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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh, by 
+William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh
+
+Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+Posting Date: December 6, 2008 [EBook #2768]
+Release Date: August, 2001
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PARIS SKETCH BOOK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK OF MR. M. A. TITMARSH
+
+By William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+
+Estes And Lauriat, Boston, Publishers
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+     THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK.
+
+     An Invasion of France
+
+     A Caution to Travellers
+
+     The Fêtes of July
+
+     On the French School of Painting
+
+     The Painter's Bargain
+
+     Cartouche
+
+     On some French Fashionable Novels
+
+     A Gambler's Death
+
+     Napoleon and his System
+
+     The Story of Mary Ancel
+
+     Beatrice Merger
+
+     Caricatures and Lithography in Paris
+
+     Little Poinsinet
+
+     The Devil's Wager
+
+     Madame Sand and the new Apocalypse
+
+     The Case of Peytel
+
+     Four Imitations of Béranger
+
+     French Dramas and Melodramas
+
+     Meditations at Versailles
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATORY LETTER
+
+TO
+
+M. ARETZ, TAILOR, ETC.
+
+27, RUE RICHELIEU, PARIS.
+
+
+SIR,--It becomes every man in his station to acknowledge and praise
+virtue wheresoever he may find it, and to point it out for the
+admiration and example of his fellow-men.
+
+Some months since, when you presented to the writer of these pages a
+small account for coats and pantaloons manufactured by you, and when you
+were met by a statement from your creditor, that an immediate settlement
+of your bill would be extremely inconvenient to him; your reply
+was, "Mon Dieu, Sir, let not that annoy you; if you want money, as a
+gentleman often does in a strange country, I have a thousand-franc note
+at my house which is quite at your service."
+
+History or experience, Sir, makes us acquainted with so few actions
+that can be compared to yours,--an offer like this from a stranger and
+a tailor seems to me so astonishing,--that you must pardon me for thus
+making your virtue public, and acquainting the English nation with your
+merit and your name. Let me add, Sir, that you live on the first floor;
+that your clothes and fit are excellent, and your charges moderate and
+just; and, as a humble tribute of my admiration, permit me to lay these
+volumes at your feet.
+
+Your obliged, faithful servant,
+
+M. A. TITMARSH.
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION.
+
+
+About half of the sketches in these volumes have already appeared in
+print, in various periodical works. A part of the text of one tale, and
+the plots of two others, have been borrowed from French originals; the
+other stories, which are, in the main, true, have been written upon
+facts and characters that came within the Author's observation during a
+residence in Paris.
+
+As the remaining papers relate to public events which occurred during
+the same period, or to Parisian Art and Literature, he has ventured to
+give his publication the title which it bears.
+
+LONDON, July 1, 1840.
+
+
+
+
+AN INVASION OF FRANCE.
+
+
+"Caesar venit in Galliam summâ diligentiâ."
+
+
+About twelve o'clock, just as the bell of the packet is tolling a
+farewell to London Bridge, and warning off the blackguard-boys with the
+newspapers, who have been shoving Times, Herald, Penny Paul-Pry, Penny
+Satirist, Flare-up, and other abominations, into your face--just as
+the bell has tolled, and the Jews, strangers, people-taking-leave-of
+their families, and blackguard-boys aforesaid, are making a rush for the
+narrow plank which conducts from the paddle-box of the "Emerald"
+steamboat unto the quay--you perceive, staggering down Thames Street,
+those two hackney-coaches, for the arrival of which you have been
+praying, trembling, hoping, despairing, swearing--sw--, I beg your
+pardon, I believe the word is not used in polite company--and
+transpiring, for the last half-hour. Yes, at last, the two coaches draw
+near, and from thence an awful number of trunks, children, carpet-bags,
+nursery-maids, hat-boxes, band-boxes, bonnet-boxes, desks, cloaks, and
+an affectionate wife, are discharged on the quay.
+
+"Elizabeth, take care of Miss Jane," screams that worthy woman, who has
+been for a fortnight employed in getting this tremendous body of troops
+and baggage into marching order. "Hicks! Hicks! for heaven's sake mind
+the babies!"--"George--Edward, sir, if you go near that porter with the
+trunk, he will tumble down and kill you, you naughty boy!--My love, DO
+take the cloaks and umbrellas, and give a hand to Fanny and Lucy; and
+I wish you would speak to the hackney-coachmen, dear, they want fifteen
+shillings, and count the packages, love--twenty-seven packages,--and
+bring little Flo; where's little Flo?--Flo! Flo!"--(Flo comes sneaking
+in; she has been speaking a few parting words to a one-eyed terrier,
+that sneaks off similarly, landward.)
+
+As when the hawk menaces the hen-roost, in like manner, when such a
+danger as a voyage menaces a mother, she becomes suddenly endowed with a
+ferocious presence of mind, and bristling up and screaming in the
+front of her brood, and in the face of circumstances, succeeds, by her
+courage, in putting her enemy to flight; in like manner you will always,
+I think, find your wife (if that lady be good for twopence) shrill,
+eager, and ill-humored, before, and during a great family move of
+this nature. Well, the swindling hackney-coachmen are paid, the mother
+leading on her regiment of little ones, and supported by her auxiliary
+nurse-maids, are safe in the cabin;--you have counted twenty-six of the
+twenty-seven parcels, and have them on board, and that horrid man on
+the paddle-box, who, for twenty minutes past, has been roaring out, NOW,
+SIR!--says, NOW, SIR, no more.
+
+I never yet knew how a steamer began to move, being always too busy
+among the trunks and children, for the first half-hour, to mark any of
+the movements of the vessel. When these private arrangements are
+made, you find yourself opposite Greenwich (farewell, sweet, sweet
+whitebait!), and quiet begins to enter your soul. Your wife smiles for
+the first time these ten days; you pass by plantations of ship-masts,
+and forests of steam-chimneys; the sailors are singing on board the
+ships, the bargees salute you with oaths, grins, and phrases facetious
+and familiar; the man on the paddle-box roars, "Ease her, stop her!"
+which mysterious words a shrill voice from below repeats, and pipes
+out, "Ease her, stop her!" in echo; the deck is crowded with groups of
+figures, and the sun shines over all.
+
+The sun shines over all, and the steward comes up to say, "Lunch, ladies
+and gentlemen! Will any lady or gentleman please to take anythink?"
+About a dozen do: boiled beef and pickles, and great red raw Cheshire
+cheese, tempt the epicure: little dumpy bottles of stout are produced,
+and fizz and bang about with a spirit one would never have looked for in
+individuals of their size and stature.
+
+The decks have a strange, look; the people on them, that is. Wives,
+elderly stout husbands, nurse-maids, and children predominate, of
+course, in English steamboats. Such may be considered as the distinctive
+marks of the English gentleman at three or four and forty: two or three
+of such groups have pitched their camps on the deck. Then there are a
+number of young men, of whom three or four have allowed their moustaches
+to BEGIN to grow since last Friday; for they are going "on the
+Continent," and they look, therefore, as if their upper lips were
+smeared with snuff.
+
+A danseuse from the opera is on her way to Paris. Followed by her bonne
+and her little dog, she paces the deck, stepping out, in the real dancer
+fashion, and ogling all around. How happy the two young Englishmen are,
+who can speak French, and make up to her: and how all criticise her
+points and paces! Yonder is a group of young ladies, who are going
+to Paris to learn how to be governesses: those two splendidly dressed
+ladies are milliners from the Rue Richelieu, who have just brought over,
+and disposed of, their cargo of Summer fashions. Here sits the Rev. Mr.
+Snodgrass with his pupils, whom he is conducting to his establishment,
+near Boulogne, where, in addition to a classical and mathematical
+education (washing included), the young gentlemen have the benefit of
+learning French among THE FRENCH THEMSELVES. Accordingly, the young
+gentlemen are locked up in a great rickety house, two miles from
+Boulogne and never see a soul, except the French usher and the cook.
+
+Some few French people are there already, preparing to be ill--(I never
+shall forget a dreadful sight I once had in the little dark, dirty,
+six-foot cabin of a Dover steamer. Four gaunt Frenchmen, but for their
+pantaloons, in the costume of Adam in Paradise, solemnly anointing
+themselves with some charm against sea-sickness!)--a few Frenchmen are
+there, but these, for the most part, and with a proper philosophy, go to
+the fore-cabin of the ship, and you see them on the fore-deck (is that
+the name for that part of the vessel which is in the region of the
+bowsprit?) lowering in huge cloaks and caps; snuffy, wretched, pale,
+and wet; and not jabbering now, as their wont is on shore. I never could
+fancy the Mounseers formidable at sea.
+
+There are, of course, many Jews on board. Who ever travelled by
+steamboat, coach, diligence, eilwagen, vetturino, mule-back, or sledge,
+without meeting some of the wandering race?
+
+By the time these remarks have been made the steward is on the deck
+again, and dinner is ready: and about two hours after dinner comes
+tea; and then there is brandy-and-water, which he eagerly presses as
+a preventive against what may happen; and about this time you pass
+the Foreland, the wind blowing pretty fresh; and the groups on deck
+disappear, and your wife, giving you an alarmed look, descends, with her
+little ones, to the ladies' cabin, and you see the steward and his boys
+issuing from their den under the paddle-box, with each a heap of
+round tin vases, like those which are called, I believe, in America,
+expectoratoons, only these are larger.
+
+      .      .      .      .      .      .
+
+The wind blows, the water looks greener and more beautiful than
+ever--ridge by ridge of long white rock passes away. "That's Ramsgit,"
+says the man at the helm; and, presently, "That there's Deal--it's
+dreadful fallen off since the war;" and "That's Dover, round that there
+pint, only you can't see it." And, in the meantime, the sun has plumped
+his hot face into the water, and the moon has shown hers as soon as ever
+his back is turned, and Mrs.--(the wife in general,) has brought up
+her children and self from the horrid cabin, in which she says it
+is impossible to breathe; and the poor little wretches are, by the
+officious stewardess and smart steward (expectoratoonifer), accommodated
+with a heap of blankets, pillows, and mattresses, in the midst of which
+they crawl, as best they may, and from the heaving heap of which are,
+during the rest of the voyage, heard occasional faint cries, and sounds
+of puking woe!
+
+Dear, dear Maria! Is this the woman who, anon, braved the jeers and
+brutal wrath of swindling hackney-coachmen; who repelled the insolence
+of haggling porters, with a scorn that brought down their demands at
+least eighteenpence? Is this the woman at whose voice servants tremble;
+at the sound of whose steps the nursery, ay, and mayhap the parlor, is
+in order? Look at her now, prostrate, prostrate--no strength has she
+to speak, scarce power to push to her youngest one--her suffering,
+struggling Rosa,--to push to her the--the instrumentoon!
+
+In the midst of all these throes and agonies, at which all the
+passengers, who have their own woes (you yourself--for how can you help
+THEM?--you are on your back on a bench, and if you move all is up with
+you,) are looking on indifferent--one man there is who has been watching
+you with the utmost care, and bestowing on your helpless family the
+tenderness that a father denies them. He is a foreigner, and you
+have been conversing with him, in the course of the morning, in
+French--which, he says, you speak remarkably well, like a native
+in fact, and then in English (which, after all, you find is more
+convenient). What can express your gratitude to this gentleman for all
+his goodness towards your family and yourself--you talk to him, he has
+served under the Emperor, and is, for all that, sensible, modest,
+and well-informed. He speaks, indeed, of his countrymen almost with
+contempt, and readily admits the superiority of a Briton, on the seas
+and elsewhere. One loves to meet with such genuine liberality in a
+foreigner, and respects the man who can sacrifice vanity to truth. This
+distinguished foreigner has travelled much; he asks whither you are
+going?--where you stop? if you have a great quantity of luggage on
+board?--and laughs when he hears of the twenty-seven packages, and
+hopes you have some friend at the custom-house, who can spare you the
+monstrous trouble of unpacking that which has taken you weeks to put up.
+Nine, ten, eleven, the distinguished foreigner is ever at your side; you
+find him now, perhaps, (with characteristic ingratitude,) something of
+a bore, but, at least, he has been most tender to the children and their
+mamma. At last a Boulogne light comes in sight, (you see it over the
+bows of the vessel, when, having bobbed violently upwards, it sinks
+swiftly down,) Boulogne harbor is in sight, and the foreigner says,--
+
+The distinguished foreigner says, says he--"Sare, eef you af no 'otel, I
+sall recommend you, milor, to ze 'Otel Betfort, in ze Quay, sare, close
+to the bathing-machines and custom-ha-oose. Good bets and fine garten,
+sare; table-d'hôte, sare, à cinq heures; breakfast, sare, in French
+or English style;--I am the commissionaire, sare, and vill see to your
+loggish."
+
+... Curse the fellow, for an impudent, swindling, sneaking French
+humbug!--Your tone instantly changes, and you tell him to go about his
+business: but at twelve o'clock at night, when the voyage is over, and
+the custom-house business done, knowing not whither to go, with a wife
+and fourteen exhausted children, scarce able to stand, and longing for
+bed, you find yourself, somehow, in the Hôtel Bedford (and you can't be
+better), and smiling chambermaids carry off your children to snug beds;
+while smart waiters produce for your honor--a cold fowl, say, and a
+salad, and a bottle of Bordeaux and Seltzer-water.
+
+      .      .      .      .      .      .
+
+The morning comes--I don't know a pleasanter feeling than that of waking
+with the sun shining on objects quite new, and (although you have made
+the voyage a dozen times,) quite strange. Mrs. X. and you occupy a very
+light bed, which has a tall canopy of red "percale;" the windows are
+smartly draped with cheap gaudy calicoes and muslins; there are little
+mean strips of carpet about the tiled floor of the room, and yet all
+seems as gay and as comfortable as may be--the sun shines brighter than
+you have seen it for a year, the sky is a thousand times bluer, and
+what a cheery clatter of shrill quick French voices comes up from the
+court-yard under the windows! Bells are jangling; a family, mayhap, is
+going to Paris, en poste, and wondrous is the jabber of the courier, the
+postilion, the inn-waiters, and the lookers-on. The landlord calls
+out for "Quatre biftecks aux pommes pour le trente-trois,"--(O my
+countrymen, I love your tastes and your ways!)--the chambermaid is
+laughing and says, "Finissez donc, Monsieur Pierre!" (what can they be
+about?)--a fat Englishman has opened his window violently, and says,
+"Dee dong, garsong, vooly voo me donny lo sho, ou vooly voo pah?" He has
+been ringing for half an hour--the last energetic appeal succeeds, and
+shortly he is enabled to descend to the coffee-room, where, with three
+hot rolls, grilled ham, cold fowl, and four boiled eggs, he makes what
+he calls his first FRENCH breakfast.
+
+It is a strange, mongrel, merry place, this town of Boulogne; the
+little French fishermen's children are beautiful, and the little French
+soldiers, four feet high, red-breeched, with huge pompons on their caps,
+and brown faces, and clear sharp eyes, look, for all their littleness,
+far more military and more intelligent than the heavy louts one has seen
+swaggering about the garrison towns in England. Yonder go a crowd of
+bare-legged fishermen; there is the town idiot, mocking a woman who is
+screaming "Fleuve du Tage," at an inn-window, to a harp, and there are
+the little gamins mocking HIM. Lo! these seven young ladies, with red
+hair and green veils, they are from neighboring Albion, and going
+to bathe. Here comes three Englishmen, habitués evidently of the
+place,--dandy specimens of our countrymen: one wears a marine dress,
+another has a shooting dress, a third has a blouse and a pair of
+guiltless spurs--all have as much hair on the face as nature or art can
+supply, and all wear their hats very much on one side. Believe me, there
+is on the face of this world no scamp like an English one, no blackguard
+like one of these half-gentlemen, so mean, so low, so vulgar,--so
+ludicrously ignorant and conceited, so desperately heartless and
+depraved.
+
+But why, my dear sir, get into a passion?--Take things coolly. As the
+poet has observed, "Those only is gentlemen who behave as sich;" with
+such, then, consort, be they cobblers or dukes. Don't give us, cries the
+patriotic reader, any abuse of our fellow-countrymen (anybody else
+can do that), but rather continue in that good-humored, facetious,
+descriptive style with which your letter has commenced.--Your remark,
+sir, is perfectly just, and does honor to your head and excellent heart.
+
+There is little need to give a description of the good town of Boulogne,
+which, haute and basse, with the new light-house and the new harbor, and
+the gas-lamps, and the manufactures, and the convents, and the number
+of English and French residents, and the pillar erected in honor of the
+grand Armée d'Angleterre, so called because it DIDN'T go to England,
+have all been excellently described by the facetious Coglan, the learned
+Dr. Millingen, and by innumerable guide-books besides. A fine thing it
+is to hear the stout old Frenchmen of Napoleon's time argue how that
+audacious Corsican WOULD have marched to London, after swallowing Nelson
+and all his gun-boats, but for cette malheureuse guerre d'Espagne and
+cette glorieuse campagne d'Autriche, which the gold of Pitt caused to be
+raised at the Emperor's tail, in order to call him off from the helpless
+country in his front. Some Frenchmen go farther still, and vow that
+in Spain they were never beaten at all; indeed, if you read in the
+Biographie des Hommes du Jour, article "Soult," you will fancy that,
+with the exception of the disaster at Vittoria, the campaigns in Spain
+and Portugal were a series of triumphs. Only, by looking at a map, it
+is observable that Vimeiro is a mortal long way from Toulouse, where,
+at the end of certain years of victories, we somehow find the honest
+Marshal. And what then?--he went to Toulouse for the purpose of beating
+the English there, to be sure;--a known fact, on which comment would be
+superfluous. However, we shall never get to Paris at this rate; let us
+break off further palaver, and away at once....
+
+(During this pause, the ingenious reader is kindly requested to pay
+his bill at the Hotel at Boulogne, to mount the Diligence of Laffitte,
+Caillard and Company, and to travel for twenty-five hours, amidst much
+jingling of harness-bells and screaming of postilions.)
+
+      .      .      .      .      .      .
+
+The French milliner, who occupies one of the corners, begins to remove
+the greasy pieces of paper which have enveloped her locks during the
+journey. She withdraws the "Madras" of dubious hue which has bound her
+head for the last five-and-twenty hours, and replaces it by the black
+velvet bonnet, which, bobbing against your nose, has hung from the
+Diligence roof since your departure from Boulogne. The old lady in the
+opposite corner, who has been sucking bonbons, and smells dreadfully
+of anisette, arranges her little parcels in that immense basket of
+abominations which all old women carry in their laps. She rubs her mouth
+and eyes with her dusty cambric handkerchief, she ties up her nightcap
+into a little bundle, and replaces it by a more becoming head-piece,
+covered with withered artificial flowers, and crumpled tags of ribbon;
+she looks wistfully at the company for an instant, and then places her
+handkerchief before her mouth:--her eyes roll strangely about for an
+instant, and you hear a faint clattering noise: the old lady has been
+getting ready her teeth, which had lain in her basket among the
+bonbons, pins, oranges, pomatum, bits of cake, lozenges, prayer-books,
+peppermint-water, copper money, and false hair--stowed away there during
+the voyage. The Jewish gentleman, who has been so attentive to
+the milliner during the journey, and is a traveller and bagman by
+profession, gathers together his various goods. The sallow-faced English
+lad, who has been drunk ever since we left Boulogne yesterday, and is
+coming to Paris to pursue the study of medicine, swears that he rejoices
+to leave the cursed Diligence, is sick of the infernal journey, and
+d--d glad that the d--d voyage is so nearly over. "Enfin!" says your
+neighbor, yawning, and inserting an elbow into the mouth of his right
+and left hand companion, "nous voilà."
+
+NOUS VOILÀ!--We are at Paris! This must account for the removal of the
+milliner's curl-papers, and the fixing of the old lady's teeth.--Since
+the last relais, the Diligence has been travelling with extraordinary
+speed. The postilion cracks his terrible whip, and screams shrilly. The
+conductor blows incessantly on his horn, the bells of the harness, the
+bumping and ringing of the wheels and chains, and the clatter of the
+great hoofs of the heavy snorting Norman stallions, have wondrously
+increased within this, the last ten minutes; and the Diligence, which
+has been proceeding hitherto at the rate of a league in an hour, now
+dashes gallantly forward, as if it would traverse at least six miles in
+the same space of time. Thus it is, when Sir Robert maketh a speech at
+Saint Stephen's--he useth his strength at the beginning, only, and the
+end. He gallopeth at the commencement; in the middle he lingers; at the
+close, again, he rouses the House, which has fallen asleep; he cracketh
+the whip of his satire; he shouts the shout of his patriotism; and,
+urging his eloquence to its roughest canter, awakens the sleepers,
+and inspires the weary, until men say, What a wondrous orator! What a
+capital coach! We will ride henceforth in it, and in no other!
+
+But, behold us at Paris! The Diligence has reached a rude-looking gate,
+or grille, flanked by two lodges; the French Kings of old made their
+entry by this gate; some of the hottest battles of the late revolution
+were fought before it. At present, it is blocked by carts and peasants,
+and a busy crowd of men, in green, examining the packages before they
+enter, probing the straw with long needles. It is the Barrier of St.
+Denis, and the green men are the customs'-men of the city of Paris. If
+you are a countryman, who would introduce a cow into the metropolis,
+the city demands twenty-four francs for such a privilege: if you have
+a hundredweight of tallow-candles, you must, previously, disburse three
+francs: if a drove of hogs, nine francs per whole hog: but upon these
+subjects Mr. Bulwer, Mrs. Trollope, and other writers, have already
+enlightened the public. In the present instance, after a momentary
+pause, one of the men in green mounts by the side of the conductor, and
+the ponderous vehicle pursues its journey.
+
+The street which we enter, that of the Faubourg St. Denis, presents
+a strange contrast to the dark uniformity of a London street, where
+everything, in the dingy and smoky atmosphere, looks as though it were
+painted in India-ink--black houses, black passengers, and black sky.
+Here, on the contrary, is a thousand times more life and color. Before
+you, shining in the sun, is a long glistening line of GUTTER,--not a
+very pleasing object in a city, but in a picture invaluable. On each
+side are houses of all dimensions and hues; some but of one story; some
+as high as the tower of Babel. From these the haberdashers (and this is
+their favorite street) flaunt long strips of gaudy calicoes, which give
+a strange air of rude gayety to the street. Milk-women, with a little
+crowd of gossips round each, are, at this early hour of morning, selling
+the chief material of the Parisian café-au-lait. Gay wine-shops, painted
+red, and smartly decorated with vines and gilded railings, are filled
+with workmen taking their morning's draught. That gloomy-looking
+prison on your right is a prison for women; once it was a convent for
+Lazarists: a thousand unfortunate individuals of the softer sex now
+occupy that mansion: they bake, as we find in the guide-books, the bread
+of all the other prisons; they mend and wash the shirts and stockings of
+all the other prisoners; they make hooks-and-eyes and phosphorus-boxes,
+and they attend chapel every Sunday:--if occupation can help them, sure
+they have enough of it. Was it not a great stroke of the legislature
+to superintend the morals and linen at once, and thus keep these poor
+creatures continually mending?--But we have passed the prison long ago,
+and are at the Porte St. Denis itself.
+
+There is only time to take a hasty glance as we pass: it commemorates
+some of the wonderful feats of arms of Ludovicus Magnus, and abounds in
+ponderous allegories--nymphs, and river-gods, and pyramids crowned with
+fleurs-de-lis; Louis passing over the Rhine in triumph, and the Dutch
+Lion giving up the ghost, in the year of our Lord 1672. The Dutch Lion
+revived, and overcame the man some years afterwards; but of this fact,
+singularly enough, the inscriptions make no mention. Passing, then,
+round the gate, and not under it (after the general custom, in respect
+of triumphal arches), you cross the boulevard, which gives a glimpse of
+trees and sunshine, and gleaming white buildings; then, dashing down the
+Rue de Bourbon Villeneuve, a dirty street, which seems interminable, and
+the Rue St. Eustache, the conductor gives a last blast on his horn, and
+the great vehicle clatters into the court-yard, where the journey is
+destined to conclude.
+
+If there was a noise before of screaming postilions and cracked horns,
+it was nothing to the Babel-like clatter which greets us now. We are
+in a great court, which Hajji Baba would call the father of Diligences.
+Half a dozen other coaches arrive at the same minute--no light affairs,
+like your English vehicles, but ponderous machines, containing fifteen
+passengers inside, more in the cabriolet, and vast towers of luggage on
+the roof: others are loading: the yard is filled with passengers coming
+or departing;--bustling porters and screaming commissionaires. These
+latter seize you as you descend from your place,--twenty cards are
+thrust into your hand, and as many voices, jabbering with inconceivable
+swiftness, shriek into your ear, "Dis way, sare; are you for ze' 'Otel
+of Rhin?' 'Hôtel de l'Amirauté!'--'Hotel Bristol,' sare!--Monsieur,
+'l'Hôtel de Lille?' Sacr-rrré 'nom de Dieu, laissez passer ce petit,
+monsieur! Ow mosh loggish ave you, sare?"
+
+And now, if you are a stranger in Paris, listen to the words of
+Titmarsh.--If you cannot speak a syllable of French, and love English
+comfort, clean rooms, breakfasts, and waiters; if you would have
+plentiful dinners, and are not particular (as how should you be?)
+concerning wine; if, in this foreign country, you WILL have your English
+companions, your porter, your friend, and your brandy-and-water--do not
+listen to any of these commissioner fellows, but with your best English
+accent, shout out boldly, "MEURICE!" and straightway a man will step
+forward to conduct you to the Rue de Rivoli.
+
+Here you will find apartments at any price: a very neat room, for
+instance, for three francs daily; an English breakfast of eternal boiled
+eggs, or grilled ham; a nondescript dinner, profuse but cold; and a
+society which will rejoice your heart. Here are young gentlemen from
+the universities; young merchants on a lark; large families of nine
+daughters, with fat father and mother; officers of dragoons, and
+lawyers' clerks. The last time we dined at "Meurice's" we hobbed and
+nobbed with no less a person than Mr. Moses, the celebrated bailiff of
+Chancery Lane; Lord Brougham was on his right, and a clergyman's lady,
+with a train of white-haired girls, sat on his left, wonderfully taken
+with the diamond rings of the fascinating stranger!
+
+It is, as you will perceive, an admirable way to see Paris, especially
+if you spend your days reading the English papers at Galignani's, as
+many of our foreign tourists do.
+
+But all this is promiscuous, and not to the purpose. If,--to continue on
+the subject of hotel choosing,--if you love quiet, heavy bills, and
+the best table-d'hôte in the city, go, O stranger! to the "Hôtel des
+Princes;" it is close to the Boulevard, and convenient for Frascati's.
+The "Hôtel Mirabeau" possesses scarcely less attraction; but of this
+you will find, in Mr. Bulwer's "Autobiography of Pelham," a faithful and
+complete account. "Lawson's Hotel" has likewise its merits, as also the
+"Hôtel de Lille," which may be described as a "second chop" Meurice.
+
+If you are a poor student come to study the humanities, or the pleasant
+art of amputation, cross the water forthwith, and proceed to the "Hôtel
+Corneille," near the Odéon, or others of its species; there are many
+where you can live royally (until you economize by going into lodgings)
+on four francs a day; and where, if by any strange chance you are
+desirous for a while to get rid of your countrymen, you will find that
+they scarcely ever penetrate.
+
+But above all, O my countrymen! shun boarding-houses, especially if you
+have ladies in your train; or ponder well, and examine the characters of
+the keepers thereof, before you lead your innocent daughters, and
+their mamma, into places so dangerous. In the first place, you have bad
+dinners; and, secondly, bad company. If you play cards, you are very
+likely playing with a swindler; if you dance, you dance with a ----
+person with whom you had better have nothing to do.
+
+
+Note (which ladies are requested not to read).--In one of these
+establishments, daily advertised as most eligible for English, a friend
+of the writer lived. A lady, who had passed for some time as the wife of
+one of the inmates, suddenly changed her husband and name, her original
+husband remaining in the house, and saluting her by her new title.
+
+
+
+
+A CAUTION TO TRAVELLERS.
+
+
+A million dangers and snares await the traveller, as soon as he issues
+out of that vast messagerie which we have just quitted: and as each man
+cannot do better than relate such events as have happened in the course
+of his own experience, and may keep the unwary from the path of danger,
+let us take this, the very earliest opportunity, of imparting to the
+public a little of the wisdom which we painfully have acquired.
+
+And first, then, with regard to the city of Paris, it is to be remarked,
+that in that metropolis flourish a greater number of native and exotic
+swindlers than are to be found in any other European nursery. What young
+Englishman that visits it, but has not determined, in his heart, to have
+a little share of the gayeties that go on--just for once, just to see
+what they are like? How many, when the horrible gambling dens were
+open, did resist a sight of them?--nay, was not a young fellow rather
+flattered by a dinner invitation from the Salon, whither he went,
+fondly pretending that he should see "French society," in the persons of
+certain Dukes and Counts who used to frequent the place?
+
+My friend Pogson is a young fellow, not much worse, although perhaps a
+little weaker and simpler than his neighbors; and coming to Paris with
+exactly the same notions that bring many others of the British youth to
+that capital, events befell him there, last winter, which are strictly
+true, and shall here be narrated, by way of warning to all.
+
+Pog, it must be premised, is a city man, who travels in drugs for a
+couple of the best London houses, blows the flute, has an album, drives
+his own gig, and is considered, both on the road and in the metropolis,
+a remarkably nice, intelligent, thriving young man. Pogson's only fault
+is too great an attachment to the fair:--"the sex," as he says often
+"will be his ruin:" the fact is, that Pog never travels without a "Don
+Juan" under his driving-cushion, and is a pretty-looking young fellow
+enough.
+
+Sam Pogson had occasion to visit Paris, last October; and it was in that
+city that his love of the sex had liked to have cost him dear. He worked
+his way down to Dover; placing, right and left, at the towns on his
+route, rhubarb, sodas, and other such delectable wares as his masters
+dealt in ("the sweetest sample of castor oil, smelt like a nosegay--went
+off like wildfire--hogshead and a half at Rochester, eight-and twenty
+gallons at Canterbury," and so on), and crossed to Calais, and thence
+voyaged to Paris in the coupé of the Diligence. He paid for two places,
+too, although a single man, and the reason shall now be made known.
+
+Dining at the table-d'hôte at "Quillacq's"--it is the best inn on the
+Continent of Europe--our little traveller had the happiness to be placed
+next to a lady, who was, he saw at a glance, one of the extreme pink of
+the nobility. A large lady, in black satin, with eyes and hair as
+black as sloes, with gold chains, scent-bottles, sable tippet, worked
+pocket-handkerchief, and four twinkling rings on each of her plump white
+fingers. Her cheeks were as pink as the finest Chinese rouge could make
+them. Pog knew the article: he travelled in it. Her lips were as red as
+the ruby lip salve: she used the very best, that was clear.
+
+She was a fine-looking woman, certainly (holding down her eyes, and
+talking perpetually of "mes trente-deux ans"); and Pogson, the wicked
+young dog, who professed not to care for young misses, saying they smelt
+so of bread-and-butter, declared, at once, that the lady was one of
+HIS beauties; in fact, when he spoke to us about her, he said, "She's a
+slap-up thing, I tell you; a reg'lar good one; ONE OF MY SORT!" And such
+was Pogson's credit in all commercial rooms, that one of HIS sort was
+considered to surpass all other sorts.
+
+During dinner-time, Mr. Pogson was profoundly polite and attentive to
+the lady at his side, and kindly communicated to her, as is the way with
+the best-bred English on their first arrival "on the Continent," all his
+impressions regarding the sights and persons he had seen. Such remarks
+having been made during half an hour's ramble about the ramparts and
+town, and in the course of a walk down to the custom-house, and a
+confidential communication with the commissionaire, must be, doubtless,
+very valuable to Frenchmen in their own country; and the lady listened
+to Pogson's opinions: not only with benevolent attention, but actually,
+she said, with pleasure and delight. Mr. Pogson said that there was
+no such thing as good meat in France, and that's why they cooked their
+victuals in this queer way; he had seen many soldiers parading about the
+place, and expressed a true Englishman's abhorrence of an armed force;
+not that he feared such fellows as these--little whipper-snappers--our
+men would eat them. Hereupon the lady admitted that our Guards were
+angels, but that Monsieur must not be too hard upon the French; "her
+father was a General of the Emperor."
+
+Pogson felt a tremendous respect for himself at the notion that he was
+dining with a General's daughter, and instantly ordered a bottle of
+champagne to keep up his consequence.
+
+"Mrs. Bironn, ma'am," said he, for he had heard the waiter call her by
+some such name, "if you WILL accept a glass of champagne, ma'am, you'll
+do me, I'm sure, great honor: they say it's very good, and a precious
+sight cheaper than it is on our side of the way, too--not that I care
+for money. Mrs. Bironn, ma'am, your health, ma'am."
+
+The lady smiled very graciously, and drank the wine.
+
+"Har you any relation, ma'am, if I may make so bold; har you anyways
+connected with the family of our immortal bard?"
+
+"Sir, I beg your pardon."
+
+"Don't mention it, ma'am: but BiRONN and BYron are hevidently the same
+names, only you pronounce in the French way; and I thought you might be
+related to his lordship: his horigin, ma'am, was of French extraction:"
+and here Pogson began to repeat,--
+
+
+     "Hare thy heyes like thy mother's, my fair child,
+      Hada! sole daughter of my 'ouse and 'art?"
+
+
+"Oh!" said the lady, laughing, "you speak of LOR Byron?
+
+"Hauthor of 'Don Juan,' 'Child 'Arold,' and 'Cain, a Mystery,'" said
+Pogson:--"I do; and hearing the waiter calling you Madam la Bironn, took
+the liberty of hasking whether you were connected with his lordship;
+that's hall:" and my friend here grew dreadfully red, and began
+twiddling his long ringlets in his fingers, and examining very eagerly
+the contents of his plate.
+
+"Oh, no: Madame la Baronne means Mistress Baroness; my husband was
+Baron, and I am Baroness."
+
+"What! 'ave I the honor--I beg your pardon, ma'am--is your ladyship a
+Baroness, and I not know it? pray excuse me for calling you ma'am."
+
+The Baroness smiled most graciously--with such a look as Juno cast
+upon unfortunate Jupiter when she wished to gain her wicked ends upon
+him--the Baroness smiled; and, stealing her hand into a black velvet
+bag, drew from it an ivory card-case, and from the ivory card-case
+extracted a glazed card, printed in gold; on it was engraved a coronet,
+and under the coronet the words
+
+
+    BARONNE DE FLORVAL-DELVAL,
+
+      NÉE DE MELVAL-NORVAL.
+
+                 Rue Taitbout.
+
+
+The grand Pitt diamond--the Queen's own star of the garter--a sample of
+otto-of-roses at a guinea a drop, would not be handled more curiously,
+or more respectfully, than this porcelain card of the Baroness.
+Trembling he put it into his little Russia-leather pocket-book: and
+when he ventured to look up, and saw the eyes of the Baroness de
+Florval-Delval, née de Melval-Norval, gazing upon him with friendly and
+serene glances, a thrill of pride tingled through Pogson's blood: he
+felt himself to be the very happiest fellow "on the Continent."
+
+But Pogson did not, for some time, venture to resume that sprightly
+and elegant familiarity which generally forms the great charm of his
+conversation: he was too much frightened at the presence he was in,
+and contented himself by graceful and solemn bows, deep attention,
+and ejaculations of "Yes, my lady," and "No, your ladyship," for some
+minutes after the discovery had been made. Pogson piqued himself on his
+breeding: "I hate the aristocracy," he said, "but that's no reason why I
+shouldn't behave like a gentleman."
+
+A surly, silent little gentleman, who had been the third at the
+ordinary, and would take no part either in the conversation or in
+Pogson's champagne, now took up his hat, and, grunting, left the room,
+when the happy bagman had the delight of a tête-à-tête. The Baroness did
+not appear inclined to move: it was cold; a fire was comfortable, and
+she had ordered none in her apartment. Might Pogson give her one more
+glass of champagne, or would her ladyship prefer "something hot." Her
+ladyship gravely said, she never took ANYTHING hot. "Some champagne,
+then; a leetle drop?" She would! she would! O gods! how Pogson's hand
+shook as he filled and offered her the glass!
+
+What took place during the rest of the evening had better be described
+by Mr. Pogson himself, who has given us permission to publish his
+letter.
+
+
+"QUILLACQ'S HOTEL (pronounced KILLYAX), CALAIS.
+
+"DEAR TIT,--I arrived at Cally, as they call it, this day, or, rather,
+yesterday; for it is past midnight, as I sit thinking of a wonderful
+adventure that has just befallen me. A woman in course; that's always
+the case with ME, you know: but oh, Tit! if you COULD but see her! Of
+the first family in France, the Florval-Delvals, beautiful as an angel,
+and no more caring for money than I do for split peas.
+
+"I'll tell you how it occurred. Everybody in France, you know, dines at
+the ordinary--it's quite distangy to do so. There was only three of us
+to-day, however,--the Baroness, me, and a gent, who never spoke a word;
+and we didn't want him to, neither: do you mark that?
+
+"You know my way with the women: champagne's the thing; make 'em drink,
+make 'em talk;--make 'em talk, make 'em do anything. So I orders a
+bottle, as if for myself; and, 'Ma'am,' says I, 'will you take a glass
+of Sham--just one?' Take it she did--for you know it's quite distangy
+here: everybody dines at the table de hôte, and everybody accepts
+everybody's wine. Bob Irons, who travels in linen on our circuit, told
+me that he had made some slap-up acquaintances among the genteelest
+people at Paris, nothing but by offering them Sham.
+
+"Well, my Baroness takes one glass, two glasses, three glasses--the old
+fellow goes--we have a deal of chat (she took me for a military man,
+she said: is it not singular that so many people should?), and by ten
+o'clock we had grown so intimate, that I had from her her whole history,
+knew where she came from, and where she was going. Leave me alone with
+'em: I can find out any woman's history in half an hour.
+
+"And where do you think she IS going? to Paris to be sure: she has her
+seat in what they call the coopy (though you're not near so cooped in it
+as in our coaches. I've been to the office and seen one of 'em). She
+has her place in the coopy, and the coopy holds THREE; so what does Sam
+Pogson do?--he goes and takes the other two. Ain't I up to a thing or
+two? Oh, no, not the least; but I shall have her to myself the whole of
+the way.
+
+"We shall be in the French metropolis the day after this reaches you:
+please look out for a handsome lodging for me, and never mind the
+expense. And I say, if you could, in her hearing, when you came down
+to the coach, call me Captain Pogson, I wish you would--it sounds well
+travelling, you know; and when she asked me if I was not an officer, I
+couldn't say no. Adieu, then, my dear fellow, till Monday, and vive le
+joy, as they say. The Baroness says I speak French charmingly, she talks
+English as well as you or I.
+
+"Your affectionate friend,
+
+"S. Pogson."
+
+
+This letter reached us duly, in our garrets, and we engaged such an
+apartment for Mr. Pogson, as beseemed a gentleman of his rank in the
+world and the army. At the appointed hour, too, we repaired to the
+Diligence office, and there beheld the arrival of the machine which
+contained him and his lovely Baroness.
+
+Those who have much frequented the society of gentlemen of his
+profession (and what more delightful?) must be aware, that, when all the
+rest of mankind look hideous, dirty, peevish, wretched, after a forty
+hours' coach-journey, a bagman appears as gay and spruce as when he
+started; having within himself a thousand little conveniences for the
+voyage, which common travellers neglect. Pogson had a little portable
+toilet, of which he had not failed to take advantage, and with his long,
+curling, flaxen hair, flowing under a seal-skin cap, with a gold tassel,
+with a blue and gold satin handkerchief, a crimson velvet waistcoat,
+a light green cut-away coat, a pair of barred brickdust-colored
+pantaloons, and a neat mackintosh, presented, altogether, as elegant and
+distingué an appearance as any one could desire. He had put on a clean
+collar at breakfast, and a pair of white kids as he entered the barrier,
+and looked, as he rushed into my arms, more like a man stepping out of a
+band-box, than one descending from a vehicle that has just performed one
+of the laziest, dullest, flattest, stalest, dirtiest journeys in Europe.
+
+To my surprise, there were TWO ladies in the coach with my friend,
+and not ONE, as I had expected. One of these, a stout female, carrying
+sundry baskets, bags, umbrellas, and woman's wraps, was evidently a
+maid-servant: the other, in black, was Pogson's fair one, evidently.
+I could see a gleam of curl-papers over a sallow face,--of a dusky
+nightcap flapping over the curl-papers,--but these were hidden by a lace
+veil and a huge velvet bonnet, of which the crowning birds-of-paradise
+were evidently in a moulting state. She was encased in many shawls
+and wrappers; she put, hesitatingly, a pretty little foot out of the
+carriage--Pogson was by her side in an instant, and, gallantly putting
+one of his white kids round her waist, aided this interesting creature
+to descend. I saw, by her walk, that she was five-and-forty, and that my
+little Pogson was a lost man.
+
+After some brief parley between them--in which it was charming to hear
+how my friend Samuel WOULD speak, what he called French, to a lady
+who could not understand one syllable of his jargon--the mutual
+hackney-coaches drew up; Madame la Baronne waved to the Captain a
+graceful French curtsy. "Adyou!" said Samuel, and waved his lily hand.
+"Adyou-addimang."
+
+A brisk little gentleman, who had made the journey in the same coach
+with Pogson, but had more modestly taken a seat in the Imperial, here
+passed us, and greeted me with a "How d'ye do?" He had shouldered
+his own little valise, and was trudging off, scattering a cloud of
+commissionaires, who would fain have spared him the trouble.
+
+"Do you know that chap?" says Pogson; "surly fellow, ain't he?"
+
+"The kindest man in existence," answered I; "all the world knows little
+Major British."
+
+"He's a Major, is he?--why, that's the fellow that dined with us at
+Killyax's; it's lucky I did not call myself Captain before him,
+he mightn't have liked it, you know:" and then Sam fell into a
+reverie;--what was the subject of his thoughts soon appeared.
+
+"Did you ever SEE such a foot and ankle?" said Sam, after sitting for
+some time, regardless of the novelty of the scene, his hands in his
+pockets, plunged in the deepest thought.
+
+"ISN'T she a slap-up woman, eh, now?" pursued he; and began enumerating
+her attractions, as a horse-jockey would the points of a favorite
+animal.
+
+"You seem to have gone a pretty length already," said I, "by promising
+to visit her to-morrow."
+
+"A good length?--I believe you. Leave ME alone for that."
+
+"But I thought you were only to be two in the coupé, you wicked rogue."
+
+"Two in the coopy? Oh! ah! yes, you know--why, that is, I didn't know
+she had her maid with her (what an ass I was to think of a noblewoman
+travelling without one!) and couldn't, in course, refuse, when she asked
+me to let the maid in."
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"Couldn't, you know, as a man of honor; but I made up for all that,"
+said Pogson, winking slyly, and putting his hand to his little bunch of
+a nose, in a very knowing way.
+
+"You did, and how?"
+
+"Why, you dog, I sat next to her; sat in the middle the whole way, and
+my back's half broke, I can tell you:" and thus, having depicted his
+happiness, we soon reached the inn where this back-broken young man was
+to lodge during his stay in Paris.
+
+The next day at five we met; Mr. Pogson had seen his Baroness, and
+described her lodgings, in his own expressive way, as "slap-up." She
+had received him quite like an old friend; treated him to eau sucrée, of
+which beverage he expressed himself a great admirer; and actually asked
+him to dine the next day. But there was a cloud over the ingenuous
+youth's brow, and I inquired still farther.
+
+"Why," said he, with a sigh, "I thought she was a widow; and, hang it!
+who should come in but her husband the Baron: a big fellow, sir, with a
+blue coat, a red ribbing, and SUCH a pair of mustachios!"
+
+"Well," said I, "he didn't turn you out, I suppose?"
+
+"Oh, no! on the contrary, as kind as possible; his lordship said that he
+respected the English army; asked me what corps I was in,--said he had
+fought in Spain against us,--and made me welcome."
+
+"What could you want more?"
+
+Mr. Pogson at this only whistled; and if some very profound observer of
+human nature had been there to read into this little bagman's heart, it
+would, perhaps, have been manifest, that the appearance of a whiskered
+soldier of a husband had counteracted some plans that the young
+scoundrel was concocting.
+
+I live up a hundred and thirty-seven steps in the remote quarter of the
+Luxembourg, and it is not to be expected that such a fashionable fellow
+as Sam Pogson, with his pockets full of money, and a new city to see,
+should be always wandering to my dull quarters; so that, although he
+did not make his appearance for some time, he must not be accused of any
+luke-warmness of friendship on that score.
+
+He was out, too, when I called at his hotel; but once, I had the good
+fortune to see him, with his hat curiously on one side, looking as
+pleased as Punch, and being driven, in an open cab, in the Champs
+Elysées. "That's ANOTHER tip-top chap," said he, when we met, at length.
+"What do you think of an Earl's son, my boy? Honorable Tom Ringwood, son
+of the Earl of Cinqbars: what do you think of that, eh?"
+
+I thought he was getting into very good society. Sam was a dashing
+fellow, and was always above his own line of life; he had met Mr.
+Ringwood at the Baron's, and they'd been to the play together; and the
+honorable gent, as Sam called him, had joked with him about being well
+to do IN A CERTAIN QUARTER; and he had had a game of billiards with the
+Baron, at the Estaminy, "a very distangy place, where you smoke," said
+Sam; "quite select, and frequented by the tip-top nobility;" and they
+were as thick as peas in a shell; and they were to dine that day at
+Ringwood's, and sup, the next night, with the Baroness.
+
+"I think the chaps down the road will stare," said Sam, "when they hear
+how I've been coming it." And stare, no doubt, they would; for it
+is certain that very few commercial gentlemen have had Mr. Pogson's
+advantages.
+
+The next morning we had made an arrangement to go out shopping together,
+and to purchase some articles of female gear, that Sam intended to
+bestow on his relations when he returned. Seven needle-books, for his
+sisters; a gilt buckle, for his mamma; a handsome French cashmere shawl
+and bonnet, for his aunt (the old lady keeps an inn in the Borough,
+and has plenty of money, and no heirs); and a toothpick case, for his
+father. Sam is a good fellow to all his relations, and as for his aunt,
+he adores her. Well, we were to go and make these purchases, and I
+arrived punctually at my time; but Sam was stretched on a sofa, very
+pale and dismal.
+
+I saw how it had been.--"A little too much of Mr. Ringwood's claret, I
+suppose?"
+
+He only gave a sickly stare.
+
+"Where does the Honorable Tom live?" says I.
+
+"HONORABLE!" says Sam, with a hollow, horrid laugh; "I tell you, Tit,
+he's no more Honorable than you are."
+
+"What, an impostor?"
+
+"No, no; not that. He is a real Honorable, only--"
+
+"Oh, ho! I smell a rat--a little jealous, eh?"
+
+"Jealousy be hanged! I tell you he's a thief; and the Baron's a thief;
+and, hang me, if I think his wife is any better. Eight-and-thirty pounds
+he won of me before supper; and made me drunk, and sent me home:--is
+THAT honorable? How can I afford to lose forty pounds? It's took me two
+years to save it up--if my old aunt gets wind of it, she'll cut me off
+with a shilling: hang me!"--and here Sam, in an agony, tore his fair
+hair.
+
+While bewailing his lot in this lamentable strain, his bell was
+rung, which signal being answered by a surly "Come in," a tall, very
+fashionable gentleman, with a fur coat, and a fierce tuft to his chin,
+entered the room. "Pogson my buck, how goes it?" said he, familiarly,
+and gave a stare at me: I was making for my hat.
+
+"Don't go," said Sam, rather eagerly; and I sat down again.
+
+The Honorable Mr. Ringwood hummed and ha'd: and, at last, said he wished
+to speak to Mr. Pogson on business, in private, if possible.
+
+"There's no secrets betwixt me and my friend," cried Sam.
+
+Mr. Ringwood paused a little:--"An awkward business that of last night,"
+at length exclaimed he.
+
+"I believe it WAS an awkward business," said Sam, dryly.
+
+"I really am very sorry for your losses."
+
+"Thank you: and so am I, I can tell you," said Sam.
+
+"You must mind, my good fellow, and not drink; for, when you drink, you
+WILL play high: by Gad, you led US in, and not we you."
+
+"I dare say," answered Sam, with something of peevishness; "losses is
+losses: there's no use talking about 'em when they're over and paid."
+
+"And paid?" here wonderingly spoke Mr. Ringwood; "why, my dear fel--what
+the deuce--has Florval been with you?"
+
+"D---- Florval!" growled Sam, "I've never set eyes on his face since
+last night; and never wish to see him again."
+
+"Come, come, enough of this talk; how do you intend to settle the bills
+which you gave him last night?"
+
+"Bills I what do you mean?"
+
+"I mean, sir, these bills," said the Honorable Tom, producing two out of
+his pocket-book, and looking as stern as a lion. "'I promise to pay, on
+demand, to the Baron de Florval, the sum of four hundred pounds. October
+20, 1838.' 'Ten days after date I promise to pay the Baron de et caetera
+et caetera, one hundred and ninety-eight pounds. Samuel Pogson.' You
+didn't say what regiment you were in."
+
+"WHAT!" shouted poor Sam, as from a dream, starting up and looking
+preternaturally pale and hideous.
+
+"D---- it, sir, you don't affect ignorance: you don't pretend not to
+remember that you signed these bills, for money lost in my rooms: money
+LENT to you, by Madame de Florval, at your own request, and lost to her
+husband? You don't suppose, sir, that I shall be such an infernal idiot
+as to believe you, or such a coward as to put up with a mean subterfuge
+of this sort. Will you, or will you not, pay the money, sir?"
+
+"I will not," said Sam, stoutly; "it's a d----d swin--"
+
+Here Mr. Ringwood sprung up, clenching his riding-whip, and looking so
+fierce that Sam and I bounded back to the other end of the room. "Utter
+that word again, and, by heaven, I'll murder you!" shouted Mr. Ringwood,
+and looked as if he would, too: "once more, will you, or will you not,
+pay this money?"
+
+"I can't," said Sam faintly.
+
+"I'll call again, Captain Pogson," said Mr. Ringwood, "I'll call again
+in one hour; and, unless you come to some arrangement, you must meet
+my friend, the Baron de Florval, or I'll post you for a swindler and
+a coward." With this he went out: the door thundered to after him, and
+when the clink of his steps departing had subsided, I was enabled to
+look round at Pog. The poor little man had his elbows on the marble
+table, his head between his hands, and looked, as one has seen gentlemen
+look over a steam-vessel off Ramsgate, the wind blowing remarkably
+fresh: at last he fairly burst out crying.
+
+"If Mrs. Pogson heard of this," said I, "what would become of the 'Three
+Tuns?'" (for I wished to give him a lesson). "If your Ma, who took you
+every Sunday to meeting, should know that her boy was paying attention
+to married women;--if Drench, Glauber and Co., your employers, were
+to know that their confidential agent was a gambler, and unfit to be
+trusted with their money, how long do you think your connection would
+last with them, and who would afterwards employ you?"
+
+To this poor Pog had not a word of answer; but sat on his sofa
+whimpering so bitterly, that the sternest of moralists would have
+relented towards him, and would have been touched by the little wretch's
+tears. Everything, too, must be pleaded in excuse for this unfortunate
+bagman: who, if he wished to pass for a captain, had only done so
+because he had an intense respect and longing for rank: if he had
+made love to the Baroness, had only done so because he was given to
+understand by Lord Byron's "Don Juan" that making love was a very
+correct, natty thing: and if he had gambled, had only been induced to
+do so by the bright eyes and example of the Baron and the Baroness. O
+ye Barons and Baronesses of England! if ye knew what a number of small
+commoners are daily occupied in studying your lives, and imitating your
+aristocratic ways, how careful would ye be of your morals, manners, and
+conversation!
+
+My soul was filled, then, with a gentle yearning pity for Pogson,
+and revolved many plans for his rescue: none of these seeming to be
+practicable, at last we hit on the very wisest of all, and determined to
+apply for counsel to no less a person than Major British.
+
+A blessing it is to be acquainted with my worthy friend, little Major
+British; and heaven, sure, it was that put the Major into my head, when
+I heard of this awkward scrape of poor Fog's. The Major is on half-pay,
+and occupies a modest apartment au quatrième, in the very hotel which
+Pogson had patronized at my suggestion; indeed, I had chosen it from
+Major British's own peculiar recommendation.
+
+There is no better guide to follow than such a character as the
+honest Major, of whom there are many likenesses now scattered over the
+Continent of Europe: men who love to live well, and are forced to
+live cheaply, and who find the English abroad a thousand times easier,
+merrier, and more hospitable than the same persons at home. I, for my
+part, never landed on Calais pier without feeling that a load of sorrows
+was left on the other side of the water; and have always fancied that
+black care stepped on board the steamer, along with the custom-house
+officers at Gravesend, and accompanied one to yonder black louring
+towers of London--so busy, so dismal, and so vast.
+
+British would have cut any foreigner's throat who ventured to say so
+much, but entertained, no doubt, private sentiments of this nature; for
+he passed eight months of the year, regularly, abroad, with headquarters
+at Paris (the garrets before alluded to), and only went to England for
+the month's shooting, on the grounds of his old colonel, now an old
+lord, of whose acquaintance the Major was passably inclined to boast.
+
+He loved and respected, like a good staunch Tory as he is, every one
+of the English nobility; gave himself certain little airs of a man of
+fashion, that were by no means disagreeable; and was, indeed, kindly
+regarded by such English aristocracy as he met, in his little annual
+tours among the German courts, in Italy or in Paris, where he never
+missed an ambassador's night: he retailed to us, who didn't go, but were
+delighted to know all that had taken place, accurate accounts of the
+dishes, the dresses, and the scandal which had there fallen under his
+observation.
+
+He is, moreover, one of the most useful persons in society that can
+possibly be; for besides being incorrigibly duelsome on his own account,
+he is, for others, the most acute and peaceable counsellor in the world,
+and has carried more friends through scrapes and prevented more deaths
+than any member of the Humane Society. British never bought a single
+step in the army, as is well known. In '14 he killed a celebrated French
+fire-eater, who had slain a young friend of his, and living, as he
+does, a great deal with young men of pleasure, and good old sober family
+people, he is loved by them both and has as welcome a place made for
+him at a roaring bachelor's supper at the "Café Anglais," as at a staid
+dowager's dinner-table in the Faubourg St. Honoré. Such pleasant old
+boys are very profitable acquaintances, let me tell you; and lucky is
+the young man who has one or two such friends in his list.
+
+Hurrying on Fogson in his dress, I conducted him, panting, up to the
+Major's quatrième, where we were cheerfully bidden to come in. The
+little gentleman was in his travelling jacket, and occupied in
+painting, elegantly, one of those natty pairs of boots in which he daily
+promenaded the Boulevards. A couple of pairs of tough buff gloves had
+been undergoing some pipe-claying operation under his hands; no man
+stepped out so spick and span, with a hat so nicely brushed, with a
+stiff cravat tied so neatly under a fat little red face, with a blue
+frock-coat so scrupulously fitted to a punchy little person, as Major
+British, about whom we have written these two pages. He stared rather
+hardly at my companion, but gave me a kind shake of the hand, and we
+proceeded at once to business. "Major British," said I, "we want your
+advice in regard to an unpleasant affair which has just occurred to my
+friend Pogson."
+
+"Pogson, take a chair."
+
+"You must know, sir, that Mr. Pogson, coming from Calais the other day,
+encountered, in the diligence, a very handsome woman."
+
+British winked at Pogson, who, wretched as he was, could not help
+feeling pleased.
+
+"Mr. Pogson was not more pleased with this lovely creature than was she
+with him; for, it appears, she gave him her card, invited him to her
+house, where he has been constantly, and has been received with much
+kindness."
+
+"I see," says British.
+
+"Her husband the Baron--"
+
+"NOW it's coming," said the Major, with a grin: "her husband is jealous,
+I suppose, and there is a talk of the Bois de Boulogne: my dear sir, you
+can't refuse--can't refuse."
+
+"It's not that," said Pogson, wagging his head passionately.
+
+"Her husband the Baron seemed quite as much taken with Pogson as his
+lady was, and has introduced him to some very distingué friends of his
+own set. Last night one of the Baron's friends gave a party in honor
+of my friend Pogson, who lost forty-eight pounds at cards BEFORE he was
+made drunk, and heaven knows how much after."
+
+"Not a shilling, by sacred heaven!--not a shilling!" yelled out Pogson.
+"After the supper I 'ad such an 'eadach', I couldn't do anything but
+fall asleep on the sofa."
+
+"You 'ad such an 'eadach', sir," says British, sternly, who piques
+himself on his grammar and pronunciation, and scorns a cockney.
+
+"Such a H-eadache, sir," replied Pogson, with much meekness.
+
+"The unfortunate man is brought home at two o'clock, as tipsy as
+possible, dragged up stairs, senseless, to bed, and, on waking, receives
+a visit from his entertainer of the night before--a lord's son, Major,
+a tip-top fellow,--who brings a couple of bills that my friend Pogson is
+said to have signed."
+
+"Well, my dear fellow, the thing's quite simple,--he must pay them."
+
+"I can't pay them."
+
+"He can't pay them," said we both in a breath: "Pogson is a commercial
+traveller, with thirty shillings a week, and how the deuce is he to pay
+five hundred pounds?"
+
+"A bagman, sir! and what right has a bagman to gamble? Gentlemen gamble,
+sir; tradesmen, sir, have no business with the amusements of the gentry.
+What business had you with barons and lords' sons, sir?--serve you
+right, sir."
+
+"Sir," says Pogson, with some dignity, "merit, and not birth, is the
+criterion of a man: I despise an hereditary aristocracy, and admire only
+Nature's gentlemen. For my part, I think that a British merch--"
+
+"Hold your tongue, sir," bounced out the Major, "and don't lecture
+me; don't come to me, sir, with your slang about Nature's
+gentlemen--Nature's tomfools, sir! Did Nature open a cash account for
+you at a banker's, sir? Did Nature give you an education, sir? What do
+you mean by competing with people to whom Nature has given all these
+things? Stick to your bags, Mr. Pogson, and your bagmen, and leave
+barons and their like to their own ways."
+
+"Yes, but, Major," here cried that faithful friend, who has always stood
+by Pogson; "they won't leave him alone."
+
+"The honorable gent says I must fight if I don't pay," whimpered Sam.
+
+"What! fight YOU? Do you mean that the honorable gent, as you call him,
+will go out with a bagman?"
+
+"He doesn't know I'm a--I'm a commercial man," blushingly said Sam: "he
+fancies I'm a military gent."
+
+The Major's gravity was quite upset at this absurd notion; and he
+laughed outrageously. "Why, the fact is, sir," said I, "that my
+friend Pogson, knowing the value of the title of Captain, and being
+complimented by the Baroness on his warlike appearance, said, boldly,
+he was in the army. He only assumed the rank in order to dazzle her weak
+imagination, never fancying that there was a husband, and a circle of
+friends, with whom he was afterwards to make an acquaintance; and then,
+you know, it was too late to withdraw."
+
+"A pretty pickle you have put yourself in, Mr. Pogson, by making love to
+other men's wives, and calling yourself names," said the Major, who was
+restored to good humor. "And pray, who is the honorable gent?"
+
+"The Earl of Cinqbars' son," says Pogson, "the Honorable Tom Ringwood."
+
+"I thought it was some such character; and the Baron is the Baron de
+Florval-Delval?"
+
+"The very same."
+
+"And his wife a black-haired woman, with a pretty foot and ankle; calls
+herself Athenais; and is always talking about her trente-deux ans? Why,
+sir, that woman was an actress on the Boulevard, when we were here in
+'15. She's no more his wife than I am. Delval's name is Chicot. The
+woman is always travelling between London and Paris: I saw she was
+hooking you at Calais; she has hooked ten men, in the course of the last
+two years, in this very way. She lent you money, didn't she?" "Yes."
+"And she leans on your shoulder, and whispers, 'Play half for me,' and
+somebody wins it, and the poor thing is as sorry as you are, and her
+husband storms and rages, and insists on double stakes; and she leans
+over your shoulder again, and tells every card in your hand to your
+adversary, and that's the way it's done, Mr. Pogson."
+
+"I've been 'AD, I see I 'ave," said Pogson, very humbly.
+
+"Well, sir," said the Major, "in consideration, not of you, sir--for,
+give me leave to tell you, Mr. Pogson, that you are a pitiful little
+scoundrel--in consideration for my Lord Cinqbars, sir, with whom, I am
+proud to say, I am intimate," (the Major dearly loved a lord, and was,
+by his own showing, acquainted with half the peerage,) "I will aid you
+in this affair. Your cursed vanity, sir, and want of principle, has set
+you, in the first place, intriguing with other men's wives; and if you
+had been shot for your pains, a bullet would have only served you right,
+sir. You must go about as an impostor, sir, in society; and you pay
+richly for your swindling, sir, by being swindled yourself: but, as
+I think your punishment has been already pretty severe, I shall do my
+best, out of regard for my friend, Lord Cinqbars, to prevent the matter
+going any farther; and I recommend you to leave Paris without delay. Now
+let me wish you a good morning."--Wherewith British made a majestic bow,
+and began giving the last touch to his varnished boots.
+
+We departed: poor Sam perfectly silent and chapfallen; and I meditating
+on the wisdom of the half-pay philosopher, and wondering what means he
+would employ to rescue Pogson from his fate.
+
+What these means were I know not; but Mr. Ringwood did NOT make his
+appearance at six; and, at eight, a letter arrived for "Mr. Pogson,
+commercial traveller," &c. &c. It was blank inside, but contained his
+two bills. Mr. Ringwood left town, almost immediately, for Vienna; nor
+did the Major explain the circumstances which caused his departure; but
+he muttered something about "knew some of his old tricks," "threatened
+police, and made him disgorge directly."
+
+Mr. Ringwood is, as yet, young at his trade; and I have often thought it
+was very green of him to give up the bills to the Major, who, certainly,
+would never have pressed the matter before the police, out of respect
+for his friend, Lord Cinqbars.
+
+
+
+
+THE FÊTES OF JULY.
+
+IN A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE "BUNGAY BEACON."
+
+
+PARIS, July 30th, 1839.
+
+We have arrived here just in time for the fêtes of July.--You have
+read, no doubt, of that glorious revolution which took place
+here nine years ago, and which is now commemorated annually,
+in a pretty facetious manner, by gun-firing, student-processions,
+pole-climbing-for-silver-spoons, gold-watches and legs-of-mutton,
+monarchical orations, and what not, and sanctioned, moreover, by
+Chamber-of-Deputies, with a grant of a couple of hundred thousand
+francs to defray the expenses of all the crackers, gun-firings, and
+legs-of-mutton aforesaid. There is a new fountain in the Place Louis
+Quinze, otherwise called the Place Louis Seize, or else the Place de la
+Révolution, or else the Place de la Concorde (who can say why?)--which,
+I am told, is to run bad wine during certain hours to-morrow, and there
+WOULD have been a review of the National Guards and the Line--only,
+since the Fieschi business, reviews are no joke, and so this latter part
+of the festivity has been discontinued.
+
+Do you not laugh, O Pharos of Bungay, at the continuance of a humbug
+such as this?--at the humbugging anniversary of a humbug? The King
+of the Barricades is, next to the Emperor Nicholas, the most absolute
+Sovereign in Europe; yet there is not in the whole of this fair kingdom
+of France a single man who cares sixpence about him, or his dynasty:
+except, mayhap, a few hangers-on at the Château, who eat his dinners,
+and put their hands in his purse. The feeling of loyalty is as dead as
+old Charles the Tenth; the Chambers have been laughed at, the country
+has been laughed at, all the successive ministries have been laughed
+at (and you know who is the wag that has amused himself with them all);
+and, behold, here come three days at the end of July, and cannons
+think it necessary to fire off, squibs and crackers to blaze and fizz,
+fountains to run wine, kings to make speeches, and subjects to crawl
+up greasy mâts-de-cocagne in token of gratitude and réjouissance
+publique!--My dear sir, in their aptitude to swallow, to utter, to enact
+humbugs, these French people, from Majesty downwards, beat all the other
+nations of this earth. In looking at these men, their manners, dresses,
+opinions, politics, actions, history, it is impossible to preserve a
+grave countenance; instead of having Carlyle to write a History of the
+French Revolution, I often think it should be handed over to Dickens
+or Theodore Hook: and oh! where is the Rabelais to be the faithful
+historian of the last phase of the Revolution--the last glorious nine
+years of which we are now commemorating the last glorious three days?
+
+I had made a vow not to say a syllable on the subject, although I have
+seen, with my neighbors, all the gingerbread stalls down the Champs
+Elysées, and some of the "catafalques" erected to the memory of the
+heroes of July, where the students and others, not connected personally
+with the victims, and not having in the least profited by their deaths,
+come and weep; but the grief shown on the first day is quite as absurd
+and fictitious as the joy exhibited on the last. The subject is one
+which admits of much wholesome reflection and food for mirth; and,
+besides, is so richly treated by the French themselves, that it would
+be a sin and a shame to pass it over. Allow me to have the honor
+of translating, for your edification, an account of the first day's
+proceedings--it is mighty amusing, to my thinking.
+
+
+"CELEBRATION OF THE DAYS OF JULY.
+
+"To-day (Saturday), funeral ceremonies, in honor of the victims of July,
+were held in the various edifices consecrated to public worship.
+
+"These edifices, with the exception of some churches (especially that
+of the Petits-Pères), were uniformly hung with black on the outside; the
+hangings bore only this inscription: 27, 28, 29 July, 1830--surrounded
+by a wreath of oak-leaves.
+
+"In the interior of the Catholic churches, it had only been thought
+proper to dress LITTLE CATAFALQUES, as for burials of the third and
+fourth class. Very few clergy attended; but a considerable number of the
+National Guard.
+
+"The Synagogue of the Israelites was entirely hung with black; and a
+great concourse of people attended. The service was performed with the
+greatest pomp.
+
+"In the Protestant temples there was likewise a very full attendance:
+APOLOGETICAL DISCOURSES on the Revolution of July were pronounced by the
+pastors.
+
+"The absence of M. de Quélen (Archbishop of Paris), and of many members
+of the superior clergy, was remarked at Notre Dame.
+
+"The civil authorities attended service in their several districts.
+
+"The poles, ornamented with tri-colored flags, which formerly were
+placed on Notre Dame, were, it was remarked, suppressed. The flags
+on the Pont Neuf were, during the ceremony, only half-mast high, and
+covered with crape."
+
+Et caetera, et caetera, et caetera.
+
+"The tombs of the Louvre were covered with black hangings, and adorned
+with tri-colored flags. In front and in the middle was erected an
+expiatory monument of a pyramidical shape, and surmounted by a funeral
+vase.
+
+"These tombs were guarded by the MUNICIPAL GUARD, THE TROOPS OF THE
+LINE, THE SERGENS DE VILLE (town patrol), AND A BRIGADE OF AGENTS OF
+POLICE IN PLAIN CLOTHES, under the orders of peace-officer Vassal.
+
+"Between eleven and twelve o'clock, some young men, to the number of
+400 or 500, assembled on the Place de la Bourse, one of them bearing a
+tri-colored banner with an inscription, 'TO THE MANES OF JULY:' ranging
+themselves in order, they marched five abreast to the Marché des
+Innocens. On their arrival, the Municipal Guards of the Halle aux
+Draps, where the post had been doubled, issued out without arms, and the
+town-sergeants placed themselves before the market to prevent the entry
+of the procession. The young men passed in perfect order, and without
+saying a word--only lifting their hats as they defiled before the tombs.
+When they arrived at the Louvre they found the gates shut, and the
+garden evacuated. The troops were under arms, and formed in battalion.
+
+"After the passage of the procession, the Garden was again open to the
+public."
+
+And the evening and the morning were the first day.
+
+There's nothing serious in mortality: is there, from the beginning
+of this account to the end thereof, aught but sheer, open, monstrous,
+undisguised humbug? I said, before, that you should have a history of
+these people by Dickens or Theodore Hook, but there is little need of
+professed wags;--do not the men write their own tale with an admirable
+Sancho-like gravity and naïveté, which one could not desire improved?
+How good is that touch of sly indignation about the LITTLE CATAFALQUES!
+how rich the contrast presented by the economy of the Catholics to the
+splendid disregard of expense exhibited by the devout Jews! and how
+touching the "APOLOGETICAL DISCOURSES on the Revolution," delivered
+by the Protestant pastors! Fancy the profound affliction of the Gardes
+Municipaux, the Sergens de Ville, the police agents in plain clothes,
+and the troops with fixed bayonets, sobbing round the "expiatory
+monuments of a pyramidical shape, surmounted by funeral vases," and
+compelled, by sad duty, to fire into the public who might wish to
+indulge in the same woe! O "manes of July!" (the phrase is pretty and
+grammatical) why did you with sharp bullets break those Louvre windows?
+Why did you bayonet red-coated Swiss behind that fair white façade,
+and, braving cannon, musket, sabre, perspective guillotine, burst yonder
+bronze gates, rush through that peaceful picture-gallery, and hurl
+royalty, loyalty, and a thousand years of Kings, head-over-heels out of
+yonder Tuileries' windows?
+
+It is, you will allow, a little difficult to say:--there is, however,
+ONE benefit that the country has gained (as for liberty of press, or
+person, diminished taxation, a juster representation, who ever thinks
+of them?)--ONE benefit they have gained, or nearly--abolition de la
+peine-de-mort pour délit politique: no more wicked guillotining for
+revolutions. A Frenchman must have his revolution--it is his nature to
+knock down omnibuses in the street, and across them to fire at troops
+of the line--it is a sin to balk it. Did not the King send off
+Revolutionary Prince Napoleon in a coach-and-four? Did not the jury,
+before the face of God and Justice, proclaim Revolutionary Colonel
+Vaudrey not guilty?--One may hope, soon, that if a man shows decent
+courage and energy in half a dozen émeutes, he will get promotion and a
+premium.
+
+I do not (although, perhaps, partial to the subject,) want to talk more
+nonsense than the occasion warrants, and will pray you to cast your eyes
+over the following anecdote, that is now going the round of the papers,
+and respects the commutation of the punishment of that wretched,
+fool-hardy Barbés, who, on his trial, seemed to invite the penalty which
+has just been remitted to him. You recollect the braggart's speech:
+"When the Indian falls into the power of the enemy, he knows the fate
+that awaits him, and submits his head to the knife:--I am the Indian!"
+
+"Well--"
+
+"M. Hugo was at the Opera on the night the sentence of the Court
+of Peers, condemning Barbés to death, was published. The great poet
+composed the following verses:--
+
+
+     'Par votre ange envolée, ainsi qu'une colombe,
+      Par le royal enfant, doux et frêle roseau,
+      Grace encore une fois!  Grace au nom de la tombe!
+         Grace au nom du berçeau!'*
+
+
+"M. Victor Hugo wrote the lines out instantly on a sheet of paper, which
+he folded, and simply despatched them to the King of the French by the
+penny-post.
+
+"That truly is a noble voice, which can at all hours thus speak to the
+throne. Poetry, in old days, was called the language of the Gods--it is
+better named now--it is the language of the Kings.
+
+"But the clemency of the King had anticipated the letter of the Poet.
+His Majesty had signed the commutation of Barbés, while the poet was
+still writing.
+
+"Louis Philippe replied to the author of 'Ruy Blas' most graciously,
+that he had already subscribed to a wish so noble, and that the verses
+had only confirmed his previous disposition to mercy."
+
+
+      * Translated for the benefit of country gentlemen:--
+
+     "By your angel flown away just like a dove,
+      By the royal infant, that frail and tender reed,
+      Pardon yet once more!  Pardon in the name of the tomb!
+      Pardon in the name of the cradle!"
+
+
+Now in countries where fools most abound, did one ever read of more
+monstrous, palpable folly? In any country, save this, would a poet who
+chose to write four crack-brained verses, comparing an angel to a dove,
+and a little boy to a reed, and calling upon the chief magistrate, in
+the name of the angel, or dove (the Princess Mary), in her tomb, and
+the little infant in his cradle, to spare a criminal, have received a
+"gracious answer" to his nonsense? Would he have ever despatched the
+nonsense? and would any journalist have been silly enough to talk of
+"the noble voice that could thus speak to the throne," and the noble
+throne that could return such a noble answer to the noble voice? You get
+nothing done here gravely and decently. Tawdry stage tricks are played,
+and braggadocio claptraps uttered, on every occasion, however sacred
+or solemn: in the face of death, as by Barbés with his hideous Indian
+metaphor; in the teeth of reason, as by M. Victor Hugo with his
+twopenny-post poetry; and of justice, as by the King's absurd reply
+to this absurd demand! Suppose the Count of Paris to be twenty times a
+reed, and the Princess Mary a host of angels, is that any reason why the
+law should not have its course? Justice is the God of our lower world,
+our great omnipresent guardian: as such it moves, or should move on
+majestic, awful, irresistible, having no passions--like a God: but, in
+the very midst of the path across which it is to pass, lo! M. Victor
+Hugo trips forward, smirking, and says, O divine Justice! I will trouble
+you to listen to the following trifling effusion of mine:--
+
+
+     Par votre ange envolée, ainsi qu'une," &c.
+
+
+Awful Justice stops, and, bowing gravely, listens to M. Hugo's verses,
+and, with true French politeness, says, "Mon cher Monsieur, these verses
+are charming, ravissans, délicieux, and, coming from such a célébrité
+littéraire as yourself, shall meet with every possible attention--in
+fact, had I required anything to confirm my own previous opinions, this
+charming poem would have done so. Bon jour, mon cher Monsieur Hugo, au
+revoir!"--and they part:--Justice taking off his hat and bowing, and the
+author of "Ruy Blas" quite convinced that he has been treating with him
+d'égal en égal. I can hardly bring my mind to fancy that anything is
+serious in France--it seems to be all rant, tinsel, and stage-play. Sham
+liberty, sham monarchy, sham glory, sham justice,--où diable donc la
+vérité va-t-elle se nicher?
+
+      .      .      .      .      .      .
+
+The last rocket of the fête of July has just mounted, exploded, made a
+portentous bang, and emitted a gorgeous show of blue lights, and then
+(like many reputations) disappeared totally: the hundredth gun on the
+Invalid terrace has uttered its last roar--and a great comfort it is for
+eyes and ears that the festival is over. We shall be able to go about
+our everyday business again, and not be hustled by the gendarmes or the
+crowd.
+
+The sight which I have just come away from is as brilliant, happy, and
+beautiful as can be conceived; and if you want to see French people to
+the greatest advantage, you should go to a festival like this, where
+their manners, and innocent gayety, show a very pleasing contrast to the
+coarse and vulgar hilarity which the same class would exhibit in our
+own country--at Epsom racecourse, for instance, or Greenwich Fair. The
+greatest noise that I heard was that of a company of jolly villagers
+from a place in the neighborhood of Paris, who, as soon as the fireworks
+were over, formed themselves into a line, three or four abreast, and so
+marched singing home. As for the fireworks, squibs and crackers are very
+hard to describe, and very little was to be seen of them: to me, the
+prettiest sight was the vast, orderly, happy crowd, the number of
+children, and the extraordinary care and kindness of the parents towards
+these little creatures. It does one good to see honest, heavy épiciers,
+fathers of families, playing with them in the Tuileries, or, as
+to-night, bearing them stoutly on their shoulders, through many long
+hours, in order that the little ones too may have their share of the
+fun. John Bull, I fear, is more selfish: he does not take Mrs. Bull to
+the public-house; but leaves her, for the most part, to take care of the
+children at home.
+
+The fête, then, is over; the pompous black pyramid at the Louvre is only
+a skeleton now; all the flags have been miraculously whisked away during
+the night, and the fine chandeliers which glittered down the Champs
+Elysées for full half a mile, have been consigned to their dens and
+darkness. Will they ever be reproduced for other celebrations of the
+glorious 29th of July?--I think not; the Government which vowed that
+there should be no more persecutions of the press, was, on that very
+29th, seizing a Legitimist paper, for some real or fancied offence
+against it: it had seized, and was seizing daily, numbers of persons
+merely suspected of being disaffected (and you may fancy how liberty is
+understood, when some of these prisoners, the other day, on coming to
+trial, were found guilty and sentenced to ONE day's imprisonment, after
+THIRTY-SIX DAYS' DETENTION ON SUSPICION). I think the Government
+which follows such a system, cannot be very anxious about any farther
+revolutionary fêtes, and that the Chamber may reasonably refuse to vote
+more money for them. Why should men be so mighty proud of having, on a
+certain day, cut a certain number of their fellow-countrymen's throats?
+The Guards and the Line employed this time nine years did no more than
+those who cannonaded the starving Lyonnese, or bayoneted the luckless
+inhabitants of the Rue Transnounain:--they did but fulfil the soldier's
+honorable duty:--his superiors bid him kill and he killeth:--perhaps,
+had he gone to his work with a little more heart, the result would have
+been different, and then--would the conquering party have been justified
+in annually rejoicing over the conquered? Would we have thought Charles
+X. justified in causing fireworks to be blazed, and concerts to be sung,
+and speeches to be spouted, in commemoration of his victory over his
+slaughtered countrymen?--I wish for my part they would allow the people
+to go about their business as on the other 362 days of the year,
+and leave the Champs Elysées free for the omnibuses to run, and the
+Tuileries' in quiet, so that the nurse-maids might come as usual, and
+the newspapers be read for a halfpenny apiece.
+
+Shall I trouble you with an account of the speculations of these latter,
+and the state of the parties which they represent? The complication
+is not a little curious, and may form, perhaps, a subject of graver
+disquisition. The July fêtes occupy, as you may imagine, a considerable
+part of their columns just now, and it is amusing to follow them one by
+one; to read Tweedledum's praise, and Tweedledee's indignation--to read,
+in the Débats how the King was received with shouts and loyal vivats--in
+the Nation, how not a tongue was wagged in his praise, but, on the
+instant of his departure, how the people called for the "Marseillaise"
+and applauded THAT.--But best say no more about the fête. The
+Legitimists were always indignant at it. The high Philippist party
+sneers at and despises it; the Republicans hate it: it seems a joke
+against THEM. Why continue it?--If there be anything sacred in the name
+and idea of loyalty, why renew this fête? It only shows how a rightful
+monarch was hurled from his throne, and a dexterous usurper stole his
+precious diadem. If there be anything noble in the memory of a day, when
+citizens, unused to war, rose against practised veterans, and, armed
+with the strength of their cause, overthrew them, why speak of it now?
+or renew the bitter recollections of the bootless struggle and victory?
+O Lafayette! O hero of two worlds! O accomplished Cromwell Grandison!
+you have to answer for more than any mortal man who has played a part in
+history: two republics and one monarchy does the world owe to you; and
+especially grateful should your country be to you. Did you not, in '90,
+make clear the path for honest Robespierre, and in '30, prepare the way
+for--
+
+      .      .      .      .      .      .
+
+[The Editor of the Bungay Beacon would insert no more of this letter,
+which is, therefore, for ever lost to the public.]
+
+
+
+
+ON THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF PAINTING:
+
+WITH APPROPRIATE ANECDOTES, ILLUSTRATIONS, AND PHILOSOPHICAL
+DISQUISITIONS.
+
+
+IN A LETTER TO MR. MACGILP, OF LONDON.
+
+
+The three collections of pictures at the Louvre, the Luxembourg, and the
+Ecole des Beaux Arts, contain a number of specimens of French art, since
+its commencement almost, and give the stranger a pretty fair opportunity
+to study and appreciate the school. The French list of painters contains
+some very good names--no very great ones, except Poussin (unless the
+admirers of Claude choose to rank him among great painters),--and I
+think the school was never in so flourishing a condition as it is at
+the present day. They say there are three thousand artists in this town
+alone: of these a handsome minority paint not merely tolerably, but
+well understand their business: draw the figure accurately; sketch with
+cleverness; and paint portraits, churches, or restaurateurs' shops, in a
+decent manner.
+
+To account for a superiority over England which, I think, as regards
+art, is incontestable--it must be remembered that the painter's trade,
+in France, is a very good one; better appreciated, better understood,
+and, generally, far better paid than with us. There are a dozen
+excellent schools which a lad may enter here, and, under the eye of a
+practised master, learn the apprenticeship of his art at an expense
+of about ten pounds a year. In England there is no school except the
+Academy, unless the student can afford to pay a very large sum, and
+place himself under the tuition of some particular artist. Here, a young
+man, for his ten pounds, has all sorts of accessory instruction, models,
+&c.; and has further, and for nothing, numberless incitements to study
+his profession which are not to be found in England:--the streets are
+filled with picture-shops, the people themselves are pictures walking
+about; the churches, theatres, eating-houses, concert-rooms are covered
+with pictures: Nature itself is inclined more kindly to him, for the sky
+is a thousand times more bright and beautiful, and the sun shines for
+the greater part of the year. Add to this, incitements more selfish,
+but quite as powerful: a French artist is paid very handsomely; for five
+hundred a year is much where all are poor; and has a rank in society
+rather above his merits than below them, being caressed by hosts and
+hostesses in places where titles are laughed at and a baron is thought
+of no more account than a banker's clerk.
+
+The life of the young artist here is the easiest, merriest, dirtiest
+existence possible. He comes to Paris, probably at sixteen, from his
+province; his parents settle forty pounds a year on him, and pay his
+master; he establishes himself in the Pays Latin, or in the new quarter
+of Notre Dame de Lorette (which is quite peopled with painters); he
+arrives at his atelier at a tolerably early hour, and labors among a
+score of companions as merry and poor as himself. Each gentleman has his
+favorite tobacco-pipe; and the pictures are painted in the midst of a
+cloud of smoke, and a din of puns and choice French slang, and a roar of
+choruses, of which no one can form an idea who has not been present at
+such an assembly.
+
+You see here every variety of coiffure that has ever been known. Some
+young men of genius have ringlets hanging over their shoulders--you may
+smell the tobacco with which they are scented across the street; some
+have straight locks, black, oily, and redundant; some have toupets in
+the famous Louis-Philippe fashion; some are cropped close; some have
+adopted the present mode--which he who would follow must, in order to do
+so, part his hair in the middle, grease it with grease, and gum it with
+gum, and iron it flat down over his ears; when arrived at the ears,
+you take the tongs and make a couple of ranges of curls close round the
+whole head,--such curls as you may see under a gilt three-cornered hat,
+and in her Britannic Majesty's coachman's state wig.
+
+This is the last fashion. As for the beards, there is no end of them;
+all my friends the artists have beards who can raise them; and Nature,
+though she has rather stinted the bodies and limbs of the French nation,
+has been very liberal to them of hair, as you may see by the following
+specimen. Fancy these heads and beards under all sorts of caps--Chinese
+caps, Mandarin caps, Greek skull-caps, English jockey-caps, Russian or
+Kuzzilbash caps, Middle-age caps (such as are called, in heraldry, caps
+of maintenance), Spanish nets, and striped worsted nightcaps. Fancy all
+the jackets you have ever seen, and you have before you, as well as pen
+can describe, the costumes of these indescribable Frenchmen.
+
+In this company and costume the French student of art passes his days
+and acquires knowledge; how he passes his evenings, at what theatres, at
+what guinguettes, in company with what seducing little milliner,
+there is no need to say; but I knew one who pawned his coat to go to a
+carnival ball, and walked abroad very cheerfully in his blouse for six
+weeks, until he could redeem the absent garment.
+
+These young men (together with the students of sciences) comport
+themselves towards the sober citizen pretty much as the German bursch
+towards the philister, or as the military man, during the empire, did
+to the pékin:--from the height of their poverty they look down upon
+him with the greatest imaginable scorn--a scorn, I think, by which the
+citizen seems dazzled, for his respect for the arts is intense. The case
+is very different in England, where a grocer's daughter would think she
+made a misalliance by marrying a painter, and where a literary man (in
+spite of all we can say against it) ranks below that class of gentry
+composed of the apothecary, the attorney, the wine-merchant, whose
+positions, in country towns at least, are so equivocal. As, for
+instance, my friend the Rev. James Asterisk, who has an undeniable
+pedigree, a paternal estate, and a living to boot, once dined in
+Warwickshire, in company with several squires and parsons of that
+enlightened county. Asterisk, as usual, made himself extraordinarily
+agreeable at dinner, and delighted all present with his learning and
+wit. "Who is that monstrous pleasant fellow?" said one of the squires.
+"Don't you know?" replied another. "It's Asterisk, the author of
+so-and-so, and a famous contributor to such and such a magazine." "Good
+heavens!" said the squire, quite horrified! "a literary man! I thought
+he had been a gentleman!"
+
+Another instance: M. Guizot, when he was Minister here, had the grand
+hotel of the Ministry, and gave entertainments to all the great de par
+le monde, as Brantôme says, and entertained them in a proper ministerial
+magnificence. The splendid and beautiful Duchess of Dash was at one of
+his ministerial parties; and went, a fortnight afterwards, as in duty
+bound, to pay her respects to M. Guizot. But it happened, in this
+fortnight, that M. Guizot was Minister no longer; having given up his
+portfolio, and his grand hotel, to retire into private life, and to
+occupy his humble apartments in the house which he possesses, and of
+which he lets the greater portion. A friend of mine was present at
+one of the ex-Minister's soirées, where the Duchess of Dash made
+her appearance. He says the Duchess, at her entrance, seemed quite
+astounded, and examined the premises with a most curious wonder. Two or
+three shabby little rooms, with ordinary furniture, and a Minister en
+retraite, who lives by letting lodgings! In our country was ever such a
+thing heard of? No, thank heaven! and a Briton ought to be proud of the
+difference.
+
+But to our muttons. This country is surely the paradise of painters
+and penny-a-liners; and when one reads of M. Horace Vernet at Rome,
+exceeding ambassadors at Rome by his magnificence, and leading such a
+life as Rubens or Titian did of old; when one sees M. Thiers's grand
+villa in the Rue St. George (a dozen years ago he was not even a
+penny-a-liner: no such luck); when one contemplates, in imagination, M.
+Gudin, the marine painter, too lame to walk through the picture-gallery
+of the Louvre, accommodated, therefore, with a wheel-chair, a privilege
+of princes only, and accompanied--nay, for what I know, actually
+trundled--down the gallery by majesty itself--who does not long to make
+one of the great nation, exchange his native tongue for the melodious
+jabber of France; or, at least, adopt it for his native country, like
+Marshal Saxe, Napoleon, and Anacharsis Clootz? Noble people! they made
+Tom Paine a deputy; and as for Tom Macaulay, they would make a DYNASTY
+of him.
+
+Well, this being the case, no wonder there are so many painters in
+France; and here, at least, we are back to them. At the Ecole Royale
+des Beaux Arts, you see two or three hundred specimens of their
+performances; all the prize-men, since 1750, I think, being bound to
+leave their prize sketch or picture. Can anything good come out of
+the Royal Academy? is a question which has been considerably mooted in
+England (in the neighborhood of Suffolk Street especially). The hundreds
+of French samples are, I think, not very satisfactory. The subjects are
+almost all what are called classical: Orestes pursued by every variety
+of Furies; numbers of little wolf-sucking Romuluses; Hectors and
+Andromaches in a complication of parting embraces, and so forth; for it
+was the absurd maxim of our forefathers, that because these subjects had
+been the fashion twenty centuries ago, they must remain so in saecula
+saeculorum; because to these lofty heights giants had scaled, behold the
+race of pigmies must get upon stilts and jump at them likewise! and on
+the canvas, and in the theatre, the French frogs (excuse the pleasantry)
+were instructed to swell out and roar as much as possible like bulls.
+
+What was the consequence, my dear friend? In trying to make themselves
+into bulls, the frogs make themselves into jackasses, as might be
+expected. For a hundred and ten years the classical humbug oppressed
+the nation; and you may see, in this gallery of the Beaux Arts, seventy
+years' specimens of the dulness which it engendered.
+
+Now, as Nature made every man with a nose and eyes of his own, she gave
+him a character of his own too; and yet we, O foolish race! must try our
+very best to ape some one or two of our neighbors, whose ideas fit us
+no more than their breeches! It is the study of nature, surely, that
+profits us, and not of these imitations of her. A man, as a man, from a
+dustman up to Æschylus, is God's work, and good to read, as all works of
+Nature are: but the silly animal is never content; is ever trying to fit
+itself into another shape; wants to deny its own identity, and has not
+the courage to utter its own thoughts. Because Lord Byron was wicked,
+and quarrelled with the world; and found himself growing fat, and
+quarrelled with his victuals, and thus, naturally, grew ill-humored, did
+not half Europe grow ill-humored too? Did not every poet feel his
+young affections withered, and despair and darkness cast upon his soul?
+Because certain mighty men of old could make heroical statues and
+plays, must we not be told that there is no other beauty but classical
+beauty?--must not every little whipster of a French poet chalk you out
+plays, "Henriades," and such-like, and vow that here was the real thing,
+the undeniable Kalon?
+
+The undeniable fiddlestick! For a hundred years, my dear sir, the world
+was humbugged by the so-called classical artists, as they now are by
+what is called the Christian art (of which anon); and it is curious to
+look at the pictorial traditions as here handed down. The consequence
+of them is, that scarce one of the classical pictures exhibited is worth
+much more than two-and-sixpence. Borrowed from statuary, in the first
+place, the color of the paintings seems, as much as possible, to
+participate in it; they are mostly of a misty, stony green, dismal hue,
+as if they had been painted in a world where no color was. In every
+picture, there are, of course, white mantles, white urns, white columns,
+white statues--those obligé accomplishments of the sublime. There are
+the endless straight noses, long eyes, round chins, short upper lips,
+just as they are ruled down for you in the drawing-books, as if the
+latter were the revelations of beauty, issued by supreme authority, from
+which there was no appeal? Why is the classical reign to endure? Why is
+yonder simpering Venus de' Medicis to be our standard of beauty, or the
+Greek tragedies to bound our notions of the sublime? There was no reason
+why Agamemnon should set the fashions, and remain [Greek text omitted]
+to eternity: and there is a classical quotation, which you may have
+occasionally heard, beginning Vixere fortes, &c., which, as it avers
+that there were a great number of stout fellows before Agamemnon, may
+not unreasonably induce us to conclude that similar heroes were to
+succeed him. Shakspeare made a better man when his imagination
+moulded the mighty figure of Macbeth. And if you will measure Satan by
+Prometheus, the blind old Puritan's work by that of the fiery Grecian
+poet, does not Milton's angel surpass Æschylus's--surpass him by "many a
+rood?"
+
+In the same school of the Beaux Arts, where are to be found such a
+number of pale imitations of the antique, Monsieur Thiers (and he ought
+to be thanked for it) has caused to be placed a full-sized copy of "The
+Last Judgment" of Michel Angelo, and a number of casts from statues
+by the same splendid hand. There IS the sublime, if you please--a new
+sublime--an original sublime--quite as sublime as the Greek sublime. See
+yonder, in the midst of his angels, the Judge of the world descending in
+glory; and near him, beautiful and gentle, and yet indescribably august
+and pure, the Virgin by his side. There is the "Moses," the grandest
+figure that ever was carved in stone. It has about it something
+frightfully majestic, if one may so speak. In examining this, and the
+astonishing picture of "The Judgment," or even a single figure of it,
+the spectator's sense amounts almost to pain. I would not like to be
+left in a room alone with the "Moses." How did the artist live amongst
+them, and create them? How did he suffer the painful labor of invention?
+One fancies that he would have been scorched up, like Semele, by sights
+too tremendous for his vision to bear. One cannot imagine him, with our
+small physical endowments and weaknesses, a man like ourselves.
+
+As for the Ecole Royale des Beaux Arts, then, and all the good its
+students have done, as students, it is stark naught. When the men did
+anything, it was after they had left the academy, and began thinking for
+themselves. There is only one picture among the many hundreds that has,
+to my idea, much merit (a charming composition of Homer singing, signed
+Jourdy); and the only good that the Academy has done by its pupils was
+to send them to Rome, where they might learn better things. At home, the
+intolerable, stupid classicalities, taught by men who, belonging to the
+least erudite country in Europe, were themselves, from their profession,
+the least learned among their countrymen, only weighed the pupils down,
+and cramped their hands, their eyes, and their imaginations; drove them
+away from natural beauty, which, thank God, is fresh and attainable by
+us all, to-day, and yesterday, and to-morrow; and sent them rambling
+after artificial grace, without the proper means of judging or attaining
+it.
+
+A word for the building of the Palais des Beaux Arts. It is beautiful,
+and as well finished and convenient as beautiful. With its light and
+elegant fabric, its pretty fountain, its archway of the Renaissance, and
+fragments of sculpture, you can hardly see, on a fine day, a place more
+riant and pleasing.
+
+Passing from thence up the picturesque Rue de Seine, let us walk to the
+Luxembourg, where bonnes, students, grisettes, and old gentlemen with
+pigtails, love to wander in the melancholy, quaint old gardens; where
+the peers have a new and comfortable court of justice, to judge all the
+émeutes which are to take place; and where, as everybody knows, is the
+picture-gallery of modern French artists, whom government thinks worthy
+of patronage.
+
+A very great proportion of the pictures, as we see by the catalogue,
+are by the students whose works we have just been to visit at the Beaux
+Arts, and who, having performed their pilgrimage to Rome, have taken
+rank among the professors of the art. I don't know a more pleasing
+exhibition; for there are not a dozen really bad pictures in the
+collection, some very good, and the rest showing great skill and
+smartness of execution.
+
+In the same way, however, that it has been supposed that no man could be
+a great poet unless he wrote a very big poem, the tradition is kept up
+among the painters, and we have here a vast number of large canvases,
+with figures of the proper heroical length and nakedness. The
+anticlassicists did not arise in France until about 1827; and, in
+consequence, up to that period, we have here the old classical faith in
+full vigor. There is Brutus, having chopped his son's head off, with all
+the agony of a father, and then, calling for number two; there is Æneas
+carrying off old Anchises; there are Paris and Venus, as naked as two
+Hottentots, and many more such choice subjects from Lemprière.
+
+But the chief specimens of the sublime are in the way of murders, with
+which the catalogue swarms. Here are a few extracts from it:--
+
+
+7. Beaume, Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur. "The Grand Dauphiness
+Dying."
+
+18. Blondel, Chevalier de la, &c. "Zenobia found Dead."
+
+36. Debay, Chevalier. "The Death of Lucretia."
+
+38. Dejuinne. "The Death of Hector."
+
+34. Court, Chevalier de la, &c. "The Death of Caesar."
+
+39, 40, 41. Delacroix, Chevalier. "Dante and Virgil in the
+Infernal Lake," "The Massacre of Scio," and "Medea going to
+Murder her Children."
+
+43. Delaroche, Chevalier. "Joas taken from among the Dead."
+
+44. "The Death of Queen Elizabeth."
+
+45. "Edward V. and his Brother" (preparing for death).
+
+50. "Hecuba going to be Sacrificed." Drolling, Chevalier.
+
+51. Dubois. "Young Clovis found Dead."
+
+56. Henry, Chevalier. "The Massacre of St. Bartholomew."
+
+75. Guérin, Chevalier. "Cain, after the Death of Abel."
+
+83. Jacquand. "Death of Adelaide de Comminges."
+
+88. "The Death of Eudamidas."
+
+93. "The Death of Hymetto."
+
+103. "The Death of Philip of Austria."--And so on.
+
+
+You see what woful subjects they take, and how profusely they are
+decorated with knighthood. They are like the Black Brunswickers, these
+painters, and ought to be called Chevaliers de la Mort. I don't know why
+the merriest people in the world should please themselves with such grim
+representations and varieties of murder, or why murder itself should be
+considered so eminently sublime and poetical. It is good at the end of
+a tragedy; but, then, it is good because it is the end, and because,
+by the events foregone, the mind is prepared for it. But these men will
+have nothing but fifth acts; and seem to skip, as unworthy, all the
+circumstances leading to them. This, however, is part of the scheme--the
+bloated, unnatural, stilted, spouting, sham sublime, that our teachers
+have believed and tried to pass off as real, and which your humble
+servant and other antihumbuggists should heartily, according to the
+strength that is in them, endeavor to pull down. What, for instance,
+could Monsieur Lafond care about the death of Eudamidas? What was Hecuba
+to Chevalier Drolling, or Chevalier Drolling to Hecuba? I would lay a
+wager that neither of them ever conjugated [Greek text omitted], and
+that their school learning carried them not as far as the letter, but
+only to the game of taw. How were they to be inspired by such subjects?
+From having seen Talma and Mademoiselle Georges flaunting in sham Greek
+costumes, and having read up the articles Eudamidas, Hecuba, in the
+"Mythological Dictionary." What a classicism, inspired by rouge,
+gas-lamps, and a few lines in Lemprière, and copied, half from ancient
+statues, and half from a naked guardsman at one shilling and sixpence
+the hour!
+
+Delacroix is a man of a very different genius, and his "Medea" is
+a genuine creation of a noble fancy. For most of the others, Mrs.
+Brownrigg, and her two female 'prentices, would have done as well as
+the desperate Colchian with her [Greek text omitted]. M. Delacroix has
+produced a number of rude, barbarous pictures; but there is the stamp of
+genius on all of them,--the great poetical INTENTION, which is worth all
+your execution. Delaroche is another man of high merit; with not such a
+great HEART, perhaps, as the other, but a fine and careful draughtsman,
+and an excellent arranger of his subject. "The Death of Elizabeth" is a
+raw young performance seemingly--not, at least, to my taste. The "Enfans
+d'Edouard" is renowned over Europe, and has appeared in a hundred
+different ways in print. It is properly pathetic and gloomy, and merits
+fully its high reputation. This painter rejoices in such subjects--in
+what Lord Portsmouth used to call "black jobs." He has killed Charles
+I. and Lady Jane Grey, and the Dukes of Guise, and I don't know whom
+besides. He is, at present, occupied with a vast work at the Beaux
+Arts, where the writer of this had the honor of seeing him,--a little,
+keen-looking man, some five feet in height. He wore, on this important
+occasion, a bandanna round his head, and was in the act of smoking a
+cigar.
+
+Horace Vernet, whose beautiful daughter Delaroche married, is the king
+of French battle-painters--an amazingly rapid and dexterous draughtsman,
+who has Napoleon and all the campaigns by heart, and has painted the
+Grenadier Français under all sorts of attitudes. His pictures on such
+subjects are spirited, natural, and excellent; and he is so clever
+a man, that all he does is good to a certain degree. His "Judith" is
+somewhat violent, perhaps. His "Rebecca" most pleasing; and not the less
+so for a little pretty affectation of attitude and needless singularity
+of costume. "Raphael and Michael Angelo" is as clever a picture as
+can be--clever is just the word--the groups and drawing excellent, the
+coloring pleasantly bright and gaudy; and the French students study it
+incessantly; there are a dozen who copy it for one who copies Delacroix.
+His little scraps of wood-cuts, in the now publishing "Life of
+Napoleon," are perfect gems in their way, and the noble price paid for
+them not a penny more than he merits.
+
+The picture, by Court, of "The Death of Caesar," is remarkable for
+effect and excellent workmanship: and the head of Brutus (who looks
+like Armand Carrel) is full of energy. There are some beautiful heads
+of women, and some very good color in the picture. Jacquand's "Death of
+Adelaide de Comminges" is neither more nor less than beautiful. Adelaide
+had, it appears, a lover, who betook himself to a convent of Trappists.
+She followed him thither, disguised as a man, took the vows, and was not
+discovered by him till on her death-bed. The painter has told this story
+in a most pleasing and affecting manner: the picture is full of onction
+and melancholy grace. The objects, too, are capitally represented; and
+the tone and color very good. Decaisne's "Guardian Angel" is not so good
+in color, but is equally beautiful in expression and grace. A little
+child and a nurse are asleep: an angel watches the infant. You see women
+look very wistfully at this sweet picture; and what triumph would a
+painter have more?
+
+We must not quit the Luxembourg without noticing the dashing
+sea-pieces of Gudin, and one or two landscapes by Giroux (the plain
+of Grasivaudan), and "The Prometheus" of Aligny. This is an imitation,
+perhaps; as is a noble picture of "Jesus Christ and the Children," by
+Flandrin: but the artists are imitating better models, at any rate; and
+one begins to perceive that the odious classical dynasty is no more.
+Poussin's magnificent "Polyphemus" (I only know a print of that
+marvellous composition) has, perhaps, suggested the first-named picture;
+and the latter has been inspired by a good enthusiastic study of the
+Roman schools.
+
+Of this revolution, Monsieur Ingres has been one of the chief
+instruments. He was, before Horace Vernet, president of the French
+Academy at Rome, and is famous as a chief of a school. When he broke
+up his atelier here, to set out for his presidency, many of his pupils
+attended him faithfully some way on his journey; and some, with scarcely
+a penny in their pouches, walked through France and across the Alps, in
+a pious pilgrimage to Rome, being determined not to forsake their old
+master. Such an action was worthy of them, and of the high rank which
+their profession holds in France, where the honors to be acquired by art
+are only inferior to those which are gained in war. One reads of such
+peregrinations in old days, when the scholars of some great Italian
+painter followed him from Venice to Rome, or from Florence to Ferrara.
+In regard of Ingres's individual merit as a painter, the writer of this
+is not a fair judge, having seen but three pictures by him; one being a
+plafond in the Louvre, which his disciples much admire.
+
+Ingres stands between the Imperio-Davido-classical school of French art,
+and the namby-pamby mystical German school, which is for carrying us
+back to Cranach and Dürer, and which is making progress here.
+
+For everything here finds imitation: the French have the genius of
+imitation and caricature. This absurd humbug, called the Christian or
+Catholic art, is sure to tickle our neighbors, and will be a favorite
+with them, when better known. My dear MacGilp, I do believe this to be
+a greater humbug than the humbug of David and Girodet, inasmuch as the
+latter was founded on Nature at least; whereas the former is made up of
+silly affectations, and improvements upon Nature. Here, for instance, is
+Chevalier Ziegler's picture of "St. Luke painting the Virgin." St. Luke
+has a monk's dress on, embroidered, however, smartly round the sleeves.
+The Virgin sits in an immense yellow-ochre halo, with her son in her
+arms. She looks preternaturally solemn; as does St. Luke, who is eying
+his paint-brush with an intense ominous mystical look. They call this
+Catholic art. There is nothing, my dear friend, more easy in life.
+First take your colors, and rub them down clean,--bright carmine,
+bright yellow, bright sienna, bright ultramarine, bright green. Make the
+costumes of your figures as much as possible like the costumes of
+the early part of the fifteenth century. Paint them in with the above
+colors; and if on a gold ground, the more "Catholic" your art is. Dress
+your apostles like priests before the altar; and remember to have a good
+commodity of crosiers, censers, and other such gimcracks, as you may
+see in the Catholic chapels, in Sutton Street and elsewhere. Deal in
+Virgins, and dress them like a burgomaster's wife by Cranach or Van
+Eyck. Give them all long twisted tails to their gowns, and proper
+angular draperies. Place all their heads on one side, with the eyes
+shut, and the proper solemn simper. At the back of the head, draw,
+and gild with gold-leaf, a halo or glory, of the exact shape of a
+cart-wheel: and you have the thing done. It is Catholic art tout craché,
+as Louis Philippe says. We have it still in England, handed down to us
+for four centuries, in the pictures on the cards, as the redoubtable
+king and queen of clubs. Look at them: you will see that the costumes
+and attitudes are precisely similar to those which figure in the
+catholicities of the school of Overbeck and Cornelius.
+
+Before you take your cane at the door, look for one instant at the
+statue-room. Yonder is Jouffley's "Jeune Fille confiant son premier
+secret à Vénus." Charming, charming! It is from the exhibition of
+this year only; and I think the best sculpture in the gallery--pretty,
+fanciful, naïve; admirable in workmanship and imitation of Nature. I
+have seldom seen flesh better represented in marble. Examine, also,
+Jaley's "Pudeur," Jacquot's "Nymph," and Rude's "Boy with the Tortoise."
+These are not very exalted subjects, or what are called exalted, and do
+not go beyond simple, smiling beauty and nature. But what then? Are we
+gods, Miltons, Michel Angelos, that can leave earth when we please;
+and soar to heights immeasurable? No, my dear MacGilp; but the fools of
+academicians would fain make us so. Are you not, and half the painters
+in London, panting for an opportunity to show your genius in a great
+"historical picture?" O blind race! Have you wings? Not a feather: and
+yet you must be ever puffing, sweating up to the tops of rugged hills;
+and, arrived there, clapping and shaking your ragged elbows, and making
+as if you would fly! Come down, silly Daedalus; come down to the lowly
+places in which Nature ordered you to walk. The sweet flowers are
+springing there; the fat muttons are waiting there; the pleasant sun
+shines there; be content and humble, and take your share of the good
+cheer.
+
+While we have been indulging in this discussion, the omnibus has gayly
+conducted us across the water; and le garde qui veille a la porte du
+Louvre ne défend pas our entry.
+
+What a paradise this gallery is for French students, or foreigners who
+sojourn in the capital! It is hardly necessary to say that the brethren
+of the brush are not usually supplied by Fortune with any extraordinary
+wealth, or means of enjoying the luxuries with which Paris, more than
+any other city, abounds. But here they have a luxury which surpasses all
+others, and spend their days in a palace which all the money of all the
+Rothschilds could not buy. They sleep, perhaps, in a garret, and dine
+in a cellar; but no grandee in Europe has such a drawing-room. Kings'
+houses have, at best, but damask hangings, and gilt cornices. What are
+these to a wall covered with canvas by Paul Veronese, or a hundred
+yards of Rubens? Artists from England, who have a national gallery that
+resembles a moderate-sized gin-shop, who may not copy pictures, except
+under particular restrictions, and on rare and particular days, may
+revel here to their hearts' content. Here is a room half a mile long,
+with as many windows as Aladdin's palace, open from sunrise till
+evening, and free to all manners and all varieties of study: the only
+puzzle to the student is to select the one he shall begin upon, and keep
+his eyes away from the rest.
+
+Fontaine's grand staircase, with its arches, and painted ceilings and
+shining Doric columns, leads directly to the gallery; but it is thought
+too fine for working days, and is only opened for the public entrance
+on Sabbath. A little back stair (leading from a court, in which stand
+numerous bas-reliefs, and a solemn sphinx, of polished granite,) is the
+common entry for students and others, who, during the week, enter the
+gallery.
+
+Hither have lately been transported a number of the works of French
+artists, which formerly covered the walls of the Luxembourg (death
+only entitles the French painter to a place in the Louvre); and let us
+confine ourselves to the Frenchmen only, for the space of this letter.
+
+I have seen, in a fine private collection at St. Germain, one or two
+admirable single figures of David, full of life, truth, and gayety.
+The color is not good, but all the rest excellent; and one of these so
+much-lauded pictures is the portrait of a washer-woman. "Pope Pius," at
+the Louvre, is as bad in color as remarkable for its vigor and look of
+life. The man had a genius for painting portraits and common life, but
+must attempt the heroic;--failed signally; and what is worse, carried a
+whole nation blundering after him. Had you told a Frenchman so, twenty
+years ago, he would have thrown the démenti in your teeth; or, at least,
+laughed at you in scornful incredulity. They say of us that we don't
+know when we are beaten: they go a step further, and swear their defeats
+are victories. David was a part of the glory of the empire; and one
+might as well have said then that "Romulus" was a bad picture, as that
+Toulouse was a lost battle. Old-fashioned people, who believe in
+the Emperor, believe in the Théâtre Français, and believe that Ducis
+improved upon Shakspeare, have the above opinion. Still, it is curious
+to remark, in this place, how art and literature become party matters,
+and political sects have their favorite painters and authors.
+
+Nevertheless, Jacques Louis David is dead, he died about a year after
+his bodily demise in 1825. The romanticism killed him. Walter Scott,
+from his Castle of Abbotsford, sent out a troop of gallant young Scotch
+adventurers, merry outlaws, valiant knights, and savage Highlanders,
+who, with trunk hosen and buff jerkins, fierce two-handed swords, and
+harness on their back, did challenge, combat, and overcome the heroes
+and demigods of Greece and Rome. Notre Dame à la rescousse! Sir Brian
+de Bois Guilbert has borne Hector of Troy clear out of his saddle.
+Andromache may weep: but her spouse is beyond the reach of physic. See!
+Robin Hood twangs his bow, and the heathen gods fly, howling. Montjoie
+Saint Denis! down goes Ajax under the mace of Dunois; and yonder
+are Leonidas and Romulus begging their lives of Rob Roy Macgregor.
+Classicism is dead. Sir John Froissart has taken Dr. Lemprière by the
+nose, and reigns sovereign.
+
+Of the great pictures of David the defunct, we need not, then, say much.
+Romulus is a mighty fine young fellow, no doubt; and if he has come out
+to battle stark naked (except a very handsome helmet), it is because the
+costume became him, and shows off his figure to advantage. But was there
+ever anything so absurd as this passion for the nude, which was followed
+by all the painters of the Davidian epoch? And how are we to suppose
+yonder straddle to be the true characteristic of the heroic and the
+sublime? Romulus stretches his legs as far as ever nature will allow;
+the Horatii, in receiving their swords, think proper to stretch their
+legs too, and to thrust forward their arms, thus,--
+
+
+[Drawing omitted]
+
+
+Romulus's is in the exact action of a telegraph; and the Horatii are all
+in the position of the lunge. Is this the sublime? Mr. Angelo, of Bond
+Street, might admire the attitude; his namesake, Michel, I don't think
+would.
+
+The little picture of "Paris and Helen," one of the master's earliest,
+I believe, is likewise one of his best: the details are exquisitely
+painted. Helen looks needlessly sheepish, and Paris has a most odious
+ogle; but the limbs of the male figure are beautifully designed, and
+have not the green tone which you see in the later pictures of the
+master. What is the meaning of this green? Was it the fashion, or the
+varnish? Girodet's pictures are green; Gros's emperors and grenadiers
+have universally the jaundice. Gerard's "Psyche" has a most decided
+green-sickness; and I am at a loss, I confess, to account for the
+enthusiasm which this performance inspired on its first appearance
+before the public.
+
+In the same room with it is Girodet's ghastly "Deluge," and Gericault's
+dismal "Medusa." Gericault died, they say, for want of fame. He was a
+man who possessed a considerable fortune of his own; but pined because
+no one in his day would purchase his pictures, and so acknowledge his
+talent. At present, a scrawl from his pencil brings an enormous price.
+All his works have a grand cachet: he never did anything mean. When he
+painted the "Raft of the Medusa," it is said he lived for a long time
+among the corpses which he painted, and that his studio was a second
+Morgue. If you have not seen the picture, you are familiar probably,
+with Reynolds's admirable engraving of it. A huge black sea; a raft
+beating upon it; a horrid company of men dead, half dead, writhing
+and frantic with hideous hunger or hideous hope; and, far away, black,
+against a stormy sunset, a sail. The story is powerfully told, and has a
+legitimate tragic interest, so to speak,--deeper, because more natural,
+than Girodet's green "Deluge," for instance: or his livid "Orestes," or
+red-hot "Clytemnestra."
+
+Seen from a distance the latter's "Deluge" has a certain awe-inspiring
+air with it. A slimy green man stands on a green rock, and clutches hold
+of a tree. On the green man's shoulders is his old father, in a green
+old age; to him hangs his wife, with a babe on her breast, and dangling
+at her hair, another child. In the water floats a corpse (a beautiful
+head) and a green sea and atmosphere envelops all this dismal group. The
+old father is represented with a bag of money in his hand; and the tree,
+which the man catches, is cracking, and just on the point of giving way.
+These two points were considered very fine by the critics: they are two
+such ghastly epigrams as continually disfigure French Tragedy. For
+this reason I have never been able to read Racine with pleasure,--the
+dialogue is so crammed with these lugubrious good things--melancholy
+antitheses--sparkling undertakers' wit; but this is heresy, and had
+better be spoken discreetly.
+
+The gallery contains a vast number of Poussin's pictures; they put me in
+mind of the color of objects in dreams,--a strange, hazy, lurid hue. How
+noble are some of his landscapes! What a depth of solemn shadow is in
+yonder wood, near which, by the side of a black water, halts Diogenes.
+The air is thunder-laden, and breathes heavily. You hear ominous
+whispers in the vast forest gloom.
+
+Near it is a landscape, by Carel Dujardin, I believe, conceived in quite
+a different mood, but exquisitely poetical too. A horseman is riding
+up a hill, and giving money to a blowsy beggar-wench. O matutini rores
+auraeque salubres! in what a wonderful way has the artist managed to
+create you out of a few bladders of paint and pots of varnish. You
+can see the matutinal dews twinkling in the grass, and feel the fresh,
+salubrious airs ("the breath of Nature blowing free," as the corn-law
+man sings) blowing free over the heath; silvery vapors are rising up
+from the blue lowlands. You can tell the hour of the morning and the
+time of the year: you can do anything but describe it in words. As with
+regard to the Poussin above mentioned, one can never pass it without
+bearing away a certain pleasing, dreamy feeling of awe and musing;
+the other landscape inspires the spectator infallibly with the most
+delightful briskness and cheerfulness of spirit. Herein lies the vast
+privilege of the landscape-painter: he does not address you with one
+fixed particular subject or expression, but with a thousand never
+contemplated by himself, and which only arise out of occasion. You
+may always be looking at a natural landscape as at a fine pictorial
+imitation of one; it seems eternally producing new thoughts in your
+bosom, as it does fresh beauties from its own. I cannot fancy more
+delightful, cheerful, silent companions for a man than half a dozen
+landscapes hung round his study. Portraits, on the contrary, and large
+pieces of figures, have a painful, fixed, staring look, which must jar
+upon the mind in many of its moods. Fancy living in a room with David's
+sans-culotte Leonidas staring perpetually in your face!
+
+There is a little Watteau here, and a rare piece of fantastical
+brightness and gayety it is. What a delightful affectation about yonder
+ladies flirting their fans, and trailing about in their long brocades!
+What splendid dandies are those, ever-smirking, turning out their toes,
+with broad blue ribbons to tie up their crooks and their pigtails, and
+wonderful gorgeous crimson satin breeches! Yonder, in the midst of a
+golden atmosphere, rises a bevy of little round Cupids, bubbling up in
+clusters as out of a champagne-bottle, and melting away in air. There
+is, to be sure, a hidden analogy between liquors and pictures: the eye
+is deliciously tickled by these frisky Watteaus, and yields itself up to
+a light, smiling, gentlemanlike intoxication. Thus, were we inclined to
+pursue further this mighty subject, yonder landscape of Claude,--calm,
+fresh, delicate, yet full of flavor,--should be likened to a bottle of
+Château Margaux. And what is the Poussin before spoken of but Romanée
+Gelée?--heavy, sluggish,--the luscious odor almost sickens you; a sultry
+sort of drink; your limbs sink under it; you feel as if you had been
+drinking hot blood.
+
+An ordinary man would be whirled away in a fever, or would hobble off
+this mortal stage in a premature gout-fit, if he too early or too often
+indulged in such tremendous drink. I think in my heart I am fonder of
+pretty third-rate pictures than of your great thundering first-rates.
+Confess how many times you have read Béranger, and how many Milton?
+If you go to the "Star and Garter," don't you grow sick of that vast,
+luscious landscape, and long for the sight of a couple of cows, or a
+donkey, and a few yards of common? Donkeys, my dear MacGilp, since we
+have come to this subject, say not so; Richmond Hill for them. Milton
+they never grow tired of; and are as familiar with Raphael as Bottom
+with exquisite Titania. Let us thank heaven, my dear sir, for according
+to us the power to taste and appreciate the pleasures of mediocrity. I
+have never heard that we were great geniuses. Earthy are we, and of
+the earth; glimpses of the sublime are but rare to us; leave we them to
+great geniuses, and to the donkeys; and if it nothing profit us aërias
+tentâsse domos along with them, let us thankfully remain below, being
+merry and humble.
+
+I have now only to mention the charming "Cruche Cassée" of Greuze, which
+all the young ladies delight to copy; and of which the color (a thought
+too blue, perhaps) is marvellously graceful and delicate. There are
+three more pictures by the artist, containing exquisite female heads and
+color; but they have charms for French critics which are difficult to
+be discovered by English eyes; and the pictures seem weak to me. A very
+fine picture by Bon Bollongue, "Saint Benedict resuscitating a Child,"
+deserves particular attention, and is superb in vigor and richness of
+color. You must look, too, at the large, noble, melancholy landscapes
+of Philippe de Champagne; and the two magnificent Italian pictures of
+Léopold Robert: they are, perhaps, the very finest pictures that the
+French school has produced,--as deep as Poussin, of a better color, and
+of a wonderful minuteness and veracity in the representation of objects.
+
+Every one of Lesueur's church-pictures is worth examining and admiring;
+they are full of "unction" and pious mystical grace. "Saint Scholastica"
+is divine; and the "Taking down from the Cross" as noble a composition
+as ever was seen; I care not by whom the other may be. There is more
+beauty, and less affectation, about this picture than you will find in
+the performances of many Italian masters, with high-sounding names (out
+with it, and say RAPHAEL at once). I hate those simpering Madonnas. I
+declare that the "Jardinière" is a puking, smirking miss, with
+nothing heavenly about her. I vow that the "Saint Elizabeth" is a
+bad picture,--a bad composition, badly drawn, badly colored, in a bad
+imitation of Titian,--a piece of vile affectation. I say, that when
+Raphael painted this picture two years before his death, the spirit of
+painting had gone from out of him; he was no longer inspired; IT WAS
+TIME THAT HE SHOULD DIE!!
+
+There,--the murder is out! My paper is filled to the brim, and there is
+no time to speak of Lesueur's "Crucifixion," which is odiously colored,
+to be sure; but earnest, tender, simple, holy. But such things are most
+difficult to translate into words;--one lays down the pen, and thinks
+and thinks. The figures appear, and take their places one by one:
+ranging themselves according to order, in light or in gloom, the colors
+are reflected duly in the little camera obscura of the brain, and the
+whole picture lies there complete; but can you describe it? No, not if
+pens were fitch-brushes, and words were bladders of paint. With which,
+for the present, adieu.
+
+Your faithful
+
+M. A. T.
+
+To Mr. ROBERT MACGILP,
+
+NEWMAN STREET, LONDON.
+
+
+
+
+THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN.
+
+
+Simon Gambouge was the son of Solomon Gambouge; and as all the world
+knows, both father and son were astonishingly clever fellows at their
+profession. Solomon painted landscapes, which nobody bought; and Simon
+took a higher line, and painted portraits to admiration, only nobody
+came to sit to him.
+
+As he was not gaining five pounds a year by his profession, and had
+arrived at the age of twenty, at least, Simon determined to better
+himself by taking a wife,--a plan which a number of other wise men
+adopt, in similar years and circumstances. So Simon prevailed upon a
+butcher's daughter (to whom he owed considerably for cutlets) to quit
+the meat-shop and follow him. Griskinissa--such was the fair creature's
+name--"was as lovely a bit of mutton," her father said, "as ever a man
+would wish to stick a knife into." She had sat to the painter for all
+sorts of characters; and the curious who possess any of Gambouge's
+pictures will see her as Venus, Minerva, Madonna, and in numberless
+other characters: Portrait of a lady--Griskinissa; Sleeping
+Nymph--Griskinissa, without a rag of clothes, lying in a forest;
+Maternal Solicitude--Griskinissa again, with young Master Gambouge, who
+was by this time the offspring of their affections.
+
+The lady brought the painter a handsome little fortune of a couple of
+hundred pounds; and as long as this sum lasted no woman could be
+more lovely or loving. But want began speedily to attack their little
+household; bakers' bills were unpaid; rent was due, and the reckless
+landlord gave no quarter; and, to crown the whole, her father, unnatural
+butcher! suddenly stopped the supplies of mutton-chops; and swore that
+his daughter, and the dauber; her husband, should have no more of his
+wares. At first they embraced tenderly, and, kissing and crying over
+their little infant, vowed to heaven that they would do without: but
+in the course of the evening Griskinissa grew peckish, and poor Simon
+pawned his best coat.
+
+When this habit of pawning is discovered, it appears to the poor a kind
+of Eldorado. Gambouge and his wife were so delighted, that they, in the
+course of a month, made away with her gold chain, her great warming-pan,
+his best crimson plush inexpressibles, two wigs, a washhand basin and
+ewer, fire-irons, window-curtains, crockery, and arm-chairs. Griskinissa
+said, smiling, that she had found a second father in HER UNCLE,--a
+base pun, which showed that her mind was corrupted, and that she was no
+longer the tender, simple Griskinissa of other days.
+
+I am sorry to say that she had taken to drinking; she swallowed the
+warming-pan in the course of three days, and fuddled herself one whole
+evening with the crimson plush breeches.
+
+Drinking is the devil--the father, that is to say, of all vices.
+Griskinissa's face and her mind grew ugly together; her good humor
+changed to bilious, bitter discontent; her pretty, fond epithets, to
+foul abuse and swearing; her tender blue eyes grew watery and blear, and
+the peach-color on her cheeks fled from its old habitation, and crowded
+up into her nose, where, with a number of pimples, it stuck fast. Add to
+this a dirty, draggle-tailed chintz; long, matted hair, wandering into
+her eyes, and over her lean shoulders, which were once so snowy, and you
+have the picture of drunkenness and Mrs. Simon Gambouge.
+
+Poor Simon, who had been a gay, lively fellow enough in the days of his
+better fortune, was completely cast down by his present ill luck, and
+cowed by the ferocity of his wife. From morning till night the neighbors
+could hear this woman's tongue, and understand her doings; bellows went
+skimming across the room, chairs were flumped down on the floor,
+and poor Gambouge's oil and varnish pots went clattering through the
+windows, or down the stairs. The baby roared all day; and Simon sat pale
+and idle in a corner, taking a small sup at the brandy-bottle, when Mrs.
+Gambouge was out of the way.
+
+One day, as he sat disconsolately at his easel, furbishing up a picture
+of his wife, in the character of Peace, which he had commenced a year
+before, he was more than ordinarily desperate, and cursed and swore in
+the most pathetic manner. "O miserable fate of genius!" cried he, "was
+I, a man of such commanding talents, born for this? to be bullied by a
+fiend of a wife; to have my masterpieces neglected by the world, or sold
+only for a few pieces? Cursed be the love which has misled me; cursed,
+be the art which is unworthy of me! Let me dig or steal, let me sell
+myself as a soldier, or sell myself to the Devil, I should not be more
+wretched than I am now!"
+
+"Quite the contrary," cried a small, cheery voice.
+
+"What!" exclaimed Gambouge, trembling and surprised. "Who's
+there?--where are you?--who are you?"
+
+"You were just speaking of me," said the voice.
+
+Gambouge held, in his left hand, his palette; in his right, a bladder
+of crimson lake, which he was about to squeeze out upon the mahogany.
+"Where are you?" cried he again.
+
+"S-q-u-e-e-z-e!" exclaimed the little voice.
+
+Gambouge picked out the nail from the bladder, and gave a squeeze; when,
+as sure as I am living, a little imp spurted out from the hole upon the
+palette, and began laughing in the most singular and oily manner.
+
+When first born he was little bigger than a tadpole; then he grew to
+be as big as a mouse; then he arrived at the size of a cat; and then
+he jumped off the palette, and, turning head over heels, asked the poor
+painter what he wanted with him.
+
+The strange little animal twisted head over heels, and fixed himself at
+last upon the top of Gambouge's easel,--smearing out, with his heels,
+all the white and vermilion which had just been laid on the allegoric
+portrait of Mrs. Gambouge.
+
+"What!" exclaimed Simon, "is it the--"
+
+"Exactly so; talk of me, you know, and I am always at hand: besides, I
+am not half so black as I am painted, as you will see when you know me a
+little better."
+
+"Upon my word," said the painter, "it is a very singular surprise
+which you have given me. To tell truth, I did not even believe in your
+existence."
+
+The little imp put on a theatrical air, and, with one of Mr. Macready's
+best looks, said,--
+
+
+     "There are more things in heaven and earth, Gambogio,
+      Than are dreamed of in your philosophy."
+
+
+Gambouge, being a Frenchman, did not understand the quotation, but felt
+somehow strangely and singularly interested in the conversation of his
+new friend.
+
+Diabolus continued: "You are a man of merit, and want money; you will
+starve on your merit; you can only get money from me. Come, my friend,
+how much is it? I ask the easiest interest in the world: old Mordecai,
+the usurer, has made you pay twice as heavily before now: nothing but
+the signature of a bond, which is a mere ceremony, and the transfer
+of an article which, in itself, is a supposition--a valueless, windy,
+uncertain property of yours, called, by some poet of your own, I think,
+an animula, vagula, blandula--bah! there is no use beating about the
+bush--I mean A SOUL. Come, let me have it; you know you will sell it
+some other way, and not get such good pay for your bargain!"--and,
+having made this speech, the Devil pulled out from his fob a sheet as
+big as a double Times, only there was a different STAMP in the corner.
+
+It is useless and tedious to describe law documents: lawyers only love
+to read them; and they have as good in Chitty as any that are to be
+found in the Devil's own; so nobly have the apprentices emulated the
+skill of the master. Suffice it to say, that poor Gambouge read over the
+paper, and signed it. He was to have all he wished for seven years,
+and at the end of that time was to become the property of the -----;
+PROVIDED that, during the course of the seven years, every single wish
+which he might form should be gratified by the other of the contracting
+parties; otherwise the deed became null and non-avenue, and Gambouge
+should be left "to go to the ----- his own way."
+
+"You will never see me again," said Diabolus, in shaking hands with poor
+Simon, on whose fingers he left such a mark as is to be seen at this
+day--"never, at least, unless you want me; for everything you ask will
+be performed in the most quiet and every-day manner: believe me, it is
+best and most gentlemanlike, and avoids anything like scandal. But if
+you set me about anything which is extraordinary, and out of the course
+of nature, as it were, come I must, you know; and of this you are
+the best judge." So saying, Diabolus disappeared; but whether up the
+chimney, through the keyhole, or by any other aperture or contrivance,
+nobody knows. Simon Gambouge was left in a fever of delight, as, heaven
+forgive me! I believe many a worthy man would be, if he were allowed an
+opportunity to make a similar bargain.
+
+"Heigho!" said Simon. "I wonder whether this be a reality or a dream.--I
+am sober, I know; for who will give me credit for the means to be drunk?
+and as for sleeping, I'm too hungry for that. I wish I could see a capon
+and a bottle of white wine."
+
+"MONSIEUR SIMON!" cried a voice on the landing-place.
+
+"C'est ici," quoth Gambouge, hastening to open the door. He did so; and
+lo! there was a restaurateur's boy at the door, supporting a tray,
+a tin-covered dish, and plates on the same; and, by its side, a tall
+amber-colored flask of Sauterne.
+
+"I am the new boy, sir," exclaimed this youth, on entering; "but I
+believe this is the right door, and you asked for these things."
+
+Simon grinned, and said, "Certainly, I did ASK FOR these things." But
+such was the effect which his interview with the demon had had on his
+innocent mind, that he took them, although he knew that they were for
+old Simon, the Jew dandy, who was mad after an opera girl, and lived on
+the floor beneath.
+
+"Go, my boy," he said; "it is good: call in a couple of hours, and
+remove the plates and glasses."
+
+The little waiter trotted down stairs, and Simon sat greedily down to
+discuss the capon and the white wine. He bolted the legs, he devoured
+the wings, he cut every morsel of flesh from the breast;--seasoning
+his repast with pleasant draughts of wine, and caring nothing for the
+inevitable bill, which was to follow all.
+
+"Ye gods!" said he, as he scraped away at the backbone, "what a dinner!
+what wine!--and how gayly served up too!" There were silver forks and
+spoons, and the remnants of the fowl were upon a silver dish. "Why, the
+money for this dish and these spoons," cried Simon, "would keep me and
+Mrs. G. for a month! I WISH"--and here Simon whistled, and turned round
+to see that nobody was peeping--"I wish the plate were mine."
+
+Oh, the horrid progress of the Devil! "Here they are," thought Simon
+to himself; "why should not I TAKE THEM?" And take them he did.
+"Detection," said he, "is not so bad as starvation; and I would as soon
+live at the galleys as live with Madame Gambouge."
+
+So Gambouge shovelled dish and spoons into the flap of his surtout, and
+ran down stairs as if the Devil were behind him--as, indeed, he was.
+
+He immediately made for the house of his old friend the pawnbroker--that
+establishment which is called in France the Mont de Piété. "I am obliged
+to come to you again, my old friend," said Simon, "with some family
+plate, of which I beseech you to take care."
+
+The pawnbroker smiled as he examined the goods. "I can give you nothing
+upon them," said he.
+
+"What!" cried Simon; "not even the worth of the silver?"
+
+"No; I could buy them at that price at the 'Café Morisot,' Rue de la
+Verrerie, where, I suppose, you got them a little cheaper." And, so
+saying, he showed to the guilt-stricken Gambouge how the name of that
+coffee-house was inscribed upon every one of the articles which he had
+wished to pawn.
+
+The effects of conscience are dreadful indeed. Oh! how fearful is
+retribution, how deep is despair, how bitter is remorse for crime--WHEN
+CRIME IS FOUND OUT!--otherwise, conscience takes matters much more
+easily. Gambouge cursed his fate, and swore henceforth to be virtuous.
+
+"But, hark ye, my friend," continued the honest broker, "there is no
+reason why, because I cannot lend upon these things, I should not buy
+them: they will do to melt, if for no other purpose. Will you have half
+the money?--speak, or I peach."
+
+Simon's resolves about virtue were dissipated instantaneously. "Give me
+half," he said, "and let me go.--What scoundrels are these pawnbrokers!"
+ejaculated he, as he passed out of the accursed shop, "seeking every
+wicked pretext to rob the poor man of his hard-won gain."
+
+When he had marched forwards for a street or two, Gambouge counted the
+money which he had received, and found that he was in possession of
+no less than a hundred francs. It was night, as he reckoned out his
+equivocal gains, and he counted them at the light of a lamp. He looked
+up at the lamp, in doubt as to the course he should next pursue: upon
+it was inscribed the simple number, 152. "A gambling-house," thought
+Gambouge. "I wish I had half the money that is now on the table, up
+stairs."
+
+He mounted, as many a rogue has done before him, and found half a
+hundred persons busy at a table of rouge et noir. Gambouge's five
+napoleons looked insignificant by the side of the heaps which were
+around him; but the effects of the wine, of the theft, and of the
+detection by the pawnbroker, were upon him, and he threw down his
+capital stoutly upon the 0 0.
+
+It is a dangerous spot that 0 0, or double zero; but to Simon it
+was more lucky than to the rest of the world. The ball went spinning
+round--in "its predestined circle rolled," as Shelley has it, after
+Goethe--and plumped down at last in the double zero. One hundred and
+thirty-five gold napoleons (louis they were then) were counted out to
+the delighted painter. "Oh, Diabolus!" cried he, "now it is that I
+begin to believe in thee! Don't talk about merit," he cried; "talk about
+fortune. Tell me not about heroes for the future--tell me of ZEROES."
+And down went twenty napoleons more upon the 0.
+
+The Devil was certainly in the ball: round it twirled, and dropped
+into zero as naturally as a duck pops its head into a pond. Our friend
+received five hundred pounds for his stake; and the croupiers and
+lookers-on began to stare at him.
+
+There were twelve thousand pounds on the table. Suffice it to say, that
+Simon won half, and retired from the Palais Royal with a thick bundle
+of bank-notes crammed into his dirty three-cornered hat. He had been but
+half an hour in the place, and he had won the revenues of a prince for
+half a year!
+
+Gambouge, as soon as he felt that he was a capitalist, and that he had a
+stake in the country, discovered that he was an altered man. He repented
+of his foul deed, and his base purloining of the restaurateur's plate.
+"O honesty!" he cried, "how unworthy is an action like this of a man who
+has a property like mine!" So he went back to the pawnbroker with the
+gloomiest face imaginable. "My friend," said he, "I have sinned against
+all that I hold most sacred: I have forgotten my family and my religion.
+Here is thy money. In the name of heaven, restore me the plate which I
+have wrongfully sold thee!"
+
+But the pawnbroker grinned, and said, "Nay, Mr. Gambouge, I will sell
+that plate for a thousand francs to you, or I never will sell it at
+all."
+
+"Well," cried Gambouge, "thou art an inexorable ruffian, Troisboules;
+but I will give thee all I am worth." And here he produced a billet of
+five hundred francs. "Look," said he, "this money is all I own; it is
+the payment of two years' lodging. To raise it, I have toiled for many
+months; and, failing, I have been a criminal. O heaven! I STOLE that
+plate that I might pay my debt, and keep my dear wife from wandering
+houseless. But I cannot bear this load of ignominy--I cannot suffer the
+thought of this crime. I will go to the person to whom I did wrong, I
+will starve, I will confess; but I will, I WILL do right!"
+
+The broker was alarmed. "Give me thy note," he cried; "here is the
+plate."
+
+"Give me an acquittal first," cried Simon, almost broken-hearted; "sign
+me a paper, and the money is yours." So Troisboules wrote according to
+Gambouge's dictation; "Received, for thirteen ounces of plate, twenty
+pounds."
+
+"Monster of iniquity!" cried the painter, "fiend of wickedness! thou art
+caught in thine own snares. Hast thou not sold me five pounds' worth of
+plate for twenty? Have I it not in my pocket? Art thou not a convicted
+dealer in stolen goods? Yield, scoundrel, yield thy money, or I will
+bring thee to justice!"
+
+The frightened pawnbroker bullied and battled for a while; but he gave
+up his money at last, and the dispute ended. Thus it will be seen that
+Diabolus had rather a hard bargain in the wily Gambouge. He had taken
+a victim prisoner, but he had assuredly caught a Tartar. Simon now
+returned home, and, to do him justice, paid the bill for his dinner, and
+restored the plate.
+
+And now I may add (and the reader should ponder upon this, as a profound
+picture of human life), that Gambouge, since he had grown rich, grew
+likewise abundantly moral. He was a most exemplary father. He fed the
+poor, and was loved by them. He scorned a base action. And I have no
+doubt that Mr. Thurtell, or the late lamented Mr. Greenacre, in similar
+circumstances, would have acted like the worthy Simon Gambouge.
+
+There was but one blot upon his character--he hated Mrs. Gam. worse than
+ever. As he grew more benevolent, she grew more virulent: when he went
+to plays, she went to Bible societies, and vice versâ: in fact, she led
+him such a life as Xantippe led Socrates, or as a dog leads a cat in
+the same kitchen. With all his fortune--for, as may be supposed, Simon
+prospered in all worldly things--he was the most miserable dog in the
+whole city of Paris. Only in the point of drinking did he and Mrs. Simon
+agree; and for many years, and during a considerable number of hours
+in each day, he thus dissipated, partially, his domestic chagrin.
+O philosophy! we may talk of thee: but, except at the bottom of the
+winecup, where thou liest like truth in a well, where shall we find
+thee?
+
+He lived so long, and in his worldly matters prospered so much, there
+was so little sign of devilment in the accomplishment of his wishes,
+and the increase of his prosperity, that Simon, at the end of six years,
+began to doubt whether he had made any such bargain at all, as that
+which we have described at the commencement of this history. He had
+grown, as we said, very pious and moral. He went regularly to mass, and
+had a confessor into the bargain. He resolved, therefore, to consult
+that reverend gentleman, and to lay before him the whole matter.
+
+"I am inclined to think, holy sir," said Gambouge, after he had
+concluded his history, and shown how, in some miraculous way, all his
+desires were accomplished, "that, after all, this demon was no other
+than the creation of my own brain, heated by the effects of that bottle
+of wine, the cause of my crime and my prosperity."
+
+The confessor agreed with him, and they walked out of church comfortably
+together, and entered afterwards a café, where they sat down to refresh
+themselves after the fatigues of their devotion.
+
+A respectable old gentleman, with a number of orders at his buttonhole,
+presently entered the room, and sauntered up to the marble table, before
+which reposed Simon and his clerical friend. "Excuse me, gentlemen," he
+said, as he took a place opposite them, and began reading the papers of
+the day.
+
+"Bah!" said he, at last,--"sont-ils grands ces journaux Anglais?
+Look, sir," he said, handing over an immense sheet of The Times to Mr.
+Gambouge, "was ever anything so monstrous?"
+
+Gambouge smiled politely, and examined the proffered page. "It is
+enormous" he said; "but I do not read English."
+
+"Nay," said the man with the orders, "look closer at it, Signor
+Gambouge; it is astonishing how easy the language is."
+
+Wondering, Simon took a sheet of paper. He turned pale as he looked at
+it, and began to curse the ices and the waiter. "Come, M. l'Abbé," he
+said; "the heat and glare of this place are intolerable."
+
+The stranger rose with them. "Au plaisir de vous revoir, mon cher
+monsieur," said he; "I do not mind speaking before the Abbé here,
+who will be my very good friend one of these days: but I thought
+it necessary to refresh your memory, concerning our little business
+transaction six years since; and could not exactly talk of it AT CHURCH,
+as you may fancy."
+
+Simon Gambouge had seen, in the double-sheeted Times, the paper signed
+by himself, which the little Devil had pulled out of his fob.
+
+There was no doubt on the subject; and Simon, who had but a year to
+live, grew more pious, and more careful than ever. He had consultations
+with all the doctors of the Sorbonne and all the lawyers of the Palais.
+But his magnificence grew as wearisome to him as his poverty had been
+before; and not one of the doctors whom he consulted could give him a
+pennyworth of consolation.
+
+Then he grew outrageous in his demands upon the Devil, and put him to
+all sorts of absurd and ridiculous tasks; but they were all punctually
+performed, until Simon could invent no new ones, and the Devil sat all
+day with his hands in his pockets doing nothing.
+
+One day, Simon's confessor came bounding into the room, with the
+greatest glee. "My friend," said he, "I have it! Eureka!--I have found
+it. Send the Pope a hundred thousand crowns, build a new Jesuit college
+at Rome, give a hundred gold candlesticks to St. Peter's; and tell his
+Holiness you will double all, if he will give you absolution!"
+
+Gambouge caught at the notion, and hurried off a courier to Rome ventre
+à terre. His Holiness agreed to the request of the petition, and sent
+him an absolution, written out with his own fist, and all in due form.
+
+"Now," said he, "foul fiend, I defy you! arise, Diabolus! your contract
+is not worth a jot: the Pope has absolved me, and I am safe on the
+road to salvation." In a fervor of gratitude he clasped the hand of his
+confessor, and embraced him: tears of joy ran down the cheeks of these
+good men.
+
+They heard an inordinate roar of laughter, and there was Diabolus
+sitting opposite to them, holding his sides, and lashing his tail about,
+as if he would have gone mad with glee.
+
+"Why," said he, "what nonsense is this! do you suppose I care about
+THAT?" and he tossed the Pope's missive into a corner. "M. l'Abbé
+knows," he said, bowing and grinning, "that though the Pope's paper may
+pass current HERE, it is not worth twopence in our country. What do I
+care about the Pope's absolution? You might just as well be absolved by
+your under butler."
+
+"Egad," said the Abbé, "the rogue is right--I quite forgot the fact,
+which he points out clearly enough."
+
+"No, no, Gambouge," continued Diabolus, with horrid familiarity, "go thy
+ways, old fellow, that COCK WON'T FIGHT." And he retired up the chimney,
+chuckling at his wit and his triumph. Gambouge heard his tail scuttling
+all the way up, as if he had been a sweeper by profession.
+
+Simon was left in that condition of grief in which, according to the
+newspapers, cities and nations are found when a murder is committed, or
+a lord ill of the gout--a situation, we say, more easy to imagine than
+to describe.
+
+To add to his woes, Mrs. Gambouge, who was now first made acquainted
+with his compact, and its probable consequences, raised such a storm
+about his ears, as made him wish almost that his seven years were
+expired. She screamed, she scolded, she swore, she wept, she went into
+such fits of hysterics, that poor Gambouge, who had completely knocked
+under to her, was worn out of his life. He was allowed no rest, night
+or day: he moped about his fine house, solitary and wretched, and cursed
+his stars that he ever had married the butcher's daughter.
+
+It wanted six months of the time.
+
+A sudden and desperate resolution seemed all at once to have taken
+possession of Simon Gambouge. He called his family and his friends
+together--he gave one of the greatest feasts that ever was known in the
+city of Paris--he gayly presided at one end of his table, while Mrs.
+Gam., splendidly arrayed, gave herself airs at the other extremity.
+
+After dinner, using the customary formula, he called upon Diabolus to
+appear. The old ladies screamed, and hoped he would not appear naked;
+the young ones tittered, and longed to see the monster: everybody was
+pale with expectation and affright.
+
+A very quiet, gentlemanly man, neatly dressed in black, made his
+appearance, to the surprise of all present, and bowed all round to
+the company. "I will not show my CREDENTIALS," he said, blushing, and
+pointing to his hoofs, which were cleverly hidden by his pumps and
+shoe-buckles, "unless the ladies absolutely wish it; but I am the person
+you want, Mr. Gambouge; pray tell me what is your will."
+
+"You know," said that gentleman, in a stately and determined voice,
+"that you are bound to me, according to our agreement, for six months to
+come."
+
+"I am," replied the new comer.
+
+"You are to do all that I ask, whatsoever it may be, or you forfeit the
+bond which I gave you?"
+
+"It is true."
+
+"You declare this before the present company?"
+
+"Upon my honor, as a gentleman," said Diabolus, bowing, and laying his
+hand upon his waistcoat.
+
+A whisper of applause ran round the room: all were charmed with the
+bland manners of the fascinating stranger.
+
+"My love," continued Gambouge, mildly addressing his lady, "will you
+be so polite as to step this way? You know I must go soon, and I am
+anxious, before this noble company, to make a provision for one who, in
+sickness as in health, in poverty as in riches, has been my truest and
+fondest companion."
+
+Gambouge mopped his eyes with his handkerchief--all the company did
+likewise. Diabolus sobbed audibly, and Mrs. Gambouge sidled up to her
+husband's side, and took him tenderly by the hand. "Simon!" said she,
+"is it true? and do you really love your Griskinissa?"
+
+Simon continued solemnly: "Come hither, Diabolus; you are bound to obey
+me in all things for the six months during which our contract has to
+run; take, then, Griskinissa Gambouge, live alone with her for half a
+year, never leave her from morning till night, obey all her caprices,
+follow all her whims, and listen to all the abuse which falls from
+her infernal tongue. Do this, and I ask no more of you; I will deliver
+myself up at the appointed time."
+
+Not Lord G---, when flogged by lord B---, in the House,--not Mr.
+Cartlitch, of Astley's Amphitheatre, in his most pathetic passages,
+could look more crestfallen, and howl more hideously, than Diabolus did
+now. "Take another year, Gambouge," screamed he; "two more--ten more--a
+century; roast me on Lawrence's gridiron, boil me in holy water, but
+don't ask that: don't, don't bid me live with Mrs. Gambouge!"
+
+Simon smiled sternly. "I have said it," he cried; "do this, or our
+contract is at an end."
+
+The Devil, at this, grinned so horribly that every drop of beer in the
+house turned sour: he gnashed his teeth so frightfully that every person
+in the company wellnigh fainted with the cholic. He slapped down the
+great parchment upon the floor, trampled upon it madly, and lashed it
+with his hoofs and his tail: at last, spreading out a mighty pair of
+wings as wide as from here to Regent Street, he slapped Gambouge with
+his tail over one eye, and vanished, abruptly, through the keyhole.
+
+Gambouge screamed with pain and started up. "You drunken, lazy
+scoundrel!" cried a shrill and well-known voice, "you have been asleep
+these two hours:" and here he received another terrific box on the ear.
+
+It was too true, he had fallen asleep at his work; and the beautiful
+vision had been dispelled by the thumps of the tipsy Griskinissa.
+Nothing remained to corroborate his story, except the bladder of lake,
+and this was spirted all over his waistcoat and breeches.
+
+"I wish," said the poor fellow, rubbing his tingling cheeks, "that
+dreams were true;" and he went to work again at his portrait.
+
+My last accounts of Gambouge are, that he has left the arts, and is
+footman in a small family. Mrs. Gam. takes in washing; and it is said
+that, her continual dealings with soap-suds and hot water have been the
+only things in life which have kept her from spontaneous combustion.
+
+
+
+CARTOUCHE.
+
+
+I have been much interested with an account of the exploits of Monsieur
+Louis Dominic Cartouche, and as Newgate and the highways are so much
+the fashion with us in England, we may be allowed to look abroad for
+histories of a similar tendency. It is pleasant to find that virtue is
+cosmopolite, and may exist among wooden-shoed Papists as well as honest
+Church-of-England men.
+
+Louis Dominic was born in a quarter of Paris called the Courtille, says
+the historian whose work lies before me;--born in the Courtille, and
+in the year 1693. Another biographer asserts that he was born two years
+later, and in the Marais;--of respectable parents, of course. Think of
+the talent that our two countries produced about this time: Marlborough,
+Villars, Mandrin, Turpin, Boileau, Dryden, Swift, Addison, Molière,
+Racine, Jack Sheppard, and Louis Cartouche,--all famous within the same
+twenty years, and fighting, writing, robbing à l'envi!
+
+Well, Marlborough was no chicken when he began to show his genius; Swift
+was but a dull, idle, college lad; but if we read the histories of
+some other great men mentioned in the above list--I mean the thieves,
+especially--we shall find that they all commenced very early: they
+showed a passion for their art, as little Raphael did, or little
+Mozart; and the history of Cartouche's knaveries begins almost with his
+breeches.
+
+Dominic's parents sent him to school at the college of Clermont (now
+Louis le Grand); and although it has never been discovered that the
+Jesuits, who directed that seminary, advanced him much in classical
+or theological knowledge, Cartouche, in revenge, showed, by repeated
+instances, his own natural bent and genius, which no difficulties were
+strong enough to overcome. His first great action on record, although
+not successful in the end, and tinctured with the innocence of youth, is
+yet highly creditable to him. He made a general swoop of a hundred and
+twenty nightcaps belonging to his companions, and disposed of them to
+his satisfaction; but as it was discovered that of all the youths in
+the college of Clermont, he only was the possessor of a cap to sleep in,
+suspicion (which, alas! was confirmed) immediately fell upon him: and by
+this little piece of youthful naïveté, a scheme, prettily conceived and
+smartly performed, was rendered naught.
+
+Cartouche had a wonderful love for good eating, and put all the
+apple-women and cooks, who came to supply the students, under
+contribution. Not always, however, desirous of robbing these, he used to
+deal with them, occasionally, on honest principles of barter; that is,
+whenever he could get hold of his schoolfellows' knives, books,
+rulers, or playthings, which he used fairly to exchange for tarts and
+gingerbread.
+
+It seemed as if the presiding genius of evil was determined to patronize
+this young man; for before he had been long at college, and soon after
+he had, with the greatest difficulty, escaped from the nightcap scrape,
+an opportunity occurred by which he was enabled to gratify both his
+propensities at once, and not only to steal, but to steal sweetmeats.
+It happened that the principal of the college received some pots of
+Narbonne honey, which came under the eyes of Cartouche, and in which
+that young gentleman, as soon as ever he saw them, determined to put
+his fingers. The president of the college put aside his honey-pots in
+an apartment within his own; to which, except by the one door which led
+into the room which his reverence usually occupied, there was no outlet.
+There was no chimney in the room; and the windows looked into the court,
+where there was a porter at night, and where crowds passed by day. What
+was Cartouche to do?--have the honey he must.
+
+Over this chamber, which contained what his soul longed after, and over
+the president's rooms, there ran a set of unoccupied garrets, into which
+the dexterous Cartouche penetrated. These were divided from the rooms
+below, according to the fashion of those days, by a set of large beams,
+which reached across the whole building, and across which rude planks
+were laid, which formed the ceiling of the lower story and the floor of
+the upper. Some of these planks did young Cartouche remove; and having
+descended by means of a rope, tied a couple of others to the neck of the
+honey-pots, climbed back again, and drew up his prey in safety. He then
+cunningly fixed the planks again in their old places, and retired to
+gorge himself upon his booty. And, now, see the punishment of avarice!
+Everybody knows that the brethren of the order of Jesus are bound by
+a vow to have no more than a certain small sum of money in their
+possession. The principal of the college of Clermont had amassed a
+larger sum, in defiance of this rule: and where do you think the old
+gentleman had hidden it? In the honey-pots! As Cartouche dug his spoon
+into one of them, he brought out, besides a quantity of golden honey, a
+couple of golden louis, which, with ninety-eight more of their fellows,
+were comfortably hidden in the pots. Little Dominic, who, before, had
+cut rather a poor figure among his fellow-students, now appeared in
+as fine clothes as any of them could boast of; and when asked by his
+parents, on going home, how he came by them, said that a young nobleman
+of his schoolfellows had taken a violent fancy to him, and made him a
+present of a couple of his suits. Cartouche the elder, good man, went
+to thank the young nobleman; but none such could be found, and young
+Cartouche disdained to give any explanation of his manner of gaining the
+money.
+
+Here, again, we have to regret and remark the inadvertence of youth.
+Cartouche lost a hundred louis--for what? For a pot of honey not worth a
+couple of shillings. Had he fished out the pieces, and replaced the pots
+and the honey, he might have been safe, and a respectable citizen all
+his life after. The principal would not have dared to confess the loss
+of his money, and did not, openly; but he vowed vengeance against the
+stealer of his sweetmeat, and a rigid search was made. Cartouche, as
+usual, was fixed upon; and in the tick of his bed, lo! there were found
+a couple of empty honey-pots! From this scrape there is no knowing
+how he would have escaped, had not the president himself been a little
+anxious to hush the matter up; and accordingly, young Cartouche was made
+to disgorge the residue of his ill-gotten gold pieces, old
+Cartouche made up the deficiency, and his son was allowed to remain
+unpunished--until the next time.
+
+This, you may fancy, was not very long in coming; and though history
+has not made us acquainted with the exact crime which Louis Dominic next
+committed, it must have been a serious one; for Cartouche, who had
+borne philosophically all the whippings and punishments which were
+administered to him at college, did not dare to face that one which
+his indignant father had in pickle for him. As he was coming home from
+school, on the first day after his crime, when he received permission to
+go abroad, one of his brothers, who was on the look-out for him, met
+him at a short distance from home, and told him what was in preparation;
+which so frightened this young thief, that he declined returning home
+altogether, and set out upon the wide world to shift for himself as he
+could.
+
+Undoubted as his genius was, he had not arrived at the full exercise of
+it, and his gains were by no means equal to his appetite. In whatever
+professions he tried,--whether he joined the gipsies, which he
+did,--whether he picked pockets on the Pont Neuf, which occupation
+history attributes to him,--poor Cartouche was always hungry. Hungry
+and ragged, he wandered from one place and profession to another, and
+regretted the honey-pots at Clermont, and the comfortable soup and
+bouilli at home.
+
+Cartouche had an uncle, a kind man, who was a merchant, and had dealings
+at Rouen. One day, walking on the quays of that city, this gentleman saw
+a very miserable, dirty, starving lad, who had just made a pounce upon
+some bones and turnip-peelings, that had been flung out on the quay, and
+was eating them as greedily as if they had been turkeys and truffles.
+The worthy man examined the lad a little closer. O heavens! it was their
+runaway prodigal--it was little Louis Dominic! The merchant was touched
+by his case; and forgetting the nightcaps, the honey-pots, and the rags
+and dirt of little Louis, took him to his arms, and kissed and hugged
+him with the tenderest affection. Louis kissed and hugged too, and
+blubbered a great deal: he was very repentant, as a man often is when he
+is hungry; and he went home with his uncle, and his peace was made; and
+his mother got him new clothes, and filled his belly, and for a while
+Louis was as good a son as might be.
+
+But why attempt to balk the progress of genius? Louis's was not to be
+kept down. He was sixteen years of age by this time--a smart, lively
+young fellow, and, what is more, desperately enamored of a lovely
+washerwoman. To be successful in your love, as Louis knew, you must have
+something more than mere flames and sentiment;--a washer, or any other
+woman, cannot live upon sighs only; but must have new gowns and caps,
+and a necklace every now and then, and a few handkerchiefs and silk
+stockings, and a treat into the country or to the play. Now, how are all
+these things to be had without money? Cartouche saw at once that it was
+impossible; and as his father would give him none, he was obliged to
+look for it elsewhere. He took to his old courses, and lifted a
+purse here, and a watch there; and found, moreover, an accommodating
+gentleman, who took the wares off his hands.
+
+This gentleman introduced him into a very select and agreeable society,
+in which Cartouche's merit began speedily to be recognized, and in which
+he learnt how pleasant it is in life to have friends to assist one, and
+how much may be done by a proper division of labor. M. Cartouche, in
+fact, formed part of a regular company or gang of gentlemen, who were
+associated together for the purpose of making war on the public and the
+law.
+
+Cartouche had a lovely young sister, who was to be married to a rich
+young gentleman from the provinces. As is the fashion in France, the
+parents had arranged the match among themselves; and the young people
+had never met until just before the time appointed for the marriage,
+when the bridegroom came up to Paris with his title-deeds, and
+settlements, and money. Now there can hardly be found in history a
+finer instance of devotion than Cartouche now exhibited. He went to his
+captain, explained the matter to him, and actually, for the good of
+his country, as it were (the thieves might be called his country),
+sacrificed his sister's husband's property. Informations were taken, the
+house of the bridegroom was reconnoitred, and, one night, Cartouche, in
+company with some chosen friends, made his first visit to the house of
+his brother-in-law. All the people were gone to bed; and, doubtless, for
+fear of disturbing the porter, Cartouche and his companions spared him
+the trouble of opening the door, by ascending quietly at the window.
+They arrived at the room where the bridegroom kept his great chest, and
+set industriously to work, filing and picking the locks which defended
+the treasure.
+
+The bridegroom slept in the next room; but however tenderly Cartouche
+and his workmen handled their tools, from fear of disturbing his
+slumbers, their benevolent design was disappointed, for awaken him they
+did; and quietly slipping out of bed, he came to a place where he had a
+complete view of all that was going on. He did not cry out, or frighten
+himself sillily; but, on the contrary, contented himself with watching
+the countenances of the robbers, so that he might recognize them on
+another occasion; and, though an avaricious man, he did not feel the
+slightest anxiety about his money-chest; for the fact is, he had removed
+all the cash and papers the day before.
+
+As soon, however, as they had broken all the locks, and found the
+nothing which lay at the bottom of the chest, he shouted with such a
+loud voice, "Here, Thomas!--John!--officer!--keep the gate, fire at the
+rascals!" that they, incontinently taking fright, skipped nimbly out of
+window, and left the house free.
+
+Cartouche, after this, did not care to meet his brother-in-law, but
+eschewed all those occasions on which the latter was to be present at
+his father's house. The evening before the marriage came; and then his
+father insisted upon his appearance among the other relatives of the
+bride's and bridegroom's families, who were all to assemble and make
+merry. Cartouche was obliged to yield; and brought with him one or two
+of his companions, who had been, by the way, present in the affair of
+the empty money-boxes; and though he never fancied that there was any
+danger in meeting his brother-in-law, for he had no idea that he had
+been seen on the night of the attack, with a natural modesty, which did
+him really credit, he kept out of the young bridegroom's sight as much
+as he could, and showed no desire to be presented to him. At supper,
+however, as he was sneaking modestly down to a side-table, his father
+shouted after him, "Ho, Dominic, come hither, and sit opposite to
+your brother-in-law:" which Dominic did, his friends following. The
+bridegroom pledged him very gracefully in a bumper; and was in the act
+of making him a pretty speech, on the honor of an alliance with such
+a family, and on the pleasures of brother-in-lawship in general, when,
+looking in his face--ye gods! he saw the very man who had been filing at
+his money-chest a few nights ago! By his side, too, sat a couple more of
+the gang. The poor fellow turned deadly pale and sick, and, setting
+his glass down, ran quickly out of the room, for he thought he was in
+company of a whole gang of robbers. And when he got home, he wrote a
+letter to the elder Cartouche, humbly declining any connection with his
+family.
+
+Cartouche the elder, of course, angrily asked the reason of such an
+abrupt dissolution of the engagement; and then, much to his horror,
+heard of his eldest son's doings. "You would not have me marry into
+such a family?" said the ex-bridegroom. And old Cartouche, an honest old
+citizen, confessed, with a heavy heart, that he would not. What was he
+to do with the lad? He did not like to ask for a lettre de cachet,
+and shut him up in the Bastile. He determined to give him a year's
+discipline at the monastery of St. Lazare.
+
+But how to catch the young gentleman? Old Cartouche knew that, were
+he to tell his son of the scheme, the latter would never obey, and,
+therefore, he determined to be very cunning. He told Dominic that he
+was about to make a heavy bargain with the fathers, and should require
+a witness; so they stepped into a carriage together, and drove
+unsuspectingly to the Rue St. Denis. But, when they arrived near the
+convent, Cartouche saw several ominous figures gathering round the
+coach, and felt that his doom was sealed. However, he made as if he knew
+nothing of the conspiracy; and the carriage drew up, and his father,
+descended, and, bidding him wait for a minute in the coach, promised to
+return to him. Cartouche looked out; on the other side of the way half a
+dozen men were posted, evidently with the intention of arresting him.
+
+Cartouche now performed a great and celebrated stroke of genius, which,
+if he had not been professionally employed in the morning, he never
+could have executed. He had in his pocket a piece of linen, which he had
+laid hold of at the door of some shop, and from which he quickly tore
+three suitable stripes. One he tied round his head, after the fashion of
+a nightcap; a second round his waist, like an apron; and with the third
+he covered his hat, a round one, with a large brim. His coat and his
+periwig lie left behind him in the carriage; and when he stepped out
+from it (which he did without asking the coachman to let down the
+steps), he bore exactly the appearance of a cook's boy carrying a dish;
+and with this he slipped through the exempts quite unsuspected, and bade
+adieu to the Lazarists and his honest father, who came out speedily to
+seek him, and was not a little annoyed to find only his coat and wig.
+
+With that coat and wig, Cartouche left home, father, friends,
+conscience, remorse, society, behind him. He discovered (like a great
+number of other philosophers and poets, when they have committed
+rascally actions) that the world was all going wrong, and he quarrelled
+with it outright. One of the first stories told of the illustrious
+Cartouche, when he became professionally and openly a robber, redounds
+highly to his credit, and shows that he knew how to take advantage of
+the occasion, and how much he had improved in the course of a very few
+years' experience. His courage and ingenuity were vastly admired by his
+friends; so much so, that, one day, the captain of the band thought fit
+to compliment him, and vowed that when he (the captain) died, Cartouche
+should infallibly be called to the command-in-chief. This conversation,
+so flattering to Cartouche, was carried on between the two gentlemen,
+as they were walking, one night, on the quays by the side of the Seine.
+Cartouche, when the captain made the last remark, blushingly protested
+against it, and pleaded his extreme youth as a reason why his comrades
+could never put entire trust in him. "Psha, man!" said the captain, "thy
+youth is in thy favor; thou wilt live only the longer to lead thy troops
+to victory. As for strength, bravery, and cunning, wert thou as old as
+Methuselah, thou couldst not be better provided than thou art now, at
+eighteen." What was the reply of Monsieur Cartouche? He answered, not by
+words, but by actions. Drawing his knife from his girdle, he instantly
+dug it into the captain's left side, as near his heart as possible; and
+then, seizing that imprudent commander, precipitated him violently
+into the waters of the Seine, to keep company with the gudgeons and
+river-gods. When he returned to the band, and recounted how the captain
+had basely attempted to assassinate him, and how he, on the contrary,
+had, by exertion of superior skill, overcome the captain, not one of
+the society believed a word of his history; but they elected him captain
+forthwith. I think his Excellency Don Rafael Maroto, the pacificator of
+Spain, is an amiable character, for whom history has not been written in
+vain.
+
+Being arrived at this exalted position, there is no end of the feats
+which Cartouche performed; and his band reached to such a pitch of
+glory, that if there had been a hundred thousand, instead of a hundred
+of them, who knows but that a new and popular dynasty might not have
+been founded, and "Louis Dominic, premier Empereur des Français," might
+have performed innumerable glorious actions, and fixed himself in the
+hearts of his people, just as other monarchs have done, a hundred years
+after Cartouche's death.
+
+A story similar to the above, and equally moral, is that of Cartouche,
+who, in company with two other gentlemen, robbed the coche,
+or packet-boat, from Melun, where they took a good quantity of
+booty,--making the passengers lie down on the decks, and rifling them
+at leisure. "This money will be but very little among three," whispered
+Cartouche to his neighbor, as the three conquerors were making merry
+over their gains; "if you were but to pull the trigger of your pistol
+in the neighborhood of your comrade's ear, perhaps it might go off,
+and then there would be but two of us to share." Strangely enough, as
+Cartouche said, the pistol DID go off, and No. 3 perished. "Give him
+another ball," said Cartouche; and another was fired into him. But
+no sooner had Cartouche's comrade discharged both his pistols, than
+Cartouche himself, seized with a furious indignation, drew his: "Learn,
+monster," cried he, "not to be so greedy of gold, and perish, the victim
+of thy disloyalty and avarice!" So Cartouche slew the second robber; and
+there is no man in Europe who can say that the latter did not merit well
+his punishment.
+
+I could fill volumes, and not mere sheets of paper, with tales of the
+triumphs of Cartouche and his band; how he robbed the Countess of O----,
+going to Dijon, in her coach, and how the Countess fell in love with
+him, and was faithful to him ever after; how, when the lieutenant of
+police offered a reward of a hundred pistoles to any man who would bring
+Cartouche before him, a noble Marquess, in a coach and six, drove up
+to the hotel of the police; and the noble Marquess, desiring to see
+Monsieur de la Reynie, on matters of the highest moment, alone, the
+latter introduced him into his private cabinet; and how, when there, the
+Marquess drew from his pocket a long, curiously shaped dagger: "Look at
+this, Monsieur de la Reynie," said he; "this dagger is poisoned!"
+
+"Is it possible?" said M. de la Reynie.
+
+"A prick of it would do for any man," said the Marquess.
+
+"You don't say so!" said M. de la Reynie.
+
+"I do, though; and, what is more," says the Marquess, in a terrible
+voice, "if you do not instantly lay yourself flat on the ground, with
+your face towards it, and your hands crossed over your back, or if
+you make the slightest noise or cry, I will stick this poisoned dagger
+between your ribs, as sure as my name is Cartouche?"
+
+At the sound of this dreadful name, M. de la Reynie sunk incontinently
+down on his stomach, and submitted to be carefully gagged and corded;
+after which Monsieur Cartouche laid his hands upon all the money which
+was kept in the lieutenant's cabinet. Alas! and alas! many a stout
+bailiff, and many an honest fellow of a spy, went, for that day, without
+his pay and his victuals.
+
+There is a story that Cartouche once took the diligence to Lille, and
+found in it a certain Abbé Potter, who was full of indignation against
+this monster of a Cartouche, and said that when he went back to Paris,
+which he proposed to do in about a fortnight, he should give the
+lieutenant of police some information, which would infallibly lead
+to the scoundrel's capture. But poor Potter was disappointed in his
+designs; for, before he could fulfil them, he was made the victim of
+Cartouche's cruelty.
+
+A letter came to the lieutenant of police, to state that Cartouche had
+travelled to Lille, in company with the Abbé de Potter, of that town;
+that, on the reverend gentleman's return towards Paris, Cartouche had
+waylaid him, murdered him, taken his papers, and would come to Paris
+himself, bearing the name and clothes of the unfortunate Abbé, by the
+Lille coach, on such a day. The Lille coach arrived, was surrounded
+by police agents; the monster Cartouche was there, sure enough, in the
+Abbé's guise. He was seized, bound, flung into prison, brought out to be
+examined, and, on examination, found to be no other than the Abbé Potter
+himself! It is pleasant to read thus of the relaxations of great men,
+and find them condescending to joke like the meanest of us.
+
+Another diligence adventure is recounted of the famous Cartouche. It
+happened that he met, in the coach, a young and lovely lady, clad in
+widow's weeds, and bound to Paris, with a couple of servants. The poor
+thing was the widow of a rich old gentleman of Marseilles, and was going
+to the capital to arrange with her lawyers, and to settle her husband's
+will. The Count de Grinche (for so her fellow-passenger was called) was
+quite as candid as the pretty widow had been, and stated that he was a
+captain in the regiment of Nivernois; that he was going to Paris to buy
+a colonelcy, which his relatives, the Duke de Bouillon, the Prince de
+Montmorency, the Commandeur de la Trémoille, with all their interest at
+court, could not fail to procure for him. To be short, in the course of
+the four days' journey, the Count Louis Dominic de Grinche played his
+cards so well, that the poor little widow half forgot her late husband;
+and her eyes glistened with tears as the Count kissed her hand at
+parting--at parting, he hoped, only for a few hours.
+
+Day and night the insinuating Count followed her; and when, at the
+end of a fortnight, and in the midst of a tête-à-tête, he plunged, one
+morning, suddenly on his knees, and said, "Leonora, do you love me?" the
+poor thing heaved the gentlest, tenderest, sweetest sigh in the world;
+and sinking her blushing head on his shoulder, whispered, "Oh, Dominic,
+je t'aime! Ah!" said she, "how noble is it of my Dominic to take me
+with the little I have, and he so rich a nobleman!" The fact is, the old
+Baron's titles and estates had passed away to his nephews; his dowager
+was only left with three hundred thousand livres, in rentes sur
+l'état--a handsome sum, but nothing to compare to the rent-roll of Count
+Dominic, Count de la Grinche, Seigneur de la Haute Pigre, Baron de la
+Bigorne; he had estates and wealth which might authorize him to aspire
+to the hand of a duchess, at least.
+
+The unfortunate widow never for a moment suspected the cruel trick that
+was about to be played on her; and, at the request of her affianced
+husband, sold out her money, and realized it in gold, to be made over to
+him on the day when the contract was to be signed. The day arrived;
+and, according to the custom in France, the relations of both parties
+attended. The widow's relatives, though respectable, were not of the
+first nobility, being chiefly persons of the finance or the robe: there
+was the president of the court of Arras, and his lady; a farmer-general;
+a judge of a court of Paris; and other such grave and respectable
+people. As for Monsieur le Comte de la Grinche, he was not bound for
+names; and, having the whole peerage to choose from, brought a host of
+Montmorencies, Créquis, De la Tours, and Guises at his back. His homme
+d'affaires brought his papers in a sack, and displayed the plans of his
+estates, and the titles of his glorious ancestry. The widow's lawyers
+had her money in sacks; and between the gold on the one side, and the
+parchments on the other, lay the contract which was to make the widow's
+three hundred thousand francs the property of the Count de Grinche. The
+Count de la Grinche was just about to sign; when the Marshal de Villars,
+stepping up to him, said, "Captain, do you know who the president of the
+court of Arras, yonder, is? It is old Manasseh, the fence, of Brussels.
+I pawned a gold watch to him, which I stole from Cadogan, when I was
+with Malbrook's army in Flanders."
+
+Here the Duc de la Roche Guyon came forward, very much alarmed. "Run me
+through the body!" said his Grace, "but the comptroller-general's lady,
+there, is no other than that old hag of a Margoton who keeps the ----"
+Here the Duc de la Roche Guyon's voice fell.
+
+Cartouche smiled graciously, and walked up to the table. He took up one
+of the widow's fifteen thousand gold pieces;--it was as pretty a bit of
+copper as you could wish to see. "My dear," said he politely, "there is
+some mistake here, and this business had better stop."
+
+"Count!" gasped the poor widow.
+
+"Count be hanged!" answered the bridegroom, sternly "my name is
+CARTOUCHE!"
+
+
+
+ON SOME FRENCH FASHIONABLE NOVELS.
+
+WITH A PLEA FOR ROMANCES IN GENERAL.
+
+
+There is an old story of a Spanish court painter, who, being pressed for
+money, and having received a piece of damask, which he was to wear in a
+state procession, pawned the damask, and appeared, at the show, dressed
+out in some very fine sheets of paper, which he had painted so as
+exactly to resemble silk. Nay, his coat looked so much richer than the
+doublets of all the rest, that the Emperor Charles, in whose honor the
+procession was given, remarked the painter, and so his deceit was found
+out.
+
+I have often thought that, in respect of sham and real histories, a
+similar fact may be noticed; the sham story appearing a great deal more
+agreeable, life-like, and natural than the true one: and all who, from
+laziness as well as principle, are inclined to follow the easy and
+comfortable study of novels, may console themselves with the notion that
+they are studying matters quite as important as history, and that their
+favorite duodecimos are as instructive as the biggest quartos in the
+world.
+
+If then, ladies, the big-wigs begin to sneer at the course of our
+studies, calling our darling romances foolish, trivial, noxious to the
+mind, enervators of intellect, fathers of idleness, and what not, let
+us at once take a high ground, and say,--Go you to your own employments,
+and to such dull studies as you fancy; go and bob for triangles, from
+the Pons Asinorum; go enjoy your dull black draughts of metaphysics;
+go fumble over history books, and dissert upon Herodotus and Livy;
+OUR histories are, perhaps, as true as yours; our drink is the brisk
+sparkling champagne drink, from the presses of Colburn, Bentley and
+Co.; our walks are over such sunshiny pleasure-grounds as Scott and
+Shakspeare have laid out for us; and if our dwellings are castles in
+the air, we find them excessively splendid and commodious;--be not
+you envious because you have no wings to fly thither. Let the big-wigs
+despise us; such contempt of their neighbors is the custom of all
+barbarous tribes;--witness, the learned Chinese: Tippoo Sultaun declared
+that there were not in all Europe ten thousand men: the Sklavonic
+hordes, it is said, so entitled themselves from a word in their jargon,
+which signifies "to speak;" the ruffians imagining that they had a
+monopoly of this agreeable faculty, and that all other nations were
+dumb.
+
+Not so: others may be DEAF; but the novelist has a loud, eloquent,
+instructive language, though his enemies may despise or deny it ever so
+much. What is more, one could, perhaps, meet the stoutest historian on
+his own ground, and argue with him; showing that sham histories were
+much truer than real histories; which are, in fact, mere contemptible
+catalogues of names and places, that can have no moral effect upon the
+reader.
+
+As thus:--
+
+
+  Julius Caesar beat Pompey, at Pharsalia.
+  The Duke of Marlborough beat Marshal Tallard at Blenheim.
+  The Constable of Bourbon beat Francis the First, at Pavia.
+
+
+And what have we here?--so many names, simply. Suppose Pharsalia had
+been, at that mysterious period when names were given, called Pavia;
+and that Julius Caesar's family name had been John Churchill;--the fact
+would have stood in history, thus:--
+
+
+  "Pompey ran away from the Duke of Marlborough at Pavia."
+
+
+And why not?--we should have been just as wise. Or it might be stated
+that--
+
+
+  "The tenth legion charged the French infantry at Blenheim; and
+   Caesar, writing home to his mamma, said, 'Madame, tout est perdu
+   fors l'honneur.'"
+
+
+What a contemptible science this is, then, about which quartos are
+written, and sixty-volumed Biographies Universelles, and Lardner's
+Cabinet Cyclopaedias, and the like! the facts are nothing in it, the
+names everything and a gentleman might as well improve his mind by
+learning Walker's "Gazetteer," or getting by heart a fifty-years-old
+edition of the "Court Guide."
+
+Having thus disposed of the historians, let us come to the point in
+question--the novelists.
+
+
+On the title-page of these volumes the reader has, doubtless, remarked,
+that among the pieces introduced, some are announced as "copies" and
+"compositions." Many of the histories have, accordingly, been neatly
+stolen from the collections of French authors (and mutilated, according
+to the old saying, so that their owners should not know them) and, for
+compositions, we intend to favor the public with some studies of French
+modern works, that have not as yet, we believe, attracted the notice of
+the English public.
+
+Of such works there appear many hundreds yearly, as may be seen by
+the French catalogues; but the writer has not so much to do with works
+political, philosophical, historical, metaphysical, scientifical,
+theological, as with those for which he has been putting forward a
+plea--novels, namely; on which he has expended a great deal of time
+and study. And passing from novels in general to French novels, let
+us confess, with much humiliation, that we borrow from these stories a
+great deal more knowledge of French society than from our own personal
+observation we ever can hope to gain: for, let a gentleman who has
+dwelt two, four, or ten years in Paris (and has not gone thither for
+the purpose of making a book, when three weeks are sufficient)--let an
+English gentleman say, at the end of any given period, how much he knows
+of French society, how many French houses he has entered, and how many
+French friends he has made?--He has enjoyed, at the end of the year,
+say--
+
+
+  At the English Ambassador's, so many soirées.
+  At houses to which he has brought letters, so many tea-parties.
+  At Cafés, so many dinners.
+  At French private houses, say three dinners, and very lucky too.
+
+
+He has, we say, seen an immense number of wax candles, cups of tea,
+glasses of orgeat, and French people, in best clothes, enjoying the
+same; but intimacy there is none; we see but the outsides of the people.
+Year by year we live in France, and grow gray, and see no more. We play
+écarté with Monsieur de Trêfle every night; but what know we of the
+heart of the man--of the inward ways, thoughts, and customs of Trêfle?
+If we have good legs, and love the amusement, we dance with Countess
+Flicflac, Tuesday's and Thursdays, ever since the Peace; and how far are
+we advanced in acquaintance with her since we first twirled her round a
+room? We know her velvet gown, and her diamonds (about three-fourths of
+them are sham, by the way); we know her smiles, and her simpers, and
+her rouge--but no more: she may turn into a kitchen wench at twelve on
+Thursday night, for aught we know; her voiture, a pumpkin; and her gens,
+so many rats: but the real, rougeless, intime Flicflac, we know not.
+This privilege is granted to no Englishman: we may understand the French
+language as well as Monsieur de Levizac, but never can penetrate
+into Flicflac's confidence: our ways are not her ways; our manners
+of thinking, not hers: when we say a good thing, in the course of the
+night, we are wondrous lucky and pleased; Flicflac will trill you off
+fifty in ten minutes, and wonder at the bêtise of the Briton, who has
+never a word to say. We are married, and have fourteen children, and
+would just as soon make love to the Pope of Rome as to any one but our
+own wife. If you do not make love to Flicflac, from the day after her
+marriage to the day she reaches sixty, she thinks you a fool. We won't
+play at écarté with Trêfle on Sunday nights; and are seen walking, about
+one o'clock (accompanied by fourteen red-haired children, with fourteen
+gleaming prayer-books), away from the church. "Grand Dieu!" cries
+Trêfle, "is that man mad? He won't play at cards on a Sunday; he goes to
+church on a Sunday: he has fourteen children!"
+
+Was ever Frenchman known to do likewise? Pass we on to our argument,
+which is, that with our English notions and moral and physical
+constitution, it is quite impossible that we should become intimate
+with our brisk neighbors; and when such authors as Lady Morgan and
+Mrs. Trollope, having frequented a certain number of tea-parties in the
+French capital, begin to prattle about French manners and men,--with all
+respect for the talents of those ladies, we do believe their information
+not to be worth a sixpence; they speak to us not of men but of
+tea-parties. Tea-parties are the same all the world over; with the
+exception that, with the French, there are more lights and prettier
+dresses; and with us, a mighty deal more tea in the pot.
+
+There is, however, a cheap and delightful way of travelling, that a
+man may perform in his easy-chair, without expense of passports or
+post-boys. On the wings of a novel, from the next circulating library,
+he sends his imagination a-gadding, and gains acquaintance with people
+and manners whom he could not hope otherwise to know. Twopence a volume
+bears us whithersoever we will;--back to Ivanhoe and Coeur de Lion, or
+to Waverley and the Young Pretender, along with Walter Scott; up the
+heights of fashion with the charming enchanters of the silver-fork
+school; or, better still, to the snug inn-parlor, or the jovial
+tap-room, with Mr. Pickwick and his faithful Sancho Weller. I am sure
+that a man who, a hundred years hence should sit down to write the
+history of our time, would do wrong to put that great contemporary
+history of "Pickwick" aside as a frivolous work. It contains true
+character under false names; and, like "Roderick Random," an inferior
+work, and "Tom Jones" (one that is immeasurably superior), gives us a
+better idea of the state and ways of the people than one could gather
+from any more pompous or authentic histories.
+
+We have, therefore, introduced into these volumes one or two short
+reviews of French fiction writers, of particular classes, whose Paris
+sketches may give the reader some notion of manners in that capital. If
+not original, at least the drawings are accurate; for, as a Frenchman
+might have lived a thousand years in England, and never could have
+written "Pickwick," an Englishman cannot hope to give a good description
+of the inward thoughts and ways of his neighbors.
+
+To a person inclined to study these, in that light and amusing fashion
+in which the novelist treats them, let us recommend the works of a new
+writer, Monsieur de Bernard, who has painted actual manners, without
+those monstrous and terrible exaggerations in which late French writers
+have indulged; and who, if he occasionally wounds the English sense of
+propriety (as what French man or woman alive will not?) does so more by
+slighting than by outraging it, as, with their labored descriptions of
+all sorts of imaginable wickedness, some of his brethren of the press
+have done. M. de Bernard's characters are men and women of genteel
+society--rascals enough, but living in no state of convulsive crimes;
+and we follow him in his lively, malicious account of their manners,
+without risk of lighting upon any such horrors as Balzac or Dumas has
+provided for us.
+
+Let us give an instance:--it is from the amusing novel called "Les Ailes
+d'Icare," and contains what is to us quite a new picture of a French
+fashionable rogue. The fashions will change in a few years, and the
+rogue, of course, with them. Let us catch this delightful fellow ere
+he flies. It is impossible to sketch the character in a more sparkling,
+gentlemanlike way than M. de Bernard's; but such light things are very
+difficult of translation, and the sparkle sadly evaporates during the
+process of DECANTING.
+
+
+A FRENCH FASHIONABLE LETTER.
+
+"MY DEAR VICTOR--It is six in the morning: I have just come from the
+English Ambassador's ball, and as my plans, for the day do not admit of
+my sleeping, I write you a line; for, at this moment, saturated as I am
+with the enchantments of a fairy night, all other pleasures would be too
+wearisome to keep me awake, except that of conversing with you. Indeed,
+were I not to write to you now, when should I find the possibility of
+doing so? Time flies here with such a frightful rapidity, my pleasures
+and my affairs whirl onwards together in such a torrentuous galopade,
+that I am compelled to seize occasion by the forelock; for each moment
+has its imperious employ. Do not then accuse me of negligence: if my
+correspondence has not always that regularity which I would fain give
+it, attribute the fault solely to the whirlwind in which I live, and
+which carries me hither and thither at its will.
+
+"However, you are not the only person with whom I am behindhand: I
+assure you, on the contrary, that you are one of a very numerous and
+fashionable company, to whom, towards the discharge of my debts, I
+propose to consecrate four hours to-day. I give you the preference to
+all the world, even to the lovely Duchess of San Severino, a delicious
+Italian, whom, for my special happiness, I met last summer at the Waters
+of Aix. I have also a most important negotiation to conclude with one of
+our Princes of Finance: but n'importe, I commence with thee: friendship
+before love or money--friendship before everything. My despatches
+concluded, I am engaged to ride with the Marquis de Grigneure, the
+Comte de Castijars, and Lord Cobham, in order that we may recover, for a
+breakfast at the Rocher de Cancale that Grigneure has lost, the appetite
+which we all of us so cruelly abused last night at the Ambassador's
+gala. On my honor, my dear fellow, everybody was of a caprice
+prestigieux and a comfortable mirobolant. Fancy, for a banquet-hall,
+a royal orangery hung with white damask; the boxes of the shrubs
+transformed into so many sideboards; lights gleaming through the
+foliage; and, for guests, the loveliest women and most brilliant
+cavaliers of Paris. Orleans and Nemours were there, dancing and eating
+like simple mortals. In a word, Albion did the thing very handsomely,
+and I accord it my esteem.
+
+"Here I pause, to call for my valet-de-chambre, and call for tea; for
+my head is heavy, and I've no time for a headache. In serving me, this
+rascal of a Frédéric has broken a cup, true Japan, upon my honor--the
+rogue does nothing else. Yesterday, for instance, did he not thump me
+prodigiously, by letting fall a goblet, after Cellini, of which the
+carving alone cost me three hundred francs? I must positively put
+the wretch out of doors, to ensure the safety of my furniture; and in
+consequence of this, Eneas, an audacious young negro, in whom wisdom
+hath not waited for years--Eneas, my groom, I say, will probably be
+elevated to the post of valet-de-chambre. But where was I? I think I was
+speaking to you of an oyster breakfast, to which, on our return from the
+Park (du Bois), a company of pleasant rakes are invited. After quitting
+Borel's, we propose to adjourn to the Barrière du Combat, where Lord
+Cobham proposes to try some bull-dogs, which he has brought over from
+England--one of these, O'Connell (Lord Cobham is a Tory,) has a face in
+which I place much confidence; I have a bet of ten louis with Castijars
+on the strength of it. After the fight, we shall make our accustomed
+appearance at the 'Cafe de Paris,' (the only place, by the way, where
+a man who respects himself may be seen,)--and then away with frocks and
+spurs, and on with our dress-coats for the rest of the evening. In the
+first place, I shall go doze for a couple of hours at the Opera, where
+my presence is indispensable; for Coralie, a charming creature, passes
+this evening from the rank of the RATS to that of the TIGERS, in a
+pas-de-trois, and our box patronizes her. After the Opera, I must show
+my face to two or three salons in the Faubourg St. Honoré; and having
+thus performed my duties to the world of fashion, I return to the
+exercise of my rights as a member of the Carnival. At two o'clock all
+the world meets at the Théâtre Ventadour: lions and tigers--the whole
+of our menagerie will be present. Evoé! off we go! roaring and bounding
+Bacchanal and Saturnal; 'tis agreed that we shall be everything that
+is low. To conclude, we sup with Castijars, the most 'furiously
+dishevelled' orgy that ever was known."
+
+
+The rest of the letter is on matters of finance, equally curious and
+instructive. But pause we for the present, to consider the fashionable
+part: and caricature as it is, we have an accurate picture of the actual
+French dandy. Bets, breakfasts, riding, dinners at the "Café de Paris,"
+and delirious Carnival balls: the animal goes through all such frantic
+pleasures at the season that precedes Lent. He has a wondrous respect
+for English "gentlemen-sportsmen;" he imitates their clubs--their love
+of horse-flesh: he calls his palefrenier a groom, wears blue birds's-eye
+neck-cloths, sports his pink out hunting, rides steeple-chases, and has
+his Jockey Club. The "tigers and lions" alluded to in the report have
+been borrowed from our own country, and a great compliment is it to
+Monsieur de Bernard, the writer of the above amusing sketch, that he has
+such a knowledge of English names and things, as to give a Tory lord the
+decent title of Lord Cobham, and to call his dog O'Connell. Paul de Kock
+calls an English nobleman, in one of his last novels, Lord Boulingrog,
+and appears vastly delighted at the verisimilitude of the title.
+
+For the "rugissements et bondissements, bacchanale et saturnale, galop
+infernal, ronde du sabbat tout le tremblement," these words give a most
+clear, untranslatable idea of the Carnival ball. A sight more hideous
+can hardly strike a man's eye. I was present at one where the four
+thousand guests whirled screaming, reeling, roaring, out of the
+ball-room in the Rue St. Honoré, and tore down to the column in the
+Place Vendôme, round which they went shrieking their own music, twenty
+miles an hour, and so tore madly back again. Let a man go alone to such
+a place of amusement, and the sight for him is perfectly terrible:
+the horrid frantic gayety of the place puts him in mind more of the
+merriment of demons than of men: bang, bang, drums, trumpets, chairs,
+pistol-shots, pour out of the orchestra, which seems as mad as the
+dancers; whiz, a whirlwind of paint and patches, all the costumes under
+the sun, all the ranks in the empire, all the he and she scoundrels of
+the capital, writhed and twisted together, rush by you; if a man falls,
+woe be to him: two thousand screaming menads go trampling over his
+carcass: they have neither power nor will to stop.
+
+A set of Malays drunk with bhang and running amuck, a company of howling
+dervishes, may possibly, in our own day, go through similar frantic
+vagaries; but I doubt if any civilized European people but the French
+would permit and enjoy such scenes. Yet our neighbors see little shame
+in them; and it is very true that men of all classes, high and low,
+here congregate and give themselves up to the disgusting worship of
+the genius of the place.--From the dandy of the Boulevard and the
+"Café Anglais," let us turn to the dandy of "Flicoteau's" and the Pays
+Latin--the Paris student, whose exploits among the grisettes are so
+celebrated, and whose fierce republicanism keeps gendarmes for ever on
+the alert. The following is M. de Bernard's description of him:--
+
+
+"I became acquainted with Dambergeac when we were students at the Ecole
+de Droit; we lived in the same Hotel on the Place du Panthéon. No
+doubt, madam, you have occasionally met little children dedicated to the
+Virgin, and, to this end, clothed in white raiment from head to foot: my
+friend, Dambergeac, had received a different consecration. His father, a
+great patriot of the Revolution, had determined that his son should
+bear into the world a sign of indelible republicanism; so, to the great
+displeasure of his godmother and the parish curate, Dambergeac was
+christened by the pagan name of Harmodius. It was a kind of moral
+tricolor-cockade, which the child was to bear through the vicissitudes
+of all the revolutions to come. Under such influences, my friend's
+character began to develop itself, and, fired by the example of his
+father, and by the warm atmosphere of his native place, Marseilles,
+he grew up to have an independent spirit, and a grand liberality of
+politics, which were at their height when first I made his acquaintance.
+
+"He was then a young man of eighteen, with a tall, slim figure, a broad
+chest, and a flaming black eye, out of all which personal charms he knew
+how to draw the most advantage; and though his costume was such as Staub
+might probably have criticised, he had, nevertheless, a style peculiar
+to himself--to himself and the students, among whom he was the leader
+of the fashion. A tight black coat, buttoned up to the chin, across
+the chest, set off that part of his person; a low-crowned hat, with
+a voluminous rim, cast solemn shadows over a countenance bronzed by a
+southern sun: he wore, at one time, enormous flowing black locks, which
+he sacrificed pitilessly, however, and adopted a Brutus, as being more
+revolutionary: finally, he carried an enormous club, that was his code
+and digest: in like manner, De Retz used to carry a stiletto in his
+pocket by way of a breviary.
+
+"Although of different ways of thinking in politics, certain sympathies
+of character and conduct united Dambergeac and myself, and we speedily
+became close friends. I don't think, in the whole course of his three
+years' residence, Dambergeac ever went through a single course of
+lectures. For the examinations, he trusted to luck, and to his own
+facility, which was prodigious: as for honors, he never aimed at them,
+but was content to do exactly as little as was necessary for him to
+gain his degree. In like manner he sedulously avoided those horrible
+circulating libraries, where daily are seen to congregate the 'reading
+men' of our schools. But, in revenge, there was not a milliner's
+shop, or a lingère's, in all our quartier Latin, which he did not
+industriously frequent, and of which he was not the oracle. Nay, it was
+said that his victories were not confined to the left bank of the
+Seine; reports did occasionally come to us of fabulous adventures by him
+accomplished in the far regions of the Rue de la Paix and the Boulevard
+Poissonnière. Such recitals were, for us less favored mortals, like
+tales of Bacchus conquering in the East; they excited our ambition, but
+not our jealousy; for the superiority of Harmodius was acknowledged by
+us all, and we never thought of a rivalry with him. No man ever cantered
+a hack through the Champs Elysées with such elegant assurance; no man
+ever made such a massacre of dolls at the shooting-gallery; or won you a
+rubber at billiards with more easy grace; or thundered out a couplet out
+of Béranger with such a roaring melodious bass. He was the monarch of
+the Prado in winter: in summer of the Chaumière and Mont Parnasse. Not
+a frequenter of those fashionable places of entertainment showed a
+more amiable laisser-aller in the dance--that peculiar dance at which
+gendarmes think proper to blush, and which squeamish society has
+banished from her salons. In a word, Harmodius was the prince of mauvais
+sujets, a youth with all the accomplishments of Göttingen and Jena, and
+all the eminent graces of his own country.
+
+"Besides dissipation and gallantry, our friend had one other vast and
+absorbing occupation--politics, namely; in which he was as turbulent
+and enthusiastic as in pleasure. La Patrie was his idol, his heaven,
+his nightmare; by day he spouted, by night he dreamed, of his country. I
+have spoken to you of his coiffure à la Sylla; need I mention his pipe,
+his meerschaum pipe, of which General Foy's head was the bowl; his
+handkerchief with the Charte printed thereon; and his celebrated
+tricolor braces, which kept the rallying sign of his country ever close
+to his heart? Besides these outward and visible signs of sedition,
+he had inward and secret plans of revolution: he belonged to clubs,
+frequented associations, read the Constitutionnel (Liberals, in those
+days, swore by the Constitutionnel), harangued peers and deputies who
+had deserved well of their country; and if death happened to fall on
+such, and the Constitutionnel declared their merit, Harmodius was the
+very first to attend their obsequies, or to set his shoulder to their
+coffins.
+
+"Such were his tastes and passions: his antipathies were not less
+lively. He detested three things: a Jesuit, a gendarme, and a claqueur
+at a theatre. At this period, missionaries were rife about Paris, and
+endeavored to re-illume the zeal of the faithful by public preachings in
+the churches. 'Infâmes jesuites!' would Harmodius exclaim, who, in the
+excess of his toleration, tolerated nothing; and, at the head of a band
+of philosophers like himself, would attend with scrupulous exactitude
+the meetings of the reverend gentlemen. But, instead of a contrite
+heart, Harmodius only brought the abomination of desolation into their
+sanctuary. A perpetual fire of fulminating balls would bang from under
+the feet of the faithful; odors of impure assafoetida would mingle with
+the fumes of the incense; and wicked drinking choruses would rise up
+along with the holy canticles, in hideous dissonance, reminding one of
+the old orgies under the reign of the Abbot of Unreason.
+
+"His hatred of the gendarmes was equally ferocious: and as for the
+claqueurs, woe be to them when Harmodius was in the pit! They knew him,
+and trembled before him, like the earth before Alexander; and his
+famous war-cry, 'La Carte au chapeau!' was so much dreaded, that the
+'entrepreneurs de succès dramatiques' demanded twice as much to do
+the Odeon Theatre (which we students and Harmodius frequented), as to
+applaud at any other place of amusement: and, indeed, their double pay
+was hardly gained; Harmodius taking care that they should earn the most
+of it under the benches."
+
+
+This passage, with which we have taken some liberties, will give the
+reader a more lively idea of the reckless, jovial, turbulent Paris
+student, than any with which a foreigner could furnish him: the
+grisette is his heroine; and dear old Béranger, the cynic-epicurean, has
+celebrated him and her in the most delightful verses in the world. Of
+these we may have occasion to say a word or two anon. Meanwhile let us
+follow Monsieur de Bernard in his amusing descriptions of his countrymen
+somewhat farther; and, having seen how Dambergeac was a ferocious
+republican, being a bachelor, let us see how age, sense, and a little
+government pay--the great agent of conversions in France--nay, in
+England--has reduced him to be a pompous, quiet, loyal supporter of the
+juste milieu: his former portrait was that of the student, the present
+will stand for an admirable lively likeness of
+
+
+    THE SOUS-PRÉFET.
+
+
+"Saying that I would wait for Dambergeac in his own study, I was
+introduced into that apartment, and saw around me the usual furniture
+of a man in his station. There was, in the middle of the room, a large
+bureau, surrounded by orthodox arm-chairs; and there were many shelves
+with boxes duly ticketed; there were a number of maps, and among them a
+great one of the department over which Dambergeac ruled; and facing
+the windows, on a wooden pedestal, stood a plaster-cast of the 'Roi des
+Français.' Recollecting my friend's former republicanism, I smiled at
+this piece of furniture; but before I had time to carry my observations
+any farther, a heavy rolling sound of carriage-wheels, that caused
+the windows to rattle and seemed to shake the whole edifice of the
+sub-prefecture, called my attention to the court without. Its iron gates
+were flung open, and in rolled, with a great deal of din, a chariot
+escorted by a brace of gendarmes, sword in hand. A tall gentleman,
+with a cocked-hat and feathers, wearing a blue and silver uniform coat,
+descended from the vehicle; and having, with much grave condescension,
+saluted his escort, mounted the stair. A moment afterwards the door of
+the study was opened, and I embraced my friend.
+
+"After the first warmth and salutations, we began to examine each other
+with an equal curiosity, for eight years had elapsed since we had last
+met.
+
+"'You are grown very thin and pale,' said Harmodius, after a moment.
+
+"'In revenge I find you fat and rosy: if I am a walking satire on
+celibacy,--you, at least, are a living panegyric on marriage.'
+
+"In fact a great change, and such an one as many people would call a
+change for the better, had taken place in my friend: he had grown fat,
+and announced a decided disposition to become what French people call a
+bel homme: that is, a very fat one. His complexion, bronzed before, was
+now clear white and red: there were no more political allusions in his
+hair, which was, on the contrary, neatly frizzed, and brushed over
+the forehead, shell-shape. This head-dress, joined to a thin pair of
+whiskers, cut crescent-wise from the ear to the nose, gave my friend a
+regular bourgeois physiognomy, wax-doll-like: he looked a great deal too
+well; and, added to this, the solemnity of his prefectural costume, gave
+his whole appearance a pompous well-fed look that by no means pleased.
+
+"'I surprise you,' said I, 'in the midst of your splendor: do you know
+that this costume and yonder attendants have a look excessively awful
+and splendid? You entered your palace just now with the air of a pasha.'
+
+"'You see me in uniform in honor of Monseigneur the Bishop, who has just
+made his diocesan visit, and whom I have just conducted to the limit of
+the arrondissement.'
+
+"'What!' said I, 'you have gendarmes for guards, and dance attendance
+on bishops? There are no more janissaries and Jesuits, I suppose?' The
+sub-prefect smiled.
+
+"'I assure you that my gendarmes are very worthy fellows; and that among
+the gentlemen who compose our clergy there are some of the very
+best rank and talent: besides, my wife is niece to one of the
+vicars-general.'
+
+"'What have you done with that great Tasso beard that poor Armandine
+used to love so?'
+
+"'My wife does not like a beard; and you know that what is permitted to
+a student is not very becoming to a magistrate.'
+
+"I began to laugh. 'Harmodius and a magistrate!--how shall I ever couple
+the two words together? But tell me, in your correspondences, your
+audiences, your sittings with village mayors and petty councils, how do
+you manage to remain awake?'
+
+"'In the commencement,' said Harmodius, gravely, 'it WAS very difficult;
+and, in order to keep my eyes open, I used to stick pins into my legs:
+now, however, I am used to it; and I'm sure I don't take more than fifty
+pinches of snuff at a sitting.'
+
+"'Ah! apropos of snuff: you are near Spain here, and were always a
+famous smoker. Give me a cigar,--it will take away the musty odor of
+these piles of papers.'
+
+"'Impossible, my dear; I don't smoke; my wife cannot bear a cigar.'
+
+"His wife! thought I; always his wife: and I remember Juliette, who
+really grew sick at the smell of a pipe, and Harmodius would smoke,
+until, at last, the poor thing grew to smoke herself, like a trooper.
+To compensate, however, as much as possible for the loss of my cigar,
+Dambergeac drew from his pocket an enormous gold snuff-box, on which
+figured the self-same head that I had before remarked in plaster, but
+this time surrounded with a ring of pretty princes and princesses, all
+nicely painted in miniature. As for the statue of Louis Philippe, that,
+in the cabinet of an official, is a thing of course; but the snuff-box
+seemed to indicate a degree of sentimental and personal devotion, such
+as the old Royalists were only supposed to be guilty of.
+
+"'What! you are turned decided juste milieu?' said I.
+
+"'I am a sous-préfet,' answered Harmodius.
+
+"I had nothing to say, but held my tongue, wondering, not at the change
+which had taken place in the habits, manners, and opinions of my friend,
+but at my own folly, which led me to fancy that I should find the
+student of '26 in the functionary of '34. At this moment a domestic
+appeared.
+
+"'Madame is waiting for Monsieur,' said he: 'the last bell has gone, and
+mass beginning.'
+
+"'Mass!' said I, bounding up from my chair. 'You at mass like a decent
+serious Christian, without crackers in your pocket, and bored keys to
+whistle through?'--The sous-préfet rose, his countenance was calm, and
+an indulgent smile played upon his lips, as he said, 'My arrondissement
+is very devout; and not to interfere with the belief of the population
+is the maxim of every wise politician: I have precise orders from
+Government on the point, too, and go to eleven o'clock mass every
+Sunday."'
+
+
+There is a great deal of curious matter for speculation in the accounts
+here so wittily given by M. de Bernard: but, perhaps, it is still
+more curious to think of what he has NOT written, and to judge of his
+characters, not so much by the words in which he describes them, as by
+the unconscious testimony that the words all together convey. In the
+first place, our author describes a swindler imitating the manners of a
+dandy; and many swindlers and dandies be there, doubtless, in London
+as well as in Paris. But there is about the present swindler, and
+about Monsieur Dambergeac the student, and Monsieur Dambergeac the
+sous-préfet, and his friend, a rich store of calm internal debauch,
+which does not, let us hope and pray, exist in England. Hearken to M.
+de Gustan, and his smirking whispers, about the Duchess of San
+Severino, who pour son bonheur particulier, &c. &c. Listen to Monsieur
+Dambergeac's friend's remonstrances concerning pauvre Juliette who grew
+sick at the smell of a pipe; to his naïve admiration at the fact that
+the sous-préfet goes to church: and we may set down, as axioms, that
+religion is so uncommon among the Parisians, as to awaken the surprise
+of all candid observers; that gallantry is so common as to create no
+remark, and to be considered as a matter of course. With us, at least,
+the converse of the proposition prevails: it is the man professing
+irreligion who would be remarked and reprehended in England; and, if the
+second-named vice exists, at any rate, it adopts the decency of
+secrecy and is not made patent and notorious to all the world. A French
+gentleman thinks no more of proclaiming that he has a mistress than that
+he has a tailor; and one lives the time of Boccaccio over again, in the
+thousand and one French novels which depict society in that country.
+
+For instance, here are before us a few specimens (do not, madam, be
+alarmed, you can skip the sentence if you like,) to be found in as many
+admirable witty tales, by the before-lauded Monsieur de Bernard. He is
+more remarkable than any other French author, to our notion, for writing
+like a gentleman: there is ease, grace and ton, in his style, which, if
+we judge aright, cannot be discovered in Balzac, or Soulié, or Dumas. We
+have then--"Gerfaut," a novel: a lovely creature is married to a brave,
+haughty, Alsacian nobleman, who allows her to spend her winters at
+Paris, he remaining on his terres, cultivating, carousing, and hunting
+the boar. The lovely-creature meets the fascinating Gerfaut at Paris;
+instantly the latter makes love to her; a duel takes place: baron
+killed; wife throws herself out of window; Gerfaut plunges into
+dissipation; and so the tale ends.
+
+Next: "La Femme de Quarante Ans," a capital tale, full of exquisite fun
+and sparkling satire: La femme de quarante ans has a husband and THREE
+lovers; all of whom find out their mutual connection one starry night;
+for the lady of forty is of a romantic poetical turn, and has given her
+three admirers A STAR APIECE; saying to one and the other, "Alphonse,
+when yon pale orb rises in heaven, think of me;" "Isadore, when that
+bright planet sparkles in the sky, remember your Caroline," &c.
+
+"Un Acte de Vertu," from which we have taken Dambergeac's history,
+contains him, the husband--a wife--and a brace of lovers; and a great
+deal of fun takes place in the manner in which one lover supplants the
+other.--Pretty morals truly!
+
+If we examine an author who rejoices in the aristocratic name of le
+Comte Horace de Viel-Castel, we find, though with infinitely less wit,
+exactly the same intrigues going on. A noble Count lives in the Faubourg
+St. Honoré, and has a noble Duchess for a mistress: he introduces her
+Grace to the Countess his wife. The Countess his wife, in order to
+ramener her lord to his conjugal duties, is counselled, by a friend,
+TO PRETEND TO TAKE A LOVER: one is found, who, poor fellow! takes the
+affair in earnest: climax--duel, death, despair, and what not? In
+the "Faubourg St. Germain," another novel by the same writer, which
+professes to describe the very pink of that society which Napoleon
+dreaded more than Russia, Prussia, and Austria, there is an old husband,
+of course; a sentimental young German nobleman, who falls in love with
+his wife; and the moral of the piece lies in the showing up of the
+conduct of the lady, who is reprehended--not for deceiving her husband
+(poor devil!)--but for being a flirt, AND TAKING A SECOND LOVER, to the
+utter despair, confusion, and annihilation of the first.
+
+Why, ye gods, do Frenchmen marry at all? Had Père Enfantin (who, it
+is said, has shaved his ambrosial beard, and is now a clerk in a
+banking-house) been allowed to carry out his chaste, just, dignified
+social scheme, what a deal of marital discomfort might have been
+avoided:--would it not be advisable that a great reformer and lawgiver
+of our own, Mr. Robert Owen, should be presented at the Tuileries, and
+there propound his scheme for the regeneration of France?
+
+He might, perhaps, be spared, for our country is not yet sufficiently
+advanced to give such a philosopher fair play. In London, as yet, there
+are no blessed Bureaux de Mariage, where an old bachelor may have a
+charming young maiden--for his money; or a widow of seventy may buy a
+gay young fellow of twenty, for a certain number of bank-billets. If
+mariages de convenance take place here (as they will wherever avarice,
+and poverty, and desire, and yearning after riches are to be found), at
+least, thank God, such unions are not arranged upon a regular organized
+SYSTEM: there is a fiction of attachment with us, and there is a
+consolation in the deceit ("the homage," according to the old mot of
+Rochefoucauld) "which vice pays to virtue"; for the very falsehood shows
+that the virtue exists somewhere. We once heard a furious old French
+colonel inveighing against the chastity of English demoiselles:
+"Figurez-vous, sir," said he (he had been a prisoner in England), "that
+these women come down to dinner in low dresses, and walk out alone with
+the men!"--and, pray heaven, so may they walk, fancy-free in all sorts
+of maiden meditations, and suffer no more molestation than that young
+lady of whom Moore sings, and who (there must have been a famous
+lord-lieutenant in those days) walked through all Ireland, with rich
+and rare gems, beauty, and a gold ring on her stick, without meeting or
+thinking of harm.
+
+Now, whether Monsieur de Viel-Castel has given a true picture of the
+Faubourg St. Germain, it is impossible for most foreigners to say; but
+some of his descriptions will not fail to astonish the English reader;
+and all are filled with that remarkable naïf contempt of the institution
+called marriage, which we have seen in M. de Bernard. The romantic young
+nobleman of Westphalia arrives at Paris, and is admitted into what a
+celebrated female author calls la crême de la crême de la haute volée
+of Parisian society. He is a youth of about twenty years of age.
+"No passion had as yet come to move his heart, and give life to his
+faculties; he was awaiting and fearing the moment of love; calling for
+it, and yet trembling at its approach; feeling in the depths of his
+soul, that that moment would create a mighty change in his being, and
+decide, perhaps, by its influence, the whole of his future life."
+
+Is it not remarkable, that a young nobleman, with these ideas, should
+not pitch upon a demoiselle, or a widow, at least? but no, the rogue
+must have a married woman, bad luck to him; and what his fate is to be,
+is thus recounted by our author, in the shape of
+
+
+A FRENCH FASHIONABLE CONVERSATION.
+
+
+"A lady, with a great deal of esprit, to whom forty years' experience
+of the great world had given a prodigious perspicacity of judgment, the
+Duchess of Chalux, arbitress of the opinion to be held on all new comers
+to the Faubourg Saint Germain, and of their destiny and reception in
+it;--one of those women, in a word, who make or ruin a man,--said, in
+speaking of Gerard de Stolberg, whom she received at her own house, and
+met everywhere, 'This young German will never gain for himself the title
+of an exquisite, or a man of bonnes fortunes, among us. In spite of his
+calm and politeness, I think I can see in his character some rude and
+insurmountable difficulties, which time will only increase, and which
+will prevent him for ever from bending to the exigencies of either
+profession; but, unless I very much deceive myself, he will, one day, be
+the hero of a veritable romance.'
+
+"'He, madame?' answered a young man, of fair complexion and fair hair,
+one of the most devoted slaves of the fashion:--'He, Madame la Duchesse?
+why, the man is, at best, but an original, fished out of the Rhine: a
+dull, heavy creature, as much capable of understanding a woman's heart
+as I am of speaking bas-Breton.'
+
+"'Well, Monsieur de Belport, you will speak bas-Breton. Monsieur de
+Stolberg has not your admirable ease of manner, nor your facility of
+telling pretty nothings, nor your--in a word, that particular something
+which makes you the most recherché man of the Faubourg Saint Germain;
+and even I avow to you that, were I still young, and a coquette, AND
+THAT I TOOK IT INTO MY HEAD TO HAVE A LOVER, I would prefer you.'
+
+"All this was said by the Duchess, with a certain air of raillery and
+such a mixture of earnest and malice, that Monsieur de Belport, piqued
+not a little, could not help saying, as he bowed profoundly before the
+Duchess's chair, 'And might I, madam, be permitted to ask the reason of
+this preference?'
+
+"'O mon Dieu, oui,' said the Duchess, always in the same tone; 'because
+a lover like you would never think of carrying his attachment to the
+height of passion; and these passions, do you know, have frightened me
+all my life. One cannot retreat at will from the grasp of a passionate
+lover; one leaves behind one some fragment of one's moral SELF, or the
+best part of one's physical life. A passion, if it does not kill you,
+adds cruelly to your years; in a word, it is the very lowest
+possible taste. And now you understand why I should prefer you, M. de
+Belport--you who are reputed to be the leader of the fashion.'
+
+"'Perfectly,' murmured the gentleman, piqued more and more.
+
+"'Gerard de Stolberg WILL be passionate. I don't know what woman will
+please him, or will be pleased by him' (here the Duchess of Chalux spoke
+more gravely); 'but his love will be no play, I repeat it to you once
+more. All this astonishes you, because you, great leaders of the ton
+that you are, never fancy that a hero of romance should be found among
+your number. Gerard de Stolberg--but, look, here he comes!'
+
+"M. de Belport rose, and quitted the Duchess, without believing in her
+prophecy; but he could not avoid smiling as he passed near the HERO OF
+ROMANCE.
+
+"It was because M. de Stolberg had never, in all his life, been a hero
+of romance, or even an apprentice-hero of romance.
+
+"Gerard de Stolberg was not, as yet, initiated into the thousand secrets
+in the chronicle of the great world: he knew but superficially the
+society in which he lived; and, therefore, he devoted his evening to
+the gathering of all the information which he could acquire from the
+indiscreet conversations of the people about him. His whole man became
+ear and memory; so much was Stolberg convinced of the necessity of
+becoming a diligent student in this new school, where was taught the art
+of knowing and advancing in the great world. In the recess of a window
+he learned more on this one night than months of investigation would
+have taught him. The talk of a ball is more indiscreet than the
+confidential chatter of a company of idle women. No man present at a
+ball, whether listener or speaker, thinks he has a right to affect
+any indulgence for his companions, and the most learned in malice will
+always pass for the most witty.
+
+"'How!' said the Viscount de Mondragé: 'the Duchess of Rivesalte arrives
+alone to-night, without her inevitable Dormilly!'--And the Viscount, as
+he spoke, pointed towards a tall and slender young woman, who, gliding
+rather than walking, met the ladies by whom she passed, with a graceful
+and modest salute, and replied to the looks of the men BY BRILLIANT
+VEILED GLANCES FULL OF COQUETRY AND ATTACK.
+
+"'Parbleu!' said an elegant personage standing near the Viscount de
+Mondragé, 'don't you see Dormilly ranged behind the Duchess, in quality
+of train-bearer, and hiding, under his long locks and his great screen
+of moustaches, the blushing consciousness of his good luck?--They call
+him THE FOURTH CHAPTER of the Duchess's memoirs. The little Marquise
+d'Alberas is ready to die out of spite; but the best of the joke is,
+that she has only taken poor de Vendre for a lover in order to vent
+her spleen on him. Look at him against the chimney yonder; if the
+Marchioness do not break at once with him by quitting him for somebody
+else, the poor fellow will turn an idiot.'
+
+"'Is he jealous?' asked a young man, looking as if he did not know what
+jealousy was and as if he had no time to be jealous.
+
+"'Jealous! the very incarnation of jealousy; the second edition,
+revised, corrected, and considerably enlarged; as jealous as poor
+Gressigny, who is dying of it.'
+
+"'What! Gressigny too? why, 'tis growing quite into fashion: egad! I
+must try and be jealous,' said Monsieur de Beauval. 'But see! here comes
+the delicious Duchess of Bellefiore,'" &c. &c. &c.
+
+
+Enough, enough: this kind of fashionable Parisian conversation,
+which is, says our author, "a prodigious labor of improvising," a
+"chef-d'oeuvre," a "strange and singular thing, in which monotony is
+unknown," seems to be, if correctly reported, a "strange and singular
+thing" indeed; but somewhat monotonous at least to an English reader,
+and "prodigious" only, if we may take leave to say so, for the wonderful
+rascality which all the conversationists betray. Miss Neverout and
+the Colonel, in Swift's famous dialogue, are a thousand times more
+entertaining and moral; and, besides, we can laugh AT those worthies as
+well as with them; whereas the "prodigious" French wits are to us quite
+incomprehensible. Fancy a duchess as old as Lady ---- herself, and who
+should begin to tell us "of what she would do if ever she had a mind
+to take a lover;" and another duchess, with a fourth lover, tripping
+modestly among the ladies, and returning the gaze of the men by
+veiled glances, full of coquetry and attack!--Parbleu, if Monsieur de
+Viel-Castel should find himself among a society of French duchesses, and
+they should tear his eyes out, and send the fashionable Orpheus floating
+by the Seine, his slaughter might almost be considered as justifiable
+COUNTICIDE.
+
+
+
+
+A GAMBLER'S DEATH.
+
+
+Anybody who was at C---- school some twelve years since, must recollect
+Jack Attwood: he was the most dashing lad in the place, with more money
+in his pocket than belonged to the whole fifth form in which we were
+companions.
+
+When he was about fifteen, Jack suddenly retreated from C----, and
+presently we heard that he had a commission in a cavalry regiment, and
+was to have a great fortune from his father, when that old gentleman
+should die. Jack himself came to confirm these stories a few months
+after, and paid a visit to his old school chums. He had laid aside his
+little school-jacket and inky corduroys, and now appeared in such a
+splendid military suit as won the respect of all of us. His hair was
+dripping with oil, his hands were covered with rings, he had a dusky
+down over his upper lip which looked not unlike a moustache, and a
+multiplicity of frogs and braiding on his surtout which would have
+sufficed to lace a field-marshal. When old Swishtail, the usher, passed
+in his seedy black coat and gaiters, Jack gave him such a look of
+contempt as set us all a-laughing: in fact it was his turn to laugh now;
+for he used to roar very stoutly some months before, when Swishtail was
+in the custom of belaboring him with his great cane.
+
+Jack's talk was all about the regiment and the fine fellows in it: how
+he had ridden a steeple-chase with Captain Boldero, and licked him at
+the last hedge; and how he had very nearly fought a duel with Sir George
+Grig, about dancing with Lady Mary Slamken at a ball. "I soon made the
+baronet know what it was to deal with a man of the n--th," said Jack.
+"Dammee, sir, when I lugged out my barkers, and talked of fighting
+across the mess-room table, Grig turned as pale as a sheet, or as--"
+
+"Or as you used to do, Attwood, when Swishtail hauled you up," piped out
+little Hicks, the foundation-boy.
+
+It was beneath Jack's dignity to thrash anybody, now, but a grown-up
+baronet; so he let off little Hicks, and passed over the general titter
+which was raised at his expense. However, he entertained us with his
+histories about lords and ladies, and so-and-so "of ours," until we
+thought him one of the greatest men in his Majesty's service, and
+until the school-bell rung; when, with a heavy heart, we got our books
+together, and marched in to be whacked by old Swishtail. I promise you
+he revenged himself on us for Jack's contempt of him. I got that day at
+least twenty cuts to my share, which ought to have belonged to Cornet
+Attwood, of the n--th dragoons.
+
+When we came to think more coolly over our quondam schoolfellow's
+swaggering talk and manner, we were not quite so impressed by his merits
+as at his first appearance among us. We recollected how he used, in
+former times, to tell us great stories, which were so monstrously
+improbable that the smallest boy in the school would scout them; how
+often we caught him tripping in facts, and how unblushingly he admitted
+his little errors in the score of veracity. He and I, though never great
+friends, had been close companions: I was Jack's form-fellow (we fought
+with amazing emulation for the LAST place in the class); but still I was
+rather hurt at the coolness of my old comrade, who had forgotten all our
+former intimacy, in his steeple-chases with Captain Boldero and his duel
+with Sir George Grig.
+
+Nothing more was heard of Attwood for some years; a tailor one day came
+down to C----, who had made clothes for Jack in his school-days, and
+furnished him with regimentals: he produced a long bill for one hundred
+and twenty pounds and upwards, and asked where news might be had of
+his customer. Jack was in India, with his regiment, shooting tigers
+and jackals, no doubt. Occasionally, from that distant country, some
+magnificent rumor would reach us of his proceedings. Once I heard that
+he had been called to a court-martial for unbecoming conduct; another
+time, that he kept twenty horses, and won the gold plate at the Calcutta
+races. Presently, however, as the recollections of the fifth form wore
+away, Jack's image disappeared likewise, and I ceased to ask or think
+about my college chum.
+
+A year since, as I was smoking my cigar in the "Estaminet du
+Grand Balcon," an excellent smoking-shop, where the tobacco is
+unexceptionable, and the Hollands of singular merit, a dark-looking,
+thick-set man, in a greasy well-cut coat, with a shabby hat, cocked on
+one side of his dirty face, took the place opposite me, at the little
+marble table, and called for brandy. I did not much admire the impudence
+or the appearance of my friend, nor the fixed stare with which he chose
+to examine me. At last, he thrust a great greasy hand across the table,
+and said, "Titmarsh, do you forget your old friend Attwood?"
+
+I confess my recognition of him was not so joyful as on the day ten
+years earlier, when he had come, bedizened with lace and gold rings, to
+see us at C---- school: a man in the tenth part of a century learns a
+deal of worldly wisdom, and his hand, which goes naturally forward
+to seize the gloved finger of a millionnaire, or a milor, draws
+instinctively back from a dirty fist, encompassed by a ragged wristband
+and a tattered cuff. But Attwood was in nowise so backward; and the iron
+squeeze with which he shook my passive paw, proved that he was either
+very affectionate or very poor. You, my dear sir, who are reading this
+history, know very well the great art of shaking hands: recollect how
+you shook Lord Dash's hand the other day, and how you shook OFF poor
+Blank, when he came to borrow five pounds of you.
+
+However, the genial influence of the Hollands speedily dissipated
+anything like coolness between us and, in the course of an hour's
+conversation, we became almost as intimate as when we were suffering
+together under the ferule of old Swishtail. Jack told me that he had
+quitted the army in disgust; and that his father, who was to leave him a
+fortune, had died ten thousand pounds in debt: he did not touch upon
+his own circumstances; but I could read them in his elbows, which were
+peeping through his old frock. He talked a great deal, however, of runs
+of luck, good and bad; and related to me an infallible plan for breaking
+all the play-banks in Europe--a great number of old tricks;--and a vast
+quantity of gin-punch was consumed on the occasion; so long, in fact,
+did our conversation continue, that, I confess it with shame, the
+sentiment, or something stronger, quite got the better of me, and I
+have, to this day, no sort of notion how our palaver concluded.--Only,
+on the next morning, I did not possess a certain five-pound note which
+on the previous evening was in my sketch-book (by far the prettiest
+drawing by the way in the collection) but there, instead, was a strip of
+paper, thus inscribed:--
+
+
+IOU Five Pounds. JOHN ATTWOOD, Late of the N--th Dragoons.
+
+
+I suppose Attwood borrowed the money, from this remarkable and
+ceremonious acknowledgment on his part: had I been sober I would just as
+soon have lent him the nose on my face; for, in my then circumstances,
+the note was of much more consequence to me.
+
+As I lay, cursing my ill fortune, and thinking how on earth I should
+manage to subsist for the next two months, Attwood burst into my little
+garret--his face strangely flushed--singing and shouting as if it had
+been the night before. "Titmarsh," cried he, "you are my preserver!--my
+best friend! Look here, and here, and here!" And at every word Mr.
+Attwood produced a handful of gold, or a glittering heap of five-franc
+pieces, or a bundle of greasy, dusky bank-notes, more beautiful than
+either silver or gold:--he had won thirteen thousand francs after
+leaving me at midnight in my garret. He separated my poor little all, of
+six pieces, from this shining and imposing collection; and the passion
+of envy entered my soul: I felt far more anxious now than before,
+although starvation was then staring me in the face; I hated Attwood for
+CHEATING me out of all this wealth. Poor fellow! it had been better for
+him had he never seen a shilling of it.
+
+However, a grand breakfast at the Café Anglais dissipated my chagrin;
+and I will do my friend the justice to say, that he nobly shared some
+portion of his good fortune with me. As far as the creature comforts
+were concerned I feasted as well as he, and never was particular as to
+settling my share of the reckoning.
+
+Jack now changed his lodgings; had cards, with Captain Attwood engraved
+on them, and drove about a prancing cab-horse, as tall as the giraffe at
+the Jardin des Plantes; he had as many frogs on his coat as in the old
+days, and frequented all the flash restaurateurs' and boarding-houses of
+the capital. Madame de Saint Laurent, and Madame la Baronne de Vaudrey,
+and Madame la Comtesse de Jonville, ladies of the highest rank, who keep
+a société choisie and condescend to give dinners at five-francs a head,
+vied with each other in their attentions to Jack. His was the wing of
+the fowl, and the largest portion of the Charlotte-Russe; his was the
+place at the écarté table, where the Countess would ease him nightly of
+a few pieces, declaring that he was the most charming cavalier, la fleur
+d'Albion. Jack's society, it may be seen, was not very select; nor, in
+truth, were his inclinations: he was a careless, daredevil, Macheath
+kind of fellow, who might be seen daily with a wife on each arm.
+
+It may be supposed that, with the life he led, his five hundred pounds
+of winnings would not last him long; nor did they; but, for some time,
+his luck never deserted him; and his cash, instead of growing lower,
+seemed always to maintain a certain level: he played every night.
+
+Of course, such a humble fellow as I, could not hope for a continued
+acquaintance and intimacy with Attwood. He grew overbearing and cool, I
+thought; at any rate I did not admire my situation as his follower and
+dependant, and left his grand dinner for a certain ordinary, where
+I could partake of five capital dishes for ninepence. Occasionally,
+however, Attwood favored me with a visit, or gave me a drive behind his
+great cab-horse. He had formed a whole host of friends besides. There
+was Fips, the barrister; heaven knows what he was doing at Paris; and
+Gortz, the West Indian, who was there on the same business, and Flapper,
+a medical student,--all these three I met one night at Flapper's rooms,
+where Jack was invited, and a great "spread" was laid in honor of him.
+
+Jack arrived rather late--he looked pale and agitated; and, though he
+ate no supper, he drank raw brandy in such a manner as made Flapper's
+eyes wink: the poor fellow had but three bottles, and Jack bade fair to
+swallow them all. However, the West Indian generously remedied the evil,
+and producing a napoleon, we speedily got the change for it in the shape
+of four bottles of champagne.
+
+Our supper was uproariously harmonious; Fips sung the good "Old English
+Gentleman;" Jack the "British Grenadiers;" and your humble servant, when
+called upon, sang that beautiful ditty, "When the Bloom is on the Rye,"
+in a manner that drew tears from every eye, except Flapper's, who was
+asleep, and Jack's, who was singing the "Bay of Biscay O," at the same
+time. Gortz and Fips were all the time lunging at each other with a pair
+of single-sticks, the barrister having a very strong notion that he was
+Richard the Third. At last Fips hit the West Indian such a blow across
+his sconce, that the other grew furious; he seized a champagne-bottle,
+which was, providentially, empty, and hurled it across the room at Fips:
+had that celebrated barrister not bowed his head at the moment, the
+Queen's Bench would have lost one of its most eloquent practitioners.
+
+Fips stood as straight as he could; his cheek was pale with wrath.
+"M-m-ister Go-gortz," he said, "I always heard you were a blackguard;
+now I can pr-pr-peperove it. Flapper, your pistols! every ge-ge-genlmn
+knows what I mean."
+
+Young Mr. Flapper had a small pair of pocket-pistols, which the tipsy
+barrister had suddenly remembered, and with which he proposed to
+sacrifice the West Indian. Gortz was nothing loth, but was quite as
+valorous as the lawyer.
+
+Attwood, who, in spite of his potations, seemed the soberest man of
+the party, had much enjoyed the scene, until this sudden demand for the
+weapons. "Pshaw!" said he, eagerly, "don't give these men the means of
+murdering each other; sit down and let us have another song." But they
+would not be still; and Flapper forthwith produced his pistol-case, and
+opened it, in order that the duel might take place on the spot. There
+were no pistols there! "I beg your pardon," said Attwood, looking much
+confused; "I--I took the pistols home with me to clean them!"
+
+I don't know what there was in his tone, or in the words, but we were
+sobered all of a sudden. Attwood was conscious of the singular effect
+produced by him, for he blushed, and endeavored to speak of other
+things, but we could not bring our spirits back to the mark again, and
+soon separated for the night. As we issued into the street Jack took me
+aside, and whispered, "Have you a napoleon, Titmarsh, in your purse?"
+Alas! I was not so rich. My reply was, that I was coming to Jack, only
+in the morning, to borrow a similar sum.
+
+He did not make any reply, but turned away homeward: I never heard him
+speak another word.
+
+
+Two mornings after (for none of our party met on the day succeeding the
+supper), I was awakened by my porter, who brought a pressing letter from
+Mr. Gortz:--
+
+
+"DEAR T.,--I wish you would come over here to breakfast. There's a row
+about Attwood.--Yours truly,
+
+"SOLOMON GORTZ."
+
+
+I immediately set forward to Gortz's; he lived in the Rue du Helder, a
+few doors from Attwood's new lodging. If the reader is curious to know
+the house in which the catastrophe of this history took place, he has
+but to march some twenty doors down from the Boulevard des Italiens,
+when he will see a fine door, with a naked Cupid shooting at him from
+the hall, and a Venus beckoning him up the stairs. On arriving at the
+West Indian's, at about mid-day (it was a Sunday morning), I found that
+gentleman in his dressing-gown, discussing, in the company of Mr Fips, a
+large plate of bifteck aux pommes.
+
+"Here's a pretty row!" said Gortz, quoting from his letter;--"Attwood's
+off--have a bit of beefsteak?"
+
+"What do you mean?" exclaimed I, adopting the familiar phraseology of my
+acquaintances:--"Attwood off?--has he cut his stick?"
+
+"Not bad," said the feeling and elegant Fips--"not such a bad guess, my
+boy; but he has not exactly CUT HIS STICK."
+
+"What then?"
+
+"WHY, HIS THROAT." The man's mouth was full of bleeding beef as he
+uttered this gentlemanly witticism.
+
+I wish I could say that I was myself in the least affected by the
+news. I did not joke about it like my friend Fips; this was more for
+propriety's sake than for feeling's: but for my old school acquaintance,
+the friend of my early days, the merry associate of the last few months,
+I own, with shame, that I had not a tear or a pang. In some German tale
+there is an account of a creature most beautiful and bewitching, whom
+all men admire and follow; but this charming and fantastic spirit only
+leads them, one by one, into ruin, and then leaves them. The novelist,
+who describes her beauty, says that his heroine is a fairy, and HAS NO
+HEART. I think the intimacy which is begotten over the wine-bottle, is
+a spirit of this nature; I never knew a good feeling come from it, or an
+honest friendship made by it; it only entices men and ruins them; it
+is only a phantom of friendship and feeling, called up by the delirious
+blood, and the wicked spells of the wine.
+
+But to drop this strain of moralizing (in which the writer is not too
+anxious to proceed, for he cuts in it a most pitiful figure), we passed
+sundry criticisms upon poor Attwood's character, expressed our horror
+at his death--which sentiment was fully proved by Mr. Fips, who declared
+that the notion of it made him feel quite faint, and was obliged to
+drink a large glass of brandy; and, finally, we agreed that we would go
+and see the poor fellow's corpse, and witness, if necessary, his burial.
+
+Flapper, who had joined us, was the first to propose this visit: he said
+he did not mind the fifteen francs which Jack owed him for billiards,
+but he was anxious to GET BACK HIS PISTOL. Accordingly, we sallied
+forth, and speedily arrived at the hotel which Attwood inhabited still.
+He had occupied, for a time, very fine apartments in this house: and it
+was only on arriving there that day that we found he had been gradually
+driven from his magnificent suite of rooms au premier, to a little
+chamber in the fifth story:--we mounted, and found him. It was a little
+shabby room, with a few articles of rickety furniture, and a bed in an
+alcove; the light from the one window was falling full upon the bed and
+the body. Jack was dressed in a fine lawn shirt; he had kept it, poor
+fellow, TO DIE IN; for in all his drawers and cupboards there was not a
+single article of clothing; he had pawned everything by which he could
+raise a penny--desk, books, dressing-case, and clothes; and not a single
+halfpenny was found in his possession.*
+
+     * In order to account for these trivial details, the reader
+     must be told that the story is, for the chief part, a fact;
+     and that the little sketch in this page was TAKEN FROM
+     NATURE. The latter was likewise a copy from one found in the
+     manner described.
+
+He was lying as I have drawn him,* one hand on his breast, the other
+falling towards the ground. There was an expression of perfect calm on
+the face, and no mark of blood to stain the side towards the light. On
+the other side, however, there was a great pool of black blood, and in
+it the pistol; it looked more like a toy than a weapon to take away the
+life of this vigorous young man. In his forehead, at the side, was a
+small black wound; Jack's life had passed through it; it was little
+bigger than a mole.
+
+
+     * This refers to an illustrated edition of the work.
+
+
+"Regardez un peu," said the landlady, "messieurs, il m'a gâté trois
+matelas, et il me doit quarante quatre francs."
+
+This was all his epitaph: he had spoiled three mattresses, and owed the
+landlady four-and-forty francs. In the whole world there was not a soul
+to love him or lament him. We, his friends, were looking at his body
+more as an object of curiosity, watching it with a kind of interest with
+which one follows the fifth act of a tragedy, and leaving it with the
+same feeling with which one leaves the theatre when the play is over and
+the curtain is down.
+
+Beside Jack's bed, on his little "table de nuit," lay the remains of
+his last meal, and an open letter, which we read. It was from one of his
+suspicious acquaintances of former days, and ran thus:--
+
+
+"Où es tu, cher Jack? why you not come and see me--tu me dois de
+l'argent, entends tu?--un chapeau, une cachemire, a box of the Play.
+Viens demain soir, je t'attendrai at eight o'clock, Passage des
+Panoramas. My Sir is at his country.
+
+"Adieu à demain.
+
+"Fifine.
+
+"Samedi."
+
+
+I shuddered as I walked through this very Passage des Panoramas, in
+the evening. The girl was there, pacing to and fro, and looking in
+the countenance of every passer-by, to recognize Attwood. "ADIEU À
+DEMAIN!"--there was a dreadful meaning in the words, which the writer of
+them little knew. "Adieu à demain!"--the morrow was come, and the soul
+of the poor suicide was now in the presence of God. I dare not think of
+his fate; for, except in the fact of his poverty and desperation, was he
+worse than any of us, his companions, who had shared his debauches, and
+marched with him up to the very brink of the grave?
+
+There is but one more circumstance to relate regarding poor Jack--his
+burial; it was of a piece with his death.
+
+He was nailed into a paltry coffin and buried, at the expense of the
+arrondissement, in a nook of the burial-place beyond the Barrière de
+l'Etoile. They buried him at six o'clock, of a bitter winter's morning,
+and it was with difficulty that an English clergyman could be found to
+read a service over his grave. The three men who have figured in this
+history acted as Jack's mourners; and as the ceremony was to take place
+so early in the morning, these men sat up the night through, AND WERE
+ALMOST DRUNK as they followed his coffin to its resting-place.
+
+
+MORAL.
+
+
+"When we turned out in our great-coats," said one of them afterwards,
+"reeking of cigars and brandy-and-water, d--e, sir, we quite frightened
+the old buck of a parson; he did not much like our company." After the
+ceremony was concluded, these gentlemen were very happy to get home to
+a warm and comfortable breakfast, and finished the day royally at
+Frascati's.
+
+
+
+
+NAPOLEON AND HIS SYSTEM.
+
+ON PRINCE LOUIS NAPOLEON'S WORK.
+
+
+Any person who recollects the history of the absurd outbreak of
+Strasburg, in which Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte figured, three years
+ago, must remember that, however silly the revolt was, however, foolish
+its pretext, however doubtful its aim, and inexperienced its leader,
+there was, nevertheless, a party, and a considerable one in France, that
+were not unwilling to lend the new projectors their aid. The troops
+who declared against the Prince, were, it was said, all but willing to
+declare for him; and it was certain that, in many of the regiments of
+the army, there existed a strong spirit of disaffection, and an eager
+wish for the return of the imperial system and family.
+
+As to the good that was to be derived from the change, that is another
+question. Why the Emperor of the French should be better than the King
+of the French, or the King of the French better than the King of France
+and Navarre, it is not our business to inquire; but all the three
+monarchs have no lack of supporters; republicanism has no lack of
+supporters; St. Simoninnism was followed by a respectable body of
+admirers; Robespierrism has a select party of friends. If, in a country
+where so many quacks have had their day, Prince Louis Napoleon thought
+he might renew the imperial quackery, why should he not? It has
+recollections with it that must always be dear to a gallant nation; it
+has certain claptraps in its vocabulary that can never fail to inflame a
+vain, restless, grasping, disappointed one.
+
+In the first place, and don't let us endeavor to disguise it, they hate
+us. Not all the protestations of friendship, not all the wisdom of Lord
+Palmerston, not all the diplomacy of our distinguished plenipotentiary,
+Mr. Henry Lytton Bulwer--and let us add, not all the benefit which both
+countries would derive from the alliance--can make it, in our times at
+least, permanent and cordial. They hate us. The Carlist organs revile
+us with a querulous fury that never sleeps; the moderate party, if they
+admit the utility of our alliance, are continually pointing out our
+treachery, our insolence, and our monstrous infractions of it; and for
+the Republicans, as sure as the morning comes, the columns of their
+journals thunder out volleys of fierce denunciations against our
+unfortunate country. They live by feeding the natural hatred against
+England, by keeping old wounds open, by recurring ceaselessly to the
+history of old quarrels, and as in these we, by God's help, by land and
+by sea, in old times and late, have had the uppermost, they perpetuate
+the shame and mortification of the losing party, the bitterness of past
+defeats, and the eager desire to avenge them. A party which knows how
+to exploiter this hatred will always be popular to a certain extent; and
+the imperial scheme has this, at least, among its conditions.
+
+Then there is the favorite claptrap of the "natural frontier." The
+Frenchman yearns to be bounded by the Rhine and the Alps; and next
+follows the cry, "Let France take her place among nations, and direct,
+as she ought to do, the affairs of Europe." These are the two chief
+articles contained in the new imperial programme, if we may credit the
+journal which has been established to advocate the cause. A natural
+boundary--stand among the nations--popular development--Russian
+alliance, and a reduction of la perfide Albion to its proper
+insignificance. As yet we know little more of the plan: and yet such
+foundations are sufficient to build a party upon, and with such windy
+weapons a substantial Government is to be overthrown!
+
+In order to give these doctrines, such as they are, a chance of finding
+favor with his countrymen, Prince Louis has the advantage of being able
+to refer to a former great professor of them--his uncle Napoleon. His
+attempt is at once pious and prudent; it exalts the memory of the uncle,
+and furthers the interests of the nephew, who attempts to show what
+Napoleon's ideas really were; what good had already resulted from the
+practice of them; how cruelly they had been thwarted by foreign wars and
+difficulties; and what vast benefits WOULD have resulted from them; ay,
+and (it is reasonable to conclude) might still, if the French nation
+would be wise enough to pitch upon a governor that would continue the
+interrupted scheme. It is, however, to be borne in mind that the Emperor
+Napoleon had certain arguments in favor of his opinions for the time
+being, which his nephew has not employed. On the 13th Vendemiaire, when
+General Bonaparte believed in the excellence of a Directory, it may be
+remembered that he aided his opinions by forty pieces of artillery, and
+by Colonel Murat at the head of his dragoons. There was no resisting
+such a philosopher; the Directory was established forthwith, and the
+sacred cause of the minority triumphed, in like manner, when the General
+was convinced of the weakness of the Directory, and saw fully the
+necessity of establishing a Consulate, what were his arguments? Moreau,
+Lannes, Murat, Berthier, Leclerc, Lefebvre--gentle apostles of the
+truth!--marched to St. Cloud, and there, with fixed bayonets, caused it
+to prevail. Error vanished in an instant. At once five hundred of its
+high-priests tumbled out of windows, and lo! three Consuls appeared to
+guide the destinies of France! How much more expeditious, reasonable,
+and clinching was this argument of the 18th Brumaire, than any one that
+can be found in any pamphlet! A fig for your duodecimos and octavos!
+Talk about points, there are none like those at the end of a bayonet;
+and the most powerful of styles is a good rattling "article" from a
+nine-pounder.
+
+At least this is our interpretation of the manner in which were always
+propagated the Idées Napoléoniennes. Not such, however, is Prince
+Louis's belief; and, if you wish to go along with him in opinion, you
+will discover that a more liberal, peaceable, prudent Prince never
+existed: you will read that "the mission of Napoleon" was to be the
+"testamentary executor of the revolution;" and the Prince should have
+added the legatee; or, more justly still, as well as the EXECUTOR, he
+should be called the EXECUTIONER, and then his title would be complete.
+In Vendemiaire, the military Tartuffe, he threw aside the Revolution's
+natural heirs, and made her, as it were, ALTER HER WILL; on the 18th of
+Brumaire he strangled her, and on the 19th seized on her property, and
+kept it until force deprived him of it. Illustrations, to be sure, are
+no arguments, but the example is the Prince's, not ours.
+
+In the Prince's eyes, then, his uncle is a god; of all monarchs, the
+most wise, upright, and merciful. Thirty years ago the opinion had
+millions of supporters; while millions again were ready to avouch the
+exact contrary. It is curious to think of the former difference of
+opinion concerning Napoleon; and, in reading his nephew's rapturous
+encomiums of him, one goes back to the days when we ourselves were as
+loud and mad in his dispraise. Who does not remember his own personal
+hatred and horror, twenty-five years ago, for the man whom we used to
+call the "bloody Corsican upstart and assassin?" What stories did we
+not believe of him?--what murders, rapes, robberies, not lay to his
+charge?--we who were living within a few miles of his territory, and
+might, by books and newspapers, be made as well acquainted with his
+merits or demerits as any of his own countrymen.
+
+Then was the age when the Idées Napoléoniennes might have passed through
+many editions; for while we were thus outrageously bitter, our neighbors
+were as extravagantly attached to him by a strange infatuation--adored
+him like a god, whom we chose to consider as a fiend; and vowed that,
+under his government, their nation had attained its highest pitch of
+grandeur and glory. In revenge there existed in England (as is proved
+by a thousand authentic documents) a monster so hideous, a tyrant so
+ruthless and bloody, that the world's history cannot show his parallel.
+This ruffian's name was, during the early part of the French revolution,
+Pittetcobourg. Pittetcobourg's emissaries were in every corner of
+France; Pittetcobourg's gold chinked in the pockets of every traitor in
+Europe; it menaced the life of the godlike Robespierre; it drove into
+cellars and fits of delirium even the gentle philanthropist Marat; it
+fourteen times caused the dagger to be lifted against the bosom of
+the First Consul, Emperor, and King,--that first, great, glorious,
+irresistible, cowardly, contemptible, bloody hero and fiend, Bonaparte,
+before mentioned.
+
+On our side of the Channel we have had leisure, long since, to
+re-consider our verdict against Napoleon; though, to be sure, we have
+not changed our opinion about Pittetcobourg. After five-and-thirty years
+all parties bear witness to his honesty, and speak with affectionate
+reverence of his patriotism, his genius, and his private virtue. In
+France, however, or, at least among certain parties in France, there
+has been no such modification of opinion. With the Republicans,
+Pittetcobourg is Pittetcobourg still,--crafty, bloody, seeking whom he
+may devour; and perfide Albion more perfidious than ever. This hatred
+is the point of union between the Republic and the Empire; it has been
+fostered ever since, and must be continued by Prince Louis, if he would
+hope to conciliate both parties.
+
+With regard to the Emperor, then, Prince Louis erects to his memory
+as fine a monument as his wits can raise. One need not say that the
+imperial apologist's opinion should be received with the utmost caution;
+for a man who has such a hero for an uncle may naturally be proud of and
+partial to him; and when this nephew of the great man would be his heir
+likewise, and, hearing his name, step also into his imperial shoes, one
+may reasonably look for much affectionate panegyric. "The empire was the
+best of empires," cries the Prince; and possibly it was; undoubtedly,
+the Prince thinks it was; but he is the very last person who would
+convince a man with the proper suspicious impartiality. One remembers
+a certain consultation of politicians which is recorded in the
+Spelling-book; and the opinion of that patriotic sage who avowed that,
+for a real blameless constitution, an impenetrable shield for liberty,
+and cheap defence of nations, there was nothing like leather.
+
+Let us examine some of the Prince's article. If we may be allowed humbly
+to express an opinion, his leather is not only quite insufficient for
+those vast public purposes for which he destines it, but is, moreover,
+and in itself, very BAD LEATHER. The hides are poor, small, unsound
+slips of skin; or, to drop this cobbling metaphor, the style is not
+particularly brilliant, the facts not very startling, and, as for the
+conclusions, one may differ with almost every one of them. Here is an
+extract from his first chapter, "on governments in general:"--
+
+"I speak it with regret, I can see but two governments, at this day,
+which fulfil the mission that Providence has confided to them; they are
+the two colossi at the end of the world; one at the extremity of the old
+world, the other at the extremity of the new. Whilst our old European
+centre is as a volcano, consuming itself in its crater, the two nations
+of the East and the West, march without hesitation, towards perfection;
+the one under the will of a single individual, the other under liberty.
+
+"Providence has confided to the United States of North America the task
+of peopling and civilizing that immense territory which stretches from
+the Atlantic to the South Sea, and from the North Pole to the Equator.
+The Government, which is only a simple administration, has only hitherto
+been called upon to put in practice the old adage, Laissez faire,
+laissez passer, in order to favor that irresistible instinct which
+pushes the people of America to the west.
+
+"In Russia it is to the imperial dynasty that is owing all the vast
+progress which, in a century and a half, has rescued that empire from
+barbarism. The imperial power must contend against all the ancient
+prejudices of our old Europe: it must centralize, as far as possible,
+all the powers of the state in the hands of one person, in order to
+destroy the abuses which the feudal and communal franchises have
+served to perpetuate. The last alone can hope to receive from it the
+improvements which it expects.
+
+"But thou, France of Henry IV., of Louis XIV., of Carnot, of
+Napoleon--thou, who wert always for the west of Europe the source of
+progress, who possessest in thyself the two great pillars of empire, the
+genius for the arts of peace and the genius of war--hast thou no further
+mission to fulfil? Wilt thou never cease to waste thy force and energies
+in intestine struggles? No; such cannot be thy destiny: the day will
+soon come, when, to govern thee, it will be necessary to understand that
+thy part is to place in all treaties thy sword of Brennus on the side of
+civilization."
+
+These are the conclusions of the Prince's remarks upon governments in
+general; and it must be supposed that the reader is very little wiser at
+the end than at the beginning. But two governments in the world fulfil
+their mission: the one government, which is no government; the other,
+which is a despotism. The duty of France is IN ALL TREATIES to place her
+sword of Brennus in the scale of civilization. Without quarrelling with
+the somewhat confused language of the latter proposition, may we ask
+what, in heaven's name, is the meaning of all the three? What is this
+épée de Brennus? and how is France to use it? Where is the great
+source of political truth, from which, flowing pure, we trace American
+republicanism in one stream, Russian despotism in another? Vastly
+prosperous is the great republic, if you will: if dollars and cents
+constitute happiness, there is plenty for all: but can any one, who has
+read of the American doings in the late frontier troubles, and the daily
+disputes on the slave question, praise the GOVERNMENT of the States?--a
+Government which dares not punish homicide or arson performed before its
+very eyes, and which the pirates of Texas and the pirates of Canada can
+brave at their will? There is no government, but a prosperous anarchy;
+as the Prince's other favorite government is a prosperous slavery. What,
+then, is to be the épée de Brennus government? Is it to be a mixture
+of the two? "Society," writes the Prince, axiomatically, "contains in
+itself two principles--the one of progress and immortality, the other
+of disease and disorganization." No doubt; and as the one tends towards
+liberty, so the other is only to be cured by order: and then, with a
+singular felicity, Prince Louis picks us out a couple of governments, in
+one of which the common regulating power is as notoriously too weak,
+as it is in the other too strong, and talks in rapturous terms of the
+manner in which they fulfil their "providential mission!"
+
+From these considerations on things in general, the Prince conducts us
+to Napoleon in particular, and enters largely into a discussion of the
+merits of the imperial system. Our author speaks of the Emperor's advent
+in the following grandiose way:--
+
+"Napoleon, on arriving at the public stage, saw that his part was to
+be the TESTAMENTARY EXECUTOR of the Revolution. The destructive fire of
+parties was extinct; and when the Revolution, dying, but not vanquished,
+delegated to Napoleon the accomplishment of her last will, she said to
+him, 'Establish upon solid bases the principal result of my efforts.
+Unite divided Frenchmen. Defeat feudal Europe that is leagued against
+me. Cicatrize my wounds. Enlighten the nations. Execute that in width,
+which I have had to perform in depth. Be for Europe what I have been for
+France. And, even if you must water the tree of civilization with
+your blood--if you must see your projects misunderstood, and your sons
+without a country, wandering over the face of the earth, never abandon
+the sacred cause of the French people. Insure its triumph by all the
+means which genius can discover and humanity approve.'
+
+"This grand mission Napoleon performed to the end. His task was
+difficult. He had to place upon new principles a society still
+boiling with hatred and revenge; and to use, for building up, the same
+instruments which had been employed for pulling down.
+
+"The common lot of every new truth that arises, is to wound rather
+than to convince--rather than to gain proselytes, to awaken fear. For,
+oppressed as it long has been, it rushes forward with additional force;
+having to encounter obstacles, it is compelled to combat them, and
+overthrow them; until, at length, comprehended and adopted by the
+generality, it becomes the basis of new social order.
+
+"Liberty will follow the same march as the Christian religion. Armed
+with death from the ancient society of Rome, it for a long while excited
+the hatred and fear of the people. At last, by force of martyrdoms and
+persecutions, the religion of Christ penetrated into the conscience and
+the soul; it soon had kings and armies at its orders, and Constantine
+and Charlemagne bore it triumphant throughout Europe. Religion then laid
+down her arms of war. It laid open to all the principles of peace and
+order which it contained; it became the prop of Government, as it was
+the organizing element of society. Thus will it be with liberty. In 1793
+it frightened people and sovereigns alike; then, having clothed itself
+in a milder garb, IT INSINUATED ITSELF EVERYWHERE IN THE TRAIN OF OUR
+BATTALIONS. In 1815 all parties adopted its flag, and armed themselves
+with its moral force--covered themselves with its colors. The adoption
+was not sincere, and liberty was soon obliged to reassume its warlike
+accoutrements. With the contest their fears returned. Let us hope that
+they will soon cease, and that liberty will soon resume her peaceful
+standards, to quit them no more.
+
+"The Emperor Napoleon contributed more than any one else towards
+accelerating the reign of liberty, by saving the moral influence of
+the revolution, and diminishing the fears which it imposed. Without the
+Consulate and the Empire, the revolution would have been only a grand
+drama, leaving grand revolutions but no traces: the revolution would
+have been drowned in the counter-revolution. The contrary, however,
+was the case. Napoleon rooted the revolution in France, and introduced,
+throughout Europe, the principal benefits of the crisis of 1789. To
+use his own words, 'He purified the revolution, he confirmed kings, and
+ennobled people.' He purified the revolution, in separating the
+truths which it contained from the passions that, during its delirium,
+disfigured it. He ennobled the people in giving them the consciousness
+of their force, and those institutions which raise men in their own
+eyes. The Emperor may be considered as the Messiah of the new ideas;
+for--and we must confess it--in the moments immediately succeeding a
+social revolution, it is not so essential to put rigidly into practice
+all the propositions resulting from the new theory, but to become master
+of the regenerative genius, to identify one's self with the sentiments
+of the people, and boldly to direct them towards the desired point. To
+accomplish such a task YOUR FIBRE SHOULD RESPOND TO THAT OF THE PEOPLE,
+as the Emperor said; you should feel like it, your interests should
+be so intimately raised with its own, that you should vanquish or fall
+together."
+
+Let us take breath after these big phrases,--grand round figures
+of speech,--which, when put together, amount like certain other
+combinations of round figures to exactly 0. We shall not stop to argue
+the merits and demerits of Prince Louis's notable comparison between the
+Christian religion and the Imperial-revolutionary system. There are
+many blunders in the above extract as we read it; blundering metaphors,
+blundering arguments, and blundering assertions; but this is surely
+the grandest blunder of all; and one wonders at the blindness of the
+legislator and historian who can advance such a parallel. And what are
+we to say of the legacy of the dying revolution to Napoleon? Revolutions
+do not die, and, on their death-beds, making fine speeches, hand over
+their property to young officers of artillery. We have all read the
+history of his rise. The constitution of the year III. was carried. Old
+men of the Montagne, disguised royalists, Paris sections, PITTETCOBOURG,
+above all, with his money-bags, thought that here was a fine opportunity
+for a revolt, and opposed the new constitution in arms: the new
+constitution had knowledge of a young officer who would not hesitate to
+defend its cause, and who effectually beat the majority. The tale may be
+found in every account of the revolution, and the rest of his story need
+not be told. We know every step that he took: we know how, by doses
+of cannon-balls promptly administered, he cured the fever of the
+sections--that fever which another camp-physician (Menou) declined
+to prescribe for; we know how he abolished the Directory; and how the
+Consulship came; and then the Empire; and then the disgrace, exile,
+and lonely death. Has not all this been written by historians in all
+tongues?--by memoir-writing pages, chamberlains, marshals, lackeys,
+secretaries, contemporaries, and ladies of honor? Not a word of miracle
+is there in all this narration; not a word of celestial missions,
+or political Messiahs. From Napoleon's rise to his fall, the bayonet
+marches alongside of him: now he points it at the tails of the
+scampering "five hundred,"--now he charges with it across the bloody
+planks of Arcola--now he flies before it over the fatal plain of
+Waterloo.
+
+Unwilling, however, as he may be to grant that there are any spots in
+the character of his hero's government, the Prince is, nevertheless,
+obliged to allow that such existed; that the Emperor's manner of
+rule was a little more abrupt and dictatorial than might possibly be
+agreeable. For this the Prince has always an answer ready--it is the
+same poor one that Napoleon uttered a million of times to his companions
+in exile--the excuse of necessity. He WOULD have been very liberal, but
+that the people were not fit for it; or that the cursed war prevented
+him--or any other reason why. His first duty, however, says his
+apologist, was to form a general union of Frenchmen, and he set about
+his plan in this wise:--
+
+"Let us not forget, that all which Napoleon undertook, in order to
+create a general fusion, he performed without renouncing the principles
+of the revolution. He recalled the émigrés, without touching upon
+the law by which their goods had been confiscated and sold as public
+property. He reestablished the Catholic religion at the same time
+that he proclaimed the liberty of conscience, and endowed equally the
+ministers of all sects. He caused himself to be consecrated by the
+Sovereign Pontiff, without conceding to the Pope's demand any of the
+liberties of the Gallican church. He married a daughter of the Emperor
+of Austria, without abandoning any of the rights of France to the
+conquests she had made. He reestablished noble titles, without attaching
+to them any privileges or prerogatives, and these titles were conferred
+on all ranks, on all services, on all professions. Under the empire
+all idea of caste was destroyed; no man ever thought of vaunting his
+pedigree--no man ever was asked how he was born, but what he had done.
+
+"The first quality of a people which aspires to liberal government,
+is respect to the law. Now, a law has no other power than lies in the
+interest which each citizen has to defend or to contravene it. In order
+to make a people respect the law, it was necessary that it should be
+executed in the interest of all, and should consecrate the principle of
+equality in all its extension. It was necessary to restore the prestige
+with which the Government had been formerly invested, and to make the
+principles of the revolution take root in the public manners. At
+the commencement of a new society, it is the legislator who makes or
+corrects the manners; later, it is the manners which make the law, or
+preserve it from age to age intact."
+
+Some of these fusions are amusing. No man in the empire was asked how
+he was born, but what he had done; and, accordingly, as a man's actions
+were sufficient to illustrate him, the Emperor took care to make a host
+of new title-bearers, princes, dukes, barons, and what not, whose rank
+has descended to their children. He married a princess of Austria; but,
+for all that, did not abandon his conquests--perhaps not actually; but
+he abandoned his allies, and, eventually, his whole kingdom. Who does
+not recollect his answer to the Poles, at the commencement of the
+Russian campaign? But for Napoleon's imperial father-in-law, Poland
+would have been a kingdom, and his race, perhaps, imperial still. Why
+was he to fetch this princess out of Austria to make heirs for his
+throne? Why did not the man of the people marry a girl of the people?
+Why must he have a Pope to crown him--half a dozen kings for brothers,
+and a bevy of aides-de-camp dressed out like so many mountebanks from
+Astley's, with dukes' coronets, and grand blue velvet marshals'
+bâtons? We have repeatedly his words for it. He wanted to create an
+aristocracy--another acknowledgment on his part of the Republican
+dilemma--another apology for the revolutionary blunder. To keep the
+republic within bounds, a despotism is necessary; to rally round the
+despotism, an aristocracy must be created; and for what have we been
+laboring all this while? for what have bastiles been battered down, and
+king's heads hurled, as a gage of battle, in the face of armed Europe?
+To have a Duke of Otranto instead of a Duke de la Tremouille, and
+Emperor Stork in place of King Log. O lame conclusion! Is the blessed
+revolution which is prophesied for us in England only to end in
+establishing a Prince Fergus O'Connor, or a Cardinal Wade, or a Duke
+Daniel Whittle Harvey? Great as those patriots are, we love them better
+under their simple family names, and scorn titles and coronets.
+
+At present, in France, the delicate matter of titles seems to be better
+arranged, any gentleman, since the Revolution, being free to adopt any
+one he may fix upon; and it appears that the Crown no longer confers any
+patents of nobility, but contents itself with saying, as in the case of
+M. de Pontois, the other day, "Le Roi trouve convenable that you take
+the title of," &c.
+
+To execute the legacy of the revolution, then; to fulfil his
+providential mission; to keep his place,--in other words, for the
+simplest are always the best,--to keep his place, and to keep his
+Government in decent order, the Emperor was obliged to establish a
+military despotism, to re-establish honors and titles; it was necessary,
+as the Prince confesses, to restore the old prestige of the Government,
+in order to make the people respect it; and he adds--a truth which one
+hardly would expect from him,--"At the commencement of a new society, it
+is the legislator who makes and corrects the manners; later, it is the
+manners which preserve the laws." Of course, and here is the great risk
+that all revolutionizing people run--they must tend to despotism;
+"they must personify themselves in a man," is the Prince's phrase; and,
+according as is his temperament or disposition--according as he is a
+Cromwell, a Washington, or a Napoleon--the revolution becomes tyranny or
+freedom, prospers or falls.
+
+Somewhere in the St. Helena memorials, Napoleon reports a message of
+his to the Pope. "Tell the Pope," he says to an archbishop, "to remember
+that I have six hundred thousand armed Frenchmen, qui marcheront avec
+moi, pour moi, et comme moi." And this is the legacy of the revolution,
+the advancement of freedom! A hundred volumes of imperial special
+pleading will not avail against such a speech as this--one so insolent,
+and at the same time so humiliating, which gives unwittingly the whole
+of the Emperor's progress, strength, and weakness. The six hundred
+thousand armed Frenchmen were used up, and the whole fabric falls; the
+six hundred thousand are reduced to sixty thousand, and straightway all
+the rest of the fine imperial scheme vanishes: the miserable senate, so
+crawling and abject but now, becomes of a sudden endowed with a wondrous
+independence; the miserable sham nobles, sham empress, sham kings,
+dukes, princes, chamberlains, pack up their plumes and embroideries,
+pounce upon what money and plate they can lay their hands on, and when
+the allies appear before Paris, when for courage and manliness there
+is yet hope, when with fierce marches hastening to the relief of his
+capital, bursting through ranks upon ranks of the enemy, and crushing or
+scattering them from the path of his swift and victorious despair, the
+Emperor at last is at home,--where are the great dignitaries and the
+lieutenant-generals of the empire? Where is Maria Louisa, the Empress
+Eagle, with her little callow king of Rome? Is she going to defend her
+nest and her eaglet? Not she. Empress-queen, lieutenant-general, and
+court dignitaries, are off on the wings of all the winds--profligati
+sunt, they are away with the money-bags, and Louis Stanislas Xavier
+rolls into the palace of his fathers.
+
+With regard to Napoleon's excellences as an administrator, a legislator,
+a constructor of public works, and a skilful financier, his nephew
+speaks with much diffuse praise, and few persons, we suppose, will be
+disposed to contradict him. Whether the Emperor composed his famous
+code, or borrowed it, is of little importance; but he established it,
+and made the law equal for every man in France except one. His vast
+public works and vaster wars were carried on without new loans or
+exorbitant taxes; it was only the blood and liberty of the people that
+were taxed, and we shall want a better advocate than Prince Louis to
+show us that these were not most unnecessarily and lavishly thrown away.
+As for the former and material improvements, it is not necessary to
+confess here that a despotic energy can effect such far more readily
+than a Government of which the strength is diffused in many conflicting
+parties. No doubt, if we could create a despotical governing machine, a
+steam autocrat,--passionless, untiring, and supreme,--we should advance
+further, and live more at ease than under any other form of government.
+Ministers might enjoy their pensions and follow their own devices;
+Lord John might compose histories or tragedies at his leisure, and Lord
+Palmerston, instead of racking his brains to write leading articles
+for Cupid, might crown his locks with flowers, and sing [Greek text
+omitted], his natural Anacreontics; but alas! not so: if the despotic
+Government has its good side, Prince Louis Napoleon must acknowledge
+that it has its bad, and it is for this that the civilized world
+is compelled to substitute for it something more orderly and less
+capricious. Good as the Imperial Government might have been, it must be
+recollected, too, that since its first fall, both the Emperor and his
+admirer and would-be successor have had their chance of re-establishing
+it. "Fly from steeple to steeple" the eagles of the former did actually,
+and according to promise perch for a while on the towers of Notre Dame.
+We know the event: if the fate of war declared against the Emperor,
+the country declared against him too; and, with old Lafayette for a
+mouthpiece, the representatives of the nation did, in a neat speech,
+pronounce themselves in permanence, but spoke no more of the Emperor
+than if he had never been. Thereupon the Emperor proclaimed his son the
+Emperor Napoleon II. "L'Empereur est mort, vive l'Empereur!" shouted
+Prince Lucien. Psha! not a soul echoed the words: the play was played,
+and as for old Lafayette and his "permanent" representatives, a corporal
+with a hammer nailed up the door of their spouting-club, and once more
+Louis Stanislas Xavier rolled back to the bosom of his people.
+
+In like manner Napoleon III. returned from exile, and made his
+appearance on the frontier. His eagle appeared at Strasburg, and from
+Strasburg advanced to the capital; but it arrived at Paris with a
+keeper, and in a post-chaise; whence, by the orders of the sovereign, it
+was removed to the American shores, and there magnanimously let loose.
+Who knows, however, how soon it may be on the wing again, and what a
+flight it will take?
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF MARY ANCEL.
+
+
+"Go, my nephew," said old Father Jacob to me, "and complete thy studies
+at Strasburg: Heaven surely hath ordained thee for the ministry in these
+times of trouble, and my excellent friend Schneider will work out the
+divine intention."
+
+Schneider was an old college friend of uncle Jacob's, was a Benedictine
+monk, and a man famous for his learning; as for me, I was at that time
+my uncle's chorister, clerk, and sacristan; I swept the church,
+chanted the prayers with my shrill treble, and swung the great copper
+incense-pot on Sundays and feasts; and I toiled over the Fathers for the
+other days of the week.
+
+The old gentleman said that my progress was prodigious, and, without
+vanity, I believe he was right, for I then verily considered that
+praying was my vocation, and not fighting, as I have found since.
+
+You would hardly conceive (said the Captain, swearing a great oath) how
+devout and how learned I was in those days; I talked Latin faster than
+my own beautiful patois of Alsacian French; I could utterly overthrow
+in argument every Protestant (heretics we called them) parson in the
+neighborhood, and there was a confounded sprinkling of these unbelievers
+in our part of the country. I prayed half a dozen times a day; I fasted
+thrice in a week; and, as for penance, I used to scourge my little
+sides, till they had no more feeling than a peg-top: such was the godly
+life I led at my uncle Jacob's in the village of Steinbach.
+
+Our family had long dwelt in this place, and a large farm and a pleasant
+house were then in the possession of another uncle--uncle Edward. He was
+the youngest of the three sons of my grandfather; but Jacob, the elder,
+had shown a decided vocation for the church, from, I believe, the age of
+three, and now was by no means tired of it at sixty. My father, who
+was to have inherited the paternal property, was, as I hear, a terrible
+scamp and scapegrace, quarrelled with his family, and disappeared
+altogether, living and dying at Paris; so far we knew through my mother,
+who came, poor woman, with me, a child of six months, on her bosom, was
+refused all shelter by my grandfather, but was housed and kindly cared
+for by my good uncle Jacob.
+
+Here she lived for about seven years, and the old gentleman, when she
+died, wept over her grave a great deal more than I did, who was then too
+young to mind anything but toys or sweetmeats.
+
+During this time my grandfather was likewise carried off: he left, as I
+said, the property to his son Edward, with a small proviso in his will
+that something should be done for me, his grandson.
+
+Edward was himself a widower, with one daughter, Mary, about three years
+older than I, and certainly she was the dearest little treasure with
+which Providence ever blessed a miserly father; by the time she was
+fifteen, five farmers, three lawyers, twelve Protestant parsons, and a
+lieutenant of Dragoons had made her offers: it must not be denied that
+she was an heiress as well as a beauty, which, perhaps, had something
+to do with the love of these gentlemen. However, Mary declared that she
+intended to live single, turned away her lovers one after another, and
+devoted herself to the care of her father.
+
+Uncle Jacob was as fond of her as he was of any saint or martyr. As for
+me, at the mature age of twelve I had made a kind of divinity of her,
+and when we sang "Ave Maria" on Sundays I could not refrain from turning
+to her, where she knelt, blushing and praying and looking like an angel,
+as she was. Besides her beauty, Mary had a thousand good qualities; she
+could play better on the harpsichord, she could dance more lightly, she
+could make better pickles and puddings, than any girl in Alsace; there
+was not a want or a fancy of the old hunks her father, or a wish of mine
+or my uncle's, that she would not gratify if she could; as for herself,
+the sweet soul had neither wants nor wishes except to see us happy.
+
+I could talk to you for a year of all the pretty kindnesses that she
+would do for me; how, when she found me of early mornings among my
+books, her presence "would cast a light upon the day;" how she used to
+smooth and fold my little surplice, and embroider me caps and gowns for
+high feast-days; how she used to bring flowers for the altar, and who
+could deck it so well as she? But sentiment does not come glibly from
+under a grizzled moustache, so I will drop it, if you please.
+
+Amongst other favors she showed me, Mary used to be particularly fond of
+kissing me: it was a thing I did not so much value in those days, but I
+found that the more I grew alive to the extent of the benefit, the less
+she would condescend to confer it on me; till at last, when I was about
+fourteen, she discontinued it altogether, of her own wish at least; only
+sometimes I used to be rude, and take what she had now become so mighty
+unwilling to give.
+
+I was engaged in a contest of this sort one day with Mary, when, just
+as I was about to carry off a kiss from her cheek, I was saluted with a
+staggering slap on my own, which was bestowed by uncle Edward, and sent
+me reeling some yards down the garden.
+
+The old gentleman, whose tongue was generally as close as his purse, now
+poured forth a flood of eloquence which quite astonished me. I did not
+think that so much was to be said on any subject as he managed to utter
+on one, and that was abuse of me; he stamped, he swore, he screamed;
+and then, from complimenting me, he turned to Mary, and saluted her in
+a manner equally forcible and significant; she, who was very much
+frightened at the commencement of the scene, grew very angry at the
+coarse words he used, and the wicked motives he imputed to her.
+
+"The child is but fourteen," she said; "he is your own nephew, and a
+candidate for holy orders:--father, it is a shame that you should thus
+speak of me, your daughter, or of one of his holy profession."
+
+I did not particularly admire this speech myself, but it had an effect
+on my uncle, and was the cause of the words with which this history
+commences. The old gentleman persuaded his brother that I must be
+sent to Strasburg, and there kept until my studies for the church were
+concluded. I was furnished with a letter to my uncle's old college chum,
+Professor Schneider, who was to instruct me in theology and Greek.
+
+I was not sorry to see Strasburg, of the wonders of which I had heard
+so much; but felt very loth as the time drew near when I must quit my
+pretty cousin, and my good old uncle. Mary and I managed, however,
+a parting walk, in which a number of tender things were said on both
+sides. I am told that you Englishmen consider it cowardly to cry; as for
+me, I wept and roared incessantly: when Mary squeezed me, for the last
+time, the tears came out of me as if I had been neither more nor less
+than a great wet sponge. My cousin's eyes were stoically dry; her
+ladyship had a part to play, and it would have been wrong for her to
+be in love with a young chit of fourteen--so she carried herself with
+perfect coolness, as if there was nothing the matter. I should not have
+known that she cared for me, had it not been for a letter which she
+wrote me a month afterwards--THEN, nobody was by, and the consequence
+was that the letter was half washed away with her weeping; if she had
+used a watering-pot the thing could not have been better done.
+
+Well, I arrived at Strasburg--a dismal, old-fashioned, rickety town in
+those days--and straightway presented myself and letter at Schneider's
+door; over it was written--
+
+
+     COMITÉ DE SALUT PUBLIC.
+
+
+Would you believe it? I was so ignorant a young fellow, that I had no
+idea of the meaning of the words; however, I entered the citizen's room
+without fear, and sat down in his ante-chamber until I could be admitted
+to see him.
+
+Here I found very few indications of his reverence's profession; the
+walls were hung round with portraits of Robespierre, Marat, and the
+like; a great bust of Mirabeau, mutilated, with the word Traître
+underneath; lists and republican proclamations, tobacco-pipes and
+fire-arms. At a deal-table, stained with grease and wine, sat a
+gentleman, with a huge pigtail dangling down to that part of his person
+which immediately succeeds his back, and a red nightcap, containing a
+TRICOLOR cockade as large as a pancake. He was smoking a short pipe,
+reading a little book, and sobbing as if his heart would break. Every
+now and then he would make brief remarks upon the personages or the
+incidents of his book, by which I could judge that he was a man of
+the very keenest sensibilities--"Ah, brigand!" "O malheureuse!" "O
+Charlotte, Charlotte!" The work which this gentleman was perusing is
+called "The Sorrows of Werter;" it was all the rage, in those days, and
+my friend was only following the fashion. I asked him if I could see
+Father Schneider? he turned towards me a hideous, pimpled face, which I
+dream of now at forty years' distance.
+
+"Father who?" said he. "Do you imagine that citizen Schneider has not
+thrown off the absurd mummery of priesthood? If you were a little older
+you would go to prison for calling him Father Schneider--many a man has
+died for less;" and he pointed to a picture of a guillotine, which was
+hanging in the room.
+
+I was in amazement.
+
+"What is he? Is he not a teacher of Greek, an abbé, a monk, until
+monasteries were abolished, the learned editor of the songs of
+'Anacreon?'"
+
+"He WAS all this," replied my grim friend; "he is now a Member of the
+Committee of Public Safety, and would think no more of ordering your
+head off than of drinking this tumbler of beer."
+
+He swallowed, himself, the frothy liquid, and then proceeded to give me
+the history of the man to whom my uncle had sent me for instruction.
+
+Schneider was born in 1756: was a student at Würzburg, and afterwards
+entered a convent, where he remained nine years. He here became
+distinguished for his learning and his talents as a preacher, and became
+chaplain to Duke Charles of Würtemberg. The doctrines of the Illuminati
+began about this time to spread in Germany, and Schneider speedily
+joined the sect. He had been a professor of Greek at Cologne; and being
+compelled, on account of his irregularity, to give up his chair, he came
+to Strasburg at the commencement of the French Revolution, and acted for
+some time a principal part as a revolutionary agent at Strasburg.
+
+["Heaven knows what would have happened to me had I continued long under
+his tuition!" said the Captain. "I owe the preservation of my morals
+entirely to my entering the army. A man, sir, who is a soldier, has very
+little time to be wicked; except in the case of a siege and the sack of
+a town, when a little license can offend nobody."]
+
+By the time that my friend had concluded Schneider's biography, we had
+grown tolerably intimate, and I imparted to him (with that experience so
+remarkable in youth) my whole history--my course of studies, my pleasant
+country life, the names and qualities of my dear relations, and my
+occupations in the vestry before religion was abolished by order of the
+Republic. In the course of my speech I recurred so often to the name
+of my cousin Mary, that the gentleman could not fail to perceive what a
+tender place she had in my heart.
+
+Then we reverted to "The Sorrows of Werter," and discussed the merits
+of that sublime performance. Although I had before felt some misgivings
+about my new acquaintance, my heart now quite yearned towards him. He
+talked about love and sentiment in a manner which made me recollect that
+I was in love myself; and you know that when a man is in that condition,
+his taste is not very refined, any maudlin trash of prose or verse
+appearing sublime to him, provided it correspond, in some degree, with
+his own situation.
+
+"Candid youth!" cried my unknown, "I love to hear thy innocent story and
+look on thy guileless face. There is, alas! so much of the contrary in
+this world, so much terror and crime and blood, that we who mingle with
+it are only too glad to forget it. Would that we could shake off our
+cares as men, and be boys, as thou art, again!"
+
+Here my friend began to weep once more, and fondly shook my hand. I
+blessed my stars that I had, at the very outset of my career, met with
+one who was so likely to aid me. What a slanderous world it is,
+thought I; the people in our village call these Republicans wicked and
+bloody-minded; a lamb could not be more tender than this sentimental
+bottle-nosed gentleman! The worthy man then gave me to understand that
+he held a place under Government. I was busy in endeavoring to discover
+what his situation might be, when the door of the next apartment opened,
+and Schneider made his appearance.
+
+At first he did not notice me, but he advanced to my new acquaintance,
+and gave him, to my astonishment, something very like a blow.
+
+"You drunken, talking fool," he said, "you are always after your time.
+Fourteen people are cooling their heels yonder, waiting until you have
+finished your beer and your sentiment!"
+
+My friend slunk muttering out of the room.
+
+"That fellow," said Schneider, turning to me, "is our public
+executioner: a capital hand too if he would but keep decent time; but
+the brute is always drunk, and blubbering over 'The Sorrows of Werter!'"
+
+
+I know not whether it was his old friendship for my uncle, or my
+proper merits, which won the heart of this the sternest ruffian of
+Robespierre's crew; but certain it is, that he became strangely attached
+to me, and kept me constantly about his person. As for the priesthood
+and the Greek, they were of course very soon out of the question. The
+Austrians were on our frontier; every day brought us accounts of
+battles won; and the youth of Strasburg, and of all France, indeed, were
+bursting with military ardor. As for me, I shared the general mania,
+and speedily mounted a cockade as large as that of my friend, the
+executioner.
+
+The occupations of this worthy were unremitting. Saint Just, who had
+come down from Paris to preside over our town, executed the laws and
+the aristocrats with terrible punctuality; and Schneider used to
+make country excursions in search of offenders with this fellow, as
+a provost-marshal, at his back. In the meantime, having entered my
+sixteenth year, and being a proper lad of my age, I had joined a
+regiment of cavalry, and was scampering now after the Austrians
+who menaced us, and now threatening the Emigrés, who were banded at
+Coblentz. My love for my dear cousin increased as my whiskers grew; and
+when I was scarcely seventeen, I thought myself man enough to marry her,
+and to cut the throat of any one who should venture to say me nay.
+
+I need not tell you that during my absence at Strasburg, great changes
+had occurred in our little village, and somewhat of the revolutionary
+rage had penetrated even to that quiet and distant place. The hideous
+"Fête of the Supreme Being" had been celebrated at Paris; the practice
+of our ancient religion was forbidden; its professors were most of them
+in concealment, or in exile, or had expiated on the scaffold their crime
+of Christianity. In our poor village my uncle's church was closed, and
+he, himself, an inmate in my brother's house, only owing his safety to
+his great popularity among his former flock, and the influence of Edward
+Ancel.
+
+The latter had taken in the Revolution a somewhat prominent part; that
+is, he had engaged in many contracts for the army, attended the clubs
+regularly, corresponded with the authorities of his department, and was
+loud in his denunciations of the aristocrats in the neighborhood. But
+owing, perhaps, to the German origin of the peasantry, and their quiet
+and rustic lives, the revolutionary fury which prevailed in the cities
+had hardly reached the country people. The occasional visit of a
+commissary from Paris or Strasburg served to keep the flame alive, and
+to remind the rural swains of the existence of a Republic in France.
+
+Now and then, when I could gain a week's leave of absence, I returned to
+the village, and was received with tolerable politeness by my uncle, and
+with a warmer feeling by his daughter.
+
+I won't describe to you the progress of our love, or the wrath of my
+uncle Edward, when he discovered that it still continued. He swore and
+he stormed; he locked Mary into her chamber, and vowed that he would
+withdraw the allowance he made me, if ever I ventured near her. His
+daughter, he said, should never marry a hopeless, penniless subaltern;
+and Mary declared she would not marry without his consent. What had I to
+do?--to despair and to leave her. As for my poor uncle Jacob, he had no
+counsel to give me, and, indeed, no spirit left: his little church was
+turned into a stable, his surplice torn off his shoulders, and he was
+only too lucky in keeping HIS HEAD on them. A bright thought struck him:
+suppose you were to ask the advice of my old friend Schneider regarding
+this marriage? he has ever been your friend, and may help you now as
+before.
+
+(Here the Captain paused a little.) You may fancy (continued he) that it
+was droll advice of a reverend gentleman like uncle Jacob to counsel
+me in this manner, and to bid me make friends with such a murderous
+cut-throat as Schneider; but we thought nothing of it in those days;
+guillotining was as common as dancing, and a man was only thought the
+better patriot the more severe he might be. I departed forthwith to
+Strasburg, and requested the vote and interest of the Citizen President
+of the Committee of Public Safety.
+
+He heard me with a great deal of attention. I described to him most
+minutely the circumstance, expatiated upon the charms of my dear Mary,
+and painted her to him from head to foot. Her golden hair and her
+bright blushing cheeks, her slim waist and her tripping tiny feet;
+and furthermore, I added that she possessed a fortune which ought, by
+rights, to be mine, but for the miserly old father. "Curse him for an
+aristocrat!" concluded I, in my wrath.
+
+As I had been discoursing about Mary's charms Schneider listened with
+much complacency and attention: when I spoke about her fortune, his
+interest redoubled; and when I called her father an aristocrat, the
+worthy ex-Jesuit gave a grin of satisfaction, which was really quite
+terrible. O fool that I was to trust him so far!
+
+
+The very same evening an officer waited upon me with the following note
+from Saint Just:--
+
+
+"STRASBURG, Fifth year of the Republic, one and indivisible, 11 Ventose.
+
+"The citizen Pierre Ancel is to leave Strasburg within two hours, and
+to carry the enclosed despatches to the President of the Committee of
+Public Safety at Paris. The necessary leave of absence from his military
+duties has been provided. Instant punishment will follow the slightest
+delay on the road.
+
+"Salut et Fraternité."
+
+
+There was no choice but obedience, and off I sped on my weary way to the
+capital.
+
+As I was riding out of the Paris gate I met an equipage which I knew to
+be that of Schneider. The ruffian smiled at me as I passed, and wished
+me a bon voyage. Behind his chariot came a curious machine, or cart; a
+great basket, three stout poles, and several planks, all painted red,
+were lying in this vehicle, on the top of which was seated my friend
+with the big cockade. It was the PORTABLE GUILLOTINE which Schneider
+always carried with him on his travels. The bourreau was reading "The
+Sorrows of Werter," and looked as sentimental as usual.
+
+I will not speak of my voyage in order to relate to you Schneider's.
+My story had awakened the wretch's curiosity and avarice, and he was
+determined that such a prize as I had shown my cousin to be should fall
+into no hands but his own. No sooner, in fact, had I quitted his
+room than he procured the order for my absence, and was on the way to
+Steinbach as I met him.
+
+The journey is not a very long one; and on the next day my uncle Jacob
+was surprised by receiving a message that the citizen Schneider was in
+the village, and was coming to greet his old friend. Old Jacob was in
+an ecstasy, for he longed to see his college acquaintance, and he hoped
+also that Schneider had come into that part of the country upon the
+marriage-business of your humble servant. Of course Mary was summoned to
+give her best dinner, and wear her best frock; and her father made ready
+to receive the new State dignitary.
+
+Schneider's carriage speedily rolled into the court-yard, and
+Schneider's CART followed, as a matter of course. The ex-priest only
+entered the house; his companion remaining with the horses to dine in
+private. Here was a most touching meeting between him and Jacob. They
+talked over their old college pranks and successes; they capped Greek
+verses, and quoted ancient epigrams upon their tutors, who had been
+dead since the Seven Years' War. Mary declared it was quite touching to
+listen to the merry friendly talk of these two old gentlemen.
+
+After the conversation had continued for a time in this strain,
+Schneider drew up all of a sudden, and said quietly, that he had come
+on particular and unpleasant business--hinting about troublesome times,
+spies, evil reports, and so forth. Then he called uncle Edward aside,
+and had with him a long and earnest conversation: so Jacob went out and
+talked with Schneider's FRIEND; they speedily became very intimate, for
+the ruffian detailed all the circumstances of his interview with me.
+When he returned into the house, some time after this pleasing colloquy,
+he found the tone of the society strangely altered. Edward Ancel, pale
+as a sheet, trembling, and crying for mercy; poor Mary weeping; and
+Schneider pacing energetically about the apartment, raging about the
+rights of man, the punishment of traitors, and the one and indivisible
+republic.
+
+"Jacob," he said, as my uncle entered the room, "I was willing, for the
+sake of our old friendship, to forget the crimes of your brother. He is
+a known and dangerous aristocrat; he holds communications with the enemy
+on the frontier; he is a possessor of great and ill-gotten wealth, of
+which he has plundered the Republic. Do you know," said he, turning to
+Edward Ancel, "where the least of these crimes, or the mere suspicion of
+them, would lead you?"
+
+Poor Edward sat trembling in his chair, and answered not a word. He
+knew full well how quickly, in this dreadful time, punishment followed
+suspicion; and, though guiltless of all treason with the enemy, perhaps
+he was aware that, in certain contracts with the Government, he had
+taken to himself a more than patriotic share of profit.
+
+"Do you know," resumed Schneider, in a voice of thunder, "for
+what purpose I came hither, and by whom I am accompanied? I am the
+administrator of the justice of the Republic. The life of yourself and
+your family is in my hands: yonder man, who follows me, is the executor
+of the law; he has rid the nation of hundreds of wretches like yourself.
+A single word from me, and your doom is sealed without hope, and your
+last hour is come. Ho! Gregoire!" shouted he; "is all ready?"
+
+Gregoire replied from the court, "I can put up the machine in half an
+hour. Shall I go down to the village and call the troops and the law
+people?"
+
+"Do you hear him?" said Schneider. "The guillotine is in the court-yard;
+your name is on my list, and I have witnesses to prove your crime. Have
+you a word in your defence?"
+
+Not a word came; the old gentleman was dumb; but his daughter, who did
+not give way to his terror, spoke for him.
+
+"You cannot, sir," said she, "although you say it, FEEL that my father
+is guilty; you would not have entered our house thus alone if you had
+thought it. You threaten him in this manner because you have something
+to ask and to gain from us: what is it, citizen?--tell us how much you
+value our lives, and what sum we are to pay for our ransom?"
+
+"Sum!" said uncle Jacob; "he does not want money of us: my old friend,
+my college chum, does not come hither to drive bargains with anybody
+belonging to Jacob Ancel?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir, no, you can't want money of us," shrieked Edward; "we are
+the poorest people of the village: ruined, Monsieur Schneider, ruined in
+the cause of the Republic."
+
+"Silence, father," said my brave Mary; "this man wants a PRICE: he
+comes, with his worthy friend yonder, to frighten us, not to kill us.
+If we die, he cannot touch a sou of our money; it is confiscated to the
+State. Tell us, sir, what is the price of our safety?"
+
+Schneider smiled, and bowed with perfect politeness.
+
+"Mademoiselle Marie," he said, "is perfectly correct in her surmise. I
+do not want the life of this poor drivelling old man: my intentions
+are much more peaceable, be assured. It rests entirely with this
+accomplished young lady (whose spirit I like, and whose ready wit I
+admire), whether the business between us shall be a matter of love or
+death. I humbly offer myself, citizen Ancel, as a candidate for the
+hand of your charming daughter. Her goodness, her beauty, and the
+large fortune which I know you intend to give her, would render her a
+desirable match for the proudest man in the republic, and, I am sure,
+would make me the happiest."
+
+"This must be a jest, Monsieur Schneider," said Mary, trembling, and
+turning deadly pale: "you cannot mean this; you do not know me: you
+never heard of me until to-day."
+
+"Pardon me, belle dame," replied he; "your cousin Pierre has often
+talked to me of your virtues; indeed, it was by his special suggestion
+that I made the visit."
+
+"It is false!--it is a base and cowardly lie!" exclaimed she (for
+the young lady's courage was up),--"Pierre never could have forgotten
+himself and me so as to offer me to one like you. You come here with
+a lie on your lips--a lie against my father, to swear his life away,
+against my dear cousin's honor and love. It is useless now to deny it:
+father, I love Pierre Ancel; I will marry no other but him--no, though
+our last penny were paid to this man as the price of our freedom."
+
+Schneider's only reply to this was a call to his friend Gregoire.
+
+"Send down to the village for the maire and some gendarmes; and tell
+your people to make ready."
+
+"Shall I put THE MACHINE up?" shouted he of the sentimental turn.
+
+"You hear him," said Schneider; "Marie Ancel, you may decide the fate
+of your father. I shall return in a few hours," concluded he, "and will
+then beg to know your decision."
+
+The advocate of the rights of man then left the apartment, and left the
+family, as you may imagine, in no very pleasant mood.
+
+Old uncle Jacob, during the few minutes which had elapsed in the
+enactment of this strange scene, sat staring wildly at Schneider, and
+holding Mary on his knees: the poor little thing had fled to him for
+protection, and not to her father, who was kneeling almost senseless at
+the window, gazing at the executioner and his hideous preparations. The
+instinct of the poor girl had not failed her; she knew that Jacob was
+her only protector, if not of her life--heaven bless him!--of her honor.
+"Indeed," the old man said, in a stout voice, "this must never be,
+my dearest child--you must not marry this man. If it be the will of
+Providence that we fall, we shall have at least the thought to console
+us that we die innocent. Any man in France at a time like this, would be
+a coward and traitor if he feared to meet the fate of the thousand brave
+and good who have preceded us."
+
+"Who speaks of dying?" said Edward. "You, Brother Jacob?--you would not
+lay that poor girl's head on the scaffold, or mine, your dear brother's.
+You will not let us die, Mary; you will not, for a small sacrifice,
+bring your poor old father into danger?"
+
+Mary made no answer. "Perhaps," she said, "there is time for escape:
+he is to be here but in two hours; in two hours we may be safe, in
+concealment, or on the frontier." And she rushed to the door of the
+chamber, as if she would have instantly made the attempt: two gendarmes
+were at the door. "We have orders, Mademoiselle," they said, "to
+allow no one to leave this apartment until the return of the citizen
+Schneider."
+
+Alas! all hope of escape was impossible. Mary became quite silent for a
+while; she would not speak to uncle Jacob; and, in reply to her father's
+eager questions, she only replied, coldly, that she would answer
+Schneider when he arrived.
+
+The two dreadful hours passed away only too quickly; and, punctual
+to his appointment, the ex-monk appeared. Directly he entered, Mary
+advanced to him, and said, calmly,--
+
+"Sir, I could not deceive you if I said that I freely accepted the offer
+which you have made me. I will be your wife; but I tell you that I love
+another; and that it is only to save the lives of those two old men that
+I yield my person up to you."
+
+Schneider bowed, and said,--
+
+"It is bravely spoken. I like your candor--your beauty. As for the love,
+excuse me for saying that is a matter of total indifference. I have no
+doubt, however, that it will come as soon as your feelings in favor of
+the young gentleman, your cousin, have lost their present fervor.
+That engaging young man has, at present, another mistress--Glory. He
+occupies, I believe, the distinguished post of corporal in a regiment
+which is about to march to--Perpignan, I believe."
+
+It was, in fact, Monsieur Schneider's polite intention to banish me as
+far as possible from the place of my birth; and he had, accordingly,
+selected the Spanish frontier as the spot where I was to display my
+future military talents.
+
+Mary gave no answer to this sneer: she seemed perfectly resigned and
+calm: she only said,--
+
+"I must make, however, some conditions regarding our proposed marriage,
+which a gentleman of Monsieur Schneider's gallantry cannot refuse."
+
+"Pray command me," replied the husband elect. "Fair lady, you know I am
+your slave."
+
+"You occupy a distinguished political rank, citizen representative,"
+said she; "and we in our village are likewise known and beloved. I
+should be ashamed, I confess, to wed you here; for our people would
+wonder at the sudden marriage, and imply that it was only by compulsion
+that I gave you my hand. Let us, then, perform this ceremony at
+Strasburg, before the public authorities of the city, with the state
+and solemnity which befits the marriage of one of the chief men of the
+Republic."
+
+"Be it so, madam," he answered, and gallantly proceeded to embrace his
+bride.
+
+Mary did not shrink from this ruffian's kiss; nor did she reply when
+poor old Jacob, who sat sobbing in a corner, burst out, and said,--
+
+"O Mary, Mary, I did not think this of thee!"
+
+"Silence, brother!" hastily said Edward; "my good son-in-law will pardon
+your ill-humor."
+
+I believe uncle Edward in his heart was pleased at the notion of the
+marriage; he only cared for money and rank, and was little scrupulous as
+to the means of obtaining them.
+
+The matter then was finally arranged; and presently, after Schneider had
+transacted the affairs which brought him into that part of the country,
+the happy bridal party set forward for Strasburg. Uncles Jacob and
+Edward occupied the back seat of the old family carriage, and the
+young bride and bridegroom (he was nearly Jacob's age) were seated
+majestically in front. Mary has often since talked to me of this
+dreadful journey. She said she wondered at the scrupulous politeness of
+Schneider during the route; nay, that at another period she could have
+listened to and admired the singular talent of this man, his great
+learning, his fancy, and wit; but her mind was bent upon other things,
+and the poor girl firmly thought that her last day was come.
+
+In the meantime, by a blessed chance, I had not ridden three leagues
+from Strasburg, when the officer of a passing troop of a cavalry
+regiment, looking at the beast on which I was mounted, was pleased
+to take a fancy to it, and ordered me, in an authoritative tone, to
+descend, and to give up my steed for the benefit of the Republic. I
+represented to him, in vain, that I was a soldier, like himself, and the
+bearer of despatches to Paris. "Fool!" he said; "do you think they would
+send despatches by a man who can ride at best but ten leagues a day?"
+And the honest soldier was so wroth at my supposed duplicity, that he
+not only confiscated my horse, but my saddle, and the little portmanteau
+which contained the chief part of my worldly goods and treasure. I had
+nothing for it but to dismount, and take my way on foot back again to
+Strasburg. I arrived there in the evening, determining the next morning
+to make my case known to the citizen St. Just; and though I made my
+entry without a sou, I don't know what secret exultation I felt at again
+being able to return.
+
+The ante-chamber of such a great man as St. Just was, in those days,
+too crowded for an unprotected boy to obtain an early audience; two days
+passed before I could obtain a sight of the friend of Robespierre. On
+the third day, as I was still waiting for the interview, I heard a great
+bustle in the courtyard of the house, and looked out with many others at
+the spectacle.
+
+A number of men and women, singing epithalamiums, and dressed in some
+absurd imitation of Roman costume, a troop of soldiers and gendarmerie,
+and an immense crowd of the badauds of Strasburg, were surrounding
+a carriage which then entered the court of the mayoralty. In this
+carriage, great God! I saw my dear Mary, and Schneider by her side. The
+truth instantly came upon me: the reason for Schneider's keen inquiries
+and my abrupt dismissal; but I could not believe that Mary was false to
+me. I had only to look in her face, white and rigid as marble, to see
+that this proposed marriage was not with her consent.
+
+I fell back in the crowd as the procession entered the great room in
+which I was, and hid my face in my hands: I could not look upon her as
+the wife of another,--upon her so long loved and truly--the saint of my
+childhood--the pride and hope of my youth--torn from me for ever, and
+delivered over to the unholy arms of the murderer who stood before me.
+
+The door of St. Just's private apartment opened, and he took his seat at
+the table of mayoralty just as Schneider and his cortège arrived before
+it.
+
+Schneider then said that he came in before the authorities of the
+Republic to espouse the citoyenne Marie Ancel.
+
+"Is she a minor?" asked St. Just.
+
+"She is a minor, but her father is here to give her away."
+
+"I am here," said uncle Edward, coming eagerly forward and bowing.
+"Edward Ancel, so please you, citizen representative. The worthy citizen
+Schneider has done me the honor of marrying into my family."
+
+"But my father has not told you the terms of the marriage," said Mary,
+interrupting him, in a loud, clear voice.
+
+Here Schneider seized her hand, and endeavored to prevent her from
+speaking. Her father turned pale, and cried, "Stop, Mary, stop! For
+heaven's sake, remember your poor old father's danger!"
+
+"Sir, may I speak?"
+
+"Let the young woman speak," said St. Just, "if she have a desire to
+talk." He did not suspect what would be the purport of her story.
+
+"Sir," she said, "two days since the citizen Schneider entered for the
+first time our house; and you will fancy that it must be a love of very
+sudden growth which has brought either him or me before you to-day. He
+had heard from a person who is now unhappily not present, of my name and
+of the wealth which my family was said to possess; and hence arose this
+mad design concerning me. He came into our village with supreme power,
+an executioner at his heels, and the soldiery and authorities of the
+district entirely under his orders. He threatened my father with death
+if he refused to give up his daughter; and I, who knew that there was no
+chance of escape, except here before you, consented to become his wife.
+My father I know to be innocent, for all his transactions with the State
+have passed through my hands. Citizen representative, I demand to be
+freed from this marriage; and I charge Schneider as a traitor to the
+Republic, as a man who would have murdered an innocent citizen for the
+sake of private gain."
+
+During the delivery of this little speech, uncle Jacob had been sobbing
+and panting like a broken-winded horse; and when Mary had done, he
+rushed up to her and kissed her, and held her tight in his arms. "Bless
+thee, my child!" he cried, "for having had the courage to speak the
+truth, and shame thy old father and me, who dared not say a word."
+
+"The girl amazes me," said Schneider, with a look of astonishment. "I
+never saw her, it is true, till yesterday; but I used no force: her
+father gave her to me with his free consent, and she yielded as gladly.
+Speak, Edward Ancel, was it not so?"
+
+"It was, indeed, by my free consent," said Edward, trembling.
+
+"For shame, brother!" cried old Jacob. "Sir, it was by Edward's free
+consent and my niece's; but the guillotine was in the court-yard!
+Question Schneider's famulus, the man Gregoire, him who reads 'The
+Sorrows of Werter.'"
+
+Gregoire stepped forward, and looked hesitatingly at Schneider, as he
+said, "I know not what took place within doors; but I was ordered to put
+up the scaffold without; and I was told to get soldiers, and let no one
+leave the house."
+
+"Citizen St. Just," cried Schneider, "you will not allow the testimony
+of a ruffian like this, of a foolish girl, and a mad ex-priest, to weigh
+against the word of one who has done such service to the Republic: it is
+a base conspiracy to betray me; the whole family is known to favor the
+interest of the émigrés."
+
+"And therefore you would marry a member of the family, and allow the
+others to escape; you must make a better defence, citizen Schneider,"
+said St. Just, sternly.
+
+Here I came forward, and said that, three days since, I had received an
+order to quit Strasburg for Paris immediately after a conversation with
+Schneider, in which I had asked him his aid in promoting my marriage
+with my cousin, Mary Ancel; that he had heard from me full accounts
+regarding her father's wealth; and that he had abruptly caused my
+dismissal, in order to carry on his scheme against her.
+
+"You are in the uniform of a regiment of this town; who sent you from
+it?" said St. Just.
+
+I produced the order, signed by himself, and the despatches which
+Schneider had sent me.
+
+"The signature is mine, but the despatches did not come from my office.
+Can you prove in any way your conversation with Schneider?"
+
+"Why," said my sentimental friend Gregoire, "for the matter of that, I
+can answer that the lad was always talking about this young woman:
+he told me the whole story himself, and many a good laugh I had with
+citizen Schneider as we talked about it."
+
+"The charge against Edward Ancel must be examined into," said St. Just.
+"The marriage cannot take place. But if I had ratified it, Mary Ancel,
+what then would have been your course?"
+
+Mary felt for a moment in her bosom, and said--"He would have died
+to-night--I would have stabbed him with this dagger."*
+
+
+     * This reply, and, indeed, the whole of the story, is
+     historical. An account, by Charles Nodier, in the Revue de
+     Paris, suggested it to the writer.
+
+
+The rain was beating down the streets, and yet they were thronged; all
+the world was hastening to the market-place, where the worthy Gregoire
+was about to perform some of the pleasant duties of his office. On this
+occasion, it was not death that he was to inflict; he was only to expose
+a criminal who was to be sent on afterwards to Paris. St. Just had
+ordered that Schneider should stand for six hours in the public place
+of Strasburg, and then be sent on to the capital to be dealt with as the
+authorities might think fit.
+
+The people followed with execrations the villain to his place of
+punishment; and Gregoire grinned as he fixed up to the post the man
+whose orders he had obeyed so often--who had delivered over to disgrace
+and punishment so many who merited it not.
+
+Schneider was left for several hours exposed to the mockery and insults
+of the mob; he was then, according to his sentence, marched on to Paris,
+where it is probable that he would have escaped death, but for his own
+fault. He was left for some time in prison, quite unnoticed, perhaps
+forgotten: day by day fresh victims were carried to the scaffold, and
+yet the Alsacian tribune remained alive; at last, by the mediation
+of one of his friends, a long petition was presented to Robespierre,
+stating his services and his innocence, and demanding his freedom. The
+reply to this was an order for his instant execution: the wretch died
+in the last days of Robespierre's reign. His comrade, St. Just, followed
+him, as you know; but Edward Ancel had been released before this, for
+the action of my brave Mary had created a strong feeling in his favor.
+
+"And Mary?" said I.
+
+Here a stout and smiling old lady entered the Captain's little room: she
+was leaning on the arm of a military-looking man of some forty years,
+and followed by a number of noisy, rosy children.
+
+"This is Mary Ancel," said the Captain, "and I am Captain Pierre, and
+yonder is the Colonel, my son; and you see us here assembled in force,
+for it is the fête of little Jacob yonder, whose brothers and sisters
+have all come from their schools to dance at his birthday."
+
+
+
+
+BEATRICE MERGER.
+
+
+Beatrice Merger, whose name might figure at the head of one of Mr.
+Colburn's politest romances--so smooth and aristocratic does it
+sound--is no heroine, except of her own simple history; she is not a
+fashionable French Countess, nor even a victim of the Revolution.
+
+She is a stout, sturdy girl of two-and-twenty, with a face beaming with
+good nature, and marked dreadfully by smallpox; and a pair of black
+eyes, which might have done some execution had they been placed in a
+smoother face. Beatrice's station in society is not very exalted; she
+is a servant of all-work: she will dress your wife, your dinner, your
+children; she does beefsteaks and plain work; she makes beds, blacks
+boots, and waits at table;--such, at least, were the offices which she
+performed in the fashionable establishment of the writer of this book:
+perhaps her history may not inaptly occupy a few pages of it.
+
+"My father died," said Beatrice, "about six years since, and left my
+poor mother with little else but a small cottage and a strip of land,
+and four children too young to work. It was hard enough in my father's
+time to supply so many little mouths with food; and how was a poor
+widowed woman to provide for them now, who had neither the strength nor
+the opportunity for labor?
+
+"Besides us, to be sure, there was my old aunt; and she would have
+helped us, but she could not, for the old woman is bed-ridden; so she
+did nothing but occupy our best room, and grumble from morning till
+night: heaven knows, poor old soul, that she had no great reason to be
+very happy; for you know, sir, that it frets the temper to be sick; and
+that it is worse still to be sick and hungry too.
+
+"At that time, in the country where we lived (in Picardy, not very far
+from Boulogne), times were so bad that the best workman could hardly
+find employ; and when he did, he was happy if he could earn a matter of
+twelve sous a day. Mother, work as she would, could not gain more than
+six; and it was a hard job, out of this, to put meat into six bellies,
+and clothing on six backs. Old Aunt Bridget would scold, as she got her
+portion of black bread; and my little brothers used to cry if theirs did
+not come in time. I, too, used to cry when I got my share; for mother
+kept only a little, little piece for herself, and said that she had
+dined in the fields,--God pardon her for the lie! and bless her, as I
+am sure He did; for, but for Him, no working man or woman could subsist
+upon such a wretched morsel as my dear mother took.
+
+"I was a thin, ragged, barefooted girl, then, and sickly and weak for
+want of food; but I think I felt mother's hunger more than my own: and
+many and many a bitter night I lay awake, crying, and praying to God to
+give me means of working for myself and aiding her. And he has, indeed,
+been good to me," said pious Beatrice, "for He has given me all this!
+
+"Well, time rolled on, and matters grew worse than ever: winter came,
+and was colder to us than any other winter, for our clothes were thinner
+and more torn; mother sometimes could find no work, for the fields in
+which she labored were hidden under the snow; so that when we wanted
+them most we had them least--warmth, work, or food.
+
+"I knew that, do what I would, mother would never let me leave her,
+because I looked to my little brothers and my old cripple of an aunt;
+but still, bread was better for us than all my service; and when I left
+them the six would have a slice more; so I determined to bid good-by to
+nobody, but to go away, and look for work elsewhere. One Sunday, when
+mother and the little ones were at church, I went in to Aunt Bridget,
+and said, 'Tell mother, when she comes back, that Beatrice is gone.' I
+spoke quite stoutly, as if I did not care about it.
+
+"'Gone! gone where?' said she. 'You ain't going to leave me alone,
+you nasty thing; you ain't going to the village to dance, you ragged,
+barefooted slut: you're all of a piece in this house--your mother, your
+brothers, and you. I know you've got meat in the kitchen, and you only
+give me black bread;' and here the old lady began to scream as if her
+heart would break; but we did not mind it, we were so used to it.
+
+"'Aunt,' said I, 'I'm going, and took this very opportunity because you
+WERE alone: tell mother I am too old now to eat her bread, and do no
+work for it: I am going, please God, where work and bread can be found:'
+and so I kissed her: she was so astonished that she could not move or
+speak; and I walked away through the old room, and the little garden,
+God knows whither!
+
+"I heard the old woman screaming after me, but I did not stop nor turn
+round. I don't think I could, for my heart was very full; and if I had
+gone back again, I should never have had the courage to go away. So I
+walked a long, long way, until night fell; and I thought of poor mother
+coming home from mass, and not finding me; and little Pierre shouting
+out, in his clear voice, for Beatrice to bring him his supper. I think
+I should like to have died that night, and I thought I should too; for
+when I was obliged to throw myself on the cold, hard ground, my feet
+were too torn and weary to bear me any further.
+
+"Just then the moon got up; and do you know I felt a comfort in looking
+at it, for I knew it was shining on our little cottage, and it seemed
+like an old friend's face? A little way on, as I saw by the moon, was a
+village: and I saw, too, that a man was coming towards me; he must have
+heard me crying, I suppose.
+
+"Was not God good to me? This man was a farmer, who had need of a girl
+in his house; he made me tell him why I was alone, and I told him the
+same story I have told you, and he believed me and took me home. I had
+walked six long leagues from our village that day, asking everywhere for
+work in vain; and here, at bedtime, I found a bed and a supper!
+
+"Here I lived very well for some months; my master was very good and
+kind to me; but, unluckily, too poor to give me any wages; so that I
+could save nothing to send to my poor mother. My mistress used to scold;
+but I was used to that at home, from Aunt Bridget: and she beat me
+sometimes, but I did not mind it; for your hardy country girl is not
+like your tender town lasses, who cry if a pin pricks them, and give
+warning to their mistresses at the first hard word. The only drawback
+to my comfort was, that I had no news of my mother; I could not write
+to her, nor could she have read my letter, if I had; so there I was,
+at only six leagues' distance from home, as far off as if I had been to
+Paris or to 'Merica.
+
+"However, in a few months I grew so listless and homesick, that my
+mistress said she would keep me no longer; and though I went away as
+poor as I came, I was still too glad to go back to the old village
+again, and see dear mother, if it were but for a day. I knew she would
+share her crust with me, as she had done for so long a time before; and
+hoped that, now, as I was taller and stronger, I might find work more
+easily in the neighborhood.
+
+"You may fancy what a fête it was when I came back; though I'm sure we
+cried as much as if it had been a funeral. Mother got into a fit, which
+frightened us all; and as for Aunt Bridget, she SKREELED away for hours
+together, and did not scold for two days at least. Little Pierre offered
+me the whole of his supper; poor little man! his slice of bread was no
+bigger than before I went away.
+
+"Well, I got a little work here and a little there; but still I was a
+burden at home rather than a bread-winner; and, at the closing-in of the
+winter, was very glad to hear of a place at two leagues' distance, where
+work, they said, was to be had. Off I set, one morning, to find it,
+but missed my way, somehow, until it was night-time before I arrived.
+Night-time and snow again; it seemed as if all my journeys were to be
+made in this bitter weather.
+
+"When I came to the farmer's door, his house was shut up, and his people
+all a-bed; I knocked for a long while in vain; at last he made his
+appearance at a window up stairs, and seemed so frightened, and looked
+so angry that I suppose he took me for a thief. I told him how I had
+come for work. 'Who comes for work at such an hour?' said he. 'Go home,
+you impudent baggage, and do not disturb honest people out of their
+sleep.' He banged the window to; and so I was left alone to shift for
+myself as I might. There was no shed, no cow-house, where I could find a
+bed; so I got under a cart, on some straw; it was no very warm berth.
+I could not sleep for the cold: and the hours passed so slowly, that it
+seemed as if I had been there a week instead of a night; but still it
+was not so bad as the first night when I left home, and when the good
+farmer found me.
+
+"In the morning, before it was light, the farmer's people came out, and
+saw me crouching under the cart: they told me to get up; but I was so
+cold that I could not: at last the man himself came, and recognized me
+as the girl who had disturbed him the night before. When he heard my
+name, and the purpose for which I came, this good man took me into the
+house, and put me into one of the beds out of which his sons had
+just got; and, if I was cold before, you may be sure I was warm and
+comfortable now! such a bed as this I had never slept in, nor ever did
+I have such good milk-soup as he gave me out of his own breakfast. Well,
+he agreed to hire me; and what do you think he gave me?--six sous a day!
+and let me sleep in the cow-house besides: you may fancy how happy I was
+now, at the prospect of earning so much money.
+
+"There was an old woman among the laborers who used to sell us soup: I
+got a cupful every day for a half-penny, with a bit of bread in it; and
+might eat as much beet-root besides as I liked; not a very wholesome
+meal, to be sure, but God took care that it should not disagree with me.
+
+"So, every Saturday, when work was over, I had thirty sous to carry home
+to mother; and tired though I was, I walked merrily the two leagues to
+our village, to see her again. On the road there was a great wood to
+pass through, and this frightened me; for if a thief should come and rob
+me of my whole week's earnings, what could a poor lone girl do to help
+herself? But I found a remedy for this too, and no thieves ever came
+near me; I used to begin saying my prayers as I entered the forest, and
+never stopped until I was safe at home; and safe I always arrived, with
+my thirty sons in my pocket. Ah! you may be sure, Sunday was a merry day
+for us all."
+
+
+This is the whole of Beatrice's history which is worthy of publication;
+the rest of it only relates to her arrival in Paris, and the various
+masters and mistresses whom she there had the honor to serve. As soon
+as she enters the capital the romance disappears, and the poor girl's
+sufferings and privations luckily vanish with it. Beatrice has got now
+warm gowns, and stout shoes, and plenty of good food. She has had her
+little brother from Picardy; clothed, fed, and educated him: that young
+gentleman is now a carpenter, and an honor to his profession. Madame
+Merger is in easy circumstances, and receives, yearly, fifty francs from
+her daughter. To crown all, Mademoiselle Beatrice herself is a funded
+proprietor, and consulted the writer of this biography as to the best
+method of laying out a capital of two hundred francs, which is the
+present amount of her fortune.
+
+God bless her! she is richer than his Grace the Duke of Devonshire; and,
+I dare say, has, in her humble walk, been more virtuous and more happy
+than all the dukes in the realm.
+
+It is, indeed, for the benefit of dukes and such great people (who, I
+make no doubt, have long since ordered copies of these Sketches), that
+poor little Beatrice's story has been indited. Certain it is, that the
+young woman would never have been immortalized in this way, but for the
+good which her betters may derive from her example. If your ladyship
+will but reflect a little, after boasting of the sums which you spend
+in charity; the beef and blankets which you dole out at Christmas;
+the poonah-painting which you execute for fancy fairs; the long,
+long sermons which you listen to at St. George's, the whole year
+through;--your ladyship, I say, will allow that, although perfectly
+meritorious in your line, as a patroness of the Church of England, of
+Almack's, and of the Lying-in Asylum, yours is but a paltry sphere
+of virtue, a pitiful attempt at benevolence, and that this honest
+servant-girl puts you to shame! And you, my Lord Bishop: do you, out of
+your six sous a day, give away five to support your flock and family?
+Would you drop a single coach-horse (I do not say, A DINNER, for such a
+notion is monstrous, in one of your lordship's degree), to feed any one
+of the starving children of your lordship's mother--the Church?
+
+I pause for a reply. His lordship took too much turtle and cold punch
+for dinner yesterday, and cannot speak just now: but we have, by this
+ingenious question, silenced him altogether: let the world wag as it
+will, and poor Christians and curates starve as they may, my lord's
+footmen must have their new liveries, and his horses their four feeds a
+day.
+
+
+When we recollect his speech about the Catholics--when we remember
+his last charity sermon,--but I say nothing. Here is a poor benighted
+superstitious creature, worshipping images, without a rag to her tail,
+who has as much faith, and humility, and charity as all the reverend
+bench.
+
+
+This angel is without a place; and for this reason (besides the pleasure
+of composing the above slap at episcopacy)--I have indited her
+history. If the Bishop is going to Paris, and wants a good honest
+maid-of-all-work, he can have her, I have no doubt; or if he chooses to
+give a few pounds to her mother, they can be sent to Mr. Titmarsh, at
+the publisher's.
+
+Here is Miss Merger's last letter and autograph. The note was evidently
+composed by an Ecrivain public:--
+
+
+"Madame,--Ayant apris par ce Monsieur, que vous vous portiez bien, ainsi
+que Monsieur, ayant su aussi que vous parliez de moi dans votre lettre
+cette nouvelle m'a fait bien plaisir Je profite de l'occasion pour vous
+faire passer ce petit billet où Je voudrais pouvoir m'enveloper pour
+aller vous voir et pour vous dire que Je suis encore sans place Je
+m'ennuye tojours de ne pas vous voir ainsi que Minette (Minette is a
+cat) qui semble m'interroger tour a tour et demander où vous êtes.
+Je vous envoye aussi la note du linge a blanchir--ah, Madame! Je vais
+cesser de vous ecrire mais non de vous regretter."
+
+Beatrice Merger.
+
+
+
+
+CARICATURES AND LITHOGRAPHY IN PARIS.
+
+
+Fifty years ago there lived at Munich a poor fellow, by name Aloys
+Senefelder, who was in so little repute as an author and artist,
+that printers and engravers refused to publish his works at their own
+charges, and so set him upon some plan for doing without their aid.
+In the first place, Aloys invented a certain kind of ink, which would
+resist the action of the acid that is usually employed by engravers,
+and with this he made his experiments upon copper-plates, as long as he
+could afford to purchase them. He found that to write upon the plates
+backwards, after the manner of engravers, required much skill and many
+trials; and he thought that, were he to practise upon any other
+polished surface--a smooth stone, for instance, the least costly article
+imaginable--he might spare the expense of the copper until he had
+sufficient skill to use it.
+
+One day, it is said, that Aloys was called upon to write--rather a
+humble composition for an author and artist--a washing-bill. He had
+no paper at hand, and so he wrote out the bill with some of his
+newly-invented ink upon one of his Kelheim stones. Some time afterwards
+he thought he would try and take an IMPRESSION of his washing-bill:
+he did, and succeeded. Such is the story, which the reader most likely
+knows very well; and having alluded to the origin of the art, we shall
+not follow the stream through its windings and enlargement after it
+issued from the little parent rock, or fill our pages with the rest of
+the pedigree. Senefelder invented Lithography. His invention has not
+made so much noise and larum in the world as some others, which have an
+origin quite as humble and unromantic; but it is one to which we owe no
+small profit, and a great deal of pleasure; and, as such, we are bound
+to speak of it with all gratitude and respect. The schoolmaster, who
+is now abroad, has taught us, in our youth, how the cultivation of
+art "emollit mores nec sinit esse"--(it is needless to finish the
+quotation); and Lithography has been, to our thinking, the very best
+ally that art ever had; the best friend of the artist, allowing him
+to produce rapidly multiplied and authentic copies of his own works
+(without trusting to the tedious and expensive assistance of the
+engraver); and the best friend to the people likewise, who have means of
+purchasing these cheap and beautiful productions, and thus having their
+ideas "mollified" and their manners "feros" no more.
+
+With ourselves, among whom money is plenty, enterprise so great, and
+everything matter of commercial speculation, Lithography has not been
+so much practised as wood or steel engraving; which, by the aid of great
+original capital and spread of sale, are able more than to compete with
+the art of drawing on stone. The two former may be called art done by
+MACHINERY. We confess to a prejudice in favor of the honest work of
+HAND, in matters of art, and prefer the rough workmanship of the painter
+to the smooth copies of his performances which are produced, for the
+most part, on the wood-block or the steel-plate.
+
+The theory will possibly be objected to by many of our readers: the
+best proof in its favor, we think, is, that the state of art amongst
+the people in France and Germany, where publishers are not so wealthy
+or enterprising as with us,* and where Lithography is more practised, is
+infinitely higher than in England, and the appreciation more correct. As
+draughtsmen, the French and German painters are incomparably superior to
+our own; and with art, as with any other commodity, the demand will be
+found pretty equal to the supply: with us, the general demand is for
+neatness, prettiness, and what is called EFFECT in pictures, and
+these can be rendered completely, nay, improved, by the engraver's
+conventional manner of copying the artist's performances. But to copy
+fine expression and fine drawing, the engraver himself must be a fine
+artist; and let anybody examine the host of picture-books which appear
+every Christmas, and say whether, for the most part, painters or
+engravers possess any artistic merit? We boast, nevertheless, of some
+of the best engravers and painters in Europe. Here, again, the supply is
+accounted for by the demand; our highest class is richer than any other
+aristocracy, quite as well instructed, and can judge and pay for fine
+pictures and engravings. But these costly productions are for the few,
+and not for the many, who have not yet certainly arrived at properly
+appreciating fine art.
+
+     * These countries are, to be sure, inundated with the
+     productions of our market, in the shape of Byron Beauties,
+     reprints from the "Keepsakes," "Books of Beauty," and such
+     trash; but these are only of late years, and their original
+     schools of art are still flourishing.
+
+Take the standard "Album" for instance--that unfortunate collection of
+deformed Zuleikas and Medoras (from the "Byron Beauties"), the Flowers,
+Gems, Souvenirs, Caskets of Loveliness, Beauty, as they way be called;
+glaring caricatures of flowers, singly, in groups, in flower-pots, or
+with hideous deformed little Cupids sporting among them; of what are
+called "mezzotinto," pencil-drawings, "poonah-paintings," and what
+not. "The Album" is to be found invariably upon the round rosewood
+brass-inlaid drawing-room table of the middle classes, and with a couple
+of "Annuals" besides, which flank it on the same table, represents the
+art of the house; perhaps there is a portrait of the master of the house
+in the dining-room, grim-glancing from above the mantel-piece; and
+of the mistress over the piano up stairs; add to these some odious
+miniatures of the sons and daughters, on each side of the chimney-glass;
+and here, commonly (we appeal to the reader if this is an overcharged
+picture), the collection ends. The family goes to the Exhibition once
+a year, to the National Gallery once in ten years: to the former place
+they have an inducement to go; there are their own portraits, or the
+portraits of their friends, or the portraits of public characters; and
+you will see them infallibly wondering over No. 2645 in the catalogue,
+representing "The Portrait of a Lady," or of the "First Mayor of Little
+Pedlington since the passing of the Reform Bill;" or else bustling and
+squeezing among the miniatures, where lies the chief attraction of the
+Gallery. England has produced, owing to the effects of this class of
+admirers of art, two admirable, and five hundred very clever, portrait
+painters. How many ARTISTS? Let the reader count upon his five fingers,
+and see if, living at the present moment, he can name one for each.
+
+If, from this examination of our own worthy middle classes, we look to
+the same class in France, what a difference do we find! Humble café's
+in country towns have their walls covered with pleasing picture papers,
+representing "Les Gloires de l'Armée Française," the "Seasons,"
+the "Four Quarters of the World," "Cupid and Psyche," or some other
+allegory, landscape or history, rudely painted, as papers for walls
+usually are; but the figures are all tolerably well drawn; and the
+common taste, which has caused a demand for such things, is undeniable.
+In Paris, the manner in which the cafés and houses of the restaurateurs
+are ornamented, is, of course, a thousand times richer, and nothing can
+be more beautiful, or more exquisitely finished and correct, than the
+designs which adorn many of them. We are not prepared to say what sums
+were expended upon the painting of "Véry's" or "Véfour's," of the "Salle
+Musard," or of numberless other places of public resort in the capital.
+There is many a shop-keeper whose sign is a very tolerable picture;
+and often have we stopped to admire (the reader will give us credit for
+having remained OUTSIDE) the excellent workmanship of the grapes and
+vine-leaves over the door of some very humble, dirty, inodorous shop of
+a marchand de vin.
+
+These, however, serve only to educate the public taste, and are
+ornaments for the most part much too costly for the people. But the
+same love of ornament which is shown in their public places of resort,
+appears in their houses likewise; and every one of our readers who has
+lived in Paris, in any lodging, magnificent or humble, with any family,
+however poor, may bear witness how profusely the walls of his smart
+salon in the English quarter, or of his little room au sixième in the
+Pays Latin, has been decorated with prints of all kinds. In the first,
+probably, with bad engravings on copper from the bad and tawdry pictures
+of the artists of the time of the Empire; in the latter, with gay
+caricatures of Granville or Monnier: military pieces, such as are dashed
+off by Raffet, Charlet, Vernet (one can hardly say which of the three
+designers has the greatest merit, or the most vigorous hand); or clever
+pictures from the crayon of the Deverias, the admirable Roqueplan,
+or Decamp. We have named here, we believe, the principal lithographic
+artists in Paris; and those--as doubtless there are many--of our readers
+who have looked over Monsieur Aubert's portfolios, or gazed at that
+famous caricature-shop window in the Rue de Coq, or are even acquainted
+with the exterior of Monsieur Delaporte's little emporium in the
+Burlington Arcade, need not be told how excellent the productions of all
+these artists are in their genre. We get in these engravings the loisirs
+of men of genius, not the finikin performances of labored mediocrity, as
+with us: all these artists are good painters, as well as good designers;
+a design from them is worth a whole gross of Books of Beauty; and if we
+might raise a humble supplication to the artists in our own country of
+similar merit--to such men as Leslie, Maclise, Herbert, Cattermole, and
+others--it would be, that they should, after the example of their French
+brethren and of the English landscape painters, take chalk in hand,
+produce their own copies of their own sketches, and never more draw a
+single "Forsaken One," "Rejected One," "Dejected One" at the entreaty
+of any publisher or for the pages of any Book of Beauty, Royalty, or
+Loveliness whatever.
+
+Can there be a more pleasing walk in the whole world than a stroll
+through the Gallery of the Louvre on a fête-day; not to look so much at
+the pictures as at the lookers-on? Thousands of the poorer classes
+are there: mechanics in their Sunday clothes, smiling grisettes, smart
+dapper soldiers of the line, with bronzed wondering faces, marching
+together in little companies of six or seven, and stopping every now and
+then at Napoleon or Leonidas as they appear in proper vulgar heroics in
+the pictures of David or Gros. The taste of these people will hardly be
+approved by the connoisseur, but they have A taste for art. Can the same
+be said of our lower classes, who, if they are inclined to be sociable
+and amused in their holidays, have no place of resort but the tap-room
+or tea-garden, and no food for conversation except such as can be built
+upon the politics or the police reports of the last Sunday paper?
+So much has Church and State puritanism done for us--so well has it
+succeeded in materializing and binding down to the earth the imagination
+of men, for which God has made another world (which certain statesmen
+take but too little into account)--that fair and beautiful world of
+heart, in which there CAN be nothing selfish or sordid, of which Dulness
+has forgotten the existence, and which Bigotry has endeavored to shut
+out from sight--
+
+
+     "On a banni les démons et les fées,
+      Le raisonner tristement s'accrédite:
+      On court, helas! après la vérité:
+      Ah! croyez moi, l'erreur a son mérite!"
+
+
+We are not putting in a plea here for demons and fairies, as Voltaire
+does in the above exquisite lines; nor about to expatiate on the
+beauties of error, for it has none; but the clank of steam-engines, and
+the shouts of politicians, and the struggle for gain or bread, and the
+loud denunciations of stupid bigots, have wellnigh smothered poor Fancy
+among us. We boast of our science, and vaunt our superior morality.
+Does the latter exist? In spite of all the forms which our policy
+has invented to secure it--in spite of all the preachers, all the
+meeting-houses, and all the legislative enactments--if any person will
+take upon himself the painful labor of purchasing and perusing some
+of the cheap periodical prints which form the people's library of
+amusement, and contain what may be presumed to be their standard in
+matters of imagination and fancy, he will see how false the claim is
+that we bring forward of superior morality. The aristocracy who are so
+eager to maintain, were, of course, not the last to feel annoyance of
+the legislative restrictions on the Sabbath, and eagerly seized upon
+that happy invention for dissipating the gloom and ennui ordered by Act
+of Parliament to prevail on that day--the Sunday paper. It might be read
+in a club-room, where the poor could not see how their betters
+ordained one thing for the vulgar, and another for themselves; or in an
+easy-chair, in the study, whither my lord retires every Sunday for
+his devotions. It dealt in private scandal and ribaldry, only the more
+piquant for its pretty flimsy veil of double-entendre. It was a fortune
+to the publisher, and it became a necessary to the reader, which
+he could not do without, any more than without his snuff-box, his
+opera-box, or his chasse after coffee. The delightful novelty could not
+for any time be kept exclusively for the haut ton; and from my lord it
+descended to his valet or tradesmen, and from Grosvenor Square it spread
+all the town through; so that now the lower classes have their scandal
+and ribaldry organs, as well as their betters (the rogues, they WILL
+imitate them!) and as their tastes are somewhat coarser than my lord's,
+and their numbers a thousand to one, why of course the prints have
+increased, and the profligacy has been diffused in a ratio exactly
+proportionable to the demand, until the town is infested with such a
+number of monstrous publications of the kind as would have put Abbé
+Dubois to the blush, or made Louis XV. cry shame. Talk of English
+morality!--the worst licentiousness, in the worst period of the French
+monarchy, scarcely equalled the wickedness of this Sabbath-keeping
+country of ours.
+
+The reader will be glad, at last, to come to the conclusion that we
+would fain draw from all these descriptions--why does this immorality
+exist? Because the people MUST be amused, and have not been taught HOW;
+because the upper classes, frightened by stupid cant, or absorbed in
+material wants, have not as yet learned the refinement which only the
+cultivation of art can give; and when their intellects are uneducated,
+and their tastes are coarse, the tastes and amusements of classes still
+more ignorant must be coarse and vicious likewise, in an increased
+proportion.
+
+Such discussions and violent attacks upon high and low, Sabbath Bills,
+politicians, and what not, may appear, perhaps, out of place in a few
+pages which purport only to give an account of some French drawings: all
+we would urge is, that, in France, these prints are made because they
+are liked and appreciated; with us they are not made, because they are
+not liked and appreciated: and the more is the pity. Nothing merely
+intellectual will be popular among us: we do not love beauty for
+beauty's sake, as Germans; or wit, for wit's sake, as the French: for
+abstract art we have no appreciation. We admire H. B.'s caricatures,
+because they are the caricatures of well-known political characters,
+not because they are witty; and Boz, because he writes us good palpable
+stories (if we may use such a word to a story); and Madame Vestris,
+because she has the most beautifully shaped legs;--the ART of the
+designer, the writer, the actress (each admirable in its way,) is a very
+minor consideration; each might have ten times the wit, and would be
+quite unsuccessful without their substantial points of popularity.
+
+In France such matters are far better managed, and the love of art is
+a thousand times more keen; and (from this feeling, surely) how much
+superiority is there in French SOCIETY over our own; how much better
+is social happiness understood; how much more manly equality is there
+between Frenchman and Frenchman, than between rich and poor in our
+own country, with all our superior wealth, instruction, and political
+freedom! There is, amongst the humblest, a gayety, cheerfulness,
+politeness, and sobriety, to which, in England, no class can show
+a parallel: and these, be it remembered, are not only qualities for
+holidays, but for working-days too, and add to the enjoyment of human
+life as much as good clothes, good beef, or good wages. If, to our
+freedom, we could but add a little of their happiness!--it is one, after
+all, of the cheapest commodities in the world, and in the power of every
+man (with means of gaining decent bread) who has the will or the skill
+to use it.
+
+We are not going to trace the history of the rise and progress of art in
+France; our business, at present, is only to speak of one branch of art
+in that country--lithographic designs, and those chiefly of a humorous
+character. A history of French caricature was published in Paris, two
+or three years back, illustrated by numerous copies of designs, from the
+time of Henry III. to our own day. We can only speak of this work from
+memory, having been unable, in London, to procure the sight of a
+copy; but our impression, at the time we saw the collection, was as
+unfavorable as could possibly be: nothing could be more meagre than the
+wit, or poorer than the execution, of the whole set of drawings. Under
+the Empire, art, as may be imagined, was at a very low ebb; and, aping
+the Government of the day, and catering to the national taste and
+vanity, it was a kind of tawdry caricature of the sublime; of which the
+pictures of David and Girodet, and almost the entire collection now
+at the Luxembourg Palace, will give pretty fair examples. Swollen,
+distorted, unnatural, the painting was something like the politics of
+those days; with force in it, nevertheless, and something of grandeur,
+that will exist in spite of taste, and is born of energetic will. A man,
+disposed to write comparisons of characters, might, for instance, find
+some striking analogies between mountebank Murat, with his irresistible
+bravery and horsemanship, who was a kind of mixture of Dugueselin and
+Ducrow, and Mountebank David, a fierce, powerful painter and genius,
+whose idea of beauty and sublimity seemed to have been gained from the
+bloody melodramas on the Boulevard. Both, however, were great in their
+way, and were worshipped as gods, in those heathen times of false belief
+and hero-worship.
+
+As for poor caricature and freedom of the press, they, like the rightful
+princess in a fairy tale, with the merry fantastic dwarf, her attendant,
+were entirely in the power of the giant who ruled the land. The Princess
+Press was so closely watched and guarded (with some little show,
+nevertheless, of respect for her rank), that she dared not utter a word
+of her own thoughts; and, for poor Caricature, he was gagged, and put
+out of the way altogether: imprisoned as completely as ever Asmodeus was
+in his phial.
+
+How the Press and her attendant fared in succeeding reigns, is well
+known; their condition was little bettered by the downfall of Napoleon:
+with the accession of Charles X. they were more oppressed even than
+before--more than they could bear; for so hard were they pressed, that,
+as one has seen when sailors are working a capstan, back of a sudden the
+bars flew, knocking to the earth the men who were endeavoring to work
+them. The Revolution came, and up sprung Caricature in France; all sorts
+of fierce epigrams were discharged at the flying monarch, and speedily
+were prepared, too, for the new one.
+
+About this time there lived at Paris (if our information be correct)
+a certain M. Philipon, an indifferent artist (painting was his
+profession), a tolerable designer, and an admirable wit. M. Philipon
+designed many caricatures himself, married the sister of an eminent
+publisher of prints (M. Aubert), and the two, gathering about them
+a body of wits and artists like themselves, set up journals of their
+own:--La Caricature, first published once a week; and the Charivari
+afterwards, a daily paper, in which a design also appears daily.
+
+At first the caricatures inserted in the Charivari were chiefly
+political; and a most curious contest speedily commenced between the
+State and M. Philipon's little army in the Galérie Véro-Dodat. Half a
+dozen poor artists on the one side, and his Majesty Louis Philippe,
+his august family, and the numberless placemen and supporters of the
+monarchy, on the other; it was something like Thersites girding at
+Ajax, and piercing through the folds of the clypei septemplicis with the
+poisonous shafts of his scorn. Our French Thersites was not always an
+honest opponent, it must be confessed; and many an attack was made upon
+the gigantic enemy, which was cowardly, false, and malignant. But to see
+the monster writhing under the effects of the arrow--to see his uncouth
+fury in return, and the blind blows that he dealt at his diminutive
+opponent!--not one of these told in a hundred; when they DID tell, it
+may be imagined that they were fierce enough in all conscience, and
+served almost to annihilate the adversary.
+
+To speak more plainly, and to drop the metaphor of giant and dwarf, the
+King of the French suffered so much, his Ministers were so mercilessly
+ridiculed, his family and his own remarkable figure drawn with such
+odious and grotesque resemblance, in fanciful attitudes, circumstances,
+and disguises, so ludicrously mean, and often so appropriate, that the
+King was obliged to descend into the lists and battle his ridiculous
+enemy in form. Prosecutions, seizures, fines, regiments of furious legal
+officials, were first brought into play against poor M. Philipon and his
+little dauntless troop of malicious artists; some few were bribed out
+of his ranks; and if they did not, like Gilray in England, turn their
+weapons upon their old friends, at least laid down their arms, and would
+fight no more. The bribes, fines, indictments, and loud-tongued avocats
+du roi made no impression; Philipon repaired the defeat of a fine by
+some fresh and furious attack upon his great enemy; if his epigrams were
+more covert, they were no less bitter; if he was beaten a dozen times
+before a jury, he had eighty or ninety victories to show in the same
+field of battle, and every victory and every defeat brought him new
+sympathy. Every one who was at Paris a few years since must recollect
+the famous "poire" which was chalked upon all the walls of the city,
+and which bore so ludicrous a resemblance to Louis Philippe. The poire
+became an object of prosecution, and M. Philipon appeared before a
+jury to answer for the crime of inciting to contempt against the King's
+person, by giving such a ludicrous version of his face. Philipon, for
+defence, produced a sheet of paper, and drew a poire, a real large
+Burgundy pear: in the lower parts round and capacious, narrower near
+the stalk, and crowned with two or three careless leaves. "There was no
+treason in THAT," he said to the jury; "could any one object to such a
+harmless botanical representation?" Then he drew a second pear, exactly
+like the former, except that one or two lines were scrawled in the midst
+of it, which bore somehow a ludicrous resemblance to the eyes, nose, and
+mouth of a celebrated personage; and, lastly, he drew the exact portrait
+of Louis Philippe; the well-known toupet, the ample whiskers and jowl
+were there, neither extenuated nor set down in malice. "Can I help it,
+gentlemen of the jury, then," said he, "if his Majesty's face is like a
+pear? Say yourselves, respectable citizens, is it, or is it not, like
+a pear?" Such eloquence could not fail of its effect; the artist was
+acquitted, and La poire is immortal.
+
+At last came the famous September laws: the freedom of the Press,
+which, from August, 1830, was to be "désormais une vérité," was calmly
+strangled by the Monarch who had gained his crown for his supposed
+championship of it; by his Ministers, some of whom had been stout
+Republicans on paper but a few years before; and by the Chamber, which,
+such is the blessed constitution of French elections, will generally
+vote, unvote, revote in any way the Government wishes. With a wondrous
+union, and happy forgetfulness of principle, monarch, ministers, and
+deputies issued the restriction laws; the Press was sent to prison; as
+for the poor dear Caricature, it was fairly murdered. No more political
+satires appear now, and "through the eye, correct the heart;" no more
+poires ripen on the walls of the metropolis; Philipon's political
+occupation is gone.
+
+But there is always food for satire; and the French caricaturists, being
+no longer allowed to hold up to ridicule and reprobation the King and
+the deputies, have found no lack of subjects for the pencil in the
+ridicules and rascalities of common life. We have said that public
+decency is greater amongst the French than amongst us, which, to some of
+our readers, may appear paradoxical; but we shall not attempt to argue
+that, in private roguery, our neighbors are not our equals. The procès
+of Gisquet, which has appeared lately in the papers, shows how deep the
+demoralization must be, and how a Government, based itself on dishonesty
+(a tyranny, that is, under the title and fiction of a democracy,) must
+practise and admit corruption in its own and in its agents' dealings
+with the nation. Accordingly, of cheating contracts, of ministers
+dabbling with the funds, or extracting underhand profits for the
+granting of unjust privileges and monopolies,--of grasping, envious
+police restrictions, which destroy the freedom, and, with it, the
+integrity of commerce,--those who like to examine such details may find
+plenty in French history: the whole French finance system has been a
+swindle from the days of Luvois, or Law, down to the present time. The
+Government swindles the public, and the small traders swindle their
+customers, on the authority and example of the superior powers. Hence
+the art of roguery, under such high patronage, maintains in France a
+noble front of impudence, and a fine audacious openness, which it does
+not wear in our country.
+
+Among the various characters of roguery which the French satirists have
+amused themselves by depicting, there is one of which the GREATNESS
+(using the word in the sense which Mr. Jonathan Wild gave to it) so far
+exceeds that of all others, embracing, as it does, all in turn, that it
+has come to be considered the type of roguery in general; and now, just
+as all the political squibs were made to come of old from the lips of
+Pasquin, all the reflections on the prevailing cant, knavery, quackery,
+humbug, are put into the mouth of Monsieur Robert Macaire.
+
+A play was written, some twenty years since, called the "Auberge des
+Adrets," in which the characters of two robbers escaped from the galleys
+were introduced--Robert Macaire, the clever rogue above mentioned, and
+Bertrand, the stupid rogue, his friend, accomplice, butt, and scapegoat,
+on all occasions of danger. It is needless to describe the play--a
+witless performance enough, of which the joke was Macaire's exaggerated
+style of conversation, a farrago of all sorts of high-flown sentiments
+such as the French love to indulge in--contrasted with his actions,
+which were philosophically unscrupulous, and his appearance, which was
+most picturesquely sordid. The play had been acted, we believe, and
+forgotten, when a very clever actor, M. Frederick Lemaitre, took upon
+himself the performance of the character of Robert Macaire, and looked,
+spoke, and acted it to such admirable perfection, that the whole town
+rung with applauses of the performance, and the caricaturists delighted
+to copy his singular figure and costume. M. Robert Macaire appears in a
+most picturesque green coat, with a variety of rents and patches, a pair
+of crimson pantaloons ornamented in the same way, enormous whiskers
+and ringlets, an enormous stock and shirt-frill, as dirty and ragged as
+stock and shirt-frill can be, the relic of a hat very gayly cocked over
+one eye, and a patch to take away somewhat from the brightness of the
+other--these are the principal pièces of his costume--a snuff-box like a
+creaking warming-pan, a handkerchief hanging together by a miracle, and
+a switch of about the thickness of a man's thigh, formed the ornaments
+of this exquisite personage. He is a compound of Fielding's "Blueskin"
+and Goldsmith's "Beau Tibbs." He has the dirt and dandyism of the one,
+with the ferocity of the other: sometimes he is made to swindle,
+but where he can get a shilling more, M. Macaire will murder without
+scruple: he performs one and the other act (or any in the scale between
+them) with a similar bland imperturbability, and accompanies his actions
+with such philosophical remarks as may be expected from a person of his
+talents, his energies, his amiable life and character.
+
+Bertrand is the simple recipient of Macaire's jokes, and makes vicarious
+atonement for his crimes, acting, in fact, the part which pantaloon
+performs in the pantomime, who is entirely under the fatal influence of
+clown. He is quite as much a rogue as that gentleman, but he has not
+his genius and courage. So, in pantomimes, (it may, doubtless, have been
+remarked by the reader,) clown always leaps first, pantaloon following
+after, more clumsily and timidly than his bold and accomplished friend
+and guide. Whatever blows are destined for clown, fall, by some means
+of ill-luck, upon the pate of pantaloon: whenever the clown robs, the
+stolen articles are sure to be found in his companion's pocket; and thus
+exactly Robert Macaire and his companion Bertrand are made to go through
+the world; both swindlers, but the one more accomplished than the other.
+Both robbing all the world, and Robert robbing his friend, and, in the
+event of danger, leaving him faithfully in the lurch. There is, in
+the two characters, some grotesque good for the spectator--a kind of
+"Beggars' Opera" moral.
+
+Ever since Robert, with his dandified rags and airs, his cane and
+snuff-box, and Bertrand with torn surtout and all-absorbing pocket, have
+appeared on the stage, they have been popular with the Parisians; and
+with these two types of clever and stupid knavery, M. Philipon and his
+companion Daumier have created a world of pleasant satire upon all the
+prevailing abuses of the day.
+
+Almost the first figure that these audacious caricaturists dared to
+depict was a political one: in Macaire's red breeches and tattered coat
+appeared no less a personage than the King himself--the old Poire--in a
+country of humbugs and swindlers the facile princeps; fit to govern, as
+he is deeper than all the rogues in his dominions. Bertrand was opposite
+to him, and having listened with delight and reverence to some tale of
+knavery truly royal, was exclaiming with a look and voice expressive of
+the most intense admiration, "AH VIEUX BLAGEUR! va!"--the word blague is
+untranslatable--it means FRENCH humbug as distinct from all other; and
+only those who know the value of an epigram in France, an epigram so
+wonderfully just, a little word so curiously comprehensive, can fancy
+the kind of rage and rapture with which it was received. It was a blow
+that shook the whole dynasty. Thersites had there given such a wound to
+Ajax, as Hector in arms could scarcely have inflicted: a blow sufficient
+almost to create the madness to which the fabulous hero of Homer and
+Ovid fell a prey.
+
+Not long, however, was French caricature allowed to attack personages
+so illustrious: the September laws came, and henceforth no more epigrams
+were launched against politics; but the caricaturists were compelled to
+confine their satire to subjects and characters that had nothing to
+do with the State. The Duke of Orleans was no longer to figure in
+lithography as the fantastic Prince Rosolin; no longer were multitudes
+(in chalk) to shelter under the enormous shadow of M. d'Argout's nose:
+Marshal Loban's squirt was hung up in peace, and M. Thiers's pigmy
+figure and round spectacled face were no more to appear in print.*
+Robert Macaire was driven out of the Chambers and the Palace--his
+remarks were a great deal too appropriate and too severe for the ears of
+the great men who congregated in those places.
+
+     * Almost all the principal public men had been most
+     ludicrously caricatured in the Charivari: those mentioned
+     above were usually depicted with the distinctive attributes
+     mentioned by us.
+
+The Chambers and the Palace were shut to him; but the rogue, driven out
+of his rogue's paradise, saw "that the world was all before him where
+to choose," and found no lack of opportunities for exercising his wit.
+There was the Bar, with its roguish practitioners, rascally attorneys,
+stupid juries, and forsworn judges; there was the Bourse, with all its
+gambling, swindling, and hoaxing, its cheats and its dupes; the Medical
+Profession, and the quacks who ruled it, alternately; the Stage, and the
+cant that was prevalent there; the Fashion, and its thousand follies
+and extravagances. Robert Macaire had all these to exploiter. Of all
+the empire, through all the ranks, professions, the lies, crimes,
+and absurdities of men, he may make sport at will; of all except of
+a certain class. Like Bluebeard's wife, he may see everything, but
+is bidden TO BEWARE OF THE BLUE CHAMBER. Robert is more wise than
+Bluebeard's wife, and knows that it would cost him his head to enter it.
+Robert, therefore, keeps aloof for the moment. Would there be any use in
+his martyrdom? Bluebeard cannot live for ever; perhaps, even now, those
+are on their way (one sees a suspicious cloud of dust or two) that are
+to destroy him.
+
+In the meantime Robert and his friend have been furnishing the designs
+that we have before us, and of which perhaps the reader will be edified
+by a brief description. We are not, to be sure, to judge of the French
+nation by M. Macaire, any more than we are to judge of our own national
+morals in the last century by such a book as the "Beggars' Opera;" but
+upon the morals and the national manners, works of satire afford a world
+of light that one would in vain look for in regular books of history.
+Doctor Smollett would have blushed to devote any considerable portion
+of his pages to a discussion of the acts and character of Mr. Jonathan
+Wild, such a figure being hardly admissible among the dignified
+personages who usually push all others out from the possession of the
+historical page; but a chapter of that gentleman's memoirs, as they are
+recorded in that exemplary recueil--the "Newgate Calendar;" nay, a canto
+of the great comic epic (involving many fables, and containing much
+exaggeration, but still having the seeds of truth) which the satirical
+poet of those days wrote in celebration of him--we mean Fielding's
+"History of Jonathan Wild the Great"--does seem to us to give a more
+curious picture of the manners of those times than any recognized
+history of them. At the close of his history of George II., Smollett
+condescends to give a short chapter on Literature and Manners. He speaks
+of Glover's "Leonidas," Cibber's "Careless Husband," the poems of Mason,
+Gray, the two Whiteheads, "the nervous style, extensive erudition, and
+superior sense of a Corke; the delicate taste, the polished muse, and
+tender feeling of a Lyttelton." "King," he says, "shone unrivalled in
+Roman eloquence, the female sex distinguished themselves by their taste
+and ingenuity. Miss Carter rivalled the celebrated Dacier in learning
+and critical knowledge; Mrs. Lennox signalized herself by many
+successful efforts of genius both in poetry and prose; and Miss Reid
+excelled the celebrated Rosalba in portrait-painting, both in miniature
+and at large, in oil as well as in crayons. The genius of Cervantes was
+transferred into the novels of Fielding, who painted the characters and
+ridiculed the follies of life with equal strength, humor, and propriety.
+The field of history and biography was cultivated by many writers
+of ability, among whom we distinguish the copious Guthrie, the
+circumstantial Ralph, the laborious Carte, the learned and elegant
+Robertson, and above all, the ingenious, penetrating, and comprehensive
+Hume," &c. &c. We will quote no more of the passage. Could a man in the
+best humor sit down to write a graver satire? Who cares for the tender
+muse of Lyttelton? Who knows the signal efforts of Mrs. Lennox's genius?
+Who has seen the admirable performances, in miniature and at large,
+in oil as well as in crayons, of Miss Reid? Laborious Carte, and
+circumstantial Ralph, and copious Guthrie, where are they, their works,
+and their reputation? Mrs. Lennox's name is just as clean wiped out
+of the list of worthies as if she had never been born; and Miss Reid,
+though she was once actual flesh and blood, "rival in miniature and at
+large" of the celebrated Rosalba, she is as if she had never been at
+all; her little farthing rushlight of a soul and reputation having burnt
+out, and left neither wick nor tallow. Death, too, has overtaken copious
+Guthrie and circumstantial Ralph. Only a few know whereabouts is the
+grave where lies laborious Carte; and yet, O wondrous power of genius!
+Fielding's men and women are alive, though History's are not. The
+progenitors of circumstantial Ralph sent forth, after much labor and
+pains of making, educating, feeding, clothing, a real man child, a
+great palpable mass of flesh, bones, and blood (we say nothing about
+the spirit), which was to move through the world, ponderous, writing
+histories, and to die, having achieved the title of circumstantial
+Ralph; and lo! without any of the trouble that the parents of Ralph
+had undergone, alone perhaps in a watch or spunging-house, fuddled
+most likely, in the blandest, easiest, and most good-humored way in the
+world, Henry Fielding makes a number of men and women on so many sheets
+of paper, not only more amusing than Ralph or Miss Reid, but more like
+flesh and blood, and more alive now than they. Is not Amelia preparing
+her husband's little supper? Is not Miss Snapp chastely preventing the
+crime of Mr. Firebrand? Is not Parson Adams in the midst of his family,
+and Mr. Wild taking his last bowl of punch with the Newgate Ordinary? Is
+not every one of them a real substantial HAVE-been personage now--more
+real than Reid or Ralph? For our parts, we will not take upon ourselves
+to say that they do not exist somewhere else: that the actions
+attributed to them have not really taken place; certain we are that they
+are more worthy of credence than Ralph, who may or may not have been
+circumstantial; who may or may not even have existed, a point unworthy
+of disputation. As for Miss Reid, we will take an affidavit that neither
+in miniature nor at large did she excel the celebrated Rosalba; and
+with regard to Mrs. Lennox, we consider her to be a mere figment, like
+Narcissa, Miss Tabitha Bramble, or any hero or heroine depicted by the
+historian of "Peregrine Pickle."
+
+In like manner, after viewing nearly ninety portraits of Robert Macaire
+and his friend Bertrand, all strongly resembling each other, we are
+inclined to believe in them as historical personages, and to canvass
+gravely the circumstances of their lives. Why should we not? Have we
+not their portraits? Are not they sufficient proofs? If not, we must
+discredit Napoleon (as Archbishop Whately teaches), for about his figure
+and himself we have no more authentic testimony.
+
+Let the reality of M. Robert Macaire and his friend M. Bertrand
+be granted, if but to gratify our own fondness for those exquisite
+characters: we find the worthy pair in the French capital, mingling
+with all grades of its society, pars magna in the intrigues, pleasures,
+perplexities, rogueries, speculations, which are carried on in Paris,
+as in our own chief city; for it need not be said that roguery is of no
+country nor clime, but finds [Greek text omitted], is a citizen of all
+countries where the quarters are good; among our merry neighbors it
+finds itself very much at its ease.
+
+Not being endowed, then, with patrimonial wealth, but compelled to
+exercise their genius to obtain distinction, or even subsistence, we
+see Messrs. Bertrand and Macaire, by turns, adopting all trades and
+professions, and exercising each with their own peculiar ingenuity. As
+public men, we have spoken already of their appearance in one or two
+important characters, and stated that the Government grew fairly jealous
+of them, excluding them from office, as the Whigs did Lord Brougham.
+As private individuals, they are made to distinguish themselves as the
+founders of journals, sociétés en commandite (companies of which the
+members are irresponsible beyond the amount of their shares), and all
+sorts of commercial speculations, requiring intelligence and honesty on
+the part of the directors, confidence and liberal disbursements from the
+shareholders.
+
+These are, among the French, so numerous, and have been of late years
+(in the shape of Newspaper Companies, Bitumen Companies, Galvanized-Iron
+Companies, Railroad Companies, &c.) pursued with such a blind FUROR and
+lust of gain, by that easily excited and imaginative people, that, as
+may be imagined, the satirist has found plenty of occasion for remark,
+and M. Macaire and his friend innumerable opportunities for exercising
+their talents.
+
+We know nothing of M. Emile de Girardin, except that, in a duel, he shot
+the best man in France, Armaud Carrel; and in Girardin's favor it must
+be said, that he had no other alternative; but was right in provoking
+the duel, seeing that the whole Republican party had vowed his
+destruction, and that he fought and killed their champion, as it were.
+We know nothing of M. Girardin's private character: but, as far as
+we can judge from the French public prints, he seems to be the most
+speculative of speculators, and, of course, a fair butt for the malice
+of the caricaturists. His one great crime, in the eyes of the French
+Republicans and Republican newspaper proprietors, was, that Girardin set
+up a journal, as he called it, "franchement monarchique,"--a journal in
+the pay of the monarchy, that is,--and a journal that cost only forty
+francs by the year. The National costs twice as much; the Charivari
+itself costs half as much again; and though all newspapers, of all
+parties, concurred in "snubbing" poor M. Girardin and his journal, the
+Republican prints, were by far the most bitter against him, thundering
+daily accusations and personalities; whether the abuse was well or
+ill founded, we know not. Hence arose the duel with Carrel; after
+the termination of which, Girardin put by his pistol, and vowed, very
+properly, to assist in the shedding of no more blood. Girardin had been
+the originator of numerous other speculations besides the journal: the
+capital of these, like that of the journal, was raised by shares, and
+the shareholders, by some fatality, have found themselves wofully in the
+lurch; while Girardin carries on the war gayly, is, or was, a member
+of the Chamber of Deputies, has money, goes to Court, and possesses a
+certain kind of reputation. He invented, we believe, the "Institution
+Agronome de Coetbo,"* the "Physionotype," the "Journal des
+Connoissances Utiles," the "Pantheon Littéraire," and the system
+of "Primes"--premiums, that is--to be given, by lottery, to certain
+subscribers in these institutions. Could Robert Macaire see such things
+going on, and have no hand in them?
+
+
+     * It is not necessary to enter into descriptions of these
+     various inventions.
+
+
+Accordingly Messrs. Macaire and Bertrand are made the heroes of many
+speculations of the kind. In almost the first print of our collection,
+Robert discourses to Bertrand of his projects. "Bertrand," says the
+disinterested admirer of talent and enterprise, "j'adore l'industrie. Si
+tu veux nous créons une banque, mais là, une vraie banque: capital
+cent millions de millions, cent milliards de milliards d'actions. Nous
+enfonçons la banque de France, les banquiers, les banquistes; nous
+enfonçons tout le monde." "Oui," says Bertrand, very calm and stupid,
+"mais les gendarmes?" "Que tu es bête, Bertrand: est-ce qu'on arrête
+un millionaire?" Such is the key to M. Macaire's philosophy; and a wise
+creed too, as times go.
+
+Acting on these principles, Robert appears soon after; he has not
+created a bank, but a journal. He sits in a chair of state, and
+discourses to a shareholder. Bertrand, calm and stupid as before, stands
+humbly behind. "Sir," says the editor of La Blague, journal quotidienne,
+"our profits arise from a new combination. The journal costs twenty
+francs; we sell it for twenty-three and a half. A million subscribers
+make three millions and a half of profits; there are my figures;
+contradict me by figures, or I will bring an action for libel." The
+reader may fancy the scene takes place in England, where many such a
+swindling prospectus has obtained credit ere now. At Plate 33, Robert is
+still a journalist; he brings to the editor of a paper an article of his
+composition, a violent attack on a law. "My dear M. Macaire," says the
+editor, "this must be changed; we must PRAISE this law." "Bon, bon!"
+says our versatile Macaire. "Je vais retoucher ça, et je vous fais en
+faveur de la loi UN ARTICLE MOUSSEUX."
+
+Can such things be? Is it possible that French journalists can so
+forget themselves? The rogues! they should come to England and learn
+consistency. The honesty of the Press in England is like the air we
+breathe, without it we die. No, no! in France, the satire may do very
+well; but for England it is too monstrous. Call the press stupid, call
+it vulgar, call it violent,--but honest it is. Who ever heard of a
+journal changing its politics? O tempora! O mores! as Robert Macaire
+says, this would be carrying the joke too far.
+
+When he has done with newspapers, Robert Macaire begins to distinguish
+himself on 'Change,* as a creator of companies, a vender of shares, or
+a dabbler in foreign stock. "Buy my coal-mine shares," shouts Robert;
+"gold mines, silver mines, diamond mines, 'sont de la pot-bouille de la
+ratatouille en comparaison de ma houille.'" "Look," says he, on another
+occasion, to a very timid, open-countenanced client, "you have a
+property to sell! I have found the very man, a rich capitalist, a fellow
+whose bills are better than bank-notes." His client sells; the bills are
+taken in payment, and signed by that respectable capitalist, Monsieur de
+Saint Bertrand. At Plate 81, we find him inditing a circular letter
+to all the world, running thus: "Sir,--I regret to say that your
+application for shares in the Consolidated European Incombustible
+Blacking Association cannot be complied with, as all the shares of the
+C. E. I. B. A. were disposed of on the day they were issued. I have,
+nevertheless, registered your name, and in case a second series should
+be put forth, I shall have the honor of immediately giving you notice.
+I am, sir, yours, &c., the Director, Robert Macaire."--"Print 300,000
+of these," he says to Bertrand, "and poison all France with them." As
+usual, the stupid Bertrand remonstrates--"But we have not sold a single
+share; you have not a penny in your pocket, and"--"Bertrand, you are an
+ass; do as I bid you."
+
+     * We have given a description of a genteel Macaire in the
+     account of M. de Bernard's novels.
+
+Will this satire apply anywhere in England? Have we any Consolidated
+European Blacking Associations amongst us? Have we penniless directors
+issuing El Dorado prospectuses, and jockeying their shares through the
+market? For information on this head, we must refer the reader to the
+newspapers; or if he be connected with the city, and acquainted with
+commercial men, he will be able to say whether ALL the persons whose
+names figure at the head of announcements of projected companies are as
+rich as Rothschild, or quite as honest as heart could desire.
+
+When Macaire has sufficiently exploité the Bourse, whether as a gambler
+in the public funds or other companies, he sagely perceives that it is
+time to turn to some other profession, and, providing himself with a
+black gown, proposes blandly to Bertrand to set up--a new religion. "Mon
+ami," says the repentant sinner, "le temps de la commandite va passer,
+MAIS LES BADAUDS NE PASSERONT PAS." (O rare sentence! it should be
+written in letters of gold!) "OCCUPONS NOUS DE CE QUI EST ÉTERNEL. Si
+nous fassions une réligion?" On which M. Bertrand remarks, "A religion!
+what the devil--a religion is not an easy thing to make." But Macaire's
+receipt is easy. "Get a gown, take a shop," he says, "borrow some
+chairs, preach about Napoleon, or the discovery of America, or
+Molière--and there's a religion for you."
+
+We have quoted this sentence more for the contrast it offers with
+our own manners, than for its merits. After the noble paragraph, "Les
+badauds ne passeront pas. Occupons nous de ce qui est éternel," one
+would have expected better satire upon cant than the words that follow.
+We are not in a condition to say whether the subjects chosen are those
+that had been selected by Père Enfantin, or Chatel, or Lacordaire; but
+the words are curious, we think, for the very reason that the satire
+is so poor. The fact is, there is no religion in Paris; even clever
+M. Philipon, who satirizes everything, and must know, therefore, some
+little about the subject which he ridicules, has nothing to say but,
+"Preach a sermon, and that makes a religion; anything will do." If
+ANYTHING will do, it is clear that the religious commodity is not in
+much demand. Tartuffe had better things to say about hypocrisy in his
+time; but then Faith was alive; now, there is no satirizing religious
+cant in France, for its contrary, true religion, has disappeared
+altogether; and having no substance, can cast no shadow. If a satirist
+would lash the religious hypocrites in ENGLAND now--the High Church
+hypocrites, the Low Church hypocrites, the promiscuous Dissenting
+hypocrites, the No Popery hypocrites--he would have ample subject
+enough. In France, the religious hypocrites went out with the Bourbons.
+Those who remain pious in that country (or, rather, we should say, in
+the capital, for of that we speak,) are unaffectedly so, for they have
+no worldly benefit to hope for from their piety; the great majority have
+no religion at all, and do not scoff at the few, for scoffing is the
+minority's weapon, and is passed always to the weaker side, whatever
+that may be. Thus H. B. caricatures the Ministers: if by any accident
+that body of men should be dismissed from their situations, and be
+succeeded by H. B.'s friends, the Tories,--what must the poor artist do?
+He must pine away and die, if he be not converted; he cannot always be
+paying compliments; for caricature has a spice of Goethe's Devil in
+it, and is "der Geist der stets verneint," the Spirit that is always
+denying.
+
+With one or two of the French writers and painters of caricatures, the
+King tried the experiment of bribery; which succeeded occasionally in
+buying off the enemy, and bringing him from the republican to the royal
+camp; but when there, the deserter was never of any use. Figaro, when so
+treated, grew fat and desponding, and lost all his sprightly VERVE;
+and Nemesis became as gentle as a Quakeress. But these instances of
+"ratting" were not many. Some few poets were bought over; but, among
+men following the profession of the press, a change of politics is an
+infringement of the point of honor, and a man must FIGHT as well
+as apostatize. A very curious table might be made, signalizing the
+difference of the moral standard between us and the French. Why is the
+grossness and indelicacy, publicly permitted in England, unknown in
+France, where private morality is certainly at a lower ebb? Why is the
+point of private honor now more rigidly maintained among the French?
+Why is it, as it should be, a moral disgrace for a Frenchman to go into
+debt, and no disgrace for him to cheat his customer? Why is there more
+honesty and less--more propriety and less?--and how are we to account
+for the particular vices or virtues which belong to each nation in its
+turn?
+
+The above is the Reverend M. Macaire's solitary exploit as a spiritual
+swindler: as MAÎTRE Macaire in the courts of law, as avocat, avoué--in
+a humbler capacity even, as a prisoner at the bar, he distinguishes
+himself greatly, as may be imagined. On one occasion we find the learned
+gentleman humanely visiting an unfortunate détenu--no other person, in
+fact, than his friend M. Bertrand, who has fallen into some trouble, and
+is awaiting the sentence of the law. He begins--
+
+"Mon cher Bertrand, donne moi cent écus, je te fais acquitter d'emblée."
+
+"J'ai pas d'argent."
+
+"Hé bien, donne moi cent francs."
+
+"Pas le sou."
+
+"Tu n'as pas dix francs?"
+
+"Pas un liard."
+
+"Alors donne moi tes bottes, je plaiderai la circonstance atténuante."
+
+The manner in which Maitre Macaire soars from the cent écus (a high
+point already) to the sublime of the boots, is in the best comic style.
+In another instance he pleads before a judge, and, mistaking his
+client, pleads for defendant, instead of plaintiff. "The infamy of the
+plaintiff's character, my LUDS, renders his testimony on such a
+charge as this wholly unavailing." "M. Macaire, M. Macaire," cries the
+attorney, in a fright, "you are for the plaintiff!" "This, my lords,
+is what the defendant WILL SAY. This is the line of defence which the
+opposite party intend to pursue; as if slanders like these could weigh
+with an enlightened jury, or injure the spotless reputation of my
+client!" In this story and expedient M. Macaire has been indebted to the
+English bar. If there be an occupation for the English satirist in the
+exposing of the cant and knavery of the pretenders to religion, what
+room is there for him to lash the infamies of the law! On this point
+the French are babes in iniquity compared to us--a counsel prostituting
+himself for money is a matter with us so stale, that it is hardly food
+for satire: which, to be popular, must find some much more complicated
+and interesting knavery whereon to exercise its skill.
+
+M. Macaire is more skilful in love than in law, and appears once or
+twice in a very amiable light while under the influence of the tender
+passion. We find him at the head of one of those useful establishments
+unknown in our country--a Bureau de Mariage: half a dozen of such places
+are daily advertised in the journals: and "une veuve de trente ans ayant
+une fortune de deux cent mille francs," or "une demoiselle de quinze
+aus, jolie, d'une famille très distinguée, qui possède trente mille
+livres de rentes,"--continually, in this kind-hearted way, are offering
+themselves to the public: sometimes it is a gentleman, with a "physique
+agréable,--des talens de société"--and a place under Government,
+who makes a sacrifice of himself in a similar manner. In our little
+historical gallery we find this philanthropic anti-Malthusian at
+the head of an establishment of this kind, introducing a very
+meek, simple-looking bachelor to some distinguished ladies of his
+connoissance. "Let me present you, sir, to Madame de St. Bertrand"
+(it is our old friend), "veuve de la grande armée, et Mdlle Eloa de
+Wormspire. Ces dames brûlent de l'envie de faire votre connoissance. Je
+les ai invitées à dîner chez vous ce soir: vous nous menerez à l'opéra,
+et nous ferons une petite partie d'écarté. Tenez vous bien, M. Gobard!
+ces dames ont des projets sur vous!"
+
+Happy Gobard! happy system, which can thus bring the pure and loving
+together, and acts as the best ally of Hymen! The announcement of
+the rank and titles of Madame de St. Bertrand--"veuve de la grande
+armée"--is very happy. "La grande armée" has been a father to more
+orphans, and a husband to more widows, than it ever made. Mistresses of
+cafés, old governesses, keepers of boarding-houses, genteel beggars, and
+ladies of lower rank still, have this favorite pedigree. They have all
+had malheurs (what kind it is needless to particularize), they are all
+connected with the grand homme, and their fathers were all colonels.
+This title exactly answers to the "clergyman's daughter" in England--as,
+"A young lady, the daughter of a clergyman, is desirous to teach,"
+&c. "A clergyman's widow receives into her house a few select," and so
+forth. "Appeal to the benevolent.--By a series of unheard-of calamities,
+a young lady, daughter of a clergyman in the west of England, has been
+plunged," &c. &c. The difference is curious, as indicating the standard
+of respectability.
+
+The male beggar of fashion is not so well known among us as in Paris,
+where street-doors are open; six or eight families live in a house; and
+the gentleman who earns his livelihood by this profession can make half
+a dozen visits without the trouble of knocking from house to house, and
+the pain of being observed by the whole street, while the footman is
+examining him from the area. Some few may be seen in England about the
+inns of court, where the locality is favorable (where, however, the
+owners of the chambers are not proverbially soft of heart, so that the
+harvest must be poor); but Paris is full of such adventurers,--fat,
+smooth-tongued, and well dressed, with gloves and gilt-headed canes, who
+would be insulted almost by the offer of silver, and expect your gold as
+their right. Among these, of course, our friend Robert plays his part;
+and an excellent engraving represents him, snuff-box in hand, advancing
+to an old gentleman, whom, by his poodle, his powdered head, and his
+drivelling, stupid look, one knows to be a Carlist of the old régime.
+"I beg pardon," says Robert; "is it really yourself to whom I have
+the honor of speaking?"--"It is." "Do you take snuff?"--"I thank
+you."--"Sir, I have had misfortunes--I want assistance. I am a Vendéan
+of illustrious birth. You know the family of Macairbec--we are of Brest.
+My grandfather served the King in his galleys; my father and I belong,
+also, to the marine. Unfortunate suits at law have plunged us into
+difficulties, and I do not hesitate to ask you for the succor of ten
+francs."--"Sir, I never give to those I don't know."--"Right, sir,
+perfectly right. Perhaps you will have the kindness to LEND me ten
+francs?"
+
+The adventures of Doctor Macaire need not be described, because the
+different degrees in quackery which are taken by that learned physician
+are all well known in England, where we have the advantage of many
+higher degrees in the science, which our neighbors know nothing about.
+We have not Hahnemann, but we have his disciples; we have not Broussais,
+but we have the College of Health; and surely a dose of Morrison's pills
+is a sublimer discovery than a draught of hot water. We had St. John
+Long, too--where is his science?--and we are credibly informed that some
+important cures have been effected by the inspired dignitaries of "the
+church" in Newman Street which, if it continue to practise, will sadly
+interfere with the profits of the regular physicians, and where the
+miracles of the Abbé of Paris are about to be acted over again.
+
+In speaking of M. Macaire and his adventures, we have managed so
+entirely to convince ourselves of the reality of the personage, that we
+have quite forgotten to speak of Messrs. Philipon and Daumier, who are,
+the one the inventor, the other the designer, of the Macaire Picture
+Gallery. As works of esprit, these drawings are not more remarkable than
+they are as works of art, and we never recollect to have seen a series
+of sketches possessing more extraordinary cleverness and variety. The
+countenance and figure of Macaire and the dear stupid Bertrand are
+preserved, of course, with great fidelity throughout; but the
+admirable way in which each fresh character is conceived, the grotesque
+appropriateness of Robert's every successive attitude and gesticulation,
+and the variety of Bertrand's postures of invariable repose, the
+exquisite fitness of all the other characters, who act their little
+part and disappear from the scene, cannot be described on paper, or too
+highly lauded. The figures are very carelessly drawn; but, if the reader
+can understand us, all the attitudes and limbs are perfectly CONCEIVED,
+and wonderfully natural and various. After pondering over these drawings
+for some hours, as we have been while compiling this notice of them,
+we have grown to believe that the personages are real, and the scenes
+remain imprinted on the brain as if we had absolutely been present at
+their acting. Perhaps the clever way in which the plates are colored,
+and the excellent effect which is put into each, may add to this
+illusion. Now, in looking, for instance, at H. B.'s slim vapory figures,
+they have struck us as excellent LIKENESSES of men and women, but
+no more: the bodies want spirit, action, and individuality. George
+Cruikshank, as a humorist, has quite as much genius, but he does not
+know the art of "effect" so well as Monsieur Daumier; and, if we might
+venture to give a word of advice to another humorous designer, whose
+works are extensively circulated--the illustrator of "Pickwick" and
+"Nicholas Nickleby,"--it would be to study well these caricatures of
+Monsieur Daumier; who, though he executes very carelessly, knows
+very well what he would express, indicates perfectly the attitude and
+identity of his figure, and is quite aware, beforehand, of the effect
+which he intends to produce. The one we should fancy to be a practised
+artist, taking his ease; the other, a young one, somewhat bewildered:
+a very clever one, however, who, if he would think more, and exaggerate
+less, would add not a little to his reputation.
+
+Having pursued, all through these remarks, the comparison between
+English art and French art, English and French humor, manners, and
+morals, perhaps we should endeavor, also, to write an analytical essay
+on English cant or humbug, as distinguished from French. It might be
+shown that the latter was more picturesque and startling, the former
+more substantial and positive. It has none of the poetic flights of the
+French genius, but advances steadily, and gains more ground in the
+end than its sprightlier compeer. But such a discussion would carry us
+through the whole range of French and English history, and the reader
+has probably read quite enough of the subject in this and the foregoing
+pages.
+
+We shall, therefore, say no more of French and English caricatures
+generally, or of Mr. Macaire's particular accomplishments and
+adventures. They are far better understood by examining the original
+pictures, by which Philipon and Daumier have illustrated them, than by
+translations first into print and afterwards into English. They form
+a very curious and instructive commentary upon the present state of
+society in Paris, and a hundred years hence, when the whole of this
+struggling, noisy, busy, merry race shall have exchanged their pleasures
+or occupations for a quiet coffin (and a tawdry lying epitaph) at
+Montmartre, or Père la Chaise; when the follies here recorded shall
+have been superseded by new ones, and the fools now so active shall
+have given up the inheritance of the world to their children: the latter
+will, at least, have the advantage of knowing, intimately and exactly,
+the manners of life and being of their grandsires, and calling up, when
+they so choose it, our ghosts from the grave, to live, love, quarrel,
+swindle, suffer, and struggle on blindly as of yore. And when the amused
+speculator shall have laughed sufficiently at the immensity of our
+follies, and the paltriness of our aims, smiled at our exploded
+superstitions, wondered how this man should be considered great, who
+is now clean forgotten (as copious Guthrie before mentioned); how
+this should have been thought a patriot who is but a knave spouting
+commonplace; or how that should have been dubbed a philosopher who is
+but a dull fool, blinking solemn, and pretending to see in the dark;
+when he shall have examined all these at his leisure, smiling in a
+pleasant contempt and good-humored superiority, and thanking heaven
+for his increased lights, he will shut the book, and be a fool as his
+fathers were before him.
+
+It runs in the blood. Well hast thou said, O ragged Macaire,--"Le jour
+va passer, MAIS LES BADAUDS NE PASSERONT PAS."
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE POINSINET.
+
+
+About the year 1760, there lived, at Paris, a little fellow, who was
+the darling of all the wags of his acquaintance. Nature seemed, in the
+formation of this little man, to have amused herself, by giving loose
+to half a hundred of her most comical caprices. He had some wit and
+drollery of his own, which sometimes rendered his sallies very amusing;
+but, where his friends laughed with him once, they laughed at him a
+thousand times, for he had a fund of absurdity in himself that was more
+pleasant than all the wit in the world. He was as proud as a peacock, as
+wicked as an ape, and as silly as a goose. He did not possess one single
+grain of common sense; but, in revenge, his pretensions were enormous,
+his ignorance vast, and his credulity more extensive still. From his
+youth upwards, he had read nothing but the new novels, and the verses in
+the almanacs, which helped him not a little in making, what he called,
+poetry of his own; for, of course, our little hero was a poet. All the
+common usages of life, all the ways of the world, and all the customs of
+society, seemed to be quite unknown to him; add to these good qualities,
+a magnificent conceit, a cowardice inconceivable, and a face so
+irresistibly comic, that every one who first beheld it was compelled
+to burst out a-laughing, and you will have some notion of this strange
+little gentleman. He was very proud of his voice, and uttered all his
+sentences in the richest tragic tone. He was little better than a dwarf;
+but he elevated his eyebrows, held up his neck, walked on the tips of
+his toes, and gave himself the airs of a giant. He had a little pair of
+bandy legs, which seemed much too short to support anything like a human
+body; but, by the help of these crooked supporters, he thought he could
+dance like a Grace; and, indeed, fancied all the graces possible were
+to be found in his person. His goggle eyes were always rolling about
+wildly, as if in correspondence with the disorder of his little brain
+and his countenance thus wore an expression of perpetual wonder. With
+such happy natural gifts, he not only fell into all traps that were laid
+for him, but seemed almost to go out of his way to seek them; although,
+to be sure, his friends did not give him much trouble in that search,
+for they prepared hoaxes for him incessantly.
+
+One day the wags introduced him to a company of ladies, who, though not
+countesses and princesses exactly, took, nevertheless, those titles upon
+themselves for the nonce; and were all, for the same reason, violently
+smitten with Master Poinsinet's person. One of them, the lady of the
+house, was especially tender; and, seating him by her side at supper, so
+plied him with smiles, ogles, and champagne, that our little hero grew
+crazed with ecstasy, and wild with love. In the midst of his happiness,
+a cruel knock was heard below, accompanied by quick loud talking,
+swearing, and shuffling of feet: you would have thought a regiment
+was at the door. "Oh heavens!" cried the marchioness, starting up,
+and giving to the hand of Poinsinet one parting squeeze; "fly--fly, my
+Poinsinet: 'tis the colonel--my husband!" At this, each gentleman of the
+party rose, and, drawing his rapier, vowed to cut his way through the
+colonel and all his mousquetaires, or die, if need be, by the side of
+Poinsinet.
+
+The little fellow was obliged to lug out his sword too, and went
+shuddering down stairs, heartily repenting of his passion for
+marchionesses. When the party arrived in the street, they found, sure
+enough, a dreadful company of mousquetaires, as they seemed, ready to
+oppose their passage. Swords crossed,--torches blazed; and, with the
+most dreadful shouts and imprecations, the contending parties rushed
+upon one another; the friends of Poinsinet surrounding and supporting
+that little warrior, as the French knights did King Francis at Pavia,
+otherwise the poor fellow certainly would have fallen down in the gutter
+from fright.
+
+But the combat was suddenly interrupted; for the neighbors, who knew
+nothing of the trick going on, and thought the brawl was real, had been
+screaming with all their might for the police, who began about this time
+to arrive. Directly they appeared, friends and enemies of Poinsinet
+at once took to their heels; and, in THIS part of the transaction, at
+least, our hero himself showed that he was equal to the longest-legged
+grenadier that ever ran away.
+
+When, at last, those little bandy legs of his had borne him safely to
+his lodgings, all Poinsinet's friends crowded round him, to congratulate
+him on his escape and his valor.
+
+"Egad, how he pinked that great red-haired fellow!" said one.
+
+"No; did I?" said Poinsinet.
+
+"Did you? Psha! don't try to play the modest, and humbug US; you know
+you did. I suppose you will say, next, that you were not for three
+minutes point to point with Cartentierce himself, the most dreadful
+swordsman of the army."
+
+"Why, you see," says Poinsinet, quite delighted, "it was so dark that I
+did not know with whom I was engaged; although, corbleu, I DID FOR one
+or two of the fellows." And after a little more of such conversation,
+during which he was fully persuaded that he had done for a dozen of the
+enemy at least, Poinsinet went to bed, his little person trembling with
+fright and pleasure; and he fell asleep, and dreamed of rescuing ladies,
+and destroying monsters, like a second Amadis de Gaul.
+
+When he awoke in the morning, he found a party of his friends in his
+room: one was examining his coat and waistcoat; another was casting many
+curious glances at his inexpressibles. "Look here!" said this gentleman,
+holding up the garment to the light; "one--two--three gashes! I am
+hanged if the cowards did not aim at Poinsinet's legs! There are four
+holes in the sword arm of his coat, and seven have gone right through
+coat and waistcoat. Good heaven! Poinsinet, have you had a surgeon to
+your wounds?"
+
+"Wounds!" said the little man, springing up, "I don't know--that is,
+I hope--that is--O Lord! O Lord! I hope I'm not wounded!" and, after a
+proper examination, he discovered he was not.
+
+"Thank heaven! thank heaven!" said one of the wags (who, indeed, during
+the slumbers of Poinsinet had been occupied in making these very holes
+through the garments of that individual), "if you have escaped, it is by
+a miracle. Alas! alas! all your enemies have not been so lucky."
+
+"How! is anybody wounded?" said Poinsinet.
+
+"My dearest friend, prepare yourself; that unhappy man who came to
+revenge his menaced honor--that gallant officer--that injured husband,
+Colonel Count de Cartentierce--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"IS NO MORE! he died this morning, pierced through with nineteen wounds
+from your hand, and calling upon his country to revenge his murder."
+
+When this awful sentence was pronounced, all the auditory gave a
+pathetic and simultaneous sob; and as for Poinsinet, he sank back on his
+bed with a howl of terror, which would have melted a Visigoth to tears,
+or to laughter. As soon as his terror and remorse had, in some degree,
+subsided, his comrades spoke to him of the necessity of making his
+escape; and, huddling on his clothes, and bidding them all a tender
+adieu, he set off, incontinently, without his breakfast, for England,
+America, or Russia, not knowing exactly which.
+
+One of his companions agreed to accompany him on a part of this
+journey,--that is, as far as the barrier of St. Denis, which is, as
+everybody knows, on the high road to Dover; and there, being tolerably
+secure, they entered a tavern for breakfast; which meal, the last that
+he ever was to take, perhaps, in his native city, Poinsinet was just
+about to discuss, when, behold! a gentleman entered the apartment where
+Poinsinet and his friend were seated, and, drawing from his pocket a
+paper, with "AU NOM DU ROY" flourished on the top, read from it, or
+rather from Poinsinet's own figure, his exact signalement, laid his hand
+on his shoulder, and arrested him in the name of the King, and of the
+provost-marshal of Paris. "I arrest you, sir," said he, gravely, "with
+regret; you have slain, with seventeen wounds, in single combat, Colonel
+Count de Cartentierce, one of his Majesty's household; and, as his
+murderer, you fall under the immediate authority of the provost-marshal,
+and die without trial or benefit of clergy."
+
+You may fancy how the poor little man's appetite fell when he heard this
+speech. "In the provost-marshal's hands?" said his friend: "then it is
+all over, indeed! When does my poor friend suffer, sir?"
+
+"At half-past six o'clock, the day after to-morrow," said the officer,
+sitting down, and helping himself to wine. "But stop," said he,
+suddenly; "sure I can't mistake? Yes--no--yes, it is. My dear friend,
+my dear Durand! don't you recollect your old schoolfellow, Antoine?" And
+herewith the officer flung himself into the arms of Durand, Poinsinet's
+comrade, and they performed a most affecting scene of friendship.
+
+"This may be of some service to you," whispered Durand to Poinsinet;
+and, after some further parley, he asked the officer when he was bound
+to deliver up his prisoner; and, hearing that he was not called upon to
+appear at the Marshalsea before six o'clock at night, Monsieur Durand
+prevailed upon Monsieur Antoine to wait until that hour, and in the
+meantime to allow his prisoner to walk about the town in his company.
+This request was, with a little difficulty, granted; and poor Poinsinet
+begged to be carried to the houses of his various friends, and bid them
+farewell. Some were aware of the trick that had been played upon him:
+others were not; but the poor little man's credulity was so great, that
+it was impossible to undeceive him; and he went from house to house
+bewailing his fate, and followed by the complaisant marshal's officer.
+
+The news of his death he received with much more meekness than could
+have been expected; but what he could not reconcile to himself was, the
+idea of dissection afterwards. "What can they want with me?" cried the
+poor wretch, in an unusual fit of candor. "I am very small and ugly;
+it would be different if I were a tall fine-looking fellow." But he
+was given to understand that beauty made very little difference to the
+surgeons, who, on the contrary, would, on certain occasions, prefer a
+deformed man to a handsome one; for science was much advanced by the
+study of such monstrosities. With this reason Poinsinet was obliged to
+be content; and so paid his rounds of visits, and repeated his dismal
+adieux.
+
+The officer of the provost-marshal, however amusing Poinsinet's woes
+might have been, began, by this time, to grow very weary of them,
+and gave him more than one opportunity to escape. He would stop at
+shop-windows, loiter round corners, and look up in the sky, but all in
+vain: Poinsinet would not escape, do what the other would. At length,
+luckily, about dinner-time, the officer met one of Poinsinet's friends
+and his own: and the three agreed to dine at a tavern, as they had
+breakfasted; and here the officer, who vowed that he had been up
+for five weeks incessantly, fell suddenly asleep, in the profoundest
+fatigue; and Poinsinet was persuaded, after much hesitation on his part,
+to take leave of him.
+
+And now, this danger overcome, another was to be avoided. Beyond a doubt
+the police were after him, and how was he to avoid them? He must be
+disguised, of course; and one of his friends, a tall, gaunt lawyer's
+clerk, agreed to provide him with habits.
+
+So little Poinsinet dressed himself out in the clerk's dingy black suit,
+of which the knee-breeches hung down to his heels, and the waist of the
+coat reached to the calves of his legs; and, furthermore, he blacked his
+eyebrows, and wore a huge black periwig, in which his friend vowed that
+no one could recognize him. But the most painful incident, with regard
+to the periwig, was, that Poinsinet, whose solitary beauty--if beauty
+it might be called--was a head of copious, curling, yellow hair, was
+compelled to snip off every one of his golden locks, and to rub the
+bristles with a black dye; "for if your wig were to come off," said the
+lawyer, "and your fair hair to tumble over your shoulders, every man
+would know, or at least suspect you." So off the locks were cut, and in
+his black suit and periwig little Poinsinet went abroad.
+
+His friends had their cue; and when he appeared amongst them, not one
+seemed to know him. He was taken into companies where his character was
+discussed before him, and his wonderful escape spoken of. At last he was
+introduced to the very officer of the provost-marshal who had taken him
+into custody, and who told him that he had been dismissed the provost's
+service, in consequence of the escape of the prisoner. Now, for the
+first time, poor Poinsinet thought himself tolerably safe, and blessed
+his kind friends who had procured for him such a complete disguise.
+How this affair ended I know not,--whether some new lie was coined to
+account for his release, or whether he was simply told that he had been
+hoaxed: it mattered little; for the little man was quite as ready to be
+hoaxed the next day.
+
+Poinsinet was one day invited to dine with one of the servants of
+the Tuileries; and, before his arrival, a person in company had been
+decorated with a knot of lace and a gold key, such as chamberlains wear;
+he was introduced to Poinsinet as the Count de Truchses, chamberlain to
+the King of Prussia. After dinner the conversation fell upon the Count's
+visit to Paris; when his Excellency, with a mysterious air, vowed that
+he had only come for pleasure. "It is mighty well," said a third person,
+"and, of course, we can't cross-question your lordship too closely;"
+but at the same time it was hinted to Poinsinet that a person of such
+consequence did not travel for NOTHING, with which opinion Poinsinet
+solemnly agreed; and, indeed, it was borne out by a subsequent
+declaration of the Count, who condescended, at last, to tell the
+company, in confidence, that he HAD a mission, and a most important
+one--to find, namely, among the literary men of France, a governor for
+the Prince Royal of Prussia. The company seemed astonished that the King
+had not made choice of Voltaire or D'Alembert, and mentioned a dozen
+other distinguished men who might be competent to this important duty;
+but the Count, as may be imagined, found objections to every one of
+them; and, at last, one of the guests said, that, if his Prussian
+Majesty was not particular as to age, he knew a person more fitted for
+the place than any other who could be found,--his honorable friend, M.
+Poinsinet, was the individual to whom he alluded.
+
+"Good heavens!" cried the Count, "is it possible that the celebrated
+Poinsinet would take such a place? I would give the world to see
+him?" And you may fancy how Poinsinet simpered and blushed when the
+introduction immediately took place.
+
+The Count protested to him that the King would be charmed to know him;
+and added, that one of his operas (for it must be told that our little
+friend was a vaudeville-maker by trade) had been acted seven-and-twenty
+times at the theatre at Potsdam. His Excellency then detailed to him all
+the honors and privileges which the governor of the Prince Royal might
+expect; and all the guests encouraged the little man's vanity, by asking
+him for his protection and favor. In a short time our hero grew
+so inflated with pride and vanity, that he was for patronizing the
+chamberlain himself, who proceeded to inform him that he was furnished
+with all the necessary powers by his sovereign, who had specially
+enjoined him to confer upon the future governor of his son the royal
+order of the Black Eagle.
+
+Poinsinet, delighted, was ordered to kneel down; and the Count produced
+a large yellow ribbon, which he hung over his shoulder, and which was,
+he declared, the grand cordon of the order. You must fancy Poinsinet's
+face, and excessive delight at this; for as for describing them, nobody
+can. For four-and-twenty hours the happy chevalier paraded through Paris
+with this flaring yellow ribbon; and he was not undeceived until his
+friends had another trick in store for him.
+
+He dined one day in the company of a man who understood a little of the
+noble art of conjuring, and performed some clever tricks on the cards.
+Poinsinet's organ of wonder was enormous; he looked on with the gravity
+and awe of a child, and thought the man's tricks sheer miracles. It
+wanted no more to set his companions to work.
+
+"Who is this wonderful man?" said he to his neighbor.
+
+"Why," said the other, mysteriously, "one hardly knows who he is; or,
+at least, one does not like to say to such an indiscreet fellow as
+you are." Poinsinet at once swore to be secret. "Well, then," said his
+friend, "you will hear that man--that wonderful man--called by a name
+which is not his: his real name is Acosta: he is a Portuguese Jew, a
+Rosicrucian, and Cabalist of the first order, and compelled to leave
+Lisbon for fear of the Inquisition. He performs here, as you see, some
+extraordinary things, occasionally; but the master of the house, who
+loves him excessively, would not, for the world, that his name should be
+made public."
+
+"Ah, bah!" said Poinsinet, who affected the bel esprit; "you don't mean
+to say that you believe in magic, and cabalas, and such trash?"
+
+"Do I not? You shall judge for yourself." And, accordingly, Poinsinet
+was presented to the magician, who pretended to take a vast liking
+for him, and declared that he saw in him certain marks which would
+infallibly lead him to great eminence in the magic art, if he chose to
+study it.
+
+Dinner was served, and Poinsinet placed by the side of the
+miracle-worker, who became very confidential with him, and promised
+him--ay, before dinner was over--a remarkable instance of his power.
+Nobody, on this occasion, ventured to cut a single joke against poor
+Poinsinet; nor could he fancy that any trick was intended against him,
+for the demeanor of the society towards him was perfectly grave and
+respectful, and the conversation serious. On a sudden, however, somebody
+exclaimed, "Where is Poinsinet? Did any one see him leave the room?"
+
+All the company exclaimed how singular the disappearance was; and
+Poinsinet himself, growing alarmed, turned round to his neighbor, and
+was about to explain.
+
+"Hush!" said the magician, in a whisper; "I told you that you should see
+what I could do. I HAVE MADE YOU INVISIBLE; be quiet, and you shall see
+some more tricks that I shall play with these fellows."
+
+Poinsinet remained then silent, and listened to his neighbors, who
+agreed, at last, that he was a quiet, orderly personage, and had left
+the table early, being unwilling to drink too much. Presently they
+ceased to talk about him, and resumed their conversation upon other
+matters.
+
+At first it was very quiet and grave, but the master of the house
+brought back the talk to the subject of Poinsinet, and uttered all sorts
+of abuse concerning him. He begged the gentleman, who had introduced
+such a little scamp into his house, to bring him thither no more:
+whereupon the other took up, warmly, Poinsinet's defence; declared that
+he was a man of the greatest merit, frequenting the best society, and
+remarkable for his talents as well as his virtues.
+
+"Ah!" said Poinsinet to the magician, quite charmed at what he heard,
+"how ever shall I thank you, my dear sir, for thus showing me who my
+true friends are?"
+
+The magician promised him still further favors in prospect; and told
+him to look out now, for he was about to throw all the company into a
+temporary fit of madness, which, no doubt, would be very amusing.
+
+In consequence, all the company, who had heard every syllable of the
+conversation, began to perform the most extraordinary antics, much to
+the delight of Poinsinet. One asked a nonsensical question, and the
+other delivered an answer not at all to the purpose. If a man asked for
+a drink, they poured him out a pepper-box or a napkin: they took a pinch
+of snuff, and swore it was excellent wine; and vowed that the bread was
+the most delicious mutton ever tasted. The little man was delighted.
+
+"Ah!" said he, "these fellows are prettily punished for their rascally
+backbiting of me!"
+
+"Gentlemen," said the host, "I shall now give you some celebrated
+champagne," and he poured out to each a glass of water.
+
+"Good heavens!" said one, spitting it out, with the most horrible
+grimace, "where did you get this detestable claret?"
+
+"Ah, faugh!" said a second, "I never tasted such vile corked burgundy in
+all my days!" and he threw the glass of water into Poinsinet's face, as
+did half a dozen of the other guests, drenching the poor wretch to the
+skin. To complete this pleasant illusion, two of the guests fell
+to boxing across Poinsinet, who received a number of the blows, and
+received them with the patience of a fakir, feeling himself more
+flattered by the precious privilege of beholding this scene invisible,
+than hurt by the blows and buffets which the mad company bestowed upon
+him.
+
+The fame of this adventure spread quickly over Paris, and all the world
+longed to have at their houses the representation of Poinsinet the
+Invisible. The servants and the whole company used to be put up to the
+trick; and Poinsinet, who believed in his invisibility as much as he did
+in his existence, went about with his friend and protector the magician.
+People, of course, never pretended to see him, and would very often
+not talk of him at all for some time, but hold sober conversation about
+anything else in the world. When dinner was served, of course there was
+no cover laid for Poinsinet, who carried about a little stool, on
+which he sat by the side of the magician, and always ate off his plate.
+Everybody was astonished at the magician's appetite and at the quantity
+of wine he drank; as for little Poinsinet, he never once suspected any
+trick, and had such a confidence in his magician, that, I do believe,
+if the latter had told him to fling himself out of window, he would have
+done so, without the slightest trepidation.
+
+Among other mystifications in which the Portuguese enchanter plunged
+him, was one which used to afford always a good deal of amusement. He
+informed Poinsinet, with great mystery, that HE WAS NOT HIMSELF; he
+was not, that is to say, that ugly, deformed little monster, called
+Poinsinet; but that his birth was most illustrious, and his real name
+Polycarte. He was, in fact, the son of a celebrated magician; but
+other magicians, enemies of his father, had changed him in his cradle,
+altering his features into their present hideous shape, in order that
+a silly old fellow, called Poinsinet, might take him to be his own son,
+which little monster the magician had likewise spirited away.
+
+The poor wretch was sadly cast down at this; for he tried to fancy
+that his person was agreeable to the ladies, of whom he was one of
+the warmest little admirers possible; and to console him somewhat, the
+magician told him that his real shape was exquisitely beautiful, and as
+soon as he should appear in it, all the beauties in Paris would be at
+his feet. But how to regain it? "Oh, for one minute of that beauty!"
+cried the little man; "what would he not give to appear under that
+enchanting form!" The magician hereupon waved his stick over his head,
+pronounced some awful magical words, and twisted him round three times;
+at the third twist, the men in company seemed struck with astonishment
+and envy, the ladies clasped their hands, and some of them kissed his.
+Everybody declared his beauty to be supernatural.
+
+Poinsinet, enchanted, rushed to a glass. "Fool!" said the magician;
+"do you suppose that YOU can see the change? My power to render you
+invisible, beautiful, or ten times more hideous even than you are,
+extends only to others, not to you. You may look a thousand times in
+the glass, and you will only see those deformed limbs and disgusting
+features with which devilish malice has disguised you." Poor
+little Poinsinet looked, and came back in tears. "But," resumed the
+magician,--"ha, ha, ha!--I know a way in which to disappoint the
+machinations of these fiendish magi."
+
+"Oh, my benefactor!--my great master!--for heaven's sake tell it!"
+gasped Poinsinet.
+
+"Look you--it is this. A prey to enchantment and demoniac art all your
+life long, you have lived until your present age perfectly satisfied;
+nay, absolutely vain of a person the most singularly hideous that ever
+walked the earth!"
+
+"IS it?" whispered Poinsinet. "Indeed and indeed I didn't think it so
+bad!"
+
+"He acknowledges it! he acknowledges it!" roared the magician. "Wretch,
+dotard, owl, mole, miserable buzzard! I have no reason to tell thee now
+that thy form is monstrous, that children cry, that cowards turn pale,
+that teeming matrons shudder to behold it. It is not thy fault that thou
+art thus ungainly: but wherefore so blind? wherefore so conceited of
+thyself! I tell thee, Poinsinet, that over every fresh instance of thy
+vanity the hostile enchanters rejoice and triumph. As long as thou
+art blindly satisfied with thyself; as long as thou pretendest, in thy
+present odious shape, to win the love of aught above a negress; nay,
+further still, until thou hast learned to regard that face, as others
+do, with the most intolerable horror and disgust, to abuse it when thou
+seest it, to despise it, in short, and treat that miserable disguise in
+which the enchanters have wrapped thee with the strongest, hatred and
+scorn, so long art thou destined to wear it."
+
+Such speeches as these, continually repeated, caused Poinsinet to be
+fully convinced of his ugliness; he used to go about in companies, and
+take every opportunity of inveighing against himself; he made verses and
+epigrams against himself; he talked about "that dwarf, Poinsinet;" "that
+buffoon, Poinsinet;" "that conceited, hump-backed Poinsinet;" and he
+would spend hours before the glass, abusing his own face as he saw
+it reflected there, and vowing that he grew handsomer at every fresh
+epithet that he uttered.
+
+Of course the wags, from time to time, used to give him every possible
+encouragement, and declared that since this exercise, his person was
+amazingly improved. The ladies, too, began to be so excessively fond of
+him, that the little fellow was obliged to caution them at last--for the
+good, as he said, of society; he recommended them to draw lots, for
+he could not gratify them all; but promised when his metamorphosis was
+complete, that the one chosen should become the happy Mrs. Poinsinet;
+or, to speak more correctly, Mrs. Polycarte.
+
+I am sorry to say, however, that, on the score of gallantry, Poinsinet
+was never quite convinced of the hideousness of his appearance. He had a
+number of adventures, accordingly, with the ladies, but strange to say,
+the husbands or fathers were always interrupting him. On one occasion
+he was made to pass the night in a slipper-bath full of water; where,
+although he had all his clothes on, he declared that he nearly caught
+his death of cold. Another night, in revenge, the poor fellow
+
+
+              --"dans le simple appareil
+     D'une beauté, qu'on vient d'arracher au sommeil,"
+
+
+spent a number of hours contemplating the beauty of the moon on the
+tiles. These adventures are pretty numerous in the memoirs of M.
+Poinsinet; but the fact is, that people in France were a great deal
+more philosophical in those days than the English are now, so that
+Poinsinet's loves must be passed over, as not being to our taste. His
+magician was a great diver, and told Poinsinet the most wonderful tales
+of his two minutes' absence under water. These two minutes, he said,
+lasted through a year, at least, which he spent in the company of a
+naiad, more beautiful than Venus, in a palace more splendid than even
+Versailles. Fired by the description, Poinsinet used to dip, and dip,
+but he never was known to make any mermaid acquaintances, although he
+fully believed that one day he should find such.
+
+The invisible joke was brought to an end by Poinsinet's too great
+reliance on it; for being, as we have said, of a very tender and
+sanguine disposition, he one day fell in love with a lady in whose
+company he dined, and whom he actually proposed to embrace; but the
+fair lady, in the hurry of the moment, forgot to act up to the joke; and
+instead of receiving Poinsinet's salute with calmness, grew indignant,
+called him an impudent little scoundrel, and lent him a sound box on
+the ear. With this slap the invisibility of Poinsinet disappeared, the
+gnomes and genii left him, and he settled down into common life again,
+and was hoaxed only by vulgar means.
+
+A vast number of pages might be filled with narratives of the tricks
+that were played upon him; but they resemble each other a good deal,
+as may be imagined, and the chief point remarkable about them is the
+wondrous faith of Poinsinet. After being introduced to the Prussian
+ambassador at the Tuileries, he was presented to the Turkish envoy at
+the Place Vendôme, who received him in state, surrounded by the officers
+of his establishment, all dressed in the smartest dresses that the
+wardrobe of the Opéra Comique could furnish.
+
+As the greatest honor that could be done to him, Poinsinet was invited
+to eat, and a tray was produced, on which was a delicate dish prepared
+in the Turkish manner. This consisted of a reasonable quantity of
+mustard, salt, cinnamon and ginger, nutmegs and cloves, with a couple
+of tablespoonfuls of cayenne pepper, to give the whole a flavor; and
+Poinsinet's countenance may be imagined when he introduced into his
+mouth a quantity of this exquisite compound.
+
+"The best of the joke was," says the author who records so many of the
+pitiless tricks practised upon poor Poinsinet, "that the little man used
+to laugh at them afterwards himself with perfect good humor; and lived
+in the daily hope that, from being the sufferer, he should become
+the agent in these hoaxes, and do to others as he had been done by."
+Passing, therefore, one day, on the Pont Neuf, with a friend, who had
+been one of the greatest performers, the latter said to him, "Poinsinet,
+my good fellow, thou hast suffered enough, and thy sufferings have made
+thee so wise and cunning, that thou art worthy of entering among the
+initiated, and hoaxing in thy turn." Poinsinet was charmed; he asked
+when he should be initiated, and how? It was told him that a moment
+would suffice, and that the ceremony might be performed on the spot. At
+this news, and according to order, Poinsinet flung himself straightway
+on his knees in the kennel; and the other, drawing his sword, solemnly
+initiated him into the sacred order of jokers. From that day the little
+man believed himself received into the society; and to this having
+brought him, let us bid him a respectful adieu.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL'S WAGER.
+
+
+It was the hour of the night when there be none stirring save churchyard
+ghosts--when all doors are closed except the gates of graves, and all
+eyes shut but the eyes of wicked men.
+
+When there is no sound on the earth except the ticking of the
+grasshopper, or the croaking of obscene frogs in the poole.
+
+And no light except that of the blinking starres, and the wicked and
+devilish wills-o'-the-wisp, as they gambol among the marshes, and lead
+good men astraye.
+
+When there is nothing moving in heaven except the owle, as he flappeth
+along lazily; or the magician, as he rides on his infernal broomsticke,
+whistling through the aire like the arrowes of a Yorkshire archere.
+
+It was at this hour (namely, at twelve o'clock of the night,) that two
+beings went winging through the black clouds, and holding converse with
+each other.
+
+Now the first was Mercurius, the messenger, not of gods (as the heathens
+feigned), but of daemons; and the second, with whom he held company, was
+the soul of Sir Roger de Rollo, the brave knight. Sir Roger was Count
+of Chauchigny, in Champagne; Seigneur of Santerre, Villacerf and aultre
+lieux. But the great die as well as the humble; and nothing remained of
+brave Rodger now, but his coffin and his deathless soul.
+
+And Mercurius, in order to keep fast the soul, his companion, had bound
+him round the neck with his tail; which, when the soul was stubborn, he
+would draw so tight as to strangle him wellnigh, sticking into him the
+barbed point thereof; whereat the poor soul, Sir Rollo, would groan and
+roar lustily.
+
+Now they two had come together from the gates of purgatorie, being bound
+to those regions of fire and flame where poor sinners fry and roast in
+saecula saeculorum.
+
+"It is hard," said the poor Sir Rollo, as they went gliding through the
+clouds, "that I should thus be condemned for ever, and all for want of a
+single ave."
+
+"How, Sir Soul?" said the daemon. "You were on earth so wicked, that
+not one, or a million of aves, could suffice to keep from hell-flame
+a creature like thee; but cheer up and be merry; thou wilt be but a
+subject of our lord the Devil, as am I; and, perhaps, thou wilt be
+advanced to posts of honor, as am I also:" and to show his authoritie,
+he lashed with his tail the ribbes of the wretched Rollo.
+
+"Nevertheless, sinner as I am, one more ave would have saved me; for my
+sister, who was Abbess of St. Mary of Chauchigny, did so prevail, by her
+prayer and good works, for my lost and wretched soul, that every day I
+felt the pains of purgatory decrease; the pitchforks which, on my first
+entry, had never ceased to vex and torment my poor carcass, were now
+not applied above once a week; the roasting had ceased, the boiling
+had discontinued; only a certain warmth was kept up, to remind me of my
+situation."
+
+"A gentle stewe," said the daemon.
+
+"Yea, truly, I was but in a stew, and all from the effects of the
+prayers of my blessed sister. But yesterday, he who watched me in
+purgatory told me, that yet another prayer from my sister, and my
+bonds should be unloosed, and I, who am now a devil, should have been a
+blessed angel."
+
+"And the other ave?" said the daemon.
+
+"She died, sir--my sister died--death choked her in the middle of
+the prayer." And hereat the wretched spirit began to weepe and whine
+piteously; his salt tears falling over his beard, and scalding the tail
+of Mercurius the devil.
+
+"It is, in truth, a hard case," said the daemon; "but I know of
+no remedy save patience, and for that you will have an excellent
+opportunity in your lodgings below."
+
+"But I have relations," said the Earl; "my kinsman Randal, who has
+inherited my lands, will he not say a prayer for his uncle?"
+
+"Thou didst hate and oppress him when living."
+
+"It is true; but an ave is not much; his sister, my niece, Matilda--"
+
+"You shut her in a convent, and hanged her lover."
+
+"Had I not reason? besides, has she not others?"
+
+"A dozen, without doubt."
+
+"And my brother, the prior?"
+
+"A liege subject of my lord the Devil: he never opens his mouth, except
+to utter an oath, or to swallow a cup of wine."
+
+"And yet, if but one of these would but say an ave for me, I should be
+saved."
+
+"Aves with them are rarae aves," replied Mercurius, wagging his tail
+right waggishly; "and, what is more, I will lay thee any wager that not
+one of these will say a prayer to save thee."
+
+"I would wager willingly," responded he of Chauchigny; "but what has a
+poor soul like me to stake?"
+
+"Every evening, after the day's roasting, my lord Satan giveth a cup of
+cold water to his servants; I will bet thee thy water for a year, that
+none of the three will pray for thee."
+
+"Done!" said Rollo.
+
+"Done!" said the daemon; "and here, if I mistake not, is thy castle of
+Chauchigny."
+
+Indeed, it was true. The soul, on looking down, perceived the tall
+towers, the courts, the stables, and the fair gardens of the castle.
+Although it was past midnight, there was a blaze of light in the
+banqueting-hall, and a lamp burning in the open window of the Lady
+Matilda.
+
+"With whom shall we begin?" said the daemon: "with the baron or the
+lady?"
+
+"With the lady, if you will."
+
+"Be it so; her window is open, let us enter."
+
+So they descended, and entered silently into Matilda's chamber.
+
+
+The young lady's eyes were fixed so intently on a little clock, that
+it was no wonder that she did not perceive the entrance of her two
+visitors. Her fair cheek rested on her white arm, and her white arm on
+the cushion of a great chair in which she sat, pleasantly supported by
+sweet thoughts and swan's down; a lute was at her side, and a book
+of prayers lay under the table (for piety is always modest). Like the
+amorous Alexander, she sighed and looked (at the clock)--and sighed for
+ten minutes or more, when she softly breathed the word "Edward!"
+
+At this the soul of the Baron was wroth. "The jade is at her old
+pranks," said he to the devil; and then addressing Matilda: "I pray
+thee, sweet niece, turn thy thoughts for a moment from that villanous
+page, Edward, and give them to thine affectionate uncle."
+
+When she heard the voice, and saw the awful apparition of her uncle (for
+a year's sojourn in purgatory had not increased the comeliness of his
+appearance), she started, screamed, and of course fainted.
+
+But the devil Mercurius soon restored her to herself. "What's o'clock?"
+said she, as soon as she had recovered from her fit: "is he come?"
+
+"Not thy lover, Maude, but thine uncle--that is, his soul. For the love
+of heaven, listen to me: I have been frying in purgatory for a year
+past, and should have been in heaven but for the want of a single ave."
+
+"I will say it for thee to-morrow, uncle."
+
+"To-night, or never."
+
+"Well, to-night be it:" and she requested the devil Mercurius to give
+her the prayer-book from under the table; but he had no sooner touched
+the holy book than he dropped it with a shriek and a yell. "It was
+hotter," he said, "than his master Sir Lucifer's own particular
+pitchfork." And the lady was forced to begin her ave without the aid of
+her missal.
+
+At the commencement of her devotions the daemon retired, and carried
+with him the anxious soul of poor Sir Roger de Rollo.
+
+The lady knelt down--she sighed deeply; she looked again at the clock,
+and began--
+
+"Ave Maria."
+
+When a lute was heard under the window, and a sweet voice singing--
+
+"Hark!" said Matilda.
+
+
+     "Now the toils of day are over,
+        And the sun hath sunk to rest,
+      Seeking, like a fiery lover,
+        The bosom of the blushing west--
+
+     "The faithful night keeps watch and ward,
+        Raising the moon, her silver shield,
+      And summoning the stars to guard
+        The slumbers of my fair Mathilde!"
+
+
+"For mercy's sake!" said Sir Rollo, "the ave first, and next the song."
+
+So Matilda again dutifully betook her to her devotions, and began--
+
+"Ave Maria gratiâ plena!" but the music began again, and the prayer
+ceased of course.
+
+
+     "The faithful night!  Now all things lie
+        Hid by her mantle dark and dim,
+      In pious hope I hither hie,
+        And humbly chant mine ev'ning hymn.
+
+     "Thou art my prayer, my saint, my shrine!
+        (For never holy pilgrim kneel'd,
+      Or wept at feet more pure than thine),
+        My virgin love, my sweet Mathilde!"
+
+
+"Virgin love!" said the Baron. "Upon my soul, this is too bad!" and he
+thought of the lady's lover whom he had caused to be hanged.
+
+But SHE only thought of him who stood singing at her window.
+
+"Niece Matilda!" cried Sir Roger, agonizedly, "wilt thou listen to the
+lies of an impudent page, whilst thine uncle is waiting but a dozen
+words to make him happy?"
+
+At this Matilda grew angry: "Edward is neither impudent nor a liar, Sir
+Uncle, and I will listen to the end of the song."
+
+"Come away," said Mercurius; "he hath yet got wield, field, sealed,
+congealed, and a dozen other rhymes beside; and after the song will come
+the supper."
+
+So the poor soul was obliged to go; while the lady listened, and the
+page sung away till morning.
+
+
+"My virtues have been my ruin," said poor Sir Rollo, as he and Mercurius
+slunk silently out of the window. "Had I hanged that knave Edward, as I
+did the page his predecessor, my niece would have sung mine ave, and I
+should have been by this time an angel in heaven."
+
+"He is reserved for wiser purposes," responded the devil: "he will
+assassinate your successor, the lady Mathilde's brother; and, in
+consequence, will be hanged. In the love of the lady he will be
+succeeded by a gardener, who will be replaced by a monk, who will
+give way to an ostler, who will be deposed by a Jew pedler, who shall,
+finally, yield to a noble earl, the future husband of the fair Mathilde.
+So that, you see, instead of having one poor soul a-frying, we may now
+look forward to a goodly harvest for our lord the Devil."
+
+The soul of the Baron began to think that his companion knew too much
+for one who would make fair bets; but there was no help for it; he would
+not, and he could not, cry off: and he prayed inwardly that the brother
+might be found more pious than the sister.
+
+But there seemed little chance of this. As they crossed the court,
+lackeys, with smoking dishes and, full jugs, passed and repassed
+continually, although it was long past midnight. On entering the hall,
+they found Sir Randal at the head of a vast table, surrounded by a
+fiercer and more motley collection of individuals than had congregated
+there even in the time of Sir Rollo. The lord of the castle had
+signified that "it was his royal pleasure to be drunk," and the
+gentlemen of his train had obsequiously followed their master. Mercurius
+was delighted with the scene, and relaxed his usually rigid countenance
+into a bland and benevolent smile, which became him wonderfully.
+
+The entrance of Sir Roger, who had been dead about a year, and a person
+with hoofs, horns, and a tail, rather disturbed the hilarity of the
+company. Sir Randal dropped his cup of wine; and Father Peter, the
+confessor, incontinently paused in the midst of a profane song, with
+which he was amusing the society.
+
+"Holy Mother!" cried he, "it is Sir Roger."
+
+"Alive!" screamed Sir Randal.
+
+"No, my lord," Mercurius said; "Sir Roger is dead, but cometh on a
+matter of business; and I have the honor to act as his counsellor and
+attendant."
+
+"Nephew," said Sir Roger, "the daemon saith justly; I am come on a
+trifling affair, in which thy service is essential."
+
+"I will do anything, uncle, in my power."
+
+"Thou canst give me life, if thou wilt?" But Sir Randal looked very
+blank at this proposition. "I mean life spiritual, Randal," said Sir
+Roger; and thereupon he explained to him the nature of the wager.
+
+Whilst he was telling his story, his companion Mercurius was playing all
+sorts of antics in the hall; and, by his wit and fun, became so popular
+with this godless crew, that they lost all the fear which his first
+appearance had given them. The friar was wonderfully taken with him,
+and used his utmost eloquence and endeavors to convert the devil; the
+knights stopped drinking to listen to the argument; the men-at-arms
+forbore brawling; and the wicked little pages crowded round the two
+strange disputants, to hear their edifying discourse. The ghostly man,
+however, had little chance in the controversy, and certainly little
+learning to carry it on. Sir Randal interrupted him. "Father Peter,"
+said he, "our kinsman is condemned for ever, for want of a single ave:
+wilt thou say it for him?" "Willingly, my lord," said the monk, "with my
+book;" and accordingly he produced his missal to read, without which aid
+it appeared that the holy father could not manage the desired prayer.
+But the crafty Mercurius had, by his devilish art, inserted a song in
+the place of the ave, so that Father Peter, instead of chanting an hymn,
+sang the following irreverent ditty--
+
+
+     "Some love the matin-chimes, which toll
+        The hour of prayer to sinner:
+      But better far's the mid-day bell,
+        Which speaks the hour of dinner;
+      For when I see a smoking fish,
+        Or capon drown'd in gravy,
+      Or noble haunch on silver dish,
+        Full glad I sing mine ave.
+
+     "My pulpit is an ale-house bench,
+        Whereon I sit so jolly;
+      A smiling rosy country wench
+        My saint and patron holy.
+      I kiss her cheek so red and sleek,
+        I press her ringlets wavy;
+      And in her willing ear I speak
+        A most religious ave.
+
+     "And if I'm blind, yet heaven is kind,
+        And holy saints forgiving;
+      For sure he leads a right good life
+        Who thus admires good living.
+      Above, they say, our flesh is air,
+        Our blood celestial ichor:
+      Oh, grant! mid all the changes there,
+        They may not change our liquor!"
+
+
+And with this pious wish the holy confessor tumbled under the table in
+an agony of devout drunkenness; whilst the knights, the men-at-arms, and
+the wicked little pages, rang out the last verse with a most melodious
+and emphatic glee. "I am sorry, fair uncle," hiccupped Sir Randal,
+"that, in the matter of the ave, we could not oblige thee in a more
+orthodox manner; but the holy father has failed, and there is not
+another man in the hall who hath an idea of a prayer."
+
+"It is my own fault," said Sir Rollo; "for I hanged the last confessor."
+And he wished his nephew a surly good-night, as he prepared to quit the
+room.
+
+"Au revoir, gentlemen," said the devil Mercurius; and once more fixed
+his tail round the neck of his disappointed companion.
+
+The spirit of poor Rollo was sadly cast down; the devil, on the
+contrary, was in high good humor. He wagged his tail with the most
+satisfied air in the world, and cut a hundred jokes at the expense of
+his poor associate. On they sped, cleaving swiftly through the cold
+night winds, frightening the birds that were roosting in the woods, and
+the owls that were watching in the towers.
+
+In the twinkling of an eye, as it is known, devils can fly hundreds of
+miles: so that almost the same beat of the clock which left these two in
+Champagne, found them hovering over Paris. They dropped into the court
+of the Lazarist Convent, and winded their way, through passage and
+cloister, until they reached the door of the prior's cell.
+
+Now the prior, Rollo's brother, was a wicked and malignant sorcerer; his
+time was spent in conjuring devils and doing wicked deeds, instead of
+fasting, scourging, and singing holy psalms: this Mercurius knew; and
+he, therefore, was fully at ease as to the final result of his wager
+with poor Sir Roger.
+
+"You seem to be well acquainted with the road," said the knight.
+
+"I have reason," answered Mercurius, "having, for a long period, had the
+acquaintance of his reverence, your brother; but you have little chance
+with him."
+
+"And why?" said Sir Rollo.
+
+"He is under a bond to my master, never to say a prayer, or else his
+soul and his body are forfeited at once."
+
+"Why, thou false and traitorous devil!" said the enraged knight; "and
+thou knewest this when we made our wager?"
+
+"Undoubtedly: do you suppose I would have done so had there been any
+chance of losing?"
+
+And with this they arrived at Father Ignatius's door.
+
+"Thy cursed presence threw a spell on my niece, and stopped the tongue
+of my nephew's chaplain; I do believe that had I seen either of them
+alone, my wager had been won."
+
+"Certainly; therefore, I took good care to go with thee: however, thou
+mayest see the prior alone, if thou wilt; and lo! his door is open. I
+will stand without for five minutes, when it will be time to commence
+our journey."
+
+It was the poor Baron's last chance: and he entered his brother's room
+more for the five minutes' respite than from any hope of success.
+
+Father Ignatius, the prior, was absorbed in magic calculations: he stood
+in the middle of a circle of skulls, with no garment except his long
+white beard, which reached to his knees; he was waving a silver rod, and
+muttering imprecations in some horrible tongue.
+
+But Sir Rollo came forward and interrupted his incantation. "I am," said
+he, "the shade of thy brother Roger de Rollo; and have come, from pure
+brotherly love, to warn thee of thy fate."
+
+"Whence camest thou?"
+
+"From the abode of the blessed in Paradise," replied Sir Roger, who was
+inspired with a sudden thought; "it was but five minutes ago that the
+Patron Saint of thy church told me of thy danger, and of thy wicked
+compact with the fiend. 'Go,' said he, 'to thy miserable brother, and
+tell him there is but one way by which he may escape from paying the
+awful forfeit of his bond.'"
+
+"And how may that be?" said the prior; "the false fiend hath deceived
+me; I have given him my soul, but have received no worldly benefit in
+return. Brother! dear brother! how may I escape?"
+
+"I will tell thee. As soon as I heard the voice of blessed St. Mary
+Lazarus" (the worthy Earl had, at a pinch, coined the name of a saint),
+"I left the clouds, where, with other angels, I was seated, and sped
+hither to save thee. 'Thy brother,' said the Saint, 'hath but one day
+more to live, when he will become for all eternity the subject of Satan;
+if he would escape, he must boldly break his bond, by saying an ave.'"
+
+"It is the express condition of the agreement," said the unhappy monk,
+"I must say no prayer, or that instant I become Satan's, body and soul."
+
+"It is the express condition of the Saint," answered Roger, fiercely;
+"pray, brother, pray, or thou art lost for ever."
+
+So the foolish monk knelt down, and devoutly sung out an ave. "Amen!"
+said Sir Roger, devoutly.
+
+"Amen!" said Mercurius, as, suddenly, coming behind, he seized
+Ignatius by his long beard, and flew up with him to the top of the
+church-steeple.
+
+The monk roared, and screamed, and swore against his brother; but it
+was of no avail: Sir Roger smiled kindly on him, and said, "Do not fret,
+brother; it must have come to this in a year or two."
+
+And he flew alongside of Mercurius to the steeple-top: BUT THIS TIME THE
+DEVIL HAD NOT HIS TAIL ROUND HIS NECK. "I will let thee off thy bet,"
+said he to the daemon; for he could afford, now, to be generous.
+
+"I believe, my lord," said the daemon, politely, "that our ways separate
+here." Sir Roger sailed gayly upwards: while Mercurius having bound the
+miserable monk faster than ever, he sunk downwards to earth, and perhaps
+lower. Ignatius was heard roaring and screaming as the devil dashed him
+against the iron spikes and buttresses of the church.
+
+
+The moral of this story will be given in the second edition.
+
+
+
+
+MADAME SAND AND THE NEW APOCALYPSE.
+
+
+I don't know an impression more curious than that which is formed in a
+foreigner's mind, who has been absent from this place for two or three
+years, returns to it, and beholds the change which has taken place, in
+the meantime, in French fashions and ways of thinking. Two years ago,
+for instance, when I left the capital, I left the young gentlemen of
+France with their hair brushed en toupet in front, and the toes of their
+boots round; now the boot-toes are pointed, and the hair combed
+flat, and, parted in the middle, falls in ringlets on the fashionable
+shoulders; and, in like manner, with books as with boots, the fashion
+has changed considerably, and it is not a little curious to contrast
+the old modes with the new. Absurd as was the literary dandyism of those
+days, it is not a whit less absurd now: only the manner is changed, and
+our versatile Frenchmen have passed from one caricature to another.
+
+The revolution may be called a caricature of freedom, as the empire
+was of glory; and what they borrow from foreigners undergoes the same
+process. They take top-boots and mackintoshes from across the water, and
+caricature our fashions; they read a little, very little, Shakespeare,
+and caricature our poetry: and while in David's time art and religion
+were only a caricature of Heathenism, now, on the contrary, these
+two commodities are imported from Germany; and distorted caricatures
+originally, are still farther distorted on passing the frontier.
+
+I trust in heaven that German art and religion will take no hold in our
+country (where there is a fund of roast-beef that will expel any such
+humbug in the end); but these sprightly Frenchmen have relished the
+mystical doctrines mightily; and having watched the Germans, with their
+sanctified looks, and quaint imitations of the old times, and mysterious
+transcendental talk, are aping many of their fashions; as well and
+solemnly as they can: not very solemnly, God wot; for I think one should
+always prepare to grin when a Frenchman looks particularly grave, being
+sure that there is something false and ridiculous lurking under the
+owl-like solemnity.
+
+When last in Paris, we were in the midst of what was called a Catholic
+reaction. Artists talked of faith in poems and pictures; churches
+were built here and there; old missals were copied and purchased; and
+numberless portraits of saints, with as much gilding about them as
+ever was used in the fifteenth century, appeared in churches, ladies'
+boudoirs, and picture-shops. One or two fashionable preachers rose, and
+were eagerly followed; the very youth of the schools gave up their pipes
+and billiards for some time, and flocked in crowds to Notre Dame, to sit
+under the feet of Lacordaire. I went to visit the Church of Notre Dame
+de Lorette yesterday, which was finished in the heat of this Catholic
+rage, and was not a little struck by the similarity of the place to
+the worship celebrated in it, and the admirable manner in which the
+architect has caused his work to express the public feeling of the
+moment. It is a pretty little bijou of a church: it is supported by sham
+marble pillars; it has a gaudy ceiling of blue and gold, which will look
+very well for some time; and is filled with gaudy pictures and carvings,
+in the very pink of the mode. The congregation did not offer a bad
+illustration of the present state of Catholic reaction. Two or three
+stray people were at prayers; there was no service; a few countrymen
+and idlers were staring about at the pictures; and the Swiss, the paid
+guardian of the place, was comfortably and appropriately asleep on his
+bench at the door. I am inclined to think the famous reaction is over:
+the students have taken to their Sunday pipes and billiards again; and
+one or two cafés have been established, within the last year, that are
+ten times handsomer than Notre Dame de Lorette.
+
+However, if the immortal Görres and the German mystics have had their
+day, there is the immortal Göthe, and the Pantheists; and I incline to
+think that the fashion has set very strongly in their favor. Voltaire
+and the Encyclopaedians are voted, now, barbares, and there is no term
+of reprobation strong enough for heartless Humes and Helvetiuses,
+who lived but to destroy, and who only thought to doubt. Wretched as
+Voltaire's sneers and puns are, I think there is something more
+manly and earnest even in them, than in the present muddy French
+transcendentalism. Pantheism is the word now; one and all have begun to
+éprouver the besoin of a religious sentiment; and we are deluged with
+a host of gods accordingly. Monsieur de Balzac feels himself to be
+inspired; Victor Hugo is a god; Madame Sand is a god; that tawdry man of
+genius, Jules Janin, who writes theatrical reviews for the Débats, has
+divine intimations; and there is scarce a beggarly, beardless scribbler
+of poems and prose, but tells you, in his preface, of the sainteté of
+the sacerdoce littéraire; or a dirty student, sucking tobacco and
+beer, and reeling home with a grisette from the chaumière, who is not
+convinced of the necessity of a new "Messianism," and will hiccup, to
+such as will listen, chapters of his own drunken Apocalypse. Surely, the
+negatives of the old days were far less dangerous than the assertions of
+the present; and you may fancy what a religion that must be, which has
+such high priests.
+
+There is no reason to trouble the reader with details of the lives of
+many of these prophets and expounders of new revelations. Madame Sand,
+for instance, I do not know personally, and can only speak of her from
+report. True or false, the history, at any rate, is not very edifying;
+and so may be passed over: but, as a certain great philosopher told us,
+in very humble and simple words, that we are not to expect to gather
+grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles, we may, at least, demand, in
+all persons assuming the character of moralist or philosopher--order,
+soberness, and regularity of life; for we are apt to distrust the
+intellect that we fancy can be swayed by circumstance or passion; and we
+know how circumstance and passion WILL sway the intellect: how mortified
+vanity will form excuses for itself; and how temper turns angrily upon
+conscience, that reproves it. How often have we called our judge our
+enemy, because he has given sentence against us!--How often have we
+called the right wrong, because the right condemns us! And in the lives
+of many of the bitter foes of the Christian doctrine, can we find no
+personal reason for their hostility? The men in Athens said it was out
+of regard for religion that they murdered Socrates; but we have had
+time, since then, to reconsider the verdict; and Socrates' character is
+pretty pure now, in spite of the sentence and the jury of those days.
+
+The Parisian philosophers will attempt to explain to you the changes
+through which Madame Sand's mind has passed,--the initiatory trials,
+labors, and sufferings which she has had to go through,--before she
+reached her present happy state of mental illumination. She teaches
+her wisdom in parables, that are, mostly, a couple of volumes long; and
+began, first, by an eloquent attack on marriage, in the charming novel
+of "Indiana." "Pity," cried she, "for the poor woman who, united to a
+being whose brute force makes him her superior, should venture to break
+the bondage which is imposed on her, and allow her heart to be free."
+
+In support of this claim of pity, she writes two volumes of the most
+exquisite prose. What a tender, suffering creature is Indiana; how
+little her husband appreciates that gentleness which he is crushing by
+his tyranny and brutal scorn; how natural it is that, in the absence
+of his sympathy, she, poor clinging confiding creature, should seek
+elsewhere for shelter; how cautious should we be, to call criminal--to
+visit with too heavy a censure--an act which is one of the natural
+impulses of a tender heart, that seeks but for a worthy object of love.
+But why attempt to tell the tale of beautiful Indiana? Madame Sand has
+written it so well, that not the hardest-hearted husband in Christendom
+can fail to be touched by her sorrows, though he may refuse to listen
+to her argument. Let us grant, for argument's sake, that the laws of
+marriage, especially the French laws of marriage, press very cruelly
+upon unfortunate women.
+
+But if one wants to have a question of this, or any nature, honestly
+argued, it is, better, surely, to apply to an indifferent person for
+an umpire. For instance, the stealing of pocket-handkerchiefs or
+snuff-boxes may or may not be vicious; but if we, who have not the wit,
+or will not take the trouble to decide the question ourselves, want to
+hear the real rights of the matter, we should not, surely, apply to a
+pickpocket to know what he thought on the point. It might naturally be
+presumed that he would be rather a prejudiced person--particularly
+as his reasoning, if successful, might get him OUT OF GAOL. This is a
+homely illustration, no doubt; all we would urge by it is, that Madame
+Sand having, according to the French newspapers, had a stern husband,
+and also having, according to the newspapers, sought "sympathy"
+elsewhere, her arguments may be considered to be somewhat partial, and
+received with some little caution.
+
+And tell us who have been the social reformers?--the haters, that is,
+of the present system, according to which we live, love, marry, have
+children, educate them, and endow them--ARE THEY PURE THEMSELVES? I do
+believe not one; and directly a man begins to quarrel with the world and
+its ways, and to lift up, as he calls it, the voice of his despair, and
+preach passionately to mankind about this tyranny of faith, customs,
+laws; if we examine what the personal character of the preacher is, we
+begin pretty clearly to understand the value of the doctrine. Any one
+can see why Rousseau should be such a whimpering reformer, and Byron
+such a free and easy misanthropist, and why our accomplished Madame
+Sand, who has a genius and eloquence inferior to neither, should take
+the present condition of mankind (French-kind) so much to heart, and
+labor so hotly to set it right.
+
+After "Indiana" (which, we presume, contains the lady's notions upon
+wives and husbands) came "Valentine," which may be said to exhibit her
+doctrine, in regard of young men and maidens, to whom the author would
+accord, as we fancy, the same tender license. "Valentine" was followed
+by "Lelia," a wonderful book indeed, gorgeous in eloquence, and rich in
+magnificent poetry: a regular topsyturvyfication of morality, a
+thieves' and prostitutes' apotheosis. This book has received some late
+enlargements and emendations by the writer; it contains her notions on
+morals, which, as we have said, are so peculiar, that, alas! they only
+can be mentioned here, not particularized: but of "Spiridion" we may
+write a few pages, as it is her religious manifesto.
+
+In this work, the lady asserts her pantheistical doctrine, and openly
+attacks the received Christian creed. She declares it to be useless now,
+and unfitted to the exigencies and the degree of culture of the actual
+world; and, though it would be hardly worth while to combat her opinions
+in due form, it is, at least, worth while to notice them, not merely
+from the extraordinary eloquence and genius of the woman herself, but
+because they express the opinions of a great number of people besides:
+for she not only produces her own thoughts, but imitates those of others
+very eagerly; and one finds in her writings so much similarity with
+others, or, in others, so much resemblance to her, that the book before
+us may pass for the expression of the sentiments of a certain French
+party.
+
+"Dieu est mort," says another writer of the same class, and of great
+genius too.--"Dieu est mort," writes Mr. Henry Heine, speaking
+of the Christian God; and he adds, in a daring figure of
+speech;--"N'entendez-vous pas sonner la Clochette?--on porte les
+sacremens à un Dieu qui se meurt!" Another of the pantheist poetical
+philosophers, Mr. Edgar Quinet, has a poem, in which Christ and the
+Virgin Mary are made to die similarly, and the former is classed with
+Prometheus. This book of "Spiridion" is a continuation of the theme, and
+perhaps you will listen to some of the author's expositions of it.
+
+It must be confessed that the controversialists of the present day have
+an eminent advantage over their predecessors in the days of folios;
+it required some learning then to write a book, and some time, at
+least--for the very labor of writing out a thousand such vast pages
+would demand a considerable period. But now, in the age of duodecimos,
+the system is reformed altogether: a male or female controversialist
+draws upon his imagination, and not his learning; makes a story instead
+of an argument, and, in the course of 150 pages (where the preacher has
+it all his own way) will prove or disprove you anything. And, to our
+shame be it said, we Protestants have set the example of this kind of
+proselytism--those detestable mixtures of truth, lies, false sentiment,
+false reasoning, bad grammar, correct and genuine philanthropy and
+piety--I mean our religious tracts, which any woman or man, be he ever
+so silly, can take upon himself to write, and sell for a penny, as if
+religious instruction were the easiest thing in the world. We, I say,
+have set the example in this kind of composition, and all the sects
+of the earth will, doubtless, speedily follow it. I can point you out
+blasphemies in famous pious tracts that are as dreadful as those above
+mentioned; but this is no place for such discussions, and we had better
+return to Madame Sand. As Mrs. Sherwood expounds, by means of many
+touching histories and anecdotes of little boys and girls, her notions
+of church history, church catechism, church doctrine;--as the author
+of "Father Clement, a Roman Catholic Story," demolishes the stately
+structure of eighteen centuries, the mighty and beautiful Roman Catholic
+faith, in whose bosom repose so many saints and sages,--by the means
+of a three-and-sixpenny duodecimo volume, which tumbles over the vast
+fabric, as David's pebble-stone did Goliath;--as, again, the Roman
+Catholic author of "Geraldine" falls foul of Luther and Calvin, and
+drowns the awful echoes of their tremendous protest by the sounds of
+her little half-crown trumpet: in like manner, by means of pretty
+sentimental tales, and cheap apologues, Mrs. Sand proclaims HER
+truth--that we need a new Messiah, and that the Christian religion is
+no more! O awful, awful name of God! Light unbearable! Mystery
+unfathomable! Vastness immeasurable!--Who are these who come forward to
+explain the mystery, and gaze unblinking into the depths of the light,
+and measure the immeasurable vastness to a hair? O name, that God's
+people of old did fear to utter! O light, that God's prophet would
+have perished had he seen! Who are these that are now so familiar with
+it?--Women, truly; for the most part weak women--weak in intellect,
+weak mayhap in spelling and grammar, but marvellously strong in
+faith:--women, who step down to the people with stately step and voice
+of authority, and deliver their twopenny tablets, as if there were some
+Divine authority for the wretched nonsense recorded there!
+
+With regard to the spelling and grammar, our Parisian Pythoness stands,
+in the goodly fellowship, remarkable. Her style is a noble, and, as far
+as a foreigner can judge, a strange tongue, beautifully rich and pure.
+She has a very exuberant imagination, and, with it, a very chaste style
+of expression. She never scarcely indulges in declamation, as other
+modern prophets do, and yet her sentences are exquisitely melodious
+and full. She seldom runs a thought to death (after the manner of some
+prophets, who, when they catch a little one, toy with it until they kill
+it), but she leaves you at the end of one of her brief, rich, melancholy
+sentences, with plenty of food for future cogitation. I can't express
+to you the charm of them; they seem to me like the sound of country
+bells--provoking I don't know what vein of musing and meditation, and
+falling sweetly and sadly on the ear.
+
+This wonderful power of language must have been felt by most people
+who read Madame Sand's first books, "Valentine" and "Indiana": in
+"Spiridion" it is greater, I think, than ever; and for those who are
+not afraid of the matter of the novel, the manner will be found most
+delightful. The author's intention, I presume, is to describe, in
+a parable, her notions of the downfall of the Catholic church; and,
+indeed, of the whole Christian scheme: she places her hero in a
+monastery in Italy, where, among the characters about him, and the
+events which occur, the particular tenets of Madame Dudevant's doctrine
+are not inaptly laid down. Innocent, faithful, tender-hearted, a young
+monk, by name Angel, finds himself, when he has pronounced his vows, an
+object of aversion and hatred to the godly men whose lives he so much
+respects, and whose love he would make any sacrifice to win. After
+enduring much, he flings himself at the feet of his confessor, and begs
+for his sympathy and counsel; but the confessor spurns him away, and
+accuses him, fiercely, of some unknown and terrible crime--bids him
+never return to the confessional until contrition has touched his heart,
+and the stains which sully his spirit are, by sincere repentance, washed
+away.
+
+"Thus speaking," says Angel, "Father Hegesippus tore away his robe,
+which I was holding in my supplicating hands. In a sort of wildness I
+still grasped it tighter; he pushed me fiercely from him, and I fell
+with my face towards the ground. He quitted me, closing violently after
+him the door of the sacristy, in which this scene had passed. I was
+left alone in the darkness. Either from the violence of my fall, or the
+excess of my grief, a vein had burst in my throat, and a haemorrhage
+ensued. I had not the force to rise; I felt my senses rapidly sinking,
+and, presently, I lay stretched on the pavement, unconscious, and bathed
+in my blood."
+
+[Now the wonderful part of the story begins.]
+
+"I know not how much time I passed in this way. As I came to myself
+I felt an agreeable coolness. It seemed as if some harmonious air was
+playing round about me, stirring gently in my hair, and drying the drops
+of perspiration on my brow. It seemed to approach, and then again to
+withdraw, breathing now softly and sweetly in the distance, and now
+returning, as if to give me strength and courage to rise.
+
+"I would not, however, do so as yet; for I felt myself, as I lay, under
+the influence of a pleasure quite new to me; and listened, in a kind
+of peaceful aberration, to the gentle murmurs of the summer wind, as it
+breathed on me through the closed window-blinds above me. Then I fancied
+I heard a voice that spoke to me from the end of the sacristy:
+it whispered so low that I could not catch the words. I remained
+motionless, and gave it my whole attention. At last I heard, distinctly,
+the following sentence:--'Spirit of Truth, raise up these victims of
+ignorance and imposture.' 'Father Hegesippus,' said I, in a weak voice,
+'is that you who are returning to me?' But no one answered. I lifted
+myself on my hands and knees, I listened again, but I heard nothing. I
+got up completely, and looked about me: I had fallen so near to the
+only door in this little room, that none, after the departure of the
+confessor, could have entered it without passing over me; besides, the
+door was shut, and only opened from the inside by a strong lock of the
+ancient shape. I touched it, and assured myself that it was closed. I
+was seized with terror, and, for some moments, did not dare to move.
+Leaning against the door, I looked round, and endeavored to see into
+the gloom in which the angles of the room were enveloped. A pale light,
+which came from an upper window, half closed, was seen to be trembling
+in the midst of the apartment. The wind beat the shutter to and fro,
+and enlarged or diminished the space through which the light issued. The
+objects which were in this half light--the praying-desk, surmounted by
+its skull--a few books lying on the benches--a surplice hanging against
+the wall--seemed to move with the shadow of the foliage that the air
+agitated behind the window. When I thought I was alone, I felt ashamed
+of my former timidity; I made the sign of the cross, and was about to
+move forward in order to open the shutter altogether, but a deep sigh
+came from the praying-desk, and kept me nailed to my place. And yet I
+saw the desk distinctly enough to be sure that no person was near it.
+Then I had an idea which gave me courage. Some person, I thought, is
+behind the shutter, and has been saying his prayers outside without
+thinking of me. But who would be so bold as to express such wishes and
+utter such a prayer as I had just heard?
+
+"Curiosity, the only passion and amusement permitted in a cloister, now
+entirely possessed me, and I advanced towards the window. But I had not
+made a step when a black shadow, as it seemed to me, detaching itself
+from the praying-desk, traversed the room, directing itself towards the
+window, and passed swiftly by me. The movement was so rapid that I had
+not time to avoid what seemed a body advancing towards me, and my fright
+was so great that I thought I should faint a second time. But I felt
+nothing, and, as if the shadow had passed through me, I saw it suddenly
+disappear to my left.
+
+"I rushed to the window, I pushed back the blind with precipitation, and
+looked round the sacristy: I was there, entirely alone. I looked into
+the garden--it was deserted, and the mid-day wind was wandering among
+the flowers. I took courage, I examined all the corners of the room; I
+looked behind the praying-desk, which was very large, and I shook all
+the sacerdotal vestments which were hanging on the walls, everything was
+in its natural condition, and could give me no explanation of what had
+just occurred. The sight of all the blood I had lost led me to fancy
+that my brain had, probably, been weakened by the haemorrhage, and that
+I had been a prey to some delusion. I retired to my cell, and remained
+shut up there until the next day."
+
+I don't know whether the reader has been as much struck with the above
+mysterious scene as the writer has; but the fancy of it strikes me
+as very fine; and the natural SUPERNATURALNESS is kept up in the best
+style. The shutter swaying to and fro, the fitful LIGHT APPEARING over
+the furniture of the room, and giving it an air of strange motion--the
+awful shadow which passed through the body of the timid young
+novice--are surely very finely painted. "I rushed to the shutter, and
+flung it back: there was no one in the sacristy. I looked into the
+garden; it was deserted, and the mid-day wind was roaming among the
+flowers." The dreariness is wonderfully described: only the poor pale
+boy looking eagerly out from the window of the sacristy, and the hot
+mid-day wind walking in the solitary garden. How skilfully is each of
+these little strokes dashed in, and how well do all together combine
+to make a picture! But we must have a little more about Spiridion's
+wonderful visitant.
+
+
+"As I entered into the garden, I stepped a little on one side, to make
+way for a person whom I saw before me. He was a young man of surprising
+beauty, and attired in a foreign costume. Although dressed in the large
+black robe which the superiors of our order wear, he had, underneath, a
+short jacket of fine cloth, fastened round the waist by a leathern belt,
+and a buckle of silver, after the manner of the old German students.
+Like them, he wore, instead of the sandals of our monks, short tight
+boots; and over the collar of his shirt, which fell on his shoulders,
+and was as white as snow, hung, in rich golden curls, the most beautiful
+hair I ever saw. He was tall, and his elegant posture seemed to reveal
+to me that he was in the habit of commanding. With much respect, and
+yet uncertain, I half saluted him. He did not return my salute; but he
+smiled on me with so benevolent an air, and at the same time, his
+eyes severe and blue, looked towards me with an expression of such
+compassionate tenderness, that his features have never since then passed
+away from my recollection. I stopped, hoping he would speak to me, and
+persuading myself, from the majesty of his aspect, that he had the power
+to protect me; but the monk, who was walking behind me, and who did not
+seem to remark him in the least, forced him brutally to step aside from
+the walk, and pushed me so rudely as almost to cause me to fall. Not
+wishing to engage in a quarrel with this coarse monk, I moved away; but,
+after having taken a few steps in the garden, I looked back, and saw the
+unknown still gazing on me with looks of the tenderest solicitude. The
+sun shone full upon him, and made his hair look radiant. He sighed, and
+lifted his fine eyes to heaven, as if to invoke its justice in my favor,
+and to call it to bear witness to my misery; he turned slowly towards
+the sanctuary, entered into the quire, and was lost, presently, in
+the shade. I longed to return, spite of the monk, to follow this
+noble stranger, and to tell him my afflictions; but who was he, that I
+imagined he would listen to them, and cause them to cease? I felt, even
+while his softness drew me towards him, that he still inspired me with
+a kind of fear; for I saw in his physiognomy as much austerity as
+sweetness."
+
+
+Who was he?--we shall see that. He was somebody very mysterious indeed;
+but our author has taken care, after the manner of her sex, to make
+a very pretty fellow of him, and to dress him in the most becoming
+costumes possible.
+
+
+The individual in tight boots and a rolling collar, with the copious
+golden locks, and the solemn blue eyes, who had just gazed on Spiridion,
+and inspired him with such a feeling of tender awe, is a much more
+important personage than the reader might suppose at first sight. This
+beautiful, mysterious, dandy ghost, whose costume, with a true woman's
+coquetry, Madame Dudevant has so rejoiced to describe--is her religious
+type, a mystical representation of Faith struggling up towards Truth,
+through superstition, doubt, fear, reason,--in tight inexpressibles,
+with "a belt such as is worn by the old German students." You will
+pardon me for treating such an awful person as this somewhat lightly;
+but there is always, I think, such a dash of the ridiculous in the
+French sublime, that the critic should try and do justice to both, or
+he may fail in giving a fair account of either. This character of
+Hebronius, the type of Mrs. Sand's convictions--if convictions they
+may be called--or, at least, the allegory under which her doubts are
+represented, is, in parts, very finely drawn; contains many passages of
+truth, very deep and touching, by the side of others so entirely absurd
+and unreasonable, that the reader's feelings are continually swaying
+between admiration and something very like contempt--always in a kind of
+wonder at the strange mixture before him. But let us hear Madame Sand:--
+
+"Peter Hebronius," says our author, "was not originally so named. His
+real name was Samuel. He was a Jew, and born in a little village in the
+neighborhood of Innsprück. His family, which possessed a considerable
+fortune, left him, in his early youth, completely free to his own
+pursuits. From infancy he had shown that these were serious. He loved to
+be alone and passed his days, and sometimes his nights, wandering among
+the mountains and valleys in the neighborhood of his birthplace. He
+would often sit by the brink of torrents, listening to the voice of
+their waters, and endeavoring to penetrate the meaning which Nature had
+hidden in those sounds. As he advanced in years, his inquiries became
+more curious and more grave. It was necessary that he should receive
+a solid education, and his parents sent him to study in the German
+universities. Luther had been dead only a century, and his words and his
+memory still lived in the enthusiasm of his disciples. The new faith was
+strengthening the conquests it had made; the Reformers were as ardent
+as in the first days, but their ardor was more enlightened and more
+measured. Proselytism was still carried on with zeal, and new converts
+were made every day. In listening to the morality and to the dogmas
+which Lutheranism had taken from Catholicism, Samuel was filled with
+admiration. His bold and sincere spirit instantly compared the doctrines
+which were now submitted to him, with those in the belief of which
+he had been bred; and, enlightened by the comparison, was not slow
+to acknowledge the inferiority of Judaism. He said to himself, that
+a religion made for a single people, to the exclusion of all
+others,--which only offered a barbarous justice for rule of
+conduct,--which neither rendered the present intelligible nor
+satisfactory, and left the future uncertain,--could not be that of noble
+souls and lofty intellects; and that he could not be the God of truth
+who had dictated, in the midst of thunder, his vacillating will, and had
+called to the performance of his narrow wishes the slaves of a vulgar
+terror. Always conversant with himself, Samuel, who had spoken what he
+thought, now performed what he had spoken; and, a year after his arrival
+in Germany, solemnly abjured Judaism, and entered into the bosom of the
+Reformed Church. As he did not wish to do things by halves, and desired
+as much as was in him to put off the old man and lead a new life, he
+changed his name of Samuel to that of Peter. Some time passed, during
+which he strengthened and instructed himself in his new religion. Very
+soon he arrived at the point of searching for objections to refute, and
+adversaries to overthrow. Bold and enterprising, he went at once to the
+strongest, and Bossuet was the first Catholic author that he set himself
+to read. He commenced with a kind of disdain; believing that the faith
+which he had just embraced contained the pure truth. He despised all
+the attacks which could be made against it, and laughed already at the
+irresistible arguments which he was to find in the works of the Eagle of
+Meaux. But his mistrust and irony soon gave place to wonder first,
+and then to admiration: he thought that the cause pleaded by such an
+advocate must, at least, be respectable; and, by a natural transition,
+came to think that great geniuses would only devote themselves to that
+which was great. He then studied Catholicism with the same ardor and
+impartiality which he had bestowed on Lutheranism. He went into France
+to gain instruction from the professors of the Mother Church, as he
+had from the Doctors of the reformed creed in Germany. He saw Arnauld
+Fénélon, that second Gregory of Nazianzen, and Bossuet himself. Guided
+by these masters, whose virtues made him appreciate their talents
+the more, he rapidly penetrated to the depth of the mysteries of the
+Catholic doctrine and morality. He found, in this religion, all that
+had for him constituted the grandeur and beauty of Protestantism,--the
+dogmas of the Unity and Eternity of God, which the two religions had
+borrowed from Judaism; and, what seemed the natural consequence of
+the last doctrine--a doctrine, however, to which the Jews had not
+arrived--the doctrine of the immortality of the soul; free will in this
+life; in the next, recompense for the good, and punishment for the evil.
+He found, more pure, perhaps, and more elevated in Catholicism than in
+Protestantism, that sublime morality which preaches equality to man,
+fraternity, love, charity, renouncement of self, devotion to your
+neighbor; Catholicism, in a word, seemed to possess that vast formula,
+and that vigorous unity, which Lutheranism wanted. The latter had,
+indeed, in its favor, the liberty of inquiry, which is also a want of
+the human mind; and had proclaimed the authority of individual reason:
+but it had so lost that which is the necessary basis and vital condition
+of all revealed religion--the principle of infallibility; because
+nothing can live except in virtue of the laws that presided at its
+birth; and, in consequence, one revelation cannot be continued and
+confirmed without another. Now, infallibility is nothing but revelation
+continued by God, or the Word, in the person of his vicars.
+
+"At last, after much reflection, Hebronius acknowledged himself entirely
+and sincerely convinced, and received baptism from the hands of Bossuet.
+He added the name of Spiridion to that of Peter, to signify that he
+had been twice enlightened by the Spirit. Resolved thenceforward to
+consecrate his life to the worship of the new God who had called him to
+Him, and to the study of His doctrines, he passed into Italy, and, with
+the aid of a large fortune, which one of his uncles, a Catholic like
+himself, had left to him, he built this convent where we now are."
+
+
+A friend of mine, who has just come from Italy, says that he has there
+left Messrs. Sp--r, P--l, and W. Dr--d, who were the lights of the great
+church in Newman Street, who were themselves apostles, and declared and
+believed that every word of nonsense which fell from their lips was a
+direct spiritual intervention. These gentlemen have become Puseyites
+already, and are, my friend states, in the high way to Catholicism.
+Madame Sand herself was a Catholic some time since: having been
+converted to that faith along with M. N--, of the Academy of Music; Mr.
+L--, the pianoforte player; and one or two other chosen individuals, by
+the famous Abbé de la M--. Abbé de la M-- (so told me in the Diligence,
+a priest, who read his breviary and gossiped alternately very curiously
+and pleasantly) is himself an âme perdue: the man spoke of his brother
+clergyman with actual horror; and it certainly appears that the Abbé's
+works of conversion have not prospered; for Madame Sand, having brought
+her hero (and herself, as we may presume) to the point of Catholicism,
+proceeds directly to dispose of that as she has done of Judaism and
+Protestantism, and will not leave, of the whole fabric of Christianity,
+a single stone standing.
+
+I think the fate of our English Newman Street apostles, and of M. de la
+M--, the mad priest, and his congregation of mad converts, should be
+a warning to such of us as are inclined to dabble in religious
+speculations; for, in them, as in all others, our flighty brains soon
+lose themselves, and we find our reason speedily lying prostrated at the
+mercy of our passions; and I think that Madame Sand's novel of Spiridion
+may do a vast deal of good, and bears a good moral with it; though not
+such an one, perhaps, as our fair philosopher intended. For anything he
+learned, Samuel-Peter-Spiridion-Hebronius might have remained a Jew from
+the beginning to the end. Wherefore be in such a hurry to set up new
+faiths? Wherefore, Madame Sand, try and be so preternaturally wise?
+Wherefore be so eager to jump out of one religion, for the purpose of
+jumping into another? See what good this philosophical friskiness has
+done you, and on what sort of ground you are come at last. You are
+so wonderfully sagacious, that you flounder in mud at every step; so
+amazingly clear-sighted, that your eyes cannot see an inch before you,
+having put out, with that extinguishing genius of yours, every one of
+the lights that are sufficient for the conduct of common men. And for
+what? Let our friend Spiridion speak for himself. After setting up his
+convent, and filling it with monks, who entertain an immense respect
+for his wealth and genius, Father Hebronius, unanimously elected prior,
+gives himself up to further studies, and leaves his monks to themselves.
+Industrious and sober as they were, originally, they grow quickly
+intemperate and idle; and Hebronius, who does not appear among his flock
+until he has freed himself of the Catholic religion, as he has of the
+Jewish and the Protestant, sees, with dismay, the evil condition of
+his disciples, and regrets, too late, the precipitancy by which he
+renounced, then and for ever, Christianity. "But, as he had no new
+religion to adopt in its place, and as, grown more prudent and calm, he
+did not wish to accuse himself unnecessarily, once more, of inconstancy
+and apostasy, he still maintained all the exterior forms of the worship
+which inwardly he had abjured. But it was not enough for him to have
+quitted error, it was necessary to discover truth. But Hebronius had
+well looked round to discover it; he could not find anything that
+resembled it. Then commenced for him a series of sufferings, unknown
+and terrible. Placed face to face with doubt, this sincere and religious
+spirit was frightened at its own solitude; and as it had no other desire
+nor aim on earth than truth, and nothing else here below interested it,
+he lived absorbed in his own sad contemplations, looked ceaselessly into
+the vague that surrounded him like an ocean without bounds, and seeing
+the horizon retreat and retreat as ever he wished to near it. Lost in
+this immense uncertainty, he felt as if attacked by vertigo, and his
+thoughts whirled within his brain. Then, fatigued with his vain
+toils and hopeless endeavors, he would sink down depressed, unmanned,
+life-wearied, only living in the sensation of that silent grief which he
+felt and could not comprehend."
+
+It is a pity that this hapless Spiridion, so eager in his passage
+from one creed to another, and so loud in his profession of the truth,
+wherever he fancied that he had found it, had not waited a little,
+before he avowed himself either Catholic or Protestant, and implicated
+others in errors and follies which might, at least, have been confined
+to his own bosom, and there have lain comparatively harmless. In what a
+pretty state, for instance, will Messrs. Dr--d and P--l have left
+their Newman Street congregation, who are still plunged in their old
+superstitions, from which their spiritual pastors and masters have been
+set free! In what a state, too, do Mrs. Sand and her brother and sister
+philosophers, Templars, Saint Simonians, Fourierites, Lerouxites, or
+whatever the sect may be, leave the unfortunate people who have listened
+to their doctrines, and who have not the opportunity, or the fiery
+versatility of belief, which carries their teachers from one creed to
+another, leaving only exploded lies and useless recantations behind
+them! I wish the state would make a law that one individual should not
+be allowed to preach more than one doctrine in his life, or, at any
+rate, should be soundly corrected for every change of creed. How many
+charlatans would have been silenced,--how much conceit would have been
+kept within bounds,--how many fools, who are dazzled by fine sentences,
+and made drunk by declamation, would have remained, quiet and sober, in
+that quiet and sober way of faith which their fathers held before them.
+However, the reader will be glad to learn that, after all his doubts
+and sorrows, Spiridion does discover the truth (THE truth, what a wise
+Spiridion!) and some discretion with it; for, having found among his
+monks, who are dissolute, superstitious--and all hate him--one only
+being, Fulgentius, who is loving, candid, and pious, he says to him, "If
+you were like myself, if the first want of your nature were, like
+mine, to know, I would, without hesitation, lay bare to you my entire
+thoughts. I would make you drink the cup of truth, which I myself have
+filled with so many tears, at the risk of intoxicating you with the
+draught. But it is not so, alas! you are made to love rather than to
+know, and your heart is stronger than your intellect. You are attached
+to Catholicism,--I believe so, at least,--by bonds of sentiment which
+you could not break without pain, and which, if you were to break, the
+truth which I could lay bare to you in return would not repay you for
+what you had sacrificed. Instead of exalting, it would crush you, very
+likely. It is a food too strong for ordinary men, and which, when
+it does not revivify, smothers. I will not, then, reveal to you this
+doctrine, which is the triumph of my life, and the consolation of
+my last days; because it might, perhaps, be for you only a cause of
+mourning and despair..... Of all the works which my long studies have
+produced, there is one alone which I have not given to the flames; for
+it alone is complete. In that you will find me entire, and there LIES
+THE TRUTH. And, as the sage has said you must not bury your treasures in
+a well, I will not confide mine to the brutal stupidity of these monks.
+But as this volume should only pass into hands worthy to touch it, and
+be laid open for eyes that are capable of comprehending its mysteries,
+I shall exact from the reader one condition, which, at the same time,
+shall be a proof: I shall carry it with me to the tomb, in order that
+he who one day shall read it, may have courage enough to brave the vain
+terrors of the grave, in searching for it amid the dust of my sepulchre.
+As soon as I am dead, therefore, place this writing on my breast.....
+Ah! when the time comes for reading it, I think my withered heart will
+spring up again, as the frozen grass at the return of the sun, and that,
+from the midst of its infinite transformations, my spirit will enter
+into immediate communication with thine!"
+
+
+Does not the reader long to be at this precious manuscript, which
+contains THE TRUTH; and ought he not to be very much obliged to Mrs.
+Sand, for being so good as to print it for him? We leave all the story
+aside: how Fulgentius had not the spirit to read the manuscript,
+but left the secret to Alexis; how Alexis, a stern old philosophical
+unbelieving monk as ever was, tried in vain to lift up the gravestone,
+but was taken with fever, and obliged to forego the discovery; and how,
+finally, Angel, his disciple, a youth amiable and innocent as his name,
+was the destined person who brought the long-buried treasure to light.
+Trembling and delighted, the pair read this tremendous MANUSCRIPT OF
+SPIRIDION.
+
+Will it be believed, that of all the dull, vague, windy documents that
+mortal ever set eyes on, this is the dullest? If this be absolute truth,
+à quoi bon search for it, since we have long, long had the jewel in our
+possession, or since, at least, it has been held up as such by every
+sham philosopher who has had a mind to pass off his wares on the public?
+Hear Spiridion:--
+
+"How much have I wept, how much have I suffered, how much have I prayed,
+how much have I labored, before I understood the cause and the aim of
+my passage on this earth! After many incertitudes, after much remorse,
+after many scruples, I HAVE COMPREHENDED THAT I WAS A MARTYR!--But why
+my martyrdom? said I; what crimne did I commit before I was born, thus
+to be condemned to labor and groaning, from the hour when I first saw
+the day up to that when I am about to enter into the night of the tomb?
+
+"At last, by dint of imploring God--by dint of inquiry into the history
+of man, a ray of the truth has descended on my brow, and the shadows of
+the past have melted from before my eyes. I have lifted a corner of the
+curtain: I have seen enough to know that my life, like that of the rest
+of the human race, has been a series of necessary errors, yet, to speak
+more correctly, of incomplete truths, conducting, more or less slowly
+and directly, to absolute truth and ideal perfection. But when will they
+rise on the face of the earth--when will they issue from the bosom of
+the Divinity--those generations who shall salute the august countenance
+of Truth, and proclaim the reign of the ideal on earth? I see well how
+humanity marches, but I neither can see its cradle nor its apotheosis.
+Man seems to me a transitory race, between the beast and the angel; but
+I know not how many centuries have been required, that he might pass
+from the state of brute to the state of man, and I cannot tell how many
+ages are necessary that he may pass from the state of man to the state
+of angel!
+
+"Yet I hope, and I feel within me, at the approach of death, that which
+warns me that great destinies await humanity. In this life all is over
+for me. Much have I striven, to advance but little: I have labored
+without ceasing, and have done almost nothing. Yet, after pains
+immeasurable, I die content, for I know that I have done all I could,
+and am sure that the little I have done will not be lost.
+
+"What, then, have I done? this wilt thou demand of me, man of a future
+age, who will seek for truth in the testaments of the past. Thou who
+wilt be no more Catholic--no more Christian, thou wilt ask of the poor
+monk, lying in the dust, an account of his life and death. Thou wouldst
+know wherefore were his vows, why his austerities, his labors, his
+retreat, his prayers?
+
+"You who turn back to me, in order that I may guide you on your road,
+and that you may arrive more quickly at the goal which it has not been
+my lot to attain, pause, yet, for a moment, and look upon the past
+history of humanity. You will see that its fate has been ever to choose
+between the least of two evils, and ever to commit great faults in order
+to avoid others still greater. You will see.... on one side, the heathen
+mythology, that debased the spirit, in its efforts to deify the flesh;
+on the other, the austere Christian principle, that debased the flesh
+too much, in order to raise the worship of the spirit. You will see,
+afterwards, how the religion of Christ embodies itself in a church,
+and raises itself a generous democratic power against the tyranny of
+princes. Later still, you will see how that power has attained its end,
+and passed beyond it. You will see it, having chained and conquered
+princes, league itself with them, in order to oppress the people, and
+seize on temporal power. Schism, then, raises up against it the standard
+of revolt, and preaches the bold and legitimate principle of liberty
+of conscience: but, also, you will see how this liberty of conscience
+brings religious anarchy in its train; or, worse still, religious
+indifference and disgust. And if your soul, shattered in the tempestuous
+changes which you behold humanity undergoing, would strike out for
+itself a passage through the rocks, amidst which, like a frail bark,
+lies tossing trembling truth, you will be embarrassed to choose between
+the new philosophers--who, in preaching tolerance, destroy religious and
+social unity--and the last Christians, who, to preserve society, that
+is, religion and philosophy, are obliged to brave the principle of
+toleration. Man of truth! to whom I address, at once, my instruction and
+my justification, at the time when you shall live, the science of truth
+no doubt will have advanced a step. Think, then, of all your fathers
+have suffered, as, bending beneath the weight of their ignorance and
+uncertainty, they have traversed the desert across which, with so much
+pain, they have conducted thee! And if the pride of thy young learning
+shall make thee contemplate the petty strifes in which our life has been
+consumed, pause and tremble, as you think of that which is still unknown
+to yourself, and of the judgment that your descendants will pass on you.
+Think of this, and learn to respect all those who, seeking their way in
+all sincerity, have wandered from the path, frightened by the storm, and
+sorely tried by the severe hand of the All-Powerful. Think of this, and
+prostrate yourself; for all these, even the most mistaken among them,
+are saints and martyrs.
+
+"Without their conquests and their defeats, thou wert in darkness still.
+Yes, their failures, their errors even, have a right to your respect;
+for man is weak..... Weep then, for us obscure travellers--unknown
+victims, who, by our mortal sufferings and unheard-of labors, have
+prepared the way before you. Pity me, who have passionately loved
+justice, and perseveringly sought for truth, only opened my eyes to
+shut them again for ever, and saw that I had been in vain endeavoring to
+support a ruin, to take refuge in a vault of which the foundations were
+worn away."....
+
+The rest of the book of Spiridion is made up of a history of the
+rise, progress, and (what our philosopher is pleased to call) decay
+of Christianity--of an assertion, that the "doctrine of Christ is
+incomplete;" that "Christ may, nevertheless, take his place in the
+Pantheon of divine men!" and of a long, disgusting, absurd, and impious
+vision, in which the Saviour, Moses, David, and Elijah are represented,
+and in which Christ is made to say--"WE ARE ALL MESSIAHS, when we wish
+to bring the reign of truth upon earth; we are all Christs, when we
+suffer for it!"
+
+And this is the ultimatum, the supreme secret, the absolute truth! and
+it has been published by Mrs. Sand, for so many napoleons per sheet, in
+the Revue des Deux Mondes: and the Deux Mondes are to abide by it for
+the future. After having attained it, are we a whit wiser? "Man is
+between an angel and a beast: I don't know how long it is since he was a
+brute--I can't say how long it will be before he is an angel." Think of
+people living by their wits, and living by such a wit as this! Think
+of the state of mental debauch and disease which must have been passed
+through, ere such words could be written, and could be popular!
+
+When a man leaves our dismal, smoky London atmosphere, and breathes,
+instead of coal-smoke and yellow fog, this bright, clear, French air, he
+is quite intoxicated by it at first, and feels a glow in his blood, and
+a joy in his spirits, which scarcely thrice a year, and then only at a
+distance from London, he can attain in England. Is the intoxication, I
+wonder, permanent among the natives? and may we not account for the ten
+thousand frantic freaks of these people by the peculiar influence of
+French air and sun? The philosophers are from night to morning drunk,
+the politicians are drunk, the literary men reel and stagger from one
+absurdity to another, and how shall we understand their vagaries? Let us
+suppose, charitably, that Madame Sand had inhaled a more than ordinary
+quantity of this laughing gas when she wrote for us this precious
+manuscript of Spiridion. That great destinies are in prospect for the
+human race we may fancy, without her ladyship's word for it: but more
+liberal than she, and having a little retrospective charity, as well as
+that easy prospective benevolence which Mrs. Sand adopts, let us try and
+think there is some hope for our fathers (who were nearer brutality than
+ourselves, according to the Sandean creed), or else there is a very poor
+chance for us, who, great philosophers as we are, are yet, alas! far
+removed from that angelic consummation which all must wish for so
+devoutly. She cannot say--is it not extraordinary?--how many centuries
+have been necessary before man could pass from the brutal state to his
+present condition, or how many ages will be required ere we may pass
+from the state of man to the state of angels? What the deuce is the use
+of chronology or philosophy? We were beasts, and we can't tell when our
+tails dropped off: we shall be angels; but when our wings are to begin
+to sprout, who knows? In the meantime, O man of genius, follow our
+counsel: lead an easy life, don't stick at trifles; never mind about
+DUTY, it is only made for slaves; if the world reproach you, reproach
+the world in return, you have a good loud tongue in your head: if your
+straight-laced morals injure your mental respiration, fling off the
+old-fashioned stays, and leave your free limbs to rise and fall as
+Nature pleases; and when you have grown pretty sick of your liberty, and
+yet unfit to return to restraint, curse the world, and scorn it, and be
+miserable, like my Lord Byron and other philosophers of his kidney; or
+else mount a step higher, and, with conceit still more monstrous, and
+mental vision still more wretchedly debauched and weak, begin suddenly
+to find yourself afflicted with a maudlin compassion for the human race,
+and a desire to set them right after your own fashion. There is the
+quarrelsome stage of drunkenness, when a man can as yet walk and
+speak, when he can call names, and fling plates and wine-glasses at his
+neighbor's head with a pretty good aim; after this comes the pathetic
+stage, when the patient becomes wondrous philanthropic, and weeps
+wildly, as he lies in the gutter, and fancies he is at home in
+bed--where he ought to be; but this is an allegory.
+
+I don't wish to carry this any farther, or to say a word in defence
+of the doctrine which Mrs. Dudevant has found "incomplete";--here, at
+least, is not the place for discussing its merits, any more than Mrs.
+Sand's book was the place for exposing, forsooth, its errors: our
+business is only with the day and the new novels, and the clever or
+silly people who write them. Oh! if they but knew their places, and
+would keep to them, and drop their absurd philosophical jargon! Not all
+the big words in the world can make Mrs. Sand talk like a philosopher:
+when will she go back to her old trade, of which she was the very ablest
+practitioner in France?
+
+I should have been glad to give some extracts from the dramatic and
+descriptive parts of the novel, that cannot, in point of style and
+beauty, be praised too highly. One must suffice,--it is the descent of
+Alexis to seek that unlucky manuscript, Spiridion.
+
+"It seemed to me," he begins, "that the descent was eternal; and that I
+was burying myself in the depths of Erebus: at last, I reached a level
+place,--and I heard a mournful voice deliver these words, as it were,
+to the secret centre of the earth--'He will mount that ascent no
+more!'--Immediately I heard arise towards me, from the depth of
+invisible abysses, a myriad of formidable voices united in a strange
+chant--'Let us destroy him! Let him be destroyed! What does he here
+among the dead? Let him be delivered back to torture! Let him be given
+again to life!'
+
+"Then a feeble light began to pierce the darkness, and I perceived
+that I stood on the lowest step of a staircase, vast as the foot of a
+mountain. Behind me were thousands of steps of lurid iron; before me,
+nothing but a void--an abyss, and ether; the blue gloom of midnight
+beneath my feet, as above my head. I became delirious, and quitting
+that staircase, which methought it was impossible for me to reascend, I
+sprung forth into the void with an execration. But, immediately, when
+I had uttered the curse, the void began to be filled with forms and
+colors, and I presently perceived that I was in a vast gallery, along
+which I advanced, trembling. There was still darkness round me; but
+the hollows of the vaults gleamed with a red light, and showed me the
+strange and hideous forms of their building..... I did not distinguish
+the nearest objects; but those towards which I advanced assumed an
+appearance more and more ominous, and my terror increased with every
+step I took. The enormous pillars which supported the vault, and the
+tracery thereof itself, were figures of men, of supernatural stature,
+delivered to tortures without a name. Some hung by their feet, and,
+locked in the coils of monstrous serpents, clenched their teeth in the
+marble of the pavement; others, fastened by their waists, were dragged
+upwards, these by their feet, those by their heads, towards capitals,
+where other figures stooped towards them, eager to torment them. Other
+pillars, again, represented a struggling mass of figures devouring one
+another; each of which only offered a trunk severed to the knees or to
+the shoulders, the fierce heads whereof retained life enough to seize
+and devour that which was near them. There were some who, half hanging
+down, agonized themselves by attempting, with their upper limbs, to flay
+the lower moiety of their bodies, which drooped from the columns, or
+were attached to the pedestals; and others, who, in their fight with
+each other, were dragged along by morsels of flesh,--grasping which,
+they clung to each other with a countenance of unspeakable hate and
+agony. Along, or rather in place of, the frieze, there were on either
+side a range of unclean beings, wearing the human form, but of a
+loathsome ugliness, busied in tearing human corpses to pieces--in
+feasting upon their limbs and entrails. From the vault, instead of
+bosses and pendants, hung the crushed and wounded forms of children; as
+if to escape these eaters of man's flesh, they would throw themselves
+downwards, and be dashed to pieces on the pavement..... The silence and
+motionlessness of the whole added to its awfulness. I became so faint
+with terror, that I stopped, and would fain have returned. But at that
+moment I heard, from the depths of the gloom through which I had passed,
+confused noises, like those of a multitude on its march. And the sounds
+soon became more distinct, and the clamor fiercer, and the steps came
+hurrying on tumultuously--at every new burst nearer, more violent, more
+threatening. I thought that I was pursued by this disorderly crowd; and
+I strove to advance, hurrying into the midst of those dismal sculptures.
+Then it seemed as if those figures began to heave,--and to sweat
+blood,--and their beady eyes to move in their sockets. At once I beheld
+that they were all looking upon me, that they were all leaning towards
+me,--some with frightful derision, others with furious aversion. Every
+arm was raised against me, and they made as though they would crush me
+with the quivering limbs they had torn one from the other."....
+
+It is, indeed, a pity that the poor fellow gave himself the trouble to
+go down into damp, unwholesome graves, for the purpose of fetching up
+a few trumpery sheets of manuscript; and if the public has been rather
+tired with their contents, and is disposed to ask why Mrs. Sand's
+religious or irreligious notions are to be brought forward to people who
+are quite satisfied with their own, we can only say that this lady is
+the representative of a vast class of her countrymen, whom the wits and
+philosophers of the eighteenth century have brought to this condition.
+The leaves of the Diderot and Rousseau tree have produced this goodly
+fruit: here it is, ripe, bursting, and ready to fall;--and how to fall?
+Heaven send that it may drop easily, for all can see that the time is
+come.
+
+
+
+
+THE CASE OF PEYTEL:
+
+IN A LETTER TO EDWARD BRIEFLESS, ESQUIRE, OF PUMP COURT, TEMPLE.
+
+
+PARIS, November, 1839.
+
+MY DEAR BRIEFLESS,--Two months since, when the act of accusation first
+appeared, containing the sum of the charges against Sebastian Peytel,
+all Paris was in a fervor on the subject. The man's trial speedily
+followed, and kept for three days the public interest wound up to a
+painful point. He was found guilty of double murder at the beginning
+of September; and, since that time, what with Maroto's disaffection
+and Turkish news, we have had leisure to forget Monsieur Peytel, and to
+occupy ourselves with [Greek text omitted]. Perhaps Monsieur de Balzac
+helped to smother what little sparks of interest might still have
+remained for the murderous notary. Balzac put forward a letter in his
+favor, so very long, so very dull, so very pompous, promising so much,
+and performing so little, that the Parisian public gave up Peytel and
+his case altogether; nor was it until to-day that some small feeling
+was raised concerning him, when the newspapers brought the account how
+Peytel's head had been cut off at Bourg.
+
+He had gone through the usual miserable ceremonies and delays which
+attend what is called, in this country, the march of justice. He had
+made his appeal to the Court of Cassation, which had taken time to
+consider the verdict of the Provincial Court, and had confirmed it. He
+had made his appeal for mercy; his poor sister coming up all the way
+from Bourg (a sad journey, poor thing!) to have an interview with the
+King, who had refused to see her. Last Monday morning, at nine o'clock,
+an hour before Peytel's breakfast, the Greffier of Assize Court, in
+company with the Curé of Bourg, waited on him, and informed him that he
+had only three hours to live. At twelve o'clock, Peytel's head was off
+his body: an executioner from Lyons had come over the night before, to
+assist the professional throat-cutter of Bourg.
+
+I am not going to entertain you with any sentimental lamentations for
+this scoundrel's fate, or to declare my belief in his innocence, as
+Monsieur de Balzac has done. As far as moral conviction can go, the
+man's guilt is pretty clearly brought home to him. But any man who
+has read the "Causes Célèbres," knows that men have been convicted
+and executed upon evidence ten times more powerful than that which was
+brought against Peytel. His own account of his horrible case may be
+true; there is nothing adduced in the evidence which is strong enough to
+overthrow it. It is a serious privilege, God knows, that society
+takes upon itself, at any time, to deprive one of God's creatures of
+existence. But when the slightest doubt remains, what a tremendous risk
+does it incur! In England, thank heaven, the law is more wise and more
+merciful: an English jury would never have taken a man's blood upon such
+testimony: an English judge and Crown advocate would never have acted
+as these Frenchmen have done; the latter inflaming the public mind by
+exaggerated appeals to their passions: the former seeking, in every way,
+to draw confessions from the prisoner, to perplex and confound him, to
+do away, by fierce cross-questioning and bitter remarks from the bench,
+with any effect that his testimony might have on the jury. I don't mean
+to say that judges and lawyers have been more violent and inquisitorial
+against the unhappy Peytel than against any one else; it is the fashion
+of the country: a man is guilty until he proves himself to be innocent;
+and to batter down his defence, if he have any, there are the lawyers,
+with all their horrible ingenuity, and their captivating passionate
+eloquence. It is hard thus to set the skilful and tried champions of the
+law against men unused to this kind of combat; nay, give a man all the
+legal aid that he can purchase or procure, still, by this plan, you take
+him at a cruel, unmanly disadvantage; he has to fight against the law,
+clogged with the dreadful weight of his presupposed guilt. Thank God
+that, in England, things are not managed so.
+
+However, I am not about to entertain you with ignorant disquisitions
+about the law. Peytel's case may, nevertheless, interest you; for the
+tale is a very stirring and mysterious one; and you may see how easy
+a thing it is for a man's life to be talked away in France, if ever he
+should happen to fall under the suspicion of a crime. The French "Acte
+d'accusation" begins in the following manner:--
+
+"Of all the events which, in these latter times, have afflicted the
+department of the Ain, there is none which has caused a more profound
+and lively sensation than the tragical death of the lady, Félicité
+Alcazar, wife of Sebastian Benedict Peytel, notary, at Belley. At the
+end of October, 1838, Madame Peytel quitted that town, with her husband,
+and their servant Louis Rey, in order to pass a few days at Macon:
+at midnight, the inhabitants of Belley were suddenly awakened by the
+arrival of Monsieur Peytel, by his cries, and by the signs which he
+exhibited of the most lively agitation: he implored the succors of all
+the physicians in the town; knocked violently at their doors; rung at
+the bells of their houses with a sort of frenzy, and announced that his
+wife, stretched out, and dying, in his carriage, had just been shot, on
+the Lyons road, by his domestic, whose life Peytel himself had taken.
+
+"At this recital a number of persons assembled, and what a spectacle was
+presented to their eyes.
+
+"A young woman lay at the bottom of a carriage, deprived of life; her
+whole body was wet, and seemed as if it had just been plunged into
+the water. She appeared to be severely wounded in the face; and her
+garments, which were raised up, in spite of the cold and rainy weather,
+left the upper part of her knees almost entirely exposed. At the sight
+of this half-naked and inanimate body, all the spectators were affected.
+People said that the first duty to pay to a dying woman was, to preserve
+her from the cold, to cover her. A physician examined the body; he
+declared that all remedies were useless; that Madame Peytel was dead and
+cold.
+
+"The entreaties of Peytel were redoubled; he demanded fresh succors,
+and, giving no heed to the fatal assurance which had just been given
+him, required that all the physicians in the place should be sent for.
+A scene so strange and so melancholy; the incoherent account given by
+Peytel of the murder of his wife; his extraordinary movements; and the
+avowal which he continued to make, that he had despatched the murderer,
+Rey, with strokes of his hammer, excited the attention of Lieutenant
+Wolf, commandant of gendarmes: that officer gave orders for the
+immediate arrest of Peytel; but the latter threw himself into the
+arms of a friend, who interceded for him, and begged the police not
+immediately to seize upon his person.
+
+"The corpse of Madame Peytel was transported to her apartment; the
+bleeding body of the domestic was likewise brought from the road, where
+it lay; and Peytel, asked to explain the circumstance, did so."....
+
+Now, as there is little reason to tell the reader, when an English
+counsel has to prosecute a prisoner on the part of the Crown for a
+capital offence, he produces the articles of his accusation in the most
+moderate terms, and especially warns the jury to give the accused person
+the benefit of every possible doubt that the evidence may give, or may
+leave. See how these things are managed in France, and how differently
+the French counsel for the Crown sets about his work.
+
+He first prepares his act of accusation, the opening of which we
+have just read; it is published six days before the trial, so that an
+unimpassioned, unprejudiced jury has ample time to study it, and to
+form its opinions accordingly, and to go into court with a happy, just
+prepossession against the prisoner.
+
+Read the first part of the Peytel act of accusation; it is as turgid and
+declamatory as a bad romance; and as inflated as a newspaper document,
+by an unlimited penny-a-liner:--"The department of the Ain is in a
+dreadful state of excitement; the inhabitants of Belley come trooping
+from their beds,--and what a sight do they behold;--a young woman at
+the bottom of a carriage, toute ruisselante, just out of a river; her
+garments, in spite of the cold and rain, raised, so as to leave the
+upper part of her knees entirely exposed, at which all the beholders
+were affected, and cried, that the FIRST DUTY was to cover her from
+the cold." This settles the case at once; the first duty of a man is
+to cover the legs of the sufferer; the second to call for help. The
+eloquent "Substitut du Procureur du Roi" has prejudged the case, in the
+course of a few sentences. He is putting his readers, among whom his
+future jury is to be found, into a proper state of mind; he works on
+them with pathetic description, just as a romance-writer would: the
+rain pours in torrents; it is a dreary evening in November; the young
+creature's situation is neatly described; the distrust which entered
+into the breast of the keen old officer of gendarmes strongly painted,
+the suspicions which might, or might not, have been entertained by
+the inhabitants, eloquently argued. How did the advocate know that the
+people had such? did all the bystanders say aloud, "I suspect that this
+is a case of murder by Monsieur Peytel, and that his story about
+the domestic is all deception?" or did they go off to the mayor, and
+register their suspicion? or was the advocate there to hear them? Not
+he; but he paints you the whole scene, as though it had existed, and
+gives full accounts of suspicions, as if they had been facts, positive,
+patent, staring, that everybody could see and swear to.
+
+Having thus primed his audience, and prepared them for the testimony of
+the accused party, "Now," says he, with a fine show of justice, "let
+us hear Monsieur Peytel;" and that worthy's narrative is given as
+follows:--
+
+"He said that he had left Macon on the 31st October, at eleven o'clock
+in the morning, in order to return to Belley, with his wife and servant.
+The latter drove, or led, an open car; he himself was driving his wife
+in a four-wheeled carriage, drawn by one horse: they reached Bourg at
+five o'clock in the evening; left it at seven, to sleep at Pont d'Ain,
+where they did not arrive before midnight. During the journey, Peytel
+thought he remarked that Rey had slackened his horse's pace. When
+they alighted at the inn, Peytel bade him deposit in his chamber 7,500
+francs, which he carried with him; but the domestic refused to do so,
+saying that the inn gates were secure, and there was no danger. Peytel
+was, therefore, obliged to carry his money up stairs himself. The next
+day, the 1st November, they set out on their journey again, at nine
+o'clock in the morning; Louis did not come, according to custom, to take
+his master's orders. They arrived at Tenay about three, stopped there a
+couple of hours to dine, and it was eight o'clock when they reached the
+bourg of Rossillon, where they waited half an hour to bait the horses.
+
+"As they left Rossillon, the weather became bad, and the rain began to
+fall: Peytel told his domestic to get a covering for the articles in
+the open chariot; but Rey refused to do so, adding, in an ironical tone,
+that the weather was fine. For some days past, Peytel had remarked that
+his servant was gloomy, and scarcely spoke at all.
+
+"After they had gone about 500 paces beyond the bridge of Andert, that
+crosses the river Furans, and ascended to the least steep part of the
+hill of Darde, Peytel cried out to his servant, who was seated in the
+car, to come down from it, and finish the ascent on foot.
+
+"At this moment a violent wind was blowing from the south, and the rain
+was falling heavily: Peytel was seated back in the right corner of the
+carriage, and his wife, who was close to him, was asleep, with her head
+on his left shoulder. All of a sudden he heard the report of a fire-arm
+(he had seen the light of it at some paces' distance), and Madame
+Peytel cried out, 'My poor husband, take your pistols;' the horse was
+frightened, and began to trot. Peytel immediately drew the pistol, and
+fired, from the interior of the carriage, upon an individual whom he saw
+running by the side of the road.
+
+"Not knowing, as yet, that his wife had been hit, he jumped out on one
+side of the carriage, while Madame Peytel descended from the other; and
+he fired a second pistol at his domestic, Louis Rey, whom he had just
+recognized. Redoubling his pace, he came up with Rey, and struck him,
+from behind, a blow with the hammer. Rey turned at this, and raised
+up his arm to strike his master with the pistol which he had just
+discharged at him; but Peytel, more quick than he, gave the domestic a
+blow with the hammer, which felled him to the ground (he fell his
+face forwards), and then Peytel, bestriding the body, despatched him,
+although the brigand asked for mercy.
+
+"He now began to think of his wife and ran back, calling out her name
+repeatedly, and seeking for her, in vain, on both sides of the road.
+Arrived at the bridge of Andert, he recognized his wife, stretched in
+a field, covered with water, which bordered the Furans. This horrible
+discovery had so much the more astonished him, because he had no idea,
+until now, that his wife had been wounded: he endeavored to draw her
+from the water; and it was only after considerable exertions that he was
+enabled to do so, and to place her, with her face towards the ground, on
+the side of the road. Supposing that, here, she would be sheltered from
+any farther danger, and believing, as yet, that she was only wounded, he
+determined to ask for help at a lone house, situated on the road towards
+Rossillon; and at this instant he perceived, without at all being able
+to explain how, that his horse had followed him back to the spot, having
+turned back of its own accord, from the road to Belley.
+
+"The house at which he knocked was inhabited by two men, of the name
+of Thannet, father and son, who opened the door to him, and whom
+he entreated to come to his aid, saying that his wife had just been
+assassinated by his servant. The elder Thannet approached to, and
+examined the body, and told Peytel that it was quite dead; he and his
+son took up the corpse, and placed it in the bottom of the carriage,
+which they all mounted themselves, and pursued their route to Belley.
+In order to do so, they had to pass by Rey's body, on the road, which
+Peytel wished to crush under the wheels of his carriage. It was to rob
+him of 7,500 francs, said Peytel, that the attack had been made."
+
+Our friend, the Procureur's Substitut, has dropped, here, the eloquent
+and pathetic style altogether, and only gives the unlucky prisoner's
+narrative in the baldest and most unimaginative style. How is a jury to
+listen to such a fellow? they ought to condemn him, if but for making
+such an uninteresting statement. Why not have helped poor Peytel with
+some of those rhetorical graces which have been so plentifully bestowed
+in the opening part of the act of accusation? He might have said:--
+
+"Monsieur Peytel is an eminent notary at Belley; he is a man
+distinguished for his literary and scientific acquirements; he has lived
+long in the best society of the capital; he had been but a few months
+married to that young and unfortunate lady, whose loss has plunged
+her bereaved husband into despair--almost into madness. Some early
+differences had marked, it is true, the commencement of their union; but
+these, which, as can be proved by evidence, were almost all the unhappy
+lady's fault,--had happily ceased, to give place to sentiments far more
+delightful and tender. Gentlemen, Madame Peytel bore in her bosom a
+sweet pledge of future concord between herself and her husband: in three
+brief months she was to become a mother.
+
+"In the exercise of his honorable profession,--in which, to succeed,
+a man must not only have high talents, but undoubted probity,--and,
+gentlemen, Monsieur Peytel DID succeed--DID inspire respect and
+confidence, as you, his neighbors, well know;--in the exercise, I say,
+of his high calling, Monsieur Peytel, towards the end of October last,
+had occasion to make a journey in the neighborhood, and visit some of
+his many clients.
+
+"He travelled in his own carriage, his young wife beside him. Does this
+look like want of affection, gentlemen? or is it not a mark of love--of
+love and paternal care on his part towards the being with whom his lot
+in life was linked,--the mother of his coming child,--the young girl,
+who had everything to gain from the union with a man of his attainments
+of intellect, his kind temper, his great experience, and his high
+position? In this manner they travelled, side by side, lovingly
+together. Monsieur Peytel was not a lawyer merely, but a man of letters
+and varied learning; of the noble and sublime science of geology he was,
+especially, an ardent devotee."
+
+(Suppose, here, a short panegyric upon geology. Allude to the creation
+of this mighty world, and then, naturally, to the Creator. Fancy the
+conversations which Peytel, a religious man,* might have with his young
+wife upon the subject.)
+
+     * He always went to mass; it is in the evidence.
+
+"Monsieur Peytel had lately taken into his service a man named Louis
+Rey. Rey was a foundling, and had passed many years in a regiment--a
+school, gentlemen, where much besides bravery, alas! is taught; nay,
+where the spirit which familiarizes one with notions of battle and
+death, I fear, may familiarize one with ideas, too, of murder. Rey,
+a dashing reckless fellow, from the army, had lately entered Peytel's
+service, was treated by him with the most singular kindness; accompanied
+him (having charge of another vehicle) upon the journey before alluded
+to; and KNEW THAT HIS MASTER CARRIED WITH HIM A CONSIDERABLE SUM OF
+MONEY; for a man like Rey an enormous sum, 7,500 francs. At midnight
+on the 1st of November, as Madame Peytel and her husband were returning
+home, an attack was made upon their carriage. Remember, gentlemen, the
+hour at which the attack was made; remember the sum of money that was in
+the carriage; and remember that the Savoy frontier IS WITHIN A LEAGUE OF
+THE SPOT where the desperate deed was done."
+
+Now, my dear Briefless, ought not Monsieur Procureur, in common justice
+to Peytel, after he had so eloquently proclaimed, not the facts, but the
+suspicions, which weighed against that worthy, to have given a similar
+florid account of the prisoner's case? Instead of this, you will remark,
+that it is the advocate's endeavor to make Peytel's statements as
+uninteresting in style as possible; and then he demolishes them in the
+following way:--
+
+"Scarcely was Peytel's statement known, when the common sense of the
+public rose against it. Peytel had commenced his story upon the bridge
+of Andert, over the cold body of his wife. On the 2nd November he
+had developed it in detail, in the presence of the physicians, in the
+presence of the assembled neighbors--of the persons who, on the day
+previous only, were his friends. Finally, he had completed it in his
+interrogatories, his conversations, his writings, and letters to the
+magistrates and everywhere these words, repeated so often, were only
+received with a painful incredulity. The fact was that, besides the
+singular character which Peytel's appearance, attitude, and talk had
+worn ever since the event, there was in his narrative an inexplicable
+enigma; its contradictions and impossibilities were such, that calm
+persons were revolted at it, and that even friendship itself refused to
+believe it."
+
+Thus Mr. Attorney speaks, not for himself alone, but for the whole
+French public; whose opinions, of course, he knows. Peytel's statement
+is discredited EVERYWHERE; the statement which he had made over the cold
+body of his wife--the monster! It is not enough simply to prove that the
+man committed the murder, but to make the jury violently angry against
+him, and cause them to shudder in the jury-box, as he exposes the horrid
+details of the crime.
+
+"Justice," goes on Mr. Substitute (who answers for the feelings of
+everybody), "DISTURBED BY THE PRE-OCCUPATIONS OF PUBLIC OPINION,
+commenced, without delay, the most active researches. The bodies of the
+victims were submitted to the investigations of men of art; the wounds
+and projectiles were examined; the place where the event took place
+explored with care. The morality of the author of this frightful
+scene became the object of rigorous examination; the exigeances of the
+prisoner, the forms affected by him, his calculating silence, and his
+answers, coldly insulting, were feeble obstacles; and justice at length
+arrived, by its prudence, and by the discoveries it made, to the most
+cruel point of certainty."
+
+You see that a man's demeanor is here made a crime against him; and that
+Mr. Substitute wishes to consider him guilty, because he has actually
+the audacity to hold his tongue. Now follows a touching description of
+the domestic, Louis Rey:--
+
+
+"Louis Rey, a child of the Hospital at Lyons, was confided, at a very
+early age, to some honest country people, with whom he stayed until he
+entered the army. At their house, and during this long period of time,
+his conduct, his intelligence, and the sweetness of his manners were
+such, that the family of his guardians became to him as an adopted
+family; and his departure caused them the most sincere affliction. When
+Louis quitted the army, he returned to his benefactors, and was received
+as a son. They found him just as they had ever known him" (I acknowledge
+that this pathos beats my humble defence of Peytel entirely), "except
+that he had learned to read and write; and the certificates of his
+commanders proved him to be a good and gallant soldier.
+
+"The necessity of creating some resources for himself, obliged him to
+quit his friends, and to enter the service of Monsieur de Montrichard,
+a lieutenant of gendarmerie, from whom he received fresh testimonials of
+regard. Louis, it is true, might have a fondness for wine and a passion
+for women; but he had been a soldier, and these faults were,
+according to the witnesses, amply compensated for by his activity,
+his intelligence, and the agreeable manner in which he performed his
+service. In the month of July, 1839, Rey quitted, voluntarily, the
+service of M. de Montrichard; and Peytel, about this period, meeting him
+at Lyons, did not hesitate to attach him to his service. Whatever may
+be the prisoner's present language, it is certain that up to the day of
+Louis's death, he served Peytel with diligence and fidelity.
+
+"More than once his master and mistress spoke well of him. EVERYBODY who
+has worked, or been at the house of Madame Peytel, has spoken in praise
+of his character; and, indeed, it may be said, that these testimonials
+were general.
+
+"On the very night of the 1st of November, and immediately after the
+catastrophe, we remark how Peytel begins to make insinuations against
+his servant; and how artfully, in order to render them more sure, he
+disseminates them through the different parts of his narrative. But,
+in the course of the proceeding, these charges have met with a most
+complete denial. Thus we find the disobedient servant who, at Pont
+d'Ain, refused to carry the money-chest to his master's room, under the
+pretext that the gates of the inn were closed securely, occupied with
+tending the horses after their long journey: meanwhile Peytel was
+standing by, and neither master nor servant exchanged a word, and the
+witnesses who beheld them both have borne testimony to the zeal and care
+of the domestic.
+
+"In like manner, we find that the servant, who was so remiss in the
+morning as to neglect to go to his master for orders, was ready for
+departure before seven o'clock, and had eagerly informed himself whether
+Monsieur and Madame Peytel were awake; learning from the maid of the
+inn, that they had ordered nothing for their breakfast. This man, who
+refused to carry with him a covering for the car, was, on the contrary,
+ready to take off his own cloak, and with it shelter articles of small
+value; this man, who had been for many days so silent and gloomy, gave,
+on the contrary, many proofs of his gayety--almost of his indiscretion,
+speaking, at all the inns, in terms of praise of his master and
+mistress. The waiter at the inn at Dauphin, says he was a tall young
+fellow, mild and good-natured; 'we talked for some time about horses,
+and such things; he seemed to be perfectly natural, and not pre-occupied
+at all.' At Pont d'Ain, he talked of his being a foundling; of the place
+where he had been brought up, and where he had served; and finally, at
+Rossillon, an hour before his death, he conversed familiarly with the
+master of the port, and spoke on indifferent subjects.
+
+"All Peytel's insinuations against his servant had no other end than
+to show, in every point of Rey's conduct, the behavior of a man who was
+premeditating attack. Of what, in fact, does he accuse him? Of wishing
+to rob him of 7,500 francs, and of having had recourse to assassination,
+in order to effect the robbery. But, for a premeditated crime, consider
+what singular improvidence the person showed who had determined on
+committing it; what folly and what weakness there is in the execution of
+it.
+
+"How many insurmountable obstacles are there in the way of committing
+and profiting by crime! On leaving Belley, Louis Rey, according to
+Peytel's statement, knowing that his master would return with money,
+provided himself with a holster pistol, which Madame Peytel had once
+before perceived among his effects. In Peytel's cabinet there were some
+balls; four of these were found in Rey's trunk, on the 6th of November.
+And, in order to commit the crime, this domestic had brought away with
+him a pistol, and no ammunition; for Peytel has informed us that Rey,
+an hour before his departure from Macon, purchased six balls at a
+gunsmith's. To gain his point, the assassin must immolate his victims;
+for this, he has only one pistol, knowing, perfectly well, that Peytel,
+in all his travels, had two on his person; knowing that, at a late hour
+of the night, his shot might fail of effect; and that, in this case, he
+would be left to the mercy of his opponent.
+
+"The execution of the crime is, according to Peytel's account, still
+more singular. Louis does not get off the carriage, until Peytel tells
+him to descend. He does not think of taking his master's life until he
+is sure that the latter has his eyes open. It is dark, and the pair are
+covered in one cloak; and Rey only fires at them at six paces' distance:
+he fires at hazard, without disquieting himself as to the choice of his
+victim; and the soldier, who was bold enough to undertake this double
+murder, has not force nor courage to consummate it. He flies, carrying
+in his hand a useless whip, with a heavy mantle on his shoulders, in
+spite of the detonation of two pistols at his ears, and the rapid steps
+of an angry master in pursuit, which ought to have set him upon some
+better means of escape. And we find this man, full of youth and vigor,
+lying with his face to the ground, in the midst of a public road,
+falling without a struggle, or resistance, under the blows of a hammer!
+
+"And suppose the murderer had succeeded in his criminal projects, what
+fruit could he have drawn from them?--Leaving, on the road, the two
+bleeding bodies; obliged to lead two carriages at a time, for fear of
+discovery; not able to return himself, after all the pains he had taken
+to speak, at every place at which they had stopped, of the money which
+his master was carrying with him; too prudent to appear alone at Belley;
+arrested at the frontier, by the excise officers, who would present an
+impassable barrier to him till morning, what could he do, or hope to
+do? The examination of the car has shown that Rey, at the moment of the
+crime, had neither linen, nor clothes, nor effects of any kind. There
+was found in his pockets, when the body was examined, no passport, nor
+certificate; one of his pockets contained a ball, of large calibre,
+which he had shown, in play, to a girl, at the inn at Macon, a little
+horn-handled knife, a snuff-box, a little packet of gunpowder, and a
+purse, containing only a halfpenny and some string. Here is all the
+baggage, with which, after the execution of his homicidal plan, Louis
+Rey intended to take refuge in a foreign country.* Beside these absurd
+contradictions, there is another remarkable fact, which must not be
+passed over; it is this:--the pistol found by Rey is of antique form,
+and the original owner of it has been found. He is a curiosity-merchant
+at Lyons; and, though he cannot affirm that Peytel was the person who
+bought this pistol of him, he perfectly recognizes Peytel as having been
+a frequent customer at his shop!
+
+     * This sentence is taken from another part of the "Acte
+     d'accusation."
+
+"No, we may fearlessly affirm that Louis Rey was not guilty of the crime
+which Peytel lays to his charge. If, to those who knew him, his mild and
+open disposition, his military career, modest and without a stain,
+the touching regrets of his employers, are sufficient proofs of his
+innocence,--the calm and candid observer, who considers how the crime
+was conceived, was executed, and what consequences would have resulted
+from it, will likewise acquit him, and free him of the odious imputation
+which Peytel endeavors to cast upon his memory.
+
+"But justice has removed the veil, with which an impious hand endeavored
+to cover itself. Already, on the night of the 1st of November, suspicion
+was awakened by the extraordinary agitation of Peytel; by those
+excessive attentions towards his wife, which came so late; by that
+excessive and noisy grief, and by those calculated bursts of sorrow,
+which are such as Nature does not exhibit. The criminal, whom the public
+conscience had fixed upon; the man whose frightful combinations have
+been laid bare, and whose falsehoods, step by step, have been exposed,
+during the proceedings previous to the trial; the murderer, at whose
+hands a heart-stricken family, and society at large, demands an account
+of the blood of a wife;--that murderer is Peytel."
+
+When, my dear Briefless, you are a judge (as I make no doubt you
+will be, when you have left off the club all night, cigar-smoking of
+mornings, and reading novels in bed), will you ever find it in your
+heart to order a fellow-sinner's head off upon such evidence as this?
+Because a romantic Substitut du Procureur de Roi chooses to compose
+and recite a little drama, and draw tears from juries, let us hope that
+severe Rhadamanthine judges are not to be melted by such trumpery.
+One wants but the description of the characters to render the piece
+complete, as thus:--
+
+         Personages                             Costumes.
+
+   SEBASTIAN PEYTAL  Meurtrier        Habillement complet de notaire
+                                      perfide: figure pâle, barbe
+                                      noire, cheveux noirs.
+
+   LOUIS REY   Soldat rétiré, bon,    Costume ordinaire; il porte sur
+               brave, franc, jovial   ses épaules une couverture de
+               aimant le vin, les     cheval.
+               femmes, la gaieté,
+               ses maîtres surtout;
+               vrai Français, enfin
+
+   WOLF     Lieutenant de gendarmerie.
+
+   FÉLICITÉ D'ALCAZAR   Femme et victime de Peytel.
+
+   Médecins, Villageois, Filles d'Auberge, Garçons d'Ecurie, &c. &c.
+
+   La scène se passe sur le pont d'Andert, entre Macon et Belley.  Il
+   est minuit.  La pluie tombe: les tonnerres grondent.  Le ciel est
+   convert de nuages, et sillonné d'éclairs.
+
+
+All these personages are brought into play in the Procureur's drama;
+the villagers come in with their chorus; the old lieutenant of
+gendarmes with his suspicions; Rey's frankness and gayety, the romantic
+circumstances of his birth, his gallantry and fidelity, are all
+introduced, in order to form a contrast with Peytel, and to call down
+the jury's indignation against the latter. But are these proofs? or
+anything like proofs? And the suspicions, that are to serve instead of
+proofs, what are they?
+
+"My servant, Louis Rey, was very sombre and reserved," says Peytel; "he
+refused to call me in the morning, to carry my money-chest to my room,
+to cover the open car when it rained." The Prosecutor disproves this by
+stating that Rey talked with the inn maids and servants, asked if his
+master was up, and stood in the inn-yard, grooming the horses, with his
+master by his side, neither speaking to the other. Might he not have
+talked to the maids, and yet been sombre when speaking to his master?
+Might he not have neglected to call his master, and yet have asked
+whether he was awake? Might he not have said that the inn-gates were
+safe, out of hearing of the ostler witness? Mr. Substitute's answers to
+Peytel's statements are no answer at all. Every word Peytel said might
+be true, and yet Louis Rey might not have committed the murder; or every
+word might have been false, and yet Louis Rey might have committed the
+murder.
+
+"Then," says Mr. Substitute, "how many obstacles are there to the
+commission of the crime? And these are--
+
+"1. Rey provided himself with ONE holster pistol, to kill two people,
+knowing well that one of them had always a brace of pistols about him.
+
+"2. He does not think of firing until his master's eyes are open: fires
+at six paces, not caring at whom he fires, and then runs away.
+
+"3. He could not have intended to kill his master, because he had no
+passport in his pocket, and no clothes; and because he must have been
+detained at the frontier until morning; and because he would have had to
+drive two carriages, in order to avoid suspicion.
+
+"4. And, a most singular circumstance, the very pistol which was found
+by his side had been bought at the shop of a man at Lyons, who perfectly
+recognized Peytel as one of his customers, though he could not say he
+had sold that particular weapon to Peytel."
+
+Does it follow, from this, that Louis Rey is not the murderer, much
+more, that Peytel is? Look at argument No. 1. Rey had no need to kill
+two people: he wanted the money, and not the blood. Suppose he had
+killed Peytel, would he not have mastered Madame Peytel easily?--a weak
+woman, in an excessively delicate situation, incapable of much energy,
+at the best of times.
+
+2. "He does not fire till he knows his master's eyes are open." Why, on
+a stormy night, does a man driving a carriage go to sleep? Was Rey to
+wait until his master snored? "He fires at six paces, not caring whom he
+hits;"--and might not this happen too? The night is not so dark but
+that he can see his master, in HIS USUAL PLACE, driving. He fires and
+hits--whom? Madame Peytel, who had left her place, AND WAS WRAPPED UP
+WITH PEYTEL IN HIS CLOAK. She screams out, "Husband, take your pistols."
+Rey knows that his master has a brace, thinks that he has hit the wrong
+person, and, as Peytel fires on him, runs away. Peytel follows, hammer
+in hand; as he comes up with the fugitive, he deals him a blow on
+the back of the head, and Rey falls--his face to the ground. Is there
+anything unnatural in this story?--anything so monstrously unnatural,
+that is, that it might not be true?
+
+3. These objections are absurd. Why need a man have change of linen?
+If he had taken none for the journey, why should he want any for the
+escape? Why need he drive two carriages?--He might have driven both into
+the river, and Mrs. Peytel in one. Why is he to go to the douane, and
+thrust himself into the very jaws of danger? Are there not a thousand
+ways for a man to pass a frontier? Do smugglers, when they have to pass
+from one country to another, choose exactly those spots where a police
+is placed?
+
+And, finally, the gunsmith of Lyons, who knows Peytel quite well, cannot
+say that he sold the pistol to him; that is, he did NOT sell the pistol
+to him; for you have only one man's word, in this case (Peytel's), to
+the contrary; and the testimony, as far as it goes, is in his favor.
+I say, my lud, and gentlemen of the jury, that these objections of my
+learned friend, who is engaged for the Crown, are absurd, frivolous,
+monstrous; that to SUSPECT away the life of a man upon such suppositions
+as these, is wicked, illegal, and inhuman; and, what is more, that Louis
+Rey, if he wanted to commit the crime--if he wanted to possess himself
+of a large sum of money, chose the best time and spot for so doing; and,
+no doubt, would have succeeded, if Fate had not, in a wonderful manner,
+caused Madame Peytel TO TAKE HER HUSBAND'S PLACE, and receive the ball
+intended for him in her own head.
+
+But whether these suspicions are absurd or not, hit or miss, it is
+the advocate's duty, as it appears, to urge them. He wants to make as
+unfavorable an impression as possible with regard to Peytel's character;
+he, therefore, must, for contrast's sake, give all sorts of praise to
+his victim, and awaken every sympathy in the poor fellow's favor.
+Having done this, as far as lies in his power, having exaggerated every
+circumstance that can be unfavorable to Peytel, and given his own tale
+in the baldest manner possible--having declared that Peytel is the
+murderer of his wife and servant, the Crown now proceeds to back this
+assertion, by showing what interested motives he had, and by relating,
+after its own fashion, the circumstances of his marriage.
+
+They may be told briefly here. Peytel was of a good family, of Macon,
+and entitled, at his mother's death, to a considerable property. He had
+been educated as a notary, and had lately purchased a business, in that
+line, in Belley, for which he had paid a large sum of money; part of the
+sum, 15,000 francs, for which he had given bills, was still due.
+
+Near Belley, Peytel first met Félicité Alcazar, who was residing with
+her brother-in-law, Monsieur de Montrichard; and, knowing that the young
+lady's fortune was considerable, he made an offer of marriage to the
+brother-in-law, who thought the match advantageous, and communicated on
+the subject with Félicité's mother, Madame Alcazar, at Paris. After a
+time Peytel went to Paris, to press his suit, and was accepted. There
+seems to have been no affectation of love on his side; and some little
+repugnance on the part of the lady, who yielded, however, to the wishes
+of her parents, and was married. The parties began to quarrel on the
+very day of the marriage, and continued their disputes almost to the
+close of the unhappy connection. Félicité was half blind, passionate,
+sarcastic, clumsy in her person and manners, and ill educated; Peytel,
+a man of considerable intellect and pretensions, who had lived for some
+time at Paris, where he had mingled with good literary society. The
+lady was, in fact, as disagreeable a person as could well be, and the
+evidence describes some scenes which took place between her and her
+husband, showing how deeply she must have mortified and enraged him.
+
+A charge very clearly made out against Peytel, is that of dishonesty; he
+procured from the notary of whom he bought his place an acquittance in
+full, whereas there were 15,000 francs owing, as we have seen. He
+also, in the contract of marriage, which was to have resembled, in
+all respects, that between Monsieur Broussais and another Demoiselle
+Alcazar, caused an alteration to be made in his favor, which gave
+him command over his wife's funded property, without furnishing
+the guarantees by which the other son-in-law was bound. And, almost
+immediately after his marriage, Peytel sold out of the funds a sum
+of 50,000 francs, that belonged to his wife, and used it for his own
+purposes.
+
+About two months after his marriage, PEYTEL PRESSED HIS WIFE TO MAKE HER
+WILL. He had made his, he said, leaving everything to her, in case of
+his death: after some parley, the poor thing consented.* This is a cruel
+suspicion against him; and Mr. Substitute has no need to enlarge upon
+it. As for the previous fact, the dishonest statement about the 15,000
+francs, there is nothing murderous in that--nothing which a man very
+eager to make a good marriage might not do. The same may be said of the
+suppression, in Peytel's marriage contract, of the clause to be found
+in Broussais's, placing restrictions upon the use of the wife's money.
+Mademoiselle d'Alcazar's friends read the contract before they signed
+it, and might have refused it, had they so pleased.
+
+     * "Peytel," says the act of accusation, "did not fail to see
+     the danger which would menace him, if this will (which had
+     escaped the magistrates in their search of Peytel's papers)
+     was discovered. He, therefore, instructed his agent to take
+     possession of it, which he did, and the fact was not
+     mentioned for several months afterwards. Peytel and his
+     agent were called upon to explain the circumstance, but
+     refused, and their silence for a long time interrupted the
+     'instruction'" (getting up of the evidence). "All that could
+     be obtained from them was an avowal, that such a will
+     existed, constituting Peytel his wife's sole legatee; and a
+     promise, on their parts, to produce it before the court gave
+     its sentence." But why keep the will secret? The anxiety
+     about it was surely absurd and unnecessary: the whole of
+     Madame Peytel's family knew that such a will was made. She
+     had consulted her sister concerning it, who said--"If there
+     is no other way of satisfying him, make the will;" and the
+     mother, when she heard of it, cried out--"Does he intend to
+     poison her?"
+
+After some disputes, which took place between Peytel and his wife (there
+were continual quarrels, and continual letters passing between them
+from room to room), the latter was induced to write him a couple of
+exaggerated letters, swearing "by the ashes of her father" that she
+would be an obedient wife to him, and entreating him to counsel and
+direct her. These letters were seen by members of the lady's family,
+who, in the quarrels between the couple, always took the husband's part.
+They were found in Peytel's cabinet, after he had been arrested for the
+murder, and after he had had full access to all his papers, of which
+he destroyed or left as many as he pleased. The accusation makes it
+a matter of suspicion against Peytel, that he should have left these
+letters of his wife's in a conspicuous situation.
+
+"All these circumstances," says the accusation, "throw a frightful light
+upon Peytel's plans. The letters and will of Madame Peytel are in the
+hands of her husband. Three months pass away, and this poor woman is
+brought to her home, in the middle of the night, with two balls in
+her head, stretched at the bottom of her carriage, by the side of a
+peasant."
+
+"What other than Sebastian Peytel could have committed this
+murder?--whom could it profit?--who but himself had an odious chain
+to break, and an inheritance to receive? Why speak of the servant's
+projected robbery? The pistols found by the side of Louis's body, the
+balls bought by him at Macon, and those discovered at Belley among his
+effects, were only the result of a perfidious combination. The pistol,
+indeed, which was found on the hill of Darde, on the night of the 1st of
+November, could only have belonged to Peytel, and must have been thrown
+by him, near the body of his domestic, with the paper which had before
+enveloped it. Who had seen this pistol in the hands of Louis? Among
+all the gendarmes, work-women, domestics, employed by Peytel and his
+brother-in-law, is there one single witness who had seen this weapon in
+Louis's possession? It is true that Madame Peytel did, on one occasion,
+speak to M. de Montrichard of a pistol; which had nothing to do,
+however, with that found near Louis Rey."
+
+Is this justice, or good reason? Just reverse the argument, and apply it
+to Rey. "Who but Rey could have committed this murder?--who but Rey
+had a large sum of money to seize upon?--a pistol is found by his side,
+balls and powder in his pocket, other balls in his trunks at home. The
+pistol found near his body could not, indeed, have belonged to Peytel:
+did any man ever see it in his possession? The very gunsmith who sold
+it, and who knew Peytel, would he not have known that he had sold him
+this pistol? At his own house, Peytel has a collection of weapons of
+all kinds; everybody has seen them--a man who makes such collections is
+anxious to display them. Did any one ever see this weapon?--Not one.
+And Madame Peytel did, in her lifetime, remark a pistol in the valet's
+possession. She was short-sighted, and could not particularize what
+kind of pistol it was; but she spoke of it to her husband and her
+brother-in-law." This is not satisfactory, if you please; but, at least,
+it is as satisfactory as the other set of suppositions. It is the very
+chain of argument which would have been brought against Louis Rey by
+this very same compiler of the act of accusation, had Rey survived,
+instead of Peytel, and had he, as most undoubtedly would have been the
+case, been tried for the murder.
+
+This argument was shortly put by Peytel's counsel:--"if Peytel had been
+killed by Rey in the struggle, would you not have found Rey guilty of
+the murder of his master and mistress?" It is such a dreadful dilemma,
+that I wonder how judges and lawyers could have dared to persecute
+Peytel in the manner which they did.
+
+After the act of accusation, which lays down all the suppositions
+against Peytel as facts, which will not admit the truth of one of the
+prisoner's allegations in his own defence, comes the trial. The judge is
+quite as impartial as the preparer of the indictment, as will be seen by
+the following specimens of his interrogatories:--
+
+Judge. "The act of accusation finds in your statement contradictions,
+improbabilities, impossibilities. Thus your domestic, who had determined
+to assassinate you, in order to rob you, and who MUST HAVE CALCULATED
+UPON THE CONSEQUENCE OF A FAILURE, had neither passport nor money upon
+him. This is very unlikely; because he could not have gone far with only
+a single halfpenny, which was all he had."
+
+Prisoner. "My servant was known, and often passed the frontier without a
+passport."
+
+Judge. "YOUR DOMESTIC HAD TO ASSASSINATE TWO PERSONS, and had no weapon
+but a single pistol. He had no dagger; and the only thing found on him
+was a knife."
+
+Prisoner. "In the car there were several turner's implements, which he
+might have used."
+
+Judge. "But he had not those arms upon him, because you pursued him
+immediately. He had, according to you, only this old pistol."
+
+Prisoner. "I have nothing to say."
+
+Judge. "Your domestic, instead of flying into woods, which skirt the
+road, ran straight forward on the road itself: THIS, AGAIN, IS VERY
+UNLIKELY."
+
+Prisoner. "This is a conjecture I could answer by another conjecture; I
+can only reason on the facts."
+
+Judge. "How far did you pursue him?"
+
+Prisoner. "I don't know exactly."
+
+Judge. "You said 'two hundred paces.'"
+
+No answer from the prisoner.
+
+Judge. "Your domestic was young, active, robust, and tall. He was ahead
+of you. You were in a carriage, from which you had to descend: you had
+to take your pistols from a cushion, and THEN your hammer;--how are we
+to believe that you could have caught him, if he ran? It is IMPOSSIBLE."
+
+Prisoner. "I can't explain it: I think that Rey had some defect in one
+leg. I, for my part, run tolerably fast."
+
+Judge. "At what distance from him did you fire your first shot?"
+
+Prisoner. "I can't tell."
+
+Judge. "Perhaps he was not running when you fired."
+
+Prisoner. "I saw him running."
+
+Judge. "In what position was your wife?"
+
+Prisoner. "She was leaning on my left arm, and the man was on the right
+side of the carriage."
+
+Judge. "The shot must have been fired à bout portant, because it burned
+the eyebrows and lashes entirely. The assassin must have passed his
+pistol across your breast."
+
+Prisoner. "The shot was not fired so close; I am convinced of it:
+professional gentlemen will prove it."
+
+Judge. "That is what you pretend, because you understand perfectly
+the consequences of admitting the fact. Your wife was hit with two
+balls--one striking downwards, to the right, by the nose, the other
+going horizontally through the cheek, to the left."
+
+Prisoner. "The contrary will be shown by the witnesses called for the
+purpose."
+
+Judge. "IT IS A VERY UNLUCKY COMBINATION FOR YOU that these balls, which
+went, you say, from the same pistol, should have taken two different
+directions."
+
+Prisoner. "I can't dispute about the various combinations of
+fire-arms--professional persons will be heard."
+
+Judge. "According to your statement, your wife said to you, 'My poor
+husband, take your pistols.'"
+
+Prisoner. "She did."
+
+Judge. "In a manner quite distinct."
+
+Prisoner. "Yes."
+
+Judge. "So distinct that you did not fancy she was hit?"
+
+Prisoner. "Yes; that is the fact."
+
+Judge. "HERE, AGAIN, IS AN IMPOSSIBILITY; and nothing is more precise
+than the declaration of the medical men. They affirm that your wife
+could not have spoken--their report is unanimous."
+
+Prisoner. "I can only oppose to it quite contrary opinions from
+professional men, also: you must hear them."
+
+Judge. "What did your wife do next?"
+
+      .      .      .      .      .      .
+
+Judge. "You deny the statements of the witnesses:" (they related to
+Peytel's demeanor and behavior, which the judge wishes to show were
+very unusual;--and what if they were?) "Here, however, are some mute
+witnesses, whose testimony, you will not perhaps refuse. Near Louis
+Rey's body was found a horse-cloth, a pistol, and a whip..... Your
+domestic must have had this cloth upon him when he went to assassinate
+you: it was wet and heavy. An assassin disencumbers himself of anything
+that is likely to impede him, especially when he is going to struggle
+with a man as young as himself."
+
+Prisoner. "My servant had, I believe, this covering on his body; it
+might be useful to him to keep the priming of his pistol dry."
+
+The president caused the cloth to be opened, and showed that there was
+no hook, or tie, by which it could be held together; and that Rey must
+have held it with one hand, and, in the other, his whip, and the pistol
+with which he intended to commit the crime; which was impossible.
+
+Prisoner. "These are only conjectures."
+
+And what conjectures, my God! upon which to take away the life of a man.
+Jeffreys, or Fouquier Tinville, could scarcely have dared to make such.
+Such prejudice, such bitter persecution, such priming of the jury, such
+monstrous assumptions and unreason--fancy them coming from an impartial
+judge! The man is worse than the public accuser.
+
+"Rey," says the Judge, "could not have committed the murder, BECAUSE HE
+HAD NO MONEY IN HIS POCKET, TO FLY, IN CASE OF FAILURE." And what is the
+precise sum that his lordship thinks necessary for a gentleman to have,
+before he makes such an attempt? Are the men who murder for money,
+usually in possession of a certain independence before they begin?
+How much money was Rey, a servant, who loved wine and women, had been
+stopping at a score of inns on the road, and had, probably, an annual
+income of 400 francs,--how much money was Rey likely to have?
+
+"Your servant had to assassinate two persons." This I have mentioned
+before. Why had he to assassinate two persons,* when one was enough?
+If he had killed Peytel, could he not have seized and gagged his wife
+immediately?
+
+     * M. Balzac's theory of the case is, that Rey had intrigued
+     with Madame Peytel; having known her previous to her
+     marriage, when she was staying in the house of her brother-
+     in-law, Monsieur de Montrichard, where Rey had been a
+     servant.
+
+"Your domestic ran straight forward, instead of taking to the woods, by
+the side of the rood: this is very unlikely." How does his worship know?
+Can any judge, however enlightened, tell the exact road that a man will
+take, who has just missed a coup of murder, and is pursued by a man who
+is firing pistols at him? And has a judge a right to instruct a jury in
+this way, as to what they shall, or shall not, believe?
+
+"You have to run after an active man, who has the start of you: to jump
+out of a carriage; to take your pistols; and THEN, your hammer. THIS IS
+IMPOSSIBLE." By heavens! does it not make a man's blood boil, to read
+such blundering, blood-seeking sophistry? This man, when it suits him,
+shows that Rey would be slow in his motions; and when it suits him,
+declares that Rey ought to be quick; declares ex cathedrâ, what pace Rey
+should go, and what direction he should take; shows, in a breath, that
+he must have run faster than Peytel; and then, that he could not run
+fast, because the cloak clogged him; settles how he is to be dressed
+when he commits a murder, and what money he is to have in his pocket;
+gives these impossible suppositions to the jury, and tells them that the
+previous statements are impossible; and, finally, informs them of the
+precise manner in which Rey must have stood holding his horse-cloth in
+one hand, his whip and pistol in the other, when he made the supposed
+attempt at murder. Now, what is the size of a horse-cloth? Is it as big
+as a pocket-handkerchief? Is there no possibility that it might hang
+over one shoulder; that the whip should be held under that very arm?
+Did you never see a carter so carry it, his hands in his pockets all the
+while? Is it monstrous, abhorrent to nature, that a man should fire a
+pistol from under a cloak on a rainy day?--that he should, after firing
+the shot, be frightened, and run; run straight before him, with the
+cloak on his shoulders, and the weapon in his hand? Peytel's story is
+possible, and very possible; it is almost probable. Allow that Rey
+had the cloth on, and you allow that he must have been clogged in his
+motions; that Peytel may have come up with him--felled him with a blow
+of the hammer; the doctors say that he would have so fallen by one
+blow--he would have fallen on his face, as he was found: the paper
+might have been thrust into his breast, and tumbled out as he fell.
+Circumstances far more impossible have occurred ere this; and men have
+been hanged for them, who were as innocent of the crime laid to their
+charge as the judge on the bench, who convicted them.
+
+In like manner, Peytel may not have committed the crime charged to
+him; and Mr. Judge, with his arguments as to possibilities and
+impossibilities,--Mr. Public Prosecutor, with his romantic narrative and
+inflammatory harangues to the jury,--may have used all these powers to
+bring to death an innocent man. From the animus with which the case had
+been conducted from beginning to end, it was easy to see the result.
+Here it is, in the words of the provincial paper:--
+
+
+BOURG, 28 October, 1839.
+
+"The condemned Peytel has just undergone his punishment, which took
+place four days before the anniversary of his crime. The terrible drama
+of the bridge of Andert, which cost the life of two persons, has just
+terminated on the scaffold. Mid-day had just sounded on the clock of the
+Palais: the same clock tolled midnight when, on the 30th of August, his
+sentence was pronounced.
+
+"Since the rejection of his appeal in Cassation, on which his principal
+hopes were founded, Peytel spoke little of his petition to the King.
+The notion of transportation was that which he seemed to cherish most.
+However, he made several inquiries from the gaoler of the prison, when
+he saw him at meal-time, with regard to the place of execution, the
+usual hour, and other details on the subject. From that period, the
+words 'Champ de Foire' (the fair-field, where the execution was to be
+held), were frequently used by him in conversation.
+
+"Yesterday, the idea that the time had arrived seemed to be more
+strongly than ever impressed upon him; especially after the departure
+of the curé, who latterly has been with him every day. The documents
+connected with the trial had arrived in the morning. He was ignorant of
+this circumstance, but sought to discover from his guardians what
+they tried to hide from him; and to find out whether his petition was
+rejected, and when he was to die.
+
+"Yesterday, also, he had written to demand the presence of his counsel,
+M. Margerand, in order that he might have some conversation with him,
+and regulate his affairs, before he ----; he did not write down the
+word, but left in its place a few points of the pen.
+
+"In the evening, whilst he was at supper, he begged earnestly to be
+allowed a little wax-candle, to finish what he was writing: otherwise,
+he said, TIME MIGHT FAIL. This was a new, indirect manner of repeating
+his ordinary question. As light, up to that evening, had been refused
+him, it was thought best to deny him in this, as in former instances;
+otherwise his suspicions might have been confirmed. The keeper refused
+his demand.
+
+"This morning, Monday, at nine o'clock, the Greffier of the Assize
+Court, in fulfilment of the painful duty which the law imposes upon him,
+came to the prison, in company with the curé of Bourg, and announced to
+the convict that his petition was rejected, and that he had only
+three hours to live. He received this fatal news with a great deal of
+calmness, and showed himself to be no more affected than he had been
+on the trial. 'I am ready; but I wish they had given me four-and-twenty
+hours' notice,'--were all the words he used.
+
+"The Greffier now retired, leaving Peytel alone with the curé, who did
+not thenceforth quit him. Peytel breakfasted at ten o'clock.
+
+"At eleven, a piquet of mounted gendarmerie and infantry took their
+station upon the place before the prison, where a great concourse of
+people had already assembled. An open car was at the door. Before
+he went out Peytel asked the gaoler for a looking-glass; and having
+examined his face for a moment, said, 'At least, the inhabitants of
+Bourg will see that I have not grown thin.'
+
+"As twelve o'clock sounded, the prison gates opened, an aide appeared,
+followed by Peytel, leaning on the arm of the curé. Peytel's face
+was pale, he had a long black beard, a blue cap on his head, and his
+great-coat flung over his shoulders, and buttoned at the neck.
+
+"He looked about at the place and the crowd; he asked if the carriage
+would go at a trot; and on being told that that would be difficult,
+he said he would prefer walking, and asked what the road was. He
+immediately set out, walking at a firm and rapid pace. He was not bound
+at all.
+
+"An immense crowd of people encumbered the two streets through which he
+had to pass to the place of execution. He cast his eyes alternately upon
+them and upon the guillotine, which was before him.
+
+"Arrived at the foot of the scaffold, Peytel embraced the curé, and
+bade him adieu. He then embraced him again; perhaps, for his mother and
+sister. He then mounted the steps rapidly, and gave himself into the
+hands of the executioner, who removed his coat and cap. He asked how he
+was to place himself, and on a sign being made, he flung himself briskly
+on the plank, and stretched his neck. In another moment he was no more.
+
+"The crowd, which had been quite silent, retired, profoundly moved by
+the sight it had witnessed. As at all executions, there was a very great
+number of women present.
+
+"Under the scaffold there had been, ever since the morning, a coffin.
+The family had asked for his remains, and had them immediately buried,
+privately: and thus the unfortunate man's head escaped the modellers in
+wax, several of whom had arrived to take an impression of it."
+
+Down goes the axe; the poor wretch's head rolls gasping into the basket;
+the spectators go home, pondering; and Mr. Executioner and his aides
+have, in half an hour, removed all traces of the august sacrifice, and
+of the altar on which it had been performed. Say, Mr. Briefless, do
+you think that any single person, meditating murder, would be deterred
+therefrom by beholding this--nay, a thousand more executions? It is
+not for moral improvement, as I take it, nor for opportunity to make
+appropriate remarks upon the punishment of crime, that people make a
+holiday of a killing-day, and leave their homes and occupations, to
+flock and witness the cutting off of a head. Do we crowd to see Mr.
+Macready in the new tragedy, or Mademoiselle Ellssler in her last new
+ballet and flesh-colored stockinnet pantaloons, out of a pure love of
+abstract poetry and beauty; or from a strong notion that we shall be
+excited, in different ways, by the actor and the dancer? And so, as we
+go to have a meal of fictitious terror at the tragedy, of something more
+questionable in the ballet, we go for a glut of blood to the execution.
+The lust is in every man's nature, more or less. Did you ever witness a
+wrestling or boxing match? The first clatter of the kick on the shins,
+or the first drawing of blood, makes the stranger shudder a little;
+but soon the blood is his chief enjoyment, and he thirsts for it with a
+fierce delight. It is a fine grim pleasure that we have in seeing a
+man killed; and I make no doubt that the organs of destructiveness must
+begin to throb and swell as we witness the delightful savage spectacle.
+
+Three or four years back, when Fieschi and Lacenaire were executed, I
+made attempts to see the execution of both; but was disappointed in
+both cases. In the first instance, the day for Fieschi's death was,
+purposely, kept secret; and he was, if I remember rightly, executed at
+some remote quarter of the town. But it would have done a philanthropist
+good, to witness the scene which we saw on the morning when his
+execution did NOT take place.
+
+It was carnival time, and the rumor had pretty generally been carried
+abroad that he was to die on that morning. A friend, who accompanied
+me, came many miles, through the mud and dark, in order to be in at the
+death. We set out before light, floundering through the muddy Champs
+Elysées; where, besides, were many other persons floundering, and all
+bent upon the same errand. We passed by the Concert of Musard, then held
+in the Rue St. Honoré; and round this, in the wet, a number of coaches
+were collected. The ball was just up, and a crowd of people in hideous
+masquerade, drunk, tired, dirty, dressed in horrible old frippery, and
+daubed with filthy rouge, were trooping out of the place: tipsy women
+and men, shrieking, jabbering, gesticulating, as French will do; parties
+swaggering, staggering forwards, arm in arm, reeling to and fro across
+the street, and yelling songs in chorus: hundreds of these were bound
+for the show, and we thought ourselves lucky in finding a vehicle to the
+execution place, at the Barrière d'Enfer. As we crossed the river and
+entered the Enfer Street, crowds of students, black workmen, and more
+drunken devils from more carnival balls, were filling it; and on the
+grand place there were thousands of these assembled, looking out for
+Fiaschi and his cortège. We waited and waited; but alas! no fun for
+us that morning: no throat-cutting; no august spectacle of satisfied
+justice; and the eager spectators were obliged to return, disappointed
+of their expected breakfast of blood. It would have been a fine scene,
+that execution, could it but have taken place in the midst of the mad
+mountebanks and tipsy strumpets who had flocked so far to witness it,
+wishing to wind up the delights of their carnival by a bonnebouche of a
+murder.
+
+The other attempt was equally unfortunate. We arrived too late on the
+ground to be present at the execution of Lacenaire and his co-mate
+in murder, Avril. But as we came to the ground (a gloomy round space,
+within the barrier--three roads lead to it; and, outside, you see
+the wine-shops and restaurateurs' of the barrier looking gay and
+inviting,)--as we came to the ground, we only found, in the midst of it,
+a little pool of ice, just partially tinged with red. Two or three idle
+street-boys were dancing and stamping about this pool; and when I asked
+one of them whether the execution had taken place, he began dancing more
+madly than ever, and shrieked out with a loud fantastical, theatrical
+voice, "Venez tous Messieurs et Dames, voyez ici le sang du monstre
+Lacenaire, et de son compagnon he traître Avril," or words to that
+effect; and straightway all the other gamins screamed out the words in
+chorus, and took hands and danced round the little puddle.
+
+O august Justice, your meal was followed by a pretty appropriate grace!
+Was any man, who saw the show, deterred, or frightened, or moralized
+in any way? He had gratified his appetite for blood, and this was
+all. There is something singularly pleasing, both in the amusement of
+execution-seeing, and in the results. You are not only delightfully
+excited at the time, but most pleasingly relaxed afterwards; the mind,
+which has been wound up painfully until now, becomes quite complacent
+and easy. There is something agreeable in the misfortunes of others, as
+the philosopher has told us. Remark what a good breakfast you eat after
+an execution; how pleasant it is to cut jokes after it, and upon it.
+This merry, pleasant mood is brought on by the blood tonic.
+
+But, for God's sake, if we are to enjoy this, let us do so in
+moderation; and let us, at least, be sure of a man's guilt before we
+murder him. To kill him, even with the full assurance that he is guilty
+is hazardous enough. Who gave you the right to do so?--you, who cry out
+against suicides, as impious and contrary to Christian law? What use is
+there in killing him? You deter no one else from committing the crime
+by so doing: you give us, to be sure, half an hour's pleasant
+entertainment; but it is a great question whether we derive much moral
+profit from the sight. If you want to keep a murderer from farther
+inroads upon society, are there not plenty of hulks and prisons, God
+wot; treadmills, galleys, and houses of correction? Above all, as in
+the case of Sebastian Peytel and his family, there have been two
+deaths already; was a third death absolutely necessary? and, taking the
+fallibility of judges and lawyers into his heart, and remembering the
+thousand instances of unmerited punishment that have been suffered, upon
+similar and stronger evidence before, can any man declare, positively
+and upon his oath, that Peytel was guilty, and that this was not THE
+THIRD MURDER IN THE FAMILY?
+
+
+
+
+FOUR IMITATIONS OF BÉRANGER
+
+
+
+
+LE ROI D'YVETOT.
+
+
+     Il était un roi d'Yvetot,
+       Peu connu dans l'histoire;
+     Se levant tard, se couchant tôt,
+       Dormant fort bien sans gloire,
+     Et couronné par Jeanneton
+     D'un simple bonnet de coton,
+                  Dit-on.
+         Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah!
+         Quel bon petit roi c'était là!
+                  La, la.
+
+     Il fesait ses quatre repas
+       Dans son palais de chaume,
+     Et sur un âne, pas à pas,
+       Parcourait son royaume.
+     Joyeux, simple et croyant le bien,
+     Pour toute garde il n'avait rien
+                  Qu'un chien.
+         Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! &c.
+                  La, la.
+
+     Il n'avait de goût onéreux
+       Qu'une soif un peu vive;
+     Mais, en rendant son peuple heureux,
+       Il faux bien qu'un roi vive.
+     Lui-même à table, et sans suppôt,
+     Sur chaque muid levait un pot
+                  D'impôt.
+         Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! &c.
+                  La, la.
+
+     Aux filles de bonnes maisons
+       Comme il avait su plaire,
+     Ses sujets avaient cent raisons
+       De le nommer leur père:
+     D'ailleurs il ne levait de ban
+     Que pour tirer quatre fois l'an
+                  Au blanc.
+         Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! &c.
+                  La, la.
+
+     Il n'agrandit point ses états,
+       Fut un voisin commode,
+     Et, modèle des potentats,
+       Prit le plaisir pour code.
+     Ce n'est que lorsqu'il expira,
+     Que le peuple qui l'enterra
+                  Pleura.
+         Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! &c.
+                  La, la.
+
+     On conserve encor le portrait
+       De ce digne et bon prince;
+     C'est l'enseigne d'un cabaret
+       Fameux dans la province.
+     Les jours de fête, bien souvent,
+     La foule s'écrie en buvant
+                  Devant:
+         Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah!
+         Quel bon petit roi c'était là!
+                  La, la.
+
+
+THE KING OF YVETOT.
+
+
+     There was a king of Yvetot,
+       Of whom renown hath little said,
+     Who let all thoughts of glory go,
+       And dawdled half his days a-bed;
+     And every night, as night came round,
+     By Jenny, with a nightcap crowned,
+                 Slept very sound:
+          Sing ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he!
+          That's the kind of king for me.
+
+     And every day it came to pass,
+       That four lusty meals made he;
+     And, step by step, upon an ass,
+       Rode abroad, his realms to see;
+     And wherever he did stir,
+     What think you was his escort, sir?
+                 Why, an old cur.
+          Sing ho, ho, ho! &c.
+
+     If e'er he went into excess,
+       'Twas from a somewhat lively thirst;
+     But he who would his subjects bless,
+       Odd's fish!--must wet his whistle first;
+     And so from every cask they got,
+     Our king did to himself allot,
+                 At least a pot.
+          Sing ho, ho! &c.
+
+     To all the ladies of the land,
+       A courteous king, and kind, was he;
+     The reason why you'll understand,
+       They named him Pater Patriae.
+     Each year he called his fighting men,
+     And marched a league from home, and then
+                 Marched back again.
+          Sing ho, ho! &c.
+
+     Neither by force nor false pretence,
+       He sought to make his kingdom great,
+     And made (O princes, learn from hence),--
+       "Live and let live," his rule of state.
+     'Twas only when he came to die,
+     That his people who stood by,
+                 Were known to cry.
+          Sing ho, ho! &c.
+
+     The portrait of this best of kings
+       Is extant still, upon a sign
+     That on a village tavern swings,
+       Famed in the country for good wine.
+     The people in their Sunday trim,
+     Filling their glasses to the brim,
+                 Look up to him,
+          Singing ha, ha, ha! and he, he, he!
+          That's the sort of king for me.
+
+
+
+
+THE KING OF BRENTFORD. ANOTHER VERSION.
+
+
+   There was a king in Brentford,--of whom no legends tell,
+   But who, without his glory,--could eat and sleep right well.
+   His Polly's cotton nightcap,--it was his crown of state,
+   He slept of evenings early,--and rose of mornings late.
+
+   All in a fine mud palace,--each day he took four meals,
+   And for a guard of honor,--a dog ran at his heels,
+   Sometimes, to view his kingdoms,--rode forth this monarch good,
+   And then a prancing jackass--he royally bestrode.
+
+   There were no costly habits--with which this king was curst,
+   Except (and where's the harm on't?)--a somewhat lively thirst;
+   But people must pay taxes,--and kings must have their sport,
+   So out of every gallon--His Grace he took a quart.
+
+   He pleased the ladies round him,--with manners soft and bland;
+   With reason good, they named him,--the father of his land.
+   Each year his mighty armies--marched forth in gallant show;
+   Their enemies were targets--their bullets they were tow.
+
+   He vexed no quiet neighbor,--no useless conquest made,
+   But by the laws of pleasure,--his peaceful realm he swayed.
+   And in the years he reigned,--through all this country wide,
+   There was no cause for weeping,--save when the good man died.
+
+   The faithful men of Brentford,--do still their king deplore,
+   His portrait yet is swinging,--beside an alehouse door.
+   And topers, tender-hearted,--regard his honest phiz,
+   And envy times departed--that knew a reign like his.
+
+
+
+
+LE GRENIER.
+
+
+     Je viens revoir l'asile où ma jeunesse
+     De la misère a subi les leçons.
+     J'avais vingt ans, une folle maîtresse,
+     De francs amis et l'amour des chansons
+     Bravant le monde et les sots et les sages,
+     Sans avenir, riche de mon printemps,
+     Leste et joyeux je montais six étages.
+     Dans un grenier qu'on est bien à vingt ans!
+
+     C'est un grenier, point ne veux qu'on l'ignore.
+     Là fut mon lit, bien chétif et bien dur;
+     Là fut ma table; et je retrouve encore
+     Trois pieds d'un vers charbonnés sur le mur.
+     Apparaissez, plaisirs de mon bel âge,
+     Que d'un coup d'aile a fustigés le temps,
+     Vingt fois pour vous j'ai mis ma montre en gage.
+     Dans un grenier qu'on est bien à vingt ans!
+
+     Lisette ici doit surtout apparaître,
+     Vive, jolie, avec un frais chapeau;
+     Déjà sa main à l'étroite fenêtre
+     Suspend son schal, en guise de rideau.
+     Sa robe aussi va parer ma couchette;
+     Respecte, Amour, ses plis longs et flottans.
+     J'ai su depuis qui payait sa toilette.
+     Dans un grenier qu'on est bien à vingt ans!
+
+     A table un jour, jour de grande richesse,
+     De mes amis les voix brillaient en choeur,
+     Quand jusqu'ici monte un cri d'allégresse:
+     A Marengo Bonaparte est vainqueur.
+     Le canon gronde; un autre chant commence;
+     Nous célébrons tant de faits éclatans.
+     Les rois jamais n'envahiront la France.
+     Dans un grenier qu'on est bien à vingt ans!
+
+     Quittons ce toit où ma raison s'enivre.
+     Oh! qu'ils sont loin ces jours si regrettés!
+     J'échangerais ce qu'il me reste à vivre
+     Contre un des mois qu'ici Dieu m'a comptés,
+     Pour rêver gloire, amour, plaisir, folie,
+     Pour dépenser sa vie en peu d'instans,
+     D'un long espoir pour la voir embellie,
+     Dans un grenier qu'on est bien à vingt ans!
+
+
+
+
+THE GARRET.
+
+
+     With pensive eyes the little room I view,
+       Where, in my youth, I weathered it so long;
+     With a wild mistress, a stanch friend or two,
+       And a light heart still breaking into song:
+     Making a mock of life, and all its cares,
+       Rich in the glory of my rising sun,
+     Lightly I vaulted up four pair of stairs,
+       In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
+
+     Yes; 'tis a garret--let him know't who will--
+       There was my bed--full hard it was and small.
+     My table there--and I decipher still
+       Half a lame couplet charcoaled on the wall.
+     Ye joys, that Time hath swept with him away,
+       Come to mine eyes, ye dreams of love and fun;
+     For you I pawned my watch how many a day,
+       In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
+
+     And see my little Jessy, first of all;
+       She comes with pouting lips and sparkling eyes:
+     Behold, how roguishly she pins her shawl
+       Across the narrow casement, curtain-wise;
+     Now by the bed her petticoat glides down,
+       And when did woman look the worse in none?
+     I have heard since who paid for many a gown,
+       In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
+
+     One jolly evening, when my friends and I
+       Made happy music with our songs and cheers,
+     A shout of triumph mounted up thus high,
+       And distant cannon opened on our ears:
+     We rise,--we join in the triumphant strain,--
+       Napoleon conquers--Austerlitz is won--
+     Tyrants shall never tread us down again,
+       In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
+
+     Let us begone--the place is sad and strange--
+       How far, far off, these happy times appear;
+     All that I have to live I'd gladly change
+       For one such month as I have wasted here--
+     To draw long dreams of beauty, love, and power,
+       From founts of hope that never will outrun,
+     And drink all life's quintessence in an hour,
+       Give me the days when I was twenty-one!
+
+
+
+
+ROGER-BONTEMPS.
+
+
+     Aux gens atrabilaires
+     Pour exemple donné,
+     En un temps de misères
+     Roger-Bontemps est né.
+     Vivre obscur à sa guise,
+     Narguer les mécontens:
+     Eh gai! c'est la devise
+     Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+     Du chapeau de son père
+     Coîffé dans le grands jours,
+     De roses ou de lierre
+     Le rajeunir toujours;
+     Mettre un manteau de bure,
+     Vieil ami de vingt ans;
+     Eh gai! c'est la parure
+     Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+     Posséder dans sa hutte
+     Une table, un vieux lit,
+     Des cartes, une flûte,
+     Un broc que Dieu remplit;
+     Un portrait de maîtresse,
+     Un coffre et rien dedans;
+     Eh gai! c'est la richesse
+     Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+     Aux enfans de la ville
+     Montrer de petits jeux;
+     Etre fesseur habile
+     De contes graveleux;
+     Ne parler que de danse
+     Et d'almanachs chantans;
+     Eh gai! c'est la science
+     Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+     Faute de vins d'élite,
+     Sabler ceux du canton:
+     Préférer Marguerite
+     Aux dames du grand ton:
+     De joie et de tendresse
+     Remplir tous ses instans;
+     Eh gai! c'est la sagesse
+     Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+     Dire au ciel: Je me fie,
+     Mon père, à ta bonté;
+     De ma philosophie
+     Pardonne le gaîté
+     Que ma saison dernière
+     Soit encore un printemps;
+     Eh gai! c'est la prière
+     Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+     Vous, pauvres pleins d'envie,
+     Vous, riches désireux,
+     Vous, dont le char dévie
+     Après un cours heureux;
+     Vous, qui perdrez peut-être
+     Des titres éclatans,
+     Eh gai! prenez pour maître
+     Le gros Roger Bontemps.
+
+
+
+
+JOLLY JACK.
+
+
+     When fierce political debate
+       Throughout the isle was storming,
+     And Rads attacked the throne and state,
+       And Tories the reforming,
+     To calm the furious rage of each,
+       And right the land demented,
+     Heaven sent us Jolly Jack, to teach
+      The way to be contented.
+
+     Jack's bed was straw, 'twas warm and soft,
+       His chair, a three-legged stool;
+     His broken jug was emptied oft,
+       Yet, somehow, always full.
+     His mistress' portrait decked the wall,
+       His mirror had a crack;
+     Yet, gay and glad, though this was all
+       His wealth, lived Jolly Jack.
+
+     To give advice to avarice,
+       Teach pride its mean condition,
+     And preach good sense to dull pretence,
+       Was honest Jack's high mission.
+     Our simple statesman found his rule
+       Of moral in the flagon,
+     And held his philosophic school
+       Beneath the "George and Dragon."
+
+     When village Solons cursed the Lords,
+       And called the malt-tax sinful,
+     Jack heeded not their angry words,
+       But smiled and drank his skinful.
+     And when men wasted health and life,
+       In search of rank and riches,
+     Jack marked, aloof, the paltry strife,
+       And wore his threadbare breeches.
+
+     "I enter not the church," he said,
+       "But I'll not seek to rob it;"
+     So worthy Jack Joe Miller read,
+       While others studied Cobbett.
+     His talk it was of feast and fun;
+       His guide the Almanack;
+     From youth to age thus gayly run
+       The life of Jolly Jack.
+
+     And when Jack prayed, as oft he would,
+       He humbly thanked his Maker;
+     "I am," said he, "O Father good!
+       Nor Catholic nor Quaker:
+     Give each his creed, let each proclaim
+       His catalogue of curses;
+     I trust in Thee, and not in them,
+       In Thee, and in Thy mercies!
+
+     "Forgive me if, midst all Thy works,
+       No hint I see of damning;
+     And think there's faith among the Turks,
+       And hope for e'en the Brahmin.
+     Harmless my mind is, and my mirth,
+       And kindly is my laughter:
+     I cannot see the smiling earth,
+       And think there's hell hereafter."
+
+     Jack died; he left no legacy,
+       Save that his story teaches:--
+     Content to peevish poverty;
+       Humility to riches.
+     Ye scornful great, ye envious small,
+       Come follow in his track;
+     We all were happier, if we all
+       Would copy JOLLY JACK.
+
+
+
+
+FRENCH DRAMAS AND MELODRAMAS.
+
+
+There are three kinds of drama in France, which you may subdivide as
+much as you please.
+
+There is the old classical drama, wellnigh dead, and full time too: old
+tragedies, in which half a dozen characters appear, and spout sonorous
+Alexandrines for half a dozen hours. The fair Rachel has been trying to
+revive this genre, and to untomb Racine; but be not alarmed, Racine will
+never come to life again, and cause audiences to weep as of yore. Madame
+Rachel can only galvanize the corpse, not revivify it. Ancient French
+tragedy, red-heeled, patched, and be-periwigged, lies in the grave;
+and it is only the ghost of it that we see, which the fair Jewess has
+raised. There are classical comedies in verse, too, wherein the knavish
+valets, rakish heroes, stolid old guardians, and smart, free-spoken
+serving-women, discourse in Alexandrines, as loud as the Horaces or the
+Cid. An Englishman will seldom reconcile himself to the roulement of
+the verses, and the painful recurrence of the rhymes; for my part, I had
+rather go to Madame Saqui's or see Deburau dancing on a rope: his lines
+are quite as natural and poetical.
+
+Then there is the comedy of the day, of which Monsieur Scribe is the
+father. Good heavens! with what a number of gay colonels, smart widows,
+and silly husbands has that gentleman peopled the play-books. How that
+unfortunate seventh commandment has been maltreated by him and his
+disciples. You will see four pieces, at the Gymnase, of a night; and so
+sure as you see them, four husbands shall be wickedly used. When is
+this joke to cease? Mon Dieu! Play-writers have handled it for about two
+thousand years, and the public, like a great baby, must have the tale
+repeated to it over and over again.
+
+Finally, there is the Drama, that great monster which has sprung into
+life of late years; and which is said, but I don't believe a word of it,
+to have Shakspeare for a father. If Monsieur Scribe's plays may be said
+to be so many ingenious examples how to break one commandment, the drame
+is a grand and general chaos of them all; nay, several crimes are added,
+not prohibited in the Decalogue, which was written before dramas were.
+Of the drama, Victor Hugo and Dumas are the well-known and respectable
+guardians. Every piece Victor Hugo has written, since "Hernani," has
+contained a monster--a delightful monster, saved by one virtue. There is
+Triboulet, a foolish monster; Lucrèce Borgia, a maternal monster; Mary
+Tudor, a religious monster; Monsieur Quasimodo, a humpback monster;
+and others, that might be named, whose monstrosities we are induced to
+pardon--nay, admiringly to witness--because they are agreeably mingled
+with some exquisite display of affection. And, as the great Hugo has one
+monster to each play, the great Dumas has, ordinarily, half a dozen,
+to whom murder is nothing; common intrigue, and simple breakage of the
+before-mentioned commandment, nothing; but who live and move in a vast,
+delightful complication of crime, that cannot be easily conceived in
+England, much less described.
+
+When I think over the number of crimes that I have seen Mademoiselle
+Georges, for instance, commit, I am filled with wonder at her greatness,
+and the greatness of the poets who have conceived these charming horrors
+for her. I have seen her make love to, and murder, her sons, in the
+"Tour de Nesle." I have seen her poison a company of no less than nine
+gentlemen, at Ferrara, with an affectionate son in the number; I have
+seen her, as Madame de Brinvilliers, kill off numbers of respectable
+relations in the first four acts; and, at the last, be actually burned
+at the stake, to which she comes shuddering, ghastly, barefooted, and in
+a white sheet. Sweet excitement of tender sympathies! Such tragedies are
+not so good as a real, downright execution; but, in point of interest,
+the next thing to it: with what a number of moral emotions do they fill
+the breast; with what a hatred for vice, and yet a true pity and respect
+for that grain of virtue that is to be found in us all: our bloody,
+daughter-loving Brinvilliers; our warmhearted, poisonous Lucretia
+Borgia; above all, what a smart appetite for a cool supper afterwards,
+at the Café Anglais, when the horrors of the play act as a piquant sauce
+to the supper!
+
+Or, to speak more seriously, and to come, at last, to the point. After
+having seen most of the grand dramas which have been produced at Paris
+for the last half-dozen years, and thinking over all that one has
+seen,--the fictitious murders, rapes, adulteries, and other crimes, by
+which one has been interested and excited,--a man may take leave to be
+heartily ashamed of the manner in which he has spent his time; and
+of the hideous kind of mental intoxication in which he has permitted
+himself to indulge.
+
+Nor are simple society outrages the only sort of crime in which the
+spectator of Paris plays has permitted himself to indulge; he has
+recreated himself with a deal of blasphemy besides, and has passed many
+pleasant evenings in beholding religion defiled and ridiculed.
+
+Allusion has been made, in a former paper, to a fashion that lately
+obtained in France, and which went by the name of Catholic reaction; and
+as, in this happy country, fashion is everything, we have had not merely
+Catholic pictures and quasi religious books, but a number of Catholic
+plays have been produced, very edifying to the frequenters of the
+theatres or the Boulevards, who have learned more about religion from
+these performances than they have acquired, no doubt, in the whole of
+their lives before. In the course of a very few years we have seen--"The
+Wandering Jew;" "Belshazzar's Feast;" "Nebuchadnezzar:" and the
+"Massacre of the Innocents;" "Joseph and his Brethren;" "The Passage of
+the Red Sea;" and "The Deluge."
+
+The great Dumas, like Madame Sand before mentioned, has brought a
+vast quantity of religion before the foot-lights. There was his famous
+tragedy of "Caligula," which, be it spoken to the shame of the Paris
+critics, was coldly received; nay, actually hissed, by them. And why?
+Because, says Dumas, it contained a great deal too much piety for the
+rogues. The public, he says, was much more religious, and understood him
+at once.
+
+"As for the critics," says he, nobly, "let those who cried out against
+the immorality of Antony and Marguérite de Bourgogne, reproach me for
+THE CHASTITY OF MESSALINA." (This dear creature is the heroine of the
+play of "Caligula.") "It matters little to me. These people have but
+seen the form of my work: they have walked round the tent, but have not
+seen the arch which it covered; they have examined the vases and candles
+of the altar, but have not opened the tabernacle!
+
+"The public alone has, instinctively, comprehended that there was,
+beneath this outward sign, an inward and mysterious grace: it followed
+the action of the piece in all its serpentine windings; it listened for
+four hours, with pious attention (avec recueillement et religion), to
+the sound of this rolling river of thoughts, which may have appeared to
+it new and bold, perhaps, but chaste and grave; and it retired, with its
+head on its breast, like a man who had just perceived, in a dream, the
+solution of a problem which he has long and vainly sought in his waking
+hours."
+
+You see that not only Saint Sand is an apostle, in her way; but Saint
+Dumas is another. We have people in England who write for bread, like
+Dumas and Sand, and are paid so much for their line; but they don't set
+up for prophets. Mrs. Trollope has never declared that her novels are
+inspired by heaven; Mr. Buckstone has written a great number of farces,
+and never talked about the altar and the tabernacle. Even Sir Edward
+Bulwer (who, on a similar occasion, when the critics found fault with
+a play of his, answered them by a pretty decent declaration of his own
+merits,) never ventured to say that he had received a divine mission,
+and was uttering five-act revelations.
+
+All things considered, the tragedy of "Caligula" is a decent tragedy; as
+decent as the decent characters of the hero and heroine can allow it
+to be; it may be almost said, provokingly decent: but this, it must be
+remembered, is the characteristic of the modern French school (nay,
+of the English school too); and if the writer take the character of
+a remarkable scoundrel, it is ten to one but he turns out an amiable
+fellow, in whom we have all the warmest sympathy. "Caligula" is killed
+at the end of the performance; Messalina is comparatively well-behaved;
+and the sacred part of the performance, the tabernacle-characters apart
+from the mere "vase" and "candlestick" personages, may be said to be
+depicted in the person of a Christian convert, Stella, who has had the
+good fortune to be converted by no less a person than Mary Magdalene,
+when she, Stella, was staying on a visit to her aunt, near Narbonne.
+
+
+STELLA (Continuant.) Voilà Que je vois s'avancer, sans pilote et sans
+rames, Une barque portant deux hommes et deux femmes, Et, spectacle
+inouï qui me ravit encor, Tous quatre avaient au front une auréole
+d'or D'où partaient des rayons de si vive lumière Que je fus obligée à
+baisser la paupière; Et, lorsque je rouvris les yeux avec effroi, Les
+voyageurs divins étaient auprès de moi. Un jour de chacun d'eux et
+dans toute sa gloire Je te raconterai la marveilleuse histoire, Et tu
+l'adoreras, j'espère; en ce moment, Ma mère, il te suffit de savoir
+seulement Que tous quatre venaient du fond de la Syrie: Un édit les
+avait bannis de leur patrie, Et, se faisant bourreaux, des hommes
+irrités, Sans avirons, sans eau, sans pain et garrotés, Sur une frêle
+barque échouée au rivage, Les avaient à la mer poussés dans un orage.
+Mais à peine l'esquif eut-il touché les flots Qu'au cantique chanté par
+les saints matelots, L'ouragan replia ses ailes frémissantes, Que la mer
+aplanit ses vagues mugissantes, Et qu'un soleil plus pur, reparaissant
+aux cieux, Enveloppa l'esquif d'un cercle radieux!...
+
+JUNIA.--Mais c'était un prodige.
+
+STELLA.-- Un miracle, ma mère! Leurs fers tombèrent seuls, l'eau cessa
+d'être amère, Et deux fois chaque jour le bateau fut couvert D'une
+manne pareille à celle du désert: C'est ainsi que, poussés par une main
+céleste, Je les vis aborder.
+
+JUNIA.-- Oh! dis vîte le reste!
+
+STELLA.--A l'aube, trois d'entre eux quittèrent la maison: Marthe prit
+le chemin qui mène à Tarascon, Lazare et Maximin celui de Massilie,
+Et celle qui resta.... C'ETAIT LA PLUS JOLIE, (how truly French!) Nous
+faisant appeler vers le milieu du jour, Demanda si les monts ou les bois
+d'alentour Cachaient quelque retraite inconnue et profonde, Qui la
+pût séparer à tout jamais du monde..... Aquila se souvint qu'il avait
+pénétré Dans un antre sauvage et de tous ignoré, Grotte creusée aux
+flancs de ces Alpes sublimes, Ou l'aigle fait son aire au-dessus des
+abîmes. Il offrit cet asile, et dès le lendemain Tous deux, pour l'y
+guider, nous étions en chemin. Le soir du second jour nous touchâmes sa
+base: Là, tombant à genoux dans une sainte extase, Elle pria long-temps,
+puis vers l'antre inconnu, Dénouant se chaussure, elle marcha pied nu.
+Nos prières, nos cris restèrent sans réponses: Au milieu des cailloux,
+des épines, des ronces, Nous la vîmes monter, un bâton à la main, Et ce
+n'est qu'arrivée au terme du chemin, Qu'enfin elle tomba sans force et
+sans haleine....
+
+JUNIA.--Comment la nommait-on, ma fille?
+
+STELLA.-- Madeleine.
+
+
+Walking, says Stella, by the sea-shore, "A bark drew near, that had nor
+sail nor oar; two women and two men the vessel bore: each of that crew,
+'twas wondrous to behold, wore round his head a ring of blazing gold;
+from which such radiance glittered all around, that I was fain to look
+towards the ground. And when once more I raised my frightened eyne,
+before me stood the travellers divine; their rank, the glorious lot that
+each befell, at better season, mother, will I tell. Of this anon:
+the time will come when thou shalt learn to worship as I worship now.
+Suffice it, that from Syria's land they came; an edict from their
+country banished them. Fierce, angry men had seized upon the four, and
+launched them in that vessel from the shore. They launched these victims
+on the waters rude; nor rudder gave to steer, nor bread for food. As the
+doomed vessel cleaves the stormy main, that pious crew uplifts a sacred
+strain; the angry waves are silent as it sings; the storm, awe-stricken,
+folds its quivering wings. A purer sun appears the heavens to light, and
+wraps the little bark in radiance bright.
+
+"JUNIA.--Sure, 'twas a prodigy.
+
+"STELLA.--A miracle. Spontaneous from their hands the fetters fell. The
+salt sea-wave grew fresh, and, twice a day, manna (like that which on
+the desert lay) covered the bark and fed them on their way. Thus, hither
+led, at heaven's divine behest, I saw them land--
+
+"JUNIA.--My daughter, tell the rest.
+
+"STELLA.--Three of the four, our mansion left at dawn. One, Martha, took
+the road to Tarascon; Lazarus and Maximin to Massily; but one remained
+(the fairest of the three), who asked us, if i' the woods or mountains
+near, there chanced to be some cavern lone and drear; where she might
+hide, for ever, from all men. It chanced, my cousin knew of such a den;
+deep hidden in a mountain's hoary breast, on which the eagle builds his
+airy nest. And thither offered he the saint to guide. Next day upon the
+journey forth we hied; and came, at the second eve, with weary pace,
+unto the lonely mountain's rugged base. Here the worn traveller, falling
+on her knee, did pray awhile in sacred ecstasy; and, drawing off her
+sandals from her feet, marched, naked, towards that desolate retreat. No
+answer made she to our cries or groans; but walking midst the prickles
+and rude stones, a staff in hand, we saw her upwards toil; nor ever did
+she pause, nor rest the while, save at the entry of that savage den.
+Here, powerless and panting, fell she then.
+
+"JUNIA.--What was her name, my daughter?
+
+"STELLA. MAGDALEN."
+
+
+Here the translator must pause--having no inclination to enter "the
+tabernacle," in company with such a spotless high-priest as Monsieur
+Dumas.
+
+Something "tabernacular" may be found in Dumas's famous piece of "Don
+Juan de Marana." The poet has laid the scene of his play in a vast
+number of places: in heaven (where we have the Virgin Mary and little
+angels, in blue, swinging censers before her!)--on earth, under the
+earth, and in a place still lower, but not mentionable to ears polite;
+and the plot, as it appears from a dialogue between a good and a bad
+angel, with which the play commences, turns upon a contest between these
+two worthies for the possession of the soul of a member of the family of
+Marana.
+
+"Don Juan de Marana" not only resembles his namesake, celebrated by
+Mozart and Molière, in his peculiar successes among the ladies, but
+possesses further qualities which render his character eminently
+fitting for stage representation: he unites the virtues of Lovelace
+and Lacenaire; he blasphemes upon all occasions; he murders, at the
+slightest provocation, and without the most trifling remorse; he
+overcomes ladies of rigid virtue, ladies of easy virtue, and ladies of
+no virtue at all; and the poet, inspired by the contemplation of such
+a character, has depicted his hero's adventures and conversation with
+wonderful feeling and truth.
+
+The first act of the play contains a half-dozen of murders and
+intrigues; which would have sufficed humbler genius than M. Dumas's, for
+the completion of, at least, half a dozen tragedies. In the second act
+our hero flogs his elder brother, and runs away with his sister-in-law;
+in the third, he fights a duel with a rival, and kills him: whereupon
+the mistress of his victim takes poison, and dies, in great agonies, on
+the stage. In the fourth act, Don Juan, having entered a church for the
+purpose of carrying off a nun, with whom he is in love, is seized by the
+statue of one of the ladies whom he has previously victimized, and made
+to behold the ghosts of all those unfortunate persons whose deaths he
+has caused.
+
+This is a most edifying spectacle. The ghosts rise solemnly, each in a
+white sheet, preceded by a wax-candle; and, having declared their names
+and qualities, call, in chorus, for vengeance upon Don Juan, as thus:--
+
+
+DON SANDOVAL loquitur.
+
+"I am Don Sandoval d'Ojedo. I played against Don Juan my fortune, the
+tomb of my fathers, and the heart of my mistress;--I lost all: I played
+against him my life, and I lost it. Vengeance against the murderer!
+vengeance!"--(The candle goes out.)
+
+
+THE CANDLE GOES OUT, and an angel descends--a flaming sword in his
+hand--and asks: "Is there no voice in favor of Don Juan?" when lo!
+Don Juan's father (like one of those ingenious toys called
+"Jack-in-the-box,") jumps up from his coffin, and demands grace for his
+son.
+
+When Martha the nun returns, having prepared all things for her
+elopement, she finds Don Juan fainting upon the ground.--"I am no longer
+your husband," says he, upon coming to himself; "I am no longer Don
+Juan; I am Brother Juan the Trappist. Sister Martha, recollect that you
+must die!"
+
+This was a most cruel blow upon Sister Martha, who is no less a person
+than an angel, an angel in disguise--the good spirit of the house of
+Marana, who has gone to the length of losing her wings and forfeiting
+her place in heaven, in order to keep company with Don Juan on earth,
+and, if possible, to convert him. Already, in her angelic character, she
+had exhorted him to repentance, but in vain; for, while she stood at one
+elbow, pouring not merely hints, but long sermons, into his ear, at the
+other elbow stood a bad spirit, grinning and sneering at all her pious
+counsels, and obtaining by far the greater share of the Don's attention.
+
+In spite, however, of the utter contempt with which Don Juan treats
+her,--in spite of his dissolute courses, which must shock her
+virtue,--and his impolite neglect, which must wound her vanity, the poor
+creature (who, from having been accustomed to better company, might have
+been presumed to have had better taste), the unfortunate angel feels a
+certain inclination for the Don, and actually flies up to heaven to ask
+permission to remain with him on earth.
+
+And when the curtain draws up, to the sound of harps, and discovers
+white-robed angels walking in the clouds, we find the angel of Marana
+upon her knees, uttering the following address:--
+
+
+LE BON ANGE.
+
+     Vierge, à qui le calice à la liqueur amère
+           Fut si souvent offert,
+     Mère, que l'on nomma la douloureuse mère,
+           Tant vous avez souffert!
+
+     Vous, dont les yeux divins sur la terre des hommes
+           Ont versé plus de pleurs
+     Que vos pieds n'ont depuis, dans le ciel où nous sommes,
+           Fait éclore de fleurs.
+
+     Vase d'élection, étoile matinale,
+          Miroir de pureté,
+     Vous qui priez pour nous, d'une voix virginale,
+          La suprême bonté;
+
+     A mon tour, aujourd'hui, bienheureuse Marie,
+          Je tombe à vos genoux;
+     Daignez donc m'écouter, car c'est vous que je prie,
+          Vous qui priez pour nous.
+
+
+     Which may be thus interpreted:--
+
+
+     O Virgin blest! by whom the bitter draught
+          So often has been quaffed,
+     That, for thy sorrow, thou art named by us
+          The Mother Dolorous!
+
+     Thou, from whose eyes have fallen more tears of woe,
+          Upon the earth below,
+     Than 'neath thy footsteps, in this heaven of ours,
+          Have risen flowers!
+
+     O beaming morning star! O chosen vase!
+          O mirror of all grace!
+     Who, with thy virgin voice, dost ever pray
+          Man's sins away;
+
+     Bend down thine ear, and list, O blessed saint!
+          Unto my sad complaint;
+     Mother! to thee I kneel, on thee I call,
+          Who hearest all.
+
+
+She proceeds to request that she may be allowed to return to earth, and
+follow the fortunes of Don Juan; and, as there is one difficulty, or, to
+use her own words,--
+
+
+    Mais, comme vous savez qu'aux voûtes éternelles,
+         Malgré moi, tend mon vol,
+    Soufflez sur mon étoile et détachez mes ailes,
+         Pour m'enchainer au sol;
+
+
+her request is granted, her star is BLOWN OUT (O poetic allusion!) and
+she descends to earth to love, and to go mad, and to die for Don Juan!
+
+The reader will require no further explanation, in order to be satisfied
+as to the moral of this play: but is it not a very bitter satire upon
+the country, which calls itself the politest nation in the world, that
+the incidents, the indecency, the coarse blasphemy, and the vulgar
+wit of this piece, should find admirers among the public, and procure
+reputation for the author? Could not the Government, which has
+re-established, in a manner, the theatrical censorship, and forbids or
+alters plays which touch on politics, exert the same guardianship
+over public morals? The honest English reader, who has a faith in his
+clergyman, and is a regular attendant at Sunday worship, will not be a
+little surprised at the march of intellect among our neighbors across
+the Channel, and at the kind of consideration in which they hold their
+religion. Here is a man who seizes upon saints and angels, merely to put
+sentiments in their mouths which might suit a nymph of Drury Lane. He
+shows heaven, in order that he may carry debauch into it; and avails
+himself of the most sacred and sublime parts of our creed as a vehicle
+for a scene-painter's skill, or an occasion for a handsome actress to
+wear a new dress.
+
+M. Dumas's piece of "Kean" is not quite so sublime; it was brought out
+by the author as a satire upon the French critics, who, to their credit
+be it spoken, had generally attacked him, and was intended by him, and
+received by the public, as a faithful portraiture of English manners.
+As such, it merits special observation and praise. In the first act you
+find a Countess and an Ambassadress, whose conversation relates purely
+to the great actor. All the ladies in London are in love with him,
+especially the two present. As for the Ambassadress, she prefers him
+to her husband (a matter of course in all French plays), and to a more
+seducing person still--no less a person than the Prince of Wales!
+who presently waits on the ladies, and joins in their conversation
+concerning Kean. "This man," says his Royal Highness, "is the very pink
+of fashion. Brummell is nobody when compared to him; and I myself only
+an insignificant private gentleman. He has a reputation among ladies,
+for which I sigh in vain; and spends an income twice as great as mine."
+This admirable historic touch at once paints the actor and the Prince;
+the estimation in which the one was held, and the modest economy for
+which the other was so notorious.
+
+Then we have Kean, at a place called the Trou de Charbon, the "Coal
+Hole," where, to the edification of the public, he engages in a fisty
+combat with a notorious boxer. This scene was received by the audience
+with loud exclamations of delight, and commented on, by the journals,
+as a faultless picture of English manners. "The Coal Hole" being on the
+banks of the Thames, a nobleman--LORD MELBOURN!--has chosen the tavern
+as a rendezvous for a gang of pirates, who are to have their ship in
+waiting, in order to carry off a young lady with whom his lordship is
+enamored. It need not be said that Kean arrives at the nick of time,
+saves the innocent Meess Anna, and exposes the infamy of the Peer. A
+violent tirade against noblemen ensues, and Lord Melbourn slinks away,
+disappointed, to meditate revenge. Kean's triumphs continue through
+all the acts: the Ambassadress falls madly in love with him; the Prince
+becomes furious at his ill success, and the Ambassador dreadfully
+jealous. They pursue Kean to his dressing-room at the theatre; where,
+unluckily, the Ambassadress herself has taken refuge. Dreadful quarrels
+ensue; the tragedian grows suddenly mad upon the stage, and so cruelly
+insults the Prince of Wales that his Royal Highness determines to send
+HIM TO BOTANY BAY. His sentence, however, is commuted to banishment to
+New York; whither, of course, Miss Anna accompanies him; rewarding him,
+previously, with her hand and twenty thousand a year!
+
+This wonderful performance was gravely received and admired by the
+people of Paris: the piece was considered to be decidedly moral, because
+the popular candidate was made to triumph throughout, and to triumph in
+the most virtuous manner; for, according to the French code of morals,
+success among women is, at once, the proof and the reward of virtue.
+
+The sacred personage introduced in Dumas's play behind a cloud, figures
+bodily in the piece of the Massacre of the Innocents, represented at
+Paris last year. She appears under a different name, but the costume
+is exactly that of Carlo Dolce's Madonna; and an ingenious fable is
+arranged, the interest of which hangs upon the grand Massacre of the
+Innocents, perpetrated in the fifth act. One of the chief characters
+is Jean le Précurseur, who threatens woe to Herod and his race, and is
+beheaded by orders of that sovereign.
+
+In the Festin de Balthazar, we are similarly introduced to Daniel, and
+the first scene is laid by the waters of Babylon, where a certain number
+of captive Jews are seated in melancholy postures; a Babylonian officer
+enters, exclaiming, "Chantez nous quelques chansons de Jerusalem," and
+the request is refused in the language of the Psalm. Belshazzar's Feast
+is given in a grand tableau, after Martin's picture. That painter, in
+like manner, furnished scenes for the Deluge. Vast numbers of schoolboys
+and children are brought to see these pieces; the lower classes delight
+in them. The famous Juif Errant, at the theatre of the Porte St.
+Martin, was the first of the kind, and its prodigious success, no
+doubt, occasioned the number of imitations which the other theatres have
+produced.
+
+The taste of such exhibitions, of course, every English person will
+question; but we must remember the manners of the people among whom they
+are popular; and, if I may be allowed to hazard such an opinion, there
+is in every one of these Boulevard mysteries, a kind of rude moral. The
+Boulevard writers don't pretend to "tabernacles" and divine gifts, like
+Madame Sand and Dumas before mentioned. If they take a story from the
+sacred books, they garble it without mercy, and take sad liberties with
+the text; but they do not deal in descriptions of the agreeably
+wicked, or ask pity and admiration for tender-hearted criminals and
+philanthropic murderers, as their betters do. Vice is vice on the
+Boulevard; and it is fine to hear the audience, as a tyrant king roars
+out cruel sentences of death, or a bereaved mother pleads for the life
+of her child, making their remarks on the circumstances of the scene.
+"Ah, le gredin!" growls an indignant countryman. "Quel monstre!" says a
+grisette, in a fury. You see very fat old men crying like babies,
+and, like babies, sucking enormous sticks of barley-sugar. Actors and
+audience enter warmly into the illusion of the piece; and so especially
+are the former affected, that at Franconi's, where the battles of the
+Empire are represented, there is as regular gradation in the ranks of
+the mimic army as in the real imperial legions. After a man has served,
+with credit, for a certain number of years in the line, he is promoted
+to be an officer--an acting officer. If he conducts himself well, he may
+rise to be a Colonel or a General of Division; if ill, he is degraded to
+the ranks again; or, worst degradation of all, drafted into a regiment
+of Cossacks or Austrians. Cossacks is the lowest depth, however; nay,
+it is said that the men who perform these Cossack parts receive higher
+wages than the mimic grenadiers and old guard. They will not consent
+to be beaten every night, even in play; to be pursued in hundreds, by a
+handful of French; to fight against their beloved Emperor. Surely there
+is fine hearty virtue in this, and pleasant child-like simplicity.
+
+So that while the drama of Victor Hugo, Dumas, and the enlightened
+classes, is profoundly immoral and absurd, the DRAMA of the common
+people is absurd, if you will, but good and right-hearted. I have made
+notes of one or two of these pieces, which all have good feeling and
+kindness in them, and which turn, as the reader will see, upon one or
+two favorite points of popular morality. A drama that obtained a vast
+success at the Porte Saint Martin was "La Duchesse de la Vauballière."
+The Duchess is the daughter of a poor farmer, who was carried off in the
+first place, and then married by M. le Duc de la Vauballière, a terrible
+roué, the farmer's landlord, and the intimate friend of Philippe
+d'Orléans, the Regent of France.
+
+Now the Duke, in running away with the lady, intended to dispense
+altogether with ceremony, and make of Julie anything but his wife; but
+Georges, her father, and one Morisseau, a notary, discovered him in
+his dastardly act, and pursued him to the very feet of the Regent, who
+compelled the pair to marry and make it up.
+
+Julie complies; but though she becomes a Duchess, her heart remains
+faithful to her old flame, Adrian, the doctor; and she declares that,
+beyond the ceremony, no sort of intimacy shall take place between her
+husband and herself.
+
+Then the Duke begins to treat her in the most ungentleman-like manner:
+he abuses her in every possible way; he introduces improper characters
+into her house; and, finally, becomes so disgusted with her, that he
+determines to make away with her altogether.
+
+For this purpose, he sends forth into the highways and seizes a doctor,
+bidding him, on pain of death, to write a poisonous prescription for
+Madame la Duchesse. She swallows the potion; and O horror! the doctor
+turns out to be Dr. Adrian; whose woe may be imagined, upon finding that
+he has been thus committing murder on his true love!
+
+Let not the reader, however, be alarmed as to the fate of the
+heroine; no heroine of a tragedy ever yet died in the third act; and,
+accordingly, the Duchess gets up perfectly well again in the fourth,
+through the instrumentality of Morisseau, the good lawyer.
+
+And now it is that vice begins to be really punished. The Duke, who,
+after killing his wife, thinks it necessary to retreat, and take refuge
+in Spain, is tracked to the borders of that country by the virtuous
+notary, and there receives such a lesson as he will never forget to his
+dying day.
+
+Morisseau, in the first instance, produces a deed (signed by his
+Holiness the Pope), which annuls the marriage of the Duke de la
+Vauballière; then another deed, by which it is proved that he was not
+the eldest son of old La Vauballière, the former Duke; then another
+deed, by which he shows that old La Vauballière (who seems to have been
+a disreputable old fellow) was a bigamist, and that, in consequence,
+the present man, styling himself Duke, is illegitimate; and finally,
+Morisseau brings forward another document, which proves that the REG'LAR
+Duke is no other than Adrian, the doctor!
+
+Thus it is that love, law, and physic combined, triumph over the horrid
+machinations of this star-and-gartered libertine.
+
+"Hermann l'Ivrogne" is another piece of the same order; and though not
+very refined, yet possesses considerable merit. As in the case of the
+celebrated Captain Smith of Halifax, who "took to drinking ratafia,
+and thought of poor Miss Bailey,"--a woman and the bottle have been the
+cause of Hermann's ruin. Deserted by his mistress, who has been seduced
+from him by a base Italian Count, Hermann, a German artist, gives
+himself entirely up to liquor and revenge: but when he finds that force,
+and not infidelity, have been the cause of his mistress's ruin, the
+reader can fancy the indignant ferocity with which he pursues the infame
+ravisseur. A scene, which is really full of spirit, and excellently well
+acted, here ensues! Hermann proposes to the Count, on the eve of their
+duel, that the survivor should bind himself to espouse the unhappy
+Marie; but the Count declares himself to be already married, and the
+student, finding a duel impossible (for his object was to restore, at
+all events, the honor of Marie), now only thinks of his revenge,
+and murders the Count. Presently, two parties of men enter Hermann's
+apartment: one is a company of students, who bring him the news that he
+has obtained the prize of painting; the other the policemen, who carry
+him to prison, to suffer the penalty of murder.
+
+I could mention many more plays in which the popular morality is
+similiarly expressed. The seducer, or rascal of the piece, is always an
+aristocrat,--a wicked count, or licentious marquis, who is brought to
+condign punishment just before the fall of the curtain. And too good
+reason have the French people had to lay such crimes to the charge of
+the aristocracy, who are expiating now, on the stage, the wrongs which
+they did a hundred years since. The aristocracy is dead now; but the
+theatre lives upon traditions: and don't let us be too scornful at
+such simple legends as are handed down by the people from race to race.
+Vulgar prejudice against the great it may be; but prejudice against
+the great is only a rude expression of sympathy with the poor; long,
+therefore, may fat épiciers blubber over mimic woes, and honest
+prolétaires shake their fists, shouting--"Gredin, scélérat, monstre de
+marquis!" and such republican cries.
+
+Remark, too, another development of this same popular feeling of dislike
+against men in power. What a number of plays and legends have we (the
+writer has submitted to the public, in the preeeding pages, a couple of
+specimens; one of French, and the other of Polish origin,) in which
+that great and powerful aristocrat, the Devil, is made to be miserably
+tricked, humiliated, and disappointed? A play of this class, which, in
+the midst of all its absurdities and claptraps, had much of good in it,
+was called "Le Maudit des Mers." Le Maudit is a Dutch captain, who, in
+the midst of a storm, while his crew were on their knees at prayers,
+blasphemed and drank punch; but what was his astonishment at beholding
+an archangel with a sword all covered with flaming resin, who told him
+that as he, in this hour of danger, was too daring, or too wicked, to
+utter a prayer, he never should cease roaming the seas until he could
+find some being who would pray to heaven for him!
+
+Once only, in a hundred years, was the skipper allowed to land for this
+purpose; and this piece runs through four centuries, in as many
+acts, describing the agonies and unavailing attempts of the miserable
+Dutchman. Willing to go any lengths in order to obtain his prayer, he,
+in the second act, betrays a Virgin of the Sun to a follower of Pizarro:
+and, in the third, assassinates the heroic William of Nassau; but ever
+before the dropping of the curtain, the angel and sword make
+their appearance--"Treachery," says the spirit, "cannot lessen thy
+punishment;--crime will not obtain thy release--A la mer! à la mer!" and
+the poor devil returns to the ocean, to be lonely, and tempest-tossed,
+and sea-sick for a hundred years more.
+
+But his woes are destined to end with the fourth act. Having landed in
+America, where the peasants on the sea-shore, all dressed in Italian
+costumes, are celebrating, in a quadrille, the victories of Washington,
+he is there lucky enough to find a young girl to pray for him. Then the
+curse is removed, the punishment is over, and a celestial vessel, with
+angels on the decks and "sweet little cherubs" fluttering about the
+shrouds and the poop, appear to receive him.
+
+This piece was acted at Franconi's, where, for once, an angel-ship was
+introduced in place of the usual horsemanship.
+
+One must not forget to mention here, how the English nation is satirized
+by our neighbors; who have some droll traditions regarding us. In one of
+the little Christmas pieces produced at the Palais Royal (satires upon
+the follies of the past twelve months, on which all the small theatres
+exhaust their wit), the celebrated flight of Messrs. Green and Monck
+Mason was parodied, and created a good deal of laughter at the expense
+of John Bull. Two English noblemen, Milor Cricri and Milor Hanneton,
+appear as descending from a balloon, and one of them communicates to the
+public the philosophic observations which were made in the course of his
+aërial tour.
+
+"On leaving Vauxhall," says his lordship, "we drank a bottle of Madeira,
+as a health to the friends from whom we parted, and crunched a few
+biscuits to support nature during the hours before lunch. In two hours
+we arrived at Canterbury, enveloped in clouds: lunch, bottled porter:
+at Dover, carried several miles in a tide of air, bitter cold,
+cherry-brandy; crossed over the Channel safely, and thought with pity of
+the poor people who were sickening in the steamboats below: more
+bottled porter: over Calais, dinner, roast-beef of Old England;
+near Dunkirk,--night falling, lunar rainbow, brandy-and-water; night
+confoundedly thick; supper, nightcap of rum-punch, and so to bed. The
+sun broke beautifully through the morning mist, as we boiled the kettle
+and took our breakfast over Cologne. In a few more hours we concluded
+this memorable voyage, and landed safely at Weilburg, in good time for
+dinner."
+
+The joke here is smart enough; but our honest neighbors make many
+better, when they are quite unconscious of the fun. Let us leave plays,
+for a moment, for poetry, and take an instance of French criticism,
+concerning England, from the works of a famous French exquisite and man
+of letters. The hero of the poem addresses his mistress--
+
+
+     Londres, tu le sais trop, en fait de capitale,
+     Est-ce que fit le ciel de plus froid et plus pâle,
+     C'est la ville du gaz, des marins, du brouillard;
+     On s'y couche à minuit, et l'on s'y lève tard;
+     Ses raouts tant vantés ne sont qu'une boxade,
+     Sur ses grands quais jamais échelle ou sérénade,
+     Mais de volumineux bourgeois pris de porter
+     Qui passent sans lever le front à Westminster;
+     Et n'était sa forêt de mâts perçant la brume,
+     Sa tour dont à minuit le vieil oeil s'allume,
+     Et tes deux yeux, Zerline, illuminés bien plus,
+     Je dirais que, ma foi, des romans que j'ai lus,
+     Il n'en est pas un seul, plus lourd, plus léthargique
+     Que cette nation qu'on nomme Britannique!
+
+
+The writer of the above lines (which let any man who can translate) is
+Monsieur Roger de Beauvoir, a gentleman who actually lived many months
+in England, as an attaché to the embassy of M. de Polignac. He places
+the heroine of his tale in a petit réduit près le Strand, "with a green
+and fresh jalousie, and a large blind, let down all day; you fancied
+you were entering a bath of Asia, as soon as you had passed the perfumed
+threshold of this charming retreat!" He next places her--
+
+
+     Dans un square écarté, morne et couverte de givre,
+     Où se cache un hôtel, aux vieux lions de cuivre;
+
+
+and the hero of the tale, a young French poet, who is in London, is
+truly unhappy in that village.
+
+
+     Arthur dessèche et meurt.  Dans la ville de Sterne,
+     Rien qu'en voyant le peuple il a le mal de mer
+     Il n'aime ni le Parc, gai comme une citerne,
+     Ni le tir au pigeon, ni le soda-water.
+
+     Liston ne le fait plus sourciller!  Il rumine
+     Sur les trottoirs du Strand, droit comme un échiquier,
+     Contre le peuple anglais, les nègres, la vermine,
+     Et les mille cokneys du peuple boutiquier,
+
+     Contre tous les bas-bleus, contre les pâtissières,
+     Les parieurs d'Epsom, le gin, le parlement,
+     La quaterly, le roi, la pluie et les libraires,
+     Dont il ne touche plus, hélas! un sou d'argent!
+
+     Et chaque gentleman lui dit: L'heureux poète!
+
+
+"L'heureux poète" indeed! I question if a poet in this wide world is so
+happy as M. de Beauvoir, or has made such wonderful discoveries. "The
+bath of Asia, with green jalousies," in which the lady dwells; "the old
+hotel, with copper lions, in a lonely square;"--were ever such things
+heard of, or imagined, but by a Frenchman? The sailors, the negroes, the
+vermin, whom he meets in the street,--how great and happy are all these
+discoveries! Liston no longer makes the happy poet frown; and "gin,"
+"cokneys," and the "quaterly" have not the least effect upon him!
+And this gentleman has lived many months amongst us; admires Williams
+Shakspear, the "grave et vieux prophète," as he calls him, and never,
+for an instant, doubts that his description contains anything absurd!
+
+I don't know whether the great Dumas has passed any time in England; but
+his plays show a similar intimate knowledge of our habits. Thus in Kean,
+the stage-manager is made to come forward and address the pit, with
+a speech beginning, "My Lords and Gentlemen;" and a company of
+Englishwomen are introduced (at the memorable "Coal hole"), and they all
+wear PINAFORES; as if the British female were in the invariable habit of
+wearing this outer garment, or slobbering her gown without it. There was
+another celebrated piece, enacted some years since, upon the subject
+of Queen Caroline, where our late adored sovereign, George, was made to
+play a most despicable part; and where Signor Bergami fought a duel with
+Lord Londonderry. In the last act of this play, the House of Lords was
+represented, and Sir Brougham made an eloquent speech in the Queen's
+favor. Presently the shouts of the mob were heard without; from shouting
+they proceeded to pelting; and pasteboard-brickbats and cabbages came
+flying among the representatives of our hereditary legislature. At this
+unpleasant juncture, SIR HARDINGE, the Secretary-at-War, rises and calls
+in the military; the act ends in a general row, and the ignominious fall
+of Lord Liverpool, laid low by a brickbat from the mob!
+
+The description of these scenes is, of course, quite incapable of
+conveying any notion of their general effect. You must have the
+solemnity of the actors, as they Meess and Milor one another, and the
+perfect gravity and good faith with which the audience listen to them.
+Our stage Frenchman is the old Marquis, with sword, and pigtail,
+and spangled court coat. The Englishman of the French theatre has,
+invariably, a red wig, and almost always leather gaiters, and a long
+white upper Benjamin: he remains as he was represented in the old
+caricatures after the peace, when Vernet designed him.
+
+And to conclude this catalogue of blunders: in the famous piece of
+the "Naufrage de la Meduse," the first act is laid on board an English
+ship-of-war, all the officers of which appeared in light blue or
+green coats (the lamp-light prevented our distinguishing the color
+accurately), and TOP-BOOTS!
+
+
+Let us not attempt to deaden the force of this tremendous blow by any
+more remarks. The force of blundering can go no further. Would a Chinese
+playwright or painter have stranger notions about the barbarians than
+our neighbors, who are separated from us but by two hours of salt water?
+
+
+
+
+MEDITATIONS AT VERSAILLES.
+
+
+The palace of Versailles has been turned into a bricabrac shop of late
+years, and its time-honored walls have been covered with many thousand
+yards of the worst pictures that eye ever looked on. I don't know how
+many leagues of battles and sieges the unhappy visitor is now obliged
+to march through, amidst a crowd of chattering Paris cockneys, who are
+never tired of looking at the glories of the Grenadier Français; to
+the chronicling of whose deeds this old palace of the old kings is now
+altogether devoted. A whizzing, screaming steam-engine rushes hither
+from Paris, bringing shoals of badauds in its wake. The old coucous
+are all gone, and their place knows them no longer. Smooth asphaltum
+terraces, tawdry lamps, and great hideous Egyptian obelisks, have
+frightened them away from the pleasant station they used to occupy under
+the trees of the Champs Elysées; and though the old coucous were just
+the most uncomfortable vehicles that human ingenuity ever constructed,
+one can't help looking back to the days of their existence with a tender
+regret; for there was pleasure then in the little trip of three leagues:
+and who ever had pleasure in a railway journey? Does any reader of this
+venture to say that, on such a voyage, he ever dared to be pleasant?
+Do the most hardened stokers joke with one another? I don't believe it.
+Look into every single car of the train, and you will see that every
+single face is solemn. They take their seats gravely, and are silent,
+for the most part, during the journey; they dare not look out of window,
+for fear of being blinded by the smoke that comes whizzing by, or of
+losing their heads in one of the windows of the down train; they ride
+for miles in utter damp and darkness: through awful pipes of brick, that
+have been run pitilessly through the bowels of gentle mother earth, the
+cast-iron Frankenstein of an engine gallops on, puffing and screaming.
+Does any man pretend to say that he ENJOYS the journey?--he might as
+well say that he enjoyed having his hair cut; he bears it, but that is
+all: he will not allow the world to laugh at him, for any exhibition
+of slavish fear; and pretends, therefore, to be at his ease; but he IS
+afraid: nay, ought to be, under the circumstances. I am sure Hannibal or
+Napoleon would, were they locked suddenly into a car; there kept close
+prisoners for a certain number of hours, and whirled along at this dizzy
+pace. You can't stop, if you would:--you may die, but you can't stop;
+the engine may explode upon the road, and up you go along with it; or,
+may be a bolter and take a fancy to go down a hill, or into a river:
+all this you must bear, for the privilege of travelling twenty miles an
+hour.
+
+This little journey, then, from Paris to Versailles, that used to be
+so merry of old, has lost its pleasures since the disappearance of the
+coucous; and I would as lief have for companions the statues that lately
+took a coach from the bridge opposite the Chamber of Deputies, and
+stepped out in the court of Versailles, as the most part of the people
+who now travel on the railroad. The stone figures are not a whit more
+cold and silent than these persons, who used to be, in the old coucous,
+so talkative and merry. The prattling grisette and her swain from the
+Ecole de Droit; the huge Alsacian carabineer, grimly smiling under his
+sandy moustaches and glittering brass helmet; the jolly nurse, in
+red calico, who had been to Paris to show mamma her darling Lolo, or
+Auguste;--what merry companions used one to find squeezed into the
+crazy old vehicles that formerly performed the journey! But the age of
+horseflesh is gone--that of engineers, economists, and calculators has
+succeeded; and the pleasure of coucoudom is extinguished for ever. Why
+not mourn over it, as Mr. Burke did over his cheap defence of nations
+and unbought grace of life; that age of chivalry, which he lamented,
+àpropos of a trip to Versailles, some half a century back?
+
+Without stopping to discuss (as might be done, in rather a neat and
+successful manner) whether the age of chivalry was cheap or dear, and
+whether, in the time of the unbought grace of life, there was not more
+bribery, robbery, villainy, tyranny, and corruption, than exists even in
+our own happy days,--let us make a few moral and historical remarks
+upon the town of Versailles; where, between railroad and coucou, we are
+surely arrived by this time.
+
+The town is, certainly, the most moral of towns. You pass from the
+railroad station through a long, lonely suburb, with dusty rows of
+stunted trees on either side, and some few miserable beggars, idle boys,
+and ragged old women under them. Behind the trees are gaunt, mouldy
+houses; palaces once, where (in the days of the unbought grace of life)
+the cheap defence of nations gambled, ogled, swindled, intrigued; whence
+high-born duchesses used to issue, in old times, to act as chambermaids
+to lovely Du Barri; and mighty princes rolled away, in gilt caroches,
+hot for the honor of lighting his Majesty to bed, or of presenting his
+stockings when he rose, or of holding his napkin when he dined. Tailors,
+chandlers, tinmen, wretched hucksters, and greengrocers, are now
+established in the mansions of the old peers; small children are yelling
+at the doors, with mouths besmeared with bread and treacle; damp rags
+are hanging out of every one of the windows, steaming in the sun;
+oyster-shells, cabbage-stalks, broken crockery, old papers, lie basking
+in the same cheerful light. A solitary water-cart goes jingling down the
+wide pavement, and spirts a feeble refreshment over the dusty, thirsty
+stones.
+
+After pacing for some time through such dismal streets, we deboucher
+on the grande place; and before us lies the palace dedicated to all the
+glories of France. In the midst of the great lonely plain this famous
+residence of King Louis looks low and mean.--Honored pile! Time was when
+tall musketeers and gilded body-guards allowed none to pass the gate.
+Fifty years ago, ten thousand drunken women from Paris broke through the
+charm; and now a tattered commissioner will conduct you through it for a
+penny, and lead you up to the sacred entrance of the palace.
+
+We will not examine all the glories of France, as here they are
+portrayed in pictures and marble: catalogues are written about these
+miles of canvas, representing all the revolutionary battles, from Valmy
+to Waterloo,--all the triumphs of Louis XIV.--all the mistresses of his
+successor--and all the great men who have flourished since the French
+empire began. Military heroes are most of these--fierce constables in
+shining steel, marshals in voluminous wigs, and brave grenadiers in
+bearskin caps; some dozens of whom gained crowns, principalities,
+dukedoms; some hundreds, plunder and epaulets; some millions, death in
+African sands, or in icy Russian plains, under the guidance, and for the
+good, of that arch-hero, Napoleon. By far the greater part of "all the
+glories" of France (as of most other countries) is made up of these
+military men: and a fine satire it is on the cowardice of mankind, that
+they pay such an extraordinary homage to the virtue called courage;
+filling their history-books with tales about it, and nothing but it.
+
+Let them disguise the place, however, as they will, and plaster the
+walls with bad pictures as they please, it will be hard to think of any
+family but one, as one traverses this vast gloomy edifice. It has not
+been humbled to the ground, as a certain palace of Babel was of yore;
+but it is a monument of fallen pride, not less awful, and would afford
+matter for a whole library of sermons. The cheap defence of nations
+expended a thousand millions in the erection of this magnificent
+dwelling-place. Armies were employed, in the intervals of their warlike
+labors, to level hills, or pile them up; to turn rivers, and to build
+aqueducts, and transplant woods, and construct smooth terraces, and long
+canals. A vast garden grew up in a wilderness, and a stupendous palace
+in the garden, and a stately city round the palace: the city was peopled
+with parasites, who daily came to do worship before the creator of these
+wonders--the Great King. "Dieu seul est grand," said courtly Massillon;
+but next to him, as the prelate thought, was certainly Louis,
+his vicegerent here upon earth--God's lieutenant-governor of the
+world,--before whom courtiers used to fall on their knees, and shade
+their eyes, as if the light of his countenance, like the sun, which
+shone supreme in heaven, the type of him, was too dazzling to bear.
+
+Did ever the sun shine upon such a king before, in such a palace?--or,
+rather, did such a king ever shine upon the sun? When Majesty came out
+of his chamber, in the midst of his superhuman splendors, viz, in his
+cinnamon-colored coat, embroidered with diamonds; his pyramid of a wig,*
+his red-heeled shoes, that lifted him four inches from the ground, "that
+he scarcely seemed to touch;" when he came out, blazing upon the dukes
+and duchesses that waited his rising,--what could the latter do, but
+cover their eyes, and wink, and tremble? And did he not himself believe,
+as he stood there, on his high heels, under his ambrosial periwig, that
+there was something in him more than man--something above Fate?
+
+     * It is fine to think that, in the days of his youth, his
+     Majesty Louis XIV. used to POWDER HIS WIG WITH GOLD-DUST.
+
+This, doubtless, was he fain to believe; and if, on very fine days, from
+his terrace before his gloomy palace of Saint Germains, he could catch
+a glimpse, in the distance, of a certain white spire of St. Denis,
+where his race lay buried, he would say to his courtiers, with a sublime
+condescension, "Gentlemen, you must remember that I, too, am mortal."
+Surely the lords in waiting could hardly think him serious, and vowed
+that his Majesty always loved a joke. However, mortal or not, the sight
+of that sharp spire wounded his Majesty's eyes; and is said, by the
+legend, to have caused the building of the palace of Babel-Versailles.
+
+In the year 1681, then, the great king, with bag and baggage,--with
+guards, cooks, chamberlains, mistresses, Jesuits, gentlemen, lackeys,
+Fénélons, Molières, Lauzuns, Bossuets, Villars, Villeroys, Louvois,
+Colberts,--transported himself to his new palace: the old one being left
+for James of England and Jaquette his wife, when their time should come.
+And when the time did come, and James sought his brother's kingdom,
+it is on record that Louis hastened to receive and console him, and
+promised to restore, incontinently, those islands from which the
+canaille had turned him. Between brothers such a gift was a trifle; and
+the courtiers said to one another reverently:* "The Lord said unto
+my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy
+footstool." There was no blasphemy in the speech: on the contrary, it
+was gravely said, by a faithful believing man, who thought it no shame
+to the latter, to compare his Majesty with God Almighty. Indeed, the
+books of the time will give one a strong idea how general was this
+Louis-worship. I have just been looking at one, which was written by
+an honest Jesuit and Protégé of Père la Chaise, who dedicates a book of
+medals to the august Infants of France, which does, indeed, go almost
+as far in print. He calls our famous monarch "Louis le Grand:--1,
+l'invincible; 2, le sage; 3, le conquérant; 4, la merveille de son
+siècle; 5, la terreur de ses ennemis; 6, l'amour de ses peuples; 7,
+l'arbitre de la paix et de la guerre; 8, l'admiration de l'univers; 9,
+et digne d'en être le maître; 10, le modèle d'un héros achevé; 11, digne
+de l'immortalité, et de la vénération de tous les siècles!"
+
+     * I think it is in the amusing "Memoirs of Madame de Crequi"
+     (a forgery, but a work remarkable for its learning and
+     accuracy) that the above anecdote is related.
+
+A pretty Jesuit declaration, truly, and a good honest judgment upon the
+great king! In thirty years more--1. The invincible had been beaten a
+vast number of times. 2. The sage was the puppet of an artful old woman,
+who was the puppet of more artful priests. 3. The conqueror had quite
+forgotten his early knack of conquering. 5. The terror of his enemies
+(for 4, the marvel of his age, we pretermit, it being a loose term, that
+may apply to any person or thing) was now terrified by his enemies in
+turn. 6. The love of his people was as heartily detested by them as
+scarcely any other monarch, not even his great-grandson, has been,
+before or since. 7. The arbiter of peace and war was fain to send superb
+ambassadors to kick their heels in Dutch shopkeepers' ante-chambers. 8,
+is again a general term. 9. The man fit to be master of the universe,
+was scarcely master of his own kingdom. 10. The finished hero was all
+but finished, in a very commonplace and vulgar way. And 11. The man
+worthy of immortality was just at the point of death, without a friend
+to soothe or deplore him; only withered old Maintenon to utter prayers
+at his bedside, and croaking Jesuits to prepare him,* with heaven knows
+what wretched tricks and mummeries, for his appearance in that Great
+Republic that lies on the other side of the grave. In the course of his
+fourscore splendid miserable years, he never had but one friend, and he
+ruined and left her. Poor La Vallière, what a sad tale is yours! "Look
+at this Galerie des Glaces," cries Monsieur Vatout, staggering with
+surprise at the appearance of the room, two hundred and forty-two feet
+long, and forty high. "Here it was that Louis displayed all the grandeur
+of royalty; and such was the splendor of his court, and the luxury of
+the times, that this immense room could hardly contain the crowd of
+courtiers that pressed around the monarch." Wonderful! wonderful! Eight
+thousand four hundred and sixty square feet of courtiers! Give a square
+yard to each, and you have a matter of three thousand of them. Think of
+three thousand courtiers per day, and all the chopping and changing
+of them for near forty years: some of them dying, some getting their
+wishes, and retiring to their provinces to enjoy their plunder; some
+disgraced, and going home to pine away out of the light of the sun;**
+new ones perpetually arriving,--pushing, squeezing, for their place,
+in the crowded Galerie des Glaces. A quarter of a million of noble
+countenances, at the very least, must those glasses have reflected.
+Rouge, diamonds, ribbons, patches, upon the faces of smiling ladies:
+towering periwigs, sleek shaven crowns, tufted moustaches, scars, and
+grizzled whiskers, worn by ministers, priests, dandies, and grim old
+commanders.--So many faces, O ye gods! and every one of them lies! So
+many tongues, vowing devotion and respectful love to the great king in
+his six-inch wig; and only poor La Vallière's amongst them all which had
+a word of truth for the dull ears of Louis of Bourbon.
+
+     * They made a Jesuit of him on his death-bed.
+
+     ** Saint Simon's account of Lauzun, in disgrace, is
+     admirably facetious and pathetic; Lauzun's regrets are as
+     monstrous as those of Raleigh when deprived of the sight of
+     his adorable Queen and Mistress, Elizabeth.
+
+"Quand j'aurai de la peine aux Carmélites," says unhappy Louise, about
+to retire from these magnificent courtiers and their grand Galerie
+des Glaces, "je me souviendrai de ce que ces gens là m'ont fait
+souffrir!"--A troop of Bossuets inveighing against the vanities of
+courts could not preach such an affecting sermon. What years of anguish
+and wrong had the poor thing suffered, before these sad words came from
+her gentle lips! How these courtiers have bowed and flattered, kissed
+the ground on which she trod, fought to have the honor of riding by her
+carriage, written sonnets, and called her goddess; who, in the days of
+her prosperity, was kind and beneficent, gentle and compassionate to
+all; then (on a certain day, when it is whispered that his Majesty
+hath cast the eyes of his gracious affection upon another) behold three
+thousand courtiers are at the feet of the new divinity.--"O divine
+Athenais! what blockheads have we been to worship any but you.--THAT a
+goddess?--a pretty goddess forsooth;--a witch, rather, who, for a while,
+kept our gracious monarch blind! Look at her: the woman limps as she
+walks; and, by sacred Venus, her mouth stretches almost to her diamond
+ear-rings?"* The same tale may be told of many more deserted mistresses;
+and fair Athenais de Montespan was to hear it of herself one day.
+Meantime, while La Vallière's heart is breaking, the model of a finished
+hero is yawning; as, on such paltry occasions, a finished hero should.
+LET her heart break: a plague upon her tears and repentance; what right
+has she to repent? Away with her to her convent. She goes, and the
+finished hero never sheds a tear. What a noble pitch of stoicism to have
+reached! Our Louis was so great, that the little woes of mean people
+were beyond him: his friends died, his mistresses left him; his
+children, one by one, were cut off before his eyes, and great Louis
+is not moved in the slightest degree! As how, indeed, should a god be
+moved?
+
+     * A pair of diamond ear-rings, given by the King to La
+     Vallière, caused much scandal; and some lampoons are extant,
+     which impugn the taste of Louis XIV. for loving a lady with
+     such an enormous mouth.
+
+I have often liked to think about this strange character in the world,
+who moved in it, bearing about a full belief in his own infallibility;
+teaching his generals the art of war, his ministers the science of
+government, his wits taste, his courtiers dress; ordering deserts to
+become gardens, turning villages into palaces at a breath; and indeed
+the august figure of the man, as he towers upon his throne, cannot fail
+to inspire one with respect and awe:--how grand those flowing locks
+appear; how awful that sceptre; how magnificent those flowing robes! In
+Louis, surely, if in any one, the majesty of kinghood is represented.
+
+But a king is not every inch a king, for all the poet may say; and it is
+curious to see how much precise majesty there is in that majestic figure
+of Ludovicus Rex. In the Frontispiece, we have endeavored to make the
+exact calculation. The idea of kingly dignity is equally strong in the
+two outer figures; and you see, at once, that majesty is made out of the
+wig, the high-heeled shoes, and cloak, all fleurs-de-lis bespangled. As
+for the little lean, shrivelled, paunchy old man, of five feet two, in a
+jacket and breeches, there is no majesty in HIM at any rate; and yet he
+has just stepped out of that very suit of clothes. Put the wig and shoes
+on him, and he is six feet high;--the other fripperies, and he stands
+before you majestic, imperial, and heroic! Thus do barbers and cobblers
+make the gods that we worship: for do we not all worship him? Yes;
+though we all know him to be stupid, heartless, short, of doubtful
+personal courage, worship and admire him we must; and have set up, in
+our hearts, a grand image of him, endowed with wit, magnanimity, valor,
+and enormous heroical stature.
+
+And what magnanimous acts are attributed to him! or, rather, how
+differently do we view the actions of heroes and common men, and find
+that the same thing shall be a wonderful virtue in the former, which,
+in the latter, is only an ordinary act of duty. Look at yonder window of
+the king's chamber;--one morning a royal cane was seen whirling out of
+it, and plumped among the courtiers and guard of honor below. King Louis
+had absolutely, and with his own hand, flung his own cane out of
+the window, "because," said he, "I won't demean myself by striking a
+gentleman!" O miracle of magnanimity! Lauzun was not caned, because he
+besought majesty to keep his promise,--only imprisoned for ten years in
+Pignerol, along with banished Fouquet;--and a pretty story is Fouquet's
+too.
+
+Out of the window the king's august head was one day thrust, when old
+Condé was painfully toiling up the steps of the court below. "Don't
+hurry yourself, my cousin," cries magnanimity, "one who has to carry
+so many laurels cannot walk fast." At which all the courtiers, lackeys,
+mistresses, chamberlains, Jesuits, and scullions, clasp their hands and
+burst into tears. Men are affected by the tale to this very day. For
+a century and three-quarters, have not all the books that speak of
+Versailles, or Louis Quatorze, told the story?--"Don't hurry
+yourself, my cousin!" O admirable king and Christian! what a pitch of
+condescension is here, that the greatest king of all the world should go
+for to say anything so kind, and really tell a tottering old gentleman,
+worn out with gout, age, and wounds, not to walk too fast!
+
+What a proper fund of slavishness is there in the composition of
+mankind, that histories like these should be found to interest and awe
+them. Till the world's end, most likely, this story will have its place
+in the history-books; and unborn generations will read it, and tenderly
+be moved by it. I am sure that Magnanimity went to bed that night,
+pleased and happy, intimately convinced that he had done an action of
+sublime virtue, and had easy slumbers and sweet dreams,--especially if
+he had taken a light supper, and not too vehemently attacked his en cas
+de nuit.
+
+That famous adventure, in which the en cas de nuit was brought into
+use, for the sake of one Poquelin alias Molière;--how often has it been
+described and admired? This Poquelin, though king's valet-de-chambre,
+was by profession a vagrant; and as such, looked coldly on by the great
+lords of the palace, who refused to eat with him. Majesty hearing
+of this, ordered his en cas de nuit to be placed on the table, and
+positively cut off a wing with his own knife and fork for Poquelin's
+use. O thrice happy Jean Baptiste! The king has actually sat down with
+him cheek by jowl, had the liver-wing of a fowl, and given Molière
+the gizzard; put his imperial legs under the same mahogany (sub iisdem
+trabibus). A man, after such an honor, can look for little else in this
+world: he has tasted the utmost conceivable earthly happiness, and has
+nothing to do now but to fold his arms, look up to heaven, and sing
+"Nunc dimittis" and die.
+
+Do not let us abuse poor old Louis on account of this monstrous pride;
+but only lay it to the charge of the fools who believed and worshipped
+it. If, honest man, he believed himself to be almost a god, it was only
+because thousands of people had told him so--people only half liars,
+too; who did, in the depths of their slavish respect, admire the man
+almost as much as they said they did. If, when he appeared in his
+five-hundred-million coat, as he is said to have done, before the
+Siamese ambassadors, the courtiers began to shade their eyes and long
+for parasols, as if this Bourbonic sun was too hot for them; indeed, it
+is no wonder that he should believe that there was something dazzling
+about his person: he had half a million of eager testimonies to this
+idea. Who was to tell him the truth?--Only in the last years of his life
+did trembling courtiers dare whisper to him, after much circumlocution,
+that a certain battle had been fought at a place called Blenheim, and
+that Eugene and Marlborough had stopped his long career of triumphs.
+
+"On n'est plus heureux à notre âge," says the old man, to one of his old
+generals, welcoming Tallard after his defeat; and he rewards him
+with honors, as if he had come from a victory. There is, if you will,
+something magnanimous in this welcome to his conquered general, this
+stout protest against Fate. Disaster succeeds disaster; armies after
+armies march out to meet fiery Eugene and that dogged, fatal Englishman,
+and disappear in the smoke of the enemies' cannon. Even at Versailles
+you may almost hear it roaring at last; but when courtiers, who have
+forgotten their god, now talk of quitting this grand temple of his, old
+Louis plucks up heart and will never hear of surrender. All the gold
+and silver at Versailles he melts, to find bread for his armies: all
+the jewels on his five-hundred-million coat he pawns resolutely; and,
+bidding Villars go and make the last struggle but one, promises, if his
+general is defeated, to place himself at the head of his nobles, and
+die King of France. Indeed, after a man, for sixty years, has been
+performing the part of a hero, some of the real heroic stuff must have
+entered into his composition, whether he would or not. When the great
+Elliston was enacting the part of King George the Fourth, in the play of
+"The Coronation," at Drury Lane, the galleries applauded very loudly
+his suavity and majestic demeanor, at which Elliston, inflamed by the
+popular loyalty (and by some fermented liquor in which, it is said, he
+was in the habit of indulging), burst into tears, and spreading out his
+arms, exclaimed: "Bless ye, bless ye, my people!" Don't let us laugh at
+his Ellistonian majesty, nor at the people who clapped hands and yelled
+"bravo!" in praise of him. The tipsy old manager did really feel that
+he was a hero at that moment; and the people, wild with delight and
+attachment for a magnificent coat and breeches, surely were uttering
+the true sentiments of loyalty: which consists in reverencing these and
+other articles of costume. In this fifth act, then, of his long royal
+drama, old Louis performed his part excellently; and when the curtain
+drops upon him, he lies, dressed majestically, in a becoming kingly
+attitude, as a king should.
+
+The king his successor has not left, at Versailles, half so much
+occasion for moralizing; perhaps the neighboring Parc aux Cerfs
+would afford better illustrations of his reign. The life of his great
+grandsire, the Grand Llama of France, seems to have frightened Louis
+the well-beloved; who understood that loneliness is one of the necessary
+conditions of divinity, and being of a jovial, companionable turn,
+aspired not beyond manhood. Only in the matter of ladies did he
+surpass his predecessor, as Solomon did David. War he eschewed, as his
+grandfather bade him; and his simple taste found little in this world to
+enjoy beyond the mulling of chocolate and the frying of pancakes. Look,
+here is the room called Laboratoire du Roi, where, with his own hands,
+he made his mistress's breakfast:--here is the little door through
+which, from her apartments in the upper story, the chaste Du Barri came
+stealing down to the arms of the weary, feeble, gloomy old man. But of
+women he was tired long since, and even pancake-frying had palled
+upon him. What had he to do, after forty years of reign;--after having
+exhausted everything? Every pleasure that Dubois could invent for his
+hot youth, or cunning Lebel could minister to his old age, was flat and
+stale; used up to the very dregs: every shilling in the national purse
+had been squeezed out, by Pompadour and Du Barri and such brilliant
+ministers of state. He had found out the vanity of pleasure, as his
+ancestor had discovered the vanity of glory: indeed it was high time
+that he should die. And die he did; and round his tomb, as round that of
+his grandfather before him, the starving people sang a dreadful chorus
+of curses, which were the only epitaphs for good or for evil that were
+raised to his memory.
+
+As for the courtiers--the knights and nobles, the unbought grace of
+life--they, of course, forgot him in one minute after his death, as
+the way is. When the king dies, the officer appointed opens his chamber
+window, and calling out into the court below, Le Roi est mort,
+breaks his cane, takes another and waves it, exclaiming, vive le Roi!
+Straightway all the loyal nobles begin yelling vive le Roi! and the
+officer goes round solemnly and sets yonder great clock in the Cour
+de Marbre to the hour of the king's death. This old Louis had solemnly
+ordained; but the Versailles clock was only set twice: there was no
+shouting of Vive le Roi when the successor of Louis XV. mounted to
+heaven to join his sainted family.
+
+Strange stories of the deaths of kings have always been very recreating
+and profitable to us: what a fine one is that of the death of Louis XV.,
+as Madame Campan tells it. One night the gracious monarch came back ill
+from Trianon; the disease turned out to be the small-pox; so violent
+that ten people of those who had to enter his chamber caught the
+infection and died. The whole court flies from him; only poor old fat
+Mesdames the King's daughters persist in remaining at his bedside, and
+praying for his soul's welfare.
+
+On the 10th May, 1774, the whole court had assembled at the château; the
+oeil de Boeuf was full. The Dauphin had determined to depart as soon as
+the king had breathed his last. And it was agreed by the people of
+the stables, with those who watched in the king's room, that a lighted
+candle should be placed in a window, and should be extinguished as
+soon as he had ceased to live. The candle was put out. At that signal,
+guards, pages, and squires mounted on horseback, and everything was
+made ready for departure. The Dauphin was with the Dauphiness, waiting
+together for the news of the king's demise. AN IMMENSE NOISE, AS IF OF
+THUNDER, WAS HEARD IN THE NEXT ROOM; it was the crowd of courtiers, who
+were deserting the dead king's apartment, in order to pay their court
+to the new power of Louis XVI. Madame de Noailles entered, and was the
+first to salute the queen by her title of Queen of France, and begged
+their Majesties to quit their apartments, to receive the princes
+and great lords of the court desirous to pay their homage to the new
+sovereigns. Leaning on her husband's arm, a handkerchief to her eyes,
+in the most touching attitude, Marie Antoinette received these first
+visits. On quitting the chamber where the dead king lay, the Duc de
+Villequier bade M. Anderville, first surgeon of the king, to open and
+embalm the body: it would have been certain death to the surgeon. "I am
+ready, sir," said he; "but whilst I am operating, you must hold the head
+of the corpse: your charge demands it." The Duke went away without
+a word, and the body was neither opened nor embalmed. A few humble
+domestics and poor workmen watched by the remains, and performed the
+last offices to their master. The surgeons ordered spirits of wine to be
+poured into the coffin.
+
+They huddled the king's body into a post-chaise; and in this deplorable
+equipage, with an escort of about forty men, Louis the well-beloved was
+carried, in the dead of night, from Versailles to St. Denis, and then
+thrown into the tomb of the kings of France!
+
+If any man is curious, and can get permission, he may mount to the roof
+of the palace, and see where Louis XVI. used royally to amuse himself,
+by gazing upon the doings of all the townspeople below with a telescope.
+Behold that balcony, where, one morning, he, his queen, and the little
+Dauphin stood, with Cromwell Grandison Lafayette by their side, who
+kissed her Majesty's hand, and protected her; and then, lovingly
+surrounded by his people, the king got into a coach and came to Paris:
+nor did his Majesty ride much in coaches after that.
+
+There is a portrait of the king, in the upper galleries, clothed in red
+and gold, riding a fat horse, brandishing a sword, on which the word
+"Justice" is inscribed, and looking remarkably stupid and uncomfortable.
+You see that the horse will throw him at the very first fling; and as
+for the sword, it never was made for such hands as his, which were
+good at holding a corkscrew or a carving-knife, but not clever at the
+management of weapons of war. Let those pity him who will: call him
+saint and martyr if you please; but a martyr to what principle was he?
+Did he frankly support either party in his kingdom, or cheat and tamper
+with both? He might have escaped; but he must have his supper: and so
+his family was butchered and his kingdom lost, and he had his bottle of
+Burgundy in comfort at Varennes. A single charge upon the fatal 10th
+of August, and the monarchy might have been his once more; but he is
+so tender-hearted, that he lets his friends be murdered before his eyes
+almost: or, at least, when he has turned his back upon his duty and
+his kingdom, and has skulked for safety into the reporters' box, at the
+National Assembly. There were hundreds of brave men who died that day,
+and were martyrs, if you will; poor neglected tenth-rate courtiers, for
+the most part, who had forgotten old slights and disappointments, and
+left their places of safety to come and die, if need were, sharing in
+the supreme hour of the monarchy. Monarchy was a great deal too humane
+to fight along with these, and so left them to the pikes of Santerre and
+the mercy of the men of the Sections. But we are wandering a good ten
+miles from Versailles, and from the deeds which Louis XVI. performed
+there.
+
+He is said to have been such a smart journeyman blacksmith, that he
+might, if Fate had not perversely placed a crown on his head, have
+earned a couple of louis every week by the making of locks and keys.
+Those who will may see the workshop where he employed many useful hours:
+Madame Elizabeth was at prayers meanwhile; the queen was making pleasant
+parties with her ladies. Monsieur the Count d'Artois was learning
+to dance on the tight-rope; and Monsieur de Provence was cultivating
+l'eloquence du billet and studying his favorite Horace. It is said that
+each member of the august family succeeded remarkably well in his or her
+pursuits; big Monsieur's little notes are still cited. At a minuet
+or syllabub, poor Antoinette was unrivalled; and Charles, on the
+tight-rope, was so graceful and so gentil, that Madame Saqui might envy
+him. The time only was out of joint. O cursed spite, that ever such
+harmless creatures as these were bidden to right it!
+
+A walk to the little Trianon is both pleasing and moral: no doubt the
+reader has seen the pretty fantastical gardens which environ it; the
+groves and temples; the streams and caverns (whither, as the guide tells
+you, during the heat of summer, it was the custom of Marie Antoinette
+to retire, with her favorite, Madame de Lamballe): the lake and Swiss
+village are pretty little toys, moreover; and the cicerone of the place
+does not fail to point out the different cottages which surround
+the piece of water, and tell the names of the royal masqueraders who
+inhabited each. In the long cottage, close upon the lake, dwelt the
+Seigneur du Village, no less a personage than Louis XV.; Louis XVI.,
+the Dauphin, was the Bailli; near his cottage is that of Monseigneur the
+Count d'Artois, who was the Miller; opposite lived the Prince de Condé,
+who enacted the part of Gamekeeper (or, indeed, any other rôle, for it
+does not signify much); near him was the Prince de Rohan, who was the
+Aumônier; and yonder is the pretty little dairy, which was under the
+charge of the fair Marie Antoinette herself.
+
+I forget whether Monsieur the fat Count of Provence took any share of
+this royal masquerading; but look at the names of the other six actors
+of the comedy, and it will be hard to find any person for whom Fate
+had such dreadful visitations in store. Fancy the party, in the days of
+their prosperity, here gathered at Trianon, and seated under the tall
+poplars by the lake, discoursing familiarly together: suppose of a
+sudden some conjuring Cagliostro of the time is introduced among them,
+and foretells to them the woes that are about to come. "You, Monsieur
+l'Aumônier, the descendant of a long line of princes, the passionate
+admirer of that fair queen who sits by your side, shall be the cause of
+her ruin and your own,* and shall die in disgrace and exile. You, son
+of the Condés, shall live long enough to see your royal race overthrown,
+and shall die by the hands of a hangman.** You, oldest son of Saint
+Louis, shall perish by the executioner's axe; that beautiful head, O
+Antoinette, the same ruthless blade shall sever." "They shall kill me
+first," says Lamballe, at the queen's side. "Yes, truly," replies the
+soothsayer, "for Fate prescribes ruin for your mistress and all who love
+her."*** "And," cries Monsieur d'Artois, "do I not love my sister, too?
+I pray you not to omit me in your prophecies."
+
+     * In the diamond-necklace affair.
+
+     ** He was found hanging in his own bedroom.
+
+     *** Among the many lovers that rumor gave to the queen, poor
+     Ferscu is the most remarkable. He seems to have entertained
+     for her a high and perfectly pure devotion. He was the chief
+     agent in the luckless escape to Varennes; was lurking in
+     Paris during the time of her captivity; and was concerned in
+     the many fruitless plots that were made for her rescue.
+     Ferscu lived to be an old man, but died a dreadful and
+     violent death. He was dragged from his carriage by the mob,
+     in Stockholm, and murdered by them.
+
+To whom Monsieur Cagliostro says, scornfully, "You may look forward
+to fifty years of life, after most of these are laid in the grave. You
+shall be a king, but not die one; and shall leave the crown only; not
+the worthless head that shall wear it. Thrice shall you go into exile:
+you shall fly from the people, first, who would have no more of you
+and your race; and you shall return home over half a million of human
+corpses, that have been made for the sake of you, and of a tyrant as
+great as the greatest of your family. Again driven away, your bitterest
+enemy shall bring you back. But the strong limbs of France are not to
+be chained by such a paltry yoke as you can put on her: you shall be a
+tyrant, but in will only; and shall have a sceptre, but to see it robbed
+from your hand."
+
+"And pray, Sir Conjurer, who shall be the robber?" asked Monsieur the
+Count d'Artois.
+
+
+This I cannot say, for here my dream ended. The fact is, I had fallen
+asleep on one of the stone benches in the Avenue de Paris, and at this
+instant was awakened by a whirling of carriages and a great clattering
+of national guards, lancers and outriders, in red. His MAJESTY LOUIS
+PHILIPPE was going to pay a visit to the palace; which contains several
+pictures of his own glorious actions, and which has been dedicated, by
+him, to all the glories of France.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A.
+Titmarsh, by William Makepeace Thackeray
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+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh, by William Makepeace
+      Thackeray
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh, by
+William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh
+
+Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+Release Date: December 6, 2008 [EBook #2768]
+Last Updated: March 5, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PARIS SKETCH BOOK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK <br /> OF MR. M. A. TITMARSH
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By William Makepeace Thackeray
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Estes And Lauriat, Boston, Publishers
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> DEDICATORY LETTER </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> AN INVASION OF FRANCE. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> A CAUTION TO TRAVELLERS. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> THE FÊTES OF JULY. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> ON THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF PAINTING: </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> A GAMBLER'S DEATH. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> NAPOLEON AND HIS SYSTEM. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> THE STORY OF MARY ANCEL. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> BEATRICE MERGER. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> CARICATURES AND LITHOGRAPHY IN PARIS. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> LITTLE POINSINET. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> THE DEVIL'S WAGER. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> MADAME SAND AND THE NEW APOCALYPSE. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> THE CASE OF PEYTEL: </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> <b>FOUR IMITATIONS OF BÉRANGER</b> </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> LE ROI D'YVETOT. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> THE KING OF BRENTFORD. ANOTHER VERSION. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> LE GRENIER. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> THE GARRET. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> ROGER-BONTEMPS. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> JOLLY JACK. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> FRENCH DRAMAS AND MELODRAMAS. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> MEDITATIONS AT VERSAILLES. </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      DEDICATORY LETTER
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      TO
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      M. ARETZ, TAILOR, ETC. 27, RUE RICHELIEU, PARIS.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SIR,&mdash;It becomes every man in his station to acknowledge and praise
+      virtue wheresoever he may find it, and to point it out for the admiration
+      and example of his fellow-men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some months since, when you presented to the writer of these pages a small
+      account for coats and pantaloons manufactured by you, and when you were
+      met by a statement from your creditor, that an immediate settlement of
+      your bill would be extremely inconvenient to him; your reply was, &ldquo;Mon
+      Dieu, Sir, let not that annoy you; if you want money, as a gentleman often
+      does in a strange country, I have a thousand-franc note at my house which
+      is quite at your service.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      History or experience, Sir, makes us acquainted with so few actions that
+      can be compared to yours,&mdash;an offer like this from a stranger and a
+      tailor seems to me so astonishing,&mdash;that you must pardon me for thus
+      making your virtue public, and acquainting the English nation with your
+      merit and your name. Let me add, Sir, that you live on the first floor;
+      that your clothes and fit are excellent, and your charges moderate and
+      just; and, as a humble tribute of my admiration, permit me to lay these
+      volumes at your feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Your obliged, faithful servant,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. A. TITMARSH. <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      About half of the sketches in these volumes have already appeared in
+      print, in various periodical works. A part of the text of one tale, and
+      the plots of two others, have been borrowed from French originals; the
+      other stories, which are, in the main, true, have been written upon facts
+      and characters that came within the Author's observation during a
+      residence in Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the remaining papers relate to public events which occurred during the
+      same period, or to Parisian Art and Literature, he has ventured to give
+      his publication the title which it bears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LONDON, July 1, 1840.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      AN INVASION OF FRANCE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Caesar venit in Galliam summâ diligentiâ.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      About twelve o'clock, just as the bell of the packet is tolling a farewell
+      to London Bridge, and warning off the blackguard-boys with the newspapers,
+      who have been shoving Times, Herald, Penny Paul-Pry, Penny Satirist,
+      Flare-up, and other abominations, into your face&mdash;just as the bell
+      has tolled, and the Jews, strangers, people-taking-leave-of their
+      families, and blackguard-boys aforesaid, are making a rush for the narrow
+      plank which conducts from the paddle-box of the &ldquo;Emerald&rdquo; steamboat unto
+      the quay&mdash;you perceive, staggering down Thames Street, those two
+      hackney-coaches, for the arrival of which you have been praying,
+      trembling, hoping, despairing, swearing&mdash;sw&mdash;, I beg your
+      pardon, I believe the word is not used in polite company&mdash;and
+      transpiring, for the last half-hour. Yes, at last, the two coaches draw
+      near, and from thence an awful number of trunks, children, carpet-bags,
+      nursery-maids, hat-boxes, band-boxes, bonnet-boxes, desks, cloaks, and an
+      affectionate wife, are discharged on the quay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Elizabeth, take care of Miss Jane,&rdquo; screams that worthy woman, who has
+      been for a fortnight employed in getting this tremendous body of troops
+      and baggage into marching order. &ldquo;Hicks! Hicks! for heaven's sake mind the
+      babies!&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;George&mdash;Edward, sir, if you go near that porter with
+      the trunk, he will tumble down and kill you, you naughty boy!&mdash;My
+      love, DO take the cloaks and umbrellas, and give a hand to Fanny and Lucy;
+      and I wish you would speak to the hackney-coachmen, dear, they want
+      fifteen shillings, and count the packages, love&mdash;twenty-seven
+      packages,&mdash;and bring little Flo; where's little Flo?&mdash;Flo! Flo!&rdquo;&mdash;(Flo
+      comes sneaking in; she has been speaking a few parting words to a one-eyed
+      terrier, that sneaks off similarly, landward.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As when the hawk menaces the hen-roost, in like manner, when such a danger
+      as a voyage menaces a mother, she becomes suddenly endowed with a
+      ferocious presence of mind, and bristling up and screaming in the front of
+      her brood, and in the face of circumstances, succeeds, by her courage, in
+      putting her enemy to flight; in like manner you will always, I think, find
+      your wife (if that lady be good for twopence) shrill, eager, and
+      ill-humored, before, and during a great family move of this nature. Well,
+      the swindling hackney-coachmen are paid, the mother leading on her
+      regiment of little ones, and supported by her auxiliary nurse-maids, are
+      safe in the cabin;&mdash;you have counted twenty-six of the twenty-seven
+      parcels, and have them on board, and that horrid man on the paddle-box,
+      who, for twenty minutes past, has been roaring out, NOW, SIR!&mdash;says,
+      NOW, SIR, no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I never yet knew how a steamer began to move, being always too busy among
+      the trunks and children, for the first half-hour, to mark any of the
+      movements of the vessel. When these private arrangements are made, you
+      find yourself opposite Greenwich (farewell, sweet, sweet whitebait!), and
+      quiet begins to enter your soul. Your wife smiles for the first time these
+      ten days; you pass by plantations of ship-masts, and forests of
+      steam-chimneys; the sailors are singing on board the ships, the bargees
+      salute you with oaths, grins, and phrases facetious and familiar; the man
+      on the paddle-box roars, &ldquo;Ease her, stop her!&rdquo; which mysterious words a
+      shrill voice from below repeats, and pipes out, &ldquo;Ease her, stop her!&rdquo; in
+      echo; the deck is crowded with groups of figures, and the sun shines over
+      all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun shines over all, and the steward comes up to say, &ldquo;Lunch, ladies
+      and gentlemen! Will any lady or gentleman please to take anythink?&rdquo; About
+      a dozen do: boiled beef and pickles, and great red raw Cheshire cheese,
+      tempt the epicure: little dumpy bottles of stout are produced, and fizz
+      and bang about with a spirit one would never have looked for in
+      individuals of their size and stature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The decks have a strange, look; the people on them, that is. Wives,
+      elderly stout husbands, nurse-maids, and children predominate, of course,
+      in English steamboats. Such may be considered as the distinctive marks of
+      the English gentleman at three or four and forty: two or three of such
+      groups have pitched their camps on the deck. Then there are a number of
+      young men, of whom three or four have allowed their moustaches to BEGIN to
+      grow since last Friday; for they are going &ldquo;on the Continent,&rdquo; and they
+      look, therefore, as if their upper lips were smeared with snuff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A danseuse from the opera is on her way to Paris. Followed by her bonne
+      and her little dog, she paces the deck, stepping out, in the real dancer
+      fashion, and ogling all around. How happy the two young Englishmen are,
+      who can speak French, and make up to her: and how all criticise her points
+      and paces! Yonder is a group of young ladies, who are going to Paris to
+      learn how to be governesses: those two splendidly dressed ladies are
+      milliners from the Rue Richelieu, who have just brought over, and disposed
+      of, their cargo of Summer fashions. Here sits the Rev. Mr. Snodgrass with
+      his pupils, whom he is conducting to his establishment, near Boulogne,
+      where, in addition to a classical and mathematical education (washing
+      included), the young gentlemen have the benefit of learning French among
+      THE FRENCH THEMSELVES. Accordingly, the young gentlemen are locked up in a
+      great rickety house, two miles from Boulogne and never see a soul, except
+      the French usher and the cook.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some few French people are there already, preparing to be ill&mdash;(I
+      never shall forget a dreadful sight I once had in the little dark, dirty,
+      six-foot cabin of a Dover steamer. Four gaunt Frenchmen, but for their
+      pantaloons, in the costume of Adam in Paradise, solemnly anointing
+      themselves with some charm against sea-sickness!)&mdash;a few Frenchmen
+      are there, but these, for the most part, and with a proper philosophy, go
+      to the fore-cabin of the ship, and you see them on the fore-deck (is that
+      the name for that part of the vessel which is in the region of the
+      bowsprit?) lowering in huge cloaks and caps; snuffy, wretched, pale, and
+      wet; and not jabbering now, as their wont is on shore. I never could fancy
+      the Mounseers formidable at sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are, of course, many Jews on board. Who ever travelled by steamboat,
+      coach, diligence, eilwagen, vetturino, mule-back, or sledge, without
+      meeting some of the wandering race?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time these remarks have been made the steward is on the deck again,
+      and dinner is ready: and about two hours after dinner comes tea; and then
+      there is brandy-and-water, which he eagerly presses as a preventive
+      against what may happen; and about this time you pass the Foreland, the
+      wind blowing pretty fresh; and the groups on deck disappear, and your
+      wife, giving you an alarmed look, descends, with her little ones, to the
+      ladies' cabin, and you see the steward and his boys issuing from their den
+      under the paddle-box, with each a heap of round tin vases, like those
+      which are called, I believe, in America, expectoratoons, only these are
+      larger.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      .      .      .      .      .      .
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The wind blows, the water looks greener and more beautiful than ever&mdash;ridge
+      by ridge of long white rock passes away. &ldquo;That's Ramsgit,&rdquo; says the man at
+      the helm; and, presently, &ldquo;That there's Deal&mdash;it's dreadful fallen
+      off since the war;&rdquo; and &ldquo;That's Dover, round that there pint, only you
+      can't see it.&rdquo; And, in the meantime, the sun has plumped his hot face into
+      the water, and the moon has shown hers as soon as ever his back is turned,
+      and Mrs.&mdash;(the wife in general,) has brought up her children and self
+      from the horrid cabin, in which she says it is impossible to breathe; and
+      the poor little wretches are, by the officious stewardess and smart
+      steward (expectoratoonifer), accommodated with a heap of blankets,
+      pillows, and mattresses, in the midst of which they crawl, as best they
+      may, and from the heaving heap of which are, during the rest of the
+      voyage, heard occasional faint cries, and sounds of puking woe!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dear, dear Maria! Is this the woman who, anon, braved the jeers and brutal
+      wrath of swindling hackney-coachmen; who repelled the insolence of
+      haggling porters, with a scorn that brought down their demands at least
+      eighteenpence? Is this the woman at whose voice servants tremble; at the
+      sound of whose steps the nursery, ay, and mayhap the parlor, is in order?
+      Look at her now, prostrate, prostrate&mdash;no strength has she to speak,
+      scarce power to push to her youngest one&mdash;her suffering, struggling
+      Rosa,&mdash;to push to her the&mdash;the instrumentoon!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the midst of all these throes and agonies, at which all the passengers,
+      who have their own woes (you yourself&mdash;for how can you help THEM?&mdash;you
+      are on your back on a bench, and if you move all is up with you,) are
+      looking on indifferent&mdash;one man there is who has been watching you
+      with the utmost care, and bestowing on your helpless family the tenderness
+      that a father denies them. He is a foreigner, and you have been conversing
+      with him, in the course of the morning, in French&mdash;which, he says,
+      you speak remarkably well, like a native in fact, and then in English
+      (which, after all, you find is more convenient). What can express your
+      gratitude to this gentleman for all his goodness towards your family and
+      yourself&mdash;you talk to him, he has served under the Emperor, and is,
+      for all that, sensible, modest, and well-informed. He speaks, indeed, of
+      his countrymen almost with contempt, and readily admits the superiority of
+      a Briton, on the seas and elsewhere. One loves to meet with such genuine
+      liberality in a foreigner, and respects the man who can sacrifice vanity
+      to truth. This distinguished foreigner has travelled much; he asks whither
+      you are going?&mdash;where you stop? if you have a great quantity of
+      luggage on board?&mdash;and laughs when he hears of the twenty-seven
+      packages, and hopes you have some friend at the custom-house, who can
+      spare you the monstrous trouble of unpacking that which has taken you
+      weeks to put up. Nine, ten, eleven, the distinguished foreigner is ever at
+      your side; you find him now, perhaps, (with characteristic ingratitude,)
+      something of a bore, but, at least, he has been most tender to the
+      children and their mamma. At last a Boulogne light comes in sight, (you
+      see it over the bows of the vessel, when, having bobbed violently upwards,
+      it sinks swiftly down,) Boulogne harbor is in sight, and the foreigner
+      says,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The distinguished foreigner says, says he&mdash;&ldquo;Sare, eef you af no
+      'otel, I sall recommend you, milor, to ze 'Otel Betfort, in ze Quay, sare,
+      close to the bathing-machines and custom-ha-oose. Good bets and fine
+      garten, sare; table-d'hôte, sare, à cinq heures; breakfast, sare, in
+      French or English style;&mdash;I am the commissionaire, sare, and vill see
+      to your loggish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      ... Curse the fellow, for an impudent, swindling, sneaking French humbug!&mdash;Your
+      tone instantly changes, and you tell him to go about his business: but at
+      twelve o'clock at night, when the voyage is over, and the custom-house
+      business done, knowing not whither to go, with a wife and fourteen
+      exhausted children, scarce able to stand, and longing for bed, you find
+      yourself, somehow, in the Hôtel Bedford (and you can't be better), and
+      smiling chambermaids carry off your children to snug beds; while smart
+      waiters produce for your honor&mdash;a cold fowl, say, and a salad, and a
+      bottle of Bordeaux and Seltzer-water.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      .      .      .      .      .      .
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The morning comes&mdash;I don't know a pleasanter feeling than that of
+      waking with the sun shining on objects quite new, and (although you have
+      made the voyage a dozen times,) quite strange. Mrs. X. and you occupy a
+      very light bed, which has a tall canopy of red &ldquo;percale;&rdquo; the windows are
+      smartly draped with cheap gaudy calicoes and muslins; there are little
+      mean strips of carpet about the tiled floor of the room, and yet all seems
+      as gay and as comfortable as may be&mdash;the sun shines brighter than you
+      have seen it for a year, the sky is a thousand times bluer, and what a
+      cheery clatter of shrill quick French voices comes up from the court-yard
+      under the windows! Bells are jangling; a family, mayhap, is going to
+      Paris, en poste, and wondrous is the jabber of the courier, the postilion,
+      the inn-waiters, and the lookers-on. The landlord calls out for &ldquo;Quatre
+      biftecks aux pommes pour le trente-trois,&rdquo;&mdash;(O my countrymen, I love
+      your tastes and your ways!)&mdash;the chambermaid is laughing and says,
+      &ldquo;Finissez donc, Monsieur Pierre!&rdquo; (what can they be about?)&mdash;a fat
+      Englishman has opened his window violently, and says, &ldquo;Dee dong, garsong,
+      vooly voo me donny lo sho, ou vooly voo pah?&rdquo; He has been ringing for half
+      an hour&mdash;the last energetic appeal succeeds, and shortly he is
+      enabled to descend to the coffee-room, where, with three hot rolls,
+      grilled ham, cold fowl, and four boiled eggs, he makes what he calls his
+      first FRENCH breakfast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a strange, mongrel, merry place, this town of Boulogne; the little
+      French fishermen's children are beautiful, and the little French soldiers,
+      four feet high, red-breeched, with huge pompons on their caps, and brown
+      faces, and clear sharp eyes, look, for all their littleness, far more
+      military and more intelligent than the heavy louts one has seen swaggering
+      about the garrison towns in England. Yonder go a crowd of bare-legged
+      fishermen; there is the town idiot, mocking a woman who is screaming
+      &ldquo;Fleuve du Tage,&rdquo; at an inn-window, to a harp, and there are the little
+      gamins mocking HIM. Lo! these seven young ladies, with red hair and green
+      veils, they are from neighboring Albion, and going to bathe. Here comes
+      three Englishmen, habitués evidently of the place,&mdash;dandy specimens
+      of our countrymen: one wears a marine dress, another has a shooting dress,
+      a third has a blouse and a pair of guiltless spurs&mdash;all have as much
+      hair on the face as nature or art can supply, and all wear their hats very
+      much on one side. Believe me, there is on the face of this world no scamp
+      like an English one, no blackguard like one of these half-gentlemen, so
+      mean, so low, so vulgar,&mdash;so ludicrously ignorant and conceited, so
+      desperately heartless and depraved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But why, my dear sir, get into a passion?&mdash;Take things coolly. As the
+      poet has observed, &ldquo;Those only is gentlemen who behave as sich;&rdquo; with
+      such, then, consort, be they cobblers or dukes. Don't give us, cries the
+      patriotic reader, any abuse of our fellow-countrymen (anybody else can do
+      that), but rather continue in that good-humored, facetious, descriptive
+      style with which your letter has commenced.&mdash;Your remark, sir, is
+      perfectly just, and does honor to your head and excellent heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is little need to give a description of the good town of Boulogne,
+      which, haute and basse, with the new light-house and the new harbor, and
+      the gas-lamps, and the manufactures, and the convents, and the number of
+      English and French residents, and the pillar erected in honor of the grand
+      Armée d'Angleterre, so called because it DIDN'T go to England, have all
+      been excellently described by the facetious Coglan, the learned Dr.
+      Millingen, and by innumerable guide-books besides. A fine thing it is to
+      hear the stout old Frenchmen of Napoleon's time argue how that audacious
+      Corsican WOULD have marched to London, after swallowing Nelson and all his
+      gun-boats, but for cette malheureuse guerre d'Espagne and cette glorieuse
+      campagne d'Autriche, which the gold of Pitt caused to be raised at the
+      Emperor's tail, in order to call him off from the helpless country in his
+      front. Some Frenchmen go farther still, and vow that in Spain they were
+      never beaten at all; indeed, if you read in the Biographie des Hommes du
+      Jour, article &ldquo;Soult,&rdquo; you will fancy that, with the exception of the
+      disaster at Vittoria, the campaigns in Spain and Portugal were a series of
+      triumphs. Only, by looking at a map, it is observable that Vimeiro is a
+      mortal long way from Toulouse, where, at the end of certain years of
+      victories, we somehow find the honest Marshal. And what then?&mdash;he
+      went to Toulouse for the purpose of beating the English there, to be sure;&mdash;a
+      known fact, on which comment would be superfluous. However, we shall never
+      get to Paris at this rate; let us break off further palaver, and away at
+      once....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (During this pause, the ingenious reader is kindly requested to pay his
+      bill at the Hotel at Boulogne, to mount the Diligence of Laffitte,
+      Caillard and Company, and to travel for twenty-five hours, amidst much
+      jingling of harness-bells and screaming of postilions.)
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      .      .      .      .      .      .
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The French milliner, who occupies one of the corners, begins to remove the
+      greasy pieces of paper which have enveloped her locks during the journey.
+      She withdraws the &ldquo;Madras&rdquo; of dubious hue which has bound her head for the
+      last five-and-twenty hours, and replaces it by the black velvet bonnet,
+      which, bobbing against your nose, has hung from the Diligence roof since
+      your departure from Boulogne. The old lady in the opposite corner, who has
+      been sucking bonbons, and smells dreadfully of anisette, arranges her
+      little parcels in that immense basket of abominations which all old women
+      carry in their laps. She rubs her mouth and eyes with her dusty cambric
+      handkerchief, she ties up her nightcap into a little bundle, and replaces
+      it by a more becoming head-piece, covered with withered artificial
+      flowers, and crumpled tags of ribbon; she looks wistfully at the company
+      for an instant, and then places her handkerchief before her mouth:&mdash;her
+      eyes roll strangely about for an instant, and you hear a faint clattering
+      noise: the old lady has been getting ready her teeth, which had lain in
+      her basket among the bonbons, pins, oranges, pomatum, bits of cake,
+      lozenges, prayer-books, peppermint-water, copper money, and false hair&mdash;stowed
+      away there during the voyage. The Jewish gentleman, who has been so
+      attentive to the milliner during the journey, and is a traveller and
+      bagman by profession, gathers together his various goods. The sallow-faced
+      English lad, who has been drunk ever since we left Boulogne yesterday, and
+      is coming to Paris to pursue the study of medicine, swears that he
+      rejoices to leave the cursed Diligence, is sick of the infernal journey,
+      and d&mdash;d glad that the d&mdash;d voyage is so nearly over. &ldquo;Enfin!&rdquo;
+       says your neighbor, yawning, and inserting an elbow into the mouth of his
+      right and left hand companion, &ldquo;nous voilà.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      NOUS VOILÀ!&mdash;We are at Paris! This must account for the removal of
+      the milliner's curl-papers, and the fixing of the old lady's teeth.&mdash;Since
+      the last relais, the Diligence has been travelling with extraordinary
+      speed. The postilion cracks his terrible whip, and screams shrilly. The
+      conductor blows incessantly on his horn, the bells of the harness, the
+      bumping and ringing of the wheels and chains, and the clatter of the great
+      hoofs of the heavy snorting Norman stallions, have wondrously increased
+      within this, the last ten minutes; and the Diligence, which has been
+      proceeding hitherto at the rate of a league in an hour, now dashes
+      gallantly forward, as if it would traverse at least six miles in the same
+      space of time. Thus it is, when Sir Robert maketh a speech at Saint
+      Stephen's&mdash;he useth his strength at the beginning, only, and the end.
+      He gallopeth at the commencement; in the middle he lingers; at the close,
+      again, he rouses the House, which has fallen asleep; he cracketh the whip
+      of his satire; he shouts the shout of his patriotism; and, urging his
+      eloquence to its roughest canter, awakens the sleepers, and inspires the
+      weary, until men say, What a wondrous orator! What a capital coach! We
+      will ride henceforth in it, and in no other!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, behold us at Paris! The Diligence has reached a rude-looking gate, or
+      grille, flanked by two lodges; the French Kings of old made their entry by
+      this gate; some of the hottest battles of the late revolution were fought
+      before it. At present, it is blocked by carts and peasants, and a busy
+      crowd of men, in green, examining the packages before they enter, probing
+      the straw with long needles. It is the Barrier of St. Denis, and the green
+      men are the customs'-men of the city of Paris. If you are a countryman,
+      who would introduce a cow into the metropolis, the city demands
+      twenty-four francs for such a privilege: if you have a hundredweight of
+      tallow-candles, you must, previously, disburse three francs: if a drove of
+      hogs, nine francs per whole hog: but upon these subjects Mr. Bulwer, Mrs.
+      Trollope, and other writers, have already enlightened the public. In the
+      present instance, after a momentary pause, one of the men in green mounts
+      by the side of the conductor, and the ponderous vehicle pursues its
+      journey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The street which we enter, that of the Faubourg St. Denis, presents a
+      strange contrast to the dark uniformity of a London street, where
+      everything, in the dingy and smoky atmosphere, looks as though it were
+      painted in India-ink&mdash;black houses, black passengers, and black sky.
+      Here, on the contrary, is a thousand times more life and color. Before
+      you, shining in the sun, is a long glistening line of GUTTER,&mdash;not a
+      very pleasing object in a city, but in a picture invaluable. On each side
+      are houses of all dimensions and hues; some but of one story; some as high
+      as the tower of Babel. From these the haberdashers (and this is their
+      favorite street) flaunt long strips of gaudy calicoes, which give a
+      strange air of rude gayety to the street. Milk-women, with a little crowd
+      of gossips round each, are, at this early hour of morning, selling the
+      chief material of the Parisian café-au-lait. Gay wine-shops, painted red,
+      and smartly decorated with vines and gilded railings, are filled with
+      workmen taking their morning's draught. That gloomy-looking prison on your
+      right is a prison for women; once it was a convent for Lazarists: a
+      thousand unfortunate individuals of the softer sex now occupy that
+      mansion: they bake, as we find in the guide-books, the bread of all the
+      other prisons; they mend and wash the shirts and stockings of all the
+      other prisoners; they make hooks-and-eyes and phosphorus-boxes, and they
+      attend chapel every Sunday:&mdash;if occupation can help them, sure they
+      have enough of it. Was it not a great stroke of the legislature to
+      superintend the morals and linen at once, and thus keep these poor
+      creatures continually mending?&mdash;But we have passed the prison long
+      ago, and are at the Porte St. Denis itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is only time to take a hasty glance as we pass: it commemorates some
+      of the wonderful feats of arms of Ludovicus Magnus, and abounds in
+      ponderous allegories&mdash;nymphs, and river-gods, and pyramids crowned
+      with fleurs-de-lis; Louis passing over the Rhine in triumph, and the Dutch
+      Lion giving up the ghost, in the year of our Lord 1672. The Dutch Lion
+      revived, and overcame the man some years afterwards; but of this fact,
+      singularly enough, the inscriptions make no mention. Passing, then, round
+      the gate, and not under it (after the general custom, in respect of
+      triumphal arches), you cross the boulevard, which gives a glimpse of trees
+      and sunshine, and gleaming white buildings; then, dashing down the Rue de
+      Bourbon Villeneuve, a dirty street, which seems interminable, and the Rue
+      St. Eustache, the conductor gives a last blast on his horn, and the great
+      vehicle clatters into the court-yard, where the journey is destined to
+      conclude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If there was a noise before of screaming postilions and cracked horns, it
+      was nothing to the Babel-like clatter which greets us now. We are in a
+      great court, which Hajji Baba would call the father of Diligences. Half a
+      dozen other coaches arrive at the same minute&mdash;no light affairs, like
+      your English vehicles, but ponderous machines, containing fifteen
+      passengers inside, more in the cabriolet, and vast towers of luggage on
+      the roof: others are loading: the yard is filled with passengers coming or
+      departing;&mdash;bustling porters and screaming commissionaires. These
+      latter seize you as you descend from your place,&mdash;twenty cards are
+      thrust into your hand, and as many voices, jabbering with inconceivable
+      swiftness, shriek into your ear, &ldquo;Dis way, sare; are you for ze' 'Otel of
+      Rhin?' 'Hôtel de l'Amirauté!'&mdash;'Hotel Bristol,' sare!&mdash;Monsieur,
+      'l'Hôtel de Lille?' Sacr-rrré 'nom de Dieu, laissez passer ce petit,
+      monsieur! Ow mosh loggish ave you, sare?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, if you are a stranger in Paris, listen to the words of Titmarsh.&mdash;If
+      you cannot speak a syllable of French, and love English comfort, clean
+      rooms, breakfasts, and waiters; if you would have plentiful dinners, and
+      are not particular (as how should you be?) concerning wine; if, in this
+      foreign country, you WILL have your English companions, your porter, your
+      friend, and your brandy-and-water&mdash;do not listen to any of these
+      commissioner fellows, but with your best English accent, shout out boldly,
+      &ldquo;MEURICE!&rdquo; and straightway a man will step forward to conduct you to the
+      Rue de Rivoli.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here you will find apartments at any price: a very neat room, for
+      instance, for three francs daily; an English breakfast of eternal boiled
+      eggs, or grilled ham; a nondescript dinner, profuse but cold; and a
+      society which will rejoice your heart. Here are young gentlemen from the
+      universities; young merchants on a lark; large families of nine daughters,
+      with fat father and mother; officers of dragoons, and lawyers' clerks. The
+      last time we dined at &ldquo;Meurice's&rdquo; we hobbed and nobbed with no less a
+      person than Mr. Moses, the celebrated bailiff of Chancery Lane; Lord
+      Brougham was on his right, and a clergyman's lady, with a train of
+      white-haired girls, sat on his left, wonderfully taken with the diamond
+      rings of the fascinating stranger!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is, as you will perceive, an admirable way to see Paris, especially if
+      you spend your days reading the English papers at Galignani's, as many of
+      our foreign tourists do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But all this is promiscuous, and not to the purpose. If,&mdash;to continue
+      on the subject of hotel choosing,&mdash;if you love quiet, heavy bills,
+      and the best table-d'hôte in the city, go, O stranger! to the &ldquo;Hôtel des
+      Princes;&rdquo; it is close to the Boulevard, and convenient for Frascati's. The
+      &ldquo;Hôtel Mirabeau&rdquo; possesses scarcely less attraction; but of this you will
+      find, in Mr. Bulwer's &ldquo;Autobiography of Pelham,&rdquo; a faithful and complete
+      account. &ldquo;Lawson's Hotel&rdquo; has likewise its merits, as also the &ldquo;Hôtel de
+      Lille,&rdquo; which may be described as a &ldquo;second chop&rdquo; Meurice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you are a poor student come to study the humanities, or the pleasant
+      art of amputation, cross the water forthwith, and proceed to the &ldquo;Hôtel
+      Corneille,&rdquo; near the Odéon, or others of its species; there are many where
+      you can live royally (until you economize by going into lodgings) on four
+      francs a day; and where, if by any strange chance you are desirous for a
+      while to get rid of your countrymen, you will find that they scarcely ever
+      penetrate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But above all, O my countrymen! shun boarding-houses, especially if you
+      have ladies in your train; or ponder well, and examine the characters of
+      the keepers thereof, before you lead your innocent daughters, and their
+      mamma, into places so dangerous. In the first place, you have bad dinners;
+      and, secondly, bad company. If you play cards, you are very likely playing
+      with a swindler; if you dance, you dance with a &mdash;&mdash; person with
+      whom you had better have nothing to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Note (which ladies are requested not to read).&mdash;In one of these
+      establishments, daily advertised as most eligible for English, a friend of
+      the writer lived. A lady, who had passed for some time as the wife of one
+      of the inmates, suddenly changed her husband and name, her original
+      husband remaining in the house, and saluting her by her new title.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A CAUTION TO TRAVELLERS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      A million dangers and snares await the traveller, as soon as he issues out
+      of that vast messagerie which we have just quitted: and as each man cannot
+      do better than relate such events as have happened in the course of his
+      own experience, and may keep the unwary from the path of danger, let us
+      take this, the very earliest opportunity, of imparting to the public a
+      little of the wisdom which we painfully have acquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And first, then, with regard to the city of Paris, it is to be remarked,
+      that in that metropolis flourish a greater number of native and exotic
+      swindlers than are to be found in any other European nursery. What young
+      Englishman that visits it, but has not determined, in his heart, to have a
+      little share of the gayeties that go on&mdash;just for once, just to see
+      what they are like? How many, when the horrible gambling dens were open,
+      did resist a sight of them?&mdash;nay, was not a young fellow rather
+      flattered by a dinner invitation from the Salon, whither he went, fondly
+      pretending that he should see &ldquo;French society,&rdquo; in the persons of certain
+      Dukes and Counts who used to frequent the place?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My friend Pogson is a young fellow, not much worse, although perhaps a
+      little weaker and simpler than his neighbors; and coming to Paris with
+      exactly the same notions that bring many others of the British youth to
+      that capital, events befell him there, last winter, which are strictly
+      true, and shall here be narrated, by way of warning to all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pog, it must be premised, is a city man, who travels in drugs for a couple
+      of the best London houses, blows the flute, has an album, drives his own
+      gig, and is considered, both on the road and in the metropolis, a
+      remarkably nice, intelligent, thriving young man. Pogson's only fault is
+      too great an attachment to the fair:&mdash;&ldquo;the sex,&rdquo; as he says often
+      &ldquo;will be his ruin:&rdquo; the fact is, that Pog never travels without a &ldquo;Don
+      Juan&rdquo; under his driving-cushion, and is a pretty-looking young fellow
+      enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam Pogson had occasion to visit Paris, last October; and it was in that
+      city that his love of the sex had liked to have cost him dear. He worked
+      his way down to Dover; placing, right and left, at the towns on his route,
+      rhubarb, sodas, and other such delectable wares as his masters dealt in
+      (&ldquo;the sweetest sample of castor oil, smelt like a nosegay&mdash;went off
+      like wildfire&mdash;hogshead and a half at Rochester, eight-and twenty
+      gallons at Canterbury,&rdquo; and so on), and crossed to Calais, and thence
+      voyaged to Paris in the coupé of the Diligence. He paid for two places,
+      too, although a single man, and the reason shall now be made known.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dining at the table-d'hôte at &ldquo;Quillacq's&rdquo;&mdash;it is the best inn on the
+      Continent of Europe&mdash;our little traveller had the happiness to be
+      placed next to a lady, who was, he saw at a glance, one of the extreme
+      pink of the nobility. A large lady, in black satin, with eyes and hair as
+      black as sloes, with gold chains, scent-bottles, sable tippet, worked
+      pocket-handkerchief, and four twinkling rings on each of her plump white
+      fingers. Her cheeks were as pink as the finest Chinese rouge could make
+      them. Pog knew the article: he travelled in it. Her lips were as red as
+      the ruby lip salve: she used the very best, that was clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was a fine-looking woman, certainly (holding down her eyes, and
+      talking perpetually of &ldquo;mes trente-deux ans&rdquo;); and Pogson, the wicked
+      young dog, who professed not to care for young misses, saying they smelt
+      so of bread-and-butter, declared, at once, that the lady was one of HIS
+      beauties; in fact, when he spoke to us about her, he said, &ldquo;She's a
+      slap-up thing, I tell you; a reg'lar good one; ONE OF MY SORT!&rdquo; And such
+      was Pogson's credit in all commercial rooms, that one of HIS sort was
+      considered to surpass all other sorts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During dinner-time, Mr. Pogson was profoundly polite and attentive to the
+      lady at his side, and kindly communicated to her, as is the way with the
+      best-bred English on their first arrival &ldquo;on the Continent,&rdquo; all his
+      impressions regarding the sights and persons he had seen. Such remarks
+      having been made during half an hour's ramble about the ramparts and town,
+      and in the course of a walk down to the custom-house, and a confidential
+      communication with the commissionaire, must be, doubtless, very valuable
+      to Frenchmen in their own country; and the lady listened to Pogson's
+      opinions: not only with benevolent attention, but actually, she said, with
+      pleasure and delight. Mr. Pogson said that there was no such thing as good
+      meat in France, and that's why they cooked their victuals in this queer
+      way; he had seen many soldiers parading about the place, and expressed a
+      true Englishman's abhorrence of an armed force; not that he feared such
+      fellows as these&mdash;little whipper-snappers&mdash;our men would eat
+      them. Hereupon the lady admitted that our Guards were angels, but that
+      Monsieur must not be too hard upon the French; &ldquo;her father was a General
+      of the Emperor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pogson felt a tremendous respect for himself at the notion that he was
+      dining with a General's daughter, and instantly ordered a bottle of
+      champagne to keep up his consequence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Bironn, ma'am,&rdquo; said he, for he had heard the waiter call her by
+      some such name, &ldquo;if you WILL accept a glass of champagne, ma'am, you'll do
+      me, I'm sure, great honor: they say it's very good, and a precious sight
+      cheaper than it is on our side of the way, too&mdash;not that I care for
+      money. Mrs. Bironn, ma'am, your health, ma'am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady smiled very graciously, and drank the wine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Har you any relation, ma'am, if I may make so bold; har you anyways
+      connected with the family of our immortal bard?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir, I beg your pardon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't mention it, ma'am: but BiRONN and BYron are hevidently the same
+      names, only you pronounce in the French way; and I thought you might be
+      related to his lordship: his horigin, ma'am, was of French extraction:&rdquo;
+       and here Pogson began to repeat,&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Hare thy heyes like thy mother's, my fair child,
+      Hada! sole daughter of my 'ouse and 'art?&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said the lady, laughing, &ldquo;you speak of LOR Byron?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hauthor of 'Don Juan,' 'Child 'Arold,' and 'Cain, a Mystery,'&rdquo; said
+      Pogson:&mdash;&ldquo;I do; and hearing the waiter calling you Madam la Bironn,
+      took the liberty of hasking whether you were connected with his lordship;
+      that's hall:&rdquo; and my friend here grew dreadfully red, and began twiddling
+      his long ringlets in his fingers, and examining very eagerly the contents
+      of his plate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no: Madame la Baronne means Mistress Baroness; my husband was Baron,
+      and I am Baroness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! 'ave I the honor&mdash;I beg your pardon, ma'am&mdash;is your
+      ladyship a Baroness, and I not know it? pray excuse me for calling you
+      ma'am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Baroness smiled most graciously&mdash;with such a look as Juno cast
+      upon unfortunate Jupiter when she wished to gain her wicked ends upon him&mdash;the
+      Baroness smiled; and, stealing her hand into a black velvet bag, drew from
+      it an ivory card-case, and from the ivory card-case extracted a glazed
+      card, printed in gold; on it was engraved a coronet, and under the coronet
+      the words
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    BARONNE DE FLORVAL-DELVAL,
+
+      NÉE DE MELVAL-NORVAL.
+
+                 Rue Taitbout.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The grand Pitt diamond&mdash;the Queen's own star of the garter&mdash;a
+      sample of otto-of-roses at a guinea a drop, would not be handled more
+      curiously, or more respectfully, than this porcelain card of the Baroness.
+      Trembling he put it into his little Russia-leather pocket-book: and when
+      he ventured to look up, and saw the eyes of the Baroness de
+      Florval-Delval, née de Melval-Norval, gazing upon him with friendly and
+      serene glances, a thrill of pride tingled through Pogson's blood: he felt
+      himself to be the very happiest fellow &ldquo;on the Continent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Pogson did not, for some time, venture to resume that sprightly and
+      elegant familiarity which generally forms the great charm of his
+      conversation: he was too much frightened at the presence he was in, and
+      contented himself by graceful and solemn bows, deep attention, and
+      ejaculations of &ldquo;Yes, my lady,&rdquo; and &ldquo;No, your ladyship,&rdquo; for some minutes
+      after the discovery had been made. Pogson piqued himself on his breeding:
+      &ldquo;I hate the aristocracy,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but that's no reason why I shouldn't
+      behave like a gentleman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A surly, silent little gentleman, who had been the third at the ordinary,
+      and would take no part either in the conversation or in Pogson's
+      champagne, now took up his hat, and, grunting, left the room, when the
+      happy bagman had the delight of a tête-à-tête. The Baroness did not appear
+      inclined to move: it was cold; a fire was comfortable, and she had ordered
+      none in her apartment. Might Pogson give her one more glass of champagne,
+      or would her ladyship prefer &ldquo;something hot.&rdquo; Her ladyship gravely said,
+      she never took ANYTHING hot. &ldquo;Some champagne, then; a leetle drop?&rdquo; She
+      would! she would! O gods! how Pogson's hand shook as he filled and offered
+      her the glass!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What took place during the rest of the evening had better be described by
+      Mr. Pogson himself, who has given us permission to publish his letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;QUILLACQ'S HOTEL (pronounced KILLYAX), CALAIS.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;DEAR TIT,&mdash;I arrived at Cally, as they call it, this day, or,
+      rather, yesterday; for it is past midnight, as I sit thinking of a
+      wonderful adventure that has just befallen me. A woman in course; that's
+      always the case with ME, you know: but oh, Tit! if you COULD but see her!
+      Of the first family in France, the Florval-Delvals, beautiful as an angel,
+      and no more caring for money than I do for split peas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you how it occurred. Everybody in France, you know, dines at
+      the ordinary&mdash;it's quite distangy to do so. There was only three of
+      us to-day, however,&mdash;the Baroness, me, and a gent, who never spoke a
+      word; and we didn't want him to, neither: do you mark that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know my way with the women: champagne's the thing; make 'em drink,
+      make 'em talk;&mdash;make 'em talk, make 'em do anything. So I orders a
+      bottle, as if for myself; and, 'Ma'am,' says I, 'will you take a glass of
+      Sham&mdash;just one?' Take it she did&mdash;for you know it's quite
+      distangy here: everybody dines at the table de hôte, and everybody accepts
+      everybody's wine. Bob Irons, who travels in linen on our circuit, told me
+      that he had made some slap-up acquaintances among the genteelest people at
+      Paris, nothing but by offering them Sham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my Baroness takes one glass, two glasses, three glasses&mdash;the
+      old fellow goes&mdash;we have a deal of chat (she took me for a military
+      man, she said: is it not singular that so many people should?), and by ten
+      o'clock we had grown so intimate, that I had from her her whole history,
+      knew where she came from, and where she was going. Leave me alone with
+      'em: I can find out any woman's history in half an hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where do you think she IS going? to Paris to be sure: she has her
+      seat in what they call the coopy (though you're not near so cooped in it
+      as in our coaches. I've been to the office and seen one of 'em). She has
+      her place in the coopy, and the coopy holds THREE; so what does Sam Pogson
+      do?&mdash;he goes and takes the other two. Ain't I up to a thing or two?
+      Oh, no, not the least; but I shall have her to myself the whole of the
+      way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall be in the French metropolis the day after this reaches you:
+      please look out for a handsome lodging for me, and never mind the expense.
+      And I say, if you could, in her hearing, when you came down to the coach,
+      call me Captain Pogson, I wish you would&mdash;it sounds well travelling,
+      you know; and when she asked me if I was not an officer, I couldn't say
+      no. Adieu, then, my dear fellow, till Monday, and vive le joy, as they
+      say. The Baroness says I speak French charmingly, she talks English as
+      well as you or I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your affectionate friend,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;S. Pogson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This letter reached us duly, in our garrets, and we engaged such an
+      apartment for Mr. Pogson, as beseemed a gentleman of his rank in the world
+      and the army. At the appointed hour, too, we repaired to the Diligence
+      office, and there beheld the arrival of the machine which contained him
+      and his lovely Baroness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those who have much frequented the society of gentlemen of his profession
+      (and what more delightful?) must be aware, that, when all the rest of
+      mankind look hideous, dirty, peevish, wretched, after a forty hours'
+      coach-journey, a bagman appears as gay and spruce as when he started;
+      having within himself a thousand little conveniences for the voyage, which
+      common travellers neglect. Pogson had a little portable toilet, of which
+      he had not failed to take advantage, and with his long, curling, flaxen
+      hair, flowing under a seal-skin cap, with a gold tassel, with a blue and
+      gold satin handkerchief, a crimson velvet waistcoat, a light green
+      cut-away coat, a pair of barred brickdust-colored pantaloons, and a neat
+      mackintosh, presented, altogether, as elegant and distingué an appearance
+      as any one could desire. He had put on a clean collar at breakfast, and a
+      pair of white kids as he entered the barrier, and looked, as he rushed
+      into my arms, more like a man stepping out of a band-box, than one
+      descending from a vehicle that has just performed one of the laziest,
+      dullest, flattest, stalest, dirtiest journeys in Europe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To my surprise, there were TWO ladies in the coach with my friend, and not
+      ONE, as I had expected. One of these, a stout female, carrying sundry
+      baskets, bags, umbrellas, and woman's wraps, was evidently a maid-servant:
+      the other, in black, was Pogson's fair one, evidently. I could see a gleam
+      of curl-papers over a sallow face,&mdash;of a dusky nightcap flapping over
+      the curl-papers,&mdash;but these were hidden by a lace veil and a huge
+      velvet bonnet, of which the crowning birds-of-paradise were evidently in a
+      moulting state. She was encased in many shawls and wrappers; she put,
+      hesitatingly, a pretty little foot out of the carriage&mdash;Pogson was by
+      her side in an instant, and, gallantly putting one of his white kids round
+      her waist, aided this interesting creature to descend. I saw, by her walk,
+      that she was five-and-forty, and that my little Pogson was a lost man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After some brief parley between them&mdash;in which it was charming to
+      hear how my friend Samuel WOULD speak, what he called French, to a lady
+      who could not understand one syllable of his jargon&mdash;the mutual
+      hackney-coaches drew up; Madame la Baronne waved to the Captain a graceful
+      French curtsy. &ldquo;Adyou!&rdquo; said Samuel, and waved his lily hand.
+      &ldquo;Adyou-addimang.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A brisk little gentleman, who had made the journey in the same coach with
+      Pogson, but had more modestly taken a seat in the Imperial, here passed
+      us, and greeted me with a &ldquo;How d'ye do?&rdquo; He had shouldered his own little
+      valise, and was trudging off, scattering a cloud of commissionaires, who
+      would fain have spared him the trouble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know that chap?&rdquo; says Pogson; &ldquo;surly fellow, ain't he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The kindest man in existence,&rdquo; answered I; &ldquo;all the world knows little
+      Major British.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a Major, is he?&mdash;why, that's the fellow that dined with us at
+      Killyax's; it's lucky I did not call myself Captain before him, he
+      mightn't have liked it, you know:&rdquo; and then Sam fell into a reverie;&mdash;what
+      was the subject of his thoughts soon appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you ever SEE such a foot and ankle?&rdquo; said Sam, after sitting for some
+      time, regardless of the novelty of the scene, his hands in his pockets,
+      plunged in the deepest thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;ISN'T she a slap-up woman, eh, now?&rdquo; pursued he; and began enumerating
+      her attractions, as a horse-jockey would the points of a favorite animal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seem to have gone a pretty length already,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;by promising to
+      visit her to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A good length?&mdash;I believe you. Leave ME alone for that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I thought you were only to be two in the coupé, you wicked rogue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two in the coopy? Oh! ah! yes, you know&mdash;why, that is, I didn't know
+      she had her maid with her (what an ass I was to think of a noblewoman
+      travelling without one!) and couldn't, in course, refuse, when she asked
+      me to let the maid in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Couldn't, you know, as a man of honor; but I made up for all that,&rdquo; said
+      Pogson, winking slyly, and putting his hand to his little bunch of a nose,
+      in a very knowing way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did, and how?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you dog, I sat next to her; sat in the middle the whole way, and my
+      back's half broke, I can tell you:&rdquo; and thus, having depicted his
+      happiness, we soon reached the inn where this back-broken young man was to
+      lodge during his stay in Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day at five we met; Mr. Pogson had seen his Baroness, and
+      described her lodgings, in his own expressive way, as &ldquo;slap-up.&rdquo; She had
+      received him quite like an old friend; treated him to eau sucrée, of which
+      beverage he expressed himself a great admirer; and actually asked him to
+      dine the next day. But there was a cloud over the ingenuous youth's brow,
+      and I inquired still farther.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; said he, with a sigh, &ldquo;I thought she was a widow; and, hang it! who
+      should come in but her husband the Baron: a big fellow, sir, with a blue
+      coat, a red ribbing, and SUCH a pair of mustachios!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;he didn't turn you out, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no! on the contrary, as kind as possible; his lordship said that he
+      respected the English army; asked me what corps I was in,&mdash;said he
+      had fought in Spain against us,&mdash;and made me welcome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What could you want more?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Pogson at this only whistled; and if some very profound observer of
+      human nature had been there to read into this little bagman's heart, it
+      would, perhaps, have been manifest, that the appearance of a whiskered
+      soldier of a husband had counteracted some plans that the young scoundrel
+      was concocting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I live up a hundred and thirty-seven steps in the remote quarter of the
+      Luxembourg, and it is not to be expected that such a fashionable fellow as
+      Sam Pogson, with his pockets full of money, and a new city to see, should
+      be always wandering to my dull quarters; so that, although he did not make
+      his appearance for some time, he must not be accused of any luke-warmness
+      of friendship on that score.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was out, too, when I called at his hotel; but once, I had the good
+      fortune to see him, with his hat curiously on one side, looking as pleased
+      as Punch, and being driven, in an open cab, in the Champs Elysées. &ldquo;That's
+      ANOTHER tip-top chap,&rdquo; said he, when we met, at length. &ldquo;What do you think
+      of an Earl's son, my boy? Honorable Tom Ringwood, son of the Earl of
+      Cinqbars: what do you think of that, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought he was getting into very good society. Sam was a dashing fellow,
+      and was always above his own line of life; he had met Mr. Ringwood at the
+      Baron's, and they'd been to the play together; and the honorable gent, as
+      Sam called him, had joked with him about being well to do IN A CERTAIN
+      QUARTER; and he had had a game of billiards with the Baron, at the
+      Estaminy, &ldquo;a very distangy place, where you smoke,&rdquo; said Sam; &ldquo;quite
+      select, and frequented by the tip-top nobility;&rdquo; and they were as thick as
+      peas in a shell; and they were to dine that day at Ringwood's, and sup,
+      the next night, with the Baroness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think the chaps down the road will stare,&rdquo; said Sam, &ldquo;when they hear
+      how I've been coming it.&rdquo; And stare, no doubt, they would; for it is
+      certain that very few commercial gentlemen have had Mr. Pogson's
+      advantages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning we had made an arrangement to go out shopping together,
+      and to purchase some articles of female gear, that Sam intended to bestow
+      on his relations when he returned. Seven needle-books, for his sisters; a
+      gilt buckle, for his mamma; a handsome French cashmere shawl and bonnet,
+      for his aunt (the old lady keeps an inn in the Borough, and has plenty of
+      money, and no heirs); and a toothpick case, for his father. Sam is a good
+      fellow to all his relations, and as for his aunt, he adores her. Well, we
+      were to go and make these purchases, and I arrived punctually at my time;
+      but Sam was stretched on a sofa, very pale and dismal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw how it had been.&mdash;&ldquo;A little too much of Mr. Ringwood's claret,
+      I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He only gave a sickly stare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where does the Honorable Tom live?&rdquo; says I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;HONORABLE!&rdquo; says Sam, with a hollow, horrid laugh; &ldquo;I tell you, Tit, he's
+      no more Honorable than you are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, an impostor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; not that. He is a real Honorable, only&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, ho! I smell a rat&mdash;a little jealous, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jealousy be hanged! I tell you he's a thief; and the Baron's a thief;
+      and, hang me, if I think his wife is any better. Eight-and-thirty pounds
+      he won of me before supper; and made me drunk, and sent me home:&mdash;is
+      THAT honorable? How can I afford to lose forty pounds? It's took me two
+      years to save it up&mdash;if my old aunt gets wind of it, she'll cut me
+      off with a shilling: hang me!&rdquo;&mdash;and here Sam, in an agony, tore his
+      fair hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While bewailing his lot in this lamentable strain, his bell was rung,
+      which signal being answered by a surly &ldquo;Come in,&rdquo; a tall, very fashionable
+      gentleman, with a fur coat, and a fierce tuft to his chin, entered the
+      room. &ldquo;Pogson my buck, how goes it?&rdquo; said he, familiarly, and gave a stare
+      at me: I was making for my hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't go,&rdquo; said Sam, rather eagerly; and I sat down again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Honorable Mr. Ringwood hummed and ha'd: and, at last, said he wished
+      to speak to Mr. Pogson on business, in private, if possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's no secrets betwixt me and my friend,&rdquo; cried Sam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Ringwood paused a little:&mdash;&ldquo;An awkward business that of last
+      night,&rdquo; at length exclaimed he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe it WAS an awkward business,&rdquo; said Sam, dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really am very sorry for your losses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you: and so am I, I can tell you,&rdquo; said Sam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must mind, my good fellow, and not drink; for, when you drink, you
+      WILL play high: by Gad, you led US in, and not we you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say,&rdquo; answered Sam, with something of peevishness; &ldquo;losses is
+      losses: there's no use talking about 'em when they're over and paid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And paid?&rdquo; here wonderingly spoke Mr. Ringwood; &ldquo;why, my dear fel&mdash;what
+      the deuce&mdash;has Florval been with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;D&mdash;&mdash; Florval!&rdquo; growled Sam, &ldquo;I've never set eyes on his face
+      since last night; and never wish to see him again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come, enough of this talk; how do you intend to settle the bills
+      which you gave him last night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bills I what do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean, sir, these bills,&rdquo; said the Honorable Tom, producing two out of
+      his pocket-book, and looking as stern as a lion. &ldquo;'I promise to pay, on
+      demand, to the Baron de Florval, the sum of four hundred pounds. October
+      20, 1838.' 'Ten days after date I promise to pay the Baron de et caetera
+      et caetera, one hundred and ninety-eight pounds. Samuel Pogson.' You
+      didn't say what regiment you were in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;WHAT!&rdquo; shouted poor Sam, as from a dream, starting up and looking
+      preternaturally pale and hideous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;D&mdash;&mdash; it, sir, you don't affect ignorance: you don't pretend
+      not to remember that you signed these bills, for money lost in my rooms:
+      money LENT to you, by Madame de Florval, at your own request, and lost to
+      her husband? You don't suppose, sir, that I shall be such an infernal
+      idiot as to believe you, or such a coward as to put up with a mean
+      subterfuge of this sort. Will you, or will you not, pay the money, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will not,&rdquo; said Sam, stoutly; &ldquo;it's a d&mdash;&mdash;d swin&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here Mr. Ringwood sprung up, clenching his riding-whip, and looking so
+      fierce that Sam and I bounded back to the other end of the room. &ldquo;Utter
+      that word again, and, by heaven, I'll murder you!&rdquo; shouted Mr. Ringwood,
+      and looked as if he would, too: &ldquo;once more, will you, or will you not, pay
+      this money?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't,&rdquo; said Sam faintly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll call again, Captain Pogson,&rdquo; said Mr. Ringwood, &ldquo;I'll call again in
+      one hour; and, unless you come to some arrangement, you must meet my
+      friend, the Baron de Florval, or I'll post you for a swindler and a
+      coward.&rdquo; With this he went out: the door thundered to after him, and when
+      the clink of his steps departing had subsided, I was enabled to look round
+      at Pog. The poor little man had his elbows on the marble table, his head
+      between his hands, and looked, as one has seen gentlemen look over a
+      steam-vessel off Ramsgate, the wind blowing remarkably fresh: at last he
+      fairly burst out crying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Mrs. Pogson heard of this,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;what would become of the 'Three
+      Tuns?'&rdquo; (for I wished to give him a lesson). &ldquo;If your Ma, who took you
+      every Sunday to meeting, should know that her boy was paying attention to
+      married women;&mdash;if Drench, Glauber and Co., your employers, were to
+      know that their confidential agent was a gambler, and unfit to be trusted
+      with their money, how long do you think your connection would last with
+      them, and who would afterwards employ you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To this poor Pog had not a word of answer; but sat on his sofa whimpering
+      so bitterly, that the sternest of moralists would have relented towards
+      him, and would have been touched by the little wretch's tears. Everything,
+      too, must be pleaded in excuse for this unfortunate bagman: who, if he
+      wished to pass for a captain, had only done so because he had an intense
+      respect and longing for rank: if he had made love to the Baroness, had
+      only done so because he was given to understand by Lord Byron's &ldquo;Don Juan&rdquo;
+       that making love was a very correct, natty thing: and if he had gambled,
+      had only been induced to do so by the bright eyes and example of the Baron
+      and the Baroness. O ye Barons and Baronesses of England! if ye knew what a
+      number of small commoners are daily occupied in studying your lives, and
+      imitating your aristocratic ways, how careful would ye be of your morals,
+      manners, and conversation!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My soul was filled, then, with a gentle yearning pity for Pogson, and
+      revolved many plans for his rescue: none of these seeming to be
+      practicable, at last we hit on the very wisest of all, and determined to
+      apply for counsel to no less a person than Major British.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A blessing it is to be acquainted with my worthy friend, little Major
+      British; and heaven, sure, it was that put the Major into my head, when I
+      heard of this awkward scrape of poor Fog's. The Major is on half-pay, and
+      occupies a modest apartment au quatrième, in the very hotel which Pogson
+      had patronized at my suggestion; indeed, I had chosen it from Major
+      British's own peculiar recommendation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is no better guide to follow than such a character as the honest
+      Major, of whom there are many likenesses now scattered over the Continent
+      of Europe: men who love to live well, and are forced to live cheaply, and
+      who find the English abroad a thousand times easier, merrier, and more
+      hospitable than the same persons at home. I, for my part, never landed on
+      Calais pier without feeling that a load of sorrows was left on the other
+      side of the water; and have always fancied that black care stepped on
+      board the steamer, along with the custom-house officers at Gravesend, and
+      accompanied one to yonder black louring towers of London&mdash;so busy, so
+      dismal, and so vast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      British would have cut any foreigner's throat who ventured to say so much,
+      but entertained, no doubt, private sentiments of this nature; for he
+      passed eight months of the year, regularly, abroad, with headquarters at
+      Paris (the garrets before alluded to), and only went to England for the
+      month's shooting, on the grounds of his old colonel, now an old lord, of
+      whose acquaintance the Major was passably inclined to boast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He loved and respected, like a good staunch Tory as he is, every one of
+      the English nobility; gave himself certain little airs of a man of
+      fashion, that were by no means disagreeable; and was, indeed, kindly
+      regarded by such English aristocracy as he met, in his little annual tours
+      among the German courts, in Italy or in Paris, where he never missed an
+      ambassador's night: he retailed to us, who didn't go, but were delighted
+      to know all that had taken place, accurate accounts of the dishes, the
+      dresses, and the scandal which had there fallen under his observation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He is, moreover, one of the most useful persons in society that can
+      possibly be; for besides being incorrigibly duelsome on his own account,
+      he is, for others, the most acute and peaceable counsellor in the world,
+      and has carried more friends through scrapes and prevented more deaths
+      than any member of the Humane Society. British never bought a single step
+      in the army, as is well known. In '14 he killed a celebrated French
+      fire-eater, who had slain a young friend of his, and living, as he does, a
+      great deal with young men of pleasure, and good old sober family people,
+      he is loved by them both and has as welcome a place made for him at a
+      roaring bachelor's supper at the &ldquo;Café Anglais,&rdquo; as at a staid dowager's
+      dinner-table in the Faubourg St. Honoré. Such pleasant old boys are very
+      profitable acquaintances, let me tell you; and lucky is the young man who
+      has one or two such friends in his list.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hurrying on Fogson in his dress, I conducted him, panting, up to the
+      Major's quatrième, where we were cheerfully bidden to come in. The little
+      gentleman was in his travelling jacket, and occupied in painting,
+      elegantly, one of those natty pairs of boots in which he daily promenaded
+      the Boulevards. A couple of pairs of tough buff gloves had been undergoing
+      some pipe-claying operation under his hands; no man stepped out so spick
+      and span, with a hat so nicely brushed, with a stiff cravat tied so neatly
+      under a fat little red face, with a blue frock-coat so scrupulously fitted
+      to a punchy little person, as Major British, about whom we have written
+      these two pages. He stared rather hardly at my companion, but gave me a
+      kind shake of the hand, and we proceeded at once to business. &ldquo;Major
+      British,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;we want your advice in regard to an unpleasant affair
+      which has just occurred to my friend Pogson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pogson, take a chair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must know, sir, that Mr. Pogson, coming from Calais the other day,
+      encountered, in the diligence, a very handsome woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      British winked at Pogson, who, wretched as he was, could not help feeling
+      pleased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Pogson was not more pleased with this lovely creature than was she
+      with him; for, it appears, she gave him her card, invited him to her
+      house, where he has been constantly, and has been received with much
+      kindness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; says British.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her husband the Baron&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;NOW it's coming,&rdquo; said the Major, with a grin: &ldquo;her husband is jealous, I
+      suppose, and there is a talk of the Bois de Boulogne: my dear sir, you
+      can't refuse&mdash;can't refuse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not that,&rdquo; said Pogson, wagging his head passionately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her husband the Baron seemed quite as much taken with Pogson as his lady
+      was, and has introduced him to some very distingué friends of his own set.
+      Last night one of the Baron's friends gave a party in honor of my friend
+      Pogson, who lost forty-eight pounds at cards BEFORE he was made drunk, and
+      heaven knows how much after.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a shilling, by sacred heaven!&mdash;not a shilling!&rdquo; yelled out
+      Pogson. &ldquo;After the supper I 'ad such an 'eadach', I couldn't do anything
+      but fall asleep on the sofa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You 'ad such an 'eadach', sir,&rdquo; says British, sternly, who piques himself
+      on his grammar and pronunciation, and scorns a cockney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Such a H-eadache, sir,&rdquo; replied Pogson, with much meekness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The unfortunate man is brought home at two o'clock, as tipsy as possible,
+      dragged up stairs, senseless, to bed, and, on waking, receives a visit
+      from his entertainer of the night before&mdash;a lord's son, Major, a
+      tip-top fellow,&mdash;who brings a couple of bills that my friend Pogson
+      is said to have signed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my dear fellow, the thing's quite simple,&mdash;he must pay them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't pay them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can't pay them,&rdquo; said we both in a breath: &ldquo;Pogson is a commercial
+      traveller, with thirty shillings a week, and how the deuce is he to pay
+      five hundred pounds?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A bagman, sir! and what right has a bagman to gamble? Gentlemen gamble,
+      sir; tradesmen, sir, have no business with the amusements of the gentry.
+      What business had you with barons and lords' sons, sir?&mdash;serve you
+      right, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; says Pogson, with some dignity, &ldquo;merit, and not birth, is the
+      criterion of a man: I despise an hereditary aristocracy, and admire only
+      Nature's gentlemen. For my part, I think that a British merch&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold your tongue, sir,&rdquo; bounced out the Major, &ldquo;and don't lecture me;
+      don't come to me, sir, with your slang about Nature's gentlemen&mdash;Nature's
+      tomfools, sir! Did Nature open a cash account for you at a banker's, sir?
+      Did Nature give you an education, sir? What do you mean by competing with
+      people to whom Nature has given all these things? Stick to your bags, Mr.
+      Pogson, and your bagmen, and leave barons and their like to their own
+      ways.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but, Major,&rdquo; here cried that faithful friend, who has always stood
+      by Pogson; &ldquo;they won't leave him alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The honorable gent says I must fight if I don't pay,&rdquo; whimpered Sam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! fight YOU? Do you mean that the honorable gent, as you call him,
+      will go out with a bagman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He doesn't know I'm a&mdash;I'm a commercial man,&rdquo; blushingly said Sam:
+      &ldquo;he fancies I'm a military gent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Major's gravity was quite upset at this absurd notion; and he laughed
+      outrageously. &ldquo;Why, the fact is, sir,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;that my friend Pogson,
+      knowing the value of the title of Captain, and being complimented by the
+      Baroness on his warlike appearance, said, boldly, he was in the army. He
+      only assumed the rank in order to dazzle her weak imagination, never
+      fancying that there was a husband, and a circle of friends, with whom he
+      was afterwards to make an acquaintance; and then, you know, it was too
+      late to withdraw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A pretty pickle you have put yourself in, Mr. Pogson, by making love to
+      other men's wives, and calling yourself names,&rdquo; said the Major, who was
+      restored to good humor. &ldquo;And pray, who is the honorable gent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Earl of Cinqbars' son,&rdquo; says Pogson, &ldquo;the Honorable Tom Ringwood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought it was some such character; and the Baron is the Baron de
+      Florval-Delval?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The very same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And his wife a black-haired woman, with a pretty foot and ankle; calls
+      herself Athenais; and is always talking about her trente-deux ans? Why,
+      sir, that woman was an actress on the Boulevard, when we were here in '15.
+      She's no more his wife than I am. Delval's name is Chicot. The woman is
+      always travelling between London and Paris: I saw she was hooking you at
+      Calais; she has hooked ten men, in the course of the last two years, in
+      this very way. She lent you money, didn't she?&rdquo; &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; &ldquo;And she leans on
+      your shoulder, and whispers, 'Play half for me,' and somebody wins it, and
+      the poor thing is as sorry as you are, and her husband storms and rages,
+      and insists on double stakes; and she leans over your shoulder again, and
+      tells every card in your hand to your adversary, and that's the way it's
+      done, Mr. Pogson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been 'AD, I see I 'ave,&rdquo; said Pogson, very humbly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; said the Major, &ldquo;in consideration, not of you, sir&mdash;for,
+      give me leave to tell you, Mr. Pogson, that you are a pitiful little
+      scoundrel&mdash;in consideration for my Lord Cinqbars, sir, with whom, I
+      am proud to say, I am intimate,&rdquo; (the Major dearly loved a lord, and was,
+      by his own showing, acquainted with half the peerage,) &ldquo;I will aid you in
+      this affair. Your cursed vanity, sir, and want of principle, has set you,
+      in the first place, intriguing with other men's wives; and if you had been
+      shot for your pains, a bullet would have only served you right, sir. You
+      must go about as an impostor, sir, in society; and you pay richly for your
+      swindling, sir, by being swindled yourself: but, as I think your
+      punishment has been already pretty severe, I shall do my best, out of
+      regard for my friend, Lord Cinqbars, to prevent the matter going any
+      farther; and I recommend you to leave Paris without delay. Now let me wish
+      you a good morning.&rdquo;&mdash;Wherewith British made a majestic bow, and
+      began giving the last touch to his varnished boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We departed: poor Sam perfectly silent and chapfallen; and I meditating on
+      the wisdom of the half-pay philosopher, and wondering what means he would
+      employ to rescue Pogson from his fate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What these means were I know not; but Mr. Ringwood did NOT make his
+      appearance at six; and, at eight, a letter arrived for &ldquo;Mr. Pogson,
+      commercial traveller,&rdquo; &amp;c. &amp;c. It was blank inside, but contained
+      his two bills. Mr. Ringwood left town, almost immediately, for Vienna; nor
+      did the Major explain the circumstances which caused his departure; but he
+      muttered something about &ldquo;knew some of his old tricks,&rdquo; &ldquo;threatened
+      police, and made him disgorge directly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Ringwood is, as yet, young at his trade; and I have often thought it
+      was very green of him to give up the bills to the Major, who, certainly,
+      would never have pressed the matter before the police, out of respect for
+      his friend, Lord Cinqbars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE FÊTES OF JULY.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      IN A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE &ldquo;BUNGAY BEACON.&rdquo;
+     </h3>
+    <p>
+      PARIS, July 30th, 1839.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have arrived here just in time for the fêtes of July.&mdash;You have
+      read, no doubt, of that glorious revolution which took place here nine
+      years ago, and which is now commemorated annually, in a pretty facetious
+      manner, by gun-firing, student-processions,
+      pole-climbing-for-silver-spoons, gold-watches and legs-of-mutton,
+      monarchical orations, and what not, and sanctioned, moreover, by
+      Chamber-of-Deputies, with a grant of a couple of hundred thousand francs
+      to defray the expenses of all the crackers, gun-firings, and
+      legs-of-mutton aforesaid. There is a new fountain in the Place Louis
+      Quinze, otherwise called the Place Louis Seize, or else the Place de la
+      Révolution, or else the Place de la Concorde (who can say why?)&mdash;which,
+      I am told, is to run bad wine during certain hours to-morrow, and there
+      WOULD have been a review of the National Guards and the Line&mdash;only,
+      since the Fieschi business, reviews are no joke, and so this latter part
+      of the festivity has been discontinued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Do you not laugh, O Pharos of Bungay, at the continuance of a humbug such
+      as this?&mdash;at the humbugging anniversary of a humbug? The King of the
+      Barricades is, next to the Emperor Nicholas, the most absolute Sovereign
+      in Europe; yet there is not in the whole of this fair kingdom of France a
+      single man who cares sixpence about him, or his dynasty: except, mayhap, a
+      few hangers-on at the Château, who eat his dinners, and put their hands in
+      his purse. The feeling of loyalty is as dead as old Charles the Tenth; the
+      Chambers have been laughed at, the country has been laughed at, all the
+      successive ministries have been laughed at (and you know who is the wag
+      that has amused himself with them all); and, behold, here come three days
+      at the end of July, and cannons think it necessary to fire off, squibs and
+      crackers to blaze and fizz, fountains to run wine, kings to make speeches,
+      and subjects to crawl up greasy mâts-de-cocagne in token of gratitude and
+      réjouissance publique!&mdash;My dear sir, in their aptitude to swallow, to
+      utter, to enact humbugs, these French people, from Majesty downwards, beat
+      all the other nations of this earth. In looking at these men, their
+      manners, dresses, opinions, politics, actions, history, it is impossible
+      to preserve a grave countenance; instead of having Carlyle to write a
+      History of the French Revolution, I often think it should be handed over
+      to Dickens or Theodore Hook: and oh! where is the Rabelais to be the
+      faithful historian of the last phase of the Revolution&mdash;the last
+      glorious nine years of which we are now commemorating the last glorious
+      three days?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had made a vow not to say a syllable on the subject, although I have
+      seen, with my neighbors, all the gingerbread stalls down the Champs
+      Elysées, and some of the &ldquo;catafalques&rdquo; erected to the memory of the heroes
+      of July, where the students and others, not connected personally with the
+      victims, and not having in the least profited by their deaths, come and
+      weep; but the grief shown on the first day is quite as absurd and
+      fictitious as the joy exhibited on the last. The subject is one which
+      admits of much wholesome reflection and food for mirth; and, besides, is
+      so richly treated by the French themselves, that it would be a sin and a
+      shame to pass it over. Allow me to have the honor of translating, for your
+      edification, an account of the first day's proceedings&mdash;it is mighty
+      amusing, to my thinking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;CELEBRATION OF THE DAYS OF JULY.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-day (Saturday), funeral ceremonies, in honor of the victims of July,
+      were held in the various edifices consecrated to public worship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These edifices, with the exception of some churches (especially that of
+      the Petits-Pères), were uniformly hung with black on the outside; the
+      hangings bore only this inscription: 27, 28, 29 July, 1830&mdash;surrounded
+      by a wreath of oak-leaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the interior of the Catholic churches, it had only been thought proper
+      to dress LITTLE CATAFALQUES, as for burials of the third and fourth class.
+      Very few clergy attended; but a considerable number of the National Guard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Synagogue of the Israelites was entirely hung with black; and a great
+      concourse of people attended. The service was performed with the greatest
+      pomp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the Protestant temples there was likewise a very full attendance:
+      APOLOGETICAL DISCOURSES on the Revolution of July were pronounced by the
+      pastors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The absence of M. de Quélen (Archbishop of Paris), and of many members of
+      the superior clergy, was remarked at Notre Dame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The civil authorities attended service in their several districts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The poles, ornamented with tri-colored flags, which formerly were placed
+      on Notre Dame, were, it was remarked, suppressed. The flags on the Pont
+      Neuf were, during the ceremony, only half-mast high, and covered with
+      crape.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Et caetera, et caetera, et caetera.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The tombs of the Louvre were covered with black hangings, and adorned
+      with tri-colored flags. In front and in the middle was erected an
+      expiatory monument of a pyramidical shape, and surmounted by a funeral
+      vase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These tombs were guarded by the MUNICIPAL GUARD, THE TROOPS OF THE LINE,
+      THE SERGENS DE VILLE (town patrol), AND A BRIGADE OF AGENTS OF POLICE IN
+      PLAIN CLOTHES, under the orders of peace-officer Vassal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Between eleven and twelve o'clock, some young men, to the number of 400
+      or 500, assembled on the Place de la Bourse, one of them bearing a
+      tri-colored banner with an inscription, 'TO THE MANES OF JULY:' ranging
+      themselves in order, they marched five abreast to the Marché des Innocens.
+      On their arrival, the Municipal Guards of the Halle aux Draps, where the
+      post had been doubled, issued out without arms, and the town-sergeants
+      placed themselves before the market to prevent the entry of the
+      procession. The young men passed in perfect order, and without saying a
+      word&mdash;only lifting their hats as they defiled before the tombs. When
+      they arrived at the Louvre they found the gates shut, and the garden
+      evacuated. The troops were under arms, and formed in battalion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After the passage of the procession, the Garden was again open to the
+      public.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the evening and the morning were the first day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There's nothing serious in mortality: is there, from the beginning of this
+      account to the end thereof, aught but sheer, open, monstrous, undisguised
+      humbug? I said, before, that you should have a history of these people by
+      Dickens or Theodore Hook, but there is little need of professed wags;&mdash;do
+      not the men write their own tale with an admirable Sancho-like gravity and
+      naïveté, which one could not desire improved? How good is that touch of
+      sly indignation about the LITTLE CATAFALQUES! how rich the contrast
+      presented by the economy of the Catholics to the splendid disregard of
+      expense exhibited by the devout Jews! and how touching the &ldquo;APOLOGETICAL
+      DISCOURSES on the Revolution,&rdquo; delivered by the Protestant pastors! Fancy
+      the profound affliction of the Gardes Municipaux, the Sergens de Ville,
+      the police agents in plain clothes, and the troops with fixed bayonets,
+      sobbing round the &ldquo;expiatory monuments of a pyramidical shape, surmounted
+      by funeral vases,&rdquo; and compelled, by sad duty, to fire into the public who
+      might wish to indulge in the same woe! O &ldquo;manes of July!&rdquo; (the phrase is
+      pretty and grammatical) why did you with sharp bullets break those Louvre
+      windows? Why did you bayonet red-coated Swiss behind that fair white
+      façade, and, braving cannon, musket, sabre, perspective guillotine, burst
+      yonder bronze gates, rush through that peaceful picture-gallery, and hurl
+      royalty, loyalty, and a thousand years of Kings, head-over-heels out of
+      yonder Tuileries' windows?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is, you will allow, a little difficult to say:&mdash;there is, however,
+      ONE benefit that the country has gained (as for liberty of press, or
+      person, diminished taxation, a juster representation, who ever thinks of
+      them?)&mdash;ONE benefit they have gained, or nearly&mdash;abolition de la
+      peine-de-mort pour délit politique: no more wicked guillotining for
+      revolutions. A Frenchman must have his revolution&mdash;it is his nature
+      to knock down omnibuses in the street, and across them to fire at troops
+      of the line&mdash;it is a sin to balk it. Did not the King send off
+      Revolutionary Prince Napoleon in a coach-and-four? Did not the jury,
+      before the face of God and Justice, proclaim Revolutionary Colonel Vaudrey
+      not guilty?&mdash;One may hope, soon, that if a man shows decent courage
+      and energy in half a dozen émeutes, he will get promotion and a premium.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not (although, perhaps, partial to the subject,) want to talk more
+      nonsense than the occasion warrants, and will pray you to cast your eyes
+      over the following anecdote, that is now going the round of the papers,
+      and respects the commutation of the punishment of that wretched,
+      fool-hardy Barbés, who, on his trial, seemed to invite the penalty which
+      has just been remitted to him. You recollect the braggart's speech: &ldquo;When
+      the Indian falls into the power of the enemy, he knows the fate that
+      awaits him, and submits his head to the knife:&mdash;I am the Indian!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M. Hugo was at the Opera on the night the sentence of the Court of Peers,
+      condemning Barbés to death, was published. The great poet composed the
+      following verses:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     'Par votre ange envolée, ainsi qu'une colombe,
+      Par le royal enfant, doux et frêle roseau,
+      Grace encore une fois!  Grace au nom de la tombe!
+         Grace au nom du berçeau!' *
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M. Victor Hugo wrote the lines out instantly on a sheet of paper, which
+      he folded, and simply despatched them to the King of the French by the
+      penny-post.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That truly is a noble voice, which can at all hours thus speak to the
+      throne. Poetry, in old days, was called the language of the Gods&mdash;it
+      is better named now&mdash;it is the language of the Kings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the clemency of the King had anticipated the letter of the Poet. His
+      Majesty had signed the commutation of Barbés, while the poet was still
+      writing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Louis Philippe replied to the author of 'Ruy Blas' most graciously, that
+      he had already subscribed to a wish so noble, and that the verses had only
+      confirmed his previous disposition to mercy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      * Translated for the benefit of country gentlemen:&mdash;
+
+     &ldquo;By your angel flown away just like a dove,
+      By the royal infant, that frail and tender reed,
+      Pardon yet once more!  Pardon in the name of the tomb!
+      Pardon in the name of the cradle!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Now in countries where fools most abound, did one ever read of more
+      monstrous, palpable folly? In any country, save this, would a poet who
+      chose to write four crack-brained verses, comparing an angel to a dove,
+      and a little boy to a reed, and calling upon the chief magistrate, in the
+      name of the angel, or dove (the Princess Mary), in her tomb, and the
+      little infant in his cradle, to spare a criminal, have received a
+      &ldquo;gracious answer&rdquo; to his nonsense? Would he have ever despatched the
+      nonsense? and would any journalist have been silly enough to talk of &ldquo;the
+      noble voice that could thus speak to the throne,&rdquo; and the noble throne
+      that could return such a noble answer to the noble voice? You get nothing
+      done here gravely and decently. Tawdry stage tricks are played, and
+      braggadocio claptraps uttered, on every occasion, however sacred or
+      solemn: in the face of death, as by Barbés with his hideous Indian
+      metaphor; in the teeth of reason, as by M. Victor Hugo with his
+      twopenny-post poetry; and of justice, as by the King's absurd reply to
+      this absurd demand! Suppose the Count of Paris to be twenty times a reed,
+      and the Princess Mary a host of angels, is that any reason why the law
+      should not have its course? Justice is the God of our lower world, our
+      great omnipresent guardian: as such it moves, or should move on majestic,
+      awful, irresistible, having no passions&mdash;like a God: but, in the very
+      midst of the path across which it is to pass, lo! M. Victor Hugo trips
+      forward, smirking, and says, O divine Justice! I will trouble you to
+      listen to the following trifling effusion of mine:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Par votre ange envolée, ainsi qu'une,&rdquo; &amp;c.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Awful Justice stops, and, bowing gravely, listens to M. Hugo's verses,
+      and, with true French politeness, says, &ldquo;Mon cher Monsieur, these verses
+      are charming, ravissans, délicieux, and, coming from such a célébrité
+      littéraire as yourself, shall meet with every possible attention&mdash;in
+      fact, had I required anything to confirm my own previous opinions, this
+      charming poem would have done so. Bon jour, mon cher Monsieur Hugo, au
+      revoir!&rdquo;&mdash;and they part:&mdash;Justice taking off his hat and bowing,
+      and the author of &ldquo;Ruy Blas&rdquo; quite convinced that he has been treating
+      with him dégal en égal. I can hardly bring my mind to fancy that anything
+      is serious in France&mdash;it seems to be all rant, tinsel, and
+      stage-play. Sham liberty, sham monarchy, sham glory, sham justice,&mdash;où
+      diable donc la vérité va-t-elle se nicher?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      .      .      .      .      .      .
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The last rocket of the fête of July has just mounted, exploded, made a
+      portentous bang, and emitted a gorgeous show of blue lights, and then
+      (like many reputations) disappeared totally: the hundredth gun on the
+      Invalid terrace has uttered its last roar&mdash;and a great comfort it is
+      for eyes and ears that the festival is over. We shall be able to go about
+      our everyday business again, and not be hustled by the gendarmes or the
+      crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sight which I have just come away from is as brilliant, happy, and
+      beautiful as can be conceived; and if you want to see French people to the
+      greatest advantage, you should go to a festival like this, where their
+      manners, and innocent gayety, show a very pleasing contrast to the coarse
+      and vulgar hilarity which the same class would exhibit in our own country&mdash;at
+      Epsom racecourse, for instance, or Greenwich Fair. The greatest noise that
+      I heard was that of a company of jolly villagers from a place in the
+      neighborhood of Paris, who, as soon as the fireworks were over, formed
+      themselves into a line, three or four abreast, and so marched singing
+      home. As for the fireworks, squibs and crackers are very hard to describe,
+      and very little was to be seen of them: to me, the prettiest sight was the
+      vast, orderly, happy crowd, the number of children, and the extraordinary
+      care and kindness of the parents towards these little creatures. It does
+      one good to see honest, heavy épiciers, fathers of families, playing with
+      them in the Tuileries, or, as to-night, bearing them stoutly on their
+      shoulders, through many long hours, in order that the little ones too may
+      have their share of the fun. John Bull, I fear, is more selfish: he does
+      not take Mrs. Bull to the public-house; but leaves her, for the most part,
+      to take care of the children at home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fête, then, is over; the pompous black pyramid at the Louvre is only a
+      skeleton now; all the flags have been miraculously whisked away during the
+      night, and the fine chandeliers which glittered down the Champs Elysées
+      for full half a mile, have been consigned to their dens and darkness. Will
+      they ever be reproduced for other celebrations of the glorious 29th of
+      July?&mdash;I think not; the Government which vowed that there should be
+      no more persecutions of the press, was, on that very 29th, seizing a
+      Legitimist paper, for some real or fancied offence against it: it had
+      seized, and was seizing daily, numbers of persons merely suspected of
+      being disaffected (and you may fancy how liberty is understood, when some
+      of these prisoners, the other day, on coming to trial, were found guilty
+      and sentenced to ONE day's imprisonment, after THIRTY-SIX DAYS' DETENTION
+      ON SUSPICION). I think the Government which follows such a system, cannot
+      be very anxious about any farther revolutionary fêtes, and that the
+      Chamber may reasonably refuse to vote more money for them. Why should men
+      be so mighty proud of having, on a certain day, cut a certain number of
+      their fellow-countrymen's throats? The Guards and the Line employed this
+      time nine years did no more than those who cannonaded the starving
+      Lyonnese, or bayoneted the luckless inhabitants of the Rue Transnounain:&mdash;they
+      did but fulfil the soldier's honorable duty:&mdash;his superiors bid him
+      kill and he killeth:&mdash;perhaps, had he gone to his work with a little
+      more heart, the result would have been different, and then&mdash;would the
+      conquering party have been justified in annually rejoicing over the
+      conquered? Would we have thought Charles X. justified in causing fireworks
+      to be blazed, and concerts to be sung, and speeches to be spouted, in
+      commemoration of his victory over his slaughtered countrymen?&mdash;I wish
+      for my part they would allow the people to go about their business as on
+      the other 362 days of the year, and leave the Champs Elysées free for the
+      omnibuses to run, and the Tuileries' in quiet, so that the nurse-maids
+      might come as usual, and the newspapers be read for a halfpenny apiece.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shall I trouble you with an account of the speculations of these latter,
+      and the state of the parties which they represent? The complication is not
+      a little curious, and may form, perhaps, a subject of graver disquisition.
+      The July fêtes occupy, as you may imagine, a considerable part of their
+      columns just now, and it is amusing to follow them one by one; to read
+      Tweedledum's praise, and Tweedledee's indignation&mdash;to read, in the
+      Débats how the King was received with shouts and loyal vivats&mdash;in the
+      Nation, how not a tongue was wagged in his praise, but, on the instant of
+      his departure, how the people called for the &ldquo;Marseillaise&rdquo; and applauded
+      THAT.&mdash;But best say no more about the fête. The Legitimists were
+      always indignant at it. The high Philippist party sneers at and despises
+      it; the Republicans hate it: it seems a joke against THEM. Why continue
+      it?&mdash;If there be anything sacred in the name and idea of loyalty, why
+      renew this fête? It only shows how a rightful monarch was hurled from his
+      throne, and a dexterous usurper stole his precious diadem. If there be
+      anything noble in the memory of a day, when citizens, unused to war, rose
+      against practised veterans, and, armed with the strength of their cause,
+      overthrew them, why speak of it now? or renew the bitter recollections of
+      the bootless struggle and victory? O Lafayette! O hero of two worlds! O
+      accomplished Cromwell Grandison! you have to answer for more than any
+      mortal man who has played a part in history: two republics and one
+      monarchy does the world owe to you; and especially grateful should your
+      country be to you. Did you not, in '90, make clear the path for honest
+      Robespierre, and in '30, prepare the way for&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      .      .      .      .      .      .
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      [The Editor of the Bungay Beacon would insert no more of this letter,
+      which is, therefore, for ever lost to the public.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ON THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF PAINTING:
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      WITH APPROPRIATE ANECDOTES, ILLUSTRATIONS, AND PHILOSOPHICAL
+      DISQUISITIONS.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IN A LETTER TO MR. MACGILP, OF LONDON.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The three collections of pictures at the Louvre, the Luxembourg, and the
+      Ecole des Beaux Arts, contain a number of specimens of French art, since
+      its commencement almost, and give the stranger a pretty fair opportunity
+      to study and appreciate the school. The French list of painters contains
+      some very good names&mdash;no very great ones, except Poussin (unless the
+      admirers of Claude choose to rank him among great painters),&mdash;and I
+      think the school was never in so flourishing a condition as it is at the
+      present day. They say there are three thousand artists in this town alone:
+      of these a handsome minority paint not merely tolerably, but well
+      understand their business: draw the figure accurately; sketch with
+      cleverness; and paint portraits, churches, or restaurateurs' shops, in a
+      decent manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To account for a superiority over England which, I think, as regards art,
+      is incontestable&mdash;it must be remembered that the painter's trade, in
+      France, is a very good one; better appreciated, better understood, and,
+      generally, far better paid than with us. There are a dozen excellent
+      schools which a lad may enter here, and, under the eye of a practised
+      master, learn the apprenticeship of his art at an expense of about ten
+      pounds a year. In England there is no school except the Academy, unless
+      the student can afford to pay a very large sum, and place himself under
+      the tuition of some particular artist. Here, a young man, for his ten
+      pounds, has all sorts of accessory instruction, models, &amp;c.; and has
+      further, and for nothing, numberless incitements to study his profession
+      which are not to be found in England:&mdash;the streets are filled with
+      picture-shops, the people themselves are pictures walking about; the
+      churches, theatres, eating-houses, concert-rooms are covered with
+      pictures: Nature itself is inclined more kindly to him, for the sky is a
+      thousand times more bright and beautiful, and the sun shines for the
+      greater part of the year. Add to this, incitements more selfish, but quite
+      as powerful: a French artist is paid very handsomely; for five hundred a
+      year is much where all are poor; and has a rank in society rather above
+      his merits than below them, being caressed by hosts and hostesses in
+      places where titles are laughed at and a baron is thought of no more
+      account than a banker's clerk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The life of the young artist here is the easiest, merriest, dirtiest
+      existence possible. He comes to Paris, probably at sixteen, from his
+      province; his parents settle forty pounds a year on him, and pay his
+      master; he establishes himself in the Pays Latin, or in the new quarter of
+      Notre Dame de Lorette (which is quite peopled with painters); he arrives
+      at his atelier at a tolerably early hour, and labors among a score of
+      companions as merry and poor as himself. Each gentleman has his favorite
+      tobacco-pipe; and the pictures are painted in the midst of a cloud of
+      smoke, and a din of puns and choice French slang, and a roar of choruses,
+      of which no one can form an idea who has not been present at such an
+      assembly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You see here every variety of coiffure that has ever been known. Some
+      young men of genius have ringlets hanging over their shoulders&mdash;you
+      may smell the tobacco with which they are scented across the street; some
+      have straight locks, black, oily, and redundant; some have toupets in the
+      famous Louis-Philippe fashion; some are cropped close; some have adopted
+      the present mode&mdash;which he who would follow must, in order to do so,
+      part his hair in the middle, grease it with grease, and gum it with gum,
+      and iron it flat down over his ears; when arrived at the ears, you take
+      the tongs and make a couple of ranges of curls close round the whole head,&mdash;such
+      curls as you may see under a gilt three-cornered hat, and in her Britannic
+      Majesty's coachman's state wig.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is the last fashion. As for the beards, there is no end of them; all
+      my friends the artists have beards who can raise them; and Nature, though
+      she has rather stinted the bodies and limbs of the French nation, has been
+      very liberal to them of hair, as you may see by the following specimen.
+      Fancy these heads and beards under all sorts of caps&mdash;Chinese caps,
+      Mandarin caps, Greek skull-caps, English jockey-caps, Russian or
+      Kuzzilbash caps, Middle-age caps (such as are called, in heraldry, caps of
+      maintenance), Spanish nets, and striped worsted nightcaps. Fancy all the
+      jackets you have ever seen, and you have before you, as well as pen can
+      describe, the costumes of these indescribable Frenchmen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this company and costume the French student of art passes his days and
+      acquires knowledge; how he passes his evenings, at what theatres, at what
+      guinguettes, in company with what seducing little milliner, there is no
+      need to say; but I knew one who pawned his coat to go to a carnival ball,
+      and walked abroad very cheerfully in his blouse for six weeks, until he
+      could redeem the absent garment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These young men (together with the students of sciences) comport
+      themselves towards the sober citizen pretty much as the German bursch
+      towards the philister, or as the military man, during the empire, did to
+      the pékin:&mdash;from the height of their poverty they look down upon him
+      with the greatest imaginable scorn&mdash;a scorn, I think, by which the
+      citizen seems dazzled, for his respect for the arts is intense. The case
+      is very different in England, where a grocer's daughter would think she
+      made a misalliance by marrying a painter, and where a literary man (in
+      spite of all we can say against it) ranks below that class of gentry
+      composed of the apothecary, the attorney, the wine-merchant, whose
+      positions, in country towns at least, are so equivocal. As, for instance,
+      my friend the Rev. James Asterisk, who has an undeniable pedigree, a
+      paternal estate, and a living to boot, once dined in Warwickshire, in
+      company with several squires and parsons of that enlightened county.
+      Asterisk, as usual, made himself extraordinarily agreeable at dinner, and
+      delighted all present with his learning and wit. &ldquo;Who is that monstrous
+      pleasant fellow?&rdquo; said one of the squires. &ldquo;Don't you know?&rdquo; replied
+      another. &ldquo;It's Asterisk, the author of so-and-so, and a famous contributor
+      to such and such a magazine.&rdquo; &ldquo;Good heavens!&rdquo; said the squire, quite
+      horrified! &ldquo;a literary man! I thought he had been a gentleman!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Another instance: M. Guizot, when he was Minister here, had the grand
+      hotel of the Ministry, and gave entertainments to all the great de par le
+      monde, as Brantôme says, and entertained them in a proper ministerial
+      magnificence. The splendid and beautiful Duchess of Dash was at one of his
+      ministerial parties; and went, a fortnight afterwards, as in duty bound,
+      to pay her respects to M. Guizot. But it happened, in this fortnight, that
+      M. Guizot was Minister no longer; having given up his portfolio, and his
+      grand hotel, to retire into private life, and to occupy his humble
+      apartments in the house which he possesses, and of which he lets the
+      greater portion. A friend of mine was present at one of the ex-Minister's
+      soirées, where the Duchess of Dash made her appearance. He says the
+      Duchess, at her entrance, seemed quite astounded, and examined the
+      premises with a most curious wonder. Two or three shabby little rooms,
+      with ordinary furniture, and a Minister en retraite, who lives by letting
+      lodgings! In our country was ever such a thing heard of? No, thank heaven!
+      and a Briton ought to be proud of the difference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to our muttons. This country is surely the paradise of painters and
+      penny-a-liners; and when one reads of M. Horace Vernet at Rome, exceeding
+      ambassadors at Rome by his magnificence, and leading such a life as Rubens
+      or Titian did of old; when one sees M. Thiers's grand villa in the Rue St.
+      George (a dozen years ago he was not even a penny-a-liner: no such luck);
+      when one contemplates, in imagination, M. Gudin, the marine painter, too
+      lame to walk through the picture-gallery of the Louvre, accommodated,
+      therefore, with a wheel-chair, a privilege of princes only, and
+      accompanied&mdash;nay, for what I know, actually trundled&mdash;down the
+      gallery by majesty itself&mdash;who does not long to make one of the great
+      nation, exchange his native tongue for the melodious jabber of France; or,
+      at least, adopt it for his native country, like Marshal Saxe, Napoleon,
+      and Anacharsis Clootz? Noble people! they made Tom Paine a deputy; and as
+      for Tom Macaulay, they would make a DYNASTY of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, this being the case, no wonder there are so many painters in France;
+      and here, at least, we are back to them. At the Ecole Royale des Beaux
+      Arts, you see two or three hundred specimens of their performances; all
+      the prize-men, since 1750, I think, being bound to leave their prize
+      sketch or picture. Can anything good come out of the Royal Academy? is a
+      question which has been considerably mooted in England (in the
+      neighborhood of Suffolk Street especially). The hundreds of French samples
+      are, I think, not very satisfactory. The subjects are almost all what are
+      called classical: Orestes pursued by every variety of Furies; numbers of
+      little wolf-sucking Romuluses; Hectors and Andromaches in a complication
+      of parting embraces, and so forth; for it was the absurd maxim of our
+      forefathers, that because these subjects had been the fashion twenty
+      centuries ago, they must remain so in saecula saeculorum; because to these
+      lofty heights giants had scaled, behold the race of pigmies must get upon
+      stilts and jump at them likewise! and on the canvas, and in the theatre,
+      the French frogs (excuse the pleasantry) were instructed to swell out and
+      roar as much as possible like bulls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What was the consequence, my dear friend? In trying to make themselves
+      into bulls, the frogs make themselves into jackasses, as might be
+      expected. For a hundred and ten years the classical humbug oppressed the
+      nation; and you may see, in this gallery of the Beaux Arts, seventy years'
+      specimens of the dulness which it engendered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, as Nature made every man with a nose and eyes of his own, she gave
+      him a character of his own too; and yet we, O foolish race! must try our
+      very best to ape some one or two of our neighbors, whose ideas fit us no
+      more than their breeches! It is the study of nature, surely, that profits
+      us, and not of these imitations of her. A man, as a man, from a dustman up
+      to Æschylus, is God's work, and good to read, as all works of Nature are:
+      but the silly animal is never content; is ever trying to fit itself into
+      another shape; wants to deny its own identity, and has not the courage to
+      utter its own thoughts. Because Lord Byron was wicked, and quarrelled with
+      the world; and found himself growing fat, and quarrelled with his
+      victuals, and thus, naturally, grew ill-humored, did not half Europe grow
+      ill-humored too? Did not every poet feel his young affections withered,
+      and despair and darkness cast upon his soul? Because certain mighty men of
+      old could make heroical statues and plays, must we not be told that there
+      is no other beauty but classical beauty?&mdash;must not every little
+      whipster of a French poet chalk you out plays, &ldquo;Henriades,&rdquo; and such-like,
+      and vow that here was the real thing, the undeniable Kalon?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The undeniable fiddlestick! For a hundred years, my dear sir, the world
+      was humbugged by the so-called classical artists, as they now are by what
+      is called the Christian art (of which anon); and it is curious to look at
+      the pictorial traditions as here handed down. The consequence of them is,
+      that scarce one of the classical pictures exhibited is worth much more
+      than two-and-sixpence. Borrowed from statuary, in the first place, the
+      color of the paintings seems, as much as possible, to participate in it;
+      they are mostly of a misty, stony green, dismal hue, as if they had been
+      painted in a world where no color was. In every picture, there are, of
+      course, white mantles, white urns, white columns, white statues&mdash;those
+      obligé accomplishments of the sublime. There are the endless straight
+      noses, long eyes, round chins, short upper lips, just as they are ruled
+      down for you in the drawing-books, as if the latter were the revelations
+      of beauty, issued by supreme authority, from which there was no appeal?
+      Why is the classical reign to endure? Why is yonder simpering Venus de'
+      Medicis to be our standard of beauty, or the Greek tragedies to bound our
+      notions of the sublime? There was no reason why Agamemnon should set the
+      fashions, and remain [Greek text omitted] to eternity: and there is a
+      classical quotation, which you may have occasionally heard, beginning
+      Vixere fortes, &amp;c., which, as it avers that there were a great number
+      of stout fellows before Agamemnon, may not unreasonably induce us to
+      conclude that similar heroes were to succeed him. Shakspeare made a better
+      man when his imagination moulded the mighty figure of Macbeth. And if you
+      will measure Satan by Prometheus, the blind old Puritan's work by that of
+      the fiery Grecian poet, does not Milton's angel surpass Æschylus's&mdash;surpass
+      him by &ldquo;many a rood?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the same school of the Beaux Arts, where are to be found such a number
+      of pale imitations of the antique, Monsieur Thiers (and he ought to be
+      thanked for it) has caused to be placed a full-sized copy of &ldquo;The Last
+      Judgment&rdquo; of Michel Angelo, and a number of casts from statues by the same
+      splendid hand. There IS the sublime, if you please&mdash;a new sublime&mdash;an
+      original sublime&mdash;quite as sublime as the Greek sublime. See yonder,
+      in the midst of his angels, the Judge of the world descending in glory;
+      and near him, beautiful and gentle, and yet indescribably august and pure,
+      the Virgin by his side. There is the &ldquo;Moses,&rdquo; the grandest figure that
+      ever was carved in stone. It has about it something frightfully majestic,
+      if one may so speak. In examining this, and the astonishing picture of
+      &ldquo;The Judgment,&rdquo; or even a single figure of it, the spectator's sense
+      amounts almost to pain. I would not like to be left in a room alone with
+      the &ldquo;Moses.&rdquo; How did the artist live amongst them, and create them? How
+      did he suffer the painful labor of invention? One fancies that he would
+      have been scorched up, like Semele, by sights too tremendous for his
+      vision to bear. One cannot imagine him, with our small physical endowments
+      and weaknesses, a man like ourselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for the Ecole Royale des Beaux Arts, then, and all the good its
+      students have done, as students, it is stark naught. When the men did
+      anything, it was after they had left the academy, and began thinking for
+      themselves. There is only one picture among the many hundreds that has, to
+      my idea, much merit (a charming composition of Homer singing, signed
+      Jourdy); and the only good that the Academy has done by its pupils was to
+      send them to Rome, where they might learn better things. At home, the
+      intolerable, stupid classicalities, taught by men who, belonging to the
+      least erudite country in Europe, were themselves, from their profession,
+      the least learned among their countrymen, only weighed the pupils down,
+      and cramped their hands, their eyes, and their imaginations; drove them
+      away from natural beauty, which, thank God, is fresh and attainable by us
+      all, to-day, and yesterday, and to-morrow; and sent them rambling after
+      artificial grace, without the proper means of judging or attaining it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A word for the building of the Palais des Beaux Arts. It is beautiful, and
+      as well finished and convenient as beautiful. With its light and elegant
+      fabric, its pretty fountain, its archway of the Renaissance, and fragments
+      of sculpture, you can hardly see, on a fine day, a place more riant and
+      pleasing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Passing from thence up the picturesque Rue de Seine, let us walk to the
+      Luxembourg, where bonnes, students, grisettes, and old gentlemen with
+      pigtails, love to wander in the melancholy, quaint old gardens; where the
+      peers have a new and comfortable court of justice, to judge all the
+      émeutes which are to take place; and where, as everybody knows, is the
+      picture-gallery of modern French artists, whom government thinks worthy of
+      patronage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A very great proportion of the pictures, as we see by the catalogue, are
+      by the students whose works we have just been to visit at the Beaux Arts,
+      and who, having performed their pilgrimage to Rome, have taken rank among
+      the professors of the art. I don't know a more pleasing exhibition; for
+      there are not a dozen really bad pictures in the collection, some very
+      good, and the rest showing great skill and smartness of execution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the same way, however, that it has been supposed that no man could be a
+      great poet unless he wrote a very big poem, the tradition is kept up among
+      the painters, and we have here a vast number of large canvases, with
+      figures of the proper heroical length and nakedness. The anticlassicists
+      did not arise in France until about 1827; and, in consequence, up to that
+      period, we have here the old classical faith in full vigor. There is
+      Brutus, having chopped his son's head off, with all the agony of a father,
+      and then, calling for number two; there is Æneas carrying off old
+      Anchises; there are Paris and Venus, as naked as two Hottentots, and many
+      more such choice subjects from Lemprière.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the chief specimens of the sublime are in the way of murders, with
+      which the catalogue swarms. Here are a few extracts from it:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      7. Beaume, Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur. &ldquo;The Grand Dauphiness Dying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      18. Blondel, Chevalier de la, &amp;c. &ldquo;Zenobia found Dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      36. Debay, Chevalier. &ldquo;The Death of Lucretia.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      38. Dejuinne. &ldquo;The Death of Hector.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      34. Court, Chevalier de la, &amp;c. &ldquo;The Death of Caesar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      39, 40, 41. Delacroix, Chevalier. &ldquo;Dante and Virgil in the Infernal Lake,&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;The Massacre of Scio,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Medea going to Murder her Children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      43. Delaroche, Chevalier. &ldquo;Joas taken from among the Dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      44. &ldquo;The Death of Queen Elizabeth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      45. &ldquo;Edward V. and his Brother&rdquo; (preparing for death).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      50. &ldquo;Hecuba going to be Sacrificed.&rdquo; Drolling, Chevalier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      51. Dubois. &ldquo;Young Clovis found Dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      56. Henry, Chevalier. &ldquo;The Massacre of St. Bartholomew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      75. Guérin, Chevalier. &ldquo;Cain, after the Death of Abel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      83. Jacquand. &ldquo;Death of Adelaide de Comminges.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      88. &ldquo;The Death of Eudamidas.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      93. &ldquo;The Death of Hymetto.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      103. &ldquo;The Death of Philip of Austria.&rdquo;&mdash;And so on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You see what woful subjects they take, and how profusely they are
+      decorated with knighthood. They are like the Black Brunswickers, these
+      painters, and ought to be called Chevaliers de la Mort. I don't know why
+      the merriest people in the world should please themselves with such grim
+      representations and varieties of murder, or why murder itself should be
+      considered so eminently sublime and poetical. It is good at the end of a
+      tragedy; but, then, it is good because it is the end, and because, by the
+      events foregone, the mind is prepared for it. But these men will have
+      nothing but fifth acts; and seem to skip, as unworthy, all the
+      circumstances leading to them. This, however, is part of the scheme&mdash;the
+      bloated, unnatural, stilted, spouting, sham sublime, that our teachers
+      have believed and tried to pass off as real, and which your humble servant
+      and other antihumbuggists should heartily, according to the strength that
+      is in them, endeavor to pull down. What, for instance, could Monsieur
+      Lafond care about the death of Eudamidas? What was Hecuba to Chevalier
+      Drolling, or Chevalier Drolling to Hecuba? I would lay a wager that
+      neither of them ever conjugated [Greek text omitted], and that their
+      school learning carried them not as far as the letter, but only to the
+      game of taw. How were they to be inspired by such subjects? From having
+      seen Talma and Mademoiselle Georges flaunting in sham Greek costumes, and
+      having read up the articles Eudamidas, Hecuba, in the &ldquo;Mythological
+      Dictionary.&rdquo; What a classicism, inspired by rouge, gas-lamps, and a few
+      lines in Lemprière, and copied, half from ancient statues, and half from a
+      naked guardsman at one shilling and sixpence the hour!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Delacroix is a man of a very different genius, and his &ldquo;Medea&rdquo; is a
+      genuine creation of a noble fancy. For most of the others, Mrs. Brownrigg,
+      and her two female 'prentices, would have done as well as the desperate
+      Colchian with her [Greek text omitted]. M. Delacroix has produced a number
+      of rude, barbarous pictures; but there is the stamp of genius on all of
+      them,&mdash;the great poetical INTENTION, which is worth all your
+      execution. Delaroche is another man of high merit; with not such a great
+      HEART, perhaps, as the other, but a fine and careful draughtsman, and an
+      excellent arranger of his subject. &ldquo;The Death of Elizabeth&rdquo; is a raw young
+      performance seemingly&mdash;not, at least, to my taste. The &ldquo;Enfans
+      d'Edouard&rdquo; is renowned over Europe, and has appeared in a hundred
+      different ways in print. It is properly pathetic and gloomy, and merits
+      fully its high reputation. This painter rejoices in such subjects&mdash;in
+      what Lord Portsmouth used to call &ldquo;black jobs.&rdquo; He has killed Charles I.
+      and Lady Jane Grey, and the Dukes of Guise, and I don't know whom besides.
+      He is, at present, occupied with a vast work at the Beaux Arts, where the
+      writer of this had the honor of seeing him,&mdash;a little, keen-looking
+      man, some five feet in height. He wore, on this important occasion, a
+      bandanna round his head, and was in the act of smoking a cigar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Horace Vernet, whose beautiful daughter Delaroche married, is the king of
+      French battle-painters&mdash;an amazingly rapid and dexterous draughtsman,
+      who has Napoleon and all the campaigns by heart, and has painted the
+      Grenadier Français under all sorts of attitudes. His pictures on such
+      subjects are spirited, natural, and excellent; and he is so clever a man,
+      that all he does is good to a certain degree. His &ldquo;Judith&rdquo; is somewhat
+      violent, perhaps. His &ldquo;Rebecca&rdquo; most pleasing; and not the less so for a
+      little pretty affectation of attitude and needless singularity of costume.
+      &ldquo;Raphael and Michael Angelo&rdquo; is as clever a picture as can be&mdash;clever
+      is just the word&mdash;the groups and drawing excellent, the coloring
+      pleasantly bright and gaudy; and the French students study it incessantly;
+      there are a dozen who copy it for one who copies Delacroix. His little
+      scraps of wood-cuts, in the now publishing &ldquo;Life of Napoleon,&rdquo; are perfect
+      gems in their way, and the noble price paid for them not a penny more than
+      he merits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The picture, by Court, of &ldquo;The Death of Caesar,&rdquo; is remarkable for effect
+      and excellent workmanship: and the head of Brutus (who looks like Armand
+      Carrel) is full of energy. There are some beautiful heads of women, and
+      some very good color in the picture. Jacquand's &ldquo;Death of Adelaide de
+      Comminges&rdquo; is neither more nor less than beautiful. Adelaide had, it
+      appears, a lover, who betook himself to a convent of Trappists. She
+      followed him thither, disguised as a man, took the vows, and was not
+      discovered by him till on her death-bed. The painter has told this story
+      in a most pleasing and affecting manner: the picture is full of onction
+      and melancholy grace. The objects, too, are capitally represented; and the
+      tone and color very good. Decaisne's &ldquo;Guardian Angel&rdquo; is not so good in
+      color, but is equally beautiful in expression and grace. A little child
+      and a nurse are asleep: an angel watches the infant. You see women look
+      very wistfully at this sweet picture; and what triumph would a painter
+      have more?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We must not quit the Luxembourg without noticing the dashing sea-pieces of
+      Gudin, and one or two landscapes by Giroux (the plain of Grasivaudan), and
+      &ldquo;The Prometheus&rdquo; of Aligny. This is an imitation, perhaps; as is a noble
+      picture of &ldquo;Jesus Christ and the Children,&rdquo; by Flandrin: but the artists
+      are imitating better models, at any rate; and one begins to perceive that
+      the odious classical dynasty is no more. Poussin's magnificent
+      &ldquo;Polyphemus&rdquo; (I only know a print of that marvellous composition) has,
+      perhaps, suggested the first-named picture; and the latter has been
+      inspired by a good enthusiastic study of the Roman schools.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of this revolution, Monsieur Ingres has been one of the chief instruments.
+      He was, before Horace Vernet, president of the French Academy at Rome, and
+      is famous as a chief of a school. When he broke up his atelier here, to
+      set out for his presidency, many of his pupils attended him faithfully
+      some way on his journey; and some, with scarcely a penny in their pouches,
+      walked through France and across the Alps, in a pious pilgrimage to Rome,
+      being determined not to forsake their old master. Such an action was
+      worthy of them, and of the high rank which their profession holds in
+      France, where the honors to be acquired by art are only inferior to those
+      which are gained in war. One reads of such peregrinations in old days,
+      when the scholars of some great Italian painter followed him from Venice
+      to Rome, or from Florence to Ferrara. In regard of Ingres's individual
+      merit as a painter, the writer of this is not a fair judge, having seen
+      but three pictures by him; one being a plafond in the Louvre, which his
+      disciples much admire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ingres stands between the Imperio-Davido-classical school of French art,
+      and the namby-pamby mystical German school, which is for carrying us back
+      to Cranach and Dürer, and which is making progress here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For everything here finds imitation: the French have the genius of
+      imitation and caricature. This absurd humbug, called the Christian or
+      Catholic art, is sure to tickle our neighbors, and will be a favorite with
+      them, when better known. My dear MacGilp, I do believe this to be a
+      greater humbug than the humbug of David and Girodet, inasmuch as the
+      latter was founded on Nature at least; whereas the former is made up of
+      silly affectations, and improvements upon Nature. Here, for instance, is
+      Chevalier Ziegler's picture of &ldquo;St. Luke painting the Virgin.&rdquo; St. Luke
+      has a monk's dress on, embroidered, however, smartly round the sleeves.
+      The Virgin sits in an immense yellow-ochre halo, with her son in her arms.
+      She looks preternaturally solemn; as does St. Luke, who is eying his
+      paint-brush with an intense ominous mystical look. They call this Catholic
+      art. There is nothing, my dear friend, more easy in life. First take your
+      colors, and rub them down clean,&mdash;bright carmine, bright yellow,
+      bright sienna, bright ultramarine, bright green. Make the costumes of your
+      figures as much as possible like the costumes of the early part of the
+      fifteenth century. Paint them in with the above colors; and if on a gold
+      ground, the more &ldquo;Catholic&rdquo; your art is. Dress your apostles like priests
+      before the altar; and remember to have a good commodity of crosiers,
+      censers, and other such gimcracks, as you may see in the Catholic chapels,
+      in Sutton Street and elsewhere. Deal in Virgins, and dress them like a
+      burgomaster's wife by Cranach or Van Eyck. Give them all long twisted
+      tails to their gowns, and proper angular draperies. Place all their heads
+      on one side, with the eyes shut, and the proper solemn simper. At the back
+      of the head, draw, and gild with gold-leaf, a halo or glory, of the exact
+      shape of a cart-wheel: and you have the thing done. It is Catholic art
+      tout craché, as Louis Philippe says. We have it still in England, handed
+      down to us for four centuries, in the pictures on the cards, as the
+      redoubtable king and queen of clubs. Look at them: you will see that the
+      costumes and attitudes are precisely similar to those which figure in the
+      catholicities of the school of Overbeck and Cornelius.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before you take your cane at the door, look for one instant at the
+      statue-room. Yonder is Jouffley's &ldquo;Jeune Fille confiant son premier secret
+      à Vénus.&rdquo; Charming, charming! It is from the exhibition of this year only;
+      and I think the best sculpture in the gallery&mdash;pretty, fanciful,
+      naïve; admirable in workmanship and imitation of Nature. I have seldom
+      seen flesh better represented in marble. Examine, also, Jaley's &ldquo;Pudeur,&rdquo;
+       Jacquot's &ldquo;Nymph,&rdquo; and Rude's &ldquo;Boy with the Tortoise.&rdquo; These are not very
+      exalted subjects, or what are called exalted, and do not go beyond simple,
+      smiling beauty and nature. But what then? Are we gods, Miltons, Michel
+      Angelos, that can leave earth when we please; and soar to heights
+      immeasurable? No, my dear MacGilp; but the fools of academicians would
+      fain make us so. Are you not, and half the painters in London, panting for
+      an opportunity to show your genius in a great &ldquo;historical picture?&rdquo; O
+      blind race! Have you wings? Not a feather: and yet you must be ever
+      puffing, sweating up to the tops of rugged hills; and, arrived there,
+      clapping and shaking your ragged elbows, and making as if you would fly!
+      Come down, silly Daedalus; come down to the lowly places in which Nature
+      ordered you to walk. The sweet flowers are springing there; the fat
+      muttons are waiting there; the pleasant sun shines there; be content and
+      humble, and take your share of the good cheer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While we have been indulging in this discussion, the omnibus has gayly
+      conducted us across the water; and le garde qui veille a la porte du
+      Louvre ne défend pas our entry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a paradise this gallery is for French students, or foreigners who
+      sojourn in the capital! It is hardly necessary to say that the brethren of
+      the brush are not usually supplied by Fortune with any extraordinary
+      wealth, or means of enjoying the luxuries with which Paris, more than any
+      other city, abounds. But here they have a luxury which surpasses all
+      others, and spend their days in a palace which all the money of all the
+      Rothschilds could not buy. They sleep, perhaps, in a garret, and dine in a
+      cellar; but no grandee in Europe has such a drawing-room. Kings' houses
+      have, at best, but damask hangings, and gilt cornices. What are these to a
+      wall covered with canvas by Paul Veronese, or a hundred yards of Rubens?
+      Artists from England, who have a national gallery that resembles a
+      moderate-sized gin-shop, who may not copy pictures, except under
+      particular restrictions, and on rare and particular days, may revel here
+      to their hearts' content. Here is a room half a mile long, with as many
+      windows as Aladdin's palace, open from sunrise till evening, and free to
+      all manners and all varieties of study: the only puzzle to the student is
+      to select the one he shall begin upon, and keep his eyes away from the
+      rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fontaine's grand staircase, with its arches, and painted ceilings and
+      shining Doric columns, leads directly to the gallery; but it is thought
+      too fine for working days, and is only opened for the public entrance on
+      Sabbath. A little back stair (leading from a court, in which stand
+      numerous bas-reliefs, and a solemn sphinx, of polished granite,) is the
+      common entry for students and others, who, during the week, enter the
+      gallery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hither have lately been transported a number of the works of French
+      artists, which formerly covered the walls of the Luxembourg (death only
+      entitles the French painter to a place in the Louvre); and let us confine
+      ourselves to the Frenchmen only, for the space of this letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have seen, in a fine private collection at St. Germain, one or two
+      admirable single figures of David, full of life, truth, and gayety. The
+      color is not good, but all the rest excellent; and one of these so
+      much-lauded pictures is the portrait of a washer-woman. &ldquo;Pope Pius,&rdquo; at
+      the Louvre, is as bad in color as remarkable for its vigor and look of
+      life. The man had a genius for painting portraits and common life, but
+      must attempt the heroic;&mdash;failed signally; and what is worse, carried
+      a whole nation blundering after him. Had you told a Frenchman so, twenty
+      years ago, he would have thrown the démenti in your teeth; or, at least,
+      laughed at you in scornful incredulity. They say of us that we don't know
+      when we are beaten: they go a step further, and swear their defeats are
+      victories. David was a part of the glory of the empire; and one might as
+      well have said then that &ldquo;Romulus&rdquo; was a bad picture, as that Toulouse was
+      a lost battle. Old-fashioned people, who believe in the Emperor, believe
+      in the Théâtre Français, and believe that Ducis improved upon Shakspeare,
+      have the above opinion. Still, it is curious to remark, in this place, how
+      art and literature become party matters, and political sects have their
+      favorite painters and authors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, Jacques Louis David is dead, he died about a year after his
+      bodily demise in 1825. The romanticism killed him. Walter Scott, from his
+      Castle of Abbotsford, sent out a troop of gallant young Scotch
+      adventurers, merry outlaws, valiant knights, and savage Highlanders, who,
+      with trunk hosen and buff jerkins, fierce two-handed swords, and harness
+      on their back, did challenge, combat, and overcome the heroes and demigods
+      of Greece and Rome. Notre Dame à la rescousse! Sir Brian de Bois Guilbert
+      has borne Hector of Troy clear out of his saddle. Andromache may weep: but
+      her spouse is beyond the reach of physic. See! Robin Hood twangs his bow,
+      and the heathen gods fly, howling. Montjoie Saint Denis! down goes Ajax
+      under the mace of Dunois; and yonder are Leonidas and Romulus begging
+      their lives of Rob Roy Macgregor. Classicism is dead. Sir John Froissart
+      has taken Dr. Lemprière by the nose, and reigns sovereign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the great pictures of David the defunct, we need not, then, say much.
+      Romulus is a mighty fine young fellow, no doubt; and if he has come out to
+      battle stark naked (except a very handsome helmet), it is because the
+      costume became him, and shows off his figure to advantage. But was there
+      ever anything so absurd as this passion for the nude, which was followed
+      by all the painters of the Davidian epoch? And how are we to suppose
+      yonder straddle to be the true characteristic of the heroic and the
+      sublime? Romulus stretches his legs as far as ever nature will allow; the
+      Horatii, in receiving their swords, think proper to stretch their legs
+      too, and to thrust forward their arms, thus,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      [Drawing omitted]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Romulus's is in the exact action of a telegraph; and the Horatii are all
+      in the position of the lunge. Is this the sublime? Mr. Angelo, of Bond
+      Street, might admire the attitude; his namesake, Michel, I don't think
+      would.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little picture of &ldquo;Paris and Helen,&rdquo; one of the master's earliest, I
+      believe, is likewise one of his best: the details are exquisitely painted.
+      Helen looks needlessly sheepish, and Paris has a most odious ogle; but the
+      limbs of the male figure are beautifully designed, and have not the green
+      tone which you see in the later pictures of the master. What is the
+      meaning of this green? Was it the fashion, or the varnish? Girodet's
+      pictures are green; Gros's emperors and grenadiers have universally the
+      jaundice. Gerard's &ldquo;Psyche&rdquo; has a most decided green-sickness; and I am at
+      a loss, I confess, to account for the enthusiasm which this performance
+      inspired on its first appearance before the public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the same room with it is Girodet's ghastly &ldquo;Deluge,&rdquo; and Gericault's
+      dismal &ldquo;Medusa.&rdquo; Gericault died, they say, for want of fame. He was a man
+      who possessed a considerable fortune of his own; but pined because no one
+      in his day would purchase his pictures, and so acknowledge his talent. At
+      present, a scrawl from his pencil brings an enormous price. All his works
+      have a grand cachet: he never did anything mean. When he painted the &ldquo;Raft
+      of the Medusa,&rdquo; it is said he lived for a long time among the corpses
+      which he painted, and that his studio was a second Morgue. If you have not
+      seen the picture, you are familiar probably, with Reynolds's admirable
+      engraving of it. A huge black sea; a raft beating upon it; a horrid
+      company of men dead, half dead, writhing and frantic with hideous hunger
+      or hideous hope; and, far away, black, against a stormy sunset, a sail.
+      The story is powerfully told, and has a legitimate tragic interest, so to
+      speak,&mdash;deeper, because more natural, than Girodet's green &ldquo;Deluge,&rdquo;
+       for instance: or his livid &ldquo;Orestes,&rdquo; or red-hot &ldquo;Clytemnestra.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seen from a distance the latter's &ldquo;Deluge&rdquo; has a certain awe-inspiring air
+      with it. A slimy green man stands on a green rock, and clutches hold of a
+      tree. On the green man's shoulders is his old father, in a green old age;
+      to him hangs his wife, with a babe on her breast, and dangling at her
+      hair, another child. In the water floats a corpse (a beautiful head) and a
+      green sea and atmosphere envelops all this dismal group. The old father is
+      represented with a bag of money in his hand; and the tree, which the man
+      catches, is cracking, and just on the point of giving way. These two
+      points were considered very fine by the critics: they are two such ghastly
+      epigrams as continually disfigure French Tragedy. For this reason I have
+      never been able to read Racine with pleasure,&mdash;the dialogue is so
+      crammed with these lugubrious good things&mdash;melancholy antitheses&mdash;sparkling
+      undertakers' wit; but this is heresy, and had better be spoken discreetly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gallery contains a vast number of Poussin's pictures; they put me in
+      mind of the color of objects in dreams,&mdash;a strange, hazy, lurid hue.
+      How noble are some of his landscapes! What a depth of solemn shadow is in
+      yonder wood, near which, by the side of a black water, halts Diogenes. The
+      air is thunder-laden, and breathes heavily. You hear ominous whispers in
+      the vast forest gloom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Near it is a landscape, by Carel Dujardin, I believe, conceived in quite a
+      different mood, but exquisitely poetical too. A horseman is riding up a
+      hill, and giving money to a blowsy beggar-wench. O matutini rores auraeque
+      salubres! in what a wonderful way has the artist managed to create you out
+      of a few bladders of paint and pots of varnish. You can see the matutinal
+      dews twinkling in the grass, and feel the fresh, salubrious airs (&ldquo;the
+      breath of Nature blowing free,&rdquo; as the corn-law man sings) blowing free
+      over the heath; silvery vapors are rising up from the blue lowlands. You
+      can tell the hour of the morning and the time of the year: you can do
+      anything but describe it in words. As with regard to the Poussin above
+      mentioned, one can never pass it without bearing away a certain pleasing,
+      dreamy feeling of awe and musing; the other landscape inspires the
+      spectator infallibly with the most delightful briskness and cheerfulness
+      of spirit. Herein lies the vast privilege of the landscape-painter: he
+      does not address you with one fixed particular subject or expression, but
+      with a thousand never contemplated by himself, and which only arise out of
+      occasion. You may always be looking at a natural landscape as at a fine
+      pictorial imitation of one; it seems eternally producing new thoughts in
+      your bosom, as it does fresh beauties from its own. I cannot fancy more
+      delightful, cheerful, silent companions for a man than half a dozen
+      landscapes hung round his study. Portraits, on the contrary, and large
+      pieces of figures, have a painful, fixed, staring look, which must jar
+      upon the mind in many of its moods. Fancy living in a room with David's
+      sans-culotte Leonidas staring perpetually in your face!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is a little Watteau here, and a rare piece of fantastical brightness
+      and gayety it is. What a delightful affectation about yonder ladies
+      flirting their fans, and trailing about in their long brocades! What
+      splendid dandies are those, ever-smirking, turning out their toes, with
+      broad blue ribbons to tie up their crooks and their pigtails, and
+      wonderful gorgeous crimson satin breeches! Yonder, in the midst of a
+      golden atmosphere, rises a bevy of little round Cupids, bubbling up in
+      clusters as out of a champagne-bottle, and melting away in air. There is,
+      to be sure, a hidden analogy between liquors and pictures: the eye is
+      deliciously tickled by these frisky Watteaus, and yields itself up to a
+      light, smiling, gentlemanlike intoxication. Thus, were we inclined to
+      pursue further this mighty subject, yonder landscape of Claude,&mdash;calm,
+      fresh, delicate, yet full of flavor,&mdash;should be likened to a bottle
+      of Château Margaux. And what is the Poussin before spoken of but Romanée
+      Gelée?&mdash;heavy, sluggish,&mdash;the luscious odor almost sickens you;
+      a sultry sort of drink; your limbs sink under it; you feel as if you had
+      been drinking hot blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An ordinary man would be whirled away in a fever, or would hobble off this
+      mortal stage in a premature gout-fit, if he too early or too often
+      indulged in such tremendous drink. I think in my heart I am fonder of
+      pretty third-rate pictures than of your great thundering first-rates.
+      Confess how many times you have read Béranger, and how many Milton? If you
+      go to the &ldquo;Star and Garter,&rdquo; don't you grow sick of that vast, luscious
+      landscape, and long for the sight of a couple of cows, or a donkey, and a
+      few yards of common? Donkeys, my dear MacGilp, since we have come to this
+      subject, say not so; Richmond Hill for them. Milton they never grow tired
+      of; and are as familiar with Raphael as Bottom with exquisite Titania. Let
+      us thank heaven, my dear sir, for according to us the power to taste and
+      appreciate the pleasures of mediocrity. I have never heard that we were
+      great geniuses. Earthy are we, and of the earth; glimpses of the sublime
+      are but rare to us; leave we them to great geniuses, and to the donkeys;
+      and if it nothing profit us aërias tentâsse domos along with them, let us
+      thankfully remain below, being merry and humble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have now only to mention the charming &ldquo;Cruche Cassée&rdquo; of Greuze, which
+      all the young ladies delight to copy; and of which the color (a thought
+      too blue, perhaps) is marvellously graceful and delicate. There are three
+      more pictures by the artist, containing exquisite female heads and color;
+      but they have charms for French critics which are difficult to be
+      discovered by English eyes; and the pictures seem weak to me. A very fine
+      picture by Bon Bollongue, &ldquo;Saint Benedict resuscitating a Child,&rdquo; deserves
+      particular attention, and is superb in vigor and richness of color. You
+      must look, too, at the large, noble, melancholy landscapes of Philippe de
+      Champagne; and the two magnificent Italian pictures of Léopold Robert:
+      they are, perhaps, the very finest pictures that the French school has
+      produced,&mdash;as deep as Poussin, of a better color, and of a wonderful
+      minuteness and veracity in the representation of objects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every one of Lesueur's church-pictures is worth examining and admiring;
+      they are full of &ldquo;unction&rdquo; and pious mystical grace. &ldquo;Saint Scholastica&rdquo;
+       is divine; and the &ldquo;Taking down from the Cross&rdquo; as noble a composition as
+      ever was seen; I care not by whom the other may be. There is more beauty,
+      and less affectation, about this picture than you will find in the
+      performances of many Italian masters, with high-sounding names (out with
+      it, and say RAPHAEL at once). I hate those simpering Madonnas. I declare
+      that the &ldquo;Jardinière&rdquo; is a puking, smirking miss, with nothing heavenly
+      about her. I vow that the &ldquo;Saint Elizabeth&rdquo; is a bad picture,&mdash;a bad
+      composition, badly drawn, badly colored, in a bad imitation of Titian,&mdash;a
+      piece of vile affectation. I say, that when Raphael painted this picture
+      two years before his death, the spirit of painting had gone from out of
+      him; he was no longer inspired; IT WAS TIME THAT HE SHOULD DIE!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There,&mdash;the murder is out! My paper is filled to the brim, and there
+      is no time to speak of Lesueur's &ldquo;Crucifixion,&rdquo; which is odiously colored,
+      to be sure; but earnest, tender, simple, holy. But such things are most
+      difficult to translate into words;&mdash;one lays down the pen, and thinks
+      and thinks. The figures appear, and take their places one by one: ranging
+      themselves according to order, in light or in gloom, the colors are
+      reflected duly in the little camera obscura of the brain, and the whole
+      picture lies there complete; but can you describe it? No, not if pens were
+      fitch-brushes, and words were bladders of paint. With which, for the
+      present, adieu.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Your faithful
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. A. T.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mr. ROBERT MACGILP,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      NEWMAN STREET, LONDON. <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Simon Gambouge was the son of Solomon Gambouge; and as all the world
+      knows, both father and son were astonishingly clever fellows at their
+      profession. Solomon painted landscapes, which nobody bought; and Simon
+      took a higher line, and painted portraits to admiration, only nobody came
+      to sit to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he was not gaining five pounds a year by his profession, and had
+      arrived at the age of twenty, at least, Simon determined to better himself
+      by taking a wife,&mdash;a plan which a number of other wise men adopt, in
+      similar years and circumstances. So Simon prevailed upon a butcher's
+      daughter (to whom he owed considerably for cutlets) to quit the meat-shop
+      and follow him. Griskinissa&mdash;such was the fair creature's name&mdash;&ldquo;was
+      as lovely a bit of mutton,&rdquo; her father said, &ldquo;as ever a man would wish to
+      stick a knife into.&rdquo; She had sat to the painter for all sorts of
+      characters; and the curious who possess any of Gambouge's pictures will
+      see her as Venus, Minerva, Madonna, and in numberless other characters:
+      Portrait of a lady&mdash;Griskinissa; Sleeping Nymph&mdash;Griskinissa,
+      without a rag of clothes, lying in a forest; Maternal Solicitude&mdash;Griskinissa
+      again, with young Master Gambouge, who was by this time the offspring of
+      their affections.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady brought the painter a handsome little fortune of a couple of
+      hundred pounds; and as long as this sum lasted no woman could be more
+      lovely or loving. But want began speedily to attack their little
+      household; bakers' bills were unpaid; rent was due, and the reckless
+      landlord gave no quarter; and, to crown the whole, her father, unnatural
+      butcher! suddenly stopped the supplies of mutton-chops; and swore that his
+      daughter, and the dauber; her husband, should have no more of his wares.
+      At first they embraced tenderly, and, kissing and crying over their little
+      infant, vowed to heaven that they would do without: but in the course of
+      the evening Griskinissa grew peckish, and poor Simon pawned his best coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When this habit of pawning is discovered, it appears to the poor a kind of
+      Eldorado. Gambouge and his wife were so delighted, that they, in the
+      course of a month, made away with her gold chain, her great warming-pan,
+      his best crimson plush inexpressibles, two wigs, a washhand basin and
+      ewer, fire-irons, window-curtains, crockery, and arm-chairs. Griskinissa
+      said, smiling, that she had found a second father in HER UNCLE,&mdash;a
+      base pun, which showed that her mind was corrupted, and that she was no
+      longer the tender, simple Griskinissa of other days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am sorry to say that she had taken to drinking; she swallowed the
+      warming-pan in the course of three days, and fuddled herself one whole
+      evening with the crimson plush breeches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Drinking is the devil&mdash;the father, that is to say, of all vices.
+      Griskinissa's face and her mind grew ugly together; her good humor changed
+      to bilious, bitter discontent; her pretty, fond epithets, to foul abuse
+      and swearing; her tender blue eyes grew watery and blear, and the
+      peach-color on her cheeks fled from its old habitation, and crowded up
+      into her nose, where, with a number of pimples, it stuck fast. Add to this
+      a dirty, draggle-tailed chintz; long, matted hair, wandering into her
+      eyes, and over her lean shoulders, which were once so snowy, and you have
+      the picture of drunkenness and Mrs. Simon Gambouge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Simon, who had been a gay, lively fellow enough in the days of his
+      better fortune, was completely cast down by his present ill luck, and
+      cowed by the ferocity of his wife. From morning till night the neighbors
+      could hear this woman's tongue, and understand her doings; bellows went
+      skimming across the room, chairs were flumped down on the floor, and poor
+      Gambouge's oil and varnish pots went clattering through the windows, or
+      down the stairs. The baby roared all day; and Simon sat pale and idle in a
+      corner, taking a small sup at the brandy-bottle, when Mrs. Gambouge was
+      out of the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, as he sat disconsolately at his easel, furbishing up a picture of
+      his wife, in the character of Peace, which he had commenced a year before,
+      he was more than ordinarily desperate, and cursed and swore in the most
+      pathetic manner. &ldquo;O miserable fate of genius!&rdquo; cried he, &ldquo;was I, a man of
+      such commanding talents, born for this? to be bullied by a fiend of a
+      wife; to have my masterpieces neglected by the world, or sold only for a
+      few pieces? Cursed be the love which has misled me; cursed, be the art
+      which is unworthy of me! Let me dig or steal, let me sell myself as a
+      soldier, or sell myself to the Devil, I should not be more wretched than I
+      am now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite the contrary,&rdquo; cried a small, cheery voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; exclaimed Gambouge, trembling and surprised. &ldquo;Who's there?&mdash;where
+      are you?&mdash;who are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were just speaking of me,&rdquo; said the voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gambouge held, in his left hand, his palette; in his right, a bladder of
+      crimson lake, which he was about to squeeze out upon the mahogany. &ldquo;Where
+      are you?&rdquo; cried he again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;S-q-u-e-e-z-e!&rdquo; exclaimed the little voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gambouge picked out the nail from the bladder, and gave a squeeze; when,
+      as sure as I am living, a little imp spurted out from the hole upon the
+      palette, and began laughing in the most singular and oily manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When first born he was little bigger than a tadpole; then he grew to be as
+      big as a mouse; then he arrived at the size of a cat; and then he jumped
+      off the palette, and, turning head over heels, asked the poor painter what
+      he wanted with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The strange little animal twisted head over heels, and fixed himself at
+      last upon the top of Gambouge's easel,&mdash;smearing out, with his heels,
+      all the white and vermilion which had just been laid on the allegoric
+      portrait of Mrs. Gambouge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; exclaimed Simon, &ldquo;is it the&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly so; talk of me, you know, and I am always at hand: besides, I am
+      not half so black as I am painted, as you will see when you know me a
+      little better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Upon my word,&rdquo; said the painter, &ldquo;it is a very singular surprise which
+      you have given me. To tell truth, I did not even believe in your
+      existence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little imp put on a theatrical air, and, with one of Mr. Macready's
+      best looks, said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;There are more things in heaven and earth, Gambogio,
+      Than are dreamed of in your philosophy.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Gambouge, being a Frenchman, did not understand the quotation, but felt
+      somehow strangely and singularly interested in the conversation of his new
+      friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Diabolus continued: &ldquo;You are a man of merit, and want money; you will
+      starve on your merit; you can only get money from me. Come, my friend, how
+      much is it? I ask the easiest interest in the world: old Mordecai, the
+      usurer, has made you pay twice as heavily before now: nothing but the
+      signature of a bond, which is a mere ceremony, and the transfer of an
+      article which, in itself, is a supposition&mdash;a valueless, windy,
+      uncertain property of yours, called, by some poet of your own, I think, an
+      animula, vagula, blandula&mdash;bah! there is no use beating about the
+      bush&mdash;I mean A SOUL. Come, let me have it; you know you will sell it
+      some other way, and not get such good pay for your bargain!&rdquo;&mdash;and,
+      having made this speech, the Devil pulled out from his fob a sheet as big
+      as a double Times, only there was a different STAMP in the corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is useless and tedious to describe law documents: lawyers only love to
+      read them; and they have as good in Chitty as any that are to be found in
+      the Devil's own; so nobly have the apprentices emulated the skill of the
+      master. Suffice it to say, that poor Gambouge read over the paper, and
+      signed it. He was to have all he wished for seven years, and at the end of
+      that time was to become the property of the &mdash;&mdash;-; PROVIDED
+      that, during the course of the seven years, every single wish which he
+      might form should be gratified by the other of the contracting parties;
+      otherwise the deed became null and non-avenue, and Gambouge should be left
+      &ldquo;to go to the &mdash;&mdash;- his own way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will never see me again,&rdquo; said Diabolus, in shaking hands with poor
+      Simon, on whose fingers he left such a mark as is to be seen at this day&mdash;&ldquo;never,
+      at least, unless you want me; for everything you ask will be performed in
+      the most quiet and every-day manner: believe me, it is best and most
+      gentlemanlike, and avoids anything like scandal. But if you set me about
+      anything which is extraordinary, and out of the course of nature, as it
+      were, come I must, you know; and of this you are the best judge.&rdquo; So
+      saying, Diabolus disappeared; but whether up the chimney, through the
+      keyhole, or by any other aperture or contrivance, nobody knows. Simon
+      Gambouge was left in a fever of delight, as, heaven forgive me! I believe
+      many a worthy man would be, if he were allowed an opportunity to make a
+      similar bargain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heigho!&rdquo; said Simon. &ldquo;I wonder whether this be a reality or a dream.&mdash;I
+      am sober, I know; for who will give me credit for the means to be drunk?
+      and as for sleeping, I'm too hungry for that. I wish I could see a capon
+      and a bottle of white wine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MONSIEUR SIMON!&rdquo; cried a voice on the landing-place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;C'est ici,&rdquo; quoth Gambouge, hastening to open the door. He did so; and
+      lo! there was a restaurateur's boy at the door, supporting a tray, a
+      tin-covered dish, and plates on the same; and, by its side, a tall
+      amber-colored flask of Sauterne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am the new boy, sir,&rdquo; exclaimed this youth, on entering; &ldquo;but I believe
+      this is the right door, and you asked for these things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Simon grinned, and said, &ldquo;Certainly, I did ASK FOR these things.&rdquo; But such
+      was the effect which his interview with the demon had had on his innocent
+      mind, that he took them, although he knew that they were for old Simon,
+      the Jew dandy, who was mad after an opera girl, and lived on the floor
+      beneath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go, my boy,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;it is good: call in a couple of hours, and remove
+      the plates and glasses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little waiter trotted down stairs, and Simon sat greedily down to
+      discuss the capon and the white wine. He bolted the legs, he devoured the
+      wings, he cut every morsel of flesh from the breast;&mdash;seasoning his
+      repast with pleasant draughts of wine, and caring nothing for the
+      inevitable bill, which was to follow all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye gods!&rdquo; said he, as he scraped away at the backbone, &ldquo;what a dinner!
+      what wine!&mdash;and how gayly served up too!&rdquo; There were silver forks and
+      spoons, and the remnants of the fowl were upon a silver dish. &ldquo;Why, the
+      money for this dish and these spoons,&rdquo; cried Simon, &ldquo;would keep me and
+      Mrs. G. for a month! I WISH&rdquo;&mdash;and here Simon whistled, and turned
+      round to see that nobody was peeping&mdash;&ldquo;I wish the plate were mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, the horrid progress of the Devil! &ldquo;Here they are,&rdquo; thought Simon to
+      himself; &ldquo;why should not I TAKE THEM?&rdquo; And take them he did. &ldquo;Detection,&rdquo;
+       said he, &ldquo;is not so bad as starvation; and I would as soon live at the
+      galleys as live with Madame Gambouge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Gambouge shovelled dish and spoons into the flap of his surtout, and
+      ran down stairs as if the Devil were behind him&mdash;as, indeed, he was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He immediately made for the house of his old friend the pawnbroker&mdash;that
+      establishment which is called in France the Mont de Piété. &ldquo;I am obliged
+      to come to you again, my old friend,&rdquo; said Simon, &ldquo;with some family plate,
+      of which I beseech you to take care.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The pawnbroker smiled as he examined the goods. &ldquo;I can give you nothing
+      upon them,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What!&rdquo; cried Simon; &ldquo;not even the worth of the silver?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I could buy them at that price at the 'Café Morisot,' Rue de la
+      Verrerie, where, I suppose, you got them a little cheaper.&rdquo; And, so
+      saying, he showed to the guilt-stricken Gambouge how the name of that
+      coffee-house was inscribed upon every one of the articles which he had
+      wished to pawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The effects of conscience are dreadful indeed. Oh! how fearful is
+      retribution, how deep is despair, how bitter is remorse for crime&mdash;WHEN
+      CRIME IS FOUND OUT!&mdash;otherwise, conscience takes matters much more
+      easily. Gambouge cursed his fate, and swore henceforth to be virtuous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, hark ye, my friend,&rdquo; continued the honest broker, &ldquo;there is no
+      reason why, because I cannot lend upon these things, I should not buy
+      them: they will do to melt, if for no other purpose. Will you have half
+      the money?&mdash;speak, or I peach.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Simon's resolves about virtue were dissipated instantaneously. &ldquo;Give me
+      half,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and let me go.&mdash;What scoundrels are these
+      pawnbrokers!&rdquo; ejaculated he, as he passed out of the accursed shop,
+      &ldquo;seeking every wicked pretext to rob the poor man of his hard-won gain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had marched forwards for a street or two, Gambouge counted the
+      money which he had received, and found that he was in possession of no
+      less than a hundred francs. It was night, as he reckoned out his equivocal
+      gains, and he counted them at the light of a lamp. He looked up at the
+      lamp, in doubt as to the course he should next pursue: upon it was
+      inscribed the simple number, 152. &ldquo;A gambling-house,&rdquo; thought Gambouge. &ldquo;I
+      wish I had half the money that is now on the table, up stairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He mounted, as many a rogue has done before him, and found half a hundred
+      persons busy at a table of rouge et noir. Gambouge's five napoleons looked
+      insignificant by the side of the heaps which were around him; but the
+      effects of the wine, of the theft, and of the detection by the pawnbroker,
+      were upon him, and he threw down his capital stoutly upon the 0 0.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a dangerous spot that 0 0, or double zero; but to Simon it was more
+      lucky than to the rest of the world. The ball went spinning round&mdash;in
+      &ldquo;its predestined circle rolled,&rdquo; as Shelley has it, after Goethe&mdash;and
+      plumped down at last in the double zero. One hundred and thirty-five gold
+      napoleons (louis they were then) were counted out to the delighted
+      painter. &ldquo;Oh, Diabolus!&rdquo; cried he, &ldquo;now it is that I begin to believe in
+      thee! Don't talk about merit,&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;talk about fortune. Tell me not
+      about heroes for the future&mdash;tell me of ZEROES.&rdquo; And down went twenty
+      napoleons more upon the 0.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Devil was certainly in the ball: round it twirled, and dropped into
+      zero as naturally as a duck pops its head into a pond. Our friend received
+      five hundred pounds for his stake; and the croupiers and lookers-on began
+      to stare at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were twelve thousand pounds on the table. Suffice it to say, that
+      Simon won half, and retired from the Palais Royal with a thick bundle of
+      bank-notes crammed into his dirty three-cornered hat. He had been but half
+      an hour in the place, and he had won the revenues of a prince for half a
+      year!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gambouge, as soon as he felt that he was a capitalist, and that he had a
+      stake in the country, discovered that he was an altered man. He repented
+      of his foul deed, and his base purloining of the restaurateur's plate. &ldquo;O
+      honesty!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;how unworthy is an action like this of a man who has
+      a property like mine!&rdquo; So he went back to the pawnbroker with the
+      gloomiest face imaginable. &ldquo;My friend,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I have sinned against
+      all that I hold most sacred: I have forgotten my family and my religion.
+      Here is thy money. In the name of heaven, restore me the plate which I
+      have wrongfully sold thee!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the pawnbroker grinned, and said, &ldquo;Nay, Mr. Gambouge, I will sell that
+      plate for a thousand francs to you, or I never will sell it at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; cried Gambouge, &ldquo;thou art an inexorable ruffian, Troisboules; but
+      I will give thee all I am worth.&rdquo; And here he produced a billet of five
+      hundred francs. &ldquo;Look,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;this money is all I own; it is the
+      payment of two years' lodging. To raise it, I have toiled for many months;
+      and, failing, I have been a criminal. O heaven! I STOLE that plate that I
+      might pay my debt, and keep my dear wife from wandering houseless. But I
+      cannot bear this load of ignominy&mdash;I cannot suffer the thought of
+      this crime. I will go to the person to whom I did wrong, I will starve, I
+      will confess; but I will, I WILL do right!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The broker was alarmed. &ldquo;Give me thy note,&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;here is the plate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me an acquittal first,&rdquo; cried Simon, almost broken-hearted; &ldquo;sign me
+      a paper, and the money is yours.&rdquo; So Troisboules wrote according to
+      Gambouge's dictation; &ldquo;Received, for thirteen ounces of plate, twenty
+      pounds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monster of iniquity!&rdquo; cried the painter, &ldquo;fiend of wickedness! thou art
+      caught in thine own snares. Hast thou not sold me five pounds' worth of
+      plate for twenty? Have I it not in my pocket? Art thou not a convicted
+      dealer in stolen goods? Yield, scoundrel, yield thy money, or I will bring
+      thee to justice!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The frightened pawnbroker bullied and battled for a while; but he gave up
+      his money at last, and the dispute ended. Thus it will be seen that
+      Diabolus had rather a hard bargain in the wily Gambouge. He had taken a
+      victim prisoner, but he had assuredly caught a Tartar. Simon now returned
+      home, and, to do him justice, paid the bill for his dinner, and restored
+      the plate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now I may add (and the reader should ponder upon this, as a profound
+      picture of human life), that Gambouge, since he had grown rich, grew
+      likewise abundantly moral. He was a most exemplary father. He fed the
+      poor, and was loved by them. He scorned a base action. And I have no doubt
+      that Mr. Thurtell, or the late lamented Mr. Greenacre, in similar
+      circumstances, would have acted like the worthy Simon Gambouge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was but one blot upon his character&mdash;he hated Mrs. Gam. worse
+      than ever. As he grew more benevolent, she grew more virulent: when he
+      went to plays, she went to Bible societies, and vice versâ: in fact, she
+      led him such a life as Xantippe led Socrates, or as a dog leads a cat in
+      the same kitchen. With all his fortune&mdash;for, as may be supposed,
+      Simon prospered in all worldly things&mdash;he was the most miserable dog
+      in the whole city of Paris. Only in the point of drinking did he and Mrs.
+      Simon agree; and for many years, and during a considerable number of hours
+      in each day, he thus dissipated, partially, his domestic chagrin. O
+      philosophy! we may talk of thee: but, except at the bottom of the winecup,
+      where thou liest like truth in a well, where shall we find thee?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lived so long, and in his worldly matters prospered so much, there was
+      so little sign of devilment in the accomplishment of his wishes, and the
+      increase of his prosperity, that Simon, at the end of six years, began to
+      doubt whether he had made any such bargain at all, as that which we have
+      described at the commencement of this history. He had grown, as we said,
+      very pious and moral. He went regularly to mass, and had a confessor into
+      the bargain. He resolved, therefore, to consult that reverend gentleman,
+      and to lay before him the whole matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am inclined to think, holy sir,&rdquo; said Gambouge, after he had concluded
+      his history, and shown how, in some miraculous way, all his desires were
+      accomplished, &ldquo;that, after all, this demon was no other than the creation
+      of my own brain, heated by the effects of that bottle of wine, the cause
+      of my crime and my prosperity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The confessor agreed with him, and they walked out of church comfortably
+      together, and entered afterwards a café, where they sat down to refresh
+      themselves after the fatigues of their devotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A respectable old gentleman, with a number of orders at his buttonhole,
+      presently entered the room, and sauntered up to the marble table, before
+      which reposed Simon and his clerical friend. &ldquo;Excuse me, gentlemen,&rdquo; he
+      said, as he took a place opposite them, and began reading the papers of
+      the day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah!&rdquo; said he, at last,&mdash;&ldquo;sont-ils grands ces journaux Anglais?
+      Look, sir,&rdquo; he said, handing over an immense sheet of The Times to Mr.
+      Gambouge, &ldquo;was ever anything so monstrous?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gambouge smiled politely, and examined the proffered page. &ldquo;It is
+      enormous&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;but I do not read English.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; said the man with the orders, &ldquo;look closer at it, Signor Gambouge;
+      it is astonishing how easy the language is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wondering, Simon took a sheet of paper. He turned pale as he looked at it,
+      and began to curse the ices and the waiter. &ldquo;Come, M. l'Abbé,&rdquo; he said;
+      &ldquo;the heat and glare of this place are intolerable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger rose with them. &ldquo;Au plaisir de vous revoir, mon cher
+      monsieur,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;I do not mind speaking before the Abbé here, who will
+      be my very good friend one of these days: but I thought it necessary to
+      refresh your memory, concerning our little business transaction six years
+      since; and could not exactly talk of it AT CHURCH, as you may fancy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Simon Gambouge had seen, in the double-sheeted Times, the paper signed by
+      himself, which the little Devil had pulled out of his fob.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no doubt on the subject; and Simon, who had but a year to live,
+      grew more pious, and more careful than ever. He had consultations with all
+      the doctors of the Sorbonne and all the lawyers of the Palais. But his
+      magnificence grew as wearisome to him as his poverty had been before; and
+      not one of the doctors whom he consulted could give him a pennyworth of
+      consolation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he grew outrageous in his demands upon the Devil, and put him to all
+      sorts of absurd and ridiculous tasks; but they were all punctually
+      performed, until Simon could invent no new ones, and the Devil sat all day
+      with his hands in his pockets doing nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, Simon's confessor came bounding into the room, with the greatest
+      glee. &ldquo;My friend,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I have it! Eureka!&mdash;I have found it.
+      Send the Pope a hundred thousand crowns, build a new Jesuit college at
+      Rome, give a hundred gold candlesticks to St. Peter's; and tell his
+      Holiness you will double all, if he will give you absolution!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gambouge caught at the notion, and hurried off a courier to Rome ventre à
+      terre. His Holiness agreed to the request of the petition, and sent him an
+      absolution, written out with his own fist, and all in due form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;foul fiend, I defy you! arise, Diabolus! your contract is
+      not worth a jot: the Pope has absolved me, and I am safe on the road to
+      salvation.&rdquo; In a fervor of gratitude he clasped the hand of his confessor,
+      and embraced him: tears of joy ran down the cheeks of these good men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They heard an inordinate roar of laughter, and there was Diabolus sitting
+      opposite to them, holding his sides, and lashing his tail about, as if he
+      would have gone mad with glee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;what nonsense is this! do you suppose I care about THAT?&rdquo;
+       and he tossed the Pope's missive into a corner. &ldquo;M. l'Abbé knows,&rdquo; he
+      said, bowing and grinning, &ldquo;that though the Pope's paper may pass current
+      HERE, it is not worth twopence in our country. What do I care about the
+      Pope's absolution? You might just as well be absolved by your under
+      butler.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Egad,&rdquo; said the Abbé, &ldquo;the rogue is right&mdash;I quite forgot the fact,
+      which he points out clearly enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, Gambouge,&rdquo; continued Diabolus, with horrid familiarity, &ldquo;go thy
+      ways, old fellow, that COCK WON'T FIGHT.&rdquo; And he retired up the chimney,
+      chuckling at his wit and his triumph. Gambouge heard his tail scuttling
+      all the way up, as if he had been a sweeper by profession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Simon was left in that condition of grief in which, according to the
+      newspapers, cities and nations are found when a murder is committed, or a
+      lord ill of the gout&mdash;a situation, we say, more easy to imagine than
+      to describe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To add to his woes, Mrs. Gambouge, who was now first made acquainted with
+      his compact, and its probable consequences, raised such a storm about his
+      ears, as made him wish almost that his seven years were expired. She
+      screamed, she scolded, she swore, she wept, she went into such fits of
+      hysterics, that poor Gambouge, who had completely knocked under to her,
+      was worn out of his life. He was allowed no rest, night or day: he moped
+      about his fine house, solitary and wretched, and cursed his stars that he
+      ever had married the butcher's daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It wanted six months of the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sudden and desperate resolution seemed all at once to have taken
+      possession of Simon Gambouge. He called his family and his friends
+      together&mdash;he gave one of the greatest feasts that ever was known in
+      the city of Paris&mdash;he gayly presided at one end of his table, while
+      Mrs. Gam., splendidly arrayed, gave herself airs at the other extremity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After dinner, using the customary formula, he called upon Diabolus to
+      appear. The old ladies screamed, and hoped he would not appear naked; the
+      young ones tittered, and longed to see the monster: everybody was pale
+      with expectation and affright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A very quiet, gentlemanly man, neatly dressed in black, made his
+      appearance, to the surprise of all present, and bowed all round to the
+      company. &ldquo;I will not show my CREDENTIALS,&rdquo; he said, blushing, and pointing
+      to his hoofs, which were cleverly hidden by his pumps and shoe-buckles,
+      &ldquo;unless the ladies absolutely wish it; but I am the person you want, Mr.
+      Gambouge; pray tell me what is your will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know,&rdquo; said that gentleman, in a stately and determined voice, &ldquo;that
+      you are bound to me, according to our agreement, for six months to come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am,&rdquo; replied the new comer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are to do all that I ask, whatsoever it may be, or you forfeit the
+      bond which I gave you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You declare this before the present company?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Upon my honor, as a gentleman,&rdquo; said Diabolus, bowing, and laying his
+      hand upon his waistcoat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A whisper of applause ran round the room: all were charmed with the bland
+      manners of the fascinating stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My love,&rdquo; continued Gambouge, mildly addressing his lady, &ldquo;will you be so
+      polite as to step this way? You know I must go soon, and I am anxious,
+      before this noble company, to make a provision for one who, in sickness as
+      in health, in poverty as in riches, has been my truest and fondest
+      companion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gambouge mopped his eyes with his handkerchief&mdash;all the company did
+      likewise. Diabolus sobbed audibly, and Mrs. Gambouge sidled up to her
+      husband's side, and took him tenderly by the hand. &ldquo;Simon!&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;is
+      it true? and do you really love your Griskinissa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Simon continued solemnly: &ldquo;Come hither, Diabolus; you are bound to obey me
+      in all things for the six months during which our contract has to run;
+      take, then, Griskinissa Gambouge, live alone with her for half a year,
+      never leave her from morning till night, obey all her caprices, follow all
+      her whims, and listen to all the abuse which falls from her infernal
+      tongue. Do this, and I ask no more of you; I will deliver myself up at the
+      appointed time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Not Lord G&mdash;-, when flogged by lord B&mdash;-, in the House,&mdash;not
+      Mr. Cartlitch, of Astley's Amphitheatre, in his most pathetic passages,
+      could look more crestfallen, and howl more hideously, than Diabolus did
+      now. &ldquo;Take another year, Gambouge,&rdquo; screamed he; &ldquo;two more&mdash;ten more&mdash;a
+      century; roast me on Lawrence's gridiron, boil me in holy water, but don't
+      ask that: don't, don't bid me live with Mrs. Gambouge!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Simon smiled sternly. &ldquo;I have said it,&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;do this, or our
+      contract is at an end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Devil, at this, grinned so horribly that every drop of beer in the
+      house turned sour: he gnashed his teeth so frightfully that every person
+      in the company wellnigh fainted with the cholic. He slapped down the great
+      parchment upon the floor, trampled upon it madly, and lashed it with his
+      hoofs and his tail: at last, spreading out a mighty pair of wings as wide
+      as from here to Regent Street, he slapped Gambouge with his tail over one
+      eye, and vanished, abruptly, through the keyhole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gambouge screamed with pain and started up. &ldquo;You drunken, lazy scoundrel!&rdquo;
+       cried a shrill and well-known voice, &ldquo;you have been asleep these two
+      hours:&rdquo; and here he received another terrific box on the ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was too true, he had fallen asleep at his work; and the beautiful
+      vision had been dispelled by the thumps of the tipsy Griskinissa. Nothing
+      remained to corroborate his story, except the bladder of lake, and this
+      was spirted all over his waistcoat and breeches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish,&rdquo; said the poor fellow, rubbing his tingling cheeks, &ldquo;that dreams
+      were true;&rdquo; and he went to work again at his portrait.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My last accounts of Gambouge are, that he has left the arts, and is
+      footman in a small family. Mrs. Gam. takes in washing; and it is said
+      that, her continual dealings with soap-suds and hot water have been the
+      only things in life which have kept her from spontaneous combustion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CARTOUCHE.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have been much interested with an account of the exploits of Monsieur
+      Louis Dominic Cartouche, and as Newgate and the highways are so much the
+      fashion with us in England, we may be allowed to look abroad for histories
+      of a similar tendency. It is pleasant to find that virtue is cosmopolite,
+      and may exist among wooden-shoed Papists as well as honest
+      Church-of-England men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Louis Dominic was born in a quarter of Paris called the Courtille, says
+      the historian whose work lies before me;&mdash;born in the Courtille, and
+      in the year 1693. Another biographer asserts that he was born two years
+      later, and in the Marais;&mdash;of respectable parents, of course. Think
+      of the talent that our two countries produced about this time:
+      Marlborough, Villars, Mandrin, Turpin, Boileau, Dryden, Swift, Addison,
+      Molière, Racine, Jack Sheppard, and Louis Cartouche,&mdash;all famous
+      within the same twenty years, and fighting, writing, robbing à l'envi!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, Marlborough was no chicken when he began to show his genius; Swift
+      was but a dull, idle, college lad; but if we read the histories of some
+      other great men mentioned in the above list&mdash;I mean the thieves,
+      especially&mdash;we shall find that they all commenced very early: they
+      showed a passion for their art, as little Raphael did, or little Mozart;
+      and the history of Cartouche's knaveries begins almost with his breeches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dominic's parents sent him to school at the college of Clermont (now Louis
+      le Grand); and although it has never been discovered that the Jesuits, who
+      directed that seminary, advanced him much in classical or theological
+      knowledge, Cartouche, in revenge, showed, by repeated instances, his own
+      natural bent and genius, which no difficulties were strong enough to
+      overcome. His first great action on record, although not successful in the
+      end, and tinctured with the innocence of youth, is yet highly creditable
+      to him. He made a general swoop of a hundred and twenty nightcaps
+      belonging to his companions, and disposed of them to his satisfaction; but
+      as it was discovered that of all the youths in the college of Clermont, he
+      only was the possessor of a cap to sleep in, suspicion (which, alas! was
+      confirmed) immediately fell upon him: and by this little piece of youthful
+      naïveté, a scheme, prettily conceived and smartly performed, was rendered
+      naught.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartouche had a wonderful love for good eating, and put all the
+      apple-women and cooks, who came to supply the students, under
+      contribution. Not always, however, desirous of robbing these, he used to
+      deal with them, occasionally, on honest principles of barter; that is,
+      whenever he could get hold of his schoolfellows' knives, books, rulers, or
+      playthings, which he used fairly to exchange for tarts and gingerbread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed as if the presiding genius of evil was determined to patronize
+      this young man; for before he had been long at college, and soon after he
+      had, with the greatest difficulty, escaped from the nightcap scrape, an
+      opportunity occurred by which he was enabled to gratify both his
+      propensities at once, and not only to steal, but to steal sweetmeats. It
+      happened that the principal of the college received some pots of Narbonne
+      honey, which came under the eyes of Cartouche, and in which that young
+      gentleman, as soon as ever he saw them, determined to put his fingers. The
+      president of the college put aside his honey-pots in an apartment within
+      his own; to which, except by the one door which led into the room which
+      his reverence usually occupied, there was no outlet. There was no chimney
+      in the room; and the windows looked into the court, where there was a
+      porter at night, and where crowds passed by day. What was Cartouche to do?&mdash;have
+      the honey he must.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Over this chamber, which contained what his soul longed after, and over
+      the president's rooms, there ran a set of unoccupied garrets, into which
+      the dexterous Cartouche penetrated. These were divided from the rooms
+      below, according to the fashion of those days, by a set of large beams,
+      which reached across the whole building, and across which rude planks were
+      laid, which formed the ceiling of the lower story and the floor of the
+      upper. Some of these planks did young Cartouche remove; and having
+      descended by means of a rope, tied a couple of others to the neck of the
+      honey-pots, climbed back again, and drew up his prey in safety. He then
+      cunningly fixed the planks again in their old places, and retired to gorge
+      himself upon his booty. And, now, see the punishment of avarice! Everybody
+      knows that the brethren of the order of Jesus are bound by a vow to have
+      no more than a certain small sum of money in their possession. The
+      principal of the college of Clermont had amassed a larger sum, in defiance
+      of this rule: and where do you think the old gentleman had hidden it? In
+      the honey-pots! As Cartouche dug his spoon into one of them, he brought
+      out, besides a quantity of golden honey, a couple of golden louis, which,
+      with ninety-eight more of their fellows, were comfortably hidden in the
+      pots. Little Dominic, who, before, had cut rather a poor figure among his
+      fellow-students, now appeared in as fine clothes as any of them could
+      boast of; and when asked by his parents, on going home, how he came by
+      them, said that a young nobleman of his schoolfellows had taken a violent
+      fancy to him, and made him a present of a couple of his suits. Cartouche
+      the elder, good man, went to thank the young nobleman; but none such could
+      be found, and young Cartouche disdained to give any explanation of his
+      manner of gaining the money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, again, we have to regret and remark the inadvertence of youth.
+      Cartouche lost a hundred louis&mdash;for what? For a pot of honey not
+      worth a couple of shillings. Had he fished out the pieces, and replaced
+      the pots and the honey, he might have been safe, and a respectable citizen
+      all his life after. The principal would not have dared to confess the loss
+      of his money, and did not, openly; but he vowed vengeance against the
+      stealer of his sweetmeat, and a rigid search was made. Cartouche, as
+      usual, was fixed upon; and in the tick of his bed, lo! there were found a
+      couple of empty honey-pots! From this scrape there is no knowing how he
+      would have escaped, had not the president himself been a little anxious to
+      hush the matter up; and accordingly, young Cartouche was made to disgorge
+      the residue of his ill-gotten gold pieces, old Cartouche made up the
+      deficiency, and his son was allowed to remain unpunished&mdash;until the
+      next time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, you may fancy, was not very long in coming; and though history has
+      not made us acquainted with the exact crime which Louis Dominic next
+      committed, it must have been a serious one; for Cartouche, who had borne
+      philosophically all the whippings and punishments which were administered
+      to him at college, did not dare to face that one which his indignant
+      father had in pickle for him. As he was coming home from school, on the
+      first day after his crime, when he received permission to go abroad, one
+      of his brothers, who was on the look-out for him, met him at a short
+      distance from home, and told him what was in preparation; which so
+      frightened this young thief, that he declined returning home altogether,
+      and set out upon the wide world to shift for himself as he could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Undoubted as his genius was, he had not arrived at the full exercise of
+      it, and his gains were by no means equal to his appetite. In whatever
+      professions he tried,&mdash;whether he joined the gipsies, which he did,&mdash;whether
+      he picked pockets on the Pont Neuf, which occupation history attributes to
+      him,&mdash;poor Cartouche was always hungry. Hungry and ragged, he
+      wandered from one place and profession to another, and regretted the
+      honey-pots at Clermont, and the comfortable soup and bouilli at home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartouche had an uncle, a kind man, who was a merchant, and had dealings
+      at Rouen. One day, walking on the quays of that city, this gentleman saw a
+      very miserable, dirty, starving lad, who had just made a pounce upon some
+      bones and turnip-peelings, that had been flung out on the quay, and was
+      eating them as greedily as if they had been turkeys and truffles. The
+      worthy man examined the lad a little closer. O heavens! it was their
+      runaway prodigal&mdash;it was little Louis Dominic! The merchant was
+      touched by his case; and forgetting the nightcaps, the honey-pots, and the
+      rags and dirt of little Louis, took him to his arms, and kissed and hugged
+      him with the tenderest affection. Louis kissed and hugged too, and
+      blubbered a great deal: he was very repentant, as a man often is when he
+      is hungry; and he went home with his uncle, and his peace was made; and
+      his mother got him new clothes, and filled his belly, and for a while
+      Louis was as good a son as might be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But why attempt to balk the progress of genius? Louis's was not to be kept
+      down. He was sixteen years of age by this time&mdash;a smart, lively young
+      fellow, and, what is more, desperately enamored of a lovely washerwoman.
+      To be successful in your love, as Louis knew, you must have something more
+      than mere flames and sentiment;&mdash;a washer, or any other woman, cannot
+      live upon sighs only; but must have new gowns and caps, and a necklace
+      every now and then, and a few handkerchiefs and silk stockings, and a
+      treat into the country or to the play. Now, how are all these things to be
+      had without money? Cartouche saw at once that it was impossible; and as
+      his father would give him none, he was obliged to look for it elsewhere.
+      He took to his old courses, and lifted a purse here, and a watch there;
+      and found, moreover, an accommodating gentleman, who took the wares off
+      his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This gentleman introduced him into a very select and agreeable society, in
+      which Cartouche's merit began speedily to be recognized, and in which he
+      learnt how pleasant it is in life to have friends to assist one, and how
+      much may be done by a proper division of labor. M. Cartouche, in fact,
+      formed part of a regular company or gang of gentlemen, who were associated
+      together for the purpose of making war on the public and the law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartouche had a lovely young sister, who was to be married to a rich young
+      gentleman from the provinces. As is the fashion in France, the parents had
+      arranged the match among themselves; and the young people had never met
+      until just before the time appointed for the marriage, when the bridegroom
+      came up to Paris with his title-deeds, and settlements, and money. Now
+      there can hardly be found in history a finer instance of devotion than
+      Cartouche now exhibited. He went to his captain, explained the matter to
+      him, and actually, for the good of his country, as it were (the thieves
+      might be called his country), sacrificed his sister's husband's property.
+      Informations were taken, the house of the bridegroom was reconnoitred,
+      and, one night, Cartouche, in company with some chosen friends, made his
+      first visit to the house of his brother-in-law. All the people were gone
+      to bed; and, doubtless, for fear of disturbing the porter, Cartouche and
+      his companions spared him the trouble of opening the door, by ascending
+      quietly at the window. They arrived at the room where the bridegroom kept
+      his great chest, and set industriously to work, filing and picking the
+      locks which defended the treasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bridegroom slept in the next room; but however tenderly Cartouche and
+      his workmen handled their tools, from fear of disturbing his slumbers,
+      their benevolent design was disappointed, for awaken him they did; and
+      quietly slipping out of bed, he came to a place where he had a complete
+      view of all that was going on. He did not cry out, or frighten himself
+      sillily; but, on the contrary, contented himself with watching the
+      countenances of the robbers, so that he might recognize them on another
+      occasion; and, though an avaricious man, he did not feel the slightest
+      anxiety about his money-chest; for the fact is, he had removed all the
+      cash and papers the day before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon, however, as they had broken all the locks, and found the nothing
+      which lay at the bottom of the chest, he shouted with such a loud voice,
+      &ldquo;Here, Thomas!&mdash;John!&mdash;officer!&mdash;keep the gate, fire at the
+      rascals!&rdquo; that they, incontinently taking fright, skipped nimbly out of
+      window, and left the house free.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartouche, after this, did not care to meet his brother-in-law, but
+      eschewed all those occasions on which the latter was to be present at his
+      father's house. The evening before the marriage came; and then his father
+      insisted upon his appearance among the other relatives of the bride's and
+      bridegroom's families, who were all to assemble and make merry. Cartouche
+      was obliged to yield; and brought with him one or two of his companions,
+      who had been, by the way, present in the affair of the empty money-boxes;
+      and though he never fancied that there was any danger in meeting his
+      brother-in-law, for he had no idea that he had been seen on the night of
+      the attack, with a natural modesty, which did him really credit, he kept
+      out of the young bridegroom's sight as much as he could, and showed no
+      desire to be presented to him. At supper, however, as he was sneaking
+      modestly down to a side-table, his father shouted after him, &ldquo;Ho, Dominic,
+      come hither, and sit opposite to your brother-in-law:&rdquo; which Dominic did,
+      his friends following. The bridegroom pledged him very gracefully in a
+      bumper; and was in the act of making him a pretty speech, on the honor of
+      an alliance with such a family, and on the pleasures of brother-in-lawship
+      in general, when, looking in his face&mdash;ye gods! he saw the very man
+      who had been filing at his money-chest a few nights ago! By his side, too,
+      sat a couple more of the gang. The poor fellow turned deadly pale and
+      sick, and, setting his glass down, ran quickly out of the room, for he
+      thought he was in company of a whole gang of robbers. And when he got
+      home, he wrote a letter to the elder Cartouche, humbly declining any
+      connection with his family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartouche the elder, of course, angrily asked the reason of such an abrupt
+      dissolution of the engagement; and then, much to his horror, heard of his
+      eldest son's doings. &ldquo;You would not have me marry into such a family?&rdquo;
+       said the ex-bridegroom. And old Cartouche, an honest old citizen,
+      confessed, with a heavy heart, that he would not. What was he to do with
+      the lad? He did not like to ask for a lettre de cachet, and shut him up in
+      the Bastile. He determined to give him a year's discipline at the
+      monastery of St. Lazare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But how to catch the young gentleman? Old Cartouche knew that, were he to
+      tell his son of the scheme, the latter would never obey, and, therefore,
+      he determined to be very cunning. He told Dominic that he was about to
+      make a heavy bargain with the fathers, and should require a witness; so
+      they stepped into a carriage together, and drove unsuspectingly to the Rue
+      St. Denis. But, when they arrived near the convent, Cartouche saw several
+      ominous figures gathering round the coach, and felt that his doom was
+      sealed. However, he made as if he knew nothing of the conspiracy; and the
+      carriage drew up, and his father, descended, and, bidding him wait for a
+      minute in the coach, promised to return to him. Cartouche looked out; on
+      the other side of the way half a dozen men were posted, evidently with the
+      intention of arresting him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartouche now performed a great and celebrated stroke of genius, which, if
+      he had not been professionally employed in the morning, he never could
+      have executed. He had in his pocket a piece of linen, which he had laid
+      hold of at the door of some shop, and from which he quickly tore three
+      suitable stripes. One he tied round his head, after the fashion of a
+      nightcap; a second round his waist, like an apron; and with the third he
+      covered his hat, a round one, with a large brim. His coat and his periwig
+      lie left behind him in the carriage; and when he stepped out from it
+      (which he did without asking the coachman to let down the steps), he bore
+      exactly the appearance of a cook's boy carrying a dish; and with this he
+      slipped through the exempts quite unsuspected, and bade adieu to the
+      Lazarists and his honest father, who came out speedily to seek him, and
+      was not a little annoyed to find only his coat and wig.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With that coat and wig, Cartouche left home, father, friends, conscience,
+      remorse, society, behind him. He discovered (like a great number of other
+      philosophers and poets, when they have committed rascally actions) that
+      the world was all going wrong, and he quarrelled with it outright. One of
+      the first stories told of the illustrious Cartouche, when he became
+      professionally and openly a robber, redounds highly to his credit, and
+      shows that he knew how to take advantage of the occasion, and how much he
+      had improved in the course of a very few years' experience. His courage
+      and ingenuity were vastly admired by his friends; so much so, that, one
+      day, the captain of the band thought fit to compliment him, and vowed that
+      when he (the captain) died, Cartouche should infallibly be called to the
+      command-in-chief. This conversation, so flattering to Cartouche, was
+      carried on between the two gentlemen, as they were walking, one night, on
+      the quays by the side of the Seine. Cartouche, when the captain made the
+      last remark, blushingly protested against it, and pleaded his extreme
+      youth as a reason why his comrades could never put entire trust in him.
+      &ldquo;Psha, man!&rdquo; said the captain, &ldquo;thy youth is in thy favor; thou wilt live
+      only the longer to lead thy troops to victory. As for strength, bravery,
+      and cunning, wert thou as old as Methuselah, thou couldst not be better
+      provided than thou art now, at eighteen.&rdquo; What was the reply of Monsieur
+      Cartouche? He answered, not by words, but by actions. Drawing his knife
+      from his girdle, he instantly dug it into the captain's left side, as near
+      his heart as possible; and then, seizing that imprudent commander,
+      precipitated him violently into the waters of the Seine, to keep company
+      with the gudgeons and river-gods. When he returned to the band, and
+      recounted how the captain had basely attempted to assassinate him, and how
+      he, on the contrary, had, by exertion of superior skill, overcome the
+      captain, not one of the society believed a word of his history; but they
+      elected him captain forthwith. I think his Excellency Don Rafael Maroto,
+      the pacificator of Spain, is an amiable character, for whom history has
+      not been written in vain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Being arrived at this exalted position, there is no end of the feats which
+      Cartouche performed; and his band reached to such a pitch of glory, that
+      if there had been a hundred thousand, instead of a hundred of them, who
+      knows but that a new and popular dynasty might not have been founded, and
+      &ldquo;Louis Dominic, premier Empereur des Français,&rdquo; might have performed
+      innumerable glorious actions, and fixed himself in the hearts of his
+      people, just as other monarchs have done, a hundred years after
+      Cartouche's death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A story similar to the above, and equally moral, is that of Cartouche,
+      who, in company with two other gentlemen, robbed the coche, or
+      packet-boat, from Melun, where they took a good quantity of booty,&mdash;making
+      the passengers lie down on the decks, and rifling them at leisure. &ldquo;This
+      money will be but very little among three,&rdquo; whispered Cartouche to his
+      neighbor, as the three conquerors were making merry over their gains; &ldquo;if
+      you were but to pull the trigger of your pistol in the neighborhood of
+      your comrade's ear, perhaps it might go off, and then there would be but
+      two of us to share.&rdquo; Strangely enough, as Cartouche said, the pistol DID
+      go off, and No. 3 perished. &ldquo;Give him another ball,&rdquo; said Cartouche; and
+      another was fired into him. But no sooner had Cartouche's comrade
+      discharged both his pistols, than Cartouche himself, seized with a furious
+      indignation, drew his: &ldquo;Learn, monster,&rdquo; cried he, &ldquo;not to be so greedy of
+      gold, and perish, the victim of thy disloyalty and avarice!&rdquo; So Cartouche
+      slew the second robber; and there is no man in Europe who can say that the
+      latter did not merit well his punishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I could fill volumes, and not mere sheets of paper, with tales of the
+      triumphs of Cartouche and his band; how he robbed the Countess of O&mdash;&mdash;,
+      going to Dijon, in her coach, and how the Countess fell in love with him,
+      and was faithful to him ever after; how, when the lieutenant of police
+      offered a reward of a hundred pistoles to any man who would bring
+      Cartouche before him, a noble Marquess, in a coach and six, drove up to
+      the hotel of the police; and the noble Marquess, desiring to see Monsieur
+      de la Reynie, on matters of the highest moment, alone, the latter
+      introduced him into his private cabinet; and how, when there, the Marquess
+      drew from his pocket a long, curiously shaped dagger: &ldquo;Look at this,
+      Monsieur de la Reynie,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;this dagger is poisoned!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it possible?&rdquo; said M. de la Reynie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A prick of it would do for any man,&rdquo; said the Marquess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't say so!&rdquo; said M. de la Reynie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do, though; and, what is more,&rdquo; says the Marquess, in a terrible voice,
+      &ldquo;if you do not instantly lay yourself flat on the ground, with your face
+      towards it, and your hands crossed over your back, or if you make the
+      slightest noise or cry, I will stick this poisoned dagger between your
+      ribs, as sure as my name is Cartouche?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of this dreadful name, M. de la Reynie sunk incontinently
+      down on his stomach, and submitted to be carefully gagged and corded;
+      after which Monsieur Cartouche laid his hands upon all the money which was
+      kept in the lieutenant's cabinet. Alas! and alas! many a stout bailiff,
+      and many an honest fellow of a spy, went, for that day, without his pay
+      and his victuals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is a story that Cartouche once took the diligence to Lille, and
+      found in it a certain Abbé Potter, who was full of indignation against
+      this monster of a Cartouche, and said that when he went back to Paris,
+      which he proposed to do in about a fortnight, he should give the
+      lieutenant of police some information, which would infallibly lead to the
+      scoundrel's capture. But poor Potter was disappointed in his designs; for,
+      before he could fulfil them, he was made the victim of Cartouche's
+      cruelty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A letter came to the lieutenant of police, to state that Cartouche had
+      travelled to Lille, in company with the Abbé de Potter, of that town;
+      that, on the reverend gentleman's return towards Paris, Cartouche had
+      waylaid him, murdered him, taken his papers, and would come to Paris
+      himself, bearing the name and clothes of the unfortunate Abbé, by the
+      Lille coach, on such a day. The Lille coach arrived, was surrounded by
+      police agents; the monster Cartouche was there, sure enough, in the Abbé's
+      guise. He was seized, bound, flung into prison, brought out to be
+      examined, and, on examination, found to be no other than the Abbé Potter
+      himself! It is pleasant to read thus of the relaxations of great men, and
+      find them condescending to joke like the meanest of us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another diligence adventure is recounted of the famous Cartouche. It
+      happened that he met, in the coach, a young and lovely lady, clad in
+      widow's weeds, and bound to Paris, with a couple of servants. The poor
+      thing was the widow of a rich old gentleman of Marseilles, and was going
+      to the capital to arrange with her lawyers, and to settle her husband's
+      will. The Count de Grinche (for so her fellow-passenger was called) was
+      quite as candid as the pretty widow had been, and stated that he was a
+      captain in the regiment of Nivernois; that he was going to Paris to buy a
+      colonelcy, which his relatives, the Duke de Bouillon, the Prince de
+      Montmorency, the Commandeur de la Trémoille, with all their interest at
+      court, could not fail to procure for him. To be short, in the course of
+      the four days' journey, the Count Louis Dominic de Grinche played his
+      cards so well, that the poor little widow half forgot her late husband;
+      and her eyes glistened with tears as the Count kissed her hand at parting&mdash;at
+      parting, he hoped, only for a few hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Day and night the insinuating Count followed her; and when, at the end of
+      a fortnight, and in the midst of a tête-à-tête, he plunged, one morning,
+      suddenly on his knees, and said, &ldquo;Leonora, do you love me?&rdquo; the poor thing
+      heaved the gentlest, tenderest, sweetest sigh in the world; and sinking
+      her blushing head on his shoulder, whispered, &ldquo;Oh, Dominic, je t'aime!
+      Ah!&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;how noble is it of my Dominic to take me with the little I
+      have, and he so rich a nobleman!&rdquo; The fact is, the old Baron's titles and
+      estates had passed away to his nephews; his dowager was only left with
+      three hundred thousand livres, in rentes sur l'état&mdash;a handsome sum,
+      but nothing to compare to the rent-roll of Count Dominic, Count de la
+      Grinche, Seigneur de la Haute Pigre, Baron de la Bigorne; he had estates
+      and wealth which might authorize him to aspire to the hand of a duchess,
+      at least.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The unfortunate widow never for a moment suspected the cruel trick that
+      was about to be played on her; and, at the request of her affianced
+      husband, sold out her money, and realized it in gold, to be made over to
+      him on the day when the contract was to be signed. The day arrived; and,
+      according to the custom in France, the relations of both parties attended.
+      The widow's relatives, though respectable, were not of the first nobility,
+      being chiefly persons of the finance or the robe: there was the president
+      of the court of Arras, and his lady; a farmer-general; a judge of a court
+      of Paris; and other such grave and respectable people. As for Monsieur le
+      Comte de la Grinche, he was not bound for names; and, having the whole
+      peerage to choose from, brought a host of Montmorencies, Créquis, De la
+      Tours, and Guises at his back. His homme d'affaires brought his papers in
+      a sack, and displayed the plans of his estates, and the titles of his
+      glorious ancestry. The widow's lawyers had her money in sacks; and between
+      the gold on the one side, and the parchments on the other, lay the
+      contract which was to make the widow's three hundred thousand francs the
+      property of the Count de Grinche. The Count de la Grinche was just about
+      to sign; when the Marshal de Villars, stepping up to him, said, &ldquo;Captain,
+      do you know who the president of the court of Arras, yonder, is? It is old
+      Manasseh, the fence, of Brussels. I pawned a gold watch to him, which I
+      stole from Cadogan, when I was with Malbrook's army in Flanders.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the Duc de la Roche Guyon came forward, very much alarmed. &ldquo;Run me
+      through the body!&rdquo; said his Grace, &ldquo;but the comptroller-general's lady,
+      there, is no other than that old hag of a Margoton who keeps the &mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+       Here the Duc de la Roche Guyon's voice fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cartouche smiled graciously, and walked up to the table. He took up one of
+      the widow's fifteen thousand gold pieces;&mdash;it was as pretty a bit of
+      copper as you could wish to see. &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; said he politely, &ldquo;there is
+      some mistake here, and this business had better stop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Count!&rdquo; gasped the poor widow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Count be hanged!&rdquo; answered the bridegroom, sternly &ldquo;my name is
+      CARTOUCHE!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      ON SOME FRENCH FASHIONABLE NOVELS. WITH A PLEA FOR ROMANCES IN GENERAL.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is an old story of a Spanish court painter, who, being pressed for
+      money, and having received a piece of damask, which he was to wear in a
+      state procession, pawned the damask, and appeared, at the show, dressed
+      out in some very fine sheets of paper, which he had painted so as exactly
+      to resemble silk. Nay, his coat looked so much richer than the doublets of
+      all the rest, that the Emperor Charles, in whose honor the procession was
+      given, remarked the painter, and so his deceit was found out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have often thought that, in respect of sham and real histories, a
+      similar fact may be noticed; the sham story appearing a great deal more
+      agreeable, life-like, and natural than the true one: and all who, from
+      laziness as well as principle, are inclined to follow the easy and
+      comfortable study of novels, may console themselves with the notion that
+      they are studying matters quite as important as history, and that their
+      favorite duodecimos are as instructive as the biggest quartos in the
+      world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If then, ladies, the big-wigs begin to sneer at the course of our studies,
+      calling our darling romances foolish, trivial, noxious to the mind,
+      enervators of intellect, fathers of idleness, and what not, let us at once
+      take a high ground, and say,&mdash;Go you to your own employments, and to
+      such dull studies as you fancy; go and bob for triangles, from the Pons
+      Asinorum; go enjoy your dull black draughts of metaphysics; go fumble over
+      history books, and dissert upon Herodotus and Livy; OUR histories are,
+      perhaps, as true as yours; our drink is the brisk sparkling champagne
+      drink, from the presses of Colburn, Bentley and Co.; our walks are over
+      such sunshiny pleasure-grounds as Scott and Shakspeare have laid out for
+      us; and if our dwellings are castles in the air, we find them excessively
+      splendid and commodious;&mdash;be not you envious because you have no
+      wings to fly thither. Let the big-wigs despise us; such contempt of their
+      neighbors is the custom of all barbarous tribes;&mdash;witness, the
+      learned Chinese: Tippoo Sultaun declared that there were not in all Europe
+      ten thousand men: the Sklavonic hordes, it is said, so entitled themselves
+      from a word in their jargon, which signifies &ldquo;to speak;&rdquo; the ruffians
+      imagining that they had a monopoly of this agreeable faculty, and that all
+      other nations were dumb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not so: others may be DEAF; but the novelist has a loud, eloquent,
+      instructive language, though his enemies may despise or deny it ever so
+      much. What is more, one could, perhaps, meet the stoutest historian on his
+      own ground, and argue with him; showing that sham histories were much
+      truer than real histories; which are, in fact, mere contemptible
+      catalogues of names and places, that can have no moral effect upon the
+      reader.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As thus:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Julius Caesar beat Pompey, at Pharsalia.
+  The Duke of Marlborough beat Marshal Tallard at Blenheim.
+  The Constable of Bourbon beat Francis the First, at Pavia.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And what have we here?&mdash;so many names, simply. Suppose Pharsalia had
+      been, at that mysterious period when names were given, called Pavia; and
+      that Julius Caesar's family name had been John Churchill;&mdash;the fact
+      would have stood in history, thus:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;Pompey ran away from the Duke of Marlborough at Pavia.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      And why not?&mdash;we should have been just as wise. Or it might be stated
+      that&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;The tenth legion charged the French infantry at Blenheim; and
+   Caesar, writing home to his mamma, said, 'Madame, tout est perdu
+   fors l'honneur.'&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      What a contemptible science this is, then, about which quartos are
+      written, and sixty-volumed Biographies Universelles, and Lardner's Cabinet
+      Cyclopaedias, and the like! the facts are nothing in it, the names
+      everything and a gentleman might as well improve his mind by learning
+      Walker's &ldquo;Gazetteer,&rdquo; or getting by heart a fifty-years-old edition of the
+      &ldquo;Court Guide.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Having thus disposed of the historians, let us come to the point in
+      question&mdash;the novelists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the title-page of these volumes the reader has, doubtless, remarked,
+      that among the pieces introduced, some are announced as &ldquo;copies&rdquo; and
+      &ldquo;compositions.&rdquo; Many of the histories have, accordingly, been neatly
+      stolen from the collections of French authors (and mutilated, according to
+      the old saying, so that their owners should not know them) and, for
+      compositions, we intend to favor the public with some studies of French
+      modern works, that have not as yet, we believe, attracted the notice of
+      the English public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of such works there appear many hundreds yearly, as may be seen by the
+      French catalogues; but the writer has not so much to do with works
+      political, philosophical, historical, metaphysical, scientifical,
+      theological, as with those for which he has been putting forward a plea&mdash;novels,
+      namely; on which he has expended a great deal of time and study. And
+      passing from novels in general to French novels, let us confess, with much
+      humiliation, that we borrow from these stories a great deal more knowledge
+      of French society than from our own personal observation we ever can hope
+      to gain: for, let a gentleman who has dwelt two, four, or ten years in
+      Paris (and has not gone thither for the purpose of making a book, when
+      three weeks are sufficient)&mdash;let an English gentleman say, at the end
+      of any given period, how much he knows of French society, how many French
+      houses he has entered, and how many French friends he has made?&mdash;He
+      has enjoyed, at the end of the year, say&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  At the English Ambassador's, so many soirées.
+  At houses to which he has brought letters, so many tea-parties.
+  At Cafés, so many dinners.
+  At French private houses, say three dinners, and very lucky too.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      He has, we say, seen an immense number of wax candles, cups of tea,
+      glasses of orgeat, and French people, in best clothes, enjoying the same;
+      but intimacy there is none; we see but the outsides of the people. Year by
+      year we live in France, and grow gray, and see no more. We play écarté
+      with Monsieur de Trêfle every night; but what know we of the heart of the
+      man&mdash;of the inward ways, thoughts, and customs of Trêfle? If we have
+      good legs, and love the amusement, we dance with Countess Flicflac,
+      Tuesday's and Thursdays, ever since the Peace; and how far are we advanced
+      in acquaintance with her since we first twirled her round a room? We know
+      her velvet gown, and her diamonds (about three-fourths of them are sham,
+      by the way); we know her smiles, and her simpers, and her rouge&mdash;but
+      no more: she may turn into a kitchen wench at twelve on Thursday night,
+      for aught we know; her voiture, a pumpkin; and her gens, so many rats: but
+      the real, rougeless, intime Flicflac, we know not. This privilege is
+      granted to no Englishman: we may understand the French language as well as
+      Monsieur de Levizac, but never can penetrate into Flicflac's confidence:
+      our ways are not her ways; our manners of thinking, not hers: when we say
+      a good thing, in the course of the night, we are wondrous lucky and
+      pleased; Flicflac will trill you off fifty in ten minutes, and wonder at
+      the bêtise of the Briton, who has never a word to say. We are married, and
+      have fourteen children, and would just as soon make love to the Pope of
+      Rome as to any one but our own wife. If you do not make love to Flicflac,
+      from the day after her marriage to the day she reaches sixty, she thinks
+      you a fool. We won't play at écarté with Trêfle on Sunday nights; and are
+      seen walking, about one o'clock (accompanied by fourteen red-haired
+      children, with fourteen gleaming prayer-books), away from the church.
+      &ldquo;Grand Dieu!&rdquo; cries Trêfle, &ldquo;is that man mad? He won't play at cards on a
+      Sunday; he goes to church on a Sunday: he has fourteen children!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Was ever Frenchman known to do likewise? Pass we on to our argument, which
+      is, that with our English notions and moral and physical constitution, it
+      is quite impossible that we should become intimate with our brisk
+      neighbors; and when such authors as Lady Morgan and Mrs. Trollope, having
+      frequented a certain number of tea-parties in the French capital, begin to
+      prattle about French manners and men,&mdash;with all respect for the
+      talents of those ladies, we do believe their information not to be worth a
+      sixpence; they speak to us not of men but of tea-parties. Tea-parties are
+      the same all the world over; with the exception that, with the French,
+      there are more lights and prettier dresses; and with us, a mighty deal
+      more tea in the pot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is, however, a cheap and delightful way of travelling, that a man
+      may perform in his easy-chair, without expense of passports or post-boys.
+      On the wings of a novel, from the next circulating library, he sends his
+      imagination a-gadding, and gains acquaintance with people and manners whom
+      he could not hope otherwise to know. Twopence a volume bears us
+      whithersoever we will;&mdash;back to Ivanhoe and Coeur de Lion, or to
+      Waverley and the Young Pretender, along with Walter Scott; up the heights
+      of fashion with the charming enchanters of the silver-fork school; or,
+      better still, to the snug inn-parlor, or the jovial tap-room, with Mr.
+      Pickwick and his faithful Sancho Weller. I am sure that a man who, a
+      hundred years hence should sit down to write the history of our time,
+      would do wrong to put that great contemporary history of &ldquo;Pickwick&rdquo; aside
+      as a frivolous work. It contains true character under false names; and,
+      like &ldquo;Roderick Random,&rdquo; an inferior work, and &ldquo;Tom Jones&rdquo; (one that is
+      immeasurably superior), gives us a better idea of the state and ways of
+      the people than one could gather from any more pompous or authentic
+      histories.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have, therefore, introduced into these volumes one or two short reviews
+      of French fiction writers, of particular classes, whose Paris sketches may
+      give the reader some notion of manners in that capital. If not original,
+      at least the drawings are accurate; for, as a Frenchman might have lived a
+      thousand years in England, and never could have written &ldquo;Pickwick,&rdquo; an
+      Englishman cannot hope to give a good description of the inward thoughts
+      and ways of his neighbors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To a person inclined to study these, in that light and amusing fashion in
+      which the novelist treats them, let us recommend the works of a new
+      writer, Monsieur de Bernard, who has painted actual manners, without those
+      monstrous and terrible exaggerations in which late French writers have
+      indulged; and who, if he occasionally wounds the English sense of
+      propriety (as what French man or woman alive will not?) does so more by
+      slighting than by outraging it, as, with their labored descriptions of all
+      sorts of imaginable wickedness, some of his brethren of the press have
+      done. M. de Bernard's characters are men and women of genteel society&mdash;rascals
+      enough, but living in no state of convulsive crimes; and we follow him in
+      his lively, malicious account of their manners, without risk of lighting
+      upon any such horrors as Balzac or Dumas has provided for us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us give an instance:&mdash;it is from the amusing novel called &ldquo;Les
+      Ailes d'Icare,&rdquo; and contains what is to us quite a new picture of a French
+      fashionable rogue. The fashions will change in a few years, and the rogue,
+      of course, with them. Let us catch this delightful fellow ere he flies. It
+      is impossible to sketch the character in a more sparkling, gentlemanlike
+      way than M. de Bernard's; but such light things are very difficult of
+      translation, and the sparkle sadly evaporates during the process of
+      DECANTING.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A FRENCH FASHIONABLE LETTER.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MY DEAR VICTOR&mdash;It is six in the morning: I have just come from the
+      English Ambassador's ball, and as my plans, for the day do not admit of my
+      sleeping, I write you a line; for, at this moment, saturated as I am with
+      the enchantments of a fairy night, all other pleasures would be too
+      wearisome to keep me awake, except that of conversing with you. Indeed,
+      were I not to write to you now, when should I find the possibility of
+      doing so? Time flies here with such a frightful rapidity, my pleasures and
+      my affairs whirl onwards together in such a torrentuous galopade, that I
+      am compelled to seize occasion by the forelock; for each moment has its
+      imperious employ. Do not then accuse me of negligence: if my
+      correspondence has not always that regularity which I would fain give it,
+      attribute the fault solely to the whirlwind in which I live, and which
+      carries me hither and thither at its will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;However, you are not the only person with whom I am behindhand: I assure
+      you, on the contrary, that you are one of a very numerous and fashionable
+      company, to whom, towards the discharge of my debts, I propose to
+      consecrate four hours to-day. I give you the preference to all the world,
+      even to the lovely Duchess of San Severino, a delicious Italian, whom, for
+      my special happiness, I met last summer at the Waters of Aix. I have also
+      a most important negotiation to conclude with one of our Princes of
+      Finance: but n'importe, I commence with thee: friendship before love or
+      money&mdash;friendship before everything. My despatches concluded, I am
+      engaged to ride with the Marquis de Grigneure, the Comte de Castijars, and
+      Lord Cobham, in order that we may recover, for a breakfast at the Rocher
+      de Cancale that Grigneure has lost, the appetite which we all of us so
+      cruelly abused last night at the Ambassador's gala. On my honor, my dear
+      fellow, everybody was of a caprice prestigieux and a comfortable
+      mirobolant. Fancy, for a banquet-hall, a royal orangery hung with white
+      damask; the boxes of the shrubs transformed into so many sideboards;
+      lights gleaming through the foliage; and, for guests, the loveliest women
+      and most brilliant cavaliers of Paris. Orleans and Nemours were there,
+      dancing and eating like simple mortals. In a word, Albion did the thing
+      very handsomely, and I accord it my esteem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here I pause, to call for my valet-de-chambre, and call for tea; for my
+      head is heavy, and I've no time for a headache. In serving me, this rascal
+      of a Frédéric has broken a cup, true Japan, upon my honor&mdash;the rogue
+      does nothing else. Yesterday, for instance, did he not thump me
+      prodigiously, by letting fall a goblet, after Cellini, of which the
+      carving alone cost me three hundred francs? I must positively put the
+      wretch out of doors, to ensure the safety of my furniture; and in
+      consequence of this, Eneas, an audacious young negro, in whom wisdom hath
+      not waited for years&mdash;Eneas, my groom, I say, will probably be
+      elevated to the post of valet-de-chambre. But where was I? I think I was
+      speaking to you of an oyster breakfast, to which, on our return from the
+      Park (du Bois), a company of pleasant rakes are invited. After quitting
+      Borel's, we propose to adjourn to the Barrière du Combat, where Lord
+      Cobham proposes to try some bull-dogs, which he has brought over from
+      England&mdash;one of these, O'Connell (Lord Cobham is a Tory,) has a face
+      in which I place much confidence; I have a bet of ten louis with Castijars
+      on the strength of it. After the fight, we shall make our accustomed
+      appearance at the 'Cafe de Paris,' (the only place, by the way, where a
+      man who respects himself may be seen,)&mdash;and then away with frocks and
+      spurs, and on with our dress-coats for the rest of the evening. In the
+      first place, I shall go doze for a couple of hours at the Opera, where my
+      presence is indispensable; for Coralie, a charming creature, passes this
+      evening from the rank of the RATS to that of the TIGERS, in a
+      pas-de-trois, and our box patronizes her. After the Opera, I must show my
+      face to two or three salons in the Faubourg St. Honoré; and having thus
+      performed my duties to the world of fashion, I return to the exercise of
+      my rights as a member of the Carnival. At two o'clock all the world meets
+      at the Théâtre Ventadour: lions and tigers&mdash;the whole of our
+      menagerie will be present. Evoé! off we go! roaring and bounding Bacchanal
+      and Saturnal; 'tis agreed that we shall be everything that is low. To
+      conclude, we sup with Castijars, the most 'furiously dishevelled' orgy
+      that ever was known.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The rest of the letter is on matters of finance, equally curious and
+      instructive. But pause we for the present, to consider the fashionable
+      part: and caricature as it is, we have an accurate picture of the actual
+      French dandy. Bets, breakfasts, riding, dinners at the &ldquo;Café de Paris,&rdquo;
+       and delirious Carnival balls: the animal goes through all such frantic
+      pleasures at the season that precedes Lent. He has a wondrous respect for
+      English &ldquo;gentlemen-sportsmen;&rdquo; he imitates their clubs&mdash;their love of
+      horse-flesh: he calls his palefrenier a groom, wears blue birds's-eye
+      neck-cloths, sports his pink out hunting, rides steeple-chases, and has
+      his Jockey Club. The &ldquo;tigers and lions&rdquo; alluded to in the report have been
+      borrowed from our own country, and a great compliment is it to Monsieur de
+      Bernard, the writer of the above amusing sketch, that he has such a
+      knowledge of English names and things, as to give a Tory lord the decent
+      title of Lord Cobham, and to call his dog O'Connell. Paul de Kock calls an
+      English nobleman, in one of his last novels, Lord Boulingrog, and appears
+      vastly delighted at the verisimilitude of the title.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the &ldquo;rugissements et bondissements, bacchanale et saturnale, galop
+      infernal, ronde du sabbat tout le tremblement,&rdquo; these words give a most
+      clear, untranslatable idea of the Carnival ball. A sight more hideous can
+      hardly strike a man's eye. I was present at one where the four thousand
+      guests whirled screaming, reeling, roaring, out of the ball-room in the
+      Rue St. Honoré, and tore down to the column in the Place Vendôme, round
+      which they went shrieking their own music, twenty miles an hour, and so
+      tore madly back again. Let a man go alone to such a place of amusement,
+      and the sight for him is perfectly terrible: the horrid frantic gayety of
+      the place puts him in mind more of the merriment of demons than of men:
+      bang, bang, drums, trumpets, chairs, pistol-shots, pour out of the
+      orchestra, which seems as mad as the dancers; whiz, a whirlwind of paint
+      and patches, all the costumes under the sun, all the ranks in the empire,
+      all the he and she scoundrels of the capital, writhed and twisted
+      together, rush by you; if a man falls, woe be to him: two thousand
+      screaming menads go trampling over his carcass: they have neither power
+      nor will to stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A set of Malays drunk with bhang and running amuck, a company of howling
+      dervishes, may possibly, in our own day, go through similar frantic
+      vagaries; but I doubt if any civilized European people but the French
+      would permit and enjoy such scenes. Yet our neighbors see little shame in
+      them; and it is very true that men of all classes, high and low, here
+      congregate and give themselves up to the disgusting worship of the genius
+      of the place.&mdash;From the dandy of the Boulevard and the &ldquo;Café
+      Anglais,&rdquo; let us turn to the dandy of &ldquo;Flicoteau's&rdquo; and the Pays Latin&mdash;the
+      Paris student, whose exploits among the grisettes are so celebrated, and
+      whose fierce republicanism keeps gendarmes for ever on the alert. The
+      following is M. de Bernard's description of him:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I became acquainted with Dambergeac when we were students at the Ecole de
+      Droit; we lived in the same Hotel on the Place du Panthéon. No doubt,
+      madam, you have occasionally met little children dedicated to the Virgin,
+      and, to this end, clothed in white raiment from head to foot: my friend,
+      Dambergeac, had received a different consecration. His father, a great
+      patriot of the Revolution, had determined that his son should bear into
+      the world a sign of indelible republicanism; so, to the great displeasure
+      of his godmother and the parish curate, Dambergeac was christened by the
+      pagan name of Harmodius. It was a kind of moral tricolor-cockade, which
+      the child was to bear through the vicissitudes of all the revolutions to
+      come. Under such influences, my friend's character began to develop
+      itself, and, fired by the example of his father, and by the warm
+      atmosphere of his native place, Marseilles, he grew up to have an
+      independent spirit, and a grand liberality of politics, which were at
+      their height when first I made his acquaintance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was then a young man of eighteen, with a tall, slim figure, a broad
+      chest, and a flaming black eye, out of all which personal charms he knew
+      how to draw the most advantage; and though his costume was such as Staub
+      might probably have criticised, he had, nevertheless, a style peculiar to
+      himself&mdash;to himself and the students, among whom he was the leader of
+      the fashion. A tight black coat, buttoned up to the chin, across the
+      chest, set off that part of his person; a low-crowned hat, with a
+      voluminous rim, cast solemn shadows over a countenance bronzed by a
+      southern sun: he wore, at one time, enormous flowing black locks, which he
+      sacrificed pitilessly, however, and adopted a Brutus, as being more
+      revolutionary: finally, he carried an enormous club, that was his code and
+      digest: in like manner, De Retz used to carry a stiletto in his pocket by
+      way of a breviary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Although of different ways of thinking in politics, certain sympathies of
+      character and conduct united Dambergeac and myself, and we speedily became
+      close friends. I don't think, in the whole course of his three years'
+      residence, Dambergeac ever went through a single course of lectures. For
+      the examinations, he trusted to luck, and to his own facility, which was
+      prodigious: as for honors, he never aimed at them, but was content to do
+      exactly as little as was necessary for him to gain his degree. In like
+      manner he sedulously avoided those horrible circulating libraries, where
+      daily are seen to congregate the 'reading men' of our schools. But, in
+      revenge, there was not a milliner's shop, or a lingère's, in all our
+      quartier Latin, which he did not industriously frequent, and of which he
+      was not the oracle. Nay, it was said that his victories were not confined
+      to the left bank of the Seine; reports did occasionally come to us of
+      fabulous adventures by him accomplished in the far regions of the Rue de
+      la Paix and the Boulevard Poissonnière. Such recitals were, for us less
+      favored mortals, like tales of Bacchus conquering in the East; they
+      excited our ambition, but not our jealousy; for the superiority of
+      Harmodius was acknowledged by us all, and we never thought of a rivalry
+      with him. No man ever cantered a hack through the Champs Elysées with such
+      elegant assurance; no man ever made such a massacre of dolls at the
+      shooting-gallery; or won you a rubber at billiards with more easy grace;
+      or thundered out a couplet out of Béranger with such a roaring melodious
+      bass. He was the monarch of the Prado in winter: in summer of the
+      Chaumière and Mont Parnasse. Not a frequenter of those fashionable places
+      of entertainment showed a more amiable laisser-aller in the dance&mdash;that
+      peculiar dance at which gendarmes think proper to blush, and which
+      squeamish society has banished from her salons. In a word, Harmodius was
+      the prince of mauvais sujets, a youth with all the accomplishments of
+      Göttingen and Jena, and all the eminent graces of his own country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides dissipation and gallantry, our friend had one other vast and
+      absorbing occupation&mdash;politics, namely; in which he was as turbulent
+      and enthusiastic as in pleasure. La Patrie was his idol, his heaven, his
+      nightmare; by day he spouted, by night he dreamed, of his country. I have
+      spoken to you of his coiffure à la Sylla; need I mention his pipe, his
+      meerschaum pipe, of which General Foy's head was the bowl; his
+      handkerchief with the Charte printed thereon; and his celebrated tricolor
+      braces, which kept the rallying sign of his country ever close to his
+      heart? Besides these outward and visible signs of sedition, he had inward
+      and secret plans of revolution: he belonged to clubs, frequented
+      associations, read the Constitutionnel (Liberals, in those days, swore by
+      the Constitutionnel), harangued peers and deputies who had deserved well
+      of their country; and if death happened to fall on such, and the
+      Constitutionnel declared their merit, Harmodius was the very first to
+      attend their obsequies, or to set his shoulder to their coffins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Such were his tastes and passions: his antipathies were not less lively.
+      He detested three things: a Jesuit, a gendarme, and a claqueur at a
+      theatre. At this period, missionaries were rife about Paris, and
+      endeavored to re-illume the zeal of the faithful by public preachings in
+      the churches. 'Infâmes jesuites!' would Harmodius exclaim, who, in the
+      excess of his toleration, tolerated nothing; and, at the head of a band of
+      philosophers like himself, would attend with scrupulous exactitude the
+      meetings of the reverend gentlemen. But, instead of a contrite heart,
+      Harmodius only brought the abomination of desolation into their sanctuary.
+      A perpetual fire of fulminating balls would bang from under the feet of
+      the faithful; odors of impure assafoetida would mingle with the fumes of
+      the incense; and wicked drinking choruses would rise up along with the
+      holy canticles, in hideous dissonance, reminding one of the old orgies
+      under the reign of the Abbot of Unreason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His hatred of the gendarmes was equally ferocious: and as for the
+      claqueurs, woe be to them when Harmodius was in the pit! They knew him,
+      and trembled before him, like the earth before Alexander; and his famous
+      war-cry, 'La Carte au chapeau!' was so much dreaded, that the
+      'entrepreneurs de succès dramatiques' demanded twice as much to do the
+      Odeon Theatre (which we students and Harmodius frequented), as to applaud
+      at any other place of amusement: and, indeed, their double pay was hardly
+      gained; Harmodius taking care that they should earn the most of it under
+      the benches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This passage, with which we have taken some liberties, will give the
+      reader a more lively idea of the reckless, jovial, turbulent Paris
+      student, than any with which a foreigner could furnish him: the grisette
+      is his heroine; and dear old Béranger, the cynic-epicurean, has celebrated
+      him and her in the most delightful verses in the world. Of these we may
+      have occasion to say a word or two anon. Meanwhile let us follow Monsieur
+      de Bernard in his amusing descriptions of his countrymen somewhat farther;
+      and, having seen how Dambergeac was a ferocious republican, being a
+      bachelor, let us see how age, sense, and a little government pay&mdash;the
+      great agent of conversions in France&mdash;nay, in England&mdash;has
+      reduced him to be a pompous, quiet, loyal supporter of the juste milieu:
+      his former portrait was that of the student, the present will stand for an
+      admirable lively likeness of
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    THE SOUS-PRÉFET.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saying that I would wait for Dambergeac in his own study, I was
+      introduced into that apartment, and saw around me the usual furniture of a
+      man in his station. There was, in the middle of the room, a large bureau,
+      surrounded by orthodox arm-chairs; and there were many shelves with boxes
+      duly ticketed; there were a number of maps, and among them a great one of
+      the department over which Dambergeac ruled; and facing the windows, on a
+      wooden pedestal, stood a plaster-cast of the 'Roi des Français.'
+      Recollecting my friend's former republicanism, I smiled at this piece of
+      furniture; but before I had time to carry my observations any farther, a
+      heavy rolling sound of carriage-wheels, that caused the windows to rattle
+      and seemed to shake the whole edifice of the sub-prefecture, called my
+      attention to the court without. Its iron gates were flung open, and in
+      rolled, with a great deal of din, a chariot escorted by a brace of
+      gendarmes, sword in hand. A tall gentleman, with a cocked-hat and
+      feathers, wearing a blue and silver uniform coat, descended from the
+      vehicle; and having, with much grave condescension, saluted his escort,
+      mounted the stair. A moment afterwards the door of the study was opened,
+      and I embraced my friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After the first warmth and salutations, we began to examine each other
+      with an equal curiosity, for eight years had elapsed since we had last
+      met.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'You are grown very thin and pale,' said Harmodius, after a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'In revenge I find you fat and rosy: if I am a walking satire on
+      celibacy,&mdash;you, at least, are a living panegyric on marriage.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In fact a great change, and such an one as many people would call a
+      change for the better, had taken place in my friend: he had grown fat, and
+      announced a decided disposition to become what French people call a bel
+      homme: that is, a very fat one. His complexion, bronzed before, was now
+      clear white and red: there were no more political allusions in his hair,
+      which was, on the contrary, neatly frizzed, and brushed over the forehead,
+      shell-shape. This head-dress, joined to a thin pair of whiskers, cut
+      crescent-wise from the ear to the nose, gave my friend a regular bourgeois
+      physiognomy, wax-doll-like: he looked a great deal too well; and, added to
+      this, the solemnity of his prefectural costume, gave his whole appearance
+      a pompous well-fed look that by no means pleased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I surprise you,' said I, 'in the midst of your splendor: do you know
+      that this costume and yonder attendants have a look excessively awful and
+      splendid? You entered your palace just now with the air of a pasha.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'You see me in uniform in honor of Monseigneur the Bishop, who has just
+      made his diocesan visit, and whom I have just conducted to the limit of
+      the arrondissement.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'What!' said I, 'you have gendarmes for guards, and dance attendance on
+      bishops? There are no more janissaries and Jesuits, I suppose?' The
+      sub-prefect smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I assure you that my gendarmes are very worthy fellows; and that among
+      the gentlemen who compose our clergy there are some of the very best rank
+      and talent: besides, my wife is niece to one of the vicars-general.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'What have you done with that great Tasso beard that poor Armandine used
+      to love so?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'My wife does not like a beard; and you know that what is permitted to a
+      student is not very becoming to a magistrate.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I began to laugh. 'Harmodius and a magistrate!&mdash;how shall I ever
+      couple the two words together? But tell me, in your correspondences, your
+      audiences, your sittings with village mayors and petty councils, how do
+      you manage to remain awake?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'In the commencement,' said Harmodius, gravely, 'it WAS very difficult;
+      and, in order to keep my eyes open, I used to stick pins into my legs:
+      now, however, I am used to it; and I'm sure I don't take more than fifty
+      pinches of snuff at a sitting.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Ah! apropos of snuff: you are near Spain here, and were always a famous
+      smoker. Give me a cigar,&mdash;it will take away the musty odor of these
+      piles of papers.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Impossible, my dear; I don't smoke; my wife cannot bear a cigar.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His wife! thought I; always his wife: and I remember Juliette, who really
+      grew sick at the smell of a pipe, and Harmodius would smoke, until, at
+      last, the poor thing grew to smoke herself, like a trooper. To compensate,
+      however, as much as possible for the loss of my cigar, Dambergeac drew
+      from his pocket an enormous gold snuff-box, on which figured the self-same
+      head that I had before remarked in plaster, but this time surrounded with
+      a ring of pretty princes and princesses, all nicely painted in miniature.
+      As for the statue of Louis Philippe, that, in the cabinet of an official,
+      is a thing of course; but the snuff-box seemed to indicate a degree of
+      sentimental and personal devotion, such as the old Royalists were only
+      supposed to be guilty of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'What! you are turned decided juste milieu?' said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I am a sous-préfet,' answered Harmodius.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had nothing to say, but held my tongue, wondering, not at the change
+      which had taken place in the habits, manners, and opinions of my friend,
+      but at my own folly, which led me to fancy that I should find the student
+      of '26 in the functionary of '34. At this moment a domestic appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Madame is waiting for Monsieur,' said he: 'the last bell has gone, and
+      mass beginning.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Mass!' said I, bounding up from my chair. 'You at mass like a decent
+      serious Christian, without crackers in your pocket, and bored keys to
+      whistle through?'&mdash;The sous-préfet rose, his countenance was calm,
+      and an indulgent smile played upon his lips, as he said, 'My
+      arrondissement is very devout; and not to interfere with the belief of the
+      population is the maxim of every wise politician: I have precise orders
+      from Government on the point, too, and go to eleven o'clock mass every
+      Sunday.&rdquo;'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is a great deal of curious matter for speculation in the accounts
+      here so wittily given by M. de Bernard: but, perhaps, it is still more
+      curious to think of what he has NOT written, and to judge of his
+      characters, not so much by the words in which he describes them, as by the
+      unconscious testimony that the words all together convey. In the first
+      place, our author describes a swindler imitating the manners of a dandy;
+      and many swindlers and dandies be there, doubtless, in London as well as
+      in Paris. But there is about the present swindler, and about Monsieur
+      Dambergeac the student, and Monsieur Dambergeac the sous-préfet, and his
+      friend, a rich store of calm internal debauch, which does not, let us hope
+      and pray, exist in England. Hearken to M. de Gustan, and his smirking
+      whispers, about the Duchess of San Severino, who pour son bonheur
+      particulier, &amp;c. &amp;c. Listen to Monsieur Dambergeac's friend's
+      remonstrances concerning pauvre Juliette who grew sick at the smell of a
+      pipe; to his naïve admiration at the fact that the sous-préfet goes to
+      church: and we may set down, as axioms, that religion is so uncommon among
+      the Parisians, as to awaken the surprise of all candid observers; that
+      gallantry is so common as to create no remark, and to be considered as a
+      matter of course. With us, at least, the converse of the proposition
+      prevails: it is the man professing irreligion who would be remarked and
+      reprehended in England; and, if the second-named vice exists, at any rate,
+      it adopts the decency of secrecy and is not made patent and notorious to
+      all the world. A French gentleman thinks no more of proclaiming that he
+      has a mistress than that he has a tailor; and one lives the time of
+      Boccaccio over again, in the thousand and one French novels which depict
+      society in that country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For instance, here are before us a few specimens (do not, madam, be
+      alarmed, you can skip the sentence if you like,) to be found in as many
+      admirable witty tales, by the before-lauded Monsieur de Bernard. He is
+      more remarkable than any other French author, to our notion, for writing
+      like a gentleman: there is ease, grace and ton, in his style, which, if we
+      judge aright, cannot be discovered in Balzac, or Soulié, or Dumas. We have
+      then&mdash;&ldquo;Gerfaut,&rdquo; a novel: a lovely creature is married to a brave,
+      haughty, Alsacian nobleman, who allows her to spend her winters at Paris,
+      he remaining on his terres, cultivating, carousing, and hunting the boar.
+      The lovely-creature meets the fascinating Gerfaut at Paris; instantly the
+      latter makes love to her; a duel takes place: baron killed; wife throws
+      herself out of window; Gerfaut plunges into dissipation; and so the tale
+      ends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next: &ldquo;La Femme de Quarante Ans,&rdquo; a capital tale, full of exquisite fun
+      and sparkling satire: La femme de quarante ans has a husband and THREE
+      lovers; all of whom find out their mutual connection one starry night; for
+      the lady of forty is of a romantic poetical turn, and has given her three
+      admirers A STAR APIECE; saying to one and the other, &ldquo;Alphonse, when yon
+      pale orb rises in heaven, think of me;&rdquo; &ldquo;Isadore, when that bright planet
+      sparkles in the sky, remember your Caroline,&rdquo; &amp;c.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Un Acte de Vertu,&rdquo; from which we have taken Dambergeac's history,
+      contains him, the husband&mdash;a wife&mdash;and a brace of lovers; and a
+      great deal of fun takes place in the manner in which one lover supplants
+      the other.&mdash;Pretty morals truly!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we examine an author who rejoices in the aristocratic name of le Comte
+      Horace de Viel-Castel, we find, though with infinitely less wit, exactly
+      the same intrigues going on. A noble Count lives in the Faubourg St.
+      Honoré, and has a noble Duchess for a mistress: he introduces her Grace to
+      the Countess his wife. The Countess his wife, in order to ramener her lord
+      to his conjugal duties, is counselled, by a friend, TO PRETEND TO TAKE A
+      LOVER: one is found, who, poor fellow! takes the affair in earnest: climax&mdash;duel,
+      death, despair, and what not? In the &ldquo;Faubourg St. Germain,&rdquo; another novel
+      by the same writer, which professes to describe the very pink of that
+      society which Napoleon dreaded more than Russia, Prussia, and Austria,
+      there is an old husband, of course; a sentimental young German nobleman,
+      who falls in love with his wife; and the moral of the piece lies in the
+      showing up of the conduct of the lady, who is reprehended&mdash;not for
+      deceiving her husband (poor devil!)&mdash;but for being a flirt, AND
+      TAKING A SECOND LOVER, to the utter despair, confusion, and annihilation
+      of the first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why, ye gods, do Frenchmen marry at all? Had Père Enfantin (who, it is
+      said, has shaved his ambrosial beard, and is now a clerk in a
+      banking-house) been allowed to carry out his chaste, just, dignified
+      social scheme, what a deal of marital discomfort might have been avoided:&mdash;would
+      it not be advisable that a great reformer and lawgiver of our own, Mr.
+      Robert Owen, should be presented at the Tuileries, and there propound his
+      scheme for the regeneration of France?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He might, perhaps, be spared, for our country is not yet sufficiently
+      advanced to give such a philosopher fair play. In London, as yet, there
+      are no blessed Bureaux de Mariage, where an old bachelor may have a
+      charming young maiden&mdash;for his money; or a widow of seventy may buy a
+      gay young fellow of twenty, for a certain number of bank-billets. If
+      mariages de convenance take place here (as they will wherever avarice, and
+      poverty, and desire, and yearning after riches are to be found), at least,
+      thank God, such unions are not arranged upon a regular organized SYSTEM:
+      there is a fiction of attachment with us, and there is a consolation in
+      the deceit (&ldquo;the homage,&rdquo; according to the old mot of Rochefoucauld)
+      &ldquo;which vice pays to virtue&rdquo;; for the very falsehood shows that the virtue
+      exists somewhere. We once heard a furious old French colonel inveighing
+      against the chastity of English demoiselles: &ldquo;Figurez-vous, sir,&rdquo; said he
+      (he had been a prisoner in England), &ldquo;that these women come down to dinner
+      in low dresses, and walk out alone with the men!&rdquo;&mdash;and, pray heaven,
+      so may they walk, fancy-free in all sorts of maiden meditations, and
+      suffer no more molestation than that young lady of whom Moore sings, and
+      who (there must have been a famous lord-lieutenant in those days) walked
+      through all Ireland, with rich and rare gems, beauty, and a gold ring on
+      her stick, without meeting or thinking of harm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, whether Monsieur de Viel-Castel has given a true picture of the
+      Faubourg St. Germain, it is impossible for most foreigners to say; but
+      some of his descriptions will not fail to astonish the English reader; and
+      all are filled with that remarkable naïf contempt of the institution
+      called marriage, which we have seen in M. de Bernard. The romantic young
+      nobleman of Westphalia arrives at Paris, and is admitted into what a
+      celebrated female author calls la crême de la crême de la haute volée of
+      Parisian society. He is a youth of about twenty years of age. &ldquo;No passion
+      had as yet come to move his heart, and give life to his faculties; he was
+      awaiting and fearing the moment of love; calling for it, and yet trembling
+      at its approach; feeling in the depths of his soul, that that moment would
+      create a mighty change in his being, and decide, perhaps, by its
+      influence, the whole of his future life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Is it not remarkable, that a young nobleman, with these ideas, should not
+      pitch upon a demoiselle, or a widow, at least? but no, the rogue must have
+      a married woman, bad luck to him; and what his fate is to be, is thus
+      recounted by our author, in the shape of
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A FRENCH FASHIONABLE CONVERSATION.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A lady, with a great deal of esprit, to whom forty years' experience of
+      the great world had given a prodigious perspicacity of judgment, the
+      Duchess of Chalux, arbitress of the opinion to be held on all new comers
+      to the Faubourg Saint Germain, and of their destiny and reception in it;&mdash;one
+      of those women, in a word, who make or ruin a man,&mdash;said, in speaking
+      of Gerard de Stolberg, whom she received at her own house, and met
+      everywhere, 'This young German will never gain for himself the title of an
+      exquisite, or a man of bonnes fortunes, among us. In spite of his calm and
+      politeness, I think I can see in his character some rude and
+      insurmountable difficulties, which time will only increase, and which will
+      prevent him for ever from bending to the exigencies of either profession;
+      but, unless I very much deceive myself, he will, one day, be the hero of a
+      veritable romance.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'He, madame?' answered a young man, of fair complexion and fair hair, one
+      of the most devoted slaves of the fashion:&mdash;'He, Madame la Duchesse?
+      why, the man is, at best, but an original, fished out of the Rhine: a
+      dull, heavy creature, as much capable of understanding a woman's heart as
+      I am of speaking bas-Breton.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Well, Monsieur de Belport, you will speak bas-Breton. Monsieur de
+      Stolberg has not your admirable ease of manner, nor your facility of
+      telling pretty nothings, nor your&mdash;in a word, that particular
+      something which makes you the most recherché man of the Faubourg Saint
+      Germain; and even I avow to you that, were I still young, and a coquette,
+      AND THAT I TOOK IT INTO MY HEAD TO HAVE A LOVER, I would prefer you.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All this was said by the Duchess, with a certain air of raillery and such
+      a mixture of earnest and malice, that Monsieur de Belport, piqued not a
+      little, could not help saying, as he bowed profoundly before the Duchess's
+      chair, 'And might I, madam, be permitted to ask the reason of this
+      preference?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'O mon Dieu, oui,' said the Duchess, always in the same tone; 'because a
+      lover like you would never think of carrying his attachment to the height
+      of passion; and these passions, do you know, have frightened me all my
+      life. One cannot retreat at will from the grasp of a passionate lover; one
+      leaves behind one some fragment of one's moral SELF, or the best part of
+      one's physical life. A passion, if it does not kill you, adds cruelly to
+      your years; in a word, it is the very lowest possible taste. And now you
+      understand why I should prefer you, M. de Belport&mdash;you who are
+      reputed to be the leader of the fashion.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Perfectly,' murmured the gentleman, piqued more and more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Gerard de Stolberg WILL be passionate. I don't know what woman will
+      please him, or will be pleased by him' (here the Duchess of Chalux spoke
+      more gravely); 'but his love will be no play, I repeat it to you once
+      more. All this astonishes you, because you, great leaders of the ton that
+      you are, never fancy that a hero of romance should be found among your
+      number. Gerard de Stolberg&mdash;but, look, here he comes!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M. de Belport rose, and quitted the Duchess, without believing in her
+      prophecy; but he could not avoid smiling as he passed near the HERO OF
+      ROMANCE.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was because M. de Stolberg had never, in all his life, been a hero of
+      romance, or even an apprentice-hero of romance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gerard de Stolberg was not, as yet, initiated into the thousand secrets
+      in the chronicle of the great world: he knew but superficially the society
+      in which he lived; and, therefore, he devoted his evening to the gathering
+      of all the information which he could acquire from the indiscreet
+      conversations of the people about him. His whole man became ear and
+      memory; so much was Stolberg convinced of the necessity of becoming a
+      diligent student in this new school, where was taught the art of knowing
+      and advancing in the great world. In the recess of a window he learned
+      more on this one night than months of investigation would have taught him.
+      The talk of a ball is more indiscreet than the confidential chatter of a
+      company of idle women. No man present at a ball, whether listener or
+      speaker, thinks he has a right to affect any indulgence for his
+      companions, and the most learned in malice will always pass for the most
+      witty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'How!' said the Viscount de Mondragé: 'the Duchess of Rivesalte arrives
+      alone to-night, without her inevitable Dormilly!'&mdash;And the Viscount,
+      as he spoke, pointed towards a tall and slender young woman, who, gliding
+      rather than walking, met the ladies by whom she passed, with a graceful
+      and modest salute, and replied to the looks of the men BY BRILLIANT VEILED
+      GLANCES FULL OF COQUETRY AND ATTACK.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Parbleu!' said an elegant personage standing near the Viscount de
+      Mondragé, 'don't you see Dormilly ranged behind the Duchess, in quality of
+      train-bearer, and hiding, under his long locks and his great screen of
+      moustaches, the blushing consciousness of his good luck?&mdash;They call
+      him THE FOURTH CHAPTER of the Duchess's memoirs. The little Marquise
+      d'Alberas is ready to die out of spite; but the best of the joke is, that
+      she has only taken poor de Vendre for a lover in order to vent her spleen
+      on him. Look at him against the chimney yonder; if the Marchioness do not
+      break at once with him by quitting him for somebody else, the poor fellow
+      will turn an idiot.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Is he jealous?' asked a young man, looking as if he did not know what
+      jealousy was and as if he had no time to be jealous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Jealous! the very incarnation of jealousy; the second edition, revised,
+      corrected, and considerably enlarged; as jealous as poor Gressigny, who is
+      dying of it.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'What! Gressigny too? why, 'tis growing quite into fashion: egad! I must
+      try and be jealous,' said Monsieur de Beauval. 'But see! here comes the
+      delicious Duchess of Bellefiore,'&rdquo; &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Enough, enough: this kind of fashionable Parisian conversation, which is,
+      says our author, &ldquo;a prodigious labor of improvising,&rdquo; a &ldquo;chef-d'oeuvre,&rdquo; a
+      &ldquo;strange and singular thing, in which monotony is unknown,&rdquo; seems to be,
+      if correctly reported, a &ldquo;strange and singular thing&rdquo; indeed; but somewhat
+      monotonous at least to an English reader, and &ldquo;prodigious&rdquo; only, if we may
+      take leave to say so, for the wonderful rascality which all the
+      conversationists betray. Miss Neverout and the Colonel, in Swift's famous
+      dialogue, are a thousand times more entertaining and moral; and, besides,
+      we can laugh AT those worthies as well as with them; whereas the
+      &ldquo;prodigious&rdquo; French wits are to us quite incomprehensible. Fancy a duchess
+      as old as Lady &mdash;&mdash; herself, and who should begin to tell us &ldquo;of
+      what she would do if ever she had a mind to take a lover;&rdquo; and another
+      duchess, with a fourth lover, tripping modestly among the ladies, and
+      returning the gaze of the men by veiled glances, full of coquetry and
+      attack!&mdash;Parbleu, if Monsieur de Viel-Castel should find himself
+      among a society of French duchesses, and they should tear his eyes out,
+      and send the fashionable Orpheus floating by the Seine, his slaughter
+      might almost be considered as justifiable COUNTICIDE.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A GAMBLER'S DEATH.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Anybody who was at C&mdash;&mdash; school some twelve years since, must
+      recollect Jack Attwood: he was the most dashing lad in the place, with
+      more money in his pocket than belonged to the whole fifth form in which we
+      were companions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he was about fifteen, Jack suddenly retreated from C&mdash;&mdash;,
+      and presently we heard that he had a commission in a cavalry regiment, and
+      was to have a great fortune from his father, when that old gentleman
+      should die. Jack himself came to confirm these stories a few months after,
+      and paid a visit to his old school chums. He had laid aside his little
+      school-jacket and inky corduroys, and now appeared in such a splendid
+      military suit as won the respect of all of us. His hair was dripping with
+      oil, his hands were covered with rings, he had a dusky down over his upper
+      lip which looked not unlike a moustache, and a multiplicity of frogs and
+      braiding on his surtout which would have sufficed to lace a field-marshal.
+      When old Swishtail, the usher, passed in his seedy black coat and gaiters,
+      Jack gave him such a look of contempt as set us all a-laughing: in fact it
+      was his turn to laugh now; for he used to roar very stoutly some months
+      before, when Swishtail was in the custom of belaboring him with his great
+      cane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack's talk was all about the regiment and the fine fellows in it: how he
+      had ridden a steeple-chase with Captain Boldero, and licked him at the
+      last hedge; and how he had very nearly fought a duel with Sir George Grig,
+      about dancing with Lady Mary Slamken at a ball. &ldquo;I soon made the baronet
+      know what it was to deal with a man of the n&mdash;th,&rdquo; said Jack.
+      &ldquo;Dammee, sir, when I lugged out my barkers, and talked of fighting across
+      the mess-room table, Grig turned as pale as a sheet, or as&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or as you used to do, Attwood, when Swishtail hauled you up,&rdquo; piped out
+      little Hicks, the foundation-boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was beneath Jack's dignity to thrash anybody, now, but a grown-up
+      baronet; so he let off little Hicks, and passed over the general titter
+      which was raised at his expense. However, he entertained us with his
+      histories about lords and ladies, and so-and-so &ldquo;of ours,&rdquo; until we
+      thought him one of the greatest men in his Majesty's service, and until
+      the school-bell rung; when, with a heavy heart, we got our books together,
+      and marched in to be whacked by old Swishtail. I promise you he revenged
+      himself on us for Jack's contempt of him. I got that day at least twenty
+      cuts to my share, which ought to have belonged to Cornet Attwood, of the n&mdash;th
+      dragoons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we came to think more coolly over our quondam schoolfellow's
+      swaggering talk and manner, we were not quite so impressed by his merits
+      as at his first appearance among us. We recollected how he used, in former
+      times, to tell us great stories, which were so monstrously improbable that
+      the smallest boy in the school would scout them; how often we caught him
+      tripping in facts, and how unblushingly he admitted his little errors in
+      the score of veracity. He and I, though never great friends, had been
+      close companions: I was Jack's form-fellow (we fought with amazing
+      emulation for the LAST place in the class); but still I was rather hurt at
+      the coolness of my old comrade, who had forgotten all our former intimacy,
+      in his steeple-chases with Captain Boldero and his duel with Sir George
+      Grig.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing more was heard of Attwood for some years; a tailor one day came
+      down to C&mdash;&mdash;, who had made clothes for Jack in his school-days,
+      and furnished him with regimentals: he produced a long bill for one
+      hundred and twenty pounds and upwards, and asked where news might be had
+      of his customer. Jack was in India, with his regiment, shooting tigers and
+      jackals, no doubt. Occasionally, from that distant country, some
+      magnificent rumor would reach us of his proceedings. Once I heard that he
+      had been called to a court-martial for unbecoming conduct; another time,
+      that he kept twenty horses, and won the gold plate at the Calcutta races.
+      Presently, however, as the recollections of the fifth form wore away,
+      Jack's image disappeared likewise, and I ceased to ask or think about my
+      college chum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A year since, as I was smoking my cigar in the &ldquo;Estaminet du Grand
+      Balcon,&rdquo; an excellent smoking-shop, where the tobacco is unexceptionable,
+      and the Hollands of singular merit, a dark-looking, thick-set man, in a
+      greasy well-cut coat, with a shabby hat, cocked on one side of his dirty
+      face, took the place opposite me, at the little marble table, and called
+      for brandy. I did not much admire the impudence or the appearance of my
+      friend, nor the fixed stare with which he chose to examine me. At last, he
+      thrust a great greasy hand across the table, and said, &ldquo;Titmarsh, do you
+      forget your old friend Attwood?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I confess my recognition of him was not so joyful as on the day ten years
+      earlier, when he had come, bedizened with lace and gold rings, to see us
+      at C&mdash;&mdash; school: a man in the tenth part of a century learns a
+      deal of worldly wisdom, and his hand, which goes naturally forward to
+      seize the gloved finger of a millionnaire, or a milor, draws instinctively
+      back from a dirty fist, encompassed by a ragged wristband and a tattered
+      cuff. But Attwood was in nowise so backward; and the iron squeeze with
+      which he shook my passive paw, proved that he was either very affectionate
+      or very poor. You, my dear sir, who are reading this history, know very
+      well the great art of shaking hands: recollect how you shook Lord Dash's
+      hand the other day, and how you shook OFF poor Blank, when he came to
+      borrow five pounds of you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, the genial influence of the Hollands speedily dissipated anything
+      like coolness between us and, in the course of an hour's conversation, we
+      became almost as intimate as when we were suffering together under the
+      ferule of old Swishtail. Jack told me that he had quitted the army in
+      disgust; and that his father, who was to leave him a fortune, had died ten
+      thousand pounds in debt: he did not touch upon his own circumstances; but
+      I could read them in his elbows, which were peeping through his old frock.
+      He talked a great deal, however, of runs of luck, good and bad; and
+      related to me an infallible plan for breaking all the play-banks in Europe&mdash;a
+      great number of old tricks;&mdash;and a vast quantity of gin-punch was
+      consumed on the occasion; so long, in fact, did our conversation continue,
+      that, I confess it with shame, the sentiment, or something stronger, quite
+      got the better of me, and I have, to this day, no sort of notion how our
+      palaver concluded.&mdash;Only, on the next morning, I did not possess a
+      certain five-pound note which on the previous evening was in my
+      sketch-book (by far the prettiest drawing by the way in the collection)
+      but there, instead, was a strip of paper, thus inscribed:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IOU Five Pounds. JOHN ATTWOOD, Late of the N&mdash;th Dragoons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I suppose Attwood borrowed the money, from this remarkable and ceremonious
+      acknowledgment on his part: had I been sober I would just as soon have
+      lent him the nose on my face; for, in my then circumstances, the note was
+      of much more consequence to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I lay, cursing my ill fortune, and thinking how on earth I should
+      manage to subsist for the next two months, Attwood burst into my little
+      garret&mdash;his face strangely flushed&mdash;singing and shouting as if
+      it had been the night before. &ldquo;Titmarsh,&rdquo; cried he, &ldquo;you are my preserver!&mdash;my
+      best friend! Look here, and here, and here!&rdquo; And at every word Mr. Attwood
+      produced a handful of gold, or a glittering heap of five-franc pieces, or
+      a bundle of greasy, dusky bank-notes, more beautiful than either silver or
+      gold:&mdash;he had won thirteen thousand francs after leaving me at
+      midnight in my garret. He separated my poor little all, of six pieces,
+      from this shining and imposing collection; and the passion of envy entered
+      my soul: I felt far more anxious now than before, although starvation was
+      then staring me in the face; I hated Attwood for CHEATING me out of all
+      this wealth. Poor fellow! it had been better for him had he never seen a
+      shilling of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, a grand breakfast at the Café Anglais dissipated my chagrin; and
+      I will do my friend the justice to say, that he nobly shared some portion
+      of his good fortune with me. As far as the creature comforts were
+      concerned I feasted as well as he, and never was particular as to settling
+      my share of the reckoning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack now changed his lodgings; had cards, with Captain Attwood engraved on
+      them, and drove about a prancing cab-horse, as tall as the giraffe at the
+      Jardin des Plantes; he had as many frogs on his coat as in the old days,
+      and frequented all the flash restaurateurs' and boarding-houses of the
+      capital. Madame de Saint Laurent, and Madame la Baronne de Vaudrey, and
+      Madame la Comtesse de Jonville, ladies of the highest rank, who keep a
+      société choisie and condescend to give dinners at five-francs a head, vied
+      with each other in their attentions to Jack. His was the wing of the fowl,
+      and the largest portion of the Charlotte-Russe; his was the place at the
+      écarté table, where the Countess would ease him nightly of a few pieces,
+      declaring that he was the most charming cavalier, la fleur d'Albion.
+      Jack's society, it may be seen, was not very select; nor, in truth, were
+      his inclinations: he was a careless, daredevil, Macheath kind of fellow,
+      who might be seen daily with a wife on each arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be supposed that, with the life he led, his five hundred pounds of
+      winnings would not last him long; nor did they; but, for some time, his
+      luck never deserted him; and his cash, instead of growing lower, seemed
+      always to maintain a certain level: he played every night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course, such a humble fellow as I, could not hope for a continued
+      acquaintance and intimacy with Attwood. He grew overbearing and cool, I
+      thought; at any rate I did not admire my situation as his follower and
+      dependant, and left his grand dinner for a certain ordinary, where I could
+      partake of five capital dishes for ninepence. Occasionally, however,
+      Attwood favored me with a visit, or gave me a drive behind his great
+      cab-horse. He had formed a whole host of friends besides. There was Fips,
+      the barrister; heaven knows what he was doing at Paris; and Gortz, the
+      West Indian, who was there on the same business, and Flapper, a medical
+      student,&mdash;all these three I met one night at Flapper's rooms, where
+      Jack was invited, and a great &ldquo;spread&rdquo; was laid in honor of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack arrived rather late&mdash;he looked pale and agitated; and, though he
+      ate no supper, he drank raw brandy in such a manner as made Flapper's eyes
+      wink: the poor fellow had but three bottles, and Jack bade fair to swallow
+      them all. However, the West Indian generously remedied the evil, and
+      producing a napoleon, we speedily got the change for it in the shape of
+      four bottles of champagne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our supper was uproariously harmonious; Fips sung the good &ldquo;Old English
+      Gentleman;&rdquo; Jack the &ldquo;British Grenadiers;&rdquo; and your humble servant, when
+      called upon, sang that beautiful ditty, &ldquo;When the Bloom is on the Rye,&rdquo; in
+      a manner that drew tears from every eye, except Flapper's, who was asleep,
+      and Jack's, who was singing the &ldquo;Bay of Biscay O,&rdquo; at the same time. Gortz
+      and Fips were all the time lunging at each other with a pair of
+      single-sticks, the barrister having a very strong notion that he was
+      Richard the Third. At last Fips hit the West Indian such a blow across his
+      sconce, that the other grew furious; he seized a champagne-bottle, which
+      was, providentially, empty, and hurled it across the room at Fips: had
+      that celebrated barrister not bowed his head at the moment, the Queen's
+      Bench would have lost one of its most eloquent practitioners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fips stood as straight as he could; his cheek was pale with wrath.
+      &ldquo;M-m-ister Go-gortz,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I always heard you were a blackguard; now
+      I can pr-pr-peperove it. Flapper, your pistols! every ge-ge-genlmn knows
+      what I mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Mr. Flapper had a small pair of pocket-pistols, which the tipsy
+      barrister had suddenly remembered, and with which he proposed to sacrifice
+      the West Indian. Gortz was nothing loth, but was quite as valorous as the
+      lawyer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Attwood, who, in spite of his potations, seemed the soberest man of the
+      party, had much enjoyed the scene, until this sudden demand for the
+      weapons. &ldquo;Pshaw!&rdquo; said he, eagerly, &ldquo;don't give these men the means of
+      murdering each other; sit down and let us have another song.&rdquo; But they
+      would not be still; and Flapper forthwith produced his pistol-case, and
+      opened it, in order that the duel might take place on the spot. There were
+      no pistols there! &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; said Attwood, looking much
+      confused; &ldquo;I&mdash;I took the pistols home with me to clean them!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't know what there was in his tone, or in the words, but we were
+      sobered all of a sudden. Attwood was conscious of the singular effect
+      produced by him, for he blushed, and endeavored to speak of other things,
+      but we could not bring our spirits back to the mark again, and soon
+      separated for the night. As we issued into the street Jack took me aside,
+      and whispered, &ldquo;Have you a napoleon, Titmarsh, in your purse?&rdquo; Alas! I was
+      not so rich. My reply was, that I was coming to Jack, only in the morning,
+      to borrow a similar sum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not make any reply, but turned away homeward: I never heard him
+      speak another word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two mornings after (for none of our party met on the day succeeding the
+      supper), I was awakened by my porter, who brought a pressing letter from
+      Mr. Gortz:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;DEAR T.,&mdash;I wish you would come over here to breakfast. There's a
+      row about Attwood.&mdash;Yours truly,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;SOLOMON GORTZ.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I immediately set forward to Gortz's; he lived in the Rue du Helder, a few
+      doors from Attwood's new lodging. If the reader is curious to know the
+      house in which the catastrophe of this history took place, he has but to
+      march some twenty doors down from the Boulevard des Italiens, when he will
+      see a fine door, with a naked Cupid shooting at him from the hall, and a
+      Venus beckoning him up the stairs. On arriving at the West Indian's, at
+      about mid-day (it was a Sunday morning), I found that gentleman in his
+      dressing-gown, discussing, in the company of Mr Fips, a large plate of
+      bifteck aux pommes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's a pretty row!&rdquo; said Gortz, quoting from his letter;&mdash;&ldquo;Attwood's
+      off&mdash;have a bit of beefsteak?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; exclaimed I, adopting the familiar phraseology of my
+      acquaintances:&mdash;&ldquo;Attwood off?&mdash;has he cut his stick?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not bad,&rdquo; said the feeling and elegant Fips&mdash;&ldquo;not such a bad guess,
+      my boy; but he has not exactly CUT HIS STICK.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;WHY, HIS THROAT.&rdquo; The man's mouth was full of bleeding beef as he uttered
+      this gentlemanly witticism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wish I could say that I was myself in the least affected by the news. I
+      did not joke about it like my friend Fips; this was more for propriety's
+      sake than for feeling's: but for my old school acquaintance, the friend of
+      my early days, the merry associate of the last few months, I own, with
+      shame, that I had not a tear or a pang. In some German tale there is an
+      account of a creature most beautiful and bewitching, whom all men admire
+      and follow; but this charming and fantastic spirit only leads them, one by
+      one, into ruin, and then leaves them. The novelist, who describes her
+      beauty, says that his heroine is a fairy, and HAS NO HEART. I think the
+      intimacy which is begotten over the wine-bottle, is a spirit of this
+      nature; I never knew a good feeling come from it, or an honest friendship
+      made by it; it only entices men and ruins them; it is only a phantom of
+      friendship and feeling, called up by the delirious blood, and the wicked
+      spells of the wine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to drop this strain of moralizing (in which the writer is not too
+      anxious to proceed, for he cuts in it a most pitiful figure), we passed
+      sundry criticisms upon poor Attwood's character, expressed our horror at
+      his death&mdash;which sentiment was fully proved by Mr. Fips, who declared
+      that the notion of it made him feel quite faint, and was obliged to drink
+      a large glass of brandy; and, finally, we agreed that we would go and see
+      the poor fellow's corpse, and witness, if necessary, his burial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Flapper, who had joined us, was the first to propose this visit: he said
+      he did not mind the fifteen francs which Jack owed him for billiards, but
+      he was anxious to GET BACK HIS PISTOL. Accordingly, we sallied forth, and
+      speedily arrived at the hotel which Attwood inhabited still. He had
+      occupied, for a time, very fine apartments in this house: and it was only
+      on arriving there that day that we found he had been gradually driven from
+      his magnificent suite of rooms au premier, to a little chamber in the
+      fifth story:&mdash;we mounted, and found him. It was a little shabby room,
+      with a few articles of rickety furniture, and a bed in an alcove; the
+      light from the one window was falling full upon the bed and the body. Jack
+      was dressed in a fine lawn shirt; he had kept it, poor fellow, TO DIE IN;
+      for in all his drawers and cupboards there was not a single article of
+      clothing; he had pawned everything by which he could raise a penny&mdash;desk,
+      books, dressing-case, and clothes; and not a single halfpenny was found in
+      his possession.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * In order to account for these trivial details, the reader
+     must be told that the story is, for the chief part, a fact;
+     and that the little sketch in this page was TAKEN FROM
+     NATURE. The latter was likewise a copy from one found in the
+     manner described.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      He was lying as I have drawn him,* one hand on his breast, the other
+      falling towards the ground. There was an expression of perfect calm on the
+      face, and no mark of blood to stain the side towards the light. On the
+      other side, however, there was a great pool of black blood, and in it the
+      pistol; it looked more like a toy than a weapon to take away the life of
+      this vigorous young man. In his forehead, at the side, was a small black
+      wound; Jack's life had passed through it; it was little bigger than a
+      mole.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * This refers to an illustrated edition of the work.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Regardez un peu,&rdquo; said the landlady, &ldquo;messieurs, il m'a gâté trois
+      matelas, et il me doit quarante quatre francs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was all his epitaph: he had spoiled three mattresses, and owed the
+      landlady four-and-forty francs. In the whole world there was not a soul to
+      love him or lament him. We, his friends, were looking at his body more as
+      an object of curiosity, watching it with a kind of interest with which one
+      follows the fifth act of a tragedy, and leaving it with the same feeling
+      with which one leaves the theatre when the play is over and the curtain is
+      down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beside Jack's bed, on his little &ldquo;table de nuit,&rdquo; lay the remains of his
+      last meal, and an open letter, which we read. It was from one of his
+      suspicious acquaintances of former days, and ran thus:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Où es tu, cher Jack? why you not come and see me&mdash;tu me dois de
+      l'argent, entends tu?&mdash;un chapeau, une cachemire, a box of the Play.
+      Viens demain soir, je t'attendrai at eight o'clock, Passage des Panoramas.
+      My Sir is at his country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adieu à demain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fifine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Samedi.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I shuddered as I walked through this very Passage des Panoramas, in the
+      evening. The girl was there, pacing to and fro, and looking in the
+      countenance of every passer-by, to recognize Attwood. &ldquo;ADIEU À DEMAIN!&rdquo;&mdash;there
+      was a dreadful meaning in the words, which the writer of them little knew.
+      &ldquo;Adieu à demain!&rdquo;&mdash;the morrow was come, and the soul of the poor
+      suicide was now in the presence of God. I dare not think of his fate; for,
+      except in the fact of his poverty and desperation, was he worse than any
+      of us, his companions, who had shared his debauches, and marched with him
+      up to the very brink of the grave?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is but one more circumstance to relate regarding poor Jack&mdash;his
+      burial; it was of a piece with his death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was nailed into a paltry coffin and buried, at the expense of the
+      arrondissement, in a nook of the burial-place beyond the Barrière de
+      l'Etoile. They buried him at six o'clock, of a bitter winter's morning,
+      and it was with difficulty that an English clergyman could be found to
+      read a service over his grave. The three men who have figured in this
+      history acted as Jack's mourners; and as the ceremony was to take place so
+      early in the morning, these men sat up the night through, AND WERE ALMOST
+      DRUNK as they followed his coffin to its resting-place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MORAL.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When we turned out in our great-coats,&rdquo; said one of them afterwards,
+      &ldquo;reeking of cigars and brandy-and-water, d&mdash;e, sir, we quite
+      frightened the old buck of a parson; he did not much like our company.&rdquo;
+       After the ceremony was concluded, these gentlemen were very happy to get
+      home to a warm and comfortable breakfast, and finished the day royally at
+      Frascati's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      NAPOLEON AND HIS SYSTEM.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ON PRINCE LOUIS NAPOLEON'S WORK.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Any person who recollects the history of the absurd outbreak of Strasburg,
+      in which Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte figured, three years ago, must
+      remember that, however silly the revolt was, however, foolish its pretext,
+      however doubtful its aim, and inexperienced its leader, there was,
+      nevertheless, a party, and a considerable one in France, that were not
+      unwilling to lend the new projectors their aid. The troops who declared
+      against the Prince, were, it was said, all but willing to declare for him;
+      and it was certain that, in many of the regiments of the army, there
+      existed a strong spirit of disaffection, and an eager wish for the return
+      of the imperial system and family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to the good that was to be derived from the change, that is another
+      question. Why the Emperor of the French should be better than the King of
+      the French, or the King of the French better than the King of France and
+      Navarre, it is not our business to inquire; but all the three monarchs
+      have no lack of supporters; republicanism has no lack of supporters; St.
+      Simoninnism was followed by a respectable body of admirers; Robespierrism
+      has a select party of friends. If, in a country where so many quacks have
+      had their day, Prince Louis Napoleon thought he might renew the imperial
+      quackery, why should he not? It has recollections with it that must always
+      be dear to a gallant nation; it has certain claptraps in its vocabulary
+      that can never fail to inflame a vain, restless, grasping, disappointed
+      one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the first place, and don't let us endeavor to disguise it, they hate
+      us. Not all the protestations of friendship, not all the wisdom of Lord
+      Palmerston, not all the diplomacy of our distinguished plenipotentiary,
+      Mr. Henry Lytton Bulwer&mdash;and let us add, not all the benefit which
+      both countries would derive from the alliance&mdash;can make it, in our
+      times at least, permanent and cordial. They hate us. The Carlist organs
+      revile us with a querulous fury that never sleeps; the moderate party, if
+      they admit the utility of our alliance, are continually pointing out our
+      treachery, our insolence, and our monstrous infractions of it; and for the
+      Republicans, as sure as the morning comes, the columns of their journals
+      thunder out volleys of fierce denunciations against our unfortunate
+      country. They live by feeding the natural hatred against England, by
+      keeping old wounds open, by recurring ceaselessly to the history of old
+      quarrels, and as in these we, by God's help, by land and by sea, in old
+      times and late, have had the uppermost, they perpetuate the shame and
+      mortification of the losing party, the bitterness of past defeats, and the
+      eager desire to avenge them. A party which knows how to exploiter this
+      hatred will always be popular to a certain extent; and the imperial scheme
+      has this, at least, among its conditions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there is the favorite claptrap of the &ldquo;natural frontier.&rdquo; The
+      Frenchman yearns to be bounded by the Rhine and the Alps; and next follows
+      the cry, &ldquo;Let France take her place among nations, and direct, as she
+      ought to do, the affairs of Europe.&rdquo; These are the two chief articles
+      contained in the new imperial programme, if we may credit the journal
+      which has been established to advocate the cause. A natural boundary&mdash;stand
+      among the nations&mdash;popular development&mdash;Russian alliance, and a
+      reduction of la perfide Albion to its proper insignificance. As yet we
+      know little more of the plan: and yet such foundations are sufficient to
+      build a party upon, and with such windy weapons a substantial Government
+      is to be overthrown!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In order to give these doctrines, such as they are, a chance of finding
+      favor with his countrymen, Prince Louis has the advantage of being able to
+      refer to a former great professor of them&mdash;his uncle Napoleon. His
+      attempt is at once pious and prudent; it exalts the memory of the uncle,
+      and furthers the interests of the nephew, who attempts to show what
+      Napoleon's ideas really were; what good had already resulted from the
+      practice of them; how cruelly they had been thwarted by foreign wars and
+      difficulties; and what vast benefits WOULD have resulted from them; ay,
+      and (it is reasonable to conclude) might still, if the French nation would
+      be wise enough to pitch upon a governor that would continue the
+      interrupted scheme. It is, however, to be borne in mind that the Emperor
+      Napoleon had certain arguments in favor of his opinions for the time
+      being, which his nephew has not employed. On the 13th Vendemiaire, when
+      General Bonaparte believed in the excellence of a Directory, it may be
+      remembered that he aided his opinions by forty pieces of artillery, and by
+      Colonel Murat at the head of his dragoons. There was no resisting such a
+      philosopher; the Directory was established forthwith, and the sacred cause
+      of the minority triumphed, in like manner, when the General was convinced
+      of the weakness of the Directory, and saw fully the necessity of
+      establishing a Consulate, what were his arguments? Moreau, Lannes, Murat,
+      Berthier, Leclerc, Lefebvre&mdash;gentle apostles of the truth!&mdash;marched
+      to St. Cloud, and there, with fixed bayonets, caused it to prevail. Error
+      vanished in an instant. At once five hundred of its high-priests tumbled
+      out of windows, and lo! three Consuls appeared to guide the destinies of
+      France! How much more expeditious, reasonable, and clinching was this
+      argument of the 18th Brumaire, than any one that can be found in any
+      pamphlet! A fig for your duodecimos and octavos! Talk about points, there
+      are none like those at the end of a bayonet; and the most powerful of
+      styles is a good rattling &ldquo;article&rdquo; from a nine-pounder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At least this is our interpretation of the manner in which were always
+      propagated the Idées Napoléoniennes. Not such, however, is Prince Louis's
+      belief; and, if you wish to go along with him in opinion, you will
+      discover that a more liberal, peaceable, prudent Prince never existed: you
+      will read that &ldquo;the mission of Napoleon&rdquo; was to be the &ldquo;testamentary
+      executor of the revolution;&rdquo; and the Prince should have added the legatee;
+      or, more justly still, as well as the EXECUTOR, he should be called the
+      EXECUTIONER, and then his title would be complete. In Vendemiaire, the
+      military Tartuffe, he threw aside the Revolution's natural heirs, and made
+      her, as it were, ALTER HER WILL; on the 18th of Brumaire he strangled her,
+      and on the 19th seized on her property, and kept it until force deprived
+      him of it. Illustrations, to be sure, are no arguments, but the example is
+      the Prince's, not ours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the Prince's eyes, then, his uncle is a god; of all monarchs, the most
+      wise, upright, and merciful. Thirty years ago the opinion had millions of
+      supporters; while millions again were ready to avouch the exact contrary.
+      It is curious to think of the former difference of opinion concerning
+      Napoleon; and, in reading his nephew's rapturous encomiums of him, one
+      goes back to the days when we ourselves were as loud and mad in his
+      dispraise. Who does not remember his own personal hatred and horror,
+      twenty-five years ago, for the man whom we used to call the &ldquo;bloody
+      Corsican upstart and assassin?&rdquo; What stories did we not believe of him?&mdash;what
+      murders, rapes, robberies, not lay to his charge?&mdash;we who were living
+      within a few miles of his territory, and might, by books and newspapers,
+      be made as well acquainted with his merits or demerits as any of his own
+      countrymen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then was the age when the Idées Napoléoniennes might have passed through
+      many editions; for while we were thus outrageously bitter, our neighbors
+      were as extravagantly attached to him by a strange infatuation&mdash;adored
+      him like a god, whom we chose to consider as a fiend; and vowed that,
+      under his government, their nation had attained its highest pitch of
+      grandeur and glory. In revenge there existed in England (as is proved by a
+      thousand authentic documents) a monster so hideous, a tyrant so ruthless
+      and bloody, that the world's history cannot show his parallel. This
+      ruffian's name was, during the early part of the French revolution,
+      Pittetcobourg. Pittetcobourg's emissaries were in every corner of France;
+      Pittetcobourg's gold chinked in the pockets of every traitor in Europe; it
+      menaced the life of the godlike Robespierre; it drove into cellars and
+      fits of delirium even the gentle philanthropist Marat; it fourteen times
+      caused the dagger to be lifted against the bosom of the First Consul,
+      Emperor, and King,&mdash;that first, great, glorious, irresistible,
+      cowardly, contemptible, bloody hero and fiend, Bonaparte, before
+      mentioned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On our side of the Channel we have had leisure, long since, to re-consider
+      our verdict against Napoleon; though, to be sure, we have not changed our
+      opinion about Pittetcobourg. After five-and-thirty years all parties bear
+      witness to his honesty, and speak with affectionate reverence of his
+      patriotism, his genius, and his private virtue. In France, however, or, at
+      least among certain parties in France, there has been no such modification
+      of opinion. With the Republicans, Pittetcobourg is Pittetcobourg still,&mdash;crafty,
+      bloody, seeking whom he may devour; and perfide Albion more perfidious
+      than ever. This hatred is the point of union between the Republic and the
+      Empire; it has been fostered ever since, and must be continued by Prince
+      Louis, if he would hope to conciliate both parties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With regard to the Emperor, then, Prince Louis erects to his memory as
+      fine a monument as his wits can raise. One need not say that the imperial
+      apologist's opinion should be received with the utmost caution; for a man
+      who has such a hero for an uncle may naturally be proud of and partial to
+      him; and when this nephew of the great man would be his heir likewise,
+      and, hearing his name, step also into his imperial shoes, one may
+      reasonably look for much affectionate panegyric. &ldquo;The empire was the best
+      of empires,&rdquo; cries the Prince; and possibly it was; undoubtedly, the
+      Prince thinks it was; but he is the very last person who would convince a
+      man with the proper suspicious impartiality. One remembers a certain
+      consultation of politicians which is recorded in the Spelling-book; and
+      the opinion of that patriotic sage who avowed that, for a real blameless
+      constitution, an impenetrable shield for liberty, and cheap defence of
+      nations, there was nothing like leather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us examine some of the Prince's article. If we may be allowed humbly
+      to express an opinion, his leather is not only quite insufficient for
+      those vast public purposes for which he destines it, but is, moreover, and
+      in itself, very BAD LEATHER. The hides are poor, small, unsound slips of
+      skin; or, to drop this cobbling metaphor, the style is not particularly
+      brilliant, the facts not very startling, and, as for the conclusions, one
+      may differ with almost every one of them. Here is an extract from his
+      first chapter, &ldquo;on governments in general:&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I speak it with regret, I can see but two governments, at this day, which
+      fulfil the mission that Providence has confided to them; they are the two
+      colossi at the end of the world; one at the extremity of the old world,
+      the other at the extremity of the new. Whilst our old European centre is
+      as a volcano, consuming itself in its crater, the two nations of the East
+      and the West, march without hesitation, towards perfection; the one under
+      the will of a single individual, the other under liberty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Providence has confided to the United States of North America the task of
+      peopling and civilizing that immense territory which stretches from the
+      Atlantic to the South Sea, and from the North Pole to the Equator. The
+      Government, which is only a simple administration, has only hitherto been
+      called upon to put in practice the old adage, Laissez faire, laissez
+      passer, in order to favor that irresistible instinct which pushes the
+      people of America to the west.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Russia it is to the imperial dynasty that is owing all the vast
+      progress which, in a century and a half, has rescued that empire from
+      barbarism. The imperial power must contend against all the ancient
+      prejudices of our old Europe: it must centralize, as far as possible, all
+      the powers of the state in the hands of one person, in order to destroy
+      the abuses which the feudal and communal franchises have served to
+      perpetuate. The last alone can hope to receive from it the improvements
+      which it expects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But thou, France of Henry IV., of Louis XIV., of Carnot, of Napoleon&mdash;thou,
+      who wert always for the west of Europe the source of progress, who
+      possessest in thyself the two great pillars of empire, the genius for the
+      arts of peace and the genius of war&mdash;hast thou no further mission to
+      fulfil? Wilt thou never cease to waste thy force and energies in intestine
+      struggles? No; such cannot be thy destiny: the day will soon come, when,
+      to govern thee, it will be necessary to understand that thy part is to
+      place in all treaties thy sword of Brennus on the side of civilization.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These are the conclusions of the Prince's remarks upon governments in
+      general; and it must be supposed that the reader is very little wiser at
+      the end than at the beginning. But two governments in the world fulfil
+      their mission: the one government, which is no government; the other,
+      which is a despotism. The duty of France is IN ALL TREATIES to place her
+      sword of Brennus in the scale of civilization. Without quarrelling with
+      the somewhat confused language of the latter proposition, may we ask what,
+      in heaven's name, is the meaning of all the three? What is this épée de
+      Brennus? and how is France to use it? Where is the great source of
+      political truth, from which, flowing pure, we trace American republicanism
+      in one stream, Russian despotism in another? Vastly prosperous is the
+      great republic, if you will: if dollars and cents constitute happiness,
+      there is plenty for all: but can any one, who has read of the American
+      doings in the late frontier troubles, and the daily disputes on the slave
+      question, praise the GOVERNMENT of the States?&mdash;a Government which
+      dares not punish homicide or arson performed before its very eyes, and
+      which the pirates of Texas and the pirates of Canada can brave at their
+      will? There is no government, but a prosperous anarchy; as the Prince's
+      other favorite government is a prosperous slavery. What, then, is to be
+      the épée de Brennus government? Is it to be a mixture of the two?
+      &ldquo;Society,&rdquo; writes the Prince, axiomatically, &ldquo;contains in itself two
+      principles&mdash;the one of progress and immortality, the other of disease
+      and disorganization.&rdquo; No doubt; and as the one tends towards liberty, so
+      the other is only to be cured by order: and then, with a singular
+      felicity, Prince Louis picks us out a couple of governments, in one of
+      which the common regulating power is as notoriously too weak, as it is in
+      the other too strong, and talks in rapturous terms of the manner in which
+      they fulfil their &ldquo;providential mission!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From these considerations on things in general, the Prince conducts us to
+      Napoleon in particular, and enters largely into a discussion of the merits
+      of the imperial system. Our author speaks of the Emperor's advent in the
+      following grandiose way:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Napoleon, on arriving at the public stage, saw that his part was to be
+      the TESTAMENTARY EXECUTOR of the Revolution. The destructive fire of
+      parties was extinct; and when the Revolution, dying, but not vanquished,
+      delegated to Napoleon the accomplishment of her last will, she said to
+      him, 'Establish upon solid bases the principal result of my efforts. Unite
+      divided Frenchmen. Defeat feudal Europe that is leagued against me.
+      Cicatrize my wounds. Enlighten the nations. Execute that in width, which I
+      have had to perform in depth. Be for Europe what I have been for France.
+      And, even if you must water the tree of civilization with your blood&mdash;if
+      you must see your projects misunderstood, and your sons without a country,
+      wandering over the face of the earth, never abandon the sacred cause of
+      the French people. Insure its triumph by all the means which genius can
+      discover and humanity approve.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This grand mission Napoleon performed to the end. His task was difficult.
+      He had to place upon new principles a society still boiling with hatred
+      and revenge; and to use, for building up, the same instruments which had
+      been employed for pulling down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The common lot of every new truth that arises, is to wound rather than to
+      convince&mdash;rather than to gain proselytes, to awaken fear. For,
+      oppressed as it long has been, it rushes forward with additional force;
+      having to encounter obstacles, it is compelled to combat them, and
+      overthrow them; until, at length, comprehended and adopted by the
+      generality, it becomes the basis of new social order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Liberty will follow the same march as the Christian religion. Armed with
+      death from the ancient society of Rome, it for a long while excited the
+      hatred and fear of the people. At last, by force of martyrdoms and
+      persecutions, the religion of Christ penetrated into the conscience and
+      the soul; it soon had kings and armies at its orders, and Constantine and
+      Charlemagne bore it triumphant throughout Europe. Religion then laid down
+      her arms of war. It laid open to all the principles of peace and order
+      which it contained; it became the prop of Government, as it was the
+      organizing element of society. Thus will it be with liberty. In 1793 it
+      frightened people and sovereigns alike; then, having clothed itself in a
+      milder garb, IT INSINUATED ITSELF EVERYWHERE IN THE TRAIN OF OUR
+      BATTALIONS. In 1815 all parties adopted its flag, and armed themselves
+      with its moral force&mdash;covered themselves with its colors. The
+      adoption was not sincere, and liberty was soon obliged to reassume its
+      warlike accoutrements. With the contest their fears returned. Let us hope
+      that they will soon cease, and that liberty will soon resume her peaceful
+      standards, to quit them no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Emperor Napoleon contributed more than any one else towards
+      accelerating the reign of liberty, by saving the moral influence of the
+      revolution, and diminishing the fears which it imposed. Without the
+      Consulate and the Empire, the revolution would have been only a grand
+      drama, leaving grand revolutions but no traces: the revolution would have
+      been drowned in the counter-revolution. The contrary, however, was the
+      case. Napoleon rooted the revolution in France, and introduced, throughout
+      Europe, the principal benefits of the crisis of 1789. To use his own
+      words, 'He purified the revolution, he confirmed kings, and ennobled
+      people.' He purified the revolution, in separating the truths which it
+      contained from the passions that, during its delirium, disfigured it. He
+      ennobled the people in giving them the consciousness of their force, and
+      those institutions which raise men in their own eyes. The Emperor may be
+      considered as the Messiah of the new ideas; for&mdash;and we must confess
+      it&mdash;in the moments immediately succeeding a social revolution, it is
+      not so essential to put rigidly into practice all the propositions
+      resulting from the new theory, but to become master of the regenerative
+      genius, to identify one's self with the sentiments of the people, and
+      boldly to direct them towards the desired point. To accomplish such a task
+      YOUR FIBRE SHOULD RESPOND TO THAT OF THE PEOPLE, as the Emperor said; you
+      should feel like it, your interests should be so intimately raised with
+      its own, that you should vanquish or fall together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us take breath after these big phrases,&mdash;grand round figures of
+      speech,&mdash;which, when put together, amount like certain other
+      combinations of round figures to exactly 0. We shall not stop to argue the
+      merits and demerits of Prince Louis's notable comparison between the
+      Christian religion and the Imperial-revolutionary system. There are many
+      blunders in the above extract as we read it; blundering metaphors,
+      blundering arguments, and blundering assertions; but this is surely the
+      grandest blunder of all; and one wonders at the blindness of the
+      legislator and historian who can advance such a parallel. And what are we
+      to say of the legacy of the dying revolution to Napoleon? Revolutions do
+      not die, and, on their death-beds, making fine speeches, hand over their
+      property to young officers of artillery. We have all read the history of
+      his rise. The constitution of the year III. was carried. Old men of the
+      Montagne, disguised royalists, Paris sections, PITTETCOBOURG, above all,
+      with his money-bags, thought that here was a fine opportunity for a
+      revolt, and opposed the new constitution in arms: the new constitution had
+      knowledge of a young officer who would not hesitate to defend its cause,
+      and who effectually beat the majority. The tale may be found in every
+      account of the revolution, and the rest of his story need not be told. We
+      know every step that he took: we know how, by doses of cannon-balls
+      promptly administered, he cured the fever of the sections&mdash;that fever
+      which another camp-physician (Menou) declined to prescribe for; we know
+      how he abolished the Directory; and how the Consulship came; and then the
+      Empire; and then the disgrace, exile, and lonely death. Has not all this
+      been written by historians in all tongues?&mdash;by memoir-writing pages,
+      chamberlains, marshals, lackeys, secretaries, contemporaries, and ladies
+      of honor? Not a word of miracle is there in all this narration; not a word
+      of celestial missions, or political Messiahs. From Napoleon's rise to his
+      fall, the bayonet marches alongside of him: now he points it at the tails
+      of the scampering &ldquo;five hundred,&rdquo;&mdash;now he charges with it across the
+      bloody planks of Arcola&mdash;now he flies before it over the fatal plain
+      of Waterloo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unwilling, however, as he may be to grant that there are any spots in the
+      character of his hero's government, the Prince is, nevertheless, obliged
+      to allow that such existed; that the Emperor's manner of rule was a little
+      more abrupt and dictatorial than might possibly be agreeable. For this the
+      Prince has always an answer ready&mdash;it is the same poor one that
+      Napoleon uttered a million of times to his companions in exile&mdash;the
+      excuse of necessity. He WOULD have been very liberal, but that the people
+      were not fit for it; or that the cursed war prevented him&mdash;or any
+      other reason why. His first duty, however, says his apologist, was to form
+      a general union of Frenchmen, and he set about his plan in this wise:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us not forget, that all which Napoleon undertook, in order to create
+      a general fusion, he performed without renouncing the principles of the
+      revolution. He recalled the émigrés, without touching upon the law by
+      which their goods had been confiscated and sold as public property. He
+      reestablished the Catholic religion at the same time that he proclaimed
+      the liberty of conscience, and endowed equally the ministers of all sects.
+      He caused himself to be consecrated by the Sovereign Pontiff, without
+      conceding to the Pope's demand any of the liberties of the Gallican
+      church. He married a daughter of the Emperor of Austria, without
+      abandoning any of the rights of France to the conquests she had made. He
+      reestablished noble titles, without attaching to them any privileges or
+      prerogatives, and these titles were conferred on all ranks, on all
+      services, on all professions. Under the empire all idea of caste was
+      destroyed; no man ever thought of vaunting his pedigree&mdash;no man ever
+      was asked how he was born, but what he had done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The first quality of a people which aspires to liberal government, is
+      respect to the law. Now, a law has no other power than lies in the
+      interest which each citizen has to defend or to contravene it. In order to
+      make a people respect the law, it was necessary that it should be executed
+      in the interest of all, and should consecrate the principle of equality in
+      all its extension. It was necessary to restore the prestige with which the
+      Government had been formerly invested, and to make the principles of the
+      revolution take root in the public manners. At the commencement of a new
+      society, it is the legislator who makes or corrects the manners; later, it
+      is the manners which make the law, or preserve it from age to age intact.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of these fusions are amusing. No man in the empire was asked how he
+      was born, but what he had done; and, accordingly, as a man's actions were
+      sufficient to illustrate him, the Emperor took care to make a host of new
+      title-bearers, princes, dukes, barons, and what not, whose rank has
+      descended to their children. He married a princess of Austria; but, for
+      all that, did not abandon his conquests&mdash;perhaps not actually; but he
+      abandoned his allies, and, eventually, his whole kingdom. Who does not
+      recollect his answer to the Poles, at the commencement of the Russian
+      campaign? But for Napoleon's imperial father-in-law, Poland would have
+      been a kingdom, and his race, perhaps, imperial still. Why was he to fetch
+      this princess out of Austria to make heirs for his throne? Why did not the
+      man of the people marry a girl of the people? Why must he have a Pope to
+      crown him&mdash;half a dozen kings for brothers, and a bevy of
+      aides-de-camp dressed out like so many mountebanks from Astley's, with
+      dukes' coronets, and grand blue velvet marshals' bâtons? We have
+      repeatedly his words for it. He wanted to create an aristocracy&mdash;another
+      acknowledgment on his part of the Republican dilemma&mdash;another apology
+      for the revolutionary blunder. To keep the republic within bounds, a
+      despotism is necessary; to rally round the despotism, an aristocracy must
+      be created; and for what have we been laboring all this while? for what
+      have bastiles been battered down, and king's heads hurled, as a gage of
+      battle, in the face of armed Europe? To have a Duke of Otranto instead of
+      a Duke de la Tremouille, and Emperor Stork in place of King Log. O lame
+      conclusion! Is the blessed revolution which is prophesied for us in
+      England only to end in establishing a Prince Fergus O'Connor, or a
+      Cardinal Wade, or a Duke Daniel Whittle Harvey? Great as those patriots
+      are, we love them better under their simple family names, and scorn titles
+      and coronets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At present, in France, the delicate matter of titles seems to be better
+      arranged, any gentleman, since the Revolution, being free to adopt any one
+      he may fix upon; and it appears that the Crown no longer confers any
+      patents of nobility, but contents itself with saying, as in the case of M.
+      de Pontois, the other day, &ldquo;Le Roi trouve convenable that you take the
+      title of,&rdquo; &amp;c.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To execute the legacy of the revolution, then; to fulfil his providential
+      mission; to keep his place,&mdash;in other words, for the simplest are
+      always the best,&mdash;to keep his place, and to keep his Government in
+      decent order, the Emperor was obliged to establish a military despotism,
+      to re-establish honors and titles; it was necessary, as the Prince
+      confesses, to restore the old prestige of the Government, in order to make
+      the people respect it; and he adds&mdash;a truth which one hardly would
+      expect from him,&mdash;&ldquo;At the commencement of a new society, it is the
+      legislator who makes and corrects the manners; later, it is the manners
+      which preserve the laws.&rdquo; Of course, and here is the great risk that all
+      revolutionizing people run&mdash;they must tend to despotism; &ldquo;they must
+      personify themselves in a man,&rdquo; is the Prince's phrase; and, according as
+      is his temperament or disposition&mdash;according as he is a Cromwell, a
+      Washington, or a Napoleon&mdash;the revolution becomes tyranny or freedom,
+      prospers or falls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somewhere in the St. Helena memorials, Napoleon reports a message of his
+      to the Pope. &ldquo;Tell the Pope,&rdquo; he says to an archbishop, &ldquo;to remember that
+      I have six hundred thousand armed Frenchmen, qui marcheront avec moi, pour
+      moi, et comme moi.&rdquo; And this is the legacy of the revolution, the
+      advancement of freedom! A hundred volumes of imperial special pleading
+      will not avail against such a speech as this&mdash;one so insolent, and at
+      the same time so humiliating, which gives unwittingly the whole of the
+      Emperor's progress, strength, and weakness. The six hundred thousand armed
+      Frenchmen were used up, and the whole fabric falls; the six hundred
+      thousand are reduced to sixty thousand, and straightway all the rest of
+      the fine imperial scheme vanishes: the miserable senate, so crawling and
+      abject but now, becomes of a sudden endowed with a wondrous independence;
+      the miserable sham nobles, sham empress, sham kings, dukes, princes,
+      chamberlains, pack up their plumes and embroideries, pounce upon what
+      money and plate they can lay their hands on, and when the allies appear
+      before Paris, when for courage and manliness there is yet hope, when with
+      fierce marches hastening to the relief of his capital, bursting through
+      ranks upon ranks of the enemy, and crushing or scattering them from the
+      path of his swift and victorious despair, the Emperor at last is at home,&mdash;where
+      are the great dignitaries and the lieutenant-generals of the empire? Where
+      is Maria Louisa, the Empress Eagle, with her little callow king of Rome?
+      Is she going to defend her nest and her eaglet? Not she. Empress-queen,
+      lieutenant-general, and court dignitaries, are off on the wings of all the
+      winds&mdash;profligati sunt, they are away with the money-bags, and Louis
+      Stanislas Xavier rolls into the palace of his fathers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With regard to Napoleon's excellences as an administrator, a legislator, a
+      constructor of public works, and a skilful financier, his nephew speaks
+      with much diffuse praise, and few persons, we suppose, will be disposed to
+      contradict him. Whether the Emperor composed his famous code, or borrowed
+      it, is of little importance; but he established it, and made the law equal
+      for every man in France except one. His vast public works and vaster wars
+      were carried on without new loans or exorbitant taxes; it was only the
+      blood and liberty of the people that were taxed, and we shall want a
+      better advocate than Prince Louis to show us that these were not most
+      unnecessarily and lavishly thrown away. As for the former and material
+      improvements, it is not necessary to confess here that a despotic energy
+      can effect such far more readily than a Government of which the strength
+      is diffused in many conflicting parties. No doubt, if we could create a
+      despotical governing machine, a steam autocrat,&mdash;passionless,
+      untiring, and supreme,&mdash;we should advance further, and live more at
+      ease than under any other form of government. Ministers might enjoy their
+      pensions and follow their own devices; Lord John might compose histories
+      or tragedies at his leisure, and Lord Palmerston, instead of racking his
+      brains to write leading articles for Cupid, might crown his locks with
+      flowers, and sing [Greek text omitted], his natural Anacreontics; but
+      alas! not so: if the despotic Government has its good side, Prince Louis
+      Napoleon must acknowledge that it has its bad, and it is for this that the
+      civilized world is compelled to substitute for it something more orderly
+      and less capricious. Good as the Imperial Government might have been, it
+      must be recollected, too, that since its first fall, both the Emperor and
+      his admirer and would-be successor have had their chance of
+      re-establishing it. &ldquo;Fly from steeple to steeple&rdquo; the eagles of the former
+      did actually, and according to promise perch for a while on the towers of
+      Notre Dame. We know the event: if the fate of war declared against the
+      Emperor, the country declared against him too; and, with old Lafayette for
+      a mouthpiece, the representatives of the nation did, in a neat speech,
+      pronounce themselves in permanence, but spoke no more of the Emperor than
+      if he had never been. Thereupon the Emperor proclaimed his son the Emperor
+      Napoleon II. &ldquo;L'Empereur est mort, vive l'Empereur!&rdquo; shouted Prince
+      Lucien. Psha! not a soul echoed the words: the play was played, and as for
+      old Lafayette and his &ldquo;permanent&rdquo; representatives, a corporal with a
+      hammer nailed up the door of their spouting-club, and once more Louis
+      Stanislas Xavier rolled back to the bosom of his people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In like manner Napoleon III. returned from exile, and made his appearance
+      on the frontier. His eagle appeared at Strasburg, and from Strasburg
+      advanced to the capital; but it arrived at Paris with a keeper, and in a
+      post-chaise; whence, by the orders of the sovereign, it was removed to the
+      American shores, and there magnanimously let loose. Who knows, however,
+      how soon it may be on the wing again, and what a flight it will take?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE STORY OF MARY ANCEL.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go, my nephew,&rdquo; said old Father Jacob to me, &ldquo;and complete thy studies at
+      Strasburg: Heaven surely hath ordained thee for the ministry in these
+      times of trouble, and my excellent friend Schneider will work out the
+      divine intention.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Schneider was an old college friend of uncle Jacob's, was a Benedictine
+      monk, and a man famous for his learning; as for me, I was at that time my
+      uncle's chorister, clerk, and sacristan; I swept the church, chanted the
+      prayers with my shrill treble, and swung the great copper incense-pot on
+      Sundays and feasts; and I toiled over the Fathers for the other days of
+      the week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old gentleman said that my progress was prodigious, and, without
+      vanity, I believe he was right, for I then verily considered that praying
+      was my vocation, and not fighting, as I have found since.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You would hardly conceive (said the Captain, swearing a great oath) how
+      devout and how learned I was in those days; I talked Latin faster than my
+      own beautiful patois of Alsacian French; I could utterly overthrow in
+      argument every Protestant (heretics we called them) parson in the
+      neighborhood, and there was a confounded sprinkling of these unbelievers
+      in our part of the country. I prayed half a dozen times a day; I fasted
+      thrice in a week; and, as for penance, I used to scourge my little sides,
+      till they had no more feeling than a peg-top: such was the godly life I
+      led at my uncle Jacob's in the village of Steinbach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our family had long dwelt in this place, and a large farm and a pleasant
+      house were then in the possession of another uncle&mdash;uncle Edward. He
+      was the youngest of the three sons of my grandfather; but Jacob, the
+      elder, had shown a decided vocation for the church, from, I believe, the
+      age of three, and now was by no means tired of it at sixty. My father, who
+      was to have inherited the paternal property, was, as I hear, a terrible
+      scamp and scapegrace, quarrelled with his family, and disappeared
+      altogether, living and dying at Paris; so far we knew through my mother,
+      who came, poor woman, with me, a child of six months, on her bosom, was
+      refused all shelter by my grandfather, but was housed and kindly cared for
+      by my good uncle Jacob.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here she lived for about seven years, and the old gentleman, when she
+      died, wept over her grave a great deal more than I did, who was then too
+      young to mind anything but toys or sweetmeats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During this time my grandfather was likewise carried off: he left, as I
+      said, the property to his son Edward, with a small proviso in his will
+      that something should be done for me, his grandson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edward was himself a widower, with one daughter, Mary, about three years
+      older than I, and certainly she was the dearest little treasure with which
+      Providence ever blessed a miserly father; by the time she was fifteen,
+      five farmers, three lawyers, twelve Protestant parsons, and a lieutenant
+      of Dragoons had made her offers: it must not be denied that she was an
+      heiress as well as a beauty, which, perhaps, had something to do with the
+      love of these gentlemen. However, Mary declared that she intended to live
+      single, turned away her lovers one after another, and devoted herself to
+      the care of her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Jacob was as fond of her as he was of any saint or martyr. As for
+      me, at the mature age of twelve I had made a kind of divinity of her, and
+      when we sang &ldquo;Ave Maria&rdquo; on Sundays I could not refrain from turning to
+      her, where she knelt, blushing and praying and looking like an angel, as
+      she was. Besides her beauty, Mary had a thousand good qualities; she could
+      play better on the harpsichord, she could dance more lightly, she could
+      make better pickles and puddings, than any girl in Alsace; there was not a
+      want or a fancy of the old hunks her father, or a wish of mine or my
+      uncle's, that she would not gratify if she could; as for herself, the
+      sweet soul had neither wants nor wishes except to see us happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I could talk to you for a year of all the pretty kindnesses that she would
+      do for me; how, when she found me of early mornings among my books, her
+      presence &ldquo;would cast a light upon the day;&rdquo; how she used to smooth and
+      fold my little surplice, and embroider me caps and gowns for high
+      feast-days; how she used to bring flowers for the altar, and who could
+      deck it so well as she? But sentiment does not come glibly from under a
+      grizzled moustache, so I will drop it, if you please.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amongst other favors she showed me, Mary used to be particularly fond of
+      kissing me: it was a thing I did not so much value in those days, but I
+      found that the more I grew alive to the extent of the benefit, the less
+      she would condescend to confer it on me; till at last, when I was about
+      fourteen, she discontinued it altogether, of her own wish at least; only
+      sometimes I used to be rude, and take what she had now become so mighty
+      unwilling to give.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was engaged in a contest of this sort one day with Mary, when, just as I
+      was about to carry off a kiss from her cheek, I was saluted with a
+      staggering slap on my own, which was bestowed by uncle Edward, and sent me
+      reeling some yards down the garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old gentleman, whose tongue was generally as close as his purse, now
+      poured forth a flood of eloquence which quite astonished me. I did not
+      think that so much was to be said on any subject as he managed to utter on
+      one, and that was abuse of me; he stamped, he swore, he screamed; and
+      then, from complimenting me, he turned to Mary, and saluted her in a
+      manner equally forcible and significant; she, who was very much frightened
+      at the commencement of the scene, grew very angry at the coarse words he
+      used, and the wicked motives he imputed to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The child is but fourteen,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;he is your own nephew, and a
+      candidate for holy orders:&mdash;father, it is a shame that you should
+      thus speak of me, your daughter, or of one of his holy profession.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I did not particularly admire this speech myself, but it had an effect on
+      my uncle, and was the cause of the words with which this history
+      commences. The old gentleman persuaded his brother that I must be sent to
+      Strasburg, and there kept until my studies for the church were concluded.
+      I was furnished with a letter to my uncle's old college chum, Professor
+      Schneider, who was to instruct me in theology and Greek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was not sorry to see Strasburg, of the wonders of which I had heard so
+      much; but felt very loth as the time drew near when I must quit my pretty
+      cousin, and my good old uncle. Mary and I managed, however, a parting
+      walk, in which a number of tender things were said on both sides. I am
+      told that you Englishmen consider it cowardly to cry; as for me, I wept
+      and roared incessantly: when Mary squeezed me, for the last time, the
+      tears came out of me as if I had been neither more nor less than a great
+      wet sponge. My cousin's eyes were stoically dry; her ladyship had a part
+      to play, and it would have been wrong for her to be in love with a young
+      chit of fourteen&mdash;so she carried herself with perfect coolness, as if
+      there was nothing the matter. I should not have known that she cared for
+      me, had it not been for a letter which she wrote me a month afterwards&mdash;THEN,
+      nobody was by, and the consequence was that the letter was half washed
+      away with her weeping; if she had used a watering-pot the thing could not
+      have been better done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, I arrived at Strasburg&mdash;a dismal, old-fashioned, rickety town
+      in those days&mdash;and straightway presented myself and letter at
+      Schneider's door; over it was written&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     COMITÉ DE SALUT PUBLIC.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Would you believe it? I was so ignorant a young fellow, that I had no idea
+      of the meaning of the words; however, I entered the citizen's room without
+      fear, and sat down in his ante-chamber until I could be admitted to see
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here I found very few indications of his reverence's profession; the walls
+      were hung round with portraits of Robespierre, Marat, and the like; a
+      great bust of Mirabeau, mutilated, with the word Traître underneath; lists
+      and republican proclamations, tobacco-pipes and fire-arms. At a
+      deal-table, stained with grease and wine, sat a gentleman, with a huge
+      pigtail dangling down to that part of his person which immediately
+      succeeds his back, and a red nightcap, containing a TRICOLOR cockade as
+      large as a pancake. He was smoking a short pipe, reading a little book,
+      and sobbing as if his heart would break. Every now and then he would make
+      brief remarks upon the personages or the incidents of his book, by which I
+      could judge that he was a man of the very keenest sensibilities&mdash;&ldquo;Ah,
+      brigand!&rdquo; &ldquo;O malheureuse!&rdquo; &ldquo;O Charlotte, Charlotte!&rdquo; The work which this
+      gentleman was perusing is called &ldquo;The Sorrows of Werter;&rdquo; it was all the
+      rage, in those days, and my friend was only following the fashion. I asked
+      him if I could see Father Schneider? he turned towards me a hideous,
+      pimpled face, which I dream of now at forty years' distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father who?&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Do you imagine that citizen Schneider has not
+      thrown off the absurd mummery of priesthood? If you were a little older
+      you would go to prison for calling him Father Schneider&mdash;many a man
+      has died for less;&rdquo; and he pointed to a picture of a guillotine, which was
+      hanging in the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was in amazement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is he? Is he not a teacher of Greek, an abbé, a monk, until
+      monasteries were abolished, the learned editor of the songs of
+      'Anacreon?'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He WAS all this,&rdquo; replied my grim friend; &ldquo;he is now a Member of the
+      Committee of Public Safety, and would think no more of ordering your head
+      off than of drinking this tumbler of beer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He swallowed, himself, the frothy liquid, and then proceeded to give me
+      the history of the man to whom my uncle had sent me for instruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Schneider was born in 1756: was a student at Würzburg, and afterwards
+      entered a convent, where he remained nine years. He here became
+      distinguished for his learning and his talents as a preacher, and became
+      chaplain to Duke Charles of Würtemberg. The doctrines of the Illuminati
+      began about this time to spread in Germany, and Schneider speedily joined
+      the sect. He had been a professor of Greek at Cologne; and being
+      compelled, on account of his irregularity, to give up his chair, he came
+      to Strasburg at the commencement of the French Revolution, and acted for
+      some time a principal part as a revolutionary agent at Strasburg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      [&ldquo;Heaven knows what would have happened to me had I continued long under
+      his tuition!&rdquo; said the Captain. &ldquo;I owe the preservation of my morals
+      entirely to my entering the army. A man, sir, who is a soldier, has very
+      little time to be wicked; except in the case of a siege and the sack of a
+      town, when a little license can offend nobody.&rdquo;]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time that my friend had concluded Schneider's biography, we had
+      grown tolerably intimate, and I imparted to him (with that experience so
+      remarkable in youth) my whole history&mdash;my course of studies, my
+      pleasant country life, the names and qualities of my dear relations, and
+      my occupations in the vestry before religion was abolished by order of the
+      Republic. In the course of my speech I recurred so often to the name of my
+      cousin Mary, that the gentleman could not fail to perceive what a tender
+      place she had in my heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then we reverted to &ldquo;The Sorrows of Werter,&rdquo; and discussed the merits of
+      that sublime performance. Although I had before felt some misgivings about
+      my new acquaintance, my heart now quite yearned towards him. He talked
+      about love and sentiment in a manner which made me recollect that I was in
+      love myself; and you know that when a man is in that condition, his taste
+      is not very refined, any maudlin trash of prose or verse appearing sublime
+      to him, provided it correspond, in some degree, with his own situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Candid youth!&rdquo; cried my unknown, &ldquo;I love to hear thy innocent story and
+      look on thy guileless face. There is, alas! so much of the contrary in
+      this world, so much terror and crime and blood, that we who mingle with it
+      are only too glad to forget it. Would that we could shake off our cares as
+      men, and be boys, as thou art, again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here my friend began to weep once more, and fondly shook my hand. I
+      blessed my stars that I had, at the very outset of my career, met with one
+      who was so likely to aid me. What a slanderous world it is, thought I; the
+      people in our village call these Republicans wicked and bloody-minded; a
+      lamb could not be more tender than this sentimental bottle-nosed
+      gentleman! The worthy man then gave me to understand that he held a place
+      under Government. I was busy in endeavoring to discover what his situation
+      might be, when the door of the next apartment opened, and Schneider made
+      his appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first he did not notice me, but he advanced to my new acquaintance, and
+      gave him, to my astonishment, something very like a blow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You drunken, talking fool,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you are always after your time.
+      Fourteen people are cooling their heels yonder, waiting until you have
+      finished your beer and your sentiment!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My friend slunk muttering out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That fellow,&rdquo; said Schneider, turning to me, &ldquo;is our public executioner:
+      a capital hand too if he would but keep decent time; but the brute is
+      always drunk, and blubbering over 'The Sorrows of Werter!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I know not whether it was his old friendship for my uncle, or my proper
+      merits, which won the heart of this the sternest ruffian of Robespierre's
+      crew; but certain it is, that he became strangely attached to me, and kept
+      me constantly about his person. As for the priesthood and the Greek, they
+      were of course very soon out of the question. The Austrians were on our
+      frontier; every day brought us accounts of battles won; and the youth of
+      Strasburg, and of all France, indeed, were bursting with military ardor.
+      As for me, I shared the general mania, and speedily mounted a cockade as
+      large as that of my friend, the executioner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The occupations of this worthy were unremitting. Saint Just, who had come
+      down from Paris to preside over our town, executed the laws and the
+      aristocrats with terrible punctuality; and Schneider used to make country
+      excursions in search of offenders with this fellow, as a provost-marshal,
+      at his back. In the meantime, having entered my sixteenth year, and being
+      a proper lad of my age, I had joined a regiment of cavalry, and was
+      scampering now after the Austrians who menaced us, and now threatening the
+      Emigrés, who were banded at Coblentz. My love for my dear cousin increased
+      as my whiskers grew; and when I was scarcely seventeen, I thought myself
+      man enough to marry her, and to cut the throat of any one who should
+      venture to say me nay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I need not tell you that during my absence at Strasburg, great changes had
+      occurred in our little village, and somewhat of the revolutionary rage had
+      penetrated even to that quiet and distant place. The hideous &ldquo;Fête of the
+      Supreme Being&rdquo; had been celebrated at Paris; the practice of our ancient
+      religion was forbidden; its professors were most of them in concealment,
+      or in exile, or had expiated on the scaffold their crime of Christianity.
+      In our poor village my uncle's church was closed, and he, himself, an
+      inmate in my brother's house, only owing his safety to his great
+      popularity among his former flock, and the influence of Edward Ancel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The latter had taken in the Revolution a somewhat prominent part; that is,
+      he had engaged in many contracts for the army, attended the clubs
+      regularly, corresponded with the authorities of his department, and was
+      loud in his denunciations of the aristocrats in the neighborhood. But
+      owing, perhaps, to the German origin of the peasantry, and their quiet and
+      rustic lives, the revolutionary fury which prevailed in the cities had
+      hardly reached the country people. The occasional visit of a commissary
+      from Paris or Strasburg served to keep the flame alive, and to remind the
+      rural swains of the existence of a Republic in France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now and then, when I could gain a week's leave of absence, I returned to
+      the village, and was received with tolerable politeness by my uncle, and
+      with a warmer feeling by his daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I won't describe to you the progress of our love, or the wrath of my uncle
+      Edward, when he discovered that it still continued. He swore and he
+      stormed; he locked Mary into her chamber, and vowed that he would withdraw
+      the allowance he made me, if ever I ventured near her. His daughter, he
+      said, should never marry a hopeless, penniless subaltern; and Mary
+      declared she would not marry without his consent. What had I to do?&mdash;to
+      despair and to leave her. As for my poor uncle Jacob, he had no counsel to
+      give me, and, indeed, no spirit left: his little church was turned into a
+      stable, his surplice torn off his shoulders, and he was only too lucky in
+      keeping HIS HEAD on them. A bright thought struck him: suppose you were to
+      ask the advice of my old friend Schneider regarding this marriage? he has
+      ever been your friend, and may help you now as before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (Here the Captain paused a little.) You may fancy (continued he) that it
+      was droll advice of a reverend gentleman like uncle Jacob to counsel me in
+      this manner, and to bid me make friends with such a murderous cut-throat
+      as Schneider; but we thought nothing of it in those days; guillotining was
+      as common as dancing, and a man was only thought the better patriot the
+      more severe he might be. I departed forthwith to Strasburg, and requested
+      the vote and interest of the Citizen President of the Committee of Public
+      Safety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He heard me with a great deal of attention. I described to him most
+      minutely the circumstance, expatiated upon the charms of my dear Mary, and
+      painted her to him from head to foot. Her golden hair and her bright
+      blushing cheeks, her slim waist and her tripping tiny feet; and
+      furthermore, I added that she possessed a fortune which ought, by rights,
+      to be mine, but for the miserly old father. &ldquo;Curse him for an aristocrat!&rdquo;
+       concluded I, in my wrath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I had been discoursing about Mary's charms Schneider listened with much
+      complacency and attention: when I spoke about her fortune, his interest
+      redoubled; and when I called her father an aristocrat, the worthy
+      ex-Jesuit gave a grin of satisfaction, which was really quite terrible. O
+      fool that I was to trust him so far!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The very same evening an officer waited upon me with the following note
+      from Saint Just:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;STRASBURG, Fifth year of the Republic, one and indivisible, 11 Ventose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The citizen Pierre Ancel is to leave Strasburg within two hours, and to
+      carry the enclosed despatches to the President of the Committee of Public
+      Safety at Paris. The necessary leave of absence from his military duties
+      has been provided. Instant punishment will follow the slightest delay on
+      the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Salut et Fraternité.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no choice but obedience, and off I sped on my weary way to the
+      capital.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I was riding out of the Paris gate I met an equipage which I knew to be
+      that of Schneider. The ruffian smiled at me as I passed, and wished me a
+      bon voyage. Behind his chariot came a curious machine, or cart; a great
+      basket, three stout poles, and several planks, all painted red, were lying
+      in this vehicle, on the top of which was seated my friend with the big
+      cockade. It was the PORTABLE GUILLOTINE which Schneider always carried
+      with him on his travels. The bourreau was reading &ldquo;The Sorrows of Werter,&rdquo;
+       and looked as sentimental as usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I will not speak of my voyage in order to relate to you Schneider's. My
+      story had awakened the wretch's curiosity and avarice, and he was
+      determined that such a prize as I had shown my cousin to be should fall
+      into no hands but his own. No sooner, in fact, had I quitted his room than
+      he procured the order for my absence, and was on the way to Steinbach as I
+      met him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The journey is not a very long one; and on the next day my uncle Jacob was
+      surprised by receiving a message that the citizen Schneider was in the
+      village, and was coming to greet his old friend. Old Jacob was in an
+      ecstasy, for he longed to see his college acquaintance, and he hoped also
+      that Schneider had come into that part of the country upon the
+      marriage-business of your humble servant. Of course Mary was summoned to
+      give her best dinner, and wear her best frock; and her father made ready
+      to receive the new State dignitary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Schneider's carriage speedily rolled into the court-yard, and Schneider's
+      CART followed, as a matter of course. The ex-priest only entered the
+      house; his companion remaining with the horses to dine in private. Here
+      was a most touching meeting between him and Jacob. They talked over their
+      old college pranks and successes; they capped Greek verses, and quoted
+      ancient epigrams upon their tutors, who had been dead since the Seven
+      Years' War. Mary declared it was quite touching to listen to the merry
+      friendly talk of these two old gentlemen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the conversation had continued for a time in this strain, Schneider
+      drew up all of a sudden, and said quietly, that he had come on particular
+      and unpleasant business&mdash;hinting about troublesome times, spies, evil
+      reports, and so forth. Then he called uncle Edward aside, and had with him
+      a long and earnest conversation: so Jacob went out and talked with
+      Schneider's FRIEND; they speedily became very intimate, for the ruffian
+      detailed all the circumstances of his interview with me. When he returned
+      into the house, some time after this pleasing colloquy, he found the tone
+      of the society strangely altered. Edward Ancel, pale as a sheet,
+      trembling, and crying for mercy; poor Mary weeping; and Schneider pacing
+      energetically about the apartment, raging about the rights of man, the
+      punishment of traitors, and the one and indivisible republic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jacob,&rdquo; he said, as my uncle entered the room, &ldquo;I was willing, for the
+      sake of our old friendship, to forget the crimes of your brother. He is a
+      known and dangerous aristocrat; he holds communications with the enemy on
+      the frontier; he is a possessor of great and ill-gotten wealth, of which
+      he has plundered the Republic. Do you know,&rdquo; said he, turning to Edward
+      Ancel, &ldquo;where the least of these crimes, or the mere suspicion of them,
+      would lead you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Edward sat trembling in his chair, and answered not a word. He knew
+      full well how quickly, in this dreadful time, punishment followed
+      suspicion; and, though guiltless of all treason with the enemy, perhaps he
+      was aware that, in certain contracts with the Government, he had taken to
+      himself a more than patriotic share of profit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know,&rdquo; resumed Schneider, in a voice of thunder, &ldquo;for what purpose
+      I came hither, and by whom I am accompanied? I am the administrator of the
+      justice of the Republic. The life of yourself and your family is in my
+      hands: yonder man, who follows me, is the executor of the law; he has rid
+      the nation of hundreds of wretches like yourself. A single word from me,
+      and your doom is sealed without hope, and your last hour is come. Ho!
+      Gregoire!&rdquo; shouted he; &ldquo;is all ready?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gregoire replied from the court, &ldquo;I can put up the machine in half an
+      hour. Shall I go down to the village and call the troops and the law
+      people?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you hear him?&rdquo; said Schneider. &ldquo;The guillotine is in the court-yard;
+      your name is on my list, and I have witnesses to prove your crime. Have
+      you a word in your defence?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Not a word came; the old gentleman was dumb; but his daughter, who did not
+      give way to his terror, spoke for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You cannot, sir,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;although you say it, FEEL that my father is
+      guilty; you would not have entered our house thus alone if you had thought
+      it. You threaten him in this manner because you have something to ask and
+      to gain from us: what is it, citizen?&mdash;tell us how much you value our
+      lives, and what sum we are to pay for our ransom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sum!&rdquo; said uncle Jacob; &ldquo;he does not want money of us: my old friend, my
+      college chum, does not come hither to drive bargains with anybody
+      belonging to Jacob Ancel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, sir, no, you can't want money of us,&rdquo; shrieked Edward; &ldquo;we are
+      the poorest people of the village: ruined, Monsieur Schneider, ruined in
+      the cause of the Republic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Silence, father,&rdquo; said my brave Mary; &ldquo;this man wants a PRICE: he comes,
+      with his worthy friend yonder, to frighten us, not to kill us. If we die,
+      he cannot touch a sou of our money; it is confiscated to the State. Tell
+      us, sir, what is the price of our safety?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Schneider smiled, and bowed with perfect politeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mademoiselle Marie,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is perfectly correct in her surmise. I do
+      not want the life of this poor drivelling old man: my intentions are much
+      more peaceable, be assured. It rests entirely with this accomplished young
+      lady (whose spirit I like, and whose ready wit I admire), whether the
+      business between us shall be a matter of love or death. I humbly offer
+      myself, citizen Ancel, as a candidate for the hand of your charming
+      daughter. Her goodness, her beauty, and the large fortune which I know you
+      intend to give her, would render her a desirable match for the proudest
+      man in the republic, and, I am sure, would make me the happiest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This must be a jest, Monsieur Schneider,&rdquo; said Mary, trembling, and
+      turning deadly pale: &ldquo;you cannot mean this; you do not know me: you never
+      heard of me until to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me, belle dame,&rdquo; replied he; &ldquo;your cousin Pierre has often talked
+      to me of your virtues; indeed, it was by his special suggestion that I
+      made the visit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is false!&mdash;it is a base and cowardly lie!&rdquo; exclaimed she (for the
+      young lady's courage was up),&mdash;&ldquo;Pierre never could have forgotten
+      himself and me so as to offer me to one like you. You come here with a lie
+      on your lips&mdash;a lie against my father, to swear his life away,
+      against my dear cousin's honor and love. It is useless now to deny it:
+      father, I love Pierre Ancel; I will marry no other but him&mdash;no,
+      though our last penny were paid to this man as the price of our freedom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Schneider's only reply to this was a call to his friend Gregoire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Send down to the village for the maire and some gendarmes; and tell your
+      people to make ready.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I put THE MACHINE up?&rdquo; shouted he of the sentimental turn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You hear him,&rdquo; said Schneider; &ldquo;Marie Ancel, you may decide the fate of
+      your father. I shall return in a few hours,&rdquo; concluded he, &ldquo;and will then
+      beg to know your decision.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The advocate of the rights of man then left the apartment, and left the
+      family, as you may imagine, in no very pleasant mood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old uncle Jacob, during the few minutes which had elapsed in the enactment
+      of this strange scene, sat staring wildly at Schneider, and holding Mary
+      on his knees: the poor little thing had fled to him for protection, and
+      not to her father, who was kneeling almost senseless at the window, gazing
+      at the executioner and his hideous preparations. The instinct of the poor
+      girl had not failed her; she knew that Jacob was her only protector, if
+      not of her life&mdash;heaven bless him!&mdash;of her honor. &ldquo;Indeed,&rdquo; the
+      old man said, in a stout voice, &ldquo;this must never be, my dearest child&mdash;you
+      must not marry this man. If it be the will of Providence that we fall, we
+      shall have at least the thought to console us that we die innocent. Any
+      man in France at a time like this, would be a coward and traitor if he
+      feared to meet the fate of the thousand brave and good who have preceded
+      us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who speaks of dying?&rdquo; said Edward. &ldquo;You, Brother Jacob?&mdash;you would
+      not lay that poor girl's head on the scaffold, or mine, your dear
+      brother's. You will not let us die, Mary; you will not, for a small
+      sacrifice, bring your poor old father into danger?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary made no answer. &ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;there is time for escape: he is
+      to be here but in two hours; in two hours we may be safe, in concealment,
+      or on the frontier.&rdquo; And she rushed to the door of the chamber, as if she
+      would have instantly made the attempt: two gendarmes were at the door. &ldquo;We
+      have orders, Mademoiselle,&rdquo; they said, &ldquo;to allow no one to leave this
+      apartment until the return of the citizen Schneider.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Alas! all hope of escape was impossible. Mary became quite silent for a
+      while; she would not speak to uncle Jacob; and, in reply to her father's
+      eager questions, she only replied, coldly, that she would answer Schneider
+      when he arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two dreadful hours passed away only too quickly; and, punctual to his
+      appointment, the ex-monk appeared. Directly he entered, Mary advanced to
+      him, and said, calmly,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir, I could not deceive you if I said that I freely accepted the offer
+      which you have made me. I will be your wife; but I tell you that I love
+      another; and that it is only to save the lives of those two old men that I
+      yield my person up to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Schneider bowed, and said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is bravely spoken. I like your candor&mdash;your beauty. As for the
+      love, excuse me for saying that is a matter of total indifference. I have
+      no doubt, however, that it will come as soon as your feelings in favor of
+      the young gentleman, your cousin, have lost their present fervor. That
+      engaging young man has, at present, another mistress&mdash;Glory. He
+      occupies, I believe, the distinguished post of corporal in a regiment
+      which is about to march to&mdash;Perpignan, I believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was, in fact, Monsieur Schneider's polite intention to banish me as far
+      as possible from the place of my birth; and he had, accordingly, selected
+      the Spanish frontier as the spot where I was to display my future military
+      talents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary gave no answer to this sneer: she seemed perfectly resigned and calm:
+      she only said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must make, however, some conditions regarding our proposed marriage,
+      which a gentleman of Monsieur Schneider's gallantry cannot refuse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pray command me,&rdquo; replied the husband elect. &ldquo;Fair lady, you know I am
+      your slave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You occupy a distinguished political rank, citizen representative,&rdquo; said
+      she; &ldquo;and we in our village are likewise known and beloved. I should be
+      ashamed, I confess, to wed you here; for our people would wonder at the
+      sudden marriage, and imply that it was only by compulsion that I gave you
+      my hand. Let us, then, perform this ceremony at Strasburg, before the
+      public authorities of the city, with the state and solemnity which befits
+      the marriage of one of the chief men of the Republic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be it so, madam,&rdquo; he answered, and gallantly proceeded to embrace his
+      bride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary did not shrink from this ruffian's kiss; nor did she reply when poor
+      old Jacob, who sat sobbing in a corner, burst out, and said,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O Mary, Mary, I did not think this of thee!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Silence, brother!&rdquo; hastily said Edward; &ldquo;my good son-in-law will pardon
+      your ill-humor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I believe uncle Edward in his heart was pleased at the notion of the
+      marriage; he only cared for money and rank, and was little scrupulous as
+      to the means of obtaining them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The matter then was finally arranged; and presently, after Schneider had
+      transacted the affairs which brought him into that part of the country,
+      the happy bridal party set forward for Strasburg. Uncles Jacob and Edward
+      occupied the back seat of the old family carriage, and the young bride and
+      bridegroom (he was nearly Jacob's age) were seated majestically in front.
+      Mary has often since talked to me of this dreadful journey. She said she
+      wondered at the scrupulous politeness of Schneider during the route; nay,
+      that at another period she could have listened to and admired the singular
+      talent of this man, his great learning, his fancy, and wit; but her mind
+      was bent upon other things, and the poor girl firmly thought that her last
+      day was come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime, by a blessed chance, I had not ridden three leagues from
+      Strasburg, when the officer of a passing troop of a cavalry regiment,
+      looking at the beast on which I was mounted, was pleased to take a fancy
+      to it, and ordered me, in an authoritative tone, to descend, and to give
+      up my steed for the benefit of the Republic. I represented to him, in
+      vain, that I was a soldier, like himself, and the bearer of despatches to
+      Paris. &ldquo;Fool!&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;do you think they would send despatches by a man
+      who can ride at best but ten leagues a day?&rdquo; And the honest soldier was so
+      wroth at my supposed duplicity, that he not only confiscated my horse, but
+      my saddle, and the little portmanteau which contained the chief part of my
+      worldly goods and treasure. I had nothing for it but to dismount, and take
+      my way on foot back again to Strasburg. I arrived there in the evening,
+      determining the next morning to make my case known to the citizen St.
+      Just; and though I made my entry without a sou, I don't know what secret
+      exultation I felt at again being able to return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ante-chamber of such a great man as St. Just was, in those days, too
+      crowded for an unprotected boy to obtain an early audience; two days
+      passed before I could obtain a sight of the friend of Robespierre. On the
+      third day, as I was still waiting for the interview, I heard a great
+      bustle in the courtyard of the house, and looked out with many others at
+      the spectacle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A number of men and women, singing epithalamiums, and dressed in some
+      absurd imitation of Roman costume, a troop of soldiers and gendarmerie,
+      and an immense crowd of the badauds of Strasburg, were surrounding a
+      carriage which then entered the court of the mayoralty. In this carriage,
+      great God! I saw my dear Mary, and Schneider by her side. The truth
+      instantly came upon me: the reason for Schneider's keen inquiries and my
+      abrupt dismissal; but I could not believe that Mary was false to me. I had
+      only to look in her face, white and rigid as marble, to see that this
+      proposed marriage was not with her consent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I fell back in the crowd as the procession entered the great room in which
+      I was, and hid my face in my hands: I could not look upon her as the wife
+      of another,&mdash;upon her so long loved and truly&mdash;the saint of my
+      childhood&mdash;the pride and hope of my youth&mdash;torn from me for
+      ever, and delivered over to the unholy arms of the murderer who stood
+      before me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door of St. Just's private apartment opened, and he took his seat at
+      the table of mayoralty just as Schneider and his cortège arrived before
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Schneider then said that he came in before the authorities of the Republic
+      to espouse the citoyenne Marie Ancel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she a minor?&rdquo; asked St. Just.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is a minor, but her father is here to give her away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am here,&rdquo; said uncle Edward, coming eagerly forward and bowing. &ldquo;Edward
+      Ancel, so please you, citizen representative. The worthy citizen Schneider
+      has done me the honor of marrying into my family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But my father has not told you the terms of the marriage,&rdquo; said Mary,
+      interrupting him, in a loud, clear voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here Schneider seized her hand, and endeavored to prevent her from
+      speaking. Her father turned pale, and cried, &ldquo;Stop, Mary, stop! For
+      heaven's sake, remember your poor old father's danger!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir, may I speak?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let the young woman speak,&rdquo; said St. Just, &ldquo;if she have a desire to
+      talk.&rdquo; He did not suspect what would be the purport of her story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;two days since the citizen Schneider entered for the
+      first time our house; and you will fancy that it must be a love of very
+      sudden growth which has brought either him or me before you to-day. He had
+      heard from a person who is now unhappily not present, of my name and of
+      the wealth which my family was said to possess; and hence arose this mad
+      design concerning me. He came into our village with supreme power, an
+      executioner at his heels, and the soldiery and authorities of the district
+      entirely under his orders. He threatened my father with death if he
+      refused to give up his daughter; and I, who knew that there was no chance
+      of escape, except here before you, consented to become his wife. My father
+      I know to be innocent, for all his transactions with the State have passed
+      through my hands. Citizen representative, I demand to be freed from this
+      marriage; and I charge Schneider as a traitor to the Republic, as a man
+      who would have murdered an innocent citizen for the sake of private gain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      During the delivery of this little speech, uncle Jacob had been sobbing
+      and panting like a broken-winded horse; and when Mary had done, he rushed
+      up to her and kissed her, and held her tight in his arms. &ldquo;Bless thee, my
+      child!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;for having had the courage to speak the truth, and
+      shame thy old father and me, who dared not say a word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The girl amazes me,&rdquo; said Schneider, with a look of astonishment. &ldquo;I
+      never saw her, it is true, till yesterday; but I used no force: her father
+      gave her to me with his free consent, and she yielded as gladly. Speak,
+      Edward Ancel, was it not so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was, indeed, by my free consent,&rdquo; said Edward, trembling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For shame, brother!&rdquo; cried old Jacob. &ldquo;Sir, it was by Edward's free
+      consent and my niece's; but the guillotine was in the court-yard! Question
+      Schneider's famulus, the man Gregoire, him who reads 'The Sorrows of
+      Werter.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gregoire stepped forward, and looked hesitatingly at Schneider, as he
+      said, &ldquo;I know not what took place within doors; but I was ordered to put
+      up the scaffold without; and I was told to get soldiers, and let no one
+      leave the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Citizen St. Just,&rdquo; cried Schneider, &ldquo;you will not allow the testimony of
+      a ruffian like this, of a foolish girl, and a mad ex-priest, to weigh
+      against the word of one who has done such service to the Republic: it is a
+      base conspiracy to betray me; the whole family is known to favor the
+      interest of the émigrés.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And therefore you would marry a member of the family, and allow the
+      others to escape; you must make a better defence, citizen Schneider,&rdquo; said
+      St. Just, sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here I came forward, and said that, three days since, I had received an
+      order to quit Strasburg for Paris immediately after a conversation with
+      Schneider, in which I had asked him his aid in promoting my marriage with
+      my cousin, Mary Ancel; that he had heard from me full accounts regarding
+      her father's wealth; and that he had abruptly caused my dismissal, in
+      order to carry on his scheme against her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are in the uniform of a regiment of this town; who sent you from it?&rdquo;
+       said St. Just.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I produced the order, signed by himself, and the despatches which
+      Schneider had sent me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The signature is mine, but the despatches did not come from my office.
+      Can you prove in any way your conversation with Schneider?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; said my sentimental friend Gregoire, &ldquo;for the matter of that, I can
+      answer that the lad was always talking about this young woman: he told me
+      the whole story himself, and many a good laugh I had with citizen
+      Schneider as we talked about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The charge against Edward Ancel must be examined into,&rdquo; said St. Just.
+      &ldquo;The marriage cannot take place. But if I had ratified it, Mary Ancel,
+      what then would have been your course?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary felt for a moment in her bosom, and said&mdash;&ldquo;He would have died
+      to-night&mdash;I would have stabbed him with this dagger.&rdquo; *
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * This reply, and, indeed, the whole of the story, is
+     historical. An account, by Charles Nodier, in the Revue de
+     Paris, suggested it to the writer.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The rain was beating down the streets, and yet they were thronged; all the
+      world was hastening to the market-place, where the worthy Gregoire was
+      about to perform some of the pleasant duties of his office. On this
+      occasion, it was not death that he was to inflict; he was only to expose a
+      criminal who was to be sent on afterwards to Paris. St. Just had ordered
+      that Schneider should stand for six hours in the public place of
+      Strasburg, and then be sent on to the capital to be dealt with as the
+      authorities might think fit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people followed with execrations the villain to his place of
+      punishment; and Gregoire grinned as he fixed up to the post the man whose
+      orders he had obeyed so often&mdash;who had delivered over to disgrace and
+      punishment so many who merited it not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Schneider was left for several hours exposed to the mockery and insults of
+      the mob; he was then, according to his sentence, marched on to Paris,
+      where it is probable that he would have escaped death, but for his own
+      fault. He was left for some time in prison, quite unnoticed, perhaps
+      forgotten: day by day fresh victims were carried to the scaffold, and yet
+      the Alsacian tribune remained alive; at last, by the mediation of one of
+      his friends, a long petition was presented to Robespierre, stating his
+      services and his innocence, and demanding his freedom. The reply to this
+      was an order for his instant execution: the wretch died in the last days
+      of Robespierre's reign. His comrade, St. Just, followed him, as you know;
+      but Edward Ancel had been released before this, for the action of my brave
+      Mary had created a strong feeling in his favor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Mary?&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here a stout and smiling old lady entered the Captain's little room: she
+      was leaning on the arm of a military-looking man of some forty years, and
+      followed by a number of noisy, rosy children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is Mary Ancel,&rdquo; said the Captain, &ldquo;and I am Captain Pierre, and
+      yonder is the Colonel, my son; and you see us here assembled in force, for
+      it is the fête of little Jacob yonder, whose brothers and sisters have all
+      come from their schools to dance at his birthday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BEATRICE MERGER.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Beatrice Merger, whose name might figure at the head of one of Mr.
+      Colburn's politest romances&mdash;so smooth and aristocratic does it sound&mdash;is
+      no heroine, except of her own simple history; she is not a fashionable
+      French Countess, nor even a victim of the Revolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She is a stout, sturdy girl of two-and-twenty, with a face beaming with
+      good nature, and marked dreadfully by smallpox; and a pair of black eyes,
+      which might have done some execution had they been placed in a smoother
+      face. Beatrice's station in society is not very exalted; she is a servant
+      of all-work: she will dress your wife, your dinner, your children; she
+      does beefsteaks and plain work; she makes beds, blacks boots, and waits at
+      table;&mdash;such, at least, were the offices which she performed in the
+      fashionable establishment of the writer of this book: perhaps her history
+      may not inaptly occupy a few pages of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father died,&rdquo; said Beatrice, &ldquo;about six years since, and left my poor
+      mother with little else but a small cottage and a strip of land, and four
+      children too young to work. It was hard enough in my father's time to
+      supply so many little mouths with food; and how was a poor widowed woman
+      to provide for them now, who had neither the strength nor the opportunity
+      for labor?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides us, to be sure, there was my old aunt; and she would have helped
+      us, but she could not, for the old woman is bed-ridden; so she did nothing
+      but occupy our best room, and grumble from morning till night: heaven
+      knows, poor old soul, that she had no great reason to be very happy; for
+      you know, sir, that it frets the temper to be sick; and that it is worse
+      still to be sick and hungry too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At that time, in the country where we lived (in Picardy, not very far
+      from Boulogne), times were so bad that the best workman could hardly find
+      employ; and when he did, he was happy if he could earn a matter of twelve
+      sous a day. Mother, work as she would, could not gain more than six; and
+      it was a hard job, out of this, to put meat into six bellies, and clothing
+      on six backs. Old Aunt Bridget would scold, as she got her portion of
+      black bread; and my little brothers used to cry if theirs did not come in
+      time. I, too, used to cry when I got my share; for mother kept only a
+      little, little piece for herself, and said that she had dined in the
+      fields,&mdash;God pardon her for the lie! and bless her, as I am sure He
+      did; for, but for Him, no working man or woman could subsist upon such a
+      wretched morsel as my dear mother took.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was a thin, ragged, barefooted girl, then, and sickly and weak for want
+      of food; but I think I felt mother's hunger more than my own: and many and
+      many a bitter night I lay awake, crying, and praying to God to give me
+      means of working for myself and aiding her. And he has, indeed, been good
+      to me,&rdquo; said pious Beatrice, &ldquo;for He has given me all this!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, time rolled on, and matters grew worse than ever: winter came, and
+      was colder to us than any other winter, for our clothes were thinner and
+      more torn; mother sometimes could find no work, for the fields in which
+      she labored were hidden under the snow; so that when we wanted them most
+      we had them least&mdash;warmth, work, or food.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew that, do what I would, mother would never let me leave her,
+      because I looked to my little brothers and my old cripple of an aunt; but
+      still, bread was better for us than all my service; and when I left them
+      the six would have a slice more; so I determined to bid good-by to nobody,
+      but to go away, and look for work elsewhere. One Sunday, when mother and
+      the little ones were at church, I went in to Aunt Bridget, and said, 'Tell
+      mother, when she comes back, that Beatrice is gone.' I spoke quite
+      stoutly, as if I did not care about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Gone! gone where?' said she. 'You ain't going to leave me alone, you
+      nasty thing; you ain't going to the village to dance, you ragged,
+      barefooted slut: you're all of a piece in this house&mdash;your mother,
+      your brothers, and you. I know you've got meat in the kitchen, and you
+      only give me black bread;' and here the old lady began to scream as if her
+      heart would break; but we did not mind it, we were so used to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Aunt,' said I, 'I'm going, and took this very opportunity because you
+      WERE alone: tell mother I am too old now to eat her bread, and do no work
+      for it: I am going, please God, where work and bread can be found:' and so
+      I kissed her: she was so astonished that she could not move or speak; and
+      I walked away through the old room, and the little garden, God knows
+      whither!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard the old woman screaming after me, but I did not stop nor turn
+      round. I don't think I could, for my heart was very full; and if I had
+      gone back again, I should never have had the courage to go away. So I
+      walked a long, long way, until night fell; and I thought of poor mother
+      coming home from mass, and not finding me; and little Pierre shouting out,
+      in his clear voice, for Beatrice to bring him his supper. I think I should
+      like to have died that night, and I thought I should too; for when I was
+      obliged to throw myself on the cold, hard ground, my feet were too torn
+      and weary to bear me any further.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just then the moon got up; and do you know I felt a comfort in looking at
+      it, for I knew it was shining on our little cottage, and it seemed like an
+      old friend's face? A little way on, as I saw by the moon, was a village:
+      and I saw, too, that a man was coming towards me; he must have heard me
+      crying, I suppose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was not God good to me? This man was a farmer, who had need of a girl in
+      his house; he made me tell him why I was alone, and I told him the same
+      story I have told you, and he believed me and took me home. I had walked
+      six long leagues from our village that day, asking everywhere for work in
+      vain; and here, at bedtime, I found a bed and a supper!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here I lived very well for some months; my master was very good and kind
+      to me; but, unluckily, too poor to give me any wages; so that I could save
+      nothing to send to my poor mother. My mistress used to scold; but I was
+      used to that at home, from Aunt Bridget: and she beat me sometimes, but I
+      did not mind it; for your hardy country girl is not like your tender town
+      lasses, who cry if a pin pricks them, and give warning to their mistresses
+      at the first hard word. The only drawback to my comfort was, that I had no
+      news of my mother; I could not write to her, nor could she have read my
+      letter, if I had; so there I was, at only six leagues' distance from home,
+      as far off as if I had been to Paris or to 'Merica.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;However, in a few months I grew so listless and homesick, that my
+      mistress said she would keep me no longer; and though I went away as poor
+      as I came, I was still too glad to go back to the old village again, and
+      see dear mother, if it were but for a day. I knew she would share her
+      crust with me, as she had done for so long a time before; and hoped that,
+      now, as I was taller and stronger, I might find work more easily in the
+      neighborhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may fancy what a fête it was when I came back; though I'm sure we
+      cried as much as if it had been a funeral. Mother got into a fit, which
+      frightened us all; and as for Aunt Bridget, she SKREELED away for hours
+      together, and did not scold for two days at least. Little Pierre offered
+      me the whole of his supper; poor little man! his slice of bread was no
+      bigger than before I went away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I got a little work here and a little there; but still I was a
+      burden at home rather than a bread-winner; and, at the closing-in of the
+      winter, was very glad to hear of a place at two leagues' distance, where
+      work, they said, was to be had. Off I set, one morning, to find it, but
+      missed my way, somehow, until it was night-time before I arrived.
+      Night-time and snow again; it seemed as if all my journeys were to be made
+      in this bitter weather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I came to the farmer's door, his house was shut up, and his people
+      all a-bed; I knocked for a long while in vain; at last he made his
+      appearance at a window up stairs, and seemed so frightened, and looked so
+      angry that I suppose he took me for a thief. I told him how I had come for
+      work. 'Who comes for work at such an hour?' said he. 'Go home, you
+      impudent baggage, and do not disturb honest people out of their sleep.' He
+      banged the window to; and so I was left alone to shift for myself as I
+      might. There was no shed, no cow-house, where I could find a bed; so I got
+      under a cart, on some straw; it was no very warm berth. I could not sleep
+      for the cold: and the hours passed so slowly, that it seemed as if I had
+      been there a week instead of a night; but still it was not so bad as the
+      first night when I left home, and when the good farmer found me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the morning, before it was light, the farmer's people came out, and
+      saw me crouching under the cart: they told me to get up; but I was so cold
+      that I could not: at last the man himself came, and recognized me as the
+      girl who had disturbed him the night before. When he heard my name, and
+      the purpose for which I came, this good man took me into the house, and
+      put me into one of the beds out of which his sons had just got; and, if I
+      was cold before, you may be sure I was warm and comfortable now! such a
+      bed as this I had never slept in, nor ever did I have such good milk-soup
+      as he gave me out of his own breakfast. Well, he agreed to hire me; and
+      what do you think he gave me?&mdash;six sous a day! and let me sleep in
+      the cow-house besides: you may fancy how happy I was now, at the prospect
+      of earning so much money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was an old woman among the laborers who used to sell us soup: I got
+      a cupful every day for a half-penny, with a bit of bread in it; and might
+      eat as much beet-root besides as I liked; not a very wholesome meal, to be
+      sure, but God took care that it should not disagree with me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So, every Saturday, when work was over, I had thirty sous to carry home
+      to mother; and tired though I was, I walked merrily the two leagues to our
+      village, to see her again. On the road there was a great wood to pass
+      through, and this frightened me; for if a thief should come and rob me of
+      my whole week's earnings, what could a poor lone girl do to help herself?
+      But I found a remedy for this too, and no thieves ever came near me; I
+      used to begin saying my prayers as I entered the forest, and never stopped
+      until I was safe at home; and safe I always arrived, with my thirty sons
+      in my pocket. Ah! you may be sure, Sunday was a merry day for us all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This is the whole of Beatrice's history which is worthy of publication;
+      the rest of it only relates to her arrival in Paris, and the various
+      masters and mistresses whom she there had the honor to serve. As soon as
+      she enters the capital the romance disappears, and the poor girl's
+      sufferings and privations luckily vanish with it. Beatrice has got now
+      warm gowns, and stout shoes, and plenty of good food. She has had her
+      little brother from Picardy; clothed, fed, and educated him: that young
+      gentleman is now a carpenter, and an honor to his profession. Madame
+      Merger is in easy circumstances, and receives, yearly, fifty francs from
+      her daughter. To crown all, Mademoiselle Beatrice herself is a funded
+      proprietor, and consulted the writer of this biography as to the best
+      method of laying out a capital of two hundred francs, which is the present
+      amount of her fortune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      God bless her! she is richer than his Grace the Duke of Devonshire; and, I
+      dare say, has, in her humble walk, been more virtuous and more happy than
+      all the dukes in the realm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is, indeed, for the benefit of dukes and such great people (who, I make
+      no doubt, have long since ordered copies of these Sketches), that poor
+      little Beatrice's story has been indited. Certain it is, that the young
+      woman would never have been immortalized in this way, but for the good
+      which her betters may derive from her example. If your ladyship will but
+      reflect a little, after boasting of the sums which you spend in charity;
+      the beef and blankets which you dole out at Christmas; the poonah-painting
+      which you execute for fancy fairs; the long, long sermons which you listen
+      to at St. George's, the whole year through;&mdash;your ladyship, I say,
+      will allow that, although perfectly meritorious in your line, as a
+      patroness of the Church of England, of Almack's, and of the Lying-in
+      Asylum, yours is but a paltry sphere of virtue, a pitiful attempt at
+      benevolence, and that this honest servant-girl puts you to shame! And you,
+      my Lord Bishop: do you, out of your six sous a day, give away five to
+      support your flock and family? Would you drop a single coach-horse (I do
+      not say, A DINNER, for such a notion is monstrous, in one of your
+      lordship's degree), to feed any one of the starving children of your
+      lordship's mother&mdash;the Church?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I pause for a reply. His lordship took too much turtle and cold punch for
+      dinner yesterday, and cannot speak just now: but we have, by this
+      ingenious question, silenced him altogether: let the world wag as it will,
+      and poor Christians and curates starve as they may, my lord's footmen must
+      have their new liveries, and his horses their four feeds a day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we recollect his speech about the Catholics&mdash;when we remember
+      his last charity sermon,&mdash;but I say nothing. Here is a poor benighted
+      superstitious creature, worshipping images, without a rag to her tail, who
+      has as much faith, and humility, and charity as all the reverend bench.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This angel is without a place; and for this reason (besides the pleasure
+      of composing the above slap at episcopacy)&mdash;I have indited her
+      history. If the Bishop is going to Paris, and wants a good honest
+      maid-of-all-work, he can have her, I have no doubt; or if he chooses to
+      give a few pounds to her mother, they can be sent to Mr. Titmarsh, at the
+      publisher's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here is Miss Merger's last letter and autograph. The note was evidently
+      composed by an Ecrivain public:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&mdash;Ayant apris par ce Monsieur, que vous vous portiez bien,
+      ainsi que Monsieur, ayant su aussi que vous parliez de moi dans votre
+      lettre cette nouvelle m'a fait bien plaisir Je profite de l'occasion pour
+      vous faire passer ce petit billet où Je voudrais pouvoir m'enveloper pour
+      aller vous voir et pour vous dire que Je suis encore sans place Je
+      m'ennuye tojours de ne pas vous voir ainsi que Minette (Minette is a cat)
+      qui semble m'interroger tour a tour et demander où vous êtes. Je vous
+      envoye aussi la note du linge a blanchir&mdash;ah, Madame! Je vais cesser
+      de vous ecrire mais non de vous regretter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Beatrice Merger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CARICATURES AND LITHOGRAPHY IN PARIS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Fifty years ago there lived at Munich a poor fellow, by name Aloys
+      Senefelder, who was in so little repute as an author and artist, that
+      printers and engravers refused to publish his works at their own charges,
+      and so set him upon some plan for doing without their aid. In the first
+      place, Aloys invented a certain kind of ink, which would resist the action
+      of the acid that is usually employed by engravers, and with this he made
+      his experiments upon copper-plates, as long as he could afford to purchase
+      them. He found that to write upon the plates backwards, after the manner
+      of engravers, required much skill and many trials; and he thought that,
+      were he to practise upon any other polished surface&mdash;a smooth stone,
+      for instance, the least costly article imaginable&mdash;he might spare the
+      expense of the copper until he had sufficient skill to use it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, it is said, that Aloys was called upon to write&mdash;rather a
+      humble composition for an author and artist&mdash;a washing-bill. He had
+      no paper at hand, and so he wrote out the bill with some of his
+      newly-invented ink upon one of his Kelheim stones. Some time afterwards he
+      thought he would try and take an IMPRESSION of his washing-bill: he did,
+      and succeeded. Such is the story, which the reader most likely knows very
+      well; and having alluded to the origin of the art, we shall not follow the
+      stream through its windings and enlargement after it issued from the
+      little parent rock, or fill our pages with the rest of the pedigree.
+      Senefelder invented Lithography. His invention has not made so much noise
+      and larum in the world as some others, which have an origin quite as
+      humble and unromantic; but it is one to which we owe no small profit, and
+      a great deal of pleasure; and, as such, we are bound to speak of it with
+      all gratitude and respect. The schoolmaster, who is now abroad, has taught
+      us, in our youth, how the cultivation of art &ldquo;emollit mores nec sinit
+      esse&rdquo;&mdash;(it is needless to finish the quotation); and Lithography has
+      been, to our thinking, the very best ally that art ever had; the best
+      friend of the artist, allowing him to produce rapidly multiplied and
+      authentic copies of his own works (without trusting to the tedious and
+      expensive assistance of the engraver); and the best friend to the people
+      likewise, who have means of purchasing these cheap and beautiful
+      productions, and thus having their ideas &ldquo;mollified&rdquo; and their manners
+      &ldquo;feros&rdquo; no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With ourselves, among whom money is plenty, enterprise so great, and
+      everything matter of commercial speculation, Lithography has not been so
+      much practised as wood or steel engraving; which, by the aid of great
+      original capital and spread of sale, are able more than to compete with
+      the art of drawing on stone. The two former may be called art done by
+      MACHINERY. We confess to a prejudice in favor of the honest work of HAND,
+      in matters of art, and prefer the rough workmanship of the painter to the
+      smooth copies of his performances which are produced, for the most part,
+      on the wood-block or the steel-plate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The theory will possibly be objected to by many of our readers: the best
+      proof in its favor, we think, is, that the state of art amongst the people
+      in France and Germany, where publishers are not so wealthy or enterprising
+      as with us,* and where Lithography is more practised, is infinitely higher
+      than in England, and the appreciation more correct. As draughtsmen, the
+      French and German painters are incomparably superior to our own; and with
+      art, as with any other commodity, the demand will be found pretty equal to
+      the supply: with us, the general demand is for neatness, prettiness, and
+      what is called EFFECT in pictures, and these can be rendered completely,
+      nay, improved, by the engraver's conventional manner of copying the
+      artist's performances. But to copy fine expression and fine drawing, the
+      engraver himself must be a fine artist; and let anybody examine the host
+      of picture-books which appear every Christmas, and say whether, for the
+      most part, painters or engravers possess any artistic merit? We boast,
+      nevertheless, of some of the best engravers and painters in Europe. Here,
+      again, the supply is accounted for by the demand; our highest class is
+      richer than any other aristocracy, quite as well instructed, and can judge
+      and pay for fine pictures and engravings. But these costly productions are
+      for the few, and not for the many, who have not yet certainly arrived at
+      properly appreciating fine art.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * These countries are, to be sure, inundated with the
+     productions of our market, in the shape of Byron Beauties,
+     reprints from the &ldquo;Keepsakes,&rdquo; &ldquo;Books of Beauty,&rdquo; and such
+     trash; but these are only of late years, and their original
+     schools of art are still flourishing.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Take the standard &ldquo;Album&rdquo; for instance&mdash;that unfortunate collection
+      of deformed Zuleikas and Medoras (from the &ldquo;Byron Beauties&rdquo;), the Flowers,
+      Gems, Souvenirs, Caskets of Loveliness, Beauty, as they way be called;
+      glaring caricatures of flowers, singly, in groups, in flower-pots, or with
+      hideous deformed little Cupids sporting among them; of what are called
+      &ldquo;mezzotinto,&rdquo; pencil-drawings, &ldquo;poonah-paintings,&rdquo; and what not. &ldquo;The
+      Album&rdquo; is to be found invariably upon the round rosewood brass-inlaid
+      drawing-room table of the middle classes, and with a couple of &ldquo;Annuals&rdquo;
+       besides, which flank it on the same table, represents the art of the
+      house; perhaps there is a portrait of the master of the house in the
+      dining-room, grim-glancing from above the mantel-piece; and of the
+      mistress over the piano up stairs; add to these some odious miniatures of
+      the sons and daughters, on each side of the chimney-glass; and here,
+      commonly (we appeal to the reader if this is an overcharged picture), the
+      collection ends. The family goes to the Exhibition once a year, to the
+      National Gallery once in ten years: to the former place they have an
+      inducement to go; there are their own portraits, or the portraits of their
+      friends, or the portraits of public characters; and you will see them
+      infallibly wondering over No. 2645 in the catalogue, representing &ldquo;The
+      Portrait of a Lady,&rdquo; or of the &ldquo;First Mayor of Little Pedlington since the
+      passing of the Reform Bill;&rdquo; or else bustling and squeezing among the
+      miniatures, where lies the chief attraction of the Gallery. England has
+      produced, owing to the effects of this class of admirers of art, two
+      admirable, and five hundred very clever, portrait painters. How many
+      ARTISTS? Let the reader count upon his five fingers, and see if, living at
+      the present moment, he can name one for each.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, from this examination of our own worthy middle classes, we look to the
+      same class in France, what a difference do we find! Humble café's in
+      country towns have their walls covered with pleasing picture papers,
+      representing &ldquo;Les Gloires de l'Armée Française,&rdquo; the &ldquo;Seasons,&rdquo; the &ldquo;Four
+      Quarters of the World,&rdquo; &ldquo;Cupid and Psyche,&rdquo; or some other allegory,
+      landscape or history, rudely painted, as papers for walls usually are; but
+      the figures are all tolerably well drawn; and the common taste, which has
+      caused a demand for such things, is undeniable. In Paris, the manner in
+      which the cafés and houses of the restaurateurs are ornamented, is, of
+      course, a thousand times richer, and nothing can be more beautiful, or
+      more exquisitely finished and correct, than the designs which adorn many
+      of them. We are not prepared to say what sums were expended upon the
+      painting of &ldquo;Véry's&rdquo; or &ldquo;Véfour's,&rdquo; of the &ldquo;Salle Musard,&rdquo; or of
+      numberless other places of public resort in the capital. There is many a
+      shop-keeper whose sign is a very tolerable picture; and often have we
+      stopped to admire (the reader will give us credit for having remained
+      OUTSIDE) the excellent workmanship of the grapes and vine-leaves over the
+      door of some very humble, dirty, inodorous shop of a marchand de vin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These, however, serve only to educate the public taste, and are ornaments
+      for the most part much too costly for the people. But the same love of
+      ornament which is shown in their public places of resort, appears in their
+      houses likewise; and every one of our readers who has lived in Paris, in
+      any lodging, magnificent or humble, with any family, however poor, may
+      bear witness how profusely the walls of his smart salon in the English
+      quarter, or of his little room au sixième in the Pays Latin, has been
+      decorated with prints of all kinds. In the first, probably, with bad
+      engravings on copper from the bad and tawdry pictures of the artists of
+      the time of the Empire; in the latter, with gay caricatures of Granville
+      or Monnier: military pieces, such as are dashed off by Raffet, Charlet,
+      Vernet (one can hardly say which of the three designers has the greatest
+      merit, or the most vigorous hand); or clever pictures from the crayon of
+      the Deverias, the admirable Roqueplan, or Decamp. We have named here, we
+      believe, the principal lithographic artists in Paris; and those&mdash;as
+      doubtless there are many&mdash;of our readers who have looked over
+      Monsieur Aubert's portfolios, or gazed at that famous caricature-shop
+      window in the Rue de Coq, or are even acquainted with the exterior of
+      Monsieur Delaporte's little emporium in the Burlington Arcade, need not be
+      told how excellent the productions of all these artists are in their
+      genre. We get in these engravings the loisirs of men of genius, not the
+      finikin performances of labored mediocrity, as with us: all these artists
+      are good painters, as well as good designers; a design from them is worth
+      a whole gross of Books of Beauty; and if we might raise a humble
+      supplication to the artists in our own country of similar merit&mdash;to
+      such men as Leslie, Maclise, Herbert, Cattermole, and others&mdash;it
+      would be, that they should, after the example of their French brethren and
+      of the English landscape painters, take chalk in hand, produce their own
+      copies of their own sketches, and never more draw a single &ldquo;Forsaken One,&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Rejected One,&rdquo; &ldquo;Dejected One&rdquo; at the entreaty of any publisher or for the
+      pages of any Book of Beauty, Royalty, or Loveliness whatever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Can there be a more pleasing walk in the whole world than a stroll through
+      the Gallery of the Louvre on a fête-day; not to look so much at the
+      pictures as at the lookers-on? Thousands of the poorer classes are there:
+      mechanics in their Sunday clothes, smiling grisettes, smart dapper
+      soldiers of the line, with bronzed wondering faces, marching together in
+      little companies of six or seven, and stopping every now and then at
+      Napoleon or Leonidas as they appear in proper vulgar heroics in the
+      pictures of David or Gros. The taste of these people will hardly be
+      approved by the connoisseur, but they have A taste for art. Can the same
+      be said of our lower classes, who, if they are inclined to be sociable and
+      amused in their holidays, have no place of resort but the tap-room or
+      tea-garden, and no food for conversation except such as can be built upon
+      the politics or the police reports of the last Sunday paper? So much has
+      Church and State puritanism done for us&mdash;so well has it succeeded in
+      materializing and binding down to the earth the imagination of men, for
+      which God has made another world (which certain statesmen take but too
+      little into account)&mdash;that fair and beautiful world of heart, in
+      which there CAN be nothing selfish or sordid, of which Dulness has
+      forgotten the existence, and which Bigotry has endeavored to shut out from
+      sight&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;On a banni les démons et les fées,
+      Le raisonner tristement s'accrédite:
+      On court, helas! après la vérité:
+      Ah! croyez moi, l'erreur a son mérite!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      We are not putting in a plea here for demons and fairies, as Voltaire does
+      in the above exquisite lines; nor about to expatiate on the beauties of
+      error, for it has none; but the clank of steam-engines, and the shouts of
+      politicians, and the struggle for gain or bread, and the loud
+      denunciations of stupid bigots, have wellnigh smothered poor Fancy among
+      us. We boast of our science, and vaunt our superior morality. Does the
+      latter exist? In spite of all the forms which our policy has invented to
+      secure it&mdash;in spite of all the preachers, all the meeting-houses, and
+      all the legislative enactments&mdash;if any person will take upon himself
+      the painful labor of purchasing and perusing some of the cheap periodical
+      prints which form the people's library of amusement, and contain what may
+      be presumed to be their standard in matters of imagination and fancy, he
+      will see how false the claim is that we bring forward of superior
+      morality. The aristocracy who are so eager to maintain, were, of course,
+      not the last to feel annoyance of the legislative restrictions on the
+      Sabbath, and eagerly seized upon that happy invention for dissipating the
+      gloom and ennui ordered by Act of Parliament to prevail on that day&mdash;the
+      Sunday paper. It might be read in a club-room, where the poor could not
+      see how their betters ordained one thing for the vulgar, and another for
+      themselves; or in an easy-chair, in the study, whither my lord retires
+      every Sunday for his devotions. It dealt in private scandal and ribaldry,
+      only the more piquant for its pretty flimsy veil of double-entendre. It
+      was a fortune to the publisher, and it became a necessary to the reader,
+      which he could not do without, any more than without his snuff-box, his
+      opera-box, or his chasse after coffee. The delightful novelty could not
+      for any time be kept exclusively for the haut ton; and from my lord it
+      descended to his valet or tradesmen, and from Grosvenor Square it spread
+      all the town through; so that now the lower classes have their scandal and
+      ribaldry organs, as well as their betters (the rogues, they WILL imitate
+      them!) and as their tastes are somewhat coarser than my lord's, and their
+      numbers a thousand to one, why of course the prints have increased, and
+      the profligacy has been diffused in a ratio exactly proportionable to the
+      demand, until the town is infested with such a number of monstrous
+      publications of the kind as would have put Abbé Dubois to the blush, or
+      made Louis XV. cry shame. Talk of English morality!&mdash;the worst
+      licentiousness, in the worst period of the French monarchy, scarcely
+      equalled the wickedness of this Sabbath-keeping country of ours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reader will be glad, at last, to come to the conclusion that we would
+      fain draw from all these descriptions&mdash;why does this immorality
+      exist? Because the people MUST be amused, and have not been taught HOW;
+      because the upper classes, frightened by stupid cant, or absorbed in
+      material wants, have not as yet learned the refinement which only the
+      cultivation of art can give; and when their intellects are uneducated, and
+      their tastes are coarse, the tastes and amusements of classes still more
+      ignorant must be coarse and vicious likewise, in an increased proportion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such discussions and violent attacks upon high and low, Sabbath Bills,
+      politicians, and what not, may appear, perhaps, out of place in a few
+      pages which purport only to give an account of some French drawings: all
+      we would urge is, that, in France, these prints are made because they are
+      liked and appreciated; with us they are not made, because they are not
+      liked and appreciated: and the more is the pity. Nothing merely
+      intellectual will be popular among us: we do not love beauty for beauty's
+      sake, as Germans; or wit, for wit's sake, as the French: for abstract art
+      we have no appreciation. We admire H. B.'s caricatures, because they are
+      the caricatures of well-known political characters, not because they are
+      witty; and Boz, because he writes us good palpable stories (if we may use
+      such a word to a story); and Madame Vestris, because she has the most
+      beautifully shaped legs;&mdash;the ART of the designer, the writer, the
+      actress (each admirable in its way,) is a very minor consideration; each
+      might have ten times the wit, and would be quite unsuccessful without
+      their substantial points of popularity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In France such matters are far better managed, and the love of art is a
+      thousand times more keen; and (from this feeling, surely) how much
+      superiority is there in French SOCIETY over our own; how much better is
+      social happiness understood; how much more manly equality is there between
+      Frenchman and Frenchman, than between rich and poor in our own country,
+      with all our superior wealth, instruction, and political freedom! There
+      is, amongst the humblest, a gayety, cheerfulness, politeness, and
+      sobriety, to which, in England, no class can show a parallel: and these,
+      be it remembered, are not only qualities for holidays, but for
+      working-days too, and add to the enjoyment of human life as much as good
+      clothes, good beef, or good wages. If, to our freedom, we could but add a
+      little of their happiness!&mdash;it is one, after all, of the cheapest
+      commodities in the world, and in the power of every man (with means of
+      gaining decent bread) who has the will or the skill to use it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are not going to trace the history of the rise and progress of art in
+      France; our business, at present, is only to speak of one branch of art in
+      that country&mdash;lithographic designs, and those chiefly of a humorous
+      character. A history of French caricature was published in Paris, two or
+      three years back, illustrated by numerous copies of designs, from the time
+      of Henry III. to our own day. We can only speak of this work from memory,
+      having been unable, in London, to procure the sight of a copy; but our
+      impression, at the time we saw the collection, was as unfavorable as could
+      possibly be: nothing could be more meagre than the wit, or poorer than the
+      execution, of the whole set of drawings. Under the Empire, art, as may be
+      imagined, was at a very low ebb; and, aping the Government of the day, and
+      catering to the national taste and vanity, it was a kind of tawdry
+      caricature of the sublime; of which the pictures of David and Girodet, and
+      almost the entire collection now at the Luxembourg Palace, will give
+      pretty fair examples. Swollen, distorted, unnatural, the painting was
+      something like the politics of those days; with force in it, nevertheless,
+      and something of grandeur, that will exist in spite of taste, and is born
+      of energetic will. A man, disposed to write comparisons of characters,
+      might, for instance, find some striking analogies between mountebank
+      Murat, with his irresistible bravery and horsemanship, who was a kind of
+      mixture of Dugueselin and Ducrow, and Mountebank David, a fierce, powerful
+      painter and genius, whose idea of beauty and sublimity seemed to have been
+      gained from the bloody melodramas on the Boulevard. Both, however, were
+      great in their way, and were worshipped as gods, in those heathen times of
+      false belief and hero-worship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for poor caricature and freedom of the press, they, like the rightful
+      princess in a fairy tale, with the merry fantastic dwarf, her attendant,
+      were entirely in the power of the giant who ruled the land. The Princess
+      Press was so closely watched and guarded (with some little show,
+      nevertheless, of respect for her rank), that she dared not utter a word of
+      her own thoughts; and, for poor Caricature, he was gagged, and put out of
+      the way altogether: imprisoned as completely as ever Asmodeus was in his
+      phial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How the Press and her attendant fared in succeeding reigns, is well known;
+      their condition was little bettered by the downfall of Napoleon: with the
+      accession of Charles X. they were more oppressed even than before&mdash;more
+      than they could bear; for so hard were they pressed, that, as one has seen
+      when sailors are working a capstan, back of a sudden the bars flew,
+      knocking to the earth the men who were endeavoring to work them. The
+      Revolution came, and up sprung Caricature in France; all sorts of fierce
+      epigrams were discharged at the flying monarch, and speedily were
+      prepared, too, for the new one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About this time there lived at Paris (if our information be correct) a
+      certain M. Philipon, an indifferent artist (painting was his profession),
+      a tolerable designer, and an admirable wit. M. Philipon designed many
+      caricatures himself, married the sister of an eminent publisher of prints
+      (M. Aubert), and the two, gathering about them a body of wits and artists
+      like themselves, set up journals of their own:&mdash;La Caricature, first
+      published once a week; and the Charivari afterwards, a daily paper, in
+      which a design also appears daily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first the caricatures inserted in the Charivari were chiefly political;
+      and a most curious contest speedily commenced between the State and M.
+      Philipon's little army in the Galérie Véro-Dodat. Half a dozen poor
+      artists on the one side, and his Majesty Louis Philippe, his august
+      family, and the numberless placemen and supporters of the monarchy, on the
+      other; it was something like Thersites girding at Ajax, and piercing
+      through the folds of the clypei septemplicis with the poisonous shafts of
+      his scorn. Our French Thersites was not always an honest opponent, it must
+      be confessed; and many an attack was made upon the gigantic enemy, which
+      was cowardly, false, and malignant. But to see the monster writhing under
+      the effects of the arrow&mdash;to see his uncouth fury in return, and the
+      blind blows that he dealt at his diminutive opponent!&mdash;not one of
+      these told in a hundred; when they DID tell, it may be imagined that they
+      were fierce enough in all conscience, and served almost to annihilate the
+      adversary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To speak more plainly, and to drop the metaphor of giant and dwarf, the
+      King of the French suffered so much, his Ministers were so mercilessly
+      ridiculed, his family and his own remarkable figure drawn with such odious
+      and grotesque resemblance, in fanciful attitudes, circumstances, and
+      disguises, so ludicrously mean, and often so appropriate, that the King
+      was obliged to descend into the lists and battle his ridiculous enemy in
+      form. Prosecutions, seizures, fines, regiments of furious legal officials,
+      were first brought into play against poor M. Philipon and his little
+      dauntless troop of malicious artists; some few were bribed out of his
+      ranks; and if they did not, like Gilray in England, turn their weapons
+      upon their old friends, at least laid down their arms, and would fight no
+      more. The bribes, fines, indictments, and loud-tongued avocats du roi made
+      no impression; Philipon repaired the defeat of a fine by some fresh and
+      furious attack upon his great enemy; if his epigrams were more covert,
+      they were no less bitter; if he was beaten a dozen times before a jury, he
+      had eighty or ninety victories to show in the same field of battle, and
+      every victory and every defeat brought him new sympathy. Every one who was
+      at Paris a few years since must recollect the famous &ldquo;poire&rdquo; which was
+      chalked upon all the walls of the city, and which bore so ludicrous a
+      resemblance to Louis Philippe. The poire became an object of prosecution,
+      and M. Philipon appeared before a jury to answer for the crime of inciting
+      to contempt against the King's person, by giving such a ludicrous version
+      of his face. Philipon, for defence, produced a sheet of paper, and drew a
+      poire, a real large Burgundy pear: in the lower parts round and capacious,
+      narrower near the stalk, and crowned with two or three careless leaves.
+      &ldquo;There was no treason in THAT,&rdquo; he said to the jury; &ldquo;could any one object
+      to such a harmless botanical representation?&rdquo; Then he drew a second pear,
+      exactly like the former, except that one or two lines were scrawled in the
+      midst of it, which bore somehow a ludicrous resemblance to the eyes, nose,
+      and mouth of a celebrated personage; and, lastly, he drew the exact
+      portrait of Louis Philippe; the well-known toupet, the ample whiskers and
+      jowl were there, neither extenuated nor set down in malice. &ldquo;Can I help
+      it, gentlemen of the jury, then,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;if his Majesty's face is like
+      a pear? Say yourselves, respectable citizens, is it, or is it not, like a
+      pear?&rdquo; Such eloquence could not fail of its effect; the artist was
+      acquitted, and La poire is immortal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last came the famous September laws: the freedom of the Press, which,
+      from August, 1830, was to be &ldquo;désormais une vérité,&rdquo; was calmly strangled
+      by the Monarch who had gained his crown for his supposed championship of
+      it; by his Ministers, some of whom had been stout Republicans on paper but
+      a few years before; and by the Chamber, which, such is the blessed
+      constitution of French elections, will generally vote, unvote, revote in
+      any way the Government wishes. With a wondrous union, and happy
+      forgetfulness of principle, monarch, ministers, and deputies issued the
+      restriction laws; the Press was sent to prison; as for the poor dear
+      Caricature, it was fairly murdered. No more political satires appear now,
+      and &ldquo;through the eye, correct the heart;&rdquo; no more poires ripen on the
+      walls of the metropolis; Philipon's political occupation is gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there is always food for satire; and the French caricaturists, being
+      no longer allowed to hold up to ridicule and reprobation the King and the
+      deputies, have found no lack of subjects for the pencil in the ridicules
+      and rascalities of common life. We have said that public decency is
+      greater amongst the French than amongst us, which, to some of our readers,
+      may appear paradoxical; but we shall not attempt to argue that, in private
+      roguery, our neighbors are not our equals. The procès of Gisquet, which
+      has appeared lately in the papers, shows how deep the demoralization must
+      be, and how a Government, based itself on dishonesty (a tyranny, that is,
+      under the title and fiction of a democracy,) must practise and admit
+      corruption in its own and in its agents' dealings with the nation.
+      Accordingly, of cheating contracts, of ministers dabbling with the funds,
+      or extracting underhand profits for the granting of unjust privileges and
+      monopolies,&mdash;of grasping, envious police restrictions, which destroy
+      the freedom, and, with it, the integrity of commerce,&mdash;those who like
+      to examine such details may find plenty in French history: the whole
+      French finance system has been a swindle from the days of Luvois, or Law,
+      down to the present time. The Government swindles the public, and the
+      small traders swindle their customers, on the authority and example of the
+      superior powers. Hence the art of roguery, under such high patronage,
+      maintains in France a noble front of impudence, and a fine audacious
+      openness, which it does not wear in our country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the various characters of roguery which the French satirists have
+      amused themselves by depicting, there is one of which the GREATNESS (using
+      the word in the sense which Mr. Jonathan Wild gave to it) so far exceeds
+      that of all others, embracing, as it does, all in turn, that it has come
+      to be considered the type of roguery in general; and now, just as all the
+      political squibs were made to come of old from the lips of Pasquin, all
+      the reflections on the prevailing cant, knavery, quackery, humbug, are put
+      into the mouth of Monsieur Robert Macaire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A play was written, some twenty years since, called the &ldquo;Auberge des
+      Adrets,&rdquo; in which the characters of two robbers escaped from the galleys
+      were introduced&mdash;Robert Macaire, the clever rogue above mentioned,
+      and Bertrand, the stupid rogue, his friend, accomplice, butt, and
+      scapegoat, on all occasions of danger. It is needless to describe the play&mdash;a
+      witless performance enough, of which the joke was Macaire's exaggerated
+      style of conversation, a farrago of all sorts of high-flown sentiments
+      such as the French love to indulge in&mdash;contrasted with his actions,
+      which were philosophically unscrupulous, and his appearance, which was
+      most picturesquely sordid. The play had been acted, we believe, and
+      forgotten, when a very clever actor, M. Frederick Lemaitre, took upon
+      himself the performance of the character of Robert Macaire, and looked,
+      spoke, and acted it to such admirable perfection, that the whole town rung
+      with applauses of the performance, and the caricaturists delighted to copy
+      his singular figure and costume. M. Robert Macaire appears in a most
+      picturesque green coat, with a variety of rents and patches, a pair of
+      crimson pantaloons ornamented in the same way, enormous whiskers and
+      ringlets, an enormous stock and shirt-frill, as dirty and ragged as stock
+      and shirt-frill can be, the relic of a hat very gayly cocked over one eye,
+      and a patch to take away somewhat from the brightness of the other&mdash;these
+      are the principal pièces of his costume&mdash;a snuff-box like a creaking
+      warming-pan, a handkerchief hanging together by a miracle, and a switch of
+      about the thickness of a man's thigh, formed the ornaments of this
+      exquisite personage. He is a compound of Fielding's &ldquo;Blueskin&rdquo; and
+      Goldsmith's &ldquo;Beau Tibbs.&rdquo; He has the dirt and dandyism of the one, with
+      the ferocity of the other: sometimes he is made to swindle, but where he
+      can get a shilling more, M. Macaire will murder without scruple: he
+      performs one and the other act (or any in the scale between them) with a
+      similar bland imperturbability, and accompanies his actions with such
+      philosophical remarks as may be expected from a person of his talents, his
+      energies, his amiable life and character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bertrand is the simple recipient of Macaire's jokes, and makes vicarious
+      atonement for his crimes, acting, in fact, the part which pantaloon
+      performs in the pantomime, who is entirely under the fatal influence of
+      clown. He is quite as much a rogue as that gentleman, but he has not his
+      genius and courage. So, in pantomimes, (it may, doubtless, have been
+      remarked by the reader,) clown always leaps first, pantaloon following
+      after, more clumsily and timidly than his bold and accomplished friend and
+      guide. Whatever blows are destined for clown, fall, by some means of
+      ill-luck, upon the pate of pantaloon: whenever the clown robs, the stolen
+      articles are sure to be found in his companion's pocket; and thus exactly
+      Robert Macaire and his companion Bertrand are made to go through the
+      world; both swindlers, but the one more accomplished than the other. Both
+      robbing all the world, and Robert robbing his friend, and, in the event of
+      danger, leaving him faithfully in the lurch. There is, in the two
+      characters, some grotesque good for the spectator&mdash;a kind of
+      &ldquo;Beggars' Opera&rdquo; moral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ever since Robert, with his dandified rags and airs, his cane and
+      snuff-box, and Bertrand with torn surtout and all-absorbing pocket, have
+      appeared on the stage, they have been popular with the Parisians; and with
+      these two types of clever and stupid knavery, M. Philipon and his
+      companion Daumier have created a world of pleasant satire upon all the
+      prevailing abuses of the day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost the first figure that these audacious caricaturists dared to depict
+      was a political one: in Macaire's red breeches and tattered coat appeared
+      no less a personage than the King himself&mdash;the old Poire&mdash;in a
+      country of humbugs and swindlers the facile princeps; fit to govern, as he
+      is deeper than all the rogues in his dominions. Bertrand was opposite to
+      him, and having listened with delight and reverence to some tale of
+      knavery truly royal, was exclaiming with a look and voice expressive of
+      the most intense admiration, &ldquo;AH VIEUX BLAGEUR! va!&rdquo;&mdash;the word blague
+      is untranslatable&mdash;it means FRENCH humbug as distinct from all other;
+      and only those who know the value of an epigram in France, an epigram so
+      wonderfully just, a little word so curiously comprehensive, can fancy the
+      kind of rage and rapture with which it was received. It was a blow that
+      shook the whole dynasty. Thersites had there given such a wound to Ajax,
+      as Hector in arms could scarcely have inflicted: a blow sufficient almost
+      to create the madness to which the fabulous hero of Homer and Ovid fell a
+      prey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not long, however, was French caricature allowed to attack personages so
+      illustrious: the September laws came, and henceforth no more epigrams were
+      launched against politics; but the caricaturists were compelled to confine
+      their satire to subjects and characters that had nothing to do with the
+      State. The Duke of Orleans was no longer to figure in lithography as the
+      fantastic Prince Rosolin; no longer were multitudes (in chalk) to shelter
+      under the enormous shadow of M. d'Argout's nose: Marshal Loban's squirt
+      was hung up in peace, and M. Thiers's pigmy figure and round spectacled
+      face were no more to appear in print.* Robert Macaire was driven out of
+      the Chambers and the Palace&mdash;his remarks were a great deal too
+      appropriate and too severe for the ears of the great men who congregated
+      in those places.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Almost all the principal public men had been most
+     ludicrously caricatured in the Charivari: those mentioned
+     above were usually depicted with the distinctive attributes
+     mentioned by us.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The Chambers and the Palace were shut to him; but the rogue, driven out of
+      his rogue's paradise, saw &ldquo;that the world was all before him where to
+      choose,&rdquo; and found no lack of opportunities for exercising his wit. There
+      was the Bar, with its roguish practitioners, rascally attorneys, stupid
+      juries, and forsworn judges; there was the Bourse, with all its gambling,
+      swindling, and hoaxing, its cheats and its dupes; the Medical Profession,
+      and the quacks who ruled it, alternately; the Stage, and the cant that was
+      prevalent there; the Fashion, and its thousand follies and extravagances.
+      Robert Macaire had all these to exploiter. Of all the empire, through all
+      the ranks, professions, the lies, crimes, and absurdities of men, he may
+      make sport at will; of all except of a certain class. Like Bluebeard's
+      wife, he may see everything, but is bidden TO BEWARE OF THE BLUE CHAMBER.
+      Robert is more wise than Bluebeard's wife, and knows that it would cost
+      him his head to enter it. Robert, therefore, keeps aloof for the moment.
+      Would there be any use in his martyrdom? Bluebeard cannot live for ever;
+      perhaps, even now, those are on their way (one sees a suspicious cloud of
+      dust or two) that are to destroy him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the meantime Robert and his friend have been furnishing the designs
+      that we have before us, and of which perhaps the reader will be edified by
+      a brief description. We are not, to be sure, to judge of the French nation
+      by M. Macaire, any more than we are to judge of our own national morals in
+      the last century by such a book as the &ldquo;Beggars' Opera;&rdquo; but upon the
+      morals and the national manners, works of satire afford a world of light
+      that one would in vain look for in regular books of history. Doctor
+      Smollett would have blushed to devote any considerable portion of his
+      pages to a discussion of the acts and character of Mr. Jonathan Wild, such
+      a figure being hardly admissible among the dignified personages who
+      usually push all others out from the possession of the historical page;
+      but a chapter of that gentleman's memoirs, as they are recorded in that
+      exemplary recueil&mdash;the &ldquo;Newgate Calendar;&rdquo; nay, a canto of the great
+      comic epic (involving many fables, and containing much exaggeration, but
+      still having the seeds of truth) which the satirical poet of those days
+      wrote in celebration of him&mdash;we mean Fielding's &ldquo;History of Jonathan
+      Wild the Great&rdquo;&mdash;does seem to us to give a more curious picture of
+      the manners of those times than any recognized history of them. At the
+      close of his history of George II., Smollett condescends to give a short
+      chapter on Literature and Manners. He speaks of Glover's &ldquo;Leonidas,&rdquo;
+       Cibber's &ldquo;Careless Husband,&rdquo; the poems of Mason, Gray, the two Whiteheads,
+      &ldquo;the nervous style, extensive erudition, and superior sense of a Corke;
+      the delicate taste, the polished muse, and tender feeling of a Lyttelton.&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;King,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;shone unrivalled in Roman eloquence, the female sex
+      distinguished themselves by their taste and ingenuity. Miss Carter
+      rivalled the celebrated Dacier in learning and critical knowledge; Mrs.
+      Lennox signalized herself by many successful efforts of genius both in
+      poetry and prose; and Miss Reid excelled the celebrated Rosalba in
+      portrait-painting, both in miniature and at large, in oil as well as in
+      crayons. The genius of Cervantes was transferred into the novels of
+      Fielding, who painted the characters and ridiculed the follies of life
+      with equal strength, humor, and propriety. The field of history and
+      biography was cultivated by many writers of ability, among whom we
+      distinguish the copious Guthrie, the circumstantial Ralph, the laborious
+      Carte, the learned and elegant Robertson, and above all, the ingenious,
+      penetrating, and comprehensive Hume,&rdquo; &amp;c. &amp;c. We will quote no
+      more of the passage. Could a man in the best humor sit down to write a
+      graver satire? Who cares for the tender muse of Lyttelton? Who knows the
+      signal efforts of Mrs. Lennox's genius? Who has seen the admirable
+      performances, in miniature and at large, in oil as well as in crayons, of
+      Miss Reid? Laborious Carte, and circumstantial Ralph, and copious Guthrie,
+      where are they, their works, and their reputation? Mrs. Lennox's name is
+      just as clean wiped out of the list of worthies as if she had never been
+      born; and Miss Reid, though she was once actual flesh and blood, &ldquo;rival in
+      miniature and at large&rdquo; of the celebrated Rosalba, she is as if she had
+      never been at all; her little farthing rushlight of a soul and reputation
+      having burnt out, and left neither wick nor tallow. Death, too, has
+      overtaken copious Guthrie and circumstantial Ralph. Only a few know
+      whereabouts is the grave where lies laborious Carte; and yet, O wondrous
+      power of genius! Fielding's men and women are alive, though History's are
+      not. The progenitors of circumstantial Ralph sent forth, after much labor
+      and pains of making, educating, feeding, clothing, a real man child, a
+      great palpable mass of flesh, bones, and blood (we say nothing about the
+      spirit), which was to move through the world, ponderous, writing
+      histories, and to die, having achieved the title of circumstantial Ralph;
+      and lo! without any of the trouble that the parents of Ralph had
+      undergone, alone perhaps in a watch or spunging-house, fuddled most
+      likely, in the blandest, easiest, and most good-humored way in the world,
+      Henry Fielding makes a number of men and women on so many sheets of paper,
+      not only more amusing than Ralph or Miss Reid, but more like flesh and
+      blood, and more alive now than they. Is not Amelia preparing her husband's
+      little supper? Is not Miss Snapp chastely preventing the crime of Mr.
+      Firebrand? Is not Parson Adams in the midst of his family, and Mr. Wild
+      taking his last bowl of punch with the Newgate Ordinary? Is not every one
+      of them a real substantial HAVE-been personage now&mdash;more real than
+      Reid or Ralph? For our parts, we will not take upon ourselves to say that
+      they do not exist somewhere else: that the actions attributed to them have
+      not really taken place; certain we are that they are more worthy of
+      credence than Ralph, who may or may not have been circumstantial; who may
+      or may not even have existed, a point unworthy of disputation. As for Miss
+      Reid, we will take an affidavit that neither in miniature nor at large did
+      she excel the celebrated Rosalba; and with regard to Mrs. Lennox, we
+      consider her to be a mere figment, like Narcissa, Miss Tabitha Bramble, or
+      any hero or heroine depicted by the historian of &ldquo;Peregrine Pickle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In like manner, after viewing nearly ninety portraits of Robert Macaire
+      and his friend Bertrand, all strongly resembling each other, we are
+      inclined to believe in them as historical personages, and to canvass
+      gravely the circumstances of their lives. Why should we not? Have we not
+      their portraits? Are not they sufficient proofs? If not, we must discredit
+      Napoleon (as Archbishop Whately teaches), for about his figure and himself
+      we have no more authentic testimony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let the reality of M. Robert Macaire and his friend M. Bertrand be
+      granted, if but to gratify our own fondness for those exquisite
+      characters: we find the worthy pair in the French capital, mingling with
+      all grades of its society, pars magna in the intrigues, pleasures,
+      perplexities, rogueries, speculations, which are carried on in Paris, as
+      in our own chief city; for it need not be said that roguery is of no
+      country nor clime, but finds [Greek text omitted], is a citizen of all
+      countries where the quarters are good; among our merry neighbors it finds
+      itself very much at its ease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not being endowed, then, with patrimonial wealth, but compelled to
+      exercise their genius to obtain distinction, or even subsistence, we see
+      Messrs. Bertrand and Macaire, by turns, adopting all trades and
+      professions, and exercising each with their own peculiar ingenuity. As
+      public men, we have spoken already of their appearance in one or two
+      important characters, and stated that the Government grew fairly jealous
+      of them, excluding them from office, as the Whigs did Lord Brougham. As
+      private individuals, they are made to distinguish themselves as the
+      founders of journals, sociétés en commandite (companies of which the
+      members are irresponsible beyond the amount of their shares), and all
+      sorts of commercial speculations, requiring intelligence and honesty on
+      the part of the directors, confidence and liberal disbursements from the
+      shareholders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These are, among the French, so numerous, and have been of late years (in
+      the shape of Newspaper Companies, Bitumen Companies, Galvanized-Iron
+      Companies, Railroad Companies, &amp;c.) pursued with such a blind FUROR
+      and lust of gain, by that easily excited and imaginative people, that, as
+      may be imagined, the satirist has found plenty of occasion for remark, and
+      M. Macaire and his friend innumerable opportunities for exercising their
+      talents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We know nothing of M. Emile de Girardin, except that, in a duel, he shot
+      the best man in France, Armaud Carrel; and in Girardin's favor it must be
+      said, that he had no other alternative; but was right in provoking the
+      duel, seeing that the whole Republican party had vowed his destruction,
+      and that he fought and killed their champion, as it were. We know nothing
+      of M. Girardin's private character: but, as far as we can judge from the
+      French public prints, he seems to be the most speculative of speculators,
+      and, of course, a fair butt for the malice of the caricaturists. His one
+      great crime, in the eyes of the French Republicans and Republican
+      newspaper proprietors, was, that Girardin set up a journal, as he called
+      it, &ldquo;franchement monarchique,&rdquo;&mdash;a journal in the pay of the monarchy,
+      that is,&mdash;and a journal that cost only forty francs by the year. The
+      National costs twice as much; the Charivari itself costs half as much
+      again; and though all newspapers, of all parties, concurred in &ldquo;snubbing&rdquo;
+       poor M. Girardin and his journal, the Republican prints, were by far the
+      most bitter against him, thundering daily accusations and personalities;
+      whether the abuse was well or ill founded, we know not. Hence arose the
+      duel with Carrel; after the termination of which, Girardin put by his
+      pistol, and vowed, very properly, to assist in the shedding of no more
+      blood. Girardin had been the originator of numerous other speculations
+      besides the journal: the capital of these, like that of the journal, was
+      raised by shares, and the shareholders, by some fatality, have found
+      themselves wofully in the lurch; while Girardin carries on the war gayly,
+      is, or was, a member of the Chamber of Deputies, has money, goes to Court,
+      and possesses a certain kind of reputation. He invented, we believe, the
+      &ldquo;Institution Agronome de Coetbo,&rdquo; * the &ldquo;Physionotype,&rdquo; the &ldquo;Journal des
+      Connoissances Utiles,&rdquo; the &ldquo;Pantheon Littéraire,&rdquo; and the system of
+      &ldquo;Primes&rdquo;&mdash;premiums, that is&mdash;to be given, by lottery, to certain
+      subscribers in these institutions. Could Robert Macaire see such things
+      going on, and have no hand in them?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * It is not necessary to enter into descriptions of these
+     various inventions.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Accordingly Messrs. Macaire and Bertrand are made the heroes of many
+      speculations of the kind. In almost the first print of our collection,
+      Robert discourses to Bertrand of his projects. &ldquo;Bertrand,&rdquo; says the
+      disinterested admirer of talent and enterprise, &ldquo;j'adore l'industrie. Si
+      tu veux nous créons une banque, mais là, une vraie banque: capital cent
+      millions de millions, cent milliards de milliards d'actions. Nous
+      enfonçons la banque de France, les banquiers, les banquistes; nous
+      enfonçons tout le monde.&rdquo; &ldquo;Oui,&rdquo; says Bertrand, very calm and stupid,
+      &ldquo;mais les gendarmes?&rdquo; &ldquo;Que tu es bête, Bertrand: est-ce qu'on arrête un
+      millionaire?&rdquo; Such is the key to M. Macaire's philosophy; and a wise creed
+      too, as times go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Acting on these principles, Robert appears soon after; he has not created
+      a bank, but a journal. He sits in a chair of state, and discourses to a
+      shareholder. Bertrand, calm and stupid as before, stands humbly behind.
+      &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; says the editor of La Blague, journal quotidienne, &ldquo;our profits
+      arise from a new combination. The journal costs twenty francs; we sell it
+      for twenty-three and a half. A million subscribers make three millions and
+      a half of profits; there are my figures; contradict me by figures, or I
+      will bring an action for libel.&rdquo; The reader may fancy the scene takes
+      place in England, where many such a swindling prospectus has obtained
+      credit ere now. At Plate 33, Robert is still a journalist; he brings to
+      the editor of a paper an article of his composition, a violent attack on a
+      law. &ldquo;My dear M. Macaire,&rdquo; says the editor, &ldquo;this must be changed; we must
+      PRAISE this law.&rdquo; &ldquo;Bon, bon!&rdquo; says our versatile Macaire. &ldquo;Je vais
+      retoucher ça, et je vous fais en faveur de la loi UN ARTICLE MOUSSEUX.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Can such things be? Is it possible that French journalists can so forget
+      themselves? The rogues! they should come to England and learn consistency.
+      The honesty of the Press in England is like the air we breathe, without it
+      we die. No, no! in France, the satire may do very well; but for England it
+      is too monstrous. Call the press stupid, call it vulgar, call it violent,&mdash;but
+      honest it is. Who ever heard of a journal changing its politics? O
+      tempora! O mores! as Robert Macaire says, this would be carrying the joke
+      too far.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he has done with newspapers, Robert Macaire begins to distinguish
+      himself on 'Change,* as a creator of companies, a vender of shares, or a
+      dabbler in foreign stock. &ldquo;Buy my coal-mine shares,&rdquo; shouts Robert; &ldquo;gold
+      mines, silver mines, diamond mines, 'sont de la pot-bouille de la
+      ratatouille en comparaison de ma houille.'&rdquo; &ldquo;Look,&rdquo; says he, on another
+      occasion, to a very timid, open-countenanced client, &ldquo;you have a property
+      to sell! I have found the very man, a rich capitalist, a fellow whose
+      bills are better than bank-notes.&rdquo; His client sells; the bills are taken
+      in payment, and signed by that respectable capitalist, Monsieur de Saint
+      Bertrand. At Plate 81, we find him inditing a circular letter to all the
+      world, running thus: &ldquo;Sir,&mdash;I regret to say that your application for
+      shares in the Consolidated European Incombustible Blacking Association
+      cannot be complied with, as all the shares of the C. E. I. B. A. were
+      disposed of on the day they were issued. I have, nevertheless, registered
+      your name, and in case a second series should be put forth, I shall have
+      the honor of immediately giving you notice. I am, sir, yours, &amp;c., the
+      Director, Robert Macaire.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Print 300,000 of these,&rdquo; he says to
+      Bertrand, &ldquo;and poison all France with them.&rdquo; As usual, the stupid Bertrand
+      remonstrates&mdash;&ldquo;But we have not sold a single share; you have not a
+      penny in your pocket, and&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Bertrand, you are an ass; do as I bid
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * We have given a description of a genteel Macaire in the
+     account of M. de Bernard's novels.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Will this satire apply anywhere in England? Have we any Consolidated
+      European Blacking Associations amongst us? Have we penniless directors
+      issuing El Dorado prospectuses, and jockeying their shares through the
+      market? For information on this head, we must refer the reader to the
+      newspapers; or if he be connected with the city, and acquainted with
+      commercial men, he will be able to say whether ALL the persons whose names
+      figure at the head of announcements of projected companies are as rich as
+      Rothschild, or quite as honest as heart could desire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Macaire has sufficiently exploité the Bourse, whether as a gambler in
+      the public funds or other companies, he sagely perceives that it is time
+      to turn to some other profession, and, providing himself with a black
+      gown, proposes blandly to Bertrand to set up&mdash;a new religion. &ldquo;Mon
+      ami,&rdquo; says the repentant sinner, &ldquo;le temps de la commandite va passer,
+      MAIS LES BADAUDS NE PASSERONT PAS.&rdquo; (O rare sentence! it should be written
+      in letters of gold!) &ldquo;OCCUPONS NOUS DE CE QUI EST ÉTERNEL. Si nous
+      fassions une réligion?&rdquo; On which M. Bertrand remarks, &ldquo;A religion! what
+      the devil&mdash;a religion is not an easy thing to make.&rdquo; But Macaire's
+      receipt is easy. &ldquo;Get a gown, take a shop,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;borrow some chairs,
+      preach about Napoleon, or the discovery of America, or Molière&mdash;and
+      there's a religion for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We have quoted this sentence more for the contrast it offers with our own
+      manners, than for its merits. After the noble paragraph, &ldquo;Les badauds ne
+      passeront pas. Occupons nous de ce qui est éternel,&rdquo; one would have
+      expected better satire upon cant than the words that follow. We are not in
+      a condition to say whether the subjects chosen are those that had been
+      selected by Père Enfantin, or Chatel, or Lacordaire; but the words are
+      curious, we think, for the very reason that the satire is so poor. The
+      fact is, there is no religion in Paris; even clever M. Philipon, who
+      satirizes everything, and must know, therefore, some little about the
+      subject which he ridicules, has nothing to say but, &ldquo;Preach a sermon, and
+      that makes a religion; anything will do.&rdquo; If ANYTHING will do, it is clear
+      that the religious commodity is not in much demand. Tartuffe had better
+      things to say about hypocrisy in his time; but then Faith was alive; now,
+      there is no satirizing religious cant in France, for its contrary, true
+      religion, has disappeared altogether; and having no substance, can cast no
+      shadow. If a satirist would lash the religious hypocrites in ENGLAND now&mdash;the
+      High Church hypocrites, the Low Church hypocrites, the promiscuous
+      Dissenting hypocrites, the No Popery hypocrites&mdash;he would have ample
+      subject enough. In France, the religious hypocrites went out with the
+      Bourbons. Those who remain pious in that country (or, rather, we should
+      say, in the capital, for of that we speak,) are unaffectedly so, for they
+      have no worldly benefit to hope for from their piety; the great majority
+      have no religion at all, and do not scoff at the few, for scoffing is the
+      minority's weapon, and is passed always to the weaker side, whatever that
+      may be. Thus H. B. caricatures the Ministers: if by any accident that body
+      of men should be dismissed from their situations, and be succeeded by H.
+      B.'s friends, the Tories,&mdash;what must the poor artist do? He must pine
+      away and die, if he be not converted; he cannot always be paying
+      compliments; for caricature has a spice of Goethe's Devil in it, and is
+      &ldquo;der Geist der stets verneint,&rdquo; the Spirit that is always denying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With one or two of the French writers and painters of caricatures, the
+      King tried the experiment of bribery; which succeeded occasionally in
+      buying off the enemy, and bringing him from the republican to the royal
+      camp; but when there, the deserter was never of any use. Figaro, when so
+      treated, grew fat and desponding, and lost all his sprightly VERVE; and
+      Nemesis became as gentle as a Quakeress. But these instances of &ldquo;ratting&rdquo;
+       were not many. Some few poets were bought over; but, among men following
+      the profession of the press, a change of politics is an infringement of
+      the point of honor, and a man must FIGHT as well as apostatize. A very
+      curious table might be made, signalizing the difference of the moral
+      standard between us and the French. Why is the grossness and indelicacy,
+      publicly permitted in England, unknown in France, where private morality
+      is certainly at a lower ebb? Why is the point of private honor now more
+      rigidly maintained among the French? Why is it, as it should be, a moral
+      disgrace for a Frenchman to go into debt, and no disgrace for him to cheat
+      his customer? Why is there more honesty and less&mdash;more propriety and
+      less?&mdash;and how are we to account for the particular vices or virtues
+      which belong to each nation in its turn?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The above is the Reverend M. Macaire's solitary exploit as a spiritual
+      swindler: as MAÎTRE Macaire in the courts of law, as avocat, avoué&mdash;in
+      a humbler capacity even, as a prisoner at the bar, he distinguishes
+      himself greatly, as may be imagined. On one occasion we find the learned
+      gentleman humanely visiting an unfortunate détenu&mdash;no other person,
+      in fact, than his friend M. Bertrand, who has fallen into some trouble,
+      and is awaiting the sentence of the law. He begins&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mon cher Bertrand, donne moi cent écus, je te fais acquitter d'emblée.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;J'ai pas d'argent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hé bien, donne moi cent francs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pas le sou.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tu n'as pas dix francs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pas un liard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alors donne moi tes bottes, je plaiderai la circonstance atténuante.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The manner in which Maitre Macaire soars from the cent écus (a high point
+      already) to the sublime of the boots, is in the best comic style. In
+      another instance he pleads before a judge, and, mistaking his client,
+      pleads for defendant, instead of plaintiff. &ldquo;The infamy of the plaintiff's
+      character, my LUDS, renders his testimony on such a charge as this wholly
+      unavailing.&rdquo; &ldquo;M. Macaire, M. Macaire,&rdquo; cries the attorney, in a fright,
+      &ldquo;you are for the plaintiff!&rdquo; &ldquo;This, my lords, is what the defendant WILL
+      SAY. This is the line of defence which the opposite party intend to
+      pursue; as if slanders like these could weigh with an enlightened jury, or
+      injure the spotless reputation of my client!&rdquo; In this story and expedient
+      M. Macaire has been indebted to the English bar. If there be an occupation
+      for the English satirist in the exposing of the cant and knavery of the
+      pretenders to religion, what room is there for him to lash the infamies of
+      the law! On this point the French are babes in iniquity compared to us&mdash;a
+      counsel prostituting himself for money is a matter with us so stale, that
+      it is hardly food for satire: which, to be popular, must find some much
+      more complicated and interesting knavery whereon to exercise its skill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Macaire is more skilful in love than in law, and appears once or twice
+      in a very amiable light while under the influence of the tender passion.
+      We find him at the head of one of those useful establishments unknown in
+      our country&mdash;a Bureau de Mariage: half a dozen of such places are
+      daily advertised in the journals: and &ldquo;une veuve de trente ans ayant une
+      fortune de deux cent mille francs,&rdquo; or &ldquo;une demoiselle de quinze aus,
+      jolie, d'une famille très distinguée, qui possède trente mille livres de
+      rentes,&rdquo;&mdash;continually, in this kind-hearted way, are offering
+      themselves to the public: sometimes it is a gentleman, with a &ldquo;physique
+      agréable,&mdash;des talens de société&rdquo;&mdash;and a place under Government,
+      who makes a sacrifice of himself in a similar manner. In our little
+      historical gallery we find this philanthropic anti-Malthusian at the head
+      of an establishment of this kind, introducing a very meek, simple-looking
+      bachelor to some distinguished ladies of his connoissance. &ldquo;Let me present
+      you, sir, to Madame de St. Bertrand&rdquo; (it is our old friend), &ldquo;veuve de la
+      grande armée, et Mdlle Eloa de Wormspire. Ces dames brûlent de l'envie de
+      faire votre connoissance. Je les ai invitées à dîner chez vous ce soir:
+      vous nous menerez à l'opéra, et nous ferons une petite partie d'écarté.
+      Tenez vous bien, M. Gobard! ces dames ont des projets sur vous!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Happy Gobard! happy system, which can thus bring the pure and loving
+      together, and acts as the best ally of Hymen! The announcement of the rank
+      and titles of Madame de St. Bertrand&mdash;&ldquo;veuve de la grande armée&rdquo;&mdash;is
+      very happy. &ldquo;La grande armée&rdquo; has been a father to more orphans, and a
+      husband to more widows, than it ever made. Mistresses of cafés, old
+      governesses, keepers of boarding-houses, genteel beggars, and ladies of
+      lower rank still, have this favorite pedigree. They have all had malheurs
+      (what kind it is needless to particularize), they are all connected with
+      the grand homme, and their fathers were all colonels. This title exactly
+      answers to the &ldquo;clergyman's daughter&rdquo; in England&mdash;as, &ldquo;A young lady,
+      the daughter of a clergyman, is desirous to teach,&rdquo; &amp;c. &ldquo;A clergyman's
+      widow receives into her house a few select,&rdquo; and so forth. &ldquo;Appeal to the
+      benevolent.&mdash;By a series of unheard-of calamities, a young lady,
+      daughter of a clergyman in the west of England, has been plunged,&rdquo; &amp;c.
+      &amp;c. The difference is curious, as indicating the standard of
+      respectability.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The male beggar of fashion is not so well known among us as in Paris,
+      where street-doors are open; six or eight families live in a house; and
+      the gentleman who earns his livelihood by this profession can make half a
+      dozen visits without the trouble of knocking from house to house, and the
+      pain of being observed by the whole street, while the footman is examining
+      him from the area. Some few may be seen in England about the inns of
+      court, where the locality is favorable (where, however, the owners of the
+      chambers are not proverbially soft of heart, so that the harvest must be
+      poor); but Paris is full of such adventurers,&mdash;fat, smooth-tongued,
+      and well dressed, with gloves and gilt-headed canes, who would be insulted
+      almost by the offer of silver, and expect your gold as their right. Among
+      these, of course, our friend Robert plays his part; and an excellent
+      engraving represents him, snuff-box in hand, advancing to an old
+      gentleman, whom, by his poodle, his powdered head, and his drivelling,
+      stupid look, one knows to be a Carlist of the old régime. &ldquo;I beg pardon,&rdquo;
+       says Robert; &ldquo;is it really yourself to whom I have the honor of speaking?&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;It
+      is.&rdquo; &ldquo;Do you take snuff?&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;I thank you.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Sir, I have had
+      misfortunes&mdash;I want assistance. I am a Vendéan of illustrious birth.
+      You know the family of Macairbec&mdash;we are of Brest. My grandfather
+      served the King in his galleys; my father and I belong, also, to the
+      marine. Unfortunate suits at law have plunged us into difficulties, and I
+      do not hesitate to ask you for the succor of ten francs.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Sir, I
+      never give to those I don't know.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Right, sir, perfectly right.
+      Perhaps you will have the kindness to LEND me ten francs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The adventures of Doctor Macaire need not be described, because the
+      different degrees in quackery which are taken by that learned physician
+      are all well known in England, where we have the advantage of many higher
+      degrees in the science, which our neighbors know nothing about. We have
+      not Hahnemann, but we have his disciples; we have not Broussais, but we
+      have the College of Health; and surely a dose of Morrison's pills is a
+      sublimer discovery than a draught of hot water. We had St. John Long, too&mdash;where
+      is his science?&mdash;and we are credibly informed that some important
+      cures have been effected by the inspired dignitaries of &ldquo;the church&rdquo; in
+      Newman Street which, if it continue to practise, will sadly interfere with
+      the profits of the regular physicians, and where the miracles of the Abbé
+      of Paris are about to be acted over again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In speaking of M. Macaire and his adventures, we have managed so entirely
+      to convince ourselves of the reality of the personage, that we have quite
+      forgotten to speak of Messrs. Philipon and Daumier, who are, the one the
+      inventor, the other the designer, of the Macaire Picture Gallery. As works
+      of esprit, these drawings are not more remarkable than they are as works
+      of art, and we never recollect to have seen a series of sketches
+      possessing more extraordinary cleverness and variety. The countenance and
+      figure of Macaire and the dear stupid Bertrand are preserved, of course,
+      with great fidelity throughout; but the admirable way in which each fresh
+      character is conceived, the grotesque appropriateness of Robert's every
+      successive attitude and gesticulation, and the variety of Bertrand's
+      postures of invariable repose, the exquisite fitness of all the other
+      characters, who act their little part and disappear from the scene, cannot
+      be described on paper, or too highly lauded. The figures are very
+      carelessly drawn; but, if the reader can understand us, all the attitudes
+      and limbs are perfectly CONCEIVED, and wonderfully natural and various.
+      After pondering over these drawings for some hours, as we have been while
+      compiling this notice of them, we have grown to believe that the
+      personages are real, and the scenes remain imprinted on the brain as if we
+      had absolutely been present at their acting. Perhaps the clever way in
+      which the plates are colored, and the excellent effect which is put into
+      each, may add to this illusion. Now, in looking, for instance, at H. B.'s
+      slim vapory figures, they have struck us as excellent LIKENESSES of men
+      and women, but no more: the bodies want spirit, action, and individuality.
+      George Cruikshank, as a humorist, has quite as much genius, but he does
+      not know the art of &ldquo;effect&rdquo; so well as Monsieur Daumier; and, if we might
+      venture to give a word of advice to another humorous designer, whose works
+      are extensively circulated&mdash;the illustrator of &ldquo;Pickwick&rdquo; and
+      &ldquo;Nicholas Nickleby,&rdquo;&mdash;it would be to study well these caricatures of
+      Monsieur Daumier; who, though he executes very carelessly, knows very well
+      what he would express, indicates perfectly the attitude and identity of
+      his figure, and is quite aware, beforehand, of the effect which he intends
+      to produce. The one we should fancy to be a practised artist, taking his
+      ease; the other, a young one, somewhat bewildered: a very clever one,
+      however, who, if he would think more, and exaggerate less, would add not a
+      little to his reputation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having pursued, all through these remarks, the comparison between English
+      art and French art, English and French humor, manners, and morals, perhaps
+      we should endeavor, also, to write an analytical essay on English cant or
+      humbug, as distinguished from French. It might be shown that the latter
+      was more picturesque and startling, the former more substantial and
+      positive. It has none of the poetic flights of the French genius, but
+      advances steadily, and gains more ground in the end than its sprightlier
+      compeer. But such a discussion would carry us through the whole range of
+      French and English history, and the reader has probably read quite enough
+      of the subject in this and the foregoing pages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We shall, therefore, say no more of French and English caricatures
+      generally, or of Mr. Macaire's particular accomplishments and adventures.
+      They are far better understood by examining the original pictures, by
+      which Philipon and Daumier have illustrated them, than by translations
+      first into print and afterwards into English. They form a very curious and
+      instructive commentary upon the present state of society in Paris, and a
+      hundred years hence, when the whole of this struggling, noisy, busy, merry
+      race shall have exchanged their pleasures or occupations for a quiet
+      coffin (and a tawdry lying epitaph) at Montmartre, or Père la Chaise; when
+      the follies here recorded shall have been superseded by new ones, and the
+      fools now so active shall have given up the inheritance of the world to
+      their children: the latter will, at least, have the advantage of knowing,
+      intimately and exactly, the manners of life and being of their grandsires,
+      and calling up, when they so choose it, our ghosts from the grave, to
+      live, love, quarrel, swindle, suffer, and struggle on blindly as of yore.
+      And when the amused speculator shall have laughed sufficiently at the
+      immensity of our follies, and the paltriness of our aims, smiled at our
+      exploded superstitions, wondered how this man should be considered great,
+      who is now clean forgotten (as copious Guthrie before mentioned); how this
+      should have been thought a patriot who is but a knave spouting
+      commonplace; or how that should have been dubbed a philosopher who is but
+      a dull fool, blinking solemn, and pretending to see in the dark; when he
+      shall have examined all these at his leisure, smiling in a pleasant
+      contempt and good-humored superiority, and thanking heaven for his
+      increased lights, he will shut the book, and be a fool as his fathers were
+      before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It runs in the blood. Well hast thou said, O ragged Macaire,&mdash;&ldquo;Le
+      jour va passer, MAIS LES BADAUDS NE PASSERONT PAS.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LITTLE POINSINET.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      About the year 1760, there lived, at Paris, a little fellow, who was the
+      darling of all the wags of his acquaintance. Nature seemed, in the
+      formation of this little man, to have amused herself, by giving loose to
+      half a hundred of her most comical caprices. He had some wit and drollery
+      of his own, which sometimes rendered his sallies very amusing; but, where
+      his friends laughed with him once, they laughed at him a thousand times,
+      for he had a fund of absurdity in himself that was more pleasant than all
+      the wit in the world. He was as proud as a peacock, as wicked as an ape,
+      and as silly as a goose. He did not possess one single grain of common
+      sense; but, in revenge, his pretensions were enormous, his ignorance vast,
+      and his credulity more extensive still. From his youth upwards, he had
+      read nothing but the new novels, and the verses in the almanacs, which
+      helped him not a little in making, what he called, poetry of his own; for,
+      of course, our little hero was a poet. All the common usages of life, all
+      the ways of the world, and all the customs of society, seemed to be quite
+      unknown to him; add to these good qualities, a magnificent conceit, a
+      cowardice inconceivable, and a face so irresistibly comic, that every one
+      who first beheld it was compelled to burst out a-laughing, and you will
+      have some notion of this strange little gentleman. He was very proud of
+      his voice, and uttered all his sentences in the richest tragic tone. He
+      was little better than a dwarf; but he elevated his eyebrows, held up his
+      neck, walked on the tips of his toes, and gave himself the airs of a
+      giant. He had a little pair of bandy legs, which seemed much too short to
+      support anything like a human body; but, by the help of these crooked
+      supporters, he thought he could dance like a Grace; and, indeed, fancied
+      all the graces possible were to be found in his person. His goggle eyes
+      were always rolling about wildly, as if in correspondence with the
+      disorder of his little brain and his countenance thus wore an expression
+      of perpetual wonder. With such happy natural gifts, he not only fell into
+      all traps that were laid for him, but seemed almost to go out of his way
+      to seek them; although, to be sure, his friends did not give him much
+      trouble in that search, for they prepared hoaxes for him incessantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day the wags introduced him to a company of ladies, who, though not
+      countesses and princesses exactly, took, nevertheless, those titles upon
+      themselves for the nonce; and were all, for the same reason, violently
+      smitten with Master Poinsinet's person. One of them, the lady of the
+      house, was especially tender; and, seating him by her side at supper, so
+      plied him with smiles, ogles, and champagne, that our little hero grew
+      crazed with ecstasy, and wild with love. In the midst of his happiness, a
+      cruel knock was heard below, accompanied by quick loud talking, swearing,
+      and shuffling of feet: you would have thought a regiment was at the door.
+      &ldquo;Oh heavens!&rdquo; cried the marchioness, starting up, and giving to the hand
+      of Poinsinet one parting squeeze; &ldquo;fly&mdash;fly, my Poinsinet: 'tis the
+      colonel&mdash;my husband!&rdquo; At this, each gentleman of the party rose, and,
+      drawing his rapier, vowed to cut his way through the colonel and all his
+      mousquetaires, or die, if need be, by the side of Poinsinet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little fellow was obliged to lug out his sword too, and went
+      shuddering down stairs, heartily repenting of his passion for
+      marchionesses. When the party arrived in the street, they found, sure
+      enough, a dreadful company of mousquetaires, as they seemed, ready to
+      oppose their passage. Swords crossed,&mdash;torches blazed; and, with the
+      most dreadful shouts and imprecations, the contending parties rushed upon
+      one another; the friends of Poinsinet surrounding and supporting that
+      little warrior, as the French knights did King Francis at Pavia, otherwise
+      the poor fellow certainly would have fallen down in the gutter from
+      fright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the combat was suddenly interrupted; for the neighbors, who knew
+      nothing of the trick going on, and thought the brawl was real, had been
+      screaming with all their might for the police, who began about this time
+      to arrive. Directly they appeared, friends and enemies of Poinsinet at
+      once took to their heels; and, in THIS part of the transaction, at least,
+      our hero himself showed that he was equal to the longest-legged grenadier
+      that ever ran away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, at last, those little bandy legs of his had borne him safely to his
+      lodgings, all Poinsinet's friends crowded round him, to congratulate him
+      on his escape and his valor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Egad, how he pinked that great red-haired fellow!&rdquo; said one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; did I?&rdquo; said Poinsinet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you? Psha! don't try to play the modest, and humbug US; you know you
+      did. I suppose you will say, next, that you were not for three minutes
+      point to point with Cartentierce himself, the most dreadful swordsman of
+      the army.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you see,&rdquo; says Poinsinet, quite delighted, &ldquo;it was so dark that I
+      did not know with whom I was engaged; although, corbleu, I DID FOR one or
+      two of the fellows.&rdquo; And after a little more of such conversation, during
+      which he was fully persuaded that he had done for a dozen of the enemy at
+      least, Poinsinet went to bed, his little person trembling with fright and
+      pleasure; and he fell asleep, and dreamed of rescuing ladies, and
+      destroying monsters, like a second Amadis de Gaul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he awoke in the morning, he found a party of his friends in his room:
+      one was examining his coat and waistcoat; another was casting many curious
+      glances at his inexpressibles. &ldquo;Look here!&rdquo; said this gentleman, holding
+      up the garment to the light; &ldquo;one&mdash;two&mdash;three gashes! I am
+      hanged if the cowards did not aim at Poinsinet's legs! There are four
+      holes in the sword arm of his coat, and seven have gone right through coat
+      and waistcoat. Good heaven! Poinsinet, have you had a surgeon to your
+      wounds?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wounds!&rdquo; said the little man, springing up, &ldquo;I don't know&mdash;that is,
+      I hope&mdash;that is&mdash;O Lord! O Lord! I hope I'm not wounded!&rdquo; and,
+      after a proper examination, he discovered he was not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank heaven! thank heaven!&rdquo; said one of the wags (who, indeed, during
+      the slumbers of Poinsinet had been occupied in making these very holes
+      through the garments of that individual), &ldquo;if you have escaped, it is by a
+      miracle. Alas! alas! all your enemies have not been so lucky.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How! is anybody wounded?&rdquo; said Poinsinet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dearest friend, prepare yourself; that unhappy man who came to revenge
+      his menaced honor&mdash;that gallant officer&mdash;that injured husband,
+      Colonel Count de Cartentierce&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;IS NO MORE! he died this morning, pierced through with nineteen wounds
+      from your hand, and calling upon his country to revenge his murder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When this awful sentence was pronounced, all the auditory gave a pathetic
+      and simultaneous sob; and as for Poinsinet, he sank back on his bed with a
+      howl of terror, which would have melted a Visigoth to tears, or to
+      laughter. As soon as his terror and remorse had, in some degree, subsided,
+      his comrades spoke to him of the necessity of making his escape; and,
+      huddling on his clothes, and bidding them all a tender adieu, he set off,
+      incontinently, without his breakfast, for England, America, or Russia, not
+      knowing exactly which.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of his companions agreed to accompany him on a part of this journey,&mdash;that
+      is, as far as the barrier of St. Denis, which is, as everybody knows, on
+      the high road to Dover; and there, being tolerably secure, they entered a
+      tavern for breakfast; which meal, the last that he ever was to take,
+      perhaps, in his native city, Poinsinet was just about to discuss, when,
+      behold! a gentleman entered the apartment where Poinsinet and his friend
+      were seated, and, drawing from his pocket a paper, with &ldquo;AU NOM DU ROY&rdquo;
+       flourished on the top, read from it, or rather from Poinsinet's own
+      figure, his exact signalement, laid his hand on his shoulder, and arrested
+      him in the name of the King, and of the provost-marshal of Paris. &ldquo;I
+      arrest you, sir,&rdquo; said he, gravely, &ldquo;with regret; you have slain, with
+      seventeen wounds, in single combat, Colonel Count de Cartentierce, one of
+      his Majesty's household; and, as his murderer, you fall under the
+      immediate authority of the provost-marshal, and die without trial or
+      benefit of clergy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      You may fancy how the poor little man's appetite fell when he heard this
+      speech. &ldquo;In the provost-marshal's hands?&rdquo; said his friend: &ldquo;then it is all
+      over, indeed! When does my poor friend suffer, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At half-past six o'clock, the day after to-morrow,&rdquo; said the officer,
+      sitting down, and helping himself to wine. &ldquo;But stop,&rdquo; said he, suddenly;
+      &ldquo;sure I can't mistake? Yes&mdash;no&mdash;yes, it is. My dear friend, my
+      dear Durand! don't you recollect your old schoolfellow, Antoine?&rdquo; And
+      herewith the officer flung himself into the arms of Durand, Poinsinet's
+      comrade, and they performed a most affecting scene of friendship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This may be of some service to you,&rdquo; whispered Durand to Poinsinet; and,
+      after some further parley, he asked the officer when he was bound to
+      deliver up his prisoner; and, hearing that he was not called upon to
+      appear at the Marshalsea before six o'clock at night, Monsieur Durand
+      prevailed upon Monsieur Antoine to wait until that hour, and in the
+      meantime to allow his prisoner to walk about the town in his company. This
+      request was, with a little difficulty, granted; and poor Poinsinet begged
+      to be carried to the houses of his various friends, and bid them farewell.
+      Some were aware of the trick that had been played upon him: others were
+      not; but the poor little man's credulity was so great, that it was
+      impossible to undeceive him; and he went from house to house bewailing his
+      fate, and followed by the complaisant marshal's officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The news of his death he received with much more meekness than could have
+      been expected; but what he could not reconcile to himself was, the idea of
+      dissection afterwards. &ldquo;What can they want with me?&rdquo; cried the poor
+      wretch, in an unusual fit of candor. &ldquo;I am very small and ugly; it would
+      be different if I were a tall fine-looking fellow.&rdquo; But he was given to
+      understand that beauty made very little difference to the surgeons, who,
+      on the contrary, would, on certain occasions, prefer a deformed man to a
+      handsome one; for science was much advanced by the study of such
+      monstrosities. With this reason Poinsinet was obliged to be content; and
+      so paid his rounds of visits, and repeated his dismal adieux.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The officer of the provost-marshal, however amusing Poinsinet's woes might
+      have been, began, by this time, to grow very weary of them, and gave him
+      more than one opportunity to escape. He would stop at shop-windows, loiter
+      round corners, and look up in the sky, but all in vain: Poinsinet would
+      not escape, do what the other would. At length, luckily, about
+      dinner-time, the officer met one of Poinsinet's friends and his own: and
+      the three agreed to dine at a tavern, as they had breakfasted; and here
+      the officer, who vowed that he had been up for five weeks incessantly,
+      fell suddenly asleep, in the profoundest fatigue; and Poinsinet was
+      persuaded, after much hesitation on his part, to take leave of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, this danger overcome, another was to be avoided. Beyond a doubt
+      the police were after him, and how was he to avoid them? He must be
+      disguised, of course; and one of his friends, a tall, gaunt lawyer's
+      clerk, agreed to provide him with habits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So little Poinsinet dressed himself out in the clerk's dingy black suit,
+      of which the knee-breeches hung down to his heels, and the waist of the
+      coat reached to the calves of his legs; and, furthermore, he blacked his
+      eyebrows, and wore a huge black periwig, in which his friend vowed that no
+      one could recognize him. But the most painful incident, with regard to the
+      periwig, was, that Poinsinet, whose solitary beauty&mdash;if beauty it
+      might be called&mdash;was a head of copious, curling, yellow hair, was
+      compelled to snip off every one of his golden locks, and to rub the
+      bristles with a black dye; &ldquo;for if your wig were to come off,&rdquo; said the
+      lawyer, &ldquo;and your fair hair to tumble over your shoulders, every man would
+      know, or at least suspect you.&rdquo; So off the locks were cut, and in his
+      black suit and periwig little Poinsinet went abroad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His friends had their cue; and when he appeared amongst them, not one
+      seemed to know him. He was taken into companies where his character was
+      discussed before him, and his wonderful escape spoken of. At last he was
+      introduced to the very officer of the provost-marshal who had taken him
+      into custody, and who told him that he had been dismissed the provost's
+      service, in consequence of the escape of the prisoner. Now, for the first
+      time, poor Poinsinet thought himself tolerably safe, and blessed his kind
+      friends who had procured for him such a complete disguise. How this affair
+      ended I know not,&mdash;whether some new lie was coined to account for his
+      release, or whether he was simply told that he had been hoaxed: it
+      mattered little; for the little man was quite as ready to be hoaxed the
+      next day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poinsinet was one day invited to dine with one of the servants of the
+      Tuileries; and, before his arrival, a person in company had been decorated
+      with a knot of lace and a gold key, such as chamberlains wear; he was
+      introduced to Poinsinet as the Count de Truchses, chamberlain to the King
+      of Prussia. After dinner the conversation fell upon the Count's visit to
+      Paris; when his Excellency, with a mysterious air, vowed that he had only
+      come for pleasure. &ldquo;It is mighty well,&rdquo; said a third person, &ldquo;and, of
+      course, we can't cross-question your lordship too closely;&rdquo; but at the
+      same time it was hinted to Poinsinet that a person of such consequence did
+      not travel for NOTHING, with which opinion Poinsinet solemnly agreed; and,
+      indeed, it was borne out by a subsequent declaration of the Count, who
+      condescended, at last, to tell the company, in confidence, that he HAD a
+      mission, and a most important one&mdash;to find, namely, among the
+      literary men of France, a governor for the Prince Royal of Prussia. The
+      company seemed astonished that the King had not made choice of Voltaire or
+      D'Alembert, and mentioned a dozen other distinguished men who might be
+      competent to this important duty; but the Count, as may be imagined, found
+      objections to every one of them; and, at last, one of the guests said,
+      that, if his Prussian Majesty was not particular as to age, he knew a
+      person more fitted for the place than any other who could be found,&mdash;his
+      honorable friend, M. Poinsinet, was the individual to whom he alluded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good heavens!&rdquo; cried the Count, &ldquo;is it possible that the celebrated
+      Poinsinet would take such a place? I would give the world to see him?&rdquo; And
+      you may fancy how Poinsinet simpered and blushed when the introduction
+      immediately took place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Count protested to him that the King would be charmed to know him; and
+      added, that one of his operas (for it must be told that our little friend
+      was a vaudeville-maker by trade) had been acted seven-and-twenty times at
+      the theatre at Potsdam. His Excellency then detailed to him all the honors
+      and privileges which the governor of the Prince Royal might expect; and
+      all the guests encouraged the little man's vanity, by asking him for his
+      protection and favor. In a short time our hero grew so inflated with pride
+      and vanity, that he was for patronizing the chamberlain himself, who
+      proceeded to inform him that he was furnished with all the necessary
+      powers by his sovereign, who had specially enjoined him to confer upon the
+      future governor of his son the royal order of the Black Eagle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poinsinet, delighted, was ordered to kneel down; and the Count produced a
+      large yellow ribbon, which he hung over his shoulder, and which was, he
+      declared, the grand cordon of the order. You must fancy Poinsinet's face,
+      and excessive delight at this; for as for describing them, nobody can. For
+      four-and-twenty hours the happy chevalier paraded through Paris with this
+      flaring yellow ribbon; and he was not undeceived until his friends had
+      another trick in store for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He dined one day in the company of a man who understood a little of the
+      noble art of conjuring, and performed some clever tricks on the cards.
+      Poinsinet's organ of wonder was enormous; he looked on with the gravity
+      and awe of a child, and thought the man's tricks sheer miracles. It wanted
+      no more to set his companions to work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is this wonderful man?&rdquo; said he to his neighbor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; said the other, mysteriously, &ldquo;one hardly knows who he is; or, at
+      least, one does not like to say to such an indiscreet fellow as you are.&rdquo;
+       Poinsinet at once swore to be secret. &ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; said his friend, &ldquo;you
+      will hear that man&mdash;that wonderful man&mdash;called by a name which
+      is not his: his real name is Acosta: he is a Portuguese Jew, a
+      Rosicrucian, and Cabalist of the first order, and compelled to leave
+      Lisbon for fear of the Inquisition. He performs here, as you see, some
+      extraordinary things, occasionally; but the master of the house, who loves
+      him excessively, would not, for the world, that his name should be made
+      public.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, bah!&rdquo; said Poinsinet, who affected the bel esprit; &ldquo;you don't mean to
+      say that you believe in magic, and cabalas, and such trash?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I not? You shall judge for yourself.&rdquo; And, accordingly, Poinsinet was
+      presented to the magician, who pretended to take a vast liking for him,
+      and declared that he saw in him certain marks which would infallibly lead
+      him to great eminence in the magic art, if he chose to study it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dinner was served, and Poinsinet placed by the side of the miracle-worker,
+      who became very confidential with him, and promised him&mdash;ay, before
+      dinner was over&mdash;a remarkable instance of his power. Nobody, on this
+      occasion, ventured to cut a single joke against poor Poinsinet; nor could
+      he fancy that any trick was intended against him, for the demeanor of the
+      society towards him was perfectly grave and respectful, and the
+      conversation serious. On a sudden, however, somebody exclaimed, &ldquo;Where is
+      Poinsinet? Did any one see him leave the room?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All the company exclaimed how singular the disappearance was; and
+      Poinsinet himself, growing alarmed, turned round to his neighbor, and was
+      about to explain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; said the magician, in a whisper; &ldquo;I told you that you should see
+      what I could do. I HAVE MADE YOU INVISIBLE; be quiet, and you shall see
+      some more tricks that I shall play with these fellows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poinsinet remained then silent, and listened to his neighbors, who agreed,
+      at last, that he was a quiet, orderly personage, and had left the table
+      early, being unwilling to drink too much. Presently they ceased to talk
+      about him, and resumed their conversation upon other matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first it was very quiet and grave, but the master of the house brought
+      back the talk to the subject of Poinsinet, and uttered all sorts of abuse
+      concerning him. He begged the gentleman, who had introduced such a little
+      scamp into his house, to bring him thither no more: whereupon the other
+      took up, warmly, Poinsinet's defence; declared that he was a man of the
+      greatest merit, frequenting the best society, and remarkable for his
+      talents as well as his virtues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Poinsinet to the magician, quite charmed at what he heard, &ldquo;how
+      ever shall I thank you, my dear sir, for thus showing me who my true
+      friends are?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The magician promised him still further favors in prospect; and told him
+      to look out now, for he was about to throw all the company into a
+      temporary fit of madness, which, no doubt, would be very amusing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In consequence, all the company, who had heard every syllable of the
+      conversation, began to perform the most extraordinary antics, much to the
+      delight of Poinsinet. One asked a nonsensical question, and the other
+      delivered an answer not at all to the purpose. If a man asked for a drink,
+      they poured him out a pepper-box or a napkin: they took a pinch of snuff,
+      and swore it was excellent wine; and vowed that the bread was the most
+      delicious mutton ever tasted. The little man was delighted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;these fellows are prettily punished for their rascally
+      backbiting of me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gentlemen,&rdquo; said the host, &ldquo;I shall now give you some celebrated
+      champagne,&rdquo; and he poured out to each a glass of water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good heavens!&rdquo; said one, spitting it out, with the most horrible grimace,
+      &ldquo;where did you get this detestable claret?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, faugh!&rdquo; said a second, &ldquo;I never tasted such vile corked burgundy in
+      all my days!&rdquo; and he threw the glass of water into Poinsinet's face, as
+      did half a dozen of the other guests, drenching the poor wretch to the
+      skin. To complete this pleasant illusion, two of the guests fell to boxing
+      across Poinsinet, who received a number of the blows, and received them
+      with the patience of a fakir, feeling himself more flattered by the
+      precious privilege of beholding this scene invisible, than hurt by the
+      blows and buffets which the mad company bestowed upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fame of this adventure spread quickly over Paris, and all the world
+      longed to have at their houses the representation of Poinsinet the
+      Invisible. The servants and the whole company used to be put up to the
+      trick; and Poinsinet, who believed in his invisibility as much as he did
+      in his existence, went about with his friend and protector the magician.
+      People, of course, never pretended to see him, and would very often not
+      talk of him at all for some time, but hold sober conversation about
+      anything else in the world. When dinner was served, of course there was no
+      cover laid for Poinsinet, who carried about a little stool, on which he
+      sat by the side of the magician, and always ate off his plate. Everybody
+      was astonished at the magician's appetite and at the quantity of wine he
+      drank; as for little Poinsinet, he never once suspected any trick, and had
+      such a confidence in his magician, that, I do believe, if the latter had
+      told him to fling himself out of window, he would have done so, without
+      the slightest trepidation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among other mystifications in which the Portuguese enchanter plunged him,
+      was one which used to afford always a good deal of amusement. He informed
+      Poinsinet, with great mystery, that HE WAS NOT HIMSELF; he was not, that
+      is to say, that ugly, deformed little monster, called Poinsinet; but that
+      his birth was most illustrious, and his real name Polycarte. He was, in
+      fact, the son of a celebrated magician; but other magicians, enemies of
+      his father, had changed him in his cradle, altering his features into
+      their present hideous shape, in order that a silly old fellow, called
+      Poinsinet, might take him to be his own son, which little monster the
+      magician had likewise spirited away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor wretch was sadly cast down at this; for he tried to fancy that
+      his person was agreeable to the ladies, of whom he was one of the warmest
+      little admirers possible; and to console him somewhat, the magician told
+      him that his real shape was exquisitely beautiful, and as soon as he
+      should appear in it, all the beauties in Paris would be at his feet. But
+      how to regain it? &ldquo;Oh, for one minute of that beauty!&rdquo; cried the little
+      man; &ldquo;what would he not give to appear under that enchanting form!&rdquo; The
+      magician hereupon waved his stick over his head, pronounced some awful
+      magical words, and twisted him round three times; at the third twist, the
+      men in company seemed struck with astonishment and envy, the ladies
+      clasped their hands, and some of them kissed his. Everybody declared his
+      beauty to be supernatural.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poinsinet, enchanted, rushed to a glass. &ldquo;Fool!&rdquo; said the magician; &ldquo;do
+      you suppose that YOU can see the change? My power to render you invisible,
+      beautiful, or ten times more hideous even than you are, extends only to
+      others, not to you. You may look a thousand times in the glass, and you
+      will only see those deformed limbs and disgusting features with which
+      devilish malice has disguised you.&rdquo; Poor little Poinsinet looked, and came
+      back in tears. &ldquo;But,&rdquo; resumed the magician,&mdash;&ldquo;ha, ha, ha!&mdash;I
+      know a way in which to disappoint the machinations of these fiendish
+      magi.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my benefactor!&mdash;my great master!&mdash;for heaven's sake tell
+      it!&rdquo; gasped Poinsinet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look you&mdash;it is this. A prey to enchantment and demoniac art all
+      your life long, you have lived until your present age perfectly satisfied;
+      nay, absolutely vain of a person the most singularly hideous that ever
+      walked the earth!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;IS it?&rdquo; whispered Poinsinet. &ldquo;Indeed and indeed I didn't think it so
+      bad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He acknowledges it! he acknowledges it!&rdquo; roared the magician. &ldquo;Wretch,
+      dotard, owl, mole, miserable buzzard! I have no reason to tell thee now
+      that thy form is monstrous, that children cry, that cowards turn pale,
+      that teeming matrons shudder to behold it. It is not thy fault that thou
+      art thus ungainly: but wherefore so blind? wherefore so conceited of
+      thyself! I tell thee, Poinsinet, that over every fresh instance of thy
+      vanity the hostile enchanters rejoice and triumph. As long as thou art
+      blindly satisfied with thyself; as long as thou pretendest, in thy present
+      odious shape, to win the love of aught above a negress; nay, further
+      still, until thou hast learned to regard that face, as others do, with the
+      most intolerable horror and disgust, to abuse it when thou seest it, to
+      despise it, in short, and treat that miserable disguise in which the
+      enchanters have wrapped thee with the strongest, hatred and scorn, so long
+      art thou destined to wear it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such speeches as these, continually repeated, caused Poinsinet to be fully
+      convinced of his ugliness; he used to go about in companies, and take
+      every opportunity of inveighing against himself; he made verses and
+      epigrams against himself; he talked about &ldquo;that dwarf, Poinsinet;&rdquo; &ldquo;that
+      buffoon, Poinsinet;&rdquo; &ldquo;that conceited, hump-backed Poinsinet;&rdquo; and he would
+      spend hours before the glass, abusing his own face as he saw it reflected
+      there, and vowing that he grew handsomer at every fresh epithet that he
+      uttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course the wags, from time to time, used to give him every possible
+      encouragement, and declared that since this exercise, his person was
+      amazingly improved. The ladies, too, began to be so excessively fond of
+      him, that the little fellow was obliged to caution them at last&mdash;for
+      the good, as he said, of society; he recommended them to draw lots, for he
+      could not gratify them all; but promised when his metamorphosis was
+      complete, that the one chosen should become the happy Mrs. Poinsinet; or,
+      to speak more correctly, Mrs. Polycarte.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am sorry to say, however, that, on the score of gallantry, Poinsinet was
+      never quite convinced of the hideousness of his appearance. He had a
+      number of adventures, accordingly, with the ladies, but strange to say,
+      the husbands or fathers were always interrupting him. On one occasion he
+      was made to pass the night in a slipper-bath full of water; where,
+      although he had all his clothes on, he declared that he nearly caught his
+      death of cold. Another night, in revenge, the poor fellow
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+              &mdash;&ldquo;dans le simple appareil
+     D'une beauté, qu'on vient d'arracher au sommeil,&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      spent a number of hours contemplating the beauty of the moon on the tiles.
+      These adventures are pretty numerous in the memoirs of M. Poinsinet; but
+      the fact is, that people in France were a great deal more philosophical in
+      those days than the English are now, so that Poinsinet's loves must be
+      passed over, as not being to our taste. His magician was a great diver,
+      and told Poinsinet the most wonderful tales of his two minutes' absence
+      under water. These two minutes, he said, lasted through a year, at least,
+      which he spent in the company of a naiad, more beautiful than Venus, in a
+      palace more splendid than even Versailles. Fired by the description,
+      Poinsinet used to dip, and dip, but he never was known to make any mermaid
+      acquaintances, although he fully believed that one day he should find
+      such.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The invisible joke was brought to an end by Poinsinet's too great reliance
+      on it; for being, as we have said, of a very tender and sanguine
+      disposition, he one day fell in love with a lady in whose company he
+      dined, and whom he actually proposed to embrace; but the fair lady, in the
+      hurry of the moment, forgot to act up to the joke; and instead of
+      receiving Poinsinet's salute with calmness, grew indignant, called him an
+      impudent little scoundrel, and lent him a sound box on the ear. With this
+      slap the invisibility of Poinsinet disappeared, the gnomes and genii left
+      him, and he settled down into common life again, and was hoaxed only by
+      vulgar means.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A vast number of pages might be filled with narratives of the tricks that
+      were played upon him; but they resemble each other a good deal, as may be
+      imagined, and the chief point remarkable about them is the wondrous faith
+      of Poinsinet. After being introduced to the Prussian ambassador at the
+      Tuileries, he was presented to the Turkish envoy at the Place Vendôme, who
+      received him in state, surrounded by the officers of his establishment,
+      all dressed in the smartest dresses that the wardrobe of the Opéra Comique
+      could furnish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the greatest honor that could be done to him, Poinsinet was invited to
+      eat, and a tray was produced, on which was a delicate dish prepared in the
+      Turkish manner. This consisted of a reasonable quantity of mustard, salt,
+      cinnamon and ginger, nutmegs and cloves, with a couple of tablespoonfuls
+      of cayenne pepper, to give the whole a flavor; and Poinsinet's countenance
+      may be imagined when he introduced into his mouth a quantity of this
+      exquisite compound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The best of the joke was,&rdquo; says the author who records so many of the
+      pitiless tricks practised upon poor Poinsinet, &ldquo;that the little man used
+      to laugh at them afterwards himself with perfect good humor; and lived in
+      the daily hope that, from being the sufferer, he should become the agent
+      in these hoaxes, and do to others as he had been done by.&rdquo; Passing,
+      therefore, one day, on the Pont Neuf, with a friend, who had been one of
+      the greatest performers, the latter said to him, &ldquo;Poinsinet, my good
+      fellow, thou hast suffered enough, and thy sufferings have made thee so
+      wise and cunning, that thou art worthy of entering among the initiated,
+      and hoaxing in thy turn.&rdquo; Poinsinet was charmed; he asked when he should
+      be initiated, and how? It was told him that a moment would suffice, and
+      that the ceremony might be performed on the spot. At this news, and
+      according to order, Poinsinet flung himself straightway on his knees in
+      the kennel; and the other, drawing his sword, solemnly initiated him into
+      the sacred order of jokers. From that day the little man believed himself
+      received into the society; and to this having brought him, let us bid him
+      a respectful adieu.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE DEVIL'S WAGER.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was the hour of the night when there be none stirring save churchyard
+      ghosts&mdash;when all doors are closed except the gates of graves, and all
+      eyes shut but the eyes of wicked men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When there is no sound on the earth except the ticking of the grasshopper,
+      or the croaking of obscene frogs in the poole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And no light except that of the blinking starres, and the wicked and
+      devilish wills-o'-the-wisp, as they gambol among the marshes, and lead
+      good men astraye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When there is nothing moving in heaven except the owle, as he flappeth
+      along lazily; or the magician, as he rides on his infernal broomsticke,
+      whistling through the aire like the arrowes of a Yorkshire archere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at this hour (namely, at twelve o'clock of the night,) that two
+      beings went winging through the black clouds, and holding converse with
+      each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the first was Mercurius, the messenger, not of gods (as the heathens
+      feigned), but of daemons; and the second, with whom he held company, was
+      the soul of Sir Roger de Rollo, the brave knight. Sir Roger was Count of
+      Chauchigny, in Champagne; Seigneur of Santerre, Villacerf and aultre
+      lieux. But the great die as well as the humble; and nothing remained of
+      brave Rodger now, but his coffin and his deathless soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mercurius, in order to keep fast the soul, his companion, had bound
+      him round the neck with his tail; which, when the soul was stubborn, he
+      would draw so tight as to strangle him wellnigh, sticking into him the
+      barbed point thereof; whereat the poor soul, Sir Rollo, would groan and
+      roar lustily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now they two had come together from the gates of purgatorie, being bound
+      to those regions of fire and flame where poor sinners fry and roast in
+      saecula saeculorum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is hard,&rdquo; said the poor Sir Rollo, as they went gliding through the
+      clouds, &ldquo;that I should thus be condemned for ever, and all for want of a
+      single ave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How, Sir Soul?&rdquo; said the daemon. &ldquo;You were on earth so wicked, that not
+      one, or a million of aves, could suffice to keep from hell-flame a
+      creature like thee; but cheer up and be merry; thou wilt be but a subject
+      of our lord the Devil, as am I; and, perhaps, thou wilt be advanced to
+      posts of honor, as am I also:&rdquo; and to show his authoritie, he lashed with
+      his tail the ribbes of the wretched Rollo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nevertheless, sinner as I am, one more ave would have saved me; for my
+      sister, who was Abbess of St. Mary of Chauchigny, did so prevail, by her
+      prayer and good works, for my lost and wretched soul, that every day I
+      felt the pains of purgatory decrease; the pitchforks which, on my first
+      entry, had never ceased to vex and torment my poor carcass, were now not
+      applied above once a week; the roasting had ceased, the boiling had
+      discontinued; only a certain warmth was kept up, to remind me of my
+      situation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A gentle stewe,&rdquo; said the daemon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yea, truly, I was but in a stew, and all from the effects of the prayers
+      of my blessed sister. But yesterday, he who watched me in purgatory told
+      me, that yet another prayer from my sister, and my bonds should be
+      unloosed, and I, who am now a devil, should have been a blessed angel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the other ave?&rdquo; said the daemon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She died, sir&mdash;my sister died&mdash;death choked her in the middle
+      of the prayer.&rdquo; And hereat the wretched spirit began to weepe and whine
+      piteously; his salt tears falling over his beard, and scalding the tail of
+      Mercurius the devil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is, in truth, a hard case,&rdquo; said the daemon; &ldquo;but I know of no remedy
+      save patience, and for that you will have an excellent opportunity in your
+      lodgings below.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I have relations,&rdquo; said the Earl; &ldquo;my kinsman Randal, who has
+      inherited my lands, will he not say a prayer for his uncle?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou didst hate and oppress him when living.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true; but an ave is not much; his sister, my niece, Matilda&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shut her in a convent, and hanged her lover.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had I not reason? besides, has she not others?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A dozen, without doubt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And my brother, the prior?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A liege subject of my lord the Devil: he never opens his mouth, except to
+      utter an oath, or to swallow a cup of wine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet, if but one of these would but say an ave for me, I should be
+      saved.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aves with them are rarae aves,&rdquo; replied Mercurius, wagging his tail right
+      waggishly; &ldquo;and, what is more, I will lay thee any wager that not one of
+      these will say a prayer to save thee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would wager willingly,&rdquo; responded he of Chauchigny; &ldquo;but what has a
+      poor soul like me to stake?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every evening, after the day's roasting, my lord Satan giveth a cup of
+      cold water to his servants; I will bet thee thy water for a year, that
+      none of the three will pray for thee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Done!&rdquo; said Rollo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Done!&rdquo; said the daemon; &ldquo;and here, if I mistake not, is thy castle of
+      Chauchigny.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, it was true. The soul, on looking down, perceived the tall towers,
+      the courts, the stables, and the fair gardens of the castle. Although it
+      was past midnight, there was a blaze of light in the banqueting-hall, and
+      a lamp burning in the open window of the Lady Matilda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With whom shall we begin?&rdquo; said the daemon: &ldquo;with the baron or the lady?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With the lady, if you will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be it so; her window is open, let us enter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So they descended, and entered silently into Matilda's chamber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young lady's eyes were fixed so intently on a little clock, that it
+      was no wonder that she did not perceive the entrance of her two visitors.
+      Her fair cheek rested on her white arm, and her white arm on the cushion
+      of a great chair in which she sat, pleasantly supported by sweet thoughts
+      and swan's down; a lute was at her side, and a book of prayers lay under
+      the table (for piety is always modest). Like the amorous Alexander, she
+      sighed and looked (at the clock)&mdash;and sighed for ten minutes or more,
+      when she softly breathed the word &ldquo;Edward!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this the soul of the Baron was wroth. &ldquo;The jade is at her old pranks,&rdquo;
+       said he to the devil; and then addressing Matilda: &ldquo;I pray thee, sweet
+      niece, turn thy thoughts for a moment from that villanous page, Edward,
+      and give them to thine affectionate uncle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When she heard the voice, and saw the awful apparition of her uncle (for a
+      year's sojourn in purgatory had not increased the comeliness of his
+      appearance), she started, screamed, and of course fainted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the devil Mercurius soon restored her to herself. &ldquo;What's o'clock?&rdquo;
+       said she, as soon as she had recovered from her fit: &ldquo;is he come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not thy lover, Maude, but thine uncle&mdash;that is, his soul. For the
+      love of heaven, listen to me: I have been frying in purgatory for a year
+      past, and should have been in heaven but for the want of a single ave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will say it for thee to-morrow, uncle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-night, or never.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, to-night be it:&rdquo; and she requested the devil Mercurius to give her
+      the prayer-book from under the table; but he had no sooner touched the
+      holy book than he dropped it with a shriek and a yell. &ldquo;It was hotter,&rdquo; he
+      said, &ldquo;than his master Sir Lucifer's own particular pitchfork.&rdquo; And the
+      lady was forced to begin her ave without the aid of her missal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the commencement of her devotions the daemon retired, and carried with
+      him the anxious soul of poor Sir Roger de Rollo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady knelt down&mdash;she sighed deeply; she looked again at the
+      clock, and began&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ave Maria.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When a lute was heard under the window, and a sweet voice singing&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hark!&rdquo; said Matilda.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Now the toils of day are over,
+        And the sun hath sunk to rest,
+      Seeking, like a fiery lover,
+        The bosom of the blushing west&mdash;
+
+     &ldquo;The faithful night keeps watch and ward,
+        Raising the moon, her silver shield,
+      And summoning the stars to guard
+        The slumbers of my fair Mathilde!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For mercy's sake!&rdquo; said Sir Rollo, &ldquo;the ave first, and next the song.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Matilda again dutifully betook her to her devotions, and began&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ave Maria gratiâ plena!&rdquo; but the music began again, and the prayer ceased
+      of course.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;The faithful night!  Now all things lie
+        Hid by her mantle dark and dim,
+      In pious hope I hither hie,
+        And humbly chant mine ev'ning hymn.
+
+     &ldquo;Thou art my prayer, my saint, my shrine!
+        (For never holy pilgrim kneel'd,
+      Or wept at feet more pure than thine),
+        My virgin love, my sweet Mathilde!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Virgin love!&rdquo; said the Baron. &ldquo;Upon my soul, this is too bad!&rdquo; and he
+      thought of the lady's lover whom he had caused to be hanged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But SHE only thought of him who stood singing at her window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Niece Matilda!&rdquo; cried Sir Roger, agonizedly, &ldquo;wilt thou listen to the
+      lies of an impudent page, whilst thine uncle is waiting but a dozen words
+      to make him happy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this Matilda grew angry: &ldquo;Edward is neither impudent nor a liar, Sir
+      Uncle, and I will listen to the end of the song.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come away,&rdquo; said Mercurius; &ldquo;he hath yet got wield, field, sealed,
+      congealed, and a dozen other rhymes beside; and after the song will come
+      the supper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So the poor soul was obliged to go; while the lady listened, and the page
+      sung away till morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My virtues have been my ruin,&rdquo; said poor Sir Rollo, as he and Mercurius
+      slunk silently out of the window. &ldquo;Had I hanged that knave Edward, as I
+      did the page his predecessor, my niece would have sung mine ave, and I
+      should have been by this time an angel in heaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is reserved for wiser purposes,&rdquo; responded the devil: &ldquo;he will
+      assassinate your successor, the lady Mathilde's brother; and, in
+      consequence, will be hanged. In the love of the lady he will be succeeded
+      by a gardener, who will be replaced by a monk, who will give way to an
+      ostler, who will be deposed by a Jew pedler, who shall, finally, yield to
+      a noble earl, the future husband of the fair Mathilde. So that, you see,
+      instead of having one poor soul a-frying, we may now look forward to a
+      goodly harvest for our lord the Devil.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The soul of the Baron began to think that his companion knew too much for
+      one who would make fair bets; but there was no help for it; he would not,
+      and he could not, cry off: and he prayed inwardly that the brother might
+      be found more pious than the sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there seemed little chance of this. As they crossed the court,
+      lackeys, with smoking dishes and, full jugs, passed and repassed
+      continually, although it was long past midnight. On entering the hall,
+      they found Sir Randal at the head of a vast table, surrounded by a fiercer
+      and more motley collection of individuals than had congregated there even
+      in the time of Sir Rollo. The lord of the castle had signified that &ldquo;it
+      was his royal pleasure to be drunk,&rdquo; and the gentlemen of his train had
+      obsequiously followed their master. Mercurius was delighted with the
+      scene, and relaxed his usually rigid countenance into a bland and
+      benevolent smile, which became him wonderfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The entrance of Sir Roger, who had been dead about a year, and a person
+      with hoofs, horns, and a tail, rather disturbed the hilarity of the
+      company. Sir Randal dropped his cup of wine; and Father Peter, the
+      confessor, incontinently paused in the midst of a profane song, with which
+      he was amusing the society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Holy Mother!&rdquo; cried he, &ldquo;it is Sir Roger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alive!&rdquo; screamed Sir Randal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, my lord,&rdquo; Mercurius said; &ldquo;Sir Roger is dead, but cometh on a matter
+      of business; and I have the honor to act as his counsellor and attendant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nephew,&rdquo; said Sir Roger, &ldquo;the daemon saith justly; I am come on a
+      trifling affair, in which thy service is essential.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will do anything, uncle, in my power.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thou canst give me life, if thou wilt?&rdquo; But Sir Randal looked very blank
+      at this proposition. &ldquo;I mean life spiritual, Randal,&rdquo; said Sir Roger; and
+      thereupon he explained to him the nature of the wager.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whilst he was telling his story, his companion Mercurius was playing all
+      sorts of antics in the hall; and, by his wit and fun, became so popular
+      with this godless crew, that they lost all the fear which his first
+      appearance had given them. The friar was wonderfully taken with him, and
+      used his utmost eloquence and endeavors to convert the devil; the knights
+      stopped drinking to listen to the argument; the men-at-arms forbore
+      brawling; and the wicked little pages crowded round the two strange
+      disputants, to hear their edifying discourse. The ghostly man, however,
+      had little chance in the controversy, and certainly little learning to
+      carry it on. Sir Randal interrupted him. &ldquo;Father Peter,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;our
+      kinsman is condemned for ever, for want of a single ave: wilt thou say it
+      for him?&rdquo; &ldquo;Willingly, my lord,&rdquo; said the monk, &ldquo;with my book;&rdquo; and
+      accordingly he produced his missal to read, without which aid it appeared
+      that the holy father could not manage the desired prayer. But the crafty
+      Mercurius had, by his devilish art, inserted a song in the place of the
+      ave, so that Father Peter, instead of chanting an hymn, sang the following
+      irreverent ditty&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Some love the matin-chimes, which toll
+        The hour of prayer to sinner:
+      But better far's the mid-day bell,
+        Which speaks the hour of dinner;
+      For when I see a smoking fish,
+        Or capon drown'd in gravy,
+      Or noble haunch on silver dish,
+        Full glad I sing mine ave.
+
+     &ldquo;My pulpit is an ale-house bench,
+        Whereon I sit so jolly;
+      A smiling rosy country wench
+        My saint and patron holy.
+      I kiss her cheek so red and sleek,
+        I press her ringlets wavy;
+      And in her willing ear I speak
+        A most religious ave.
+
+     &ldquo;And if I'm blind, yet heaven is kind,
+        And holy saints forgiving;
+      For sure he leads a right good life
+        Who thus admires good living.
+      Above, they say, our flesh is air,
+        Our blood celestial ichor:
+      Oh, grant! mid all the changes there,
+        They may not change our liquor!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      And with this pious wish the holy confessor tumbled under the table in an
+      agony of devout drunkenness; whilst the knights, the men-at-arms, and the
+      wicked little pages, rang out the last verse with a most melodious and
+      emphatic glee. &ldquo;I am sorry, fair uncle,&rdquo; hiccupped Sir Randal, &ldquo;that, in
+      the matter of the ave, we could not oblige thee in a more orthodox manner;
+      but the holy father has failed, and there is not another man in the hall
+      who hath an idea of a prayer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is my own fault,&rdquo; said Sir Rollo; &ldquo;for I hanged the last confessor.&rdquo;
+       And he wished his nephew a surly good-night, as he prepared to quit the
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Au revoir, gentlemen,&rdquo; said the devil Mercurius; and once more fixed his
+      tail round the neck of his disappointed companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The spirit of poor Rollo was sadly cast down; the devil, on the contrary,
+      was in high good humor. He wagged his tail with the most satisfied air in
+      the world, and cut a hundred jokes at the expense of his poor associate.
+      On they sped, cleaving swiftly through the cold night winds, frightening
+      the birds that were roosting in the woods, and the owls that were watching
+      in the towers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the twinkling of an eye, as it is known, devils can fly hundreds of
+      miles: so that almost the same beat of the clock which left these two in
+      Champagne, found them hovering over Paris. They dropped into the court of
+      the Lazarist Convent, and winded their way, through passage and cloister,
+      until they reached the door of the prior's cell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the prior, Rollo's brother, was a wicked and malignant sorcerer; his
+      time was spent in conjuring devils and doing wicked deeds, instead of
+      fasting, scourging, and singing holy psalms: this Mercurius knew; and he,
+      therefore, was fully at ease as to the final result of his wager with poor
+      Sir Roger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seem to be well acquainted with the road,&rdquo; said the knight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have reason,&rdquo; answered Mercurius, &ldquo;having, for a long period, had the
+      acquaintance of his reverence, your brother; but you have little chance
+      with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why?&rdquo; said Sir Rollo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is under a bond to my master, never to say a prayer, or else his soul
+      and his body are forfeited at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, thou false and traitorous devil!&rdquo; said the enraged knight; &ldquo;and thou
+      knewest this when we made our wager?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Undoubtedly: do you suppose I would have done so had there been any
+      chance of losing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And with this they arrived at Father Ignatius's door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thy cursed presence threw a spell on my niece, and stopped the tongue of
+      my nephew's chaplain; I do believe that had I seen either of them alone,
+      my wager had been won.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly; therefore, I took good care to go with thee: however, thou
+      mayest see the prior alone, if thou wilt; and lo! his door is open. I will
+      stand without for five minutes, when it will be time to commence our
+      journey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the poor Baron's last chance: and he entered his brother's room
+      more for the five minutes' respite than from any hope of success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Father Ignatius, the prior, was absorbed in magic calculations: he stood
+      in the middle of a circle of skulls, with no garment except his long white
+      beard, which reached to his knees; he was waving a silver rod, and
+      muttering imprecations in some horrible tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Sir Rollo came forward and interrupted his incantation. &ldquo;I am,&rdquo; said
+      he, &ldquo;the shade of thy brother Roger de Rollo; and have come, from pure
+      brotherly love, to warn thee of thy fate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whence camest thou?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From the abode of the blessed in Paradise,&rdquo; replied Sir Roger, who was
+      inspired with a sudden thought; &ldquo;it was but five minutes ago that the
+      Patron Saint of thy church told me of thy danger, and of thy wicked
+      compact with the fiend. 'Go,' said he, 'to thy miserable brother, and tell
+      him there is but one way by which he may escape from paying the awful
+      forfeit of his bond.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how may that be?&rdquo; said the prior; &ldquo;the false fiend hath deceived me;
+      I have given him my soul, but have received no worldly benefit in return.
+      Brother! dear brother! how may I escape?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell thee. As soon as I heard the voice of blessed St. Mary
+      Lazarus&rdquo; (the worthy Earl had, at a pinch, coined the name of a saint), &ldquo;I
+      left the clouds, where, with other angels, I was seated, and sped hither
+      to save thee. 'Thy brother,' said the Saint, 'hath but one day more to
+      live, when he will become for all eternity the subject of Satan; if he
+      would escape, he must boldly break his bond, by saying an ave.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the express condition of the agreement,&rdquo; said the unhappy monk, &ldquo;I
+      must say no prayer, or that instant I become Satan's, body and soul.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the express condition of the Saint,&rdquo; answered Roger, fiercely;
+      &ldquo;pray, brother, pray, or thou art lost for ever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So the foolish monk knelt down, and devoutly sung out an ave. &ldquo;Amen!&rdquo; said
+      Sir Roger, devoutly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Amen!&rdquo; said Mercurius, as, suddenly, coming behind, he seized Ignatius by
+      his long beard, and flew up with him to the top of the church-steeple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The monk roared, and screamed, and swore against his brother; but it was
+      of no avail: Sir Roger smiled kindly on him, and said, &ldquo;Do not fret,
+      brother; it must have come to this in a year or two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he flew alongside of Mercurius to the steeple-top: BUT THIS TIME THE
+      DEVIL HAD NOT HIS TAIL ROUND HIS NECK. &ldquo;I will let thee off thy bet,&rdquo; said
+      he to the daemon; for he could afford, now, to be generous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe, my lord,&rdquo; said the daemon, politely, &ldquo;that our ways separate
+      here.&rdquo; Sir Roger sailed gayly upwards: while Mercurius having bound the
+      miserable monk faster than ever, he sunk downwards to earth, and perhaps
+      lower. Ignatius was heard roaring and screaming as the devil dashed him
+      against the iron spikes and buttresses of the church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moral of this story will be given in the second edition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      MADAME SAND AND THE NEW APOCALYPSE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I don't know an impression more curious than that which is formed in a
+      foreigner's mind, who has been absent from this place for two or three
+      years, returns to it, and beholds the change which has taken place, in the
+      meantime, in French fashions and ways of thinking. Two years ago, for
+      instance, when I left the capital, I left the young gentlemen of France
+      with their hair brushed en toupet in front, and the toes of their boots
+      round; now the boot-toes are pointed, and the hair combed flat, and,
+      parted in the middle, falls in ringlets on the fashionable shoulders; and,
+      in like manner, with books as with boots, the fashion has changed
+      considerably, and it is not a little curious to contrast the old modes
+      with the new. Absurd as was the literary dandyism of those days, it is not
+      a whit less absurd now: only the manner is changed, and our versatile
+      Frenchmen have passed from one caricature to another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The revolution may be called a caricature of freedom, as the empire was of
+      glory; and what they borrow from foreigners undergoes the same process.
+      They take top-boots and mackintoshes from across the water, and caricature
+      our fashions; they read a little, very little, Shakespeare, and caricature
+      our poetry: and while in David's time art and religion were only a
+      caricature of Heathenism, now, on the contrary, these two commodities are
+      imported from Germany; and distorted caricatures originally, are still
+      farther distorted on passing the frontier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I trust in heaven that German art and religion will take no hold in our
+      country (where there is a fund of roast-beef that will expel any such
+      humbug in the end); but these sprightly Frenchmen have relished the
+      mystical doctrines mightily; and having watched the Germans, with their
+      sanctified looks, and quaint imitations of the old times, and mysterious
+      transcendental talk, are aping many of their fashions; as well and
+      solemnly as they can: not very solemnly, God wot; for I think one should
+      always prepare to grin when a Frenchman looks particularly grave, being
+      sure that there is something false and ridiculous lurking under the
+      owl-like solemnity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When last in Paris, we were in the midst of what was called a Catholic
+      reaction. Artists talked of faith in poems and pictures; churches were
+      built here and there; old missals were copied and purchased; and
+      numberless portraits of saints, with as much gilding about them as ever
+      was used in the fifteenth century, appeared in churches, ladies' boudoirs,
+      and picture-shops. One or two fashionable preachers rose, and were eagerly
+      followed; the very youth of the schools gave up their pipes and billiards
+      for some time, and flocked in crowds to Notre Dame, to sit under the feet
+      of Lacordaire. I went to visit the Church of Notre Dame de Lorette
+      yesterday, which was finished in the heat of this Catholic rage, and was
+      not a little struck by the similarity of the place to the worship
+      celebrated in it, and the admirable manner in which the architect has
+      caused his work to express the public feeling of the moment. It is a
+      pretty little bijou of a church: it is supported by sham marble pillars;
+      it has a gaudy ceiling of blue and gold, which will look very well for
+      some time; and is filled with gaudy pictures and carvings, in the very
+      pink of the mode. The congregation did not offer a bad illustration of the
+      present state of Catholic reaction. Two or three stray people were at
+      prayers; there was no service; a few countrymen and idlers were staring
+      about at the pictures; and the Swiss, the paid guardian of the place, was
+      comfortably and appropriately asleep on his bench at the door. I am
+      inclined to think the famous reaction is over: the students have taken to
+      their Sunday pipes and billiards again; and one or two cafés have been
+      established, within the last year, that are ten times handsomer than Notre
+      Dame de Lorette.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, if the immortal Görres and the German mystics have had their day,
+      there is the immortal Göthe, and the Pantheists; and I incline to think
+      that the fashion has set very strongly in their favor. Voltaire and the
+      Encyclopaedians are voted, now, barbares, and there is no term of
+      reprobation strong enough for heartless Humes and Helvetiuses, who lived
+      but to destroy, and who only thought to doubt. Wretched as Voltaire's
+      sneers and puns are, I think there is something more manly and earnest
+      even in them, than in the present muddy French transcendentalism.
+      Pantheism is the word now; one and all have begun to éprouver the besoin
+      of a religious sentiment; and we are deluged with a host of gods
+      accordingly. Monsieur de Balzac feels himself to be inspired; Victor Hugo
+      is a god; Madame Sand is a god; that tawdry man of genius, Jules Janin,
+      who writes theatrical reviews for the Débats, has divine intimations; and
+      there is scarce a beggarly, beardless scribbler of poems and prose, but
+      tells you, in his preface, of the sainteté of the sacerdoce littéraire; or
+      a dirty student, sucking tobacco and beer, and reeling home with a
+      grisette from the chaumière, who is not convinced of the necessity of a
+      new &ldquo;Messianism,&rdquo; and will hiccup, to such as will listen, chapters of his
+      own drunken Apocalypse. Surely, the negatives of the old days were far
+      less dangerous than the assertions of the present; and you may fancy what
+      a religion that must be, which has such high priests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is no reason to trouble the reader with details of the lives of many
+      of these prophets and expounders of new revelations. Madame Sand, for
+      instance, I do not know personally, and can only speak of her from report.
+      True or false, the history, at any rate, is not very edifying; and so may
+      be passed over: but, as a certain great philosopher told us, in very
+      humble and simple words, that we are not to expect to gather grapes from
+      thorns, or figs from thistles, we may, at least, demand, in all persons
+      assuming the character of moralist or philosopher&mdash;order, soberness,
+      and regularity of life; for we are apt to distrust the intellect that we
+      fancy can be swayed by circumstance or passion; and we know how
+      circumstance and passion WILL sway the intellect: how mortified vanity
+      will form excuses for itself; and how temper turns angrily upon
+      conscience, that reproves it. How often have we called our judge our
+      enemy, because he has given sentence against us!&mdash;How often have we
+      called the right wrong, because the right condemns us! And in the lives of
+      many of the bitter foes of the Christian doctrine, can we find no personal
+      reason for their hostility? The men in Athens said it was out of regard
+      for religion that they murdered Socrates; but we have had time, since
+      then, to reconsider the verdict; and Socrates' character is pretty pure
+      now, in spite of the sentence and the jury of those days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Parisian philosophers will attempt to explain to you the changes
+      through which Madame Sand's mind has passed,&mdash;the initiatory trials,
+      labors, and sufferings which she has had to go through,&mdash;before she
+      reached her present happy state of mental illumination. She teaches her
+      wisdom in parables, that are, mostly, a couple of volumes long; and began,
+      first, by an eloquent attack on marriage, in the charming novel of
+      &ldquo;Indiana.&rdquo; &ldquo;Pity,&rdquo; cried she, &ldquo;for the poor woman who, united to a being
+      whose brute force makes him her superior, should venture to break the
+      bondage which is imposed on her, and allow her heart to be free.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In support of this claim of pity, she writes two volumes of the most
+      exquisite prose. What a tender, suffering creature is Indiana; how little
+      her husband appreciates that gentleness which he is crushing by his
+      tyranny and brutal scorn; how natural it is that, in the absence of his
+      sympathy, she, poor clinging confiding creature, should seek elsewhere for
+      shelter; how cautious should we be, to call criminal&mdash;to visit with
+      too heavy a censure&mdash;an act which is one of the natural impulses of a
+      tender heart, that seeks but for a worthy object of love. But why attempt
+      to tell the tale of beautiful Indiana? Madame Sand has written it so well,
+      that not the hardest-hearted husband in Christendom can fail to be touched
+      by her sorrows, though he may refuse to listen to her argument. Let us
+      grant, for argument's sake, that the laws of marriage, especially the
+      French laws of marriage, press very cruelly upon unfortunate women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if one wants to have a question of this, or any nature, honestly
+      argued, it is, better, surely, to apply to an indifferent person for an
+      umpire. For instance, the stealing of pocket-handkerchiefs or snuff-boxes
+      may or may not be vicious; but if we, who have not the wit, or will not
+      take the trouble to decide the question ourselves, want to hear the real
+      rights of the matter, we should not, surely, apply to a pickpocket to know
+      what he thought on the point. It might naturally be presumed that he would
+      be rather a prejudiced person&mdash;particularly as his reasoning, if
+      successful, might get him OUT OF GAOL. This is a homely illustration, no
+      doubt; all we would urge by it is, that Madame Sand having, according to
+      the French newspapers, had a stern husband, and also having, according to
+      the newspapers, sought &ldquo;sympathy&rdquo; elsewhere, her arguments may be
+      considered to be somewhat partial, and received with some little caution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And tell us who have been the social reformers?&mdash;the haters, that is,
+      of the present system, according to which we live, love, marry, have
+      children, educate them, and endow them&mdash;ARE THEY PURE THEMSELVES? I
+      do believe not one; and directly a man begins to quarrel with the world
+      and its ways, and to lift up, as he calls it, the voice of his despair,
+      and preach passionately to mankind about this tyranny of faith, customs,
+      laws; if we examine what the personal character of the preacher is, we
+      begin pretty clearly to understand the value of the doctrine. Any one can
+      see why Rousseau should be such a whimpering reformer, and Byron such a
+      free and easy misanthropist, and why our accomplished Madame Sand, who has
+      a genius and eloquence inferior to neither, should take the present
+      condition of mankind (French-kind) so much to heart, and labor so hotly to
+      set it right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After &ldquo;Indiana&rdquo; (which, we presume, contains the lady's notions upon wives
+      and husbands) came &ldquo;Valentine,&rdquo; which may be said to exhibit her doctrine,
+      in regard of young men and maidens, to whom the author would accord, as we
+      fancy, the same tender license. &ldquo;Valentine&rdquo; was followed by &ldquo;Lelia,&rdquo; a
+      wonderful book indeed, gorgeous in eloquence, and rich in magnificent
+      poetry: a regular topsyturvyfication of morality, a thieves' and
+      prostitutes' apotheosis. This book has received some late enlargements and
+      emendations by the writer; it contains her notions on morals, which, as we
+      have said, are so peculiar, that, alas! they only can be mentioned here,
+      not particularized: but of &ldquo;Spiridion&rdquo; we may write a few pages, as it is
+      her religious manifesto.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this work, the lady asserts her pantheistical doctrine, and openly
+      attacks the received Christian creed. She declares it to be useless now,
+      and unfitted to the exigencies and the degree of culture of the actual
+      world; and, though it would be hardly worth while to combat her opinions
+      in due form, it is, at least, worth while to notice them, not merely from
+      the extraordinary eloquence and genius of the woman herself, but because
+      they express the opinions of a great number of people besides: for she not
+      only produces her own thoughts, but imitates those of others very eagerly;
+      and one finds in her writings so much similarity with others, or, in
+      others, so much resemblance to her, that the book before us may pass for
+      the expression of the sentiments of a certain French party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dieu est mort,&rdquo; says another writer of the same class, and of great
+      genius too.&mdash;&ldquo;Dieu est mort,&rdquo; writes Mr. Henry Heine, speaking of the
+      Christian God; and he adds, in a daring figure of speech;&mdash;&ldquo;N'entendez-vous
+      pas sonner la Clochette?&mdash;on porte les sacremens à un Dieu qui se
+      meurt!&rdquo; Another of the pantheist poetical philosophers, Mr. Edgar Quinet,
+      has a poem, in which Christ and the Virgin Mary are made to die similarly,
+      and the former is classed with Prometheus. This book of &ldquo;Spiridion&rdquo; is a
+      continuation of the theme, and perhaps you will listen to some of the
+      author's expositions of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must be confessed that the controversialists of the present day have an
+      eminent advantage over their predecessors in the days of folios; it
+      required some learning then to write a book, and some time, at least&mdash;for
+      the very labor of writing out a thousand such vast pages would demand a
+      considerable period. But now, in the age of duodecimos, the system is
+      reformed altogether: a male or female controversialist draws upon his
+      imagination, and not his learning; makes a story instead of an argument,
+      and, in the course of 150 pages (where the preacher has it all his own
+      way) will prove or disprove you anything. And, to our shame be it said, we
+      Protestants have set the example of this kind of proselytism&mdash;those
+      detestable mixtures of truth, lies, false sentiment, false reasoning, bad
+      grammar, correct and genuine philanthropy and piety&mdash;I mean our
+      religious tracts, which any woman or man, be he ever so silly, can take
+      upon himself to write, and sell for a penny, as if religious instruction
+      were the easiest thing in the world. We, I say, have set the example in
+      this kind of composition, and all the sects of the earth will, doubtless,
+      speedily follow it. I can point you out blasphemies in famous pious tracts
+      that are as dreadful as those above mentioned; but this is no place for
+      such discussions, and we had better return to Madame Sand. As Mrs.
+      Sherwood expounds, by means of many touching histories and anecdotes of
+      little boys and girls, her notions of church history, church catechism,
+      church doctrine;&mdash;as the author of &ldquo;Father Clement, a Roman Catholic
+      Story,&rdquo; demolishes the stately structure of eighteen centuries, the mighty
+      and beautiful Roman Catholic faith, in whose bosom repose so many saints
+      and sages,&mdash;by the means of a three-and-sixpenny duodecimo volume,
+      which tumbles over the vast fabric, as David's pebble-stone did Goliath;&mdash;as,
+      again, the Roman Catholic author of &ldquo;Geraldine&rdquo; falls foul of Luther and
+      Calvin, and drowns the awful echoes of their tremendous protest by the
+      sounds of her little half-crown trumpet: in like manner, by means of
+      pretty sentimental tales, and cheap apologues, Mrs. Sand proclaims HER
+      truth&mdash;that we need a new Messiah, and that the Christian religion is
+      no more! O awful, awful name of God! Light unbearable! Mystery
+      unfathomable! Vastness immeasurable!&mdash;Who are these who come forward
+      to explain the mystery, and gaze unblinking into the depths of the light,
+      and measure the immeasurable vastness to a hair? O name, that God's people
+      of old did fear to utter! O light, that God's prophet would have perished
+      had he seen! Who are these that are now so familiar with it?&mdash;Women,
+      truly; for the most part weak women&mdash;weak in intellect, weak mayhap
+      in spelling and grammar, but marvellously strong in faith:&mdash;women,
+      who step down to the people with stately step and voice of authority, and
+      deliver their twopenny tablets, as if there were some Divine authority for
+      the wretched nonsense recorded there!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With regard to the spelling and grammar, our Parisian Pythoness stands, in
+      the goodly fellowship, remarkable. Her style is a noble, and, as far as a
+      foreigner can judge, a strange tongue, beautifully rich and pure. She has
+      a very exuberant imagination, and, with it, a very chaste style of
+      expression. She never scarcely indulges in declamation, as other modern
+      prophets do, and yet her sentences are exquisitely melodious and full. She
+      seldom runs a thought to death (after the manner of some prophets, who,
+      when they catch a little one, toy with it until they kill it), but she
+      leaves you at the end of one of her brief, rich, melancholy sentences,
+      with plenty of food for future cogitation. I can't express to you the
+      charm of them; they seem to me like the sound of country bells&mdash;provoking
+      I don't know what vein of musing and meditation, and falling sweetly and
+      sadly on the ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This wonderful power of language must have been felt by most people who
+      read Madame Sand's first books, &ldquo;Valentine&rdquo; and &ldquo;Indiana&rdquo;: in &ldquo;Spiridion&rdquo;
+       it is greater, I think, than ever; and for those who are not afraid of the
+      matter of the novel, the manner will be found most delightful. The
+      author's intention, I presume, is to describe, in a parable, her notions
+      of the downfall of the Catholic church; and, indeed, of the whole
+      Christian scheme: she places her hero in a monastery in Italy, where,
+      among the characters about him, and the events which occur, the particular
+      tenets of Madame Dudevant's doctrine are not inaptly laid down. Innocent,
+      faithful, tender-hearted, a young monk, by name Angel, finds himself, when
+      he has pronounced his vows, an object of aversion and hatred to the godly
+      men whose lives he so much respects, and whose love he would make any
+      sacrifice to win. After enduring much, he flings himself at the feet of
+      his confessor, and begs for his sympathy and counsel; but the confessor
+      spurns him away, and accuses him, fiercely, of some unknown and terrible
+      crime&mdash;bids him never return to the confessional until contrition has
+      touched his heart, and the stains which sully his spirit are, by sincere
+      repentance, washed away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thus speaking,&rdquo; says Angel, &ldquo;Father Hegesippus tore away his robe, which
+      I was holding in my supplicating hands. In a sort of wildness I still
+      grasped it tighter; he pushed me fiercely from him, and I fell with my
+      face towards the ground. He quitted me, closing violently after him the
+      door of the sacristy, in which this scene had passed. I was left alone in
+      the darkness. Either from the violence of my fall, or the excess of my
+      grief, a vein had burst in my throat, and a haemorrhage ensued. I had not
+      the force to rise; I felt my senses rapidly sinking, and, presently, I lay
+      stretched on the pavement, unconscious, and bathed in my blood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      [Now the wonderful part of the story begins.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know not how much time I passed in this way. As I came to myself I felt
+      an agreeable coolness. It seemed as if some harmonious air was playing
+      round about me, stirring gently in my hair, and drying the drops of
+      perspiration on my brow. It seemed to approach, and then again to
+      withdraw, breathing now softly and sweetly in the distance, and now
+      returning, as if to give me strength and courage to rise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would not, however, do so as yet; for I felt myself, as I lay, under
+      the influence of a pleasure quite new to me; and listened, in a kind of
+      peaceful aberration, to the gentle murmurs of the summer wind, as it
+      breathed on me through the closed window-blinds above me. Then I fancied I
+      heard a voice that spoke to me from the end of the sacristy: it whispered
+      so low that I could not catch the words. I remained motionless, and gave
+      it my whole attention. At last I heard, distinctly, the following
+      sentence:&mdash;'Spirit of Truth, raise up these victims of ignorance and
+      imposture.' 'Father Hegesippus,' said I, in a weak voice, 'is that you who
+      are returning to me?' But no one answered. I lifted myself on my hands and
+      knees, I listened again, but I heard nothing. I got up completely, and
+      looked about me: I had fallen so near to the only door in this little
+      room, that none, after the departure of the confessor, could have entered
+      it without passing over me; besides, the door was shut, and only opened
+      from the inside by a strong lock of the ancient shape. I touched it, and
+      assured myself that it was closed. I was seized with terror, and, for some
+      moments, did not dare to move. Leaning against the door, I looked round,
+      and endeavored to see into the gloom in which the angles of the room were
+      enveloped. A pale light, which came from an upper window, half closed, was
+      seen to be trembling in the midst of the apartment. The wind beat the
+      shutter to and fro, and enlarged or diminished the space through which the
+      light issued. The objects which were in this half light&mdash;the
+      praying-desk, surmounted by its skull&mdash;a few books lying on the
+      benches&mdash;a surplice hanging against the wall&mdash;seemed to move
+      with the shadow of the foliage that the air agitated behind the window.
+      When I thought I was alone, I felt ashamed of my former timidity; I made
+      the sign of the cross, and was about to move forward in order to open the
+      shutter altogether, but a deep sigh came from the praying-desk, and kept
+      me nailed to my place. And yet I saw the desk distinctly enough to be sure
+      that no person was near it. Then I had an idea which gave me courage. Some
+      person, I thought, is behind the shutter, and has been saying his prayers
+      outside without thinking of me. But who would be so bold as to express
+      such wishes and utter such a prayer as I had just heard?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Curiosity, the only passion and amusement permitted in a cloister, now
+      entirely possessed me, and I advanced towards the window. But I had not
+      made a step when a black shadow, as it seemed to me, detaching itself from
+      the praying-desk, traversed the room, directing itself towards the window,
+      and passed swiftly by me. The movement was so rapid that I had not time to
+      avoid what seemed a body advancing towards me, and my fright was so great
+      that I thought I should faint a second time. But I felt nothing, and, as
+      if the shadow had passed through me, I saw it suddenly disappear to my
+      left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I rushed to the window, I pushed back the blind with precipitation, and
+      looked round the sacristy: I was there, entirely alone. I looked into the
+      garden&mdash;it was deserted, and the mid-day wind was wandering among the
+      flowers. I took courage, I examined all the corners of the room; I looked
+      behind the praying-desk, which was very large, and I shook all the
+      sacerdotal vestments which were hanging on the walls, everything was in
+      its natural condition, and could give me no explanation of what had just
+      occurred. The sight of all the blood I had lost led me to fancy that my
+      brain had, probably, been weakened by the haemorrhage, and that I had been
+      a prey to some delusion. I retired to my cell, and remained shut up there
+      until the next day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't know whether the reader has been as much struck with the above
+      mysterious scene as the writer has; but the fancy of it strikes me as very
+      fine; and the natural SUPERNATURALNESS is kept up in the best style. The
+      shutter swaying to and fro, the fitful LIGHT APPEARING over the furniture
+      of the room, and giving it an air of strange motion&mdash;the awful shadow
+      which passed through the body of the timid young novice&mdash;are surely
+      very finely painted. &ldquo;I rushed to the shutter, and flung it back: there
+      was no one in the sacristy. I looked into the garden; it was deserted, and
+      the mid-day wind was roaming among the flowers.&rdquo; The dreariness is
+      wonderfully described: only the poor pale boy looking eagerly out from the
+      window of the sacristy, and the hot mid-day wind walking in the solitary
+      garden. How skilfully is each of these little strokes dashed in, and how
+      well do all together combine to make a picture! But we must have a little
+      more about Spiridion's wonderful visitant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As I entered into the garden, I stepped a little on one side, to make way
+      for a person whom I saw before me. He was a young man of surprising
+      beauty, and attired in a foreign costume. Although dressed in the large
+      black robe which the superiors of our order wear, he had, underneath, a
+      short jacket of fine cloth, fastened round the waist by a leathern belt,
+      and a buckle of silver, after the manner of the old German students. Like
+      them, he wore, instead of the sandals of our monks, short tight boots; and
+      over the collar of his shirt, which fell on his shoulders, and was as
+      white as snow, hung, in rich golden curls, the most beautiful hair I ever
+      saw. He was tall, and his elegant posture seemed to reveal to me that he
+      was in the habit of commanding. With much respect, and yet uncertain, I
+      half saluted him. He did not return my salute; but he smiled on me with so
+      benevolent an air, and at the same time, his eyes severe and blue, looked
+      towards me with an expression of such compassionate tenderness, that his
+      features have never since then passed away from my recollection. I
+      stopped, hoping he would speak to me, and persuading myself, from the
+      majesty of his aspect, that he had the power to protect me; but the monk,
+      who was walking behind me, and who did not seem to remark him in the
+      least, forced him brutally to step aside from the walk, and pushed me so
+      rudely as almost to cause me to fall. Not wishing to engage in a quarrel
+      with this coarse monk, I moved away; but, after having taken a few steps
+      in the garden, I looked back, and saw the unknown still gazing on me with
+      looks of the tenderest solicitude. The sun shone full upon him, and made
+      his hair look radiant. He sighed, and lifted his fine eyes to heaven, as
+      if to invoke its justice in my favor, and to call it to bear witness to my
+      misery; he turned slowly towards the sanctuary, entered into the quire,
+      and was lost, presently, in the shade. I longed to return, spite of the
+      monk, to follow this noble stranger, and to tell him my afflictions; but
+      who was he, that I imagined he would listen to them, and cause them to
+      cease? I felt, even while his softness drew me towards him, that he still
+      inspired me with a kind of fear; for I saw in his physiognomy as much
+      austerity as sweetness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Who was he?&mdash;we shall see that. He was somebody very mysterious
+      indeed; but our author has taken care, after the manner of her sex, to
+      make a very pretty fellow of him, and to dress him in the most becoming
+      costumes possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The individual in tight boots and a rolling collar, with the copious
+      golden locks, and the solemn blue eyes, who had just gazed on Spiridion,
+      and inspired him with such a feeling of tender awe, is a much more
+      important personage than the reader might suppose at first sight. This
+      beautiful, mysterious, dandy ghost, whose costume, with a true woman's
+      coquetry, Madame Dudevant has so rejoiced to describe&mdash;is her
+      religious type, a mystical representation of Faith struggling up towards
+      Truth, through superstition, doubt, fear, reason,&mdash;in tight
+      inexpressibles, with &ldquo;a belt such as is worn by the old German students.&rdquo;
+       You will pardon me for treating such an awful person as this somewhat
+      lightly; but there is always, I think, such a dash of the ridiculous in
+      the French sublime, that the critic should try and do justice to both, or
+      he may fail in giving a fair account of either. This character of
+      Hebronius, the type of Mrs. Sand's convictions&mdash;if convictions they
+      may be called&mdash;or, at least, the allegory under which her doubts are
+      represented, is, in parts, very finely drawn; contains many passages of
+      truth, very deep and touching, by the side of others so entirely absurd
+      and unreasonable, that the reader's feelings are continually swaying
+      between admiration and something very like contempt&mdash;always in a kind
+      of wonder at the strange mixture before him. But let us hear Madame Sand:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter Hebronius,&rdquo; says our author, &ldquo;was not originally so named. His real
+      name was Samuel. He was a Jew, and born in a little village in the
+      neighborhood of Innsprück. His family, which possessed a considerable
+      fortune, left him, in his early youth, completely free to his own
+      pursuits. From infancy he had shown that these were serious. He loved to
+      be alone and passed his days, and sometimes his nights, wandering among
+      the mountains and valleys in the neighborhood of his birthplace. He would
+      often sit by the brink of torrents, listening to the voice of their
+      waters, and endeavoring to penetrate the meaning which Nature had hidden
+      in those sounds. As he advanced in years, his inquiries became more
+      curious and more grave. It was necessary that he should receive a solid
+      education, and his parents sent him to study in the German universities.
+      Luther had been dead only a century, and his words and his memory still
+      lived in the enthusiasm of his disciples. The new faith was strengthening
+      the conquests it had made; the Reformers were as ardent as in the first
+      days, but their ardor was more enlightened and more measured. Proselytism
+      was still carried on with zeal, and new converts were made every day. In
+      listening to the morality and to the dogmas which Lutheranism had taken
+      from Catholicism, Samuel was filled with admiration. His bold and sincere
+      spirit instantly compared the doctrines which were now submitted to him,
+      with those in the belief of which he had been bred; and, enlightened by
+      the comparison, was not slow to acknowledge the inferiority of Judaism. He
+      said to himself, that a religion made for a single people, to the
+      exclusion of all others,&mdash;which only offered a barbarous justice for
+      rule of conduct,&mdash;which neither rendered the present intelligible nor
+      satisfactory, and left the future uncertain,&mdash;could not be that of
+      noble souls and lofty intellects; and that he could not be the God of
+      truth who had dictated, in the midst of thunder, his vacillating will, and
+      had called to the performance of his narrow wishes the slaves of a vulgar
+      terror. Always conversant with himself, Samuel, who had spoken what he
+      thought, now performed what he had spoken; and, a year after his arrival
+      in Germany, solemnly abjured Judaism, and entered into the bosom of the
+      Reformed Church. As he did not wish to do things by halves, and desired as
+      much as was in him to put off the old man and lead a new life, he changed
+      his name of Samuel to that of Peter. Some time passed, during which he
+      strengthened and instructed himself in his new religion. Very soon he
+      arrived at the point of searching for objections to refute, and
+      adversaries to overthrow. Bold and enterprising, he went at once to the
+      strongest, and Bossuet was the first Catholic author that he set himself
+      to read. He commenced with a kind of disdain; believing that the faith
+      which he had just embraced contained the pure truth. He despised all the
+      attacks which could be made against it, and laughed already at the
+      irresistible arguments which he was to find in the works of the Eagle of
+      Meaux. But his mistrust and irony soon gave place to wonder first, and
+      then to admiration: he thought that the cause pleaded by such an advocate
+      must, at least, be respectable; and, by a natural transition, came to
+      think that great geniuses would only devote themselves to that which was
+      great. He then studied Catholicism with the same ardor and impartiality
+      which he had bestowed on Lutheranism. He went into France to gain
+      instruction from the professors of the Mother Church, as he had from the
+      Doctors of the reformed creed in Germany. He saw Arnauld Fénélon, that
+      second Gregory of Nazianzen, and Bossuet himself. Guided by these masters,
+      whose virtues made him appreciate their talents the more, he rapidly
+      penetrated to the depth of the mysteries of the Catholic doctrine and
+      morality. He found, in this religion, all that had for him constituted the
+      grandeur and beauty of Protestantism,&mdash;the dogmas of the Unity and
+      Eternity of God, which the two religions had borrowed from Judaism; and,
+      what seemed the natural consequence of the last doctrine&mdash;a doctrine,
+      however, to which the Jews had not arrived&mdash;the doctrine of the
+      immortality of the soul; free will in this life; in the next, recompense
+      for the good, and punishment for the evil. He found, more pure, perhaps,
+      and more elevated in Catholicism than in Protestantism, that sublime
+      morality which preaches equality to man, fraternity, love, charity,
+      renouncement of self, devotion to your neighbor; Catholicism, in a word,
+      seemed to possess that vast formula, and that vigorous unity, which
+      Lutheranism wanted. The latter had, indeed, in its favor, the liberty of
+      inquiry, which is also a want of the human mind; and had proclaimed the
+      authority of individual reason: but it had so lost that which is the
+      necessary basis and vital condition of all revealed religion&mdash;the
+      principle of infallibility; because nothing can live except in virtue of
+      the laws that presided at its birth; and, in consequence, one revelation
+      cannot be continued and confirmed without another. Now, infallibility is
+      nothing but revelation continued by God, or the Word, in the person of his
+      vicars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At last, after much reflection, Hebronius acknowledged himself entirely
+      and sincerely convinced, and received baptism from the hands of Bossuet.
+      He added the name of Spiridion to that of Peter, to signify that he had
+      been twice enlightened by the Spirit. Resolved thenceforward to consecrate
+      his life to the worship of the new God who had called him to Him, and to
+      the study of His doctrines, he passed into Italy, and, with the aid of a
+      large fortune, which one of his uncles, a Catholic like himself, had left
+      to him, he built this convent where we now are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A friend of mine, who has just come from Italy, says that he has there
+      left Messrs. Sp&mdash;r, P&mdash;l, and W. Dr&mdash;d, who were the lights
+      of the great church in Newman Street, who were themselves apostles, and
+      declared and believed that every word of nonsense which fell from their
+      lips was a direct spiritual intervention. These gentlemen have become
+      Puseyites already, and are, my friend states, in the high way to
+      Catholicism. Madame Sand herself was a Catholic some time since: having
+      been converted to that faith along with M. N&mdash;, of the Academy of
+      Music; Mr. L&mdash;, the pianoforte player; and one or two other chosen
+      individuals, by the famous Abbé de la M&mdash;. Abbé de la M&mdash; (so
+      told me in the Diligence, a priest, who read his breviary and gossiped
+      alternately very curiously and pleasantly) is himself an âme perdue: the
+      man spoke of his brother clergyman with actual horror; and it certainly
+      appears that the Abbé's works of conversion have not prospered; for Madame
+      Sand, having brought her hero (and herself, as we may presume) to the
+      point of Catholicism, proceeds directly to dispose of that as she has done
+      of Judaism and Protestantism, and will not leave, of the whole fabric of
+      Christianity, a single stone standing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think the fate of our English Newman Street apostles, and of M. de la M&mdash;,
+      the mad priest, and his congregation of mad converts, should be a warning
+      to such of us as are inclined to dabble in religious speculations; for, in
+      them, as in all others, our flighty brains soon lose themselves, and we
+      find our reason speedily lying prostrated at the mercy of our passions;
+      and I think that Madame Sand's novel of Spiridion may do a vast deal of
+      good, and bears a good moral with it; though not such an one, perhaps, as
+      our fair philosopher intended. For anything he learned,
+      Samuel-Peter-Spiridion-Hebronius might have remained a Jew from the
+      beginning to the end. Wherefore be in such a hurry to set up new faiths?
+      Wherefore, Madame Sand, try and be so preternaturally wise? Wherefore be
+      so eager to jump out of one religion, for the purpose of jumping into
+      another? See what good this philosophical friskiness has done you, and on
+      what sort of ground you are come at last. You are so wonderfully
+      sagacious, that you flounder in mud at every step; so amazingly
+      clear-sighted, that your eyes cannot see an inch before you, having put
+      out, with that extinguishing genius of yours, every one of the lights that
+      are sufficient for the conduct of common men. And for what? Let our friend
+      Spiridion speak for himself. After setting up his convent, and filling it
+      with monks, who entertain an immense respect for his wealth and genius,
+      Father Hebronius, unanimously elected prior, gives himself up to further
+      studies, and leaves his monks to themselves. Industrious and sober as they
+      were, originally, they grow quickly intemperate and idle; and Hebronius,
+      who does not appear among his flock until he has freed himself of the
+      Catholic religion, as he has of the Jewish and the Protestant, sees, with
+      dismay, the evil condition of his disciples, and regrets, too late, the
+      precipitancy by which he renounced, then and for ever, Christianity. &ldquo;But,
+      as he had no new religion to adopt in its place, and as, grown more
+      prudent and calm, he did not wish to accuse himself unnecessarily, once
+      more, of inconstancy and apostasy, he still maintained all the exterior
+      forms of the worship which inwardly he had abjured. But it was not enough
+      for him to have quitted error, it was necessary to discover truth. But
+      Hebronius had well looked round to discover it; he could not find anything
+      that resembled it. Then commenced for him a series of sufferings, unknown
+      and terrible. Placed face to face with doubt, this sincere and religious
+      spirit was frightened at its own solitude; and as it had no other desire
+      nor aim on earth than truth, and nothing else here below interested it, he
+      lived absorbed in his own sad contemplations, looked ceaselessly into the
+      vague that surrounded him like an ocean without bounds, and seeing the
+      horizon retreat and retreat as ever he wished to near it. Lost in this
+      immense uncertainty, he felt as if attacked by vertigo, and his thoughts
+      whirled within his brain. Then, fatigued with his vain toils and hopeless
+      endeavors, he would sink down depressed, unmanned, life-wearied, only
+      living in the sensation of that silent grief which he felt and could not
+      comprehend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a pity that this hapless Spiridion, so eager in his passage from one
+      creed to another, and so loud in his profession of the truth, wherever he
+      fancied that he had found it, had not waited a little, before he avowed
+      himself either Catholic or Protestant, and implicated others in errors and
+      follies which might, at least, have been confined to his own bosom, and
+      there have lain comparatively harmless. In what a pretty state, for
+      instance, will Messrs. Dr&mdash;d and P&mdash;l have left their Newman
+      Street congregation, who are still plunged in their old superstitions,
+      from which their spiritual pastors and masters have been set free! In what
+      a state, too, do Mrs. Sand and her brother and sister philosophers,
+      Templars, Saint Simonians, Fourierites, Lerouxites, or whatever the sect
+      may be, leave the unfortunate people who have listened to their doctrines,
+      and who have not the opportunity, or the fiery versatility of belief,
+      which carries their teachers from one creed to another, leaving only
+      exploded lies and useless recantations behind them! I wish the state would
+      make a law that one individual should not be allowed to preach more than
+      one doctrine in his life, or, at any rate, should be soundly corrected for
+      every change of creed. How many charlatans would have been silenced,&mdash;how
+      much conceit would have been kept within bounds,&mdash;how many fools, who
+      are dazzled by fine sentences, and made drunk by declamation, would have
+      remained, quiet and sober, in that quiet and sober way of faith which
+      their fathers held before them. However, the reader will be glad to learn
+      that, after all his doubts and sorrows, Spiridion does discover the truth
+      (THE truth, what a wise Spiridion!) and some discretion with it; for,
+      having found among his monks, who are dissolute, superstitious&mdash;and
+      all hate him&mdash;one only being, Fulgentius, who is loving, candid, and
+      pious, he says to him, &ldquo;If you were like myself, if the first want of your
+      nature were, like mine, to know, I would, without hesitation, lay bare to
+      you my entire thoughts. I would make you drink the cup of truth, which I
+      myself have filled with so many tears, at the risk of intoxicating you
+      with the draught. But it is not so, alas! you are made to love rather than
+      to know, and your heart is stronger than your intellect. You are attached
+      to Catholicism,&mdash;I believe so, at least,&mdash;by bonds of sentiment
+      which you could not break without pain, and which, if you were to break,
+      the truth which I could lay bare to you in return would not repay you for
+      what you had sacrificed. Instead of exalting, it would crush you, very
+      likely. It is a food too strong for ordinary men, and which, when it does
+      not revivify, smothers. I will not, then, reveal to you this doctrine,
+      which is the triumph of my life, and the consolation of my last days;
+      because it might, perhaps, be for you only a cause of mourning and
+      despair..... Of all the works which my long studies have produced, there
+      is one alone which I have not given to the flames; for it alone is
+      complete. In that you will find me entire, and there LIES THE TRUTH. And,
+      as the sage has said you must not bury your treasures in a well, I will
+      not confide mine to the brutal stupidity of these monks. But as this
+      volume should only pass into hands worthy to touch it, and be laid open
+      for eyes that are capable of comprehending its mysteries, I shall exact
+      from the reader one condition, which, at the same time, shall be a proof:
+      I shall carry it with me to the tomb, in order that he who one day shall
+      read it, may have courage enough to brave the vain terrors of the grave,
+      in searching for it amid the dust of my sepulchre. As soon as I am dead,
+      therefore, place this writing on my breast..... Ah! when the time comes
+      for reading it, I think my withered heart will spring up again, as the
+      frozen grass at the return of the sun, and that, from the midst of its
+      infinite transformations, my spirit will enter into immediate
+      communication with thine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Does not the reader long to be at this precious manuscript, which contains
+      THE TRUTH; and ought he not to be very much obliged to Mrs. Sand, for
+      being so good as to print it for him? We leave all the story aside: how
+      Fulgentius had not the spirit to read the manuscript, but left the secret
+      to Alexis; how Alexis, a stern old philosophical unbelieving monk as ever
+      was, tried in vain to lift up the gravestone, but was taken with fever,
+      and obliged to forego the discovery; and how, finally, Angel, his
+      disciple, a youth amiable and innocent as his name, was the destined
+      person who brought the long-buried treasure to light. Trembling and
+      delighted, the pair read this tremendous MANUSCRIPT OF SPIRIDION.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Will it be believed, that of all the dull, vague, windy documents that
+      mortal ever set eyes on, this is the dullest? If this be absolute truth, à
+      quoi bon search for it, since we have long, long had the jewel in our
+      possession, or since, at least, it has been held up as such by every sham
+      philosopher who has had a mind to pass off his wares on the public? Hear
+      Spiridion:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much have I wept, how much have I suffered, how much have I prayed,
+      how much have I labored, before I understood the cause and the aim of my
+      passage on this earth! After many incertitudes, after much remorse, after
+      many scruples, I HAVE COMPREHENDED THAT I WAS A MARTYR!&mdash;But why my
+      martyrdom? said I; what crimne did I commit before I was born, thus to be
+      condemned to labor and groaning, from the hour when I first saw the day up
+      to that when I am about to enter into the night of the tomb?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At last, by dint of imploring God&mdash;by dint of inquiry into the
+      history of man, a ray of the truth has descended on my brow, and the
+      shadows of the past have melted from before my eyes. I have lifted a
+      corner of the curtain: I have seen enough to know that my life, like that
+      of the rest of the human race, has been a series of necessary errors, yet,
+      to speak more correctly, of incomplete truths, conducting, more or less
+      slowly and directly, to absolute truth and ideal perfection. But when will
+      they rise on the face of the earth&mdash;when will they issue from the
+      bosom of the Divinity&mdash;those generations who shall salute the august
+      countenance of Truth, and proclaim the reign of the ideal on earth? I see
+      well how humanity marches, but I neither can see its cradle nor its
+      apotheosis. Man seems to me a transitory race, between the beast and the
+      angel; but I know not how many centuries have been required, that he might
+      pass from the state of brute to the state of man, and I cannot tell how
+      many ages are necessary that he may pass from the state of man to the
+      state of angel!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet I hope, and I feel within me, at the approach of death, that which
+      warns me that great destinies await humanity. In this life all is over for
+      me. Much have I striven, to advance but little: I have labored without
+      ceasing, and have done almost nothing. Yet, after pains immeasurable, I
+      die content, for I know that I have done all I could, and am sure that the
+      little I have done will not be lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, then, have I done? this wilt thou demand of me, man of a future
+      age, who will seek for truth in the testaments of the past. Thou who wilt
+      be no more Catholic&mdash;no more Christian, thou wilt ask of the poor
+      monk, lying in the dust, an account of his life and death. Thou wouldst
+      know wherefore were his vows, why his austerities, his labors, his
+      retreat, his prayers?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You who turn back to me, in order that I may guide you on your road, and
+      that you may arrive more quickly at the goal which it has not been my lot
+      to attain, pause, yet, for a moment, and look upon the past history of
+      humanity. You will see that its fate has been ever to choose between the
+      least of two evils, and ever to commit great faults in order to avoid
+      others still greater. You will see.... on one side, the heathen mythology,
+      that debased the spirit, in its efforts to deify the flesh; on the other,
+      the austere Christian principle, that debased the flesh too much, in order
+      to raise the worship of the spirit. You will see, afterwards, how the
+      religion of Christ embodies itself in a church, and raises itself a
+      generous democratic power against the tyranny of princes. Later still, you
+      will see how that power has attained its end, and passed beyond it. You
+      will see it, having chained and conquered princes, league itself with
+      them, in order to oppress the people, and seize on temporal power. Schism,
+      then, raises up against it the standard of revolt, and preaches the bold
+      and legitimate principle of liberty of conscience: but, also, you will see
+      how this liberty of conscience brings religious anarchy in its train; or,
+      worse still, religious indifference and disgust. And if your soul,
+      shattered in the tempestuous changes which you behold humanity undergoing,
+      would strike out for itself a passage through the rocks, amidst which,
+      like a frail bark, lies tossing trembling truth, you will be embarrassed
+      to choose between the new philosophers&mdash;who, in preaching tolerance,
+      destroy religious and social unity&mdash;and the last Christians, who, to
+      preserve society, that is, religion and philosophy, are obliged to brave
+      the principle of toleration. Man of truth! to whom I address, at once, my
+      instruction and my justification, at the time when you shall live, the
+      science of truth no doubt will have advanced a step. Think, then, of all
+      your fathers have suffered, as, bending beneath the weight of their
+      ignorance and uncertainty, they have traversed the desert across which,
+      with so much pain, they have conducted thee! And if the pride of thy young
+      learning shall make thee contemplate the petty strifes in which our life
+      has been consumed, pause and tremble, as you think of that which is still
+      unknown to yourself, and of the judgment that your descendants will pass
+      on you. Think of this, and learn to respect all those who, seeking their
+      way in all sincerity, have wandered from the path, frightened by the
+      storm, and sorely tried by the severe hand of the All-Powerful. Think of
+      this, and prostrate yourself; for all these, even the most mistaken among
+      them, are saints and martyrs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Without their conquests and their defeats, thou wert in darkness still.
+      Yes, their failures, their errors even, have a right to your respect; for
+      man is weak..... Weep then, for us obscure travellers&mdash;unknown
+      victims, who, by our mortal sufferings and unheard-of labors, have
+      prepared the way before you. Pity me, who have passionately loved justice,
+      and perseveringly sought for truth, only opened my eyes to shut them again
+      for ever, and saw that I had been in vain endeavoring to support a ruin,
+      to take refuge in a vault of which the foundations were worn away.&rdquo;....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rest of the book of Spiridion is made up of a history of the rise,
+      progress, and (what our philosopher is pleased to call) decay of
+      Christianity&mdash;of an assertion, that the &ldquo;doctrine of Christ is
+      incomplete;&rdquo; that &ldquo;Christ may, nevertheless, take his place in the
+      Pantheon of divine men!&rdquo; and of a long, disgusting, absurd, and impious
+      vision, in which the Saviour, Moses, David, and Elijah are represented,
+      and in which Christ is made to say&mdash;&ldquo;WE ARE ALL MESSIAHS, when we
+      wish to bring the reign of truth upon earth; we are all Christs, when we
+      suffer for it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And this is the ultimatum, the supreme secret, the absolute truth! and it
+      has been published by Mrs. Sand, for so many napoleons per sheet, in the
+      Revue des Deux Mondes: and the Deux Mondes are to abide by it for the
+      future. After having attained it, are we a whit wiser? &ldquo;Man is between an
+      angel and a beast: I don't know how long it is since he was a brute&mdash;I
+      can't say how long it will be before he is an angel.&rdquo; Think of people
+      living by their wits, and living by such a wit as this! Think of the state
+      of mental debauch and disease which must have been passed through, ere
+      such words could be written, and could be popular!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When a man leaves our dismal, smoky London atmosphere, and breathes,
+      instead of coal-smoke and yellow fog, this bright, clear, French air, he
+      is quite intoxicated by it at first, and feels a glow in his blood, and a
+      joy in his spirits, which scarcely thrice a year, and then only at a
+      distance from London, he can attain in England. Is the intoxication, I
+      wonder, permanent among the natives? and may we not account for the ten
+      thousand frantic freaks of these people by the peculiar influence of
+      French air and sun? The philosophers are from night to morning drunk, the
+      politicians are drunk, the literary men reel and stagger from one
+      absurdity to another, and how shall we understand their vagaries? Let us
+      suppose, charitably, that Madame Sand had inhaled a more than ordinary
+      quantity of this laughing gas when she wrote for us this precious
+      manuscript of Spiridion. That great destinies are in prospect for the
+      human race we may fancy, without her ladyship's word for it: but more
+      liberal than she, and having a little retrospective charity, as well as
+      that easy prospective benevolence which Mrs. Sand adopts, let us try and
+      think there is some hope for our fathers (who were nearer brutality than
+      ourselves, according to the Sandean creed), or else there is a very poor
+      chance for us, who, great philosophers as we are, are yet, alas! far
+      removed from that angelic consummation which all must wish for so
+      devoutly. She cannot say&mdash;is it not extraordinary?&mdash;how many
+      centuries have been necessary before man could pass from the brutal state
+      to his present condition, or how many ages will be required ere we may
+      pass from the state of man to the state of angels? What the deuce is the
+      use of chronology or philosophy? We were beasts, and we can't tell when
+      our tails dropped off: we shall be angels; but when our wings are to begin
+      to sprout, who knows? In the meantime, O man of genius, follow our
+      counsel: lead an easy life, don't stick at trifles; never mind about DUTY,
+      it is only made for slaves; if the world reproach you, reproach the world
+      in return, you have a good loud tongue in your head: if your
+      straight-laced morals injure your mental respiration, fling off the
+      old-fashioned stays, and leave your free limbs to rise and fall as Nature
+      pleases; and when you have grown pretty sick of your liberty, and yet
+      unfit to return to restraint, curse the world, and scorn it, and be
+      miserable, like my Lord Byron and other philosophers of his kidney; or
+      else mount a step higher, and, with conceit still more monstrous, and
+      mental vision still more wretchedly debauched and weak, begin suddenly to
+      find yourself afflicted with a maudlin compassion for the human race, and
+      a desire to set them right after your own fashion. There is the
+      quarrelsome stage of drunkenness, when a man can as yet walk and speak,
+      when he can call names, and fling plates and wine-glasses at his
+      neighbor's head with a pretty good aim; after this comes the pathetic
+      stage, when the patient becomes wondrous philanthropic, and weeps wildly,
+      as he lies in the gutter, and fancies he is at home in bed&mdash;where he
+      ought to be; but this is an allegory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't wish to carry this any farther, or to say a word in defence of the
+      doctrine which Mrs. Dudevant has found &ldquo;incomplete&rdquo;;&mdash;here, at least,
+      is not the place for discussing its merits, any more than Mrs. Sand's book
+      was the place for exposing, forsooth, its errors: our business is only
+      with the day and the new novels, and the clever or silly people who write
+      them. Oh! if they but knew their places, and would keep to them, and drop
+      their absurd philosophical jargon! Not all the big words in the world can
+      make Mrs. Sand talk like a philosopher: when will she go back to her old
+      trade, of which she was the very ablest practitioner in France?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I should have been glad to give some extracts from the dramatic and
+      descriptive parts of the novel, that cannot, in point of style and beauty,
+      be praised too highly. One must suffice,&mdash;it is the descent of Alexis
+      to seek that unlucky manuscript, Spiridion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seemed to me,&rdquo; he begins, &ldquo;that the descent was eternal; and that I
+      was burying myself in the depths of Erebus: at last, I reached a level
+      place,&mdash;and I heard a mournful voice deliver these words, as it were,
+      to the secret centre of the earth&mdash;'He will mount that ascent no
+      more!'&mdash;Immediately I heard arise towards me, from the depth of
+      invisible abysses, a myriad of formidable voices united in a strange chant&mdash;'Let
+      us destroy him! Let him be destroyed! What does he here among the dead?
+      Let him be delivered back to torture! Let him be given again to life!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then a feeble light began to pierce the darkness, and I perceived that I
+      stood on the lowest step of a staircase, vast as the foot of a mountain.
+      Behind me were thousands of steps of lurid iron; before me, nothing but a
+      void&mdash;an abyss, and ether; the blue gloom of midnight beneath my
+      feet, as above my head. I became delirious, and quitting that staircase,
+      which methought it was impossible for me to reascend, I sprung forth into
+      the void with an execration. But, immediately, when I had uttered the
+      curse, the void began to be filled with forms and colors, and I presently
+      perceived that I was in a vast gallery, along which I advanced, trembling.
+      There was still darkness round me; but the hollows of the vaults gleamed
+      with a red light, and showed me the strange and hideous forms of their
+      building..... I did not distinguish the nearest objects; but those towards
+      which I advanced assumed an appearance more and more ominous, and my
+      terror increased with every step I took. The enormous pillars which
+      supported the vault, and the tracery thereof itself, were figures of men,
+      of supernatural stature, delivered to tortures without a name. Some hung
+      by their feet, and, locked in the coils of monstrous serpents, clenched
+      their teeth in the marble of the pavement; others, fastened by their
+      waists, were dragged upwards, these by their feet, those by their heads,
+      towards capitals, where other figures stooped towards them, eager to
+      torment them. Other pillars, again, represented a struggling mass of
+      figures devouring one another; each of which only offered a trunk severed
+      to the knees or to the shoulders, the fierce heads whereof retained life
+      enough to seize and devour that which was near them. There were some who,
+      half hanging down, agonized themselves by attempting, with their upper
+      limbs, to flay the lower moiety of their bodies, which drooped from the
+      columns, or were attached to the pedestals; and others, who, in their
+      fight with each other, were dragged along by morsels of flesh,&mdash;grasping
+      which, they clung to each other with a countenance of unspeakable hate and
+      agony. Along, or rather in place of, the frieze, there were on either side
+      a range of unclean beings, wearing the human form, but of a loathsome
+      ugliness, busied in tearing human corpses to pieces&mdash;in feasting upon
+      their limbs and entrails. From the vault, instead of bosses and pendants,
+      hung the crushed and wounded forms of children; as if to escape these
+      eaters of man's flesh, they would throw themselves downwards, and be
+      dashed to pieces on the pavement..... The silence and motionlessness of
+      the whole added to its awfulness. I became so faint with terror, that I
+      stopped, and would fain have returned. But at that moment I heard, from
+      the depths of the gloom through which I had passed, confused noises, like
+      those of a multitude on its march. And the sounds soon became more
+      distinct, and the clamor fiercer, and the steps came hurrying on
+      tumultuously&mdash;at every new burst nearer, more violent, more
+      threatening. I thought that I was pursued by this disorderly crowd; and I
+      strove to advance, hurrying into the midst of those dismal sculptures.
+      Then it seemed as if those figures began to heave,&mdash;and to sweat
+      blood,&mdash;and their beady eyes to move in their sockets. At once I
+      beheld that they were all looking upon me, that they were all leaning
+      towards me,&mdash;some with frightful derision, others with furious
+      aversion. Every arm was raised against me, and they made as though they
+      would crush me with the quivering limbs they had torn one from the
+      other.&rdquo;....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is, indeed, a pity that the poor fellow gave himself the trouble to go
+      down into damp, unwholesome graves, for the purpose of fetching up a few
+      trumpery sheets of manuscript; and if the public has been rather tired
+      with their contents, and is disposed to ask why Mrs. Sand's religious or
+      irreligious notions are to be brought forward to people who are quite
+      satisfied with their own, we can only say that this lady is the
+      representative of a vast class of her countrymen, whom the wits and
+      philosophers of the eighteenth century have brought to this condition. The
+      leaves of the Diderot and Rousseau tree have produced this goodly fruit:
+      here it is, ripe, bursting, and ready to fall;&mdash;and how to fall?
+      Heaven send that it may drop easily, for all can see that the time is
+      come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE CASE OF PEYTEL:
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      IN A LETTER TO EDWARD BRIEFLESS, ESQUIRE, OF PUMP COURT, TEMPLE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      PARIS, November, 1839.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR BRIEFLESS,&mdash;Two months since, when the act of accusation
+      first appeared, containing the sum of the charges against Sebastian
+      Peytel, all Paris was in a fervor on the subject. The man's trial speedily
+      followed, and kept for three days the public interest wound up to a
+      painful point. He was found guilty of double murder at the beginning of
+      September; and, since that time, what with Maroto's disaffection and
+      Turkish news, we have had leisure to forget Monsieur Peytel, and to occupy
+      ourselves with [Greek text omitted]. Perhaps Monsieur de Balzac helped to
+      smother what little sparks of interest might still have remained for the
+      murderous notary. Balzac put forward a letter in his favor, so very long,
+      so very dull, so very pompous, promising so much, and performing so
+      little, that the Parisian public gave up Peytel and his case altogether;
+      nor was it until to-day that some small feeling was raised concerning him,
+      when the newspapers brought the account how Peytel's head had been cut off
+      at Bourg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had gone through the usual miserable ceremonies and delays which attend
+      what is called, in this country, the march of justice. He had made his
+      appeal to the Court of Cassation, which had taken time to consider the
+      verdict of the Provincial Court, and had confirmed it. He had made his
+      appeal for mercy; his poor sister coming up all the way from Bourg (a sad
+      journey, poor thing!) to have an interview with the King, who had refused
+      to see her. Last Monday morning, at nine o'clock, an hour before Peytel's
+      breakfast, the Greffier of Assize Court, in company with the Curé of
+      Bourg, waited on him, and informed him that he had only three hours to
+      live. At twelve o'clock, Peytel's head was off his body: an executioner
+      from Lyons had come over the night before, to assist the professional
+      throat-cutter of Bourg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am not going to entertain you with any sentimental lamentations for this
+      scoundrel's fate, or to declare my belief in his innocence, as Monsieur de
+      Balzac has done. As far as moral conviction can go, the man's guilt is
+      pretty clearly brought home to him. But any man who has read the &ldquo;Causes
+      Célèbres,&rdquo; knows that men have been convicted and executed upon evidence
+      ten times more powerful than that which was brought against Peytel. His
+      own account of his horrible case may be true; there is nothing adduced in
+      the evidence which is strong enough to overthrow it. It is a serious
+      privilege, God knows, that society takes upon itself, at any time, to
+      deprive one of God's creatures of existence. But when the slightest doubt
+      remains, what a tremendous risk does it incur! In England, thank heaven,
+      the law is more wise and more merciful: an English jury would never have
+      taken a man's blood upon such testimony: an English judge and Crown
+      advocate would never have acted as these Frenchmen have done; the latter
+      inflaming the public mind by exaggerated appeals to their passions: the
+      former seeking, in every way, to draw confessions from the prisoner, to
+      perplex and confound him, to do away, by fierce cross-questioning and
+      bitter remarks from the bench, with any effect that his testimony might
+      have on the jury. I don't mean to say that judges and lawyers have been
+      more violent and inquisitorial against the unhappy Peytel than against any
+      one else; it is the fashion of the country: a man is guilty until he
+      proves himself to be innocent; and to batter down his defence, if he have
+      any, there are the lawyers, with all their horrible ingenuity, and their
+      captivating passionate eloquence. It is hard thus to set the skilful and
+      tried champions of the law against men unused to this kind of combat; nay,
+      give a man all the legal aid that he can purchase or procure, still, by
+      this plan, you take him at a cruel, unmanly disadvantage; he has to fight
+      against the law, clogged with the dreadful weight of his presupposed
+      guilt. Thank God that, in England, things are not managed so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, I am not about to entertain you with ignorant disquisitions about
+      the law. Peytel's case may, nevertheless, interest you; for the tale is a
+      very stirring and mysterious one; and you may see how easy a thing it is
+      for a man's life to be talked away in France, if ever he should happen to
+      fall under the suspicion of a crime. The French &ldquo;Acte d'accusation&rdquo; begins
+      in the following manner:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of all the events which, in these latter times, have afflicted the
+      department of the Ain, there is none which has caused a more profound and
+      lively sensation than the tragical death of the lady, Félicité Alcazar,
+      wife of Sebastian Benedict Peytel, notary, at Belley. At the end of
+      October, 1838, Madame Peytel quitted that town, with her husband, and
+      their servant Louis Rey, in order to pass a few days at Macon: at
+      midnight, the inhabitants of Belley were suddenly awakened by the arrival
+      of Monsieur Peytel, by his cries, and by the signs which he exhibited of
+      the most lively agitation: he implored the succors of all the physicians
+      in the town; knocked violently at their doors; rung at the bells of their
+      houses with a sort of frenzy, and announced that his wife, stretched out,
+      and dying, in his carriage, had just been shot, on the Lyons road, by his
+      domestic, whose life Peytel himself had taken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At this recital a number of persons assembled, and what a spectacle was
+      presented to their eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A young woman lay at the bottom of a carriage, deprived of life; her
+      whole body was wet, and seemed as if it had just been plunged into the
+      water. She appeared to be severely wounded in the face; and her garments,
+      which were raised up, in spite of the cold and rainy weather, left the
+      upper part of her knees almost entirely exposed. At the sight of this
+      half-naked and inanimate body, all the spectators were affected. People
+      said that the first duty to pay to a dying woman was, to preserve her from
+      the cold, to cover her. A physician examined the body; he declared that
+      all remedies were useless; that Madame Peytel was dead and cold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The entreaties of Peytel were redoubled; he demanded fresh succors, and,
+      giving no heed to the fatal assurance which had just been given him,
+      required that all the physicians in the place should be sent for. A scene
+      so strange and so melancholy; the incoherent account given by Peytel of
+      the murder of his wife; his extraordinary movements; and the avowal which
+      he continued to make, that he had despatched the murderer, Rey, with
+      strokes of his hammer, excited the attention of Lieutenant Wolf,
+      commandant of gendarmes: that officer gave orders for the immediate arrest
+      of Peytel; but the latter threw himself into the arms of a friend, who
+      interceded for him, and begged the police not immediately to seize upon
+      his person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The corpse of Madame Peytel was transported to her apartment; the
+      bleeding body of the domestic was likewise brought from the road, where it
+      lay; and Peytel, asked to explain the circumstance, did so.&rdquo;....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, as there is little reason to tell the reader, when an English counsel
+      has to prosecute a prisoner on the part of the Crown for a capital
+      offence, he produces the articles of his accusation in the most moderate
+      terms, and especially warns the jury to give the accused person the
+      benefit of every possible doubt that the evidence may give, or may leave.
+      See how these things are managed in France, and how differently the French
+      counsel for the Crown sets about his work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He first prepares his act of accusation, the opening of which we have just
+      read; it is published six days before the trial, so that an unimpassioned,
+      unprejudiced jury has ample time to study it, and to form its opinions
+      accordingly, and to go into court with a happy, just prepossession against
+      the prisoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Read the first part of the Peytel act of accusation; it is as turgid and
+      declamatory as a bad romance; and as inflated as a newspaper document, by
+      an unlimited penny-a-liner:&mdash;&ldquo;The department of the Ain is in a
+      dreadful state of excitement; the inhabitants of Belley come trooping from
+      their beds,&mdash;and what a sight do they behold;&mdash;a young woman at
+      the bottom of a carriage, toute ruisselante, just out of a river; her
+      garments, in spite of the cold and rain, raised, so as to leave the upper
+      part of her knees entirely exposed, at which all the beholders were
+      affected, and cried, that the FIRST DUTY was to cover her from the cold.&rdquo;
+       This settles the case at once; the first duty of a man is to cover the
+      legs of the sufferer; the second to call for help. The eloquent &ldquo;Substitut
+      du Procureur du Roi&rdquo; has prejudged the case, in the course of a few
+      sentences. He is putting his readers, among whom his future jury is to be
+      found, into a proper state of mind; he works on them with pathetic
+      description, just as a romance-writer would: the rain pours in torrents;
+      it is a dreary evening in November; the young creature's situation is
+      neatly described; the distrust which entered into the breast of the keen
+      old officer of gendarmes strongly painted, the suspicions which might, or
+      might not, have been entertained by the inhabitants, eloquently argued.
+      How did the advocate know that the people had such? did all the bystanders
+      say aloud, &ldquo;I suspect that this is a case of murder by Monsieur Peytel,
+      and that his story about the domestic is all deception?&rdquo; or did they go
+      off to the mayor, and register their suspicion? or was the advocate there
+      to hear them? Not he; but he paints you the whole scene, as though it had
+      existed, and gives full accounts of suspicions, as if they had been facts,
+      positive, patent, staring, that everybody could see and swear to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having thus primed his audience, and prepared them for the testimony of
+      the accused party, &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; says he, with a fine show of justice, &ldquo;let us
+      hear Monsieur Peytel;&rdquo; and that worthy's narrative is given as follows:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He said that he had left Macon on the 31st October, at eleven o'clock in
+      the morning, in order to return to Belley, with his wife and servant. The
+      latter drove, or led, an open car; he himself was driving his wife in a
+      four-wheeled carriage, drawn by one horse: they reached Bourg at five
+      o'clock in the evening; left it at seven, to sleep at Pont d'Ain, where
+      they did not arrive before midnight. During the journey, Peytel thought he
+      remarked that Rey had slackened his horse's pace. When they alighted at
+      the inn, Peytel bade him deposit in his chamber 7,500 francs, which he
+      carried with him; but the domestic refused to do so, saying that the inn
+      gates were secure, and there was no danger. Peytel was, therefore, obliged
+      to carry his money up stairs himself. The next day, the 1st November, they
+      set out on their journey again, at nine o'clock in the morning; Louis did
+      not come, according to custom, to take his master's orders. They arrived
+      at Tenay about three, stopped there a couple of hours to dine, and it was
+      eight o'clock when they reached the bourg of Rossillon, where they waited
+      half an hour to bait the horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As they left Rossillon, the weather became bad, and the rain began to
+      fall: Peytel told his domestic to get a covering for the articles in the
+      open chariot; but Rey refused to do so, adding, in an ironical tone, that
+      the weather was fine. For some days past, Peytel had remarked that his
+      servant was gloomy, and scarcely spoke at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After they had gone about 500 paces beyond the bridge of Andert, that
+      crosses the river Furans, and ascended to the least steep part of the hill
+      of Darde, Peytel cried out to his servant, who was seated in the car, to
+      come down from it, and finish the ascent on foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At this moment a violent wind was blowing from the south, and the rain
+      was falling heavily: Peytel was seated back in the right corner of the
+      carriage, and his wife, who was close to him, was asleep, with her head on
+      his left shoulder. All of a sudden he heard the report of a fire-arm (he
+      had seen the light of it at some paces' distance), and Madame Peytel cried
+      out, 'My poor husband, take your pistols;' the horse was frightened, and
+      began to trot. Peytel immediately drew the pistol, and fired, from the
+      interior of the carriage, upon an individual whom he saw running by the
+      side of the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not knowing, as yet, that his wife had been hit, he jumped out on one
+      side of the carriage, while Madame Peytel descended from the other; and he
+      fired a second pistol at his domestic, Louis Rey, whom he had just
+      recognized. Redoubling his pace, he came up with Rey, and struck him, from
+      behind, a blow with the hammer. Rey turned at this, and raised up his arm
+      to strike his master with the pistol which he had just discharged at him;
+      but Peytel, more quick than he, gave the domestic a blow with the hammer,
+      which felled him to the ground (he fell his face forwards), and then
+      Peytel, bestriding the body, despatched him, although the brigand asked
+      for mercy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He now began to think of his wife and ran back, calling out her name
+      repeatedly, and seeking for her, in vain, on both sides of the road.
+      Arrived at the bridge of Andert, he recognized his wife, stretched in a
+      field, covered with water, which bordered the Furans. This horrible
+      discovery had so much the more astonished him, because he had no idea,
+      until now, that his wife had been wounded: he endeavored to draw her from
+      the water; and it was only after considerable exertions that he was
+      enabled to do so, and to place her, with her face towards the ground, on
+      the side of the road. Supposing that, here, she would be sheltered from
+      any farther danger, and believing, as yet, that she was only wounded, he
+      determined to ask for help at a lone house, situated on the road towards
+      Rossillon; and at this instant he perceived, without at all being able to
+      explain how, that his horse had followed him back to the spot, having
+      turned back of its own accord, from the road to Belley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The house at which he knocked was inhabited by two men, of the name of
+      Thannet, father and son, who opened the door to him, and whom he entreated
+      to come to his aid, saying that his wife had just been assassinated by his
+      servant. The elder Thannet approached to, and examined the body, and told
+      Peytel that it was quite dead; he and his son took up the corpse, and
+      placed it in the bottom of the carriage, which they all mounted
+      themselves, and pursued their route to Belley. In order to do so, they had
+      to pass by Rey's body, on the road, which Peytel wished to crush under the
+      wheels of his carriage. It was to rob him of 7,500 francs, said Peytel,
+      that the attack had been made.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Our friend, the Procureur's Substitut, has dropped, here, the eloquent and
+      pathetic style altogether, and only gives the unlucky prisoner's narrative
+      in the baldest and most unimaginative style. How is a jury to listen to
+      such a fellow? they ought to condemn him, if but for making such an
+      uninteresting statement. Why not have helped poor Peytel with some of
+      those rhetorical graces which have been so plentifully bestowed in the
+      opening part of the act of accusation? He might have said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur Peytel is an eminent notary at Belley; he is a man distinguished
+      for his literary and scientific acquirements; he has lived long in the
+      best society of the capital; he had been but a few months married to that
+      young and unfortunate lady, whose loss has plunged her bereaved husband
+      into despair&mdash;almost into madness. Some early differences had marked,
+      it is true, the commencement of their union; but these, which, as can be
+      proved by evidence, were almost all the unhappy lady's fault,&mdash;had
+      happily ceased, to give place to sentiments far more delightful and
+      tender. Gentlemen, Madame Peytel bore in her bosom a sweet pledge of
+      future concord between herself and her husband: in three brief months she
+      was to become a mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the exercise of his honorable profession,&mdash;in which, to succeed,
+      a man must not only have high talents, but undoubted probity,&mdash;and,
+      gentlemen, Monsieur Peytel DID succeed&mdash;DID inspire respect and
+      confidence, as you, his neighbors, well know;&mdash;in the exercise, I
+      say, of his high calling, Monsieur Peytel, towards the end of October
+      last, had occasion to make a journey in the neighborhood, and visit some
+      of his many clients.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He travelled in his own carriage, his young wife beside him. Does this
+      look like want of affection, gentlemen? or is it not a mark of love&mdash;of
+      love and paternal care on his part towards the being with whom his lot in
+      life was linked,&mdash;the mother of his coming child,&mdash;the young
+      girl, who had everything to gain from the union with a man of his
+      attainments of intellect, his kind temper, his great experience, and his
+      high position? In this manner they travelled, side by side, lovingly
+      together. Monsieur Peytel was not a lawyer merely, but a man of letters
+      and varied learning; of the noble and sublime science of geology he was,
+      especially, an ardent devotee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      (Suppose, here, a short panegyric upon geology. Allude to the creation of
+      this mighty world, and then, naturally, to the Creator. Fancy the
+      conversations which Peytel, a religious man,* might have with his young
+      wife upon the subject.)
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * He always went to mass; it is in the evidence.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur Peytel had lately taken into his service a man named Louis Rey.
+      Rey was a foundling, and had passed many years in a regiment&mdash;a
+      school, gentlemen, where much besides bravery, alas! is taught; nay, where
+      the spirit which familiarizes one with notions of battle and death, I
+      fear, may familiarize one with ideas, too, of murder. Rey, a dashing
+      reckless fellow, from the army, had lately entered Peytel's service, was
+      treated by him with the most singular kindness; accompanied him (having
+      charge of another vehicle) upon the journey before alluded to; and KNEW
+      THAT HIS MASTER CARRIED WITH HIM A CONSIDERABLE SUM OF MONEY; for a man
+      like Rey an enormous sum, 7,500 francs. At midnight on the 1st of
+      November, as Madame Peytel and her husband were returning home, an attack
+      was made upon their carriage. Remember, gentlemen, the hour at which the
+      attack was made; remember the sum of money that was in the carriage; and
+      remember that the Savoy frontier IS WITHIN A LEAGUE OF THE SPOT where the
+      desperate deed was done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, my dear Briefless, ought not Monsieur Procureur, in common justice to
+      Peytel, after he had so eloquently proclaimed, not the facts, but the
+      suspicions, which weighed against that worthy, to have given a similar
+      florid account of the prisoner's case? Instead of this, you will remark,
+      that it is the advocate's endeavor to make Peytel's statements as
+      uninteresting in style as possible; and then he demolishes them in the
+      following way:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scarcely was Peytel's statement known, when the common sense of the
+      public rose against it. Peytel had commenced his story upon the bridge of
+      Andert, over the cold body of his wife. On the 2nd November he had
+      developed it in detail, in the presence of the physicians, in the presence
+      of the assembled neighbors&mdash;of the persons who, on the day previous
+      only, were his friends. Finally, he had completed it in his
+      interrogatories, his conversations, his writings, and letters to the
+      magistrates and everywhere these words, repeated so often, were only
+      received with a painful incredulity. The fact was that, besides the
+      singular character which Peytel's appearance, attitude, and talk had worn
+      ever since the event, there was in his narrative an inexplicable enigma;
+      its contradictions and impossibilities were such, that calm persons were
+      revolted at it, and that even friendship itself refused to believe it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus Mr. Attorney speaks, not for himself alone, but for the whole French
+      public; whose opinions, of course, he knows. Peytel's statement is
+      discredited EVERYWHERE; the statement which he had made over the cold body
+      of his wife&mdash;the monster! It is not enough simply to prove that the
+      man committed the murder, but to make the jury violently angry against
+      him, and cause them to shudder in the jury-box, as he exposes the horrid
+      details of the crime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Justice,&rdquo; goes on Mr. Substitute (who answers for the feelings of
+      everybody), &ldquo;DISTURBED BY THE PRE-OCCUPATIONS OF PUBLIC OPINION,
+      commenced, without delay, the most active researches. The bodies of the
+      victims were submitted to the investigations of men of art; the wounds and
+      projectiles were examined; the place where the event took place explored
+      with care. The morality of the author of this frightful scene became the
+      object of rigorous examination; the exigeances of the prisoner, the forms
+      affected by him, his calculating silence, and his answers, coldly
+      insulting, were feeble obstacles; and justice at length arrived, by its
+      prudence, and by the discoveries it made, to the most cruel point of
+      certainty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      You see that a man's demeanor is here made a crime against him; and that
+      Mr. Substitute wishes to consider him guilty, because he has actually the
+      audacity to hold his tongue. Now follows a touching description of the
+      domestic, Louis Rey:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Louis Rey, a child of the Hospital at Lyons, was confided, at a very
+      early age, to some honest country people, with whom he stayed until he
+      entered the army. At their house, and during this long period of time, his
+      conduct, his intelligence, and the sweetness of his manners were such,
+      that the family of his guardians became to him as an adopted family; and
+      his departure caused them the most sincere affliction. When Louis quitted
+      the army, he returned to his benefactors, and was received as a son. They
+      found him just as they had ever known him&rdquo; (I acknowledge that this pathos
+      beats my humble defence of Peytel entirely), &ldquo;except that he had learned
+      to read and write; and the certificates of his commanders proved him to be
+      a good and gallant soldier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The necessity of creating some resources for himself, obliged him to quit
+      his friends, and to enter the service of Monsieur de Montrichard, a
+      lieutenant of gendarmerie, from whom he received fresh testimonials of
+      regard. Louis, it is true, might have a fondness for wine and a passion
+      for women; but he had been a soldier, and these faults were, according to
+      the witnesses, amply compensated for by his activity, his intelligence,
+      and the agreeable manner in which he performed his service. In the month
+      of July, 1839, Rey quitted, voluntarily, the service of M. de Montrichard;
+      and Peytel, about this period, meeting him at Lyons, did not hesitate to
+      attach him to his service. Whatever may be the prisoner's present
+      language, it is certain that up to the day of Louis's death, he served
+      Peytel with diligence and fidelity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More than once his master and mistress spoke well of him. EVERYBODY who
+      has worked, or been at the house of Madame Peytel, has spoken in praise of
+      his character; and, indeed, it may be said, that these testimonials were
+      general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the very night of the 1st of November, and immediately after the
+      catastrophe, we remark how Peytel begins to make insinuations against his
+      servant; and how artfully, in order to render them more sure, he
+      disseminates them through the different parts of his narrative. But, in
+      the course of the proceeding, these charges have met with a most complete
+      denial. Thus we find the disobedient servant who, at Pont d'Ain, refused
+      to carry the money-chest to his master's room, under the pretext that the
+      gates of the inn were closed securely, occupied with tending the horses
+      after their long journey: meanwhile Peytel was standing by, and neither
+      master nor servant exchanged a word, and the witnesses who beheld them
+      both have borne testimony to the zeal and care of the domestic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In like manner, we find that the servant, who was so remiss in the
+      morning as to neglect to go to his master for orders, was ready for
+      departure before seven o'clock, and had eagerly informed himself whether
+      Monsieur and Madame Peytel were awake; learning from the maid of the inn,
+      that they had ordered nothing for their breakfast. This man, who refused
+      to carry with him a covering for the car, was, on the contrary, ready to
+      take off his own cloak, and with it shelter articles of small value; this
+      man, who had been for many days so silent and gloomy, gave, on the
+      contrary, many proofs of his gayety&mdash;almost of his indiscretion,
+      speaking, at all the inns, in terms of praise of his master and mistress.
+      The waiter at the inn at Dauphin, says he was a tall young fellow, mild
+      and good-natured; 'we talked for some time about horses, and such things;
+      he seemed to be perfectly natural, and not pre-occupied at all.' At Pont
+      d'Ain, he talked of his being a foundling; of the place where he had been
+      brought up, and where he had served; and finally, at Rossillon, an hour
+      before his death, he conversed familiarly with the master of the port, and
+      spoke on indifferent subjects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All Peytel's insinuations against his servant had no other end than to
+      show, in every point of Rey's conduct, the behavior of a man who was
+      premeditating attack. Of what, in fact, does he accuse him? Of wishing to
+      rob him of 7,500 francs, and of having had recourse to assassination, in
+      order to effect the robbery. But, for a premeditated crime, consider what
+      singular improvidence the person showed who had determined on committing
+      it; what folly and what weakness there is in the execution of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How many insurmountable obstacles are there in the way of committing and
+      profiting by crime! On leaving Belley, Louis Rey, according to Peytel's
+      statement, knowing that his master would return with money, provided
+      himself with a holster pistol, which Madame Peytel had once before
+      perceived among his effects. In Peytel's cabinet there were some balls;
+      four of these were found in Rey's trunk, on the 6th of November. And, in
+      order to commit the crime, this domestic had brought away with him a
+      pistol, and no ammunition; for Peytel has informed us that Rey, an hour
+      before his departure from Macon, purchased six balls at a gunsmith's. To
+      gain his point, the assassin must immolate his victims; for this, he has
+      only one pistol, knowing, perfectly well, that Peytel, in all his travels,
+      had two on his person; knowing that, at a late hour of the night, his shot
+      might fail of effect; and that, in this case, he would be left to the
+      mercy of his opponent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The execution of the crime is, according to Peytel's account, still more
+      singular. Louis does not get off the carriage, until Peytel tells him to
+      descend. He does not think of taking his master's life until he is sure
+      that the latter has his eyes open. It is dark, and the pair are covered in
+      one cloak; and Rey only fires at them at six paces' distance: he fires at
+      hazard, without disquieting himself as to the choice of his victim; and
+      the soldier, who was bold enough to undertake this double murder, has not
+      force nor courage to consummate it. He flies, carrying in his hand a
+      useless whip, with a heavy mantle on his shoulders, in spite of the
+      detonation of two pistols at his ears, and the rapid steps of an angry
+      master in pursuit, which ought to have set him upon some better means of
+      escape. And we find this man, full of youth and vigor, lying with his face
+      to the ground, in the midst of a public road, falling without a struggle,
+      or resistance, under the blows of a hammer!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And suppose the murderer had succeeded in his criminal projects, what
+      fruit could he have drawn from them?&mdash;Leaving, on the road, the two
+      bleeding bodies; obliged to lead two carriages at a time, for fear of
+      discovery; not able to return himself, after all the pains he had taken to
+      speak, at every place at which they had stopped, of the money which his
+      master was carrying with him; too prudent to appear alone at Belley;
+      arrested at the frontier, by the excise officers, who would present an
+      impassable barrier to him till morning, what could he do, or hope to do?
+      The examination of the car has shown that Rey, at the moment of the crime,
+      had neither linen, nor clothes, nor effects of any kind. There was found
+      in his pockets, when the body was examined, no passport, nor certificate;
+      one of his pockets contained a ball, of large calibre, which he had shown,
+      in play, to a girl, at the inn at Macon, a little horn-handled knife, a
+      snuff-box, a little packet of gunpowder, and a purse, containing only a
+      halfpenny and some string. Here is all the baggage, with which, after the
+      execution of his homicidal plan, Louis Rey intended to take refuge in a
+      foreign country.* Beside these absurd contradictions, there is another
+      remarkable fact, which must not be passed over; it is this:&mdash;the
+      pistol found by Rey is of antique form, and the original owner of it has
+      been found. He is a curiosity-merchant at Lyons; and, though he cannot
+      affirm that Peytel was the person who bought this pistol of him, he
+      perfectly recognizes Peytel as having been a frequent customer at his
+      shop!
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * This sentence is taken from another part of the &ldquo;Acte
+     d'accusation.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, we may fearlessly affirm that Louis Rey was not guilty of the crime
+      which Peytel lays to his charge. If, to those who knew him, his mild and
+      open disposition, his military career, modest and without a stain, the
+      touching regrets of his employers, are sufficient proofs of his innocence,&mdash;the
+      calm and candid observer, who considers how the crime was conceived, was
+      executed, and what consequences would have resulted from it, will likewise
+      acquit him, and free him of the odious imputation which Peytel endeavors
+      to cast upon his memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But justice has removed the veil, with which an impious hand endeavored
+      to cover itself. Already, on the night of the 1st of November, suspicion
+      was awakened by the extraordinary agitation of Peytel; by those excessive
+      attentions towards his wife, which came so late; by that excessive and
+      noisy grief, and by those calculated bursts of sorrow, which are such as
+      Nature does not exhibit. The criminal, whom the public conscience had
+      fixed upon; the man whose frightful combinations have been laid bare, and
+      whose falsehoods, step by step, have been exposed, during the proceedings
+      previous to the trial; the murderer, at whose hands a heart-stricken
+      family, and society at large, demands an account of the blood of a wife;&mdash;that
+      murderer is Peytel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When, my dear Briefless, you are a judge (as I make no doubt you will be,
+      when you have left off the club all night, cigar-smoking of mornings, and
+      reading novels in bed), will you ever find it in your heart to order a
+      fellow-sinner's head off upon such evidence as this? Because a romantic
+      Substitut du Procureur de Roi chooses to compose and recite a little
+      drama, and draw tears from juries, let us hope that severe Rhadamanthine
+      judges are not to be melted by such trumpery. One wants but the
+      description of the characters to render the piece complete, as thus:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+         Personages                             Costumes.
+
+   SEBASTIAN PEYTAL  Meurtrier        Habillement complet de notaire
+                                      perfide: figure pâle, barbe
+                                      noire, cheveux noirs.
+
+   LOUIS REY   Soldat rétiré, bon,    Costume ordinaire; il porte sur
+               brave, franc, jovial   ses épaules une couverture de
+               aimant le vin, les     cheval.
+               femmes, la gaieté,
+               ses maîtres surtout;
+               vrai Français, enfin
+
+   WOLF     Lieutenant de gendarmerie.
+
+   FÉLICITÉ D'ALCAZAR   Femme et victime de Peytel.
+
+   Médecins, Villageois, Filles d'Auberge, Garçons d'Ecurie, &amp;c. &amp;c.
+
+   La scène se passe sur le pont d'Andert, entre Macon et Belley.  Il
+   est minuit.  La pluie tombe: les tonnerres grondent.  Le ciel est
+   convert de nuages, et sillonné d'éclairs.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      All these personages are brought into play in the Procureur's drama; the
+      villagers come in with their chorus; the old lieutenant of gendarmes with
+      his suspicions; Rey's frankness and gayety, the romantic circumstances of
+      his birth, his gallantry and fidelity, are all introduced, in order to
+      form a contrast with Peytel, and to call down the jury's indignation
+      against the latter. But are these proofs? or anything like proofs? And the
+      suspicions, that are to serve instead of proofs, what are they?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My servant, Louis Rey, was very sombre and reserved,&rdquo; says Peytel; &ldquo;he
+      refused to call me in the morning, to carry my money-chest to my room, to
+      cover the open car when it rained.&rdquo; The Prosecutor disproves this by
+      stating that Rey talked with the inn maids and servants, asked if his
+      master was up, and stood in the inn-yard, grooming the horses, with his
+      master by his side, neither speaking to the other. Might he not have
+      talked to the maids, and yet been sombre when speaking to his master?
+      Might he not have neglected to call his master, and yet have asked whether
+      he was awake? Might he not have said that the inn-gates were safe, out of
+      hearing of the ostler witness? Mr. Substitute's answers to Peytel's
+      statements are no answer at all. Every word Peytel said might be true, and
+      yet Louis Rey might not have committed the murder; or every word might
+      have been false, and yet Louis Rey might have committed the murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; says Mr. Substitute, &ldquo;how many obstacles are there to the
+      commission of the crime? And these are&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;1. Rey provided himself with ONE holster pistol, to kill two people,
+      knowing well that one of them had always a brace of pistols about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;2. He does not think of firing until his master's eyes are open: fires at
+      six paces, not caring at whom he fires, and then runs away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;3. He could not have intended to kill his master, because he had no
+      passport in his pocket, and no clothes; and because he must have been
+      detained at the frontier until morning; and because he would have had to
+      drive two carriages, in order to avoid suspicion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;4. And, a most singular circumstance, the very pistol which was found by
+      his side had been bought at the shop of a man at Lyons, who perfectly
+      recognized Peytel as one of his customers, though he could not say he had
+      sold that particular weapon to Peytel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Does it follow, from this, that Louis Rey is not the murderer, much more,
+      that Peytel is? Look at argument No. 1. Rey had no need to kill two
+      people: he wanted the money, and not the blood. Suppose he had killed
+      Peytel, would he not have mastered Madame Peytel easily?&mdash;a weak
+      woman, in an excessively delicate situation, incapable of much energy, at
+      the best of times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. &ldquo;He does not fire till he knows his master's eyes are open.&rdquo; Why, on a
+      stormy night, does a man driving a carriage go to sleep? Was Rey to wait
+      until his master snored? &ldquo;He fires at six paces, not caring whom he hits;&rdquo;&mdash;and
+      might not this happen too? The night is not so dark but that he can see
+      his master, in HIS USUAL PLACE, driving. He fires and hits&mdash;whom?
+      Madame Peytel, who had left her place, AND WAS WRAPPED UP WITH PEYTEL IN
+      HIS CLOAK. She screams out, &ldquo;Husband, take your pistols.&rdquo; Rey knows that
+      his master has a brace, thinks that he has hit the wrong person, and, as
+      Peytel fires on him, runs away. Peytel follows, hammer in hand; as he
+      comes up with the fugitive, he deals him a blow on the back of the head,
+      and Rey falls&mdash;his face to the ground. Is there anything unnatural in
+      this story?&mdash;anything so monstrously unnatural, that is, that it
+      might not be true?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. These objections are absurd. Why need a man have change of linen? If he
+      had taken none for the journey, why should he want any for the escape? Why
+      need he drive two carriages?&mdash;He might have driven both into the
+      river, and Mrs. Peytel in one. Why is he to go to the douane, and thrust
+      himself into the very jaws of danger? Are there not a thousand ways for a
+      man to pass a frontier? Do smugglers, when they have to pass from one
+      country to another, choose exactly those spots where a police is placed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, finally, the gunsmith of Lyons, who knows Peytel quite well, cannot
+      say that he sold the pistol to him; that is, he did NOT sell the pistol to
+      him; for you have only one man's word, in this case (Peytel's), to the
+      contrary; and the testimony, as far as it goes, is in his favor. I say, my
+      lud, and gentlemen of the jury, that these objections of my learned
+      friend, who is engaged for the Crown, are absurd, frivolous, monstrous;
+      that to SUSPECT away the life of a man upon such suppositions as these, is
+      wicked, illegal, and inhuman; and, what is more, that Louis Rey, if he
+      wanted to commit the crime&mdash;if he wanted to possess himself of a
+      large sum of money, chose the best time and spot for so doing; and, no
+      doubt, would have succeeded, if Fate had not, in a wonderful manner,
+      caused Madame Peytel TO TAKE HER HUSBAND'S PLACE, and receive the ball
+      intended for him in her own head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But whether these suspicions are absurd or not, hit or miss, it is the
+      advocate's duty, as it appears, to urge them. He wants to make as
+      unfavorable an impression as possible with regard to Peytel's character;
+      he, therefore, must, for contrast's sake, give all sorts of praise to his
+      victim, and awaken every sympathy in the poor fellow's favor. Having done
+      this, as far as lies in his power, having exaggerated every circumstance
+      that can be unfavorable to Peytel, and given his own tale in the baldest
+      manner possible&mdash;having declared that Peytel is the murderer of his
+      wife and servant, the Crown now proceeds to back this assertion, by
+      showing what interested motives he had, and by relating, after its own
+      fashion, the circumstances of his marriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They may be told briefly here. Peytel was of a good family, of Macon, and
+      entitled, at his mother's death, to a considerable property. He had been
+      educated as a notary, and had lately purchased a business, in that line,
+      in Belley, for which he had paid a large sum of money; part of the sum,
+      15,000 francs, for which he had given bills, was still due.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Near Belley, Peytel first met Félicité Alcazar, who was residing with her
+      brother-in-law, Monsieur de Montrichard; and, knowing that the young
+      lady's fortune was considerable, he made an offer of marriage to the
+      brother-in-law, who thought the match advantageous, and communicated on
+      the subject with Félicité's mother, Madame Alcazar, at Paris. After a time
+      Peytel went to Paris, to press his suit, and was accepted. There seems to
+      have been no affectation of love on his side; and some little repugnance
+      on the part of the lady, who yielded, however, to the wishes of her
+      parents, and was married. The parties began to quarrel on the very day of
+      the marriage, and continued their disputes almost to the close of the
+      unhappy connection. Félicité was half blind, passionate, sarcastic, clumsy
+      in her person and manners, and ill educated; Peytel, a man of considerable
+      intellect and pretensions, who had lived for some time at Paris, where he
+      had mingled with good literary society. The lady was, in fact, as
+      disagreeable a person as could well be, and the evidence describes some
+      scenes which took place between her and her husband, showing how deeply
+      she must have mortified and enraged him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A charge very clearly made out against Peytel, is that of dishonesty; he
+      procured from the notary of whom he bought his place an acquittance in
+      full, whereas there were 15,000 francs owing, as we have seen. He also, in
+      the contract of marriage, which was to have resembled, in all respects,
+      that between Monsieur Broussais and another Demoiselle Alcazar, caused an
+      alteration to be made in his favor, which gave him command over his wife's
+      funded property, without furnishing the guarantees by which the other
+      son-in-law was bound. And, almost immediately after his marriage, Peytel
+      sold out of the funds a sum of 50,000 francs, that belonged to his wife,
+      and used it for his own purposes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About two months after his marriage, PEYTEL PRESSED HIS WIFE TO MAKE HER
+      WILL. He had made his, he said, leaving everything to her, in case of his
+      death: after some parley, the poor thing consented.* This is a cruel
+      suspicion against him; and Mr. Substitute has no need to enlarge upon it.
+      As for the previous fact, the dishonest statement about the 15,000 francs,
+      there is nothing murderous in that&mdash;nothing which a man very eager to
+      make a good marriage might not do. The same may be said of the
+      suppression, in Peytel's marriage contract, of the clause to be found in
+      Broussais's, placing restrictions upon the use of the wife's money.
+      Mademoiselle d'Alcazar's friends read the contract before they signed it,
+      and might have refused it, had they so pleased.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * &ldquo;Peytel,&rdquo; says the act of accusation, &ldquo;did not fail to see
+     the danger which would menace him, if this will (which had
+     escaped the magistrates in their search of Peytel's papers)
+     was discovered. He, therefore, instructed his agent to take
+     possession of it, which he did, and the fact was not
+     mentioned for several months afterwards. Peytel and his
+     agent were called upon to explain the circumstance, but
+     refused, and their silence for a long time interrupted the
+     'instruction'&rdquo; (getting up of the evidence). &ldquo;All that could
+     be obtained from them was an avowal, that such a will
+     existed, constituting Peytel his wife's sole legatee; and a
+     promise, on their parts, to produce it before the court gave
+     its sentence.&rdquo; But why keep the will secret? The anxiety
+     about it was surely absurd and unnecessary: the whole of
+     Madame Peytel's family knew that such a will was made. She
+     had consulted her sister concerning it, who said&mdash;&ldquo;If there
+     is no other way of satisfying him, make the will;&rdquo; and the
+     mother, when she heard of it, cried out&mdash;&ldquo;Does he intend to
+     poison her?&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      After some disputes, which took place between Peytel and his wife (there
+      were continual quarrels, and continual letters passing between them from
+      room to room), the latter was induced to write him a couple of exaggerated
+      letters, swearing &ldquo;by the ashes of her father&rdquo; that she would be an
+      obedient wife to him, and entreating him to counsel and direct her. These
+      letters were seen by members of the lady's family, who, in the quarrels
+      between the couple, always took the husband's part. They were found in
+      Peytel's cabinet, after he had been arrested for the murder, and after he
+      had had full access to all his papers, of which he destroyed or left as
+      many as he pleased. The accusation makes it a matter of suspicion against
+      Peytel, that he should have left these letters of his wife's in a
+      conspicuous situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All these circumstances,&rdquo; says the accusation, &ldquo;throw a frightful light
+      upon Peytel's plans. The letters and will of Madame Peytel are in the
+      hands of her husband. Three months pass away, and this poor woman is
+      brought to her home, in the middle of the night, with two balls in her
+      head, stretched at the bottom of her carriage, by the side of a peasant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What other than Sebastian Peytel could have committed this murder?&mdash;whom
+      could it profit?&mdash;who but himself had an odious chain to break, and
+      an inheritance to receive? Why speak of the servant's projected robbery?
+      The pistols found by the side of Louis's body, the balls bought by him at
+      Macon, and those discovered at Belley among his effects, were only the
+      result of a perfidious combination. The pistol, indeed, which was found on
+      the hill of Darde, on the night of the 1st of November, could only have
+      belonged to Peytel, and must have been thrown by him, near the body of his
+      domestic, with the paper which had before enveloped it. Who had seen this
+      pistol in the hands of Louis? Among all the gendarmes, work-women,
+      domestics, employed by Peytel and his brother-in-law, is there one single
+      witness who had seen this weapon in Louis's possession? It is true that
+      Madame Peytel did, on one occasion, speak to M. de Montrichard of a
+      pistol; which had nothing to do, however, with that found near Louis Rey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Is this justice, or good reason? Just reverse the argument, and apply it
+      to Rey. &ldquo;Who but Rey could have committed this murder?&mdash;who but Rey
+      had a large sum of money to seize upon?&mdash;a pistol is found by his
+      side, balls and powder in his pocket, other balls in his trunks at home.
+      The pistol found near his body could not, indeed, have belonged to Peytel:
+      did any man ever see it in his possession? The very gunsmith who sold it,
+      and who knew Peytel, would he not have known that he had sold him this
+      pistol? At his own house, Peytel has a collection of weapons of all kinds;
+      everybody has seen them&mdash;a man who makes such collections is anxious
+      to display them. Did any one ever see this weapon?&mdash;Not one. And
+      Madame Peytel did, in her lifetime, remark a pistol in the valet's
+      possession. She was short-sighted, and could not particularize what kind
+      of pistol it was; but she spoke of it to her husband and her
+      brother-in-law.&rdquo; This is not satisfactory, if you please; but, at least,
+      it is as satisfactory as the other set of suppositions. It is the very
+      chain of argument which would have been brought against Louis Rey by this
+      very same compiler of the act of accusation, had Rey survived, instead of
+      Peytel, and had he, as most undoubtedly would have been the case, been
+      tried for the murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This argument was shortly put by Peytel's counsel:&mdash;&ldquo;if Peytel had
+      been killed by Rey in the struggle, would you not have found Rey guilty of
+      the murder of his master and mistress?&rdquo; It is such a dreadful dilemma,
+      that I wonder how judges and lawyers could have dared to persecute Peytel
+      in the manner which they did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the act of accusation, which lays down all the suppositions against
+      Peytel as facts, which will not admit the truth of one of the prisoner's
+      allegations in his own defence, comes the trial. The judge is quite as
+      impartial as the preparer of the indictment, as will be seen by the
+      following specimens of his interrogatories:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Judge. &ldquo;The act of accusation finds in your statement contradictions,
+      improbabilities, impossibilities. Thus your domestic, who had determined
+      to assassinate you, in order to rob you, and who MUST HAVE CALCULATED UPON
+      THE CONSEQUENCE OF A FAILURE, had neither passport nor money upon him.
+      This is very unlikely; because he could not have gone far with only a
+      single halfpenny, which was all he had.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Prisoner. &ldquo;My servant was known, and often passed the frontier without a
+      passport.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Judge. &ldquo;YOUR DOMESTIC HAD TO ASSASSINATE TWO PERSONS, and had no weapon
+      but a single pistol. He had no dagger; and the only thing found on him was
+      a knife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Prisoner. &ldquo;In the car there were several turner's implements, which he
+      might have used.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Judge. &ldquo;But he had not those arms upon him, because you pursued him
+      immediately. He had, according to you, only this old pistol.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Prisoner. &ldquo;I have nothing to say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Judge. &ldquo;Your domestic, instead of flying into woods, which skirt the road,
+      ran straight forward on the road itself: THIS, AGAIN, IS VERY UNLIKELY.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Prisoner. &ldquo;This is a conjecture I could answer by another conjecture; I
+      can only reason on the facts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Judge. &ldquo;How far did you pursue him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Prisoner. &ldquo;I don't know exactly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Judge. &ldquo;You said 'two hundred paces.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No answer from the prisoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Judge. &ldquo;Your domestic was young, active, robust, and tall. He was ahead of
+      you. You were in a carriage, from which you had to descend: you had to
+      take your pistols from a cushion, and THEN your hammer;&mdash;how are we
+      to believe that you could have caught him, if he ran? It is IMPOSSIBLE.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Prisoner. &ldquo;I can't explain it: I think that Rey had some defect in one
+      leg. I, for my part, run tolerably fast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Judge. &ldquo;At what distance from him did you fire your first shot?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Prisoner. &ldquo;I can't tell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Judge. &ldquo;Perhaps he was not running when you fired.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Prisoner. &ldquo;I saw him running.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Judge. &ldquo;In what position was your wife?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Prisoner. &ldquo;She was leaning on my left arm, and the man was on the right
+      side of the carriage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Judge. &ldquo;The shot must have been fired à bout portant, because it burned
+      the eyebrows and lashes entirely. The assassin must have passed his pistol
+      across your breast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Prisoner. &ldquo;The shot was not fired so close; I am convinced of it:
+      professional gentlemen will prove it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Judge. &ldquo;That is what you pretend, because you understand perfectly the
+      consequences of admitting the fact. Your wife was hit with two balls&mdash;one
+      striking downwards, to the right, by the nose, the other going
+      horizontally through the cheek, to the left.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Prisoner. &ldquo;The contrary will be shown by the witnesses called for the
+      purpose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Judge. &ldquo;IT IS A VERY UNLUCKY COMBINATION FOR YOU that these balls, which
+      went, you say, from the same pistol, should have taken two different
+      directions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Prisoner. &ldquo;I can't dispute about the various combinations of fire-arms&mdash;professional
+      persons will be heard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Judge. &ldquo;According to your statement, your wife said to you, 'My poor
+      husband, take your pistols.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Prisoner. &ldquo;She did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Judge. &ldquo;In a manner quite distinct.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Prisoner. &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Judge. &ldquo;So distinct that you did not fancy she was hit?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Prisoner. &ldquo;Yes; that is the fact.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Judge. &ldquo;HERE, AGAIN, IS AN IMPOSSIBILITY; and nothing is more precise than
+      the declaration of the medical men. They affirm that your wife could not
+      have spoken&mdash;their report is unanimous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Prisoner. &ldquo;I can only oppose to it quite contrary opinions from
+      professional men, also: you must hear them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Judge. &ldquo;What did your wife do next?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      .      .      .      .      .      .
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Judge. &ldquo;You deny the statements of the witnesses:&rdquo; (they related to
+      Peytel's demeanor and behavior, which the judge wishes to show were very
+      unusual;&mdash;and what if they were?) &ldquo;Here, however, are some mute
+      witnesses, whose testimony, you will not perhaps refuse. Near Louis Rey's
+      body was found a horse-cloth, a pistol, and a whip..... Your domestic must
+      have had this cloth upon him when he went to assassinate you: it was wet
+      and heavy. An assassin disencumbers himself of anything that is likely to
+      impede him, especially when he is going to struggle with a man as young as
+      himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Prisoner. &ldquo;My servant had, I believe, this covering on his body; it might
+      be useful to him to keep the priming of his pistol dry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The president caused the cloth to be opened, and showed that there was no
+      hook, or tie, by which it could be held together; and that Rey must have
+      held it with one hand, and, in the other, his whip, and the pistol with
+      which he intended to commit the crime; which was impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Prisoner. &ldquo;These are only conjectures.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And what conjectures, my God! upon which to take away the life of a man.
+      Jeffreys, or Fouquier Tinville, could scarcely have dared to make such.
+      Such prejudice, such bitter persecution, such priming of the jury, such
+      monstrous assumptions and unreason&mdash;fancy them coming from an
+      impartial judge! The man is worse than the public accuser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rey,&rdquo; says the Judge, &ldquo;could not have committed the murder, BECAUSE HE
+      HAD NO MONEY IN HIS POCKET, TO FLY, IN CASE OF FAILURE.&rdquo; And what is the
+      precise sum that his lordship thinks necessary for a gentleman to have,
+      before he makes such an attempt? Are the men who murder for money, usually
+      in possession of a certain independence before they begin? How much money
+      was Rey, a servant, who loved wine and women, had been stopping at a score
+      of inns on the road, and had, probably, an annual income of 400 francs,&mdash;how
+      much money was Rey likely to have?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your servant had to assassinate two persons.&rdquo; This I have mentioned
+      before. Why had he to assassinate two persons,* when one was enough? If he
+      had killed Peytel, could he not have seized and gagged his wife
+      immediately?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * M. Balzac's theory of the case is, that Rey had intrigued
+     with Madame Peytel; having known her previous to her
+     marriage, when she was staying in the house of her brother-
+     in-law, Monsieur de Montrichard, where Rey had been a
+     servant.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your domestic ran straight forward, instead of taking to the woods, by
+      the side of the rood: this is very unlikely.&rdquo; How does his worship know?
+      Can any judge, however enlightened, tell the exact road that a man will
+      take, who has just missed a coup of murder, and is pursued by a man who is
+      firing pistols at him? And has a judge a right to instruct a jury in this
+      way, as to what they shall, or shall not, believe?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have to run after an active man, who has the start of you: to jump
+      out of a carriage; to take your pistols; and THEN, your hammer. THIS IS
+      IMPOSSIBLE.&rdquo; By heavens! does it not make a man's blood boil, to read such
+      blundering, blood-seeking sophistry? This man, when it suits him, shows
+      that Rey would be slow in his motions; and when it suits him, declares
+      that Rey ought to be quick; declares ex cathedrâ, what pace Rey should go,
+      and what direction he should take; shows, in a breath, that he must have
+      run faster than Peytel; and then, that he could not run fast, because the
+      cloak clogged him; settles how he is to be dressed when he commits a
+      murder, and what money he is to have in his pocket; gives these impossible
+      suppositions to the jury, and tells them that the previous statements are
+      impossible; and, finally, informs them of the precise manner in which Rey
+      must have stood holding his horse-cloth in one hand, his whip and pistol
+      in the other, when he made the supposed attempt at murder. Now, what is
+      the size of a horse-cloth? Is it as big as a pocket-handkerchief? Is there
+      no possibility that it might hang over one shoulder; that the whip should
+      be held under that very arm? Did you never see a carter so carry it, his
+      hands in his pockets all the while? Is it monstrous, abhorrent to nature,
+      that a man should fire a pistol from under a cloak on a rainy day?&mdash;that
+      he should, after firing the shot, be frightened, and run; run straight
+      before him, with the cloak on his shoulders, and the weapon in his hand?
+      Peytel's story is possible, and very possible; it is almost probable.
+      Allow that Rey had the cloth on, and you allow that he must have been
+      clogged in his motions; that Peytel may have come up with him&mdash;felled
+      him with a blow of the hammer; the doctors say that he would have so
+      fallen by one blow&mdash;he would have fallen on his face, as he was
+      found: the paper might have been thrust into his breast, and tumbled out
+      as he fell. Circumstances far more impossible have occurred ere this; and
+      men have been hanged for them, who were as innocent of the crime laid to
+      their charge as the judge on the bench, who convicted them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In like manner, Peytel may not have committed the crime charged to him;
+      and Mr. Judge, with his arguments as to possibilities and impossibilities,&mdash;Mr.
+      Public Prosecutor, with his romantic narrative and inflammatory harangues
+      to the jury,&mdash;may have used all these powers to bring to death an
+      innocent man. From the animus with which the case had been conducted from
+      beginning to end, it was easy to see the result. Here it is, in the words
+      of the provincial paper:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BOURG, 28 October, 1839.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The condemned Peytel has just undergone his punishment, which took place
+      four days before the anniversary of his crime. The terrible drama of the
+      bridge of Andert, which cost the life of two persons, has just terminated
+      on the scaffold. Mid-day had just sounded on the clock of the Palais: the
+      same clock tolled midnight when, on the 30th of August, his sentence was
+      pronounced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Since the rejection of his appeal in Cassation, on which his principal
+      hopes were founded, Peytel spoke little of his petition to the King. The
+      notion of transportation was that which he seemed to cherish most.
+      However, he made several inquiries from the gaoler of the prison, when he
+      saw him at meal-time, with regard to the place of execution, the usual
+      hour, and other details on the subject. From that period, the words 'Champ
+      de Foire' (the fair-field, where the execution was to be held), were
+      frequently used by him in conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yesterday, the idea that the time had arrived seemed to be more strongly
+      than ever impressed upon him; especially after the departure of the curé,
+      who latterly has been with him every day. The documents connected with the
+      trial had arrived in the morning. He was ignorant of this circumstance,
+      but sought to discover from his guardians what they tried to hide from
+      him; and to find out whether his petition was rejected, and when he was to
+      die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yesterday, also, he had written to demand the presence of his counsel, M.
+      Margerand, in order that he might have some conversation with him, and
+      regulate his affairs, before he &mdash;&mdash;; he did not write down the
+      word, but left in its place a few points of the pen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the evening, whilst he was at supper, he begged earnestly to be
+      allowed a little wax-candle, to finish what he was writing: otherwise, he
+      said, TIME MIGHT FAIL. This was a new, indirect manner of repeating his
+      ordinary question. As light, up to that evening, had been refused him, it
+      was thought best to deny him in this, as in former instances; otherwise
+      his suspicions might have been confirmed. The keeper refused his demand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This morning, Monday, at nine o'clock, the Greffier of the Assize Court,
+      in fulfilment of the painful duty which the law imposes upon him, came to
+      the prison, in company with the curé of Bourg, and announced to the
+      convict that his petition was rejected, and that he had only three hours
+      to live. He received this fatal news with a great deal of calmness, and
+      showed himself to be no more affected than he had been on the trial. 'I am
+      ready; but I wish they had given me four-and-twenty hours' notice,'&mdash;were
+      all the words he used.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Greffier now retired, leaving Peytel alone with the curé, who did not
+      thenceforth quit him. Peytel breakfasted at ten o'clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At eleven, a piquet of mounted gendarmerie and infantry took their
+      station upon the place before the prison, where a great concourse of
+      people had already assembled. An open car was at the door. Before he went
+      out Peytel asked the gaoler for a looking-glass; and having examined his
+      face for a moment, said, 'At least, the inhabitants of Bourg will see that
+      I have not grown thin.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As twelve o'clock sounded, the prison gates opened, an aide appeared,
+      followed by Peytel, leaning on the arm of the curé. Peytel's face was
+      pale, he had a long black beard, a blue cap on his head, and his
+      great-coat flung over his shoulders, and buttoned at the neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He looked about at the place and the crowd; he asked if the carriage
+      would go at a trot; and on being told that that would be difficult, he
+      said he would prefer walking, and asked what the road was. He immediately
+      set out, walking at a firm and rapid pace. He was not bound at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An immense crowd of people encumbered the two streets through which he
+      had to pass to the place of execution. He cast his eyes alternately upon
+      them and upon the guillotine, which was before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arrived at the foot of the scaffold, Peytel embraced the curé, and bade
+      him adieu. He then embraced him again; perhaps, for his mother and sister.
+      He then mounted the steps rapidly, and gave himself into the hands of the
+      executioner, who removed his coat and cap. He asked how he was to place
+      himself, and on a sign being made, he flung himself briskly on the plank,
+      and stretched his neck. In another moment he was no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The crowd, which had been quite silent, retired, profoundly moved by the
+      sight it had witnessed. As at all executions, there was a very great
+      number of women present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Under the scaffold there had been, ever since the morning, a coffin. The
+      family had asked for his remains, and had them immediately buried,
+      privately: and thus the unfortunate man's head escaped the modellers in
+      wax, several of whom had arrived to take an impression of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Down goes the axe; the poor wretch's head rolls gasping into the basket;
+      the spectators go home, pondering; and Mr. Executioner and his aides have,
+      in half an hour, removed all traces of the august sacrifice, and of the
+      altar on which it had been performed. Say, Mr. Briefless, do you think
+      that any single person, meditating murder, would be deterred therefrom by
+      beholding this&mdash;nay, a thousand more executions? It is not for moral
+      improvement, as I take it, nor for opportunity to make appropriate remarks
+      upon the punishment of crime, that people make a holiday of a killing-day,
+      and leave their homes and occupations, to flock and witness the cutting
+      off of a head. Do we crowd to see Mr. Macready in the new tragedy, or
+      Mademoiselle Ellssler in her last new ballet and flesh-colored stockinnet
+      pantaloons, out of a pure love of abstract poetry and beauty; or from a
+      strong notion that we shall be excited, in different ways, by the actor
+      and the dancer? And so, as we go to have a meal of fictitious terror at
+      the tragedy, of something more questionable in the ballet, we go for a
+      glut of blood to the execution. The lust is in every man's nature, more or
+      less. Did you ever witness a wrestling or boxing match? The first clatter
+      of the kick on the shins, or the first drawing of blood, makes the
+      stranger shudder a little; but soon the blood is his chief enjoyment, and
+      he thirsts for it with a fierce delight. It is a fine grim pleasure that
+      we have in seeing a man killed; and I make no doubt that the organs of
+      destructiveness must begin to throb and swell as we witness the delightful
+      savage spectacle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three or four years back, when Fieschi and Lacenaire were executed, I made
+      attempts to see the execution of both; but was disappointed in both cases.
+      In the first instance, the day for Fieschi's death was, purposely, kept
+      secret; and he was, if I remember rightly, executed at some remote quarter
+      of the town. But it would have done a philanthropist good, to witness the
+      scene which we saw on the morning when his execution did NOT take place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was carnival time, and the rumor had pretty generally been carried
+      abroad that he was to die on that morning. A friend, who accompanied me,
+      came many miles, through the mud and dark, in order to be in at the death.
+      We set out before light, floundering through the muddy Champs Elysées;
+      where, besides, were many other persons floundering, and all bent upon the
+      same errand. We passed by the Concert of Musard, then held in the Rue St.
+      Honoré; and round this, in the wet, a number of coaches were collected.
+      The ball was just up, and a crowd of people in hideous masquerade, drunk,
+      tired, dirty, dressed in horrible old frippery, and daubed with filthy
+      rouge, were trooping out of the place: tipsy women and men, shrieking,
+      jabbering, gesticulating, as French will do; parties swaggering,
+      staggering forwards, arm in arm, reeling to and fro across the street, and
+      yelling songs in chorus: hundreds of these were bound for the show, and we
+      thought ourselves lucky in finding a vehicle to the execution place, at
+      the Barrière d'Enfer. As we crossed the river and entered the Enfer
+      Street, crowds of students, black workmen, and more drunken devils from
+      more carnival balls, were filling it; and on the grand place there were
+      thousands of these assembled, looking out for Fiaschi and his cortège. We
+      waited and waited; but alas! no fun for us that morning: no
+      throat-cutting; no august spectacle of satisfied justice; and the eager
+      spectators were obliged to return, disappointed of their expected
+      breakfast of blood. It would have been a fine scene, that execution, could
+      it but have taken place in the midst of the mad mountebanks and tipsy
+      strumpets who had flocked so far to witness it, wishing to wind up the
+      delights of their carnival by a bonnebouche of a murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other attempt was equally unfortunate. We arrived too late on the
+      ground to be present at the execution of Lacenaire and his co-mate in
+      murder, Avril. But as we came to the ground (a gloomy round space, within
+      the barrier&mdash;three roads lead to it; and, outside, you see the
+      wine-shops and restaurateurs' of the barrier looking gay and inviting,)&mdash;as
+      we came to the ground, we only found, in the midst of it, a little pool of
+      ice, just partially tinged with red. Two or three idle street-boys were
+      dancing and stamping about this pool; and when I asked one of them whether
+      the execution had taken place, he began dancing more madly than ever, and
+      shrieked out with a loud fantastical, theatrical voice, &ldquo;Venez tous
+      Messieurs et Dames, voyez ici le sang du monstre Lacenaire, et de son
+      compagnon he traître Avril,&rdquo; or words to that effect; and straightway all
+      the other gamins screamed out the words in chorus, and took hands and
+      danced round the little puddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O august Justice, your meal was followed by a pretty appropriate grace!
+      Was any man, who saw the show, deterred, or frightened, or moralized in
+      any way? He had gratified his appetite for blood, and this was all. There
+      is something singularly pleasing, both in the amusement of
+      execution-seeing, and in the results. You are not only delightfully
+      excited at the time, but most pleasingly relaxed afterwards; the mind,
+      which has been wound up painfully until now, becomes quite complacent and
+      easy. There is something agreeable in the misfortunes of others, as the
+      philosopher has told us. Remark what a good breakfast you eat after an
+      execution; how pleasant it is to cut jokes after it, and upon it. This
+      merry, pleasant mood is brought on by the blood tonic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, for God's sake, if we are to enjoy this, let us do so in moderation;
+      and let us, at least, be sure of a man's guilt before we murder him. To
+      kill him, even with the full assurance that he is guilty is hazardous
+      enough. Who gave you the right to do so?&mdash;you, who cry out against
+      suicides, as impious and contrary to Christian law? What use is there in
+      killing him? You deter no one else from committing the crime by so doing:
+      you give us, to be sure, half an hour's pleasant entertainment; but it is
+      a great question whether we derive much moral profit from the sight. If
+      you want to keep a murderer from farther inroads upon society, are there
+      not plenty of hulks and prisons, God wot; treadmills, galleys, and houses
+      of correction? Above all, as in the case of Sebastian Peytel and his
+      family, there have been two deaths already; was a third death absolutely
+      necessary? and, taking the fallibility of judges and lawyers into his
+      heart, and remembering the thousand instances of unmerited punishment that
+      have been suffered, upon similar and stronger evidence before, can any man
+      declare, positively and upon his oath, that Peytel was guilty, and that
+      this was not THE THIRD MURDER IN THE FAMILY?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      FOUR IMITATIONS OF BÉRANGER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LE ROI D'YVETOT.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Il était un roi d'Yvetot,
+       Peu connu dans l'histoire;
+     Se levant tard, se couchant tôt,
+       Dormant fort bien sans gloire,
+     Et couronné par Jeanneton
+     D'un simple bonnet de coton,
+                  Dit-on.
+         Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah!
+         Quel bon petit roi c'était là!
+                  La, la.
+
+     Il fesait ses quatre repas
+       Dans son palais de chaume,
+     Et sur un âne, pas à pas,
+       Parcourait son royaume.
+     Joyeux, simple et croyant le bien,
+     Pour toute garde il n'avait rien
+                  Qu'un chien.
+         Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! &amp;c.
+                  La, la.
+
+     Il n'avait de goût onéreux
+       Qu'une soif un peu vive;
+     Mais, en rendant son peuple heureux,
+       Il faux bien qu'un roi vive.
+     Lui-même à table, et sans suppôt,
+     Sur chaque muid levait un pot
+                  D'impôt.
+         Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! &amp;c.
+                  La, la.
+
+     Aux filles de bonnes maisons
+       Comme il avait su plaire,
+     Ses sujets avaient cent raisons
+       De le nommer leur père:
+     D'ailleurs il ne levait de ban
+     Que pour tirer quatre fois l'an
+                  Au blanc.
+         Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! &amp;c.
+                  La, la.
+
+     Il n'agrandit point ses états,
+       Fut un voisin commode,
+     Et, modèle des potentats,
+       Prit le plaisir pour code.
+     Ce n'est que lorsqu'il expira,
+     Que le peuple qui l'enterra
+                  Pleura.
+         Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! &amp;c.
+                  La, la.
+
+     On conserve encor le portrait
+       De ce digne et bon prince;
+     C'est l'enseigne d'un cabaret
+       Fameux dans la province.
+     Les jours de fête, bien souvent,
+     La foule s'écrie en buvant
+                  Devant:
+         Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah!
+         Quel bon petit roi c'était là!
+                  La, la.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      THE KING OF YVETOT.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     There was a king of Yvetot,
+       Of whom renown hath little said,
+     Who let all thoughts of glory go,
+       And dawdled half his days a-bed;
+     And every night, as night came round,
+     By Jenny, with a nightcap crowned,
+                 Slept very sound:
+          Sing ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he!
+          That's the kind of king for me.
+
+     And every day it came to pass,
+       That four lusty meals made he;
+     And, step by step, upon an ass,
+       Rode abroad, his realms to see;
+     And wherever he did stir,
+     What think you was his escort, sir?
+                 Why, an old cur.
+          Sing ho, ho, ho! &amp;c.
+
+     If e'er he went into excess,
+       'Twas from a somewhat lively thirst;
+     But he who would his subjects bless,
+       Odd's fish!&mdash;must wet his whistle first;
+     And so from every cask they got,
+     Our king did to himself allot,
+                 At least a pot.
+          Sing ho, ho! &amp;c.
+
+     To all the ladies of the land,
+       A courteous king, and kind, was he;
+     The reason why you'll understand,
+       They named him Pater Patriae.
+     Each year he called his fighting men,
+     And marched a league from home, and then
+                 Marched back again.
+          Sing ho, ho! &amp;c.
+
+     Neither by force nor false pretence,
+       He sought to make his kingdom great,
+     And made (O princes, learn from hence),&mdash;
+       &ldquo;Live and let live,&rdquo; his rule of state.
+     'Twas only when he came to die,
+     That his people who stood by,
+                 Were known to cry.
+          Sing ho, ho! &amp;c.
+
+     The portrait of this best of kings
+       Is extant still, upon a sign
+     That on a village tavern swings,
+       Famed in the country for good wine.
+     The people in their Sunday trim,
+     Filling their glasses to the brim,
+                 Look up to him,
+          Singing ha, ha, ha! and he, he, he!
+          That's the sort of king for me.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE KING OF BRENTFORD. ANOTHER VERSION.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   There was a king in Brentford,&mdash;of whom no legends tell,
+   But who, without his glory,&mdash;could eat and sleep right well.
+   His Polly's cotton nightcap,&mdash;it was his crown of state,
+   He slept of evenings early,&mdash;and rose of mornings late.
+
+   All in a fine mud palace,&mdash;each day he took four meals,
+   And for a guard of honor,&mdash;a dog ran at his heels,
+   Sometimes, to view his kingdoms,&mdash;rode forth this monarch good,
+   And then a prancing jackass&mdash;he royally bestrode.
+
+   There were no costly habits&mdash;with which this king was curst,
+   Except (and where's the harm on't?)&mdash;a somewhat lively thirst;
+   But people must pay taxes,&mdash;and kings must have their sport,
+   So out of every gallon&mdash;His Grace he took a quart.
+
+   He pleased the ladies round him,&mdash;with manners soft and bland;
+   With reason good, they named him,&mdash;the father of his land.
+   Each year his mighty armies&mdash;marched forth in gallant show;
+   Their enemies were targets&mdash;their bullets they were tow.
+
+   He vexed no quiet neighbor,&mdash;no useless conquest made,
+   But by the laws of pleasure,&mdash;his peaceful realm he swayed.
+   And in the years he reigned,&mdash;through all this country wide,
+   There was no cause for weeping,&mdash;save when the good man died.
+
+   The faithful men of Brentford,&mdash;do still their king deplore,
+   His portrait yet is swinging,&mdash;beside an alehouse door.
+   And topers, tender-hearted,&mdash;regard his honest phiz,
+   And envy times departed&mdash;that knew a reign like his.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LE GRENIER.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Je viens revoir l'asile où ma jeunesse
+     De la misère a subi les leçons.
+     J'avais vingt ans, une folle maîtresse,
+     De francs amis et l'amour des chansons
+     Bravant le monde et les sots et les sages,
+     Sans avenir, riche de mon printemps,
+     Leste et joyeux je montais six étages.
+     Dans un grenier qu'on est bien à vingt ans!
+
+     C'est un grenier, point ne veux qu'on l'ignore.
+     Là fut mon lit, bien chétif et bien dur;
+     Là fut ma table; et je retrouve encore
+     Trois pieds d'un vers charbonnés sur le mur.
+     Apparaissez, plaisirs de mon bel âge,
+     Que d'un coup d'aile a fustigés le temps,
+     Vingt fois pour vous j'ai mis ma montre en gage.
+     Dans un grenier qu'on est bien à vingt ans!
+
+     Lisette ici doit surtout apparaître,
+     Vive, jolie, avec un frais chapeau;
+     Déjà sa main à l'étroite fenêtre
+     Suspend son schal, en guise de rideau.
+     Sa robe aussi va parer ma couchette;
+     Respecte, Amour, ses plis longs et flottans.
+     J'ai su depuis qui payait sa toilette.
+     Dans un grenier qu'on est bien à vingt ans!
+
+     A table un jour, jour de grande richesse,
+     De mes amis les voix brillaient en choeur,
+     Quand jusqu'ici monte un cri d'allégresse:
+     A Marengo Bonaparte est vainqueur.
+     Le canon gronde; un autre chant commence;
+     Nous célébrons tant de faits éclatans.
+     Les rois jamais n'envahiront la France.
+     Dans un grenier qu'on est bien à vingt ans!
+
+     Quittons ce toit où ma raison s'enivre.
+     Oh! qu'ils sont loin ces jours si regrettés!
+     J'échangerais ce qu'il me reste à vivre
+     Contre un des mois qu'ici Dieu m'a comptés,
+     Pour rêver gloire, amour, plaisir, folie,
+     Pour dépenser sa vie en peu d'instans,
+     D'un long espoir pour la voir embellie,
+     Dans un grenier qu'on est bien à vingt ans!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE GARRET.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     With pensive eyes the little room I view,
+       Where, in my youth, I weathered it so long;
+     With a wild mistress, a stanch friend or two,
+       And a light heart still breaking into song:
+     Making a mock of life, and all its cares,
+       Rich in the glory of my rising sun,
+     Lightly I vaulted up four pair of stairs,
+       In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
+
+     Yes; 'tis a garret&mdash;let him know't who will&mdash;
+       There was my bed&mdash;full hard it was and small.
+     My table there&mdash;and I decipher still
+       Half a lame couplet charcoaled on the wall.
+     Ye joys, that Time hath swept with him away,
+       Come to mine eyes, ye dreams of love and fun;
+     For you I pawned my watch how many a day,
+       In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
+
+     And see my little Jessy, first of all;
+       She comes with pouting lips and sparkling eyes:
+     Behold, how roguishly she pins her shawl
+       Across the narrow casement, curtain-wise;
+     Now by the bed her petticoat glides down,
+       And when did woman look the worse in none?
+     I have heard since who paid for many a gown,
+       In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
+
+     One jolly evening, when my friends and I
+       Made happy music with our songs and cheers,
+     A shout of triumph mounted up thus high,
+       And distant cannon opened on our ears:
+     We rise,&mdash;we join in the triumphant strain,&mdash;
+       Napoleon conquers&mdash;Austerlitz is won&mdash;
+     Tyrants shall never tread us down again,
+       In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
+
+     Let us begone&mdash;the place is sad and strange&mdash;
+       How far, far off, these happy times appear;
+     All that I have to live I'd gladly change
+       For one such month as I have wasted here&mdash;
+     To draw long dreams of beauty, love, and power,
+       From founts of hope that never will outrun,
+     And drink all life's quintessence in an hour,
+       Give me the days when I was twenty-one!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ROGER-BONTEMPS.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Aux gens atrabilaires
+     Pour exemple donné,
+     En un temps de misères
+     Roger-Bontemps est né.
+     Vivre obscur à sa guise,
+     Narguer les mécontens:
+     Eh gai! c'est la devise
+     Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+     Du chapeau de son père
+     Coîffé dans le grands jours,
+     De roses ou de lierre
+     Le rajeunir toujours;
+     Mettre un manteau de bure,
+     Vieil ami de vingt ans;
+     Eh gai! c'est la parure
+     Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+     Posséder dans sa hutte
+     Une table, un vieux lit,
+     Des cartes, une flûte,
+     Un broc que Dieu remplit;
+     Un portrait de maîtresse,
+     Un coffre et rien dedans;
+     Eh gai! c'est la richesse
+     Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+     Aux enfans de la ville
+     Montrer de petits jeux;
+     Etre fesseur habile
+     De contes graveleux;
+     Ne parler que de danse
+     Et d'almanachs chantans;
+     Eh gai! c'est la science
+     Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+     Faute de vins d'élite,
+     Sabler ceux du canton:
+     Préférer Marguerite
+     Aux dames du grand ton:
+     De joie et de tendresse
+     Remplir tous ses instans;
+     Eh gai! c'est la sagesse
+     Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+     Dire au ciel: Je me fie,
+     Mon père, à ta bonté;
+     De ma philosophie
+     Pardonne le gaîté
+     Que ma saison dernière
+     Soit encore un printemps;
+     Eh gai! c'est la prière
+     Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+     Vous, pauvres pleins d'envie,
+     Vous, riches désireux,
+     Vous, dont le char dévie
+     Après un cours heureux;
+     Vous, qui perdrez peut-être
+     Des titres éclatans,
+     Eh gai! prenez pour maître
+     Le gros Roger Bontemps.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      JOLLY JACK.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     When fierce political debate
+       Throughout the isle was storming,
+     And Rads attacked the throne and state,
+       And Tories the reforming,
+     To calm the furious rage of each,
+       And right the land demented,
+     Heaven sent us Jolly Jack, to teach
+      The way to be contented.
+
+     Jack's bed was straw, 'twas warm and soft,
+       His chair, a three-legged stool;
+     His broken jug was emptied oft,
+       Yet, somehow, always full.
+     His mistress' portrait decked the wall,
+       His mirror had a crack;
+     Yet, gay and glad, though this was all
+       His wealth, lived Jolly Jack.
+
+     To give advice to avarice,
+       Teach pride its mean condition,
+     And preach good sense to dull pretence,
+       Was honest Jack's high mission.
+     Our simple statesman found his rule
+       Of moral in the flagon,
+     And held his philosophic school
+       Beneath the &ldquo;George and Dragon.&rdquo;
+
+     When village Solons cursed the Lords,
+       And called the malt-tax sinful,
+     Jack heeded not their angry words,
+       But smiled and drank his skinful.
+     And when men wasted health and life,
+       In search of rank and riches,
+     Jack marked, aloof, the paltry strife,
+       And wore his threadbare breeches.
+
+     &ldquo;I enter not the church,&rdquo; he said,
+       &ldquo;But I'll not seek to rob it;&rdquo;
+      So worthy Jack Joe Miller read,
+       While others studied Cobbett.
+     His talk it was of feast and fun;
+       His guide the Almanack;
+     From youth to age thus gayly run
+       The life of Jolly Jack.
+
+     And when Jack prayed, as oft he would,
+       He humbly thanked his Maker;
+     &ldquo;I am,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;O Father good!
+       Nor Catholic nor Quaker:
+     Give each his creed, let each proclaim
+       His catalogue of curses;
+     I trust in Thee, and not in them,
+       In Thee, and in Thy mercies!
+
+     &ldquo;Forgive me if, midst all Thy works,
+       No hint I see of damning;
+     And think there's faith among the Turks,
+       And hope for e'en the Brahmin.
+     Harmless my mind is, and my mirth,
+       And kindly is my laughter:
+     I cannot see the smiling earth,
+       And think there's hell hereafter.&rdquo;
+
+     Jack died; he left no legacy,
+       Save that his story teaches:&mdash;
+     Content to peevish poverty;
+       Humility to riches.
+     Ye scornful great, ye envious small,
+       Come follow in his track;
+     We all were happier, if we all
+       Would copy JOLLY JACK.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      FRENCH DRAMAS AND MELODRAMAS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There are three kinds of drama in France, which you may subdivide as much
+      as you please.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is the old classical drama, wellnigh dead, and full time too: old
+      tragedies, in which half a dozen characters appear, and spout sonorous
+      Alexandrines for half a dozen hours. The fair Rachel has been trying to
+      revive this genre, and to untomb Racine; but be not alarmed, Racine will
+      never come to life again, and cause audiences to weep as of yore. Madame
+      Rachel can only galvanize the corpse, not revivify it. Ancient French
+      tragedy, red-heeled, patched, and be-periwigged, lies in the grave; and it
+      is only the ghost of it that we see, which the fair Jewess has raised.
+      There are classical comedies in verse, too, wherein the knavish valets,
+      rakish heroes, stolid old guardians, and smart, free-spoken serving-women,
+      discourse in Alexandrines, as loud as the Horaces or the Cid. An
+      Englishman will seldom reconcile himself to the roulement of the verses,
+      and the painful recurrence of the rhymes; for my part, I had rather go to
+      Madame Saqui's or see Deburau dancing on a rope: his lines are quite as
+      natural and poetical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there is the comedy of the day, of which Monsieur Scribe is the
+      father. Good heavens! with what a number of gay colonels, smart widows,
+      and silly husbands has that gentleman peopled the play-books. How that
+      unfortunate seventh commandment has been maltreated by him and his
+      disciples. You will see four pieces, at the Gymnase, of a night; and so
+      sure as you see them, four husbands shall be wickedly used. When is this
+      joke to cease? Mon Dieu! Play-writers have handled it for about two
+      thousand years, and the public, like a great baby, must have the tale
+      repeated to it over and over again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally, there is the Drama, that great monster which has sprung into life
+      of late years; and which is said, but I don't believe a word of it, to
+      have Shakspeare for a father. If Monsieur Scribe's plays may be said to be
+      so many ingenious examples how to break one commandment, the drame is a
+      grand and general chaos of them all; nay, several crimes are added, not
+      prohibited in the Decalogue, which was written before dramas were. Of the
+      drama, Victor Hugo and Dumas are the well-known and respectable guardians.
+      Every piece Victor Hugo has written, since &ldquo;Hernani,&rdquo; has contained a
+      monster&mdash;a delightful monster, saved by one virtue. There is
+      Triboulet, a foolish monster; Lucrèce Borgia, a maternal monster; Mary
+      Tudor, a religious monster; Monsieur Quasimodo, a humpback monster; and
+      others, that might be named, whose monstrosities we are induced to pardon&mdash;nay,
+      admiringly to witness&mdash;because they are agreeably mingled with some
+      exquisite display of affection. And, as the great Hugo has one monster to
+      each play, the great Dumas has, ordinarily, half a dozen, to whom murder
+      is nothing; common intrigue, and simple breakage of the before-mentioned
+      commandment, nothing; but who live and move in a vast, delightful
+      complication of crime, that cannot be easily conceived in England, much
+      less described.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I think over the number of crimes that I have seen Mademoiselle
+      Georges, for instance, commit, I am filled with wonder at her greatness,
+      and the greatness of the poets who have conceived these charming horrors
+      for her. I have seen her make love to, and murder, her sons, in the &ldquo;Tour
+      de Nesle.&rdquo; I have seen her poison a company of no less than nine
+      gentlemen, at Ferrara, with an affectionate son in the number; I have seen
+      her, as Madame de Brinvilliers, kill off numbers of respectable relations
+      in the first four acts; and, at the last, be actually burned at the stake,
+      to which she comes shuddering, ghastly, barefooted, and in a white sheet.
+      Sweet excitement of tender sympathies! Such tragedies are not so good as a
+      real, downright execution; but, in point of interest, the next thing to
+      it: with what a number of moral emotions do they fill the breast; with
+      what a hatred for vice, and yet a true pity and respect for that grain of
+      virtue that is to be found in us all: our bloody, daughter-loving
+      Brinvilliers; our warmhearted, poisonous Lucretia Borgia; above all, what
+      a smart appetite for a cool supper afterwards, at the Café Anglais, when
+      the horrors of the play act as a piquant sauce to the supper!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Or, to speak more seriously, and to come, at last, to the point. After
+      having seen most of the grand dramas which have been produced at Paris for
+      the last half-dozen years, and thinking over all that one has seen,&mdash;the
+      fictitious murders, rapes, adulteries, and other crimes, by which one has
+      been interested and excited,&mdash;a man may take leave to be heartily
+      ashamed of the manner in which he has spent his time; and of the hideous
+      kind of mental intoxication in which he has permitted himself to indulge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor are simple society outrages the only sort of crime in which the
+      spectator of Paris plays has permitted himself to indulge; he has
+      recreated himself with a deal of blasphemy besides, and has passed many
+      pleasant evenings in beholding religion defiled and ridiculed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Allusion has been made, in a former paper, to a fashion that lately
+      obtained in France, and which went by the name of Catholic reaction; and
+      as, in this happy country, fashion is everything, we have had not merely
+      Catholic pictures and quasi religious books, but a number of Catholic
+      plays have been produced, very edifying to the frequenters of the theatres
+      or the Boulevards, who have learned more about religion from these
+      performances than they have acquired, no doubt, in the whole of their
+      lives before. In the course of a very few years we have seen&mdash;&ldquo;The
+      Wandering Jew;&rdquo; &ldquo;Belshazzar's Feast;&rdquo; &ldquo;Nebuchadnezzar:&rdquo; and the &ldquo;Massacre
+      of the Innocents;&rdquo; &ldquo;Joseph and his Brethren;&rdquo; &ldquo;The Passage of the Red
+      Sea;&rdquo; and &ldquo;The Deluge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The great Dumas, like Madame Sand before mentioned, has brought a vast
+      quantity of religion before the foot-lights. There was his famous tragedy
+      of &ldquo;Caligula,&rdquo; which, be it spoken to the shame of the Paris critics, was
+      coldly received; nay, actually hissed, by them. And why? Because, says
+      Dumas, it contained a great deal too much piety for the rogues. The
+      public, he says, was much more religious, and understood him at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As for the critics,&rdquo; says he, nobly, &ldquo;let those who cried out against the
+      immorality of Antony and Marguérite de Bourgogne, reproach me for THE
+      CHASTITY OF MESSALINA.&rdquo; (This dear creature is the heroine of the play of
+      &ldquo;Caligula.&rdquo;) &ldquo;It matters little to me. These people have but seen the form
+      of my work: they have walked round the tent, but have not seen the arch
+      which it covered; they have examined the vases and candles of the altar,
+      but have not opened the tabernacle!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The public alone has, instinctively, comprehended that there was, beneath
+      this outward sign, an inward and mysterious grace: it followed the action
+      of the piece in all its serpentine windings; it listened for four hours,
+      with pious attention (avec recueillement et religion), to the sound of
+      this rolling river of thoughts, which may have appeared to it new and
+      bold, perhaps, but chaste and grave; and it retired, with its head on its
+      breast, like a man who had just perceived, in a dream, the solution of a
+      problem which he has long and vainly sought in his waking hours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      You see that not only Saint Sand is an apostle, in her way; but Saint
+      Dumas is another. We have people in England who write for bread, like
+      Dumas and Sand, and are paid so much for their line; but they don't set up
+      for prophets. Mrs. Trollope has never declared that her novels are
+      inspired by heaven; Mr. Buckstone has written a great number of farces,
+      and never talked about the altar and the tabernacle. Even Sir Edward
+      Bulwer (who, on a similar occasion, when the critics found fault with a
+      play of his, answered them by a pretty decent declaration of his own
+      merits,) never ventured to say that he had received a divine mission, and
+      was uttering five-act revelations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All things considered, the tragedy of &ldquo;Caligula&rdquo; is a decent tragedy; as
+      decent as the decent characters of the hero and heroine can allow it to
+      be; it may be almost said, provokingly decent: but this, it must be
+      remembered, is the characteristic of the modern French school (nay, of the
+      English school too); and if the writer take the character of a remarkable
+      scoundrel, it is ten to one but he turns out an amiable fellow, in whom we
+      have all the warmest sympathy. &ldquo;Caligula&rdquo; is killed at the end of the
+      performance; Messalina is comparatively well-behaved; and the sacred part
+      of the performance, the tabernacle-characters apart from the mere &ldquo;vase&rdquo;
+       and &ldquo;candlestick&rdquo; personages, may be said to be depicted in the person of
+      a Christian convert, Stella, who has had the good fortune to be converted
+      by no less a person than Mary Magdalene, when she, Stella, was staying on
+      a visit to her aunt, near Narbonne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STELLA (Continuant.) Voilà Que je vois s'avancer, sans pilote et sans
+      rames, Une barque portant deux hommes et deux femmes, Et, spectacle inouï
+      qui me ravit encor, Tous quatre avaient au front une auréole d'or D'où
+      partaient des rayons de si vive lumière Que je fus obligée à baisser la
+      paupière; Et, lorsque je rouvris les yeux avec effroi, Les voyageurs
+      divins étaient auprès de moi. Un jour de chacun d'eux et dans toute sa
+      gloire Je te raconterai la marveilleuse histoire, Et tu l'adoreras,
+      j'espère; en ce moment, Ma mère, il te suffit de savoir seulement Que tous
+      quatre venaient du fond de la Syrie: Un édit les avait bannis de leur
+      patrie, Et, se faisant bourreaux, des hommes irrités, Sans avirons, sans
+      eau, sans pain et garrotés, Sur une frêle barque échouée au rivage, Les
+      avaient à la mer poussés dans un orage. Mais à peine l'esquif eut-il
+      touché les flots Qu'au cantique chanté par les saints matelots, L'ouragan
+      replia ses ailes frémissantes, Que la mer aplanit ses vagues mugissantes,
+      Et qu'un soleil plus pur, reparaissant aux cieux, Enveloppa l'esquif d'un
+      cercle radieux!...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      JUNIA.&mdash;Mais c'était un prodige.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STELLA.&mdash; Un miracle, ma mère! Leurs fers tombèrent seuls, l'eau
+      cessa d'être amère, Et deux fois chaque jour le bateau fut couvert D'une
+      manne pareille à celle du désert: C'est ainsi que, poussés par une main
+      céleste, Je les vis aborder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      JUNIA.&mdash; Oh! dis vîte le reste!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STELLA.&mdash;A l'aube, trois d'entre eux quittèrent la maison: Marthe
+      prit le chemin qui mène à Tarascon, Lazare et Maximin celui de Massilie,
+      Et celle qui resta.... C'ETAIT LA PLUS JOLIE, (how truly French!) Nous
+      faisant appeler vers le milieu du jour, Demanda si les monts ou les bois
+      d'alentour Cachaient quelque retraite inconnue et profonde, Qui la pût
+      séparer à tout jamais du monde..... Aquila se souvint qu'il avait pénétré
+      Dans un antre sauvage et de tous ignoré, Grotte creusée aux flancs de ces
+      Alpes sublimes, Ou l'aigle fait son aire au-dessus des abîmes. Il offrit
+      cet asile, et dès le lendemain Tous deux, pour l'y guider, nous étions en
+      chemin. Le soir du second jour nous touchâmes sa base: Là, tombant à
+      genoux dans une sainte extase, Elle pria long-temps, puis vers l'antre
+      inconnu, Dénouant se chaussure, elle marcha pied nu. Nos prières, nos cris
+      restèrent sans réponses: Au milieu des cailloux, des épines, des ronces,
+      Nous la vîmes monter, un bâton à la main, Et ce n'est qu'arrivée au terme
+      du chemin, Qu'enfin elle tomba sans force et sans haleine....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      JUNIA.&mdash;Comment la nommait-on, ma fille?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      STELLA.&mdash; Madeleine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Walking, says Stella, by the sea-shore, &ldquo;A bark drew near, that had nor
+      sail nor oar; two women and two men the vessel bore: each of that crew,
+      'twas wondrous to behold, wore round his head a ring of blazing gold; from
+      which such radiance glittered all around, that I was fain to look towards
+      the ground. And when once more I raised my frightened eyne, before me
+      stood the travellers divine; their rank, the glorious lot that each
+      befell, at better season, mother, will I tell. Of this anon: the time will
+      come when thou shalt learn to worship as I worship now. Suffice it, that
+      from Syria's land they came; an edict from their country banished them.
+      Fierce, angry men had seized upon the four, and launched them in that
+      vessel from the shore. They launched these victims on the waters rude; nor
+      rudder gave to steer, nor bread for food. As the doomed vessel cleaves the
+      stormy main, that pious crew uplifts a sacred strain; the angry waves are
+      silent as it sings; the storm, awe-stricken, folds its quivering wings. A
+      purer sun appears the heavens to light, and wraps the little bark in
+      radiance bright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;JUNIA.&mdash;Sure, 'twas a prodigy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;STELLA.&mdash;A miracle. Spontaneous from their hands the fetters fell.
+      The salt sea-wave grew fresh, and, twice a day, manna (like that which on
+      the desert lay) covered the bark and fed them on their way. Thus, hither
+      led, at heaven's divine behest, I saw them land&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;JUNIA.&mdash;My daughter, tell the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;STELLA.&mdash;Three of the four, our mansion left at dawn. One, Martha,
+      took the road to Tarascon; Lazarus and Maximin to Massily; but one
+      remained (the fairest of the three), who asked us, if i' the woods or
+      mountains near, there chanced to be some cavern lone and drear; where she
+      might hide, for ever, from all men. It chanced, my cousin knew of such a
+      den; deep hidden in a mountain's hoary breast, on which the eagle builds
+      his airy nest. And thither offered he the saint to guide. Next day upon
+      the journey forth we hied; and came, at the second eve, with weary pace,
+      unto the lonely mountain's rugged base. Here the worn traveller, falling
+      on her knee, did pray awhile in sacred ecstasy; and, drawing off her
+      sandals from her feet, marched, naked, towards that desolate retreat. No
+      answer made she to our cries or groans; but walking midst the prickles and
+      rude stones, a staff in hand, we saw her upwards toil; nor ever did she
+      pause, nor rest the while, save at the entry of that savage den. Here,
+      powerless and panting, fell she then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;JUNIA.&mdash;What was her name, my daughter?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;STELLA. MAGDALEN.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the translator must pause&mdash;having no inclination to enter &ldquo;the
+      tabernacle,&rdquo; in company with such a spotless high-priest as Monsieur
+      Dumas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Something &ldquo;tabernacular&rdquo; may be found in Dumas's famous piece of &ldquo;Don Juan
+      de Marana.&rdquo; The poet has laid the scene of his play in a vast number of
+      places: in heaven (where we have the Virgin Mary and little angels, in
+      blue, swinging censers before her!)&mdash;on earth, under the earth, and
+      in a place still lower, but not mentionable to ears polite; and the plot,
+      as it appears from a dialogue between a good and a bad angel, with which
+      the play commences, turns upon a contest between these two worthies for
+      the possession of the soul of a member of the family of Marana.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don Juan de Marana&rdquo; not only resembles his namesake, celebrated by Mozart
+      and Molière, in his peculiar successes among the ladies, but possesses
+      further qualities which render his character eminently fitting for stage
+      representation: he unites the virtues of Lovelace and Lacenaire; he
+      blasphemes upon all occasions; he murders, at the slightest provocation,
+      and without the most trifling remorse; he overcomes ladies of rigid
+      virtue, ladies of easy virtue, and ladies of no virtue at all; and the
+      poet, inspired by the contemplation of such a character, has depicted his
+      hero's adventures and conversation with wonderful feeling and truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first act of the play contains a half-dozen of murders and intrigues;
+      which would have sufficed humbler genius than M. Dumas's, for the
+      completion of, at least, half a dozen tragedies. In the second act our
+      hero flogs his elder brother, and runs away with his sister-in-law; in the
+      third, he fights a duel with a rival, and kills him: whereupon the
+      mistress of his victim takes poison, and dies, in great agonies, on the
+      stage. In the fourth act, Don Juan, having entered a church for the
+      purpose of carrying off a nun, with whom he is in love, is seized by the
+      statue of one of the ladies whom he has previously victimized, and made to
+      behold the ghosts of all those unfortunate persons whose deaths he has
+      caused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is a most edifying spectacle. The ghosts rise solemnly, each in a
+      white sheet, preceded by a wax-candle; and, having declared their names
+      and qualities, call, in chorus, for vengeance upon Don Juan, as thus:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DON SANDOVAL loquitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am Don Sandoval d'Ojedo. I played against Don Juan my fortune, the tomb
+      of my fathers, and the heart of my mistress;&mdash;I lost all: I played
+      against him my life, and I lost it. Vengeance against the murderer!
+      vengeance!&rdquo;&mdash;(The candle goes out.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE CANDLE GOES OUT, and an angel descends&mdash;a flaming sword in his
+      hand&mdash;and asks: &ldquo;Is there no voice in favor of Don Juan?&rdquo; when lo!
+      Don Juan's father (like one of those ingenious toys called
+      &ldquo;Jack-in-the-box,&rdquo;) jumps up from his coffin, and demands grace for his
+      son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Martha the nun returns, having prepared all things for her elopement,
+      she finds Don Juan fainting upon the ground.&mdash;&ldquo;I am no longer your
+      husband,&rdquo; says he, upon coming to himself; &ldquo;I am no longer Don Juan; I am
+      Brother Juan the Trappist. Sister Martha, recollect that you must die!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a most cruel blow upon Sister Martha, who is no less a person
+      than an angel, an angel in disguise&mdash;the good spirit of the house of
+      Marana, who has gone to the length of losing her wings and forfeiting her
+      place in heaven, in order to keep company with Don Juan on earth, and, if
+      possible, to convert him. Already, in her angelic character, she had
+      exhorted him to repentance, but in vain; for, while she stood at one
+      elbow, pouring not merely hints, but long sermons, into his ear, at the
+      other elbow stood a bad spirit, grinning and sneering at all her pious
+      counsels, and obtaining by far the greater share of the Don's attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite, however, of the utter contempt with which Don Juan treats her,&mdash;in
+      spite of his dissolute courses, which must shock her virtue,&mdash;and his
+      impolite neglect, which must wound her vanity, the poor creature (who,
+      from having been accustomed to better company, might have been presumed to
+      have had better taste), the unfortunate angel feels a certain inclination
+      for the Don, and actually flies up to heaven to ask permission to remain
+      with him on earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when the curtain draws up, to the sound of harps, and discovers
+      white-robed angels walking in the clouds, we find the angel of Marana upon
+      her knees, uttering the following address:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LE BON ANGE.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Vierge, à qui le calice à la liqueur amère
+           Fut si souvent offert,
+     Mère, que l'on nomma la douloureuse mère,
+           Tant vous avez souffert!
+
+     Vous, dont les yeux divins sur la terre des hommes
+           Ont versé plus de pleurs
+     Que vos pieds n'ont depuis, dans le ciel où nous sommes,
+           Fait éclore de fleurs.
+
+     Vase d'élection, étoile matinale,
+          Miroir de pureté,
+     Vous qui priez pour nous, d'une voix virginale,
+          La suprême bonté;
+
+     A mon tour, aujourd'hui, bienheureuse Marie,
+          Je tombe à vos genoux;
+     Daignez donc m'écouter, car c'est vous que je prie,
+          Vous qui priez pour nous.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Which may be thus interpreted:&mdash;
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     O Virgin blest! by whom the bitter draught
+          So often has been quaffed,
+     That, for thy sorrow, thou art named by us
+          The Mother Dolorous!
+
+     Thou, from whose eyes have fallen more tears of woe,
+          Upon the earth below,
+     Than 'neath thy footsteps, in this heaven of ours,
+          Have risen flowers!
+
+     O beaming morning star! O chosen vase!
+          O mirror of all grace!
+     Who, with thy virgin voice, dost ever pray
+          Man's sins away;
+
+     Bend down thine ear, and list, O blessed saint!
+          Unto my sad complaint;
+     Mother! to thee I kneel, on thee I call,
+          Who hearest all.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      She proceeds to request that she may be allowed to return to earth, and
+      follow the fortunes of Don Juan; and, as there is one difficulty, or, to
+      use her own words,&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    Mais, comme vous savez qu'aux voûtes éternelles,
+         Malgré moi, tend mon vol,
+    Soufflez sur mon étoile et détachez mes ailes,
+         Pour m'enchainer au sol;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      her request is granted, her star is BLOWN OUT (O poetic allusion!) and she
+      descends to earth to love, and to go mad, and to die for Don Juan!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reader will require no further explanation, in order to be satisfied
+      as to the moral of this play: but is it not a very bitter satire upon the
+      country, which calls itself the politest nation in the world, that the
+      incidents, the indecency, the coarse blasphemy, and the vulgar wit of this
+      piece, should find admirers among the public, and procure reputation for
+      the author? Could not the Government, which has re-established, in a
+      manner, the theatrical censorship, and forbids or alters plays which touch
+      on politics, exert the same guardianship over public morals? The honest
+      English reader, who has a faith in his clergyman, and is a regular
+      attendant at Sunday worship, will not be a little surprised at the march
+      of intellect among our neighbors across the Channel, and at the kind of
+      consideration in which they hold their religion. Here is a man who seizes
+      upon saints and angels, merely to put sentiments in their mouths which
+      might suit a nymph of Drury Lane. He shows heaven, in order that he may
+      carry debauch into it; and avails himself of the most sacred and sublime
+      parts of our creed as a vehicle for a scene-painter's skill, or an
+      occasion for a handsome actress to wear a new dress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      M. Dumas's piece of &ldquo;Kean&rdquo; is not quite so sublime; it was brought out by
+      the author as a satire upon the French critics, who, to their credit be it
+      spoken, had generally attacked him, and was intended by him, and received
+      by the public, as a faithful portraiture of English manners. As such, it
+      merits special observation and praise. In the first act you find a
+      Countess and an Ambassadress, whose conversation relates purely to the
+      great actor. All the ladies in London are in love with him, especially the
+      two present. As for the Ambassadress, she prefers him to her husband (a
+      matter of course in all French plays), and to a more seducing person still&mdash;no
+      less a person than the Prince of Wales! who presently waits on the ladies,
+      and joins in their conversation concerning Kean. &ldquo;This man,&rdquo; says his
+      Royal Highness, &ldquo;is the very pink of fashion. Brummell is nobody when
+      compared to him; and I myself only an insignificant private gentleman. He
+      has a reputation among ladies, for which I sigh in vain; and spends an
+      income twice as great as mine.&rdquo; This admirable historic touch at once
+      paints the actor and the Prince; the estimation in which the one was held,
+      and the modest economy for which the other was so notorious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then we have Kean, at a place called the Trou de Charbon, the &ldquo;Coal Hole,&rdquo;
+       where, to the edification of the public, he engages in a fisty combat with
+      a notorious boxer. This scene was received by the audience with loud
+      exclamations of delight, and commented on, by the journals, as a faultless
+      picture of English manners. &ldquo;The Coal Hole&rdquo; being on the banks of the
+      Thames, a nobleman&mdash;LORD MELBOURN!&mdash;has chosen the tavern as a
+      rendezvous for a gang of pirates, who are to have their ship in waiting,
+      in order to carry off a young lady with whom his lordship is enamored. It
+      need not be said that Kean arrives at the nick of time, saves the innocent
+      Meess Anna, and exposes the infamy of the Peer. A violent tirade against
+      noblemen ensues, and Lord Melbourn slinks away, disappointed, to meditate
+      revenge. Kean's triumphs continue through all the acts: the Ambassadress
+      falls madly in love with him; the Prince becomes furious at his ill
+      success, and the Ambassador dreadfully jealous. They pursue Kean to his
+      dressing-room at the theatre; where, unluckily, the Ambassadress herself
+      has taken refuge. Dreadful quarrels ensue; the tragedian grows suddenly
+      mad upon the stage, and so cruelly insults the Prince of Wales that his
+      Royal Highness determines to send HIM TO BOTANY BAY. His sentence,
+      however, is commuted to banishment to New York; whither, of course, Miss
+      Anna accompanies him; rewarding him, previously, with her hand and twenty
+      thousand a year!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This wonderful performance was gravely received and admired by the people
+      of Paris: the piece was considered to be decidedly moral, because the
+      popular candidate was made to triumph throughout, and to triumph in the
+      most virtuous manner; for, according to the French code of morals, success
+      among women is, at once, the proof and the reward of virtue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sacred personage introduced in Dumas's play behind a cloud, figures
+      bodily in the piece of the Massacre of the Innocents, represented at Paris
+      last year. She appears under a different name, but the costume is exactly
+      that of Carlo Dolce's Madonna; and an ingenious fable is arranged, the
+      interest of which hangs upon the grand Massacre of the Innocents,
+      perpetrated in the fifth act. One of the chief characters is Jean le
+      Précurseur, who threatens woe to Herod and his race, and is beheaded by
+      orders of that sovereign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the Festin de Balthazar, we are similarly introduced to Daniel, and the
+      first scene is laid by the waters of Babylon, where a certain number of
+      captive Jews are seated in melancholy postures; a Babylonian officer
+      enters, exclaiming, &ldquo;Chantez nous quelques chansons de Jerusalem,&rdquo; and the
+      request is refused in the language of the Psalm. Belshazzar's Feast is
+      given in a grand tableau, after Martin's picture. That painter, in like
+      manner, furnished scenes for the Deluge. Vast numbers of schoolboys and
+      children are brought to see these pieces; the lower classes delight in
+      them. The famous Juif Errant, at the theatre of the Porte St. Martin, was
+      the first of the kind, and its prodigious success, no doubt, occasioned
+      the number of imitations which the other theatres have produced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The taste of such exhibitions, of course, every English person will
+      question; but we must remember the manners of the people among whom they
+      are popular; and, if I may be allowed to hazard such an opinion, there is
+      in every one of these Boulevard mysteries, a kind of rude moral. The
+      Boulevard writers don't pretend to &ldquo;tabernacles&rdquo; and divine gifts, like
+      Madame Sand and Dumas before mentioned. If they take a story from the
+      sacred books, they garble it without mercy, and take sad liberties with
+      the text; but they do not deal in descriptions of the agreeably wicked, or
+      ask pity and admiration for tender-hearted criminals and philanthropic
+      murderers, as their betters do. Vice is vice on the Boulevard; and it is
+      fine to hear the audience, as a tyrant king roars out cruel sentences of
+      death, or a bereaved mother pleads for the life of her child, making their
+      remarks on the circumstances of the scene. &ldquo;Ah, le gredin!&rdquo; growls an
+      indignant countryman. &ldquo;Quel monstre!&rdquo; says a grisette, in a fury. You see
+      very fat old men crying like babies, and, like babies, sucking enormous
+      sticks of barley-sugar. Actors and audience enter warmly into the illusion
+      of the piece; and so especially are the former affected, that at
+      Franconi's, where the battles of the Empire are represented, there is as
+      regular gradation in the ranks of the mimic army as in the real imperial
+      legions. After a man has served, with credit, for a certain number of
+      years in the line, he is promoted to be an officer&mdash;an acting
+      officer. If he conducts himself well, he may rise to be a Colonel or a
+      General of Division; if ill, he is degraded to the ranks again; or, worst
+      degradation of all, drafted into a regiment of Cossacks or Austrians.
+      Cossacks is the lowest depth, however; nay, it is said that the men who
+      perform these Cossack parts receive higher wages than the mimic grenadiers
+      and old guard. They will not consent to be beaten every night, even in
+      play; to be pursued in hundreds, by a handful of French; to fight against
+      their beloved Emperor. Surely there is fine hearty virtue in this, and
+      pleasant child-like simplicity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So that while the drama of Victor Hugo, Dumas, and the enlightened
+      classes, is profoundly immoral and absurd, the DRAMA of the common people
+      is absurd, if you will, but good and right-hearted. I have made notes of
+      one or two of these pieces, which all have good feeling and kindness in
+      them, and which turn, as the reader will see, upon one or two favorite
+      points of popular morality. A drama that obtained a vast success at the
+      Porte Saint Martin was &ldquo;La Duchesse de la Vauballière.&rdquo; The Duchess is the
+      daughter of a poor farmer, who was carried off in the first place, and
+      then married by M. le Duc de la Vauballière, a terrible roué, the farmer's
+      landlord, and the intimate friend of Philippe d'Orléans, the Regent of
+      France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the Duke, in running away with the lady, intended to dispense
+      altogether with ceremony, and make of Julie anything but his wife; but
+      Georges, her father, and one Morisseau, a notary, discovered him in his
+      dastardly act, and pursued him to the very feet of the Regent, who
+      compelled the pair to marry and make it up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julie complies; but though she becomes a Duchess, her heart remains
+      faithful to her old flame, Adrian, the doctor; and she declares that,
+      beyond the ceremony, no sort of intimacy shall take place between her
+      husband and herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the Duke begins to treat her in the most ungentleman-like manner: he
+      abuses her in every possible way; he introduces improper characters into
+      her house; and, finally, becomes so disgusted with her, that he determines
+      to make away with her altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For this purpose, he sends forth into the highways and seizes a doctor,
+      bidding him, on pain of death, to write a poisonous prescription for
+      Madame la Duchesse. She swallows the potion; and O horror! the doctor
+      turns out to be Dr. Adrian; whose woe may be imagined, upon finding that
+      he has been thus committing murder on his true love!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let not the reader, however, be alarmed as to the fate of the heroine; no
+      heroine of a tragedy ever yet died in the third act; and, accordingly, the
+      Duchess gets up perfectly well again in the fourth, through the
+      instrumentality of Morisseau, the good lawyer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now it is that vice begins to be really punished. The Duke, who, after
+      killing his wife, thinks it necessary to retreat, and take refuge in
+      Spain, is tracked to the borders of that country by the virtuous notary,
+      and there receives such a lesson as he will never forget to his dying day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Morisseau, in the first instance, produces a deed (signed by his Holiness
+      the Pope), which annuls the marriage of the Duke de la Vauballière; then
+      another deed, by which it is proved that he was not the eldest son of old
+      La Vauballière, the former Duke; then another deed, by which he shows that
+      old La Vauballière (who seems to have been a disreputable old fellow) was
+      a bigamist, and that, in consequence, the present man, styling himself
+      Duke, is illegitimate; and finally, Morisseau brings forward another
+      document, which proves that the REG'LAR Duke is no other than Adrian, the
+      doctor!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus it is that love, law, and physic combined, triumph over the horrid
+      machinations of this star-and-gartered libertine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hermann l'Ivrogne&rdquo; is another piece of the same order; and though not
+      very refined, yet possesses considerable merit. As in the case of the
+      celebrated Captain Smith of Halifax, who &ldquo;took to drinking ratafia, and
+      thought of poor Miss Bailey,&rdquo;&mdash;a woman and the bottle have been the
+      cause of Hermann's ruin. Deserted by his mistress, who has been seduced
+      from him by a base Italian Count, Hermann, a German artist, gives himself
+      entirely up to liquor and revenge: but when he finds that force, and not
+      infidelity, have been the cause of his mistress's ruin, the reader can
+      fancy the indignant ferocity with which he pursues the infame ravisseur. A
+      scene, which is really full of spirit, and excellently well acted, here
+      ensues! Hermann proposes to the Count, on the eve of their duel, that the
+      survivor should bind himself to espouse the unhappy Marie; but the Count
+      declares himself to be already married, and the student, finding a duel
+      impossible (for his object was to restore, at all events, the honor of
+      Marie), now only thinks of his revenge, and murders the Count. Presently,
+      two parties of men enter Hermann's apartment: one is a company of
+      students, who bring him the news that he has obtained the prize of
+      painting; the other the policemen, who carry him to prison, to suffer the
+      penalty of murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I could mention many more plays in which the popular morality is
+      similiarly expressed. The seducer, or rascal of the piece, is always an
+      aristocrat,&mdash;a wicked count, or licentious marquis, who is brought to
+      condign punishment just before the fall of the curtain. And too good
+      reason have the French people had to lay such crimes to the charge of the
+      aristocracy, who are expiating now, on the stage, the wrongs which they
+      did a hundred years since. The aristocracy is dead now; but the theatre
+      lives upon traditions: and don't let us be too scornful at such simple
+      legends as are handed down by the people from race to race. Vulgar
+      prejudice against the great it may be; but prejudice against the great is
+      only a rude expression of sympathy with the poor; long, therefore, may fat
+      épiciers blubber over mimic woes, and honest prolétaires shake their
+      fists, shouting&mdash;&ldquo;Gredin, scélérat, monstre de marquis!&rdquo; and such
+      republican cries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Remark, too, another development of this same popular feeling of dislike
+      against men in power. What a number of plays and legends have we (the
+      writer has submitted to the public, in the preeeding pages, a couple of
+      specimens; one of French, and the other of Polish origin,) in which that
+      great and powerful aristocrat, the Devil, is made to be miserably tricked,
+      humiliated, and disappointed? A play of this class, which, in the midst of
+      all its absurdities and claptraps, had much of good in it, was called &ldquo;Le
+      Maudit des Mers.&rdquo; Le Maudit is a Dutch captain, who, in the midst of a
+      storm, while his crew were on their knees at prayers, blasphemed and drank
+      punch; but what was his astonishment at beholding an archangel with a
+      sword all covered with flaming resin, who told him that as he, in this
+      hour of danger, was too daring, or too wicked, to utter a prayer, he never
+      should cease roaming the seas until he could find some being who would
+      pray to heaven for him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once only, in a hundred years, was the skipper allowed to land for this
+      purpose; and this piece runs through four centuries, in as many acts,
+      describing the agonies and unavailing attempts of the miserable Dutchman.
+      Willing to go any lengths in order to obtain his prayer, he, in the second
+      act, betrays a Virgin of the Sun to a follower of Pizarro: and, in the
+      third, assassinates the heroic William of Nassau; but ever before the
+      dropping of the curtain, the angel and sword make their appearance&mdash;&ldquo;Treachery,&rdquo;
+       says the spirit, &ldquo;cannot lessen thy punishment;&mdash;crime will not
+      obtain thy release&mdash;A la mer! à la mer!&rdquo; and the poor devil returns
+      to the ocean, to be lonely, and tempest-tossed, and sea-sick for a hundred
+      years more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his woes are destined to end with the fourth act. Having landed in
+      America, where the peasants on the sea-shore, all dressed in Italian
+      costumes, are celebrating, in a quadrille, the victories of Washington, he
+      is there lucky enough to find a young girl to pray for him. Then the curse
+      is removed, the punishment is over, and a celestial vessel, with angels on
+      the decks and &ldquo;sweet little cherubs&rdquo; fluttering about the shrouds and the
+      poop, appear to receive him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This piece was acted at Franconi's, where, for once, an angel-ship was
+      introduced in place of the usual horsemanship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One must not forget to mention here, how the English nation is satirized
+      by our neighbors; who have some droll traditions regarding us. In one of
+      the little Christmas pieces produced at the Palais Royal (satires upon the
+      follies of the past twelve months, on which all the small theatres exhaust
+      their wit), the celebrated flight of Messrs. Green and Monck Mason was
+      parodied, and created a good deal of laughter at the expense of John Bull.
+      Two English noblemen, Milor Cricri and Milor Hanneton, appear as
+      descending from a balloon, and one of them communicates to the public the
+      philosophic observations which were made in the course of his aërial tour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On leaving Vauxhall,&rdquo; says his lordship, &ldquo;we drank a bottle of Madeira,
+      as a health to the friends from whom we parted, and crunched a few
+      biscuits to support nature during the hours before lunch. In two hours we
+      arrived at Canterbury, enveloped in clouds: lunch, bottled porter: at
+      Dover, carried several miles in a tide of air, bitter cold, cherry-brandy;
+      crossed over the Channel safely, and thought with pity of the poor people
+      who were sickening in the steamboats below: more bottled porter: over
+      Calais, dinner, roast-beef of Old England; near Dunkirk,&mdash;night
+      falling, lunar rainbow, brandy-and-water; night confoundedly thick;
+      supper, nightcap of rum-punch, and so to bed. The sun broke beautifully
+      through the morning mist, as we boiled the kettle and took our breakfast
+      over Cologne. In a few more hours we concluded this memorable voyage, and
+      landed safely at Weilburg, in good time for dinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The joke here is smart enough; but our honest neighbors make many better,
+      when they are quite unconscious of the fun. Let us leave plays, for a
+      moment, for poetry, and take an instance of French criticism, concerning
+      England, from the works of a famous French exquisite and man of letters.
+      The hero of the poem addresses his mistress&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Londres, tu le sais trop, en fait de capitale,
+     Est-ce que fit le ciel de plus froid et plus pâle,
+     C'est la ville du gaz, des marins, du brouillard;
+     On s'y couche à minuit, et l'on s'y lève tard;
+     Ses raouts tant vantés ne sont qu'une boxade,
+     Sur ses grands quais jamais échelle ou sérénade,
+     Mais de volumineux bourgeois pris de porter
+     Qui passent sans lever le front à Westminster;
+     Et n'était sa forêt de mâts perçant la brume,
+     Sa tour dont à minuit le vieil oeil s'allume,
+     Et tes deux yeux, Zerline, illuminés bien plus,
+     Je dirais que, ma foi, des romans que j'ai lus,
+     Il n'en est pas un seul, plus lourd, plus léthargique
+     Que cette nation qu'on nomme Britannique!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The writer of the above lines (which let any man who can translate) is
+      Monsieur Roger de Beauvoir, a gentleman who actually lived many months in
+      England, as an attaché to the embassy of M. de Polignac. He places the
+      heroine of his tale in a petit réduit près le Strand, &ldquo;with a green and
+      fresh jalousie, and a large blind, let down all day; you fancied you were
+      entering a bath of Asia, as soon as you had passed the perfumed threshold
+      of this charming retreat!&rdquo; He next places her&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Dans un square écarté, morne et couverte de givre,
+     Où se cache un hôtel, aux vieux lions de cuivre;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      and the hero of the tale, a young French poet, who is in London, is truly
+      unhappy in that village.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Arthur dessèche et meurt.  Dans la ville de Sterne,
+     Rien qu'en voyant le peuple il a le mal de mer
+     Il n'aime ni le Parc, gai comme une citerne,
+     Ni le tir au pigeon, ni le soda-water.
+
+     Liston ne le fait plus sourciller!  Il rumine
+     Sur les trottoirs du Strand, droit comme un échiquier,
+     Contre le peuple anglais, les nègres, la vermine,
+     Et les mille cokneys du peuple boutiquier,
+
+     Contre tous les bas-bleus, contre les pâtissières,
+     Les parieurs d'Epsom, le gin, le parlement,
+     La quaterly, le roi, la pluie et les libraires,
+     Dont il ne touche plus, hélas! un sou d'argent!
+
+     Et chaque gentleman lui dit: L'heureux poète!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;L'heureux poète&rdquo; indeed! I question if a poet in this wide world is so
+      happy as M. de Beauvoir, or has made such wonderful discoveries. &ldquo;The bath
+      of Asia, with green jalousies,&rdquo; in which the lady dwells; &ldquo;the old hotel,
+      with copper lions, in a lonely square;&rdquo;&mdash;were ever such things heard
+      of, or imagined, but by a Frenchman? The sailors, the negroes, the vermin,
+      whom he meets in the street,&mdash;how great and happy are all these
+      discoveries! Liston no longer makes the happy poet frown; and &ldquo;gin,&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;cokneys,&rdquo; and the &ldquo;quaterly&rdquo; have not the least effect upon him! And this
+      gentleman has lived many months amongst us; admires Williams Shakspear,
+      the &ldquo;grave et vieux prophète,&rdquo; as he calls him, and never, for an instant,
+      doubts that his description contains anything absurd!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't know whether the great Dumas has passed any time in England; but
+      his plays show a similar intimate knowledge of our habits. Thus in Kean,
+      the stage-manager is made to come forward and address the pit, with a
+      speech beginning, &ldquo;My Lords and Gentlemen;&rdquo; and a company of Englishwomen
+      are introduced (at the memorable &ldquo;Coal hole&rdquo;), and they all wear
+      PINAFORES; as if the British female were in the invariable habit of
+      wearing this outer garment, or slobbering her gown without it. There was
+      another celebrated piece, enacted some years since, upon the subject of
+      Queen Caroline, where our late adored sovereign, George, was made to play
+      a most despicable part; and where Signor Bergami fought a duel with Lord
+      Londonderry. In the last act of this play, the House of Lords was
+      represented, and Sir Brougham made an eloquent speech in the Queen's
+      favor. Presently the shouts of the mob were heard without; from shouting
+      they proceeded to pelting; and pasteboard-brickbats and cabbages came
+      flying among the representatives of our hereditary legislature. At this
+      unpleasant juncture, SIR HARDINGE, the Secretary-at-War, rises and calls
+      in the military; the act ends in a general row, and the ignominious fall
+      of Lord Liverpool, laid low by a brickbat from the mob!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The description of these scenes is, of course, quite incapable of
+      conveying any notion of their general effect. You must have the solemnity
+      of the actors, as they Meess and Milor one another, and the perfect
+      gravity and good faith with which the audience listen to them. Our stage
+      Frenchman is the old Marquis, with sword, and pigtail, and spangled court
+      coat. The Englishman of the French theatre has, invariably, a red wig, and
+      almost always leather gaiters, and a long white upper Benjamin: he remains
+      as he was represented in the old caricatures after the peace, when Vernet
+      designed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And to conclude this catalogue of blunders: in the famous piece of the
+      &ldquo;Naufrage de la Meduse,&rdquo; the first act is laid on board an English
+      ship-of-war, all the officers of which appeared in light blue or green
+      coats (the lamp-light prevented our distinguishing the color accurately),
+      and TOP-BOOTS!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us not attempt to deaden the force of this tremendous blow by any more
+      remarks. The force of blundering can go no further. Would a Chinese
+      playwright or painter have stranger notions about the barbarians than our
+      neighbors, who are separated from us but by two hours of salt water?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      MEDITATIONS AT VERSAILLES.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The palace of Versailles has been turned into a bricabrac shop of late
+      years, and its time-honored walls have been covered with many thousand
+      yards of the worst pictures that eye ever looked on. I don't know how many
+      leagues of battles and sieges the unhappy visitor is now obliged to march
+      through, amidst a crowd of chattering Paris cockneys, who are never tired
+      of looking at the glories of the Grenadier Français; to the chronicling of
+      whose deeds this old palace of the old kings is now altogether devoted. A
+      whizzing, screaming steam-engine rushes hither from Paris, bringing shoals
+      of badauds in its wake. The old coucous are all gone, and their place
+      knows them no longer. Smooth asphaltum terraces, tawdry lamps, and great
+      hideous Egyptian obelisks, have frightened them away from the pleasant
+      station they used to occupy under the trees of the Champs Elysées; and
+      though the old coucous were just the most uncomfortable vehicles that
+      human ingenuity ever constructed, one can't help looking back to the days
+      of their existence with a tender regret; for there was pleasure then in
+      the little trip of three leagues: and who ever had pleasure in a railway
+      journey? Does any reader of this venture to say that, on such a voyage, he
+      ever dared to be pleasant? Do the most hardened stokers joke with one
+      another? I don't believe it. Look into every single car of the train, and
+      you will see that every single face is solemn. They take their seats
+      gravely, and are silent, for the most part, during the journey; they dare
+      not look out of window, for fear of being blinded by the smoke that comes
+      whizzing by, or of losing their heads in one of the windows of the down
+      train; they ride for miles in utter damp and darkness: through awful pipes
+      of brick, that have been run pitilessly through the bowels of gentle
+      mother earth, the cast-iron Frankenstein of an engine gallops on, puffing
+      and screaming. Does any man pretend to say that he ENJOYS the journey?&mdash;he
+      might as well say that he enjoyed having his hair cut; he bears it, but
+      that is all: he will not allow the world to laugh at him, for any
+      exhibition of slavish fear; and pretends, therefore, to be at his ease;
+      but he IS afraid: nay, ought to be, under the circumstances. I am sure
+      Hannibal or Napoleon would, were they locked suddenly into a car; there
+      kept close prisoners for a certain number of hours, and whirled along at
+      this dizzy pace. You can't stop, if you would:&mdash;you may die, but you
+      can't stop; the engine may explode upon the road, and up you go along with
+      it; or, may be a bolter and take a fancy to go down a hill, or into a
+      river: all this you must bear, for the privilege of travelling twenty
+      miles an hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This little journey, then, from Paris to Versailles, that used to be so
+      merry of old, has lost its pleasures since the disappearance of the
+      coucous; and I would as lief have for companions the statues that lately
+      took a coach from the bridge opposite the Chamber of Deputies, and stepped
+      out in the court of Versailles, as the most part of the people who now
+      travel on the railroad. The stone figures are not a whit more cold and
+      silent than these persons, who used to be, in the old coucous, so
+      talkative and merry. The prattling grisette and her swain from the Ecole
+      de Droit; the huge Alsacian carabineer, grimly smiling under his sandy
+      moustaches and glittering brass helmet; the jolly nurse, in red calico,
+      who had been to Paris to show mamma her darling Lolo, or Auguste;&mdash;what
+      merry companions used one to find squeezed into the crazy old vehicles
+      that formerly performed the journey! But the age of horseflesh is gone&mdash;that
+      of engineers, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the pleasure
+      of coucoudom is extinguished for ever. Why not mourn over it, as Mr. Burke
+      did over his cheap defence of nations and unbought grace of life; that age
+      of chivalry, which he lamented, àpropos of a trip to Versailles, some half
+      a century back?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without stopping to discuss (as might be done, in rather a neat and
+      successful manner) whether the age of chivalry was cheap or dear, and
+      whether, in the time of the unbought grace of life, there was not more
+      bribery, robbery, villainy, tyranny, and corruption, than exists even in
+      our own happy days,&mdash;let us make a few moral and historical remarks
+      upon the town of Versailles; where, between railroad and coucou, we are
+      surely arrived by this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The town is, certainly, the most moral of towns. You pass from the
+      railroad station through a long, lonely suburb, with dusty rows of stunted
+      trees on either side, and some few miserable beggars, idle boys, and
+      ragged old women under them. Behind the trees are gaunt, mouldy houses;
+      palaces once, where (in the days of the unbought grace of life) the cheap
+      defence of nations gambled, ogled, swindled, intrigued; whence high-born
+      duchesses used to issue, in old times, to act as chambermaids to lovely Du
+      Barri; and mighty princes rolled away, in gilt caroches, hot for the honor
+      of lighting his Majesty to bed, or of presenting his stockings when he
+      rose, or of holding his napkin when he dined. Tailors, chandlers, tinmen,
+      wretched hucksters, and greengrocers, are now established in the mansions
+      of the old peers; small children are yelling at the doors, with mouths
+      besmeared with bread and treacle; damp rags are hanging out of every one
+      of the windows, steaming in the sun; oyster-shells, cabbage-stalks, broken
+      crockery, old papers, lie basking in the same cheerful light. A solitary
+      water-cart goes jingling down the wide pavement, and spirts a feeble
+      refreshment over the dusty, thirsty stones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After pacing for some time through such dismal streets, we deboucher on
+      the grande place; and before us lies the palace dedicated to all the
+      glories of France. In the midst of the great lonely plain this famous
+      residence of King Louis looks low and mean.&mdash;Honored pile! Time was
+      when tall musketeers and gilded body-guards allowed none to pass the gate.
+      Fifty years ago, ten thousand drunken women from Paris broke through the
+      charm; and now a tattered commissioner will conduct you through it for a
+      penny, and lead you up to the sacred entrance of the palace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We will not examine all the glories of France, as here they are portrayed
+      in pictures and marble: catalogues are written about these miles of
+      canvas, representing all the revolutionary battles, from Valmy to
+      Waterloo,&mdash;all the triumphs of Louis XIV.&mdash;all the mistresses of
+      his successor&mdash;and all the great men who have flourished since the
+      French empire began. Military heroes are most of these&mdash;fierce
+      constables in shining steel, marshals in voluminous wigs, and brave
+      grenadiers in bearskin caps; some dozens of whom gained crowns,
+      principalities, dukedoms; some hundreds, plunder and epaulets; some
+      millions, death in African sands, or in icy Russian plains, under the
+      guidance, and for the good, of that arch-hero, Napoleon. By far the
+      greater part of &ldquo;all the glories&rdquo; of France (as of most other countries)
+      is made up of these military men: and a fine satire it is on the cowardice
+      of mankind, that they pay such an extraordinary homage to the virtue
+      called courage; filling their history-books with tales about it, and
+      nothing but it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let them disguise the place, however, as they will, and plaster the walls
+      with bad pictures as they please, it will be hard to think of any family
+      but one, as one traverses this vast gloomy edifice. It has not been
+      humbled to the ground, as a certain palace of Babel was of yore; but it is
+      a monument of fallen pride, not less awful, and would afford matter for a
+      whole library of sermons. The cheap defence of nations expended a thousand
+      millions in the erection of this magnificent dwelling-place. Armies were
+      employed, in the intervals of their warlike labors, to level hills, or
+      pile them up; to turn rivers, and to build aqueducts, and transplant
+      woods, and construct smooth terraces, and long canals. A vast garden grew
+      up in a wilderness, and a stupendous palace in the garden, and a stately
+      city round the palace: the city was peopled with parasites, who daily came
+      to do worship before the creator of these wonders&mdash;the Great King.
+      &ldquo;Dieu seul est grand,&rdquo; said courtly Massillon; but next to him, as the
+      prelate thought, was certainly Louis, his vicegerent here upon earth&mdash;God's
+      lieutenant-governor of the world,&mdash;before whom courtiers used to fall
+      on their knees, and shade their eyes, as if the light of his countenance,
+      like the sun, which shone supreme in heaven, the type of him, was too
+      dazzling to bear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Did ever the sun shine upon such a king before, in such a palace?&mdash;or,
+      rather, did such a king ever shine upon the sun? When Majesty came out of
+      his chamber, in the midst of his superhuman splendors, viz, in his
+      cinnamon-colored coat, embroidered with diamonds; his pyramid of a wig,*
+      his red-heeled shoes, that lifted him four inches from the ground, &ldquo;that
+      he scarcely seemed to touch;&rdquo; when he came out, blazing upon the dukes and
+      duchesses that waited his rising,&mdash;what could the latter do, but
+      cover their eyes, and wink, and tremble? And did he not himself believe,
+      as he stood there, on his high heels, under his ambrosial periwig, that
+      there was something in him more than man&mdash;something above Fate?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * It is fine to think that, in the days of his youth, his
+     Majesty Louis XIV. used to POWDER HIS WIG WITH GOLD-DUST.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      This, doubtless, was he fain to believe; and if, on very fine days, from
+      his terrace before his gloomy palace of Saint Germains, he could catch a
+      glimpse, in the distance, of a certain white spire of St. Denis, where his
+      race lay buried, he would say to his courtiers, with a sublime
+      condescension, &ldquo;Gentlemen, you must remember that I, too, am mortal.&rdquo;
+       Surely the lords in waiting could hardly think him serious, and vowed that
+      his Majesty always loved a joke. However, mortal or not, the sight of that
+      sharp spire wounded his Majesty's eyes; and is said, by the legend, to
+      have caused the building of the palace of Babel-Versailles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the year 1681, then, the great king, with bag and baggage,&mdash;with
+      guards, cooks, chamberlains, mistresses, Jesuits, gentlemen, lackeys,
+      Fénélons, Molières, Lauzuns, Bossuets, Villars, Villeroys, Louvois,
+      Colberts,&mdash;transported himself to his new palace: the old one being
+      left for James of England and Jaquette his wife, when their time should
+      come. And when the time did come, and James sought his brother's kingdom,
+      it is on record that Louis hastened to receive and console him, and
+      promised to restore, incontinently, those islands from which the canaille
+      had turned him. Between brothers such a gift was a trifle; and the
+      courtiers said to one another reverently:* &ldquo;The Lord said unto my Lord,
+      Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.&rdquo;
+       There was no blasphemy in the speech: on the contrary, it was gravely
+      said, by a faithful believing man, who thought it no shame to the latter,
+      to compare his Majesty with God Almighty. Indeed, the books of the time
+      will give one a strong idea how general was this Louis-worship. I have
+      just been looking at one, which was written by an honest Jesuit and
+      Protégé of Père la Chaise, who dedicates a book of medals to the august
+      Infants of France, which does, indeed, go almost as far in print. He calls
+      our famous monarch &ldquo;Louis le Grand:&mdash;1, l'invincible; 2, le sage; 3,
+      le conquérant; 4, la merveille de son siècle; 5, la terreur de ses
+      ennemis; 6, l'amour de ses peuples; 7, l'arbitre de la paix et de la
+      guerre; 8, l'admiration de l'univers; 9, et digne d'en être le maître; 10,
+      le modèle d'un héros achevé; 11, digne de l'immortalité, et de la
+      vénération de tous les siècles!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * I think it is in the amusing &ldquo;Memoirs of Madame de Crequi&rdquo;
+      (a forgery, but a work remarkable for its learning and
+     accuracy) that the above anecdote is related.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      A pretty Jesuit declaration, truly, and a good honest judgment upon the
+      great king! In thirty years more&mdash;1. The invincible had been beaten a
+      vast number of times. 2. The sage was the puppet of an artful old woman,
+      who was the puppet of more artful priests. 3. The conqueror had quite
+      forgotten his early knack of conquering. 5. The terror of his enemies (for
+      4, the marvel of his age, we pretermit, it being a loose term, that may
+      apply to any person or thing) was now terrified by his enemies in turn. 6.
+      The love of his people was as heartily detested by them as scarcely any
+      other monarch, not even his great-grandson, has been, before or since. 7.
+      The arbiter of peace and war was fain to send superb ambassadors to kick
+      their heels in Dutch shopkeepers' ante-chambers. 8, is again a general
+      term. 9. The man fit to be master of the universe, was scarcely master of
+      his own kingdom. 10. The finished hero was all but finished, in a very
+      commonplace and vulgar way. And 11. The man worthy of immortality was just
+      at the point of death, without a friend to soothe or deplore him; only
+      withered old Maintenon to utter prayers at his bedside, and croaking
+      Jesuits to prepare him,* with heaven knows what wretched tricks and
+      mummeries, for his appearance in that Great Republic that lies on the
+      other side of the grave. In the course of his fourscore splendid miserable
+      years, he never had but one friend, and he ruined and left her. Poor La
+      Vallière, what a sad tale is yours! &ldquo;Look at this Galerie des Glaces,&rdquo;
+       cries Monsieur Vatout, staggering with surprise at the appearance of the
+      room, two hundred and forty-two feet long, and forty high. &ldquo;Here it was
+      that Louis displayed all the grandeur of royalty; and such was the
+      splendor of his court, and the luxury of the times, that this immense room
+      could hardly contain the crowd of courtiers that pressed around the
+      monarch.&rdquo; Wonderful! wonderful! Eight thousand four hundred and sixty
+      square feet of courtiers! Give a square yard to each, and you have a
+      matter of three thousand of them. Think of three thousand courtiers per
+      day, and all the chopping and changing of them for near forty years: some
+      of them dying, some getting their wishes, and retiring to their provinces
+      to enjoy their plunder; some disgraced, and going home to pine away out of
+      the light of the sun;** new ones perpetually arriving,&mdash;pushing,
+      squeezing, for their place, in the crowded Galerie des Glaces. A quarter
+      of a million of noble countenances, at the very least, must those glasses
+      have reflected. Rouge, diamonds, ribbons, patches, upon the faces of
+      smiling ladies: towering periwigs, sleek shaven crowns, tufted moustaches,
+      scars, and grizzled whiskers, worn by ministers, priests, dandies, and
+      grim old commanders.&mdash;So many faces, O ye gods! and every one of them
+      lies! So many tongues, vowing devotion and respectful love to the great
+      king in his six-inch wig; and only poor La Vallière's amongst them all
+      which had a word of truth for the dull ears of Louis of Bourbon.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * They made a Jesuit of him on his death-bed.
+
+     ** Saint Simon's account of Lauzun, in disgrace, is
+     admirably facetious and pathetic; Lauzun's regrets are as
+     monstrous as those of Raleigh when deprived of the sight of
+     his adorable Queen and Mistress, Elizabeth.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quand j'aurai de la peine aux Carmélites,&rdquo; says unhappy Louise, about to
+      retire from these magnificent courtiers and their grand Galerie des
+      Glaces, &ldquo;je me souviendrai de ce que ces gens là m'ont fait souffrir!&rdquo;&mdash;A
+      troop of Bossuets inveighing against the vanities of courts could not
+      preach such an affecting sermon. What years of anguish and wrong had the
+      poor thing suffered, before these sad words came from her gentle lips! How
+      these courtiers have bowed and flattered, kissed the ground on which she
+      trod, fought to have the honor of riding by her carriage, written sonnets,
+      and called her goddess; who, in the days of her prosperity, was kind and
+      beneficent, gentle and compassionate to all; then (on a certain day, when
+      it is whispered that his Majesty hath cast the eyes of his gracious
+      affection upon another) behold three thousand courtiers are at the feet of
+      the new divinity.&mdash;&ldquo;O divine Athenais! what blockheads have we been
+      to worship any but you.&mdash;THAT a goddess?&mdash;a pretty goddess
+      forsooth;&mdash;a witch, rather, who, for a while, kept our gracious
+      monarch blind! Look at her: the woman limps as she walks; and, by sacred
+      Venus, her mouth stretches almost to her diamond ear-rings?&rdquo; * The same
+      tale may be told of many more deserted mistresses; and fair Athenais de
+      Montespan was to hear it of herself one day. Meantime, while La Vallière's
+      heart is breaking, the model of a finished hero is yawning; as, on such
+      paltry occasions, a finished hero should. LET her heart break: a plague
+      upon her tears and repentance; what right has she to repent? Away with her
+      to her convent. She goes, and the finished hero never sheds a tear. What a
+      noble pitch of stoicism to have reached! Our Louis was so great, that the
+      little woes of mean people were beyond him: his friends died, his
+      mistresses left him; his children, one by one, were cut off before his
+      eyes, and great Louis is not moved in the slightest degree! As how,
+      indeed, should a god be moved?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * A pair of diamond ear-rings, given by the King to La
+     Vallière, caused much scandal; and some lampoons are extant,
+     which impugn the taste of Louis XIV. for loving a lady with
+     such an enormous mouth.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I have often liked to think about this strange character in the world, who
+      moved in it, bearing about a full belief in his own infallibility;
+      teaching his generals the art of war, his ministers the science of
+      government, his wits taste, his courtiers dress; ordering deserts to
+      become gardens, turning villages into palaces at a breath; and indeed the
+      august figure of the man, as he towers upon his throne, cannot fail to
+      inspire one with respect and awe:&mdash;how grand those flowing locks
+      appear; how awful that sceptre; how magnificent those flowing robes! In
+      Louis, surely, if in any one, the majesty of kinghood is represented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But a king is not every inch a king, for all the poet may say; and it is
+      curious to see how much precise majesty there is in that majestic figure
+      of Ludovicus Rex. In the Frontispiece, we have endeavored to make the
+      exact calculation. The idea of kingly dignity is equally strong in the two
+      outer figures; and you see, at once, that majesty is made out of the wig,
+      the high-heeled shoes, and cloak, all fleurs-de-lis bespangled. As for the
+      little lean, shrivelled, paunchy old man, of five feet two, in a jacket
+      and breeches, there is no majesty in HIM at any rate; and yet he has just
+      stepped out of that very suit of clothes. Put the wig and shoes on him,
+      and he is six feet high;&mdash;the other fripperies, and he stands before
+      you majestic, imperial, and heroic! Thus do barbers and cobblers make the
+      gods that we worship: for do we not all worship him? Yes; though we all
+      know him to be stupid, heartless, short, of doubtful personal courage,
+      worship and admire him we must; and have set up, in our hearts, a grand
+      image of him, endowed with wit, magnanimity, valor, and enormous heroical
+      stature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And what magnanimous acts are attributed to him! or, rather, how
+      differently do we view the actions of heroes and common men, and find that
+      the same thing shall be a wonderful virtue in the former, which, in the
+      latter, is only an ordinary act of duty. Look at yonder window of the
+      king's chamber;&mdash;one morning a royal cane was seen whirling out of
+      it, and plumped among the courtiers and guard of honor below. King Louis
+      had absolutely, and with his own hand, flung his own cane out of the
+      window, &ldquo;because,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I won't demean myself by striking a
+      gentleman!&rdquo; O miracle of magnanimity! Lauzun was not caned, because he
+      besought majesty to keep his promise,&mdash;only imprisoned for ten years
+      in Pignerol, along with banished Fouquet;&mdash;and a pretty story is
+      Fouquet's too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out of the window the king's august head was one day thrust, when old
+      Condé was painfully toiling up the steps of the court below. &ldquo;Don't hurry
+      yourself, my cousin,&rdquo; cries magnanimity, &ldquo;one who has to carry so many
+      laurels cannot walk fast.&rdquo; At which all the courtiers, lackeys,
+      mistresses, chamberlains, Jesuits, and scullions, clasp their hands and
+      burst into tears. Men are affected by the tale to this very day. For a
+      century and three-quarters, have not all the books that speak of
+      Versailles, or Louis Quatorze, told the story?&mdash;&ldquo;Don't hurry
+      yourself, my cousin!&rdquo; O admirable king and Christian! what a pitch of
+      condescension is here, that the greatest king of all the world should go
+      for to say anything so kind, and really tell a tottering old gentleman,
+      worn out with gout, age, and wounds, not to walk too fast!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a proper fund of slavishness is there in the composition of mankind,
+      that histories like these should be found to interest and awe them. Till
+      the world's end, most likely, this story will have its place in the
+      history-books; and unborn generations will read it, and tenderly be moved
+      by it. I am sure that Magnanimity went to bed that night, pleased and
+      happy, intimately convinced that he had done an action of sublime virtue,
+      and had easy slumbers and sweet dreams,&mdash;especially if he had taken a
+      light supper, and not too vehemently attacked his en cas de nuit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That famous adventure, in which the en cas de nuit was brought into use,
+      for the sake of one Poquelin alias Molière;&mdash;how often has it been
+      described and admired? This Poquelin, though king's valet-de-chambre, was
+      by profession a vagrant; and as such, looked coldly on by the great lords
+      of the palace, who refused to eat with him. Majesty hearing of this,
+      ordered his en cas de nuit to be placed on the table, and positively cut
+      off a wing with his own knife and fork for Poquelin's use. O thrice happy
+      Jean Baptiste! The king has actually sat down with him cheek by jowl, had
+      the liver-wing of a fowl, and given Molière the gizzard; put his imperial
+      legs under the same mahogany (sub iisdem trabibus). A man, after such an
+      honor, can look for little else in this world: he has tasted the utmost
+      conceivable earthly happiness, and has nothing to do now but to fold his
+      arms, look up to heaven, and sing &ldquo;Nunc dimittis&rdquo; and die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Do not let us abuse poor old Louis on account of this monstrous pride; but
+      only lay it to the charge of the fools who believed and worshipped it. If,
+      honest man, he believed himself to be almost a god, it was only because
+      thousands of people had told him so&mdash;people only half liars, too; who
+      did, in the depths of their slavish respect, admire the man almost as much
+      as they said they did. If, when he appeared in his five-hundred-million
+      coat, as he is said to have done, before the Siamese ambassadors, the
+      courtiers began to shade their eyes and long for parasols, as if this
+      Bourbonic sun was too hot for them; indeed, it is no wonder that he should
+      believe that there was something dazzling about his person: he had half a
+      million of eager testimonies to this idea. Who was to tell him the truth?&mdash;Only
+      in the last years of his life did trembling courtiers dare whisper to him,
+      after much circumlocution, that a certain battle had been fought at a
+      place called Blenheim, and that Eugene and Marlborough had stopped his
+      long career of triumphs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On n'est plus heureux à notre âge,&rdquo; says the old man, to one of his old
+      generals, welcoming Tallard after his defeat; and he rewards him with
+      honors, as if he had come from a victory. There is, if you will, something
+      magnanimous in this welcome to his conquered general, this stout protest
+      against Fate. Disaster succeeds disaster; armies after armies march out to
+      meet fiery Eugene and that dogged, fatal Englishman, and disappear in the
+      smoke of the enemies' cannon. Even at Versailles you may almost hear it
+      roaring at last; but when courtiers, who have forgotten their god, now
+      talk of quitting this grand temple of his, old Louis plucks up heart and
+      will never hear of surrender. All the gold and silver at Versailles he
+      melts, to find bread for his armies: all the jewels on his
+      five-hundred-million coat he pawns resolutely; and, bidding Villars go and
+      make the last struggle but one, promises, if his general is defeated, to
+      place himself at the head of his nobles, and die King of France. Indeed,
+      after a man, for sixty years, has been performing the part of a hero, some
+      of the real heroic stuff must have entered into his composition, whether
+      he would or not. When the great Elliston was enacting the part of King
+      George the Fourth, in the play of &ldquo;The Coronation,&rdquo; at Drury Lane, the
+      galleries applauded very loudly his suavity and majestic demeanor, at
+      which Elliston, inflamed by the popular loyalty (and by some fermented
+      liquor in which, it is said, he was in the habit of indulging), burst into
+      tears, and spreading out his arms, exclaimed: &ldquo;Bless ye, bless ye, my
+      people!&rdquo; Don't let us laugh at his Ellistonian majesty, nor at the people
+      who clapped hands and yelled &ldquo;bravo!&rdquo; in praise of him. The tipsy old
+      manager did really feel that he was a hero at that moment; and the people,
+      wild with delight and attachment for a magnificent coat and breeches,
+      surely were uttering the true sentiments of loyalty: which consists in
+      reverencing these and other articles of costume. In this fifth act, then,
+      of his long royal drama, old Louis performed his part excellently; and
+      when the curtain drops upon him, he lies, dressed majestically, in a
+      becoming kingly attitude, as a king should.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The king his successor has not left, at Versailles, half so much occasion
+      for moralizing; perhaps the neighboring Parc aux Cerfs would afford better
+      illustrations of his reign. The life of his great grandsire, the Grand
+      Llama of France, seems to have frightened Louis the well-beloved; who
+      understood that loneliness is one of the necessary conditions of divinity,
+      and being of a jovial, companionable turn, aspired not beyond manhood.
+      Only in the matter of ladies did he surpass his predecessor, as Solomon
+      did David. War he eschewed, as his grandfather bade him; and his simple
+      taste found little in this world to enjoy beyond the mulling of chocolate
+      and the frying of pancakes. Look, here is the room called Laboratoire du
+      Roi, where, with his own hands, he made his mistress's breakfast:&mdash;here
+      is the little door through which, from her apartments in the upper story,
+      the chaste Du Barri came stealing down to the arms of the weary, feeble,
+      gloomy old man. But of women he was tired long since, and even
+      pancake-frying had palled upon him. What had he to do, after forty years
+      of reign;&mdash;after having exhausted everything? Every pleasure that
+      Dubois could invent for his hot youth, or cunning Lebel could minister to
+      his old age, was flat and stale; used up to the very dregs: every shilling
+      in the national purse had been squeezed out, by Pompadour and Du Barri and
+      such brilliant ministers of state. He had found out the vanity of
+      pleasure, as his ancestor had discovered the vanity of glory: indeed it
+      was high time that he should die. And die he did; and round his tomb, as
+      round that of his grandfather before him, the starving people sang a
+      dreadful chorus of curses, which were the only epitaphs for good or for
+      evil that were raised to his memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for the courtiers&mdash;the knights and nobles, the unbought grace of
+      life&mdash;they, of course, forgot him in one minute after his death, as
+      the way is. When the king dies, the officer appointed opens his chamber
+      window, and calling out into the court below, Le Roi est mort, breaks his
+      cane, takes another and waves it, exclaiming, vive le Roi! Straightway all
+      the loyal nobles begin yelling vive le Roi! and the officer goes round
+      solemnly and sets yonder great clock in the Cour de Marbre to the hour of
+      the king's death. This old Louis had solemnly ordained; but the Versailles
+      clock was only set twice: there was no shouting of Vive le Roi when the
+      successor of Louis XV. mounted to heaven to join his sainted family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strange stories of the deaths of kings have always been very recreating
+      and profitable to us: what a fine one is that of the death of Louis XV.,
+      as Madame Campan tells it. One night the gracious monarch came back ill
+      from Trianon; the disease turned out to be the small-pox; so violent that
+      ten people of those who had to enter his chamber caught the infection and
+      died. The whole court flies from him; only poor old fat Mesdames the
+      King's daughters persist in remaining at his bedside, and praying for his
+      soul's welfare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the 10th May, 1774, the whole court had assembled at the château; the
+      oeil de Boeuf was full. The Dauphin had determined to depart as soon as
+      the king had breathed his last. And it was agreed by the people of the
+      stables, with those who watched in the king's room, that a lighted candle
+      should be placed in a window, and should be extinguished as soon as he had
+      ceased to live. The candle was put out. At that signal, guards, pages, and
+      squires mounted on horseback, and everything was made ready for departure.
+      The Dauphin was with the Dauphiness, waiting together for the news of the
+      king's demise. AN IMMENSE NOISE, AS IF OF THUNDER, WAS HEARD IN THE NEXT
+      ROOM; it was the crowd of courtiers, who were deserting the dead king's
+      apartment, in order to pay their court to the new power of Louis XVI.
+      Madame de Noailles entered, and was the first to salute the queen by her
+      title of Queen of France, and begged their Majesties to quit their
+      apartments, to receive the princes and great lords of the court desirous
+      to pay their homage to the new sovereigns. Leaning on her husband's arm, a
+      handkerchief to her eyes, in the most touching attitude, Marie Antoinette
+      received these first visits. On quitting the chamber where the dead king
+      lay, the Duc de Villequier bade M. Anderville, first surgeon of the king,
+      to open and embalm the body: it would have been certain death to the
+      surgeon. &ldquo;I am ready, sir,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;but whilst I am operating, you must
+      hold the head of the corpse: your charge demands it.&rdquo; The Duke went away
+      without a word, and the body was neither opened nor embalmed. A few humble
+      domestics and poor workmen watched by the remains, and performed the last
+      offices to their master. The surgeons ordered spirits of wine to be poured
+      into the coffin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They huddled the king's body into a post-chaise; and in this deplorable
+      equipage, with an escort of about forty men, Louis the well-beloved was
+      carried, in the dead of night, from Versailles to St. Denis, and then
+      thrown into the tomb of the kings of France!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If any man is curious, and can get permission, he may mount to the roof of
+      the palace, and see where Louis XVI. used royally to amuse himself, by
+      gazing upon the doings of all the townspeople below with a telescope.
+      Behold that balcony, where, one morning, he, his queen, and the little
+      Dauphin stood, with Cromwell Grandison Lafayette by their side, who kissed
+      her Majesty's hand, and protected her; and then, lovingly surrounded by
+      his people, the king got into a coach and came to Paris: nor did his
+      Majesty ride much in coaches after that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is a portrait of the king, in the upper galleries, clothed in red
+      and gold, riding a fat horse, brandishing a sword, on which the word
+      &ldquo;Justice&rdquo; is inscribed, and looking remarkably stupid and uncomfortable.
+      You see that the horse will throw him at the very first fling; and as for
+      the sword, it never was made for such hands as his, which were good at
+      holding a corkscrew or a carving-knife, but not clever at the management
+      of weapons of war. Let those pity him who will: call him saint and martyr
+      if you please; but a martyr to what principle was he? Did he frankly
+      support either party in his kingdom, or cheat and tamper with both? He
+      might have escaped; but he must have his supper: and so his family was
+      butchered and his kingdom lost, and he had his bottle of Burgundy in
+      comfort at Varennes. A single charge upon the fatal 10th of August, and
+      the monarchy might have been his once more; but he is so tender-hearted,
+      that he lets his friends be murdered before his eyes almost: or, at least,
+      when he has turned his back upon his duty and his kingdom, and has skulked
+      for safety into the reporters' box, at the National Assembly. There were
+      hundreds of brave men who died that day, and were martyrs, if you will;
+      poor neglected tenth-rate courtiers, for the most part, who had forgotten
+      old slights and disappointments, and left their places of safety to come
+      and die, if need were, sharing in the supreme hour of the monarchy.
+      Monarchy was a great deal too humane to fight along with these, and so
+      left them to the pikes of Santerre and the mercy of the men of the
+      Sections. But we are wandering a good ten miles from Versailles, and from
+      the deeds which Louis XVI. performed there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He is said to have been such a smart journeyman blacksmith, that he might,
+      if Fate had not perversely placed a crown on his head, have earned a
+      couple of louis every week by the making of locks and keys. Those who will
+      may see the workshop where he employed many useful hours: Madame Elizabeth
+      was at prayers meanwhile; the queen was making pleasant parties with her
+      ladies. Monsieur the Count d'Artois was learning to dance on the
+      tight-rope; and Monsieur de Provence was cultivating l'eloquence du billet
+      and studying his favorite Horace. It is said that each member of the
+      august family succeeded remarkably well in his or her pursuits; big
+      Monsieur's little notes are still cited. At a minuet or syllabub, poor
+      Antoinette was unrivalled; and Charles, on the tight-rope, was so graceful
+      and so gentil, that Madame Saqui might envy him. The time only was out of
+      joint. O cursed spite, that ever such harmless creatures as these were
+      bidden to right it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A walk to the little Trianon is both pleasing and moral: no doubt the
+      reader has seen the pretty fantastical gardens which environ it; the
+      groves and temples; the streams and caverns (whither, as the guide tells
+      you, during the heat of summer, it was the custom of Marie Antoinette to
+      retire, with her favorite, Madame de Lamballe): the lake and Swiss village
+      are pretty little toys, moreover; and the cicerone of the place does not
+      fail to point out the different cottages which surround the piece of
+      water, and tell the names of the royal masqueraders who inhabited each. In
+      the long cottage, close upon the lake, dwelt the Seigneur du Village, no
+      less a personage than Louis XV.; Louis XVI., the Dauphin, was the Bailli;
+      near his cottage is that of Monseigneur the Count d'Artois, who was the
+      Miller; opposite lived the Prince de Condé, who enacted the part of
+      Gamekeeper (or, indeed, any other rôle, for it does not signify much);
+      near him was the Prince de Rohan, who was the Aumônier; and yonder is the
+      pretty little dairy, which was under the charge of the fair Marie
+      Antoinette herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I forget whether Monsieur the fat Count of Provence took any share of this
+      royal masquerading; but look at the names of the other six actors of the
+      comedy, and it will be hard to find any person for whom Fate had such
+      dreadful visitations in store. Fancy the party, in the days of their
+      prosperity, here gathered at Trianon, and seated under the tall poplars by
+      the lake, discoursing familiarly together: suppose of a sudden some
+      conjuring Cagliostro of the time is introduced among them, and foretells
+      to them the woes that are about to come. &ldquo;You, Monsieur l'Aumônier, the
+      descendant of a long line of princes, the passionate admirer of that fair
+      queen who sits by your side, shall be the cause of her ruin and your own,*
+      and shall die in disgrace and exile. You, son of the Condés, shall live
+      long enough to see your royal race overthrown, and shall die by the hands
+      of a hangman.** You, oldest son of Saint Louis, shall perish by the
+      executioner's axe; that beautiful head, O Antoinette, the same ruthless
+      blade shall sever.&rdquo; &ldquo;They shall kill me first,&rdquo; says Lamballe, at the
+      queen's side. &ldquo;Yes, truly,&rdquo; replies the soothsayer, &ldquo;for Fate prescribes
+      ruin for your mistress and all who love her.&rdquo; *** &ldquo;And,&rdquo; cries Monsieur
+      d'Artois, &ldquo;do I not love my sister, too? I pray you not to omit me in your
+      prophecies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * In the diamond-necklace affair.
+
+     ** He was found hanging in his own bedroom.
+
+     *** Among the many lovers that rumor gave to the queen, poor
+     Ferscu is the most remarkable. He seems to have entertained
+     for her a high and perfectly pure devotion. He was the chief
+     agent in the luckless escape to Varennes; was lurking in
+     Paris during the time of her captivity; and was concerned in
+     the many fruitless plots that were made for her rescue.
+     Ferscu lived to be an old man, but died a dreadful and
+     violent death. He was dragged from his carriage by the mob,
+     in Stockholm, and murdered by them.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      To whom Monsieur Cagliostro says, scornfully, &ldquo;You may look forward to
+      fifty years of life, after most of these are laid in the grave. You shall
+      be a king, but not die one; and shall leave the crown only; not the
+      worthless head that shall wear it. Thrice shall you go into exile: you
+      shall fly from the people, first, who would have no more of you and your
+      race; and you shall return home over half a million of human corpses, that
+      have been made for the sake of you, and of a tyrant as great as the
+      greatest of your family. Again driven away, your bitterest enemy shall
+      bring you back. But the strong limbs of France are not to be chained by
+      such a paltry yoke as you can put on her: you shall be a tyrant, but in
+      will only; and shall have a sceptre, but to see it robbed from your hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And pray, Sir Conjurer, who shall be the robber?&rdquo; asked Monsieur the
+      Count d'Artois.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This I cannot say, for here my dream ended. The fact is, I had fallen
+      asleep on one of the stone benches in the Avenue de Paris, and at this
+      instant was awakened by a whirling of carriages and a great clattering of
+      national guards, lancers and outriders, in red. His MAJESTY LOUIS PHILIPPE
+      was going to pay a visit to the palace; which contains several pictures of
+      his own glorious actions, and which has been dedicated, by him, to all the
+      glories of France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh, by
+William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh
+
+Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+Posting Date: December 6, 2008 [EBook #2768]
+Release Date: August, 2001
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PARIS SKETCH BOOK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK OF MR. M. A. TITMARSH
+
+By William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+
+Estes And Lauriat, Boston, Publishers
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+     THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK.
+
+     An Invasion of France
+
+     A Caution to Travellers
+
+     The Fetes of July
+
+     On the French School of Painting
+
+     The Painter's Bargain
+
+     Cartouche
+
+     On some French Fashionable Novels
+
+     A Gambler's Death
+
+     Napoleon and his System
+
+     The Story of Mary Ancel
+
+     Beatrice Merger
+
+     Caricatures and Lithography in Paris
+
+     Little Poinsinet
+
+     The Devil's Wager
+
+     Madame Sand and the new Apocalypse
+
+     The Case of Peytel
+
+     Four Imitations of Beranger
+
+     French Dramas and Melodramas
+
+     Meditations at Versailles
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATORY LETTER
+
+TO
+
+M. ARETZ, TAILOR, ETC.
+
+27, RUE RICHELIEU, PARIS.
+
+
+SIR,--It becomes every man in his station to acknowledge and praise
+virtue wheresoever he may find it, and to point it out for the
+admiration and example of his fellow-men.
+
+Some months since, when you presented to the writer of these pages a
+small account for coats and pantaloons manufactured by you, and when you
+were met by a statement from your creditor, that an immediate settlement
+of your bill would be extremely inconvenient to him; your reply
+was, "Mon Dieu, Sir, let not that annoy you; if you want money, as a
+gentleman often does in a strange country, I have a thousand-franc note
+at my house which is quite at your service."
+
+History or experience, Sir, makes us acquainted with so few actions
+that can be compared to yours,--an offer like this from a stranger and
+a tailor seems to me so astonishing,--that you must pardon me for thus
+making your virtue public, and acquainting the English nation with your
+merit and your name. Let me add, Sir, that you live on the first floor;
+that your clothes and fit are excellent, and your charges moderate and
+just; and, as a humble tribute of my admiration, permit me to lay these
+volumes at your feet.
+
+Your obliged, faithful servant,
+
+M. A. TITMARSH.
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION.
+
+
+About half of the sketches in these volumes have already appeared in
+print, in various periodical works. A part of the text of one tale, and
+the plots of two others, have been borrowed from French originals; the
+other stories, which are, in the main, true, have been written upon
+facts and characters that came within the Author's observation during a
+residence in Paris.
+
+As the remaining papers relate to public events which occurred during
+the same period, or to Parisian Art and Literature, he has ventured to
+give his publication the title which it bears.
+
+LONDON, July 1, 1840.
+
+
+
+
+AN INVASION OF FRANCE.
+
+
+"Caesar venit in Galliam summa diligentia."
+
+
+About twelve o'clock, just as the bell of the packet is tolling a
+farewell to London Bridge, and warning off the blackguard-boys with the
+newspapers, who have been shoving Times, Herald, Penny Paul-Pry, Penny
+Satirist, Flare-up, and other abominations, into your face--just as
+the bell has tolled, and the Jews, strangers, people-taking-leave-of
+their families, and blackguard-boys aforesaid, are making a rush for the
+narrow plank which conducts from the paddle-box of the "Emerald"
+steamboat unto the quay--you perceive, staggering down Thames Street,
+those two hackney-coaches, for the arrival of which you have been
+praying, trembling, hoping, despairing, swearing--sw--, I beg your
+pardon, I believe the word is not used in polite company--and
+transpiring, for the last half-hour. Yes, at last, the two coaches draw
+near, and from thence an awful number of trunks, children, carpet-bags,
+nursery-maids, hat-boxes, band-boxes, bonnet-boxes, desks, cloaks, and
+an affectionate wife, are discharged on the quay.
+
+"Elizabeth, take care of Miss Jane," screams that worthy woman, who has
+been for a fortnight employed in getting this tremendous body of troops
+and baggage into marching order. "Hicks! Hicks! for heaven's sake mind
+the babies!"--"George--Edward, sir, if you go near that porter with the
+trunk, he will tumble down and kill you, you naughty boy!--My love, DO
+take the cloaks and umbrellas, and give a hand to Fanny and Lucy; and
+I wish you would speak to the hackney-coachmen, dear, they want fifteen
+shillings, and count the packages, love--twenty-seven packages,--and
+bring little Flo; where's little Flo?--Flo! Flo!"--(Flo comes sneaking
+in; she has been speaking a few parting words to a one-eyed terrier,
+that sneaks off similarly, landward.)
+
+As when the hawk menaces the hen-roost, in like manner, when such a
+danger as a voyage menaces a mother, she becomes suddenly endowed with a
+ferocious presence of mind, and bristling up and screaming in the
+front of her brood, and in the face of circumstances, succeeds, by her
+courage, in putting her enemy to flight; in like manner you will always,
+I think, find your wife (if that lady be good for twopence) shrill,
+eager, and ill-humored, before, and during a great family move of
+this nature. Well, the swindling hackney-coachmen are paid, the mother
+leading on her regiment of little ones, and supported by her auxiliary
+nurse-maids, are safe in the cabin;--you have counted twenty-six of the
+twenty-seven parcels, and have them on board, and that horrid man on
+the paddle-box, who, for twenty minutes past, has been roaring out, NOW,
+SIR!--says, NOW, SIR, no more.
+
+I never yet knew how a steamer began to move, being always too busy
+among the trunks and children, for the first half-hour, to mark any of
+the movements of the vessel. When these private arrangements are
+made, you find yourself opposite Greenwich (farewell, sweet, sweet
+whitebait!), and quiet begins to enter your soul. Your wife smiles for
+the first time these ten days; you pass by plantations of ship-masts,
+and forests of steam-chimneys; the sailors are singing on board the
+ships, the bargees salute you with oaths, grins, and phrases facetious
+and familiar; the man on the paddle-box roars, "Ease her, stop her!"
+which mysterious words a shrill voice from below repeats, and pipes
+out, "Ease her, stop her!" in echo; the deck is crowded with groups of
+figures, and the sun shines over all.
+
+The sun shines over all, and the steward comes up to say, "Lunch, ladies
+and gentlemen! Will any lady or gentleman please to take anythink?"
+About a dozen do: boiled beef and pickles, and great red raw Cheshire
+cheese, tempt the epicure: little dumpy bottles of stout are produced,
+and fizz and bang about with a spirit one would never have looked for in
+individuals of their size and stature.
+
+The decks have a strange, look; the people on them, that is. Wives,
+elderly stout husbands, nurse-maids, and children predominate, of
+course, in English steamboats. Such may be considered as the distinctive
+marks of the English gentleman at three or four and forty: two or three
+of such groups have pitched their camps on the deck. Then there are a
+number of young men, of whom three or four have allowed their moustaches
+to BEGIN to grow since last Friday; for they are going "on the
+Continent," and they look, therefore, as if their upper lips were
+smeared with snuff.
+
+A danseuse from the opera is on her way to Paris. Followed by her bonne
+and her little dog, she paces the deck, stepping out, in the real dancer
+fashion, and ogling all around. How happy the two young Englishmen are,
+who can speak French, and make up to her: and how all criticise her
+points and paces! Yonder is a group of young ladies, who are going
+to Paris to learn how to be governesses: those two splendidly dressed
+ladies are milliners from the Rue Richelieu, who have just brought over,
+and disposed of, their cargo of Summer fashions. Here sits the Rev. Mr.
+Snodgrass with his pupils, whom he is conducting to his establishment,
+near Boulogne, where, in addition to a classical and mathematical
+education (washing included), the young gentlemen have the benefit of
+learning French among THE FRENCH THEMSELVES. Accordingly, the young
+gentlemen are locked up in a great rickety house, two miles from
+Boulogne and never see a soul, except the French usher and the cook.
+
+Some few French people are there already, preparing to be ill--(I never
+shall forget a dreadful sight I once had in the little dark, dirty,
+six-foot cabin of a Dover steamer. Four gaunt Frenchmen, but for their
+pantaloons, in the costume of Adam in Paradise, solemnly anointing
+themselves with some charm against sea-sickness!)--a few Frenchmen are
+there, but these, for the most part, and with a proper philosophy, go to
+the fore-cabin of the ship, and you see them on the fore-deck (is that
+the name for that part of the vessel which is in the region of the
+bowsprit?) lowering in huge cloaks and caps; snuffy, wretched, pale,
+and wet; and not jabbering now, as their wont is on shore. I never could
+fancy the Mounseers formidable at sea.
+
+There are, of course, many Jews on board. Who ever travelled by
+steamboat, coach, diligence, eilwagen, vetturino, mule-back, or sledge,
+without meeting some of the wandering race?
+
+By the time these remarks have been made the steward is on the deck
+again, and dinner is ready: and about two hours after dinner comes
+tea; and then there is brandy-and-water, which he eagerly presses as
+a preventive against what may happen; and about this time you pass
+the Foreland, the wind blowing pretty fresh; and the groups on deck
+disappear, and your wife, giving you an alarmed look, descends, with her
+little ones, to the ladies' cabin, and you see the steward and his boys
+issuing from their den under the paddle-box, with each a heap of
+round tin vases, like those which are called, I believe, in America,
+expectoratoons, only these are larger.
+
+      .      .      .      .      .      .
+
+The wind blows, the water looks greener and more beautiful than
+ever--ridge by ridge of long white rock passes away. "That's Ramsgit,"
+says the man at the helm; and, presently, "That there's Deal--it's
+dreadful fallen off since the war;" and "That's Dover, round that there
+pint, only you can't see it." And, in the meantime, the sun has plumped
+his hot face into the water, and the moon has shown hers as soon as ever
+his back is turned, and Mrs.--(the wife in general,) has brought up
+her children and self from the horrid cabin, in which she says it
+is impossible to breathe; and the poor little wretches are, by the
+officious stewardess and smart steward (expectoratoonifer), accommodated
+with a heap of blankets, pillows, and mattresses, in the midst of which
+they crawl, as best they may, and from the heaving heap of which are,
+during the rest of the voyage, heard occasional faint cries, and sounds
+of puking woe!
+
+Dear, dear Maria! Is this the woman who, anon, braved the jeers and
+brutal wrath of swindling hackney-coachmen; who repelled the insolence
+of haggling porters, with a scorn that brought down their demands at
+least eighteenpence? Is this the woman at whose voice servants tremble;
+at the sound of whose steps the nursery, ay, and mayhap the parlor, is
+in order? Look at her now, prostrate, prostrate--no strength has she
+to speak, scarce power to push to her youngest one--her suffering,
+struggling Rosa,--to push to her the--the instrumentoon!
+
+In the midst of all these throes and agonies, at which all the
+passengers, who have their own woes (you yourself--for how can you help
+THEM?--you are on your back on a bench, and if you move all is up with
+you,) are looking on indifferent--one man there is who has been watching
+you with the utmost care, and bestowing on your helpless family the
+tenderness that a father denies them. He is a foreigner, and you
+have been conversing with him, in the course of the morning, in
+French--which, he says, you speak remarkably well, like a native
+in fact, and then in English (which, after all, you find is more
+convenient). What can express your gratitude to this gentleman for all
+his goodness towards your family and yourself--you talk to him, he has
+served under the Emperor, and is, for all that, sensible, modest,
+and well-informed. He speaks, indeed, of his countrymen almost with
+contempt, and readily admits the superiority of a Briton, on the seas
+and elsewhere. One loves to meet with such genuine liberality in a
+foreigner, and respects the man who can sacrifice vanity to truth. This
+distinguished foreigner has travelled much; he asks whither you are
+going?--where you stop? if you have a great quantity of luggage on
+board?--and laughs when he hears of the twenty-seven packages, and
+hopes you have some friend at the custom-house, who can spare you the
+monstrous trouble of unpacking that which has taken you weeks to put up.
+Nine, ten, eleven, the distinguished foreigner is ever at your side; you
+find him now, perhaps, (with characteristic ingratitude,) something of
+a bore, but, at least, he has been most tender to the children and their
+mamma. At last a Boulogne light comes in sight, (you see it over the
+bows of the vessel, when, having bobbed violently upwards, it sinks
+swiftly down,) Boulogne harbor is in sight, and the foreigner says,--
+
+The distinguished foreigner says, says he--"Sare, eef you af no 'otel, I
+sall recommend you, milor, to ze 'Otel Betfort, in ze Quay, sare, close
+to the bathing-machines and custom-ha-oose. Good bets and fine garten,
+sare; table-d'hote, sare, a cinq heures; breakfast, sare, in French
+or English style;--I am the commissionaire, sare, and vill see to your
+loggish."
+
+... Curse the fellow, for an impudent, swindling, sneaking French
+humbug!--Your tone instantly changes, and you tell him to go about his
+business: but at twelve o'clock at night, when the voyage is over, and
+the custom-house business done, knowing not whither to go, with a wife
+and fourteen exhausted children, scarce able to stand, and longing for
+bed, you find yourself, somehow, in the Hotel Bedford (and you can't be
+better), and smiling chambermaids carry off your children to snug beds;
+while smart waiters produce for your honor--a cold fowl, say, and a
+salad, and a bottle of Bordeaux and Seltzer-water.
+
+      .      .      .      .      .      .
+
+The morning comes--I don't know a pleasanter feeling than that of waking
+with the sun shining on objects quite new, and (although you have made
+the voyage a dozen times,) quite strange. Mrs. X. and you occupy a very
+light bed, which has a tall canopy of red "percale;" the windows are
+smartly draped with cheap gaudy calicoes and muslins; there are little
+mean strips of carpet about the tiled floor of the room, and yet all
+seems as gay and as comfortable as may be--the sun shines brighter than
+you have seen it for a year, the sky is a thousand times bluer, and
+what a cheery clatter of shrill quick French voices comes up from the
+court-yard under the windows! Bells are jangling; a family, mayhap, is
+going to Paris, en poste, and wondrous is the jabber of the courier, the
+postilion, the inn-waiters, and the lookers-on. The landlord calls
+out for "Quatre biftecks aux pommes pour le trente-trois,"--(O my
+countrymen, I love your tastes and your ways!)--the chambermaid is
+laughing and says, "Finissez donc, Monsieur Pierre!" (what can they be
+about?)--a fat Englishman has opened his window violently, and says,
+"Dee dong, garsong, vooly voo me donny lo sho, ou vooly voo pah?" He has
+been ringing for half an hour--the last energetic appeal succeeds, and
+shortly he is enabled to descend to the coffee-room, where, with three
+hot rolls, grilled ham, cold fowl, and four boiled eggs, he makes what
+he calls his first FRENCH breakfast.
+
+It is a strange, mongrel, merry place, this town of Boulogne; the
+little French fishermen's children are beautiful, and the little French
+soldiers, four feet high, red-breeched, with huge pompons on their caps,
+and brown faces, and clear sharp eyes, look, for all their littleness,
+far more military and more intelligent than the heavy louts one has seen
+swaggering about the garrison towns in England. Yonder go a crowd of
+bare-legged fishermen; there is the town idiot, mocking a woman who is
+screaming "Fleuve du Tage," at an inn-window, to a harp, and there are
+the little gamins mocking HIM. Lo! these seven young ladies, with red
+hair and green veils, they are from neighboring Albion, and going
+to bathe. Here comes three Englishmen, habitues evidently of the
+place,--dandy specimens of our countrymen: one wears a marine dress,
+another has a shooting dress, a third has a blouse and a pair of
+guiltless spurs--all have as much hair on the face as nature or art can
+supply, and all wear their hats very much on one side. Believe me, there
+is on the face of this world no scamp like an English one, no blackguard
+like one of these half-gentlemen, so mean, so low, so vulgar,--so
+ludicrously ignorant and conceited, so desperately heartless and
+depraved.
+
+But why, my dear sir, get into a passion?--Take things coolly. As the
+poet has observed, "Those only is gentlemen who behave as sich;" with
+such, then, consort, be they cobblers or dukes. Don't give us, cries the
+patriotic reader, any abuse of our fellow-countrymen (anybody else
+can do that), but rather continue in that good-humored, facetious,
+descriptive style with which your letter has commenced.--Your remark,
+sir, is perfectly just, and does honor to your head and excellent heart.
+
+There is little need to give a description of the good town of Boulogne,
+which, haute and basse, with the new light-house and the new harbor, and
+the gas-lamps, and the manufactures, and the convents, and the number
+of English and French residents, and the pillar erected in honor of the
+grand Armee d'Angleterre, so called because it DIDN'T go to England,
+have all been excellently described by the facetious Coglan, the learned
+Dr. Millingen, and by innumerable guide-books besides. A fine thing it
+is to hear the stout old Frenchmen of Napoleon's time argue how that
+audacious Corsican WOULD have marched to London, after swallowing Nelson
+and all his gun-boats, but for cette malheureuse guerre d'Espagne and
+cette glorieuse campagne d'Autriche, which the gold of Pitt caused to be
+raised at the Emperor's tail, in order to call him off from the helpless
+country in his front. Some Frenchmen go farther still, and vow that
+in Spain they were never beaten at all; indeed, if you read in the
+Biographie des Hommes du Jour, article "Soult," you will fancy that,
+with the exception of the disaster at Vittoria, the campaigns in Spain
+and Portugal were a series of triumphs. Only, by looking at a map, it
+is observable that Vimeiro is a mortal long way from Toulouse, where,
+at the end of certain years of victories, we somehow find the honest
+Marshal. And what then?--he went to Toulouse for the purpose of beating
+the English there, to be sure;--a known fact, on which comment would be
+superfluous. However, we shall never get to Paris at this rate; let us
+break off further palaver, and away at once....
+
+(During this pause, the ingenious reader is kindly requested to pay
+his bill at the Hotel at Boulogne, to mount the Diligence of Laffitte,
+Caillard and Company, and to travel for twenty-five hours, amidst much
+jingling of harness-bells and screaming of postilions.)
+
+      .      .      .      .      .      .
+
+The French milliner, who occupies one of the corners, begins to remove
+the greasy pieces of paper which have enveloped her locks during the
+journey. She withdraws the "Madras" of dubious hue which has bound her
+head for the last five-and-twenty hours, and replaces it by the black
+velvet bonnet, which, bobbing against your nose, has hung from the
+Diligence roof since your departure from Boulogne. The old lady in the
+opposite corner, who has been sucking bonbons, and smells dreadfully
+of anisette, arranges her little parcels in that immense basket of
+abominations which all old women carry in their laps. She rubs her mouth
+and eyes with her dusty cambric handkerchief, she ties up her nightcap
+into a little bundle, and replaces it by a more becoming head-piece,
+covered with withered artificial flowers, and crumpled tags of ribbon;
+she looks wistfully at the company for an instant, and then places her
+handkerchief before her mouth:--her eyes roll strangely about for an
+instant, and you hear a faint clattering noise: the old lady has been
+getting ready her teeth, which had lain in her basket among the
+bonbons, pins, oranges, pomatum, bits of cake, lozenges, prayer-books,
+peppermint-water, copper money, and false hair--stowed away there during
+the voyage. The Jewish gentleman, who has been so attentive to
+the milliner during the journey, and is a traveller and bagman by
+profession, gathers together his various goods. The sallow-faced English
+lad, who has been drunk ever since we left Boulogne yesterday, and is
+coming to Paris to pursue the study of medicine, swears that he rejoices
+to leave the cursed Diligence, is sick of the infernal journey, and
+d--d glad that the d--d voyage is so nearly over. "Enfin!" says your
+neighbor, yawning, and inserting an elbow into the mouth of his right
+and left hand companion, "nous voila."
+
+NOUS VOILA!--We are at Paris! This must account for the removal of the
+milliner's curl-papers, and the fixing of the old lady's teeth.--Since
+the last relais, the Diligence has been travelling with extraordinary
+speed. The postilion cracks his terrible whip, and screams shrilly. The
+conductor blows incessantly on his horn, the bells of the harness, the
+bumping and ringing of the wheels and chains, and the clatter of the
+great hoofs of the heavy snorting Norman stallions, have wondrously
+increased within this, the last ten minutes; and the Diligence, which
+has been proceeding hitherto at the rate of a league in an hour, now
+dashes gallantly forward, as if it would traverse at least six miles in
+the same space of time. Thus it is, when Sir Robert maketh a speech at
+Saint Stephen's--he useth his strength at the beginning, only, and the
+end. He gallopeth at the commencement; in the middle he lingers; at the
+close, again, he rouses the House, which has fallen asleep; he cracketh
+the whip of his satire; he shouts the shout of his patriotism; and,
+urging his eloquence to its roughest canter, awakens the sleepers,
+and inspires the weary, until men say, What a wondrous orator! What a
+capital coach! We will ride henceforth in it, and in no other!
+
+But, behold us at Paris! The Diligence has reached a rude-looking gate,
+or grille, flanked by two lodges; the French Kings of old made their
+entry by this gate; some of the hottest battles of the late revolution
+were fought before it. At present, it is blocked by carts and peasants,
+and a busy crowd of men, in green, examining the packages before they
+enter, probing the straw with long needles. It is the Barrier of St.
+Denis, and the green men are the customs'-men of the city of Paris. If
+you are a countryman, who would introduce a cow into the metropolis,
+the city demands twenty-four francs for such a privilege: if you have
+a hundredweight of tallow-candles, you must, previously, disburse three
+francs: if a drove of hogs, nine francs per whole hog: but upon these
+subjects Mr. Bulwer, Mrs. Trollope, and other writers, have already
+enlightened the public. In the present instance, after a momentary
+pause, one of the men in green mounts by the side of the conductor, and
+the ponderous vehicle pursues its journey.
+
+The street which we enter, that of the Faubourg St. Denis, presents
+a strange contrast to the dark uniformity of a London street, where
+everything, in the dingy and smoky atmosphere, looks as though it were
+painted in India-ink--black houses, black passengers, and black sky.
+Here, on the contrary, is a thousand times more life and color. Before
+you, shining in the sun, is a long glistening line of GUTTER,--not a
+very pleasing object in a city, but in a picture invaluable. On each
+side are houses of all dimensions and hues; some but of one story; some
+as high as the tower of Babel. From these the haberdashers (and this is
+their favorite street) flaunt long strips of gaudy calicoes, which give
+a strange air of rude gayety to the street. Milk-women, with a little
+crowd of gossips round each, are, at this early hour of morning, selling
+the chief material of the Parisian cafe-au-lait. Gay wine-shops, painted
+red, and smartly decorated with vines and gilded railings, are filled
+with workmen taking their morning's draught. That gloomy-looking
+prison on your right is a prison for women; once it was a convent for
+Lazarists: a thousand unfortunate individuals of the softer sex now
+occupy that mansion: they bake, as we find in the guide-books, the bread
+of all the other prisons; they mend and wash the shirts and stockings of
+all the other prisoners; they make hooks-and-eyes and phosphorus-boxes,
+and they attend chapel every Sunday:--if occupation can help them, sure
+they have enough of it. Was it not a great stroke of the legislature
+to superintend the morals and linen at once, and thus keep these poor
+creatures continually mending?--But we have passed the prison long ago,
+and are at the Porte St. Denis itself.
+
+There is only time to take a hasty glance as we pass: it commemorates
+some of the wonderful feats of arms of Ludovicus Magnus, and abounds in
+ponderous allegories--nymphs, and river-gods, and pyramids crowned with
+fleurs-de-lis; Louis passing over the Rhine in triumph, and the Dutch
+Lion giving up the ghost, in the year of our Lord 1672. The Dutch Lion
+revived, and overcame the man some years afterwards; but of this fact,
+singularly enough, the inscriptions make no mention. Passing, then,
+round the gate, and not under it (after the general custom, in respect
+of triumphal arches), you cross the boulevard, which gives a glimpse of
+trees and sunshine, and gleaming white buildings; then, dashing down the
+Rue de Bourbon Villeneuve, a dirty street, which seems interminable, and
+the Rue St. Eustache, the conductor gives a last blast on his horn, and
+the great vehicle clatters into the court-yard, where the journey is
+destined to conclude.
+
+If there was a noise before of screaming postilions and cracked horns,
+it was nothing to the Babel-like clatter which greets us now. We are
+in a great court, which Hajji Baba would call the father of Diligences.
+Half a dozen other coaches arrive at the same minute--no light affairs,
+like your English vehicles, but ponderous machines, containing fifteen
+passengers inside, more in the cabriolet, and vast towers of luggage on
+the roof: others are loading: the yard is filled with passengers coming
+or departing;--bustling porters and screaming commissionaires. These
+latter seize you as you descend from your place,--twenty cards are
+thrust into your hand, and as many voices, jabbering with inconceivable
+swiftness, shriek into your ear, "Dis way, sare; are you for ze' 'Otel
+of Rhin?' 'Hotel de l'Amiraute!'--'Hotel Bristol,' sare!--Monsieur,
+'l'Hotel de Lille?' Sacr-rrre 'nom de Dieu, laissez passer ce petit,
+monsieur! Ow mosh loggish ave you, sare?"
+
+And now, if you are a stranger in Paris, listen to the words of
+Titmarsh.--If you cannot speak a syllable of French, and love English
+comfort, clean rooms, breakfasts, and waiters; if you would have
+plentiful dinners, and are not particular (as how should you be?)
+concerning wine; if, in this foreign country, you WILL have your English
+companions, your porter, your friend, and your brandy-and-water--do not
+listen to any of these commissioner fellows, but with your best English
+accent, shout out boldly, "MEURICE!" and straightway a man will step
+forward to conduct you to the Rue de Rivoli.
+
+Here you will find apartments at any price: a very neat room, for
+instance, for three francs daily; an English breakfast of eternal boiled
+eggs, or grilled ham; a nondescript dinner, profuse but cold; and a
+society which will rejoice your heart. Here are young gentlemen from
+the universities; young merchants on a lark; large families of nine
+daughters, with fat father and mother; officers of dragoons, and
+lawyers' clerks. The last time we dined at "Meurice's" we hobbed and
+nobbed with no less a person than Mr. Moses, the celebrated bailiff of
+Chancery Lane; Lord Brougham was on his right, and a clergyman's lady,
+with a train of white-haired girls, sat on his left, wonderfully taken
+with the diamond rings of the fascinating stranger!
+
+It is, as you will perceive, an admirable way to see Paris, especially
+if you spend your days reading the English papers at Galignani's, as
+many of our foreign tourists do.
+
+But all this is promiscuous, and not to the purpose. If,--to continue on
+the subject of hotel choosing,--if you love quiet, heavy bills, and
+the best table-d'hote in the city, go, O stranger! to the "Hotel des
+Princes;" it is close to the Boulevard, and convenient for Frascati's.
+The "Hotel Mirabeau" possesses scarcely less attraction; but of this
+you will find, in Mr. Bulwer's "Autobiography of Pelham," a faithful and
+complete account. "Lawson's Hotel" has likewise its merits, as also the
+"Hotel de Lille," which may be described as a "second chop" Meurice.
+
+If you are a poor student come to study the humanities, or the pleasant
+art of amputation, cross the water forthwith, and proceed to the "Hotel
+Corneille," near the Odeon, or others of its species; there are many
+where you can live royally (until you economize by going into lodgings)
+on four francs a day; and where, if by any strange chance you are
+desirous for a while to get rid of your countrymen, you will find that
+they scarcely ever penetrate.
+
+But above all, O my countrymen! shun boarding-houses, especially if you
+have ladies in your train; or ponder well, and examine the characters of
+the keepers thereof, before you lead your innocent daughters, and
+their mamma, into places so dangerous. In the first place, you have bad
+dinners; and, secondly, bad company. If you play cards, you are very
+likely playing with a swindler; if you dance, you dance with a ----
+person with whom you had better have nothing to do.
+
+
+Note (which ladies are requested not to read).--In one of these
+establishments, daily advertised as most eligible for English, a friend
+of the writer lived. A lady, who had passed for some time as the wife of
+one of the inmates, suddenly changed her husband and name, her original
+husband remaining in the house, and saluting her by her new title.
+
+
+
+
+A CAUTION TO TRAVELLERS.
+
+
+A million dangers and snares await the traveller, as soon as he issues
+out of that vast messagerie which we have just quitted: and as each man
+cannot do better than relate such events as have happened in the course
+of his own experience, and may keep the unwary from the path of danger,
+let us take this, the very earliest opportunity, of imparting to the
+public a little of the wisdom which we painfully have acquired.
+
+And first, then, with regard to the city of Paris, it is to be remarked,
+that in that metropolis flourish a greater number of native and exotic
+swindlers than are to be found in any other European nursery. What young
+Englishman that visits it, but has not determined, in his heart, to have
+a little share of the gayeties that go on--just for once, just to see
+what they are like? How many, when the horrible gambling dens were
+open, did resist a sight of them?--nay, was not a young fellow rather
+flattered by a dinner invitation from the Salon, whither he went,
+fondly pretending that he should see "French society," in the persons of
+certain Dukes and Counts who used to frequent the place?
+
+My friend Pogson is a young fellow, not much worse, although perhaps a
+little weaker and simpler than his neighbors; and coming to Paris with
+exactly the same notions that bring many others of the British youth to
+that capital, events befell him there, last winter, which are strictly
+true, and shall here be narrated, by way of warning to all.
+
+Pog, it must be premised, is a city man, who travels in drugs for a
+couple of the best London houses, blows the flute, has an album, drives
+his own gig, and is considered, both on the road and in the metropolis,
+a remarkably nice, intelligent, thriving young man. Pogson's only fault
+is too great an attachment to the fair:--"the sex," as he says often
+"will be his ruin:" the fact is, that Pog never travels without a "Don
+Juan" under his driving-cushion, and is a pretty-looking young fellow
+enough.
+
+Sam Pogson had occasion to visit Paris, last October; and it was in that
+city that his love of the sex had liked to have cost him dear. He worked
+his way down to Dover; placing, right and left, at the towns on his
+route, rhubarb, sodas, and other such delectable wares as his masters
+dealt in ("the sweetest sample of castor oil, smelt like a nosegay--went
+off like wildfire--hogshead and a half at Rochester, eight-and twenty
+gallons at Canterbury," and so on), and crossed to Calais, and thence
+voyaged to Paris in the coupe of the Diligence. He paid for two places,
+too, although a single man, and the reason shall now be made known.
+
+Dining at the table-d'hote at "Quillacq's"--it is the best inn on the
+Continent of Europe--our little traveller had the happiness to be placed
+next to a lady, who was, he saw at a glance, one of the extreme pink of
+the nobility. A large lady, in black satin, with eyes and hair as
+black as sloes, with gold chains, scent-bottles, sable tippet, worked
+pocket-handkerchief, and four twinkling rings on each of her plump white
+fingers. Her cheeks were as pink as the finest Chinese rouge could make
+them. Pog knew the article: he travelled in it. Her lips were as red as
+the ruby lip salve: she used the very best, that was clear.
+
+She was a fine-looking woman, certainly (holding down her eyes, and
+talking perpetually of "mes trente-deux ans"); and Pogson, the wicked
+young dog, who professed not to care for young misses, saying they smelt
+so of bread-and-butter, declared, at once, that the lady was one of
+HIS beauties; in fact, when he spoke to us about her, he said, "She's a
+slap-up thing, I tell you; a reg'lar good one; ONE OF MY SORT!" And such
+was Pogson's credit in all commercial rooms, that one of HIS sort was
+considered to surpass all other sorts.
+
+During dinner-time, Mr. Pogson was profoundly polite and attentive to
+the lady at his side, and kindly communicated to her, as is the way with
+the best-bred English on their first arrival "on the Continent," all his
+impressions regarding the sights and persons he had seen. Such remarks
+having been made during half an hour's ramble about the ramparts and
+town, and in the course of a walk down to the custom-house, and a
+confidential communication with the commissionaire, must be, doubtless,
+very valuable to Frenchmen in their own country; and the lady listened
+to Pogson's opinions: not only with benevolent attention, but actually,
+she said, with pleasure and delight. Mr. Pogson said that there was
+no such thing as good meat in France, and that's why they cooked their
+victuals in this queer way; he had seen many soldiers parading about the
+place, and expressed a true Englishman's abhorrence of an armed force;
+not that he feared such fellows as these--little whipper-snappers--our
+men would eat them. Hereupon the lady admitted that our Guards were
+angels, but that Monsieur must not be too hard upon the French; "her
+father was a General of the Emperor."
+
+Pogson felt a tremendous respect for himself at the notion that he was
+dining with a General's daughter, and instantly ordered a bottle of
+champagne to keep up his consequence.
+
+"Mrs. Bironn, ma'am," said he, for he had heard the waiter call her by
+some such name, "if you WILL accept a glass of champagne, ma'am, you'll
+do me, I'm sure, great honor: they say it's very good, and a precious
+sight cheaper than it is on our side of the way, too--not that I care
+for money. Mrs. Bironn, ma'am, your health, ma'am."
+
+The lady smiled very graciously, and drank the wine.
+
+"Har you any relation, ma'am, if I may make so bold; har you anyways
+connected with the family of our immortal bard?"
+
+"Sir, I beg your pardon."
+
+"Don't mention it, ma'am: but BiRONN and BYron are hevidently the same
+names, only you pronounce in the French way; and I thought you might be
+related to his lordship: his horigin, ma'am, was of French extraction:"
+and here Pogson began to repeat,--
+
+
+     "Hare thy heyes like thy mother's, my fair child,
+      Hada! sole daughter of my 'ouse and 'art?"
+
+
+"Oh!" said the lady, laughing, "you speak of LOR Byron?
+
+"Hauthor of 'Don Juan,' 'Child 'Arold,' and 'Cain, a Mystery,'" said
+Pogson:--"I do; and hearing the waiter calling you Madam la Bironn, took
+the liberty of hasking whether you were connected with his lordship;
+that's hall:" and my friend here grew dreadfully red, and began
+twiddling his long ringlets in his fingers, and examining very eagerly
+the contents of his plate.
+
+"Oh, no: Madame la Baronne means Mistress Baroness; my husband was
+Baron, and I am Baroness."
+
+"What! 'ave I the honor--I beg your pardon, ma'am--is your ladyship a
+Baroness, and I not know it? pray excuse me for calling you ma'am."
+
+The Baroness smiled most graciously--with such a look as Juno cast
+upon unfortunate Jupiter when she wished to gain her wicked ends upon
+him--the Baroness smiled; and, stealing her hand into a black velvet
+bag, drew from it an ivory card-case, and from the ivory card-case
+extracted a glazed card, printed in gold; on it was engraved a coronet,
+and under the coronet the words
+
+
+    BARONNE DE FLORVAL-DELVAL,
+
+      NEE DE MELVAL-NORVAL.
+
+                 Rue Taitbout.
+
+
+The grand Pitt diamond--the Queen's own star of the garter--a sample of
+otto-of-roses at a guinea a drop, would not be handled more curiously,
+or more respectfully, than this porcelain card of the Baroness.
+Trembling he put it into his little Russia-leather pocket-book: and
+when he ventured to look up, and saw the eyes of the Baroness de
+Florval-Delval, nee de Melval-Norval, gazing upon him with friendly and
+serene glances, a thrill of pride tingled through Pogson's blood: he
+felt himself to be the very happiest fellow "on the Continent."
+
+But Pogson did not, for some time, venture to resume that sprightly
+and elegant familiarity which generally forms the great charm of his
+conversation: he was too much frightened at the presence he was in,
+and contented himself by graceful and solemn bows, deep attention,
+and ejaculations of "Yes, my lady," and "No, your ladyship," for some
+minutes after the discovery had been made. Pogson piqued himself on his
+breeding: "I hate the aristocracy," he said, "but that's no reason why I
+shouldn't behave like a gentleman."
+
+A surly, silent little gentleman, who had been the third at the
+ordinary, and would take no part either in the conversation or in
+Pogson's champagne, now took up his hat, and, grunting, left the room,
+when the happy bagman had the delight of a tete-a-tete. The Baroness did
+not appear inclined to move: it was cold; a fire was comfortable, and
+she had ordered none in her apartment. Might Pogson give her one more
+glass of champagne, or would her ladyship prefer "something hot." Her
+ladyship gravely said, she never took ANYTHING hot. "Some champagne,
+then; a leetle drop?" She would! she would! O gods! how Pogson's hand
+shook as he filled and offered her the glass!
+
+What took place during the rest of the evening had better be described
+by Mr. Pogson himself, who has given us permission to publish his
+letter.
+
+
+"QUILLACQ'S HOTEL (pronounced KILLYAX), CALAIS.
+
+"DEAR TIT,--I arrived at Cally, as they call it, this day, or, rather,
+yesterday; for it is past midnight, as I sit thinking of a wonderful
+adventure that has just befallen me. A woman in course; that's always
+the case with ME, you know: but oh, Tit! if you COULD but see her! Of
+the first family in France, the Florval-Delvals, beautiful as an angel,
+and no more caring for money than I do for split peas.
+
+"I'll tell you how it occurred. Everybody in France, you know, dines at
+the ordinary--it's quite distangy to do so. There was only three of us
+to-day, however,--the Baroness, me, and a gent, who never spoke a word;
+and we didn't want him to, neither: do you mark that?
+
+"You know my way with the women: champagne's the thing; make 'em drink,
+make 'em talk;--make 'em talk, make 'em do anything. So I orders a
+bottle, as if for myself; and, 'Ma'am,' says I, 'will you take a glass
+of Sham--just one?' Take it she did--for you know it's quite distangy
+here: everybody dines at the table de hote, and everybody accepts
+everybody's wine. Bob Irons, who travels in linen on our circuit, told
+me that he had made some slap-up acquaintances among the genteelest
+people at Paris, nothing but by offering them Sham.
+
+"Well, my Baroness takes one glass, two glasses, three glasses--the old
+fellow goes--we have a deal of chat (she took me for a military man,
+she said: is it not singular that so many people should?), and by ten
+o'clock we had grown so intimate, that I had from her her whole history,
+knew where she came from, and where she was going. Leave me alone with
+'em: I can find out any woman's history in half an hour.
+
+"And where do you think she IS going? to Paris to be sure: she has her
+seat in what they call the coopy (though you're not near so cooped in it
+as in our coaches. I've been to the office and seen one of 'em). She
+has her place in the coopy, and the coopy holds THREE; so what does Sam
+Pogson do?--he goes and takes the other two. Ain't I up to a thing or
+two? Oh, no, not the least; but I shall have her to myself the whole of
+the way.
+
+"We shall be in the French metropolis the day after this reaches you:
+please look out for a handsome lodging for me, and never mind the
+expense. And I say, if you could, in her hearing, when you came down
+to the coach, call me Captain Pogson, I wish you would--it sounds well
+travelling, you know; and when she asked me if I was not an officer, I
+couldn't say no. Adieu, then, my dear fellow, till Monday, and vive le
+joy, as they say. The Baroness says I speak French charmingly, she talks
+English as well as you or I.
+
+"Your affectionate friend,
+
+"S. Pogson."
+
+
+This letter reached us duly, in our garrets, and we engaged such an
+apartment for Mr. Pogson, as beseemed a gentleman of his rank in the
+world and the army. At the appointed hour, too, we repaired to the
+Diligence office, and there beheld the arrival of the machine which
+contained him and his lovely Baroness.
+
+Those who have much frequented the society of gentlemen of his
+profession (and what more delightful?) must be aware, that, when all the
+rest of mankind look hideous, dirty, peevish, wretched, after a forty
+hours' coach-journey, a bagman appears as gay and spruce as when he
+started; having within himself a thousand little conveniences for the
+voyage, which common travellers neglect. Pogson had a little portable
+toilet, of which he had not failed to take advantage, and with his long,
+curling, flaxen hair, flowing under a seal-skin cap, with a gold tassel,
+with a blue and gold satin handkerchief, a crimson velvet waistcoat,
+a light green cut-away coat, a pair of barred brickdust-colored
+pantaloons, and a neat mackintosh, presented, altogether, as elegant and
+distingue an appearance as any one could desire. He had put on a clean
+collar at breakfast, and a pair of white kids as he entered the barrier,
+and looked, as he rushed into my arms, more like a man stepping out of a
+band-box, than one descending from a vehicle that has just performed one
+of the laziest, dullest, flattest, stalest, dirtiest journeys in Europe.
+
+To my surprise, there were TWO ladies in the coach with my friend,
+and not ONE, as I had expected. One of these, a stout female, carrying
+sundry baskets, bags, umbrellas, and woman's wraps, was evidently a
+maid-servant: the other, in black, was Pogson's fair one, evidently.
+I could see a gleam of curl-papers over a sallow face,--of a dusky
+nightcap flapping over the curl-papers,--but these were hidden by a lace
+veil and a huge velvet bonnet, of which the crowning birds-of-paradise
+were evidently in a moulting state. She was encased in many shawls
+and wrappers; she put, hesitatingly, a pretty little foot out of the
+carriage--Pogson was by her side in an instant, and, gallantly putting
+one of his white kids round her waist, aided this interesting creature
+to descend. I saw, by her walk, that she was five-and-forty, and that my
+little Pogson was a lost man.
+
+After some brief parley between them--in which it was charming to hear
+how my friend Samuel WOULD speak, what he called French, to a lady
+who could not understand one syllable of his jargon--the mutual
+hackney-coaches drew up; Madame la Baronne waved to the Captain a
+graceful French curtsy. "Adyou!" said Samuel, and waved his lily hand.
+"Adyou-addimang."
+
+A brisk little gentleman, who had made the journey in the same coach
+with Pogson, but had more modestly taken a seat in the Imperial, here
+passed us, and greeted me with a "How d'ye do?" He had shouldered
+his own little valise, and was trudging off, scattering a cloud of
+commissionaires, who would fain have spared him the trouble.
+
+"Do you know that chap?" says Pogson; "surly fellow, ain't he?"
+
+"The kindest man in existence," answered I; "all the world knows little
+Major British."
+
+"He's a Major, is he?--why, that's the fellow that dined with us at
+Killyax's; it's lucky I did not call myself Captain before him,
+he mightn't have liked it, you know:" and then Sam fell into a
+reverie;--what was the subject of his thoughts soon appeared.
+
+"Did you ever SEE such a foot and ankle?" said Sam, after sitting for
+some time, regardless of the novelty of the scene, his hands in his
+pockets, plunged in the deepest thought.
+
+"ISN'T she a slap-up woman, eh, now?" pursued he; and began enumerating
+her attractions, as a horse-jockey would the points of a favorite
+animal.
+
+"You seem to have gone a pretty length already," said I, "by promising
+to visit her to-morrow."
+
+"A good length?--I believe you. Leave ME alone for that."
+
+"But I thought you were only to be two in the coupe, you wicked rogue."
+
+"Two in the coopy? Oh! ah! yes, you know--why, that is, I didn't know
+she had her maid with her (what an ass I was to think of a noblewoman
+travelling without one!) and couldn't, in course, refuse, when she asked
+me to let the maid in."
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"Couldn't, you know, as a man of honor; but I made up for all that,"
+said Pogson, winking slyly, and putting his hand to his little bunch of
+a nose, in a very knowing way.
+
+"You did, and how?"
+
+"Why, you dog, I sat next to her; sat in the middle the whole way, and
+my back's half broke, I can tell you:" and thus, having depicted his
+happiness, we soon reached the inn where this back-broken young man was
+to lodge during his stay in Paris.
+
+The next day at five we met; Mr. Pogson had seen his Baroness, and
+described her lodgings, in his own expressive way, as "slap-up." She
+had received him quite like an old friend; treated him to eau sucree, of
+which beverage he expressed himself a great admirer; and actually asked
+him to dine the next day. But there was a cloud over the ingenuous
+youth's brow, and I inquired still farther.
+
+"Why," said he, with a sigh, "I thought she was a widow; and, hang it!
+who should come in but her husband the Baron: a big fellow, sir, with a
+blue coat, a red ribbing, and SUCH a pair of mustachios!"
+
+"Well," said I, "he didn't turn you out, I suppose?"
+
+"Oh, no! on the contrary, as kind as possible; his lordship said that he
+respected the English army; asked me what corps I was in,--said he had
+fought in Spain against us,--and made me welcome."
+
+"What could you want more?"
+
+Mr. Pogson at this only whistled; and if some very profound observer of
+human nature had been there to read into this little bagman's heart, it
+would, perhaps, have been manifest, that the appearance of a whiskered
+soldier of a husband had counteracted some plans that the young
+scoundrel was concocting.
+
+I live up a hundred and thirty-seven steps in the remote quarter of the
+Luxembourg, and it is not to be expected that such a fashionable fellow
+as Sam Pogson, with his pockets full of money, and a new city to see,
+should be always wandering to my dull quarters; so that, although he
+did not make his appearance for some time, he must not be accused of any
+luke-warmness of friendship on that score.
+
+He was out, too, when I called at his hotel; but once, I had the good
+fortune to see him, with his hat curiously on one side, looking as
+pleased as Punch, and being driven, in an open cab, in the Champs
+Elysees. "That's ANOTHER tip-top chap," said he, when we met, at length.
+"What do you think of an Earl's son, my boy? Honorable Tom Ringwood, son
+of the Earl of Cinqbars: what do you think of that, eh?"
+
+I thought he was getting into very good society. Sam was a dashing
+fellow, and was always above his own line of life; he had met Mr.
+Ringwood at the Baron's, and they'd been to the play together; and the
+honorable gent, as Sam called him, had joked with him about being well
+to do IN A CERTAIN QUARTER; and he had had a game of billiards with the
+Baron, at the Estaminy, "a very distangy place, where you smoke," said
+Sam; "quite select, and frequented by the tip-top nobility;" and they
+were as thick as peas in a shell; and they were to dine that day at
+Ringwood's, and sup, the next night, with the Baroness.
+
+"I think the chaps down the road will stare," said Sam, "when they hear
+how I've been coming it." And stare, no doubt, they would; for it
+is certain that very few commercial gentlemen have had Mr. Pogson's
+advantages.
+
+The next morning we had made an arrangement to go out shopping together,
+and to purchase some articles of female gear, that Sam intended to
+bestow on his relations when he returned. Seven needle-books, for his
+sisters; a gilt buckle, for his mamma; a handsome French cashmere shawl
+and bonnet, for his aunt (the old lady keeps an inn in the Borough,
+and has plenty of money, and no heirs); and a toothpick case, for his
+father. Sam is a good fellow to all his relations, and as for his aunt,
+he adores her. Well, we were to go and make these purchases, and I
+arrived punctually at my time; but Sam was stretched on a sofa, very
+pale and dismal.
+
+I saw how it had been.--"A little too much of Mr. Ringwood's claret, I
+suppose?"
+
+He only gave a sickly stare.
+
+"Where does the Honorable Tom live?" says I.
+
+"HONORABLE!" says Sam, with a hollow, horrid laugh; "I tell you, Tit,
+he's no more Honorable than you are."
+
+"What, an impostor?"
+
+"No, no; not that. He is a real Honorable, only--"
+
+"Oh, ho! I smell a rat--a little jealous, eh?"
+
+"Jealousy be hanged! I tell you he's a thief; and the Baron's a thief;
+and, hang me, if I think his wife is any better. Eight-and-thirty pounds
+he won of me before supper; and made me drunk, and sent me home:--is
+THAT honorable? How can I afford to lose forty pounds? It's took me two
+years to save it up--if my old aunt gets wind of it, she'll cut me off
+with a shilling: hang me!"--and here Sam, in an agony, tore his fair
+hair.
+
+While bewailing his lot in this lamentable strain, his bell was
+rung, which signal being answered by a surly "Come in," a tall, very
+fashionable gentleman, with a fur coat, and a fierce tuft to his chin,
+entered the room. "Pogson my buck, how goes it?" said he, familiarly,
+and gave a stare at me: I was making for my hat.
+
+"Don't go," said Sam, rather eagerly; and I sat down again.
+
+The Honorable Mr. Ringwood hummed and ha'd: and, at last, said he wished
+to speak to Mr. Pogson on business, in private, if possible.
+
+"There's no secrets betwixt me and my friend," cried Sam.
+
+Mr. Ringwood paused a little:--"An awkward business that of last night,"
+at length exclaimed he.
+
+"I believe it WAS an awkward business," said Sam, dryly.
+
+"I really am very sorry for your losses."
+
+"Thank you: and so am I, I can tell you," said Sam.
+
+"You must mind, my good fellow, and not drink; for, when you drink, you
+WILL play high: by Gad, you led US in, and not we you."
+
+"I dare say," answered Sam, with something of peevishness; "losses is
+losses: there's no use talking about 'em when they're over and paid."
+
+"And paid?" here wonderingly spoke Mr. Ringwood; "why, my dear fel--what
+the deuce--has Florval been with you?"
+
+"D---- Florval!" growled Sam, "I've never set eyes on his face since
+last night; and never wish to see him again."
+
+"Come, come, enough of this talk; how do you intend to settle the bills
+which you gave him last night?"
+
+"Bills I what do you mean?"
+
+"I mean, sir, these bills," said the Honorable Tom, producing two out of
+his pocket-book, and looking as stern as a lion. "'I promise to pay, on
+demand, to the Baron de Florval, the sum of four hundred pounds. October
+20, 1838.' 'Ten days after date I promise to pay the Baron de et caetera
+et caetera, one hundred and ninety-eight pounds. Samuel Pogson.' You
+didn't say what regiment you were in."
+
+"WHAT!" shouted poor Sam, as from a dream, starting up and looking
+preternaturally pale and hideous.
+
+"D---- it, sir, you don't affect ignorance: you don't pretend not to
+remember that you signed these bills, for money lost in my rooms: money
+LENT to you, by Madame de Florval, at your own request, and lost to her
+husband? You don't suppose, sir, that I shall be such an infernal idiot
+as to believe you, or such a coward as to put up with a mean subterfuge
+of this sort. Will you, or will you not, pay the money, sir?"
+
+"I will not," said Sam, stoutly; "it's a d----d swin--"
+
+Here Mr. Ringwood sprung up, clenching his riding-whip, and looking so
+fierce that Sam and I bounded back to the other end of the room. "Utter
+that word again, and, by heaven, I'll murder you!" shouted Mr. Ringwood,
+and looked as if he would, too: "once more, will you, or will you not,
+pay this money?"
+
+"I can't," said Sam faintly.
+
+"I'll call again, Captain Pogson," said Mr. Ringwood, "I'll call again
+in one hour; and, unless you come to some arrangement, you must meet
+my friend, the Baron de Florval, or I'll post you for a swindler and
+a coward." With this he went out: the door thundered to after him, and
+when the clink of his steps departing had subsided, I was enabled to
+look round at Pog. The poor little man had his elbows on the marble
+table, his head between his hands, and looked, as one has seen gentlemen
+look over a steam-vessel off Ramsgate, the wind blowing remarkably
+fresh: at last he fairly burst out crying.
+
+"If Mrs. Pogson heard of this," said I, "what would become of the 'Three
+Tuns?'" (for I wished to give him a lesson). "If your Ma, who took you
+every Sunday to meeting, should know that her boy was paying attention
+to married women;--if Drench, Glauber and Co., your employers, were
+to know that their confidential agent was a gambler, and unfit to be
+trusted with their money, how long do you think your connection would
+last with them, and who would afterwards employ you?"
+
+To this poor Pog had not a word of answer; but sat on his sofa
+whimpering so bitterly, that the sternest of moralists would have
+relented towards him, and would have been touched by the little wretch's
+tears. Everything, too, must be pleaded in excuse for this unfortunate
+bagman: who, if he wished to pass for a captain, had only done so
+because he had an intense respect and longing for rank: if he had
+made love to the Baroness, had only done so because he was given to
+understand by Lord Byron's "Don Juan" that making love was a very
+correct, natty thing: and if he had gambled, had only been induced to
+do so by the bright eyes and example of the Baron and the Baroness. O
+ye Barons and Baronesses of England! if ye knew what a number of small
+commoners are daily occupied in studying your lives, and imitating your
+aristocratic ways, how careful would ye be of your morals, manners, and
+conversation!
+
+My soul was filled, then, with a gentle yearning pity for Pogson,
+and revolved many plans for his rescue: none of these seeming to be
+practicable, at last we hit on the very wisest of all, and determined to
+apply for counsel to no less a person than Major British.
+
+A blessing it is to be acquainted with my worthy friend, little Major
+British; and heaven, sure, it was that put the Major into my head, when
+I heard of this awkward scrape of poor Fog's. The Major is on half-pay,
+and occupies a modest apartment au quatrieme, in the very hotel which
+Pogson had patronized at my suggestion; indeed, I had chosen it from
+Major British's own peculiar recommendation.
+
+There is no better guide to follow than such a character as the
+honest Major, of whom there are many likenesses now scattered over the
+Continent of Europe: men who love to live well, and are forced to
+live cheaply, and who find the English abroad a thousand times easier,
+merrier, and more hospitable than the same persons at home. I, for my
+part, never landed on Calais pier without feeling that a load of sorrows
+was left on the other side of the water; and have always fancied that
+black care stepped on board the steamer, along with the custom-house
+officers at Gravesend, and accompanied one to yonder black louring
+towers of London--so busy, so dismal, and so vast.
+
+British would have cut any foreigner's throat who ventured to say so
+much, but entertained, no doubt, private sentiments of this nature; for
+he passed eight months of the year, regularly, abroad, with headquarters
+at Paris (the garrets before alluded to), and only went to England for
+the month's shooting, on the grounds of his old colonel, now an old
+lord, of whose acquaintance the Major was passably inclined to boast.
+
+He loved and respected, like a good staunch Tory as he is, every one
+of the English nobility; gave himself certain little airs of a man of
+fashion, that were by no means disagreeable; and was, indeed, kindly
+regarded by such English aristocracy as he met, in his little annual
+tours among the German courts, in Italy or in Paris, where he never
+missed an ambassador's night: he retailed to us, who didn't go, but were
+delighted to know all that had taken place, accurate accounts of the
+dishes, the dresses, and the scandal which had there fallen under his
+observation.
+
+He is, moreover, one of the most useful persons in society that can
+possibly be; for besides being incorrigibly duelsome on his own account,
+he is, for others, the most acute and peaceable counsellor in the world,
+and has carried more friends through scrapes and prevented more deaths
+than any member of the Humane Society. British never bought a single
+step in the army, as is well known. In '14 he killed a celebrated French
+fire-eater, who had slain a young friend of his, and living, as he
+does, a great deal with young men of pleasure, and good old sober family
+people, he is loved by them both and has as welcome a place made for
+him at a roaring bachelor's supper at the "Cafe Anglais," as at a staid
+dowager's dinner-table in the Faubourg St. Honore. Such pleasant old
+boys are very profitable acquaintances, let me tell you; and lucky is
+the young man who has one or two such friends in his list.
+
+Hurrying on Fogson in his dress, I conducted him, panting, up to the
+Major's quatrieme, where we were cheerfully bidden to come in. The
+little gentleman was in his travelling jacket, and occupied in
+painting, elegantly, one of those natty pairs of boots in which he daily
+promenaded the Boulevards. A couple of pairs of tough buff gloves had
+been undergoing some pipe-claying operation under his hands; no man
+stepped out so spick and span, with a hat so nicely brushed, with a
+stiff cravat tied so neatly under a fat little red face, with a blue
+frock-coat so scrupulously fitted to a punchy little person, as Major
+British, about whom we have written these two pages. He stared rather
+hardly at my companion, but gave me a kind shake of the hand, and we
+proceeded at once to business. "Major British," said I, "we want your
+advice in regard to an unpleasant affair which has just occurred to my
+friend Pogson."
+
+"Pogson, take a chair."
+
+"You must know, sir, that Mr. Pogson, coming from Calais the other day,
+encountered, in the diligence, a very handsome woman."
+
+British winked at Pogson, who, wretched as he was, could not help
+feeling pleased.
+
+"Mr. Pogson was not more pleased with this lovely creature than was she
+with him; for, it appears, she gave him her card, invited him to her
+house, where he has been constantly, and has been received with much
+kindness."
+
+"I see," says British.
+
+"Her husband the Baron--"
+
+"NOW it's coming," said the Major, with a grin: "her husband is jealous,
+I suppose, and there is a talk of the Bois de Boulogne: my dear sir, you
+can't refuse--can't refuse."
+
+"It's not that," said Pogson, wagging his head passionately.
+
+"Her husband the Baron seemed quite as much taken with Pogson as his
+lady was, and has introduced him to some very distingue friends of his
+own set. Last night one of the Baron's friends gave a party in honor
+of my friend Pogson, who lost forty-eight pounds at cards BEFORE he was
+made drunk, and heaven knows how much after."
+
+"Not a shilling, by sacred heaven!--not a shilling!" yelled out Pogson.
+"After the supper I 'ad such an 'eadach', I couldn't do anything but
+fall asleep on the sofa."
+
+"You 'ad such an 'eadach', sir," says British, sternly, who piques
+himself on his grammar and pronunciation, and scorns a cockney.
+
+"Such a H-eadache, sir," replied Pogson, with much meekness.
+
+"The unfortunate man is brought home at two o'clock, as tipsy as
+possible, dragged up stairs, senseless, to bed, and, on waking, receives
+a visit from his entertainer of the night before--a lord's son, Major,
+a tip-top fellow,--who brings a couple of bills that my friend Pogson is
+said to have signed."
+
+"Well, my dear fellow, the thing's quite simple,--he must pay them."
+
+"I can't pay them."
+
+"He can't pay them," said we both in a breath: "Pogson is a commercial
+traveller, with thirty shillings a week, and how the deuce is he to pay
+five hundred pounds?"
+
+"A bagman, sir! and what right has a bagman to gamble? Gentlemen gamble,
+sir; tradesmen, sir, have no business with the amusements of the gentry.
+What business had you with barons and lords' sons, sir?--serve you
+right, sir."
+
+"Sir," says Pogson, with some dignity, "merit, and not birth, is the
+criterion of a man: I despise an hereditary aristocracy, and admire only
+Nature's gentlemen. For my part, I think that a British merch--"
+
+"Hold your tongue, sir," bounced out the Major, "and don't lecture
+me; don't come to me, sir, with your slang about Nature's
+gentlemen--Nature's tomfools, sir! Did Nature open a cash account for
+you at a banker's, sir? Did Nature give you an education, sir? What do
+you mean by competing with people to whom Nature has given all these
+things? Stick to your bags, Mr. Pogson, and your bagmen, and leave
+barons and their like to their own ways."
+
+"Yes, but, Major," here cried that faithful friend, who has always stood
+by Pogson; "they won't leave him alone."
+
+"The honorable gent says I must fight if I don't pay," whimpered Sam.
+
+"What! fight YOU? Do you mean that the honorable gent, as you call him,
+will go out with a bagman?"
+
+"He doesn't know I'm a--I'm a commercial man," blushingly said Sam: "he
+fancies I'm a military gent."
+
+The Major's gravity was quite upset at this absurd notion; and he
+laughed outrageously. "Why, the fact is, sir," said I, "that my
+friend Pogson, knowing the value of the title of Captain, and being
+complimented by the Baroness on his warlike appearance, said, boldly,
+he was in the army. He only assumed the rank in order to dazzle her weak
+imagination, never fancying that there was a husband, and a circle of
+friends, with whom he was afterwards to make an acquaintance; and then,
+you know, it was too late to withdraw."
+
+"A pretty pickle you have put yourself in, Mr. Pogson, by making love to
+other men's wives, and calling yourself names," said the Major, who was
+restored to good humor. "And pray, who is the honorable gent?"
+
+"The Earl of Cinqbars' son," says Pogson, "the Honorable Tom Ringwood."
+
+"I thought it was some such character; and the Baron is the Baron de
+Florval-Delval?"
+
+"The very same."
+
+"And his wife a black-haired woman, with a pretty foot and ankle; calls
+herself Athenais; and is always talking about her trente-deux ans? Why,
+sir, that woman was an actress on the Boulevard, when we were here in
+'15. She's no more his wife than I am. Delval's name is Chicot. The
+woman is always travelling between London and Paris: I saw she was
+hooking you at Calais; she has hooked ten men, in the course of the last
+two years, in this very way. She lent you money, didn't she?" "Yes."
+"And she leans on your shoulder, and whispers, 'Play half for me,' and
+somebody wins it, and the poor thing is as sorry as you are, and her
+husband storms and rages, and insists on double stakes; and she leans
+over your shoulder again, and tells every card in your hand to your
+adversary, and that's the way it's done, Mr. Pogson."
+
+"I've been 'AD, I see I 'ave," said Pogson, very humbly.
+
+"Well, sir," said the Major, "in consideration, not of you, sir--for,
+give me leave to tell you, Mr. Pogson, that you are a pitiful little
+scoundrel--in consideration for my Lord Cinqbars, sir, with whom, I am
+proud to say, I am intimate," (the Major dearly loved a lord, and was,
+by his own showing, acquainted with half the peerage,) "I will aid you
+in this affair. Your cursed vanity, sir, and want of principle, has set
+you, in the first place, intriguing with other men's wives; and if you
+had been shot for your pains, a bullet would have only served you right,
+sir. You must go about as an impostor, sir, in society; and you pay
+richly for your swindling, sir, by being swindled yourself: but, as
+I think your punishment has been already pretty severe, I shall do my
+best, out of regard for my friend, Lord Cinqbars, to prevent the matter
+going any farther; and I recommend you to leave Paris without delay. Now
+let me wish you a good morning."--Wherewith British made a majestic bow,
+and began giving the last touch to his varnished boots.
+
+We departed: poor Sam perfectly silent and chapfallen; and I meditating
+on the wisdom of the half-pay philosopher, and wondering what means he
+would employ to rescue Pogson from his fate.
+
+What these means were I know not; but Mr. Ringwood did NOT make his
+appearance at six; and, at eight, a letter arrived for "Mr. Pogson,
+commercial traveller," &c. &c. It was blank inside, but contained his
+two bills. Mr. Ringwood left town, almost immediately, for Vienna; nor
+did the Major explain the circumstances which caused his departure; but
+he muttered something about "knew some of his old tricks," "threatened
+police, and made him disgorge directly."
+
+Mr. Ringwood is, as yet, young at his trade; and I have often thought it
+was very green of him to give up the bills to the Major, who, certainly,
+would never have pressed the matter before the police, out of respect
+for his friend, Lord Cinqbars.
+
+
+
+
+THE FETES OF JULY.
+
+IN A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE "BUNGAY BEACON."
+
+
+PARIS, July 30th, 1839.
+
+We have arrived here just in time for the fetes of July.--You have
+read, no doubt, of that glorious revolution which took place
+here nine years ago, and which is now commemorated annually,
+in a pretty facetious manner, by gun-firing, student-processions,
+pole-climbing-for-silver-spoons, gold-watches and legs-of-mutton,
+monarchical orations, and what not, and sanctioned, moreover, by
+Chamber-of-Deputies, with a grant of a couple of hundred thousand
+francs to defray the expenses of all the crackers, gun-firings, and
+legs-of-mutton aforesaid. There is a new fountain in the Place Louis
+Quinze, otherwise called the Place Louis Seize, or else the Place de la
+Revolution, or else the Place de la Concorde (who can say why?)--which,
+I am told, is to run bad wine during certain hours to-morrow, and there
+WOULD have been a review of the National Guards and the Line--only,
+since the Fieschi business, reviews are no joke, and so this latter part
+of the festivity has been discontinued.
+
+Do you not laugh, O Pharos of Bungay, at the continuance of a humbug
+such as this?--at the humbugging anniversary of a humbug? The King
+of the Barricades is, next to the Emperor Nicholas, the most absolute
+Sovereign in Europe; yet there is not in the whole of this fair kingdom
+of France a single man who cares sixpence about him, or his dynasty:
+except, mayhap, a few hangers-on at the Chateau, who eat his dinners,
+and put their hands in his purse. The feeling of loyalty is as dead as
+old Charles the Tenth; the Chambers have been laughed at, the country
+has been laughed at, all the successive ministries have been laughed
+at (and you know who is the wag that has amused himself with them all);
+and, behold, here come three days at the end of July, and cannons
+think it necessary to fire off, squibs and crackers to blaze and fizz,
+fountains to run wine, kings to make speeches, and subjects to crawl
+up greasy mats-de-cocagne in token of gratitude and rejouissance
+publique!--My dear sir, in their aptitude to swallow, to utter, to enact
+humbugs, these French people, from Majesty downwards, beat all the other
+nations of this earth. In looking at these men, their manners, dresses,
+opinions, politics, actions, history, it is impossible to preserve a
+grave countenance; instead of having Carlyle to write a History of the
+French Revolution, I often think it should be handed over to Dickens
+or Theodore Hook: and oh! where is the Rabelais to be the faithful
+historian of the last phase of the Revolution--the last glorious nine
+years of which we are now commemorating the last glorious three days?
+
+I had made a vow not to say a syllable on the subject, although I have
+seen, with my neighbors, all the gingerbread stalls down the Champs
+Elysees, and some of the "catafalques" erected to the memory of the
+heroes of July, where the students and others, not connected personally
+with the victims, and not having in the least profited by their deaths,
+come and weep; but the grief shown on the first day is quite as absurd
+and fictitious as the joy exhibited on the last. The subject is one
+which admits of much wholesome reflection and food for mirth; and,
+besides, is so richly treated by the French themselves, that it would
+be a sin and a shame to pass it over. Allow me to have the honor
+of translating, for your edification, an account of the first day's
+proceedings--it is mighty amusing, to my thinking.
+
+
+"CELEBRATION OF THE DAYS OF JULY.
+
+"To-day (Saturday), funeral ceremonies, in honor of the victims of July,
+were held in the various edifices consecrated to public worship.
+
+"These edifices, with the exception of some churches (especially that
+of the Petits-Peres), were uniformly hung with black on the outside; the
+hangings bore only this inscription: 27, 28, 29 July, 1830--surrounded
+by a wreath of oak-leaves.
+
+"In the interior of the Catholic churches, it had only been thought
+proper to dress LITTLE CATAFALQUES, as for burials of the third and
+fourth class. Very few clergy attended; but a considerable number of the
+National Guard.
+
+"The Synagogue of the Israelites was entirely hung with black; and a
+great concourse of people attended. The service was performed with the
+greatest pomp.
+
+"In the Protestant temples there was likewise a very full attendance:
+APOLOGETICAL DISCOURSES on the Revolution of July were pronounced by the
+pastors.
+
+"The absence of M. de Quelen (Archbishop of Paris), and of many members
+of the superior clergy, was remarked at Notre Dame.
+
+"The civil authorities attended service in their several districts.
+
+"The poles, ornamented with tri-colored flags, which formerly were
+placed on Notre Dame, were, it was remarked, suppressed. The flags
+on the Pont Neuf were, during the ceremony, only half-mast high, and
+covered with crape."
+
+Et caetera, et caetera, et caetera.
+
+"The tombs of the Louvre were covered with black hangings, and adorned
+with tri-colored flags. In front and in the middle was erected an
+expiatory monument of a pyramidical shape, and surmounted by a funeral
+vase.
+
+"These tombs were guarded by the MUNICIPAL GUARD, THE TROOPS OF THE
+LINE, THE SERGENS DE VILLE (town patrol), AND A BRIGADE OF AGENTS OF
+POLICE IN PLAIN CLOTHES, under the orders of peace-officer Vassal.
+
+"Between eleven and twelve o'clock, some young men, to the number of
+400 or 500, assembled on the Place de la Bourse, one of them bearing a
+tri-colored banner with an inscription, 'TO THE MANES OF JULY:' ranging
+themselves in order, they marched five abreast to the Marche des
+Innocens. On their arrival, the Municipal Guards of the Halle aux
+Draps, where the post had been doubled, issued out without arms, and the
+town-sergeants placed themselves before the market to prevent the entry
+of the procession. The young men passed in perfect order, and without
+saying a word--only lifting their hats as they defiled before the tombs.
+When they arrived at the Louvre they found the gates shut, and the
+garden evacuated. The troops were under arms, and formed in battalion.
+
+"After the passage of the procession, the Garden was again open to the
+public."
+
+And the evening and the morning were the first day.
+
+There's nothing serious in mortality: is there, from the beginning
+of this account to the end thereof, aught but sheer, open, monstrous,
+undisguised humbug? I said, before, that you should have a history of
+these people by Dickens or Theodore Hook, but there is little need of
+professed wags;--do not the men write their own tale with an admirable
+Sancho-like gravity and naivete, which one could not desire improved?
+How good is that touch of sly indignation about the LITTLE CATAFALQUES!
+how rich the contrast presented by the economy of the Catholics to the
+splendid disregard of expense exhibited by the devout Jews! and how
+touching the "APOLOGETICAL DISCOURSES on the Revolution," delivered
+by the Protestant pastors! Fancy the profound affliction of the Gardes
+Municipaux, the Sergens de Ville, the police agents in plain clothes,
+and the troops with fixed bayonets, sobbing round the "expiatory
+monuments of a pyramidical shape, surmounted by funeral vases," and
+compelled, by sad duty, to fire into the public who might wish to
+indulge in the same woe! O "manes of July!" (the phrase is pretty and
+grammatical) why did you with sharp bullets break those Louvre windows?
+Why did you bayonet red-coated Swiss behind that fair white facade,
+and, braving cannon, musket, sabre, perspective guillotine, burst yonder
+bronze gates, rush through that peaceful picture-gallery, and hurl
+royalty, loyalty, and a thousand years of Kings, head-over-heels out of
+yonder Tuileries' windows?
+
+It is, you will allow, a little difficult to say:--there is, however,
+ONE benefit that the country has gained (as for liberty of press, or
+person, diminished taxation, a juster representation, who ever thinks
+of them?)--ONE benefit they have gained, or nearly--abolition de la
+peine-de-mort pour delit politique: no more wicked guillotining for
+revolutions. A Frenchman must have his revolution--it is his nature to
+knock down omnibuses in the street, and across them to fire at troops
+of the line--it is a sin to balk it. Did not the King send off
+Revolutionary Prince Napoleon in a coach-and-four? Did not the jury,
+before the face of God and Justice, proclaim Revolutionary Colonel
+Vaudrey not guilty?--One may hope, soon, that if a man shows decent
+courage and energy in half a dozen emeutes, he will get promotion and a
+premium.
+
+I do not (although, perhaps, partial to the subject,) want to talk more
+nonsense than the occasion warrants, and will pray you to cast your eyes
+over the following anecdote, that is now going the round of the papers,
+and respects the commutation of the punishment of that wretched,
+fool-hardy Barbes, who, on his trial, seemed to invite the penalty which
+has just been remitted to him. You recollect the braggart's speech:
+"When the Indian falls into the power of the enemy, he knows the fate
+that awaits him, and submits his head to the knife:--I am the Indian!"
+
+"Well--"
+
+"M. Hugo was at the Opera on the night the sentence of the Court
+of Peers, condemning Barbes to death, was published. The great poet
+composed the following verses:--
+
+
+     'Par votre ange envolee, ainsi qu'une colombe,
+      Par le royal enfant, doux et frele roseau,
+      Grace encore une fois!  Grace au nom de la tombe!
+         Grace au nom du berceau!'*
+
+
+"M. Victor Hugo wrote the lines out instantly on a sheet of paper, which
+he folded, and simply despatched them to the King of the French by the
+penny-post.
+
+"That truly is a noble voice, which can at all hours thus speak to the
+throne. Poetry, in old days, was called the language of the Gods--it is
+better named now--it is the language of the Kings.
+
+"But the clemency of the King had anticipated the letter of the Poet.
+His Majesty had signed the commutation of Barbes, while the poet was
+still writing.
+
+"Louis Philippe replied to the author of 'Ruy Blas' most graciously,
+that he had already subscribed to a wish so noble, and that the verses
+had only confirmed his previous disposition to mercy."
+
+
+      * Translated for the benefit of country gentlemen:--
+
+     "By your angel flown away just like a dove,
+      By the royal infant, that frail and tender reed,
+      Pardon yet once more!  Pardon in the name of the tomb!
+      Pardon in the name of the cradle!"
+
+
+Now in countries where fools most abound, did one ever read of more
+monstrous, palpable folly? In any country, save this, would a poet who
+chose to write four crack-brained verses, comparing an angel to a dove,
+and a little boy to a reed, and calling upon the chief magistrate, in
+the name of the angel, or dove (the Princess Mary), in her tomb, and
+the little infant in his cradle, to spare a criminal, have received a
+"gracious answer" to his nonsense? Would he have ever despatched the
+nonsense? and would any journalist have been silly enough to talk of
+"the noble voice that could thus speak to the throne," and the noble
+throne that could return such a noble answer to the noble voice? You get
+nothing done here gravely and decently. Tawdry stage tricks are played,
+and braggadocio claptraps uttered, on every occasion, however sacred
+or solemn: in the face of death, as by Barbes with his hideous Indian
+metaphor; in the teeth of reason, as by M. Victor Hugo with his
+twopenny-post poetry; and of justice, as by the King's absurd reply
+to this absurd demand! Suppose the Count of Paris to be twenty times a
+reed, and the Princess Mary a host of angels, is that any reason why the
+law should not have its course? Justice is the God of our lower world,
+our great omnipresent guardian: as such it moves, or should move on
+majestic, awful, irresistible, having no passions--like a God: but, in
+the very midst of the path across which it is to pass, lo! M. Victor
+Hugo trips forward, smirking, and says, O divine Justice! I will trouble
+you to listen to the following trifling effusion of mine:--
+
+
+     Par votre ange envolee, ainsi qu'une," &c.
+
+
+Awful Justice stops, and, bowing gravely, listens to M. Hugo's verses,
+and, with true French politeness, says, "Mon cher Monsieur, these verses
+are charming, ravissans, delicieux, and, coming from such a celebrite
+litteraire as yourself, shall meet with every possible attention--in
+fact, had I required anything to confirm my own previous opinions, this
+charming poem would have done so. Bon jour, mon cher Monsieur Hugo, au
+revoir!"--and they part:--Justice taking off his hat and bowing, and the
+author of "Ruy Blas" quite convinced that he has been treating with him
+d'egal en egal. I can hardly bring my mind to fancy that anything is
+serious in France--it seems to be all rant, tinsel, and stage-play. Sham
+liberty, sham monarchy, sham glory, sham justice,--ou diable donc la
+verite va-t-elle se nicher?
+
+      .      .      .      .      .      .
+
+The last rocket of the fete of July has just mounted, exploded, made a
+portentous bang, and emitted a gorgeous show of blue lights, and then
+(like many reputations) disappeared totally: the hundredth gun on the
+Invalid terrace has uttered its last roar--and a great comfort it is for
+eyes and ears that the festival is over. We shall be able to go about
+our everyday business again, and not be hustled by the gendarmes or the
+crowd.
+
+The sight which I have just come away from is as brilliant, happy, and
+beautiful as can be conceived; and if you want to see French people to
+the greatest advantage, you should go to a festival like this, where
+their manners, and innocent gayety, show a very pleasing contrast to the
+coarse and vulgar hilarity which the same class would exhibit in our
+own country--at Epsom racecourse, for instance, or Greenwich Fair. The
+greatest noise that I heard was that of a company of jolly villagers
+from a place in the neighborhood of Paris, who, as soon as the fireworks
+were over, formed themselves into a line, three or four abreast, and so
+marched singing home. As for the fireworks, squibs and crackers are very
+hard to describe, and very little was to be seen of them: to me, the
+prettiest sight was the vast, orderly, happy crowd, the number of
+children, and the extraordinary care and kindness of the parents towards
+these little creatures. It does one good to see honest, heavy epiciers,
+fathers of families, playing with them in the Tuileries, or, as
+to-night, bearing them stoutly on their shoulders, through many long
+hours, in order that the little ones too may have their share of the
+fun. John Bull, I fear, is more selfish: he does not take Mrs. Bull to
+the public-house; but leaves her, for the most part, to take care of the
+children at home.
+
+The fete, then, is over; the pompous black pyramid at the Louvre is only
+a skeleton now; all the flags have been miraculously whisked away during
+the night, and the fine chandeliers which glittered down the Champs
+Elysees for full half a mile, have been consigned to their dens and
+darkness. Will they ever be reproduced for other celebrations of the
+glorious 29th of July?--I think not; the Government which vowed that
+there should be no more persecutions of the press, was, on that very
+29th, seizing a Legitimist paper, for some real or fancied offence
+against it: it had seized, and was seizing daily, numbers of persons
+merely suspected of being disaffected (and you may fancy how liberty is
+understood, when some of these prisoners, the other day, on coming to
+trial, were found guilty and sentenced to ONE day's imprisonment, after
+THIRTY-SIX DAYS' DETENTION ON SUSPICION). I think the Government
+which follows such a system, cannot be very anxious about any farther
+revolutionary fetes, and that the Chamber may reasonably refuse to vote
+more money for them. Why should men be so mighty proud of having, on a
+certain day, cut a certain number of their fellow-countrymen's throats?
+The Guards and the Line employed this time nine years did no more than
+those who cannonaded the starving Lyonnese, or bayoneted the luckless
+inhabitants of the Rue Transnounain:--they did but fulfil the soldier's
+honorable duty:--his superiors bid him kill and he killeth:--perhaps,
+had he gone to his work with a little more heart, the result would have
+been different, and then--would the conquering party have been justified
+in annually rejoicing over the conquered? Would we have thought Charles
+X. justified in causing fireworks to be blazed, and concerts to be sung,
+and speeches to be spouted, in commemoration of his victory over his
+slaughtered countrymen?--I wish for my part they would allow the people
+to go about their business as on the other 362 days of the year,
+and leave the Champs Elysees free for the omnibuses to run, and the
+Tuileries' in quiet, so that the nurse-maids might come as usual, and
+the newspapers be read for a halfpenny apiece.
+
+Shall I trouble you with an account of the speculations of these latter,
+and the state of the parties which they represent? The complication
+is not a little curious, and may form, perhaps, a subject of graver
+disquisition. The July fetes occupy, as you may imagine, a considerable
+part of their columns just now, and it is amusing to follow them one by
+one; to read Tweedledum's praise, and Tweedledee's indignation--to read,
+in the Debats how the King was received with shouts and loyal vivats--in
+the Nation, how not a tongue was wagged in his praise, but, on the
+instant of his departure, how the people called for the "Marseillaise"
+and applauded THAT.--But best say no more about the fete. The
+Legitimists were always indignant at it. The high Philippist party
+sneers at and despises it; the Republicans hate it: it seems a joke
+against THEM. Why continue it?--If there be anything sacred in the name
+and idea of loyalty, why renew this fete? It only shows how a rightful
+monarch was hurled from his throne, and a dexterous usurper stole his
+precious diadem. If there be anything noble in the memory of a day, when
+citizens, unused to war, rose against practised veterans, and, armed
+with the strength of their cause, overthrew them, why speak of it now?
+or renew the bitter recollections of the bootless struggle and victory?
+O Lafayette! O hero of two worlds! O accomplished Cromwell Grandison!
+you have to answer for more than any mortal man who has played a part in
+history: two republics and one monarchy does the world owe to you; and
+especially grateful should your country be to you. Did you not, in '90,
+make clear the path for honest Robespierre, and in '30, prepare the way
+for--
+
+      .      .      .      .      .      .
+
+[The Editor of the Bungay Beacon would insert no more of this letter,
+which is, therefore, for ever lost to the public.]
+
+
+
+
+ON THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF PAINTING:
+
+WITH APPROPRIATE ANECDOTES, ILLUSTRATIONS, AND PHILOSOPHICAL
+DISQUISITIONS.
+
+
+IN A LETTER TO MR. MACGILP, OF LONDON.
+
+
+The three collections of pictures at the Louvre, the Luxembourg, and the
+Ecole des Beaux Arts, contain a number of specimens of French art, since
+its commencement almost, and give the stranger a pretty fair opportunity
+to study and appreciate the school. The French list of painters contains
+some very good names--no very great ones, except Poussin (unless the
+admirers of Claude choose to rank him among great painters),--and I
+think the school was never in so flourishing a condition as it is at
+the present day. They say there are three thousand artists in this town
+alone: of these a handsome minority paint not merely tolerably, but
+well understand their business: draw the figure accurately; sketch with
+cleverness; and paint portraits, churches, or restaurateurs' shops, in a
+decent manner.
+
+To account for a superiority over England which, I think, as regards
+art, is incontestable--it must be remembered that the painter's trade,
+in France, is a very good one; better appreciated, better understood,
+and, generally, far better paid than with us. There are a dozen
+excellent schools which a lad may enter here, and, under the eye of a
+practised master, learn the apprenticeship of his art at an expense
+of about ten pounds a year. In England there is no school except the
+Academy, unless the student can afford to pay a very large sum, and
+place himself under the tuition of some particular artist. Here, a young
+man, for his ten pounds, has all sorts of accessory instruction, models,
+&c.; and has further, and for nothing, numberless incitements to study
+his profession which are not to be found in England:--the streets are
+filled with picture-shops, the people themselves are pictures walking
+about; the churches, theatres, eating-houses, concert-rooms are covered
+with pictures: Nature itself is inclined more kindly to him, for the sky
+is a thousand times more bright and beautiful, and the sun shines for
+the greater part of the year. Add to this, incitements more selfish,
+but quite as powerful: a French artist is paid very handsomely; for five
+hundred a year is much where all are poor; and has a rank in society
+rather above his merits than below them, being caressed by hosts and
+hostesses in places where titles are laughed at and a baron is thought
+of no more account than a banker's clerk.
+
+The life of the young artist here is the easiest, merriest, dirtiest
+existence possible. He comes to Paris, probably at sixteen, from his
+province; his parents settle forty pounds a year on him, and pay his
+master; he establishes himself in the Pays Latin, or in the new quarter
+of Notre Dame de Lorette (which is quite peopled with painters); he
+arrives at his atelier at a tolerably early hour, and labors among a
+score of companions as merry and poor as himself. Each gentleman has his
+favorite tobacco-pipe; and the pictures are painted in the midst of a
+cloud of smoke, and a din of puns and choice French slang, and a roar of
+choruses, of which no one can form an idea who has not been present at
+such an assembly.
+
+You see here every variety of coiffure that has ever been known. Some
+young men of genius have ringlets hanging over their shoulders--you may
+smell the tobacco with which they are scented across the street; some
+have straight locks, black, oily, and redundant; some have toupets in
+the famous Louis-Philippe fashion; some are cropped close; some have
+adopted the present mode--which he who would follow must, in order to do
+so, part his hair in the middle, grease it with grease, and gum it with
+gum, and iron it flat down over his ears; when arrived at the ears,
+you take the tongs and make a couple of ranges of curls close round the
+whole head,--such curls as you may see under a gilt three-cornered hat,
+and in her Britannic Majesty's coachman's state wig.
+
+This is the last fashion. As for the beards, there is no end of them;
+all my friends the artists have beards who can raise them; and Nature,
+though she has rather stinted the bodies and limbs of the French nation,
+has been very liberal to them of hair, as you may see by the following
+specimen. Fancy these heads and beards under all sorts of caps--Chinese
+caps, Mandarin caps, Greek skull-caps, English jockey-caps, Russian or
+Kuzzilbash caps, Middle-age caps (such as are called, in heraldry, caps
+of maintenance), Spanish nets, and striped worsted nightcaps. Fancy all
+the jackets you have ever seen, and you have before you, as well as pen
+can describe, the costumes of these indescribable Frenchmen.
+
+In this company and costume the French student of art passes his days
+and acquires knowledge; how he passes his evenings, at what theatres, at
+what guinguettes, in company with what seducing little milliner,
+there is no need to say; but I knew one who pawned his coat to go to a
+carnival ball, and walked abroad very cheerfully in his blouse for six
+weeks, until he could redeem the absent garment.
+
+These young men (together with the students of sciences) comport
+themselves towards the sober citizen pretty much as the German bursch
+towards the philister, or as the military man, during the empire, did
+to the pekin:--from the height of their poverty they look down upon
+him with the greatest imaginable scorn--a scorn, I think, by which the
+citizen seems dazzled, for his respect for the arts is intense. The case
+is very different in England, where a grocer's daughter would think she
+made a misalliance by marrying a painter, and where a literary man (in
+spite of all we can say against it) ranks below that class of gentry
+composed of the apothecary, the attorney, the wine-merchant, whose
+positions, in country towns at least, are so equivocal. As, for
+instance, my friend the Rev. James Asterisk, who has an undeniable
+pedigree, a paternal estate, and a living to boot, once dined in
+Warwickshire, in company with several squires and parsons of that
+enlightened county. Asterisk, as usual, made himself extraordinarily
+agreeable at dinner, and delighted all present with his learning and
+wit. "Who is that monstrous pleasant fellow?" said one of the squires.
+"Don't you know?" replied another. "It's Asterisk, the author of
+so-and-so, and a famous contributor to such and such a magazine." "Good
+heavens!" said the squire, quite horrified! "a literary man! I thought
+he had been a gentleman!"
+
+Another instance: M. Guizot, when he was Minister here, had the grand
+hotel of the Ministry, and gave entertainments to all the great de par
+le monde, as Brantome says, and entertained them in a proper ministerial
+magnificence. The splendid and beautiful Duchess of Dash was at one of
+his ministerial parties; and went, a fortnight afterwards, as in duty
+bound, to pay her respects to M. Guizot. But it happened, in this
+fortnight, that M. Guizot was Minister no longer; having given up his
+portfolio, and his grand hotel, to retire into private life, and to
+occupy his humble apartments in the house which he possesses, and of
+which he lets the greater portion. A friend of mine was present at
+one of the ex-Minister's soirees, where the Duchess of Dash made
+her appearance. He says the Duchess, at her entrance, seemed quite
+astounded, and examined the premises with a most curious wonder. Two or
+three shabby little rooms, with ordinary furniture, and a Minister en
+retraite, who lives by letting lodgings! In our country was ever such a
+thing heard of? No, thank heaven! and a Briton ought to be proud of the
+difference.
+
+But to our muttons. This country is surely the paradise of painters
+and penny-a-liners; and when one reads of M. Horace Vernet at Rome,
+exceeding ambassadors at Rome by his magnificence, and leading such a
+life as Rubens or Titian did of old; when one sees M. Thiers's grand
+villa in the Rue St. George (a dozen years ago he was not even a
+penny-a-liner: no such luck); when one contemplates, in imagination, M.
+Gudin, the marine painter, too lame to walk through the picture-gallery
+of the Louvre, accommodated, therefore, with a wheel-chair, a privilege
+of princes only, and accompanied--nay, for what I know, actually
+trundled--down the gallery by majesty itself--who does not long to make
+one of the great nation, exchange his native tongue for the melodious
+jabber of France; or, at least, adopt it for his native country, like
+Marshal Saxe, Napoleon, and Anacharsis Clootz? Noble people! they made
+Tom Paine a deputy; and as for Tom Macaulay, they would make a DYNASTY
+of him.
+
+Well, this being the case, no wonder there are so many painters in
+France; and here, at least, we are back to them. At the Ecole Royale
+des Beaux Arts, you see two or three hundred specimens of their
+performances; all the prize-men, since 1750, I think, being bound to
+leave their prize sketch or picture. Can anything good come out of
+the Royal Academy? is a question which has been considerably mooted in
+England (in the neighborhood of Suffolk Street especially). The hundreds
+of French samples are, I think, not very satisfactory. The subjects are
+almost all what are called classical: Orestes pursued by every variety
+of Furies; numbers of little wolf-sucking Romuluses; Hectors and
+Andromaches in a complication of parting embraces, and so forth; for it
+was the absurd maxim of our forefathers, that because these subjects had
+been the fashion twenty centuries ago, they must remain so in saecula
+saeculorum; because to these lofty heights giants had scaled, behold the
+race of pigmies must get upon stilts and jump at them likewise! and on
+the canvas, and in the theatre, the French frogs (excuse the pleasantry)
+were instructed to swell out and roar as much as possible like bulls.
+
+What was the consequence, my dear friend? In trying to make themselves
+into bulls, the frogs make themselves into jackasses, as might be
+expected. For a hundred and ten years the classical humbug oppressed
+the nation; and you may see, in this gallery of the Beaux Arts, seventy
+years' specimens of the dulness which it engendered.
+
+Now, as Nature made every man with a nose and eyes of his own, she gave
+him a character of his own too; and yet we, O foolish race! must try our
+very best to ape some one or two of our neighbors, whose ideas fit us
+no more than their breeches! It is the study of nature, surely, that
+profits us, and not of these imitations of her. A man, as a man, from a
+dustman up to AEschylus, is God's work, and good to read, as all works of
+Nature are: but the silly animal is never content; is ever trying to fit
+itself into another shape; wants to deny its own identity, and has not
+the courage to utter its own thoughts. Because Lord Byron was wicked,
+and quarrelled with the world; and found himself growing fat, and
+quarrelled with his victuals, and thus, naturally, grew ill-humored, did
+not half Europe grow ill-humored too? Did not every poet feel his
+young affections withered, and despair and darkness cast upon his soul?
+Because certain mighty men of old could make heroical statues and
+plays, must we not be told that there is no other beauty but classical
+beauty?--must not every little whipster of a French poet chalk you out
+plays, "Henriades," and such-like, and vow that here was the real thing,
+the undeniable Kalon?
+
+The undeniable fiddlestick! For a hundred years, my dear sir, the world
+was humbugged by the so-called classical artists, as they now are by
+what is called the Christian art (of which anon); and it is curious to
+look at the pictorial traditions as here handed down. The consequence
+of them is, that scarce one of the classical pictures exhibited is worth
+much more than two-and-sixpence. Borrowed from statuary, in the first
+place, the color of the paintings seems, as much as possible, to
+participate in it; they are mostly of a misty, stony green, dismal hue,
+as if they had been painted in a world where no color was. In every
+picture, there are, of course, white mantles, white urns, white columns,
+white statues--those oblige accomplishments of the sublime. There are
+the endless straight noses, long eyes, round chins, short upper lips,
+just as they are ruled down for you in the drawing-books, as if the
+latter were the revelations of beauty, issued by supreme authority, from
+which there was no appeal? Why is the classical reign to endure? Why is
+yonder simpering Venus de' Medicis to be our standard of beauty, or the
+Greek tragedies to bound our notions of the sublime? There was no reason
+why Agamemnon should set the fashions, and remain [Greek text omitted]
+to eternity: and there is a classical quotation, which you may have
+occasionally heard, beginning Vixere fortes, &c., which, as it avers
+that there were a great number of stout fellows before Agamemnon, may
+not unreasonably induce us to conclude that similar heroes were to
+succeed him. Shakspeare made a better man when his imagination
+moulded the mighty figure of Macbeth. And if you will measure Satan by
+Prometheus, the blind old Puritan's work by that of the fiery Grecian
+poet, does not Milton's angel surpass AEschylus's--surpass him by "many a
+rood?"
+
+In the same school of the Beaux Arts, where are to be found such a
+number of pale imitations of the antique, Monsieur Thiers (and he ought
+to be thanked for it) has caused to be placed a full-sized copy of "The
+Last Judgment" of Michel Angelo, and a number of casts from statues
+by the same splendid hand. There IS the sublime, if you please--a new
+sublime--an original sublime--quite as sublime as the Greek sublime. See
+yonder, in the midst of his angels, the Judge of the world descending in
+glory; and near him, beautiful and gentle, and yet indescribably august
+and pure, the Virgin by his side. There is the "Moses," the grandest
+figure that ever was carved in stone. It has about it something
+frightfully majestic, if one may so speak. In examining this, and the
+astonishing picture of "The Judgment," or even a single figure of it,
+the spectator's sense amounts almost to pain. I would not like to be
+left in a room alone with the "Moses." How did the artist live amongst
+them, and create them? How did he suffer the painful labor of invention?
+One fancies that he would have been scorched up, like Semele, by sights
+too tremendous for his vision to bear. One cannot imagine him, with our
+small physical endowments and weaknesses, a man like ourselves.
+
+As for the Ecole Royale des Beaux Arts, then, and all the good its
+students have done, as students, it is stark naught. When the men did
+anything, it was after they had left the academy, and began thinking for
+themselves. There is only one picture among the many hundreds that has,
+to my idea, much merit (a charming composition of Homer singing, signed
+Jourdy); and the only good that the Academy has done by its pupils was
+to send them to Rome, where they might learn better things. At home, the
+intolerable, stupid classicalities, taught by men who, belonging to the
+least erudite country in Europe, were themselves, from their profession,
+the least learned among their countrymen, only weighed the pupils down,
+and cramped their hands, their eyes, and their imaginations; drove them
+away from natural beauty, which, thank God, is fresh and attainable by
+us all, to-day, and yesterday, and to-morrow; and sent them rambling
+after artificial grace, without the proper means of judging or attaining
+it.
+
+A word for the building of the Palais des Beaux Arts. It is beautiful,
+and as well finished and convenient as beautiful. With its light and
+elegant fabric, its pretty fountain, its archway of the Renaissance, and
+fragments of sculpture, you can hardly see, on a fine day, a place more
+riant and pleasing.
+
+Passing from thence up the picturesque Rue de Seine, let us walk to the
+Luxembourg, where bonnes, students, grisettes, and old gentlemen with
+pigtails, love to wander in the melancholy, quaint old gardens; where
+the peers have a new and comfortable court of justice, to judge all the
+emeutes which are to take place; and where, as everybody knows, is the
+picture-gallery of modern French artists, whom government thinks worthy
+of patronage.
+
+A very great proportion of the pictures, as we see by the catalogue,
+are by the students whose works we have just been to visit at the Beaux
+Arts, and who, having performed their pilgrimage to Rome, have taken
+rank among the professors of the art. I don't know a more pleasing
+exhibition; for there are not a dozen really bad pictures in the
+collection, some very good, and the rest showing great skill and
+smartness of execution.
+
+In the same way, however, that it has been supposed that no man could be
+a great poet unless he wrote a very big poem, the tradition is kept up
+among the painters, and we have here a vast number of large canvases,
+with figures of the proper heroical length and nakedness. The
+anticlassicists did not arise in France until about 1827; and, in
+consequence, up to that period, we have here the old classical faith in
+full vigor. There is Brutus, having chopped his son's head off, with all
+the agony of a father, and then, calling for number two; there is AEneas
+carrying off old Anchises; there are Paris and Venus, as naked as two
+Hottentots, and many more such choice subjects from Lempriere.
+
+But the chief specimens of the sublime are in the way of murders, with
+which the catalogue swarms. Here are a few extracts from it:--
+
+
+7. Beaume, Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur. "The Grand Dauphiness
+Dying."
+
+18. Blondel, Chevalier de la, &c. "Zenobia found Dead."
+
+36. Debay, Chevalier. "The Death of Lucretia."
+
+38. Dejuinne. "The Death of Hector."
+
+34. Court, Chevalier de la, &c. "The Death of Caesar."
+
+39, 40, 41. Delacroix, Chevalier. "Dante and Virgil in the
+Infernal Lake," "The Massacre of Scio," and "Medea going to
+Murder her Children."
+
+43. Delaroche, Chevalier. "Joas taken from among the Dead."
+
+44. "The Death of Queen Elizabeth."
+
+45. "Edward V. and his Brother" (preparing for death).
+
+50. "Hecuba going to be Sacrificed." Drolling, Chevalier.
+
+51. Dubois. "Young Clovis found Dead."
+
+56. Henry, Chevalier. "The Massacre of St. Bartholomew."
+
+75. Guerin, Chevalier. "Cain, after the Death of Abel."
+
+83. Jacquand. "Death of Adelaide de Comminges."
+
+88. "The Death of Eudamidas."
+
+93. "The Death of Hymetto."
+
+103. "The Death of Philip of Austria."--And so on.
+
+
+You see what woful subjects they take, and how profusely they are
+decorated with knighthood. They are like the Black Brunswickers, these
+painters, and ought to be called Chevaliers de la Mort. I don't know why
+the merriest people in the world should please themselves with such grim
+representations and varieties of murder, or why murder itself should be
+considered so eminently sublime and poetical. It is good at the end of
+a tragedy; but, then, it is good because it is the end, and because,
+by the events foregone, the mind is prepared for it. But these men will
+have nothing but fifth acts; and seem to skip, as unworthy, all the
+circumstances leading to them. This, however, is part of the scheme--the
+bloated, unnatural, stilted, spouting, sham sublime, that our teachers
+have believed and tried to pass off as real, and which your humble
+servant and other antihumbuggists should heartily, according to the
+strength that is in them, endeavor to pull down. What, for instance,
+could Monsieur Lafond care about the death of Eudamidas? What was Hecuba
+to Chevalier Drolling, or Chevalier Drolling to Hecuba? I would lay a
+wager that neither of them ever conjugated [Greek text omitted], and
+that their school learning carried them not as far as the letter, but
+only to the game of taw. How were they to be inspired by such subjects?
+From having seen Talma and Mademoiselle Georges flaunting in sham Greek
+costumes, and having read up the articles Eudamidas, Hecuba, in the
+"Mythological Dictionary." What a classicism, inspired by rouge,
+gas-lamps, and a few lines in Lempriere, and copied, half from ancient
+statues, and half from a naked guardsman at one shilling and sixpence
+the hour!
+
+Delacroix is a man of a very different genius, and his "Medea" is
+a genuine creation of a noble fancy. For most of the others, Mrs.
+Brownrigg, and her two female 'prentices, would have done as well as
+the desperate Colchian with her [Greek text omitted]. M. Delacroix has
+produced a number of rude, barbarous pictures; but there is the stamp of
+genius on all of them,--the great poetical INTENTION, which is worth all
+your execution. Delaroche is another man of high merit; with not such a
+great HEART, perhaps, as the other, but a fine and careful draughtsman,
+and an excellent arranger of his subject. "The Death of Elizabeth" is a
+raw young performance seemingly--not, at least, to my taste. The "Enfans
+d'Edouard" is renowned over Europe, and has appeared in a hundred
+different ways in print. It is properly pathetic and gloomy, and merits
+fully its high reputation. This painter rejoices in such subjects--in
+what Lord Portsmouth used to call "black jobs." He has killed Charles
+I. and Lady Jane Grey, and the Dukes of Guise, and I don't know whom
+besides. He is, at present, occupied with a vast work at the Beaux
+Arts, where the writer of this had the honor of seeing him,--a little,
+keen-looking man, some five feet in height. He wore, on this important
+occasion, a bandanna round his head, and was in the act of smoking a
+cigar.
+
+Horace Vernet, whose beautiful daughter Delaroche married, is the king
+of French battle-painters--an amazingly rapid and dexterous draughtsman,
+who has Napoleon and all the campaigns by heart, and has painted the
+Grenadier Francais under all sorts of attitudes. His pictures on such
+subjects are spirited, natural, and excellent; and he is so clever
+a man, that all he does is good to a certain degree. His "Judith" is
+somewhat violent, perhaps. His "Rebecca" most pleasing; and not the less
+so for a little pretty affectation of attitude and needless singularity
+of costume. "Raphael and Michael Angelo" is as clever a picture as
+can be--clever is just the word--the groups and drawing excellent, the
+coloring pleasantly bright and gaudy; and the French students study it
+incessantly; there are a dozen who copy it for one who copies Delacroix.
+His little scraps of wood-cuts, in the now publishing "Life of
+Napoleon," are perfect gems in their way, and the noble price paid for
+them not a penny more than he merits.
+
+The picture, by Court, of "The Death of Caesar," is remarkable for
+effect and excellent workmanship: and the head of Brutus (who looks
+like Armand Carrel) is full of energy. There are some beautiful heads
+of women, and some very good color in the picture. Jacquand's "Death of
+Adelaide de Comminges" is neither more nor less than beautiful. Adelaide
+had, it appears, a lover, who betook himself to a convent of Trappists.
+She followed him thither, disguised as a man, took the vows, and was not
+discovered by him till on her death-bed. The painter has told this story
+in a most pleasing and affecting manner: the picture is full of onction
+and melancholy grace. The objects, too, are capitally represented; and
+the tone and color very good. Decaisne's "Guardian Angel" is not so good
+in color, but is equally beautiful in expression and grace. A little
+child and a nurse are asleep: an angel watches the infant. You see women
+look very wistfully at this sweet picture; and what triumph would a
+painter have more?
+
+We must not quit the Luxembourg without noticing the dashing
+sea-pieces of Gudin, and one or two landscapes by Giroux (the plain
+of Grasivaudan), and "The Prometheus" of Aligny. This is an imitation,
+perhaps; as is a noble picture of "Jesus Christ and the Children," by
+Flandrin: but the artists are imitating better models, at any rate; and
+one begins to perceive that the odious classical dynasty is no more.
+Poussin's magnificent "Polyphemus" (I only know a print of that
+marvellous composition) has, perhaps, suggested the first-named picture;
+and the latter has been inspired by a good enthusiastic study of the
+Roman schools.
+
+Of this revolution, Monsieur Ingres has been one of the chief
+instruments. He was, before Horace Vernet, president of the French
+Academy at Rome, and is famous as a chief of a school. When he broke
+up his atelier here, to set out for his presidency, many of his pupils
+attended him faithfully some way on his journey; and some, with scarcely
+a penny in their pouches, walked through France and across the Alps, in
+a pious pilgrimage to Rome, being determined not to forsake their old
+master. Such an action was worthy of them, and of the high rank which
+their profession holds in France, where the honors to be acquired by art
+are only inferior to those which are gained in war. One reads of such
+peregrinations in old days, when the scholars of some great Italian
+painter followed him from Venice to Rome, or from Florence to Ferrara.
+In regard of Ingres's individual merit as a painter, the writer of this
+is not a fair judge, having seen but three pictures by him; one being a
+plafond in the Louvre, which his disciples much admire.
+
+Ingres stands between the Imperio-Davido-classical school of French art,
+and the namby-pamby mystical German school, which is for carrying us
+back to Cranach and Duerer, and which is making progress here.
+
+For everything here finds imitation: the French have the genius of
+imitation and caricature. This absurd humbug, called the Christian or
+Catholic art, is sure to tickle our neighbors, and will be a favorite
+with them, when better known. My dear MacGilp, I do believe this to be
+a greater humbug than the humbug of David and Girodet, inasmuch as the
+latter was founded on Nature at least; whereas the former is made up of
+silly affectations, and improvements upon Nature. Here, for instance, is
+Chevalier Ziegler's picture of "St. Luke painting the Virgin." St. Luke
+has a monk's dress on, embroidered, however, smartly round the sleeves.
+The Virgin sits in an immense yellow-ochre halo, with her son in her
+arms. She looks preternaturally solemn; as does St. Luke, who is eying
+his paint-brush with an intense ominous mystical look. They call this
+Catholic art. There is nothing, my dear friend, more easy in life.
+First take your colors, and rub them down clean,--bright carmine,
+bright yellow, bright sienna, bright ultramarine, bright green. Make the
+costumes of your figures as much as possible like the costumes of
+the early part of the fifteenth century. Paint them in with the above
+colors; and if on a gold ground, the more "Catholic" your art is. Dress
+your apostles like priests before the altar; and remember to have a good
+commodity of crosiers, censers, and other such gimcracks, as you may
+see in the Catholic chapels, in Sutton Street and elsewhere. Deal in
+Virgins, and dress them like a burgomaster's wife by Cranach or Van
+Eyck. Give them all long twisted tails to their gowns, and proper
+angular draperies. Place all their heads on one side, with the eyes
+shut, and the proper solemn simper. At the back of the head, draw,
+and gild with gold-leaf, a halo or glory, of the exact shape of a
+cart-wheel: and you have the thing done. It is Catholic art tout crache,
+as Louis Philippe says. We have it still in England, handed down to us
+for four centuries, in the pictures on the cards, as the redoubtable
+king and queen of clubs. Look at them: you will see that the costumes
+and attitudes are precisely similar to those which figure in the
+catholicities of the school of Overbeck and Cornelius.
+
+Before you take your cane at the door, look for one instant at the
+statue-room. Yonder is Jouffley's "Jeune Fille confiant son premier
+secret a Venus." Charming, charming! It is from the exhibition of
+this year only; and I think the best sculpture in the gallery--pretty,
+fanciful, naive; admirable in workmanship and imitation of Nature. I
+have seldom seen flesh better represented in marble. Examine, also,
+Jaley's "Pudeur," Jacquot's "Nymph," and Rude's "Boy with the Tortoise."
+These are not very exalted subjects, or what are called exalted, and do
+not go beyond simple, smiling beauty and nature. But what then? Are we
+gods, Miltons, Michel Angelos, that can leave earth when we please;
+and soar to heights immeasurable? No, my dear MacGilp; but the fools of
+academicians would fain make us so. Are you not, and half the painters
+in London, panting for an opportunity to show your genius in a great
+"historical picture?" O blind race! Have you wings? Not a feather: and
+yet you must be ever puffing, sweating up to the tops of rugged hills;
+and, arrived there, clapping and shaking your ragged elbows, and making
+as if you would fly! Come down, silly Daedalus; come down to the lowly
+places in which Nature ordered you to walk. The sweet flowers are
+springing there; the fat muttons are waiting there; the pleasant sun
+shines there; be content and humble, and take your share of the good
+cheer.
+
+While we have been indulging in this discussion, the omnibus has gayly
+conducted us across the water; and le garde qui veille a la porte du
+Louvre ne defend pas our entry.
+
+What a paradise this gallery is for French students, or foreigners who
+sojourn in the capital! It is hardly necessary to say that the brethren
+of the brush are not usually supplied by Fortune with any extraordinary
+wealth, or means of enjoying the luxuries with which Paris, more than
+any other city, abounds. But here they have a luxury which surpasses all
+others, and spend their days in a palace which all the money of all the
+Rothschilds could not buy. They sleep, perhaps, in a garret, and dine
+in a cellar; but no grandee in Europe has such a drawing-room. Kings'
+houses have, at best, but damask hangings, and gilt cornices. What are
+these to a wall covered with canvas by Paul Veronese, or a hundred
+yards of Rubens? Artists from England, who have a national gallery that
+resembles a moderate-sized gin-shop, who may not copy pictures, except
+under particular restrictions, and on rare and particular days, may
+revel here to their hearts' content. Here is a room half a mile long,
+with as many windows as Aladdin's palace, open from sunrise till
+evening, and free to all manners and all varieties of study: the only
+puzzle to the student is to select the one he shall begin upon, and keep
+his eyes away from the rest.
+
+Fontaine's grand staircase, with its arches, and painted ceilings and
+shining Doric columns, leads directly to the gallery; but it is thought
+too fine for working days, and is only opened for the public entrance
+on Sabbath. A little back stair (leading from a court, in which stand
+numerous bas-reliefs, and a solemn sphinx, of polished granite,) is the
+common entry for students and others, who, during the week, enter the
+gallery.
+
+Hither have lately been transported a number of the works of French
+artists, which formerly covered the walls of the Luxembourg (death
+only entitles the French painter to a place in the Louvre); and let us
+confine ourselves to the Frenchmen only, for the space of this letter.
+
+I have seen, in a fine private collection at St. Germain, one or two
+admirable single figures of David, full of life, truth, and gayety.
+The color is not good, but all the rest excellent; and one of these so
+much-lauded pictures is the portrait of a washer-woman. "Pope Pius," at
+the Louvre, is as bad in color as remarkable for its vigor and look of
+life. The man had a genius for painting portraits and common life, but
+must attempt the heroic;--failed signally; and what is worse, carried a
+whole nation blundering after him. Had you told a Frenchman so, twenty
+years ago, he would have thrown the dementi in your teeth; or, at least,
+laughed at you in scornful incredulity. They say of us that we don't
+know when we are beaten: they go a step further, and swear their defeats
+are victories. David was a part of the glory of the empire; and one
+might as well have said then that "Romulus" was a bad picture, as that
+Toulouse was a lost battle. Old-fashioned people, who believe in
+the Emperor, believe in the Theatre Francais, and believe that Ducis
+improved upon Shakspeare, have the above opinion. Still, it is curious
+to remark, in this place, how art and literature become party matters,
+and political sects have their favorite painters and authors.
+
+Nevertheless, Jacques Louis David is dead, he died about a year after
+his bodily demise in 1825. The romanticism killed him. Walter Scott,
+from his Castle of Abbotsford, sent out a troop of gallant young Scotch
+adventurers, merry outlaws, valiant knights, and savage Highlanders,
+who, with trunk hosen and buff jerkins, fierce two-handed swords, and
+harness on their back, did challenge, combat, and overcome the heroes
+and demigods of Greece and Rome. Notre Dame a la rescousse! Sir Brian
+de Bois Guilbert has borne Hector of Troy clear out of his saddle.
+Andromache may weep: but her spouse is beyond the reach of physic. See!
+Robin Hood twangs his bow, and the heathen gods fly, howling. Montjoie
+Saint Denis! down goes Ajax under the mace of Dunois; and yonder
+are Leonidas and Romulus begging their lives of Rob Roy Macgregor.
+Classicism is dead. Sir John Froissart has taken Dr. Lempriere by the
+nose, and reigns sovereign.
+
+Of the great pictures of David the defunct, we need not, then, say much.
+Romulus is a mighty fine young fellow, no doubt; and if he has come out
+to battle stark naked (except a very handsome helmet), it is because the
+costume became him, and shows off his figure to advantage. But was there
+ever anything so absurd as this passion for the nude, which was followed
+by all the painters of the Davidian epoch? And how are we to suppose
+yonder straddle to be the true characteristic of the heroic and the
+sublime? Romulus stretches his legs as far as ever nature will allow;
+the Horatii, in receiving their swords, think proper to stretch their
+legs too, and to thrust forward their arms, thus,--
+
+
+[Drawing omitted]
+
+
+Romulus's is in the exact action of a telegraph; and the Horatii are all
+in the position of the lunge. Is this the sublime? Mr. Angelo, of Bond
+Street, might admire the attitude; his namesake, Michel, I don't think
+would.
+
+The little picture of "Paris and Helen," one of the master's earliest,
+I believe, is likewise one of his best: the details are exquisitely
+painted. Helen looks needlessly sheepish, and Paris has a most odious
+ogle; but the limbs of the male figure are beautifully designed, and
+have not the green tone which you see in the later pictures of the
+master. What is the meaning of this green? Was it the fashion, or the
+varnish? Girodet's pictures are green; Gros's emperors and grenadiers
+have universally the jaundice. Gerard's "Psyche" has a most decided
+green-sickness; and I am at a loss, I confess, to account for the
+enthusiasm which this performance inspired on its first appearance
+before the public.
+
+In the same room with it is Girodet's ghastly "Deluge," and Gericault's
+dismal "Medusa." Gericault died, they say, for want of fame. He was a
+man who possessed a considerable fortune of his own; but pined because
+no one in his day would purchase his pictures, and so acknowledge his
+talent. At present, a scrawl from his pencil brings an enormous price.
+All his works have a grand cachet: he never did anything mean. When he
+painted the "Raft of the Medusa," it is said he lived for a long time
+among the corpses which he painted, and that his studio was a second
+Morgue. If you have not seen the picture, you are familiar probably,
+with Reynolds's admirable engraving of it. A huge black sea; a raft
+beating upon it; a horrid company of men dead, half dead, writhing
+and frantic with hideous hunger or hideous hope; and, far away, black,
+against a stormy sunset, a sail. The story is powerfully told, and has a
+legitimate tragic interest, so to speak,--deeper, because more natural,
+than Girodet's green "Deluge," for instance: or his livid "Orestes," or
+red-hot "Clytemnestra."
+
+Seen from a distance the latter's "Deluge" has a certain awe-inspiring
+air with it. A slimy green man stands on a green rock, and clutches hold
+of a tree. On the green man's shoulders is his old father, in a green
+old age; to him hangs his wife, with a babe on her breast, and dangling
+at her hair, another child. In the water floats a corpse (a beautiful
+head) and a green sea and atmosphere envelops all this dismal group. The
+old father is represented with a bag of money in his hand; and the tree,
+which the man catches, is cracking, and just on the point of giving way.
+These two points were considered very fine by the critics: they are two
+such ghastly epigrams as continually disfigure French Tragedy. For
+this reason I have never been able to read Racine with pleasure,--the
+dialogue is so crammed with these lugubrious good things--melancholy
+antitheses--sparkling undertakers' wit; but this is heresy, and had
+better be spoken discreetly.
+
+The gallery contains a vast number of Poussin's pictures; they put me in
+mind of the color of objects in dreams,--a strange, hazy, lurid hue. How
+noble are some of his landscapes! What a depth of solemn shadow is in
+yonder wood, near which, by the side of a black water, halts Diogenes.
+The air is thunder-laden, and breathes heavily. You hear ominous
+whispers in the vast forest gloom.
+
+Near it is a landscape, by Carel Dujardin, I believe, conceived in quite
+a different mood, but exquisitely poetical too. A horseman is riding
+up a hill, and giving money to a blowsy beggar-wench. O matutini rores
+auraeque salubres! in what a wonderful way has the artist managed to
+create you out of a few bladders of paint and pots of varnish. You
+can see the matutinal dews twinkling in the grass, and feel the fresh,
+salubrious airs ("the breath of Nature blowing free," as the corn-law
+man sings) blowing free over the heath; silvery vapors are rising up
+from the blue lowlands. You can tell the hour of the morning and the
+time of the year: you can do anything but describe it in words. As with
+regard to the Poussin above mentioned, one can never pass it without
+bearing away a certain pleasing, dreamy feeling of awe and musing;
+the other landscape inspires the spectator infallibly with the most
+delightful briskness and cheerfulness of spirit. Herein lies the vast
+privilege of the landscape-painter: he does not address you with one
+fixed particular subject or expression, but with a thousand never
+contemplated by himself, and which only arise out of occasion. You
+may always be looking at a natural landscape as at a fine pictorial
+imitation of one; it seems eternally producing new thoughts in your
+bosom, as it does fresh beauties from its own. I cannot fancy more
+delightful, cheerful, silent companions for a man than half a dozen
+landscapes hung round his study. Portraits, on the contrary, and large
+pieces of figures, have a painful, fixed, staring look, which must jar
+upon the mind in many of its moods. Fancy living in a room with David's
+sans-culotte Leonidas staring perpetually in your face!
+
+There is a little Watteau here, and a rare piece of fantastical
+brightness and gayety it is. What a delightful affectation about yonder
+ladies flirting their fans, and trailing about in their long brocades!
+What splendid dandies are those, ever-smirking, turning out their toes,
+with broad blue ribbons to tie up their crooks and their pigtails, and
+wonderful gorgeous crimson satin breeches! Yonder, in the midst of a
+golden atmosphere, rises a bevy of little round Cupids, bubbling up in
+clusters as out of a champagne-bottle, and melting away in air. There
+is, to be sure, a hidden analogy between liquors and pictures: the eye
+is deliciously tickled by these frisky Watteaus, and yields itself up to
+a light, smiling, gentlemanlike intoxication. Thus, were we inclined to
+pursue further this mighty subject, yonder landscape of Claude,--calm,
+fresh, delicate, yet full of flavor,--should be likened to a bottle of
+Chateau Margaux. And what is the Poussin before spoken of but Romanee
+Gelee?--heavy, sluggish,--the luscious odor almost sickens you; a sultry
+sort of drink; your limbs sink under it; you feel as if you had been
+drinking hot blood.
+
+An ordinary man would be whirled away in a fever, or would hobble off
+this mortal stage in a premature gout-fit, if he too early or too often
+indulged in such tremendous drink. I think in my heart I am fonder of
+pretty third-rate pictures than of your great thundering first-rates.
+Confess how many times you have read Beranger, and how many Milton?
+If you go to the "Star and Garter," don't you grow sick of that vast,
+luscious landscape, and long for the sight of a couple of cows, or a
+donkey, and a few yards of common? Donkeys, my dear MacGilp, since we
+have come to this subject, say not so; Richmond Hill for them. Milton
+they never grow tired of; and are as familiar with Raphael as Bottom
+with exquisite Titania. Let us thank heaven, my dear sir, for according
+to us the power to taste and appreciate the pleasures of mediocrity. I
+have never heard that we were great geniuses. Earthy are we, and of
+the earth; glimpses of the sublime are but rare to us; leave we them to
+great geniuses, and to the donkeys; and if it nothing profit us aerias
+tentasse domos along with them, let us thankfully remain below, being
+merry and humble.
+
+I have now only to mention the charming "Cruche Cassee" of Greuze, which
+all the young ladies delight to copy; and of which the color (a thought
+too blue, perhaps) is marvellously graceful and delicate. There are
+three more pictures by the artist, containing exquisite female heads and
+color; but they have charms for French critics which are difficult to
+be discovered by English eyes; and the pictures seem weak to me. A very
+fine picture by Bon Bollongue, "Saint Benedict resuscitating a Child,"
+deserves particular attention, and is superb in vigor and richness of
+color. You must look, too, at the large, noble, melancholy landscapes
+of Philippe de Champagne; and the two magnificent Italian pictures of
+Leopold Robert: they are, perhaps, the very finest pictures that the
+French school has produced,--as deep as Poussin, of a better color, and
+of a wonderful minuteness and veracity in the representation of objects.
+
+Every one of Lesueur's church-pictures is worth examining and admiring;
+they are full of "unction" and pious mystical grace. "Saint Scholastica"
+is divine; and the "Taking down from the Cross" as noble a composition
+as ever was seen; I care not by whom the other may be. There is more
+beauty, and less affectation, about this picture than you will find in
+the performances of many Italian masters, with high-sounding names (out
+with it, and say RAPHAEL at once). I hate those simpering Madonnas. I
+declare that the "Jardiniere" is a puking, smirking miss, with
+nothing heavenly about her. I vow that the "Saint Elizabeth" is a
+bad picture,--a bad composition, badly drawn, badly colored, in a bad
+imitation of Titian,--a piece of vile affectation. I say, that when
+Raphael painted this picture two years before his death, the spirit of
+painting had gone from out of him; he was no longer inspired; IT WAS
+TIME THAT HE SHOULD DIE!!
+
+There,--the murder is out! My paper is filled to the brim, and there is
+no time to speak of Lesueur's "Crucifixion," which is odiously colored,
+to be sure; but earnest, tender, simple, holy. But such things are most
+difficult to translate into words;--one lays down the pen, and thinks
+and thinks. The figures appear, and take their places one by one:
+ranging themselves according to order, in light or in gloom, the colors
+are reflected duly in the little camera obscura of the brain, and the
+whole picture lies there complete; but can you describe it? No, not if
+pens were fitch-brushes, and words were bladders of paint. With which,
+for the present, adieu.
+
+Your faithful
+
+M. A. T.
+
+To Mr. ROBERT MACGILP,
+
+NEWMAN STREET, LONDON.
+
+
+
+
+THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN.
+
+
+Simon Gambouge was the son of Solomon Gambouge; and as all the world
+knows, both father and son were astonishingly clever fellows at their
+profession. Solomon painted landscapes, which nobody bought; and Simon
+took a higher line, and painted portraits to admiration, only nobody
+came to sit to him.
+
+As he was not gaining five pounds a year by his profession, and had
+arrived at the age of twenty, at least, Simon determined to better
+himself by taking a wife,--a plan which a number of other wise men
+adopt, in similar years and circumstances. So Simon prevailed upon a
+butcher's daughter (to whom he owed considerably for cutlets) to quit
+the meat-shop and follow him. Griskinissa--such was the fair creature's
+name--"was as lovely a bit of mutton," her father said, "as ever a man
+would wish to stick a knife into." She had sat to the painter for all
+sorts of characters; and the curious who possess any of Gambouge's
+pictures will see her as Venus, Minerva, Madonna, and in numberless
+other characters: Portrait of a lady--Griskinissa; Sleeping
+Nymph--Griskinissa, without a rag of clothes, lying in a forest;
+Maternal Solicitude--Griskinissa again, with young Master Gambouge, who
+was by this time the offspring of their affections.
+
+The lady brought the painter a handsome little fortune of a couple of
+hundred pounds; and as long as this sum lasted no woman could be
+more lovely or loving. But want began speedily to attack their little
+household; bakers' bills were unpaid; rent was due, and the reckless
+landlord gave no quarter; and, to crown the whole, her father, unnatural
+butcher! suddenly stopped the supplies of mutton-chops; and swore that
+his daughter, and the dauber; her husband, should have no more of his
+wares. At first they embraced tenderly, and, kissing and crying over
+their little infant, vowed to heaven that they would do without: but
+in the course of the evening Griskinissa grew peckish, and poor Simon
+pawned his best coat.
+
+When this habit of pawning is discovered, it appears to the poor a kind
+of Eldorado. Gambouge and his wife were so delighted, that they, in the
+course of a month, made away with her gold chain, her great warming-pan,
+his best crimson plush inexpressibles, two wigs, a washhand basin and
+ewer, fire-irons, window-curtains, crockery, and arm-chairs. Griskinissa
+said, smiling, that she had found a second father in HER UNCLE,--a
+base pun, which showed that her mind was corrupted, and that she was no
+longer the tender, simple Griskinissa of other days.
+
+I am sorry to say that she had taken to drinking; she swallowed the
+warming-pan in the course of three days, and fuddled herself one whole
+evening with the crimson plush breeches.
+
+Drinking is the devil--the father, that is to say, of all vices.
+Griskinissa's face and her mind grew ugly together; her good humor
+changed to bilious, bitter discontent; her pretty, fond epithets, to
+foul abuse and swearing; her tender blue eyes grew watery and blear, and
+the peach-color on her cheeks fled from its old habitation, and crowded
+up into her nose, where, with a number of pimples, it stuck fast. Add to
+this a dirty, draggle-tailed chintz; long, matted hair, wandering into
+her eyes, and over her lean shoulders, which were once so snowy, and you
+have the picture of drunkenness and Mrs. Simon Gambouge.
+
+Poor Simon, who had been a gay, lively fellow enough in the days of his
+better fortune, was completely cast down by his present ill luck, and
+cowed by the ferocity of his wife. From morning till night the neighbors
+could hear this woman's tongue, and understand her doings; bellows went
+skimming across the room, chairs were flumped down on the floor,
+and poor Gambouge's oil and varnish pots went clattering through the
+windows, or down the stairs. The baby roared all day; and Simon sat pale
+and idle in a corner, taking a small sup at the brandy-bottle, when Mrs.
+Gambouge was out of the way.
+
+One day, as he sat disconsolately at his easel, furbishing up a picture
+of his wife, in the character of Peace, which he had commenced a year
+before, he was more than ordinarily desperate, and cursed and swore in
+the most pathetic manner. "O miserable fate of genius!" cried he, "was
+I, a man of such commanding talents, born for this? to be bullied by a
+fiend of a wife; to have my masterpieces neglected by the world, or sold
+only for a few pieces? Cursed be the love which has misled me; cursed,
+be the art which is unworthy of me! Let me dig or steal, let me sell
+myself as a soldier, or sell myself to the Devil, I should not be more
+wretched than I am now!"
+
+"Quite the contrary," cried a small, cheery voice.
+
+"What!" exclaimed Gambouge, trembling and surprised. "Who's
+there?--where are you?--who are you?"
+
+"You were just speaking of me," said the voice.
+
+Gambouge held, in his left hand, his palette; in his right, a bladder
+of crimson lake, which he was about to squeeze out upon the mahogany.
+"Where are you?" cried he again.
+
+"S-q-u-e-e-z-e!" exclaimed the little voice.
+
+Gambouge picked out the nail from the bladder, and gave a squeeze; when,
+as sure as I am living, a little imp spurted out from the hole upon the
+palette, and began laughing in the most singular and oily manner.
+
+When first born he was little bigger than a tadpole; then he grew to
+be as big as a mouse; then he arrived at the size of a cat; and then
+he jumped off the palette, and, turning head over heels, asked the poor
+painter what he wanted with him.
+
+The strange little animal twisted head over heels, and fixed himself at
+last upon the top of Gambouge's easel,--smearing out, with his heels,
+all the white and vermilion which had just been laid on the allegoric
+portrait of Mrs. Gambouge.
+
+"What!" exclaimed Simon, "is it the--"
+
+"Exactly so; talk of me, you know, and I am always at hand: besides, I
+am not half so black as I am painted, as you will see when you know me a
+little better."
+
+"Upon my word," said the painter, "it is a very singular surprise
+which you have given me. To tell truth, I did not even believe in your
+existence."
+
+The little imp put on a theatrical air, and, with one of Mr. Macready's
+best looks, said,--
+
+
+     "There are more things in heaven and earth, Gambogio,
+      Than are dreamed of in your philosophy."
+
+
+Gambouge, being a Frenchman, did not understand the quotation, but felt
+somehow strangely and singularly interested in the conversation of his
+new friend.
+
+Diabolus continued: "You are a man of merit, and want money; you will
+starve on your merit; you can only get money from me. Come, my friend,
+how much is it? I ask the easiest interest in the world: old Mordecai,
+the usurer, has made you pay twice as heavily before now: nothing but
+the signature of a bond, which is a mere ceremony, and the transfer
+of an article which, in itself, is a supposition--a valueless, windy,
+uncertain property of yours, called, by some poet of your own, I think,
+an animula, vagula, blandula--bah! there is no use beating about the
+bush--I mean A SOUL. Come, let me have it; you know you will sell it
+some other way, and not get such good pay for your bargain!"--and,
+having made this speech, the Devil pulled out from his fob a sheet as
+big as a double Times, only there was a different STAMP in the corner.
+
+It is useless and tedious to describe law documents: lawyers only love
+to read them; and they have as good in Chitty as any that are to be
+found in the Devil's own; so nobly have the apprentices emulated the
+skill of the master. Suffice it to say, that poor Gambouge read over the
+paper, and signed it. He was to have all he wished for seven years,
+and at the end of that time was to become the property of the -----;
+PROVIDED that, during the course of the seven years, every single wish
+which he might form should be gratified by the other of the contracting
+parties; otherwise the deed became null and non-avenue, and Gambouge
+should be left "to go to the ----- his own way."
+
+"You will never see me again," said Diabolus, in shaking hands with poor
+Simon, on whose fingers he left such a mark as is to be seen at this
+day--"never, at least, unless you want me; for everything you ask will
+be performed in the most quiet and every-day manner: believe me, it is
+best and most gentlemanlike, and avoids anything like scandal. But if
+you set me about anything which is extraordinary, and out of the course
+of nature, as it were, come I must, you know; and of this you are
+the best judge." So saying, Diabolus disappeared; but whether up the
+chimney, through the keyhole, or by any other aperture or contrivance,
+nobody knows. Simon Gambouge was left in a fever of delight, as, heaven
+forgive me! I believe many a worthy man would be, if he were allowed an
+opportunity to make a similar bargain.
+
+"Heigho!" said Simon. "I wonder whether this be a reality or a dream.--I
+am sober, I know; for who will give me credit for the means to be drunk?
+and as for sleeping, I'm too hungry for that. I wish I could see a capon
+and a bottle of white wine."
+
+"MONSIEUR SIMON!" cried a voice on the landing-place.
+
+"C'est ici," quoth Gambouge, hastening to open the door. He did so; and
+lo! there was a restaurateur's boy at the door, supporting a tray,
+a tin-covered dish, and plates on the same; and, by its side, a tall
+amber-colored flask of Sauterne.
+
+"I am the new boy, sir," exclaimed this youth, on entering; "but I
+believe this is the right door, and you asked for these things."
+
+Simon grinned, and said, "Certainly, I did ASK FOR these things." But
+such was the effect which his interview with the demon had had on his
+innocent mind, that he took them, although he knew that they were for
+old Simon, the Jew dandy, who was mad after an opera girl, and lived on
+the floor beneath.
+
+"Go, my boy," he said; "it is good: call in a couple of hours, and
+remove the plates and glasses."
+
+The little waiter trotted down stairs, and Simon sat greedily down to
+discuss the capon and the white wine. He bolted the legs, he devoured
+the wings, he cut every morsel of flesh from the breast;--seasoning
+his repast with pleasant draughts of wine, and caring nothing for the
+inevitable bill, which was to follow all.
+
+"Ye gods!" said he, as he scraped away at the backbone, "what a dinner!
+what wine!--and how gayly served up too!" There were silver forks and
+spoons, and the remnants of the fowl were upon a silver dish. "Why, the
+money for this dish and these spoons," cried Simon, "would keep me and
+Mrs. G. for a month! I WISH"--and here Simon whistled, and turned round
+to see that nobody was peeping--"I wish the plate were mine."
+
+Oh, the horrid progress of the Devil! "Here they are," thought Simon
+to himself; "why should not I TAKE THEM?" And take them he did.
+"Detection," said he, "is not so bad as starvation; and I would as soon
+live at the galleys as live with Madame Gambouge."
+
+So Gambouge shovelled dish and spoons into the flap of his surtout, and
+ran down stairs as if the Devil were behind him--as, indeed, he was.
+
+He immediately made for the house of his old friend the pawnbroker--that
+establishment which is called in France the Mont de Piete. "I am obliged
+to come to you again, my old friend," said Simon, "with some family
+plate, of which I beseech you to take care."
+
+The pawnbroker smiled as he examined the goods. "I can give you nothing
+upon them," said he.
+
+"What!" cried Simon; "not even the worth of the silver?"
+
+"No; I could buy them at that price at the 'Cafe Morisot,' Rue de la
+Verrerie, where, I suppose, you got them a little cheaper." And, so
+saying, he showed to the guilt-stricken Gambouge how the name of that
+coffee-house was inscribed upon every one of the articles which he had
+wished to pawn.
+
+The effects of conscience are dreadful indeed. Oh! how fearful is
+retribution, how deep is despair, how bitter is remorse for crime--WHEN
+CRIME IS FOUND OUT!--otherwise, conscience takes matters much more
+easily. Gambouge cursed his fate, and swore henceforth to be virtuous.
+
+"But, hark ye, my friend," continued the honest broker, "there is no
+reason why, because I cannot lend upon these things, I should not buy
+them: they will do to melt, if for no other purpose. Will you have half
+the money?--speak, or I peach."
+
+Simon's resolves about virtue were dissipated instantaneously. "Give me
+half," he said, "and let me go.--What scoundrels are these pawnbrokers!"
+ejaculated he, as he passed out of the accursed shop, "seeking every
+wicked pretext to rob the poor man of his hard-won gain."
+
+When he had marched forwards for a street or two, Gambouge counted the
+money which he had received, and found that he was in possession of
+no less than a hundred francs. It was night, as he reckoned out his
+equivocal gains, and he counted them at the light of a lamp. He looked
+up at the lamp, in doubt as to the course he should next pursue: upon
+it was inscribed the simple number, 152. "A gambling-house," thought
+Gambouge. "I wish I had half the money that is now on the table, up
+stairs."
+
+He mounted, as many a rogue has done before him, and found half a
+hundred persons busy at a table of rouge et noir. Gambouge's five
+napoleons looked insignificant by the side of the heaps which were
+around him; but the effects of the wine, of the theft, and of the
+detection by the pawnbroker, were upon him, and he threw down his
+capital stoutly upon the 0 0.
+
+It is a dangerous spot that 0 0, or double zero; but to Simon it
+was more lucky than to the rest of the world. The ball went spinning
+round--in "its predestined circle rolled," as Shelley has it, after
+Goethe--and plumped down at last in the double zero. One hundred and
+thirty-five gold napoleons (louis they were then) were counted out to
+the delighted painter. "Oh, Diabolus!" cried he, "now it is that I
+begin to believe in thee! Don't talk about merit," he cried; "talk about
+fortune. Tell me not about heroes for the future--tell me of ZEROES."
+And down went twenty napoleons more upon the 0.
+
+The Devil was certainly in the ball: round it twirled, and dropped
+into zero as naturally as a duck pops its head into a pond. Our friend
+received five hundred pounds for his stake; and the croupiers and
+lookers-on began to stare at him.
+
+There were twelve thousand pounds on the table. Suffice it to say, that
+Simon won half, and retired from the Palais Royal with a thick bundle
+of bank-notes crammed into his dirty three-cornered hat. He had been but
+half an hour in the place, and he had won the revenues of a prince for
+half a year!
+
+Gambouge, as soon as he felt that he was a capitalist, and that he had a
+stake in the country, discovered that he was an altered man. He repented
+of his foul deed, and his base purloining of the restaurateur's plate.
+"O honesty!" he cried, "how unworthy is an action like this of a man who
+has a property like mine!" So he went back to the pawnbroker with the
+gloomiest face imaginable. "My friend," said he, "I have sinned against
+all that I hold most sacred: I have forgotten my family and my religion.
+Here is thy money. In the name of heaven, restore me the plate which I
+have wrongfully sold thee!"
+
+But the pawnbroker grinned, and said, "Nay, Mr. Gambouge, I will sell
+that plate for a thousand francs to you, or I never will sell it at
+all."
+
+"Well," cried Gambouge, "thou art an inexorable ruffian, Troisboules;
+but I will give thee all I am worth." And here he produced a billet of
+five hundred francs. "Look," said he, "this money is all I own; it is
+the payment of two years' lodging. To raise it, I have toiled for many
+months; and, failing, I have been a criminal. O heaven! I STOLE that
+plate that I might pay my debt, and keep my dear wife from wandering
+houseless. But I cannot bear this load of ignominy--I cannot suffer the
+thought of this crime. I will go to the person to whom I did wrong, I
+will starve, I will confess; but I will, I WILL do right!"
+
+The broker was alarmed. "Give me thy note," he cried; "here is the
+plate."
+
+"Give me an acquittal first," cried Simon, almost broken-hearted; "sign
+me a paper, and the money is yours." So Troisboules wrote according to
+Gambouge's dictation; "Received, for thirteen ounces of plate, twenty
+pounds."
+
+"Monster of iniquity!" cried the painter, "fiend of wickedness! thou art
+caught in thine own snares. Hast thou not sold me five pounds' worth of
+plate for twenty? Have I it not in my pocket? Art thou not a convicted
+dealer in stolen goods? Yield, scoundrel, yield thy money, or I will
+bring thee to justice!"
+
+The frightened pawnbroker bullied and battled for a while; but he gave
+up his money at last, and the dispute ended. Thus it will be seen that
+Diabolus had rather a hard bargain in the wily Gambouge. He had taken
+a victim prisoner, but he had assuredly caught a Tartar. Simon now
+returned home, and, to do him justice, paid the bill for his dinner, and
+restored the plate.
+
+And now I may add (and the reader should ponder upon this, as a profound
+picture of human life), that Gambouge, since he had grown rich, grew
+likewise abundantly moral. He was a most exemplary father. He fed the
+poor, and was loved by them. He scorned a base action. And I have no
+doubt that Mr. Thurtell, or the late lamented Mr. Greenacre, in similar
+circumstances, would have acted like the worthy Simon Gambouge.
+
+There was but one blot upon his character--he hated Mrs. Gam. worse than
+ever. As he grew more benevolent, she grew more virulent: when he went
+to plays, she went to Bible societies, and vice versa: in fact, she led
+him such a life as Xantippe led Socrates, or as a dog leads a cat in
+the same kitchen. With all his fortune--for, as may be supposed, Simon
+prospered in all worldly things--he was the most miserable dog in the
+whole city of Paris. Only in the point of drinking did he and Mrs. Simon
+agree; and for many years, and during a considerable number of hours
+in each day, he thus dissipated, partially, his domestic chagrin.
+O philosophy! we may talk of thee: but, except at the bottom of the
+winecup, where thou liest like truth in a well, where shall we find
+thee?
+
+He lived so long, and in his worldly matters prospered so much, there
+was so little sign of devilment in the accomplishment of his wishes,
+and the increase of his prosperity, that Simon, at the end of six years,
+began to doubt whether he had made any such bargain at all, as that
+which we have described at the commencement of this history. He had
+grown, as we said, very pious and moral. He went regularly to mass, and
+had a confessor into the bargain. He resolved, therefore, to consult
+that reverend gentleman, and to lay before him the whole matter.
+
+"I am inclined to think, holy sir," said Gambouge, after he had
+concluded his history, and shown how, in some miraculous way, all his
+desires were accomplished, "that, after all, this demon was no other
+than the creation of my own brain, heated by the effects of that bottle
+of wine, the cause of my crime and my prosperity."
+
+The confessor agreed with him, and they walked out of church comfortably
+together, and entered afterwards a cafe, where they sat down to refresh
+themselves after the fatigues of their devotion.
+
+A respectable old gentleman, with a number of orders at his buttonhole,
+presently entered the room, and sauntered up to the marble table, before
+which reposed Simon and his clerical friend. "Excuse me, gentlemen," he
+said, as he took a place opposite them, and began reading the papers of
+the day.
+
+"Bah!" said he, at last,--"sont-ils grands ces journaux Anglais?
+Look, sir," he said, handing over an immense sheet of The Times to Mr.
+Gambouge, "was ever anything so monstrous?"
+
+Gambouge smiled politely, and examined the proffered page. "It is
+enormous" he said; "but I do not read English."
+
+"Nay," said the man with the orders, "look closer at it, Signor
+Gambouge; it is astonishing how easy the language is."
+
+Wondering, Simon took a sheet of paper. He turned pale as he looked at
+it, and began to curse the ices and the waiter. "Come, M. l'Abbe," he
+said; "the heat and glare of this place are intolerable."
+
+The stranger rose with them. "Au plaisir de vous revoir, mon cher
+monsieur," said he; "I do not mind speaking before the Abbe here,
+who will be my very good friend one of these days: but I thought
+it necessary to refresh your memory, concerning our little business
+transaction six years since; and could not exactly talk of it AT CHURCH,
+as you may fancy."
+
+Simon Gambouge had seen, in the double-sheeted Times, the paper signed
+by himself, which the little Devil had pulled out of his fob.
+
+There was no doubt on the subject; and Simon, who had but a year to
+live, grew more pious, and more careful than ever. He had consultations
+with all the doctors of the Sorbonne and all the lawyers of the Palais.
+But his magnificence grew as wearisome to him as his poverty had been
+before; and not one of the doctors whom he consulted could give him a
+pennyworth of consolation.
+
+Then he grew outrageous in his demands upon the Devil, and put him to
+all sorts of absurd and ridiculous tasks; but they were all punctually
+performed, until Simon could invent no new ones, and the Devil sat all
+day with his hands in his pockets doing nothing.
+
+One day, Simon's confessor came bounding into the room, with the
+greatest glee. "My friend," said he, "I have it! Eureka!--I have found
+it. Send the Pope a hundred thousand crowns, build a new Jesuit college
+at Rome, give a hundred gold candlesticks to St. Peter's; and tell his
+Holiness you will double all, if he will give you absolution!"
+
+Gambouge caught at the notion, and hurried off a courier to Rome ventre
+a terre. His Holiness agreed to the request of the petition, and sent
+him an absolution, written out with his own fist, and all in due form.
+
+"Now," said he, "foul fiend, I defy you! arise, Diabolus! your contract
+is not worth a jot: the Pope has absolved me, and I am safe on the
+road to salvation." In a fervor of gratitude he clasped the hand of his
+confessor, and embraced him: tears of joy ran down the cheeks of these
+good men.
+
+They heard an inordinate roar of laughter, and there was Diabolus
+sitting opposite to them, holding his sides, and lashing his tail about,
+as if he would have gone mad with glee.
+
+"Why," said he, "what nonsense is this! do you suppose I care about
+THAT?" and he tossed the Pope's missive into a corner. "M. l'Abbe
+knows," he said, bowing and grinning, "that though the Pope's paper may
+pass current HERE, it is not worth twopence in our country. What do I
+care about the Pope's absolution? You might just as well be absolved by
+your under butler."
+
+"Egad," said the Abbe, "the rogue is right--I quite forgot the fact,
+which he points out clearly enough."
+
+"No, no, Gambouge," continued Diabolus, with horrid familiarity, "go thy
+ways, old fellow, that COCK WON'T FIGHT." And he retired up the chimney,
+chuckling at his wit and his triumph. Gambouge heard his tail scuttling
+all the way up, as if he had been a sweeper by profession.
+
+Simon was left in that condition of grief in which, according to the
+newspapers, cities and nations are found when a murder is committed, or
+a lord ill of the gout--a situation, we say, more easy to imagine than
+to describe.
+
+To add to his woes, Mrs. Gambouge, who was now first made acquainted
+with his compact, and its probable consequences, raised such a storm
+about his ears, as made him wish almost that his seven years were
+expired. She screamed, she scolded, she swore, she wept, she went into
+such fits of hysterics, that poor Gambouge, who had completely knocked
+under to her, was worn out of his life. He was allowed no rest, night
+or day: he moped about his fine house, solitary and wretched, and cursed
+his stars that he ever had married the butcher's daughter.
+
+It wanted six months of the time.
+
+A sudden and desperate resolution seemed all at once to have taken
+possession of Simon Gambouge. He called his family and his friends
+together--he gave one of the greatest feasts that ever was known in the
+city of Paris--he gayly presided at one end of his table, while Mrs.
+Gam., splendidly arrayed, gave herself airs at the other extremity.
+
+After dinner, using the customary formula, he called upon Diabolus to
+appear. The old ladies screamed, and hoped he would not appear naked;
+the young ones tittered, and longed to see the monster: everybody was
+pale with expectation and affright.
+
+A very quiet, gentlemanly man, neatly dressed in black, made his
+appearance, to the surprise of all present, and bowed all round to
+the company. "I will not show my CREDENTIALS," he said, blushing, and
+pointing to his hoofs, which were cleverly hidden by his pumps and
+shoe-buckles, "unless the ladies absolutely wish it; but I am the person
+you want, Mr. Gambouge; pray tell me what is your will."
+
+"You know," said that gentleman, in a stately and determined voice,
+"that you are bound to me, according to our agreement, for six months to
+come."
+
+"I am," replied the new comer.
+
+"You are to do all that I ask, whatsoever it may be, or you forfeit the
+bond which I gave you?"
+
+"It is true."
+
+"You declare this before the present company?"
+
+"Upon my honor, as a gentleman," said Diabolus, bowing, and laying his
+hand upon his waistcoat.
+
+A whisper of applause ran round the room: all were charmed with the
+bland manners of the fascinating stranger.
+
+"My love," continued Gambouge, mildly addressing his lady, "will you
+be so polite as to step this way? You know I must go soon, and I am
+anxious, before this noble company, to make a provision for one who, in
+sickness as in health, in poverty as in riches, has been my truest and
+fondest companion."
+
+Gambouge mopped his eyes with his handkerchief--all the company did
+likewise. Diabolus sobbed audibly, and Mrs. Gambouge sidled up to her
+husband's side, and took him tenderly by the hand. "Simon!" said she,
+"is it true? and do you really love your Griskinissa?"
+
+Simon continued solemnly: "Come hither, Diabolus; you are bound to obey
+me in all things for the six months during which our contract has to
+run; take, then, Griskinissa Gambouge, live alone with her for half a
+year, never leave her from morning till night, obey all her caprices,
+follow all her whims, and listen to all the abuse which falls from
+her infernal tongue. Do this, and I ask no more of you; I will deliver
+myself up at the appointed time."
+
+Not Lord G---, when flogged by lord B---, in the House,--not Mr.
+Cartlitch, of Astley's Amphitheatre, in his most pathetic passages,
+could look more crestfallen, and howl more hideously, than Diabolus did
+now. "Take another year, Gambouge," screamed he; "two more--ten more--a
+century; roast me on Lawrence's gridiron, boil me in holy water, but
+don't ask that: don't, don't bid me live with Mrs. Gambouge!"
+
+Simon smiled sternly. "I have said it," he cried; "do this, or our
+contract is at an end."
+
+The Devil, at this, grinned so horribly that every drop of beer in the
+house turned sour: he gnashed his teeth so frightfully that every person
+in the company wellnigh fainted with the cholic. He slapped down the
+great parchment upon the floor, trampled upon it madly, and lashed it
+with his hoofs and his tail: at last, spreading out a mighty pair of
+wings as wide as from here to Regent Street, he slapped Gambouge with
+his tail over one eye, and vanished, abruptly, through the keyhole.
+
+Gambouge screamed with pain and started up. "You drunken, lazy
+scoundrel!" cried a shrill and well-known voice, "you have been asleep
+these two hours:" and here he received another terrific box on the ear.
+
+It was too true, he had fallen asleep at his work; and the beautiful
+vision had been dispelled by the thumps of the tipsy Griskinissa.
+Nothing remained to corroborate his story, except the bladder of lake,
+and this was spirted all over his waistcoat and breeches.
+
+"I wish," said the poor fellow, rubbing his tingling cheeks, "that
+dreams were true;" and he went to work again at his portrait.
+
+My last accounts of Gambouge are, that he has left the arts, and is
+footman in a small family. Mrs. Gam. takes in washing; and it is said
+that, her continual dealings with soap-suds and hot water have been the
+only things in life which have kept her from spontaneous combustion.
+
+
+
+CARTOUCHE.
+
+
+I have been much interested with an account of the exploits of Monsieur
+Louis Dominic Cartouche, and as Newgate and the highways are so much
+the fashion with us in England, we may be allowed to look abroad for
+histories of a similar tendency. It is pleasant to find that virtue is
+cosmopolite, and may exist among wooden-shoed Papists as well as honest
+Church-of-England men.
+
+Louis Dominic was born in a quarter of Paris called the Courtille, says
+the historian whose work lies before me;--born in the Courtille, and
+in the year 1693. Another biographer asserts that he was born two years
+later, and in the Marais;--of respectable parents, of course. Think of
+the talent that our two countries produced about this time: Marlborough,
+Villars, Mandrin, Turpin, Boileau, Dryden, Swift, Addison, Moliere,
+Racine, Jack Sheppard, and Louis Cartouche,--all famous within the same
+twenty years, and fighting, writing, robbing a l'envi!
+
+Well, Marlborough was no chicken when he began to show his genius; Swift
+was but a dull, idle, college lad; but if we read the histories of
+some other great men mentioned in the above list--I mean the thieves,
+especially--we shall find that they all commenced very early: they
+showed a passion for their art, as little Raphael did, or little
+Mozart; and the history of Cartouche's knaveries begins almost with his
+breeches.
+
+Dominic's parents sent him to school at the college of Clermont (now
+Louis le Grand); and although it has never been discovered that the
+Jesuits, who directed that seminary, advanced him much in classical
+or theological knowledge, Cartouche, in revenge, showed, by repeated
+instances, his own natural bent and genius, which no difficulties were
+strong enough to overcome. His first great action on record, although
+not successful in the end, and tinctured with the innocence of youth, is
+yet highly creditable to him. He made a general swoop of a hundred and
+twenty nightcaps belonging to his companions, and disposed of them to
+his satisfaction; but as it was discovered that of all the youths in
+the college of Clermont, he only was the possessor of a cap to sleep in,
+suspicion (which, alas! was confirmed) immediately fell upon him: and by
+this little piece of youthful naivete, a scheme, prettily conceived and
+smartly performed, was rendered naught.
+
+Cartouche had a wonderful love for good eating, and put all the
+apple-women and cooks, who came to supply the students, under
+contribution. Not always, however, desirous of robbing these, he used to
+deal with them, occasionally, on honest principles of barter; that is,
+whenever he could get hold of his schoolfellows' knives, books,
+rulers, or playthings, which he used fairly to exchange for tarts and
+gingerbread.
+
+It seemed as if the presiding genius of evil was determined to patronize
+this young man; for before he had been long at college, and soon after
+he had, with the greatest difficulty, escaped from the nightcap scrape,
+an opportunity occurred by which he was enabled to gratify both his
+propensities at once, and not only to steal, but to steal sweetmeats.
+It happened that the principal of the college received some pots of
+Narbonne honey, which came under the eyes of Cartouche, and in which
+that young gentleman, as soon as ever he saw them, determined to put
+his fingers. The president of the college put aside his honey-pots in
+an apartment within his own; to which, except by the one door which led
+into the room which his reverence usually occupied, there was no outlet.
+There was no chimney in the room; and the windows looked into the court,
+where there was a porter at night, and where crowds passed by day. What
+was Cartouche to do?--have the honey he must.
+
+Over this chamber, which contained what his soul longed after, and over
+the president's rooms, there ran a set of unoccupied garrets, into which
+the dexterous Cartouche penetrated. These were divided from the rooms
+below, according to the fashion of those days, by a set of large beams,
+which reached across the whole building, and across which rude planks
+were laid, which formed the ceiling of the lower story and the floor of
+the upper. Some of these planks did young Cartouche remove; and having
+descended by means of a rope, tied a couple of others to the neck of the
+honey-pots, climbed back again, and drew up his prey in safety. He then
+cunningly fixed the planks again in their old places, and retired to
+gorge himself upon his booty. And, now, see the punishment of avarice!
+Everybody knows that the brethren of the order of Jesus are bound by
+a vow to have no more than a certain small sum of money in their
+possession. The principal of the college of Clermont had amassed a
+larger sum, in defiance of this rule: and where do you think the old
+gentleman had hidden it? In the honey-pots! As Cartouche dug his spoon
+into one of them, he brought out, besides a quantity of golden honey, a
+couple of golden louis, which, with ninety-eight more of their fellows,
+were comfortably hidden in the pots. Little Dominic, who, before, had
+cut rather a poor figure among his fellow-students, now appeared in
+as fine clothes as any of them could boast of; and when asked by his
+parents, on going home, how he came by them, said that a young nobleman
+of his schoolfellows had taken a violent fancy to him, and made him a
+present of a couple of his suits. Cartouche the elder, good man, went
+to thank the young nobleman; but none such could be found, and young
+Cartouche disdained to give any explanation of his manner of gaining the
+money.
+
+Here, again, we have to regret and remark the inadvertence of youth.
+Cartouche lost a hundred louis--for what? For a pot of honey not worth a
+couple of shillings. Had he fished out the pieces, and replaced the pots
+and the honey, he might have been safe, and a respectable citizen all
+his life after. The principal would not have dared to confess the loss
+of his money, and did not, openly; but he vowed vengeance against the
+stealer of his sweetmeat, and a rigid search was made. Cartouche, as
+usual, was fixed upon; and in the tick of his bed, lo! there were found
+a couple of empty honey-pots! From this scrape there is no knowing
+how he would have escaped, had not the president himself been a little
+anxious to hush the matter up; and accordingly, young Cartouche was made
+to disgorge the residue of his ill-gotten gold pieces, old
+Cartouche made up the deficiency, and his son was allowed to remain
+unpunished--until the next time.
+
+This, you may fancy, was not very long in coming; and though history
+has not made us acquainted with the exact crime which Louis Dominic next
+committed, it must have been a serious one; for Cartouche, who had
+borne philosophically all the whippings and punishments which were
+administered to him at college, did not dare to face that one which
+his indignant father had in pickle for him. As he was coming home from
+school, on the first day after his crime, when he received permission to
+go abroad, one of his brothers, who was on the look-out for him, met
+him at a short distance from home, and told him what was in preparation;
+which so frightened this young thief, that he declined returning home
+altogether, and set out upon the wide world to shift for himself as he
+could.
+
+Undoubted as his genius was, he had not arrived at the full exercise of
+it, and his gains were by no means equal to his appetite. In whatever
+professions he tried,--whether he joined the gipsies, which he
+did,--whether he picked pockets on the Pont Neuf, which occupation
+history attributes to him,--poor Cartouche was always hungry. Hungry
+and ragged, he wandered from one place and profession to another, and
+regretted the honey-pots at Clermont, and the comfortable soup and
+bouilli at home.
+
+Cartouche had an uncle, a kind man, who was a merchant, and had dealings
+at Rouen. One day, walking on the quays of that city, this gentleman saw
+a very miserable, dirty, starving lad, who had just made a pounce upon
+some bones and turnip-peelings, that had been flung out on the quay, and
+was eating them as greedily as if they had been turkeys and truffles.
+The worthy man examined the lad a little closer. O heavens! it was their
+runaway prodigal--it was little Louis Dominic! The merchant was touched
+by his case; and forgetting the nightcaps, the honey-pots, and the rags
+and dirt of little Louis, took him to his arms, and kissed and hugged
+him with the tenderest affection. Louis kissed and hugged too, and
+blubbered a great deal: he was very repentant, as a man often is when he
+is hungry; and he went home with his uncle, and his peace was made; and
+his mother got him new clothes, and filled his belly, and for a while
+Louis was as good a son as might be.
+
+But why attempt to balk the progress of genius? Louis's was not to be
+kept down. He was sixteen years of age by this time--a smart, lively
+young fellow, and, what is more, desperately enamored of a lovely
+washerwoman. To be successful in your love, as Louis knew, you must have
+something more than mere flames and sentiment;--a washer, or any other
+woman, cannot live upon sighs only; but must have new gowns and caps,
+and a necklace every now and then, and a few handkerchiefs and silk
+stockings, and a treat into the country or to the play. Now, how are all
+these things to be had without money? Cartouche saw at once that it was
+impossible; and as his father would give him none, he was obliged to
+look for it elsewhere. He took to his old courses, and lifted a
+purse here, and a watch there; and found, moreover, an accommodating
+gentleman, who took the wares off his hands.
+
+This gentleman introduced him into a very select and agreeable society,
+in which Cartouche's merit began speedily to be recognized, and in which
+he learnt how pleasant it is in life to have friends to assist one, and
+how much may be done by a proper division of labor. M. Cartouche, in
+fact, formed part of a regular company or gang of gentlemen, who were
+associated together for the purpose of making war on the public and the
+law.
+
+Cartouche had a lovely young sister, who was to be married to a rich
+young gentleman from the provinces. As is the fashion in France, the
+parents had arranged the match among themselves; and the young people
+had never met until just before the time appointed for the marriage,
+when the bridegroom came up to Paris with his title-deeds, and
+settlements, and money. Now there can hardly be found in history a
+finer instance of devotion than Cartouche now exhibited. He went to his
+captain, explained the matter to him, and actually, for the good of
+his country, as it were (the thieves might be called his country),
+sacrificed his sister's husband's property. Informations were taken, the
+house of the bridegroom was reconnoitred, and, one night, Cartouche, in
+company with some chosen friends, made his first visit to the house of
+his brother-in-law. All the people were gone to bed; and, doubtless, for
+fear of disturbing the porter, Cartouche and his companions spared him
+the trouble of opening the door, by ascending quietly at the window.
+They arrived at the room where the bridegroom kept his great chest, and
+set industriously to work, filing and picking the locks which defended
+the treasure.
+
+The bridegroom slept in the next room; but however tenderly Cartouche
+and his workmen handled their tools, from fear of disturbing his
+slumbers, their benevolent design was disappointed, for awaken him they
+did; and quietly slipping out of bed, he came to a place where he had a
+complete view of all that was going on. He did not cry out, or frighten
+himself sillily; but, on the contrary, contented himself with watching
+the countenances of the robbers, so that he might recognize them on
+another occasion; and, though an avaricious man, he did not feel the
+slightest anxiety about his money-chest; for the fact is, he had removed
+all the cash and papers the day before.
+
+As soon, however, as they had broken all the locks, and found the
+nothing which lay at the bottom of the chest, he shouted with such a
+loud voice, "Here, Thomas!--John!--officer!--keep the gate, fire at the
+rascals!" that they, incontinently taking fright, skipped nimbly out of
+window, and left the house free.
+
+Cartouche, after this, did not care to meet his brother-in-law, but
+eschewed all those occasions on which the latter was to be present at
+his father's house. The evening before the marriage came; and then his
+father insisted upon his appearance among the other relatives of the
+bride's and bridegroom's families, who were all to assemble and make
+merry. Cartouche was obliged to yield; and brought with him one or two
+of his companions, who had been, by the way, present in the affair of
+the empty money-boxes; and though he never fancied that there was any
+danger in meeting his brother-in-law, for he had no idea that he had
+been seen on the night of the attack, with a natural modesty, which did
+him really credit, he kept out of the young bridegroom's sight as much
+as he could, and showed no desire to be presented to him. At supper,
+however, as he was sneaking modestly down to a side-table, his father
+shouted after him, "Ho, Dominic, come hither, and sit opposite to
+your brother-in-law:" which Dominic did, his friends following. The
+bridegroom pledged him very gracefully in a bumper; and was in the act
+of making him a pretty speech, on the honor of an alliance with such
+a family, and on the pleasures of brother-in-lawship in general, when,
+looking in his face--ye gods! he saw the very man who had been filing at
+his money-chest a few nights ago! By his side, too, sat a couple more of
+the gang. The poor fellow turned deadly pale and sick, and, setting
+his glass down, ran quickly out of the room, for he thought he was in
+company of a whole gang of robbers. And when he got home, he wrote a
+letter to the elder Cartouche, humbly declining any connection with his
+family.
+
+Cartouche the elder, of course, angrily asked the reason of such an
+abrupt dissolution of the engagement; and then, much to his horror,
+heard of his eldest son's doings. "You would not have me marry into
+such a family?" said the ex-bridegroom. And old Cartouche, an honest old
+citizen, confessed, with a heavy heart, that he would not. What was he
+to do with the lad? He did not like to ask for a lettre de cachet,
+and shut him up in the Bastile. He determined to give him a year's
+discipline at the monastery of St. Lazare.
+
+But how to catch the young gentleman? Old Cartouche knew that, were
+he to tell his son of the scheme, the latter would never obey, and,
+therefore, he determined to be very cunning. He told Dominic that he
+was about to make a heavy bargain with the fathers, and should require
+a witness; so they stepped into a carriage together, and drove
+unsuspectingly to the Rue St. Denis. But, when they arrived near the
+convent, Cartouche saw several ominous figures gathering round the
+coach, and felt that his doom was sealed. However, he made as if he knew
+nothing of the conspiracy; and the carriage drew up, and his father,
+descended, and, bidding him wait for a minute in the coach, promised to
+return to him. Cartouche looked out; on the other side of the way half a
+dozen men were posted, evidently with the intention of arresting him.
+
+Cartouche now performed a great and celebrated stroke of genius, which,
+if he had not been professionally employed in the morning, he never
+could have executed. He had in his pocket a piece of linen, which he had
+laid hold of at the door of some shop, and from which he quickly tore
+three suitable stripes. One he tied round his head, after the fashion of
+a nightcap; a second round his waist, like an apron; and with the third
+he covered his hat, a round one, with a large brim. His coat and his
+periwig lie left behind him in the carriage; and when he stepped out
+from it (which he did without asking the coachman to let down the
+steps), he bore exactly the appearance of a cook's boy carrying a dish;
+and with this he slipped through the exempts quite unsuspected, and bade
+adieu to the Lazarists and his honest father, who came out speedily to
+seek him, and was not a little annoyed to find only his coat and wig.
+
+With that coat and wig, Cartouche left home, father, friends,
+conscience, remorse, society, behind him. He discovered (like a great
+number of other philosophers and poets, when they have committed
+rascally actions) that the world was all going wrong, and he quarrelled
+with it outright. One of the first stories told of the illustrious
+Cartouche, when he became professionally and openly a robber, redounds
+highly to his credit, and shows that he knew how to take advantage of
+the occasion, and how much he had improved in the course of a very few
+years' experience. His courage and ingenuity were vastly admired by his
+friends; so much so, that, one day, the captain of the band thought fit
+to compliment him, and vowed that when he (the captain) died, Cartouche
+should infallibly be called to the command-in-chief. This conversation,
+so flattering to Cartouche, was carried on between the two gentlemen,
+as they were walking, one night, on the quays by the side of the Seine.
+Cartouche, when the captain made the last remark, blushingly protested
+against it, and pleaded his extreme youth as a reason why his comrades
+could never put entire trust in him. "Psha, man!" said the captain, "thy
+youth is in thy favor; thou wilt live only the longer to lead thy troops
+to victory. As for strength, bravery, and cunning, wert thou as old as
+Methuselah, thou couldst not be better provided than thou art now, at
+eighteen." What was the reply of Monsieur Cartouche? He answered, not by
+words, but by actions. Drawing his knife from his girdle, he instantly
+dug it into the captain's left side, as near his heart as possible; and
+then, seizing that imprudent commander, precipitated him violently
+into the waters of the Seine, to keep company with the gudgeons and
+river-gods. When he returned to the band, and recounted how the captain
+had basely attempted to assassinate him, and how he, on the contrary,
+had, by exertion of superior skill, overcome the captain, not one of
+the society believed a word of his history; but they elected him captain
+forthwith. I think his Excellency Don Rafael Maroto, the pacificator of
+Spain, is an amiable character, for whom history has not been written in
+vain.
+
+Being arrived at this exalted position, there is no end of the feats
+which Cartouche performed; and his band reached to such a pitch of
+glory, that if there had been a hundred thousand, instead of a hundred
+of them, who knows but that a new and popular dynasty might not have
+been founded, and "Louis Dominic, premier Empereur des Francais," might
+have performed innumerable glorious actions, and fixed himself in the
+hearts of his people, just as other monarchs have done, a hundred years
+after Cartouche's death.
+
+A story similar to the above, and equally moral, is that of Cartouche,
+who, in company with two other gentlemen, robbed the coche,
+or packet-boat, from Melun, where they took a good quantity of
+booty,--making the passengers lie down on the decks, and rifling them
+at leisure. "This money will be but very little among three," whispered
+Cartouche to his neighbor, as the three conquerors were making merry
+over their gains; "if you were but to pull the trigger of your pistol
+in the neighborhood of your comrade's ear, perhaps it might go off,
+and then there would be but two of us to share." Strangely enough, as
+Cartouche said, the pistol DID go off, and No. 3 perished. "Give him
+another ball," said Cartouche; and another was fired into him. But
+no sooner had Cartouche's comrade discharged both his pistols, than
+Cartouche himself, seized with a furious indignation, drew his: "Learn,
+monster," cried he, "not to be so greedy of gold, and perish, the victim
+of thy disloyalty and avarice!" So Cartouche slew the second robber; and
+there is no man in Europe who can say that the latter did not merit well
+his punishment.
+
+I could fill volumes, and not mere sheets of paper, with tales of the
+triumphs of Cartouche and his band; how he robbed the Countess of O----,
+going to Dijon, in her coach, and how the Countess fell in love with
+him, and was faithful to him ever after; how, when the lieutenant of
+police offered a reward of a hundred pistoles to any man who would bring
+Cartouche before him, a noble Marquess, in a coach and six, drove up
+to the hotel of the police; and the noble Marquess, desiring to see
+Monsieur de la Reynie, on matters of the highest moment, alone, the
+latter introduced him into his private cabinet; and how, when there, the
+Marquess drew from his pocket a long, curiously shaped dagger: "Look at
+this, Monsieur de la Reynie," said he; "this dagger is poisoned!"
+
+"Is it possible?" said M. de la Reynie.
+
+"A prick of it would do for any man," said the Marquess.
+
+"You don't say so!" said M. de la Reynie.
+
+"I do, though; and, what is more," says the Marquess, in a terrible
+voice, "if you do not instantly lay yourself flat on the ground, with
+your face towards it, and your hands crossed over your back, or if
+you make the slightest noise or cry, I will stick this poisoned dagger
+between your ribs, as sure as my name is Cartouche?"
+
+At the sound of this dreadful name, M. de la Reynie sunk incontinently
+down on his stomach, and submitted to be carefully gagged and corded;
+after which Monsieur Cartouche laid his hands upon all the money which
+was kept in the lieutenant's cabinet. Alas! and alas! many a stout
+bailiff, and many an honest fellow of a spy, went, for that day, without
+his pay and his victuals.
+
+There is a story that Cartouche once took the diligence to Lille, and
+found in it a certain Abbe Potter, who was full of indignation against
+this monster of a Cartouche, and said that when he went back to Paris,
+which he proposed to do in about a fortnight, he should give the
+lieutenant of police some information, which would infallibly lead
+to the scoundrel's capture. But poor Potter was disappointed in his
+designs; for, before he could fulfil them, he was made the victim of
+Cartouche's cruelty.
+
+A letter came to the lieutenant of police, to state that Cartouche had
+travelled to Lille, in company with the Abbe de Potter, of that town;
+that, on the reverend gentleman's return towards Paris, Cartouche had
+waylaid him, murdered him, taken his papers, and would come to Paris
+himself, bearing the name and clothes of the unfortunate Abbe, by the
+Lille coach, on such a day. The Lille coach arrived, was surrounded
+by police agents; the monster Cartouche was there, sure enough, in the
+Abbe's guise. He was seized, bound, flung into prison, brought out to be
+examined, and, on examination, found to be no other than the Abbe Potter
+himself! It is pleasant to read thus of the relaxations of great men,
+and find them condescending to joke like the meanest of us.
+
+Another diligence adventure is recounted of the famous Cartouche. It
+happened that he met, in the coach, a young and lovely lady, clad in
+widow's weeds, and bound to Paris, with a couple of servants. The poor
+thing was the widow of a rich old gentleman of Marseilles, and was going
+to the capital to arrange with her lawyers, and to settle her husband's
+will. The Count de Grinche (for so her fellow-passenger was called) was
+quite as candid as the pretty widow had been, and stated that he was a
+captain in the regiment of Nivernois; that he was going to Paris to buy
+a colonelcy, which his relatives, the Duke de Bouillon, the Prince de
+Montmorency, the Commandeur de la Tremoille, with all their interest at
+court, could not fail to procure for him. To be short, in the course of
+the four days' journey, the Count Louis Dominic de Grinche played his
+cards so well, that the poor little widow half forgot her late husband;
+and her eyes glistened with tears as the Count kissed her hand at
+parting--at parting, he hoped, only for a few hours.
+
+Day and night the insinuating Count followed her; and when, at the
+end of a fortnight, and in the midst of a tete-a-tete, he plunged, one
+morning, suddenly on his knees, and said, "Leonora, do you love me?" the
+poor thing heaved the gentlest, tenderest, sweetest sigh in the world;
+and sinking her blushing head on his shoulder, whispered, "Oh, Dominic,
+je t'aime! Ah!" said she, "how noble is it of my Dominic to take me
+with the little I have, and he so rich a nobleman!" The fact is, the old
+Baron's titles and estates had passed away to his nephews; his dowager
+was only left with three hundred thousand livres, in rentes sur
+l'etat--a handsome sum, but nothing to compare to the rent-roll of Count
+Dominic, Count de la Grinche, Seigneur de la Haute Pigre, Baron de la
+Bigorne; he had estates and wealth which might authorize him to aspire
+to the hand of a duchess, at least.
+
+The unfortunate widow never for a moment suspected the cruel trick that
+was about to be played on her; and, at the request of her affianced
+husband, sold out her money, and realized it in gold, to be made over to
+him on the day when the contract was to be signed. The day arrived;
+and, according to the custom in France, the relations of both parties
+attended. The widow's relatives, though respectable, were not of the
+first nobility, being chiefly persons of the finance or the robe: there
+was the president of the court of Arras, and his lady; a farmer-general;
+a judge of a court of Paris; and other such grave and respectable
+people. As for Monsieur le Comte de la Grinche, he was not bound for
+names; and, having the whole peerage to choose from, brought a host of
+Montmorencies, Crequis, De la Tours, and Guises at his back. His homme
+d'affaires brought his papers in a sack, and displayed the plans of his
+estates, and the titles of his glorious ancestry. The widow's lawyers
+had her money in sacks; and between the gold on the one side, and the
+parchments on the other, lay the contract which was to make the widow's
+three hundred thousand francs the property of the Count de Grinche. The
+Count de la Grinche was just about to sign; when the Marshal de Villars,
+stepping up to him, said, "Captain, do you know who the president of the
+court of Arras, yonder, is? It is old Manasseh, the fence, of Brussels.
+I pawned a gold watch to him, which I stole from Cadogan, when I was
+with Malbrook's army in Flanders."
+
+Here the Duc de la Roche Guyon came forward, very much alarmed. "Run me
+through the body!" said his Grace, "but the comptroller-general's lady,
+there, is no other than that old hag of a Margoton who keeps the ----"
+Here the Duc de la Roche Guyon's voice fell.
+
+Cartouche smiled graciously, and walked up to the table. He took up one
+of the widow's fifteen thousand gold pieces;--it was as pretty a bit of
+copper as you could wish to see. "My dear," said he politely, "there is
+some mistake here, and this business had better stop."
+
+"Count!" gasped the poor widow.
+
+"Count be hanged!" answered the bridegroom, sternly "my name is
+CARTOUCHE!"
+
+
+
+ON SOME FRENCH FASHIONABLE NOVELS.
+
+WITH A PLEA FOR ROMANCES IN GENERAL.
+
+
+There is an old story of a Spanish court painter, who, being pressed for
+money, and having received a piece of damask, which he was to wear in a
+state procession, pawned the damask, and appeared, at the show, dressed
+out in some very fine sheets of paper, which he had painted so as
+exactly to resemble silk. Nay, his coat looked so much richer than the
+doublets of all the rest, that the Emperor Charles, in whose honor the
+procession was given, remarked the painter, and so his deceit was found
+out.
+
+I have often thought that, in respect of sham and real histories, a
+similar fact may be noticed; the sham story appearing a great deal more
+agreeable, life-like, and natural than the true one: and all who, from
+laziness as well as principle, are inclined to follow the easy and
+comfortable study of novels, may console themselves with the notion that
+they are studying matters quite as important as history, and that their
+favorite duodecimos are as instructive as the biggest quartos in the
+world.
+
+If then, ladies, the big-wigs begin to sneer at the course of our
+studies, calling our darling romances foolish, trivial, noxious to the
+mind, enervators of intellect, fathers of idleness, and what not, let
+us at once take a high ground, and say,--Go you to your own employments,
+and to such dull studies as you fancy; go and bob for triangles, from
+the Pons Asinorum; go enjoy your dull black draughts of metaphysics;
+go fumble over history books, and dissert upon Herodotus and Livy;
+OUR histories are, perhaps, as true as yours; our drink is the brisk
+sparkling champagne drink, from the presses of Colburn, Bentley and
+Co.; our walks are over such sunshiny pleasure-grounds as Scott and
+Shakspeare have laid out for us; and if our dwellings are castles in
+the air, we find them excessively splendid and commodious;--be not
+you envious because you have no wings to fly thither. Let the big-wigs
+despise us; such contempt of their neighbors is the custom of all
+barbarous tribes;--witness, the learned Chinese: Tippoo Sultaun declared
+that there were not in all Europe ten thousand men: the Sklavonic
+hordes, it is said, so entitled themselves from a word in their jargon,
+which signifies "to speak;" the ruffians imagining that they had a
+monopoly of this agreeable faculty, and that all other nations were
+dumb.
+
+Not so: others may be DEAF; but the novelist has a loud, eloquent,
+instructive language, though his enemies may despise or deny it ever so
+much. What is more, one could, perhaps, meet the stoutest historian on
+his own ground, and argue with him; showing that sham histories were
+much truer than real histories; which are, in fact, mere contemptible
+catalogues of names and places, that can have no moral effect upon the
+reader.
+
+As thus:--
+
+
+  Julius Caesar beat Pompey, at Pharsalia.
+  The Duke of Marlborough beat Marshal Tallard at Blenheim.
+  The Constable of Bourbon beat Francis the First, at Pavia.
+
+
+And what have we here?--so many names, simply. Suppose Pharsalia had
+been, at that mysterious period when names were given, called Pavia;
+and that Julius Caesar's family name had been John Churchill;--the fact
+would have stood in history, thus:--
+
+
+  "Pompey ran away from the Duke of Marlborough at Pavia."
+
+
+And why not?--we should have been just as wise. Or it might be stated
+that--
+
+
+  "The tenth legion charged the French infantry at Blenheim; and
+   Caesar, writing home to his mamma, said, 'Madame, tout est perdu
+   fors l'honneur.'"
+
+
+What a contemptible science this is, then, about which quartos are
+written, and sixty-volumed Biographies Universelles, and Lardner's
+Cabinet Cyclopaedias, and the like! the facts are nothing in it, the
+names everything and a gentleman might as well improve his mind by
+learning Walker's "Gazetteer," or getting by heart a fifty-years-old
+edition of the "Court Guide."
+
+Having thus disposed of the historians, let us come to the point in
+question--the novelists.
+
+
+On the title-page of these volumes the reader has, doubtless, remarked,
+that among the pieces introduced, some are announced as "copies" and
+"compositions." Many of the histories have, accordingly, been neatly
+stolen from the collections of French authors (and mutilated, according
+to the old saying, so that their owners should not know them) and, for
+compositions, we intend to favor the public with some studies of French
+modern works, that have not as yet, we believe, attracted the notice of
+the English public.
+
+Of such works there appear many hundreds yearly, as may be seen by
+the French catalogues; but the writer has not so much to do with works
+political, philosophical, historical, metaphysical, scientifical,
+theological, as with those for which he has been putting forward a
+plea--novels, namely; on which he has expended a great deal of time
+and study. And passing from novels in general to French novels, let
+us confess, with much humiliation, that we borrow from these stories a
+great deal more knowledge of French society than from our own personal
+observation we ever can hope to gain: for, let a gentleman who has
+dwelt two, four, or ten years in Paris (and has not gone thither for
+the purpose of making a book, when three weeks are sufficient)--let an
+English gentleman say, at the end of any given period, how much he knows
+of French society, how many French houses he has entered, and how many
+French friends he has made?--He has enjoyed, at the end of the year,
+say--
+
+
+  At the English Ambassador's, so many soirees.
+  At houses to which he has brought letters, so many tea-parties.
+  At Cafes, so many dinners.
+  At French private houses, say three dinners, and very lucky too.
+
+
+He has, we say, seen an immense number of wax candles, cups of tea,
+glasses of orgeat, and French people, in best clothes, enjoying the
+same; but intimacy there is none; we see but the outsides of the people.
+Year by year we live in France, and grow gray, and see no more. We play
+ecarte with Monsieur de Trefle every night; but what know we of the
+heart of the man--of the inward ways, thoughts, and customs of Trefle?
+If we have good legs, and love the amusement, we dance with Countess
+Flicflac, Tuesday's and Thursdays, ever since the Peace; and how far are
+we advanced in acquaintance with her since we first twirled her round a
+room? We know her velvet gown, and her diamonds (about three-fourths of
+them are sham, by the way); we know her smiles, and her simpers, and
+her rouge--but no more: she may turn into a kitchen wench at twelve on
+Thursday night, for aught we know; her voiture, a pumpkin; and her gens,
+so many rats: but the real, rougeless, intime Flicflac, we know not.
+This privilege is granted to no Englishman: we may understand the French
+language as well as Monsieur de Levizac, but never can penetrate
+into Flicflac's confidence: our ways are not her ways; our manners
+of thinking, not hers: when we say a good thing, in the course of the
+night, we are wondrous lucky and pleased; Flicflac will trill you off
+fifty in ten minutes, and wonder at the betise of the Briton, who has
+never a word to say. We are married, and have fourteen children, and
+would just as soon make love to the Pope of Rome as to any one but our
+own wife. If you do not make love to Flicflac, from the day after her
+marriage to the day she reaches sixty, she thinks you a fool. We won't
+play at ecarte with Trefle on Sunday nights; and are seen walking, about
+one o'clock (accompanied by fourteen red-haired children, with fourteen
+gleaming prayer-books), away from the church. "Grand Dieu!" cries
+Trefle, "is that man mad? He won't play at cards on a Sunday; he goes to
+church on a Sunday: he has fourteen children!"
+
+Was ever Frenchman known to do likewise? Pass we on to our argument,
+which is, that with our English notions and moral and physical
+constitution, it is quite impossible that we should become intimate
+with our brisk neighbors; and when such authors as Lady Morgan and
+Mrs. Trollope, having frequented a certain number of tea-parties in the
+French capital, begin to prattle about French manners and men,--with all
+respect for the talents of those ladies, we do believe their information
+not to be worth a sixpence; they speak to us not of men but of
+tea-parties. Tea-parties are the same all the world over; with the
+exception that, with the French, there are more lights and prettier
+dresses; and with us, a mighty deal more tea in the pot.
+
+There is, however, a cheap and delightful way of travelling, that a
+man may perform in his easy-chair, without expense of passports or
+post-boys. On the wings of a novel, from the next circulating library,
+he sends his imagination a-gadding, and gains acquaintance with people
+and manners whom he could not hope otherwise to know. Twopence a volume
+bears us whithersoever we will;--back to Ivanhoe and Coeur de Lion, or
+to Waverley and the Young Pretender, along with Walter Scott; up the
+heights of fashion with the charming enchanters of the silver-fork
+school; or, better still, to the snug inn-parlor, or the jovial
+tap-room, with Mr. Pickwick and his faithful Sancho Weller. I am sure
+that a man who, a hundred years hence should sit down to write the
+history of our time, would do wrong to put that great contemporary
+history of "Pickwick" aside as a frivolous work. It contains true
+character under false names; and, like "Roderick Random," an inferior
+work, and "Tom Jones" (one that is immeasurably superior), gives us a
+better idea of the state and ways of the people than one could gather
+from any more pompous or authentic histories.
+
+We have, therefore, introduced into these volumes one or two short
+reviews of French fiction writers, of particular classes, whose Paris
+sketches may give the reader some notion of manners in that capital. If
+not original, at least the drawings are accurate; for, as a Frenchman
+might have lived a thousand years in England, and never could have
+written "Pickwick," an Englishman cannot hope to give a good description
+of the inward thoughts and ways of his neighbors.
+
+To a person inclined to study these, in that light and amusing fashion
+in which the novelist treats them, let us recommend the works of a new
+writer, Monsieur de Bernard, who has painted actual manners, without
+those monstrous and terrible exaggerations in which late French writers
+have indulged; and who, if he occasionally wounds the English sense of
+propriety (as what French man or woman alive will not?) does so more by
+slighting than by outraging it, as, with their labored descriptions of
+all sorts of imaginable wickedness, some of his brethren of the press
+have done. M. de Bernard's characters are men and women of genteel
+society--rascals enough, but living in no state of convulsive crimes;
+and we follow him in his lively, malicious account of their manners,
+without risk of lighting upon any such horrors as Balzac or Dumas has
+provided for us.
+
+Let us give an instance:--it is from the amusing novel called "Les Ailes
+d'Icare," and contains what is to us quite a new picture of a French
+fashionable rogue. The fashions will change in a few years, and the
+rogue, of course, with them. Let us catch this delightful fellow ere
+he flies. It is impossible to sketch the character in a more sparkling,
+gentlemanlike way than M. de Bernard's; but such light things are very
+difficult of translation, and the sparkle sadly evaporates during the
+process of DECANTING.
+
+
+A FRENCH FASHIONABLE LETTER.
+
+"MY DEAR VICTOR--It is six in the morning: I have just come from the
+English Ambassador's ball, and as my plans, for the day do not admit of
+my sleeping, I write you a line; for, at this moment, saturated as I am
+with the enchantments of a fairy night, all other pleasures would be too
+wearisome to keep me awake, except that of conversing with you. Indeed,
+were I not to write to you now, when should I find the possibility of
+doing so? Time flies here with such a frightful rapidity, my pleasures
+and my affairs whirl onwards together in such a torrentuous galopade,
+that I am compelled to seize occasion by the forelock; for each moment
+has its imperious employ. Do not then accuse me of negligence: if my
+correspondence has not always that regularity which I would fain give
+it, attribute the fault solely to the whirlwind in which I live, and
+which carries me hither and thither at its will.
+
+"However, you are not the only person with whom I am behindhand: I
+assure you, on the contrary, that you are one of a very numerous and
+fashionable company, to whom, towards the discharge of my debts, I
+propose to consecrate four hours to-day. I give you the preference to
+all the world, even to the lovely Duchess of San Severino, a delicious
+Italian, whom, for my special happiness, I met last summer at the Waters
+of Aix. I have also a most important negotiation to conclude with one of
+our Princes of Finance: but n'importe, I commence with thee: friendship
+before love or money--friendship before everything. My despatches
+concluded, I am engaged to ride with the Marquis de Grigneure, the
+Comte de Castijars, and Lord Cobham, in order that we may recover, for a
+breakfast at the Rocher de Cancale that Grigneure has lost, the appetite
+which we all of us so cruelly abused last night at the Ambassador's
+gala. On my honor, my dear fellow, everybody was of a caprice
+prestigieux and a comfortable mirobolant. Fancy, for a banquet-hall,
+a royal orangery hung with white damask; the boxes of the shrubs
+transformed into so many sideboards; lights gleaming through the
+foliage; and, for guests, the loveliest women and most brilliant
+cavaliers of Paris. Orleans and Nemours were there, dancing and eating
+like simple mortals. In a word, Albion did the thing very handsomely,
+and I accord it my esteem.
+
+"Here I pause, to call for my valet-de-chambre, and call for tea; for
+my head is heavy, and I've no time for a headache. In serving me, this
+rascal of a Frederic has broken a cup, true Japan, upon my honor--the
+rogue does nothing else. Yesterday, for instance, did he not thump me
+prodigiously, by letting fall a goblet, after Cellini, of which the
+carving alone cost me three hundred francs? I must positively put
+the wretch out of doors, to ensure the safety of my furniture; and in
+consequence of this, Eneas, an audacious young negro, in whom wisdom
+hath not waited for years--Eneas, my groom, I say, will probably be
+elevated to the post of valet-de-chambre. But where was I? I think I was
+speaking to you of an oyster breakfast, to which, on our return from the
+Park (du Bois), a company of pleasant rakes are invited. After quitting
+Borel's, we propose to adjourn to the Barriere du Combat, where Lord
+Cobham proposes to try some bull-dogs, which he has brought over from
+England--one of these, O'Connell (Lord Cobham is a Tory,) has a face in
+which I place much confidence; I have a bet of ten louis with Castijars
+on the strength of it. After the fight, we shall make our accustomed
+appearance at the 'Cafe de Paris,' (the only place, by the way, where
+a man who respects himself may be seen,)--and then away with frocks and
+spurs, and on with our dress-coats for the rest of the evening. In the
+first place, I shall go doze for a couple of hours at the Opera, where
+my presence is indispensable; for Coralie, a charming creature, passes
+this evening from the rank of the RATS to that of the TIGERS, in a
+pas-de-trois, and our box patronizes her. After the Opera, I must show
+my face to two or three salons in the Faubourg St. Honore; and having
+thus performed my duties to the world of fashion, I return to the
+exercise of my rights as a member of the Carnival. At two o'clock all
+the world meets at the Theatre Ventadour: lions and tigers--the whole
+of our menagerie will be present. Evoe! off we go! roaring and bounding
+Bacchanal and Saturnal; 'tis agreed that we shall be everything that
+is low. To conclude, we sup with Castijars, the most 'furiously
+dishevelled' orgy that ever was known."
+
+
+The rest of the letter is on matters of finance, equally curious and
+instructive. But pause we for the present, to consider the fashionable
+part: and caricature as it is, we have an accurate picture of the actual
+French dandy. Bets, breakfasts, riding, dinners at the "Cafe de Paris,"
+and delirious Carnival balls: the animal goes through all such frantic
+pleasures at the season that precedes Lent. He has a wondrous respect
+for English "gentlemen-sportsmen;" he imitates their clubs--their love
+of horse-flesh: he calls his palefrenier a groom, wears blue birds's-eye
+neck-cloths, sports his pink out hunting, rides steeple-chases, and has
+his Jockey Club. The "tigers and lions" alluded to in the report have
+been borrowed from our own country, and a great compliment is it to
+Monsieur de Bernard, the writer of the above amusing sketch, that he has
+such a knowledge of English names and things, as to give a Tory lord the
+decent title of Lord Cobham, and to call his dog O'Connell. Paul de Kock
+calls an English nobleman, in one of his last novels, Lord Boulingrog,
+and appears vastly delighted at the verisimilitude of the title.
+
+For the "rugissements et bondissements, bacchanale et saturnale, galop
+infernal, ronde du sabbat tout le tremblement," these words give a most
+clear, untranslatable idea of the Carnival ball. A sight more hideous
+can hardly strike a man's eye. I was present at one where the four
+thousand guests whirled screaming, reeling, roaring, out of the
+ball-room in the Rue St. Honore, and tore down to the column in the
+Place Vendome, round which they went shrieking their own music, twenty
+miles an hour, and so tore madly back again. Let a man go alone to such
+a place of amusement, and the sight for him is perfectly terrible:
+the horrid frantic gayety of the place puts him in mind more of the
+merriment of demons than of men: bang, bang, drums, trumpets, chairs,
+pistol-shots, pour out of the orchestra, which seems as mad as the
+dancers; whiz, a whirlwind of paint and patches, all the costumes under
+the sun, all the ranks in the empire, all the he and she scoundrels of
+the capital, writhed and twisted together, rush by you; if a man falls,
+woe be to him: two thousand screaming menads go trampling over his
+carcass: they have neither power nor will to stop.
+
+A set of Malays drunk with bhang and running amuck, a company of howling
+dervishes, may possibly, in our own day, go through similar frantic
+vagaries; but I doubt if any civilized European people but the French
+would permit and enjoy such scenes. Yet our neighbors see little shame
+in them; and it is very true that men of all classes, high and low,
+here congregate and give themselves up to the disgusting worship of
+the genius of the place.--From the dandy of the Boulevard and the
+"Cafe Anglais," let us turn to the dandy of "Flicoteau's" and the Pays
+Latin--the Paris student, whose exploits among the grisettes are so
+celebrated, and whose fierce republicanism keeps gendarmes for ever on
+the alert. The following is M. de Bernard's description of him:--
+
+
+"I became acquainted with Dambergeac when we were students at the Ecole
+de Droit; we lived in the same Hotel on the Place du Pantheon. No
+doubt, madam, you have occasionally met little children dedicated to the
+Virgin, and, to this end, clothed in white raiment from head to foot: my
+friend, Dambergeac, had received a different consecration. His father, a
+great patriot of the Revolution, had determined that his son should
+bear into the world a sign of indelible republicanism; so, to the great
+displeasure of his godmother and the parish curate, Dambergeac was
+christened by the pagan name of Harmodius. It was a kind of moral
+tricolor-cockade, which the child was to bear through the vicissitudes
+of all the revolutions to come. Under such influences, my friend's
+character began to develop itself, and, fired by the example of his
+father, and by the warm atmosphere of his native place, Marseilles,
+he grew up to have an independent spirit, and a grand liberality of
+politics, which were at their height when first I made his acquaintance.
+
+"He was then a young man of eighteen, with a tall, slim figure, a broad
+chest, and a flaming black eye, out of all which personal charms he knew
+how to draw the most advantage; and though his costume was such as Staub
+might probably have criticised, he had, nevertheless, a style peculiar
+to himself--to himself and the students, among whom he was the leader
+of the fashion. A tight black coat, buttoned up to the chin, across
+the chest, set off that part of his person; a low-crowned hat, with
+a voluminous rim, cast solemn shadows over a countenance bronzed by a
+southern sun: he wore, at one time, enormous flowing black locks, which
+he sacrificed pitilessly, however, and adopted a Brutus, as being more
+revolutionary: finally, he carried an enormous club, that was his code
+and digest: in like manner, De Retz used to carry a stiletto in his
+pocket by way of a breviary.
+
+"Although of different ways of thinking in politics, certain sympathies
+of character and conduct united Dambergeac and myself, and we speedily
+became close friends. I don't think, in the whole course of his three
+years' residence, Dambergeac ever went through a single course of
+lectures. For the examinations, he trusted to luck, and to his own
+facility, which was prodigious: as for honors, he never aimed at them,
+but was content to do exactly as little as was necessary for him to
+gain his degree. In like manner he sedulously avoided those horrible
+circulating libraries, where daily are seen to congregate the 'reading
+men' of our schools. But, in revenge, there was not a milliner's
+shop, or a lingere's, in all our quartier Latin, which he did not
+industriously frequent, and of which he was not the oracle. Nay, it was
+said that his victories were not confined to the left bank of the
+Seine; reports did occasionally come to us of fabulous adventures by him
+accomplished in the far regions of the Rue de la Paix and the Boulevard
+Poissonniere. Such recitals were, for us less favored mortals, like
+tales of Bacchus conquering in the East; they excited our ambition, but
+not our jealousy; for the superiority of Harmodius was acknowledged by
+us all, and we never thought of a rivalry with him. No man ever cantered
+a hack through the Champs Elysees with such elegant assurance; no man
+ever made such a massacre of dolls at the shooting-gallery; or won you a
+rubber at billiards with more easy grace; or thundered out a couplet out
+of Beranger with such a roaring melodious bass. He was the monarch of
+the Prado in winter: in summer of the Chaumiere and Mont Parnasse. Not
+a frequenter of those fashionable places of entertainment showed a
+more amiable laisser-aller in the dance--that peculiar dance at which
+gendarmes think proper to blush, and which squeamish society has
+banished from her salons. In a word, Harmodius was the prince of mauvais
+sujets, a youth with all the accomplishments of Goettingen and Jena, and
+all the eminent graces of his own country.
+
+"Besides dissipation and gallantry, our friend had one other vast and
+absorbing occupation--politics, namely; in which he was as turbulent
+and enthusiastic as in pleasure. La Patrie was his idol, his heaven,
+his nightmare; by day he spouted, by night he dreamed, of his country. I
+have spoken to you of his coiffure a la Sylla; need I mention his pipe,
+his meerschaum pipe, of which General Foy's head was the bowl; his
+handkerchief with the Charte printed thereon; and his celebrated
+tricolor braces, which kept the rallying sign of his country ever close
+to his heart? Besides these outward and visible signs of sedition,
+he had inward and secret plans of revolution: he belonged to clubs,
+frequented associations, read the Constitutionnel (Liberals, in those
+days, swore by the Constitutionnel), harangued peers and deputies who
+had deserved well of their country; and if death happened to fall on
+such, and the Constitutionnel declared their merit, Harmodius was the
+very first to attend their obsequies, or to set his shoulder to their
+coffins.
+
+"Such were his tastes and passions: his antipathies were not less
+lively. He detested three things: a Jesuit, a gendarme, and a claqueur
+at a theatre. At this period, missionaries were rife about Paris, and
+endeavored to re-illume the zeal of the faithful by public preachings in
+the churches. 'Infames jesuites!' would Harmodius exclaim, who, in the
+excess of his toleration, tolerated nothing; and, at the head of a band
+of philosophers like himself, would attend with scrupulous exactitude
+the meetings of the reverend gentlemen. But, instead of a contrite
+heart, Harmodius only brought the abomination of desolation into their
+sanctuary. A perpetual fire of fulminating balls would bang from under
+the feet of the faithful; odors of impure assafoetida would mingle with
+the fumes of the incense; and wicked drinking choruses would rise up
+along with the holy canticles, in hideous dissonance, reminding one of
+the old orgies under the reign of the Abbot of Unreason.
+
+"His hatred of the gendarmes was equally ferocious: and as for the
+claqueurs, woe be to them when Harmodius was in the pit! They knew him,
+and trembled before him, like the earth before Alexander; and his
+famous war-cry, 'La Carte au chapeau!' was so much dreaded, that the
+'entrepreneurs de succes dramatiques' demanded twice as much to do
+the Odeon Theatre (which we students and Harmodius frequented), as to
+applaud at any other place of amusement: and, indeed, their double pay
+was hardly gained; Harmodius taking care that they should earn the most
+of it under the benches."
+
+
+This passage, with which we have taken some liberties, will give the
+reader a more lively idea of the reckless, jovial, turbulent Paris
+student, than any with which a foreigner could furnish him: the
+grisette is his heroine; and dear old Beranger, the cynic-epicurean, has
+celebrated him and her in the most delightful verses in the world. Of
+these we may have occasion to say a word or two anon. Meanwhile let us
+follow Monsieur de Bernard in his amusing descriptions of his countrymen
+somewhat farther; and, having seen how Dambergeac was a ferocious
+republican, being a bachelor, let us see how age, sense, and a little
+government pay--the great agent of conversions in France--nay, in
+England--has reduced him to be a pompous, quiet, loyal supporter of the
+juste milieu: his former portrait was that of the student, the present
+will stand for an admirable lively likeness of
+
+
+    THE SOUS-PREFET.
+
+
+"Saying that I would wait for Dambergeac in his own study, I was
+introduced into that apartment, and saw around me the usual furniture
+of a man in his station. There was, in the middle of the room, a large
+bureau, surrounded by orthodox arm-chairs; and there were many shelves
+with boxes duly ticketed; there were a number of maps, and among them a
+great one of the department over which Dambergeac ruled; and facing
+the windows, on a wooden pedestal, stood a plaster-cast of the 'Roi des
+Francais.' Recollecting my friend's former republicanism, I smiled at
+this piece of furniture; but before I had time to carry my observations
+any farther, a heavy rolling sound of carriage-wheels, that caused
+the windows to rattle and seemed to shake the whole edifice of the
+sub-prefecture, called my attention to the court without. Its iron gates
+were flung open, and in rolled, with a great deal of din, a chariot
+escorted by a brace of gendarmes, sword in hand. A tall gentleman,
+with a cocked-hat and feathers, wearing a blue and silver uniform coat,
+descended from the vehicle; and having, with much grave condescension,
+saluted his escort, mounted the stair. A moment afterwards the door of
+the study was opened, and I embraced my friend.
+
+"After the first warmth and salutations, we began to examine each other
+with an equal curiosity, for eight years had elapsed since we had last
+met.
+
+"'You are grown very thin and pale,' said Harmodius, after a moment.
+
+"'In revenge I find you fat and rosy: if I am a walking satire on
+celibacy,--you, at least, are a living panegyric on marriage.'
+
+"In fact a great change, and such an one as many people would call a
+change for the better, had taken place in my friend: he had grown fat,
+and announced a decided disposition to become what French people call a
+bel homme: that is, a very fat one. His complexion, bronzed before, was
+now clear white and red: there were no more political allusions in his
+hair, which was, on the contrary, neatly frizzed, and brushed over
+the forehead, shell-shape. This head-dress, joined to a thin pair of
+whiskers, cut crescent-wise from the ear to the nose, gave my friend a
+regular bourgeois physiognomy, wax-doll-like: he looked a great deal too
+well; and, added to this, the solemnity of his prefectural costume, gave
+his whole appearance a pompous well-fed look that by no means pleased.
+
+"'I surprise you,' said I, 'in the midst of your splendor: do you know
+that this costume and yonder attendants have a look excessively awful
+and splendid? You entered your palace just now with the air of a pasha.'
+
+"'You see me in uniform in honor of Monseigneur the Bishop, who has just
+made his diocesan visit, and whom I have just conducted to the limit of
+the arrondissement.'
+
+"'What!' said I, 'you have gendarmes for guards, and dance attendance
+on bishops? There are no more janissaries and Jesuits, I suppose?' The
+sub-prefect smiled.
+
+"'I assure you that my gendarmes are very worthy fellows; and that among
+the gentlemen who compose our clergy there are some of the very
+best rank and talent: besides, my wife is niece to one of the
+vicars-general.'
+
+"'What have you done with that great Tasso beard that poor Armandine
+used to love so?'
+
+"'My wife does not like a beard; and you know that what is permitted to
+a student is not very becoming to a magistrate.'
+
+"I began to laugh. 'Harmodius and a magistrate!--how shall I ever couple
+the two words together? But tell me, in your correspondences, your
+audiences, your sittings with village mayors and petty councils, how do
+you manage to remain awake?'
+
+"'In the commencement,' said Harmodius, gravely, 'it WAS very difficult;
+and, in order to keep my eyes open, I used to stick pins into my legs:
+now, however, I am used to it; and I'm sure I don't take more than fifty
+pinches of snuff at a sitting.'
+
+"'Ah! apropos of snuff: you are near Spain here, and were always a
+famous smoker. Give me a cigar,--it will take away the musty odor of
+these piles of papers.'
+
+"'Impossible, my dear; I don't smoke; my wife cannot bear a cigar.'
+
+"His wife! thought I; always his wife: and I remember Juliette, who
+really grew sick at the smell of a pipe, and Harmodius would smoke,
+until, at last, the poor thing grew to smoke herself, like a trooper.
+To compensate, however, as much as possible for the loss of my cigar,
+Dambergeac drew from his pocket an enormous gold snuff-box, on which
+figured the self-same head that I had before remarked in plaster, but
+this time surrounded with a ring of pretty princes and princesses, all
+nicely painted in miniature. As for the statue of Louis Philippe, that,
+in the cabinet of an official, is a thing of course; but the snuff-box
+seemed to indicate a degree of sentimental and personal devotion, such
+as the old Royalists were only supposed to be guilty of.
+
+"'What! you are turned decided juste milieu?' said I.
+
+"'I am a sous-prefet,' answered Harmodius.
+
+"I had nothing to say, but held my tongue, wondering, not at the change
+which had taken place in the habits, manners, and opinions of my friend,
+but at my own folly, which led me to fancy that I should find the
+student of '26 in the functionary of '34. At this moment a domestic
+appeared.
+
+"'Madame is waiting for Monsieur,' said he: 'the last bell has gone, and
+mass beginning.'
+
+"'Mass!' said I, bounding up from my chair. 'You at mass like a decent
+serious Christian, without crackers in your pocket, and bored keys to
+whistle through?'--The sous-prefet rose, his countenance was calm, and
+an indulgent smile played upon his lips, as he said, 'My arrondissement
+is very devout; and not to interfere with the belief of the population
+is the maxim of every wise politician: I have precise orders from
+Government on the point, too, and go to eleven o'clock mass every
+Sunday."'
+
+
+There is a great deal of curious matter for speculation in the accounts
+here so wittily given by M. de Bernard: but, perhaps, it is still
+more curious to think of what he has NOT written, and to judge of his
+characters, not so much by the words in which he describes them, as by
+the unconscious testimony that the words all together convey. In the
+first place, our author describes a swindler imitating the manners of a
+dandy; and many swindlers and dandies be there, doubtless, in London
+as well as in Paris. But there is about the present swindler, and
+about Monsieur Dambergeac the student, and Monsieur Dambergeac the
+sous-prefet, and his friend, a rich store of calm internal debauch,
+which does not, let us hope and pray, exist in England. Hearken to M.
+de Gustan, and his smirking whispers, about the Duchess of San
+Severino, who pour son bonheur particulier, &c. &c. Listen to Monsieur
+Dambergeac's friend's remonstrances concerning pauvre Juliette who grew
+sick at the smell of a pipe; to his naive admiration at the fact that
+the sous-prefet goes to church: and we may set down, as axioms, that
+religion is so uncommon among the Parisians, as to awaken the surprise
+of all candid observers; that gallantry is so common as to create no
+remark, and to be considered as a matter of course. With us, at least,
+the converse of the proposition prevails: it is the man professing
+irreligion who would be remarked and reprehended in England; and, if the
+second-named vice exists, at any rate, it adopts the decency of
+secrecy and is not made patent and notorious to all the world. A French
+gentleman thinks no more of proclaiming that he has a mistress than that
+he has a tailor; and one lives the time of Boccaccio over again, in the
+thousand and one French novels which depict society in that country.
+
+For instance, here are before us a few specimens (do not, madam, be
+alarmed, you can skip the sentence if you like,) to be found in as many
+admirable witty tales, by the before-lauded Monsieur de Bernard. He is
+more remarkable than any other French author, to our notion, for writing
+like a gentleman: there is ease, grace and ton, in his style, which, if
+we judge aright, cannot be discovered in Balzac, or Soulie, or Dumas. We
+have then--"Gerfaut," a novel: a lovely creature is married to a brave,
+haughty, Alsacian nobleman, who allows her to spend her winters at
+Paris, he remaining on his terres, cultivating, carousing, and hunting
+the boar. The lovely-creature meets the fascinating Gerfaut at Paris;
+instantly the latter makes love to her; a duel takes place: baron
+killed; wife throws herself out of window; Gerfaut plunges into
+dissipation; and so the tale ends.
+
+Next: "La Femme de Quarante Ans," a capital tale, full of exquisite fun
+and sparkling satire: La femme de quarante ans has a husband and THREE
+lovers; all of whom find out their mutual connection one starry night;
+for the lady of forty is of a romantic poetical turn, and has given her
+three admirers A STAR APIECE; saying to one and the other, "Alphonse,
+when yon pale orb rises in heaven, think of me;" "Isadore, when that
+bright planet sparkles in the sky, remember your Caroline," &c.
+
+"Un Acte de Vertu," from which we have taken Dambergeac's history,
+contains him, the husband--a wife--and a brace of lovers; and a great
+deal of fun takes place in the manner in which one lover supplants the
+other.--Pretty morals truly!
+
+If we examine an author who rejoices in the aristocratic name of le
+Comte Horace de Viel-Castel, we find, though with infinitely less wit,
+exactly the same intrigues going on. A noble Count lives in the Faubourg
+St. Honore, and has a noble Duchess for a mistress: he introduces her
+Grace to the Countess his wife. The Countess his wife, in order to
+ramener her lord to his conjugal duties, is counselled, by a friend,
+TO PRETEND TO TAKE A LOVER: one is found, who, poor fellow! takes the
+affair in earnest: climax--duel, death, despair, and what not? In
+the "Faubourg St. Germain," another novel by the same writer, which
+professes to describe the very pink of that society which Napoleon
+dreaded more than Russia, Prussia, and Austria, there is an old husband,
+of course; a sentimental young German nobleman, who falls in love with
+his wife; and the moral of the piece lies in the showing up of the
+conduct of the lady, who is reprehended--not for deceiving her husband
+(poor devil!)--but for being a flirt, AND TAKING A SECOND LOVER, to the
+utter despair, confusion, and annihilation of the first.
+
+Why, ye gods, do Frenchmen marry at all? Had Pere Enfantin (who, it
+is said, has shaved his ambrosial beard, and is now a clerk in a
+banking-house) been allowed to carry out his chaste, just, dignified
+social scheme, what a deal of marital discomfort might have been
+avoided:--would it not be advisable that a great reformer and lawgiver
+of our own, Mr. Robert Owen, should be presented at the Tuileries, and
+there propound his scheme for the regeneration of France?
+
+He might, perhaps, be spared, for our country is not yet sufficiently
+advanced to give such a philosopher fair play. In London, as yet, there
+are no blessed Bureaux de Mariage, where an old bachelor may have a
+charming young maiden--for his money; or a widow of seventy may buy a
+gay young fellow of twenty, for a certain number of bank-billets. If
+mariages de convenance take place here (as they will wherever avarice,
+and poverty, and desire, and yearning after riches are to be found), at
+least, thank God, such unions are not arranged upon a regular organized
+SYSTEM: there is a fiction of attachment with us, and there is a
+consolation in the deceit ("the homage," according to the old mot of
+Rochefoucauld) "which vice pays to virtue"; for the very falsehood shows
+that the virtue exists somewhere. We once heard a furious old French
+colonel inveighing against the chastity of English demoiselles:
+"Figurez-vous, sir," said he (he had been a prisoner in England), "that
+these women come down to dinner in low dresses, and walk out alone with
+the men!"--and, pray heaven, so may they walk, fancy-free in all sorts
+of maiden meditations, and suffer no more molestation than that young
+lady of whom Moore sings, and who (there must have been a famous
+lord-lieutenant in those days) walked through all Ireland, with rich
+and rare gems, beauty, and a gold ring on her stick, without meeting or
+thinking of harm.
+
+Now, whether Monsieur de Viel-Castel has given a true picture of the
+Faubourg St. Germain, it is impossible for most foreigners to say; but
+some of his descriptions will not fail to astonish the English reader;
+and all are filled with that remarkable naif contempt of the institution
+called marriage, which we have seen in M. de Bernard. The romantic young
+nobleman of Westphalia arrives at Paris, and is admitted into what a
+celebrated female author calls la creme de la creme de la haute volee
+of Parisian society. He is a youth of about twenty years of age.
+"No passion had as yet come to move his heart, and give life to his
+faculties; he was awaiting and fearing the moment of love; calling for
+it, and yet trembling at its approach; feeling in the depths of his
+soul, that that moment would create a mighty change in his being, and
+decide, perhaps, by its influence, the whole of his future life."
+
+Is it not remarkable, that a young nobleman, with these ideas, should
+not pitch upon a demoiselle, or a widow, at least? but no, the rogue
+must have a married woman, bad luck to him; and what his fate is to be,
+is thus recounted by our author, in the shape of
+
+
+A FRENCH FASHIONABLE CONVERSATION.
+
+
+"A lady, with a great deal of esprit, to whom forty years' experience
+of the great world had given a prodigious perspicacity of judgment, the
+Duchess of Chalux, arbitress of the opinion to be held on all new comers
+to the Faubourg Saint Germain, and of their destiny and reception in
+it;--one of those women, in a word, who make or ruin a man,--said, in
+speaking of Gerard de Stolberg, whom she received at her own house, and
+met everywhere, 'This young German will never gain for himself the title
+of an exquisite, or a man of bonnes fortunes, among us. In spite of his
+calm and politeness, I think I can see in his character some rude and
+insurmountable difficulties, which time will only increase, and which
+will prevent him for ever from bending to the exigencies of either
+profession; but, unless I very much deceive myself, he will, one day, be
+the hero of a veritable romance.'
+
+"'He, madame?' answered a young man, of fair complexion and fair hair,
+one of the most devoted slaves of the fashion:--'He, Madame la Duchesse?
+why, the man is, at best, but an original, fished out of the Rhine: a
+dull, heavy creature, as much capable of understanding a woman's heart
+as I am of speaking bas-Breton.'
+
+"'Well, Monsieur de Belport, you will speak bas-Breton. Monsieur de
+Stolberg has not your admirable ease of manner, nor your facility of
+telling pretty nothings, nor your--in a word, that particular something
+which makes you the most recherche man of the Faubourg Saint Germain;
+and even I avow to you that, were I still young, and a coquette, AND
+THAT I TOOK IT INTO MY HEAD TO HAVE A LOVER, I would prefer you.'
+
+"All this was said by the Duchess, with a certain air of raillery and
+such a mixture of earnest and malice, that Monsieur de Belport, piqued
+not a little, could not help saying, as he bowed profoundly before the
+Duchess's chair, 'And might I, madam, be permitted to ask the reason of
+this preference?'
+
+"'O mon Dieu, oui,' said the Duchess, always in the same tone; 'because
+a lover like you would never think of carrying his attachment to the
+height of passion; and these passions, do you know, have frightened me
+all my life. One cannot retreat at will from the grasp of a passionate
+lover; one leaves behind one some fragment of one's moral SELF, or the
+best part of one's physical life. A passion, if it does not kill you,
+adds cruelly to your years; in a word, it is the very lowest
+possible taste. And now you understand why I should prefer you, M. de
+Belport--you who are reputed to be the leader of the fashion.'
+
+"'Perfectly,' murmured the gentleman, piqued more and more.
+
+"'Gerard de Stolberg WILL be passionate. I don't know what woman will
+please him, or will be pleased by him' (here the Duchess of Chalux spoke
+more gravely); 'but his love will be no play, I repeat it to you once
+more. All this astonishes you, because you, great leaders of the ton
+that you are, never fancy that a hero of romance should be found among
+your number. Gerard de Stolberg--but, look, here he comes!'
+
+"M. de Belport rose, and quitted the Duchess, without believing in her
+prophecy; but he could not avoid smiling as he passed near the HERO OF
+ROMANCE.
+
+"It was because M. de Stolberg had never, in all his life, been a hero
+of romance, or even an apprentice-hero of romance.
+
+"Gerard de Stolberg was not, as yet, initiated into the thousand secrets
+in the chronicle of the great world: he knew but superficially the
+society in which he lived; and, therefore, he devoted his evening to
+the gathering of all the information which he could acquire from the
+indiscreet conversations of the people about him. His whole man became
+ear and memory; so much was Stolberg convinced of the necessity of
+becoming a diligent student in this new school, where was taught the art
+of knowing and advancing in the great world. In the recess of a window
+he learned more on this one night than months of investigation would
+have taught him. The talk of a ball is more indiscreet than the
+confidential chatter of a company of idle women. No man present at a
+ball, whether listener or speaker, thinks he has a right to affect
+any indulgence for his companions, and the most learned in malice will
+always pass for the most witty.
+
+"'How!' said the Viscount de Mondrage: 'the Duchess of Rivesalte arrives
+alone to-night, without her inevitable Dormilly!'--And the Viscount, as
+he spoke, pointed towards a tall and slender young woman, who, gliding
+rather than walking, met the ladies by whom she passed, with a graceful
+and modest salute, and replied to the looks of the men BY BRILLIANT
+VEILED GLANCES FULL OF COQUETRY AND ATTACK.
+
+"'Parbleu!' said an elegant personage standing near the Viscount de
+Mondrage, 'don't you see Dormilly ranged behind the Duchess, in quality
+of train-bearer, and hiding, under his long locks and his great screen
+of moustaches, the blushing consciousness of his good luck?--They call
+him THE FOURTH CHAPTER of the Duchess's memoirs. The little Marquise
+d'Alberas is ready to die out of spite; but the best of the joke is,
+that she has only taken poor de Vendre for a lover in order to vent
+her spleen on him. Look at him against the chimney yonder; if the
+Marchioness do not break at once with him by quitting him for somebody
+else, the poor fellow will turn an idiot.'
+
+"'Is he jealous?' asked a young man, looking as if he did not know what
+jealousy was and as if he had no time to be jealous.
+
+"'Jealous! the very incarnation of jealousy; the second edition,
+revised, corrected, and considerably enlarged; as jealous as poor
+Gressigny, who is dying of it.'
+
+"'What! Gressigny too? why, 'tis growing quite into fashion: egad! I
+must try and be jealous,' said Monsieur de Beauval. 'But see! here comes
+the delicious Duchess of Bellefiore,'" &c. &c. &c.
+
+
+Enough, enough: this kind of fashionable Parisian conversation,
+which is, says our author, "a prodigious labor of improvising," a
+"chef-d'oeuvre," a "strange and singular thing, in which monotony is
+unknown," seems to be, if correctly reported, a "strange and singular
+thing" indeed; but somewhat monotonous at least to an English reader,
+and "prodigious" only, if we may take leave to say so, for the wonderful
+rascality which all the conversationists betray. Miss Neverout and
+the Colonel, in Swift's famous dialogue, are a thousand times more
+entertaining and moral; and, besides, we can laugh AT those worthies as
+well as with them; whereas the "prodigious" French wits are to us quite
+incomprehensible. Fancy a duchess as old as Lady ---- herself, and who
+should begin to tell us "of what she would do if ever she had a mind
+to take a lover;" and another duchess, with a fourth lover, tripping
+modestly among the ladies, and returning the gaze of the men by
+veiled glances, full of coquetry and attack!--Parbleu, if Monsieur de
+Viel-Castel should find himself among a society of French duchesses, and
+they should tear his eyes out, and send the fashionable Orpheus floating
+by the Seine, his slaughter might almost be considered as justifiable
+COUNTICIDE.
+
+
+
+
+A GAMBLER'S DEATH.
+
+
+Anybody who was at C---- school some twelve years since, must recollect
+Jack Attwood: he was the most dashing lad in the place, with more money
+in his pocket than belonged to the whole fifth form in which we were
+companions.
+
+When he was about fifteen, Jack suddenly retreated from C----, and
+presently we heard that he had a commission in a cavalry regiment, and
+was to have a great fortune from his father, when that old gentleman
+should die. Jack himself came to confirm these stories a few months
+after, and paid a visit to his old school chums. He had laid aside his
+little school-jacket and inky corduroys, and now appeared in such a
+splendid military suit as won the respect of all of us. His hair was
+dripping with oil, his hands were covered with rings, he had a dusky
+down over his upper lip which looked not unlike a moustache, and a
+multiplicity of frogs and braiding on his surtout which would have
+sufficed to lace a field-marshal. When old Swishtail, the usher, passed
+in his seedy black coat and gaiters, Jack gave him such a look of
+contempt as set us all a-laughing: in fact it was his turn to laugh now;
+for he used to roar very stoutly some months before, when Swishtail was
+in the custom of belaboring him with his great cane.
+
+Jack's talk was all about the regiment and the fine fellows in it: how
+he had ridden a steeple-chase with Captain Boldero, and licked him at
+the last hedge; and how he had very nearly fought a duel with Sir George
+Grig, about dancing with Lady Mary Slamken at a ball. "I soon made the
+baronet know what it was to deal with a man of the n--th," said Jack.
+"Dammee, sir, when I lugged out my barkers, and talked of fighting
+across the mess-room table, Grig turned as pale as a sheet, or as--"
+
+"Or as you used to do, Attwood, when Swishtail hauled you up," piped out
+little Hicks, the foundation-boy.
+
+It was beneath Jack's dignity to thrash anybody, now, but a grown-up
+baronet; so he let off little Hicks, and passed over the general titter
+which was raised at his expense. However, he entertained us with his
+histories about lords and ladies, and so-and-so "of ours," until we
+thought him one of the greatest men in his Majesty's service, and
+until the school-bell rung; when, with a heavy heart, we got our books
+together, and marched in to be whacked by old Swishtail. I promise you
+he revenged himself on us for Jack's contempt of him. I got that day at
+least twenty cuts to my share, which ought to have belonged to Cornet
+Attwood, of the n--th dragoons.
+
+When we came to think more coolly over our quondam schoolfellow's
+swaggering talk and manner, we were not quite so impressed by his merits
+as at his first appearance among us. We recollected how he used, in
+former times, to tell us great stories, which were so monstrously
+improbable that the smallest boy in the school would scout them; how
+often we caught him tripping in facts, and how unblushingly he admitted
+his little errors in the score of veracity. He and I, though never great
+friends, had been close companions: I was Jack's form-fellow (we fought
+with amazing emulation for the LAST place in the class); but still I was
+rather hurt at the coolness of my old comrade, who had forgotten all our
+former intimacy, in his steeple-chases with Captain Boldero and his duel
+with Sir George Grig.
+
+Nothing more was heard of Attwood for some years; a tailor one day came
+down to C----, who had made clothes for Jack in his school-days, and
+furnished him with regimentals: he produced a long bill for one hundred
+and twenty pounds and upwards, and asked where news might be had of
+his customer. Jack was in India, with his regiment, shooting tigers
+and jackals, no doubt. Occasionally, from that distant country, some
+magnificent rumor would reach us of his proceedings. Once I heard that
+he had been called to a court-martial for unbecoming conduct; another
+time, that he kept twenty horses, and won the gold plate at the Calcutta
+races. Presently, however, as the recollections of the fifth form wore
+away, Jack's image disappeared likewise, and I ceased to ask or think
+about my college chum.
+
+A year since, as I was smoking my cigar in the "Estaminet du
+Grand Balcon," an excellent smoking-shop, where the tobacco is
+unexceptionable, and the Hollands of singular merit, a dark-looking,
+thick-set man, in a greasy well-cut coat, with a shabby hat, cocked on
+one side of his dirty face, took the place opposite me, at the little
+marble table, and called for brandy. I did not much admire the impudence
+or the appearance of my friend, nor the fixed stare with which he chose
+to examine me. At last, he thrust a great greasy hand across the table,
+and said, "Titmarsh, do you forget your old friend Attwood?"
+
+I confess my recognition of him was not so joyful as on the day ten
+years earlier, when he had come, bedizened with lace and gold rings, to
+see us at C---- school: a man in the tenth part of a century learns a
+deal of worldly wisdom, and his hand, which goes naturally forward
+to seize the gloved finger of a millionnaire, or a milor, draws
+instinctively back from a dirty fist, encompassed by a ragged wristband
+and a tattered cuff. But Attwood was in nowise so backward; and the iron
+squeeze with which he shook my passive paw, proved that he was either
+very affectionate or very poor. You, my dear sir, who are reading this
+history, know very well the great art of shaking hands: recollect how
+you shook Lord Dash's hand the other day, and how you shook OFF poor
+Blank, when he came to borrow five pounds of you.
+
+However, the genial influence of the Hollands speedily dissipated
+anything like coolness between us and, in the course of an hour's
+conversation, we became almost as intimate as when we were suffering
+together under the ferule of old Swishtail. Jack told me that he had
+quitted the army in disgust; and that his father, who was to leave him a
+fortune, had died ten thousand pounds in debt: he did not touch upon
+his own circumstances; but I could read them in his elbows, which were
+peeping through his old frock. He talked a great deal, however, of runs
+of luck, good and bad; and related to me an infallible plan for breaking
+all the play-banks in Europe--a great number of old tricks;--and a vast
+quantity of gin-punch was consumed on the occasion; so long, in fact,
+did our conversation continue, that, I confess it with shame, the
+sentiment, or something stronger, quite got the better of me, and I
+have, to this day, no sort of notion how our palaver concluded.--Only,
+on the next morning, I did not possess a certain five-pound note which
+on the previous evening was in my sketch-book (by far the prettiest
+drawing by the way in the collection) but there, instead, was a strip of
+paper, thus inscribed:--
+
+
+IOU Five Pounds. JOHN ATTWOOD, Late of the N--th Dragoons.
+
+
+I suppose Attwood borrowed the money, from this remarkable and
+ceremonious acknowledgment on his part: had I been sober I would just as
+soon have lent him the nose on my face; for, in my then circumstances,
+the note was of much more consequence to me.
+
+As I lay, cursing my ill fortune, and thinking how on earth I should
+manage to subsist for the next two months, Attwood burst into my little
+garret--his face strangely flushed--singing and shouting as if it had
+been the night before. "Titmarsh," cried he, "you are my preserver!--my
+best friend! Look here, and here, and here!" And at every word Mr.
+Attwood produced a handful of gold, or a glittering heap of five-franc
+pieces, or a bundle of greasy, dusky bank-notes, more beautiful than
+either silver or gold:--he had won thirteen thousand francs after
+leaving me at midnight in my garret. He separated my poor little all, of
+six pieces, from this shining and imposing collection; and the passion
+of envy entered my soul: I felt far more anxious now than before,
+although starvation was then staring me in the face; I hated Attwood for
+CHEATING me out of all this wealth. Poor fellow! it had been better for
+him had he never seen a shilling of it.
+
+However, a grand breakfast at the Cafe Anglais dissipated my chagrin;
+and I will do my friend the justice to say, that he nobly shared some
+portion of his good fortune with me. As far as the creature comforts
+were concerned I feasted as well as he, and never was particular as to
+settling my share of the reckoning.
+
+Jack now changed his lodgings; had cards, with Captain Attwood engraved
+on them, and drove about a prancing cab-horse, as tall as the giraffe at
+the Jardin des Plantes; he had as many frogs on his coat as in the old
+days, and frequented all the flash restaurateurs' and boarding-houses of
+the capital. Madame de Saint Laurent, and Madame la Baronne de Vaudrey,
+and Madame la Comtesse de Jonville, ladies of the highest rank, who keep
+a societe choisie and condescend to give dinners at five-francs a head,
+vied with each other in their attentions to Jack. His was the wing of
+the fowl, and the largest portion of the Charlotte-Russe; his was the
+place at the ecarte table, where the Countess would ease him nightly of
+a few pieces, declaring that he was the most charming cavalier, la fleur
+d'Albion. Jack's society, it may be seen, was not very select; nor, in
+truth, were his inclinations: he was a careless, daredevil, Macheath
+kind of fellow, who might be seen daily with a wife on each arm.
+
+It may be supposed that, with the life he led, his five hundred pounds
+of winnings would not last him long; nor did they; but, for some time,
+his luck never deserted him; and his cash, instead of growing lower,
+seemed always to maintain a certain level: he played every night.
+
+Of course, such a humble fellow as I, could not hope for a continued
+acquaintance and intimacy with Attwood. He grew overbearing and cool, I
+thought; at any rate I did not admire my situation as his follower and
+dependant, and left his grand dinner for a certain ordinary, where
+I could partake of five capital dishes for ninepence. Occasionally,
+however, Attwood favored me with a visit, or gave me a drive behind his
+great cab-horse. He had formed a whole host of friends besides. There
+was Fips, the barrister; heaven knows what he was doing at Paris; and
+Gortz, the West Indian, who was there on the same business, and Flapper,
+a medical student,--all these three I met one night at Flapper's rooms,
+where Jack was invited, and a great "spread" was laid in honor of him.
+
+Jack arrived rather late--he looked pale and agitated; and, though he
+ate no supper, he drank raw brandy in such a manner as made Flapper's
+eyes wink: the poor fellow had but three bottles, and Jack bade fair to
+swallow them all. However, the West Indian generously remedied the evil,
+and producing a napoleon, we speedily got the change for it in the shape
+of four bottles of champagne.
+
+Our supper was uproariously harmonious; Fips sung the good "Old English
+Gentleman;" Jack the "British Grenadiers;" and your humble servant, when
+called upon, sang that beautiful ditty, "When the Bloom is on the Rye,"
+in a manner that drew tears from every eye, except Flapper's, who was
+asleep, and Jack's, who was singing the "Bay of Biscay O," at the same
+time. Gortz and Fips were all the time lunging at each other with a pair
+of single-sticks, the barrister having a very strong notion that he was
+Richard the Third. At last Fips hit the West Indian such a blow across
+his sconce, that the other grew furious; he seized a champagne-bottle,
+which was, providentially, empty, and hurled it across the room at Fips:
+had that celebrated barrister not bowed his head at the moment, the
+Queen's Bench would have lost one of its most eloquent practitioners.
+
+Fips stood as straight as he could; his cheek was pale with wrath.
+"M-m-ister Go-gortz," he said, "I always heard you were a blackguard;
+now I can pr-pr-peperove it. Flapper, your pistols! every ge-ge-genlmn
+knows what I mean."
+
+Young Mr. Flapper had a small pair of pocket-pistols, which the tipsy
+barrister had suddenly remembered, and with which he proposed to
+sacrifice the West Indian. Gortz was nothing loth, but was quite as
+valorous as the lawyer.
+
+Attwood, who, in spite of his potations, seemed the soberest man of
+the party, had much enjoyed the scene, until this sudden demand for the
+weapons. "Pshaw!" said he, eagerly, "don't give these men the means of
+murdering each other; sit down and let us have another song." But they
+would not be still; and Flapper forthwith produced his pistol-case, and
+opened it, in order that the duel might take place on the spot. There
+were no pistols there! "I beg your pardon," said Attwood, looking much
+confused; "I--I took the pistols home with me to clean them!"
+
+I don't know what there was in his tone, or in the words, but we were
+sobered all of a sudden. Attwood was conscious of the singular effect
+produced by him, for he blushed, and endeavored to speak of other
+things, but we could not bring our spirits back to the mark again, and
+soon separated for the night. As we issued into the street Jack took me
+aside, and whispered, "Have you a napoleon, Titmarsh, in your purse?"
+Alas! I was not so rich. My reply was, that I was coming to Jack, only
+in the morning, to borrow a similar sum.
+
+He did not make any reply, but turned away homeward: I never heard him
+speak another word.
+
+
+Two mornings after (for none of our party met on the day succeeding the
+supper), I was awakened by my porter, who brought a pressing letter from
+Mr. Gortz:--
+
+
+"DEAR T.,--I wish you would come over here to breakfast. There's a row
+about Attwood.--Yours truly,
+
+"SOLOMON GORTZ."
+
+
+I immediately set forward to Gortz's; he lived in the Rue du Helder, a
+few doors from Attwood's new lodging. If the reader is curious to know
+the house in which the catastrophe of this history took place, he has
+but to march some twenty doors down from the Boulevard des Italiens,
+when he will see a fine door, with a naked Cupid shooting at him from
+the hall, and a Venus beckoning him up the stairs. On arriving at the
+West Indian's, at about mid-day (it was a Sunday morning), I found that
+gentleman in his dressing-gown, discussing, in the company of Mr Fips, a
+large plate of bifteck aux pommes.
+
+"Here's a pretty row!" said Gortz, quoting from his letter;--"Attwood's
+off--have a bit of beefsteak?"
+
+"What do you mean?" exclaimed I, adopting the familiar phraseology of my
+acquaintances:--"Attwood off?--has he cut his stick?"
+
+"Not bad," said the feeling and elegant Fips--"not such a bad guess, my
+boy; but he has not exactly CUT HIS STICK."
+
+"What then?"
+
+"WHY, HIS THROAT." The man's mouth was full of bleeding beef as he
+uttered this gentlemanly witticism.
+
+I wish I could say that I was myself in the least affected by the
+news. I did not joke about it like my friend Fips; this was more for
+propriety's sake than for feeling's: but for my old school acquaintance,
+the friend of my early days, the merry associate of the last few months,
+I own, with shame, that I had not a tear or a pang. In some German tale
+there is an account of a creature most beautiful and bewitching, whom
+all men admire and follow; but this charming and fantastic spirit only
+leads them, one by one, into ruin, and then leaves them. The novelist,
+who describes her beauty, says that his heroine is a fairy, and HAS NO
+HEART. I think the intimacy which is begotten over the wine-bottle, is
+a spirit of this nature; I never knew a good feeling come from it, or an
+honest friendship made by it; it only entices men and ruins them; it
+is only a phantom of friendship and feeling, called up by the delirious
+blood, and the wicked spells of the wine.
+
+But to drop this strain of moralizing (in which the writer is not too
+anxious to proceed, for he cuts in it a most pitiful figure), we passed
+sundry criticisms upon poor Attwood's character, expressed our horror
+at his death--which sentiment was fully proved by Mr. Fips, who declared
+that the notion of it made him feel quite faint, and was obliged to
+drink a large glass of brandy; and, finally, we agreed that we would go
+and see the poor fellow's corpse, and witness, if necessary, his burial.
+
+Flapper, who had joined us, was the first to propose this visit: he said
+he did not mind the fifteen francs which Jack owed him for billiards,
+but he was anxious to GET BACK HIS PISTOL. Accordingly, we sallied
+forth, and speedily arrived at the hotel which Attwood inhabited still.
+He had occupied, for a time, very fine apartments in this house: and it
+was only on arriving there that day that we found he had been gradually
+driven from his magnificent suite of rooms au premier, to a little
+chamber in the fifth story:--we mounted, and found him. It was a little
+shabby room, with a few articles of rickety furniture, and a bed in an
+alcove; the light from the one window was falling full upon the bed and
+the body. Jack was dressed in a fine lawn shirt; he had kept it, poor
+fellow, TO DIE IN; for in all his drawers and cupboards there was not a
+single article of clothing; he had pawned everything by which he could
+raise a penny--desk, books, dressing-case, and clothes; and not a single
+halfpenny was found in his possession.*
+
+     * In order to account for these trivial details, the reader
+     must be told that the story is, for the chief part, a fact;
+     and that the little sketch in this page was TAKEN FROM
+     NATURE. The latter was likewise a copy from one found in the
+     manner described.
+
+He was lying as I have drawn him,* one hand on his breast, the other
+falling towards the ground. There was an expression of perfect calm on
+the face, and no mark of blood to stain the side towards the light. On
+the other side, however, there was a great pool of black blood, and in
+it the pistol; it looked more like a toy than a weapon to take away the
+life of this vigorous young man. In his forehead, at the side, was a
+small black wound; Jack's life had passed through it; it was little
+bigger than a mole.
+
+
+     * This refers to an illustrated edition of the work.
+
+
+"Regardez un peu," said the landlady, "messieurs, il m'a gate trois
+matelas, et il me doit quarante quatre francs."
+
+This was all his epitaph: he had spoiled three mattresses, and owed the
+landlady four-and-forty francs. In the whole world there was not a soul
+to love him or lament him. We, his friends, were looking at his body
+more as an object of curiosity, watching it with a kind of interest with
+which one follows the fifth act of a tragedy, and leaving it with the
+same feeling with which one leaves the theatre when the play is over and
+the curtain is down.
+
+Beside Jack's bed, on his little "table de nuit," lay the remains of
+his last meal, and an open letter, which we read. It was from one of his
+suspicious acquaintances of former days, and ran thus:--
+
+
+"Ou es tu, cher Jack? why you not come and see me--tu me dois de
+l'argent, entends tu?--un chapeau, une cachemire, a box of the Play.
+Viens demain soir, je t'attendrai at eight o'clock, Passage des
+Panoramas. My Sir is at his country.
+
+"Adieu a demain.
+
+"Fifine.
+
+"Samedi."
+
+
+I shuddered as I walked through this very Passage des Panoramas, in
+the evening. The girl was there, pacing to and fro, and looking in
+the countenance of every passer-by, to recognize Attwood. "ADIEU A
+DEMAIN!"--there was a dreadful meaning in the words, which the writer of
+them little knew. "Adieu a demain!"--the morrow was come, and the soul
+of the poor suicide was now in the presence of God. I dare not think of
+his fate; for, except in the fact of his poverty and desperation, was he
+worse than any of us, his companions, who had shared his debauches, and
+marched with him up to the very brink of the grave?
+
+There is but one more circumstance to relate regarding poor Jack--his
+burial; it was of a piece with his death.
+
+He was nailed into a paltry coffin and buried, at the expense of the
+arrondissement, in a nook of the burial-place beyond the Barriere de
+l'Etoile. They buried him at six o'clock, of a bitter winter's morning,
+and it was with difficulty that an English clergyman could be found to
+read a service over his grave. The three men who have figured in this
+history acted as Jack's mourners; and as the ceremony was to take place
+so early in the morning, these men sat up the night through, AND WERE
+ALMOST DRUNK as they followed his coffin to its resting-place.
+
+
+MORAL.
+
+
+"When we turned out in our great-coats," said one of them afterwards,
+"reeking of cigars and brandy-and-water, d--e, sir, we quite frightened
+the old buck of a parson; he did not much like our company." After the
+ceremony was concluded, these gentlemen were very happy to get home to
+a warm and comfortable breakfast, and finished the day royally at
+Frascati's.
+
+
+
+
+NAPOLEON AND HIS SYSTEM.
+
+ON PRINCE LOUIS NAPOLEON'S WORK.
+
+
+Any person who recollects the history of the absurd outbreak of
+Strasburg, in which Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte figured, three years
+ago, must remember that, however silly the revolt was, however, foolish
+its pretext, however doubtful its aim, and inexperienced its leader,
+there was, nevertheless, a party, and a considerable one in France, that
+were not unwilling to lend the new projectors their aid. The troops
+who declared against the Prince, were, it was said, all but willing to
+declare for him; and it was certain that, in many of the regiments of
+the army, there existed a strong spirit of disaffection, and an eager
+wish for the return of the imperial system and family.
+
+As to the good that was to be derived from the change, that is another
+question. Why the Emperor of the French should be better than the King
+of the French, or the King of the French better than the King of France
+and Navarre, it is not our business to inquire; but all the three
+monarchs have no lack of supporters; republicanism has no lack of
+supporters; St. Simoninnism was followed by a respectable body of
+admirers; Robespierrism has a select party of friends. If, in a country
+where so many quacks have had their day, Prince Louis Napoleon thought
+he might renew the imperial quackery, why should he not? It has
+recollections with it that must always be dear to a gallant nation; it
+has certain claptraps in its vocabulary that can never fail to inflame a
+vain, restless, grasping, disappointed one.
+
+In the first place, and don't let us endeavor to disguise it, they hate
+us. Not all the protestations of friendship, not all the wisdom of Lord
+Palmerston, not all the diplomacy of our distinguished plenipotentiary,
+Mr. Henry Lytton Bulwer--and let us add, not all the benefit which both
+countries would derive from the alliance--can make it, in our times at
+least, permanent and cordial. They hate us. The Carlist organs revile
+us with a querulous fury that never sleeps; the moderate party, if they
+admit the utility of our alliance, are continually pointing out our
+treachery, our insolence, and our monstrous infractions of it; and for
+the Republicans, as sure as the morning comes, the columns of their
+journals thunder out volleys of fierce denunciations against our
+unfortunate country. They live by feeding the natural hatred against
+England, by keeping old wounds open, by recurring ceaselessly to the
+history of old quarrels, and as in these we, by God's help, by land and
+by sea, in old times and late, have had the uppermost, they perpetuate
+the shame and mortification of the losing party, the bitterness of past
+defeats, and the eager desire to avenge them. A party which knows how
+to exploiter this hatred will always be popular to a certain extent; and
+the imperial scheme has this, at least, among its conditions.
+
+Then there is the favorite claptrap of the "natural frontier." The
+Frenchman yearns to be bounded by the Rhine and the Alps; and next
+follows the cry, "Let France take her place among nations, and direct,
+as she ought to do, the affairs of Europe." These are the two chief
+articles contained in the new imperial programme, if we may credit the
+journal which has been established to advocate the cause. A natural
+boundary--stand among the nations--popular development--Russian
+alliance, and a reduction of la perfide Albion to its proper
+insignificance. As yet we know little more of the plan: and yet such
+foundations are sufficient to build a party upon, and with such windy
+weapons a substantial Government is to be overthrown!
+
+In order to give these doctrines, such as they are, a chance of finding
+favor with his countrymen, Prince Louis has the advantage of being able
+to refer to a former great professor of them--his uncle Napoleon. His
+attempt is at once pious and prudent; it exalts the memory of the uncle,
+and furthers the interests of the nephew, who attempts to show what
+Napoleon's ideas really were; what good had already resulted from the
+practice of them; how cruelly they had been thwarted by foreign wars and
+difficulties; and what vast benefits WOULD have resulted from them; ay,
+and (it is reasonable to conclude) might still, if the French nation
+would be wise enough to pitch upon a governor that would continue the
+interrupted scheme. It is, however, to be borne in mind that the Emperor
+Napoleon had certain arguments in favor of his opinions for the time
+being, which his nephew has not employed. On the 13th Vendemiaire, when
+General Bonaparte believed in the excellence of a Directory, it may be
+remembered that he aided his opinions by forty pieces of artillery, and
+by Colonel Murat at the head of his dragoons. There was no resisting
+such a philosopher; the Directory was established forthwith, and the
+sacred cause of the minority triumphed, in like manner, when the General
+was convinced of the weakness of the Directory, and saw fully the
+necessity of establishing a Consulate, what were his arguments? Moreau,
+Lannes, Murat, Berthier, Leclerc, Lefebvre--gentle apostles of the
+truth!--marched to St. Cloud, and there, with fixed bayonets, caused it
+to prevail. Error vanished in an instant. At once five hundred of its
+high-priests tumbled out of windows, and lo! three Consuls appeared to
+guide the destinies of France! How much more expeditious, reasonable,
+and clinching was this argument of the 18th Brumaire, than any one that
+can be found in any pamphlet! A fig for your duodecimos and octavos!
+Talk about points, there are none like those at the end of a bayonet;
+and the most powerful of styles is a good rattling "article" from a
+nine-pounder.
+
+At least this is our interpretation of the manner in which were always
+propagated the Idees Napoleoniennes. Not such, however, is Prince
+Louis's belief; and, if you wish to go along with him in opinion, you
+will discover that a more liberal, peaceable, prudent Prince never
+existed: you will read that "the mission of Napoleon" was to be the
+"testamentary executor of the revolution;" and the Prince should have
+added the legatee; or, more justly still, as well as the EXECUTOR, he
+should be called the EXECUTIONER, and then his title would be complete.
+In Vendemiaire, the military Tartuffe, he threw aside the Revolution's
+natural heirs, and made her, as it were, ALTER HER WILL; on the 18th of
+Brumaire he strangled her, and on the 19th seized on her property, and
+kept it until force deprived him of it. Illustrations, to be sure, are
+no arguments, but the example is the Prince's, not ours.
+
+In the Prince's eyes, then, his uncle is a god; of all monarchs, the
+most wise, upright, and merciful. Thirty years ago the opinion had
+millions of supporters; while millions again were ready to avouch the
+exact contrary. It is curious to think of the former difference of
+opinion concerning Napoleon; and, in reading his nephew's rapturous
+encomiums of him, one goes back to the days when we ourselves were as
+loud and mad in his dispraise. Who does not remember his own personal
+hatred and horror, twenty-five years ago, for the man whom we used to
+call the "bloody Corsican upstart and assassin?" What stories did we
+not believe of him?--what murders, rapes, robberies, not lay to his
+charge?--we who were living within a few miles of his territory, and
+might, by books and newspapers, be made as well acquainted with his
+merits or demerits as any of his own countrymen.
+
+Then was the age when the Idees Napoleoniennes might have passed through
+many editions; for while we were thus outrageously bitter, our neighbors
+were as extravagantly attached to him by a strange infatuation--adored
+him like a god, whom we chose to consider as a fiend; and vowed that,
+under his government, their nation had attained its highest pitch of
+grandeur and glory. In revenge there existed in England (as is proved
+by a thousand authentic documents) a monster so hideous, a tyrant so
+ruthless and bloody, that the world's history cannot show his parallel.
+This ruffian's name was, during the early part of the French revolution,
+Pittetcobourg. Pittetcobourg's emissaries were in every corner of
+France; Pittetcobourg's gold chinked in the pockets of every traitor in
+Europe; it menaced the life of the godlike Robespierre; it drove into
+cellars and fits of delirium even the gentle philanthropist Marat; it
+fourteen times caused the dagger to be lifted against the bosom of
+the First Consul, Emperor, and King,--that first, great, glorious,
+irresistible, cowardly, contemptible, bloody hero and fiend, Bonaparte,
+before mentioned.
+
+On our side of the Channel we have had leisure, long since, to
+re-consider our verdict against Napoleon; though, to be sure, we have
+not changed our opinion about Pittetcobourg. After five-and-thirty years
+all parties bear witness to his honesty, and speak with affectionate
+reverence of his patriotism, his genius, and his private virtue. In
+France, however, or, at least among certain parties in France, there
+has been no such modification of opinion. With the Republicans,
+Pittetcobourg is Pittetcobourg still,--crafty, bloody, seeking whom he
+may devour; and perfide Albion more perfidious than ever. This hatred
+is the point of union between the Republic and the Empire; it has been
+fostered ever since, and must be continued by Prince Louis, if he would
+hope to conciliate both parties.
+
+With regard to the Emperor, then, Prince Louis erects to his memory
+as fine a monument as his wits can raise. One need not say that the
+imperial apologist's opinion should be received with the utmost caution;
+for a man who has such a hero for an uncle may naturally be proud of and
+partial to him; and when this nephew of the great man would be his heir
+likewise, and, hearing his name, step also into his imperial shoes, one
+may reasonably look for much affectionate panegyric. "The empire was the
+best of empires," cries the Prince; and possibly it was; undoubtedly,
+the Prince thinks it was; but he is the very last person who would
+convince a man with the proper suspicious impartiality. One remembers
+a certain consultation of politicians which is recorded in the
+Spelling-book; and the opinion of that patriotic sage who avowed that,
+for a real blameless constitution, an impenetrable shield for liberty,
+and cheap defence of nations, there was nothing like leather.
+
+Let us examine some of the Prince's article. If we may be allowed humbly
+to express an opinion, his leather is not only quite insufficient for
+those vast public purposes for which he destines it, but is, moreover,
+and in itself, very BAD LEATHER. The hides are poor, small, unsound
+slips of skin; or, to drop this cobbling metaphor, the style is not
+particularly brilliant, the facts not very startling, and, as for the
+conclusions, one may differ with almost every one of them. Here is an
+extract from his first chapter, "on governments in general:"--
+
+"I speak it with regret, I can see but two governments, at this day,
+which fulfil the mission that Providence has confided to them; they are
+the two colossi at the end of the world; one at the extremity of the old
+world, the other at the extremity of the new. Whilst our old European
+centre is as a volcano, consuming itself in its crater, the two nations
+of the East and the West, march without hesitation, towards perfection;
+the one under the will of a single individual, the other under liberty.
+
+"Providence has confided to the United States of North America the task
+of peopling and civilizing that immense territory which stretches from
+the Atlantic to the South Sea, and from the North Pole to the Equator.
+The Government, which is only a simple administration, has only hitherto
+been called upon to put in practice the old adage, Laissez faire,
+laissez passer, in order to favor that irresistible instinct which
+pushes the people of America to the west.
+
+"In Russia it is to the imperial dynasty that is owing all the vast
+progress which, in a century and a half, has rescued that empire from
+barbarism. The imperial power must contend against all the ancient
+prejudices of our old Europe: it must centralize, as far as possible,
+all the powers of the state in the hands of one person, in order to
+destroy the abuses which the feudal and communal franchises have
+served to perpetuate. The last alone can hope to receive from it the
+improvements which it expects.
+
+"But thou, France of Henry IV., of Louis XIV., of Carnot, of
+Napoleon--thou, who wert always for the west of Europe the source of
+progress, who possessest in thyself the two great pillars of empire, the
+genius for the arts of peace and the genius of war--hast thou no further
+mission to fulfil? Wilt thou never cease to waste thy force and energies
+in intestine struggles? No; such cannot be thy destiny: the day will
+soon come, when, to govern thee, it will be necessary to understand that
+thy part is to place in all treaties thy sword of Brennus on the side of
+civilization."
+
+These are the conclusions of the Prince's remarks upon governments in
+general; and it must be supposed that the reader is very little wiser at
+the end than at the beginning. But two governments in the world fulfil
+their mission: the one government, which is no government; the other,
+which is a despotism. The duty of France is IN ALL TREATIES to place her
+sword of Brennus in the scale of civilization. Without quarrelling with
+the somewhat confused language of the latter proposition, may we ask
+what, in heaven's name, is the meaning of all the three? What is this
+epee de Brennus? and how is France to use it? Where is the great
+source of political truth, from which, flowing pure, we trace American
+republicanism in one stream, Russian despotism in another? Vastly
+prosperous is the great republic, if you will: if dollars and cents
+constitute happiness, there is plenty for all: but can any one, who has
+read of the American doings in the late frontier troubles, and the daily
+disputes on the slave question, praise the GOVERNMENT of the States?--a
+Government which dares not punish homicide or arson performed before its
+very eyes, and which the pirates of Texas and the pirates of Canada can
+brave at their will? There is no government, but a prosperous anarchy;
+as the Prince's other favorite government is a prosperous slavery. What,
+then, is to be the epee de Brennus government? Is it to be a mixture
+of the two? "Society," writes the Prince, axiomatically, "contains in
+itself two principles--the one of progress and immortality, the other
+of disease and disorganization." No doubt; and as the one tends towards
+liberty, so the other is only to be cured by order: and then, with a
+singular felicity, Prince Louis picks us out a couple of governments, in
+one of which the common regulating power is as notoriously too weak,
+as it is in the other too strong, and talks in rapturous terms of the
+manner in which they fulfil their "providential mission!"
+
+From these considerations on things in general, the Prince conducts us
+to Napoleon in particular, and enters largely into a discussion of the
+merits of the imperial system. Our author speaks of the Emperor's advent
+in the following grandiose way:--
+
+"Napoleon, on arriving at the public stage, saw that his part was to
+be the TESTAMENTARY EXECUTOR of the Revolution. The destructive fire of
+parties was extinct; and when the Revolution, dying, but not vanquished,
+delegated to Napoleon the accomplishment of her last will, she said to
+him, 'Establish upon solid bases the principal result of my efforts.
+Unite divided Frenchmen. Defeat feudal Europe that is leagued against
+me. Cicatrize my wounds. Enlighten the nations. Execute that in width,
+which I have had to perform in depth. Be for Europe what I have been for
+France. And, even if you must water the tree of civilization with
+your blood--if you must see your projects misunderstood, and your sons
+without a country, wandering over the face of the earth, never abandon
+the sacred cause of the French people. Insure its triumph by all the
+means which genius can discover and humanity approve.'
+
+"This grand mission Napoleon performed to the end. His task was
+difficult. He had to place upon new principles a society still
+boiling with hatred and revenge; and to use, for building up, the same
+instruments which had been employed for pulling down.
+
+"The common lot of every new truth that arises, is to wound rather
+than to convince--rather than to gain proselytes, to awaken fear. For,
+oppressed as it long has been, it rushes forward with additional force;
+having to encounter obstacles, it is compelled to combat them, and
+overthrow them; until, at length, comprehended and adopted by the
+generality, it becomes the basis of new social order.
+
+"Liberty will follow the same march as the Christian religion. Armed
+with death from the ancient society of Rome, it for a long while excited
+the hatred and fear of the people. At last, by force of martyrdoms and
+persecutions, the religion of Christ penetrated into the conscience and
+the soul; it soon had kings and armies at its orders, and Constantine
+and Charlemagne bore it triumphant throughout Europe. Religion then laid
+down her arms of war. It laid open to all the principles of peace and
+order which it contained; it became the prop of Government, as it was
+the organizing element of society. Thus will it be with liberty. In 1793
+it frightened people and sovereigns alike; then, having clothed itself
+in a milder garb, IT INSINUATED ITSELF EVERYWHERE IN THE TRAIN OF OUR
+BATTALIONS. In 1815 all parties adopted its flag, and armed themselves
+with its moral force--covered themselves with its colors. The adoption
+was not sincere, and liberty was soon obliged to reassume its warlike
+accoutrements. With the contest their fears returned. Let us hope that
+they will soon cease, and that liberty will soon resume her peaceful
+standards, to quit them no more.
+
+"The Emperor Napoleon contributed more than any one else towards
+accelerating the reign of liberty, by saving the moral influence of
+the revolution, and diminishing the fears which it imposed. Without the
+Consulate and the Empire, the revolution would have been only a grand
+drama, leaving grand revolutions but no traces: the revolution would
+have been drowned in the counter-revolution. The contrary, however,
+was the case. Napoleon rooted the revolution in France, and introduced,
+throughout Europe, the principal benefits of the crisis of 1789. To
+use his own words, 'He purified the revolution, he confirmed kings, and
+ennobled people.' He purified the revolution, in separating the
+truths which it contained from the passions that, during its delirium,
+disfigured it. He ennobled the people in giving them the consciousness
+of their force, and those institutions which raise men in their own
+eyes. The Emperor may be considered as the Messiah of the new ideas;
+for--and we must confess it--in the moments immediately succeeding a
+social revolution, it is not so essential to put rigidly into practice
+all the propositions resulting from the new theory, but to become master
+of the regenerative genius, to identify one's self with the sentiments
+of the people, and boldly to direct them towards the desired point. To
+accomplish such a task YOUR FIBRE SHOULD RESPOND TO THAT OF THE PEOPLE,
+as the Emperor said; you should feel like it, your interests should
+be so intimately raised with its own, that you should vanquish or fall
+together."
+
+Let us take breath after these big phrases,--grand round figures
+of speech,--which, when put together, amount like certain other
+combinations of round figures to exactly 0. We shall not stop to argue
+the merits and demerits of Prince Louis's notable comparison between the
+Christian religion and the Imperial-revolutionary system. There are
+many blunders in the above extract as we read it; blundering metaphors,
+blundering arguments, and blundering assertions; but this is surely
+the grandest blunder of all; and one wonders at the blindness of the
+legislator and historian who can advance such a parallel. And what are
+we to say of the legacy of the dying revolution to Napoleon? Revolutions
+do not die, and, on their death-beds, making fine speeches, hand over
+their property to young officers of artillery. We have all read the
+history of his rise. The constitution of the year III. was carried. Old
+men of the Montagne, disguised royalists, Paris sections, PITTETCOBOURG,
+above all, with his money-bags, thought that here was a fine opportunity
+for a revolt, and opposed the new constitution in arms: the new
+constitution had knowledge of a young officer who would not hesitate to
+defend its cause, and who effectually beat the majority. The tale may be
+found in every account of the revolution, and the rest of his story need
+not be told. We know every step that he took: we know how, by doses
+of cannon-balls promptly administered, he cured the fever of the
+sections--that fever which another camp-physician (Menou) declined
+to prescribe for; we know how he abolished the Directory; and how the
+Consulship came; and then the Empire; and then the disgrace, exile,
+and lonely death. Has not all this been written by historians in all
+tongues?--by memoir-writing pages, chamberlains, marshals, lackeys,
+secretaries, contemporaries, and ladies of honor? Not a word of miracle
+is there in all this narration; not a word of celestial missions,
+or political Messiahs. From Napoleon's rise to his fall, the bayonet
+marches alongside of him: now he points it at the tails of the
+scampering "five hundred,"--now he charges with it across the bloody
+planks of Arcola--now he flies before it over the fatal plain of
+Waterloo.
+
+Unwilling, however, as he may be to grant that there are any spots in
+the character of his hero's government, the Prince is, nevertheless,
+obliged to allow that such existed; that the Emperor's manner of
+rule was a little more abrupt and dictatorial than might possibly be
+agreeable. For this the Prince has always an answer ready--it is the
+same poor one that Napoleon uttered a million of times to his companions
+in exile--the excuse of necessity. He WOULD have been very liberal, but
+that the people were not fit for it; or that the cursed war prevented
+him--or any other reason why. His first duty, however, says his
+apologist, was to form a general union of Frenchmen, and he set about
+his plan in this wise:--
+
+"Let us not forget, that all which Napoleon undertook, in order to
+create a general fusion, he performed without renouncing the principles
+of the revolution. He recalled the emigres, without touching upon
+the law by which their goods had been confiscated and sold as public
+property. He reestablished the Catholic religion at the same time
+that he proclaimed the liberty of conscience, and endowed equally the
+ministers of all sects. He caused himself to be consecrated by the
+Sovereign Pontiff, without conceding to the Pope's demand any of the
+liberties of the Gallican church. He married a daughter of the Emperor
+of Austria, without abandoning any of the rights of France to the
+conquests she had made. He reestablished noble titles, without attaching
+to them any privileges or prerogatives, and these titles were conferred
+on all ranks, on all services, on all professions. Under the empire
+all idea of caste was destroyed; no man ever thought of vaunting his
+pedigree--no man ever was asked how he was born, but what he had done.
+
+"The first quality of a people which aspires to liberal government,
+is respect to the law. Now, a law has no other power than lies in the
+interest which each citizen has to defend or to contravene it. In order
+to make a people respect the law, it was necessary that it should be
+executed in the interest of all, and should consecrate the principle of
+equality in all its extension. It was necessary to restore the prestige
+with which the Government had been formerly invested, and to make the
+principles of the revolution take root in the public manners. At
+the commencement of a new society, it is the legislator who makes or
+corrects the manners; later, it is the manners which make the law, or
+preserve it from age to age intact."
+
+Some of these fusions are amusing. No man in the empire was asked how
+he was born, but what he had done; and, accordingly, as a man's actions
+were sufficient to illustrate him, the Emperor took care to make a host
+of new title-bearers, princes, dukes, barons, and what not, whose rank
+has descended to their children. He married a princess of Austria; but,
+for all that, did not abandon his conquests--perhaps not actually; but
+he abandoned his allies, and, eventually, his whole kingdom. Who does
+not recollect his answer to the Poles, at the commencement of the
+Russian campaign? But for Napoleon's imperial father-in-law, Poland
+would have been a kingdom, and his race, perhaps, imperial still. Why
+was he to fetch this princess out of Austria to make heirs for his
+throne? Why did not the man of the people marry a girl of the people?
+Why must he have a Pope to crown him--half a dozen kings for brothers,
+and a bevy of aides-de-camp dressed out like so many mountebanks from
+Astley's, with dukes' coronets, and grand blue velvet marshals'
+batons? We have repeatedly his words for it. He wanted to create an
+aristocracy--another acknowledgment on his part of the Republican
+dilemma--another apology for the revolutionary blunder. To keep the
+republic within bounds, a despotism is necessary; to rally round the
+despotism, an aristocracy must be created; and for what have we been
+laboring all this while? for what have bastiles been battered down, and
+king's heads hurled, as a gage of battle, in the face of armed Europe?
+To have a Duke of Otranto instead of a Duke de la Tremouille, and
+Emperor Stork in place of King Log. O lame conclusion! Is the blessed
+revolution which is prophesied for us in England only to end in
+establishing a Prince Fergus O'Connor, or a Cardinal Wade, or a Duke
+Daniel Whittle Harvey? Great as those patriots are, we love them better
+under their simple family names, and scorn titles and coronets.
+
+At present, in France, the delicate matter of titles seems to be better
+arranged, any gentleman, since the Revolution, being free to adopt any
+one he may fix upon; and it appears that the Crown no longer confers any
+patents of nobility, but contents itself with saying, as in the case of
+M. de Pontois, the other day, "Le Roi trouve convenable that you take
+the title of," &c.
+
+To execute the legacy of the revolution, then; to fulfil his
+providential mission; to keep his place,--in other words, for the
+simplest are always the best,--to keep his place, and to keep his
+Government in decent order, the Emperor was obliged to establish a
+military despotism, to re-establish honors and titles; it was necessary,
+as the Prince confesses, to restore the old prestige of the Government,
+in order to make the people respect it; and he adds--a truth which one
+hardly would expect from him,--"At the commencement of a new society, it
+is the legislator who makes and corrects the manners; later, it is the
+manners which preserve the laws." Of course, and here is the great risk
+that all revolutionizing people run--they must tend to despotism;
+"they must personify themselves in a man," is the Prince's phrase; and,
+according as is his temperament or disposition--according as he is a
+Cromwell, a Washington, or a Napoleon--the revolution becomes tyranny or
+freedom, prospers or falls.
+
+Somewhere in the St. Helena memorials, Napoleon reports a message of
+his to the Pope. "Tell the Pope," he says to an archbishop, "to remember
+that I have six hundred thousand armed Frenchmen, qui marcheront avec
+moi, pour moi, et comme moi." And this is the legacy of the revolution,
+the advancement of freedom! A hundred volumes of imperial special
+pleading will not avail against such a speech as this--one so insolent,
+and at the same time so humiliating, which gives unwittingly the whole
+of the Emperor's progress, strength, and weakness. The six hundred
+thousand armed Frenchmen were used up, and the whole fabric falls; the
+six hundred thousand are reduced to sixty thousand, and straightway all
+the rest of the fine imperial scheme vanishes: the miserable senate, so
+crawling and abject but now, becomes of a sudden endowed with a wondrous
+independence; the miserable sham nobles, sham empress, sham kings,
+dukes, princes, chamberlains, pack up their plumes and embroideries,
+pounce upon what money and plate they can lay their hands on, and when
+the allies appear before Paris, when for courage and manliness there
+is yet hope, when with fierce marches hastening to the relief of his
+capital, bursting through ranks upon ranks of the enemy, and crushing or
+scattering them from the path of his swift and victorious despair, the
+Emperor at last is at home,--where are the great dignitaries and the
+lieutenant-generals of the empire? Where is Maria Louisa, the Empress
+Eagle, with her little callow king of Rome? Is she going to defend her
+nest and her eaglet? Not she. Empress-queen, lieutenant-general, and
+court dignitaries, are off on the wings of all the winds--profligati
+sunt, they are away with the money-bags, and Louis Stanislas Xavier
+rolls into the palace of his fathers.
+
+With regard to Napoleon's excellences as an administrator, a legislator,
+a constructor of public works, and a skilful financier, his nephew
+speaks with much diffuse praise, and few persons, we suppose, will be
+disposed to contradict him. Whether the Emperor composed his famous
+code, or borrowed it, is of little importance; but he established it,
+and made the law equal for every man in France except one. His vast
+public works and vaster wars were carried on without new loans or
+exorbitant taxes; it was only the blood and liberty of the people that
+were taxed, and we shall want a better advocate than Prince Louis to
+show us that these were not most unnecessarily and lavishly thrown away.
+As for the former and material improvements, it is not necessary to
+confess here that a despotic energy can effect such far more readily
+than a Government of which the strength is diffused in many conflicting
+parties. No doubt, if we could create a despotical governing machine, a
+steam autocrat,--passionless, untiring, and supreme,--we should advance
+further, and live more at ease than under any other form of government.
+Ministers might enjoy their pensions and follow their own devices;
+Lord John might compose histories or tragedies at his leisure, and Lord
+Palmerston, instead of racking his brains to write leading articles
+for Cupid, might crown his locks with flowers, and sing [Greek text
+omitted], his natural Anacreontics; but alas! not so: if the despotic
+Government has its good side, Prince Louis Napoleon must acknowledge
+that it has its bad, and it is for this that the civilized world
+is compelled to substitute for it something more orderly and less
+capricious. Good as the Imperial Government might have been, it must be
+recollected, too, that since its first fall, both the Emperor and his
+admirer and would-be successor have had their chance of re-establishing
+it. "Fly from steeple to steeple" the eagles of the former did actually,
+and according to promise perch for a while on the towers of Notre Dame.
+We know the event: if the fate of war declared against the Emperor,
+the country declared against him too; and, with old Lafayette for a
+mouthpiece, the representatives of the nation did, in a neat speech,
+pronounce themselves in permanence, but spoke no more of the Emperor
+than if he had never been. Thereupon the Emperor proclaimed his son the
+Emperor Napoleon II. "L'Empereur est mort, vive l'Empereur!" shouted
+Prince Lucien. Psha! not a soul echoed the words: the play was played,
+and as for old Lafayette and his "permanent" representatives, a corporal
+with a hammer nailed up the door of their spouting-club, and once more
+Louis Stanislas Xavier rolled back to the bosom of his people.
+
+In like manner Napoleon III. returned from exile, and made his
+appearance on the frontier. His eagle appeared at Strasburg, and from
+Strasburg advanced to the capital; but it arrived at Paris with a
+keeper, and in a post-chaise; whence, by the orders of the sovereign, it
+was removed to the American shores, and there magnanimously let loose.
+Who knows, however, how soon it may be on the wing again, and what a
+flight it will take?
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF MARY ANCEL.
+
+
+"Go, my nephew," said old Father Jacob to me, "and complete thy studies
+at Strasburg: Heaven surely hath ordained thee for the ministry in these
+times of trouble, and my excellent friend Schneider will work out the
+divine intention."
+
+Schneider was an old college friend of uncle Jacob's, was a Benedictine
+monk, and a man famous for his learning; as for me, I was at that time
+my uncle's chorister, clerk, and sacristan; I swept the church,
+chanted the prayers with my shrill treble, and swung the great copper
+incense-pot on Sundays and feasts; and I toiled over the Fathers for the
+other days of the week.
+
+The old gentleman said that my progress was prodigious, and, without
+vanity, I believe he was right, for I then verily considered that
+praying was my vocation, and not fighting, as I have found since.
+
+You would hardly conceive (said the Captain, swearing a great oath) how
+devout and how learned I was in those days; I talked Latin faster than
+my own beautiful patois of Alsacian French; I could utterly overthrow
+in argument every Protestant (heretics we called them) parson in the
+neighborhood, and there was a confounded sprinkling of these unbelievers
+in our part of the country. I prayed half a dozen times a day; I fasted
+thrice in a week; and, as for penance, I used to scourge my little
+sides, till they had no more feeling than a peg-top: such was the godly
+life I led at my uncle Jacob's in the village of Steinbach.
+
+Our family had long dwelt in this place, and a large farm and a pleasant
+house were then in the possession of another uncle--uncle Edward. He was
+the youngest of the three sons of my grandfather; but Jacob, the elder,
+had shown a decided vocation for the church, from, I believe, the age of
+three, and now was by no means tired of it at sixty. My father, who
+was to have inherited the paternal property, was, as I hear, a terrible
+scamp and scapegrace, quarrelled with his family, and disappeared
+altogether, living and dying at Paris; so far we knew through my mother,
+who came, poor woman, with me, a child of six months, on her bosom, was
+refused all shelter by my grandfather, but was housed and kindly cared
+for by my good uncle Jacob.
+
+Here she lived for about seven years, and the old gentleman, when she
+died, wept over her grave a great deal more than I did, who was then too
+young to mind anything but toys or sweetmeats.
+
+During this time my grandfather was likewise carried off: he left, as I
+said, the property to his son Edward, with a small proviso in his will
+that something should be done for me, his grandson.
+
+Edward was himself a widower, with one daughter, Mary, about three years
+older than I, and certainly she was the dearest little treasure with
+which Providence ever blessed a miserly father; by the time she was
+fifteen, five farmers, three lawyers, twelve Protestant parsons, and a
+lieutenant of Dragoons had made her offers: it must not be denied that
+she was an heiress as well as a beauty, which, perhaps, had something
+to do with the love of these gentlemen. However, Mary declared that she
+intended to live single, turned away her lovers one after another, and
+devoted herself to the care of her father.
+
+Uncle Jacob was as fond of her as he was of any saint or martyr. As for
+me, at the mature age of twelve I had made a kind of divinity of her,
+and when we sang "Ave Maria" on Sundays I could not refrain from turning
+to her, where she knelt, blushing and praying and looking like an angel,
+as she was. Besides her beauty, Mary had a thousand good qualities; she
+could play better on the harpsichord, she could dance more lightly, she
+could make better pickles and puddings, than any girl in Alsace; there
+was not a want or a fancy of the old hunks her father, or a wish of mine
+or my uncle's, that she would not gratify if she could; as for herself,
+the sweet soul had neither wants nor wishes except to see us happy.
+
+I could talk to you for a year of all the pretty kindnesses that she
+would do for me; how, when she found me of early mornings among my
+books, her presence "would cast a light upon the day;" how she used to
+smooth and fold my little surplice, and embroider me caps and gowns for
+high feast-days; how she used to bring flowers for the altar, and who
+could deck it so well as she? But sentiment does not come glibly from
+under a grizzled moustache, so I will drop it, if you please.
+
+Amongst other favors she showed me, Mary used to be particularly fond of
+kissing me: it was a thing I did not so much value in those days, but I
+found that the more I grew alive to the extent of the benefit, the less
+she would condescend to confer it on me; till at last, when I was about
+fourteen, she discontinued it altogether, of her own wish at least; only
+sometimes I used to be rude, and take what she had now become so mighty
+unwilling to give.
+
+I was engaged in a contest of this sort one day with Mary, when, just
+as I was about to carry off a kiss from her cheek, I was saluted with a
+staggering slap on my own, which was bestowed by uncle Edward, and sent
+me reeling some yards down the garden.
+
+The old gentleman, whose tongue was generally as close as his purse, now
+poured forth a flood of eloquence which quite astonished me. I did not
+think that so much was to be said on any subject as he managed to utter
+on one, and that was abuse of me; he stamped, he swore, he screamed;
+and then, from complimenting me, he turned to Mary, and saluted her in
+a manner equally forcible and significant; she, who was very much
+frightened at the commencement of the scene, grew very angry at the
+coarse words he used, and the wicked motives he imputed to her.
+
+"The child is but fourteen," she said; "he is your own nephew, and a
+candidate for holy orders:--father, it is a shame that you should thus
+speak of me, your daughter, or of one of his holy profession."
+
+I did not particularly admire this speech myself, but it had an effect
+on my uncle, and was the cause of the words with which this history
+commences. The old gentleman persuaded his brother that I must be
+sent to Strasburg, and there kept until my studies for the church were
+concluded. I was furnished with a letter to my uncle's old college chum,
+Professor Schneider, who was to instruct me in theology and Greek.
+
+I was not sorry to see Strasburg, of the wonders of which I had heard
+so much; but felt very loth as the time drew near when I must quit my
+pretty cousin, and my good old uncle. Mary and I managed, however,
+a parting walk, in which a number of tender things were said on both
+sides. I am told that you Englishmen consider it cowardly to cry; as for
+me, I wept and roared incessantly: when Mary squeezed me, for the last
+time, the tears came out of me as if I had been neither more nor less
+than a great wet sponge. My cousin's eyes were stoically dry; her
+ladyship had a part to play, and it would have been wrong for her to
+be in love with a young chit of fourteen--so she carried herself with
+perfect coolness, as if there was nothing the matter. I should not have
+known that she cared for me, had it not been for a letter which she
+wrote me a month afterwards--THEN, nobody was by, and the consequence
+was that the letter was half washed away with her weeping; if she had
+used a watering-pot the thing could not have been better done.
+
+Well, I arrived at Strasburg--a dismal, old-fashioned, rickety town in
+those days--and straightway presented myself and letter at Schneider's
+door; over it was written--
+
+
+     COMITE DE SALUT PUBLIC.
+
+
+Would you believe it? I was so ignorant a young fellow, that I had no
+idea of the meaning of the words; however, I entered the citizen's room
+without fear, and sat down in his ante-chamber until I could be admitted
+to see him.
+
+Here I found very few indications of his reverence's profession; the
+walls were hung round with portraits of Robespierre, Marat, and the
+like; a great bust of Mirabeau, mutilated, with the word Traitre
+underneath; lists and republican proclamations, tobacco-pipes and
+fire-arms. At a deal-table, stained with grease and wine, sat a
+gentleman, with a huge pigtail dangling down to that part of his person
+which immediately succeeds his back, and a red nightcap, containing a
+TRICOLOR cockade as large as a pancake. He was smoking a short pipe,
+reading a little book, and sobbing as if his heart would break. Every
+now and then he would make brief remarks upon the personages or the
+incidents of his book, by which I could judge that he was a man of
+the very keenest sensibilities--"Ah, brigand!" "O malheureuse!" "O
+Charlotte, Charlotte!" The work which this gentleman was perusing is
+called "The Sorrows of Werter;" it was all the rage, in those days, and
+my friend was only following the fashion. I asked him if I could see
+Father Schneider? he turned towards me a hideous, pimpled face, which I
+dream of now at forty years' distance.
+
+"Father who?" said he. "Do you imagine that citizen Schneider has not
+thrown off the absurd mummery of priesthood? If you were a little older
+you would go to prison for calling him Father Schneider--many a man has
+died for less;" and he pointed to a picture of a guillotine, which was
+hanging in the room.
+
+I was in amazement.
+
+"What is he? Is he not a teacher of Greek, an abbe, a monk, until
+monasteries were abolished, the learned editor of the songs of
+'Anacreon?'"
+
+"He WAS all this," replied my grim friend; "he is now a Member of the
+Committee of Public Safety, and would think no more of ordering your
+head off than of drinking this tumbler of beer."
+
+He swallowed, himself, the frothy liquid, and then proceeded to give me
+the history of the man to whom my uncle had sent me for instruction.
+
+Schneider was born in 1756: was a student at Wuerzburg, and afterwards
+entered a convent, where he remained nine years. He here became
+distinguished for his learning and his talents as a preacher, and became
+chaplain to Duke Charles of Wuertemberg. The doctrines of the Illuminati
+began about this time to spread in Germany, and Schneider speedily
+joined the sect. He had been a professor of Greek at Cologne; and being
+compelled, on account of his irregularity, to give up his chair, he came
+to Strasburg at the commencement of the French Revolution, and acted for
+some time a principal part as a revolutionary agent at Strasburg.
+
+["Heaven knows what would have happened to me had I continued long under
+his tuition!" said the Captain. "I owe the preservation of my morals
+entirely to my entering the army. A man, sir, who is a soldier, has very
+little time to be wicked; except in the case of a siege and the sack of
+a town, when a little license can offend nobody."]
+
+By the time that my friend had concluded Schneider's biography, we had
+grown tolerably intimate, and I imparted to him (with that experience so
+remarkable in youth) my whole history--my course of studies, my pleasant
+country life, the names and qualities of my dear relations, and my
+occupations in the vestry before religion was abolished by order of the
+Republic. In the course of my speech I recurred so often to the name
+of my cousin Mary, that the gentleman could not fail to perceive what a
+tender place she had in my heart.
+
+Then we reverted to "The Sorrows of Werter," and discussed the merits
+of that sublime performance. Although I had before felt some misgivings
+about my new acquaintance, my heart now quite yearned towards him. He
+talked about love and sentiment in a manner which made me recollect that
+I was in love myself; and you know that when a man is in that condition,
+his taste is not very refined, any maudlin trash of prose or verse
+appearing sublime to him, provided it correspond, in some degree, with
+his own situation.
+
+"Candid youth!" cried my unknown, "I love to hear thy innocent story and
+look on thy guileless face. There is, alas! so much of the contrary in
+this world, so much terror and crime and blood, that we who mingle with
+it are only too glad to forget it. Would that we could shake off our
+cares as men, and be boys, as thou art, again!"
+
+Here my friend began to weep once more, and fondly shook my hand. I
+blessed my stars that I had, at the very outset of my career, met with
+one who was so likely to aid me. What a slanderous world it is,
+thought I; the people in our village call these Republicans wicked and
+bloody-minded; a lamb could not be more tender than this sentimental
+bottle-nosed gentleman! The worthy man then gave me to understand that
+he held a place under Government. I was busy in endeavoring to discover
+what his situation might be, when the door of the next apartment opened,
+and Schneider made his appearance.
+
+At first he did not notice me, but he advanced to my new acquaintance,
+and gave him, to my astonishment, something very like a blow.
+
+"You drunken, talking fool," he said, "you are always after your time.
+Fourteen people are cooling their heels yonder, waiting until you have
+finished your beer and your sentiment!"
+
+My friend slunk muttering out of the room.
+
+"That fellow," said Schneider, turning to me, "is our public
+executioner: a capital hand too if he would but keep decent time; but
+the brute is always drunk, and blubbering over 'The Sorrows of Werter!'"
+
+
+I know not whether it was his old friendship for my uncle, or my
+proper merits, which won the heart of this the sternest ruffian of
+Robespierre's crew; but certain it is, that he became strangely attached
+to me, and kept me constantly about his person. As for the priesthood
+and the Greek, they were of course very soon out of the question. The
+Austrians were on our frontier; every day brought us accounts of
+battles won; and the youth of Strasburg, and of all France, indeed, were
+bursting with military ardor. As for me, I shared the general mania,
+and speedily mounted a cockade as large as that of my friend, the
+executioner.
+
+The occupations of this worthy were unremitting. Saint Just, who had
+come down from Paris to preside over our town, executed the laws and
+the aristocrats with terrible punctuality; and Schneider used to
+make country excursions in search of offenders with this fellow, as
+a provost-marshal, at his back. In the meantime, having entered my
+sixteenth year, and being a proper lad of my age, I had joined a
+regiment of cavalry, and was scampering now after the Austrians
+who menaced us, and now threatening the Emigres, who were banded at
+Coblentz. My love for my dear cousin increased as my whiskers grew; and
+when I was scarcely seventeen, I thought myself man enough to marry her,
+and to cut the throat of any one who should venture to say me nay.
+
+I need not tell you that during my absence at Strasburg, great changes
+had occurred in our little village, and somewhat of the revolutionary
+rage had penetrated even to that quiet and distant place. The hideous
+"Fete of the Supreme Being" had been celebrated at Paris; the practice
+of our ancient religion was forbidden; its professors were most of them
+in concealment, or in exile, or had expiated on the scaffold their crime
+of Christianity. In our poor village my uncle's church was closed, and
+he, himself, an inmate in my brother's house, only owing his safety to
+his great popularity among his former flock, and the influence of Edward
+Ancel.
+
+The latter had taken in the Revolution a somewhat prominent part; that
+is, he had engaged in many contracts for the army, attended the clubs
+regularly, corresponded with the authorities of his department, and was
+loud in his denunciations of the aristocrats in the neighborhood. But
+owing, perhaps, to the German origin of the peasantry, and their quiet
+and rustic lives, the revolutionary fury which prevailed in the cities
+had hardly reached the country people. The occasional visit of a
+commissary from Paris or Strasburg served to keep the flame alive, and
+to remind the rural swains of the existence of a Republic in France.
+
+Now and then, when I could gain a week's leave of absence, I returned to
+the village, and was received with tolerable politeness by my uncle, and
+with a warmer feeling by his daughter.
+
+I won't describe to you the progress of our love, or the wrath of my
+uncle Edward, when he discovered that it still continued. He swore and
+he stormed; he locked Mary into her chamber, and vowed that he would
+withdraw the allowance he made me, if ever I ventured near her. His
+daughter, he said, should never marry a hopeless, penniless subaltern;
+and Mary declared she would not marry without his consent. What had I to
+do?--to despair and to leave her. As for my poor uncle Jacob, he had no
+counsel to give me, and, indeed, no spirit left: his little church was
+turned into a stable, his surplice torn off his shoulders, and he was
+only too lucky in keeping HIS HEAD on them. A bright thought struck him:
+suppose you were to ask the advice of my old friend Schneider regarding
+this marriage? he has ever been your friend, and may help you now as
+before.
+
+(Here the Captain paused a little.) You may fancy (continued he) that it
+was droll advice of a reverend gentleman like uncle Jacob to counsel
+me in this manner, and to bid me make friends with such a murderous
+cut-throat as Schneider; but we thought nothing of it in those days;
+guillotining was as common as dancing, and a man was only thought the
+better patriot the more severe he might be. I departed forthwith to
+Strasburg, and requested the vote and interest of the Citizen President
+of the Committee of Public Safety.
+
+He heard me with a great deal of attention. I described to him most
+minutely the circumstance, expatiated upon the charms of my dear Mary,
+and painted her to him from head to foot. Her golden hair and her
+bright blushing cheeks, her slim waist and her tripping tiny feet;
+and furthermore, I added that she possessed a fortune which ought, by
+rights, to be mine, but for the miserly old father. "Curse him for an
+aristocrat!" concluded I, in my wrath.
+
+As I had been discoursing about Mary's charms Schneider listened with
+much complacency and attention: when I spoke about her fortune, his
+interest redoubled; and when I called her father an aristocrat, the
+worthy ex-Jesuit gave a grin of satisfaction, which was really quite
+terrible. O fool that I was to trust him so far!
+
+
+The very same evening an officer waited upon me with the following note
+from Saint Just:--
+
+
+"STRASBURG, Fifth year of the Republic, one and indivisible, 11 Ventose.
+
+"The citizen Pierre Ancel is to leave Strasburg within two hours, and
+to carry the enclosed despatches to the President of the Committee of
+Public Safety at Paris. The necessary leave of absence from his military
+duties has been provided. Instant punishment will follow the slightest
+delay on the road.
+
+"Salut et Fraternite."
+
+
+There was no choice but obedience, and off I sped on my weary way to the
+capital.
+
+As I was riding out of the Paris gate I met an equipage which I knew to
+be that of Schneider. The ruffian smiled at me as I passed, and wished
+me a bon voyage. Behind his chariot came a curious machine, or cart; a
+great basket, three stout poles, and several planks, all painted red,
+were lying in this vehicle, on the top of which was seated my friend
+with the big cockade. It was the PORTABLE GUILLOTINE which Schneider
+always carried with him on his travels. The bourreau was reading "The
+Sorrows of Werter," and looked as sentimental as usual.
+
+I will not speak of my voyage in order to relate to you Schneider's.
+My story had awakened the wretch's curiosity and avarice, and he was
+determined that such a prize as I had shown my cousin to be should fall
+into no hands but his own. No sooner, in fact, had I quitted his
+room than he procured the order for my absence, and was on the way to
+Steinbach as I met him.
+
+The journey is not a very long one; and on the next day my uncle Jacob
+was surprised by receiving a message that the citizen Schneider was in
+the village, and was coming to greet his old friend. Old Jacob was in
+an ecstasy, for he longed to see his college acquaintance, and he hoped
+also that Schneider had come into that part of the country upon the
+marriage-business of your humble servant. Of course Mary was summoned to
+give her best dinner, and wear her best frock; and her father made ready
+to receive the new State dignitary.
+
+Schneider's carriage speedily rolled into the court-yard, and
+Schneider's CART followed, as a matter of course. The ex-priest only
+entered the house; his companion remaining with the horses to dine in
+private. Here was a most touching meeting between him and Jacob. They
+talked over their old college pranks and successes; they capped Greek
+verses, and quoted ancient epigrams upon their tutors, who had been
+dead since the Seven Years' War. Mary declared it was quite touching to
+listen to the merry friendly talk of these two old gentlemen.
+
+After the conversation had continued for a time in this strain,
+Schneider drew up all of a sudden, and said quietly, that he had come
+on particular and unpleasant business--hinting about troublesome times,
+spies, evil reports, and so forth. Then he called uncle Edward aside,
+and had with him a long and earnest conversation: so Jacob went out and
+talked with Schneider's FRIEND; they speedily became very intimate, for
+the ruffian detailed all the circumstances of his interview with me.
+When he returned into the house, some time after this pleasing colloquy,
+he found the tone of the society strangely altered. Edward Ancel, pale
+as a sheet, trembling, and crying for mercy; poor Mary weeping; and
+Schneider pacing energetically about the apartment, raging about the
+rights of man, the punishment of traitors, and the one and indivisible
+republic.
+
+"Jacob," he said, as my uncle entered the room, "I was willing, for the
+sake of our old friendship, to forget the crimes of your brother. He is
+a known and dangerous aristocrat; he holds communications with the enemy
+on the frontier; he is a possessor of great and ill-gotten wealth, of
+which he has plundered the Republic. Do you know," said he, turning to
+Edward Ancel, "where the least of these crimes, or the mere suspicion of
+them, would lead you?"
+
+Poor Edward sat trembling in his chair, and answered not a word. He
+knew full well how quickly, in this dreadful time, punishment followed
+suspicion; and, though guiltless of all treason with the enemy, perhaps
+he was aware that, in certain contracts with the Government, he had
+taken to himself a more than patriotic share of profit.
+
+"Do you know," resumed Schneider, in a voice of thunder, "for
+what purpose I came hither, and by whom I am accompanied? I am the
+administrator of the justice of the Republic. The life of yourself and
+your family is in my hands: yonder man, who follows me, is the executor
+of the law; he has rid the nation of hundreds of wretches like yourself.
+A single word from me, and your doom is sealed without hope, and your
+last hour is come. Ho! Gregoire!" shouted he; "is all ready?"
+
+Gregoire replied from the court, "I can put up the machine in half an
+hour. Shall I go down to the village and call the troops and the law
+people?"
+
+"Do you hear him?" said Schneider. "The guillotine is in the court-yard;
+your name is on my list, and I have witnesses to prove your crime. Have
+you a word in your defence?"
+
+Not a word came; the old gentleman was dumb; but his daughter, who did
+not give way to his terror, spoke for him.
+
+"You cannot, sir," said she, "although you say it, FEEL that my father
+is guilty; you would not have entered our house thus alone if you had
+thought it. You threaten him in this manner because you have something
+to ask and to gain from us: what is it, citizen?--tell us how much you
+value our lives, and what sum we are to pay for our ransom?"
+
+"Sum!" said uncle Jacob; "he does not want money of us: my old friend,
+my college chum, does not come hither to drive bargains with anybody
+belonging to Jacob Ancel?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir, no, you can't want money of us," shrieked Edward; "we are
+the poorest people of the village: ruined, Monsieur Schneider, ruined in
+the cause of the Republic."
+
+"Silence, father," said my brave Mary; "this man wants a PRICE: he
+comes, with his worthy friend yonder, to frighten us, not to kill us.
+If we die, he cannot touch a sou of our money; it is confiscated to the
+State. Tell us, sir, what is the price of our safety?"
+
+Schneider smiled, and bowed with perfect politeness.
+
+"Mademoiselle Marie," he said, "is perfectly correct in her surmise. I
+do not want the life of this poor drivelling old man: my intentions
+are much more peaceable, be assured. It rests entirely with this
+accomplished young lady (whose spirit I like, and whose ready wit I
+admire), whether the business between us shall be a matter of love or
+death. I humbly offer myself, citizen Ancel, as a candidate for the
+hand of your charming daughter. Her goodness, her beauty, and the
+large fortune which I know you intend to give her, would render her a
+desirable match for the proudest man in the republic, and, I am sure,
+would make me the happiest."
+
+"This must be a jest, Monsieur Schneider," said Mary, trembling, and
+turning deadly pale: "you cannot mean this; you do not know me: you
+never heard of me until to-day."
+
+"Pardon me, belle dame," replied he; "your cousin Pierre has often
+talked to me of your virtues; indeed, it was by his special suggestion
+that I made the visit."
+
+"It is false!--it is a base and cowardly lie!" exclaimed she (for
+the young lady's courage was up),--"Pierre never could have forgotten
+himself and me so as to offer me to one like you. You come here with
+a lie on your lips--a lie against my father, to swear his life away,
+against my dear cousin's honor and love. It is useless now to deny it:
+father, I love Pierre Ancel; I will marry no other but him--no, though
+our last penny were paid to this man as the price of our freedom."
+
+Schneider's only reply to this was a call to his friend Gregoire.
+
+"Send down to the village for the maire and some gendarmes; and tell
+your people to make ready."
+
+"Shall I put THE MACHINE up?" shouted he of the sentimental turn.
+
+"You hear him," said Schneider; "Marie Ancel, you may decide the fate
+of your father. I shall return in a few hours," concluded he, "and will
+then beg to know your decision."
+
+The advocate of the rights of man then left the apartment, and left the
+family, as you may imagine, in no very pleasant mood.
+
+Old uncle Jacob, during the few minutes which had elapsed in the
+enactment of this strange scene, sat staring wildly at Schneider, and
+holding Mary on his knees: the poor little thing had fled to him for
+protection, and not to her father, who was kneeling almost senseless at
+the window, gazing at the executioner and his hideous preparations. The
+instinct of the poor girl had not failed her; she knew that Jacob was
+her only protector, if not of her life--heaven bless him!--of her honor.
+"Indeed," the old man said, in a stout voice, "this must never be,
+my dearest child--you must not marry this man. If it be the will of
+Providence that we fall, we shall have at least the thought to console
+us that we die innocent. Any man in France at a time like this, would be
+a coward and traitor if he feared to meet the fate of the thousand brave
+and good who have preceded us."
+
+"Who speaks of dying?" said Edward. "You, Brother Jacob?--you would not
+lay that poor girl's head on the scaffold, or mine, your dear brother's.
+You will not let us die, Mary; you will not, for a small sacrifice,
+bring your poor old father into danger?"
+
+Mary made no answer. "Perhaps," she said, "there is time for escape:
+he is to be here but in two hours; in two hours we may be safe, in
+concealment, or on the frontier." And she rushed to the door of the
+chamber, as if she would have instantly made the attempt: two gendarmes
+were at the door. "We have orders, Mademoiselle," they said, "to
+allow no one to leave this apartment until the return of the citizen
+Schneider."
+
+Alas! all hope of escape was impossible. Mary became quite silent for a
+while; she would not speak to uncle Jacob; and, in reply to her father's
+eager questions, she only replied, coldly, that she would answer
+Schneider when he arrived.
+
+The two dreadful hours passed away only too quickly; and, punctual
+to his appointment, the ex-monk appeared. Directly he entered, Mary
+advanced to him, and said, calmly,--
+
+"Sir, I could not deceive you if I said that I freely accepted the offer
+which you have made me. I will be your wife; but I tell you that I love
+another; and that it is only to save the lives of those two old men that
+I yield my person up to you."
+
+Schneider bowed, and said,--
+
+"It is bravely spoken. I like your candor--your beauty. As for the love,
+excuse me for saying that is a matter of total indifference. I have no
+doubt, however, that it will come as soon as your feelings in favor of
+the young gentleman, your cousin, have lost their present fervor.
+That engaging young man has, at present, another mistress--Glory. He
+occupies, I believe, the distinguished post of corporal in a regiment
+which is about to march to--Perpignan, I believe."
+
+It was, in fact, Monsieur Schneider's polite intention to banish me as
+far as possible from the place of my birth; and he had, accordingly,
+selected the Spanish frontier as the spot where I was to display my
+future military talents.
+
+Mary gave no answer to this sneer: she seemed perfectly resigned and
+calm: she only said,--
+
+"I must make, however, some conditions regarding our proposed marriage,
+which a gentleman of Monsieur Schneider's gallantry cannot refuse."
+
+"Pray command me," replied the husband elect. "Fair lady, you know I am
+your slave."
+
+"You occupy a distinguished political rank, citizen representative,"
+said she; "and we in our village are likewise known and beloved. I
+should be ashamed, I confess, to wed you here; for our people would
+wonder at the sudden marriage, and imply that it was only by compulsion
+that I gave you my hand. Let us, then, perform this ceremony at
+Strasburg, before the public authorities of the city, with the state
+and solemnity which befits the marriage of one of the chief men of the
+Republic."
+
+"Be it so, madam," he answered, and gallantly proceeded to embrace his
+bride.
+
+Mary did not shrink from this ruffian's kiss; nor did she reply when
+poor old Jacob, who sat sobbing in a corner, burst out, and said,--
+
+"O Mary, Mary, I did not think this of thee!"
+
+"Silence, brother!" hastily said Edward; "my good son-in-law will pardon
+your ill-humor."
+
+I believe uncle Edward in his heart was pleased at the notion of the
+marriage; he only cared for money and rank, and was little scrupulous as
+to the means of obtaining them.
+
+The matter then was finally arranged; and presently, after Schneider had
+transacted the affairs which brought him into that part of the country,
+the happy bridal party set forward for Strasburg. Uncles Jacob and
+Edward occupied the back seat of the old family carriage, and the
+young bride and bridegroom (he was nearly Jacob's age) were seated
+majestically in front. Mary has often since talked to me of this
+dreadful journey. She said she wondered at the scrupulous politeness of
+Schneider during the route; nay, that at another period she could have
+listened to and admired the singular talent of this man, his great
+learning, his fancy, and wit; but her mind was bent upon other things,
+and the poor girl firmly thought that her last day was come.
+
+In the meantime, by a blessed chance, I had not ridden three leagues
+from Strasburg, when the officer of a passing troop of a cavalry
+regiment, looking at the beast on which I was mounted, was pleased
+to take a fancy to it, and ordered me, in an authoritative tone, to
+descend, and to give up my steed for the benefit of the Republic. I
+represented to him, in vain, that I was a soldier, like himself, and the
+bearer of despatches to Paris. "Fool!" he said; "do you think they would
+send despatches by a man who can ride at best but ten leagues a day?"
+And the honest soldier was so wroth at my supposed duplicity, that he
+not only confiscated my horse, but my saddle, and the little portmanteau
+which contained the chief part of my worldly goods and treasure. I had
+nothing for it but to dismount, and take my way on foot back again to
+Strasburg. I arrived there in the evening, determining the next morning
+to make my case known to the citizen St. Just; and though I made my
+entry without a sou, I don't know what secret exultation I felt at again
+being able to return.
+
+The ante-chamber of such a great man as St. Just was, in those days,
+too crowded for an unprotected boy to obtain an early audience; two days
+passed before I could obtain a sight of the friend of Robespierre. On
+the third day, as I was still waiting for the interview, I heard a great
+bustle in the courtyard of the house, and looked out with many others at
+the spectacle.
+
+A number of men and women, singing epithalamiums, and dressed in some
+absurd imitation of Roman costume, a troop of soldiers and gendarmerie,
+and an immense crowd of the badauds of Strasburg, were surrounding
+a carriage which then entered the court of the mayoralty. In this
+carriage, great God! I saw my dear Mary, and Schneider by her side. The
+truth instantly came upon me: the reason for Schneider's keen inquiries
+and my abrupt dismissal; but I could not believe that Mary was false to
+me. I had only to look in her face, white and rigid as marble, to see
+that this proposed marriage was not with her consent.
+
+I fell back in the crowd as the procession entered the great room in
+which I was, and hid my face in my hands: I could not look upon her as
+the wife of another,--upon her so long loved and truly--the saint of my
+childhood--the pride and hope of my youth--torn from me for ever, and
+delivered over to the unholy arms of the murderer who stood before me.
+
+The door of St. Just's private apartment opened, and he took his seat at
+the table of mayoralty just as Schneider and his cortege arrived before
+it.
+
+Schneider then said that he came in before the authorities of the
+Republic to espouse the citoyenne Marie Ancel.
+
+"Is she a minor?" asked St. Just.
+
+"She is a minor, but her father is here to give her away."
+
+"I am here," said uncle Edward, coming eagerly forward and bowing.
+"Edward Ancel, so please you, citizen representative. The worthy citizen
+Schneider has done me the honor of marrying into my family."
+
+"But my father has not told you the terms of the marriage," said Mary,
+interrupting him, in a loud, clear voice.
+
+Here Schneider seized her hand, and endeavored to prevent her from
+speaking. Her father turned pale, and cried, "Stop, Mary, stop! For
+heaven's sake, remember your poor old father's danger!"
+
+"Sir, may I speak?"
+
+"Let the young woman speak," said St. Just, "if she have a desire to
+talk." He did not suspect what would be the purport of her story.
+
+"Sir," she said, "two days since the citizen Schneider entered for the
+first time our house; and you will fancy that it must be a love of very
+sudden growth which has brought either him or me before you to-day. He
+had heard from a person who is now unhappily not present, of my name and
+of the wealth which my family was said to possess; and hence arose this
+mad design concerning me. He came into our village with supreme power,
+an executioner at his heels, and the soldiery and authorities of the
+district entirely under his orders. He threatened my father with death
+if he refused to give up his daughter; and I, who knew that there was no
+chance of escape, except here before you, consented to become his wife.
+My father I know to be innocent, for all his transactions with the State
+have passed through my hands. Citizen representative, I demand to be
+freed from this marriage; and I charge Schneider as a traitor to the
+Republic, as a man who would have murdered an innocent citizen for the
+sake of private gain."
+
+During the delivery of this little speech, uncle Jacob had been sobbing
+and panting like a broken-winded horse; and when Mary had done, he
+rushed up to her and kissed her, and held her tight in his arms. "Bless
+thee, my child!" he cried, "for having had the courage to speak the
+truth, and shame thy old father and me, who dared not say a word."
+
+"The girl amazes me," said Schneider, with a look of astonishment. "I
+never saw her, it is true, till yesterday; but I used no force: her
+father gave her to me with his free consent, and she yielded as gladly.
+Speak, Edward Ancel, was it not so?"
+
+"It was, indeed, by my free consent," said Edward, trembling.
+
+"For shame, brother!" cried old Jacob. "Sir, it was by Edward's free
+consent and my niece's; but the guillotine was in the court-yard!
+Question Schneider's famulus, the man Gregoire, him who reads 'The
+Sorrows of Werter.'"
+
+Gregoire stepped forward, and looked hesitatingly at Schneider, as he
+said, "I know not what took place within doors; but I was ordered to put
+up the scaffold without; and I was told to get soldiers, and let no one
+leave the house."
+
+"Citizen St. Just," cried Schneider, "you will not allow the testimony
+of a ruffian like this, of a foolish girl, and a mad ex-priest, to weigh
+against the word of one who has done such service to the Republic: it is
+a base conspiracy to betray me; the whole family is known to favor the
+interest of the emigres."
+
+"And therefore you would marry a member of the family, and allow the
+others to escape; you must make a better defence, citizen Schneider,"
+said St. Just, sternly.
+
+Here I came forward, and said that, three days since, I had received an
+order to quit Strasburg for Paris immediately after a conversation with
+Schneider, in which I had asked him his aid in promoting my marriage
+with my cousin, Mary Ancel; that he had heard from me full accounts
+regarding her father's wealth; and that he had abruptly caused my
+dismissal, in order to carry on his scheme against her.
+
+"You are in the uniform of a regiment of this town; who sent you from
+it?" said St. Just.
+
+I produced the order, signed by himself, and the despatches which
+Schneider had sent me.
+
+"The signature is mine, but the despatches did not come from my office.
+Can you prove in any way your conversation with Schneider?"
+
+"Why," said my sentimental friend Gregoire, "for the matter of that, I
+can answer that the lad was always talking about this young woman:
+he told me the whole story himself, and many a good laugh I had with
+citizen Schneider as we talked about it."
+
+"The charge against Edward Ancel must be examined into," said St. Just.
+"The marriage cannot take place. But if I had ratified it, Mary Ancel,
+what then would have been your course?"
+
+Mary felt for a moment in her bosom, and said--"He would have died
+to-night--I would have stabbed him with this dagger."*
+
+
+     * This reply, and, indeed, the whole of the story, is
+     historical. An account, by Charles Nodier, in the Revue de
+     Paris, suggested it to the writer.
+
+
+The rain was beating down the streets, and yet they were thronged; all
+the world was hastening to the market-place, where the worthy Gregoire
+was about to perform some of the pleasant duties of his office. On this
+occasion, it was not death that he was to inflict; he was only to expose
+a criminal who was to be sent on afterwards to Paris. St. Just had
+ordered that Schneider should stand for six hours in the public place
+of Strasburg, and then be sent on to the capital to be dealt with as the
+authorities might think fit.
+
+The people followed with execrations the villain to his place of
+punishment; and Gregoire grinned as he fixed up to the post the man
+whose orders he had obeyed so often--who had delivered over to disgrace
+and punishment so many who merited it not.
+
+Schneider was left for several hours exposed to the mockery and insults
+of the mob; he was then, according to his sentence, marched on to Paris,
+where it is probable that he would have escaped death, but for his own
+fault. He was left for some time in prison, quite unnoticed, perhaps
+forgotten: day by day fresh victims were carried to the scaffold, and
+yet the Alsacian tribune remained alive; at last, by the mediation
+of one of his friends, a long petition was presented to Robespierre,
+stating his services and his innocence, and demanding his freedom. The
+reply to this was an order for his instant execution: the wretch died
+in the last days of Robespierre's reign. His comrade, St. Just, followed
+him, as you know; but Edward Ancel had been released before this, for
+the action of my brave Mary had created a strong feeling in his favor.
+
+"And Mary?" said I.
+
+Here a stout and smiling old lady entered the Captain's little room: she
+was leaning on the arm of a military-looking man of some forty years,
+and followed by a number of noisy, rosy children.
+
+"This is Mary Ancel," said the Captain, "and I am Captain Pierre, and
+yonder is the Colonel, my son; and you see us here assembled in force,
+for it is the fete of little Jacob yonder, whose brothers and sisters
+have all come from their schools to dance at his birthday."
+
+
+
+
+BEATRICE MERGER.
+
+
+Beatrice Merger, whose name might figure at the head of one of Mr.
+Colburn's politest romances--so smooth and aristocratic does it
+sound--is no heroine, except of her own simple history; she is not a
+fashionable French Countess, nor even a victim of the Revolution.
+
+She is a stout, sturdy girl of two-and-twenty, with a face beaming with
+good nature, and marked dreadfully by smallpox; and a pair of black
+eyes, which might have done some execution had they been placed in a
+smoother face. Beatrice's station in society is not very exalted; she
+is a servant of all-work: she will dress your wife, your dinner, your
+children; she does beefsteaks and plain work; she makes beds, blacks
+boots, and waits at table;--such, at least, were the offices which she
+performed in the fashionable establishment of the writer of this book:
+perhaps her history may not inaptly occupy a few pages of it.
+
+"My father died," said Beatrice, "about six years since, and left my
+poor mother with little else but a small cottage and a strip of land,
+and four children too young to work. It was hard enough in my father's
+time to supply so many little mouths with food; and how was a poor
+widowed woman to provide for them now, who had neither the strength nor
+the opportunity for labor?
+
+"Besides us, to be sure, there was my old aunt; and she would have
+helped us, but she could not, for the old woman is bed-ridden; so she
+did nothing but occupy our best room, and grumble from morning till
+night: heaven knows, poor old soul, that she had no great reason to be
+very happy; for you know, sir, that it frets the temper to be sick; and
+that it is worse still to be sick and hungry too.
+
+"At that time, in the country where we lived (in Picardy, not very far
+from Boulogne), times were so bad that the best workman could hardly
+find employ; and when he did, he was happy if he could earn a matter of
+twelve sous a day. Mother, work as she would, could not gain more than
+six; and it was a hard job, out of this, to put meat into six bellies,
+and clothing on six backs. Old Aunt Bridget would scold, as she got her
+portion of black bread; and my little brothers used to cry if theirs did
+not come in time. I, too, used to cry when I got my share; for mother
+kept only a little, little piece for herself, and said that she had
+dined in the fields,--God pardon her for the lie! and bless her, as I
+am sure He did; for, but for Him, no working man or woman could subsist
+upon such a wretched morsel as my dear mother took.
+
+"I was a thin, ragged, barefooted girl, then, and sickly and weak for
+want of food; but I think I felt mother's hunger more than my own: and
+many and many a bitter night I lay awake, crying, and praying to God to
+give me means of working for myself and aiding her. And he has, indeed,
+been good to me," said pious Beatrice, "for He has given me all this!
+
+"Well, time rolled on, and matters grew worse than ever: winter came,
+and was colder to us than any other winter, for our clothes were thinner
+and more torn; mother sometimes could find no work, for the fields in
+which she labored were hidden under the snow; so that when we wanted
+them most we had them least--warmth, work, or food.
+
+"I knew that, do what I would, mother would never let me leave her,
+because I looked to my little brothers and my old cripple of an aunt;
+but still, bread was better for us than all my service; and when I left
+them the six would have a slice more; so I determined to bid good-by to
+nobody, but to go away, and look for work elsewhere. One Sunday, when
+mother and the little ones were at church, I went in to Aunt Bridget,
+and said, 'Tell mother, when she comes back, that Beatrice is gone.' I
+spoke quite stoutly, as if I did not care about it.
+
+"'Gone! gone where?' said she. 'You ain't going to leave me alone,
+you nasty thing; you ain't going to the village to dance, you ragged,
+barefooted slut: you're all of a piece in this house--your mother, your
+brothers, and you. I know you've got meat in the kitchen, and you only
+give me black bread;' and here the old lady began to scream as if her
+heart would break; but we did not mind it, we were so used to it.
+
+"'Aunt,' said I, 'I'm going, and took this very opportunity because you
+WERE alone: tell mother I am too old now to eat her bread, and do no
+work for it: I am going, please God, where work and bread can be found:'
+and so I kissed her: she was so astonished that she could not move or
+speak; and I walked away through the old room, and the little garden,
+God knows whither!
+
+"I heard the old woman screaming after me, but I did not stop nor turn
+round. I don't think I could, for my heart was very full; and if I had
+gone back again, I should never have had the courage to go away. So I
+walked a long, long way, until night fell; and I thought of poor mother
+coming home from mass, and not finding me; and little Pierre shouting
+out, in his clear voice, for Beatrice to bring him his supper. I think
+I should like to have died that night, and I thought I should too; for
+when I was obliged to throw myself on the cold, hard ground, my feet
+were too torn and weary to bear me any further.
+
+"Just then the moon got up; and do you know I felt a comfort in looking
+at it, for I knew it was shining on our little cottage, and it seemed
+like an old friend's face? A little way on, as I saw by the moon, was a
+village: and I saw, too, that a man was coming towards me; he must have
+heard me crying, I suppose.
+
+"Was not God good to me? This man was a farmer, who had need of a girl
+in his house; he made me tell him why I was alone, and I told him the
+same story I have told you, and he believed me and took me home. I had
+walked six long leagues from our village that day, asking everywhere for
+work in vain; and here, at bedtime, I found a bed and a supper!
+
+"Here I lived very well for some months; my master was very good and
+kind to me; but, unluckily, too poor to give me any wages; so that I
+could save nothing to send to my poor mother. My mistress used to scold;
+but I was used to that at home, from Aunt Bridget: and she beat me
+sometimes, but I did not mind it; for your hardy country girl is not
+like your tender town lasses, who cry if a pin pricks them, and give
+warning to their mistresses at the first hard word. The only drawback
+to my comfort was, that I had no news of my mother; I could not write
+to her, nor could she have read my letter, if I had; so there I was,
+at only six leagues' distance from home, as far off as if I had been to
+Paris or to 'Merica.
+
+"However, in a few months I grew so listless and homesick, that my
+mistress said she would keep me no longer; and though I went away as
+poor as I came, I was still too glad to go back to the old village
+again, and see dear mother, if it were but for a day. I knew she would
+share her crust with me, as she had done for so long a time before; and
+hoped that, now, as I was taller and stronger, I might find work more
+easily in the neighborhood.
+
+"You may fancy what a fete it was when I came back; though I'm sure we
+cried as much as if it had been a funeral. Mother got into a fit, which
+frightened us all; and as for Aunt Bridget, she SKREELED away for hours
+together, and did not scold for two days at least. Little Pierre offered
+me the whole of his supper; poor little man! his slice of bread was no
+bigger than before I went away.
+
+"Well, I got a little work here and a little there; but still I was a
+burden at home rather than a bread-winner; and, at the closing-in of the
+winter, was very glad to hear of a place at two leagues' distance, where
+work, they said, was to be had. Off I set, one morning, to find it,
+but missed my way, somehow, until it was night-time before I arrived.
+Night-time and snow again; it seemed as if all my journeys were to be
+made in this bitter weather.
+
+"When I came to the farmer's door, his house was shut up, and his people
+all a-bed; I knocked for a long while in vain; at last he made his
+appearance at a window up stairs, and seemed so frightened, and looked
+so angry that I suppose he took me for a thief. I told him how I had
+come for work. 'Who comes for work at such an hour?' said he. 'Go home,
+you impudent baggage, and do not disturb honest people out of their
+sleep.' He banged the window to; and so I was left alone to shift for
+myself as I might. There was no shed, no cow-house, where I could find a
+bed; so I got under a cart, on some straw; it was no very warm berth.
+I could not sleep for the cold: and the hours passed so slowly, that it
+seemed as if I had been there a week instead of a night; but still it
+was not so bad as the first night when I left home, and when the good
+farmer found me.
+
+"In the morning, before it was light, the farmer's people came out, and
+saw me crouching under the cart: they told me to get up; but I was so
+cold that I could not: at last the man himself came, and recognized me
+as the girl who had disturbed him the night before. When he heard my
+name, and the purpose for which I came, this good man took me into the
+house, and put me into one of the beds out of which his sons had
+just got; and, if I was cold before, you may be sure I was warm and
+comfortable now! such a bed as this I had never slept in, nor ever did
+I have such good milk-soup as he gave me out of his own breakfast. Well,
+he agreed to hire me; and what do you think he gave me?--six sous a day!
+and let me sleep in the cow-house besides: you may fancy how happy I was
+now, at the prospect of earning so much money.
+
+"There was an old woman among the laborers who used to sell us soup: I
+got a cupful every day for a half-penny, with a bit of bread in it; and
+might eat as much beet-root besides as I liked; not a very wholesome
+meal, to be sure, but God took care that it should not disagree with me.
+
+"So, every Saturday, when work was over, I had thirty sous to carry home
+to mother; and tired though I was, I walked merrily the two leagues to
+our village, to see her again. On the road there was a great wood to
+pass through, and this frightened me; for if a thief should come and rob
+me of my whole week's earnings, what could a poor lone girl do to help
+herself? But I found a remedy for this too, and no thieves ever came
+near me; I used to begin saying my prayers as I entered the forest, and
+never stopped until I was safe at home; and safe I always arrived, with
+my thirty sons in my pocket. Ah! you may be sure, Sunday was a merry day
+for us all."
+
+
+This is the whole of Beatrice's history which is worthy of publication;
+the rest of it only relates to her arrival in Paris, and the various
+masters and mistresses whom she there had the honor to serve. As soon
+as she enters the capital the romance disappears, and the poor girl's
+sufferings and privations luckily vanish with it. Beatrice has got now
+warm gowns, and stout shoes, and plenty of good food. She has had her
+little brother from Picardy; clothed, fed, and educated him: that young
+gentleman is now a carpenter, and an honor to his profession. Madame
+Merger is in easy circumstances, and receives, yearly, fifty francs from
+her daughter. To crown all, Mademoiselle Beatrice herself is a funded
+proprietor, and consulted the writer of this biography as to the best
+method of laying out a capital of two hundred francs, which is the
+present amount of her fortune.
+
+God bless her! she is richer than his Grace the Duke of Devonshire; and,
+I dare say, has, in her humble walk, been more virtuous and more happy
+than all the dukes in the realm.
+
+It is, indeed, for the benefit of dukes and such great people (who, I
+make no doubt, have long since ordered copies of these Sketches), that
+poor little Beatrice's story has been indited. Certain it is, that the
+young woman would never have been immortalized in this way, but for the
+good which her betters may derive from her example. If your ladyship
+will but reflect a little, after boasting of the sums which you spend
+in charity; the beef and blankets which you dole out at Christmas;
+the poonah-painting which you execute for fancy fairs; the long,
+long sermons which you listen to at St. George's, the whole year
+through;--your ladyship, I say, will allow that, although perfectly
+meritorious in your line, as a patroness of the Church of England, of
+Almack's, and of the Lying-in Asylum, yours is but a paltry sphere
+of virtue, a pitiful attempt at benevolence, and that this honest
+servant-girl puts you to shame! And you, my Lord Bishop: do you, out of
+your six sous a day, give away five to support your flock and family?
+Would you drop a single coach-horse (I do not say, A DINNER, for such a
+notion is monstrous, in one of your lordship's degree), to feed any one
+of the starving children of your lordship's mother--the Church?
+
+I pause for a reply. His lordship took too much turtle and cold punch
+for dinner yesterday, and cannot speak just now: but we have, by this
+ingenious question, silenced him altogether: let the world wag as it
+will, and poor Christians and curates starve as they may, my lord's
+footmen must have their new liveries, and his horses their four feeds a
+day.
+
+
+When we recollect his speech about the Catholics--when we remember
+his last charity sermon,--but I say nothing. Here is a poor benighted
+superstitious creature, worshipping images, without a rag to her tail,
+who has as much faith, and humility, and charity as all the reverend
+bench.
+
+
+This angel is without a place; and for this reason (besides the pleasure
+of composing the above slap at episcopacy)--I have indited her
+history. If the Bishop is going to Paris, and wants a good honest
+maid-of-all-work, he can have her, I have no doubt; or if he chooses to
+give a few pounds to her mother, they can be sent to Mr. Titmarsh, at
+the publisher's.
+
+Here is Miss Merger's last letter and autograph. The note was evidently
+composed by an Ecrivain public:--
+
+
+"Madame,--Ayant apris par ce Monsieur, que vous vous portiez bien, ainsi
+que Monsieur, ayant su aussi que vous parliez de moi dans votre lettre
+cette nouvelle m'a fait bien plaisir Je profite de l'occasion pour vous
+faire passer ce petit billet ou Je voudrais pouvoir m'enveloper pour
+aller vous voir et pour vous dire que Je suis encore sans place Je
+m'ennuye tojours de ne pas vous voir ainsi que Minette (Minette is a
+cat) qui semble m'interroger tour a tour et demander ou vous etes.
+Je vous envoye aussi la note du linge a blanchir--ah, Madame! Je vais
+cesser de vous ecrire mais non de vous regretter."
+
+Beatrice Merger.
+
+
+
+
+CARICATURES AND LITHOGRAPHY IN PARIS.
+
+
+Fifty years ago there lived at Munich a poor fellow, by name Aloys
+Senefelder, who was in so little repute as an author and artist,
+that printers and engravers refused to publish his works at their own
+charges, and so set him upon some plan for doing without their aid.
+In the first place, Aloys invented a certain kind of ink, which would
+resist the action of the acid that is usually employed by engravers,
+and with this he made his experiments upon copper-plates, as long as he
+could afford to purchase them. He found that to write upon the plates
+backwards, after the manner of engravers, required much skill and many
+trials; and he thought that, were he to practise upon any other
+polished surface--a smooth stone, for instance, the least costly article
+imaginable--he might spare the expense of the copper until he had
+sufficient skill to use it.
+
+One day, it is said, that Aloys was called upon to write--rather a
+humble composition for an author and artist--a washing-bill. He had
+no paper at hand, and so he wrote out the bill with some of his
+newly-invented ink upon one of his Kelheim stones. Some time afterwards
+he thought he would try and take an IMPRESSION of his washing-bill:
+he did, and succeeded. Such is the story, which the reader most likely
+knows very well; and having alluded to the origin of the art, we shall
+not follow the stream through its windings and enlargement after it
+issued from the little parent rock, or fill our pages with the rest of
+the pedigree. Senefelder invented Lithography. His invention has not
+made so much noise and larum in the world as some others, which have an
+origin quite as humble and unromantic; but it is one to which we owe no
+small profit, and a great deal of pleasure; and, as such, we are bound
+to speak of it with all gratitude and respect. The schoolmaster, who
+is now abroad, has taught us, in our youth, how the cultivation of
+art "emollit mores nec sinit esse"--(it is needless to finish the
+quotation); and Lithography has been, to our thinking, the very best
+ally that art ever had; the best friend of the artist, allowing him
+to produce rapidly multiplied and authentic copies of his own works
+(without trusting to the tedious and expensive assistance of the
+engraver); and the best friend to the people likewise, who have means of
+purchasing these cheap and beautiful productions, and thus having their
+ideas "mollified" and their manners "feros" no more.
+
+With ourselves, among whom money is plenty, enterprise so great, and
+everything matter of commercial speculation, Lithography has not been
+so much practised as wood or steel engraving; which, by the aid of great
+original capital and spread of sale, are able more than to compete with
+the art of drawing on stone. The two former may be called art done by
+MACHINERY. We confess to a prejudice in favor of the honest work of
+HAND, in matters of art, and prefer the rough workmanship of the painter
+to the smooth copies of his performances which are produced, for the
+most part, on the wood-block or the steel-plate.
+
+The theory will possibly be objected to by many of our readers: the
+best proof in its favor, we think, is, that the state of art amongst
+the people in France and Germany, where publishers are not so wealthy
+or enterprising as with us,* and where Lithography is more practised, is
+infinitely higher than in England, and the appreciation more correct. As
+draughtsmen, the French and German painters are incomparably superior to
+our own; and with art, as with any other commodity, the demand will be
+found pretty equal to the supply: with us, the general demand is for
+neatness, prettiness, and what is called EFFECT in pictures, and
+these can be rendered completely, nay, improved, by the engraver's
+conventional manner of copying the artist's performances. But to copy
+fine expression and fine drawing, the engraver himself must be a fine
+artist; and let anybody examine the host of picture-books which appear
+every Christmas, and say whether, for the most part, painters or
+engravers possess any artistic merit? We boast, nevertheless, of some
+of the best engravers and painters in Europe. Here, again, the supply is
+accounted for by the demand; our highest class is richer than any other
+aristocracy, quite as well instructed, and can judge and pay for fine
+pictures and engravings. But these costly productions are for the few,
+and not for the many, who have not yet certainly arrived at properly
+appreciating fine art.
+
+     * These countries are, to be sure, inundated with the
+     productions of our market, in the shape of Byron Beauties,
+     reprints from the "Keepsakes," "Books of Beauty," and such
+     trash; but these are only of late years, and their original
+     schools of art are still flourishing.
+
+Take the standard "Album" for instance--that unfortunate collection of
+deformed Zuleikas and Medoras (from the "Byron Beauties"), the Flowers,
+Gems, Souvenirs, Caskets of Loveliness, Beauty, as they way be called;
+glaring caricatures of flowers, singly, in groups, in flower-pots, or
+with hideous deformed little Cupids sporting among them; of what are
+called "mezzotinto," pencil-drawings, "poonah-paintings," and what
+not. "The Album" is to be found invariably upon the round rosewood
+brass-inlaid drawing-room table of the middle classes, and with a couple
+of "Annuals" besides, which flank it on the same table, represents the
+art of the house; perhaps there is a portrait of the master of the house
+in the dining-room, grim-glancing from above the mantel-piece; and
+of the mistress over the piano up stairs; add to these some odious
+miniatures of the sons and daughters, on each side of the chimney-glass;
+and here, commonly (we appeal to the reader if this is an overcharged
+picture), the collection ends. The family goes to the Exhibition once
+a year, to the National Gallery once in ten years: to the former place
+they have an inducement to go; there are their own portraits, or the
+portraits of their friends, or the portraits of public characters; and
+you will see them infallibly wondering over No. 2645 in the catalogue,
+representing "The Portrait of a Lady," or of the "First Mayor of Little
+Pedlington since the passing of the Reform Bill;" or else bustling and
+squeezing among the miniatures, where lies the chief attraction of the
+Gallery. England has produced, owing to the effects of this class of
+admirers of art, two admirable, and five hundred very clever, portrait
+painters. How many ARTISTS? Let the reader count upon his five fingers,
+and see if, living at the present moment, he can name one for each.
+
+If, from this examination of our own worthy middle classes, we look to
+the same class in France, what a difference do we find! Humble cafe's
+in country towns have their walls covered with pleasing picture papers,
+representing "Les Gloires de l'Armee Francaise," the "Seasons,"
+the "Four Quarters of the World," "Cupid and Psyche," or some other
+allegory, landscape or history, rudely painted, as papers for walls
+usually are; but the figures are all tolerably well drawn; and the
+common taste, which has caused a demand for such things, is undeniable.
+In Paris, the manner in which the cafes and houses of the restaurateurs
+are ornamented, is, of course, a thousand times richer, and nothing can
+be more beautiful, or more exquisitely finished and correct, than the
+designs which adorn many of them. We are not prepared to say what sums
+were expended upon the painting of "Very's" or "Vefour's," of the "Salle
+Musard," or of numberless other places of public resort in the capital.
+There is many a shop-keeper whose sign is a very tolerable picture;
+and often have we stopped to admire (the reader will give us credit for
+having remained OUTSIDE) the excellent workmanship of the grapes and
+vine-leaves over the door of some very humble, dirty, inodorous shop of
+a marchand de vin.
+
+These, however, serve only to educate the public taste, and are
+ornaments for the most part much too costly for the people. But the
+same love of ornament which is shown in their public places of resort,
+appears in their houses likewise; and every one of our readers who has
+lived in Paris, in any lodging, magnificent or humble, with any family,
+however poor, may bear witness how profusely the walls of his smart
+salon in the English quarter, or of his little room au sixieme in the
+Pays Latin, has been decorated with prints of all kinds. In the first,
+probably, with bad engravings on copper from the bad and tawdry pictures
+of the artists of the time of the Empire; in the latter, with gay
+caricatures of Granville or Monnier: military pieces, such as are dashed
+off by Raffet, Charlet, Vernet (one can hardly say which of the three
+designers has the greatest merit, or the most vigorous hand); or clever
+pictures from the crayon of the Deverias, the admirable Roqueplan,
+or Decamp. We have named here, we believe, the principal lithographic
+artists in Paris; and those--as doubtless there are many--of our readers
+who have looked over Monsieur Aubert's portfolios, or gazed at that
+famous caricature-shop window in the Rue de Coq, or are even acquainted
+with the exterior of Monsieur Delaporte's little emporium in the
+Burlington Arcade, need not be told how excellent the productions of all
+these artists are in their genre. We get in these engravings the loisirs
+of men of genius, not the finikin performances of labored mediocrity, as
+with us: all these artists are good painters, as well as good designers;
+a design from them is worth a whole gross of Books of Beauty; and if we
+might raise a humble supplication to the artists in our own country of
+similar merit--to such men as Leslie, Maclise, Herbert, Cattermole, and
+others--it would be, that they should, after the example of their French
+brethren and of the English landscape painters, take chalk in hand,
+produce their own copies of their own sketches, and never more draw a
+single "Forsaken One," "Rejected One," "Dejected One" at the entreaty
+of any publisher or for the pages of any Book of Beauty, Royalty, or
+Loveliness whatever.
+
+Can there be a more pleasing walk in the whole world than a stroll
+through the Gallery of the Louvre on a fete-day; not to look so much at
+the pictures as at the lookers-on? Thousands of the poorer classes
+are there: mechanics in their Sunday clothes, smiling grisettes, smart
+dapper soldiers of the line, with bronzed wondering faces, marching
+together in little companies of six or seven, and stopping every now and
+then at Napoleon or Leonidas as they appear in proper vulgar heroics in
+the pictures of David or Gros. The taste of these people will hardly be
+approved by the connoisseur, but they have A taste for art. Can the same
+be said of our lower classes, who, if they are inclined to be sociable
+and amused in their holidays, have no place of resort but the tap-room
+or tea-garden, and no food for conversation except such as can be built
+upon the politics or the police reports of the last Sunday paper?
+So much has Church and State puritanism done for us--so well has it
+succeeded in materializing and binding down to the earth the imagination
+of men, for which God has made another world (which certain statesmen
+take but too little into account)--that fair and beautiful world of
+heart, in which there CAN be nothing selfish or sordid, of which Dulness
+has forgotten the existence, and which Bigotry has endeavored to shut
+out from sight--
+
+
+     "On a banni les demons et les fees,
+      Le raisonner tristement s'accredite:
+      On court, helas! apres la verite:
+      Ah! croyez moi, l'erreur a son merite!"
+
+
+We are not putting in a plea here for demons and fairies, as Voltaire
+does in the above exquisite lines; nor about to expatiate on the
+beauties of error, for it has none; but the clank of steam-engines, and
+the shouts of politicians, and the struggle for gain or bread, and the
+loud denunciations of stupid bigots, have wellnigh smothered poor Fancy
+among us. We boast of our science, and vaunt our superior morality.
+Does the latter exist? In spite of all the forms which our policy
+has invented to secure it--in spite of all the preachers, all the
+meeting-houses, and all the legislative enactments--if any person will
+take upon himself the painful labor of purchasing and perusing some
+of the cheap periodical prints which form the people's library of
+amusement, and contain what may be presumed to be their standard in
+matters of imagination and fancy, he will see how false the claim is
+that we bring forward of superior morality. The aristocracy who are so
+eager to maintain, were, of course, not the last to feel annoyance of
+the legislative restrictions on the Sabbath, and eagerly seized upon
+that happy invention for dissipating the gloom and ennui ordered by Act
+of Parliament to prevail on that day--the Sunday paper. It might be read
+in a club-room, where the poor could not see how their betters
+ordained one thing for the vulgar, and another for themselves; or in an
+easy-chair, in the study, whither my lord retires every Sunday for
+his devotions. It dealt in private scandal and ribaldry, only the more
+piquant for its pretty flimsy veil of double-entendre. It was a fortune
+to the publisher, and it became a necessary to the reader, which
+he could not do without, any more than without his snuff-box, his
+opera-box, or his chasse after coffee. The delightful novelty could not
+for any time be kept exclusively for the haut ton; and from my lord it
+descended to his valet or tradesmen, and from Grosvenor Square it spread
+all the town through; so that now the lower classes have their scandal
+and ribaldry organs, as well as their betters (the rogues, they WILL
+imitate them!) and as their tastes are somewhat coarser than my lord's,
+and their numbers a thousand to one, why of course the prints have
+increased, and the profligacy has been diffused in a ratio exactly
+proportionable to the demand, until the town is infested with such a
+number of monstrous publications of the kind as would have put Abbe
+Dubois to the blush, or made Louis XV. cry shame. Talk of English
+morality!--the worst licentiousness, in the worst period of the French
+monarchy, scarcely equalled the wickedness of this Sabbath-keeping
+country of ours.
+
+The reader will be glad, at last, to come to the conclusion that we
+would fain draw from all these descriptions--why does this immorality
+exist? Because the people MUST be amused, and have not been taught HOW;
+because the upper classes, frightened by stupid cant, or absorbed in
+material wants, have not as yet learned the refinement which only the
+cultivation of art can give; and when their intellects are uneducated,
+and their tastes are coarse, the tastes and amusements of classes still
+more ignorant must be coarse and vicious likewise, in an increased
+proportion.
+
+Such discussions and violent attacks upon high and low, Sabbath Bills,
+politicians, and what not, may appear, perhaps, out of place in a few
+pages which purport only to give an account of some French drawings: all
+we would urge is, that, in France, these prints are made because they
+are liked and appreciated; with us they are not made, because they are
+not liked and appreciated: and the more is the pity. Nothing merely
+intellectual will be popular among us: we do not love beauty for
+beauty's sake, as Germans; or wit, for wit's sake, as the French: for
+abstract art we have no appreciation. We admire H. B.'s caricatures,
+because they are the caricatures of well-known political characters,
+not because they are witty; and Boz, because he writes us good palpable
+stories (if we may use such a word to a story); and Madame Vestris,
+because she has the most beautifully shaped legs;--the ART of the
+designer, the writer, the actress (each admirable in its way,) is a very
+minor consideration; each might have ten times the wit, and would be
+quite unsuccessful without their substantial points of popularity.
+
+In France such matters are far better managed, and the love of art is
+a thousand times more keen; and (from this feeling, surely) how much
+superiority is there in French SOCIETY over our own; how much better
+is social happiness understood; how much more manly equality is there
+between Frenchman and Frenchman, than between rich and poor in our
+own country, with all our superior wealth, instruction, and political
+freedom! There is, amongst the humblest, a gayety, cheerfulness,
+politeness, and sobriety, to which, in England, no class can show
+a parallel: and these, be it remembered, are not only qualities for
+holidays, but for working-days too, and add to the enjoyment of human
+life as much as good clothes, good beef, or good wages. If, to our
+freedom, we could but add a little of their happiness!--it is one, after
+all, of the cheapest commodities in the world, and in the power of every
+man (with means of gaining decent bread) who has the will or the skill
+to use it.
+
+We are not going to trace the history of the rise and progress of art in
+France; our business, at present, is only to speak of one branch of art
+in that country--lithographic designs, and those chiefly of a humorous
+character. A history of French caricature was published in Paris, two
+or three years back, illustrated by numerous copies of designs, from the
+time of Henry III. to our own day. We can only speak of this work from
+memory, having been unable, in London, to procure the sight of a
+copy; but our impression, at the time we saw the collection, was as
+unfavorable as could possibly be: nothing could be more meagre than the
+wit, or poorer than the execution, of the whole set of drawings. Under
+the Empire, art, as may be imagined, was at a very low ebb; and, aping
+the Government of the day, and catering to the national taste and
+vanity, it was a kind of tawdry caricature of the sublime; of which the
+pictures of David and Girodet, and almost the entire collection now
+at the Luxembourg Palace, will give pretty fair examples. Swollen,
+distorted, unnatural, the painting was something like the politics of
+those days; with force in it, nevertheless, and something of grandeur,
+that will exist in spite of taste, and is born of energetic will. A man,
+disposed to write comparisons of characters, might, for instance, find
+some striking analogies between mountebank Murat, with his irresistible
+bravery and horsemanship, who was a kind of mixture of Dugueselin and
+Ducrow, and Mountebank David, a fierce, powerful painter and genius,
+whose idea of beauty and sublimity seemed to have been gained from the
+bloody melodramas on the Boulevard. Both, however, were great in their
+way, and were worshipped as gods, in those heathen times of false belief
+and hero-worship.
+
+As for poor caricature and freedom of the press, they, like the rightful
+princess in a fairy tale, with the merry fantastic dwarf, her attendant,
+were entirely in the power of the giant who ruled the land. The Princess
+Press was so closely watched and guarded (with some little show,
+nevertheless, of respect for her rank), that she dared not utter a word
+of her own thoughts; and, for poor Caricature, he was gagged, and put
+out of the way altogether: imprisoned as completely as ever Asmodeus was
+in his phial.
+
+How the Press and her attendant fared in succeeding reigns, is well
+known; their condition was little bettered by the downfall of Napoleon:
+with the accession of Charles X. they were more oppressed even than
+before--more than they could bear; for so hard were they pressed, that,
+as one has seen when sailors are working a capstan, back of a sudden the
+bars flew, knocking to the earth the men who were endeavoring to work
+them. The Revolution came, and up sprung Caricature in France; all sorts
+of fierce epigrams were discharged at the flying monarch, and speedily
+were prepared, too, for the new one.
+
+About this time there lived at Paris (if our information be correct)
+a certain M. Philipon, an indifferent artist (painting was his
+profession), a tolerable designer, and an admirable wit. M. Philipon
+designed many caricatures himself, married the sister of an eminent
+publisher of prints (M. Aubert), and the two, gathering about them
+a body of wits and artists like themselves, set up journals of their
+own:--La Caricature, first published once a week; and the Charivari
+afterwards, a daily paper, in which a design also appears daily.
+
+At first the caricatures inserted in the Charivari were chiefly
+political; and a most curious contest speedily commenced between the
+State and M. Philipon's little army in the Galerie Vero-Dodat. Half a
+dozen poor artists on the one side, and his Majesty Louis Philippe,
+his august family, and the numberless placemen and supporters of the
+monarchy, on the other; it was something like Thersites girding at
+Ajax, and piercing through the folds of the clypei septemplicis with the
+poisonous shafts of his scorn. Our French Thersites was not always an
+honest opponent, it must be confessed; and many an attack was made upon
+the gigantic enemy, which was cowardly, false, and malignant. But to see
+the monster writhing under the effects of the arrow--to see his uncouth
+fury in return, and the blind blows that he dealt at his diminutive
+opponent!--not one of these told in a hundred; when they DID tell, it
+may be imagined that they were fierce enough in all conscience, and
+served almost to annihilate the adversary.
+
+To speak more plainly, and to drop the metaphor of giant and dwarf, the
+King of the French suffered so much, his Ministers were so mercilessly
+ridiculed, his family and his own remarkable figure drawn with such
+odious and grotesque resemblance, in fanciful attitudes, circumstances,
+and disguises, so ludicrously mean, and often so appropriate, that the
+King was obliged to descend into the lists and battle his ridiculous
+enemy in form. Prosecutions, seizures, fines, regiments of furious legal
+officials, were first brought into play against poor M. Philipon and his
+little dauntless troop of malicious artists; some few were bribed out
+of his ranks; and if they did not, like Gilray in England, turn their
+weapons upon their old friends, at least laid down their arms, and would
+fight no more. The bribes, fines, indictments, and loud-tongued avocats
+du roi made no impression; Philipon repaired the defeat of a fine by
+some fresh and furious attack upon his great enemy; if his epigrams were
+more covert, they were no less bitter; if he was beaten a dozen times
+before a jury, he had eighty or ninety victories to show in the same
+field of battle, and every victory and every defeat brought him new
+sympathy. Every one who was at Paris a few years since must recollect
+the famous "poire" which was chalked upon all the walls of the city,
+and which bore so ludicrous a resemblance to Louis Philippe. The poire
+became an object of prosecution, and M. Philipon appeared before a
+jury to answer for the crime of inciting to contempt against the King's
+person, by giving such a ludicrous version of his face. Philipon, for
+defence, produced a sheet of paper, and drew a poire, a real large
+Burgundy pear: in the lower parts round and capacious, narrower near
+the stalk, and crowned with two or three careless leaves. "There was no
+treason in THAT," he said to the jury; "could any one object to such a
+harmless botanical representation?" Then he drew a second pear, exactly
+like the former, except that one or two lines were scrawled in the midst
+of it, which bore somehow a ludicrous resemblance to the eyes, nose, and
+mouth of a celebrated personage; and, lastly, he drew the exact portrait
+of Louis Philippe; the well-known toupet, the ample whiskers and jowl
+were there, neither extenuated nor set down in malice. "Can I help it,
+gentlemen of the jury, then," said he, "if his Majesty's face is like a
+pear? Say yourselves, respectable citizens, is it, or is it not, like
+a pear?" Such eloquence could not fail of its effect; the artist was
+acquitted, and La poire is immortal.
+
+At last came the famous September laws: the freedom of the Press,
+which, from August, 1830, was to be "desormais une verite," was calmly
+strangled by the Monarch who had gained his crown for his supposed
+championship of it; by his Ministers, some of whom had been stout
+Republicans on paper but a few years before; and by the Chamber, which,
+such is the blessed constitution of French elections, will generally
+vote, unvote, revote in any way the Government wishes. With a wondrous
+union, and happy forgetfulness of principle, monarch, ministers, and
+deputies issued the restriction laws; the Press was sent to prison; as
+for the poor dear Caricature, it was fairly murdered. No more political
+satires appear now, and "through the eye, correct the heart;" no more
+poires ripen on the walls of the metropolis; Philipon's political
+occupation is gone.
+
+But there is always food for satire; and the French caricaturists, being
+no longer allowed to hold up to ridicule and reprobation the King and
+the deputies, have found no lack of subjects for the pencil in the
+ridicules and rascalities of common life. We have said that public
+decency is greater amongst the French than amongst us, which, to some of
+our readers, may appear paradoxical; but we shall not attempt to argue
+that, in private roguery, our neighbors are not our equals. The proces
+of Gisquet, which has appeared lately in the papers, shows how deep the
+demoralization must be, and how a Government, based itself on dishonesty
+(a tyranny, that is, under the title and fiction of a democracy,) must
+practise and admit corruption in its own and in its agents' dealings
+with the nation. Accordingly, of cheating contracts, of ministers
+dabbling with the funds, or extracting underhand profits for the
+granting of unjust privileges and monopolies,--of grasping, envious
+police restrictions, which destroy the freedom, and, with it, the
+integrity of commerce,--those who like to examine such details may find
+plenty in French history: the whole French finance system has been a
+swindle from the days of Luvois, or Law, down to the present time. The
+Government swindles the public, and the small traders swindle their
+customers, on the authority and example of the superior powers. Hence
+the art of roguery, under such high patronage, maintains in France a
+noble front of impudence, and a fine audacious openness, which it does
+not wear in our country.
+
+Among the various characters of roguery which the French satirists have
+amused themselves by depicting, there is one of which the GREATNESS
+(using the word in the sense which Mr. Jonathan Wild gave to it) so far
+exceeds that of all others, embracing, as it does, all in turn, that it
+has come to be considered the type of roguery in general; and now, just
+as all the political squibs were made to come of old from the lips of
+Pasquin, all the reflections on the prevailing cant, knavery, quackery,
+humbug, are put into the mouth of Monsieur Robert Macaire.
+
+A play was written, some twenty years since, called the "Auberge des
+Adrets," in which the characters of two robbers escaped from the galleys
+were introduced--Robert Macaire, the clever rogue above mentioned, and
+Bertrand, the stupid rogue, his friend, accomplice, butt, and scapegoat,
+on all occasions of danger. It is needless to describe the play--a
+witless performance enough, of which the joke was Macaire's exaggerated
+style of conversation, a farrago of all sorts of high-flown sentiments
+such as the French love to indulge in--contrasted with his actions,
+which were philosophically unscrupulous, and his appearance, which was
+most picturesquely sordid. The play had been acted, we believe, and
+forgotten, when a very clever actor, M. Frederick Lemaitre, took upon
+himself the performance of the character of Robert Macaire, and looked,
+spoke, and acted it to such admirable perfection, that the whole town
+rung with applauses of the performance, and the caricaturists delighted
+to copy his singular figure and costume. M. Robert Macaire appears in a
+most picturesque green coat, with a variety of rents and patches, a pair
+of crimson pantaloons ornamented in the same way, enormous whiskers
+and ringlets, an enormous stock and shirt-frill, as dirty and ragged as
+stock and shirt-frill can be, the relic of a hat very gayly cocked over
+one eye, and a patch to take away somewhat from the brightness of the
+other--these are the principal pieces of his costume--a snuff-box like a
+creaking warming-pan, a handkerchief hanging together by a miracle, and
+a switch of about the thickness of a man's thigh, formed the ornaments
+of this exquisite personage. He is a compound of Fielding's "Blueskin"
+and Goldsmith's "Beau Tibbs." He has the dirt and dandyism of the one,
+with the ferocity of the other: sometimes he is made to swindle,
+but where he can get a shilling more, M. Macaire will murder without
+scruple: he performs one and the other act (or any in the scale between
+them) with a similar bland imperturbability, and accompanies his actions
+with such philosophical remarks as may be expected from a person of his
+talents, his energies, his amiable life and character.
+
+Bertrand is the simple recipient of Macaire's jokes, and makes vicarious
+atonement for his crimes, acting, in fact, the part which pantaloon
+performs in the pantomime, who is entirely under the fatal influence of
+clown. He is quite as much a rogue as that gentleman, but he has not
+his genius and courage. So, in pantomimes, (it may, doubtless, have been
+remarked by the reader,) clown always leaps first, pantaloon following
+after, more clumsily and timidly than his bold and accomplished friend
+and guide. Whatever blows are destined for clown, fall, by some means
+of ill-luck, upon the pate of pantaloon: whenever the clown robs, the
+stolen articles are sure to be found in his companion's pocket; and thus
+exactly Robert Macaire and his companion Bertrand are made to go through
+the world; both swindlers, but the one more accomplished than the other.
+Both robbing all the world, and Robert robbing his friend, and, in the
+event of danger, leaving him faithfully in the lurch. There is, in
+the two characters, some grotesque good for the spectator--a kind of
+"Beggars' Opera" moral.
+
+Ever since Robert, with his dandified rags and airs, his cane and
+snuff-box, and Bertrand with torn surtout and all-absorbing pocket, have
+appeared on the stage, they have been popular with the Parisians; and
+with these two types of clever and stupid knavery, M. Philipon and his
+companion Daumier have created a world of pleasant satire upon all the
+prevailing abuses of the day.
+
+Almost the first figure that these audacious caricaturists dared to
+depict was a political one: in Macaire's red breeches and tattered coat
+appeared no less a personage than the King himself--the old Poire--in a
+country of humbugs and swindlers the facile princeps; fit to govern, as
+he is deeper than all the rogues in his dominions. Bertrand was opposite
+to him, and having listened with delight and reverence to some tale of
+knavery truly royal, was exclaiming with a look and voice expressive of
+the most intense admiration, "AH VIEUX BLAGEUR! va!"--the word blague is
+untranslatable--it means FRENCH humbug as distinct from all other; and
+only those who know the value of an epigram in France, an epigram so
+wonderfully just, a little word so curiously comprehensive, can fancy
+the kind of rage and rapture with which it was received. It was a blow
+that shook the whole dynasty. Thersites had there given such a wound to
+Ajax, as Hector in arms could scarcely have inflicted: a blow sufficient
+almost to create the madness to which the fabulous hero of Homer and
+Ovid fell a prey.
+
+Not long, however, was French caricature allowed to attack personages
+so illustrious: the September laws came, and henceforth no more epigrams
+were launched against politics; but the caricaturists were compelled to
+confine their satire to subjects and characters that had nothing to
+do with the State. The Duke of Orleans was no longer to figure in
+lithography as the fantastic Prince Rosolin; no longer were multitudes
+(in chalk) to shelter under the enormous shadow of M. d'Argout's nose:
+Marshal Loban's squirt was hung up in peace, and M. Thiers's pigmy
+figure and round spectacled face were no more to appear in print.*
+Robert Macaire was driven out of the Chambers and the Palace--his
+remarks were a great deal too appropriate and too severe for the ears of
+the great men who congregated in those places.
+
+     * Almost all the principal public men had been most
+     ludicrously caricatured in the Charivari: those mentioned
+     above were usually depicted with the distinctive attributes
+     mentioned by us.
+
+The Chambers and the Palace were shut to him; but the rogue, driven out
+of his rogue's paradise, saw "that the world was all before him where
+to choose," and found no lack of opportunities for exercising his wit.
+There was the Bar, with its roguish practitioners, rascally attorneys,
+stupid juries, and forsworn judges; there was the Bourse, with all its
+gambling, swindling, and hoaxing, its cheats and its dupes; the Medical
+Profession, and the quacks who ruled it, alternately; the Stage, and the
+cant that was prevalent there; the Fashion, and its thousand follies
+and extravagances. Robert Macaire had all these to exploiter. Of all
+the empire, through all the ranks, professions, the lies, crimes,
+and absurdities of men, he may make sport at will; of all except of
+a certain class. Like Bluebeard's wife, he may see everything, but
+is bidden TO BEWARE OF THE BLUE CHAMBER. Robert is more wise than
+Bluebeard's wife, and knows that it would cost him his head to enter it.
+Robert, therefore, keeps aloof for the moment. Would there be any use in
+his martyrdom? Bluebeard cannot live for ever; perhaps, even now, those
+are on their way (one sees a suspicious cloud of dust or two) that are
+to destroy him.
+
+In the meantime Robert and his friend have been furnishing the designs
+that we have before us, and of which perhaps the reader will be edified
+by a brief description. We are not, to be sure, to judge of the French
+nation by M. Macaire, any more than we are to judge of our own national
+morals in the last century by such a book as the "Beggars' Opera;" but
+upon the morals and the national manners, works of satire afford a world
+of light that one would in vain look for in regular books of history.
+Doctor Smollett would have blushed to devote any considerable portion
+of his pages to a discussion of the acts and character of Mr. Jonathan
+Wild, such a figure being hardly admissible among the dignified
+personages who usually push all others out from the possession of the
+historical page; but a chapter of that gentleman's memoirs, as they are
+recorded in that exemplary recueil--the "Newgate Calendar;" nay, a canto
+of the great comic epic (involving many fables, and containing much
+exaggeration, but still having the seeds of truth) which the satirical
+poet of those days wrote in celebration of him--we mean Fielding's
+"History of Jonathan Wild the Great"--does seem to us to give a more
+curious picture of the manners of those times than any recognized
+history of them. At the close of his history of George II., Smollett
+condescends to give a short chapter on Literature and Manners. He speaks
+of Glover's "Leonidas," Cibber's "Careless Husband," the poems of Mason,
+Gray, the two Whiteheads, "the nervous style, extensive erudition, and
+superior sense of a Corke; the delicate taste, the polished muse, and
+tender feeling of a Lyttelton." "King," he says, "shone unrivalled in
+Roman eloquence, the female sex distinguished themselves by their taste
+and ingenuity. Miss Carter rivalled the celebrated Dacier in learning
+and critical knowledge; Mrs. Lennox signalized herself by many
+successful efforts of genius both in poetry and prose; and Miss Reid
+excelled the celebrated Rosalba in portrait-painting, both in miniature
+and at large, in oil as well as in crayons. The genius of Cervantes was
+transferred into the novels of Fielding, who painted the characters and
+ridiculed the follies of life with equal strength, humor, and propriety.
+The field of history and biography was cultivated by many writers
+of ability, among whom we distinguish the copious Guthrie, the
+circumstantial Ralph, the laborious Carte, the learned and elegant
+Robertson, and above all, the ingenious, penetrating, and comprehensive
+Hume," &c. &c. We will quote no more of the passage. Could a man in the
+best humor sit down to write a graver satire? Who cares for the tender
+muse of Lyttelton? Who knows the signal efforts of Mrs. Lennox's genius?
+Who has seen the admirable performances, in miniature and at large,
+in oil as well as in crayons, of Miss Reid? Laborious Carte, and
+circumstantial Ralph, and copious Guthrie, where are they, their works,
+and their reputation? Mrs. Lennox's name is just as clean wiped out
+of the list of worthies as if she had never been born; and Miss Reid,
+though she was once actual flesh and blood, "rival in miniature and at
+large" of the celebrated Rosalba, she is as if she had never been at
+all; her little farthing rushlight of a soul and reputation having burnt
+out, and left neither wick nor tallow. Death, too, has overtaken copious
+Guthrie and circumstantial Ralph. Only a few know whereabouts is the
+grave where lies laborious Carte; and yet, O wondrous power of genius!
+Fielding's men and women are alive, though History's are not. The
+progenitors of circumstantial Ralph sent forth, after much labor and
+pains of making, educating, feeding, clothing, a real man child, a
+great palpable mass of flesh, bones, and blood (we say nothing about
+the spirit), which was to move through the world, ponderous, writing
+histories, and to die, having achieved the title of circumstantial
+Ralph; and lo! without any of the trouble that the parents of Ralph
+had undergone, alone perhaps in a watch or spunging-house, fuddled
+most likely, in the blandest, easiest, and most good-humored way in the
+world, Henry Fielding makes a number of men and women on so many sheets
+of paper, not only more amusing than Ralph or Miss Reid, but more like
+flesh and blood, and more alive now than they. Is not Amelia preparing
+her husband's little supper? Is not Miss Snapp chastely preventing the
+crime of Mr. Firebrand? Is not Parson Adams in the midst of his family,
+and Mr. Wild taking his last bowl of punch with the Newgate Ordinary? Is
+not every one of them a real substantial HAVE-been personage now--more
+real than Reid or Ralph? For our parts, we will not take upon ourselves
+to say that they do not exist somewhere else: that the actions
+attributed to them have not really taken place; certain we are that they
+are more worthy of credence than Ralph, who may or may not have been
+circumstantial; who may or may not even have existed, a point unworthy
+of disputation. As for Miss Reid, we will take an affidavit that neither
+in miniature nor at large did she excel the celebrated Rosalba; and
+with regard to Mrs. Lennox, we consider her to be a mere figment, like
+Narcissa, Miss Tabitha Bramble, or any hero or heroine depicted by the
+historian of "Peregrine Pickle."
+
+In like manner, after viewing nearly ninety portraits of Robert Macaire
+and his friend Bertrand, all strongly resembling each other, we are
+inclined to believe in them as historical personages, and to canvass
+gravely the circumstances of their lives. Why should we not? Have we
+not their portraits? Are not they sufficient proofs? If not, we must
+discredit Napoleon (as Archbishop Whately teaches), for about his figure
+and himself we have no more authentic testimony.
+
+Let the reality of M. Robert Macaire and his friend M. Bertrand
+be granted, if but to gratify our own fondness for those exquisite
+characters: we find the worthy pair in the French capital, mingling
+with all grades of its society, pars magna in the intrigues, pleasures,
+perplexities, rogueries, speculations, which are carried on in Paris,
+as in our own chief city; for it need not be said that roguery is of no
+country nor clime, but finds [Greek text omitted], is a citizen of all
+countries where the quarters are good; among our merry neighbors it
+finds itself very much at its ease.
+
+Not being endowed, then, with patrimonial wealth, but compelled to
+exercise their genius to obtain distinction, or even subsistence, we
+see Messrs. Bertrand and Macaire, by turns, adopting all trades and
+professions, and exercising each with their own peculiar ingenuity. As
+public men, we have spoken already of their appearance in one or two
+important characters, and stated that the Government grew fairly jealous
+of them, excluding them from office, as the Whigs did Lord Brougham.
+As private individuals, they are made to distinguish themselves as the
+founders of journals, societes en commandite (companies of which the
+members are irresponsible beyond the amount of their shares), and all
+sorts of commercial speculations, requiring intelligence and honesty on
+the part of the directors, confidence and liberal disbursements from the
+shareholders.
+
+These are, among the French, so numerous, and have been of late years
+(in the shape of Newspaper Companies, Bitumen Companies, Galvanized-Iron
+Companies, Railroad Companies, &c.) pursued with such a blind FUROR and
+lust of gain, by that easily excited and imaginative people, that, as
+may be imagined, the satirist has found plenty of occasion for remark,
+and M. Macaire and his friend innumerable opportunities for exercising
+their talents.
+
+We know nothing of M. Emile de Girardin, except that, in a duel, he shot
+the best man in France, Armaud Carrel; and in Girardin's favor it must
+be said, that he had no other alternative; but was right in provoking
+the duel, seeing that the whole Republican party had vowed his
+destruction, and that he fought and killed their champion, as it were.
+We know nothing of M. Girardin's private character: but, as far as
+we can judge from the French public prints, he seems to be the most
+speculative of speculators, and, of course, a fair butt for the malice
+of the caricaturists. His one great crime, in the eyes of the French
+Republicans and Republican newspaper proprietors, was, that Girardin set
+up a journal, as he called it, "franchement monarchique,"--a journal in
+the pay of the monarchy, that is,--and a journal that cost only forty
+francs by the year. The National costs twice as much; the Charivari
+itself costs half as much again; and though all newspapers, of all
+parties, concurred in "snubbing" poor M. Girardin and his journal, the
+Republican prints, were by far the most bitter against him, thundering
+daily accusations and personalities; whether the abuse was well or
+ill founded, we know not. Hence arose the duel with Carrel; after
+the termination of which, Girardin put by his pistol, and vowed, very
+properly, to assist in the shedding of no more blood. Girardin had been
+the originator of numerous other speculations besides the journal: the
+capital of these, like that of the journal, was raised by shares, and
+the shareholders, by some fatality, have found themselves wofully in the
+lurch; while Girardin carries on the war gayly, is, or was, a member
+of the Chamber of Deputies, has money, goes to Court, and possesses a
+certain kind of reputation. He invented, we believe, the "Institution
+Agronome de Coetbo,"* the "Physionotype," the "Journal des
+Connoissances Utiles," the "Pantheon Litteraire," and the system
+of "Primes"--premiums, that is--to be given, by lottery, to certain
+subscribers in these institutions. Could Robert Macaire see such things
+going on, and have no hand in them?
+
+
+     * It is not necessary to enter into descriptions of these
+     various inventions.
+
+
+Accordingly Messrs. Macaire and Bertrand are made the heroes of many
+speculations of the kind. In almost the first print of our collection,
+Robert discourses to Bertrand of his projects. "Bertrand," says the
+disinterested admirer of talent and enterprise, "j'adore l'industrie. Si
+tu veux nous creons une banque, mais la, une vraie banque: capital
+cent millions de millions, cent milliards de milliards d'actions. Nous
+enfoncons la banque de France, les banquiers, les banquistes; nous
+enfoncons tout le monde." "Oui," says Bertrand, very calm and stupid,
+"mais les gendarmes?" "Que tu es bete, Bertrand: est-ce qu'on arrete
+un millionaire?" Such is the key to M. Macaire's philosophy; and a wise
+creed too, as times go.
+
+Acting on these principles, Robert appears soon after; he has not
+created a bank, but a journal. He sits in a chair of state, and
+discourses to a shareholder. Bertrand, calm and stupid as before, stands
+humbly behind. "Sir," says the editor of La Blague, journal quotidienne,
+"our profits arise from a new combination. The journal costs twenty
+francs; we sell it for twenty-three and a half. A million subscribers
+make three millions and a half of profits; there are my figures;
+contradict me by figures, or I will bring an action for libel." The
+reader may fancy the scene takes place in England, where many such a
+swindling prospectus has obtained credit ere now. At Plate 33, Robert is
+still a journalist; he brings to the editor of a paper an article of his
+composition, a violent attack on a law. "My dear M. Macaire," says the
+editor, "this must be changed; we must PRAISE this law." "Bon, bon!"
+says our versatile Macaire. "Je vais retoucher ca, et je vous fais en
+faveur de la loi UN ARTICLE MOUSSEUX."
+
+Can such things be? Is it possible that French journalists can so
+forget themselves? The rogues! they should come to England and learn
+consistency. The honesty of the Press in England is like the air we
+breathe, without it we die. No, no! in France, the satire may do very
+well; but for England it is too monstrous. Call the press stupid, call
+it vulgar, call it violent,--but honest it is. Who ever heard of a
+journal changing its politics? O tempora! O mores! as Robert Macaire
+says, this would be carrying the joke too far.
+
+When he has done with newspapers, Robert Macaire begins to distinguish
+himself on 'Change,* as a creator of companies, a vender of shares, or
+a dabbler in foreign stock. "Buy my coal-mine shares," shouts Robert;
+"gold mines, silver mines, diamond mines, 'sont de la pot-bouille de la
+ratatouille en comparaison de ma houille.'" "Look," says he, on another
+occasion, to a very timid, open-countenanced client, "you have a
+property to sell! I have found the very man, a rich capitalist, a fellow
+whose bills are better than bank-notes." His client sells; the bills are
+taken in payment, and signed by that respectable capitalist, Monsieur de
+Saint Bertrand. At Plate 81, we find him inditing a circular letter
+to all the world, running thus: "Sir,--I regret to say that your
+application for shares in the Consolidated European Incombustible
+Blacking Association cannot be complied with, as all the shares of the
+C. E. I. B. A. were disposed of on the day they were issued. I have,
+nevertheless, registered your name, and in case a second series should
+be put forth, I shall have the honor of immediately giving you notice.
+I am, sir, yours, &c., the Director, Robert Macaire."--"Print 300,000
+of these," he says to Bertrand, "and poison all France with them." As
+usual, the stupid Bertrand remonstrates--"But we have not sold a single
+share; you have not a penny in your pocket, and"--"Bertrand, you are an
+ass; do as I bid you."
+
+     * We have given a description of a genteel Macaire in the
+     account of M. de Bernard's novels.
+
+Will this satire apply anywhere in England? Have we any Consolidated
+European Blacking Associations amongst us? Have we penniless directors
+issuing El Dorado prospectuses, and jockeying their shares through the
+market? For information on this head, we must refer the reader to the
+newspapers; or if he be connected with the city, and acquainted with
+commercial men, he will be able to say whether ALL the persons whose
+names figure at the head of announcements of projected companies are as
+rich as Rothschild, or quite as honest as heart could desire.
+
+When Macaire has sufficiently exploite the Bourse, whether as a gambler
+in the public funds or other companies, he sagely perceives that it is
+time to turn to some other profession, and, providing himself with a
+black gown, proposes blandly to Bertrand to set up--a new religion. "Mon
+ami," says the repentant sinner, "le temps de la commandite va passer,
+MAIS LES BADAUDS NE PASSERONT PAS." (O rare sentence! it should be
+written in letters of gold!) "OCCUPONS NOUS DE CE QUI EST ETERNEL. Si
+nous fassions une religion?" On which M. Bertrand remarks, "A religion!
+what the devil--a religion is not an easy thing to make." But Macaire's
+receipt is easy. "Get a gown, take a shop," he says, "borrow some
+chairs, preach about Napoleon, or the discovery of America, or
+Moliere--and there's a religion for you."
+
+We have quoted this sentence more for the contrast it offers with
+our own manners, than for its merits. After the noble paragraph, "Les
+badauds ne passeront pas. Occupons nous de ce qui est eternel," one
+would have expected better satire upon cant than the words that follow.
+We are not in a condition to say whether the subjects chosen are those
+that had been selected by Pere Enfantin, or Chatel, or Lacordaire; but
+the words are curious, we think, for the very reason that the satire
+is so poor. The fact is, there is no religion in Paris; even clever
+M. Philipon, who satirizes everything, and must know, therefore, some
+little about the subject which he ridicules, has nothing to say but,
+"Preach a sermon, and that makes a religion; anything will do." If
+ANYTHING will do, it is clear that the religious commodity is not in
+much demand. Tartuffe had better things to say about hypocrisy in his
+time; but then Faith was alive; now, there is no satirizing religious
+cant in France, for its contrary, true religion, has disappeared
+altogether; and having no substance, can cast no shadow. If a satirist
+would lash the religious hypocrites in ENGLAND now--the High Church
+hypocrites, the Low Church hypocrites, the promiscuous Dissenting
+hypocrites, the No Popery hypocrites--he would have ample subject
+enough. In France, the religious hypocrites went out with the Bourbons.
+Those who remain pious in that country (or, rather, we should say, in
+the capital, for of that we speak,) are unaffectedly so, for they have
+no worldly benefit to hope for from their piety; the great majority have
+no religion at all, and do not scoff at the few, for scoffing is the
+minority's weapon, and is passed always to the weaker side, whatever
+that may be. Thus H. B. caricatures the Ministers: if by any accident
+that body of men should be dismissed from their situations, and be
+succeeded by H. B.'s friends, the Tories,--what must the poor artist do?
+He must pine away and die, if he be not converted; he cannot always be
+paying compliments; for caricature has a spice of Goethe's Devil in
+it, and is "der Geist der stets verneint," the Spirit that is always
+denying.
+
+With one or two of the French writers and painters of caricatures, the
+King tried the experiment of bribery; which succeeded occasionally in
+buying off the enemy, and bringing him from the republican to the royal
+camp; but when there, the deserter was never of any use. Figaro, when so
+treated, grew fat and desponding, and lost all his sprightly VERVE;
+and Nemesis became as gentle as a Quakeress. But these instances of
+"ratting" were not many. Some few poets were bought over; but, among
+men following the profession of the press, a change of politics is an
+infringement of the point of honor, and a man must FIGHT as well
+as apostatize. A very curious table might be made, signalizing the
+difference of the moral standard between us and the French. Why is the
+grossness and indelicacy, publicly permitted in England, unknown in
+France, where private morality is certainly at a lower ebb? Why is the
+point of private honor now more rigidly maintained among the French?
+Why is it, as it should be, a moral disgrace for a Frenchman to go into
+debt, and no disgrace for him to cheat his customer? Why is there more
+honesty and less--more propriety and less?--and how are we to account
+for the particular vices or virtues which belong to each nation in its
+turn?
+
+The above is the Reverend M. Macaire's solitary exploit as a spiritual
+swindler: as MAITRE Macaire in the courts of law, as avocat, avoue--in
+a humbler capacity even, as a prisoner at the bar, he distinguishes
+himself greatly, as may be imagined. On one occasion we find the learned
+gentleman humanely visiting an unfortunate detenu--no other person, in
+fact, than his friend M. Bertrand, who has fallen into some trouble, and
+is awaiting the sentence of the law. He begins--
+
+"Mon cher Bertrand, donne moi cent ecus, je te fais acquitter d'emblee."
+
+"J'ai pas d'argent."
+
+"He bien, donne moi cent francs."
+
+"Pas le sou."
+
+"Tu n'as pas dix francs?"
+
+"Pas un liard."
+
+"Alors donne moi tes bottes, je plaiderai la circonstance attenuante."
+
+The manner in which Maitre Macaire soars from the cent ecus (a high
+point already) to the sublime of the boots, is in the best comic style.
+In another instance he pleads before a judge, and, mistaking his
+client, pleads for defendant, instead of plaintiff. "The infamy of the
+plaintiff's character, my LUDS, renders his testimony on such a
+charge as this wholly unavailing." "M. Macaire, M. Macaire," cries the
+attorney, in a fright, "you are for the plaintiff!" "This, my lords,
+is what the defendant WILL SAY. This is the line of defence which the
+opposite party intend to pursue; as if slanders like these could weigh
+with an enlightened jury, or injure the spotless reputation of my
+client!" In this story and expedient M. Macaire has been indebted to the
+English bar. If there be an occupation for the English satirist in the
+exposing of the cant and knavery of the pretenders to religion, what
+room is there for him to lash the infamies of the law! On this point
+the French are babes in iniquity compared to us--a counsel prostituting
+himself for money is a matter with us so stale, that it is hardly food
+for satire: which, to be popular, must find some much more complicated
+and interesting knavery whereon to exercise its skill.
+
+M. Macaire is more skilful in love than in law, and appears once or
+twice in a very amiable light while under the influence of the tender
+passion. We find him at the head of one of those useful establishments
+unknown in our country--a Bureau de Mariage: half a dozen of such places
+are daily advertised in the journals: and "une veuve de trente ans ayant
+une fortune de deux cent mille francs," or "une demoiselle de quinze
+aus, jolie, d'une famille tres distinguee, qui possede trente mille
+livres de rentes,"--continually, in this kind-hearted way, are offering
+themselves to the public: sometimes it is a gentleman, with a "physique
+agreable,--des talens de societe"--and a place under Government,
+who makes a sacrifice of himself in a similar manner. In our little
+historical gallery we find this philanthropic anti-Malthusian at
+the head of an establishment of this kind, introducing a very
+meek, simple-looking bachelor to some distinguished ladies of his
+connoissance. "Let me present you, sir, to Madame de St. Bertrand"
+(it is our old friend), "veuve de la grande armee, et Mdlle Eloa de
+Wormspire. Ces dames brulent de l'envie de faire votre connoissance. Je
+les ai invitees a diner chez vous ce soir: vous nous menerez a l'opera,
+et nous ferons une petite partie d'ecarte. Tenez vous bien, M. Gobard!
+ces dames ont des projets sur vous!"
+
+Happy Gobard! happy system, which can thus bring the pure and loving
+together, and acts as the best ally of Hymen! The announcement of
+the rank and titles of Madame de St. Bertrand--"veuve de la grande
+armee"--is very happy. "La grande armee" has been a father to more
+orphans, and a husband to more widows, than it ever made. Mistresses of
+cafes, old governesses, keepers of boarding-houses, genteel beggars, and
+ladies of lower rank still, have this favorite pedigree. They have all
+had malheurs (what kind it is needless to particularize), they are all
+connected with the grand homme, and their fathers were all colonels.
+This title exactly answers to the "clergyman's daughter" in England--as,
+"A young lady, the daughter of a clergyman, is desirous to teach,"
+&c. "A clergyman's widow receives into her house a few select," and so
+forth. "Appeal to the benevolent.--By a series of unheard-of calamities,
+a young lady, daughter of a clergyman in the west of England, has been
+plunged," &c. &c. The difference is curious, as indicating the standard
+of respectability.
+
+The male beggar of fashion is not so well known among us as in Paris,
+where street-doors are open; six or eight families live in a house; and
+the gentleman who earns his livelihood by this profession can make half
+a dozen visits without the trouble of knocking from house to house, and
+the pain of being observed by the whole street, while the footman is
+examining him from the area. Some few may be seen in England about the
+inns of court, where the locality is favorable (where, however, the
+owners of the chambers are not proverbially soft of heart, so that the
+harvest must be poor); but Paris is full of such adventurers,--fat,
+smooth-tongued, and well dressed, with gloves and gilt-headed canes, who
+would be insulted almost by the offer of silver, and expect your gold as
+their right. Among these, of course, our friend Robert plays his part;
+and an excellent engraving represents him, snuff-box in hand, advancing
+to an old gentleman, whom, by his poodle, his powdered head, and his
+drivelling, stupid look, one knows to be a Carlist of the old regime.
+"I beg pardon," says Robert; "is it really yourself to whom I have
+the honor of speaking?"--"It is." "Do you take snuff?"--"I thank
+you."--"Sir, I have had misfortunes--I want assistance. I am a Vendean
+of illustrious birth. You know the family of Macairbec--we are of Brest.
+My grandfather served the King in his galleys; my father and I belong,
+also, to the marine. Unfortunate suits at law have plunged us into
+difficulties, and I do not hesitate to ask you for the succor of ten
+francs."--"Sir, I never give to those I don't know."--"Right, sir,
+perfectly right. Perhaps you will have the kindness to LEND me ten
+francs?"
+
+The adventures of Doctor Macaire need not be described, because the
+different degrees in quackery which are taken by that learned physician
+are all well known in England, where we have the advantage of many
+higher degrees in the science, which our neighbors know nothing about.
+We have not Hahnemann, but we have his disciples; we have not Broussais,
+but we have the College of Health; and surely a dose of Morrison's pills
+is a sublimer discovery than a draught of hot water. We had St. John
+Long, too--where is his science?--and we are credibly informed that some
+important cures have been effected by the inspired dignitaries of "the
+church" in Newman Street which, if it continue to practise, will sadly
+interfere with the profits of the regular physicians, and where the
+miracles of the Abbe of Paris are about to be acted over again.
+
+In speaking of M. Macaire and his adventures, we have managed so
+entirely to convince ourselves of the reality of the personage, that we
+have quite forgotten to speak of Messrs. Philipon and Daumier, who are,
+the one the inventor, the other the designer, of the Macaire Picture
+Gallery. As works of esprit, these drawings are not more remarkable than
+they are as works of art, and we never recollect to have seen a series
+of sketches possessing more extraordinary cleverness and variety. The
+countenance and figure of Macaire and the dear stupid Bertrand are
+preserved, of course, with great fidelity throughout; but the
+admirable way in which each fresh character is conceived, the grotesque
+appropriateness of Robert's every successive attitude and gesticulation,
+and the variety of Bertrand's postures of invariable repose, the
+exquisite fitness of all the other characters, who act their little
+part and disappear from the scene, cannot be described on paper, or too
+highly lauded. The figures are very carelessly drawn; but, if the reader
+can understand us, all the attitudes and limbs are perfectly CONCEIVED,
+and wonderfully natural and various. After pondering over these drawings
+for some hours, as we have been while compiling this notice of them,
+we have grown to believe that the personages are real, and the scenes
+remain imprinted on the brain as if we had absolutely been present at
+their acting. Perhaps the clever way in which the plates are colored,
+and the excellent effect which is put into each, may add to this
+illusion. Now, in looking, for instance, at H. B.'s slim vapory figures,
+they have struck us as excellent LIKENESSES of men and women, but
+no more: the bodies want spirit, action, and individuality. George
+Cruikshank, as a humorist, has quite as much genius, but he does not
+know the art of "effect" so well as Monsieur Daumier; and, if we might
+venture to give a word of advice to another humorous designer, whose
+works are extensively circulated--the illustrator of "Pickwick" and
+"Nicholas Nickleby,"--it would be to study well these caricatures of
+Monsieur Daumier; who, though he executes very carelessly, knows
+very well what he would express, indicates perfectly the attitude and
+identity of his figure, and is quite aware, beforehand, of the effect
+which he intends to produce. The one we should fancy to be a practised
+artist, taking his ease; the other, a young one, somewhat bewildered:
+a very clever one, however, who, if he would think more, and exaggerate
+less, would add not a little to his reputation.
+
+Having pursued, all through these remarks, the comparison between
+English art and French art, English and French humor, manners, and
+morals, perhaps we should endeavor, also, to write an analytical essay
+on English cant or humbug, as distinguished from French. It might be
+shown that the latter was more picturesque and startling, the former
+more substantial and positive. It has none of the poetic flights of the
+French genius, but advances steadily, and gains more ground in the
+end than its sprightlier compeer. But such a discussion would carry us
+through the whole range of French and English history, and the reader
+has probably read quite enough of the subject in this and the foregoing
+pages.
+
+We shall, therefore, say no more of French and English caricatures
+generally, or of Mr. Macaire's particular accomplishments and
+adventures. They are far better understood by examining the original
+pictures, by which Philipon and Daumier have illustrated them, than by
+translations first into print and afterwards into English. They form
+a very curious and instructive commentary upon the present state of
+society in Paris, and a hundred years hence, when the whole of this
+struggling, noisy, busy, merry race shall have exchanged their pleasures
+or occupations for a quiet coffin (and a tawdry lying epitaph) at
+Montmartre, or Pere la Chaise; when the follies here recorded shall
+have been superseded by new ones, and the fools now so active shall
+have given up the inheritance of the world to their children: the latter
+will, at least, have the advantage of knowing, intimately and exactly,
+the manners of life and being of their grandsires, and calling up, when
+they so choose it, our ghosts from the grave, to live, love, quarrel,
+swindle, suffer, and struggle on blindly as of yore. And when the amused
+speculator shall have laughed sufficiently at the immensity of our
+follies, and the paltriness of our aims, smiled at our exploded
+superstitions, wondered how this man should be considered great, who
+is now clean forgotten (as copious Guthrie before mentioned); how
+this should have been thought a patriot who is but a knave spouting
+commonplace; or how that should have been dubbed a philosopher who is
+but a dull fool, blinking solemn, and pretending to see in the dark;
+when he shall have examined all these at his leisure, smiling in a
+pleasant contempt and good-humored superiority, and thanking heaven
+for his increased lights, he will shut the book, and be a fool as his
+fathers were before him.
+
+It runs in the blood. Well hast thou said, O ragged Macaire,--"Le jour
+va passer, MAIS LES BADAUDS NE PASSERONT PAS."
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE POINSINET.
+
+
+About the year 1760, there lived, at Paris, a little fellow, who was
+the darling of all the wags of his acquaintance. Nature seemed, in the
+formation of this little man, to have amused herself, by giving loose
+to half a hundred of her most comical caprices. He had some wit and
+drollery of his own, which sometimes rendered his sallies very amusing;
+but, where his friends laughed with him once, they laughed at him a
+thousand times, for he had a fund of absurdity in himself that was more
+pleasant than all the wit in the world. He was as proud as a peacock, as
+wicked as an ape, and as silly as a goose. He did not possess one single
+grain of common sense; but, in revenge, his pretensions were enormous,
+his ignorance vast, and his credulity more extensive still. From his
+youth upwards, he had read nothing but the new novels, and the verses in
+the almanacs, which helped him not a little in making, what he called,
+poetry of his own; for, of course, our little hero was a poet. All the
+common usages of life, all the ways of the world, and all the customs of
+society, seemed to be quite unknown to him; add to these good qualities,
+a magnificent conceit, a cowardice inconceivable, and a face so
+irresistibly comic, that every one who first beheld it was compelled
+to burst out a-laughing, and you will have some notion of this strange
+little gentleman. He was very proud of his voice, and uttered all his
+sentences in the richest tragic tone. He was little better than a dwarf;
+but he elevated his eyebrows, held up his neck, walked on the tips of
+his toes, and gave himself the airs of a giant. He had a little pair of
+bandy legs, which seemed much too short to support anything like a human
+body; but, by the help of these crooked supporters, he thought he could
+dance like a Grace; and, indeed, fancied all the graces possible were
+to be found in his person. His goggle eyes were always rolling about
+wildly, as if in correspondence with the disorder of his little brain
+and his countenance thus wore an expression of perpetual wonder. With
+such happy natural gifts, he not only fell into all traps that were laid
+for him, but seemed almost to go out of his way to seek them; although,
+to be sure, his friends did not give him much trouble in that search,
+for they prepared hoaxes for him incessantly.
+
+One day the wags introduced him to a company of ladies, who, though not
+countesses and princesses exactly, took, nevertheless, those titles upon
+themselves for the nonce; and were all, for the same reason, violently
+smitten with Master Poinsinet's person. One of them, the lady of the
+house, was especially tender; and, seating him by her side at supper, so
+plied him with smiles, ogles, and champagne, that our little hero grew
+crazed with ecstasy, and wild with love. In the midst of his happiness,
+a cruel knock was heard below, accompanied by quick loud talking,
+swearing, and shuffling of feet: you would have thought a regiment
+was at the door. "Oh heavens!" cried the marchioness, starting up,
+and giving to the hand of Poinsinet one parting squeeze; "fly--fly, my
+Poinsinet: 'tis the colonel--my husband!" At this, each gentleman of the
+party rose, and, drawing his rapier, vowed to cut his way through the
+colonel and all his mousquetaires, or die, if need be, by the side of
+Poinsinet.
+
+The little fellow was obliged to lug out his sword too, and went
+shuddering down stairs, heartily repenting of his passion for
+marchionesses. When the party arrived in the street, they found, sure
+enough, a dreadful company of mousquetaires, as they seemed, ready to
+oppose their passage. Swords crossed,--torches blazed; and, with the
+most dreadful shouts and imprecations, the contending parties rushed
+upon one another; the friends of Poinsinet surrounding and supporting
+that little warrior, as the French knights did King Francis at Pavia,
+otherwise the poor fellow certainly would have fallen down in the gutter
+from fright.
+
+But the combat was suddenly interrupted; for the neighbors, who knew
+nothing of the trick going on, and thought the brawl was real, had been
+screaming with all their might for the police, who began about this time
+to arrive. Directly they appeared, friends and enemies of Poinsinet
+at once took to their heels; and, in THIS part of the transaction, at
+least, our hero himself showed that he was equal to the longest-legged
+grenadier that ever ran away.
+
+When, at last, those little bandy legs of his had borne him safely to
+his lodgings, all Poinsinet's friends crowded round him, to congratulate
+him on his escape and his valor.
+
+"Egad, how he pinked that great red-haired fellow!" said one.
+
+"No; did I?" said Poinsinet.
+
+"Did you? Psha! don't try to play the modest, and humbug US; you know
+you did. I suppose you will say, next, that you were not for three
+minutes point to point with Cartentierce himself, the most dreadful
+swordsman of the army."
+
+"Why, you see," says Poinsinet, quite delighted, "it was so dark that I
+did not know with whom I was engaged; although, corbleu, I DID FOR one
+or two of the fellows." And after a little more of such conversation,
+during which he was fully persuaded that he had done for a dozen of the
+enemy at least, Poinsinet went to bed, his little person trembling with
+fright and pleasure; and he fell asleep, and dreamed of rescuing ladies,
+and destroying monsters, like a second Amadis de Gaul.
+
+When he awoke in the morning, he found a party of his friends in his
+room: one was examining his coat and waistcoat; another was casting many
+curious glances at his inexpressibles. "Look here!" said this gentleman,
+holding up the garment to the light; "one--two--three gashes! I am
+hanged if the cowards did not aim at Poinsinet's legs! There are four
+holes in the sword arm of his coat, and seven have gone right through
+coat and waistcoat. Good heaven! Poinsinet, have you had a surgeon to
+your wounds?"
+
+"Wounds!" said the little man, springing up, "I don't know--that is,
+I hope--that is--O Lord! O Lord! I hope I'm not wounded!" and, after a
+proper examination, he discovered he was not.
+
+"Thank heaven! thank heaven!" said one of the wags (who, indeed, during
+the slumbers of Poinsinet had been occupied in making these very holes
+through the garments of that individual), "if you have escaped, it is by
+a miracle. Alas! alas! all your enemies have not been so lucky."
+
+"How! is anybody wounded?" said Poinsinet.
+
+"My dearest friend, prepare yourself; that unhappy man who came to
+revenge his menaced honor--that gallant officer--that injured husband,
+Colonel Count de Cartentierce--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"IS NO MORE! he died this morning, pierced through with nineteen wounds
+from your hand, and calling upon his country to revenge his murder."
+
+When this awful sentence was pronounced, all the auditory gave a
+pathetic and simultaneous sob; and as for Poinsinet, he sank back on his
+bed with a howl of terror, which would have melted a Visigoth to tears,
+or to laughter. As soon as his terror and remorse had, in some degree,
+subsided, his comrades spoke to him of the necessity of making his
+escape; and, huddling on his clothes, and bidding them all a tender
+adieu, he set off, incontinently, without his breakfast, for England,
+America, or Russia, not knowing exactly which.
+
+One of his companions agreed to accompany him on a part of this
+journey,--that is, as far as the barrier of St. Denis, which is, as
+everybody knows, on the high road to Dover; and there, being tolerably
+secure, they entered a tavern for breakfast; which meal, the last that
+he ever was to take, perhaps, in his native city, Poinsinet was just
+about to discuss, when, behold! a gentleman entered the apartment where
+Poinsinet and his friend were seated, and, drawing from his pocket a
+paper, with "AU NOM DU ROY" flourished on the top, read from it, or
+rather from Poinsinet's own figure, his exact signalement, laid his hand
+on his shoulder, and arrested him in the name of the King, and of the
+provost-marshal of Paris. "I arrest you, sir," said he, gravely, "with
+regret; you have slain, with seventeen wounds, in single combat, Colonel
+Count de Cartentierce, one of his Majesty's household; and, as his
+murderer, you fall under the immediate authority of the provost-marshal,
+and die without trial or benefit of clergy."
+
+You may fancy how the poor little man's appetite fell when he heard this
+speech. "In the provost-marshal's hands?" said his friend: "then it is
+all over, indeed! When does my poor friend suffer, sir?"
+
+"At half-past six o'clock, the day after to-morrow," said the officer,
+sitting down, and helping himself to wine. "But stop," said he,
+suddenly; "sure I can't mistake? Yes--no--yes, it is. My dear friend,
+my dear Durand! don't you recollect your old schoolfellow, Antoine?" And
+herewith the officer flung himself into the arms of Durand, Poinsinet's
+comrade, and they performed a most affecting scene of friendship.
+
+"This may be of some service to you," whispered Durand to Poinsinet;
+and, after some further parley, he asked the officer when he was bound
+to deliver up his prisoner; and, hearing that he was not called upon to
+appear at the Marshalsea before six o'clock at night, Monsieur Durand
+prevailed upon Monsieur Antoine to wait until that hour, and in the
+meantime to allow his prisoner to walk about the town in his company.
+This request was, with a little difficulty, granted; and poor Poinsinet
+begged to be carried to the houses of his various friends, and bid them
+farewell. Some were aware of the trick that had been played upon him:
+others were not; but the poor little man's credulity was so great, that
+it was impossible to undeceive him; and he went from house to house
+bewailing his fate, and followed by the complaisant marshal's officer.
+
+The news of his death he received with much more meekness than could
+have been expected; but what he could not reconcile to himself was, the
+idea of dissection afterwards. "What can they want with me?" cried the
+poor wretch, in an unusual fit of candor. "I am very small and ugly;
+it would be different if I were a tall fine-looking fellow." But he
+was given to understand that beauty made very little difference to the
+surgeons, who, on the contrary, would, on certain occasions, prefer a
+deformed man to a handsome one; for science was much advanced by the
+study of such monstrosities. With this reason Poinsinet was obliged to
+be content; and so paid his rounds of visits, and repeated his dismal
+adieux.
+
+The officer of the provost-marshal, however amusing Poinsinet's woes
+might have been, began, by this time, to grow very weary of them,
+and gave him more than one opportunity to escape. He would stop at
+shop-windows, loiter round corners, and look up in the sky, but all in
+vain: Poinsinet would not escape, do what the other would. At length,
+luckily, about dinner-time, the officer met one of Poinsinet's friends
+and his own: and the three agreed to dine at a tavern, as they had
+breakfasted; and here the officer, who vowed that he had been up
+for five weeks incessantly, fell suddenly asleep, in the profoundest
+fatigue; and Poinsinet was persuaded, after much hesitation on his part,
+to take leave of him.
+
+And now, this danger overcome, another was to be avoided. Beyond a doubt
+the police were after him, and how was he to avoid them? He must be
+disguised, of course; and one of his friends, a tall, gaunt lawyer's
+clerk, agreed to provide him with habits.
+
+So little Poinsinet dressed himself out in the clerk's dingy black suit,
+of which the knee-breeches hung down to his heels, and the waist of the
+coat reached to the calves of his legs; and, furthermore, he blacked his
+eyebrows, and wore a huge black periwig, in which his friend vowed that
+no one could recognize him. But the most painful incident, with regard
+to the periwig, was, that Poinsinet, whose solitary beauty--if beauty
+it might be called--was a head of copious, curling, yellow hair, was
+compelled to snip off every one of his golden locks, and to rub the
+bristles with a black dye; "for if your wig were to come off," said the
+lawyer, "and your fair hair to tumble over your shoulders, every man
+would know, or at least suspect you." So off the locks were cut, and in
+his black suit and periwig little Poinsinet went abroad.
+
+His friends had their cue; and when he appeared amongst them, not one
+seemed to know him. He was taken into companies where his character was
+discussed before him, and his wonderful escape spoken of. At last he was
+introduced to the very officer of the provost-marshal who had taken him
+into custody, and who told him that he had been dismissed the provost's
+service, in consequence of the escape of the prisoner. Now, for the
+first time, poor Poinsinet thought himself tolerably safe, and blessed
+his kind friends who had procured for him such a complete disguise.
+How this affair ended I know not,--whether some new lie was coined to
+account for his release, or whether he was simply told that he had been
+hoaxed: it mattered little; for the little man was quite as ready to be
+hoaxed the next day.
+
+Poinsinet was one day invited to dine with one of the servants of
+the Tuileries; and, before his arrival, a person in company had been
+decorated with a knot of lace and a gold key, such as chamberlains wear;
+he was introduced to Poinsinet as the Count de Truchses, chamberlain to
+the King of Prussia. After dinner the conversation fell upon the Count's
+visit to Paris; when his Excellency, with a mysterious air, vowed that
+he had only come for pleasure. "It is mighty well," said a third person,
+"and, of course, we can't cross-question your lordship too closely;"
+but at the same time it was hinted to Poinsinet that a person of such
+consequence did not travel for NOTHING, with which opinion Poinsinet
+solemnly agreed; and, indeed, it was borne out by a subsequent
+declaration of the Count, who condescended, at last, to tell the
+company, in confidence, that he HAD a mission, and a most important
+one--to find, namely, among the literary men of France, a governor for
+the Prince Royal of Prussia. The company seemed astonished that the King
+had not made choice of Voltaire or D'Alembert, and mentioned a dozen
+other distinguished men who might be competent to this important duty;
+but the Count, as may be imagined, found objections to every one of
+them; and, at last, one of the guests said, that, if his Prussian
+Majesty was not particular as to age, he knew a person more fitted for
+the place than any other who could be found,--his honorable friend, M.
+Poinsinet, was the individual to whom he alluded.
+
+"Good heavens!" cried the Count, "is it possible that the celebrated
+Poinsinet would take such a place? I would give the world to see
+him?" And you may fancy how Poinsinet simpered and blushed when the
+introduction immediately took place.
+
+The Count protested to him that the King would be charmed to know him;
+and added, that one of his operas (for it must be told that our little
+friend was a vaudeville-maker by trade) had been acted seven-and-twenty
+times at the theatre at Potsdam. His Excellency then detailed to him all
+the honors and privileges which the governor of the Prince Royal might
+expect; and all the guests encouraged the little man's vanity, by asking
+him for his protection and favor. In a short time our hero grew
+so inflated with pride and vanity, that he was for patronizing the
+chamberlain himself, who proceeded to inform him that he was furnished
+with all the necessary powers by his sovereign, who had specially
+enjoined him to confer upon the future governor of his son the royal
+order of the Black Eagle.
+
+Poinsinet, delighted, was ordered to kneel down; and the Count produced
+a large yellow ribbon, which he hung over his shoulder, and which was,
+he declared, the grand cordon of the order. You must fancy Poinsinet's
+face, and excessive delight at this; for as for describing them, nobody
+can. For four-and-twenty hours the happy chevalier paraded through Paris
+with this flaring yellow ribbon; and he was not undeceived until his
+friends had another trick in store for him.
+
+He dined one day in the company of a man who understood a little of the
+noble art of conjuring, and performed some clever tricks on the cards.
+Poinsinet's organ of wonder was enormous; he looked on with the gravity
+and awe of a child, and thought the man's tricks sheer miracles. It
+wanted no more to set his companions to work.
+
+"Who is this wonderful man?" said he to his neighbor.
+
+"Why," said the other, mysteriously, "one hardly knows who he is; or,
+at least, one does not like to say to such an indiscreet fellow as
+you are." Poinsinet at once swore to be secret. "Well, then," said his
+friend, "you will hear that man--that wonderful man--called by a name
+which is not his: his real name is Acosta: he is a Portuguese Jew, a
+Rosicrucian, and Cabalist of the first order, and compelled to leave
+Lisbon for fear of the Inquisition. He performs here, as you see, some
+extraordinary things, occasionally; but the master of the house, who
+loves him excessively, would not, for the world, that his name should be
+made public."
+
+"Ah, bah!" said Poinsinet, who affected the bel esprit; "you don't mean
+to say that you believe in magic, and cabalas, and such trash?"
+
+"Do I not? You shall judge for yourself." And, accordingly, Poinsinet
+was presented to the magician, who pretended to take a vast liking
+for him, and declared that he saw in him certain marks which would
+infallibly lead him to great eminence in the magic art, if he chose to
+study it.
+
+Dinner was served, and Poinsinet placed by the side of the
+miracle-worker, who became very confidential with him, and promised
+him--ay, before dinner was over--a remarkable instance of his power.
+Nobody, on this occasion, ventured to cut a single joke against poor
+Poinsinet; nor could he fancy that any trick was intended against him,
+for the demeanor of the society towards him was perfectly grave and
+respectful, and the conversation serious. On a sudden, however, somebody
+exclaimed, "Where is Poinsinet? Did any one see him leave the room?"
+
+All the company exclaimed how singular the disappearance was; and
+Poinsinet himself, growing alarmed, turned round to his neighbor, and
+was about to explain.
+
+"Hush!" said the magician, in a whisper; "I told you that you should see
+what I could do. I HAVE MADE YOU INVISIBLE; be quiet, and you shall see
+some more tricks that I shall play with these fellows."
+
+Poinsinet remained then silent, and listened to his neighbors, who
+agreed, at last, that he was a quiet, orderly personage, and had left
+the table early, being unwilling to drink too much. Presently they
+ceased to talk about him, and resumed their conversation upon other
+matters.
+
+At first it was very quiet and grave, but the master of the house
+brought back the talk to the subject of Poinsinet, and uttered all sorts
+of abuse concerning him. He begged the gentleman, who had introduced
+such a little scamp into his house, to bring him thither no more:
+whereupon the other took up, warmly, Poinsinet's defence; declared that
+he was a man of the greatest merit, frequenting the best society, and
+remarkable for his talents as well as his virtues.
+
+"Ah!" said Poinsinet to the magician, quite charmed at what he heard,
+"how ever shall I thank you, my dear sir, for thus showing me who my
+true friends are?"
+
+The magician promised him still further favors in prospect; and told
+him to look out now, for he was about to throw all the company into a
+temporary fit of madness, which, no doubt, would be very amusing.
+
+In consequence, all the company, who had heard every syllable of the
+conversation, began to perform the most extraordinary antics, much to
+the delight of Poinsinet. One asked a nonsensical question, and the
+other delivered an answer not at all to the purpose. If a man asked for
+a drink, they poured him out a pepper-box or a napkin: they took a pinch
+of snuff, and swore it was excellent wine; and vowed that the bread was
+the most delicious mutton ever tasted. The little man was delighted.
+
+"Ah!" said he, "these fellows are prettily punished for their rascally
+backbiting of me!"
+
+"Gentlemen," said the host, "I shall now give you some celebrated
+champagne," and he poured out to each a glass of water.
+
+"Good heavens!" said one, spitting it out, with the most horrible
+grimace, "where did you get this detestable claret?"
+
+"Ah, faugh!" said a second, "I never tasted such vile corked burgundy in
+all my days!" and he threw the glass of water into Poinsinet's face, as
+did half a dozen of the other guests, drenching the poor wretch to the
+skin. To complete this pleasant illusion, two of the guests fell
+to boxing across Poinsinet, who received a number of the blows, and
+received them with the patience of a fakir, feeling himself more
+flattered by the precious privilege of beholding this scene invisible,
+than hurt by the blows and buffets which the mad company bestowed upon
+him.
+
+The fame of this adventure spread quickly over Paris, and all the world
+longed to have at their houses the representation of Poinsinet the
+Invisible. The servants and the whole company used to be put up to the
+trick; and Poinsinet, who believed in his invisibility as much as he did
+in his existence, went about with his friend and protector the magician.
+People, of course, never pretended to see him, and would very often
+not talk of him at all for some time, but hold sober conversation about
+anything else in the world. When dinner was served, of course there was
+no cover laid for Poinsinet, who carried about a little stool, on
+which he sat by the side of the magician, and always ate off his plate.
+Everybody was astonished at the magician's appetite and at the quantity
+of wine he drank; as for little Poinsinet, he never once suspected any
+trick, and had such a confidence in his magician, that, I do believe,
+if the latter had told him to fling himself out of window, he would have
+done so, without the slightest trepidation.
+
+Among other mystifications in which the Portuguese enchanter plunged
+him, was one which used to afford always a good deal of amusement. He
+informed Poinsinet, with great mystery, that HE WAS NOT HIMSELF; he
+was not, that is to say, that ugly, deformed little monster, called
+Poinsinet; but that his birth was most illustrious, and his real name
+Polycarte. He was, in fact, the son of a celebrated magician; but
+other magicians, enemies of his father, had changed him in his cradle,
+altering his features into their present hideous shape, in order that
+a silly old fellow, called Poinsinet, might take him to be his own son,
+which little monster the magician had likewise spirited away.
+
+The poor wretch was sadly cast down at this; for he tried to fancy
+that his person was agreeable to the ladies, of whom he was one of
+the warmest little admirers possible; and to console him somewhat, the
+magician told him that his real shape was exquisitely beautiful, and as
+soon as he should appear in it, all the beauties in Paris would be at
+his feet. But how to regain it? "Oh, for one minute of that beauty!"
+cried the little man; "what would he not give to appear under that
+enchanting form!" The magician hereupon waved his stick over his head,
+pronounced some awful magical words, and twisted him round three times;
+at the third twist, the men in company seemed struck with astonishment
+and envy, the ladies clasped their hands, and some of them kissed his.
+Everybody declared his beauty to be supernatural.
+
+Poinsinet, enchanted, rushed to a glass. "Fool!" said the magician;
+"do you suppose that YOU can see the change? My power to render you
+invisible, beautiful, or ten times more hideous even than you are,
+extends only to others, not to you. You may look a thousand times in
+the glass, and you will only see those deformed limbs and disgusting
+features with which devilish malice has disguised you." Poor
+little Poinsinet looked, and came back in tears. "But," resumed the
+magician,--"ha, ha, ha!--I know a way in which to disappoint the
+machinations of these fiendish magi."
+
+"Oh, my benefactor!--my great master!--for heaven's sake tell it!"
+gasped Poinsinet.
+
+"Look you--it is this. A prey to enchantment and demoniac art all your
+life long, you have lived until your present age perfectly satisfied;
+nay, absolutely vain of a person the most singularly hideous that ever
+walked the earth!"
+
+"IS it?" whispered Poinsinet. "Indeed and indeed I didn't think it so
+bad!"
+
+"He acknowledges it! he acknowledges it!" roared the magician. "Wretch,
+dotard, owl, mole, miserable buzzard! I have no reason to tell thee now
+that thy form is monstrous, that children cry, that cowards turn pale,
+that teeming matrons shudder to behold it. It is not thy fault that thou
+art thus ungainly: but wherefore so blind? wherefore so conceited of
+thyself! I tell thee, Poinsinet, that over every fresh instance of thy
+vanity the hostile enchanters rejoice and triumph. As long as thou
+art blindly satisfied with thyself; as long as thou pretendest, in thy
+present odious shape, to win the love of aught above a negress; nay,
+further still, until thou hast learned to regard that face, as others
+do, with the most intolerable horror and disgust, to abuse it when thou
+seest it, to despise it, in short, and treat that miserable disguise in
+which the enchanters have wrapped thee with the strongest, hatred and
+scorn, so long art thou destined to wear it."
+
+Such speeches as these, continually repeated, caused Poinsinet to be
+fully convinced of his ugliness; he used to go about in companies, and
+take every opportunity of inveighing against himself; he made verses and
+epigrams against himself; he talked about "that dwarf, Poinsinet;" "that
+buffoon, Poinsinet;" "that conceited, hump-backed Poinsinet;" and he
+would spend hours before the glass, abusing his own face as he saw
+it reflected there, and vowing that he grew handsomer at every fresh
+epithet that he uttered.
+
+Of course the wags, from time to time, used to give him every possible
+encouragement, and declared that since this exercise, his person was
+amazingly improved. The ladies, too, began to be so excessively fond of
+him, that the little fellow was obliged to caution them at last--for the
+good, as he said, of society; he recommended them to draw lots, for
+he could not gratify them all; but promised when his metamorphosis was
+complete, that the one chosen should become the happy Mrs. Poinsinet;
+or, to speak more correctly, Mrs. Polycarte.
+
+I am sorry to say, however, that, on the score of gallantry, Poinsinet
+was never quite convinced of the hideousness of his appearance. He had a
+number of adventures, accordingly, with the ladies, but strange to say,
+the husbands or fathers were always interrupting him. On one occasion
+he was made to pass the night in a slipper-bath full of water; where,
+although he had all his clothes on, he declared that he nearly caught
+his death of cold. Another night, in revenge, the poor fellow
+
+
+              --"dans le simple appareil
+     D'une beaute, qu'on vient d'arracher au sommeil,"
+
+
+spent a number of hours contemplating the beauty of the moon on the
+tiles. These adventures are pretty numerous in the memoirs of M.
+Poinsinet; but the fact is, that people in France were a great deal
+more philosophical in those days than the English are now, so that
+Poinsinet's loves must be passed over, as not being to our taste. His
+magician was a great diver, and told Poinsinet the most wonderful tales
+of his two minutes' absence under water. These two minutes, he said,
+lasted through a year, at least, which he spent in the company of a
+naiad, more beautiful than Venus, in a palace more splendid than even
+Versailles. Fired by the description, Poinsinet used to dip, and dip,
+but he never was known to make any mermaid acquaintances, although he
+fully believed that one day he should find such.
+
+The invisible joke was brought to an end by Poinsinet's too great
+reliance on it; for being, as we have said, of a very tender and
+sanguine disposition, he one day fell in love with a lady in whose
+company he dined, and whom he actually proposed to embrace; but the
+fair lady, in the hurry of the moment, forgot to act up to the joke; and
+instead of receiving Poinsinet's salute with calmness, grew indignant,
+called him an impudent little scoundrel, and lent him a sound box on
+the ear. With this slap the invisibility of Poinsinet disappeared, the
+gnomes and genii left him, and he settled down into common life again,
+and was hoaxed only by vulgar means.
+
+A vast number of pages might be filled with narratives of the tricks
+that were played upon him; but they resemble each other a good deal,
+as may be imagined, and the chief point remarkable about them is the
+wondrous faith of Poinsinet. After being introduced to the Prussian
+ambassador at the Tuileries, he was presented to the Turkish envoy at
+the Place Vendome, who received him in state, surrounded by the officers
+of his establishment, all dressed in the smartest dresses that the
+wardrobe of the Opera Comique could furnish.
+
+As the greatest honor that could be done to him, Poinsinet was invited
+to eat, and a tray was produced, on which was a delicate dish prepared
+in the Turkish manner. This consisted of a reasonable quantity of
+mustard, salt, cinnamon and ginger, nutmegs and cloves, with a couple
+of tablespoonfuls of cayenne pepper, to give the whole a flavor; and
+Poinsinet's countenance may be imagined when he introduced into his
+mouth a quantity of this exquisite compound.
+
+"The best of the joke was," says the author who records so many of the
+pitiless tricks practised upon poor Poinsinet, "that the little man used
+to laugh at them afterwards himself with perfect good humor; and lived
+in the daily hope that, from being the sufferer, he should become
+the agent in these hoaxes, and do to others as he had been done by."
+Passing, therefore, one day, on the Pont Neuf, with a friend, who had
+been one of the greatest performers, the latter said to him, "Poinsinet,
+my good fellow, thou hast suffered enough, and thy sufferings have made
+thee so wise and cunning, that thou art worthy of entering among the
+initiated, and hoaxing in thy turn." Poinsinet was charmed; he asked
+when he should be initiated, and how? It was told him that a moment
+would suffice, and that the ceremony might be performed on the spot. At
+this news, and according to order, Poinsinet flung himself straightway
+on his knees in the kennel; and the other, drawing his sword, solemnly
+initiated him into the sacred order of jokers. From that day the little
+man believed himself received into the society; and to this having
+brought him, let us bid him a respectful adieu.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL'S WAGER.
+
+
+It was the hour of the night when there be none stirring save churchyard
+ghosts--when all doors are closed except the gates of graves, and all
+eyes shut but the eyes of wicked men.
+
+When there is no sound on the earth except the ticking of the
+grasshopper, or the croaking of obscene frogs in the poole.
+
+And no light except that of the blinking starres, and the wicked and
+devilish wills-o'-the-wisp, as they gambol among the marshes, and lead
+good men astraye.
+
+When there is nothing moving in heaven except the owle, as he flappeth
+along lazily; or the magician, as he rides on his infernal broomsticke,
+whistling through the aire like the arrowes of a Yorkshire archere.
+
+It was at this hour (namely, at twelve o'clock of the night,) that two
+beings went winging through the black clouds, and holding converse with
+each other.
+
+Now the first was Mercurius, the messenger, not of gods (as the heathens
+feigned), but of daemons; and the second, with whom he held company, was
+the soul of Sir Roger de Rollo, the brave knight. Sir Roger was Count
+of Chauchigny, in Champagne; Seigneur of Santerre, Villacerf and aultre
+lieux. But the great die as well as the humble; and nothing remained of
+brave Rodger now, but his coffin and his deathless soul.
+
+And Mercurius, in order to keep fast the soul, his companion, had bound
+him round the neck with his tail; which, when the soul was stubborn, he
+would draw so tight as to strangle him wellnigh, sticking into him the
+barbed point thereof; whereat the poor soul, Sir Rollo, would groan and
+roar lustily.
+
+Now they two had come together from the gates of purgatorie, being bound
+to those regions of fire and flame where poor sinners fry and roast in
+saecula saeculorum.
+
+"It is hard," said the poor Sir Rollo, as they went gliding through the
+clouds, "that I should thus be condemned for ever, and all for want of a
+single ave."
+
+"How, Sir Soul?" said the daemon. "You were on earth so wicked, that
+not one, or a million of aves, could suffice to keep from hell-flame
+a creature like thee; but cheer up and be merry; thou wilt be but a
+subject of our lord the Devil, as am I; and, perhaps, thou wilt be
+advanced to posts of honor, as am I also:" and to show his authoritie,
+he lashed with his tail the ribbes of the wretched Rollo.
+
+"Nevertheless, sinner as I am, one more ave would have saved me; for my
+sister, who was Abbess of St. Mary of Chauchigny, did so prevail, by her
+prayer and good works, for my lost and wretched soul, that every day I
+felt the pains of purgatory decrease; the pitchforks which, on my first
+entry, had never ceased to vex and torment my poor carcass, were now
+not applied above once a week; the roasting had ceased, the boiling
+had discontinued; only a certain warmth was kept up, to remind me of my
+situation."
+
+"A gentle stewe," said the daemon.
+
+"Yea, truly, I was but in a stew, and all from the effects of the
+prayers of my blessed sister. But yesterday, he who watched me in
+purgatory told me, that yet another prayer from my sister, and my
+bonds should be unloosed, and I, who am now a devil, should have been a
+blessed angel."
+
+"And the other ave?" said the daemon.
+
+"She died, sir--my sister died--death choked her in the middle of
+the prayer." And hereat the wretched spirit began to weepe and whine
+piteously; his salt tears falling over his beard, and scalding the tail
+of Mercurius the devil.
+
+"It is, in truth, a hard case," said the daemon; "but I know of
+no remedy save patience, and for that you will have an excellent
+opportunity in your lodgings below."
+
+"But I have relations," said the Earl; "my kinsman Randal, who has
+inherited my lands, will he not say a prayer for his uncle?"
+
+"Thou didst hate and oppress him when living."
+
+"It is true; but an ave is not much; his sister, my niece, Matilda--"
+
+"You shut her in a convent, and hanged her lover."
+
+"Had I not reason? besides, has she not others?"
+
+"A dozen, without doubt."
+
+"And my brother, the prior?"
+
+"A liege subject of my lord the Devil: he never opens his mouth, except
+to utter an oath, or to swallow a cup of wine."
+
+"And yet, if but one of these would but say an ave for me, I should be
+saved."
+
+"Aves with them are rarae aves," replied Mercurius, wagging his tail
+right waggishly; "and, what is more, I will lay thee any wager that not
+one of these will say a prayer to save thee."
+
+"I would wager willingly," responded he of Chauchigny; "but what has a
+poor soul like me to stake?"
+
+"Every evening, after the day's roasting, my lord Satan giveth a cup of
+cold water to his servants; I will bet thee thy water for a year, that
+none of the three will pray for thee."
+
+"Done!" said Rollo.
+
+"Done!" said the daemon; "and here, if I mistake not, is thy castle of
+Chauchigny."
+
+Indeed, it was true. The soul, on looking down, perceived the tall
+towers, the courts, the stables, and the fair gardens of the castle.
+Although it was past midnight, there was a blaze of light in the
+banqueting-hall, and a lamp burning in the open window of the Lady
+Matilda.
+
+"With whom shall we begin?" said the daemon: "with the baron or the
+lady?"
+
+"With the lady, if you will."
+
+"Be it so; her window is open, let us enter."
+
+So they descended, and entered silently into Matilda's chamber.
+
+
+The young lady's eyes were fixed so intently on a little clock, that
+it was no wonder that she did not perceive the entrance of her two
+visitors. Her fair cheek rested on her white arm, and her white arm on
+the cushion of a great chair in which she sat, pleasantly supported by
+sweet thoughts and swan's down; a lute was at her side, and a book
+of prayers lay under the table (for piety is always modest). Like the
+amorous Alexander, she sighed and looked (at the clock)--and sighed for
+ten minutes or more, when she softly breathed the word "Edward!"
+
+At this the soul of the Baron was wroth. "The jade is at her old
+pranks," said he to the devil; and then addressing Matilda: "I pray
+thee, sweet niece, turn thy thoughts for a moment from that villanous
+page, Edward, and give them to thine affectionate uncle."
+
+When she heard the voice, and saw the awful apparition of her uncle (for
+a year's sojourn in purgatory had not increased the comeliness of his
+appearance), she started, screamed, and of course fainted.
+
+But the devil Mercurius soon restored her to herself. "What's o'clock?"
+said she, as soon as she had recovered from her fit: "is he come?"
+
+"Not thy lover, Maude, but thine uncle--that is, his soul. For the love
+of heaven, listen to me: I have been frying in purgatory for a year
+past, and should have been in heaven but for the want of a single ave."
+
+"I will say it for thee to-morrow, uncle."
+
+"To-night, or never."
+
+"Well, to-night be it:" and she requested the devil Mercurius to give
+her the prayer-book from under the table; but he had no sooner touched
+the holy book than he dropped it with a shriek and a yell. "It was
+hotter," he said, "than his master Sir Lucifer's own particular
+pitchfork." And the lady was forced to begin her ave without the aid of
+her missal.
+
+At the commencement of her devotions the daemon retired, and carried
+with him the anxious soul of poor Sir Roger de Rollo.
+
+The lady knelt down--she sighed deeply; she looked again at the clock,
+and began--
+
+"Ave Maria."
+
+When a lute was heard under the window, and a sweet voice singing--
+
+"Hark!" said Matilda.
+
+
+     "Now the toils of day are over,
+        And the sun hath sunk to rest,
+      Seeking, like a fiery lover,
+        The bosom of the blushing west--
+
+     "The faithful night keeps watch and ward,
+        Raising the moon, her silver shield,
+      And summoning the stars to guard
+        The slumbers of my fair Mathilde!"
+
+
+"For mercy's sake!" said Sir Rollo, "the ave first, and next the song."
+
+So Matilda again dutifully betook her to her devotions, and began--
+
+"Ave Maria gratia plena!" but the music began again, and the prayer
+ceased of course.
+
+
+     "The faithful night!  Now all things lie
+        Hid by her mantle dark and dim,
+      In pious hope I hither hie,
+        And humbly chant mine ev'ning hymn.
+
+     "Thou art my prayer, my saint, my shrine!
+        (For never holy pilgrim kneel'd,
+      Or wept at feet more pure than thine),
+        My virgin love, my sweet Mathilde!"
+
+
+"Virgin love!" said the Baron. "Upon my soul, this is too bad!" and he
+thought of the lady's lover whom he had caused to be hanged.
+
+But SHE only thought of him who stood singing at her window.
+
+"Niece Matilda!" cried Sir Roger, agonizedly, "wilt thou listen to the
+lies of an impudent page, whilst thine uncle is waiting but a dozen
+words to make him happy?"
+
+At this Matilda grew angry: "Edward is neither impudent nor a liar, Sir
+Uncle, and I will listen to the end of the song."
+
+"Come away," said Mercurius; "he hath yet got wield, field, sealed,
+congealed, and a dozen other rhymes beside; and after the song will come
+the supper."
+
+So the poor soul was obliged to go; while the lady listened, and the
+page sung away till morning.
+
+
+"My virtues have been my ruin," said poor Sir Rollo, as he and Mercurius
+slunk silently out of the window. "Had I hanged that knave Edward, as I
+did the page his predecessor, my niece would have sung mine ave, and I
+should have been by this time an angel in heaven."
+
+"He is reserved for wiser purposes," responded the devil: "he will
+assassinate your successor, the lady Mathilde's brother; and, in
+consequence, will be hanged. In the love of the lady he will be
+succeeded by a gardener, who will be replaced by a monk, who will
+give way to an ostler, who will be deposed by a Jew pedler, who shall,
+finally, yield to a noble earl, the future husband of the fair Mathilde.
+So that, you see, instead of having one poor soul a-frying, we may now
+look forward to a goodly harvest for our lord the Devil."
+
+The soul of the Baron began to think that his companion knew too much
+for one who would make fair bets; but there was no help for it; he would
+not, and he could not, cry off: and he prayed inwardly that the brother
+might be found more pious than the sister.
+
+But there seemed little chance of this. As they crossed the court,
+lackeys, with smoking dishes and, full jugs, passed and repassed
+continually, although it was long past midnight. On entering the hall,
+they found Sir Randal at the head of a vast table, surrounded by a
+fiercer and more motley collection of individuals than had congregated
+there even in the time of Sir Rollo. The lord of the castle had
+signified that "it was his royal pleasure to be drunk," and the
+gentlemen of his train had obsequiously followed their master. Mercurius
+was delighted with the scene, and relaxed his usually rigid countenance
+into a bland and benevolent smile, which became him wonderfully.
+
+The entrance of Sir Roger, who had been dead about a year, and a person
+with hoofs, horns, and a tail, rather disturbed the hilarity of the
+company. Sir Randal dropped his cup of wine; and Father Peter, the
+confessor, incontinently paused in the midst of a profane song, with
+which he was amusing the society.
+
+"Holy Mother!" cried he, "it is Sir Roger."
+
+"Alive!" screamed Sir Randal.
+
+"No, my lord," Mercurius said; "Sir Roger is dead, but cometh on a
+matter of business; and I have the honor to act as his counsellor and
+attendant."
+
+"Nephew," said Sir Roger, "the daemon saith justly; I am come on a
+trifling affair, in which thy service is essential."
+
+"I will do anything, uncle, in my power."
+
+"Thou canst give me life, if thou wilt?" But Sir Randal looked very
+blank at this proposition. "I mean life spiritual, Randal," said Sir
+Roger; and thereupon he explained to him the nature of the wager.
+
+Whilst he was telling his story, his companion Mercurius was playing all
+sorts of antics in the hall; and, by his wit and fun, became so popular
+with this godless crew, that they lost all the fear which his first
+appearance had given them. The friar was wonderfully taken with him,
+and used his utmost eloquence and endeavors to convert the devil; the
+knights stopped drinking to listen to the argument; the men-at-arms
+forbore brawling; and the wicked little pages crowded round the two
+strange disputants, to hear their edifying discourse. The ghostly man,
+however, had little chance in the controversy, and certainly little
+learning to carry it on. Sir Randal interrupted him. "Father Peter,"
+said he, "our kinsman is condemned for ever, for want of a single ave:
+wilt thou say it for him?" "Willingly, my lord," said the monk, "with my
+book;" and accordingly he produced his missal to read, without which aid
+it appeared that the holy father could not manage the desired prayer.
+But the crafty Mercurius had, by his devilish art, inserted a song in
+the place of the ave, so that Father Peter, instead of chanting an hymn,
+sang the following irreverent ditty--
+
+
+     "Some love the matin-chimes, which toll
+        The hour of prayer to sinner:
+      But better far's the mid-day bell,
+        Which speaks the hour of dinner;
+      For when I see a smoking fish,
+        Or capon drown'd in gravy,
+      Or noble haunch on silver dish,
+        Full glad I sing mine ave.
+
+     "My pulpit is an ale-house bench,
+        Whereon I sit so jolly;
+      A smiling rosy country wench
+        My saint and patron holy.
+      I kiss her cheek so red and sleek,
+        I press her ringlets wavy;
+      And in her willing ear I speak
+        A most religious ave.
+
+     "And if I'm blind, yet heaven is kind,
+        And holy saints forgiving;
+      For sure he leads a right good life
+        Who thus admires good living.
+      Above, they say, our flesh is air,
+        Our blood celestial ichor:
+      Oh, grant! mid all the changes there,
+        They may not change our liquor!"
+
+
+And with this pious wish the holy confessor tumbled under the table in
+an agony of devout drunkenness; whilst the knights, the men-at-arms, and
+the wicked little pages, rang out the last verse with a most melodious
+and emphatic glee. "I am sorry, fair uncle," hiccupped Sir Randal,
+"that, in the matter of the ave, we could not oblige thee in a more
+orthodox manner; but the holy father has failed, and there is not
+another man in the hall who hath an idea of a prayer."
+
+"It is my own fault," said Sir Rollo; "for I hanged the last confessor."
+And he wished his nephew a surly good-night, as he prepared to quit the
+room.
+
+"Au revoir, gentlemen," said the devil Mercurius; and once more fixed
+his tail round the neck of his disappointed companion.
+
+The spirit of poor Rollo was sadly cast down; the devil, on the
+contrary, was in high good humor. He wagged his tail with the most
+satisfied air in the world, and cut a hundred jokes at the expense of
+his poor associate. On they sped, cleaving swiftly through the cold
+night winds, frightening the birds that were roosting in the woods, and
+the owls that were watching in the towers.
+
+In the twinkling of an eye, as it is known, devils can fly hundreds of
+miles: so that almost the same beat of the clock which left these two in
+Champagne, found them hovering over Paris. They dropped into the court
+of the Lazarist Convent, and winded their way, through passage and
+cloister, until they reached the door of the prior's cell.
+
+Now the prior, Rollo's brother, was a wicked and malignant sorcerer; his
+time was spent in conjuring devils and doing wicked deeds, instead of
+fasting, scourging, and singing holy psalms: this Mercurius knew; and
+he, therefore, was fully at ease as to the final result of his wager
+with poor Sir Roger.
+
+"You seem to be well acquainted with the road," said the knight.
+
+"I have reason," answered Mercurius, "having, for a long period, had the
+acquaintance of his reverence, your brother; but you have little chance
+with him."
+
+"And why?" said Sir Rollo.
+
+"He is under a bond to my master, never to say a prayer, or else his
+soul and his body are forfeited at once."
+
+"Why, thou false and traitorous devil!" said the enraged knight; "and
+thou knewest this when we made our wager?"
+
+"Undoubtedly: do you suppose I would have done so had there been any
+chance of losing?"
+
+And with this they arrived at Father Ignatius's door.
+
+"Thy cursed presence threw a spell on my niece, and stopped the tongue
+of my nephew's chaplain; I do believe that had I seen either of them
+alone, my wager had been won."
+
+"Certainly; therefore, I took good care to go with thee: however, thou
+mayest see the prior alone, if thou wilt; and lo! his door is open. I
+will stand without for five minutes, when it will be time to commence
+our journey."
+
+It was the poor Baron's last chance: and he entered his brother's room
+more for the five minutes' respite than from any hope of success.
+
+Father Ignatius, the prior, was absorbed in magic calculations: he stood
+in the middle of a circle of skulls, with no garment except his long
+white beard, which reached to his knees; he was waving a silver rod, and
+muttering imprecations in some horrible tongue.
+
+But Sir Rollo came forward and interrupted his incantation. "I am," said
+he, "the shade of thy brother Roger de Rollo; and have come, from pure
+brotherly love, to warn thee of thy fate."
+
+"Whence camest thou?"
+
+"From the abode of the blessed in Paradise," replied Sir Roger, who was
+inspired with a sudden thought; "it was but five minutes ago that the
+Patron Saint of thy church told me of thy danger, and of thy wicked
+compact with the fiend. 'Go,' said he, 'to thy miserable brother, and
+tell him there is but one way by which he may escape from paying the
+awful forfeit of his bond.'"
+
+"And how may that be?" said the prior; "the false fiend hath deceived
+me; I have given him my soul, but have received no worldly benefit in
+return. Brother! dear brother! how may I escape?"
+
+"I will tell thee. As soon as I heard the voice of blessed St. Mary
+Lazarus" (the worthy Earl had, at a pinch, coined the name of a saint),
+"I left the clouds, where, with other angels, I was seated, and sped
+hither to save thee. 'Thy brother,' said the Saint, 'hath but one day
+more to live, when he will become for all eternity the subject of Satan;
+if he would escape, he must boldly break his bond, by saying an ave.'"
+
+"It is the express condition of the agreement," said the unhappy monk,
+"I must say no prayer, or that instant I become Satan's, body and soul."
+
+"It is the express condition of the Saint," answered Roger, fiercely;
+"pray, brother, pray, or thou art lost for ever."
+
+So the foolish monk knelt down, and devoutly sung out an ave. "Amen!"
+said Sir Roger, devoutly.
+
+"Amen!" said Mercurius, as, suddenly, coming behind, he seized
+Ignatius by his long beard, and flew up with him to the top of the
+church-steeple.
+
+The monk roared, and screamed, and swore against his brother; but it
+was of no avail: Sir Roger smiled kindly on him, and said, "Do not fret,
+brother; it must have come to this in a year or two."
+
+And he flew alongside of Mercurius to the steeple-top: BUT THIS TIME THE
+DEVIL HAD NOT HIS TAIL ROUND HIS NECK. "I will let thee off thy bet,"
+said he to the daemon; for he could afford, now, to be generous.
+
+"I believe, my lord," said the daemon, politely, "that our ways separate
+here." Sir Roger sailed gayly upwards: while Mercurius having bound the
+miserable monk faster than ever, he sunk downwards to earth, and perhaps
+lower. Ignatius was heard roaring and screaming as the devil dashed him
+against the iron spikes and buttresses of the church.
+
+
+The moral of this story will be given in the second edition.
+
+
+
+
+MADAME SAND AND THE NEW APOCALYPSE.
+
+
+I don't know an impression more curious than that which is formed in a
+foreigner's mind, who has been absent from this place for two or three
+years, returns to it, and beholds the change which has taken place, in
+the meantime, in French fashions and ways of thinking. Two years ago,
+for instance, when I left the capital, I left the young gentlemen of
+France with their hair brushed en toupet in front, and the toes of their
+boots round; now the boot-toes are pointed, and the hair combed
+flat, and, parted in the middle, falls in ringlets on the fashionable
+shoulders; and, in like manner, with books as with boots, the fashion
+has changed considerably, and it is not a little curious to contrast
+the old modes with the new. Absurd as was the literary dandyism of those
+days, it is not a whit less absurd now: only the manner is changed, and
+our versatile Frenchmen have passed from one caricature to another.
+
+The revolution may be called a caricature of freedom, as the empire
+was of glory; and what they borrow from foreigners undergoes the same
+process. They take top-boots and mackintoshes from across the water, and
+caricature our fashions; they read a little, very little, Shakespeare,
+and caricature our poetry: and while in David's time art and religion
+were only a caricature of Heathenism, now, on the contrary, these
+two commodities are imported from Germany; and distorted caricatures
+originally, are still farther distorted on passing the frontier.
+
+I trust in heaven that German art and religion will take no hold in our
+country (where there is a fund of roast-beef that will expel any such
+humbug in the end); but these sprightly Frenchmen have relished the
+mystical doctrines mightily; and having watched the Germans, with their
+sanctified looks, and quaint imitations of the old times, and mysterious
+transcendental talk, are aping many of their fashions; as well and
+solemnly as they can: not very solemnly, God wot; for I think one should
+always prepare to grin when a Frenchman looks particularly grave, being
+sure that there is something false and ridiculous lurking under the
+owl-like solemnity.
+
+When last in Paris, we were in the midst of what was called a Catholic
+reaction. Artists talked of faith in poems and pictures; churches
+were built here and there; old missals were copied and purchased; and
+numberless portraits of saints, with as much gilding about them as
+ever was used in the fifteenth century, appeared in churches, ladies'
+boudoirs, and picture-shops. One or two fashionable preachers rose, and
+were eagerly followed; the very youth of the schools gave up their pipes
+and billiards for some time, and flocked in crowds to Notre Dame, to sit
+under the feet of Lacordaire. I went to visit the Church of Notre Dame
+de Lorette yesterday, which was finished in the heat of this Catholic
+rage, and was not a little struck by the similarity of the place to
+the worship celebrated in it, and the admirable manner in which the
+architect has caused his work to express the public feeling of the
+moment. It is a pretty little bijou of a church: it is supported by sham
+marble pillars; it has a gaudy ceiling of blue and gold, which will look
+very well for some time; and is filled with gaudy pictures and carvings,
+in the very pink of the mode. The congregation did not offer a bad
+illustration of the present state of Catholic reaction. Two or three
+stray people were at prayers; there was no service; a few countrymen
+and idlers were staring about at the pictures; and the Swiss, the paid
+guardian of the place, was comfortably and appropriately asleep on his
+bench at the door. I am inclined to think the famous reaction is over:
+the students have taken to their Sunday pipes and billiards again; and
+one or two cafes have been established, within the last year, that are
+ten times handsomer than Notre Dame de Lorette.
+
+However, if the immortal Goerres and the German mystics have had their
+day, there is the immortal Goethe, and the Pantheists; and I incline to
+think that the fashion has set very strongly in their favor. Voltaire
+and the Encyclopaedians are voted, now, barbares, and there is no term
+of reprobation strong enough for heartless Humes and Helvetiuses,
+who lived but to destroy, and who only thought to doubt. Wretched as
+Voltaire's sneers and puns are, I think there is something more
+manly and earnest even in them, than in the present muddy French
+transcendentalism. Pantheism is the word now; one and all have begun to
+eprouver the besoin of a religious sentiment; and we are deluged with
+a host of gods accordingly. Monsieur de Balzac feels himself to be
+inspired; Victor Hugo is a god; Madame Sand is a god; that tawdry man of
+genius, Jules Janin, who writes theatrical reviews for the Debats, has
+divine intimations; and there is scarce a beggarly, beardless scribbler
+of poems and prose, but tells you, in his preface, of the saintete of
+the sacerdoce litteraire; or a dirty student, sucking tobacco and
+beer, and reeling home with a grisette from the chaumiere, who is not
+convinced of the necessity of a new "Messianism," and will hiccup, to
+such as will listen, chapters of his own drunken Apocalypse. Surely, the
+negatives of the old days were far less dangerous than the assertions of
+the present; and you may fancy what a religion that must be, which has
+such high priests.
+
+There is no reason to trouble the reader with details of the lives of
+many of these prophets and expounders of new revelations. Madame Sand,
+for instance, I do not know personally, and can only speak of her from
+report. True or false, the history, at any rate, is not very edifying;
+and so may be passed over: but, as a certain great philosopher told us,
+in very humble and simple words, that we are not to expect to gather
+grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles, we may, at least, demand, in
+all persons assuming the character of moralist or philosopher--order,
+soberness, and regularity of life; for we are apt to distrust the
+intellect that we fancy can be swayed by circumstance or passion; and we
+know how circumstance and passion WILL sway the intellect: how mortified
+vanity will form excuses for itself; and how temper turns angrily upon
+conscience, that reproves it. How often have we called our judge our
+enemy, because he has given sentence against us!--How often have we
+called the right wrong, because the right condemns us! And in the lives
+of many of the bitter foes of the Christian doctrine, can we find no
+personal reason for their hostility? The men in Athens said it was out
+of regard for religion that they murdered Socrates; but we have had
+time, since then, to reconsider the verdict; and Socrates' character is
+pretty pure now, in spite of the sentence and the jury of those days.
+
+The Parisian philosophers will attempt to explain to you the changes
+through which Madame Sand's mind has passed,--the initiatory trials,
+labors, and sufferings which she has had to go through,--before she
+reached her present happy state of mental illumination. She teaches
+her wisdom in parables, that are, mostly, a couple of volumes long; and
+began, first, by an eloquent attack on marriage, in the charming novel
+of "Indiana." "Pity," cried she, "for the poor woman who, united to a
+being whose brute force makes him her superior, should venture to break
+the bondage which is imposed on her, and allow her heart to be free."
+
+In support of this claim of pity, she writes two volumes of the most
+exquisite prose. What a tender, suffering creature is Indiana; how
+little her husband appreciates that gentleness which he is crushing by
+his tyranny and brutal scorn; how natural it is that, in the absence
+of his sympathy, she, poor clinging confiding creature, should seek
+elsewhere for shelter; how cautious should we be, to call criminal--to
+visit with too heavy a censure--an act which is one of the natural
+impulses of a tender heart, that seeks but for a worthy object of love.
+But why attempt to tell the tale of beautiful Indiana? Madame Sand has
+written it so well, that not the hardest-hearted husband in Christendom
+can fail to be touched by her sorrows, though he may refuse to listen
+to her argument. Let us grant, for argument's sake, that the laws of
+marriage, especially the French laws of marriage, press very cruelly
+upon unfortunate women.
+
+But if one wants to have a question of this, or any nature, honestly
+argued, it is, better, surely, to apply to an indifferent person for
+an umpire. For instance, the stealing of pocket-handkerchiefs or
+snuff-boxes may or may not be vicious; but if we, who have not the wit,
+or will not take the trouble to decide the question ourselves, want to
+hear the real rights of the matter, we should not, surely, apply to a
+pickpocket to know what he thought on the point. It might naturally be
+presumed that he would be rather a prejudiced person--particularly
+as his reasoning, if successful, might get him OUT OF GAOL. This is a
+homely illustration, no doubt; all we would urge by it is, that Madame
+Sand having, according to the French newspapers, had a stern husband,
+and also having, according to the newspapers, sought "sympathy"
+elsewhere, her arguments may be considered to be somewhat partial, and
+received with some little caution.
+
+And tell us who have been the social reformers?--the haters, that is,
+of the present system, according to which we live, love, marry, have
+children, educate them, and endow them--ARE THEY PURE THEMSELVES? I do
+believe not one; and directly a man begins to quarrel with the world and
+its ways, and to lift up, as he calls it, the voice of his despair, and
+preach passionately to mankind about this tyranny of faith, customs,
+laws; if we examine what the personal character of the preacher is, we
+begin pretty clearly to understand the value of the doctrine. Any one
+can see why Rousseau should be such a whimpering reformer, and Byron
+such a free and easy misanthropist, and why our accomplished Madame
+Sand, who has a genius and eloquence inferior to neither, should take
+the present condition of mankind (French-kind) so much to heart, and
+labor so hotly to set it right.
+
+After "Indiana" (which, we presume, contains the lady's notions upon
+wives and husbands) came "Valentine," which may be said to exhibit her
+doctrine, in regard of young men and maidens, to whom the author would
+accord, as we fancy, the same tender license. "Valentine" was followed
+by "Lelia," a wonderful book indeed, gorgeous in eloquence, and rich in
+magnificent poetry: a regular topsyturvyfication of morality, a
+thieves' and prostitutes' apotheosis. This book has received some late
+enlargements and emendations by the writer; it contains her notions on
+morals, which, as we have said, are so peculiar, that, alas! they only
+can be mentioned here, not particularized: but of "Spiridion" we may
+write a few pages, as it is her religious manifesto.
+
+In this work, the lady asserts her pantheistical doctrine, and openly
+attacks the received Christian creed. She declares it to be useless now,
+and unfitted to the exigencies and the degree of culture of the actual
+world; and, though it would be hardly worth while to combat her opinions
+in due form, it is, at least, worth while to notice them, not merely
+from the extraordinary eloquence and genius of the woman herself, but
+because they express the opinions of a great number of people besides:
+for she not only produces her own thoughts, but imitates those of others
+very eagerly; and one finds in her writings so much similarity with
+others, or, in others, so much resemblance to her, that the book before
+us may pass for the expression of the sentiments of a certain French
+party.
+
+"Dieu est mort," says another writer of the same class, and of great
+genius too.--"Dieu est mort," writes Mr. Henry Heine, speaking
+of the Christian God; and he adds, in a daring figure of
+speech;--"N'entendez-vous pas sonner la Clochette?--on porte les
+sacremens a un Dieu qui se meurt!" Another of the pantheist poetical
+philosophers, Mr. Edgar Quinet, has a poem, in which Christ and the
+Virgin Mary are made to die similarly, and the former is classed with
+Prometheus. This book of "Spiridion" is a continuation of the theme, and
+perhaps you will listen to some of the author's expositions of it.
+
+It must be confessed that the controversialists of the present day have
+an eminent advantage over their predecessors in the days of folios;
+it required some learning then to write a book, and some time, at
+least--for the very labor of writing out a thousand such vast pages
+would demand a considerable period. But now, in the age of duodecimos,
+the system is reformed altogether: a male or female controversialist
+draws upon his imagination, and not his learning; makes a story instead
+of an argument, and, in the course of 150 pages (where the preacher has
+it all his own way) will prove or disprove you anything. And, to our
+shame be it said, we Protestants have set the example of this kind of
+proselytism--those detestable mixtures of truth, lies, false sentiment,
+false reasoning, bad grammar, correct and genuine philanthropy and
+piety--I mean our religious tracts, which any woman or man, be he ever
+so silly, can take upon himself to write, and sell for a penny, as if
+religious instruction were the easiest thing in the world. We, I say,
+have set the example in this kind of composition, and all the sects
+of the earth will, doubtless, speedily follow it. I can point you out
+blasphemies in famous pious tracts that are as dreadful as those above
+mentioned; but this is no place for such discussions, and we had better
+return to Madame Sand. As Mrs. Sherwood expounds, by means of many
+touching histories and anecdotes of little boys and girls, her notions
+of church history, church catechism, church doctrine;--as the author
+of "Father Clement, a Roman Catholic Story," demolishes the stately
+structure of eighteen centuries, the mighty and beautiful Roman Catholic
+faith, in whose bosom repose so many saints and sages,--by the means
+of a three-and-sixpenny duodecimo volume, which tumbles over the vast
+fabric, as David's pebble-stone did Goliath;--as, again, the Roman
+Catholic author of "Geraldine" falls foul of Luther and Calvin, and
+drowns the awful echoes of their tremendous protest by the sounds of
+her little half-crown trumpet: in like manner, by means of pretty
+sentimental tales, and cheap apologues, Mrs. Sand proclaims HER
+truth--that we need a new Messiah, and that the Christian religion is
+no more! O awful, awful name of God! Light unbearable! Mystery
+unfathomable! Vastness immeasurable!--Who are these who come forward to
+explain the mystery, and gaze unblinking into the depths of the light,
+and measure the immeasurable vastness to a hair? O name, that God's
+people of old did fear to utter! O light, that God's prophet would
+have perished had he seen! Who are these that are now so familiar with
+it?--Women, truly; for the most part weak women--weak in intellect,
+weak mayhap in spelling and grammar, but marvellously strong in
+faith:--women, who step down to the people with stately step and voice
+of authority, and deliver their twopenny tablets, as if there were some
+Divine authority for the wretched nonsense recorded there!
+
+With regard to the spelling and grammar, our Parisian Pythoness stands,
+in the goodly fellowship, remarkable. Her style is a noble, and, as far
+as a foreigner can judge, a strange tongue, beautifully rich and pure.
+She has a very exuberant imagination, and, with it, a very chaste style
+of expression. She never scarcely indulges in declamation, as other
+modern prophets do, and yet her sentences are exquisitely melodious
+and full. She seldom runs a thought to death (after the manner of some
+prophets, who, when they catch a little one, toy with it until they kill
+it), but she leaves you at the end of one of her brief, rich, melancholy
+sentences, with plenty of food for future cogitation. I can't express
+to you the charm of them; they seem to me like the sound of country
+bells--provoking I don't know what vein of musing and meditation, and
+falling sweetly and sadly on the ear.
+
+This wonderful power of language must have been felt by most people
+who read Madame Sand's first books, "Valentine" and "Indiana": in
+"Spiridion" it is greater, I think, than ever; and for those who are
+not afraid of the matter of the novel, the manner will be found most
+delightful. The author's intention, I presume, is to describe, in
+a parable, her notions of the downfall of the Catholic church; and,
+indeed, of the whole Christian scheme: she places her hero in a
+monastery in Italy, where, among the characters about him, and the
+events which occur, the particular tenets of Madame Dudevant's doctrine
+are not inaptly laid down. Innocent, faithful, tender-hearted, a young
+monk, by name Angel, finds himself, when he has pronounced his vows, an
+object of aversion and hatred to the godly men whose lives he so much
+respects, and whose love he would make any sacrifice to win. After
+enduring much, he flings himself at the feet of his confessor, and begs
+for his sympathy and counsel; but the confessor spurns him away, and
+accuses him, fiercely, of some unknown and terrible crime--bids him
+never return to the confessional until contrition has touched his heart,
+and the stains which sully his spirit are, by sincere repentance, washed
+away.
+
+"Thus speaking," says Angel, "Father Hegesippus tore away his robe,
+which I was holding in my supplicating hands. In a sort of wildness I
+still grasped it tighter; he pushed me fiercely from him, and I fell
+with my face towards the ground. He quitted me, closing violently after
+him the door of the sacristy, in which this scene had passed. I was
+left alone in the darkness. Either from the violence of my fall, or the
+excess of my grief, a vein had burst in my throat, and a haemorrhage
+ensued. I had not the force to rise; I felt my senses rapidly sinking,
+and, presently, I lay stretched on the pavement, unconscious, and bathed
+in my blood."
+
+[Now the wonderful part of the story begins.]
+
+"I know not how much time I passed in this way. As I came to myself
+I felt an agreeable coolness. It seemed as if some harmonious air was
+playing round about me, stirring gently in my hair, and drying the drops
+of perspiration on my brow. It seemed to approach, and then again to
+withdraw, breathing now softly and sweetly in the distance, and now
+returning, as if to give me strength and courage to rise.
+
+"I would not, however, do so as yet; for I felt myself, as I lay, under
+the influence of a pleasure quite new to me; and listened, in a kind
+of peaceful aberration, to the gentle murmurs of the summer wind, as it
+breathed on me through the closed window-blinds above me. Then I fancied
+I heard a voice that spoke to me from the end of the sacristy:
+it whispered so low that I could not catch the words. I remained
+motionless, and gave it my whole attention. At last I heard, distinctly,
+the following sentence:--'Spirit of Truth, raise up these victims of
+ignorance and imposture.' 'Father Hegesippus,' said I, in a weak voice,
+'is that you who are returning to me?' But no one answered. I lifted
+myself on my hands and knees, I listened again, but I heard nothing. I
+got up completely, and looked about me: I had fallen so near to the
+only door in this little room, that none, after the departure of the
+confessor, could have entered it without passing over me; besides, the
+door was shut, and only opened from the inside by a strong lock of the
+ancient shape. I touched it, and assured myself that it was closed. I
+was seized with terror, and, for some moments, did not dare to move.
+Leaning against the door, I looked round, and endeavored to see into
+the gloom in which the angles of the room were enveloped. A pale light,
+which came from an upper window, half closed, was seen to be trembling
+in the midst of the apartment. The wind beat the shutter to and fro,
+and enlarged or diminished the space through which the light issued. The
+objects which were in this half light--the praying-desk, surmounted by
+its skull--a few books lying on the benches--a surplice hanging against
+the wall--seemed to move with the shadow of the foliage that the air
+agitated behind the window. When I thought I was alone, I felt ashamed
+of my former timidity; I made the sign of the cross, and was about to
+move forward in order to open the shutter altogether, but a deep sigh
+came from the praying-desk, and kept me nailed to my place. And yet I
+saw the desk distinctly enough to be sure that no person was near it.
+Then I had an idea which gave me courage. Some person, I thought, is
+behind the shutter, and has been saying his prayers outside without
+thinking of me. But who would be so bold as to express such wishes and
+utter such a prayer as I had just heard?
+
+"Curiosity, the only passion and amusement permitted in a cloister, now
+entirely possessed me, and I advanced towards the window. But I had not
+made a step when a black shadow, as it seemed to me, detaching itself
+from the praying-desk, traversed the room, directing itself towards the
+window, and passed swiftly by me. The movement was so rapid that I had
+not time to avoid what seemed a body advancing towards me, and my fright
+was so great that I thought I should faint a second time. But I felt
+nothing, and, as if the shadow had passed through me, I saw it suddenly
+disappear to my left.
+
+"I rushed to the window, I pushed back the blind with precipitation, and
+looked round the sacristy: I was there, entirely alone. I looked into
+the garden--it was deserted, and the mid-day wind was wandering among
+the flowers. I took courage, I examined all the corners of the room; I
+looked behind the praying-desk, which was very large, and I shook all
+the sacerdotal vestments which were hanging on the walls, everything was
+in its natural condition, and could give me no explanation of what had
+just occurred. The sight of all the blood I had lost led me to fancy
+that my brain had, probably, been weakened by the haemorrhage, and that
+I had been a prey to some delusion. I retired to my cell, and remained
+shut up there until the next day."
+
+I don't know whether the reader has been as much struck with the above
+mysterious scene as the writer has; but the fancy of it strikes me
+as very fine; and the natural SUPERNATURALNESS is kept up in the best
+style. The shutter swaying to and fro, the fitful LIGHT APPEARING over
+the furniture of the room, and giving it an air of strange motion--the
+awful shadow which passed through the body of the timid young
+novice--are surely very finely painted. "I rushed to the shutter, and
+flung it back: there was no one in the sacristy. I looked into the
+garden; it was deserted, and the mid-day wind was roaming among the
+flowers." The dreariness is wonderfully described: only the poor pale
+boy looking eagerly out from the window of the sacristy, and the hot
+mid-day wind walking in the solitary garden. How skilfully is each of
+these little strokes dashed in, and how well do all together combine
+to make a picture! But we must have a little more about Spiridion's
+wonderful visitant.
+
+
+"As I entered into the garden, I stepped a little on one side, to make
+way for a person whom I saw before me. He was a young man of surprising
+beauty, and attired in a foreign costume. Although dressed in the large
+black robe which the superiors of our order wear, he had, underneath, a
+short jacket of fine cloth, fastened round the waist by a leathern belt,
+and a buckle of silver, after the manner of the old German students.
+Like them, he wore, instead of the sandals of our monks, short tight
+boots; and over the collar of his shirt, which fell on his shoulders,
+and was as white as snow, hung, in rich golden curls, the most beautiful
+hair I ever saw. He was tall, and his elegant posture seemed to reveal
+to me that he was in the habit of commanding. With much respect, and
+yet uncertain, I half saluted him. He did not return my salute; but he
+smiled on me with so benevolent an air, and at the same time, his
+eyes severe and blue, looked towards me with an expression of such
+compassionate tenderness, that his features have never since then passed
+away from my recollection. I stopped, hoping he would speak to me, and
+persuading myself, from the majesty of his aspect, that he had the power
+to protect me; but the monk, who was walking behind me, and who did not
+seem to remark him in the least, forced him brutally to step aside from
+the walk, and pushed me so rudely as almost to cause me to fall. Not
+wishing to engage in a quarrel with this coarse monk, I moved away; but,
+after having taken a few steps in the garden, I looked back, and saw the
+unknown still gazing on me with looks of the tenderest solicitude. The
+sun shone full upon him, and made his hair look radiant. He sighed, and
+lifted his fine eyes to heaven, as if to invoke its justice in my favor,
+and to call it to bear witness to my misery; he turned slowly towards
+the sanctuary, entered into the quire, and was lost, presently, in
+the shade. I longed to return, spite of the monk, to follow this
+noble stranger, and to tell him my afflictions; but who was he, that I
+imagined he would listen to them, and cause them to cease? I felt, even
+while his softness drew me towards him, that he still inspired me with
+a kind of fear; for I saw in his physiognomy as much austerity as
+sweetness."
+
+
+Who was he?--we shall see that. He was somebody very mysterious indeed;
+but our author has taken care, after the manner of her sex, to make
+a very pretty fellow of him, and to dress him in the most becoming
+costumes possible.
+
+
+The individual in tight boots and a rolling collar, with the copious
+golden locks, and the solemn blue eyes, who had just gazed on Spiridion,
+and inspired him with such a feeling of tender awe, is a much more
+important personage than the reader might suppose at first sight. This
+beautiful, mysterious, dandy ghost, whose costume, with a true woman's
+coquetry, Madame Dudevant has so rejoiced to describe--is her religious
+type, a mystical representation of Faith struggling up towards Truth,
+through superstition, doubt, fear, reason,--in tight inexpressibles,
+with "a belt such as is worn by the old German students." You will
+pardon me for treating such an awful person as this somewhat lightly;
+but there is always, I think, such a dash of the ridiculous in the
+French sublime, that the critic should try and do justice to both, or
+he may fail in giving a fair account of either. This character of
+Hebronius, the type of Mrs. Sand's convictions--if convictions they
+may be called--or, at least, the allegory under which her doubts are
+represented, is, in parts, very finely drawn; contains many passages of
+truth, very deep and touching, by the side of others so entirely absurd
+and unreasonable, that the reader's feelings are continually swaying
+between admiration and something very like contempt--always in a kind of
+wonder at the strange mixture before him. But let us hear Madame Sand:--
+
+"Peter Hebronius," says our author, "was not originally so named. His
+real name was Samuel. He was a Jew, and born in a little village in the
+neighborhood of Innsprueck. His family, which possessed a considerable
+fortune, left him, in his early youth, completely free to his own
+pursuits. From infancy he had shown that these were serious. He loved to
+be alone and passed his days, and sometimes his nights, wandering among
+the mountains and valleys in the neighborhood of his birthplace. He
+would often sit by the brink of torrents, listening to the voice of
+their waters, and endeavoring to penetrate the meaning which Nature had
+hidden in those sounds. As he advanced in years, his inquiries became
+more curious and more grave. It was necessary that he should receive
+a solid education, and his parents sent him to study in the German
+universities. Luther had been dead only a century, and his words and his
+memory still lived in the enthusiasm of his disciples. The new faith was
+strengthening the conquests it had made; the Reformers were as ardent
+as in the first days, but their ardor was more enlightened and more
+measured. Proselytism was still carried on with zeal, and new converts
+were made every day. In listening to the morality and to the dogmas
+which Lutheranism had taken from Catholicism, Samuel was filled with
+admiration. His bold and sincere spirit instantly compared the doctrines
+which were now submitted to him, with those in the belief of which
+he had been bred; and, enlightened by the comparison, was not slow
+to acknowledge the inferiority of Judaism. He said to himself, that
+a religion made for a single people, to the exclusion of all
+others,--which only offered a barbarous justice for rule of
+conduct,--which neither rendered the present intelligible nor
+satisfactory, and left the future uncertain,--could not be that of noble
+souls and lofty intellects; and that he could not be the God of truth
+who had dictated, in the midst of thunder, his vacillating will, and had
+called to the performance of his narrow wishes the slaves of a vulgar
+terror. Always conversant with himself, Samuel, who had spoken what he
+thought, now performed what he had spoken; and, a year after his arrival
+in Germany, solemnly abjured Judaism, and entered into the bosom of the
+Reformed Church. As he did not wish to do things by halves, and desired
+as much as was in him to put off the old man and lead a new life, he
+changed his name of Samuel to that of Peter. Some time passed, during
+which he strengthened and instructed himself in his new religion. Very
+soon he arrived at the point of searching for objections to refute, and
+adversaries to overthrow. Bold and enterprising, he went at once to the
+strongest, and Bossuet was the first Catholic author that he set himself
+to read. He commenced with a kind of disdain; believing that the faith
+which he had just embraced contained the pure truth. He despised all
+the attacks which could be made against it, and laughed already at the
+irresistible arguments which he was to find in the works of the Eagle of
+Meaux. But his mistrust and irony soon gave place to wonder first,
+and then to admiration: he thought that the cause pleaded by such an
+advocate must, at least, be respectable; and, by a natural transition,
+came to think that great geniuses would only devote themselves to that
+which was great. He then studied Catholicism with the same ardor and
+impartiality which he had bestowed on Lutheranism. He went into France
+to gain instruction from the professors of the Mother Church, as he
+had from the Doctors of the reformed creed in Germany. He saw Arnauld
+Fenelon, that second Gregory of Nazianzen, and Bossuet himself. Guided
+by these masters, whose virtues made him appreciate their talents
+the more, he rapidly penetrated to the depth of the mysteries of the
+Catholic doctrine and morality. He found, in this religion, all that
+had for him constituted the grandeur and beauty of Protestantism,--the
+dogmas of the Unity and Eternity of God, which the two religions had
+borrowed from Judaism; and, what seemed the natural consequence of
+the last doctrine--a doctrine, however, to which the Jews had not
+arrived--the doctrine of the immortality of the soul; free will in this
+life; in the next, recompense for the good, and punishment for the evil.
+He found, more pure, perhaps, and more elevated in Catholicism than in
+Protestantism, that sublime morality which preaches equality to man,
+fraternity, love, charity, renouncement of self, devotion to your
+neighbor; Catholicism, in a word, seemed to possess that vast formula,
+and that vigorous unity, which Lutheranism wanted. The latter had,
+indeed, in its favor, the liberty of inquiry, which is also a want of
+the human mind; and had proclaimed the authority of individual reason:
+but it had so lost that which is the necessary basis and vital condition
+of all revealed religion--the principle of infallibility; because
+nothing can live except in virtue of the laws that presided at its
+birth; and, in consequence, one revelation cannot be continued and
+confirmed without another. Now, infallibility is nothing but revelation
+continued by God, or the Word, in the person of his vicars.
+
+"At last, after much reflection, Hebronius acknowledged himself entirely
+and sincerely convinced, and received baptism from the hands of Bossuet.
+He added the name of Spiridion to that of Peter, to signify that he
+had been twice enlightened by the Spirit. Resolved thenceforward to
+consecrate his life to the worship of the new God who had called him to
+Him, and to the study of His doctrines, he passed into Italy, and, with
+the aid of a large fortune, which one of his uncles, a Catholic like
+himself, had left to him, he built this convent where we now are."
+
+
+A friend of mine, who has just come from Italy, says that he has there
+left Messrs. Sp--r, P--l, and W. Dr--d, who were the lights of the great
+church in Newman Street, who were themselves apostles, and declared and
+believed that every word of nonsense which fell from their lips was a
+direct spiritual intervention. These gentlemen have become Puseyites
+already, and are, my friend states, in the high way to Catholicism.
+Madame Sand herself was a Catholic some time since: having been
+converted to that faith along with M. N--, of the Academy of Music; Mr.
+L--, the pianoforte player; and one or two other chosen individuals, by
+the famous Abbe de la M--. Abbe de la M-- (so told me in the Diligence,
+a priest, who read his breviary and gossiped alternately very curiously
+and pleasantly) is himself an ame perdue: the man spoke of his brother
+clergyman with actual horror; and it certainly appears that the Abbe's
+works of conversion have not prospered; for Madame Sand, having brought
+her hero (and herself, as we may presume) to the point of Catholicism,
+proceeds directly to dispose of that as she has done of Judaism and
+Protestantism, and will not leave, of the whole fabric of Christianity,
+a single stone standing.
+
+I think the fate of our English Newman Street apostles, and of M. de la
+M--, the mad priest, and his congregation of mad converts, should be
+a warning to such of us as are inclined to dabble in religious
+speculations; for, in them, as in all others, our flighty brains soon
+lose themselves, and we find our reason speedily lying prostrated at the
+mercy of our passions; and I think that Madame Sand's novel of Spiridion
+may do a vast deal of good, and bears a good moral with it; though not
+such an one, perhaps, as our fair philosopher intended. For anything he
+learned, Samuel-Peter-Spiridion-Hebronius might have remained a Jew from
+the beginning to the end. Wherefore be in such a hurry to set up new
+faiths? Wherefore, Madame Sand, try and be so preternaturally wise?
+Wherefore be so eager to jump out of one religion, for the purpose of
+jumping into another? See what good this philosophical friskiness has
+done you, and on what sort of ground you are come at last. You are
+so wonderfully sagacious, that you flounder in mud at every step; so
+amazingly clear-sighted, that your eyes cannot see an inch before you,
+having put out, with that extinguishing genius of yours, every one of
+the lights that are sufficient for the conduct of common men. And for
+what? Let our friend Spiridion speak for himself. After setting up his
+convent, and filling it with monks, who entertain an immense respect
+for his wealth and genius, Father Hebronius, unanimously elected prior,
+gives himself up to further studies, and leaves his monks to themselves.
+Industrious and sober as they were, originally, they grow quickly
+intemperate and idle; and Hebronius, who does not appear among his flock
+until he has freed himself of the Catholic religion, as he has of the
+Jewish and the Protestant, sees, with dismay, the evil condition of
+his disciples, and regrets, too late, the precipitancy by which he
+renounced, then and for ever, Christianity. "But, as he had no new
+religion to adopt in its place, and as, grown more prudent and calm, he
+did not wish to accuse himself unnecessarily, once more, of inconstancy
+and apostasy, he still maintained all the exterior forms of the worship
+which inwardly he had abjured. But it was not enough for him to have
+quitted error, it was necessary to discover truth. But Hebronius had
+well looked round to discover it; he could not find anything that
+resembled it. Then commenced for him a series of sufferings, unknown
+and terrible. Placed face to face with doubt, this sincere and religious
+spirit was frightened at its own solitude; and as it had no other desire
+nor aim on earth than truth, and nothing else here below interested it,
+he lived absorbed in his own sad contemplations, looked ceaselessly into
+the vague that surrounded him like an ocean without bounds, and seeing
+the horizon retreat and retreat as ever he wished to near it. Lost in
+this immense uncertainty, he felt as if attacked by vertigo, and his
+thoughts whirled within his brain. Then, fatigued with his vain
+toils and hopeless endeavors, he would sink down depressed, unmanned,
+life-wearied, only living in the sensation of that silent grief which he
+felt and could not comprehend."
+
+It is a pity that this hapless Spiridion, so eager in his passage
+from one creed to another, and so loud in his profession of the truth,
+wherever he fancied that he had found it, had not waited a little,
+before he avowed himself either Catholic or Protestant, and implicated
+others in errors and follies which might, at least, have been confined
+to his own bosom, and there have lain comparatively harmless. In what a
+pretty state, for instance, will Messrs. Dr--d and P--l have left
+their Newman Street congregation, who are still plunged in their old
+superstitions, from which their spiritual pastors and masters have been
+set free! In what a state, too, do Mrs. Sand and her brother and sister
+philosophers, Templars, Saint Simonians, Fourierites, Lerouxites, or
+whatever the sect may be, leave the unfortunate people who have listened
+to their doctrines, and who have not the opportunity, or the fiery
+versatility of belief, which carries their teachers from one creed to
+another, leaving only exploded lies and useless recantations behind
+them! I wish the state would make a law that one individual should not
+be allowed to preach more than one doctrine in his life, or, at any
+rate, should be soundly corrected for every change of creed. How many
+charlatans would have been silenced,--how much conceit would have been
+kept within bounds,--how many fools, who are dazzled by fine sentences,
+and made drunk by declamation, would have remained, quiet and sober, in
+that quiet and sober way of faith which their fathers held before them.
+However, the reader will be glad to learn that, after all his doubts
+and sorrows, Spiridion does discover the truth (THE truth, what a wise
+Spiridion!) and some discretion with it; for, having found among his
+monks, who are dissolute, superstitious--and all hate him--one only
+being, Fulgentius, who is loving, candid, and pious, he says to him, "If
+you were like myself, if the first want of your nature were, like
+mine, to know, I would, without hesitation, lay bare to you my entire
+thoughts. I would make you drink the cup of truth, which I myself have
+filled with so many tears, at the risk of intoxicating you with the
+draught. But it is not so, alas! you are made to love rather than to
+know, and your heart is stronger than your intellect. You are attached
+to Catholicism,--I believe so, at least,--by bonds of sentiment which
+you could not break without pain, and which, if you were to break, the
+truth which I could lay bare to you in return would not repay you for
+what you had sacrificed. Instead of exalting, it would crush you, very
+likely. It is a food too strong for ordinary men, and which, when
+it does not revivify, smothers. I will not, then, reveal to you this
+doctrine, which is the triumph of my life, and the consolation of
+my last days; because it might, perhaps, be for you only a cause of
+mourning and despair..... Of all the works which my long studies have
+produced, there is one alone which I have not given to the flames; for
+it alone is complete. In that you will find me entire, and there LIES
+THE TRUTH. And, as the sage has said you must not bury your treasures in
+a well, I will not confide mine to the brutal stupidity of these monks.
+But as this volume should only pass into hands worthy to touch it, and
+be laid open for eyes that are capable of comprehending its mysteries,
+I shall exact from the reader one condition, which, at the same time,
+shall be a proof: I shall carry it with me to the tomb, in order that
+he who one day shall read it, may have courage enough to brave the vain
+terrors of the grave, in searching for it amid the dust of my sepulchre.
+As soon as I am dead, therefore, place this writing on my breast.....
+Ah! when the time comes for reading it, I think my withered heart will
+spring up again, as the frozen grass at the return of the sun, and that,
+from the midst of its infinite transformations, my spirit will enter
+into immediate communication with thine!"
+
+
+Does not the reader long to be at this precious manuscript, which
+contains THE TRUTH; and ought he not to be very much obliged to Mrs.
+Sand, for being so good as to print it for him? We leave all the story
+aside: how Fulgentius had not the spirit to read the manuscript,
+but left the secret to Alexis; how Alexis, a stern old philosophical
+unbelieving monk as ever was, tried in vain to lift up the gravestone,
+but was taken with fever, and obliged to forego the discovery; and how,
+finally, Angel, his disciple, a youth amiable and innocent as his name,
+was the destined person who brought the long-buried treasure to light.
+Trembling and delighted, the pair read this tremendous MANUSCRIPT OF
+SPIRIDION.
+
+Will it be believed, that of all the dull, vague, windy documents that
+mortal ever set eyes on, this is the dullest? If this be absolute truth,
+a quoi bon search for it, since we have long, long had the jewel in our
+possession, or since, at least, it has been held up as such by every
+sham philosopher who has had a mind to pass off his wares on the public?
+Hear Spiridion:--
+
+"How much have I wept, how much have I suffered, how much have I prayed,
+how much have I labored, before I understood the cause and the aim of
+my passage on this earth! After many incertitudes, after much remorse,
+after many scruples, I HAVE COMPREHENDED THAT I WAS A MARTYR!--But why
+my martyrdom? said I; what crimne did I commit before I was born, thus
+to be condemned to labor and groaning, from the hour when I first saw
+the day up to that when I am about to enter into the night of the tomb?
+
+"At last, by dint of imploring God--by dint of inquiry into the history
+of man, a ray of the truth has descended on my brow, and the shadows of
+the past have melted from before my eyes. I have lifted a corner of the
+curtain: I have seen enough to know that my life, like that of the rest
+of the human race, has been a series of necessary errors, yet, to speak
+more correctly, of incomplete truths, conducting, more or less slowly
+and directly, to absolute truth and ideal perfection. But when will they
+rise on the face of the earth--when will they issue from the bosom of
+the Divinity--those generations who shall salute the august countenance
+of Truth, and proclaim the reign of the ideal on earth? I see well how
+humanity marches, but I neither can see its cradle nor its apotheosis.
+Man seems to me a transitory race, between the beast and the angel; but
+I know not how many centuries have been required, that he might pass
+from the state of brute to the state of man, and I cannot tell how many
+ages are necessary that he may pass from the state of man to the state
+of angel!
+
+"Yet I hope, and I feel within me, at the approach of death, that which
+warns me that great destinies await humanity. In this life all is over
+for me. Much have I striven, to advance but little: I have labored
+without ceasing, and have done almost nothing. Yet, after pains
+immeasurable, I die content, for I know that I have done all I could,
+and am sure that the little I have done will not be lost.
+
+"What, then, have I done? this wilt thou demand of me, man of a future
+age, who will seek for truth in the testaments of the past. Thou who
+wilt be no more Catholic--no more Christian, thou wilt ask of the poor
+monk, lying in the dust, an account of his life and death. Thou wouldst
+know wherefore were his vows, why his austerities, his labors, his
+retreat, his prayers?
+
+"You who turn back to me, in order that I may guide you on your road,
+and that you may arrive more quickly at the goal which it has not been
+my lot to attain, pause, yet, for a moment, and look upon the past
+history of humanity. You will see that its fate has been ever to choose
+between the least of two evils, and ever to commit great faults in order
+to avoid others still greater. You will see.... on one side, the heathen
+mythology, that debased the spirit, in its efforts to deify the flesh;
+on the other, the austere Christian principle, that debased the flesh
+too much, in order to raise the worship of the spirit. You will see,
+afterwards, how the religion of Christ embodies itself in a church,
+and raises itself a generous democratic power against the tyranny of
+princes. Later still, you will see how that power has attained its end,
+and passed beyond it. You will see it, having chained and conquered
+princes, league itself with them, in order to oppress the people, and
+seize on temporal power. Schism, then, raises up against it the standard
+of revolt, and preaches the bold and legitimate principle of liberty
+of conscience: but, also, you will see how this liberty of conscience
+brings religious anarchy in its train; or, worse still, religious
+indifference and disgust. And if your soul, shattered in the tempestuous
+changes which you behold humanity undergoing, would strike out for
+itself a passage through the rocks, amidst which, like a frail bark,
+lies tossing trembling truth, you will be embarrassed to choose between
+the new philosophers--who, in preaching tolerance, destroy religious and
+social unity--and the last Christians, who, to preserve society, that
+is, religion and philosophy, are obliged to brave the principle of
+toleration. Man of truth! to whom I address, at once, my instruction and
+my justification, at the time when you shall live, the science of truth
+no doubt will have advanced a step. Think, then, of all your fathers
+have suffered, as, bending beneath the weight of their ignorance and
+uncertainty, they have traversed the desert across which, with so much
+pain, they have conducted thee! And if the pride of thy young learning
+shall make thee contemplate the petty strifes in which our life has been
+consumed, pause and tremble, as you think of that which is still unknown
+to yourself, and of the judgment that your descendants will pass on you.
+Think of this, and learn to respect all those who, seeking their way in
+all sincerity, have wandered from the path, frightened by the storm, and
+sorely tried by the severe hand of the All-Powerful. Think of this, and
+prostrate yourself; for all these, even the most mistaken among them,
+are saints and martyrs.
+
+"Without their conquests and their defeats, thou wert in darkness still.
+Yes, their failures, their errors even, have a right to your respect;
+for man is weak..... Weep then, for us obscure travellers--unknown
+victims, who, by our mortal sufferings and unheard-of labors, have
+prepared the way before you. Pity me, who have passionately loved
+justice, and perseveringly sought for truth, only opened my eyes to
+shut them again for ever, and saw that I had been in vain endeavoring to
+support a ruin, to take refuge in a vault of which the foundations were
+worn away."....
+
+The rest of the book of Spiridion is made up of a history of the
+rise, progress, and (what our philosopher is pleased to call) decay
+of Christianity--of an assertion, that the "doctrine of Christ is
+incomplete;" that "Christ may, nevertheless, take his place in the
+Pantheon of divine men!" and of a long, disgusting, absurd, and impious
+vision, in which the Saviour, Moses, David, and Elijah are represented,
+and in which Christ is made to say--"WE ARE ALL MESSIAHS, when we wish
+to bring the reign of truth upon earth; we are all Christs, when we
+suffer for it!"
+
+And this is the ultimatum, the supreme secret, the absolute truth! and
+it has been published by Mrs. Sand, for so many napoleons per sheet, in
+the Revue des Deux Mondes: and the Deux Mondes are to abide by it for
+the future. After having attained it, are we a whit wiser? "Man is
+between an angel and a beast: I don't know how long it is since he was a
+brute--I can't say how long it will be before he is an angel." Think of
+people living by their wits, and living by such a wit as this! Think
+of the state of mental debauch and disease which must have been passed
+through, ere such words could be written, and could be popular!
+
+When a man leaves our dismal, smoky London atmosphere, and breathes,
+instead of coal-smoke and yellow fog, this bright, clear, French air, he
+is quite intoxicated by it at first, and feels a glow in his blood, and
+a joy in his spirits, which scarcely thrice a year, and then only at a
+distance from London, he can attain in England. Is the intoxication, I
+wonder, permanent among the natives? and may we not account for the ten
+thousand frantic freaks of these people by the peculiar influence of
+French air and sun? The philosophers are from night to morning drunk,
+the politicians are drunk, the literary men reel and stagger from one
+absurdity to another, and how shall we understand their vagaries? Let us
+suppose, charitably, that Madame Sand had inhaled a more than ordinary
+quantity of this laughing gas when she wrote for us this precious
+manuscript of Spiridion. That great destinies are in prospect for the
+human race we may fancy, without her ladyship's word for it: but more
+liberal than she, and having a little retrospective charity, as well as
+that easy prospective benevolence which Mrs. Sand adopts, let us try and
+think there is some hope for our fathers (who were nearer brutality than
+ourselves, according to the Sandean creed), or else there is a very poor
+chance for us, who, great philosophers as we are, are yet, alas! far
+removed from that angelic consummation which all must wish for so
+devoutly. She cannot say--is it not extraordinary?--how many centuries
+have been necessary before man could pass from the brutal state to his
+present condition, or how many ages will be required ere we may pass
+from the state of man to the state of angels? What the deuce is the use
+of chronology or philosophy? We were beasts, and we can't tell when our
+tails dropped off: we shall be angels; but when our wings are to begin
+to sprout, who knows? In the meantime, O man of genius, follow our
+counsel: lead an easy life, don't stick at trifles; never mind about
+DUTY, it is only made for slaves; if the world reproach you, reproach
+the world in return, you have a good loud tongue in your head: if your
+straight-laced morals injure your mental respiration, fling off the
+old-fashioned stays, and leave your free limbs to rise and fall as
+Nature pleases; and when you have grown pretty sick of your liberty, and
+yet unfit to return to restraint, curse the world, and scorn it, and be
+miserable, like my Lord Byron and other philosophers of his kidney; or
+else mount a step higher, and, with conceit still more monstrous, and
+mental vision still more wretchedly debauched and weak, begin suddenly
+to find yourself afflicted with a maudlin compassion for the human race,
+and a desire to set them right after your own fashion. There is the
+quarrelsome stage of drunkenness, when a man can as yet walk and
+speak, when he can call names, and fling plates and wine-glasses at his
+neighbor's head with a pretty good aim; after this comes the pathetic
+stage, when the patient becomes wondrous philanthropic, and weeps
+wildly, as he lies in the gutter, and fancies he is at home in
+bed--where he ought to be; but this is an allegory.
+
+I don't wish to carry this any farther, or to say a word in defence
+of the doctrine which Mrs. Dudevant has found "incomplete";--here, at
+least, is not the place for discussing its merits, any more than Mrs.
+Sand's book was the place for exposing, forsooth, its errors: our
+business is only with the day and the new novels, and the clever or
+silly people who write them. Oh! if they but knew their places, and
+would keep to them, and drop their absurd philosophical jargon! Not all
+the big words in the world can make Mrs. Sand talk like a philosopher:
+when will she go back to her old trade, of which she was the very ablest
+practitioner in France?
+
+I should have been glad to give some extracts from the dramatic and
+descriptive parts of the novel, that cannot, in point of style and
+beauty, be praised too highly. One must suffice,--it is the descent of
+Alexis to seek that unlucky manuscript, Spiridion.
+
+"It seemed to me," he begins, "that the descent was eternal; and that I
+was burying myself in the depths of Erebus: at last, I reached a level
+place,--and I heard a mournful voice deliver these words, as it were,
+to the secret centre of the earth--'He will mount that ascent no
+more!'--Immediately I heard arise towards me, from the depth of
+invisible abysses, a myriad of formidable voices united in a strange
+chant--'Let us destroy him! Let him be destroyed! What does he here
+among the dead? Let him be delivered back to torture! Let him be given
+again to life!'
+
+"Then a feeble light began to pierce the darkness, and I perceived
+that I stood on the lowest step of a staircase, vast as the foot of a
+mountain. Behind me were thousands of steps of lurid iron; before me,
+nothing but a void--an abyss, and ether; the blue gloom of midnight
+beneath my feet, as above my head. I became delirious, and quitting
+that staircase, which methought it was impossible for me to reascend, I
+sprung forth into the void with an execration. But, immediately, when
+I had uttered the curse, the void began to be filled with forms and
+colors, and I presently perceived that I was in a vast gallery, along
+which I advanced, trembling. There was still darkness round me; but
+the hollows of the vaults gleamed with a red light, and showed me the
+strange and hideous forms of their building..... I did not distinguish
+the nearest objects; but those towards which I advanced assumed an
+appearance more and more ominous, and my terror increased with every
+step I took. The enormous pillars which supported the vault, and the
+tracery thereof itself, were figures of men, of supernatural stature,
+delivered to tortures without a name. Some hung by their feet, and,
+locked in the coils of monstrous serpents, clenched their teeth in the
+marble of the pavement; others, fastened by their waists, were dragged
+upwards, these by their feet, those by their heads, towards capitals,
+where other figures stooped towards them, eager to torment them. Other
+pillars, again, represented a struggling mass of figures devouring one
+another; each of which only offered a trunk severed to the knees or to
+the shoulders, the fierce heads whereof retained life enough to seize
+and devour that which was near them. There were some who, half hanging
+down, agonized themselves by attempting, with their upper limbs, to flay
+the lower moiety of their bodies, which drooped from the columns, or
+were attached to the pedestals; and others, who, in their fight with
+each other, were dragged along by morsels of flesh,--grasping which,
+they clung to each other with a countenance of unspeakable hate and
+agony. Along, or rather in place of, the frieze, there were on either
+side a range of unclean beings, wearing the human form, but of a
+loathsome ugliness, busied in tearing human corpses to pieces--in
+feasting upon their limbs and entrails. From the vault, instead of
+bosses and pendants, hung the crushed and wounded forms of children; as
+if to escape these eaters of man's flesh, they would throw themselves
+downwards, and be dashed to pieces on the pavement..... The silence and
+motionlessness of the whole added to its awfulness. I became so faint
+with terror, that I stopped, and would fain have returned. But at that
+moment I heard, from the depths of the gloom through which I had passed,
+confused noises, like those of a multitude on its march. And the sounds
+soon became more distinct, and the clamor fiercer, and the steps came
+hurrying on tumultuously--at every new burst nearer, more violent, more
+threatening. I thought that I was pursued by this disorderly crowd; and
+I strove to advance, hurrying into the midst of those dismal sculptures.
+Then it seemed as if those figures began to heave,--and to sweat
+blood,--and their beady eyes to move in their sockets. At once I beheld
+that they were all looking upon me, that they were all leaning towards
+me,--some with frightful derision, others with furious aversion. Every
+arm was raised against me, and they made as though they would crush me
+with the quivering limbs they had torn one from the other."....
+
+It is, indeed, a pity that the poor fellow gave himself the trouble to
+go down into damp, unwholesome graves, for the purpose of fetching up
+a few trumpery sheets of manuscript; and if the public has been rather
+tired with their contents, and is disposed to ask why Mrs. Sand's
+religious or irreligious notions are to be brought forward to people who
+are quite satisfied with their own, we can only say that this lady is
+the representative of a vast class of her countrymen, whom the wits and
+philosophers of the eighteenth century have brought to this condition.
+The leaves of the Diderot and Rousseau tree have produced this goodly
+fruit: here it is, ripe, bursting, and ready to fall;--and how to fall?
+Heaven send that it may drop easily, for all can see that the time is
+come.
+
+
+
+
+THE CASE OF PEYTEL:
+
+IN A LETTER TO EDWARD BRIEFLESS, ESQUIRE, OF PUMP COURT, TEMPLE.
+
+
+PARIS, November, 1839.
+
+MY DEAR BRIEFLESS,--Two months since, when the act of accusation first
+appeared, containing the sum of the charges against Sebastian Peytel,
+all Paris was in a fervor on the subject. The man's trial speedily
+followed, and kept for three days the public interest wound up to a
+painful point. He was found guilty of double murder at the beginning
+of September; and, since that time, what with Maroto's disaffection
+and Turkish news, we have had leisure to forget Monsieur Peytel, and to
+occupy ourselves with [Greek text omitted]. Perhaps Monsieur de Balzac
+helped to smother what little sparks of interest might still have
+remained for the murderous notary. Balzac put forward a letter in his
+favor, so very long, so very dull, so very pompous, promising so much,
+and performing so little, that the Parisian public gave up Peytel and
+his case altogether; nor was it until to-day that some small feeling
+was raised concerning him, when the newspapers brought the account how
+Peytel's head had been cut off at Bourg.
+
+He had gone through the usual miserable ceremonies and delays which
+attend what is called, in this country, the march of justice. He had
+made his appeal to the Court of Cassation, which had taken time to
+consider the verdict of the Provincial Court, and had confirmed it. He
+had made his appeal for mercy; his poor sister coming up all the way
+from Bourg (a sad journey, poor thing!) to have an interview with the
+King, who had refused to see her. Last Monday morning, at nine o'clock,
+an hour before Peytel's breakfast, the Greffier of Assize Court, in
+company with the Cure of Bourg, waited on him, and informed him that he
+had only three hours to live. At twelve o'clock, Peytel's head was off
+his body: an executioner from Lyons had come over the night before, to
+assist the professional throat-cutter of Bourg.
+
+I am not going to entertain you with any sentimental lamentations for
+this scoundrel's fate, or to declare my belief in his innocence, as
+Monsieur de Balzac has done. As far as moral conviction can go, the
+man's guilt is pretty clearly brought home to him. But any man who
+has read the "Causes Celebres," knows that men have been convicted
+and executed upon evidence ten times more powerful than that which was
+brought against Peytel. His own account of his horrible case may be
+true; there is nothing adduced in the evidence which is strong enough to
+overthrow it. It is a serious privilege, God knows, that society
+takes upon itself, at any time, to deprive one of God's creatures of
+existence. But when the slightest doubt remains, what a tremendous risk
+does it incur! In England, thank heaven, the law is more wise and more
+merciful: an English jury would never have taken a man's blood upon such
+testimony: an English judge and Crown advocate would never have acted
+as these Frenchmen have done; the latter inflaming the public mind by
+exaggerated appeals to their passions: the former seeking, in every way,
+to draw confessions from the prisoner, to perplex and confound him, to
+do away, by fierce cross-questioning and bitter remarks from the bench,
+with any effect that his testimony might have on the jury. I don't mean
+to say that judges and lawyers have been more violent and inquisitorial
+against the unhappy Peytel than against any one else; it is the fashion
+of the country: a man is guilty until he proves himself to be innocent;
+and to batter down his defence, if he have any, there are the lawyers,
+with all their horrible ingenuity, and their captivating passionate
+eloquence. It is hard thus to set the skilful and tried champions of the
+law against men unused to this kind of combat; nay, give a man all the
+legal aid that he can purchase or procure, still, by this plan, you take
+him at a cruel, unmanly disadvantage; he has to fight against the law,
+clogged with the dreadful weight of his presupposed guilt. Thank God
+that, in England, things are not managed so.
+
+However, I am not about to entertain you with ignorant disquisitions
+about the law. Peytel's case may, nevertheless, interest you; for the
+tale is a very stirring and mysterious one; and you may see how easy
+a thing it is for a man's life to be talked away in France, if ever he
+should happen to fall under the suspicion of a crime. The French "Acte
+d'accusation" begins in the following manner:--
+
+"Of all the events which, in these latter times, have afflicted the
+department of the Ain, there is none which has caused a more profound
+and lively sensation than the tragical death of the lady, Felicite
+Alcazar, wife of Sebastian Benedict Peytel, notary, at Belley. At the
+end of October, 1838, Madame Peytel quitted that town, with her husband,
+and their servant Louis Rey, in order to pass a few days at Macon:
+at midnight, the inhabitants of Belley were suddenly awakened by the
+arrival of Monsieur Peytel, by his cries, and by the signs which he
+exhibited of the most lively agitation: he implored the succors of all
+the physicians in the town; knocked violently at their doors; rung at
+the bells of their houses with a sort of frenzy, and announced that his
+wife, stretched out, and dying, in his carriage, had just been shot, on
+the Lyons road, by his domestic, whose life Peytel himself had taken.
+
+"At this recital a number of persons assembled, and what a spectacle was
+presented to their eyes.
+
+"A young woman lay at the bottom of a carriage, deprived of life; her
+whole body was wet, and seemed as if it had just been plunged into
+the water. She appeared to be severely wounded in the face; and her
+garments, which were raised up, in spite of the cold and rainy weather,
+left the upper part of her knees almost entirely exposed. At the sight
+of this half-naked and inanimate body, all the spectators were affected.
+People said that the first duty to pay to a dying woman was, to preserve
+her from the cold, to cover her. A physician examined the body; he
+declared that all remedies were useless; that Madame Peytel was dead and
+cold.
+
+"The entreaties of Peytel were redoubled; he demanded fresh succors,
+and, giving no heed to the fatal assurance which had just been given
+him, required that all the physicians in the place should be sent for.
+A scene so strange and so melancholy; the incoherent account given by
+Peytel of the murder of his wife; his extraordinary movements; and the
+avowal which he continued to make, that he had despatched the murderer,
+Rey, with strokes of his hammer, excited the attention of Lieutenant
+Wolf, commandant of gendarmes: that officer gave orders for the
+immediate arrest of Peytel; but the latter threw himself into the
+arms of a friend, who interceded for him, and begged the police not
+immediately to seize upon his person.
+
+"The corpse of Madame Peytel was transported to her apartment; the
+bleeding body of the domestic was likewise brought from the road, where
+it lay; and Peytel, asked to explain the circumstance, did so."....
+
+Now, as there is little reason to tell the reader, when an English
+counsel has to prosecute a prisoner on the part of the Crown for a
+capital offence, he produces the articles of his accusation in the most
+moderate terms, and especially warns the jury to give the accused person
+the benefit of every possible doubt that the evidence may give, or may
+leave. See how these things are managed in France, and how differently
+the French counsel for the Crown sets about his work.
+
+He first prepares his act of accusation, the opening of which we
+have just read; it is published six days before the trial, so that an
+unimpassioned, unprejudiced jury has ample time to study it, and to
+form its opinions accordingly, and to go into court with a happy, just
+prepossession against the prisoner.
+
+Read the first part of the Peytel act of accusation; it is as turgid and
+declamatory as a bad romance; and as inflated as a newspaper document,
+by an unlimited penny-a-liner:--"The department of the Ain is in a
+dreadful state of excitement; the inhabitants of Belley come trooping
+from their beds,--and what a sight do they behold;--a young woman at
+the bottom of a carriage, toute ruisselante, just out of a river; her
+garments, in spite of the cold and rain, raised, so as to leave the
+upper part of her knees entirely exposed, at which all the beholders
+were affected, and cried, that the FIRST DUTY was to cover her from
+the cold." This settles the case at once; the first duty of a man is
+to cover the legs of the sufferer; the second to call for help. The
+eloquent "Substitut du Procureur du Roi" has prejudged the case, in the
+course of a few sentences. He is putting his readers, among whom his
+future jury is to be found, into a proper state of mind; he works on
+them with pathetic description, just as a romance-writer would: the
+rain pours in torrents; it is a dreary evening in November; the young
+creature's situation is neatly described; the distrust which entered
+into the breast of the keen old officer of gendarmes strongly painted,
+the suspicions which might, or might not, have been entertained by
+the inhabitants, eloquently argued. How did the advocate know that the
+people had such? did all the bystanders say aloud, "I suspect that this
+is a case of murder by Monsieur Peytel, and that his story about
+the domestic is all deception?" or did they go off to the mayor, and
+register their suspicion? or was the advocate there to hear them? Not
+he; but he paints you the whole scene, as though it had existed, and
+gives full accounts of suspicions, as if they had been facts, positive,
+patent, staring, that everybody could see and swear to.
+
+Having thus primed his audience, and prepared them for the testimony of
+the accused party, "Now," says he, with a fine show of justice, "let
+us hear Monsieur Peytel;" and that worthy's narrative is given as
+follows:--
+
+"He said that he had left Macon on the 31st October, at eleven o'clock
+in the morning, in order to return to Belley, with his wife and servant.
+The latter drove, or led, an open car; he himself was driving his wife
+in a four-wheeled carriage, drawn by one horse: they reached Bourg at
+five o'clock in the evening; left it at seven, to sleep at Pont d'Ain,
+where they did not arrive before midnight. During the journey, Peytel
+thought he remarked that Rey had slackened his horse's pace. When
+they alighted at the inn, Peytel bade him deposit in his chamber 7,500
+francs, which he carried with him; but the domestic refused to do so,
+saying that the inn gates were secure, and there was no danger. Peytel
+was, therefore, obliged to carry his money up stairs himself. The next
+day, the 1st November, they set out on their journey again, at nine
+o'clock in the morning; Louis did not come, according to custom, to take
+his master's orders. They arrived at Tenay about three, stopped there a
+couple of hours to dine, and it was eight o'clock when they reached the
+bourg of Rossillon, where they waited half an hour to bait the horses.
+
+"As they left Rossillon, the weather became bad, and the rain began to
+fall: Peytel told his domestic to get a covering for the articles in
+the open chariot; but Rey refused to do so, adding, in an ironical tone,
+that the weather was fine. For some days past, Peytel had remarked that
+his servant was gloomy, and scarcely spoke at all.
+
+"After they had gone about 500 paces beyond the bridge of Andert, that
+crosses the river Furans, and ascended to the least steep part of the
+hill of Darde, Peytel cried out to his servant, who was seated in the
+car, to come down from it, and finish the ascent on foot.
+
+"At this moment a violent wind was blowing from the south, and the rain
+was falling heavily: Peytel was seated back in the right corner of the
+carriage, and his wife, who was close to him, was asleep, with her head
+on his left shoulder. All of a sudden he heard the report of a fire-arm
+(he had seen the light of it at some paces' distance), and Madame
+Peytel cried out, 'My poor husband, take your pistols;' the horse was
+frightened, and began to trot. Peytel immediately drew the pistol, and
+fired, from the interior of the carriage, upon an individual whom he saw
+running by the side of the road.
+
+"Not knowing, as yet, that his wife had been hit, he jumped out on one
+side of the carriage, while Madame Peytel descended from the other; and
+he fired a second pistol at his domestic, Louis Rey, whom he had just
+recognized. Redoubling his pace, he came up with Rey, and struck him,
+from behind, a blow with the hammer. Rey turned at this, and raised
+up his arm to strike his master with the pistol which he had just
+discharged at him; but Peytel, more quick than he, gave the domestic a
+blow with the hammer, which felled him to the ground (he fell his
+face forwards), and then Peytel, bestriding the body, despatched him,
+although the brigand asked for mercy.
+
+"He now began to think of his wife and ran back, calling out her name
+repeatedly, and seeking for her, in vain, on both sides of the road.
+Arrived at the bridge of Andert, he recognized his wife, stretched in
+a field, covered with water, which bordered the Furans. This horrible
+discovery had so much the more astonished him, because he had no idea,
+until now, that his wife had been wounded: he endeavored to draw her
+from the water; and it was only after considerable exertions that he was
+enabled to do so, and to place her, with her face towards the ground, on
+the side of the road. Supposing that, here, she would be sheltered from
+any farther danger, and believing, as yet, that she was only wounded, he
+determined to ask for help at a lone house, situated on the road towards
+Rossillon; and at this instant he perceived, without at all being able
+to explain how, that his horse had followed him back to the spot, having
+turned back of its own accord, from the road to Belley.
+
+"The house at which he knocked was inhabited by two men, of the name
+of Thannet, father and son, who opened the door to him, and whom
+he entreated to come to his aid, saying that his wife had just been
+assassinated by his servant. The elder Thannet approached to, and
+examined the body, and told Peytel that it was quite dead; he and his
+son took up the corpse, and placed it in the bottom of the carriage,
+which they all mounted themselves, and pursued their route to Belley.
+In order to do so, they had to pass by Rey's body, on the road, which
+Peytel wished to crush under the wheels of his carriage. It was to rob
+him of 7,500 francs, said Peytel, that the attack had been made."
+
+Our friend, the Procureur's Substitut, has dropped, here, the eloquent
+and pathetic style altogether, and only gives the unlucky prisoner's
+narrative in the baldest and most unimaginative style. How is a jury to
+listen to such a fellow? they ought to condemn him, if but for making
+such an uninteresting statement. Why not have helped poor Peytel with
+some of those rhetorical graces which have been so plentifully bestowed
+in the opening part of the act of accusation? He might have said:--
+
+"Monsieur Peytel is an eminent notary at Belley; he is a man
+distinguished for his literary and scientific acquirements; he has lived
+long in the best society of the capital; he had been but a few months
+married to that young and unfortunate lady, whose loss has plunged
+her bereaved husband into despair--almost into madness. Some early
+differences had marked, it is true, the commencement of their union; but
+these, which, as can be proved by evidence, were almost all the unhappy
+lady's fault,--had happily ceased, to give place to sentiments far more
+delightful and tender. Gentlemen, Madame Peytel bore in her bosom a
+sweet pledge of future concord between herself and her husband: in three
+brief months she was to become a mother.
+
+"In the exercise of his honorable profession,--in which, to succeed,
+a man must not only have high talents, but undoubted probity,--and,
+gentlemen, Monsieur Peytel DID succeed--DID inspire respect and
+confidence, as you, his neighbors, well know;--in the exercise, I say,
+of his high calling, Monsieur Peytel, towards the end of October last,
+had occasion to make a journey in the neighborhood, and visit some of
+his many clients.
+
+"He travelled in his own carriage, his young wife beside him. Does this
+look like want of affection, gentlemen? or is it not a mark of love--of
+love and paternal care on his part towards the being with whom his lot
+in life was linked,--the mother of his coming child,--the young girl,
+who had everything to gain from the union with a man of his attainments
+of intellect, his kind temper, his great experience, and his high
+position? In this manner they travelled, side by side, lovingly
+together. Monsieur Peytel was not a lawyer merely, but a man of letters
+and varied learning; of the noble and sublime science of geology he was,
+especially, an ardent devotee."
+
+(Suppose, here, a short panegyric upon geology. Allude to the creation
+of this mighty world, and then, naturally, to the Creator. Fancy the
+conversations which Peytel, a religious man,* might have with his young
+wife upon the subject.)
+
+     * He always went to mass; it is in the evidence.
+
+"Monsieur Peytel had lately taken into his service a man named Louis
+Rey. Rey was a foundling, and had passed many years in a regiment--a
+school, gentlemen, where much besides bravery, alas! is taught; nay,
+where the spirit which familiarizes one with notions of battle and
+death, I fear, may familiarize one with ideas, too, of murder. Rey,
+a dashing reckless fellow, from the army, had lately entered Peytel's
+service, was treated by him with the most singular kindness; accompanied
+him (having charge of another vehicle) upon the journey before alluded
+to; and KNEW THAT HIS MASTER CARRIED WITH HIM A CONSIDERABLE SUM OF
+MONEY; for a man like Rey an enormous sum, 7,500 francs. At midnight
+on the 1st of November, as Madame Peytel and her husband were returning
+home, an attack was made upon their carriage. Remember, gentlemen, the
+hour at which the attack was made; remember the sum of money that was in
+the carriage; and remember that the Savoy frontier IS WITHIN A LEAGUE OF
+THE SPOT where the desperate deed was done."
+
+Now, my dear Briefless, ought not Monsieur Procureur, in common justice
+to Peytel, after he had so eloquently proclaimed, not the facts, but the
+suspicions, which weighed against that worthy, to have given a similar
+florid account of the prisoner's case? Instead of this, you will remark,
+that it is the advocate's endeavor to make Peytel's statements as
+uninteresting in style as possible; and then he demolishes them in the
+following way:--
+
+"Scarcely was Peytel's statement known, when the common sense of the
+public rose against it. Peytel had commenced his story upon the bridge
+of Andert, over the cold body of his wife. On the 2nd November he
+had developed it in detail, in the presence of the physicians, in the
+presence of the assembled neighbors--of the persons who, on the day
+previous only, were his friends. Finally, he had completed it in his
+interrogatories, his conversations, his writings, and letters to the
+magistrates and everywhere these words, repeated so often, were only
+received with a painful incredulity. The fact was that, besides the
+singular character which Peytel's appearance, attitude, and talk had
+worn ever since the event, there was in his narrative an inexplicable
+enigma; its contradictions and impossibilities were such, that calm
+persons were revolted at it, and that even friendship itself refused to
+believe it."
+
+Thus Mr. Attorney speaks, not for himself alone, but for the whole
+French public; whose opinions, of course, he knows. Peytel's statement
+is discredited EVERYWHERE; the statement which he had made over the cold
+body of his wife--the monster! It is not enough simply to prove that the
+man committed the murder, but to make the jury violently angry against
+him, and cause them to shudder in the jury-box, as he exposes the horrid
+details of the crime.
+
+"Justice," goes on Mr. Substitute (who answers for the feelings of
+everybody), "DISTURBED BY THE PRE-OCCUPATIONS OF PUBLIC OPINION,
+commenced, without delay, the most active researches. The bodies of the
+victims were submitted to the investigations of men of art; the wounds
+and projectiles were examined; the place where the event took place
+explored with care. The morality of the author of this frightful
+scene became the object of rigorous examination; the exigeances of the
+prisoner, the forms affected by him, his calculating silence, and his
+answers, coldly insulting, were feeble obstacles; and justice at length
+arrived, by its prudence, and by the discoveries it made, to the most
+cruel point of certainty."
+
+You see that a man's demeanor is here made a crime against him; and that
+Mr. Substitute wishes to consider him guilty, because he has actually
+the audacity to hold his tongue. Now follows a touching description of
+the domestic, Louis Rey:--
+
+
+"Louis Rey, a child of the Hospital at Lyons, was confided, at a very
+early age, to some honest country people, with whom he stayed until he
+entered the army. At their house, and during this long period of time,
+his conduct, his intelligence, and the sweetness of his manners were
+such, that the family of his guardians became to him as an adopted
+family; and his departure caused them the most sincere affliction. When
+Louis quitted the army, he returned to his benefactors, and was received
+as a son. They found him just as they had ever known him" (I acknowledge
+that this pathos beats my humble defence of Peytel entirely), "except
+that he had learned to read and write; and the certificates of his
+commanders proved him to be a good and gallant soldier.
+
+"The necessity of creating some resources for himself, obliged him to
+quit his friends, and to enter the service of Monsieur de Montrichard,
+a lieutenant of gendarmerie, from whom he received fresh testimonials of
+regard. Louis, it is true, might have a fondness for wine and a passion
+for women; but he had been a soldier, and these faults were,
+according to the witnesses, amply compensated for by his activity,
+his intelligence, and the agreeable manner in which he performed his
+service. In the month of July, 1839, Rey quitted, voluntarily, the
+service of M. de Montrichard; and Peytel, about this period, meeting him
+at Lyons, did not hesitate to attach him to his service. Whatever may
+be the prisoner's present language, it is certain that up to the day of
+Louis's death, he served Peytel with diligence and fidelity.
+
+"More than once his master and mistress spoke well of him. EVERYBODY who
+has worked, or been at the house of Madame Peytel, has spoken in praise
+of his character; and, indeed, it may be said, that these testimonials
+were general.
+
+"On the very night of the 1st of November, and immediately after the
+catastrophe, we remark how Peytel begins to make insinuations against
+his servant; and how artfully, in order to render them more sure, he
+disseminates them through the different parts of his narrative. But,
+in the course of the proceeding, these charges have met with a most
+complete denial. Thus we find the disobedient servant who, at Pont
+d'Ain, refused to carry the money-chest to his master's room, under the
+pretext that the gates of the inn were closed securely, occupied with
+tending the horses after their long journey: meanwhile Peytel was
+standing by, and neither master nor servant exchanged a word, and the
+witnesses who beheld them both have borne testimony to the zeal and care
+of the domestic.
+
+"In like manner, we find that the servant, who was so remiss in the
+morning as to neglect to go to his master for orders, was ready for
+departure before seven o'clock, and had eagerly informed himself whether
+Monsieur and Madame Peytel were awake; learning from the maid of the
+inn, that they had ordered nothing for their breakfast. This man, who
+refused to carry with him a covering for the car, was, on the contrary,
+ready to take off his own cloak, and with it shelter articles of small
+value; this man, who had been for many days so silent and gloomy, gave,
+on the contrary, many proofs of his gayety--almost of his indiscretion,
+speaking, at all the inns, in terms of praise of his master and
+mistress. The waiter at the inn at Dauphin, says he was a tall young
+fellow, mild and good-natured; 'we talked for some time about horses,
+and such things; he seemed to be perfectly natural, and not pre-occupied
+at all.' At Pont d'Ain, he talked of his being a foundling; of the place
+where he had been brought up, and where he had served; and finally, at
+Rossillon, an hour before his death, he conversed familiarly with the
+master of the port, and spoke on indifferent subjects.
+
+"All Peytel's insinuations against his servant had no other end than
+to show, in every point of Rey's conduct, the behavior of a man who was
+premeditating attack. Of what, in fact, does he accuse him? Of wishing
+to rob him of 7,500 francs, and of having had recourse to assassination,
+in order to effect the robbery. But, for a premeditated crime, consider
+what singular improvidence the person showed who had determined on
+committing it; what folly and what weakness there is in the execution of
+it.
+
+"How many insurmountable obstacles are there in the way of committing
+and profiting by crime! On leaving Belley, Louis Rey, according to
+Peytel's statement, knowing that his master would return with money,
+provided himself with a holster pistol, which Madame Peytel had once
+before perceived among his effects. In Peytel's cabinet there were some
+balls; four of these were found in Rey's trunk, on the 6th of November.
+And, in order to commit the crime, this domestic had brought away with
+him a pistol, and no ammunition; for Peytel has informed us that Rey,
+an hour before his departure from Macon, purchased six balls at a
+gunsmith's. To gain his point, the assassin must immolate his victims;
+for this, he has only one pistol, knowing, perfectly well, that Peytel,
+in all his travels, had two on his person; knowing that, at a late hour
+of the night, his shot might fail of effect; and that, in this case, he
+would be left to the mercy of his opponent.
+
+"The execution of the crime is, according to Peytel's account, still
+more singular. Louis does not get off the carriage, until Peytel tells
+him to descend. He does not think of taking his master's life until he
+is sure that the latter has his eyes open. It is dark, and the pair are
+covered in one cloak; and Rey only fires at them at six paces' distance:
+he fires at hazard, without disquieting himself as to the choice of his
+victim; and the soldier, who was bold enough to undertake this double
+murder, has not force nor courage to consummate it. He flies, carrying
+in his hand a useless whip, with a heavy mantle on his shoulders, in
+spite of the detonation of two pistols at his ears, and the rapid steps
+of an angry master in pursuit, which ought to have set him upon some
+better means of escape. And we find this man, full of youth and vigor,
+lying with his face to the ground, in the midst of a public road,
+falling without a struggle, or resistance, under the blows of a hammer!
+
+"And suppose the murderer had succeeded in his criminal projects, what
+fruit could he have drawn from them?--Leaving, on the road, the two
+bleeding bodies; obliged to lead two carriages at a time, for fear of
+discovery; not able to return himself, after all the pains he had taken
+to speak, at every place at which they had stopped, of the money which
+his master was carrying with him; too prudent to appear alone at Belley;
+arrested at the frontier, by the excise officers, who would present an
+impassable barrier to him till morning, what could he do, or hope to
+do? The examination of the car has shown that Rey, at the moment of the
+crime, had neither linen, nor clothes, nor effects of any kind. There
+was found in his pockets, when the body was examined, no passport, nor
+certificate; one of his pockets contained a ball, of large calibre,
+which he had shown, in play, to a girl, at the inn at Macon, a little
+horn-handled knife, a snuff-box, a little packet of gunpowder, and a
+purse, containing only a halfpenny and some string. Here is all the
+baggage, with which, after the execution of his homicidal plan, Louis
+Rey intended to take refuge in a foreign country.* Beside these absurd
+contradictions, there is another remarkable fact, which must not be
+passed over; it is this:--the pistol found by Rey is of antique form,
+and the original owner of it has been found. He is a curiosity-merchant
+at Lyons; and, though he cannot affirm that Peytel was the person who
+bought this pistol of him, he perfectly recognizes Peytel as having been
+a frequent customer at his shop!
+
+     * This sentence is taken from another part of the "Acte
+     d'accusation."
+
+"No, we may fearlessly affirm that Louis Rey was not guilty of the crime
+which Peytel lays to his charge. If, to those who knew him, his mild and
+open disposition, his military career, modest and without a stain,
+the touching regrets of his employers, are sufficient proofs of his
+innocence,--the calm and candid observer, who considers how the crime
+was conceived, was executed, and what consequences would have resulted
+from it, will likewise acquit him, and free him of the odious imputation
+which Peytel endeavors to cast upon his memory.
+
+"But justice has removed the veil, with which an impious hand endeavored
+to cover itself. Already, on the night of the 1st of November, suspicion
+was awakened by the extraordinary agitation of Peytel; by those
+excessive attentions towards his wife, which came so late; by that
+excessive and noisy grief, and by those calculated bursts of sorrow,
+which are such as Nature does not exhibit. The criminal, whom the public
+conscience had fixed upon; the man whose frightful combinations have
+been laid bare, and whose falsehoods, step by step, have been exposed,
+during the proceedings previous to the trial; the murderer, at whose
+hands a heart-stricken family, and society at large, demands an account
+of the blood of a wife;--that murderer is Peytel."
+
+When, my dear Briefless, you are a judge (as I make no doubt you
+will be, when you have left off the club all night, cigar-smoking of
+mornings, and reading novels in bed), will you ever find it in your
+heart to order a fellow-sinner's head off upon such evidence as this?
+Because a romantic Substitut du Procureur de Roi chooses to compose
+and recite a little drama, and draw tears from juries, let us hope that
+severe Rhadamanthine judges are not to be melted by such trumpery.
+One wants but the description of the characters to render the piece
+complete, as thus:--
+
+         Personages                             Costumes.
+
+   SEBASTIAN PEYTAL  Meurtrier        Habillement complet de notaire
+                                      perfide: figure pale, barbe
+                                      noire, cheveux noirs.
+
+   LOUIS REY   Soldat retire, bon,    Costume ordinaire; il porte sur
+               brave, franc, jovial   ses epaules une couverture de
+               aimant le vin, les     cheval.
+               femmes, la gaiete,
+               ses maitres surtout;
+               vrai Francais, enfin
+
+   WOLF     Lieutenant de gendarmerie.
+
+   FELICITE D'ALCAZAR   Femme et victime de Peytel.
+
+   Medecins, Villageois, Filles d'Auberge, Garcons d'Ecurie, &c. &c.
+
+   La scene se passe sur le pont d'Andert, entre Macon et Belley.  Il
+   est minuit.  La pluie tombe: les tonnerres grondent.  Le ciel est
+   convert de nuages, et sillonne d'eclairs.
+
+
+All these personages are brought into play in the Procureur's drama;
+the villagers come in with their chorus; the old lieutenant of
+gendarmes with his suspicions; Rey's frankness and gayety, the romantic
+circumstances of his birth, his gallantry and fidelity, are all
+introduced, in order to form a contrast with Peytel, and to call down
+the jury's indignation against the latter. But are these proofs? or
+anything like proofs? And the suspicions, that are to serve instead of
+proofs, what are they?
+
+"My servant, Louis Rey, was very sombre and reserved," says Peytel; "he
+refused to call me in the morning, to carry my money-chest to my room,
+to cover the open car when it rained." The Prosecutor disproves this by
+stating that Rey talked with the inn maids and servants, asked if his
+master was up, and stood in the inn-yard, grooming the horses, with his
+master by his side, neither speaking to the other. Might he not have
+talked to the maids, and yet been sombre when speaking to his master?
+Might he not have neglected to call his master, and yet have asked
+whether he was awake? Might he not have said that the inn-gates were
+safe, out of hearing of the ostler witness? Mr. Substitute's answers to
+Peytel's statements are no answer at all. Every word Peytel said might
+be true, and yet Louis Rey might not have committed the murder; or every
+word might have been false, and yet Louis Rey might have committed the
+murder.
+
+"Then," says Mr. Substitute, "how many obstacles are there to the
+commission of the crime? And these are--
+
+"1. Rey provided himself with ONE holster pistol, to kill two people,
+knowing well that one of them had always a brace of pistols about him.
+
+"2. He does not think of firing until his master's eyes are open: fires
+at six paces, not caring at whom he fires, and then runs away.
+
+"3. He could not have intended to kill his master, because he had no
+passport in his pocket, and no clothes; and because he must have been
+detained at the frontier until morning; and because he would have had to
+drive two carriages, in order to avoid suspicion.
+
+"4. And, a most singular circumstance, the very pistol which was found
+by his side had been bought at the shop of a man at Lyons, who perfectly
+recognized Peytel as one of his customers, though he could not say he
+had sold that particular weapon to Peytel."
+
+Does it follow, from this, that Louis Rey is not the murderer, much
+more, that Peytel is? Look at argument No. 1. Rey had no need to kill
+two people: he wanted the money, and not the blood. Suppose he had
+killed Peytel, would he not have mastered Madame Peytel easily?--a weak
+woman, in an excessively delicate situation, incapable of much energy,
+at the best of times.
+
+2. "He does not fire till he knows his master's eyes are open." Why, on
+a stormy night, does a man driving a carriage go to sleep? Was Rey to
+wait until his master snored? "He fires at six paces, not caring whom he
+hits;"--and might not this happen too? The night is not so dark but
+that he can see his master, in HIS USUAL PLACE, driving. He fires and
+hits--whom? Madame Peytel, who had left her place, AND WAS WRAPPED UP
+WITH PEYTEL IN HIS CLOAK. She screams out, "Husband, take your pistols."
+Rey knows that his master has a brace, thinks that he has hit the wrong
+person, and, as Peytel fires on him, runs away. Peytel follows, hammer
+in hand; as he comes up with the fugitive, he deals him a blow on
+the back of the head, and Rey falls--his face to the ground. Is there
+anything unnatural in this story?--anything so monstrously unnatural,
+that is, that it might not be true?
+
+3. These objections are absurd. Why need a man have change of linen?
+If he had taken none for the journey, why should he want any for the
+escape? Why need he drive two carriages?--He might have driven both into
+the river, and Mrs. Peytel in one. Why is he to go to the douane, and
+thrust himself into the very jaws of danger? Are there not a thousand
+ways for a man to pass a frontier? Do smugglers, when they have to pass
+from one country to another, choose exactly those spots where a police
+is placed?
+
+And, finally, the gunsmith of Lyons, who knows Peytel quite well, cannot
+say that he sold the pistol to him; that is, he did NOT sell the pistol
+to him; for you have only one man's word, in this case (Peytel's), to
+the contrary; and the testimony, as far as it goes, is in his favor.
+I say, my lud, and gentlemen of the jury, that these objections of my
+learned friend, who is engaged for the Crown, are absurd, frivolous,
+monstrous; that to SUSPECT away the life of a man upon such suppositions
+as these, is wicked, illegal, and inhuman; and, what is more, that Louis
+Rey, if he wanted to commit the crime--if he wanted to possess himself
+of a large sum of money, chose the best time and spot for so doing; and,
+no doubt, would have succeeded, if Fate had not, in a wonderful manner,
+caused Madame Peytel TO TAKE HER HUSBAND'S PLACE, and receive the ball
+intended for him in her own head.
+
+But whether these suspicions are absurd or not, hit or miss, it is
+the advocate's duty, as it appears, to urge them. He wants to make as
+unfavorable an impression as possible with regard to Peytel's character;
+he, therefore, must, for contrast's sake, give all sorts of praise to
+his victim, and awaken every sympathy in the poor fellow's favor.
+Having done this, as far as lies in his power, having exaggerated every
+circumstance that can be unfavorable to Peytel, and given his own tale
+in the baldest manner possible--having declared that Peytel is the
+murderer of his wife and servant, the Crown now proceeds to back this
+assertion, by showing what interested motives he had, and by relating,
+after its own fashion, the circumstances of his marriage.
+
+They may be told briefly here. Peytel was of a good family, of Macon,
+and entitled, at his mother's death, to a considerable property. He had
+been educated as a notary, and had lately purchased a business, in that
+line, in Belley, for which he had paid a large sum of money; part of the
+sum, 15,000 francs, for which he had given bills, was still due.
+
+Near Belley, Peytel first met Felicite Alcazar, who was residing with
+her brother-in-law, Monsieur de Montrichard; and, knowing that the young
+lady's fortune was considerable, he made an offer of marriage to the
+brother-in-law, who thought the match advantageous, and communicated on
+the subject with Felicite's mother, Madame Alcazar, at Paris. After a
+time Peytel went to Paris, to press his suit, and was accepted. There
+seems to have been no affectation of love on his side; and some little
+repugnance on the part of the lady, who yielded, however, to the wishes
+of her parents, and was married. The parties began to quarrel on the
+very day of the marriage, and continued their disputes almost to the
+close of the unhappy connection. Felicite was half blind, passionate,
+sarcastic, clumsy in her person and manners, and ill educated; Peytel,
+a man of considerable intellect and pretensions, who had lived for some
+time at Paris, where he had mingled with good literary society. The
+lady was, in fact, as disagreeable a person as could well be, and the
+evidence describes some scenes which took place between her and her
+husband, showing how deeply she must have mortified and enraged him.
+
+A charge very clearly made out against Peytel, is that of dishonesty; he
+procured from the notary of whom he bought his place an acquittance in
+full, whereas there were 15,000 francs owing, as we have seen. He
+also, in the contract of marriage, which was to have resembled, in
+all respects, that between Monsieur Broussais and another Demoiselle
+Alcazar, caused an alteration to be made in his favor, which gave
+him command over his wife's funded property, without furnishing
+the guarantees by which the other son-in-law was bound. And, almost
+immediately after his marriage, Peytel sold out of the funds a sum
+of 50,000 francs, that belonged to his wife, and used it for his own
+purposes.
+
+About two months after his marriage, PEYTEL PRESSED HIS WIFE TO MAKE HER
+WILL. He had made his, he said, leaving everything to her, in case of
+his death: after some parley, the poor thing consented.* This is a cruel
+suspicion against him; and Mr. Substitute has no need to enlarge upon
+it. As for the previous fact, the dishonest statement about the 15,000
+francs, there is nothing murderous in that--nothing which a man very
+eager to make a good marriage might not do. The same may be said of the
+suppression, in Peytel's marriage contract, of the clause to be found
+in Broussais's, placing restrictions upon the use of the wife's money.
+Mademoiselle d'Alcazar's friends read the contract before they signed
+it, and might have refused it, had they so pleased.
+
+     * "Peytel," says the act of accusation, "did not fail to see
+     the danger which would menace him, if this will (which had
+     escaped the magistrates in their search of Peytel's papers)
+     was discovered. He, therefore, instructed his agent to take
+     possession of it, which he did, and the fact was not
+     mentioned for several months afterwards. Peytel and his
+     agent were called upon to explain the circumstance, but
+     refused, and their silence for a long time interrupted the
+     'instruction'" (getting up of the evidence). "All that could
+     be obtained from them was an avowal, that such a will
+     existed, constituting Peytel his wife's sole legatee; and a
+     promise, on their parts, to produce it before the court gave
+     its sentence." But why keep the will secret? The anxiety
+     about it was surely absurd and unnecessary: the whole of
+     Madame Peytel's family knew that such a will was made. She
+     had consulted her sister concerning it, who said--"If there
+     is no other way of satisfying him, make the will;" and the
+     mother, when she heard of it, cried out--"Does he intend to
+     poison her?"
+
+After some disputes, which took place between Peytel and his wife (there
+were continual quarrels, and continual letters passing between them
+from room to room), the latter was induced to write him a couple of
+exaggerated letters, swearing "by the ashes of her father" that she
+would be an obedient wife to him, and entreating him to counsel and
+direct her. These letters were seen by members of the lady's family,
+who, in the quarrels between the couple, always took the husband's part.
+They were found in Peytel's cabinet, after he had been arrested for the
+murder, and after he had had full access to all his papers, of which
+he destroyed or left as many as he pleased. The accusation makes it
+a matter of suspicion against Peytel, that he should have left these
+letters of his wife's in a conspicuous situation.
+
+"All these circumstances," says the accusation, "throw a frightful light
+upon Peytel's plans. The letters and will of Madame Peytel are in the
+hands of her husband. Three months pass away, and this poor woman is
+brought to her home, in the middle of the night, with two balls in
+her head, stretched at the bottom of her carriage, by the side of a
+peasant."
+
+"What other than Sebastian Peytel could have committed this
+murder?--whom could it profit?--who but himself had an odious chain
+to break, and an inheritance to receive? Why speak of the servant's
+projected robbery? The pistols found by the side of Louis's body, the
+balls bought by him at Macon, and those discovered at Belley among his
+effects, were only the result of a perfidious combination. The pistol,
+indeed, which was found on the hill of Darde, on the night of the 1st of
+November, could only have belonged to Peytel, and must have been thrown
+by him, near the body of his domestic, with the paper which had before
+enveloped it. Who had seen this pistol in the hands of Louis? Among
+all the gendarmes, work-women, domestics, employed by Peytel and his
+brother-in-law, is there one single witness who had seen this weapon in
+Louis's possession? It is true that Madame Peytel did, on one occasion,
+speak to M. de Montrichard of a pistol; which had nothing to do,
+however, with that found near Louis Rey."
+
+Is this justice, or good reason? Just reverse the argument, and apply it
+to Rey. "Who but Rey could have committed this murder?--who but Rey
+had a large sum of money to seize upon?--a pistol is found by his side,
+balls and powder in his pocket, other balls in his trunks at home. The
+pistol found near his body could not, indeed, have belonged to Peytel:
+did any man ever see it in his possession? The very gunsmith who sold
+it, and who knew Peytel, would he not have known that he had sold him
+this pistol? At his own house, Peytel has a collection of weapons of
+all kinds; everybody has seen them--a man who makes such collections is
+anxious to display them. Did any one ever see this weapon?--Not one.
+And Madame Peytel did, in her lifetime, remark a pistol in the valet's
+possession. She was short-sighted, and could not particularize what
+kind of pistol it was; but she spoke of it to her husband and her
+brother-in-law." This is not satisfactory, if you please; but, at least,
+it is as satisfactory as the other set of suppositions. It is the very
+chain of argument which would have been brought against Louis Rey by
+this very same compiler of the act of accusation, had Rey survived,
+instead of Peytel, and had he, as most undoubtedly would have been the
+case, been tried for the murder.
+
+This argument was shortly put by Peytel's counsel:--"if Peytel had been
+killed by Rey in the struggle, would you not have found Rey guilty of
+the murder of his master and mistress?" It is such a dreadful dilemma,
+that I wonder how judges and lawyers could have dared to persecute
+Peytel in the manner which they did.
+
+After the act of accusation, which lays down all the suppositions
+against Peytel as facts, which will not admit the truth of one of the
+prisoner's allegations in his own defence, comes the trial. The judge is
+quite as impartial as the preparer of the indictment, as will be seen by
+the following specimens of his interrogatories:--
+
+Judge. "The act of accusation finds in your statement contradictions,
+improbabilities, impossibilities. Thus your domestic, who had determined
+to assassinate you, in order to rob you, and who MUST HAVE CALCULATED
+UPON THE CONSEQUENCE OF A FAILURE, had neither passport nor money upon
+him. This is very unlikely; because he could not have gone far with only
+a single halfpenny, which was all he had."
+
+Prisoner. "My servant was known, and often passed the frontier without a
+passport."
+
+Judge. "YOUR DOMESTIC HAD TO ASSASSINATE TWO PERSONS, and had no weapon
+but a single pistol. He had no dagger; and the only thing found on him
+was a knife."
+
+Prisoner. "In the car there were several turner's implements, which he
+might have used."
+
+Judge. "But he had not those arms upon him, because you pursued him
+immediately. He had, according to you, only this old pistol."
+
+Prisoner. "I have nothing to say."
+
+Judge. "Your domestic, instead of flying into woods, which skirt the
+road, ran straight forward on the road itself: THIS, AGAIN, IS VERY
+UNLIKELY."
+
+Prisoner. "This is a conjecture I could answer by another conjecture; I
+can only reason on the facts."
+
+Judge. "How far did you pursue him?"
+
+Prisoner. "I don't know exactly."
+
+Judge. "You said 'two hundred paces.'"
+
+No answer from the prisoner.
+
+Judge. "Your domestic was young, active, robust, and tall. He was ahead
+of you. You were in a carriage, from which you had to descend: you had
+to take your pistols from a cushion, and THEN your hammer;--how are we
+to believe that you could have caught him, if he ran? It is IMPOSSIBLE."
+
+Prisoner. "I can't explain it: I think that Rey had some defect in one
+leg. I, for my part, run tolerably fast."
+
+Judge. "At what distance from him did you fire your first shot?"
+
+Prisoner. "I can't tell."
+
+Judge. "Perhaps he was not running when you fired."
+
+Prisoner. "I saw him running."
+
+Judge. "In what position was your wife?"
+
+Prisoner. "She was leaning on my left arm, and the man was on the right
+side of the carriage."
+
+Judge. "The shot must have been fired a bout portant, because it burned
+the eyebrows and lashes entirely. The assassin must have passed his
+pistol across your breast."
+
+Prisoner. "The shot was not fired so close; I am convinced of it:
+professional gentlemen will prove it."
+
+Judge. "That is what you pretend, because you understand perfectly
+the consequences of admitting the fact. Your wife was hit with two
+balls--one striking downwards, to the right, by the nose, the other
+going horizontally through the cheek, to the left."
+
+Prisoner. "The contrary will be shown by the witnesses called for the
+purpose."
+
+Judge. "IT IS A VERY UNLUCKY COMBINATION FOR YOU that these balls, which
+went, you say, from the same pistol, should have taken two different
+directions."
+
+Prisoner. "I can't dispute about the various combinations of
+fire-arms--professional persons will be heard."
+
+Judge. "According to your statement, your wife said to you, 'My poor
+husband, take your pistols.'"
+
+Prisoner. "She did."
+
+Judge. "In a manner quite distinct."
+
+Prisoner. "Yes."
+
+Judge. "So distinct that you did not fancy she was hit?"
+
+Prisoner. "Yes; that is the fact."
+
+Judge. "HERE, AGAIN, IS AN IMPOSSIBILITY; and nothing is more precise
+than the declaration of the medical men. They affirm that your wife
+could not have spoken--their report is unanimous."
+
+Prisoner. "I can only oppose to it quite contrary opinions from
+professional men, also: you must hear them."
+
+Judge. "What did your wife do next?"
+
+      .      .      .      .      .      .
+
+Judge. "You deny the statements of the witnesses:" (they related to
+Peytel's demeanor and behavior, which the judge wishes to show were
+very unusual;--and what if they were?) "Here, however, are some mute
+witnesses, whose testimony, you will not perhaps refuse. Near Louis
+Rey's body was found a horse-cloth, a pistol, and a whip..... Your
+domestic must have had this cloth upon him when he went to assassinate
+you: it was wet and heavy. An assassin disencumbers himself of anything
+that is likely to impede him, especially when he is going to struggle
+with a man as young as himself."
+
+Prisoner. "My servant had, I believe, this covering on his body; it
+might be useful to him to keep the priming of his pistol dry."
+
+The president caused the cloth to be opened, and showed that there was
+no hook, or tie, by which it could be held together; and that Rey must
+have held it with one hand, and, in the other, his whip, and the pistol
+with which he intended to commit the crime; which was impossible.
+
+Prisoner. "These are only conjectures."
+
+And what conjectures, my God! upon which to take away the life of a man.
+Jeffreys, or Fouquier Tinville, could scarcely have dared to make such.
+Such prejudice, such bitter persecution, such priming of the jury, such
+monstrous assumptions and unreason--fancy them coming from an impartial
+judge! The man is worse than the public accuser.
+
+"Rey," says the Judge, "could not have committed the murder, BECAUSE HE
+HAD NO MONEY IN HIS POCKET, TO FLY, IN CASE OF FAILURE." And what is the
+precise sum that his lordship thinks necessary for a gentleman to have,
+before he makes such an attempt? Are the men who murder for money,
+usually in possession of a certain independence before they begin?
+How much money was Rey, a servant, who loved wine and women, had been
+stopping at a score of inns on the road, and had, probably, an annual
+income of 400 francs,--how much money was Rey likely to have?
+
+"Your servant had to assassinate two persons." This I have mentioned
+before. Why had he to assassinate two persons,* when one was enough?
+If he had killed Peytel, could he not have seized and gagged his wife
+immediately?
+
+     * M. Balzac's theory of the case is, that Rey had intrigued
+     with Madame Peytel; having known her previous to her
+     marriage, when she was staying in the house of her brother-
+     in-law, Monsieur de Montrichard, where Rey had been a
+     servant.
+
+"Your domestic ran straight forward, instead of taking to the woods, by
+the side of the rood: this is very unlikely." How does his worship know?
+Can any judge, however enlightened, tell the exact road that a man will
+take, who has just missed a coup of murder, and is pursued by a man who
+is firing pistols at him? And has a judge a right to instruct a jury in
+this way, as to what they shall, or shall not, believe?
+
+"You have to run after an active man, who has the start of you: to jump
+out of a carriage; to take your pistols; and THEN, your hammer. THIS IS
+IMPOSSIBLE." By heavens! does it not make a man's blood boil, to read
+such blundering, blood-seeking sophistry? This man, when it suits him,
+shows that Rey would be slow in his motions; and when it suits him,
+declares that Rey ought to be quick; declares ex cathedra, what pace Rey
+should go, and what direction he should take; shows, in a breath, that
+he must have run faster than Peytel; and then, that he could not run
+fast, because the cloak clogged him; settles how he is to be dressed
+when he commits a murder, and what money he is to have in his pocket;
+gives these impossible suppositions to the jury, and tells them that the
+previous statements are impossible; and, finally, informs them of the
+precise manner in which Rey must have stood holding his horse-cloth in
+one hand, his whip and pistol in the other, when he made the supposed
+attempt at murder. Now, what is the size of a horse-cloth? Is it as big
+as a pocket-handkerchief? Is there no possibility that it might hang
+over one shoulder; that the whip should be held under that very arm?
+Did you never see a carter so carry it, his hands in his pockets all the
+while? Is it monstrous, abhorrent to nature, that a man should fire a
+pistol from under a cloak on a rainy day?--that he should, after firing
+the shot, be frightened, and run; run straight before him, with the
+cloak on his shoulders, and the weapon in his hand? Peytel's story is
+possible, and very possible; it is almost probable. Allow that Rey
+had the cloth on, and you allow that he must have been clogged in his
+motions; that Peytel may have come up with him--felled him with a blow
+of the hammer; the doctors say that he would have so fallen by one
+blow--he would have fallen on his face, as he was found: the paper
+might have been thrust into his breast, and tumbled out as he fell.
+Circumstances far more impossible have occurred ere this; and men have
+been hanged for them, who were as innocent of the crime laid to their
+charge as the judge on the bench, who convicted them.
+
+In like manner, Peytel may not have committed the crime charged to
+him; and Mr. Judge, with his arguments as to possibilities and
+impossibilities,--Mr. Public Prosecutor, with his romantic narrative and
+inflammatory harangues to the jury,--may have used all these powers to
+bring to death an innocent man. From the animus with which the case had
+been conducted from beginning to end, it was easy to see the result.
+Here it is, in the words of the provincial paper:--
+
+
+BOURG, 28 October, 1839.
+
+"The condemned Peytel has just undergone his punishment, which took
+place four days before the anniversary of his crime. The terrible drama
+of the bridge of Andert, which cost the life of two persons, has just
+terminated on the scaffold. Mid-day had just sounded on the clock of the
+Palais: the same clock tolled midnight when, on the 30th of August, his
+sentence was pronounced.
+
+"Since the rejection of his appeal in Cassation, on which his principal
+hopes were founded, Peytel spoke little of his petition to the King.
+The notion of transportation was that which he seemed to cherish most.
+However, he made several inquiries from the gaoler of the prison, when
+he saw him at meal-time, with regard to the place of execution, the
+usual hour, and other details on the subject. From that period, the
+words 'Champ de Foire' (the fair-field, where the execution was to be
+held), were frequently used by him in conversation.
+
+"Yesterday, the idea that the time had arrived seemed to be more
+strongly than ever impressed upon him; especially after the departure
+of the cure, who latterly has been with him every day. The documents
+connected with the trial had arrived in the morning. He was ignorant of
+this circumstance, but sought to discover from his guardians what
+they tried to hide from him; and to find out whether his petition was
+rejected, and when he was to die.
+
+"Yesterday, also, he had written to demand the presence of his counsel,
+M. Margerand, in order that he might have some conversation with him,
+and regulate his affairs, before he ----; he did not write down the
+word, but left in its place a few points of the pen.
+
+"In the evening, whilst he was at supper, he begged earnestly to be
+allowed a little wax-candle, to finish what he was writing: otherwise,
+he said, TIME MIGHT FAIL. This was a new, indirect manner of repeating
+his ordinary question. As light, up to that evening, had been refused
+him, it was thought best to deny him in this, as in former instances;
+otherwise his suspicions might have been confirmed. The keeper refused
+his demand.
+
+"This morning, Monday, at nine o'clock, the Greffier of the Assize
+Court, in fulfilment of the painful duty which the law imposes upon him,
+came to the prison, in company with the cure of Bourg, and announced to
+the convict that his petition was rejected, and that he had only
+three hours to live. He received this fatal news with a great deal of
+calmness, and showed himself to be no more affected than he had been
+on the trial. 'I am ready; but I wish they had given me four-and-twenty
+hours' notice,'--were all the words he used.
+
+"The Greffier now retired, leaving Peytel alone with the cure, who did
+not thenceforth quit him. Peytel breakfasted at ten o'clock.
+
+"At eleven, a piquet of mounted gendarmerie and infantry took their
+station upon the place before the prison, where a great concourse of
+people had already assembled. An open car was at the door. Before
+he went out Peytel asked the gaoler for a looking-glass; and having
+examined his face for a moment, said, 'At least, the inhabitants of
+Bourg will see that I have not grown thin.'
+
+"As twelve o'clock sounded, the prison gates opened, an aide appeared,
+followed by Peytel, leaning on the arm of the cure. Peytel's face
+was pale, he had a long black beard, a blue cap on his head, and his
+great-coat flung over his shoulders, and buttoned at the neck.
+
+"He looked about at the place and the crowd; he asked if the carriage
+would go at a trot; and on being told that that would be difficult,
+he said he would prefer walking, and asked what the road was. He
+immediately set out, walking at a firm and rapid pace. He was not bound
+at all.
+
+"An immense crowd of people encumbered the two streets through which he
+had to pass to the place of execution. He cast his eyes alternately upon
+them and upon the guillotine, which was before him.
+
+"Arrived at the foot of the scaffold, Peytel embraced the cure, and
+bade him adieu. He then embraced him again; perhaps, for his mother and
+sister. He then mounted the steps rapidly, and gave himself into the
+hands of the executioner, who removed his coat and cap. He asked how he
+was to place himself, and on a sign being made, he flung himself briskly
+on the plank, and stretched his neck. In another moment he was no more.
+
+"The crowd, which had been quite silent, retired, profoundly moved by
+the sight it had witnessed. As at all executions, there was a very great
+number of women present.
+
+"Under the scaffold there had been, ever since the morning, a coffin.
+The family had asked for his remains, and had them immediately buried,
+privately: and thus the unfortunate man's head escaped the modellers in
+wax, several of whom had arrived to take an impression of it."
+
+Down goes the axe; the poor wretch's head rolls gasping into the basket;
+the spectators go home, pondering; and Mr. Executioner and his aides
+have, in half an hour, removed all traces of the august sacrifice, and
+of the altar on which it had been performed. Say, Mr. Briefless, do
+you think that any single person, meditating murder, would be deterred
+therefrom by beholding this--nay, a thousand more executions? It is
+not for moral improvement, as I take it, nor for opportunity to make
+appropriate remarks upon the punishment of crime, that people make a
+holiday of a killing-day, and leave their homes and occupations, to
+flock and witness the cutting off of a head. Do we crowd to see Mr.
+Macready in the new tragedy, or Mademoiselle Ellssler in her last new
+ballet and flesh-colored stockinnet pantaloons, out of a pure love of
+abstract poetry and beauty; or from a strong notion that we shall be
+excited, in different ways, by the actor and the dancer? And so, as we
+go to have a meal of fictitious terror at the tragedy, of something more
+questionable in the ballet, we go for a glut of blood to the execution.
+The lust is in every man's nature, more or less. Did you ever witness a
+wrestling or boxing match? The first clatter of the kick on the shins,
+or the first drawing of blood, makes the stranger shudder a little;
+but soon the blood is his chief enjoyment, and he thirsts for it with a
+fierce delight. It is a fine grim pleasure that we have in seeing a
+man killed; and I make no doubt that the organs of destructiveness must
+begin to throb and swell as we witness the delightful savage spectacle.
+
+Three or four years back, when Fieschi and Lacenaire were executed, I
+made attempts to see the execution of both; but was disappointed in
+both cases. In the first instance, the day for Fieschi's death was,
+purposely, kept secret; and he was, if I remember rightly, executed at
+some remote quarter of the town. But it would have done a philanthropist
+good, to witness the scene which we saw on the morning when his
+execution did NOT take place.
+
+It was carnival time, and the rumor had pretty generally been carried
+abroad that he was to die on that morning. A friend, who accompanied
+me, came many miles, through the mud and dark, in order to be in at the
+death. We set out before light, floundering through the muddy Champs
+Elysees; where, besides, were many other persons floundering, and all
+bent upon the same errand. We passed by the Concert of Musard, then held
+in the Rue St. Honore; and round this, in the wet, a number of coaches
+were collected. The ball was just up, and a crowd of people in hideous
+masquerade, drunk, tired, dirty, dressed in horrible old frippery, and
+daubed with filthy rouge, were trooping out of the place: tipsy women
+and men, shrieking, jabbering, gesticulating, as French will do; parties
+swaggering, staggering forwards, arm in arm, reeling to and fro across
+the street, and yelling songs in chorus: hundreds of these were bound
+for the show, and we thought ourselves lucky in finding a vehicle to the
+execution place, at the Barriere d'Enfer. As we crossed the river and
+entered the Enfer Street, crowds of students, black workmen, and more
+drunken devils from more carnival balls, were filling it; and on the
+grand place there were thousands of these assembled, looking out for
+Fiaschi and his cortege. We waited and waited; but alas! no fun for
+us that morning: no throat-cutting; no august spectacle of satisfied
+justice; and the eager spectators were obliged to return, disappointed
+of their expected breakfast of blood. It would have been a fine scene,
+that execution, could it but have taken place in the midst of the mad
+mountebanks and tipsy strumpets who had flocked so far to witness it,
+wishing to wind up the delights of their carnival by a bonnebouche of a
+murder.
+
+The other attempt was equally unfortunate. We arrived too late on the
+ground to be present at the execution of Lacenaire and his co-mate
+in murder, Avril. But as we came to the ground (a gloomy round space,
+within the barrier--three roads lead to it; and, outside, you see
+the wine-shops and restaurateurs' of the barrier looking gay and
+inviting,)--as we came to the ground, we only found, in the midst of it,
+a little pool of ice, just partially tinged with red. Two or three idle
+street-boys were dancing and stamping about this pool; and when I asked
+one of them whether the execution had taken place, he began dancing more
+madly than ever, and shrieked out with a loud fantastical, theatrical
+voice, "Venez tous Messieurs et Dames, voyez ici le sang du monstre
+Lacenaire, et de son compagnon he traitre Avril," or words to that
+effect; and straightway all the other gamins screamed out the words in
+chorus, and took hands and danced round the little puddle.
+
+O august Justice, your meal was followed by a pretty appropriate grace!
+Was any man, who saw the show, deterred, or frightened, or moralized
+in any way? He had gratified his appetite for blood, and this was
+all. There is something singularly pleasing, both in the amusement of
+execution-seeing, and in the results. You are not only delightfully
+excited at the time, but most pleasingly relaxed afterwards; the mind,
+which has been wound up painfully until now, becomes quite complacent
+and easy. There is something agreeable in the misfortunes of others, as
+the philosopher has told us. Remark what a good breakfast you eat after
+an execution; how pleasant it is to cut jokes after it, and upon it.
+This merry, pleasant mood is brought on by the blood tonic.
+
+But, for God's sake, if we are to enjoy this, let us do so in
+moderation; and let us, at least, be sure of a man's guilt before we
+murder him. To kill him, even with the full assurance that he is guilty
+is hazardous enough. Who gave you the right to do so?--you, who cry out
+against suicides, as impious and contrary to Christian law? What use is
+there in killing him? You deter no one else from committing the crime
+by so doing: you give us, to be sure, half an hour's pleasant
+entertainment; but it is a great question whether we derive much moral
+profit from the sight. If you want to keep a murderer from farther
+inroads upon society, are there not plenty of hulks and prisons, God
+wot; treadmills, galleys, and houses of correction? Above all, as in
+the case of Sebastian Peytel and his family, there have been two
+deaths already; was a third death absolutely necessary? and, taking the
+fallibility of judges and lawyers into his heart, and remembering the
+thousand instances of unmerited punishment that have been suffered, upon
+similar and stronger evidence before, can any man declare, positively
+and upon his oath, that Peytel was guilty, and that this was not THE
+THIRD MURDER IN THE FAMILY?
+
+
+
+
+FOUR IMITATIONS OF BERANGER
+
+
+
+
+LE ROI D'YVETOT.
+
+
+     Il etait un roi d'Yvetot,
+       Peu connu dans l'histoire;
+     Se levant tard, se couchant tot,
+       Dormant fort bien sans gloire,
+     Et couronne par Jeanneton
+     D'un simple bonnet de coton,
+                  Dit-on.
+         Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah!
+         Quel bon petit roi c'etait la!
+                  La, la.
+
+     Il fesait ses quatre repas
+       Dans son palais de chaume,
+     Et sur un ane, pas a pas,
+       Parcourait son royaume.
+     Joyeux, simple et croyant le bien,
+     Pour toute garde il n'avait rien
+                  Qu'un chien.
+         Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! &c.
+                  La, la.
+
+     Il n'avait de gout onereux
+       Qu'une soif un peu vive;
+     Mais, en rendant son peuple heureux,
+       Il faux bien qu'un roi vive.
+     Lui-meme a table, et sans suppot,
+     Sur chaque muid levait un pot
+                  D'impot.
+         Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! &c.
+                  La, la.
+
+     Aux filles de bonnes maisons
+       Comme il avait su plaire,
+     Ses sujets avaient cent raisons
+       De le nommer leur pere:
+     D'ailleurs il ne levait de ban
+     Que pour tirer quatre fois l'an
+                  Au blanc.
+         Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! &c.
+                  La, la.
+
+     Il n'agrandit point ses etats,
+       Fut un voisin commode,
+     Et, modele des potentats,
+       Prit le plaisir pour code.
+     Ce n'est que lorsqu'il expira,
+     Que le peuple qui l'enterra
+                  Pleura.
+         Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! &c.
+                  La, la.
+
+     On conserve encor le portrait
+       De ce digne et bon prince;
+     C'est l'enseigne d'un cabaret
+       Fameux dans la province.
+     Les jours de fete, bien souvent,
+     La foule s'ecrie en buvant
+                  Devant:
+         Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah!
+         Quel bon petit roi c'etait la!
+                  La, la.
+
+
+THE KING OF YVETOT.
+
+
+     There was a king of Yvetot,
+       Of whom renown hath little said,
+     Who let all thoughts of glory go,
+       And dawdled half his days a-bed;
+     And every night, as night came round,
+     By Jenny, with a nightcap crowned,
+                 Slept very sound:
+          Sing ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he!
+          That's the kind of king for me.
+
+     And every day it came to pass,
+       That four lusty meals made he;
+     And, step by step, upon an ass,
+       Rode abroad, his realms to see;
+     And wherever he did stir,
+     What think you was his escort, sir?
+                 Why, an old cur.
+          Sing ho, ho, ho! &c.
+
+     If e'er he went into excess,
+       'Twas from a somewhat lively thirst;
+     But he who would his subjects bless,
+       Odd's fish!--must wet his whistle first;
+     And so from every cask they got,
+     Our king did to himself allot,
+                 At least a pot.
+          Sing ho, ho! &c.
+
+     To all the ladies of the land,
+       A courteous king, and kind, was he;
+     The reason why you'll understand,
+       They named him Pater Patriae.
+     Each year he called his fighting men,
+     And marched a league from home, and then
+                 Marched back again.
+          Sing ho, ho! &c.
+
+     Neither by force nor false pretence,
+       He sought to make his kingdom great,
+     And made (O princes, learn from hence),--
+       "Live and let live," his rule of state.
+     'Twas only when he came to die,
+     That his people who stood by,
+                 Were known to cry.
+          Sing ho, ho! &c.
+
+     The portrait of this best of kings
+       Is extant still, upon a sign
+     That on a village tavern swings,
+       Famed in the country for good wine.
+     The people in their Sunday trim,
+     Filling their glasses to the brim,
+                 Look up to him,
+          Singing ha, ha, ha! and he, he, he!
+          That's the sort of king for me.
+
+
+
+
+THE KING OF BRENTFORD. ANOTHER VERSION.
+
+
+   There was a king in Brentford,--of whom no legends tell,
+   But who, without his glory,--could eat and sleep right well.
+   His Polly's cotton nightcap,--it was his crown of state,
+   He slept of evenings early,--and rose of mornings late.
+
+   All in a fine mud palace,--each day he took four meals,
+   And for a guard of honor,--a dog ran at his heels,
+   Sometimes, to view his kingdoms,--rode forth this monarch good,
+   And then a prancing jackass--he royally bestrode.
+
+   There were no costly habits--with which this king was curst,
+   Except (and where's the harm on't?)--a somewhat lively thirst;
+   But people must pay taxes,--and kings must have their sport,
+   So out of every gallon--His Grace he took a quart.
+
+   He pleased the ladies round him,--with manners soft and bland;
+   With reason good, they named him,--the father of his land.
+   Each year his mighty armies--marched forth in gallant show;
+   Their enemies were targets--their bullets they were tow.
+
+   He vexed no quiet neighbor,--no useless conquest made,
+   But by the laws of pleasure,--his peaceful realm he swayed.
+   And in the years he reigned,--through all this country wide,
+   There was no cause for weeping,--save when the good man died.
+
+   The faithful men of Brentford,--do still their king deplore,
+   His portrait yet is swinging,--beside an alehouse door.
+   And topers, tender-hearted,--regard his honest phiz,
+   And envy times departed--that knew a reign like his.
+
+
+
+
+LE GRENIER.
+
+
+     Je viens revoir l'asile ou ma jeunesse
+     De la misere a subi les lecons.
+     J'avais vingt ans, une folle maitresse,
+     De francs amis et l'amour des chansons
+     Bravant le monde et les sots et les sages,
+     Sans avenir, riche de mon printemps,
+     Leste et joyeux je montais six etages.
+     Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt ans!
+
+     C'est un grenier, point ne veux qu'on l'ignore.
+     La fut mon lit, bien chetif et bien dur;
+     La fut ma table; et je retrouve encore
+     Trois pieds d'un vers charbonnes sur le mur.
+     Apparaissez, plaisirs de mon bel age,
+     Que d'un coup d'aile a fustiges le temps,
+     Vingt fois pour vous j'ai mis ma montre en gage.
+     Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt ans!
+
+     Lisette ici doit surtout apparaitre,
+     Vive, jolie, avec un frais chapeau;
+     Deja sa main a l'etroite fenetre
+     Suspend son schal, en guise de rideau.
+     Sa robe aussi va parer ma couchette;
+     Respecte, Amour, ses plis longs et flottans.
+     J'ai su depuis qui payait sa toilette.
+     Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt ans!
+
+     A table un jour, jour de grande richesse,
+     De mes amis les voix brillaient en choeur,
+     Quand jusqu'ici monte un cri d'allegresse:
+     A Marengo Bonaparte est vainqueur.
+     Le canon gronde; un autre chant commence;
+     Nous celebrons tant de faits eclatans.
+     Les rois jamais n'envahiront la France.
+     Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt ans!
+
+     Quittons ce toit ou ma raison s'enivre.
+     Oh! qu'ils sont loin ces jours si regrettes!
+     J'echangerais ce qu'il me reste a vivre
+     Contre un des mois qu'ici Dieu m'a comptes,
+     Pour rever gloire, amour, plaisir, folie,
+     Pour depenser sa vie en peu d'instans,
+     D'un long espoir pour la voir embellie,
+     Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt ans!
+
+
+
+
+THE GARRET.
+
+
+     With pensive eyes the little room I view,
+       Where, in my youth, I weathered it so long;
+     With a wild mistress, a stanch friend or two,
+       And a light heart still breaking into song:
+     Making a mock of life, and all its cares,
+       Rich in the glory of my rising sun,
+     Lightly I vaulted up four pair of stairs,
+       In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
+
+     Yes; 'tis a garret--let him know't who will--
+       There was my bed--full hard it was and small.
+     My table there--and I decipher still
+       Half a lame couplet charcoaled on the wall.
+     Ye joys, that Time hath swept with him away,
+       Come to mine eyes, ye dreams of love and fun;
+     For you I pawned my watch how many a day,
+       In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
+
+     And see my little Jessy, first of all;
+       She comes with pouting lips and sparkling eyes:
+     Behold, how roguishly she pins her shawl
+       Across the narrow casement, curtain-wise;
+     Now by the bed her petticoat glides down,
+       And when did woman look the worse in none?
+     I have heard since who paid for many a gown,
+       In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
+
+     One jolly evening, when my friends and I
+       Made happy music with our songs and cheers,
+     A shout of triumph mounted up thus high,
+       And distant cannon opened on our ears:
+     We rise,--we join in the triumphant strain,--
+       Napoleon conquers--Austerlitz is won--
+     Tyrants shall never tread us down again,
+       In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
+
+     Let us begone--the place is sad and strange--
+       How far, far off, these happy times appear;
+     All that I have to live I'd gladly change
+       For one such month as I have wasted here--
+     To draw long dreams of beauty, love, and power,
+       From founts of hope that never will outrun,
+     And drink all life's quintessence in an hour,
+       Give me the days when I was twenty-one!
+
+
+
+
+ROGER-BONTEMPS.
+
+
+     Aux gens atrabilaires
+     Pour exemple donne,
+     En un temps de miseres
+     Roger-Bontemps est ne.
+     Vivre obscur a sa guise,
+     Narguer les mecontens:
+     Eh gai! c'est la devise
+     Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+     Du chapeau de son pere
+     Coiffe dans le grands jours,
+     De roses ou de lierre
+     Le rajeunir toujours;
+     Mettre un manteau de bure,
+     Vieil ami de vingt ans;
+     Eh gai! c'est la parure
+     Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+     Posseder dans sa hutte
+     Une table, un vieux lit,
+     Des cartes, une flute,
+     Un broc que Dieu remplit;
+     Un portrait de maitresse,
+     Un coffre et rien dedans;
+     Eh gai! c'est la richesse
+     Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+     Aux enfans de la ville
+     Montrer de petits jeux;
+     Etre fesseur habile
+     De contes graveleux;
+     Ne parler que de danse
+     Et d'almanachs chantans;
+     Eh gai! c'est la science
+     Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+     Faute de vins d'elite,
+     Sabler ceux du canton:
+     Preferer Marguerite
+     Aux dames du grand ton:
+     De joie et de tendresse
+     Remplir tous ses instans;
+     Eh gai! c'est la sagesse
+     Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+     Dire au ciel: Je me fie,
+     Mon pere, a ta bonte;
+     De ma philosophie
+     Pardonne le gaite
+     Que ma saison derniere
+     Soit encore un printemps;
+     Eh gai! c'est la priere
+     Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+     Vous, pauvres pleins d'envie,
+     Vous, riches desireux,
+     Vous, dont le char devie
+     Apres un cours heureux;
+     Vous, qui perdrez peut-etre
+     Des titres eclatans,
+     Eh gai! prenez pour maitre
+     Le gros Roger Bontemps.
+
+
+
+
+JOLLY JACK.
+
+
+     When fierce political debate
+       Throughout the isle was storming,
+     And Rads attacked the throne and state,
+       And Tories the reforming,
+     To calm the furious rage of each,
+       And right the land demented,
+     Heaven sent us Jolly Jack, to teach
+      The way to be contented.
+
+     Jack's bed was straw, 'twas warm and soft,
+       His chair, a three-legged stool;
+     His broken jug was emptied oft,
+       Yet, somehow, always full.
+     His mistress' portrait decked the wall,
+       His mirror had a crack;
+     Yet, gay and glad, though this was all
+       His wealth, lived Jolly Jack.
+
+     To give advice to avarice,
+       Teach pride its mean condition,
+     And preach good sense to dull pretence,
+       Was honest Jack's high mission.
+     Our simple statesman found his rule
+       Of moral in the flagon,
+     And held his philosophic school
+       Beneath the "George and Dragon."
+
+     When village Solons cursed the Lords,
+       And called the malt-tax sinful,
+     Jack heeded not their angry words,
+       But smiled and drank his skinful.
+     And when men wasted health and life,
+       In search of rank and riches,
+     Jack marked, aloof, the paltry strife,
+       And wore his threadbare breeches.
+
+     "I enter not the church," he said,
+       "But I'll not seek to rob it;"
+     So worthy Jack Joe Miller read,
+       While others studied Cobbett.
+     His talk it was of feast and fun;
+       His guide the Almanack;
+     From youth to age thus gayly run
+       The life of Jolly Jack.
+
+     And when Jack prayed, as oft he would,
+       He humbly thanked his Maker;
+     "I am," said he, "O Father good!
+       Nor Catholic nor Quaker:
+     Give each his creed, let each proclaim
+       His catalogue of curses;
+     I trust in Thee, and not in them,
+       In Thee, and in Thy mercies!
+
+     "Forgive me if, midst all Thy works,
+       No hint I see of damning;
+     And think there's faith among the Turks,
+       And hope for e'en the Brahmin.
+     Harmless my mind is, and my mirth,
+       And kindly is my laughter:
+     I cannot see the smiling earth,
+       And think there's hell hereafter."
+
+     Jack died; he left no legacy,
+       Save that his story teaches:--
+     Content to peevish poverty;
+       Humility to riches.
+     Ye scornful great, ye envious small,
+       Come follow in his track;
+     We all were happier, if we all
+       Would copy JOLLY JACK.
+
+
+
+
+FRENCH DRAMAS AND MELODRAMAS.
+
+
+There are three kinds of drama in France, which you may subdivide as
+much as you please.
+
+There is the old classical drama, wellnigh dead, and full time too: old
+tragedies, in which half a dozen characters appear, and spout sonorous
+Alexandrines for half a dozen hours. The fair Rachel has been trying to
+revive this genre, and to untomb Racine; but be not alarmed, Racine will
+never come to life again, and cause audiences to weep as of yore. Madame
+Rachel can only galvanize the corpse, not revivify it. Ancient French
+tragedy, red-heeled, patched, and be-periwigged, lies in the grave;
+and it is only the ghost of it that we see, which the fair Jewess has
+raised. There are classical comedies in verse, too, wherein the knavish
+valets, rakish heroes, stolid old guardians, and smart, free-spoken
+serving-women, discourse in Alexandrines, as loud as the Horaces or the
+Cid. An Englishman will seldom reconcile himself to the roulement of
+the verses, and the painful recurrence of the rhymes; for my part, I had
+rather go to Madame Saqui's or see Deburau dancing on a rope: his lines
+are quite as natural and poetical.
+
+Then there is the comedy of the day, of which Monsieur Scribe is the
+father. Good heavens! with what a number of gay colonels, smart widows,
+and silly husbands has that gentleman peopled the play-books. How that
+unfortunate seventh commandment has been maltreated by him and his
+disciples. You will see four pieces, at the Gymnase, of a night; and so
+sure as you see them, four husbands shall be wickedly used. When is
+this joke to cease? Mon Dieu! Play-writers have handled it for about two
+thousand years, and the public, like a great baby, must have the tale
+repeated to it over and over again.
+
+Finally, there is the Drama, that great monster which has sprung into
+life of late years; and which is said, but I don't believe a word of it,
+to have Shakspeare for a father. If Monsieur Scribe's plays may be said
+to be so many ingenious examples how to break one commandment, the drame
+is a grand and general chaos of them all; nay, several crimes are added,
+not prohibited in the Decalogue, which was written before dramas were.
+Of the drama, Victor Hugo and Dumas are the well-known and respectable
+guardians. Every piece Victor Hugo has written, since "Hernani," has
+contained a monster--a delightful monster, saved by one virtue. There is
+Triboulet, a foolish monster; Lucrece Borgia, a maternal monster; Mary
+Tudor, a religious monster; Monsieur Quasimodo, a humpback monster;
+and others, that might be named, whose monstrosities we are induced to
+pardon--nay, admiringly to witness--because they are agreeably mingled
+with some exquisite display of affection. And, as the great Hugo has one
+monster to each play, the great Dumas has, ordinarily, half a dozen,
+to whom murder is nothing; common intrigue, and simple breakage of the
+before-mentioned commandment, nothing; but who live and move in a vast,
+delightful complication of crime, that cannot be easily conceived in
+England, much less described.
+
+When I think over the number of crimes that I have seen Mademoiselle
+Georges, for instance, commit, I am filled with wonder at her greatness,
+and the greatness of the poets who have conceived these charming horrors
+for her. I have seen her make love to, and murder, her sons, in the
+"Tour de Nesle." I have seen her poison a company of no less than nine
+gentlemen, at Ferrara, with an affectionate son in the number; I have
+seen her, as Madame de Brinvilliers, kill off numbers of respectable
+relations in the first four acts; and, at the last, be actually burned
+at the stake, to which she comes shuddering, ghastly, barefooted, and in
+a white sheet. Sweet excitement of tender sympathies! Such tragedies are
+not so good as a real, downright execution; but, in point of interest,
+the next thing to it: with what a number of moral emotions do they fill
+the breast; with what a hatred for vice, and yet a true pity and respect
+for that grain of virtue that is to be found in us all: our bloody,
+daughter-loving Brinvilliers; our warmhearted, poisonous Lucretia
+Borgia; above all, what a smart appetite for a cool supper afterwards,
+at the Cafe Anglais, when the horrors of the play act as a piquant sauce
+to the supper!
+
+Or, to speak more seriously, and to come, at last, to the point. After
+having seen most of the grand dramas which have been produced at Paris
+for the last half-dozen years, and thinking over all that one has
+seen,--the fictitious murders, rapes, adulteries, and other crimes, by
+which one has been interested and excited,--a man may take leave to be
+heartily ashamed of the manner in which he has spent his time; and
+of the hideous kind of mental intoxication in which he has permitted
+himself to indulge.
+
+Nor are simple society outrages the only sort of crime in which the
+spectator of Paris plays has permitted himself to indulge; he has
+recreated himself with a deal of blasphemy besides, and has passed many
+pleasant evenings in beholding religion defiled and ridiculed.
+
+Allusion has been made, in a former paper, to a fashion that lately
+obtained in France, and which went by the name of Catholic reaction; and
+as, in this happy country, fashion is everything, we have had not merely
+Catholic pictures and quasi religious books, but a number of Catholic
+plays have been produced, very edifying to the frequenters of the
+theatres or the Boulevards, who have learned more about religion from
+these performances than they have acquired, no doubt, in the whole of
+their lives before. In the course of a very few years we have seen--"The
+Wandering Jew;" "Belshazzar's Feast;" "Nebuchadnezzar:" and the
+"Massacre of the Innocents;" "Joseph and his Brethren;" "The Passage of
+the Red Sea;" and "The Deluge."
+
+The great Dumas, like Madame Sand before mentioned, has brought a
+vast quantity of religion before the foot-lights. There was his famous
+tragedy of "Caligula," which, be it spoken to the shame of the Paris
+critics, was coldly received; nay, actually hissed, by them. And why?
+Because, says Dumas, it contained a great deal too much piety for the
+rogues. The public, he says, was much more religious, and understood him
+at once.
+
+"As for the critics," says he, nobly, "let those who cried out against
+the immorality of Antony and Marguerite de Bourgogne, reproach me for
+THE CHASTITY OF MESSALINA." (This dear creature is the heroine of the
+play of "Caligula.") "It matters little to me. These people have but
+seen the form of my work: they have walked round the tent, but have not
+seen the arch which it covered; they have examined the vases and candles
+of the altar, but have not opened the tabernacle!
+
+"The public alone has, instinctively, comprehended that there was,
+beneath this outward sign, an inward and mysterious grace: it followed
+the action of the piece in all its serpentine windings; it listened for
+four hours, with pious attention (avec recueillement et religion), to
+the sound of this rolling river of thoughts, which may have appeared to
+it new and bold, perhaps, but chaste and grave; and it retired, with its
+head on its breast, like a man who had just perceived, in a dream, the
+solution of a problem which he has long and vainly sought in his waking
+hours."
+
+You see that not only Saint Sand is an apostle, in her way; but Saint
+Dumas is another. We have people in England who write for bread, like
+Dumas and Sand, and are paid so much for their line; but they don't set
+up for prophets. Mrs. Trollope has never declared that her novels are
+inspired by heaven; Mr. Buckstone has written a great number of farces,
+and never talked about the altar and the tabernacle. Even Sir Edward
+Bulwer (who, on a similar occasion, when the critics found fault with
+a play of his, answered them by a pretty decent declaration of his own
+merits,) never ventured to say that he had received a divine mission,
+and was uttering five-act revelations.
+
+All things considered, the tragedy of "Caligula" is a decent tragedy; as
+decent as the decent characters of the hero and heroine can allow it
+to be; it may be almost said, provokingly decent: but this, it must be
+remembered, is the characteristic of the modern French school (nay,
+of the English school too); and if the writer take the character of
+a remarkable scoundrel, it is ten to one but he turns out an amiable
+fellow, in whom we have all the warmest sympathy. "Caligula" is killed
+at the end of the performance; Messalina is comparatively well-behaved;
+and the sacred part of the performance, the tabernacle-characters apart
+from the mere "vase" and "candlestick" personages, may be said to be
+depicted in the person of a Christian convert, Stella, who has had the
+good fortune to be converted by no less a person than Mary Magdalene,
+when she, Stella, was staying on a visit to her aunt, near Narbonne.
+
+
+STELLA (Continuant.) Voila Que je vois s'avancer, sans pilote et sans
+rames, Une barque portant deux hommes et deux femmes, Et, spectacle
+inoui qui me ravit encor, Tous quatre avaient au front une aureole
+d'or D'ou partaient des rayons de si vive lumiere Que je fus obligee a
+baisser la paupiere; Et, lorsque je rouvris les yeux avec effroi, Les
+voyageurs divins etaient aupres de moi. Un jour de chacun d'eux et
+dans toute sa gloire Je te raconterai la marveilleuse histoire, Et tu
+l'adoreras, j'espere; en ce moment, Ma mere, il te suffit de savoir
+seulement Que tous quatre venaient du fond de la Syrie: Un edit les
+avait bannis de leur patrie, Et, se faisant bourreaux, des hommes
+irrites, Sans avirons, sans eau, sans pain et garrotes, Sur une frele
+barque echouee au rivage, Les avaient a la mer pousses dans un orage.
+Mais a peine l'esquif eut-il touche les flots Qu'au cantique chante par
+les saints matelots, L'ouragan replia ses ailes fremissantes, Que la mer
+aplanit ses vagues mugissantes, Et qu'un soleil plus pur, reparaissant
+aux cieux, Enveloppa l'esquif d'un cercle radieux!...
+
+JUNIA.--Mais c'etait un prodige.
+
+STELLA.-- Un miracle, ma mere! Leurs fers tomberent seuls, l'eau cessa
+d'etre amere, Et deux fois chaque jour le bateau fut couvert D'une
+manne pareille a celle du desert: C'est ainsi que, pousses par une main
+celeste, Je les vis aborder.
+
+JUNIA.-- Oh! dis vite le reste!
+
+STELLA.--A l'aube, trois d'entre eux quitterent la maison: Marthe prit
+le chemin qui mene a Tarascon, Lazare et Maximin celui de Massilie,
+Et celle qui resta.... C'ETAIT LA PLUS JOLIE, (how truly French!) Nous
+faisant appeler vers le milieu du jour, Demanda si les monts ou les bois
+d'alentour Cachaient quelque retraite inconnue et profonde, Qui la
+put separer a tout jamais du monde..... Aquila se souvint qu'il avait
+penetre Dans un antre sauvage et de tous ignore, Grotte creusee aux
+flancs de ces Alpes sublimes, Ou l'aigle fait son aire au-dessus des
+abimes. Il offrit cet asile, et des le lendemain Tous deux, pour l'y
+guider, nous etions en chemin. Le soir du second jour nous touchames sa
+base: La, tombant a genoux dans une sainte extase, Elle pria long-temps,
+puis vers l'antre inconnu, Denouant se chaussure, elle marcha pied nu.
+Nos prieres, nos cris resterent sans reponses: Au milieu des cailloux,
+des epines, des ronces, Nous la vimes monter, un baton a la main, Et ce
+n'est qu'arrivee au terme du chemin, Qu'enfin elle tomba sans force et
+sans haleine....
+
+JUNIA.--Comment la nommait-on, ma fille?
+
+STELLA.-- Madeleine.
+
+
+Walking, says Stella, by the sea-shore, "A bark drew near, that had nor
+sail nor oar; two women and two men the vessel bore: each of that crew,
+'twas wondrous to behold, wore round his head a ring of blazing gold;
+from which such radiance glittered all around, that I was fain to look
+towards the ground. And when once more I raised my frightened eyne,
+before me stood the travellers divine; their rank, the glorious lot that
+each befell, at better season, mother, will I tell. Of this anon:
+the time will come when thou shalt learn to worship as I worship now.
+Suffice it, that from Syria's land they came; an edict from their
+country banished them. Fierce, angry men had seized upon the four, and
+launched them in that vessel from the shore. They launched these victims
+on the waters rude; nor rudder gave to steer, nor bread for food. As the
+doomed vessel cleaves the stormy main, that pious crew uplifts a sacred
+strain; the angry waves are silent as it sings; the storm, awe-stricken,
+folds its quivering wings. A purer sun appears the heavens to light, and
+wraps the little bark in radiance bright.
+
+"JUNIA.--Sure, 'twas a prodigy.
+
+"STELLA.--A miracle. Spontaneous from their hands the fetters fell. The
+salt sea-wave grew fresh, and, twice a day, manna (like that which on
+the desert lay) covered the bark and fed them on their way. Thus, hither
+led, at heaven's divine behest, I saw them land--
+
+"JUNIA.--My daughter, tell the rest.
+
+"STELLA.--Three of the four, our mansion left at dawn. One, Martha, took
+the road to Tarascon; Lazarus and Maximin to Massily; but one remained
+(the fairest of the three), who asked us, if i' the woods or mountains
+near, there chanced to be some cavern lone and drear; where she might
+hide, for ever, from all men. It chanced, my cousin knew of such a den;
+deep hidden in a mountain's hoary breast, on which the eagle builds his
+airy nest. And thither offered he the saint to guide. Next day upon the
+journey forth we hied; and came, at the second eve, with weary pace,
+unto the lonely mountain's rugged base. Here the worn traveller, falling
+on her knee, did pray awhile in sacred ecstasy; and, drawing off her
+sandals from her feet, marched, naked, towards that desolate retreat. No
+answer made she to our cries or groans; but walking midst the prickles
+and rude stones, a staff in hand, we saw her upwards toil; nor ever did
+she pause, nor rest the while, save at the entry of that savage den.
+Here, powerless and panting, fell she then.
+
+"JUNIA.--What was her name, my daughter?
+
+"STELLA. MAGDALEN."
+
+
+Here the translator must pause--having no inclination to enter "the
+tabernacle," in company with such a spotless high-priest as Monsieur
+Dumas.
+
+Something "tabernacular" may be found in Dumas's famous piece of "Don
+Juan de Marana." The poet has laid the scene of his play in a vast
+number of places: in heaven (where we have the Virgin Mary and little
+angels, in blue, swinging censers before her!)--on earth, under the
+earth, and in a place still lower, but not mentionable to ears polite;
+and the plot, as it appears from a dialogue between a good and a bad
+angel, with which the play commences, turns upon a contest between these
+two worthies for the possession of the soul of a member of the family of
+Marana.
+
+"Don Juan de Marana" not only resembles his namesake, celebrated by
+Mozart and Moliere, in his peculiar successes among the ladies, but
+possesses further qualities which render his character eminently
+fitting for stage representation: he unites the virtues of Lovelace
+and Lacenaire; he blasphemes upon all occasions; he murders, at the
+slightest provocation, and without the most trifling remorse; he
+overcomes ladies of rigid virtue, ladies of easy virtue, and ladies of
+no virtue at all; and the poet, inspired by the contemplation of such
+a character, has depicted his hero's adventures and conversation with
+wonderful feeling and truth.
+
+The first act of the play contains a half-dozen of murders and
+intrigues; which would have sufficed humbler genius than M. Dumas's, for
+the completion of, at least, half a dozen tragedies. In the second act
+our hero flogs his elder brother, and runs away with his sister-in-law;
+in the third, he fights a duel with a rival, and kills him: whereupon
+the mistress of his victim takes poison, and dies, in great agonies, on
+the stage. In the fourth act, Don Juan, having entered a church for the
+purpose of carrying off a nun, with whom he is in love, is seized by the
+statue of one of the ladies whom he has previously victimized, and made
+to behold the ghosts of all those unfortunate persons whose deaths he
+has caused.
+
+This is a most edifying spectacle. The ghosts rise solemnly, each in a
+white sheet, preceded by a wax-candle; and, having declared their names
+and qualities, call, in chorus, for vengeance upon Don Juan, as thus:--
+
+
+DON SANDOVAL loquitur.
+
+"I am Don Sandoval d'Ojedo. I played against Don Juan my fortune, the
+tomb of my fathers, and the heart of my mistress;--I lost all: I played
+against him my life, and I lost it. Vengeance against the murderer!
+vengeance!"--(The candle goes out.)
+
+
+THE CANDLE GOES OUT, and an angel descends--a flaming sword in his
+hand--and asks: "Is there no voice in favor of Don Juan?" when lo!
+Don Juan's father (like one of those ingenious toys called
+"Jack-in-the-box,") jumps up from his coffin, and demands grace for his
+son.
+
+When Martha the nun returns, having prepared all things for her
+elopement, she finds Don Juan fainting upon the ground.--"I am no longer
+your husband," says he, upon coming to himself; "I am no longer Don
+Juan; I am Brother Juan the Trappist. Sister Martha, recollect that you
+must die!"
+
+This was a most cruel blow upon Sister Martha, who is no less a person
+than an angel, an angel in disguise--the good spirit of the house of
+Marana, who has gone to the length of losing her wings and forfeiting
+her place in heaven, in order to keep company with Don Juan on earth,
+and, if possible, to convert him. Already, in her angelic character, she
+had exhorted him to repentance, but in vain; for, while she stood at one
+elbow, pouring not merely hints, but long sermons, into his ear, at the
+other elbow stood a bad spirit, grinning and sneering at all her pious
+counsels, and obtaining by far the greater share of the Don's attention.
+
+In spite, however, of the utter contempt with which Don Juan treats
+her,--in spite of his dissolute courses, which must shock her
+virtue,--and his impolite neglect, which must wound her vanity, the poor
+creature (who, from having been accustomed to better company, might have
+been presumed to have had better taste), the unfortunate angel feels a
+certain inclination for the Don, and actually flies up to heaven to ask
+permission to remain with him on earth.
+
+And when the curtain draws up, to the sound of harps, and discovers
+white-robed angels walking in the clouds, we find the angel of Marana
+upon her knees, uttering the following address:--
+
+
+LE BON ANGE.
+
+     Vierge, a qui le calice a la liqueur amere
+           Fut si souvent offert,
+     Mere, que l'on nomma la douloureuse mere,
+           Tant vous avez souffert!
+
+     Vous, dont les yeux divins sur la terre des hommes
+           Ont verse plus de pleurs
+     Que vos pieds n'ont depuis, dans le ciel ou nous sommes,
+           Fait eclore de fleurs.
+
+     Vase d'election, etoile matinale,
+          Miroir de purete,
+     Vous qui priez pour nous, d'une voix virginale,
+          La supreme bonte;
+
+     A mon tour, aujourd'hui, bienheureuse Marie,
+          Je tombe a vos genoux;
+     Daignez donc m'ecouter, car c'est vous que je prie,
+          Vous qui priez pour nous.
+
+
+     Which may be thus interpreted:--
+
+
+     O Virgin blest! by whom the bitter draught
+          So often has been quaffed,
+     That, for thy sorrow, thou art named by us
+          The Mother Dolorous!
+
+     Thou, from whose eyes have fallen more tears of woe,
+          Upon the earth below,
+     Than 'neath thy footsteps, in this heaven of ours,
+          Have risen flowers!
+
+     O beaming morning star! O chosen vase!
+          O mirror of all grace!
+     Who, with thy virgin voice, dost ever pray
+          Man's sins away;
+
+     Bend down thine ear, and list, O blessed saint!
+          Unto my sad complaint;
+     Mother! to thee I kneel, on thee I call,
+          Who hearest all.
+
+
+She proceeds to request that she may be allowed to return to earth, and
+follow the fortunes of Don Juan; and, as there is one difficulty, or, to
+use her own words,--
+
+
+    Mais, comme vous savez qu'aux voutes eternelles,
+         Malgre moi, tend mon vol,
+    Soufflez sur mon etoile et detachez mes ailes,
+         Pour m'enchainer au sol;
+
+
+her request is granted, her star is BLOWN OUT (O poetic allusion!) and
+she descends to earth to love, and to go mad, and to die for Don Juan!
+
+The reader will require no further explanation, in order to be satisfied
+as to the moral of this play: but is it not a very bitter satire upon
+the country, which calls itself the politest nation in the world, that
+the incidents, the indecency, the coarse blasphemy, and the vulgar
+wit of this piece, should find admirers among the public, and procure
+reputation for the author? Could not the Government, which has
+re-established, in a manner, the theatrical censorship, and forbids or
+alters plays which touch on politics, exert the same guardianship
+over public morals? The honest English reader, who has a faith in his
+clergyman, and is a regular attendant at Sunday worship, will not be a
+little surprised at the march of intellect among our neighbors across
+the Channel, and at the kind of consideration in which they hold their
+religion. Here is a man who seizes upon saints and angels, merely to put
+sentiments in their mouths which might suit a nymph of Drury Lane. He
+shows heaven, in order that he may carry debauch into it; and avails
+himself of the most sacred and sublime parts of our creed as a vehicle
+for a scene-painter's skill, or an occasion for a handsome actress to
+wear a new dress.
+
+M. Dumas's piece of "Kean" is not quite so sublime; it was brought out
+by the author as a satire upon the French critics, who, to their credit
+be it spoken, had generally attacked him, and was intended by him, and
+received by the public, as a faithful portraiture of English manners.
+As such, it merits special observation and praise. In the first act you
+find a Countess and an Ambassadress, whose conversation relates purely
+to the great actor. All the ladies in London are in love with him,
+especially the two present. As for the Ambassadress, she prefers him
+to her husband (a matter of course in all French plays), and to a more
+seducing person still--no less a person than the Prince of Wales!
+who presently waits on the ladies, and joins in their conversation
+concerning Kean. "This man," says his Royal Highness, "is the very pink
+of fashion. Brummell is nobody when compared to him; and I myself only
+an insignificant private gentleman. He has a reputation among ladies,
+for which I sigh in vain; and spends an income twice as great as mine."
+This admirable historic touch at once paints the actor and the Prince;
+the estimation in which the one was held, and the modest economy for
+which the other was so notorious.
+
+Then we have Kean, at a place called the Trou de Charbon, the "Coal
+Hole," where, to the edification of the public, he engages in a fisty
+combat with a notorious boxer. This scene was received by the audience
+with loud exclamations of delight, and commented on, by the journals,
+as a faultless picture of English manners. "The Coal Hole" being on the
+banks of the Thames, a nobleman--LORD MELBOURN!--has chosen the tavern
+as a rendezvous for a gang of pirates, who are to have their ship in
+waiting, in order to carry off a young lady with whom his lordship is
+enamored. It need not be said that Kean arrives at the nick of time,
+saves the innocent Meess Anna, and exposes the infamy of the Peer. A
+violent tirade against noblemen ensues, and Lord Melbourn slinks away,
+disappointed, to meditate revenge. Kean's triumphs continue through
+all the acts: the Ambassadress falls madly in love with him; the Prince
+becomes furious at his ill success, and the Ambassador dreadfully
+jealous. They pursue Kean to his dressing-room at the theatre; where,
+unluckily, the Ambassadress herself has taken refuge. Dreadful quarrels
+ensue; the tragedian grows suddenly mad upon the stage, and so cruelly
+insults the Prince of Wales that his Royal Highness determines to send
+HIM TO BOTANY BAY. His sentence, however, is commuted to banishment to
+New York; whither, of course, Miss Anna accompanies him; rewarding him,
+previously, with her hand and twenty thousand a year!
+
+This wonderful performance was gravely received and admired by the
+people of Paris: the piece was considered to be decidedly moral, because
+the popular candidate was made to triumph throughout, and to triumph in
+the most virtuous manner; for, according to the French code of morals,
+success among women is, at once, the proof and the reward of virtue.
+
+The sacred personage introduced in Dumas's play behind a cloud, figures
+bodily in the piece of the Massacre of the Innocents, represented at
+Paris last year. She appears under a different name, but the costume
+is exactly that of Carlo Dolce's Madonna; and an ingenious fable is
+arranged, the interest of which hangs upon the grand Massacre of the
+Innocents, perpetrated in the fifth act. One of the chief characters
+is Jean le Precurseur, who threatens woe to Herod and his race, and is
+beheaded by orders of that sovereign.
+
+In the Festin de Balthazar, we are similarly introduced to Daniel, and
+the first scene is laid by the waters of Babylon, where a certain number
+of captive Jews are seated in melancholy postures; a Babylonian officer
+enters, exclaiming, "Chantez nous quelques chansons de Jerusalem," and
+the request is refused in the language of the Psalm. Belshazzar's Feast
+is given in a grand tableau, after Martin's picture. That painter, in
+like manner, furnished scenes for the Deluge. Vast numbers of schoolboys
+and children are brought to see these pieces; the lower classes delight
+in them. The famous Juif Errant, at the theatre of the Porte St.
+Martin, was the first of the kind, and its prodigious success, no
+doubt, occasioned the number of imitations which the other theatres have
+produced.
+
+The taste of such exhibitions, of course, every English person will
+question; but we must remember the manners of the people among whom they
+are popular; and, if I may be allowed to hazard such an opinion, there
+is in every one of these Boulevard mysteries, a kind of rude moral. The
+Boulevard writers don't pretend to "tabernacles" and divine gifts, like
+Madame Sand and Dumas before mentioned. If they take a story from the
+sacred books, they garble it without mercy, and take sad liberties with
+the text; but they do not deal in descriptions of the agreeably
+wicked, or ask pity and admiration for tender-hearted criminals and
+philanthropic murderers, as their betters do. Vice is vice on the
+Boulevard; and it is fine to hear the audience, as a tyrant king roars
+out cruel sentences of death, or a bereaved mother pleads for the life
+of her child, making their remarks on the circumstances of the scene.
+"Ah, le gredin!" growls an indignant countryman. "Quel monstre!" says a
+grisette, in a fury. You see very fat old men crying like babies,
+and, like babies, sucking enormous sticks of barley-sugar. Actors and
+audience enter warmly into the illusion of the piece; and so especially
+are the former affected, that at Franconi's, where the battles of the
+Empire are represented, there is as regular gradation in the ranks of
+the mimic army as in the real imperial legions. After a man has served,
+with credit, for a certain number of years in the line, he is promoted
+to be an officer--an acting officer. If he conducts himself well, he may
+rise to be a Colonel or a General of Division; if ill, he is degraded to
+the ranks again; or, worst degradation of all, drafted into a regiment
+of Cossacks or Austrians. Cossacks is the lowest depth, however; nay,
+it is said that the men who perform these Cossack parts receive higher
+wages than the mimic grenadiers and old guard. They will not consent
+to be beaten every night, even in play; to be pursued in hundreds, by a
+handful of French; to fight against their beloved Emperor. Surely there
+is fine hearty virtue in this, and pleasant child-like simplicity.
+
+So that while the drama of Victor Hugo, Dumas, and the enlightened
+classes, is profoundly immoral and absurd, the DRAMA of the common
+people is absurd, if you will, but good and right-hearted. I have made
+notes of one or two of these pieces, which all have good feeling and
+kindness in them, and which turn, as the reader will see, upon one or
+two favorite points of popular morality. A drama that obtained a vast
+success at the Porte Saint Martin was "La Duchesse de la Vauballiere."
+The Duchess is the daughter of a poor farmer, who was carried off in the
+first place, and then married by M. le Duc de la Vauballiere, a terrible
+roue, the farmer's landlord, and the intimate friend of Philippe
+d'Orleans, the Regent of France.
+
+Now the Duke, in running away with the lady, intended to dispense
+altogether with ceremony, and make of Julie anything but his wife; but
+Georges, her father, and one Morisseau, a notary, discovered him in
+his dastardly act, and pursued him to the very feet of the Regent, who
+compelled the pair to marry and make it up.
+
+Julie complies; but though she becomes a Duchess, her heart remains
+faithful to her old flame, Adrian, the doctor; and she declares that,
+beyond the ceremony, no sort of intimacy shall take place between her
+husband and herself.
+
+Then the Duke begins to treat her in the most ungentleman-like manner:
+he abuses her in every possible way; he introduces improper characters
+into her house; and, finally, becomes so disgusted with her, that he
+determines to make away with her altogether.
+
+For this purpose, he sends forth into the highways and seizes a doctor,
+bidding him, on pain of death, to write a poisonous prescription for
+Madame la Duchesse. She swallows the potion; and O horror! the doctor
+turns out to be Dr. Adrian; whose woe may be imagined, upon finding that
+he has been thus committing murder on his true love!
+
+Let not the reader, however, be alarmed as to the fate of the
+heroine; no heroine of a tragedy ever yet died in the third act; and,
+accordingly, the Duchess gets up perfectly well again in the fourth,
+through the instrumentality of Morisseau, the good lawyer.
+
+And now it is that vice begins to be really punished. The Duke, who,
+after killing his wife, thinks it necessary to retreat, and take refuge
+in Spain, is tracked to the borders of that country by the virtuous
+notary, and there receives such a lesson as he will never forget to his
+dying day.
+
+Morisseau, in the first instance, produces a deed (signed by his
+Holiness the Pope), which annuls the marriage of the Duke de la
+Vauballiere; then another deed, by which it is proved that he was not
+the eldest son of old La Vauballiere, the former Duke; then another
+deed, by which he shows that old La Vauballiere (who seems to have been
+a disreputable old fellow) was a bigamist, and that, in consequence,
+the present man, styling himself Duke, is illegitimate; and finally,
+Morisseau brings forward another document, which proves that the REG'LAR
+Duke is no other than Adrian, the doctor!
+
+Thus it is that love, law, and physic combined, triumph over the horrid
+machinations of this star-and-gartered libertine.
+
+"Hermann l'Ivrogne" is another piece of the same order; and though not
+very refined, yet possesses considerable merit. As in the case of the
+celebrated Captain Smith of Halifax, who "took to drinking ratafia,
+and thought of poor Miss Bailey,"--a woman and the bottle have been the
+cause of Hermann's ruin. Deserted by his mistress, who has been seduced
+from him by a base Italian Count, Hermann, a German artist, gives
+himself entirely up to liquor and revenge: but when he finds that force,
+and not infidelity, have been the cause of his mistress's ruin, the
+reader can fancy the indignant ferocity with which he pursues the infame
+ravisseur. A scene, which is really full of spirit, and excellently well
+acted, here ensues! Hermann proposes to the Count, on the eve of their
+duel, that the survivor should bind himself to espouse the unhappy
+Marie; but the Count declares himself to be already married, and the
+student, finding a duel impossible (for his object was to restore, at
+all events, the honor of Marie), now only thinks of his revenge,
+and murders the Count. Presently, two parties of men enter Hermann's
+apartment: one is a company of students, who bring him the news that he
+has obtained the prize of painting; the other the policemen, who carry
+him to prison, to suffer the penalty of murder.
+
+I could mention many more plays in which the popular morality is
+similiarly expressed. The seducer, or rascal of the piece, is always an
+aristocrat,--a wicked count, or licentious marquis, who is brought to
+condign punishment just before the fall of the curtain. And too good
+reason have the French people had to lay such crimes to the charge of
+the aristocracy, who are expiating now, on the stage, the wrongs which
+they did a hundred years since. The aristocracy is dead now; but the
+theatre lives upon traditions: and don't let us be too scornful at
+such simple legends as are handed down by the people from race to race.
+Vulgar prejudice against the great it may be; but prejudice against
+the great is only a rude expression of sympathy with the poor; long,
+therefore, may fat epiciers blubber over mimic woes, and honest
+proletaires shake their fists, shouting--"Gredin, scelerat, monstre de
+marquis!" and such republican cries.
+
+Remark, too, another development of this same popular feeling of dislike
+against men in power. What a number of plays and legends have we (the
+writer has submitted to the public, in the preeeding pages, a couple of
+specimens; one of French, and the other of Polish origin,) in which
+that great and powerful aristocrat, the Devil, is made to be miserably
+tricked, humiliated, and disappointed? A play of this class, which, in
+the midst of all its absurdities and claptraps, had much of good in it,
+was called "Le Maudit des Mers." Le Maudit is a Dutch captain, who, in
+the midst of a storm, while his crew were on their knees at prayers,
+blasphemed and drank punch; but what was his astonishment at beholding
+an archangel with a sword all covered with flaming resin, who told him
+that as he, in this hour of danger, was too daring, or too wicked, to
+utter a prayer, he never should cease roaming the seas until he could
+find some being who would pray to heaven for him!
+
+Once only, in a hundred years, was the skipper allowed to land for this
+purpose; and this piece runs through four centuries, in as many
+acts, describing the agonies and unavailing attempts of the miserable
+Dutchman. Willing to go any lengths in order to obtain his prayer, he,
+in the second act, betrays a Virgin of the Sun to a follower of Pizarro:
+and, in the third, assassinates the heroic William of Nassau; but ever
+before the dropping of the curtain, the angel and sword make
+their appearance--"Treachery," says the spirit, "cannot lessen thy
+punishment;--crime will not obtain thy release--A la mer! a la mer!" and
+the poor devil returns to the ocean, to be lonely, and tempest-tossed,
+and sea-sick for a hundred years more.
+
+But his woes are destined to end with the fourth act. Having landed in
+America, where the peasants on the sea-shore, all dressed in Italian
+costumes, are celebrating, in a quadrille, the victories of Washington,
+he is there lucky enough to find a young girl to pray for him. Then the
+curse is removed, the punishment is over, and a celestial vessel, with
+angels on the decks and "sweet little cherubs" fluttering about the
+shrouds and the poop, appear to receive him.
+
+This piece was acted at Franconi's, where, for once, an angel-ship was
+introduced in place of the usual horsemanship.
+
+One must not forget to mention here, how the English nation is satirized
+by our neighbors; who have some droll traditions regarding us. In one of
+the little Christmas pieces produced at the Palais Royal (satires upon
+the follies of the past twelve months, on which all the small theatres
+exhaust their wit), the celebrated flight of Messrs. Green and Monck
+Mason was parodied, and created a good deal of laughter at the expense
+of John Bull. Two English noblemen, Milor Cricri and Milor Hanneton,
+appear as descending from a balloon, and one of them communicates to the
+public the philosophic observations which were made in the course of his
+aerial tour.
+
+"On leaving Vauxhall," says his lordship, "we drank a bottle of Madeira,
+as a health to the friends from whom we parted, and crunched a few
+biscuits to support nature during the hours before lunch. In two hours
+we arrived at Canterbury, enveloped in clouds: lunch, bottled porter:
+at Dover, carried several miles in a tide of air, bitter cold,
+cherry-brandy; crossed over the Channel safely, and thought with pity of
+the poor people who were sickening in the steamboats below: more
+bottled porter: over Calais, dinner, roast-beef of Old England;
+near Dunkirk,--night falling, lunar rainbow, brandy-and-water; night
+confoundedly thick; supper, nightcap of rum-punch, and so to bed. The
+sun broke beautifully through the morning mist, as we boiled the kettle
+and took our breakfast over Cologne. In a few more hours we concluded
+this memorable voyage, and landed safely at Weilburg, in good time for
+dinner."
+
+The joke here is smart enough; but our honest neighbors make many
+better, when they are quite unconscious of the fun. Let us leave plays,
+for a moment, for poetry, and take an instance of French criticism,
+concerning England, from the works of a famous French exquisite and man
+of letters. The hero of the poem addresses his mistress--
+
+
+     Londres, tu le sais trop, en fait de capitale,
+     Est-ce que fit le ciel de plus froid et plus pale,
+     C'est la ville du gaz, des marins, du brouillard;
+     On s'y couche a minuit, et l'on s'y leve tard;
+     Ses raouts tant vantes ne sont qu'une boxade,
+     Sur ses grands quais jamais echelle ou serenade,
+     Mais de volumineux bourgeois pris de porter
+     Qui passent sans lever le front a Westminster;
+     Et n'etait sa foret de mats percant la brume,
+     Sa tour dont a minuit le vieil oeil s'allume,
+     Et tes deux yeux, Zerline, illumines bien plus,
+     Je dirais que, ma foi, des romans que j'ai lus,
+     Il n'en est pas un seul, plus lourd, plus lethargique
+     Que cette nation qu'on nomme Britannique!
+
+
+The writer of the above lines (which let any man who can translate) is
+Monsieur Roger de Beauvoir, a gentleman who actually lived many months
+in England, as an attache to the embassy of M. de Polignac. He places
+the heroine of his tale in a petit reduit pres le Strand, "with a green
+and fresh jalousie, and a large blind, let down all day; you fancied
+you were entering a bath of Asia, as soon as you had passed the perfumed
+threshold of this charming retreat!" He next places her--
+
+
+     Dans un square ecarte, morne et couverte de givre,
+     Ou se cache un hotel, aux vieux lions de cuivre;
+
+
+and the hero of the tale, a young French poet, who is in London, is
+truly unhappy in that village.
+
+
+     Arthur desseche et meurt.  Dans la ville de Sterne,
+     Rien qu'en voyant le peuple il a le mal de mer
+     Il n'aime ni le Parc, gai comme une citerne,
+     Ni le tir au pigeon, ni le soda-water.
+
+     Liston ne le fait plus sourciller!  Il rumine
+     Sur les trottoirs du Strand, droit comme un echiquier,
+     Contre le peuple anglais, les negres, la vermine,
+     Et les mille cokneys du peuple boutiquier,
+
+     Contre tous les bas-bleus, contre les patissieres,
+     Les parieurs d'Epsom, le gin, le parlement,
+     La quaterly, le roi, la pluie et les libraires,
+     Dont il ne touche plus, helas! un sou d'argent!
+
+     Et chaque gentleman lui dit: L'heureux poete!
+
+
+"L'heureux poete" indeed! I question if a poet in this wide world is so
+happy as M. de Beauvoir, or has made such wonderful discoveries. "The
+bath of Asia, with green jalousies," in which the lady dwells; "the old
+hotel, with copper lions, in a lonely square;"--were ever such things
+heard of, or imagined, but by a Frenchman? The sailors, the negroes, the
+vermin, whom he meets in the street,--how great and happy are all these
+discoveries! Liston no longer makes the happy poet frown; and "gin,"
+"cokneys," and the "quaterly" have not the least effect upon him!
+And this gentleman has lived many months amongst us; admires Williams
+Shakspear, the "grave et vieux prophete," as he calls him, and never,
+for an instant, doubts that his description contains anything absurd!
+
+I don't know whether the great Dumas has passed any time in England; but
+his plays show a similar intimate knowledge of our habits. Thus in Kean,
+the stage-manager is made to come forward and address the pit, with
+a speech beginning, "My Lords and Gentlemen;" and a company of
+Englishwomen are introduced (at the memorable "Coal hole"), and they all
+wear PINAFORES; as if the British female were in the invariable habit of
+wearing this outer garment, or slobbering her gown without it. There was
+another celebrated piece, enacted some years since, upon the subject
+of Queen Caroline, where our late adored sovereign, George, was made to
+play a most despicable part; and where Signor Bergami fought a duel with
+Lord Londonderry. In the last act of this play, the House of Lords was
+represented, and Sir Brougham made an eloquent speech in the Queen's
+favor. Presently the shouts of the mob were heard without; from shouting
+they proceeded to pelting; and pasteboard-brickbats and cabbages came
+flying among the representatives of our hereditary legislature. At this
+unpleasant juncture, SIR HARDINGE, the Secretary-at-War, rises and calls
+in the military; the act ends in a general row, and the ignominious fall
+of Lord Liverpool, laid low by a brickbat from the mob!
+
+The description of these scenes is, of course, quite incapable of
+conveying any notion of their general effect. You must have the
+solemnity of the actors, as they Meess and Milor one another, and the
+perfect gravity and good faith with which the audience listen to them.
+Our stage Frenchman is the old Marquis, with sword, and pigtail,
+and spangled court coat. The Englishman of the French theatre has,
+invariably, a red wig, and almost always leather gaiters, and a long
+white upper Benjamin: he remains as he was represented in the old
+caricatures after the peace, when Vernet designed him.
+
+And to conclude this catalogue of blunders: in the famous piece of
+the "Naufrage de la Meduse," the first act is laid on board an English
+ship-of-war, all the officers of which appeared in light blue or
+green coats (the lamp-light prevented our distinguishing the color
+accurately), and TOP-BOOTS!
+
+
+Let us not attempt to deaden the force of this tremendous blow by any
+more remarks. The force of blundering can go no further. Would a Chinese
+playwright or painter have stranger notions about the barbarians than
+our neighbors, who are separated from us but by two hours of salt water?
+
+
+
+
+MEDITATIONS AT VERSAILLES.
+
+
+The palace of Versailles has been turned into a bricabrac shop of late
+years, and its time-honored walls have been covered with many thousand
+yards of the worst pictures that eye ever looked on. I don't know how
+many leagues of battles and sieges the unhappy visitor is now obliged
+to march through, amidst a crowd of chattering Paris cockneys, who are
+never tired of looking at the glories of the Grenadier Francais; to
+the chronicling of whose deeds this old palace of the old kings is now
+altogether devoted. A whizzing, screaming steam-engine rushes hither
+from Paris, bringing shoals of badauds in its wake. The old coucous
+are all gone, and their place knows them no longer. Smooth asphaltum
+terraces, tawdry lamps, and great hideous Egyptian obelisks, have
+frightened them away from the pleasant station they used to occupy under
+the trees of the Champs Elysees; and though the old coucous were just
+the most uncomfortable vehicles that human ingenuity ever constructed,
+one can't help looking back to the days of their existence with a tender
+regret; for there was pleasure then in the little trip of three leagues:
+and who ever had pleasure in a railway journey? Does any reader of this
+venture to say that, on such a voyage, he ever dared to be pleasant?
+Do the most hardened stokers joke with one another? I don't believe it.
+Look into every single car of the train, and you will see that every
+single face is solemn. They take their seats gravely, and are silent,
+for the most part, during the journey; they dare not look out of window,
+for fear of being blinded by the smoke that comes whizzing by, or of
+losing their heads in one of the windows of the down train; they ride
+for miles in utter damp and darkness: through awful pipes of brick, that
+have been run pitilessly through the bowels of gentle mother earth, the
+cast-iron Frankenstein of an engine gallops on, puffing and screaming.
+Does any man pretend to say that he ENJOYS the journey?--he might as
+well say that he enjoyed having his hair cut; he bears it, but that is
+all: he will not allow the world to laugh at him, for any exhibition
+of slavish fear; and pretends, therefore, to be at his ease; but he IS
+afraid: nay, ought to be, under the circumstances. I am sure Hannibal or
+Napoleon would, were they locked suddenly into a car; there kept close
+prisoners for a certain number of hours, and whirled along at this dizzy
+pace. You can't stop, if you would:--you may die, but you can't stop;
+the engine may explode upon the road, and up you go along with it; or,
+may be a bolter and take a fancy to go down a hill, or into a river:
+all this you must bear, for the privilege of travelling twenty miles an
+hour.
+
+This little journey, then, from Paris to Versailles, that used to be
+so merry of old, has lost its pleasures since the disappearance of the
+coucous; and I would as lief have for companions the statues that lately
+took a coach from the bridge opposite the Chamber of Deputies, and
+stepped out in the court of Versailles, as the most part of the people
+who now travel on the railroad. The stone figures are not a whit more
+cold and silent than these persons, who used to be, in the old coucous,
+so talkative and merry. The prattling grisette and her swain from the
+Ecole de Droit; the huge Alsacian carabineer, grimly smiling under his
+sandy moustaches and glittering brass helmet; the jolly nurse, in
+red calico, who had been to Paris to show mamma her darling Lolo, or
+Auguste;--what merry companions used one to find squeezed into the
+crazy old vehicles that formerly performed the journey! But the age of
+horseflesh is gone--that of engineers, economists, and calculators has
+succeeded; and the pleasure of coucoudom is extinguished for ever. Why
+not mourn over it, as Mr. Burke did over his cheap defence of nations
+and unbought grace of life; that age of chivalry, which he lamented,
+apropos of a trip to Versailles, some half a century back?
+
+Without stopping to discuss (as might be done, in rather a neat and
+successful manner) whether the age of chivalry was cheap or dear, and
+whether, in the time of the unbought grace of life, there was not more
+bribery, robbery, villainy, tyranny, and corruption, than exists even in
+our own happy days,--let us make a few moral and historical remarks
+upon the town of Versailles; where, between railroad and coucou, we are
+surely arrived by this time.
+
+The town is, certainly, the most moral of towns. You pass from the
+railroad station through a long, lonely suburb, with dusty rows of
+stunted trees on either side, and some few miserable beggars, idle boys,
+and ragged old women under them. Behind the trees are gaunt, mouldy
+houses; palaces once, where (in the days of the unbought grace of life)
+the cheap defence of nations gambled, ogled, swindled, intrigued; whence
+high-born duchesses used to issue, in old times, to act as chambermaids
+to lovely Du Barri; and mighty princes rolled away, in gilt caroches,
+hot for the honor of lighting his Majesty to bed, or of presenting his
+stockings when he rose, or of holding his napkin when he dined. Tailors,
+chandlers, tinmen, wretched hucksters, and greengrocers, are now
+established in the mansions of the old peers; small children are yelling
+at the doors, with mouths besmeared with bread and treacle; damp rags
+are hanging out of every one of the windows, steaming in the sun;
+oyster-shells, cabbage-stalks, broken crockery, old papers, lie basking
+in the same cheerful light. A solitary water-cart goes jingling down the
+wide pavement, and spirts a feeble refreshment over the dusty, thirsty
+stones.
+
+After pacing for some time through such dismal streets, we deboucher
+on the grande place; and before us lies the palace dedicated to all the
+glories of France. In the midst of the great lonely plain this famous
+residence of King Louis looks low and mean.--Honored pile! Time was when
+tall musketeers and gilded body-guards allowed none to pass the gate.
+Fifty years ago, ten thousand drunken women from Paris broke through the
+charm; and now a tattered commissioner will conduct you through it for a
+penny, and lead you up to the sacred entrance of the palace.
+
+We will not examine all the glories of France, as here they are
+portrayed in pictures and marble: catalogues are written about these
+miles of canvas, representing all the revolutionary battles, from Valmy
+to Waterloo,--all the triumphs of Louis XIV.--all the mistresses of his
+successor--and all the great men who have flourished since the French
+empire began. Military heroes are most of these--fierce constables in
+shining steel, marshals in voluminous wigs, and brave grenadiers in
+bearskin caps; some dozens of whom gained crowns, principalities,
+dukedoms; some hundreds, plunder and epaulets; some millions, death in
+African sands, or in icy Russian plains, under the guidance, and for the
+good, of that arch-hero, Napoleon. By far the greater part of "all the
+glories" of France (as of most other countries) is made up of these
+military men: and a fine satire it is on the cowardice of mankind, that
+they pay such an extraordinary homage to the virtue called courage;
+filling their history-books with tales about it, and nothing but it.
+
+Let them disguise the place, however, as they will, and plaster the
+walls with bad pictures as they please, it will be hard to think of any
+family but one, as one traverses this vast gloomy edifice. It has not
+been humbled to the ground, as a certain palace of Babel was of yore;
+but it is a monument of fallen pride, not less awful, and would afford
+matter for a whole library of sermons. The cheap defence of nations
+expended a thousand millions in the erection of this magnificent
+dwelling-place. Armies were employed, in the intervals of their warlike
+labors, to level hills, or pile them up; to turn rivers, and to build
+aqueducts, and transplant woods, and construct smooth terraces, and long
+canals. A vast garden grew up in a wilderness, and a stupendous palace
+in the garden, and a stately city round the palace: the city was peopled
+with parasites, who daily came to do worship before the creator of these
+wonders--the Great King. "Dieu seul est grand," said courtly Massillon;
+but next to him, as the prelate thought, was certainly Louis,
+his vicegerent here upon earth--God's lieutenant-governor of the
+world,--before whom courtiers used to fall on their knees, and shade
+their eyes, as if the light of his countenance, like the sun, which
+shone supreme in heaven, the type of him, was too dazzling to bear.
+
+Did ever the sun shine upon such a king before, in such a palace?--or,
+rather, did such a king ever shine upon the sun? When Majesty came out
+of his chamber, in the midst of his superhuman splendors, viz, in his
+cinnamon-colored coat, embroidered with diamonds; his pyramid of a wig,*
+his red-heeled shoes, that lifted him four inches from the ground, "that
+he scarcely seemed to touch;" when he came out, blazing upon the dukes
+and duchesses that waited his rising,--what could the latter do, but
+cover their eyes, and wink, and tremble? And did he not himself believe,
+as he stood there, on his high heels, under his ambrosial periwig, that
+there was something in him more than man--something above Fate?
+
+     * It is fine to think that, in the days of his youth, his
+     Majesty Louis XIV. used to POWDER HIS WIG WITH GOLD-DUST.
+
+This, doubtless, was he fain to believe; and if, on very fine days, from
+his terrace before his gloomy palace of Saint Germains, he could catch
+a glimpse, in the distance, of a certain white spire of St. Denis,
+where his race lay buried, he would say to his courtiers, with a sublime
+condescension, "Gentlemen, you must remember that I, too, am mortal."
+Surely the lords in waiting could hardly think him serious, and vowed
+that his Majesty always loved a joke. However, mortal or not, the sight
+of that sharp spire wounded his Majesty's eyes; and is said, by the
+legend, to have caused the building of the palace of Babel-Versailles.
+
+In the year 1681, then, the great king, with bag and baggage,--with
+guards, cooks, chamberlains, mistresses, Jesuits, gentlemen, lackeys,
+Fenelons, Molieres, Lauzuns, Bossuets, Villars, Villeroys, Louvois,
+Colberts,--transported himself to his new palace: the old one being left
+for James of England and Jaquette his wife, when their time should come.
+And when the time did come, and James sought his brother's kingdom,
+it is on record that Louis hastened to receive and console him, and
+promised to restore, incontinently, those islands from which the
+canaille had turned him. Between brothers such a gift was a trifle; and
+the courtiers said to one another reverently:* "The Lord said unto
+my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy
+footstool." There was no blasphemy in the speech: on the contrary, it
+was gravely said, by a faithful believing man, who thought it no shame
+to the latter, to compare his Majesty with God Almighty. Indeed, the
+books of the time will give one a strong idea how general was this
+Louis-worship. I have just been looking at one, which was written by
+an honest Jesuit and Protege of Pere la Chaise, who dedicates a book of
+medals to the august Infants of France, which does, indeed, go almost
+as far in print. He calls our famous monarch "Louis le Grand:--1,
+l'invincible; 2, le sage; 3, le conquerant; 4, la merveille de son
+siecle; 5, la terreur de ses ennemis; 6, l'amour de ses peuples; 7,
+l'arbitre de la paix et de la guerre; 8, l'admiration de l'univers; 9,
+et digne d'en etre le maitre; 10, le modele d'un heros acheve; 11, digne
+de l'immortalite, et de la veneration de tous les siecles!"
+
+     * I think it is in the amusing "Memoirs of Madame de Crequi"
+     (a forgery, but a work remarkable for its learning and
+     accuracy) that the above anecdote is related.
+
+A pretty Jesuit declaration, truly, and a good honest judgment upon the
+great king! In thirty years more--1. The invincible had been beaten a
+vast number of times. 2. The sage was the puppet of an artful old woman,
+who was the puppet of more artful priests. 3. The conqueror had quite
+forgotten his early knack of conquering. 5. The terror of his enemies
+(for 4, the marvel of his age, we pretermit, it being a loose term, that
+may apply to any person or thing) was now terrified by his enemies in
+turn. 6. The love of his people was as heartily detested by them as
+scarcely any other monarch, not even his great-grandson, has been,
+before or since. 7. The arbiter of peace and war was fain to send superb
+ambassadors to kick their heels in Dutch shopkeepers' ante-chambers. 8,
+is again a general term. 9. The man fit to be master of the universe,
+was scarcely master of his own kingdom. 10. The finished hero was all
+but finished, in a very commonplace and vulgar way. And 11. The man
+worthy of immortality was just at the point of death, without a friend
+to soothe or deplore him; only withered old Maintenon to utter prayers
+at his bedside, and croaking Jesuits to prepare him,* with heaven knows
+what wretched tricks and mummeries, for his appearance in that Great
+Republic that lies on the other side of the grave. In the course of his
+fourscore splendid miserable years, he never had but one friend, and he
+ruined and left her. Poor La Valliere, what a sad tale is yours! "Look
+at this Galerie des Glaces," cries Monsieur Vatout, staggering with
+surprise at the appearance of the room, two hundred and forty-two feet
+long, and forty high. "Here it was that Louis displayed all the grandeur
+of royalty; and such was the splendor of his court, and the luxury of
+the times, that this immense room could hardly contain the crowd of
+courtiers that pressed around the monarch." Wonderful! wonderful! Eight
+thousand four hundred and sixty square feet of courtiers! Give a square
+yard to each, and you have a matter of three thousand of them. Think of
+three thousand courtiers per day, and all the chopping and changing
+of them for near forty years: some of them dying, some getting their
+wishes, and retiring to their provinces to enjoy their plunder; some
+disgraced, and going home to pine away out of the light of the sun;**
+new ones perpetually arriving,--pushing, squeezing, for their place,
+in the crowded Galerie des Glaces. A quarter of a million of noble
+countenances, at the very least, must those glasses have reflected.
+Rouge, diamonds, ribbons, patches, upon the faces of smiling ladies:
+towering periwigs, sleek shaven crowns, tufted moustaches, scars, and
+grizzled whiskers, worn by ministers, priests, dandies, and grim old
+commanders.--So many faces, O ye gods! and every one of them lies! So
+many tongues, vowing devotion and respectful love to the great king in
+his six-inch wig; and only poor La Valliere's amongst them all which had
+a word of truth for the dull ears of Louis of Bourbon.
+
+     * They made a Jesuit of him on his death-bed.
+
+     ** Saint Simon's account of Lauzun, in disgrace, is
+     admirably facetious and pathetic; Lauzun's regrets are as
+     monstrous as those of Raleigh when deprived of the sight of
+     his adorable Queen and Mistress, Elizabeth.
+
+"Quand j'aurai de la peine aux Carmelites," says unhappy Louise, about
+to retire from these magnificent courtiers and their grand Galerie
+des Glaces, "je me souviendrai de ce que ces gens la m'ont fait
+souffrir!"--A troop of Bossuets inveighing against the vanities of
+courts could not preach such an affecting sermon. What years of anguish
+and wrong had the poor thing suffered, before these sad words came from
+her gentle lips! How these courtiers have bowed and flattered, kissed
+the ground on which she trod, fought to have the honor of riding by her
+carriage, written sonnets, and called her goddess; who, in the days of
+her prosperity, was kind and beneficent, gentle and compassionate to
+all; then (on a certain day, when it is whispered that his Majesty
+hath cast the eyes of his gracious affection upon another) behold three
+thousand courtiers are at the feet of the new divinity.--"O divine
+Athenais! what blockheads have we been to worship any but you.--THAT a
+goddess?--a pretty goddess forsooth;--a witch, rather, who, for a while,
+kept our gracious monarch blind! Look at her: the woman limps as she
+walks; and, by sacred Venus, her mouth stretches almost to her diamond
+ear-rings?"* The same tale may be told of many more deserted mistresses;
+and fair Athenais de Montespan was to hear it of herself one day.
+Meantime, while La Valliere's heart is breaking, the model of a finished
+hero is yawning; as, on such paltry occasions, a finished hero should.
+LET her heart break: a plague upon her tears and repentance; what right
+has she to repent? Away with her to her convent. She goes, and the
+finished hero never sheds a tear. What a noble pitch of stoicism to have
+reached! Our Louis was so great, that the little woes of mean people
+were beyond him: his friends died, his mistresses left him; his
+children, one by one, were cut off before his eyes, and great Louis
+is not moved in the slightest degree! As how, indeed, should a god be
+moved?
+
+     * A pair of diamond ear-rings, given by the King to La
+     Valliere, caused much scandal; and some lampoons are extant,
+     which impugn the taste of Louis XIV. for loving a lady with
+     such an enormous mouth.
+
+I have often liked to think about this strange character in the world,
+who moved in it, bearing about a full belief in his own infallibility;
+teaching his generals the art of war, his ministers the science of
+government, his wits taste, his courtiers dress; ordering deserts to
+become gardens, turning villages into palaces at a breath; and indeed
+the august figure of the man, as he towers upon his throne, cannot fail
+to inspire one with respect and awe:--how grand those flowing locks
+appear; how awful that sceptre; how magnificent those flowing robes! In
+Louis, surely, if in any one, the majesty of kinghood is represented.
+
+But a king is not every inch a king, for all the poet may say; and it is
+curious to see how much precise majesty there is in that majestic figure
+of Ludovicus Rex. In the Frontispiece, we have endeavored to make the
+exact calculation. The idea of kingly dignity is equally strong in the
+two outer figures; and you see, at once, that majesty is made out of the
+wig, the high-heeled shoes, and cloak, all fleurs-de-lis bespangled. As
+for the little lean, shrivelled, paunchy old man, of five feet two, in a
+jacket and breeches, there is no majesty in HIM at any rate; and yet he
+has just stepped out of that very suit of clothes. Put the wig and shoes
+on him, and he is six feet high;--the other fripperies, and he stands
+before you majestic, imperial, and heroic! Thus do barbers and cobblers
+make the gods that we worship: for do we not all worship him? Yes;
+though we all know him to be stupid, heartless, short, of doubtful
+personal courage, worship and admire him we must; and have set up, in
+our hearts, a grand image of him, endowed with wit, magnanimity, valor,
+and enormous heroical stature.
+
+And what magnanimous acts are attributed to him! or, rather, how
+differently do we view the actions of heroes and common men, and find
+that the same thing shall be a wonderful virtue in the former, which,
+in the latter, is only an ordinary act of duty. Look at yonder window of
+the king's chamber;--one morning a royal cane was seen whirling out of
+it, and plumped among the courtiers and guard of honor below. King Louis
+had absolutely, and with his own hand, flung his own cane out of
+the window, "because," said he, "I won't demean myself by striking a
+gentleman!" O miracle of magnanimity! Lauzun was not caned, because he
+besought majesty to keep his promise,--only imprisoned for ten years in
+Pignerol, along with banished Fouquet;--and a pretty story is Fouquet's
+too.
+
+Out of the window the king's august head was one day thrust, when old
+Conde was painfully toiling up the steps of the court below. "Don't
+hurry yourself, my cousin," cries magnanimity, "one who has to carry
+so many laurels cannot walk fast." At which all the courtiers, lackeys,
+mistresses, chamberlains, Jesuits, and scullions, clasp their hands and
+burst into tears. Men are affected by the tale to this very day. For
+a century and three-quarters, have not all the books that speak of
+Versailles, or Louis Quatorze, told the story?--"Don't hurry
+yourself, my cousin!" O admirable king and Christian! what a pitch of
+condescension is here, that the greatest king of all the world should go
+for to say anything so kind, and really tell a tottering old gentleman,
+worn out with gout, age, and wounds, not to walk too fast!
+
+What a proper fund of slavishness is there in the composition of
+mankind, that histories like these should be found to interest and awe
+them. Till the world's end, most likely, this story will have its place
+in the history-books; and unborn generations will read it, and tenderly
+be moved by it. I am sure that Magnanimity went to bed that night,
+pleased and happy, intimately convinced that he had done an action of
+sublime virtue, and had easy slumbers and sweet dreams,--especially if
+he had taken a light supper, and not too vehemently attacked his en cas
+de nuit.
+
+That famous adventure, in which the en cas de nuit was brought into
+use, for the sake of one Poquelin alias Moliere;--how often has it been
+described and admired? This Poquelin, though king's valet-de-chambre,
+was by profession a vagrant; and as such, looked coldly on by the great
+lords of the palace, who refused to eat with him. Majesty hearing
+of this, ordered his en cas de nuit to be placed on the table, and
+positively cut off a wing with his own knife and fork for Poquelin's
+use. O thrice happy Jean Baptiste! The king has actually sat down with
+him cheek by jowl, had the liver-wing of a fowl, and given Moliere
+the gizzard; put his imperial legs under the same mahogany (sub iisdem
+trabibus). A man, after such an honor, can look for little else in this
+world: he has tasted the utmost conceivable earthly happiness, and has
+nothing to do now but to fold his arms, look up to heaven, and sing
+"Nunc dimittis" and die.
+
+Do not let us abuse poor old Louis on account of this monstrous pride;
+but only lay it to the charge of the fools who believed and worshipped
+it. If, honest man, he believed himself to be almost a god, it was only
+because thousands of people had told him so--people only half liars,
+too; who did, in the depths of their slavish respect, admire the man
+almost as much as they said they did. If, when he appeared in his
+five-hundred-million coat, as he is said to have done, before the
+Siamese ambassadors, the courtiers began to shade their eyes and long
+for parasols, as if this Bourbonic sun was too hot for them; indeed, it
+is no wonder that he should believe that there was something dazzling
+about his person: he had half a million of eager testimonies to this
+idea. Who was to tell him the truth?--Only in the last years of his life
+did trembling courtiers dare whisper to him, after much circumlocution,
+that a certain battle had been fought at a place called Blenheim, and
+that Eugene and Marlborough had stopped his long career of triumphs.
+
+"On n'est plus heureux a notre age," says the old man, to one of his old
+generals, welcoming Tallard after his defeat; and he rewards him
+with honors, as if he had come from a victory. There is, if you will,
+something magnanimous in this welcome to his conquered general, this
+stout protest against Fate. Disaster succeeds disaster; armies after
+armies march out to meet fiery Eugene and that dogged, fatal Englishman,
+and disappear in the smoke of the enemies' cannon. Even at Versailles
+you may almost hear it roaring at last; but when courtiers, who have
+forgotten their god, now talk of quitting this grand temple of his, old
+Louis plucks up heart and will never hear of surrender. All the gold
+and silver at Versailles he melts, to find bread for his armies: all
+the jewels on his five-hundred-million coat he pawns resolutely; and,
+bidding Villars go and make the last struggle but one, promises, if his
+general is defeated, to place himself at the head of his nobles, and
+die King of France. Indeed, after a man, for sixty years, has been
+performing the part of a hero, some of the real heroic stuff must have
+entered into his composition, whether he would or not. When the great
+Elliston was enacting the part of King George the Fourth, in the play of
+"The Coronation," at Drury Lane, the galleries applauded very loudly
+his suavity and majestic demeanor, at which Elliston, inflamed by the
+popular loyalty (and by some fermented liquor in which, it is said, he
+was in the habit of indulging), burst into tears, and spreading out his
+arms, exclaimed: "Bless ye, bless ye, my people!" Don't let us laugh at
+his Ellistonian majesty, nor at the people who clapped hands and yelled
+"bravo!" in praise of him. The tipsy old manager did really feel that
+he was a hero at that moment; and the people, wild with delight and
+attachment for a magnificent coat and breeches, surely were uttering
+the true sentiments of loyalty: which consists in reverencing these and
+other articles of costume. In this fifth act, then, of his long royal
+drama, old Louis performed his part excellently; and when the curtain
+drops upon him, he lies, dressed majestically, in a becoming kingly
+attitude, as a king should.
+
+The king his successor has not left, at Versailles, half so much
+occasion for moralizing; perhaps the neighboring Parc aux Cerfs
+would afford better illustrations of his reign. The life of his great
+grandsire, the Grand Llama of France, seems to have frightened Louis
+the well-beloved; who understood that loneliness is one of the necessary
+conditions of divinity, and being of a jovial, companionable turn,
+aspired not beyond manhood. Only in the matter of ladies did he
+surpass his predecessor, as Solomon did David. War he eschewed, as his
+grandfather bade him; and his simple taste found little in this world to
+enjoy beyond the mulling of chocolate and the frying of pancakes. Look,
+here is the room called Laboratoire du Roi, where, with his own hands,
+he made his mistress's breakfast:--here is the little door through
+which, from her apartments in the upper story, the chaste Du Barri came
+stealing down to the arms of the weary, feeble, gloomy old man. But of
+women he was tired long since, and even pancake-frying had palled
+upon him. What had he to do, after forty years of reign;--after having
+exhausted everything? Every pleasure that Dubois could invent for his
+hot youth, or cunning Lebel could minister to his old age, was flat and
+stale; used up to the very dregs: every shilling in the national purse
+had been squeezed out, by Pompadour and Du Barri and such brilliant
+ministers of state. He had found out the vanity of pleasure, as his
+ancestor had discovered the vanity of glory: indeed it was high time
+that he should die. And die he did; and round his tomb, as round that of
+his grandfather before him, the starving people sang a dreadful chorus
+of curses, which were the only epitaphs for good or for evil that were
+raised to his memory.
+
+As for the courtiers--the knights and nobles, the unbought grace of
+life--they, of course, forgot him in one minute after his death, as
+the way is. When the king dies, the officer appointed opens his chamber
+window, and calling out into the court below, Le Roi est mort,
+breaks his cane, takes another and waves it, exclaiming, vive le Roi!
+Straightway all the loyal nobles begin yelling vive le Roi! and the
+officer goes round solemnly and sets yonder great clock in the Cour
+de Marbre to the hour of the king's death. This old Louis had solemnly
+ordained; but the Versailles clock was only set twice: there was no
+shouting of Vive le Roi when the successor of Louis XV. mounted to
+heaven to join his sainted family.
+
+Strange stories of the deaths of kings have always been very recreating
+and profitable to us: what a fine one is that of the death of Louis XV.,
+as Madame Campan tells it. One night the gracious monarch came back ill
+from Trianon; the disease turned out to be the small-pox; so violent
+that ten people of those who had to enter his chamber caught the
+infection and died. The whole court flies from him; only poor old fat
+Mesdames the King's daughters persist in remaining at his bedside, and
+praying for his soul's welfare.
+
+On the 10th May, 1774, the whole court had assembled at the chateau; the
+oeil de Boeuf was full. The Dauphin had determined to depart as soon as
+the king had breathed his last. And it was agreed by the people of
+the stables, with those who watched in the king's room, that a lighted
+candle should be placed in a window, and should be extinguished as
+soon as he had ceased to live. The candle was put out. At that signal,
+guards, pages, and squires mounted on horseback, and everything was
+made ready for departure. The Dauphin was with the Dauphiness, waiting
+together for the news of the king's demise. AN IMMENSE NOISE, AS IF OF
+THUNDER, WAS HEARD IN THE NEXT ROOM; it was the crowd of courtiers, who
+were deserting the dead king's apartment, in order to pay their court
+to the new power of Louis XVI. Madame de Noailles entered, and was the
+first to salute the queen by her title of Queen of France, and begged
+their Majesties to quit their apartments, to receive the princes
+and great lords of the court desirous to pay their homage to the new
+sovereigns. Leaning on her husband's arm, a handkerchief to her eyes,
+in the most touching attitude, Marie Antoinette received these first
+visits. On quitting the chamber where the dead king lay, the Duc de
+Villequier bade M. Anderville, first surgeon of the king, to open and
+embalm the body: it would have been certain death to the surgeon. "I am
+ready, sir," said he; "but whilst I am operating, you must hold the head
+of the corpse: your charge demands it." The Duke went away without
+a word, and the body was neither opened nor embalmed. A few humble
+domestics and poor workmen watched by the remains, and performed the
+last offices to their master. The surgeons ordered spirits of wine to be
+poured into the coffin.
+
+They huddled the king's body into a post-chaise; and in this deplorable
+equipage, with an escort of about forty men, Louis the well-beloved was
+carried, in the dead of night, from Versailles to St. Denis, and then
+thrown into the tomb of the kings of France!
+
+If any man is curious, and can get permission, he may mount to the roof
+of the palace, and see where Louis XVI. used royally to amuse himself,
+by gazing upon the doings of all the townspeople below with a telescope.
+Behold that balcony, where, one morning, he, his queen, and the little
+Dauphin stood, with Cromwell Grandison Lafayette by their side, who
+kissed her Majesty's hand, and protected her; and then, lovingly
+surrounded by his people, the king got into a coach and came to Paris:
+nor did his Majesty ride much in coaches after that.
+
+There is a portrait of the king, in the upper galleries, clothed in red
+and gold, riding a fat horse, brandishing a sword, on which the word
+"Justice" is inscribed, and looking remarkably stupid and uncomfortable.
+You see that the horse will throw him at the very first fling; and as
+for the sword, it never was made for such hands as his, which were
+good at holding a corkscrew or a carving-knife, but not clever at the
+management of weapons of war. Let those pity him who will: call him
+saint and martyr if you please; but a martyr to what principle was he?
+Did he frankly support either party in his kingdom, or cheat and tamper
+with both? He might have escaped; but he must have his supper: and so
+his family was butchered and his kingdom lost, and he had his bottle of
+Burgundy in comfort at Varennes. A single charge upon the fatal 10th
+of August, and the monarchy might have been his once more; but he is
+so tender-hearted, that he lets his friends be murdered before his eyes
+almost: or, at least, when he has turned his back upon his duty and
+his kingdom, and has skulked for safety into the reporters' box, at the
+National Assembly. There were hundreds of brave men who died that day,
+and were martyrs, if you will; poor neglected tenth-rate courtiers, for
+the most part, who had forgotten old slights and disappointments, and
+left their places of safety to come and die, if need were, sharing in
+the supreme hour of the monarchy. Monarchy was a great deal too humane
+to fight along with these, and so left them to the pikes of Santerre and
+the mercy of the men of the Sections. But we are wandering a good ten
+miles from Versailles, and from the deeds which Louis XVI. performed
+there.
+
+He is said to have been such a smart journeyman blacksmith, that he
+might, if Fate had not perversely placed a crown on his head, have
+earned a couple of louis every week by the making of locks and keys.
+Those who will may see the workshop where he employed many useful hours:
+Madame Elizabeth was at prayers meanwhile; the queen was making pleasant
+parties with her ladies. Monsieur the Count d'Artois was learning
+to dance on the tight-rope; and Monsieur de Provence was cultivating
+l'eloquence du billet and studying his favorite Horace. It is said that
+each member of the august family succeeded remarkably well in his or her
+pursuits; big Monsieur's little notes are still cited. At a minuet
+or syllabub, poor Antoinette was unrivalled; and Charles, on the
+tight-rope, was so graceful and so gentil, that Madame Saqui might envy
+him. The time only was out of joint. O cursed spite, that ever such
+harmless creatures as these were bidden to right it!
+
+A walk to the little Trianon is both pleasing and moral: no doubt the
+reader has seen the pretty fantastical gardens which environ it; the
+groves and temples; the streams and caverns (whither, as the guide tells
+you, during the heat of summer, it was the custom of Marie Antoinette
+to retire, with her favorite, Madame de Lamballe): the lake and Swiss
+village are pretty little toys, moreover; and the cicerone of the place
+does not fail to point out the different cottages which surround
+the piece of water, and tell the names of the royal masqueraders who
+inhabited each. In the long cottage, close upon the lake, dwelt the
+Seigneur du Village, no less a personage than Louis XV.; Louis XVI.,
+the Dauphin, was the Bailli; near his cottage is that of Monseigneur the
+Count d'Artois, who was the Miller; opposite lived the Prince de Conde,
+who enacted the part of Gamekeeper (or, indeed, any other role, for it
+does not signify much); near him was the Prince de Rohan, who was the
+Aumonier; and yonder is the pretty little dairy, which was under the
+charge of the fair Marie Antoinette herself.
+
+I forget whether Monsieur the fat Count of Provence took any share of
+this royal masquerading; but look at the names of the other six actors
+of the comedy, and it will be hard to find any person for whom Fate
+had such dreadful visitations in store. Fancy the party, in the days of
+their prosperity, here gathered at Trianon, and seated under the tall
+poplars by the lake, discoursing familiarly together: suppose of a
+sudden some conjuring Cagliostro of the time is introduced among them,
+and foretells to them the woes that are about to come. "You, Monsieur
+l'Aumonier, the descendant of a long line of princes, the passionate
+admirer of that fair queen who sits by your side, shall be the cause of
+her ruin and your own,* and shall die in disgrace and exile. You, son
+of the Condes, shall live long enough to see your royal race overthrown,
+and shall die by the hands of a hangman.** You, oldest son of Saint
+Louis, shall perish by the executioner's axe; that beautiful head, O
+Antoinette, the same ruthless blade shall sever." "They shall kill me
+first," says Lamballe, at the queen's side. "Yes, truly," replies the
+soothsayer, "for Fate prescribes ruin for your mistress and all who love
+her."*** "And," cries Monsieur d'Artois, "do I not love my sister, too?
+I pray you not to omit me in your prophecies."
+
+     * In the diamond-necklace affair.
+
+     ** He was found hanging in his own bedroom.
+
+     *** Among the many lovers that rumor gave to the queen, poor
+     Ferscu is the most remarkable. He seems to have entertained
+     for her a high and perfectly pure devotion. He was the chief
+     agent in the luckless escape to Varennes; was lurking in
+     Paris during the time of her captivity; and was concerned in
+     the many fruitless plots that were made for her rescue.
+     Ferscu lived to be an old man, but died a dreadful and
+     violent death. He was dragged from his carriage by the mob,
+     in Stockholm, and murdered by them.
+
+To whom Monsieur Cagliostro says, scornfully, "You may look forward
+to fifty years of life, after most of these are laid in the grave. You
+shall be a king, but not die one; and shall leave the crown only; not
+the worthless head that shall wear it. Thrice shall you go into exile:
+you shall fly from the people, first, who would have no more of you
+and your race; and you shall return home over half a million of human
+corpses, that have been made for the sake of you, and of a tyrant as
+great as the greatest of your family. Again driven away, your bitterest
+enemy shall bring you back. But the strong limbs of France are not to
+be chained by such a paltry yoke as you can put on her: you shall be a
+tyrant, but in will only; and shall have a sceptre, but to see it robbed
+from your hand."
+
+"And pray, Sir Conjurer, who shall be the robber?" asked Monsieur the
+Count d'Artois.
+
+
+This I cannot say, for here my dream ended. The fact is, I had fallen
+asleep on one of the stone benches in the Avenue de Paris, and at this
+instant was awakened by a whirling of carriages and a great clattering
+of national guards, lancers and outriders, in red. His MAJESTY LOUIS
+PHILIPPE was going to pay a visit to the palace; which contains several
+pictures of his own glorious actions, and which has been dedicated, by
+him, to all the glories of France.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A.
+Titmarsh, by William Makepeace Thackeray
+
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+Project Gutenberg Etext The Paris Sketch Book, by W. M. Thackeray
+#21 in our series by William Makepeace Thackeray
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+Title:  The Paris Sketch Book
+
+Author:  William Makepeace Thackeray
+
+August, 2001  [Etext #2768]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext The Paris Sketch Book, by W. M. Thackeray
+******This file should be named 7tpsb10.txt or 7tpsb10.zip******
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+This etext was prepared by Donald Lainson, charlie@idirect.com.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK
+
+OF
+
+MR. M. A. TITMARSH
+
+by
+
+WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK.
+
+
+An Invasion of France
+
+A Caution to Travellers
+
+The Fetes of July
+
+On the French School of Painting
+
+The Painter's Bargain
+
+Cartouche
+
+On some French Fashionable Novels
+
+A Gambler's Death
+
+Napoleon and his System
+
+The Story of Mary Ancel
+
+Beatrice Merger
+
+Caricatures and Lithography in Paris
+
+Little Poinsinet
+
+The Devil's Wager
+
+Madame Sand and the new Apocalypse
+
+The Case of Peytel
+
+Four Imitations of Beranger
+
+French Dramas and Melodramas
+
+Meditations at Versailles
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATORY LETTER
+
+TO
+
+M. ARETZ, TAILOR, ETC.
+
+27, RUE RICHELIEU, PARIS.
+
+
+SIR,--It becomes every man in his station to acknowledge and praise
+virtue wheresoever he may find it, and to point it out for the
+admiration and example of his fellow-men.
+
+Some months since, when you presented to the writer of these pages
+a small account for coats and pantaloons manufactured by you, and
+when you were met by a statement from your creditor, that an
+immediate settlement of your bill would be extremely inconvenient
+to him; your reply was, "Mon Dieu, Sir, let not that annoy you; if
+you want money, as a gentleman often does in a strange country, I
+have a thousand-franc note at my house which is quite at your
+service."
+
+History or experience, Sir, makes us acquainted with so few actions
+that can be compared to yours,--an offer like this from a stranger
+and a tailor seems to me so astonishing,--that you must pardon me
+for thus making your virtue public, and acquainting the English
+nation with your merit and your name.  Let me add, Sir, that you
+live on the first floor; that your clothes and fit are excellent,
+and your charges moderate and just; and, as a humble tribute of my
+admiration, permit me to lay these volumes at your feet.
+
+Your obliged, faithful servant,
+
+M. A. TITMARSH.
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION.
+
+
+About half of the sketches in these volumes have already appeared
+in print, in various periodical works.  A part of the text of one
+tale, and the plots of two others, have been borrowed from French
+originals; the other stories, which are, in the main, true, have
+been written upon facts and characters that came within the
+Author's observation during a residence in Paris.
+
+As the remaining papers relate to public events which occurred
+during the same period, or to Parisian Art and Literature, he has
+ventured to give his publication the title which it bears.
+
+LONDON, July 1, 1840.
+
+
+
+
+AN INVASION OF FRANCE.
+
+
+Caesar venit in Galliam summa diligentia."
+
+
+About twelve o'clock, just as the bell of the packet is tolling a
+farewell to London Bridge, and warning off the blackguard-boys with
+the newspapers, who have been shoving Times, Herald, Penny Paul-
+Pry, Penny Satirist, Flare-up, and other abominations, into your
+face--just as the bell has tolled, and the Jews, strangers, people-
+taking-leave-of-their-families, and blackguard-boys aforesaid, are
+making a rush for the narrow plank which conducts from the paddle-
+box of the "Emerald" steamboat unto the quay--you perceive,
+staggering down Thames Street, those two hackney-coaches, for the
+arrival of which you have been praying, trembling, hoping,
+despairing, swearing--sw--, I beg your pardon, I believe the word
+is not used in polite company--and transpiring, for the last half-
+hour.  Yes, at last, the two coaches draw near, and from thence an
+awful number of trunks, children, carpet-bags, nursery-maids, hat-
+boxes, band-boxes, bonnet-boxes, desks, cloaks, and an affectionate
+wife, are discharged on the quay.
+
+"Elizabeth, take care of Miss Jane," screams that worthy woman, who
+has been for a fortnight employed in getting this tremendous body
+of troops and baggage into marching order.  "Hicks!  Hicks! for
+heaven's sake mind the babies!"--"George--Edward, sir, if you go
+near that porter with the trunk, he will tumble down and kill you,
+you naughty boy!--My love, DO take the cloaks and umbrellas, and
+give a hand to Fanny and Lucy; and I wish you would speak to the
+hackney-coachmen, dear, they want fifteen shillings, and count the
+packages, love--twenty-seven packages,--and bring little Flo;
+where's little Flo?--Flo! Flo!"--(Flo comes sneaking in; she has
+been speaking a few parting words to a one-eyed terrier, that
+sneaks off similarly, landward.)
+
+As when the hawk menaces the hen-roost, in like manner, when such a
+danger as a voyage menaces a mother, she becomes suddenly endowed
+with a ferocious presence of mind, and bristling up and screaming
+in the front of her brood, and in the face of circumstances,
+succeeds, by her courage, in putting her enemy to flight; in like
+manner you will always, I think, find your wife (if that lady be
+good for twopence) shrill, eager, and ill-humored, before, and
+during a great family move of this nature.  Well, the swindling
+hackney-coachmen are paid, the mother leading on her regiment of
+little ones, and supported by her auxiliary nurse-maids, are safe
+in the cabin;--you have counted twenty-six of the twenty-seven
+parcels, and have them on board, and that horrid man on the paddle-
+box, who, for twenty minutes past, has been roaring out, NOW, SIR!--
+says, NOW, SIR, no more.
+
+I never yet knew how a steamer began to move, being always too busy
+among the trunks and children, for the first half-hour, to mark any
+of the movements of the vessel.  When these private arrangements
+are made, you find yourself opposite Greenwich (farewell, sweet,
+sweet whitebait!), and quiet begins to enter your soul.  Your wife
+smiles for the first time these ten days; you pass by plantations
+of ship-masts, and forests of steam-chimneys; the sailors are
+singing on board the ships, the bargees salute you with oaths,
+grins, and phrases facetious and familiar; the man on the paddle-
+box roars, "Ease her, stop her!" which mysterious words a shrill
+voice from below repeats, and pipes out, "Ease her, stop her!" in
+echo; the deck is crowded with groups of figures, and the sun
+shines over all.
+
+The sun shines over all, and the steward comes up to say, "Lunch,
+ladies and gentlemen!  Will any lady or gentleman please to take
+anythink?"  About a dozen do: boiled beef and pickles, and great
+red raw Cheshire cheese, tempt the epicure: little dumpy bottles of
+stout are produced, and fizz and bang about with a spirit one would
+never have looked for in individuals of their size and stature.
+
+The decks have a strange, look; the people on them, that is.
+Wives, elderly stout husbands, nurse-maids, and children
+predominate, of course, in English steamboats.  Such may be
+considered as the distinctive marks of the English gentleman at
+three or four and forty: two or three of such groups have pitched
+their camps on the deck.  Then there are a number of young men, of
+whom three or four have allowed their moustaches to BEGIN to grow
+since last Friday; for they are going "on the Continent," and they
+look, therefore, as if their upper lips were smeared with snuff.
+
+A danseuse from the opera is on her way to Paris.  Followed by her
+bonne and her little dog, she paces the deck, stepping out, in the
+real dancer fashion, and ogling all around.  How happy the two
+young Englishmen are, who can speak French, and make up to her: and
+how all criticise her points and paces!  Yonder is a group of young
+ladies, who are going to Paris to learn how to be governesses:
+those two splendidly dressed ladies are milliners from the Rue
+Richelieu, who have just brought over, and disposed of, their cargo
+of Summer fashions.  Here sits the Rev. Mr. Snodgrass with his
+pupils, whom he is conducting to his establishment, near Boulogne,
+where, in addition to a classical and mathematical education
+(washing included), the young gentlemen have the benefit of
+learning French among THE FRENCH THEMSELVES.  Accordingly, the
+young gentlemen are locked up in a great rickety house, two miles
+from Boulogne and never see a soul, except the French usher and the
+cook.
+
+Some few French people are there already, preparing to be ill--(I
+never shall forget a dreadful sight I once had in the little dark,
+dirty, six-foot cabin of a Dover steamer.  Four gaunt Frenchmen,
+but for their pantaloons, in the costume of Adam in Paradise,
+solemnly anointing themselves with some charm against sea-
+sickness!)--a few Frenchmen are there, but these, for the most
+part, and with a proper philosophy, go to the fore-cabin of the
+ship, and you see them on the fore-deck (is that the name for that
+part of the vessel which is in the region of the bowsprit?)
+lowering in huge cloaks and caps; snuffy, wretched, pale, and wet;
+and not jabbering now, as their wont is on shore.  I never could
+fancy the Mounseers formidable at sea.
+
+There are, of course, many Jews on board.  Who ever travelled by
+steamboat, coach, diligence, eilwagen, vetturino, mule-back, or
+sledge, without meeting some of the wandering race?
+
+By the time these remarks have been made the steward is on the deck
+again, and dinner is ready: and about two hours after dinner comes
+tea; and then there is brandy-and-water, which he eagerly presses
+as a preventive against what may happen; and about this time you
+pass the Foreland, the wind blowing pretty fresh; and the groups
+on deck disappear, and your wife, giving you an alarmed look,
+descends, with her little ones, to the ladies' cabin, and you see
+the steward and his boys issuing from their den under the paddle-
+box, with each a heap of round tin vases, like those which are
+called, I believe, in America, expectoratoons, only these are
+larger.
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+The wind blows, the water looks greener and more beautiful than
+ever--ridge by ridge of long white rock passes away.  "That's
+Ramsgit," says the man at the helm; and, presently, "That there's
+Deal--it's dreadful fallen off since the war;" and "That's Dover,
+round that there pint, only you can't see it."  And, in the
+meantime, the sun has plumped his hot face into the water, and the
+moon has shown hers as soon as ever his back is turned, and Mrs.--
+(the wife in general,) has brought up her children and self from
+the horrid cabin, in which she says it is impossible to breathe;
+and the poor little wretches are, by the officious stewardess and
+smart steward (expectoratoonifer), accommodated with a heap of
+blankets, pillows, and mattresses, in the midst of which they
+crawl, as best they may, and from the heaving heap of which are,
+during the rest of the voyage, heard occasional faint cries, and
+sounds of puking woe!
+
+Dear, dear Maria!  Is this the woman who, anon, braved the jeers
+and brutal wrath of swindling hackney-coachmen; who repelled the
+insolence of haggling porters, with a scorn that brought down their
+demands at least eighteenpence?  Is this the woman at whose voice
+servants tremble; at the sound of whose steps the nursery, ay, and
+mayhap the parlor, is in order?  Look at her now, prostrate,
+prostrate--no strength has she to speak, scarce power to push to
+her youngest one--her suffering, struggling Rosa,--to push to her
+the--the instrumentoon!
+
+In the midst of all these throes and agonies, at which all the
+passengers, who have their own woes (you yourself--for how can you
+help THEM?--you are on your back on a bench, and if you move all is
+up with you,) are looking on indifferent--one man there is who has
+been watching you with the utmost care, and bestowing on your
+helpless family the tenderness that a father denies them.  He is a
+foreigner, and you have been conversing with him, in the course of
+the morning, in French--which, he says, you speak remarkably well,
+like a native in fact, and then in English (which, after all, you
+find is more convenient).  What can express your gratitude to this
+gentleman for all his goodness towards your family and yourself--
+you talk to him, he has served under the Emperor, and is, for all
+that, sensible, modest, and well-informed.  He speaks, indeed, of
+his countrymen almost with contempt, and readily admits the
+superiority of a Briton, on the seas and elsewhere.  One loves to
+meet with such genuine liberality in a foreigner, and respects
+the man who can sacrifice vanity to truth.  This distinguished
+foreigner has travelled much; he asks whither you are going?--where
+you stop? if you have a great quantity of luggage on board?--and
+laughs when he hears of the twenty-seven packages, and hopes you
+have some friend at the custom-house, who can spare you the
+monstrous trouble of unpacking that which has taken you weeks to
+put up.  Nine, ten, eleven, the distinguished foreigner is ever
+at your side; you find him now, perhaps, (with characteristic
+ingratitude,) something of a bore, but, at least, he has been most
+tender to the children and their mamma.  At last a Boulogne light
+comes in sight, (you see it over the bows of the vessel, when,
+having bobbed violently upwards, it sinks swiftly down,) Boulogne
+harbor is in sight, and the foreigner says,--
+
+The distinguished foreigner says, says he--"Sare, eef you af no
+'otel, I sall recommend you, milor, to ze 'Otel Betfort, in ze
+Quay, sare, close to the bathing-machines and custom-ha-oose.  Good
+bets and fine garten, sare; table-d'hote, sare, a cinq heures;
+breakfast, sare, in French or English style;--I am the
+commissionaire, sare, and vill see to your loggish."
+
+. . . Curse the fellow, for an impudent, swindling, sneaking French
+humbug!--Your tone instantly changes, and you tell him to go about
+his business: but at twelve o'clock at night, when the voyage is
+over, and the custom-house business done, knowing not whither to
+go, with a wife and fourteen exhausted children, scarce able to
+stand, and longing for bed, you find yourself, somehow, in the
+Hotel Bedford (and you can't be better), and smiling chambermaids
+carry off your children to snug beds; while smart waiters produce
+for your honor--a cold fowl, say, and a salad, and a bottle of
+Bordeaux and Seltzer-water.
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+The morning comes--I don't know a pleasanter feeling than that of
+waking with the sun shining on objects quite new, and (although you
+have made the voyage a dozen times,) quite strange.  Mrs. X. and
+you occupy a very light bed, which has a tall canopy of red
+"percale;" the windows are smartly draped with cheap gaudy calicoes
+and muslins; there are little mean strips of carpet about the tiled
+floor of the room, and yet all seems as gay and as comfortable as
+may be--the sun shines brighter than you have seen it for a year,
+the sky is a thousand times bluer, and what a cheery clatter of
+shrill quick French voices comes up from the court-yard under the
+windows!  Bells are jangling; a family, mayhap, is going to Paris,
+en poste, and wondrous is the jabber of the courier, the postilion,
+the inn-waiters, and the lookers-on.  The landlord calls out for
+"Quatre biftecks aux pommes pour le trente-trois,"--(O my
+countrymen, I love your tastes and your ways!)--the chambermaid is
+laughing and says, "Finissez donc, Monsieur Pierre!" (what can they
+be about?)--a fat Englishman has opened his window violently, and
+says, "Dee dong, garsong, vooly voo me donny lo sho, ou vooly voo
+pah?"  He has been ringing for half an hour--the last energetic
+appeal succeeds, and shortly he is enabled to descend to the
+coffee-room, where, with three hot rolls, grilled ham, cold fowl,
+and four boiled eggs, he makes what he calls his first FRENCH
+breakfast.
+
+It is a strange, mongrel, merry place, this town of Boulogne; the
+little French fishermen's children are beautiful, and the little
+French soldiers, four feet high, red-breeched, with huge pompons on
+their caps, and brown faces, and clear sharp eyes, look, for all
+their littleness, far more military and more intelligent than the
+heavy louts one has seen swaggering about the garrison towns in
+England.  Yonder go a crowd of bare-legged fishermen; there is the
+town idiot, mocking a woman who is screaming "Fleuve du Tage," at
+an inn-window, to a harp, and there are the little gamins mocking
+HIM.  Lo! these seven young ladies, with red hair and green veils,
+they are from neighboring Albion, and going to bathe.  Here comes
+three Englishmen, habitues evidently of the place,--dandy specimens
+of our countrymen: one wears a marine dress, another has a shooting
+dress, a third has a blouse and a pair of guiltless spurs--all have
+as much hair on the face as nature or art can supply, and all wear
+their hats very much on one side.  Believe me, there is on the face
+of this world no scamp like an English one, no blackguard like one
+of these half-gentlemen, so mean, so low, so vulgar,--so ludicrously
+ignorant and conceited, so desperately heartless and depraved.
+
+But why, my dear sir, get into a passion?--Take things coolly.  As
+the poet has observed, "Those only is gentlemen who behave as
+sich;" with such, then, consort, be they cobblers or dukes.  Don't
+give us, cries the patriotic reader, any abuse of our fellow-
+countrymen (anybody else can do that), but rather continue in that
+good-humored, facetious, descriptive style with which your letter
+has commenced.--Your remark, sir, is perfectly just, and does honor
+to your head and excellent heart.
+
+There is little need to give a description of the good town of
+Boulogne, which, haute and basse, with the new light-house and the
+new harbor, and the gas-lamps, and the manufactures, and the
+convents, and the number of English and French residents, and the
+pillar erected in honor of the grand Armee d'Angleterre, so called
+because it DIDN'T go to England, have all been excellently
+described by the facetious Coglan, the learned Dr. Millingen, and
+by innumerable guide-books besides.  A fine thing it is to hear the
+stout old Frenchmen of Napoleon's time argue how that audacious
+Corsican WOULD have marched to London, after swallowing Nelson and
+all his gun-boats, but for cette malheureuse guerre d'Espagne and
+cette glorieuse campagne d'Autriche, which the gold of Pitt caused
+to be raised at the Emperor's tail, in order to call him off from
+the helpless country in his front.  Some Frenchmen go farther
+still, and vow that in Spain they were never beaten at all; indeed,
+if you read in the Biographie des Hommes du Jour, article "Soult,"
+you will fancy that, with the exception of the disaster at
+Vittoria, the campaigns in Spain and Portugal were a series of
+triumphs.  Only, by looking at a map, it is observable that Vimeiro
+is a mortal long way from Toulouse, where, at the end of certain
+years of victories, we somehow find the honest Marshal.  And what
+then?--he went to Toulouse for the purpose of beating the English
+there, to be sure;--a known fact, on which comment would be
+superfluous.  However, we shall never get to Paris at this rate;
+let us break off further palaver, and away at once. . . .
+
+(During this pause, the ingenious reader is kindly requested to pay
+his bill at the Hotel at Boulogne, to mount the Diligence of
+Laffitte, Caillard and Company, and to travel for twenty-five
+hours, amidst much jingling of harness-bells and screaming of
+postilions.)
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+The French milliner, who occupies one of the corners, begins to
+remove the greasy pieces of paper which have enveloped her locks
+during the journey.  She withdraws the "Madras" of dubious hue
+which has bound her head for the last five-and-twenty hours, and
+replaces it by the black velvet bonnet, which, bobbing against your
+nose, has hung from the Diligence roof since your departure from
+Boulogne.  The old lady in the opposite corner, who has been
+sucking bonbons, and smells dreadfully of anisette, arranges her
+little parcels in that immense basket of abominations which all old
+women carry in their laps.  She rubs her mouth and eyes with her
+dusty cambric handkerchief, she ties up her nightcap into a little
+bundle, and replaces it by a more becoming head-piece, covered with
+withered artificial flowers, and crumpled tags of ribbon; she looks
+wistfully at the company for an instant, and then places her
+handkerchief before her mouth:--her eyes roll strangely about for
+an instant, and you hear a faint clattering noise: the old lady has
+been getting ready her teeth, which had lain in her basket among
+the bonbons, pins, oranges, pomatum, bits of cake, lozenges,
+prayer-books, peppermint-water, copper money, and false hair--
+stowed away there during the voyage.  The Jewish gentleman, who has
+been so attentive to the milliner during the journey, and is a
+traveller and bagman by profession, gathers together his various
+goods.  The sallow-faced English lad, who has been drunk ever since
+we left Boulogne yesterday, and is coming to Paris to pursue the
+study of medicine, swears that he rejoices to leave the cursed
+Diligence, is sick of the infernal journey, and d--d glad that the
+d--d voyage is so nearly over.  "Enfin!" says your neighbor,
+yawning, and inserting an elbow into the mouth of his right and
+left hand companion, "nous voila."
+
+NOUS VOILA!--We are at Paris!  This must account for the removal of
+the milliner's curl-papers, and the fixing of the old lady's
+teeth.--Since the last relais, the Diligence has been travelling
+with extraordinary speed.  The postilion cracks his terrible whip,
+and screams shrilly.  The conductor blows incessantly on his horn,
+the bells of the harness, the bumping and ringing of the wheels and
+chains, and the clatter of the great hoofs of the heavy snorting
+Norman stallions, have wondrously increased within this, the last
+ten minutes; and the Diligence, which has been proceeding hitherto
+at the rate of a league in an hour, now dashes gallantly forward,
+as if it would traverse at least six miles in the same space of
+time.  Thus it is, when Sir Robert maketh a speech at Saint
+Stephen's--he useth his strength at the beginning, only, and the
+end.  He gallopeth at the commencement; in the middle he lingers;
+at the close, again, he rouses the House, which has fallen asleep;
+he cracketh the whip of his satire; he shouts the shout of his
+patriotism; and, urging his eloquence to its roughest canter,
+awakens the sleepers, and inspires the weary, until men say, What a
+wondrous orator!  What a capital coach!  We will ride henceforth in
+it, and in no other!
+
+But, behold us at Paris!  The Diligence has reached a rude-looking
+gate, or grille, flanked by two lodges; the French Kings of old
+made their entry by this gate; some of the hottest battles of the
+late revolution were fought before it.  At present, it is blocked
+by carts and peasants, and a busy crowd of men, in green, examining
+the packages before they enter, probing the straw with long
+needles.  It is the Barrier of St. Denis, and the green men are the
+customs'-men of the city of Paris.  If you are a countryman, who
+would introduce a cow into the metropolis, the city demands twenty-
+four francs for such a privilege: if you have a hundredweight of
+tallow-candles, you must, previously, disburse three francs: if a
+drove of hogs, nine francs per whole hog: but upon these subjects
+Mr. Bulwer, Mrs. Trollope, and other writers, have already
+enlightened the public.  In the present instance, after a momentary
+pause, one of the men in green mounts by the side of the conductor,
+and the ponderous vehicle pursues its journey.
+
+The street which we enter, that of the Faubourg St. Denis, presents
+a strange contrast to the dark uniformity of a London street, where
+everything, in the dingy and smoky atmosphere, looks as though it
+were painted in India-ink--black houses, black passengers, and
+black sky.  Here, on the contrary, is a thousand times more life
+and color.  Before you, shining in the sun, is a long glistening
+line of GUTTER,--not a very pleasing object in a city, but in a
+picture invaluable.  On each side are houses of all dimensions and
+hues; some but of one story; some as high as the tower of Babel.
+From these the haberdashers (and this is their favorite street)
+flaunt long strips of gaudy calicoes, which give a strange air of
+rude gayety to the street.  Milk-women, with a little crowd of
+gossips round each, are, at this early hour of morning, selling the
+chief material of the Parisian cafe-au-lait.  Gay wine-shops,
+painted red, and smartly decorated with vines and gilded railings,
+are filled with workmen taking their morning's draught.  That
+gloomy-looking prison on your right is a prison for women; once it
+was a convent for Lazarists: a thousand unfortunate individuals of
+the softer sex now occupy that mansion: they bake, as we find in
+the guide-books, the bread of all the other prisons; they mend and
+wash the shirts and stockings of all the other prisoners; they make
+hooks-and-eyes and phosphorus-boxes, and they attend chapel every
+Sunday:--if occupation can help them, sure they have enough of it.
+Was it not a great stroke of the legislature to superintend the
+morals and linen at once, and thus keep these poor creatures
+continually mending?--But we have passed the prison long ago, and
+are at the Porte St. Denis itself.
+
+There is only time to take a hasty glance as we pass: it
+commemorates some of the wonderful feats of arms of Ludovicus
+Magnus, and abounds in ponderous allegories--nymphs, and river-
+gods, and pyramids crowned with fleurs-de-lis; Louis passing over
+the Rhine in triumph, and the Dutch Lion giving up the ghost, in
+the year of our Lord 1672.  The Dutch Lion revived, and overcame
+the man some years afterwards; but of this fact, singularly enough,
+the inscriptions make no mention.  Passing, then, round the gate,
+and not under it (after the general custom, in respect of triumphal
+arches), you cross the boulevard, which gives a glimpse of trees
+and sunshine, and gleaming white buildings; then, dashing down the
+Rue de Bourbon Villeneuve, a dirty street, which seems interminable,
+and the Rue St. Eustache, the conductor gives a last blast on his
+horn, and the great vehicle clatters into the court- yard, where the
+journey is destined to conclude.
+
+If there was a noise before of screaming postilions and cracked
+horns, it was nothing to the Babel-like clatter which greets us
+now.  We are in a great court, which Hajji Baba would call the
+father of Diligences.  Half a dozen other coaches arrive at the
+same minute--no light affairs, like your English vehicles, but
+ponderous machines, containing fifteen passengers inside, more in
+the cabriolet, and vast towers of luggage on the roof: others are
+loading: the yard is filled with passengers coming or departing;--
+bustling porters and screaming commissionaires.  These latter seize
+you as you descend from your place,--twenty cards are thrust into
+your hand, and as many voices, jabbering with inconceivable
+swiftness, shriek into your ear, "Dis way, sare; are you for ze'
+'Otel of Rhin?' 'Hotel de l'Amiraute!'--'Hotel Bristol,' sare!--
+Monsieur, 'l'Hotel de Lille?'  Sacr-rrre 'nom de Dieu, laissez
+passer ce petit, monsieur!  Ow mosh loggish ave you, sare?"
+
+And now, if you are a stranger in Paris, listen to the words of
+Titmarsh.--If you cannot speak a syllable of French, and love
+English comfort, clean rooms, breakfasts, and waiters; if you would
+have plentiful dinners, and are not particular (as how should you
+be?) concerning wine; if, in this foreign country, you WILL have
+your English companions, your porter, your friend, and your brandy-
+and-water--do not listen to any of these commissioner fellows, but
+with your best English accent, shout out boldly, "MEURICE!" and
+straightway a man will step forward to conduct you to the Rue de
+Rivoli.
+
+Here you will find apartments at any price: a very neat room, for
+instance, for three francs daily; an English breakfast of eternal
+boiled eggs, or grilled ham; a nondescript dinner, profuse but
+cold; and a society which will rejoice your heart.  Here are young
+gentlemen from the universities; young merchants on a lark; large
+families of nine daughters, with fat father and mother; officers of
+dragoons, and lawyers' clerks.  The last time we dined at
+"Meurice's" we hobbed and nobbed with no less a person than Mr.
+Moses, the celebrated bailiff of Chancery Lane; Lord Brougham was
+on his right, and a clergyman's lady, with a train of white-haired
+girls, sat on his left, wonderfully taken with the diamond rings of
+the fascinating stranger!
+
+It is, as you will perceive, an admirable way to see Paris,
+especially if you spend your days reading the English papers at
+Galignani's, as many of our foreign tourists do.
+
+But all this is promiscuous, and not to the purpose.  If,--to
+continue on the subject of hotel choosing,--if you love quiet,
+heavy bills, and the best table-d'hote in the city, go, O stranger!
+to the "Hotel des Princes;" it is close to the Boulevard, and
+convenient for Frascati's.  The "Hotel Mirabeau" possesses scarcely
+less attraction; but of this you will find, in Mr. Bulwer's
+"Autobiography of Pelham," a faithful and complete account.
+"Lawson's Hotel" has likewise its merits, as also the "Hotel de
+Lille," which may be described as a "second chop" Meurice.
+
+If you are a poor student come to study the humanities, or the
+pleasant art of amputation, cross the water forthwith, and proceed
+to the "Hotel Corneille," near the Odeon, or others of its species;
+there are many where you can live royally (until you economize by
+going into lodgings) on four francs a day; and where, if by any
+strange chance you are desirous for a while to get rid of your
+countrymen, you will find that they scarcely ever penetrate.
+
+But above all, O my countrymen! shun boarding-houses, especially if
+you have ladies in your train; or ponder well, and examine the
+characters of the keepers thereof, before you lead your innocent
+daughters, and their mamma, into places so dangerous.  In the first
+place, you have bad dinners; and, secondly, bad company.  If you
+play cards, you are very likely playing with a swindler; if you
+dance, you dance with a ---- person with whom you had better have
+nothing to do.
+
+
+Note (which ladies are requested not to read).--In one of these
+establishments, daily advertised as most eligible for English, a
+friend of the writer lived.  A lady, who had passed for some time
+as the wife of one of the inmates, suddenly changed her husband and
+name, her original husband remaining in the house, and saluting her
+by her new title.
+
+
+
+
+A CAUTION TO TRAVELLERS.
+
+
+A million dangers and snares await the traveller, as soon as he
+issues out of that vast messagerie which we have just quitted: and
+as each man cannot do better than relate such events as have
+happened in the course of his own experience, and may keep the
+unwary from the path of danger, let us take this, the very earliest
+opportunity, of imparting to the public a little of the wisdom
+which we painfully have acquired.
+
+And first, then, with regard to the city of Paris, it is to be
+remarked, that in that metropolis flourish a greater number of
+native and exotic swindlers than are to be found in any other
+European nursery.  What young Englishman that visits it, but has
+not determined, in his heart, to have a little share of the
+gayeties that go on--just for once, just to see what they are like?
+How many, when the horrible gambling dens were open, did resist a
+sight of them?--nay, was not a young fellow rather flattered by a
+dinner invitation from the Salon, whither he went, fondly
+pretending that he should see "French society," in the persons of
+certain Dukes and Counts who used to frequent the place?
+
+My friend Pogson is a young fellow, not much worse, although
+perhaps a little weaker and simpler than his neighbors; and coming
+to Paris with exactly the same notions that bring many others of
+the British youth to that capital, events befell him there, last
+winter, which are strictly true, and shall here be narrated, by way
+of warning to all.
+
+Pog, it must be premised, is a city man, who travels in drugs for a
+couple of the best London houses, blows the flute, has an album,
+drives his own gig, and is considered, both on the road and in the
+metropolis, a remarkably nice, intelligent, thriving young man.
+Pogson's only fault is too great an attachment to the fair:--"the
+sex," as he says often "will be his ruin:" the fact is, that Pog
+never travels without a "Don Juan" under his driving-cushion, and
+is a pretty-looking young fellow enough.
+
+Sam Pogson had occasion to visit Paris, last October; and it was in
+that city that his love of the sex had liked to have cost him dear.
+He worked his way down to Dover; placing, right and left, at the
+towns on his route, rhubarb, sodas, and other such delectable wares
+as his masters dealt in ("the sweetest sample of castor oil, smelt
+like a nosegay--went off like wildfire--hogshead and a half at
+Rochester, eight-and twenty gallons at Canterbury," and so on), and
+crossed to Calais, and thence voyaged to Paris in the coupe of the
+Diligence.  He paid for two places, too, although a single man, and
+the reason shall now be made known.
+
+Dining at the table-d'hote at "Quillacq's"--it is the best inn on
+the Continent of Europe--our little traveller had the happiness to
+be placed next to a lady, who was, he saw at a glance, one of the
+extreme pink of the nobility.  A large lady, in black satin, with
+eyes and hair as black as sloes, with gold chains, scent-bottles,
+sable tippet, worked pocket-handkerchief, and four twinkling rings
+on each of her plump white fingers.  Her cheeks were as pink as the
+finest Chinese rouge could make them.  Pog knew the article: he
+travelled in it.  Her lips were as red as the ruby lip salve: she
+used the very best, that was clear.
+
+She was a fine-looking woman, certainly (holding down her eyes, and
+talking perpetually of "mes trente-deux ans"); and Pogson, the
+wicked young dog, who professed not to care for young misses,
+saying they smelt so of bread-and-butter, declared, at once, that
+the lady was one of HIS beauties; in fact, when he spoke to us
+about her, he said, "She's a slap-up thing, I tell you; a reg'lar
+good one; ONE OF MY SORT!"  And such was Pogson's credit in all
+commercial rooms, that one of HIS sort was considered to surpass
+all other sorts.
+
+During dinner-time, Mr. Pogson was profoundly polite and attentive
+to the lady at his side, and kindly communicated to her, as is the
+way with the best-bred English on their first arrival "on the
+Continent," all his impressions regarding the sights and persons he
+had seen.  Such remarks having been made during half an hour's
+ramble about the ramparts and town, and in the course of a walk
+down to the custom-house, and a confidential communication with the
+commissionaire, must be, doubtless, very valuable to Frenchmen in
+their own country; and the lady listened to Pogson's opinions: not
+only with benevolent attention, but actually, she said, with
+pleasure and delight.  Mr. Pogson said that there was no such thing
+as good meat in France, and that's why they cooked their victuals
+in this queer way; he had seen many soldiers parading about the
+place, and expressed a true Englishman's abhorrence of an armed
+force; not that he feared such fellows as these--little whipper-
+snappers--our men would eat them.  Hereupon the lady admitted that
+our Guards were angels, but that Monsieur must not be too hard upon
+the French; "her father was a General of the Emperor."
+
+Pogson felt a tremendous respect for himself at the notion that he
+was dining with a General's daughter, and instantly ordered a
+bottle of champagne to keep up his consequence.
+
+"Mrs. Bironn, ma'am," said he, for he had heard the waiter call her
+by some such name, "if you WILL accept a glass of champagne, ma'am,
+you'll do me, I'm sure, great honor: they say it's very good, and a
+precious sight cheaper than it is on our side of the way, too--not
+that I care for money.  Mrs. Bironn, ma'am, your health, ma'am."
+
+The lady smiled very graciously, and drank the wine.
+
+"Har you any relation, ma'am, if I may make so bold; har you
+anyways connected with the family of our immortal bard?"
+
+"Sir, I beg your pardon."
+
+"Don't mention it, ma'am: but BiRONN and BYron are hevidently the
+same names, only you pronounce in the French way; and I thought you
+might be related to his lordship: his horigin, ma'am, was of French
+extraction:" and here Pogson began to repeat,--
+
+
+     "Hare thy heyes like thy mother's, my fair child,
+      Hada! sole daughter of my 'ouse and 'art?"
+
+
+"Oh!" said the lady, laughing, "you speak of LOR Byron?
+
+"Hauthor of 'Don Juan,' 'Child 'Arold,' and 'Cain, a Mystery,'"
+said Pogson:--"I do; and hearing the waiter calling you Madam la
+Bironn, took the liberty of hasking whether you were connected with
+his lordship; that's hall:" and my friend here grew dreadfully red,
+and began twiddling his long ringlets in his fingers, and examining
+very eagerly the contents of his plate.
+
+"Oh, no: Madame la Baronne means Mistress Baroness; my husband was
+Baron, and I am Baroness."
+
+"What! 'ave I the honor--I beg your pardon, ma'am--is your ladyship
+a Baroness, and I not know it? pray excuse me for calling you
+ma'am."
+
+The Baroness smiled most graciously--with such a look as Juno cast
+upon unfortunate Jupiter when she wished to gain her wicked ends
+upon him--the Baroness smiled; and, stealing her hand into a black
+velvet bag, drew from it an ivory card-case, and from the ivory
+card-case extracted a glazed card, printed in gold; on it was
+engraved a coronet, and under the coronet the words
+
+
+    BARONNE DE FLORVAL-DELVAL,
+
+      NEE DE MELVAL-NORVAL.
+
+                 Rue Taitbout.
+
+
+The grand Pitt diamond--the Queen's own star of the garter--a
+sample of otto-of-roses at a guinea a drop, would not be handled
+more curiously, or more respectfully, than this porcelain card of
+the Baroness.  Trembling he put it into his little Russia-leather
+pocket-book: and when he ventured to look up, and saw the eyes of
+the Baroness de Florval-Delval, nee de Melval-Norval, gazing upon
+him with friendly and serene glances, a thrill of pride tingled
+through Pogson's blood: he felt himself to be the very happiest
+fellow "on the Continent."
+
+But Pogson did not, for some time, venture to resume that sprightly
+and elegant familiarity which generally forms the great charm of
+his conversation: he was too much frightened at the presence he
+was in, and contented himself by graceful and solemn bows, deep
+attention, and ejaculations of "Yes, my lady," and "No, your
+ladyship," for some minutes after the discovery had been made.
+Pogson piqued himself on his breeding: "I hate the aristocracy,"
+he said, "but that's no reason why I shouldn't behave like a
+gentleman."
+
+A surly, silent little gentleman, who had been the third at the
+ordinary, and would take no part either in the conversation or in
+Pogson's champagne, now took up his hat, and, grunting, left the
+room, when the happy bagman had the delight of a tete-a-tete.  The
+Baroness did not appear inclined to move: it was cold; a fire was
+comfortable, and she had ordered none in her apartment.  Might
+Pogson give her one more glass of champagne, or would her ladyship
+prefer "something hot."  Her ladyship gravely said, she never took
+ANYTHING hot.  "Some champagne, then; a leetle drop?"  She would!
+she would!  O gods! how Pogson's hand shook as he filled and
+offered her the glass!
+
+What took place during the rest of the evening had better be
+described by Mr. Pogson himself, who has given us permission to
+publish his letter.
+
+
+"QUILLACQ'S HOTEL (pronounced KILLYAX), CALAIS.
+
+"DEAR TIT,--I arrived at Cally, as they call it, this day, or,
+rather, yesterday; for it is past midnight, as I sit thinking of a
+wonderful adventure that has just befallen me.  A woman in course;
+that's always the case with ME, you know: but oh, Tit! if you COULD
+but see her!  Of the first family in France, the Florval-Delvals,
+beautiful as an angel, and no more caring for money than I do for
+split peas.
+
+"I'll tell you how it occurred.  Everybody in France, you know,
+dines at the ordinary--it's quite distangy to do so.  There was
+only three of us to-day, however,--the Baroness, me, and a gent,
+who never spoke a word; and we didn't want him to, neither: do you
+mark that?
+
+"You know my way with the women: champagne's the thing; make 'em
+drink, make 'em talk;--make 'em talk, make 'em do anything.  So I
+orders a bottle, as if for myself; and, 'Ma'am,' says I, 'will you
+take a glass of Sham--just one?'  Take it she did--for you know
+it's quite distangy here: everybody dines at the table de hote, and
+everybody accepts everybody's wine.  Bob Irons, who travels in
+linen on our circuit, told me that he had made some slap-up
+acquaintances among the genteelest people at Paris, nothing but by
+offering them Sham.
+
+"Well, my Baroness takes one glass, two glasses, three glasses--the
+old fellow goes--we have a deal of chat (she took me for a military
+man, she said: is it not singular that so many people should?), and
+by ten o'clock we had grown so intimate, that I had from her her
+whole history, knew where she came from, and where she was going.
+Leave me alone with 'em: I can find out any woman's history in half
+an hour.
+
+"And where do you think she IS going? to Paris to be sure: she has
+her seat in what they call the coopy (though you're not near so
+cooped in it as in our coaches.  I've been to the office and seen
+one of 'em).  She has her place in the coopy, and the coopy holds
+THREE; so what does Sam Pogson do?--he goes and takes the other
+two.  Ain't I up to a thing or two?  Oh, no, not the least; but I
+shall have her to myself the whole of the way.
+
+"We shall be in the French metropolis the day after this reaches
+you: please look out for a handsome lodging for me, and never mind
+the expense.  And I say, if you could, in her hearing, when you
+came down to the coach, call me Captain Pogson, I wish you would--
+it sounds well travelling, you know; and when she asked me if I was
+not an officer, I couldn't say no.  Adieu, then, my dear fellow,
+till Monday, and vive le joy, as they say.  The Baroness says I
+speak French charmingly, she talks English as well as you or I.
+
+"Your affectionate friend,
+
+"S. Pogson."
+
+
+This letter reached us duly, in our garrets, and we engaged such an
+apartment for Mr. Pogson, as beseemed a gentleman of his rank in
+the world and the army.  At the appointed hour, too, we repaired to
+the Diligence office, and there beheld the arrival of the machine
+which contained him and his lovely Baroness.
+
+Those who have much frequented the society of gentlemen of his
+profession (and what more delightful?) must be aware, that, when
+all the rest of mankind look hideous, dirty, peevish, wretched,
+after a forty hours' coach-journey, a bagman appears as gay and
+spruce as when he started; having within himself a thousand little
+conveniences for the voyage, which common travellers neglect.
+Pogson had a little portable toilet, of which he had not failed to
+take advantage, and with his long, curling, flaxen hair, flowing
+under a seal-skin cap, with a gold tassel, with a blue and gold
+satin handkerchief, a crimson velvet waistcoat, a light green cut-
+away coat, a pair of barred brickdust-colored pantaloons, and a
+neat mackintosh, presented, altogether, as elegant and distingue an
+appearance as any one could desire.  He had put on a clean collar
+at breakfast, and a pair of white kids as he entered the barrier,
+and looked, as he rushed into my arms, more like a man stepping out
+of a band-box, than one descending from a vehicle that has just
+performed one of the laziest, dullest, flattest, stalest, dirtiest
+journeys in Europe.
+
+To my surprise, there were TWO ladies in the coach with my friend,
+and not ONE, as I had expected.  One of these, a stout female,
+carrying sundry baskets, bags, umbrellas, and woman's wraps, was
+evidently a maid-servant: the other, in black, was Pogson's fair
+one, evidently.  I could see a gleam of curl-papers over a sallow
+face,--of a dusky nightcap flapping over the curl-papers,--but
+these were hidden by a lace veil and a huge velvet bonnet, of which
+the crowning birds-of-paradise were evidently in a moulting state.
+She was encased in many shawls and wrappers; she put, hesitatingly,
+a pretty little foot out of the carriage--Pogson was by her side in
+an instant, and, gallantly putting one of his white kids round her
+waist, aided this interesting creature to descend.  I saw, by her
+walk, that she was five-and-forty, and that my little Pogson was a
+lost man.
+
+After some brief parley between them--in which it was charming to
+hear how my friend Samuel WOULD speak, what he called French, to a
+lady who could not understand one syllable of his jargon--the
+mutual hackney-coaches drew up; Madame la Baronne waved to the
+Captain a graceful French curtsy.  "Adyou!" said Samuel, and waved
+his lily hand.  "Adyou-addimang."
+
+A brisk little gentleman, who had made the journey in the same
+coach with Pogson, but had more modestly taken a seat in the
+Imperial, here passed us, and greeted me with a "How d'ye do?"  He
+had shouldered his own little valise, and was trudging off,
+scattering a cloud of commissionaires, who would fain have spared
+him the trouble.
+
+"Do you know that chap?" says Pogson; "surly fellow, ain't he?"
+
+"The kindest man in existence," answered I; "all the world knows
+little Major British."
+
+"He's a Major, is he?--why, that's the fellow that dined with us at
+Killyax's; it's lucky I did not call myself Captain before him, he
+mightn't have liked it, you know:" and then Sam fell into a
+reverie;--what was the subject of his thoughts soon appeared.
+
+"Did you ever SEE such a foot and ankle?" said Sam, after sitting
+for some time, regardless of the novelty of the scene, his hands in
+his pockets, plunged in the deepest thought.
+
+"ISN'T she a slap-up woman, eh, now?" pursued he; and began
+enumerating her attractions, as a horse-jockey would the points of
+a favorite animal.
+
+"You seem to have gone a pretty length already," said I, "by
+promising to visit her to-morrow."
+
+"A good length?--I believe you.  Leave ME alone for that."
+
+"But I thought you were only to be two in the coupe, you wicked
+rogue."
+
+"Two in the coopy?  Oh! ah! yes, you know--why, that is, I didn't
+know she had her maid with her (what an ass I was to think of a
+noblewoman travelling without one!) and couldn't, in course,
+refuse, when she asked me to let the maid in."
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"Couldn't, you know, as a man of honor; but I made up for all
+that," said Pogson, winking slyly, and putting his hand to his
+little bunch of a nose, in a very knowing way.
+
+"You did, and how?"
+
+"Why, you dog, I sat next to her; sat in the middle the whole way,
+and my back's half broke, I can tell you:" and thus, having
+depicted his happiness, we soon reached the inn where this back-
+broken young man was to lodge during his stay in Paris.
+
+The next day at five we met; Mr. Pogson had seen his Baroness, and
+described her lodgings, in his own expressive way, as "slap-up."
+She had received him quite like an old friend; treated him to eau
+sucree, of which beverage he expressed himself a great admirer; and
+actually asked him to dine the next day.  But there was a cloud
+over the ingenuous youth's brow, and I inquired still farther.
+
+"Why," said he, with a sigh, "I thought she was a widow; and, hang
+it! who should come in but her husband the Baron: a big fellow,
+sir, with a blue coat, a red ribbing, and SUCH a pair of mustachios!"
+
+"Well," said I, "he didn't turn you out, I suppose?"
+
+"Oh, no! on the contrary, as kind as possible; his lordship said
+that he respected the English army; asked me what corps I was in,--
+said he had fought in Spain against us,--and made me welcome."
+
+"What could you want more?"
+
+Mr. Pogson at this only whistled; and if some very profound
+observer of human nature had been there to read into this little
+bagman's heart, it would, perhaps, have been manifest, that the
+appearance of a whiskered soldier of a husband had counteracted
+some plans that the young scoundrel was concocting.
+
+I live up a hundred and thirty-seven steps in the remote quarter
+of the Luxembourg, and it is not to be expected that such a
+fashionable fellow as Sam Pogson, with his pockets full of money,
+and a new city to see, should be always wandering to my dull
+quarters; so that, although he did not make his appearance for some
+time, he must not be accused of any luke-warmness of friendship on
+that score.
+
+He was out, too, when I called at his hotel; but once, I had the
+good fortune to see him, with his hat curiously on one side,
+looking as pleased as Punch, and being driven, in an open cab, in
+the Champs Elysees.  "That's ANOTHER tip-top chap," said he, when
+we met, at length.  "What do you think of an Earl's son, my boy?
+Honorable Tom Ringwood, son of the Earl of Cinqbars: what do you
+think of that, eh?"
+
+I thought he was getting into very good society.  Sam was a dashing
+fellow, and was always above his own line of life; he had met Mr.
+Ringwood at the Baron's, and they'd been to the play together; and
+the honorable gent, as Sam called him, had joked with him about
+being well to do IN A CERTAIN QUARTER; and he had had a game of
+billiards with the Baron, at the Estaminy, "a very distangy place,
+where you smoke," said Sam; "quite select, and frequented by the
+tip-top nobility;" and they were as thick as peas in a shell; and
+they were to dine that day at Ringwood's, and sup, the next night,
+with the Baroness.
+
+"I think the chaps down the road will stare," said Sam, "when they
+hear how I've been coming it."  And stare, no doubt, they would;
+for it is certain that very few commercial gentlemen have had Mr.
+Pogson's advantages.
+
+The next morning we had made an arrangement to go out shopping
+together, and to purchase some articles of female gear, that Sam
+intended to bestow on his relations when he returned.  Seven
+needle-books, for his sisters; a gilt buckle, for his mamma; a
+handsome French cashmere shawl and bonnet, for his aunt (the old
+lady keeps an inn in the Borough, and has plenty of money, and no
+heirs); and a toothpick case, for his father.  Sam is a good fellow
+to all his relations, and as for his aunt, he adores her.  Well, we
+were to go and make these purchases, and I arrived punctually at my
+time; but Sam was stretched on a sofa, very pale and dismal.
+
+I saw how it had been.--"A little too much of Mr. Ringwood's
+claret, I suppose?"
+
+He only gave a sickly stare.
+
+"Where does the Honorable Tom live?" says I.
+
+"HONORABLE!" says Sam, with a hollow, horrid laugh; "I tell you,
+Tit, he's no more Honorable than you are."
+
+"What, an impostor?"
+
+"No, no; not that.  He is a real Honorable, only--"
+
+"Oh, ho! I smell a rat--a little jealous, eh?"
+
+"Jealousy be hanged!  I tell you he's a thief; and the Baron's a
+thief; and, hang me, if I think his wife is any better.  Eight-and-
+thirty pounds he won of me before supper; and made me drunk, and
+sent me home:--is THAT honorable?  How can I afford to lose forty
+pounds?  It's took me two years to save it up--if my old aunt gets
+wind of it, she'll cut me off with a shilling: hang me!"--and here
+Sam, in an agony, tore his fair hair.
+
+While bewailing his lot in this lamentable strain, his bell was
+rung, which signal being answered by a surly "Come in," a tall,
+very fashionable gentleman, with a fur coat, and a fierce tuft to
+his chin, entered the room.  "Pogson my buck, how goes it?" said
+he, familiarly, and gave a stare at me: I was making for my hat.
+
+"Don't go," said Sam, rather eagerly; and I sat down again.
+
+The Honorable Mr. Ringwood hummed and ha'd: and, at last, said he
+wished to speak to Mr. Pogson on business, in private, if possible.
+
+"There's no secrets betwixt me and my friend," cried Sam.
+
+Mr. Ringwood paused a little:--"An awkward business that of last
+night," at length exclaimed he.
+
+"I believe it WAS an awkward business," said Sam, dryly.
+
+"I really am very sorry for your losses."
+
+"Thank you: and so am I, I can tell you," said Sam.
+
+"You must mind, my good fellow, and not drink; for, when you drink,
+you WILL play high: by Gad, you led US in, and not we you."
+
+"I dare say," answered Sam, with something of peevishness; "losses
+is losses: there's no use talking about 'em when they're over and
+paid."
+
+"And paid?" here wonderingly spoke Mr. Ringwood; "why, my dear fel--
+what the deuce--has Florval been with you?"
+
+"D--- Florval!" growled Sam, "I've never set eyes on his face since
+last night; and never wish to see him again."
+
+"Come, come, enough of this talk; how do you intend to settle the
+bills which you gave him last night?"
+
+"Bills I what do you mean?"
+
+"I mean, sir, these bills," said the Honorable Tom, producing two
+out of his pocket-book, and looking as stern as a lion.  "'I
+promise to pay, on demand, to the Baron de Florval, the sum of four
+hundred pounds.  October 20, 1838.'  'Ten days after date I promise
+to pay the Baron de et caetera et caetera, one hundred and ninety-
+eight pounds.  Samuel Pogson.'  You didn't say what regiment you
+were in."
+
+"WHAT!" shouted poor Sam, as from a dream, starting up and looking
+preternaturally pale and hideous.
+
+"D--- it, sir, you don't affect ignorance: you don't pretend not to
+remember that you signed these bills, for money lost in my rooms:
+money LENT to you, by Madame de Florval, at your own request, and
+lost to her husband?  You don't suppose, sir, that I shall be such
+an infernal idiot as to believe you, or such a coward as to put up
+with a mean subterfuge of this sort.  Will you, or will you not,
+pay the money, sir?"
+
+"I will not," said Sam, stoutly; "it's a d----d swin--"
+
+Here Mr. Ringwood sprung up, clenching his riding-whip, and looking
+so fierce that Sam and I bounded back to the other end of the room.
+"Utter that word again, and, by heaven, I'll murder you!" shouted
+Mr. Ringwood, and looked as if he would, too: "once more, will you,
+or will you not, pay this money?"
+
+"I can't," said Sam faintly.
+
+"I'll call again, Captain Pogson," said Mr. Ringwood, "I'll call
+again in one hour; and, unless you come to some arrangement, you
+must meet my friend, the Baron de Florval, or I'll post you for a
+swindler and a coward."  With this he went out: the door thundered
+to after him, and when the clink of his steps departing had
+subsided, I was enabled to look round at Pog.  The poor little man
+had his elbows on the marble table, his head between his hands, and
+looked, as one has seen gentlemen look over a steam-vessel off
+Ramsgate, the wind blowing remarkably fresh: at last he fairly
+burst out crying.
+
+"If Mrs. Pogson heard of this," said I, "what would become of the
+'Three Tuns?'" (for I wished to give him a lesson).  "If your Ma,
+who took you every Sunday to meeting, should know that her boy was
+paying attention to married women;--if Drench, Glauber and Co.,
+your employers, were to know that their confidential agent was a
+gambler, and unfit to be trusted with their money, how long do you
+think your connection would last with them, and who would
+afterwards employ you?"
+
+To this poor Pog had not a word of answer; but sat on his sofa
+whimpering so bitterly, that the sternest of moralists would have
+relented towards him, and would have been touched by the little
+wretch's tears.  Everything, too, must be pleaded in excuse for
+this unfortunate bagman: who, if he wished to pass for a captain,
+had only done so because he had an intense respect and longing for
+rank: if he had made love to the Baroness, had only done so because
+he was given to understand by Lord Byron's "Don Juan" that making
+love was a very correct, natty thing: and if he had gambled, had
+only been induced to do so by the bright eyes and example of the
+Baron and the Baroness.  O ye Barons and Baronesses of England! if
+ye knew what a number of small commoners are daily occupied in
+studying your lives, and imitating your aristocratic ways, how
+careful would ye be of your morals, manners, and conversation!
+
+My soul was filled, then, with a gentle yearning pity for Pogson,
+and revolved many plans for his rescue: none of these seeming to
+be practicable, at last we hit on the very wisest of all, and
+determined to apply for counsel to no less a person than Major
+British.
+
+A blessing it is to be acquainted with my worthy friend, little
+Major British; and heaven, sure, it was that put the Major into my
+head, when I heard of this awkward scrape of poor Fog's.  The Major
+is on half-pay, and occupies a modest apartment au quatrieme, in
+the very hotel which Pogson had patronized at my suggestion;
+indeed, I had chosen it from Major British's own peculiar
+recommendation.
+
+There is no better guide to follow than such a character as the
+honest Major, of whom there are many likenesses now scattered over
+the Continent of Europe: men who love to live well, and are forced
+to live cheaply, and who find the English abroad a thousand times
+easier, merrier, and more hospitable than the same persons at home.
+I, for my part, never landed on Calais pier without feeling that a
+load of sorrows was left on the other side of the water; and have
+always fancied that black care stepped on board the steamer, along
+with the custom-house officers at Gravesend, and accompanied one to
+yonder black louring towers of London--so busy, so dismal, and so
+vast.
+
+British would have cut any foreigner's throat who ventured to say
+so much, but entertained, no doubt, private sentiments of this
+nature; for he passed eight months of the year, regularly, abroad,
+with headquarters at Paris (the garrets before alluded to), and
+only went to England for the month's shooting, on the grounds of
+his old colonel, now an old lord, of whose acquaintance the Major
+was passably inclined to boast.
+
+He loved and respected, like a good staunch Tory as he is, every
+one of the English nobility; gave himself certain little airs of
+a man of fashion, that were by no means disagreeable; and was,
+indeed, kindly regarded by such English aristocracy as he met, in
+his little annual tours among the German courts, in Italy or in
+Paris, where he never missed an ambassador's night: he retailed to
+us, who didn't go, but were delighted to know all that had taken
+place, accurate accounts of the dishes, the dresses, and the
+scandal which had there fallen under his observation.
+
+He is, moreover, one of the most useful persons in society that can
+possibly be; for besides being incorrigibly duelsome on his own
+account, he is, for others, the most acute and peaceable counsellor
+in the world, and has carried more friends through scrapes and
+prevented more deaths than any member of the Humane Society.
+British never bought a single step in the army, as is well known.
+In '14 he killed a celebrated French fire-eater,, who had slain a
+young friend of his, and living, as he does, a great deal with
+young men of pleasure, and good old sober family people, he is
+loved by them both and has as welcome a place made for him at a
+roaring bachelor's supper at the "Cafe Anglais," as at a staid
+dowager's dinner-table in the Faubourg St. Honore.  Such pleasant
+old boys are very profitable acquaintances, let me tell you; and
+lucky is the young man who has one or two such friends in his list.
+
+Hurrying on Fogson in his dress, I conducted him, panting, up to
+the Major's quatrieme, where we were cheerfully bidden to come in.
+The little gentleman was in his travelling jacket, and occupied in
+painting, elegantly, one of those natty pairs of boots in which he
+daily promenaded the Boulevards.  A couple of pairs of tough buff
+gloves had been undergoing some pipe-claying operation under his
+hands; no man stepped out so spick and span, with a hat so nicely
+brushed, with a stiff cravat tied so neatly under a fat little red
+face, with a blue frock-coat so scrupulously fitted to a punchy
+little person, as Major British, about whom we have written these
+two pages.  He stared rather hardly at my companion, but gave me a
+kind shake of the hand, and we proceeded at once to business.
+"Major British," said I, "we want your advice in regard to an
+unpleasant affair which has just occurred to my friend Pogson."
+
+"Pogson, take a chair."
+
+"You must know, sir, that Mr. Pogson, coming from Calais the other
+day, encountered, in the diligence, a very handsome woman."
+
+British winked at Pogson, who, wretched as he was, could not help
+feeling pleased.
+
+"Mr. Pogson was not more pleased with this lovely creature than was
+she with him; for, it appears, she gave him her card, invited him
+to her house, where he has been constantly, and has been received
+with much kindness."
+
+"I see," says British.
+
+"Her husband the Baron--"
+
+"NOW it's coming," said the Major, with a grin: "her husband is
+jealous, I suppose, and there is a talk of the Bois de Boulogne: my
+dear sir, you can't refuse--can't refuse."
+
+"It's not that," said Pogson, wagging his head passionately.
+
+"Her husband the Baron seemed quite as much taken with Pogson as
+his lady was, and has introduced him to some very distingue friends
+of his own set.  Last night one of the Baron's friends gave a party
+in honor of my friend Pogson, who lost forty-eight pounds at cards
+BEFORE he was made drunk, and heaven knows how much after."
+
+"Not a shilling, by sacred heaven!--not a shilling!" yelled out
+Pogson.  "After the supper I 'ad such an 'eadach', I couldn't do
+anything but fall asleep on the sofa."
+
+"You 'ad such an 'eadach', sir," says British, sternly, who piques
+himself on his grammar and pronunciation, and scorns a cockney.
+
+Such a H-eadache, sir," replied Pogson, with much meekness.
+
+"The unfortunate man is brought home at two o'clock, as tipsy as
+possible, dragged up stairs, senseless, to bed, and, on waking,
+receives a visit from his entertainer of the night before--a lord's
+son, Major, a tip-top fellow,--who brings a couple of bills that my
+friend Pogson is said to have signed."
+
+"Well, my dear fellow, the thing's quite simple,--he must pay
+them."
+
+"I can't pay them."
+
+"He can't pay them," said we both in a breath: "Pogson is a
+commercial traveller, with thirty shillings a week, and how the
+deuce is he to pay five hundred pounds?"
+
+"A bagman, sir! and what right has a bagman to gamble?  Gentlemen
+gamble, sir; tradesmen, sir, have no business with the amusements
+of the gentry.  What business had you with barons and lords' sons,
+sir?--serve you right, sir."
+
+"Sir," says Pogson, with some dignity, "merit, and not birth, is
+the criterion of a man: I despise an hereditary aristocracy, and
+admire only Nature's gentlemen.  For my part, I think that a
+British merch--"
+
+"Hold your tongue, sir," bounced out the Major, "and don't lecture
+me; don't come to me, sir, with your slang about Nature's
+gentlemen--Nature's tomfools, sir!  Did Nature open a cash account
+for you at a banker's, sir?  Did Nature give you an education, sir?
+What do you mean by competing with people to whom Nature has given
+all these things?  Stick to your bags, Mr. Pogson, and your bagmen,
+and leave barons and their like to their own ways."
+
+"Yes, but, Major," here cried that faithful friend, who has always
+stood by Pogson; "they won't leave him alone."
+
+"The honorable gent says I must fight if I don't pay," whimpered
+Sam.
+
+"What! fight YOU?  Do you mean that the honorable gent, as you call
+him, will go out with a bagman?"
+
+"He doesn't know I'm a--I'm a commercial man," blushingly said Sam:
+"he fancies I'm a military gent."
+
+The Major's gravity was quite upset at this absurd notion; and he
+laughed outrageously.  "Why, the fact is, sir," said I, "that my
+friend Pogson, knowing the value of the title of Captain, and being
+complimented by the Baroness on his warlike appearance, said,
+boldly, he was in the army.  He only assumed the rank in order to
+dazzle her weak imagination, never fancying that there was a
+husband, and a circle of friends, with whom he was afterwards to
+make an acquaintance; and then, you know, it was too late to
+withdraw."
+
+"A pretty pickle you have put yourself in, Mr. Pogson, by making
+love to other men's wives, and calling yourself names," said the
+Major, who was restored to good humor.  "And pray, who is the
+honorable gent?"
+
+"The Earl of Cinqbars' son," says Pogson, "the Honorable Tom
+Ringwood."
+
+"I thought it was some such character; and the Baron is the Baron
+de Florval-Delval?"
+
+"The very same."
+
+"And his wife a black-haired woman, with a pretty foot and ankle;
+calls herself Athenais; and is always talking about her trente-deux
+ans?  Why, sir, that woman was an actress on the Boulevard, when we
+were here in '15.  She's no more his wife than I am.  Delval's name
+is Chicot.  The woman is always travelling between London and
+Paris: I saw she was hooking you at Calais; she has hooked ten men,
+in the course of the last two years, in this very way.  She lent
+you money, didn't she?"  "Yes."  "And she leans on your shoulder,
+and whispers, 'Play half for me,' and somebody wins it, and the
+poor thing is as sorry as you are, and her husband storms and
+rages, and insists on double stakes; and she leans over your
+shoulder again, and tells every card in your hand to your
+adversary, and that's the way it's done, Mr. Pogson."
+
+"I've been 'AD, I see I 'ave," said Pogson, very humbly.
+
+"Well, sir," said the Major, "in consideration, not of you, sir--
+for, give me leave to tell you, Mr. Pogson, that you are a pitiful
+little scoundrel--in consideration for my Lord Cinqbars, sir, with
+whom, I am proud to say, I am intimate," (the Major dearly loved a
+lord, and was, by his own showing, acquainted with half the
+peerage,) "I will aid you in this affair.  Your cursed vanity, sir,
+and want of principle, has set you, in the first place, intriguing
+with other men's wives; and if you had been shot for your pains, a
+bullet would have only served you right, sir.  You must go about as
+an impostor, sir, in society; and you pay richly for your swindling,
+sir, by being swindled yourself: but, as I think your punishment has
+been already pretty severe, I shall do my best, out of regard for my
+friend, Lord Cinqbars, to prevent the matter going any farther; and
+I recommend you to leave Paris without delay.  Now let me wish you a
+good morning."--Wherewith British made a majestic bow, and began
+giving the last touch to his varnished boots.
+
+We departed: poor Sam perfectly silent and chapfallen; and I
+meditating on the wisdom of the half-pay philosopher, and wondering
+what means he would employ to rescue Pogson from his fate.
+
+What these means were I know not; but Mr. Ringwood did NOT make his
+appearance at six; and, at eight, a letter arrived for "Mr. Pogson,
+commercial traveller," &c. &c.  It was blank inside, but contained
+his two bills.  Mr. Ringwood left town, almost immediately, for
+Vienna; nor did the Major explain the circumstances which caused
+his departure; but he muttered something about "knew some of his
+old tricks," "threatened police, and made him disgorge directly."
+
+Mr. Ringwood is, as yet, young at his trade; and I have often
+thought it was very green of him to give up the bills to the Major,
+who, certainly, would never have pressed the matter before the
+police, out of respect for his friend, Lord Cinqbars.
+
+
+
+
+THE FETES OF JULY.
+
+IN A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE "BUNGAY BEACON."
+
+
+PARIS, July 30th, 1839.
+
+We have arrived here just in time for the fetes of July.--You have
+read, no doubt, of that glorious revolution which took place here
+nine years ago, and which is now commemorated annually, in a pretty
+facetious manner, by gun-firing, student-processions, pole-
+climbing-for-silver-spoons, gold-watches and legs-of-mutton,
+monarchical orations, and what not, and sanctioned, moreover, by
+Chamber-of-Deputies, with a grant of a couple of hundred thousand
+francs to defray the expenses of all the crackers, gun-firings, and
+legs-of-mutton aforesaid.  There is a new fountain in the Place
+Louis Quinze, otherwise called the Place Louis Seize, or else the
+Place de la Revolution, or else the Place de la Concorde (who can
+say why?)--which, I am told, is to run bad wine during certain
+hours to-morrow, and there WOULD have been a review of the National
+Guards and the Line--only, since the Fieschi business, reviews are
+no joke, and so this latter part of the festivity has been
+discontinued.
+
+Do you not laugh, O Pharos of Bungay, at the continuance of a
+humbug such as this?--at the humbugging anniversary of a humbug?
+The King of the Barricades is, next to the Emperor Nicholas, the
+most absolute Sovereign in Europe; yet there is not in the whole of
+this fair kingdom of France a single man who cares sixpence about
+him, or his dynasty: except, mayhap, a few hangers-on at the
+Chateau, who eat his dinners, and put their hands in his purse.
+The feeling of loyalty is as dead as old Charles the Tenth; the
+Chambers have been laughed at, the country has been laughed at, all
+the successive ministries have been laughed at (and you know who is
+the wag that has amused himself with them all); and, behold, here
+come three days at the end of July, and cannons think it necessary
+to fire off, squibs and crackers to blaze and fizz, fountains to
+run wine, kings to make speeches, and subjects to crawl up greasy
+mats-de-cocagne in token of gratitude and rejouissance publique!--
+My dear sir, in their aptitude to swallow, to utter, to enact
+humbugs, these French people, from Majesty downwards, beat all the
+other nations of this earth.  In looking at these men, their
+manners, dresses, opinions, politics, actions, history, it is
+impossible to preserve a grave countenance; instead of having
+Carlyle to write a History of the French Revolution, I often think
+it should be handed over to Dickens or Theodore Hook: and oh! where
+is the Rabelais to be the faithful historian of the last phase of
+the Revolution--the last glorious nine years of which we are now
+commemorating the last glorious three days?
+
+I had made a vow not to say a syllable on the subject, although I
+have seen, with my neighbors, all the gingerbread stalls down the
+Champs Elysees, and some of the "catafalques" erected to the memory
+of the heroes of July, where the students and others, not connected
+personally with the victims, and not having in the least profited
+by their deaths, come and weep; but the grief shown on the first
+day is quite as absurd and fictitious as the joy exhibited on the
+last.  The subject is one which admits of much wholesome reflection
+and food for mirth; and, besides, is so richly treated by the
+French themselves, that it would be a sin and a shame to pass it
+over.  Allow me to have the honor of translating, for your
+edification, an account of the first day's proceedings--it is
+mighty amusing, to my thinking.
+
+
+"CELEBRATION OF THE DAYS OF JULY.
+
+"To-day (Saturday), funeral ceremonies, in honor of the victims of
+July, were held in the various edifices consecrated to public
+worship.
+
+"These edifices, with the exception of some churches (especially
+that of the Petits-Peres), were uniformly hung with black on the
+outside; the hangings bore only this inscription: 27, 28, 29 July,
+1830--surrounded by a wreath of oak-leaves.
+
+"In the interior of the Catholic churches, it had only been thought
+proper to dress LITTLE CATAFALQUES, as for burials of the third and
+fourth class.  Very few clergy attended; but a considerable number
+of the National Guard.
+
+"The Synagogue of the Israelites was entirely hung with black; and
+a great concourse of people attended.  The service was performed
+with the greatest pomp.
+
+"In the Protestant temples there was likewise a very full
+attendance: APOLOGETICAL DISCOURSES on the Revolution of July were
+pronounced by the pastors.
+
+"The absence of M. de Quelen (Archbishop of Paris), and of many
+members of the superior clergy, was remarked at Notre Dame.
+
+"The civil authorities attended service in their several districts.
+
+"The poles, ornamented with tri-colored flags, which formerly were
+placed on Notre Dame, were, it was remarked, suppressed.  The flags
+on the Pont Neuf were, during the ceremony, only half-mast high,
+and covered with crape."
+
+Et caetera, et caetera, et caetera.
+
+"The tombs of the Louvre were covered with black hangings, and
+adorned with tri-colored flags.  In front and in the middle was
+erected an expiatory monument of a pyramidical shape, and
+surmounted by a funeral vase.
+
+"These tombs were guarded by the MUNICIPAL GUARD, THE TROOPS OF THE
+LINE, THE SERGENS DE VILLE (town patrol), AND A BRIGADE OF AGENTS
+OF POLICE IN PLAIN CLOTHES, under the orders of peace-officer
+Vassal.
+
+"Between eleven and twelve o'clock, some young men, to the number
+of 400 or 500, assembled on the Place de la Bourse, one of them
+bearing a tri-colored banner with an inscription, 'TO THE MANES OF
+JULY:' ranging themselves in order, they marched five abreast to
+the Marche des Innocens.  On their arrival, the Municipal Guards of
+the Halle aux Draps, where the post had been doubled, issued out
+without arms, and the town-sergeants placed themselves before the
+market to prevent the entry of the procession.  The young men
+passed in perfect order, and without saying a word--only lifting
+their hats as they defiled before the tombs.  When they arrived at
+the Louvre they found the gates shut, and the garden evacuated.
+The troops were under arms, and formed in battalion.
+
+"After the passage of the procession, the Garden was again open to
+the public."
+
+And the evening and the morning were the first day.
+
+There's nothing serious in mortality: is there, from the beginning
+of this account to the end thereof, aught but sheer, open,
+monstrous, undisguised humbug?  I said, before, that you should
+have a history of these people by Dickens or Theodore Hook, but
+there is little need of professed wags;--do not the men write their
+own tale with an admirable Sancho-like gravity and naivete, which
+one could not desire improved?  How good is that touch of sly
+indignation about the LITTLE CATAFALQUES! how rich the contrast
+presented by the economy of the Catholics to the splendid disregard
+of expense exhibited by the devout Jews! and how touching the
+"APOLOGETICAL DISCOURSES on the Revolution," delivered by the
+Protestant pastors!  Fancy the profound affliction of the Gardes
+Municipaux, the Sergens de Ville, the police agents in plain
+clothes, and the troops with fixed bayonets, sobbing round the
+"expiatory monuments of a pyramidical shape, surmounted by funeral
+vases," and compelled, by sad duty, to fire into the public who
+might wish to indulge in the same woe!  O "manes of July!" (the
+phrase is pretty and grammatical) why did you with sharp bullets
+break those Louvre windows?  Why did you bayonet red-coated Swiss
+behind that fair white facade, and, braving cannon, musket, sabre,
+perspective guillotine, burst yonder bronze gates, rush through
+that peaceful picture-gallery, and hurl royalty, loyalty, and a
+thousand years of Kings, head-over-heels out of yonder Tuileries'
+windows?
+
+It is, you will allow, a little difficult to say:--there is,
+however, ONE benefit that the country has gained (as for liberty of
+press, or person, diminished taxation, a juster representation, who
+ever thinks of them?)--ONE benefit they have gained, or nearly--
+abolition de la peine-de-mort pour delit politique: no more wicked
+guillotining for revolutions.  A Frenchman must have his revolution--
+it is his nature to knock down omnibuses in the street, and across
+them to fire at troops of the line--it is a sin to balk it.  Did not
+the King send off Revolutionary Prince Napoleon in a coach-and-four?
+Did not the jury, before the face of God and Justice, proclaim
+Revolutionary Colonel Vaudrey not guilty?--One may hope, soon, that
+if a man shows decent courage and energy in half a dozen emeutes, he
+will get promotion and a premium.
+
+I do not (although, perhaps, partial to the subject,) want to talk
+more nonsense than the occasion warrants, and will pray you to cast
+your eyes over the following anecdote, that is now going the round
+of the papers, and respects the commutation of the punishment of
+that wretched, fool-hardy Barbes, who, on his trial, seemed to
+invite the penalty which has just been remitted to him.  You
+recollect the braggart's speech: "When the Indian falls into the
+power of the enemy, he knows the fate that awaits him, and submits
+his head to the knife:--I am the Indian!"
+
+"Well--"
+
+"M. Hugo was at the Opera on the night the sentence of the Court of
+Peers, condemning Barbes to death, was published.  The great poet
+composed the following verses:--
+
+
+     'Par votre ange envolee, ainsi qu'une colombe,
+      Par le royal enfant, doux et frele roseau,
+      Grace encore une fois!  Grace au nom de la tombe!
+         Grace au nom du berceau!'*
+
+
+"M. Victor Hugo wrote the lines out instantly on a sheet of paper,
+which he folded, and simply despatched them to the King of the
+French by the penny-post.
+
+"That truly is a noble voice, which can at all hours thus speak to
+the throne.  Poetry, in old days, was called the language of the
+Gods--it is better named now--it is the language of the Kings.
+
+"But the clemency of the King had anticipated the letter of the
+Poet.  His Majesty had signed the commutation of Barbes, while the
+poet was still writing.
+
+"Louis Philippe replied to the author of 'Ruy Blas' most
+graciously, that he had already subscribed to a wish so noble, and
+that the verses had only confirmed his previous disposition to
+mercy."
+
+
+* Translated for the benefit of country gentlemen:--
+
+     "By your angel flown away just like a dove,
+      By the royal infant, that frail and tender reed,
+      Pardon yet once more!  Pardon in the name of the tomb!
+      Pardon in the name of the cradle!"
+
+
+Now in countries where fools most abound, did one ever read of more
+monstrous, palpable folly?  In any country, save this, would a poet
+who chose to write four crack-brained verses, comparing an angel to
+a dove, and a little boy to a reed, and calling upon the chief
+magistrate, in the name of the angel, or dove (the Princess Mary),
+in her tomb, and the little infant in his cradle, to spare a
+criminal, have received a "gracious answer" to his nonsense?  Would
+he have ever despatched the nonsense? and would any journalist have
+been silly enough to talk of "the noble voice that could thus speak
+to the throne," and the noble throne that could return such a noble
+answer to the noble voice?  You get nothing done here gravely and
+decently.  Tawdry stage tricks are played, and braggadocio
+claptraps uttered, on every occasion, however sacred or solemn: in
+the face of death, as by Barbes with his hideous Indian metaphor;
+in the teeth of reason, as by M. Victor Hugo with his twopenny-post
+poetry; and of justice, as by the King's absurd reply to this
+absurd demand!  Suppose the Count of Paris to be twenty times a
+reed, and the Princess Mary a host of angels, is that any reason
+why the law should not have its course?  Justice is the God of our
+lower world, our great omnipresent guardian: as such it moves, or
+should move on majestic, awful, irresistible, having no passions--
+like a God: but, in the very midst of the path across which it is
+to pass, lo! M. Victor Hugo trips forward, smirking, and says,
+O divine Justice! I will trouble you to listen to the following
+trifling effusion of mine:--
+
+
+     Par votre ange envolee, ainsi qu'une," &c.
+
+
+Awful Justice stops, and, bowing gravely, listens to M. Hugo's
+verses, and, with true French politeness, says, "Mon cher Monsieur,
+these verses are charming, ravissans, delicieux, and, coming from
+such a celebrite litteraire as yourself, shall meet with every
+possible attention--in fact, had I required anything to confirm my
+own previous opinions, this charming poem would have done so.  Bon
+jour, mon cher Monsieur Hugo, au revoir!"--and they part:--Justice
+taking off his hat and bowing, and the author of "Ruy Blas" quite
+convinced that he has been treating with him d'egal en egal.  I can
+hardly bring my mind to fancy that anything is serious in France--
+it seems to be all rant, tinsel, and stage-play.  Sham liberty,
+sham monarchy, sham glory, sham justice,--ou diable donc la verite
+va-t-elle se nicher?
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+The last rocket of the fete of July has just mounted, exploded,
+made a portentous bang, and emitted a gorgeous show of blue lights,
+and then (like many reputations) disappeared totally: the hundredth
+gun on the Invalid terrace has uttered its last roar--and a great
+comfort it is for eyes and ears that the festival is over.  We
+shall be able to go about our everyday business again, and not be
+hustled by the gendarmes or the crowd.
+
+The sight which I have just come away from is as brilliant, happy,
+and beautiful as can be conceived; and if you want to see French
+people to the greatest advantage, you should go to a festival like
+this, where their manners, and innocent gayety, show a very
+pleasing contrast to the coarse and vulgar hilarity which the same
+class would exhibit in our own country--at Epsom racecourse, for
+instance, or Greenwich Fair.  The greatest noise that I heard
+was that of a company of jolly villagers from a place in the
+neighborhood of Paris, who, as soon as the fireworks were over,
+formed themselves into a line, three or four abreast, and so
+marched singing home.  As for the fireworks, squibs and crackers
+are very hard to describe, and very little was to be seen of them:
+to me, the prettiest sight was the vast, orderly, happy crowd, the
+number of children, and the extraordinary care and kindness of the
+parents towards these little creatures.  It does one good to see
+honest, heavy epiciers, fathers of families, playing with them in
+the Tuileries, or, as to-night, bearing them stoutly on their
+shoulders, through many long hours, in order that the little ones
+too may have their share of the fun.  John Bull, I fear, is more
+selfish: he does not take Mrs. Bull to the public-house; but leaves
+her, for the most part, to take care of the children at home.
+
+The fete, then, is over; the pompous black pyramid at the Louvre is
+only a skeleton now; all the flags have been miraculously whisked
+away during the night, and the fine chandeliers which glittered
+down the Champs Elysees for full half a mile, have been consigned
+to their dens and darkness.  Will they ever be reproduced for other
+celebrations of the glorious 29th of July?--I think not; the
+Government which vowed that there should be no more persecutions of
+the press, was, on that very 29th, seizing a Legitimist paper, for
+some real or fancied offence against it: it had seized, and was
+seizing daily, numbers of persons merely suspected of being
+disaffected (and you may fancy how liberty is understood, when some
+of these prisoners, the other day, on coming to trial, were found
+guilty and sentenced to ONE day's imprisonment, after THIRTY-SIX
+DAYS' DETENTION ON SUSPICION).  I think the Government which
+follows such a system, cannot be very anxious about any farther
+revolutionary fetes, and that the Chamber may reasonably refuse to
+vote more money for them.  Why should men be so mighty proud of
+having, on a certain day, cut a certain number of their fellow-
+countrymen's throats?  The Guards and the Line employed this time
+nine years did no more than those who cannonaded the starving
+Lyonnese, or bayoneted the luckless inhabitants of the Rue
+Transnounain:--they did but fulfil the soldier's honorable duty:--
+his superiors bid him kill and he killeth:--perhaps, had he gone to
+his work with a little more heart, the result would have been
+different, and then--would the conquering party have been justified
+in annually rejoicing over the conquered?  Would we have thought
+Charles X. justified in causing fireworks to be blazed, and
+concerts to be sung, and speeches to be spouted, in commemoration
+of his victory over his slaughtered countrymen?--I wish for my part
+they would allow the people to go about their business as on the
+other 362 days of the year, and leave the Champs Elysees free for
+the omnibuses to run, and the Tuileries' in quiet, so that the
+nurse-maids might come as usual, and the newspapers be read for a
+halfpenny apiece.
+
+Shall I trouble you with an account of the speculations of these
+latter, and the state of the parties which they represent?  The
+complication is not a little curious, and may form, perhaps, a
+subject of graver disquisition.  The July fetes occupy, as you may
+imagine, a considerable part of their columns just now, and it is
+amusing to follow them one by one; to read Tweedledum's praise, and
+Tweedledee's indignation--to read, in the Debats how the King was
+received with shouts and loyal vivats--in the Nation, how not a
+tongue was wagged in his praise, but, on the instant of his
+departure, how the people called for the "Marseillaise" and
+applauded THAT.--But best say no more about the fete.  The
+Legitimists were always indignant at it.  The high Philippist party
+sneers at and despises it; the Republicans hate it: it seems a joke
+against THEM.  Why continue it?--If there be anything sacred in the
+name and idea of loyalty, why renew this fete?  It only shows how a
+rightful monarch was hurled from his throne, and a dexterous
+usurper stole his precious diadem.  If there be anything noble in
+the memory of a day, when citizens, unused to war, rose against
+practised veterans, and, armed with the strength of their cause,
+overthrew them, why speak of it now? or renew the bitter
+recollections of the bootless struggle and victory?  O Lafayette!
+O hero of two worlds!  O accomplished Cromwell Grandison! you have
+to answer for more than any mortal man who has played a part in
+history: two republics and one monarchy does the world owe to you;
+and especially grateful should your country be to you.  Did you
+not, in '90, make clear the path for honest Robespierre, and in
+'30, prepare the way for--
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+[The Editor of the Bungay Beacon would insert no more of this
+letter, which is, therefore, for ever lost to the public.]
+
+
+
+
+ON THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF PAINTING:
+
+WITH APPROPRIATE ANECDOTES, ILLUSTRATIONS, AND PHILOSOPHICAL
+DISQUISITIONS.
+
+
+IN A LETTER TO MR. MACGILP, OF LONDON.
+
+
+The three collections of pictures at the Louvre, the Luxembourg,
+and the Ecole des Beaux Arts, contain a number of specimens of
+French art, since its commencement almost, and give the stranger a
+pretty fair opportunity to study and appreciate the school.  The
+French list of painters contains some very good names--no very
+great ones, except Poussin (unless the admirers of Claude choose to
+rank him among great painters),--and I think the school was never
+in so flourishing a condition as it is at the present day.  They
+say there are three thousand artists in this town alone: of these a
+handsome minority paint not merely tolerably, but well understand
+their business: draw the figure accurately; sketch with cleverness;
+and paint portraits, churches, or restaurateurs' shops, in a decent
+manner.
+
+To account for a superiority over England which, I think, as
+regards art, is incontestable--it must be remembered that the
+painter's trade, in France, is a very good one; better appreciated,
+better understood, and, generally, far better paid than with us.
+There are a dozen excellent schools which a lad may enter here,
+and, under the eye of a practised master, learn the apprenticeship
+of his art at an expense of about ten pounds a year.  In England
+there is no school except the Academy, unless the student can
+afford to pay a very large sum, and place himself under the tuition
+of some particular artist.  Here, a young man, for his ten pounds,
+has all sorts of accessory instruction, models, &c.; and has
+further, and for nothing, numberless incitements to study his
+profession which are not to be found in England:--the streets are
+filled with picture-shops, the people themselves are pictures
+walking about; the churches, theatres, eating-houses, concert-rooms
+are covered with pictures: Nature itself is inclined more kindly to
+him, for the sky is a thousand times more bright and beautiful, and
+the sun shines for the greater part of the year.  Add to this,
+incitements more selfish, but quite as powerful: a French artist is
+paid very handsomely; for five hundred a year is much where all are
+poor; and has a rank in society rather above his merits than below
+them, being caressed by hosts and hostesses in places where titles
+are laughed at and a baron is thought of no more account than a
+banker's clerk.
+
+The life of the young artist here is the easiest, merriest,
+dirtiest existence possible.  He comes to Paris, probably at
+sixteen, from his province; his parents settle forty pounds a year
+on him, and pay his master; he establishes himself in the Pays
+Latin, or in the new quarter of Notre Dame de Lorette (which is
+quite peopled with painters); he arrives at his atelier at a
+tolerably early hour, and labors among a score of companions as
+merry and poor as himself.  Each gentleman has his favorite
+tobacco-pipe; and the pictures are painted in the midst of a cloud
+of smoke, and a din of puns and choice French slang, and a roar of
+choruses, of which no one can form an idea who has not been present
+at such an assembly.
+
+You see here every variety of coiffure that has ever been known.
+Some young men of genius have ringlets hanging over their
+shoulders--you may smell the tobacco with which they are scented
+across the street; some have straight locks, black, oily, and
+redundant; some have toupets in the famous Louis-Philippe fashion;
+some are cropped close; some have adopted the present mode--which
+he who would follow must, in order to do so, part his hair in the
+middle, grease it with grease, and gum it with gum, and iron it
+flat down over his ears; when arrived at the ears, you take the
+tongs and make a couple of ranges of curls close round the whole
+head,--such curls as you may see under a gilt three-cornered hat,
+and in her Britannic Majesty's coachman's state wig.
+
+This is the last fashion.  As for the beards, there is no end of
+them; all my friends the artists have beards who can raise them;
+and Nature, though she has rather stinted the bodies and limbs of
+the French nation, has been very liberal to them of hair, as you
+may see by the following specimen.  Fancy these heads and beards
+under all sorts of caps--Chinese caps, Mandarin caps, Greek skull-
+caps, English jockey-caps, Russian or Kuzzilbash caps, Middle-age
+caps (such as are called, in heraldry, caps of maintenance),
+Spanish nets, and striped worsted nightcaps.  Fancy all the jackets
+you have ever seen, and you have before you, as well as pen can
+describe, the costumes of these indescribable Frenchmen.
+
+In this company and costume the French student of art passes his
+days and acquires knowledge; how he passes his evenings, at what
+theatres, at what guinguettes, in company with what seducing little
+milliner, there is no need to say; but I knew one who pawned his
+coat to go to a carnival ball, and walked abroad very cheerfully in
+his blouse for six weeks, until he could redeem the absent garment.
+
+These young men (together with the students of sciences) comport
+themselves towards the sober citizen pretty much as the German
+bursch towards the philister, or as the military man, during the
+empire, did to the pekin:--from the height of their poverty they
+look down upon him with the greatest imaginable scorn--a scorn, I
+think, by which the citizen seems dazzled, for his respect for the
+arts is intense.  The case is very different in England, where a
+grocer's daughter would think she made a misalliance by marrying a
+painter, and where a literary man (in spite of all we can say
+against it) ranks below that class of gentry composed of the
+apothecary, the attorney, the wine-merchant, whose positions, in
+country towns at least, are so equivocal.  As, for instance, my
+friend the Rev. James Asterisk, who has an undeniable pedigree, a
+paternal estate, and a living to boot, once dined in Warwickshire,
+in company with several squires and parsons of that enlightened
+county.  Asterisk, as usual, made himself extraordinarily agreeable
+at dinner, and delighted all present with his learning and wit.
+"Who is that monstrous pleasant fellow?" said one of the squires.
+"Don't you know?" replied another.  "It's Asterisk, the author of
+so-and-so, and a famous contributor to such and such a magazine."
+"Good heavens!" said the squire, quite horrified! "a literary man!
+I thought he had been a gentleman!"
+
+Another instance: M. Guizot, when he was Minister here, had the
+grand hotel of the Ministry, and gave entertainments to all the
+great de par le monde, as Brantome says, and entertained them in a
+proper ministerial magnificence.  The splendid and beautiful
+Duchess of Dash was at one of his ministerial parties; and went, a
+fortnight afterwards, as in duty bound, to pay her respects to M.
+Guizot.  But it happened, in this fortnight, that M. Guizot was
+Minister no longer; having given up his portfolio, and his grand
+hotel, to retire into private life, and to occupy his humble
+apartments in the house which he possesses, and of which he lets
+the greater portion.  A friend of mine was present at one of the
+ex-Minister's soirees, where the Duchess of Dash made her
+appearance.  He says the Duchess, at her entrance, seemed quite
+astounded, and examined the premises with a most curious wonder.
+Two or three shabby little rooms, with ordinary furniture, and a
+Minister en retraite, who lives by letting lodgings!  In our
+country was ever such a thing heard of?  No, thank heaven! and a
+Briton ought to be proud of the difference.
+
+But to our muttons.  This country is surely the paradise of
+painters and penny-a-liners; and when one reads of M. Horace Vernet
+at Rome, exceeding ambassadors at Rome by his magnificence, and
+leading such a life as Rubens or Titian did of old; when one sees
+M. Thiers's grand villa in the Rue St. George (a dozen years ago he
+was not even a penny-a-liner: no such luck); when one contemplates,
+in imagination, M. Gudin, the marine painter, too lame to walk
+through the picture-gallery of the Louvre, accommodated, therefore,
+with a wheel-chair, a privilege of princes only, and accompanied--
+nay, for what I know, actually trundled--down the gallery by
+majesty itself--who does not long to make one of the great nation,
+exchange his native tongue for the melodious jabber of France; or,
+at least, adopt it for his native country, like Marshal Saxe,
+Napoleon, and Anacharsis Clootz?  Noble people! they made Tom Paine
+a deputy; and as for Tom Macaulay, they would make a DYNASTY of
+him.
+
+Well, this being the case, no wonder there are so many painters in
+France; and here, at least, we are back to them.  At the Ecole
+Royale des Beaux Arts, you see two or three hundred specimens of
+their performances; all the prize-men, since 1750, I think, being
+bound to leave their prize sketch or picture.  Can anything good
+come out of the Royal Academy? is a question which has been
+considerably mooted in England (in the neighborhood of Suffolk
+Street especially).  The hundreds of French samples are, I think,
+not very satisfactory.  The subjects are almost all what are called
+classical: Orestes pursued by every variety of Furies; numbers of
+little wolf-sucking Romuluses; Hectors and Andromaches in a
+complication of parting embraces, and so forth; for it was the
+absurd maxim of our forefathers, that because these subjects had
+been the fashion twenty centuries ago, they must remain so in
+saecula saeculorum; because to these lofty heights giants had scaled,
+behold the race of pigmies must get upon stilts and jump at them
+likewise! and on the canvas, and in the theatre, the French frogs
+(excuse the pleasantry) were instructed to swell out and roar as
+much as possible like bulls.
+
+What was the consequence, my dear friend?  In trying to make
+themselves into bulls, the frogs make themselves into jackasses, as
+might be expected.  For a hundred and ten years the classical
+humbug oppressed the nation; and you may see, in this gallery of
+the Beaux Arts, seventy years' specimens of the dulness which it
+engendered.
+
+Now, as Nature made every man with a nose and eyes of his own, she
+gave him a character of his own too; and yet we, O foolish race!
+must try our very best to ape some one or two of our neighbors,
+whose ideas fit us no more than their breeches!  It is the study of
+nature, surely, that profits us, and not of these imitations of
+her.  A man, as a man, from a dustman up to Aeschylus, is God's
+work, and good to read, as all works of Nature are: but the silly
+animal is never content; is ever trying to fit itself into another
+shape; wants to deny its own identity, and has not the courage to
+utter its own thoughts.  Because Lord Byron was wicked, and
+quarrelled with the world; and found himself growing fat, and
+quarrelled with his victuals, and thus, naturally, grew ill-
+humored, did not half Europe grow ill-humored too?  Did not every
+poet feel his young affections withered, and despair and darkness
+cast upon his soul?  Because certain mighty men of old could make
+heroical statues and plays, must we not be told that there is no
+other beauty but classical beauty?--must not every little whipster
+of a French poet chalk you out plays, "Henriades," and such-like,
+and vow that here was the real thing, the undeniable Kalon?
+
+The undeniable fiddlestick!  For a hundred years, my dear sir, the
+world was humbugged by the so-called classical artists, as they now
+are by what is called the Christian art (of which anon); and it is
+curious to look at the pictorial traditions as here handed down.
+The consequence of them is, that scarce one of the classical
+pictures exhibited is worth much more than two-and-sixpence.
+Borrowed from statuary, in the first place, the color of the
+paintings seems, as much as possible, to participate in it; they
+are mostly of a misty, stony green, dismal hue, as if they had been
+painted in a world where no color was.  In every picture, there
+are, of course, white mantles, white urns, white columns, white
+statues--those oblige accomplishments of the sublime.  There are
+the endless straight noses, long eyes, round chins, short upper
+lips, just as they are ruled down for you in the drawing-books, as
+if the latter were the revelations of beauty, issued by supreme
+authority, from which there was no appeal?  Why is the classical
+reign to endure?  Why is yonder simpering Venus de' Medicis to be
+our standard of beauty, or the Greek tragedies to bound our notions
+of the sublime?  There was no reason why Agamemnon should set the
+fashions, and remain [Greek text omitted] to eternity: and there
+is a classical quotation, which you may have occasionally heard,
+beginning Vixere fortes, &c., which, as it avers that there were a
+great number of stout fellows before Agamemnon, may not unreasonably
+induce us to conclude that similar heroes were to succeed him.
+Shakspeare made a better man when his imagination moulded the mighty
+figure of Macbeth.  And if you will measure Satan by Prometheus, the
+blind old Puritan's work by that of the fiery Grecian poet, does not
+Milton's angel surpass Aeschylus's--surpass him by "many a rood?"
+
+In the same school of the Beaux Arts, where are to be found such a
+number of pale imitations of the antique, Monsieur Thiers (and he
+ought to be thanked for it) has caused to be placed a full-sized
+copy of "The Last Judgment" of Michel Angelo, and a number of casts
+from statues by the same splendid hand.  There IS the sublime, if
+you please--a new sublime--an original sublime--quite as sublime as
+the Greek sublime.  See yonder, in the midst of his angels, the
+Judge of the world descending in glory; and near him, beautiful and
+gentle, and yet indescribably august and pure, the Virgin by his
+side.  There is the "Moses," the grandest figure that ever was
+carved in stone.  It has about it something frightfully majestic,
+if one may so speak.  In examining this, and the astonishing
+picture of "The Judgment," or even a single figure of it, the
+spectator's sense amounts almost to pain.  I would not like to be
+left in a room alone with the "Moses."  How did the artist live
+amongst them, and create them?  How did he suffer the painful labor
+of invention?  One fancies that he would have been scorched up,
+like Semele, by sights too tremendous for his vision to bear.
+One cannot imagine him, with our small physical endowments and
+weaknesses, a man like ourselves.
+
+As for the Ecole Royale des Beaux Arts, then, and all the good its
+students have done, as students, it is stark naught.  When the men
+did anything, it was after they had left the academy, and began
+thinking for themselves.  There is only one picture among the many
+hundreds that has, to my idea, much merit (a charming composition
+of Homer singing, signed Jourdy); and the only good that the
+Academy has done by its pupils was to send them to Rome, where they
+might learn better things.  At home, the intolerable, stupid
+classicalities, taught by men who, belonging to the least erudite
+country in Europe, were themselves, from their profession, the
+least learned among their countrymen, only weighed the pupils down,
+and cramped their hands, their eyes, and their imaginations; drove
+them away from natural beauty, which, thank God, is fresh and
+attainable by us all, to-day, and yesterday, and to-morrow; and
+sent them rambling after artificial grace, without the proper means
+of judging or attaining it.
+
+A word for the building of the Palais des Beaux Arts.  It is
+beautiful, and as well finished and convenient as beautiful.  With
+its light and elegant fabric, its pretty fountain, its archway of
+the Renaissance, and fragments of sculpture, you can hardly see, on
+a fine day, a place more riant and pleasing.
+
+Passing from thence up the picturesque Rue de Seine, let us walk to
+the Luxembourg, where bonnes, students, grisettes, and old
+gentlemen with pigtails, love to wander in the melancholy, quaint
+old gardens; where the peers have a new and comfortable court of
+justice, to judge all the emeutes which are to take place; and
+where, as everybody knows, is the picture-gallery of modern French
+artists, whom government thinks worthy of patronage.
+
+A very great proportion of the pictures, as we see by the
+catalogue, are by the students whose works we have just been to
+visit at the Beaux Arts, and who, having performed their pilgrimage
+to Rome, have taken rank among the professors of the art.  I don't
+know a more pleasing exhibition; for there are not a dozen really
+bad pictures in the collection, some very good, and the rest
+showing great skill and smartness of execution.
+
+In the same way, however, that it has been supposed that no man
+could be a great poet unless he wrote a very big poem, the
+tradition is kept up among the painters, and we have here a vast
+number of large canvases, with figures of the proper heroical
+length and nakedness.  The anticlassicists did not arise in France
+until about 1827; and, in consequence, up to that period, we have
+here the old classical faith in full vigor.  There is Brutus,
+having chopped his son's head off, with all the agony of a father,
+and then, calling for number two; there is Aeneas carrying off old
+Anchises; there are Paris and Venus, as naked as two Hottentots,
+and many more such choice subjects from Lempriere.
+
+But the chief specimens of the sublime are in the way of murders,
+with which the catalogue swarms.  Here are a few extracts from it:--
+
+
+7. Beaume, Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur.  "The Grand Dauphiness
+Dying.
+
+18. Blondel, Chevalier de la, &c.  "Zenobia found Dead."
+
+36. Debay, Chevalier.  "The Death of Lucretia."
+
+38. Dejuinne.  "The Death of Hector."
+
+34. Court, Chevalier de la, &c.  "The Death of Caesar."
+
+39, 40, 41.  Delacroix, Chevalier.  "Dante and Virgil in the
+    Infernal Lake," "The Massacre of Scio," and "Medea going to
+    Murder her Children."
+
+43. Delaroche, Chevalier.  "Joas taken from among the Dead."
+
+44. "The Death of Queen Elizabeth."
+
+45. "Edward V. and his Brother" (preparing for death).
+
+50. "Hecuba going to be Sacrificed."  Drolling, Chevalier.
+
+51. Dubois.  "Young Clovis found Dead."
+
+56. Henry, Chevalier.  "The Massacre of St. Bartholomew."
+
+75. Guerin, Chevalier.  "Cain, after the Death of Abel."
+
+83. Jacquand.  "Death of Adelaide de Comminges."
+
+88. "The Death of Eudamidas."
+
+93. "The Death of Hymetto."
+
+103. "The Death of Philip of Austria."--And so on.
+
+
+You see what woful subjects they take, and how profusely they are
+decorated with knighthood.  They are like the Black Brunswickers,
+these painters, and ought to be called Chevaliers de la Mort.  I
+don't know why the merriest people in the world should please
+themselves with such grim representations and varieties of murder,
+or why murder itself should be considered so eminently sublime and
+poetical.  It is good at the end of a tragedy; but, then, it is
+good because it is the end, and because, by the events foregone,
+the mind is prepared for it.  But these men will have nothing but
+fifth acts; and seem to skip, as unworthy, all the circumstances
+leading to them.  This, however, is part of the scheme--the
+bloated, unnatural, stilted, spouting, sham sublime, that our
+teachers have believed and tried to pass off as real, and which
+your humble servant and other antihumbuggists should heartily,
+according to the strength that is in them, endeavor to pull down.
+What, for instance, could Monsieur Lafond care about the death of
+Eudamidas?  What was Hecuba to Chevalier Drolling, or Chevalier
+Drolling to Hecuba?  I would lay a wager that neither of them ever
+conjugated [Greek text omitted], and that their school learning
+carried them not as far as the letter, but only to the game of taw.
+How were they to be inspired by such subjects?  From having seen
+Talma and Mademoiselle Georges flaunting in sham Greek costumes,
+and having read up the articles Eudamidas, Hecuba, in the
+"Mythological Dictionary."  What a classicism, inspired by rouge,
+gas-lamps, and a few lines in Lempriere, and copied, half from
+ancient statues, and half from a naked guardsman at one shilling
+and sixpence the hour!
+
+Delacroix is a man of a very different genius, and his "Medea" is a
+genuine creation of a noble fancy.  For most of the others, Mrs.
+Brownrigg, and her two female 'prentices, would have done as well
+as the desperate Colchian with her [Greek text omitted].  M.
+Delacroix has produced a number of rude, barbarous pictures; but
+there is the stamp of genius on all of them,--the great poetical
+INTENTION, which is worth all your execution.  Delaroche is another
+man of high merit; with not such a great HEART, perhaps, as the
+other, but a fine and careful draughtsman, and an excellent
+arranger of his subject.  "The Death of Elizabeth" is a raw young
+performance seemingly--not, at least, to my taste.  The "Enfans
+d'Edouard" is renowned over Europe, and has appeared in a hundred
+different ways in print.  It is properly pathetic and gloomy, and
+merits fully its high reputation.  This painter rejoices in such
+subjects--in what Lord Portsmouth used to call "black jobs."  He
+has killed Charles I. and Lady Jane Grey, and the Dukes of Guise,
+and I don't know whom besides.  He is, at present, occupied with a
+vast work at the Beaux Arts, where the writer of this had the honor
+of seeing him,--a little, keen-looking man, some five feet in
+height.  He wore, on this important occasion, a bandanna round his
+head, and was in the act of smoking a cigar.
+
+Horace Vernet, whose beautiful daughter Delaroche married, is the
+king of French battle-painters--an amazingly rapid and dexterous
+draughtsman, who has Napoleon and all the campaigns by heart, and
+has painted the Grenadier Francais under all sorts of attitudes.
+His pictures on such subjects are spirited, natural, and excellent;
+and he is so clever a man, that all he does is good to a certain
+degree.  His "Judith" is somewhat violent, perhaps.  His "Rebecca"
+most pleasing; and not the less so for a little pretty affectation
+of attitude and needless singularity of costume.  "Raphael and
+Michael Angelo" is as clever a picture as can be--clever is just
+the word--the groups and drawing excellent, the coloring pleasantly
+bright and gaudy; and the French students study it incessantly;
+there are a dozen who copy it for one who copies Delacroix.  His
+little scraps of wood-cuts, in the now publishing "Life of
+Napoleon," are perfect gems in their way, and the noble price paid
+for them not a penny more than he merits.
+
+The picture, by Court, of "The Death of Caesar," is remarkable for
+effect and excellent workmanship: and the head of Brutus (who looks
+like Armand Carrel) is full of energy.  There are some beautiful
+heads of women, and some very good color in the picture.
+Jacquand's "Death of Adelaide de Comminges" is neither more nor
+less than beautiful.  Adelaide had, it appears, a lover, who betook
+himself to a convent of Trappists.  She followed him thither,
+disguised as a man, took the vows, and was not discovered by him
+till on her death-bed.  The painter has told this story in a most
+pleasing and affecting manner: the picture is full of onction and
+melancholy grace.  The objects, too, are capitally represented; and
+the tone and color very good.  Decaisne's "Guardian Angel" is not
+so good in color, but is equally beautiful in expression and grace.
+A little child and a nurse are asleep: an angel watches the infant.
+You see women look very wistfully at this sweet picture; and what
+triumph would a painter have more?
+
+We must not quit the Luxembourg without noticing the dashing sea-
+pieces of Gudin, and one or two landscapes by Giroux (the plain of
+Grasivaudan), and "The Prometheus" of Aligny.  This is an
+imitation, perhaps; as is a noble picture of "Jesus Christ and the
+Children," by Flandrin: but the artists are imitating better
+models, at any rate; and one begins to perceive that the odious
+classical dynasty is no more.  Poussin's magnificent "Polyphemus"
+(I only know a print of that marvellous composition) has, perhaps,
+suggested the first-named picture; and the latter has been inspired
+by a good enthusiastic study of the Roman schools.
+
+Of this revolution, Monsieur Ingres has been one of the chief
+instruments.  He was, before Horace Vernet, president of the French
+Academy at Rome, and is famous as a chief of a school.  When he
+broke up his atelier here, to set out for his presidency, many of
+his pupils attended him faithfully some way on his journey; and
+some, with scarcely a penny in their pouches, walked through France
+and across the Alps, in a pious pilgrimage to Rome, being
+determined not to forsake their old master.  Such an action was
+worthy of them, and of the high rank which their profession holds
+in France, where the honors to be acquired by art are only inferior
+to those which are gained in war.  One reads of such peregrinations
+in old days, when the scholars of some great Italian painter
+followed him from Venice to Rome, or from Florence to Ferrara.  In
+regard of Ingres's individual merit as a painter, the writer of
+this is not a fair judge, having seen but three pictures by him;
+one being a plafond in the Louvre, which his disciples much admire.
+
+Ingres stands between the Imperio-Davido-classical school of French
+art, and the namby-pamby mystical German school, which is for
+carrying us back to Cranach and Durer, and which is making progress
+here.
+
+For everything here finds imitation: the French have the genius of
+imitation and caricature.  This absurd humbug, called the Christian
+or Catholic art, is sure to tickle our neighbors, and will be a
+favorite with them, when better known.  My dear MacGilp, I do
+believe this to be a greater humbug than the humbug of David and
+Girodet, inasmuch as the latter was founded on Nature at least;
+whereas the former is made up of silly affectations, and
+improvements upon Nature.  Here, for instance, is Chevalier
+Ziegler's picture of "St. Luke painting the Virgin."  St. Luke has
+a monk's dress on, embroidered, however, smartly round the sleeves.
+The Virgin sits in an immense yellow-ochre halo, with her son in
+her arms.  She looks preternaturally solemn; as does St. Luke, who
+is eying his paint-brush with an intense ominous mystical look.
+They call this Catholic art.  There is nothing, my dear friend,
+more easy in life.  First take your colors, and rub them down
+clean,--bright carmine, bright yellow, bright sienna, bright
+ultramarine, bright green.  Make the costumes of your figures as
+much as possible like the costumes of the early part of the
+fifteenth century.  Paint them in with the above colors; and if on
+a gold ground, the more "Catholic" your art is.  Dress your
+apostles like priests before the altar; and remember to have a good
+commodity of crosiers, censers, and other such gimcracks, as you
+may see in the Catholic chapels, in Sutton Street and elsewhere.
+Deal in Virgins, and dress them like a burgomaster's wife by
+Cranach or Van Eyck.  Give them all long twisted tails to their
+gowns, and proper angular draperies.  Place all their heads on one
+side, with the eyes shut, and the proper solemn simper.  At the
+back of the head, draw, and gild with gold-leaf, a halo or glory,
+of the exact shape of a cart-wheel: and you have the thing done.
+It is Catholic art tout crache, as Louis Philippe says.  We have it
+still in England, handed down to us for four centuries, in the
+pictures on the cards, as the redoubtable king and queen of clubs.
+Look at them: you will see that the costumes and attitudes are
+precisely similar to those which figure in the catholicities of the
+school of Overbeck and Cornelius.
+
+Before you take your cane at the door, look for one instant at the
+statue-room.  Yonder is Jouffley's "Jeune Fille confiant son
+premier secret a Venus."  Charming, charming!  It is from the
+exhibition of this year only; and I think the best sculpture in the
+gallery--pretty, fanciful, naive; admirable in workmanship and
+imitation of Nature.  I have seldom seen flesh better represented
+in marble.  Examine, also, Jaley's "Pudeur," Jacquot's "Nymph," and
+Rude's "Boy with the Tortoise."  These are not very exalted
+subjects, or what are called exalted, and do not go beyond simple,
+smiling beauty and nature.  But what then?  Are we gods, Miltons,
+Michel Angelos, that can leave earth when we please; and soar to
+heights immeasurable?  No, my dear MacGilp; but the fools of
+academicians would fain make us so.  Are you not, and half the
+painters in London, panting for an opportunity to show your genius
+in a great "historical picture?"  O blind race!  Have you wings?
+Not a feather: and yet you must be ever puffing, sweating up to the
+tops of rugged hills; and, arrived there, clapping and shaking your
+ragged elbows, and making as if you would fly!  Come down, silly
+Daedalus; come down to the lowly places in which Nature ordered you
+to walk.  The sweet flowers are springing there; the fat muttons
+are waiting there; the pleasant sun shines there; be content and
+humble, and take your share of the good cheer.
+
+While we have been indulging in this discussion, the omnibus has
+gayly conducted us across the water; and le garde qui veille a la
+porte du Louvre ne defend pas our entry.
+
+What a paradise this gallery is for French students, or foreigners
+who sojourn in the capital!  It is hardly necessary to say that the
+brethren of the brush are not usually supplied by Fortune with any
+extraordinary wealth, or means of enjoying the luxuries with which
+Paris, more than any other city, abounds.  But here they have a
+luxury which surpasses all others, and spend their days in a palace
+which all the money of all the Rothschilds could not buy.  They
+sleep, perhaps, in a garret, and dine in a cellar; but no grandee
+in Europe has such a drawing-room.  Kings' houses have, at best,
+but damask hangings, and gilt cornices.  What are these to a wall
+covered with canvas by Paul Veronese, or a hundred yards of Rubens?
+Artists from England, who have a national gallery that resembles a
+moderate-sized gin-shop, who may not copy pictures, except under
+particular restrictions, and on rare and particular days, may revel
+here to their hearts' content.  Here is a room half a mile long,
+with as many windows as Aladdin's palace, open from sunrise till
+evening, and free to all manners and all varieties of study: the
+only puzzle to the student is to select the one he shall begin
+upon, and keep his eyes away from the rest.
+
+Fontaine's grand staircase, with its arches, and painted ceilings
+and shining Doric columns, leads directly to the gallery; but it
+is thought too fine for working days, and is only opened for the
+public entrance on Sabbath.  A little back stair (leading from a
+court, in which stand numerous bas-reliefs, and a solemn sphinx,
+of polished granite,) is the common entry for students and others,
+who, during the week, enter the gallery.
+
+Hither have lately been transported a number of the works of French
+artists, which formerly covered the walls of the Luxembourg (death
+only entitles the French painter to a place in the Louvre); and let
+us confine ourselves to the Frenchmen only, for the space of this
+letter.
+
+I have seen, in a fine private collection at St. Germain, one or
+two admirable single figures of David, full of life, truth, and
+gayety.  The color is not good, but all the rest excellent; and one
+of these so much-lauded pictures is the portrait of a washer-woman.
+"Pope Pius," at the Louvre, is as bad in color as remarkable for
+its vigor and look of life.  The man had a genius for painting
+portraits and common life, but must attempt the heroic;--failed
+signally; and what is worse, carried a whole nation blundering
+after him.  Had you told a Frenchman so, twenty years ago, he would
+have thrown the dementi in your teeth; or, at least, laughed at you
+in scornful incredulity.  They say of us that we don't know when we
+are beaten: they go a step further, and swear their defeats are
+victories.  David was a part of the glory of the empire; and one
+might as well have said then that "Romulus" was a bad picture, as
+that Toulouse was a lost battle.  Old-fashioned people, who believe
+in the Emperor, believe in the Theatre Francais, and believe that
+Ducis improved upon Shakspeare, have the above opinion.  Still, it
+is curious to remark, in this place, how art and literature become
+party matters, and political sects have their favorite painters and
+authors.
+
+Nevertheless, Jacques Louis David is dead, he died about a year
+after his bodily demise in 1825.  The romanticism killed him.
+Walter Scott, from his Castle of Abbotsford, sent out a troop of
+gallant young Scotch adventurers, merry outlaws, valiant knights,
+and savage Highlanders, who, with trunk hosen and buff jerkins,
+fierce two-handed swords, and harness on their back, did challenge,
+combat, and overcome the heroes and demigods of Greece and Rome.
+Notre Dame a la rescousse!  Sir Brian de Bois Guilbert has borne
+Hector of Troy clear out of his saddle.  Andromache may weep: but
+her spouse is beyond the reach of physic.  See! Robin Hood twangs
+his bow, and the heathen gods fly, howling.  Montjoie Saint Denis!
+down goes Ajax under the mace of Dunois; and yonder are Leonidas
+and Romulus begging their lives of Rob Roy Macgregor.  Classicism
+is dead.  Sir John Froissart has taken Dr. Lempriere by the nose,
+and reigns sovereign.
+
+Of the great pictures of David the defunct, we need not, then, say
+much.  Romulus is a mighty fine young fellow, no doubt; and if he
+has come out to battle stark naked (except a very handsome helmet),
+it is because the costume became him, and shows off his figure to
+advantage.  But was there ever anything so absurd as this passion
+for the nude, which was followed by all the painters of the
+Davidian epoch?  And how are we to suppose yonder straddle to be
+the true characteristic of the heroic and the sublime?  Romulus
+stretches his legs as far as ever nature will allow; the Horatii,
+in receiving their swords, think proper to stretch their legs too,
+and to thrust forward their arms, thus,--
+
+
+[Drawing omitted]
+
+
+Romulus's is in the exact action of a telegraph; and the Horatii
+are all in the position of the lunge.  Is this the sublime?  Mr.
+Angelo, of Bond Street, might admire the attitude; his namesake,
+Michel, I don't think would.
+
+The little picture of "Paris and Helen," one of the master's
+earliest, I believe, is likewise one of his best: the details are
+exquisitely painted.  Helen looks needlessly sheepish, and Paris
+has a most odious ogle; but the limbs of the male figure are
+beautifully designed, and have not the green tone which you see in
+the later pictures of the master.  What is the meaning of this
+green?  Was it the fashion, or the varnish?  Girodet's pictures
+are green; Gros's emperors and grenadiers have universally the
+jaundice.  Gerard's "Psyche" has a most decided green-sickness; and
+I am at a loss, I confess, to account for the enthusiasm which this
+performance inspired on its first appearance before the public.
+
+In the same room with it is Girodet's ghastly "Deluge," and
+Gericault's dismal "Medusa."  Gericault died, they say, for want of
+fame.  He was a man who possessed a considerable fortune of his
+own; but pined because no one in his day would purchase his
+pictures, and so acknowledge his talent.  At present, a scrawl from
+his pencil brings an enormous price.  All his works have a grand
+cachet: he never  did anything mean.  When he painted the "Raft of
+the Medusa," it is said he lived for a long time among the corpses
+which he painted, and that his studio was a second Morgue.  If you
+have not seen the picture, you are familiar probably, with
+Reynolds's admirable engraving of it.  A huge black sea; a raft
+beating upon it; a horrid company of men dead, half dead, writhing
+and frantic with hideous hunger or hideous hope; and, far away,
+black, against a stormy sunset, a sail.  The story is powerfully
+told, and has a legitimate tragic interest, so to speak,--deeper,
+because more natural, than Girodet's green "Deluge," for instance:
+or his livid "Orestes," or red-hot "Clytemnestra."
+
+Seen from a distance the latter's "Deluge" has a certain awe-
+inspiring air with it.  A slimy green man stands on a green rock,
+and clutches hold of a tree.  On the green man's shoulders is his
+old father, in a green old age; to him hangs his wife, with a babe
+on her breast, and dangling at her hair, another child.  In the
+water floats a corpse (a beautiful head) and a green sea and
+atmosphere envelops all this dismal group.  The old father is
+represented with a bag of money in his hand; and the tree, which
+the man catches, is cracking, and just on the point of giving way.
+These two points were considered very fine by the critics: they are
+two such ghastly epigrams as continually disfigure French Tragedy.
+For this reason I have never been able to read Racine with
+pleasure,--the dialogue is so crammed with these lugubrious good
+things--melancholy antitheses--sparkling undertakers' wit; but this
+is heresy, and had better be spoken discreetly.
+
+The gallery contains a vast number of Poussin's pictures; they put
+me in mind of the color of objects in dreams,--a strange, hazy,
+lurid hue.  How noble are some of his landscapes!  What a depth of
+solemn shadow is in yonder wood, near which, by the side of a black
+water, halts Diogenes.  The air is thunder-laden, and breathes
+heavily.  You hear ominous whispers in the vast forest gloom.
+
+Near it is a landscape, by Carel Dujardin, I believe, conceived in
+quite a different mood, but exquisitely poetical too.  A horseman
+is riding up a hill, and giving money to a blowsy beggar-wench.
+O matutini rores auraeque salubres! in what a wonderful way has the
+artist managed to create you out of a few bladders of paint and
+pots of varnish.  You can see the matutinal dews twinkling in the
+grass, and feel the fresh, salubrious airs ("the breath of Nature
+blowing free," as the corn-law man sings) blowing free over the
+heath; silvery vapors are rising up from the blue lowlands.  You
+can tell the hour of the morning and the time of the year: you can
+do anything but describe it in words.  As with regard to the
+Poussin above mentioned, one can never pass it without bearing away
+a certain pleasing, dreamy feeling of awe and musing; the other
+landscape inspires the spectator infallibly with the most
+delightful briskness and cheerfulness of spirit.  Herein lies the
+vast privilege of the landscape-painter: he does not address you
+with one fixed particular subject or expression, but with a
+thousand never contemplated by himself, and which only arise out of
+occasion.  You may always be looking at a natural landscape as at a
+fine pictorial imitation of one; it seems eternally producing new
+thoughts in your bosom, as it does fresh beauties from its own.  I
+cannot fancy more delightful, cheerful, silent companions for a man
+than half a dozen landscapes hung round his study.  Portraits, on
+the contrary, and large pieces of figures, have a painful, fixed,
+staring look, which must jar upon the mind in many of its moods.
+Fancy living in a room with David's sans-culotte Leonidas staring
+perpetually in your face!
+
+There is a little Watteau here, and a rare piece of fantastical
+brightness and gayety it is.  What a delightful affectation about
+yonder ladies flirting their fans, and trailing about in their long
+brocades!  What splendid dandies are those, ever-smirking, turning
+out their toes, with broad blue ribbons to tie up their crooks and
+their pigtails, and wonderful gorgeous crimson satin breeches!
+Yonder, in the midst of a golden atmosphere, rises a bevy of little
+round Cupids, bubbling up in clusters as out of a champagne-bottle,
+and melting away in air.  There is, to be sure, a hidden analogy
+between liquors and pictures: the eye is deliciously tickled by
+these frisky Watteaus, and yields itself up to a light, smiling,
+gentlemanlike intoxication.  Thus, were we inclined to pursue
+further this mighty subject, yonder landscape of Claude,--calm,
+fresh, delicate, yet full of flavor,--should be likened to a bottle
+of Chateau Margaux.  And what is the Poussin before spoken of but
+Romanee Gelee?--heavy, sluggish,--the luscious odor almost sickens
+you; a sultry sort of drink; your limbs sink under it; you feel as
+if you had been drinking hot blood.
+
+An ordinary man would be whirled away in a fever, or would hobble
+off this mortal stage in a premature gout-fit, if he too early or
+too often indulged in such tremendous drink.  I think in my heart
+I am fonder of pretty third-rate pictures than of your great
+thundering first-rates.  Confess how many times you have read
+Beranger, and how many Milton?  If you go to the "Star and Garter,"
+don't you grow sick of that vast, luscious landscape, and long for
+the sight of a couple of cows, or a donkey, and a few yards of
+common?  Donkeys, my dear MacGilp, since we have come to this
+subject, say not so; Richmond Hill for them.  Milton they never
+grow tired of; and are as familiar with Raphael as Bottom with
+exquisite Titania.  Let us thank heaven, my dear sir, for according
+to us the power to taste and appreciate the pleasures of
+mediocrity.  I have never heard that we were great geniuses.
+Earthy are we, and of the earth; glimpses of the sublime are but
+rare to us; leave we them to great geniuses, and to the donkeys;
+and if it nothing profit us aerias tentasse domos along with them,
+let us thankfully remain below, being merry and humble.
+
+I have now only to mention the charming "Cruche Cassee" of Greuze,
+which all the young ladies delight to copy; and of which the color
+(a thought too blue, perhaps) is marvellously graceful and
+delicate.  There are three more pictures by the artist, containing
+exquisite female heads and color; but they have charms for French
+critics which are difficult to be discovered by English eyes; and
+the pictures seem weak to me.  A very fine picture by Bon
+Bollongue, "Saint Benedict resuscitating a Child," deserves
+particular attention, and is superb in vigor and richness of color.
+You must look, too, at the large, noble, melancholy landscapes of
+Philippe de Champagne; and the two magnificent Italian pictures of
+Leopold Robert: they are, perhaps, the very finest pictures that
+the French school has produced,--as deep as Poussin, of a better
+color, and of a wonderful minuteness and veracity in the
+representation of objects.
+
+Every one of Lesueur's church-pictures is worth examining and
+admiring; they are full of "unction" and pious mystical grace.
+"Saint Scholastica" is divine; and the "Taking down from the Cross"
+as noble a composition as ever was seen; I care not by whom the
+other may be.  There is more beauty, and less affectation, about
+this picture than you will find in the performances of many Italian
+masters, with high-sounding names (out with it, and say RAPHAEL at
+once).  I hate those simpering Madonnas.  I declare that the
+"Jardiniere" is a puking, smirking miss, with nothing heavenly
+about her.  I vow that the "Saint Elizabeth" is a bad picture,--a
+bad composition, badly drawn, badly colored, in a bad imitation of
+Titian,--a piece of vile affectation.  I say, that when Raphael
+painted this picture two years before his death, the spirit of
+painting had gone from out of him; he was no longer inspired; IT
+WAS TIME THAT HE SHOULD DIE!!
+
+There,--the murder is out!  My paper is filled to the brim, and
+there is no time to speak of Lesueur's "Crucifixion," which is
+odiously colored, to be sure; but earnest, tender, simple, holy.
+But such things are most difficult to translate into words;--one
+lays down the pen, and thinks and thinks.  The figures appear, and
+take their places one by one: ranging themselves according to
+order, in light or in gloom, the colors are reflected duly in the
+little camera obscura of the brain, and the whole picture lies
+there complete; but can you describe it?  No, not if pens were
+fitch-brushes, and words were bladders of paint.  With which, for
+the present, adieu.
+
+Your faithful
+
+M. A. T.
+
+To Mr. ROBERT MACGILP,
+
+NEWMAN STREET, LONDON.
+
+
+
+
+THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN.
+
+
+Simon Gambouge was the son of Solomon Gambouge; and as all the
+world knows, both father and son were astonishingly clever fellows
+at their profession.  Solomon painted landscapes, which nobody
+bought; and Simon took a higher line, and painted portraits to
+admiration, only nobody came to sit to him.
+
+As he was not gaining five pounds a year by his profession, and had
+arrived at the age of twenty, at least, Simon determined to better
+himself by taking a wife,--a plan which a number of other wise men
+adopt, in similar years and circumstances.  So Simon prevailed upon
+a butcher's daughter (to whom he owed considerably for cutlets) to
+quit the meat-shop and follow him.  Griskinissa--such was the fair
+creature's name--"was as lovely a bit of mutton," her father said,
+"as ever a man would wish to stick a knife into."  She had sat to
+the painter for all sorts of characters; and the curious who
+possess any of Gambouge's pictures will see her as Venus, Minerva,
+Madonna, and in numberless other characters: Portrait of a lady--
+Griskinissa; Sleeping Nymph--Griskinissa, without a rag of clothes,
+lying in a forest; Maternal Solicitude--Griskinissa again, with
+young Master Gambouge, who was by this time the offspring of their
+affections.
+
+The lady brought the painter a handsome little fortune of a couple
+of hundred pounds; and as long as this sum lasted no woman could be
+more lovely or loving.  But want began speedily to attack their
+little household; bakers' bills were unpaid; rent was due, and the
+reckless landlord gave no quarter; and, to crown the whole, her
+father, unnatural butcher! suddenly stopped the supplies of mutton-
+chops; and swore that his daughter, and the dauber; her husband,
+should have no more of his wares.  At first they embraced tenderly,
+and, kissing and crying over their little infant, vowed to heaven
+that they would do without: but in the course of the evening
+Griskinissa grew peckish, and poor Simon pawned his best coat.
+
+When this habit of pawning is discovered, it appears to the poor a
+kind of Eldorado.  Gambouge and his wife were so delighted, that
+they, in the course of a month, made away with her gold chain, her
+great warming-pan, his best crimson plush inexpressibles, two wigs,
+a washhand basin and ewer, fire-irons, window-curtains, crockery,
+and arm-chairs.  Griskinissa said, smiling, that she had found a
+second father in HER UNCLE,--a base pun, which showed that her
+mind was corrupted, and that she was no longer the tender, simple
+Griskinissa of other days.
+
+I am sorry to say that she had taken to drinking; she swallowed the
+warming-pan in the course of three days, and fuddled herself one
+whole evening with the crimson plush breeches.
+
+Drinking is the devil--the father, that is to say, of all vices.
+Griskinissa's face and her mind grew ugly together; her good humor
+changed to bilious, bitter discontent; her pretty, fond epithets,
+to foul abuse and swearing; her tender blue eyes grew watery and
+blear, and the peach-color on her cheeks fled from its old
+habitation, and crowded up into her nose, where, with a number of
+pimples, it stuck fast.  Add to this a dirty, draggle-tailed
+chintz; long, matted hair, wandering into her eyes, and over her
+lean shoulders, which were once so snowy, and you have the picture
+of drunkenness and Mrs. Simon Gambouge.
+
+Poor Simon, who had been a gay, lively fellow enough in the days of
+his better fortune, was completely cast down by his present ill
+luck, and cowed by the ferocity of his wife.  From morning till
+night the neighbors could hear this woman's tongue, and understand
+her doings; bellows went skimming across the room, chairs were
+flumped down on the floor, and poor Gambouge's oil and varnish pots
+went clattering through the windows, or down the stairs.  The baby
+roared all day; and Simon sat pale and idle in a corner, taking a
+small sup at the brandy-bottle, when Mrs. Gambouge was out of the
+way.
+
+One day, as he sat disconsolately at his easel, furbishing up a
+picture of his wife, in the character of Peace, which he had
+commenced a year before, he was more than ordinarily desperate, and
+cursed and swore in the most pathetic manner.  "O miserable fate of
+genius!" cried he, "was I, a man of such commanding talents, born
+for this? to be bullied by a fiend of a wife; to have my
+masterpieces neglected by the world, or sold only for a few pieces?
+Cursed be the love which has misled me; cursed, be the art which is
+unworthy of me!  Let me dig or steal, let me sell myself as a
+soldier, or sell myself to the Devil, I should not be more wretched
+than I am now!"
+
+"Quite the contrary," cried a small, cheery voice.
+
+"What!" exclaimed Gambouge, trembling and surprised.  "Who's
+there?--where are you?--who are you?"
+
+"You were just speaking of me," said the voice.
+
+Gambouge held, in his left hand, his palette; in his right, a
+bladder of crimson lake, which he was about to squeeze out upon the
+mahogany.  "Where are you?" cried he again.
+
+"S-q-u-e-e-z-e!" exclaimed the little voice.
+
+Gambouge picked out the nail from the bladder, and gave a squeeze;
+when, as sure as I am living, a little imp spurted out from the
+hole upon the palette, and began laughing in the most singular and
+oily manner.
+
+When first born he was little bigger than a tadpole; then he grew
+to be as big as a mouse; then he arrived at the size of a cat; and
+then he jumped off the palette, and, turning head over heels, asked
+the poor painter what he wanted with him.
+
+The strange little animal twisted head over heels, and fixed
+himself at last upon the top of Gambouge's easel,--smearing out,
+with his heels, all the white and vermilion which had just been
+laid on the allegoric portrait of Mrs. Gambouge.
+
+"What!" exclaimed Simon, "is it the--"
+
+"Exactly so; talk of me, you know, and I am always at hand:
+besides, I am not half so black as I am painted, as you will see
+when you know me a little better."
+
+"Upon my word," said the painter, "it is a very singular surprise
+which you have given me.  To tell truth, I did not even believe in
+your existence."
+
+The little imp put on a theatrical air, and, with one of Mr.
+Macready's best looks, said,--
+
+
+     "There are more things in heaven and earth, Gambogio,
+      Than are dreamed of in your philosophy."
+
+
+Gambouge, being a Frenchman, did not understand the quotation, but
+felt somehow strangely and singularly interested in the conversation
+of his new friend.
+
+Diabolus continued: "You are a man of merit, and want money; you
+will starve on your merit; you can only get money from me.  Come,
+my friend, how much is it?  I ask the easiest interest in the
+world: old Mordecai, the usurer, has made you pay twice as heavily
+before now: nothing but the signature of a bond, which is a mere
+ceremony, and the transfer of an article which, in itself, is a
+supposition--a valueless, windy, uncertain property of yours,
+called, by some poet of your own, I think, an animula, vagula,
+blandula--bah! there is no use beating about the bush--I mean A
+SOUL.  Come, let me have it; you know you will sell it some other
+way, and not get such good pay for your bargain!"--and, having made
+this speech, the Devil pulled out from his fob a sheet as big as a
+double Times, only there was a different STAMP in the corner.
+
+It is useless and tedious to describe law documents: lawyers only
+love to read them; and they have as good in Chitty as any that are
+to be found in the Devil's own; so nobly have the apprentices
+emulated the skill of the master.  Suffice it to say, that poor
+Gambouge read over the paper, and signed it.  He was to have all he
+wished for seven years, and at the end of that time was to become
+the property of the -----; PROVIDED that, during the course of the
+seven years, every single wish which he might form should be
+gratified by the other of the contracting parties; otherwise the
+deed became null and non-avenue, and Gambouge should be left "to go
+to the ----- his own way."
+
+"You will never see me again," said Diabolus, in shaking hands with
+poor Simon, on whose fingers he left such a mark as is to be seen
+at this day--"never, at least, unless you want me; for everything
+you ask will be performed in the most quiet and every-day manner:
+believe me, it is best and most gentlemanlike, and avoids anything
+like scandal.  But if you set me about anything which is
+extraordinary, and out of the course of nature, as it were, come I
+must, you know; and of this you are the best judge."  So saying,
+Diabolus disappeared; but whether up the chimney, through the
+keyhole, or by any other aperture or contrivance, nobody knows.
+Simon Gambouge was left in a fever of delight, as, heaven forgive
+me! I believe many a worthy man would be, if he were allowed an
+opportunity to make a similar bargain.
+
+"Heigho!" said Simon.  "I wonder whether this be a reality or a
+dream.--I am sober, I know; for who will give me credit for the
+means to be drunk? and as for sleeping, I'm too hungry for that.  I
+wish I could see a capon and a bottle of white wine."
+
+"MONSIEUR SIMON!" cried a voice on the landing-place.
+
+"C'est ici," quoth Gambouge, hastening to open the door.  He did
+so; and lo! there was a restaurateur's boy at the door, supporting
+a tray, a tin-covered dish, and plates on the same; and, by its
+side, a tall amber-colored flask of Sauterne.
+
+"I am the new boy, sir," exclaimed this youth, on entering; "but I
+believe this is the right door, and you asked for these things."
+
+Simon grinned, and said, "Certainly, I did ASK FOR these things."
+But such was the effect which his interview with the demon had had
+on his innocent mind, that he took them, although he knew that they
+were for old Simon, the Jew dandy, who was mad after an opera girl,
+and lived on the floor beneath.
+
+"Go, my boy," he said; "it is good: call in a couple of hours, and
+remove the plates and glasses."
+
+The little waiter trotted down stairs, and Simon sat greedily down
+to discuss the capon and the white wine.  He bolted the legs, he
+devoured the wings, he cut every morsel of flesh from the breast;--
+seasoning his repast with pleasant draughts of wine, and caring
+nothing for the inevitable bill, which was to follow all.
+
+"Ye gods!" said he, as he scraped away at the backbone, "what a
+dinner! what wine!--and how gayly served up too!"  There were
+silver forks and spoons, and the remnants of the fowl were upon a
+silver dish.  "Why, the money for this dish and these spoons,"
+cried Simon, "would keep me and Mrs. G. for a month!  I WISH"--and
+here Simon whistled, and turned round to see that nobody was
+peeping--"I wish the plate were mine."
+
+Oh, the horrid progress of the Devil!  "Here they are," thought
+Simon to himself; "why should not I TAKE THEM?"  And take them he
+did.  "Detection," said he, "is not so bad as starvation; and I
+would as soon live at the galleys as live with Madame Gambouge."
+
+So Gambouge shovelled dish and spoons into the flap of his surtout,
+and ran down stairs as if the Devil were behind him--as, indeed, he
+was.
+
+He immediately made for the house of his old friend the pawnbroker--
+that establishment which is called in France the Mont de Piete.
+"I am obliged to come to you again, my old friend," said Simon,
+"with some family plate, of which I beseech you to take care."
+
+The pawnbroker smiled as he examined the goods.  "I can give you
+nothing upon them," said he.
+
+"What!" cried Simon; "not even the worth of the silver?"
+
+"No; I could buy them at that price at the 'Cafe Morisot,' Rue de
+la Verrerie, where, I suppose, you got them a little cheaper."
+And, so saying, he showed to the guilt-stricken Gambouge how the
+name of that coffee-house was inscribed upon every one of the
+articles which he had wished to pawn.
+
+The effects of conscience are dreadful indeed.  Oh! how fearful is
+retribution, how deep is despair, how bitter is remorse for crime--
+WHEN CRIME IS FOUND OUT!--otherwise, conscience takes matters much
+more easily.  Gambouge cursed his fate, and swore henceforth to be
+virtuous.
+
+"But, hark ye, my friend," continued the honest broker, "there is
+no reason why, because I cannot lend upon these things, I should
+not buy them: they will do to melt, if for no other purpose.  Will
+you have half the money?--speak, or I peach."
+
+Simon's resolves about virtue were dissipated instantaneously.
+"Give me half," he said, "and let me go.--What scoundrels are these
+pawnbrokers!" ejaculated he, as he passed out of the accursed shop,
+"seeking every wicked pretext to rob the poor man of his hard-won
+gain."
+
+When he had marched forwards for a street or two, Gambouge counted
+the money which he had received, and found that he was in possession
+of no less than a hundred francs.  It was night, as he reckoned out
+his equivocal gains, and he counted them at the light of a lamp.  He
+looked up at the lamp, in doubt as to the course he should next
+pursue: upon it was inscribed the simple number, 152.  "A
+gambling-house," thought Gambouge.  "I wish I had half the money
+that is now on the table, up stairs."
+
+He mounted, as many a rogue has done before him, and found half a
+hundred persons busy at a table of rouge et noir.  Gambouge's five
+napoleons looked insignificant by the side of the heaps which were
+around him; but the effects of the wine, of the theft, and of the
+detection by the pawnbroker, were upon him, and he threw down his
+capital stoutly upon the 0 0.
+
+It is a dangerous spot that 0 0, or double zero; but to Simon it
+was more lucky than to the rest of the world.  The ball went
+spinning round--in "its predestined circle rolled," as Shelley has
+it, after Goethe--and plumped down at last in the double zero.  One
+hundred and thirty-five gold napoleons (louis they were then) were
+counted out to the delighted painter.  "Oh, Diabolus!" cried he,
+"now it is that I begin to believe in thee!  Don't talk about
+merit," he cried; "talk about fortune.  Tell me not about heroes
+for the future--tell me of ZEROES."  And down went twenty napoleons
+more upon the 0.
+
+The Devil was certainly in the ball: round it twirled, and dropped
+into zero as naturally as a duck pops its head into a pond.  Our
+friend received five hundred pounds for his stake; and the
+croupiers and lookers-on began to stare at him.
+
+There were twelve thousand pounds on the table.  Suffice it to say,
+that Simon won half, and retired from the Palais Royal with a thick
+bundle of bank-notes crammed into his dirty three-cornered hat.  He
+had been but half an hour in the place, and he had won the revenues
+of a prince for half a year!
+
+Gambouge, as soon as he felt that he was a capitalist, and that he
+had a stake in the country, discovered that he was an altered man.
+He repented of his foul deed, and his base purloining of the
+restaurateur's plate.  "O honesty!" he cried, "how unworthy is an
+action like this of a man who has a property like mine!"  So he
+went back to the pawnbroker with the gloomiest face imaginable.
+"My friend," said he, "I have sinned against all that I hold most
+sacred: I have forgotten my family and my religion.  Here is thy
+money.  In the name of heaven, restore me the plate which I have
+wrongfully sold thee!"
+
+But the pawnbroker grinned, and said, "Nay, Mr. Gambouge, I will
+sell that plate for a thousand francs to you, or I never will sell
+it at all."
+
+"Well," cried Gambouge, "thou art an inexorable ruffian, Troisboules;
+but I will give thee all I am worth."  And here he produced a billet
+of five hundred francs.  "Look," said he, "this money is all I own;
+it is the payment of two years' lodging.  To raise it, I have toiled
+for many months; and, failing, I have been a criminal.  O heaven!
+I STOLE that plate that I might pay my debt, and keep my dear wife
+from wandering houseless.  But I cannot bear this load of ignominy--
+I cannot suffer the thought of this crime.  I will go to the person
+to whom I did wrong, I will starve, I will confess; but I will, I
+WILL do right!"
+
+The broker was alarmed.  "Give me thy note," he cried; "here is the
+plate."
+
+"Give me an acquittal first," cried Simon, almost broken-hearted;
+"sign me a paper, and the money is yours."  So Troisboules wrote
+according to Gambouge's dictation; "Received, for thirteen ounces
+of plate, twenty pounds."
+
+"Monster of iniquity!" cried the painter, "fiend of wickedness!
+thou art caught in thine own snares.  Hast thou not sold me five
+pounds' worth of plate for twenty?  Have I it not in my pocket?
+Art thou not a convicted dealer in stolen goods?  Yield, scoundrel,
+yield thy money, or I will bring thee to justice!"
+
+The frightened pawnbroker bullied and battled for a while; but he
+gave up his money at last, and the dispute ended.  Thus it will be
+seen that Diabolus had rather a hard bargain in the wily Gambouge.
+He had taken a victim prisoner, but he had assuredly caught a
+Tartar.  Simon now returned home, and, to do him justice, paid the
+bill for his dinner, and restored the plate.
+
+And now I may add (and the reader should ponder upon this, as a
+profound picture of human life), that Gambouge, since he had grown
+rich, grew likewise abundantly moral.  He was a most exemplary
+father.  He fed the poor, and was loved by them.  He scorned a
+base action.  And I have no doubt that Mr. Thurtell, or the late
+lamented Mr. Greenacre, in similar circumstances, would have acted
+like the worthy Simon Gambouge.
+
+There was but one blot upon his character--he hated Mrs. Gam. worse
+than ever.  As he grew more benevolent, she grew more virulent:
+when he went to plays, she went to Bible societies, and vice versa:
+in fact, she led him such a life as Xantippe led Socrates, or as a
+dog leads a cat in the same kitchen.  With all his fortune--for, as
+may be supposed, Simon prospered in all worldly things--he was the
+most miserable dog in the whole city of Paris.  Only in the point
+of drinking did he and Mrs. Simon agree; and for many years, and
+during a considerable number of hours in each day, he thus
+dissipated, partially, his domestic chagrin.  O philosophy! we may
+talk of thee: but, except at the bottom of the winecup, where thou
+liest like truth in a well, where shall we find thee?
+
+He lived so long, and in his worldly matters prospered so much,
+there was so little sign of devilment in the accomplishment of his
+wishes, and the increase of his prosperity, that Simon, at the end
+of six years, began to doubt whether he had made any such bargain
+at all, as that which we have described at the commencement of this
+history.  He had grown, as we said, very pious and moral.  He went
+regularly to mass, and had a confessor into the bargain.  He
+resolved, therefore, to consult that reverend gentleman, and to lay
+before him the whole matter.
+
+"I am inclined to think, holy sir," said Gambouge, after he had
+concluded his history, and shown how, in some miraculous way, all
+his desires were accomplished, "that, after all, this demon was no
+other than the creation of my own brain, heated by the effects of
+that bottle of wine, the cause of my crime and my prosperity."
+
+The confessor agreed with him, and they walked out of church
+comfortably together, and entered afterwards a cafe, where they sat
+down to refresh themselves after the fatigues of their devotion.
+
+A respectable old gentleman, with a number of orders at his
+buttonhole, presently entered the room, and sauntered up to the
+marble table, before which reposed Simon and his clerical friend.
+"Excuse me, gentlemen," he said, as he took a place opposite them,
+and began reading the papers of the day.
+
+"Bah!" said he, at last,--"sont-ils grands ces journaux Anglais?
+Look, sir," he said, handing over an immense sheet of The Times to
+Mr. Gambouge, "was ever anything so monstrous?"
+
+Gambouge smiled politely, and examined the proffered page.  "It is
+enormous" he said; "but I do not read English."
+
+"Nay," said the man with the orders, "look closer at it, Signor
+Gambouge; it is astonishing how easy the language is."
+
+Wondering, Simon took a sheet of paper.  He turned pale as he
+looked at it, and began to curse the ices and the waiter.  "Come,
+M. l'Abbe," he said; "the heat and glare of this place are
+intolerable."
+
+The stranger rose with them.  "Au plaisir de vous revoir, mon cher
+monsieur," said he; "I do not mind speaking before the Abbe here,
+who will be my very good friend one of these days: but I thought it
+necessary to refresh your memory, concerning our little business
+transaction six years since; and could not exactly talk of it AT
+CHURCH, as you may fancy."
+
+Simon Gambouge had seen, in the double-sheeted Times, the paper
+signed by himself, which the little Devil had pulled out of his
+fob.
+
+There was no doubt on the subject; and Simon, who had but a year
+to live, grew more pious, and more careful than ever.  He had
+consultations with all the doctors of the Sorbonne and all the
+lawyers of the Palais.  But his magnificence grew as wearisome to
+him as his poverty had been before; and not one of the doctors whom
+he consulted could give him a pennyworth of consolation.
+
+Then he grew outrageous in his demands upon the Devil, and put him
+to all sorts of absurd and ridiculous tasks; but they were all
+punctually performed, until Simon could invent no new ones, and the
+Devil sat all day with his hands in his pockets doing nothing.
+
+One day, Simon's confessor came bounding into the room, with the
+greatest glee.  "My friend," said he, "I have it!  Eureka!--I have
+found it.  Send the Pope a hundred thousand crowns, build a new
+Jesuit college at Rome, give a hundred gold candlesticks to St.
+Peter's; and tell his Holiness you will double all, if he will give
+you absolution!"
+
+Gambouge caught at the notion, and hurried off a courier to Rome
+ventre a terre.  His Holiness agreed to the request of the
+petition, and sent him an absolution, written out with his own
+fist, and all in due form.
+
+"Now," said he, "foul fiend, I defy you! arise, Diabolus! your
+contract is not worth a jot: the Pope has absolved me, and I am
+safe on the road to salvation."  In a fervor of gratitude he
+clasped the hand of his confessor, and embraced him: tears of joy
+ran down the cheeks of these good men.
+
+They heard an inordinate roar of laughter, and there was Diabolus
+sitting opposite to them, holding his sides, and lashing his tail
+about, as if he would have gone mad with glee.
+
+"Why," said he, "what nonsense is this! do you suppose I care about
+THAT?" and he tossed the Pope's missive into a corner.  "M. l'Abbe
+knows," he said, bowing and grinning, "that though the Pope's paper
+may pass current HERE, it is not worth twopence in our country.
+What do I care about the Pope's absolution?  You might just as well
+be absolved by your under butler."
+
+"Egad," said the Abbe, "the rogue is right--I quite forgot the
+fact, which he points out clearly enough."
+
+"No, no, Gambouge," continued Diabolus, with horrid familiarity.
+"go thy ways, old fellow, that COCK WON'T FIGHT."  And he retired
+up the chimney, chuckling at his wit and his triumph.  Gambouge
+heard his tail scuttling all the way up, as if he had been a
+sweeper by profession.
+
+Simon was left in that condition of grief in which, according to
+the newspapers, cities and nations are found when a murder is
+committed, or a lord ill of the gout--a situation, we say, more
+easy to imagine than to describe.
+
+To add to his woes, Mrs. Gambouge, who was now first made acquainted
+with his compact, and its probable consequences, raised such a storm
+about his ears, as made him wish almost that his seven years were
+expired.  She screamed, she scolded, she swore, she wept, she went
+into such fits of hysterics, that poor Gambouge, who had completely
+knocked under to her, was worn out of his life.  He was allowed no
+rest, night or day: he moped about his fine house, solitary and
+wretched, and cursed his stars that he ever had married the
+butcher's daughter.
+
+It wanted six months of the time.
+
+A sudden and desperate resolution seemed all at once to have taken
+possession of Simon Gambouge.  He called his family and his friends
+together--he gave one of the greatest feasts that ever was known in
+the city of Paris--he gayly presided at one end of his table, while
+Mrs. Gam., splendidly arrayed, gave herself airs at the other
+extremity.
+
+After dinner, using the customary formula, he called upon Diabolus
+to appear.  The old ladies screamed, and hoped he would not appear
+naked; the young ones tittered, and longed to see the monster:
+everybody was pale with expectation and affright.
+
+A very quiet, gentlemanly man, neatly dressed in black, made his
+appearance, to the surprise of all present, and bowed all round to
+the company.  "I will not show my CREDENTIALS," he said, blushing,
+and pointing to his hoofs, which were cleverly hidden by his pumps
+and shoe-buckles, "unless the ladies absolutely wish it; but I am
+the person you want, Mr. Gambouge; pray tell me what is your will."
+
+"You know," said that gentleman, in a stately and determined voice,
+"that you are bound to me, according to our agreement, for six
+months to come."
+
+"I am," replied the new comer.
+
+"You are to do all that I ask, whatsoever it may be, or you forfeit
+the bond which I gave you?"
+
+"It is true."
+
+"You declare this before the present company?"
+
+"Upon my honor, as a gentleman," said Diabolus, bowing, and laying
+his hand upon his waistcoat.
+
+A whisper of applause ran round the room: all were charmed with the
+bland manners of the fascinating stranger.
+
+"My love," continued Gambouge, mildly addressing his lady, "will
+you be so polite as to step this way?  You know I must go soon, and
+I am anxious, before this noble company, to make a provision for
+one who, in sickness as in health, in poverty as in riches, has
+been my truest and fondest companion."
+
+Gambouge mopped his eyes with his handkerchief--all the company did
+likewise.  Diabolus sobbed audibly, and Mrs. Gambouge sidled up to
+her husband's side, and took him tenderly by the hand.  "Simon!"
+said she, "is it true? and do you really love your Griskinissa?"
+
+Simon continued solemnly: "Come hither, Diabolus; you are bound to
+obey me in all things for the six months during which our contract
+has to run; take, then, Griskinissa Gambouge, live alone with her
+for half a year, never leave her from morning till night, obey all
+her caprices, follow all her whims, and listen to all the abuse
+which falls from her infernal tongue.  Do this, and I ask no more
+of you; I will deliver myself up at the appointed time."
+
+Not Lord G---, when flogged by lord B---, in the House,--not Mr.
+Cartlitch, of Astley's Amphitheatre, in his most pathetic passages,
+could look more crestfallen, and howl more hideously, than Diabolus
+did now.  "Take another year, Gambouge," screamed he; "two more--
+ten more--a century; roast me on Lawrence's gridiron, boil me in
+holy water, but don't ask that: don't, don't bid me live with Mrs.
+Gambouge!"
+
+Simon smiled sternly.  "I have said it," he cried; "do this, or our
+contract is at an end."
+
+The Devil, at this, grinned so horribly that every drop of beer in
+the house turned sour: he gnashed his teeth so frightfully that
+every person in the company wellnigh fainted with the cholic.  He
+slapped down the great parchment upon the floor, trampled upon
+it madly, and lashed it with his hoofs and his tail: at last,
+spreading out a mighty pair of wings as wide as from here to Regent
+Street, he slapped Gambouge with his tail over one eye, and
+vanished, abruptly, through the keyhole.
+
+Gambouge screamed with pain and started up.  "You drunken, lazy
+scoundrel!" cried a shrill and well-known voice, "you have been
+asleep these two hours:" and here he received another terrific box
+on the ear.
+
+It was too true, he had fallen asleep at his work; and the
+beautiful vision had been dispelled by the thumps of the tipsy
+Griskinissa.  Nothing remained to corroborate his story, except the
+bladder of lake, and this was spirted all over his waistcoat and
+breeches.
+
+"I wish," said the poor fellow, rubbing his tingling cheeks, "that
+dreams were true;" and he went to work again at his portrait.
+
+My last accounts of Gambouge are, that he has left the arts, and is
+footman in a small family.  Mrs. Gam. takes in washing; and it is
+said that, her continual dealings with soap-suds and hot water have
+been the only things in life which have kept her from spontaneous
+combustion.
+
+
+
+CARTOUCHE.
+
+
+I have been much interested with an account of the exploits of
+Monsieur Louis Dominic Cartouche, and as Newgate and the highways
+are so much the fashion with us in England, we may be allowed to
+look abroad for histories of a similar tendency.  It is pleasant to
+find that virtue is cosmopolite, and may exist among wooden-shoed
+Papists as well as honest Church-of-England men.
+
+Louis Dominic was born in a quarter of Paris called the Courtille,
+says the historian whose work lies before me;--born in the
+Courtille, and in the year 1693.  Another biographer asserts that
+he was born two years later, and in the Marais;--of respectable
+parents, of course.  Think of the talent that our two countries
+produced about this time: Marlborough, Villars, Mandrin, Turpin,
+Boileau, Dryden, Swift, Addison, Moliere, Racine, Jack Sheppard,
+and Louis Cartouche,--all famous within the same twenty years, and
+fighting, writing, robbing a l'envi!
+
+Well, Marlborough was no chicken when he began to show his genius;
+Swift was but a dull, idle, college lad; but if we read the
+histories of some other great men mentioned in the above list--
+I mean the thieves, especially--we shall find that they all
+commenced very early: they showed a passion for their art, as
+little Raphael did, or little Mozart; and the history of Cartouche's
+knaveries begins almost with his breeches.
+
+Dominic's parents sent him to school at the college of Clermont
+(now Louis le Grand); and although it has never been discovered
+that the Jesuits, who directed that seminary, advanced him much in
+classical or theological knowledge, Cartouche, in revenge, showed,
+by repeated instances, his own natural bent and genius, which no
+difficulties were strong enough to overcome.  His first great
+action on record, although not successful in the end, and tinctured
+with the innocence of youth, is yet highly creditable to him.  He
+made a general swoop of a hundred and twenty nightcaps belonging to
+his companions, and disposed of them to his satisfaction; but as it
+was discovered that of all the youths in the college of Clermont,
+he only was the possessor of a cap to sleep in, suspicion (which,
+alas! was confirmed) immediately fell upon him: and by this little
+piece of youthful naivete, a scheme, prettily conceived and smartly
+performed, was rendered naught.
+
+Cartouche had a wonderful love for good eating, and put all the
+apple-women and cooks, who came to supply the students, under
+contribution.  Not always, however, desirous of robbing these, he
+used to deal with them, occasionally, on honest principles of
+barter; that is, whenever he could get hold of his schoolfellows'
+knives, books, rulers, or playthings, which he used fairly to
+exchange for tarts and gingerbread.
+
+It seemed as if the presiding genius of evil was determined to
+patronize this young man; for before he had been long at college,
+and soon after he had, with the greatest difficulty, escaped from
+the nightcap scrape, an opportunity occurred by which he was
+enabled to gratify both his propensities at once, and not only to
+steal, but to steal sweetmeats.  It happened that the principal of
+the college received some pots of Narbonne honey, which came under
+the eyes of Cartouche, and in which that young gentleman, as soon
+as ever he saw them, determined to put his fingers.  The president
+of the college put aside his honey-pots in an apartment within his
+own; to which, except by the one door which led into the room which
+his reverence usually occupied, there was no outlet.  There was no
+chimney in the room; and the windows looked into the court, where
+there was a porter at night, and where crowds passed by day.  What
+was Cartouche to do?--have the honey he must.
+
+Over this chamber, which contained what his soul longed after, and
+over the president's rooms, there ran a set of unoccupied garrets,
+into which the dexterous Cartouche penetrated.  These were divided
+from the rooms below, according to the fashion of those days, by a
+set of large beams, which reached across the whole building, and
+across which rude planks were laid, which formed the ceiling of the
+lower story and the floor of the upper.  Some of these planks did
+young Cartouche remove; and having descended by means of a rope,
+tied a couple of others to the neck of the honey-pots, climbed back
+again, and drew up his prey in safety.  He then cunningly fixed the
+planks again in their old places, and retired to gorge himself upon
+his booty.  And, now, see the punishment of avarice!  Everybody
+knows that the brethren of the order of Jesus are bound by a vow to
+have no more than a certain small sum of money in their possession.
+The principal of the college of Clermont had amassed a larger sum,
+in defiance of this rule: and where do you think the old gentleman
+had hidden it?  In the honey-pots!  As Cartouche dug his spoon into
+one of them, he brought out, besides a quantity of golden honey, a
+couple of golden louis, which, with ninety-eight more of their
+fellows, were comfortably hidden in the pots.  Little Dominic, who,
+before, had cut rather a poor figure among his fellow-students, now
+appeared in as fine clothes as any of them could boast of; and when
+asked by his parents, on going home, how he came by them, said that
+a young nobleman of his schoolfellows had taken a violent fancy to
+him, and made him a present of a couple of his suits.  Cartouche
+the elder, good man, went to thank the young nobleman; but none
+such could be found, and young Cartouche disdained to give any
+explanation of his manner of gaining the money.
+
+Here, again, we have to regret and remark the inadvertence of
+youth.  Cartouche lost a hundred louis--for what?  For a pot of
+honey not worth a couple of shillings.  Had he fished out the
+pieces, and replaced the pots and the honey, he might have been
+safe, and a respectable citizen all his life after.  The principal
+would not have dared to confess the loss of his money, and did not,
+openly; but he vowed vengeance against the stealer of his
+sweetmeat, and a rigid search was made.  Cartouche, as usual, was
+fixed upon; and in the tick of his bed, lo! there were found a
+couple of empty honey-pots!  From this scrape there is no knowing
+how he would have escaped, had not the president himself been a
+little anxious to hush the matter up; and accordingly, young
+Cartouche was made to disgorge the residue of his ill-gotten gold
+pieces, old Cartouche made up the deficiency, and his son was
+allowed to remain unpunished--until the next time.
+
+This, you may fancy, was not very long in coming; and though
+history has not made us acquainted with the exact crime which Louis
+Dominic next committed, it must have been a serious one; for
+Cartouche, who had borne philosophically all the whippings and
+punishments which were administered to him at college, did not dare
+to face that one which his indignant father had in pickle for him.
+As he was coming home from school, on the first day after his
+crime, when he received permission to go abroad, one of his
+brothers, who was on the look-out for him, met him at a short
+distance from home, and told him what was in preparation; which so
+frightened this young thief, that he declined returning home
+altogether, and set out upon the wide world to shift for himself
+as he could.
+
+Undoubted as his genius was, he had not arrived at the full
+exercise of it, and his gains were by no means equal to his
+appetite.  In whatever professions he tried,--whether he joined the
+gipsies, which he did,--whether he picked pockets on the Pont Neuf,
+which occupation history attributes to him,--poor Cartouche was
+always hungry.  Hungry and ragged, he wandered from one place and
+profession to another, and regretted the honey-pots at Clermont,
+and the comfortable soup and bouilli at home.
+
+Cartouche had an uncle, a kind man, who was a merchant, and had
+dealings at Rouen.  One day, walking on the quays of that city,
+this gentleman saw a very miserable, dirty, starving lad, who had
+just made a pounce upon some bones and turnip-peelings, that had
+been flung out on the quay, and was eating them as greedily as if
+they had been turkeys and truffles.  The worthy man examined the
+lad a little closer.  O heavens! it was their runaway prodigal--it
+was little Louis Dominic!  The merchant was touched by his case;
+and forgetting the nightcaps, the honey-pots, and the rags and dirt
+of little Louis, took him to his arms, and kissed and hugged him
+with the tenderest affection.  Louis kissed and hugged too, and
+blubbered a great deal: he was very repentant, as a man often is
+when he is hungry; and he went home with his uncle, and his peace
+was made; and his mother got him new clothes, and filled his belly,
+and for a while Louis was as good a son as might be.
+
+But why attempt to balk the progress of genius?  Louis's was not to
+be kept down.  He was sixteen years of age by this time--a smart,
+lively young fellow, and, what is more, desperately enamored of a
+lovely washerwoman.  To be successful in your love, as Louis knew,
+you must have something more than mere flames and sentiment;--a
+washer, or any other woman, cannot live upon sighs only; but must
+have new gowns and caps, and a necklace every now and then, and a
+few handkerchiefs and silk stockings, and a treat into the country
+or to the play.  Now, how are all these things to be had without
+money?  Cartouche saw at once that it was impossible; and as his
+father would give him none, he was obliged to look for it
+elsewhere.  He took to his old courses, and lifted a purse here,
+and a watch there; and found, moreover, an accommodating gentleman,
+who took the wares off his hands.
+
+This gentleman introduced him into a very select and agreeable
+society, in which Cartouche's merit began speedily to be
+recognized, and in which he learnt how pleasant it is in life to
+have friends to assist one, and how much may be done by a proper
+division of labor.  M. Cartouche, in fact, formed part of a regular
+company or gang of gentlemen, who were associated together for the
+purpose of making war on the public and the law.
+
+Cartouche had a lovely young sister, who was to be married to a
+rich young gentleman from the provinces.  As is the fashion in
+France, the parents had arranged the match among themselves; and
+the young people had never met until just before the time appointed
+for the marriage, when the bridegroom came up to Paris with his
+title-deeds, and settlements, and money.  Now there can hardly be
+found in history a finer instance of devotion than Cartouche now
+exhibited.  He went to his captain, explained the matter to him,
+and actually, for the good of his country, as it were (the thieves
+might be called his country), sacrificed his sister's husband's
+property.  Informations were taken, the house of the bridegroom was
+reconnoitred, and, one night, Cartouche, in company with some
+chosen friends, made his first visit to the house of his brother-
+in-law.  All the people were gone to bed; and, doubtless, for fear
+of disturbing the porter, Cartouche and his companions spared him
+the trouble of opening the door, by ascending quietly at the
+window.  They arrived at the room where the bridegroom kept his
+great chest, and set industriously to work, filing and picking the
+locks which defended the treasure.
+
+The bridegroom slept in the next room; but however tenderly
+Cartouche and his workmen handled their tools, from fear of
+disturbing his slumbers, their benevolent design was disappointed,
+for awaken him they did; and quietly slipping out of bed, he came
+to a place where he had a complete view of all that was going on.
+He did not cry out, or frighten himself sillily; but, on the
+contrary, contented himself with watching the countenances of the
+robbers, so that he might recognize them on another occasion; and,
+though an avaricious man, he did not feel the slightest anxiety
+about his money-chest; for the fact is, he had removed all the cash
+and papers the day before.
+
+As soon, however, as they had broken all the locks, and found the
+nothing which lay at the bottom of the chest, he shouted with such
+a loud voice, "Here, Thomas!--John!--officer!--keep the gate, fire
+at the rascals!" that they, incontinently taking fright, skipped
+nimbly out of window, and left the house free.
+
+Cartouche, after this, did not care to meet his brother-in-law, but
+eschewed all those occasions on which the latter was to be present
+at his father's house.  The evening before the marriage came; and
+then his father insisted upon his appearance among the other
+relatives of the bride's and bridegroom's families, who were all to
+assemble and make merry.  Cartouche was obliged to yield; and
+brought with him one or two of his companions, who had been, by the
+way, present in the affair of the empty money-boxes; and though he
+never fancied that there was any danger in meeting his brother-in-
+law, for he had no idea that he had been seen on the night of the
+attack, with a natural modesty, which did him really credit, he
+kept out of the young bridegroom's sight as much as he could, and
+showed no desire to be presented to him.  At supper, however, as he
+was sneaking modestly down to a side-table, his father shouted
+after him, "Ho, Dominic, come hither, and sit opposite to your
+brother-in-law:" which Dominic did, his friends following.  The
+bridegroom pledged him very gracefully in a bumper; and was in the
+act of making him a pretty speech, on the honor of an alliance with
+such a family, and on the pleasures of brother-in-lawship in
+general, when, looking in his face--ye gods! he saw the very man
+who had been filing at his money-chest a few nights ago!  By his
+side, too, sat a couple more of the gang.  The poor fellow turned
+deadly pale and sick, and, setting his glass down, ran quickly out
+of the room, for he thought he was in company of a whole gang of
+robbers.  And when he got home, he wrote a letter to the elder
+Cartouche, humbly declining any connection with his family.
+
+Cartouche the elder, of course, angrily asked the reason of such an
+abrupt dissolution of the engagement; and then, much to his horror,
+heard of his eldest son's doings.  "You would not have me marry
+into such a family?" said the ex-bridegroom.  And old Cartouche, an
+honest old citizen, confessed, with a heavy heart, that he would
+not.  What was he to do with the lad?  He did not like to ask for a
+lettre de cachet, and shut him up in the Bastile.  He determined to
+give him a year's discipline at the monastery of St. Lazare.
+
+But how to catch the young gentleman?  Old Cartouche knew that,
+were he to tell his son of the scheme, the latter would never obey,
+and, therefore, he determined to be very cunning.  He told Dominic
+that he was about to make a heavy bargain with the fathers, and
+should require a witness; so they stepped into a carriage together,
+and drove unsuspectingly to the Rue St. Denis.  But, when they
+arrived near the convent, Cartouche saw several ominous figures
+gathering round the coach, and felt that his doom was sealed.
+However, he made as if he knew nothing of the conspiracy; and the
+carriage drew up, and his father, descended, and, bidding him wait
+for a minute in the coach, promised to return to him.  Cartouche
+looked out; on the other side of the way half a dozen men were
+posted, evidently with the intention of arresting him.
+
+Cartouche now performed a great and celebrated stroke of genius,
+which, if he had not been professionally employed in the morning,
+he never could have executed.  He had in his pocket a piece of
+linen, which he had laid hold of at the door of some shop, and from
+which he quickly tore three suitable stripes.  One he tied round
+his head, after the fashion of a nightcap; a second round his
+waist, like an apron; and with the third he covered his hat, a
+round one, with a large brim.  His coat and his periwig lie left
+behind him in the carriage; and when he stepped out from it (which
+he did without asking the coachman to let down the steps), he bore
+exactly the appearance of a cook's boy carrying a dish; and with
+this he slipped through the exempts quite unsuspected, and bade
+adieu to the Lazarists and his honest father, who came out speedily
+to seek him, and was not a little annoyed to find only his coat and
+wig.
+
+With that coat and wig, Cartouche left home, father, friends,
+conscience, remorse, society, behind him.  He discovered (like a
+great number of other philosophers and poets, when they have
+committed rascally actions) that the world was all going wrong, and
+he quarrelled with it outright.  One of the first stories told of
+the illustrious Cartouche, when he became professionally and openly
+a robber, redounds highly to his credit, and shows that he knew how
+to take advantage of the occasion, and how much he had improved in
+the course of a very few years' experience.  His courage and
+ingenuity were vastly admired by his friends; so much so, that, one
+day, the captain of the band thought fit to compliment him, and
+vowed that when he (the captain) died, Cartouche should infallibly
+be called to the command-in-chief.  This conversation, so
+flattering to Cartouche, was carried on between the two gentlemen,
+as they were walking, one night, on the quays by the side of the
+Seine.  Cartouche, when the captain made the last remark,
+blushingly protested against it, and pleaded his extreme youth as
+a reason why his comrades could never put entire trust in him.
+"Psha, man!" said the captain, "thy youth is in thy favor; thou
+wilt live only the longer to lead thy troops to victory.  As for
+strength, bravery, and cunning, wert thou as old as Methuselah,
+thou couldst not be better provided than thou art now, at
+eighteen."  What was the reply of Monsieur Cartouche?  He answered,
+not by words, but by actions.  Drawing his knife from his girdle,
+he instantly dug it into the captain's left side, as near his heart
+as possible; and then, seizing that imprudent commander,
+precipitated him violently into the waters of the Seine, to keep
+company with the gudgeons and river-gods.  When he returned to
+the band, and recounted how the captain had basely attempted to
+assassinate him, and how he, on the contrary, had, by exertion of
+superior skill, overcome the captain, not one of the society
+believed a word of his history; but they elected him captain
+forthwith.  I think his Excellency Don Rafael Maroto, the
+pacificator of Spain, is an amiable character, for whom history
+has not been written in vain.
+
+Being arrived at this exalted position, there is no end of the
+feats which Cartouche performed; and his band reached to such a
+pitch of glory, that if there had been a hundred thousand, instead
+of a hundred of them, who knows but that a new and popular dynasty
+might not have been founded, and "Louis Dominic, premier Empereur
+des Francais," might have performed innumerable glorious actions,
+and fixed himself in the hearts of his people, just as other
+monarchs have done, a hundred years after Cartouche's death.
+
+A story similar to the above, and equally moral, is that of
+Cartouche, who, in company with two other gentlemen, robbed the
+coche, or packet-boat, from Melun, where they took a good quantity
+of booty,--making the passengers lie down on the decks, and rifling
+them at leisure.  "This money will be but very little among three,"
+whispered Cartouche to his neighbor, as the three conquerors were
+making merry over their gains; "if you were but to pull the trigger
+of your pistol in the neighborhood of your comrade's ear, perhaps
+it might go off, and then there would be but two of us to share."
+Strangely enough, as Cartouche said, the pistol DID go off, and No.
+3 perished.  "Give him another ball," said Cartouche; and another
+was fired into him.  But no sooner had Cartouche's comrade
+discharged both his pistols, than Cartouche himself, seized with a
+furious indignation, drew his: "Learn, monster," cried he, "not to
+be so greedy of gold, and perish, the victim of thy disloyalty and
+avarice!"  So Cartouche slew the second robber; and there is no man
+in Europe who can say that the latter did not merit well his
+punishment.
+
+I could fill volumes, and not mere sheets of paper, with tales of
+the triumphs of Cartouche and his band; how he robbed the Countess
+of O----, going to Dijon, in her coach, and how the Countess fell
+in love with him, and was faithful to him ever after; how, when the
+lieutenant of police offered a reward of a hundred pistoles to any
+man who would bring Cartouche before him, a noble Marquess, in a
+coach and six, drove up to the hotel of the police; and the noble
+Marquess, desiring to see Monsieur de la Reynie, on matters of the
+highest moment, alone, the latter introduced him into his private
+cabinet; and how, when there, the Marquess drew from his pocket a
+long, curiously shaped dagger: "Look at this, Monsieur de la
+Reynie," said he; "this dagger is poisoned!"
+
+"Is it possible?" said M. de la Reynie.
+
+"A prick of it would do for any man," said the Marquess.
+
+"You don't say so!" said M. de la Reynie.
+
+"I do, though; and, what is more," says the Marquess, in a terrible
+voice, "if you do not instantly lay yourself flat on the ground,
+with your face towards it, and your hands crossed over your back,
+or if you make the slightest noise or cry, I will stick this
+poisoned dagger between your ribs, as sure as my name is Cartouche?"
+
+At the sound of this dreadful name, M. de la Reynie sunk
+incontinently down on his stomach, and submitted to be carefully
+gagged and corded; after which Monsieur Cartouche laid his hands
+upon all the money which was kept in the lieutenant's cabinet.
+Alas! and alas! many a stout bailiff, and many an honest fellow of
+a spy, went, for that day, without his pay and his victuals.
+
+There is a story that Cartouche once took the diligence to Lille,
+and found in it a certain Abbe Potter, who was full of indignation
+against this monster of a Cartouche, and said that when he went
+back to Paris, which he proposed to do in about a fortnight, he
+should give the lieutenant of police some information, which would
+infallibly lead to the scoundrel's capture.  But poor Potter was
+disappointed in his designs; for, before he could fulfil them, he
+was made the victim of Cartouche's cruelty.
+
+A letter came to the lieutenant of police, to state that Cartouche
+had travelled to Lille, in company with the Abbe de Potter, of that
+town; that, on the reverend gentleman's return towards Paris,
+Cartouche had waylaid him, murdered him, taken his papers, and
+would come to Paris himself, bearing the name and clothes of the
+unfortunate Abbe, by the Lille coach, on such a day.  The Lille
+coach arrived, was surrounded by police agents; the monster
+Cartouche was there, sure enough, in the Abbe's guise.  He was
+seized, bound, flung into prison, brought out to be examined, and,
+on examination, found to be no other than the Abbe Potter himself!
+It is pleasant to read thus of the relaxations of great men, and
+find them condescending to joke like the meanest of us.
+
+Another diligence adventure is recounted of the famous Cartouche.
+It happened that he met, in the coach, a young and lovely lady,
+clad in widow's weeds, and bound to Paris, with a couple of
+servants.  The poor thing was the widow of a rich old gentleman
+of Marseilles, and was going to the capital to arrange with her
+lawyers, and to settle her husband's will.  The Count de Grinche
+(for so her fellow-passenger was called) was quite as candid as the
+pretty widow had been, and stated that he was a captain in the
+regiment of Nivernois; that he was going to Paris to buy a
+colonelcy, which his relatives, the Duke de Bouillon, the Prince
+de Montmorency, the Commandeur de la Tremoille, with all their
+interest at court, could not fail to procure for him.  To be short,
+in the course of the four days' journey, the Count Louis Dominic de
+Grinche played his cards so well, that the poor little widow half
+forgot her late husband; and her eyes glistened with tears as the
+Count kissed her hand at parting--at parting, he hoped, only for a
+few hours.
+
+Day and night the insinuating Count followed her; and when, at the
+end of a fortnight, and in the midst of a tete-a-tete, he plunged,
+one morning, suddenly on his knees, and said, Leonora, do you love
+me?" the poor thing heaved the gentlest, tenderest, sweetest sigh
+in the world; and sinking her blushing head on his shoulder,
+whispered, "Oh, Dominic, je t'aime!  Ah!" said she, "how noble is
+it of my Dominic to take me with the little I have, and he so rich
+a nobleman!"  The fact is, the old Baron's titles and estates had
+passed away to his nephews; his dowager was only left with three
+hundred thousand livres, in rentes sur l'etat--a handsome sum, but
+nothing to compare to the rent-roll of Count Dominic, Count de la
+Grinche, Seigneur de la Haute Pigre, Baron de la Bigorne; he had
+estates and wealth which might authorize him to aspire to the hand
+of a duchess, at least.
+
+The unfortunate widow never for a moment suspected the cruel trick
+that was about to be played on her; and, at the request of her
+affianced husband, sold out her money, and realized it in gold, to
+be made over to him on the day when the contract was to be signed.
+The day arrived; and, according to the custom in France, the
+relations of both parties attended.  The widow's relatives, though
+respectable, were not of the first nobility, being chiefly persons
+of the finance or the robe: there was the president of the court of
+Arras, and his lady; a farmer-general; a judge of a court of Paris;
+and other such grave and respectable people.  As for Monsieur le
+Comte de la Grinche, he was not bound for names; and, having the
+whole peerage to choose from, brought a host of Montmorencies,
+Crequis, De la Tours, and Guises at his back.  His homme d'affaires
+brought his papers in a sack, and displayed the plans of his
+estates, and the titles of his glorious ancestry.  The widow's
+lawyers had her money in sacks; and between the gold on the one
+side, and the parchments on the other, lay the contract which was
+to make the widow's three hundred thousand francs the property of
+the Count de Grinche.  The Count de la Grinche was just about to
+sign; when the Marshal de Villars, stepping up to him, said,
+"Captain, do you know who the president of the court of Arras,
+yonder, is?  It is old Manasseh, the fence, of Brussels.  I pawned
+a gold watch to him, which I stole from Cadogan, when I was with
+Malbrook's army in Flanders."
+
+Here the Duc de la Roche Guyon came forward, very much alarmed.
+"Run me through the body!" said his Grace, "but the comptroller-
+general's lady, there, is no other than that old hag of a Margoton
+who keeps the ----"  Here the Duc de la Roche Guyon's voice fell.
+
+Cartouche smiled graciously, and walked up to the table.  He took
+up one of the widow's fifteen thousand gold pieces;--it was as
+pretty a bit of copper as you could wish to see.  "My dear," said
+he politely, "there is some mistake here, and this business had
+better stop."
+
+"Count!" gasped the poor widow.
+
+"Count be hanged!" answered the bridegroom, sternly "my name is
+CARTOUCHE!"
+
+
+
+ON SOME FRENCH FASHIONABLE NOVELS.
+
+WITH A PLEA FOR ROMANCES IN GENERAL.
+
+
+There is an old story of a Spanish court painter, who, being
+pressed for money, and having received a piece of damask, which he
+was to wear in a state procession, pawned the damask, and appeared,
+at the show, dressed out in some very fine sheets of paper, which
+he had painted so as exactly to resemble silk.  Nay, his coat
+looked so much richer than the doublets of all the rest, that the
+Emperor Charles, in whose honor the procession was given, remarked
+the painter, and so his deceit was found out.
+
+I have often thought that, in respect of sham and real histories, a
+similar fact may be noticed; the sham story appearing a great deal
+more agreeable, life-like, and natural than the true one: and all
+who, from laziness as well as principle, are inclined to follow the
+easy and comfortable study of novels, may console themselves with
+the notion that they are studying matters quite as important as
+history, and that their favorite duodecimos are as instructive as
+the biggest quartos in the world.
+
+If then, ladies, the big-wigs begin to sneer at the course of our
+studies, calling our darling romances foolish, trivial, noxious to
+the mind, enervators of intellect, fathers of idleness, and what
+not, let us at once take a high ground, and say,--Go you to your
+own employments, and to such dull studies as you fancy; go and bob
+for triangles, from the Pons Asinorum; go enjoy your dull black
+draughts of metaphysics; go fumble over history books, and dissert
+upon Herodotus and Livy; OUR histories are, perhaps, as true as
+yours; our drink is the brisk sparkling champagne drink, from the
+presses of Colburn, Bentley and Co.; our walks are over such
+sunshiny pleasure-grounds as Scott and Shakspeare have laid out for
+us; and if our dwellings are castles in the air, we find them
+excessively splendid and commodious;--be not you envious because
+you have no wings to fly thither.  Let the big-wigs despise us;
+such contempt of their neighbors is the custom of all barbarous
+tribes;--witness, the learned Chinese: Tippoo Sultaun declared that
+there were not in all Europe ten thousand men: the Sklavonic
+hordes, it is said, so entitled themselves from a word in their
+jargon, which signifies "to speak;" the ruffians imagining that
+they had a monopoly of this agreeable faculty, and that all other
+nations were dumb.
+
+Not so: others may be DEAF; but the novelist has a loud, eloquent,
+instructive language, though his enemies may despise or deny it
+ever so much.  What is more, one could, perhaps, meet the stoutest
+historian on his own ground, and argue with him; showing that sham
+histories were much truer than real histories; which are, in fact,
+mere contemptible catalogues of names and places, that can have no
+moral effect upon the reader.
+
+As thus:--
+
+
+  Julius Caesar beat Pompey, at Pharsalia.
+  The Duke of Marlborough beat Marshal Tallard at Blenheim.
+  The Constable of Bourbon beat Francis the First, at Pavia.
+
+
+And what have we here?--so many names, simply.  Suppose Pharsalia
+had been, at that mysterious period when names were given, called
+Pavia; and that Julius Caesar's family name had been John
+Churchill;--the fact would have stood in history, thus:--
+
+
+  "Pompey ran away from the Duke of Marlborough at Pavia."
+
+
+And why not?--we should have been just as wise.  Or it might be
+stated that--
+
+
+  "The tenth legion charged the French infantry at Blenheim; and
+   Caesar, writing home to his mamma, said, 'Madame, tout est perdu
+   fors l'honneur.'"
+
+
+What a contemptible science this is, then, about which quartos are
+written, and sixty-volumed Biographies Universelles, and Lardner's
+Cabinet Cyclopaedias, and the like! the facts are nothing in it, the
+names everything and a gentleman might as well improve his mind by
+learning Walker's "Gazetteer," or getting by heart a fifty-years-
+old edition of the "Court Guide."
+
+Having thus disposed of the historians, let us come to the point in
+question--the novelists.
+
+
+On the title-page of these volumes the reader has, doubtless,
+remarked, that among the pieces introduced, some are announced as
+"copies" and "compositions."  Many of the histories have,
+accordingly, been neatly stolen from the collections of French
+authors (and mutilated, according to the old saying, so that their
+owners should not know them) and, for compositions, we intend to
+favor the public with some studies of French modern works, that
+have not as yet, we believe, attracted the notice of the English
+public.
+
+Of such works there appear many hundreds yearly, as may be seen by
+the French catalogues; but the writer has not so much to do with
+works political, philosophical, historical, metaphysical,
+scientifical, theological, as with those for which he has been
+putting forward a plea--novels, namely; on which he has expended a
+great deal of time and study.  And passing from novels in general
+to French novels, let us confess, with much humiliation, that we
+borrow from these stories a great deal more knowledge of French
+society than from our own personal observation we ever can hope to
+gain: for, let a gentleman who has dwelt two, four, or ten years in
+Paris (and has not gone thither for the purpose of making a book,
+when three weeks are sufficient--let an English gentleman say, at
+the end of any given period, how much he knows of French society,
+how many French houses he has entered, and how many French friends
+he has made?--He has enjoyed, at the end of the year, say--
+
+
+  At the English Ambassador's, so many soirees.
+  At houses to which he has brought letters, so many tea-parties.
+  At Cafes, so many dinners.
+  At French private houses, say three dinners, and very lucky too.
+
+
+He has, we say, seen an immense number of wax candles, cups of tea,
+glasses of orgeat, and French people, in best clothes, enjoying the
+same; but intimacy there is none; we see but the outsides of the
+people.  Year by year we live in France, and grow gray, and see no
+more.  We play ecarte with Monsieur de Trefle every night; but what
+know we of the heart of the man--of the inward ways, thoughts, and
+customs of Trefle?  If we have good legs, and love the amusement,
+we dance with Countess Flicflac, Tuesday's and Thursdays, ever
+since the Peace; and how far are we advanced in acquaintance with
+her since we first twirled her round a room?  We know her velvet
+gown, and her diamonds (about three-fourths of them are sham, by
+the way); we know her smiles, and her simpers, and her rouge--but
+no more: she may turn into a kitchen wench at twelve on Thursday
+night, for aught we know; her voiture, a pumpkin; and her gens, so
+many rats: but the real, rougeless, intime Flicflac, we know not.
+This privilege is granted to no Englishman: we may understand the
+French language as well as Monsieur de Levizac, but never can
+penetrate into Flicflac's confidence: our ways are not her ways;
+our manners of thinking, not hers: when we say a good thing, in the
+course of the night, we are wondrous lucky and pleased; Flicflac
+will trill you off fifty in ten minutes, and wonder at the betise
+of the Briton, who has never a word to say.  We are married, and
+have fourteen children, and would just as soon make love to the
+Pope of Rome as to any one but our own wife.  If you do not make
+love to Flicflac, from the day after her marriage to the day she
+reaches sixty, she thinks you a fool.  We won't play at ecarte with
+Trefle on Sunday nights; and are seen walking, about one o'clock
+(accompanied by fourteen red-haired children, with fourteen
+gleaming prayer-books), away from the church.  "Grand Dieu!" cries
+Trefle, "is that man mad?  He won't play at cards on a Sunday; he
+goes to church on a Sunday: he has fourteen children!"
+
+Was ever Frenchman known to do likewise?  Pass we on to our
+argument, which is, that with our English notions and moral and
+physical constitution, it is quite impossible that we should become
+intimate with our brisk neighbors; and when such authors as Lady
+Morgan and Mrs. Trollope, having frequented a certain number of
+tea-parties in the French capital, begin to prattle about French
+manners and men,--with all respect for the talents of those ladies,
+we do believe their information not to be worth a sixpence; they
+speak to us not of men but of tea-parties.  Tea-parties are the
+same all the world over; with the exception that, with the French,
+there are more lights and prettier dresses; and with us, a mighty
+deal more tea in the pot.
+
+There is, however, a cheap and delightful way of travelling, that a
+man may perform in his easy-chair, without expense of passports or
+post-boys.  On the wings of a novel, from the next circulating
+library, he sends his imagination a-gadding, and gains acquaintance
+with people and manners whom he could not hope otherwise to know.
+Twopence a volume bears us whithersoever we will;--back to Ivanhoe
+and Coeur de Lion, or to Waverley and the Young Pretender, along
+with Walter Scott; up the heights of fashion with the charming
+enchanters of the silver-fork school; or, better still, to the snug
+inn-parlor, or the jovial tap-room, with Mr. Pickwick and his
+faithful Sancho Weller.  I am sure that a man who, a hundred years
+hence should sit down to write the history of our time, would do
+wrong to put that great contemporary history of "Pickwick" aside as
+a frivolous work.  It contains true character under false names;
+and, like "Roderick Random," an inferior work, and "Tom Jones" (one
+that is immeasurably superior), gives us a better idea of the state
+and ways of the people than one could gather from any more pompous
+or authentic histories.
+
+We have, therefore, introduced into these volumes one or two short
+reviews of French fiction writers, of particular classes, whose
+Paris sketches may give the reader some notion of manners in that
+capital.  If not original, at least the drawings are accurate; for,
+as a Frenchman might have lived a thousand years in England, and
+never could have written "Pickwick," an Englishman cannot hope to
+give a good description of the inward thoughts and ways of his
+neighbors.
+
+To a person inclined to study these, in that light and amusing
+fashion in which the novelist treats them, let us recommend the
+works of a new writer, Monsieur de Bernard, who has painted actual
+manners, without those monstrous and terrible exaggerations in
+which late French writers have indulged; and who, if he
+occasionally wounds the English sense of propriety (as what French
+man or woman alive will not?) does so more by slighting than by
+outraging it, as, with their labored descriptions of all sorts of
+imaginable wickedness, some of his brethren of the press have done.
+M. de Bernard's characters are men and women of genteel society--
+rascals enough, but living in no state of convulsive crimes; and we
+follow him in his lively, malicious account of their manners,
+without risk of lighting upon any such horrors as Balzac or Dumas
+has provided for us.
+
+Let us give an instance:--it is from the amusing novel called "Les
+Ailes d'Icare," and contains what is to us quite a new picture of a
+French fashionable rogue.  The fashions will change in a few years,
+and the rogue, of course, with them.  Let us catch this delightful
+fellow ere he flies.  It is impossible to sketch the character in a
+more sparkling, gentlemanlike way than M. de Bernard's; but such
+light things are very difficult of translation, and the sparkle
+sadly evaporates during the process of DECANTING.
+
+
+A FRENCH FASHIONABLE LETTER.
+
+"MY DEAR VICTOR--It is six in the morning: I have just come from
+the English Ambassador's ball, and as my plans, for the day do not
+admit of my sleeping, I write you a line; for, at this moment,
+saturated as I am with the enchantments of a fairy night, all other
+pleasures would be too wearisome to keep me awake, except that of
+conversing with you.  Indeed, were I not to write to you now, when
+should I find the possibility of doing so?  Time flies here with
+such a frightful rapidity, my pleasures and my affairs whirl
+onwards together in such a torrentuous galopade, that I am
+compelled to seize occasion by the forelock; for each moment has
+its imperious employ.  Do not then accuse me of negligence: if my
+correspondence has not always that regularity which I would fain
+give it, attribute the fault solely to the whirlwind in which I
+live, and which carries me hither and thither at its will.
+
+"However, you are not the only person with whom I am behindhand: I
+assure you, on the contrary, that you are one of a very numerous
+and fashionable company, to whom, towards the discharge of my
+debts, I propose to consecrate four hours to-day.  I give you the
+preference to all the world, even to the lovely Duchess of San
+Severino, a delicious Italian, whom, for my special happiness, I
+met last summer at the Waters of Aix.  I have also a most important
+negotiation to conclude with one of our Princes of Finance: but
+n'importe, I commence with thee: friendship before love or money--
+friendship before everything.  My despatches concluded, I am
+engaged to ride with the Marquis de Grigneure, the Comte de
+Castijars, and Lord Cobham, in order that we may recover, for a
+breakfast at the Rocher de Cancale that Grigneure has lost, the
+appetite which we all of us so cruelly abused last night at the
+Ambassador's gala.  On my honor, my dear fellow, everybody was of a
+caprice prestigieux and a comfortable mirobolant.  Fancy, for a
+banquet-hall, a royal orangery hung with white damask; the boxes of
+the shrubs transformed into so many sideboards; lights gleaming
+through the foliage; and, for guests, the loveliest women and most
+brilliant cavaliers of Paris.  Orleans and Nemours were there,
+dancing and eating like simple mortals.  In a word, Albion did the
+thing very handsomely, and I accord it my esteem.
+
+"Here I pause, to call for my valet-de-chambre, and call for tea;
+for my head is heavy, and I've no time for a headache.  In serving
+me, this rascal of a Frederic has broken a cup, true Japan, upon my
+honor--the rogue does nothing else.  Yesterday, for instance, did
+he not thump me prodigiously, by letting fall a goblet, after
+Cellini, of which the carving alone cost me three hundred francs?
+I must positively put the wretch out of doors, to ensure the safety
+of my furniture; and in consequence of this, Eneas, an audacious
+young negro, in whom wisdom hath not waited for years--Eneas, my
+groom, I say, will probably be elevated to the post of valet-de-
+chambre. But where was I?  I think I was speaking to you of an
+oyster breakfast, to which, on our return from the Park (du Bois), a
+company of pleasant rakes are invited.  After quitting Borel's, we
+propose to adjourn to the Barriere du Combat, where Lord Cobham
+proposes to try some bull-dogs, which he has brought over from
+England--one of these, O'Connell (Lord Cobham is a Tory,) has a face
+in which I place much confidence; I have a bet of ten louis with
+Castijars on the strength of it.  After the fight, we shall make our
+accustomed appearance at the 'Cafe de Paris,' (the only place, by
+the way, where a man who respects himself may be seen,)-- and then
+away with frocks and spurs, and on with our dress-coats for the rest
+of the evening.  In the first place, I shall go doze for a couple of
+hours at the Opera, where my presence is indispensable; for Coralie,
+a charming creature, passes this evening from the rank of the RATS
+to that of the TIGERS, in a pas-de-trois, and our box patronizes
+her.  After the Opera, I must show my face to two or three salons in
+the Faubourg St. Honore; and having thus performed my duties to the
+world of fashion, I return to the exercise of my rights as a member
+of the Carnival.  At two o'clock all the world meets at the Theatre
+Ventadour: lions and tigers--the whole of our menagerie will be
+present.  Evoe! off we go! roaring and bounding Bacchanal and
+Saturnal; 'tis agreed that we shall be everything that is low.  To
+conclude, we sup with Castijars, the most 'furiously dishevelled'
+orgy that ever was known."
+
+
+The rest of the letter is on matters of finance, equally curious
+and instructive.  But pause we for the present, to consider the
+fashionable part: and caricature as it is, we have an accurate
+picture of the actual French dandy.  Bets, breakfasts, riding,
+dinners at the "Cafe de Paris," and delirious Carnival balls: the
+animal goes through all such frantic pleasures at the season that
+precedes Lent.  He has a wondrous respect for English "gentlemen-
+sportsmen;" he imitates their clubs--their love of horse-flesh: he
+calls his palefrenier a groom, wears blue birds's-eye neck-cloths,
+sports his pink out hunting, rides steeple-chases, and has his
+Jockey Club.  The "tigers and lions" alluded to in the report have
+been borrowed from our own country, and a great compliment is it to
+Monsieur de Bernard, the writer of the above amusing sketch, that
+he has such a knowledge of English names and things, as to give a
+Tory lord the decent title of Lord Cobham, and to call his dog
+O'Connell.  Paul de Kock calls an English nobleman, in one of his
+last novels, Lord Boulingrog, and appears vastly delighted at the
+verisimilitude of the title.
+
+For the "rugissements et bondissements, bacchanale et saturnale,
+galop infernal, ronde du sabbat tout le tremblement," these words
+give a most clear, untranslatable idea of the Carnival ball.  A
+sight more hideous can hardly strike a man's eye.  I was present at
+one where the four thousand guests whirled screaming, reeling,
+roaring, out of the ball-room in the Rue St. Honore, and tore down
+to the column in the Place Vendome, round which they went shrieking
+their own music, twenty miles an hour, and so tore madly back
+again.  Let a man go alone to such a place of amusement, and the
+sight for him is perfectly terrible: the horrid frantic gayety of
+the place puts him in mind more of the merriment of demons than of
+men: bang, bang, drums, trumpets, chairs, pistol-shots, pour out of
+the orchestra, which seems as mad as the dancers; whiz, a whirlwind
+of paint and patches, all the costumes under the sun, all the ranks
+in the empire, all the he and she scoundrels of the capital,
+writhed and twisted together, rush by you; if a man falls, woe be
+to him: two thousand screaming menads go trampling over his
+carcass: they have neither power nor will to stop.
+
+A set of Malays drunk with bhang and running amuck, a company of
+howling dervishes, may possibly, in our own day, go through similar
+frantic vagaries; but I doubt if any civilized European people but
+the French would permit and enjoy such scenes.  Yet our neighbors
+see little shame in them; and it is very true that men of all
+classes, high and low, here congregate and give themselves up to
+the disgusting worship of the genius of the place.--From the dandy
+of the Boulevard and the "Cafe Anglais," let us turn to the dandy
+of "Flicoteau's" and the Pays Latin--the Paris student, whose
+exploits among the grisettes are so celebrated, and whose fierce
+republicanism keeps gendarmes for ever on the alert.  The following
+is M. de Bernard's description of him:--
+
+
+"I became acquainted with Dambergeac when we were students at the
+Ecole de Droit; we lived in the same Hotel on the Place du
+Pantheon.  No doubt, madam, you have occasionally met little
+children dedicated to the Virgin, and, to this end, clothed in
+white raiment from head to foot: my friend, Dambergeac, had
+received a different consecration.  His father, a great patriot of
+the Revolution, had determined that his son should bear into the
+world a sign of indelible republicanism; so, to the great
+displeasure of his godmother and the parish curate, Dambergeac was
+christened by the pagan name of Harmodius.  It was a kind of moral
+tricolor-cockade, which the child was to bear through the
+vicissitudes of all the revolutions to come.  Under such
+influences, my friend's character began to develop itself, and,
+fired by the example of his father, and by the warm atmosphere of
+his native place, Marseilles, he grew up to have an independent
+spirit, and a grand liberality of politics, which were at their
+height when first I made his acquaintance.
+
+"He was then a young man of eighteen, with a tall, slim figure, a
+broad chest, and a flaming black eye, out of all which personal
+charms he knew how to draw the most advantage; and though his
+costume was such as Staub might probably have criticised, he had,
+nevertheless, a style peculiar to himself--to himself and the
+students, among whom he was the leader of the fashion.  A tight
+black coat, buttoned up to the chin, across the chest, set off that
+part of his person; a low-crowned hat, with a voluminous rim, cast
+solemn shadows over a countenance bronzed by a southern sun: he
+wore, at one time, enormous flowing black locks, which he sacrificed
+pitilessly, however, and adopted a Brutus, as being more
+revolutionary: finally, he carried an enormous club, that was his
+code and digest: in like manner, De Retz used to carry a stiletto in
+his pocket by way of a breviary.
+
+"Although of different ways of thinking in politics, certain
+sympathies of character and conduct united Dambergeac and myself,
+and we speedily became close friends.  I don't think, in the whole
+course of his three years' residence, Dambergeac ever went through
+a single course of lectures.  For the examinations, he trusted to
+luck, and to his own facility, which was prodigious: as for honors,
+he never aimed at them, but was content to do exactly as little as
+was necessary for him to gain his degree.  In like manner he
+sedulously avoided those horrible circulating libraries, where
+daily are seen to congregate the 'reading men' of our schools.
+But, in revenge, there was not a milliner's shop, or a lingere's,
+in all our quartier Latin, which he did not industriously frequent,
+and of which he was not the oracle.  Nay, it was said that his
+victories were not confined to the left bank of the Seine; reports
+did occasionally come to us of fabulous adventures by him
+accomplished in the far regions of the Rue de la Paix and the
+Boulevard Poissonniere.  Such recitals were, for us less favored
+mortals, like tales of Bacchus conquering in the East; they excited
+our ambition, but not our jealousy; for the superiority of
+Harmodius was acknowledged by us all, and we never thought of a
+rivalry with him.  No man ever cantered a hack through the Champs
+Elysees with such elegant assurance; no man ever made such a
+massacre of dolls at the shooting-gallery; or won you a rubber at
+billiards with more easy grace; or thundered out a couplet out of
+Beranger with such a roaring melodious bass.  He was the monarch of
+the Prado in winter: in summer of the Chaumiere and Mont Parnasse.
+Not a frequenter of those fashionable places of entertainment
+showed a more amiable laisser-aller in the dance--that peculiar
+dance at which gendarmes think proper to blush, and which squeamish
+society has banished from her salons.  In a word, Harmodius was the
+prince of mauvais sujets, a youth with all the accomplishments of
+Gottingen and Jena, and all the eminent graces of his own country.
+
+"Besides dissipation and gallantry, our friend had one other vast
+and absorbing occupation--politics, namely; in which he was as
+turbulent and enthusiastic as in pleasure.  La Patrie was his idol,
+his heaven, his nightmare; by day he spouted, by night he dreamed,
+of his country.  I have spoken to you of his coiffure a la Sylla;
+need I mention his pipe, his meerschaum pipe, of which General
+Foy's head was the bowl; his handkerchief with the Charte printed
+thereon; and his celebrated tricolor braces, which kept the
+rallying sign of his country ever close to his heart?  Besides
+these outward and visible signs of sedition, he had inward and
+secret plans of revolution: he belonged to clubs, frequented
+associations, read the Constitutionnel (Liberals, in those days,
+swore by the Constitutionnel), harangued peers and deputies who had
+deserved well of their country; and if death happened to fall on
+such, and the Constitutionnel declared their merit, Harmodius was
+the very first to attend their obsequies, or to set his shoulder to
+their coffins.
+
+"Such were his tastes and passions: his antipathies were not less
+lively.  He detested three things: a Jesuit, a gendarme, and a
+claqueur at a theatre.  At this period, missionaries were rife
+about Paris, and endeavored to re-illume the zeal of the faithful
+by public preachings in the churches.  'Infames jesuites!' would
+Harmodius exclaim, who, in the excess of his toleration, tolerated
+nothing; and, at the head of a band of philosophers like himself,
+would attend with scrupulous exactitude the meetings of the
+reverend gentlemen.  But, instead of a contrite heart, Harmodius
+only brought the abomination of desolation into their sanctuary.  A
+perpetual fire of fulminating balls would bang from under the feet
+of the faithful; odors of impure assafoetida would mingle with the
+fumes of the incense; and wicked drinking choruses would rise up
+along with the holy canticles, in hideous dissonance, reminding one
+of the old orgies under the reign of the Abbot of Unreason.
+
+"His hatred of the gendarmes was equally ferocious: and as for the
+claqueurs, woe be to them when Harmodius was in the pit!  They knew
+him, and trembled before him, like the earth before Alexander; and
+his famous war-cry, 'La Carte au chapeau!' was so much dreaded,
+that the 'entrepreneurs de succes dramatiques' demanded twice as
+much to do the Odeon Theatre (which we students and Harmodius
+frequented), as to applaud at any other place of amusement: and,
+indeed, their double pay was hardly gained; Harmodius taking care
+that they should earn the most of it under the benches."
+
+
+This passage, with which we have taken some liberties, will give
+the reader a more lively idea of the reckless, jovial, turbulent
+Paris student, than any with which a foreigner could furnish him:
+the grisette is his heroine; and dear old Beranger, the cynic-
+epicurean, has celebrated him and her in the most delightful verses
+in the world.  Of these we may have occasion to say a word or two
+anon.  Meanwhile let us follow Monsieur de Bernard in his amusing
+descriptions of his countrymen somewhat farther; and, having seen
+how Dambergeac was a ferocious republican, being a bachelor, let us
+see how age, sense, and a little government pay--the great agent of
+conversions in France--nay, in England--has reduced him to be a
+pompous, quiet, loyal supporter of the juste milieu: his former
+portrait was that of the student, the present will stand for an
+admirable lively likeness of
+
+
+THE SOUS-PREFET.
+
+
+"Saying that I would wait for Dambergeac in his own study, I was
+introduced into that apartment, and saw around me the usual
+furniture of a man in his station.  There was, in the middle of the
+room, a large bureau, surrounded by orthodox arm-chairs; and there
+were many shelves with boxes duly ticketed; there were a number of
+maps, and among them a great one of the department over which
+Dambergeac ruled; and facing the windows, on a wooden pedestal,
+stood a plaster-cast of the 'Roi des Francais.'  Recollecting my
+friend's former republicanism, I smiled at this piece of furniture;
+but before I had time to carry my observations any farther, a heavy
+rolling sound of carriage-wheels, that caused the windows to rattle
+and seemed to shake the whole edifice of the sub-prefecture, called
+my attention to the court without.  Its iron gates were flung open,
+and in rolled, with a great deal of din, a chariot escorted by a
+brace of gendarmes, sword in hand.  A tall gentleman, with a
+cocked-hat and feathers, wearing a blue and silver uniform coat,
+descended from the vehicle; and having, with much grave
+condescension, saluted his escort, mounted the stair.  A moment
+afterwards the door of the study was opened, and I embraced my
+friend.
+
+"After the first warmth and salutations, we began to examine each
+other with an equal curiosity, for eight years had elapsed since we
+had last met.
+
+"'You are grown very thin and pale,' said Harmodius, after a
+moment.
+
+"'In revenge I find you fat and rosy: if I am a walking satire on
+celibacy,--you, at least, are a living panegyric on marriage.'
+
+"In fact a great change, and such an one as many people would call
+a change for the better, had taken place in my friend: he had grown
+fat, and announced a decided disposition to become what French
+people call a bel homme: that is, a very fat one.  His complexion,
+bronzed before, was now clear white and red: there were no more
+political allusions in his hair, which was, on the contrary, neatly
+frizzed, and brushed over the forehead, shell-shape.  This head-
+dress, joined to a thin pair of whiskers, cut crescent-wise from
+the ear to the nose, gave my friend a regular bourgeois
+physiognomy, wax-doll-like: he looked a great deal too well; and,
+added to this, the solemnity of his prefectural costume, gave his
+whole appearance a pompous well-fed look that by no means pleased.
+
+"'I surprise you,' said I, 'in the midst of your splendor: do you
+know that this costume and yonder attendants have a look
+excessively awful and splendid?  You entered your palace just now
+with the air of a pasha.'
+
+"'You see me in uniform in honor of Monseigneur the Bishop, who has
+just made his diocesan visit, and whom I have just conducted to the
+limit of the arrondissement.'
+
+"'What!' said I, 'you have gendarmes for guards, and dance
+attendance on bishops?  There are no more janissaries and Jesuits,
+I suppose?'  The sub-prefect smiled.
+
+"'I assure you that my gendarmes are very worthy fellows; and that
+among the gentlemen who compose our clergy there are some of the
+very best rank and talent: besides, my wife is niece to one of the
+vicars-general.'
+
+"'What have you done with that great Tasso beard that poor
+Armandine used to love so?'
+
+"'My wife does not like a beard; and you know that what is
+permitted to a student is not very becoming to a magistrate.'
+
+"I began to laugh.  'Harmodius and a magistrate!--how shall I ever
+couple the two words together?  But tell me, in your correspondences,
+your audiences, your sittings with village mayors and petty councils,
+how do you manage to remain awake?'
+
+"'In the commencement,' said Harmodius, gravely, 'it WAS very
+difficult; and, in order to keep my eyes open, I used to stick pins
+into my legs: now, however, I am used to it; and I'm sure I don't
+take more than fifty pinches of snuff at a sitting.'
+
+"'Ah! apropos of snuff: you are near Spain here, and were always a
+famous smoker.  Give me a cigar,--it will take away the musty odor
+of these piles of papers.'
+
+"'Impossible, my dear; I don't smoke; my wife cannot bear a cigar.'
+
+"His wife! thought I; always his wife: and I remember Juliette, who
+really grew sick at the smell of a pipe, and Harmodius would smoke,
+until, at last, the poor thing grew to smoke herself, like a
+trooper.  To compensate, however, as much as possible for the loss
+of my cigar, Dambergeac drew from his pocket an enormous gold
+snuff-box, on which figured the self-same head that I had before
+remarked in plaster, but this time surrounded with a ring of pretty
+princes and princesses, all nicely painted in miniature.  As for
+the statue of Louis Philippe, that, in the cabinet of an official,
+is a thing of course; but the snuff-box seemed to indicate a degree
+of sentimental and personal devotion, such as the old Royalists
+were only supposed to be guilty of.
+
+"'What! you are turned decided juste milieu?' said I.
+
+"'I am a sous-prefet,' answered Harmodius.
+
+"I had nothing to say, but held my tongue, wondering, not at the
+change which had taken place in the habits, manners, and opinions
+of my friend, but at my own folly, which led me to fancy that I
+should find the student of '26 in the functionary of '34.  At this
+moment a domestic appeared.
+
+"'Madame is waiting for Monsieur,' said he: 'the last bell has
+gone, and mass beginning.'
+
+"'Mass!' said I, bounding up from my chair.  'You at mass like a
+decent serious Christian, without crackers in your pocket, and
+bored keys to whistle through?'--The sous-prefet rose, his
+countenance was calm, and an indulgent smile played upon his lips,
+as he said, 'My arrondissement is very devout; and not to interfere
+with the belief of the population is the maxim of every wise
+politician: I have precise orders from Government on the point,
+too, and go to eleven o'clock mass every Sunday."'
+
+
+There is a great deal of curious matter for speculation in the
+accounts here so wittily given by M. de Bernard: but, perhaps, it
+is still more curious to think of what he has NOT written, and to
+judge of his characters, not so much by the words in which he
+describes them, as by the unconscious testimony that the words all
+together convey.  In the first place, our author describes a
+swindler imitating the manners of a dandy; and many swindlers and
+dandies be there, doubtless, in London as well as in Paris.  But
+there is about the present swindler, and about Monsieur Dambergeac
+the student, and Monsieur Dambergeac the sous-prefet, and his
+friend, a rich store of calm internal debauch, which does not, let
+us hope and pray, exist in England.  Hearken to M. de Gustan, and
+his smirking whispers, about the Duchess of San Severino, who pour
+son bonheur particulier, &c. &c.  Listen to Monsieur Dambergeac's
+friend's remonstrances concerning pauvre Juliette who grew sick at
+the smell of a pipe; to his naive admiration at the fact that the
+sous-prefet goes to church: and we may set down, as axioms, that
+religion is so uncommon among the Parisians, as to awaken the
+surprise of all candid observers; that gallantry is so common as to
+create no remark, and to be considered as a matter of course.  With
+us, at least, the converse of the proposition prevails: it is the
+man professing irreligion who would be remarked and reprehended in
+England; and, if the second-named vice exists, at any rate, it
+adopts the decency of secrecy and is not made patent and notorious
+to all the world.  A French gentleman thinks no more of proclaiming
+that he has a mistress than that he has a tailor; and one lives the
+time of Boccaccio over again, in the thousand and one French novels
+which depict society in that country.
+
+For instance, here are before us a few specimens (do not, madam, be
+alarmed, you can skip the sentence if you like,) to be found in as
+many admirable witty tales, by the before-lauded Monsieur de
+Bernard.  He is more remarkable than any other French author, to
+our notion, for writing like a gentleman: there is ease, grace and
+ton, in his style, which, if we judge aright, cannot be discovered
+in Balzac, or Soulie, or Dumas.  We have then--"Gerfaut," a novel:
+a lovely creature is married to a brave, haughty, Alsacian
+nobleman, who allows her to spend her winters at Paris, he
+remaining on his terres, cultivating, carousing, and hunting the
+boar.  The lovely-creature meets the fascinating Gerfaut at Paris;
+instantly the latter makes love to her; a duel takes place: baron
+killed; wife throws herself out of window; Gerfaut plunges into
+dissipation; and so the tale ends.
+
+Next: "La Femme de Quarante Ans," a capital tale, full of exquisite
+fun and sparkling satire: La femme de quarante ans has a husband
+and THREE lovers; all of whom find out their mutual connection one
+starry night; for the lady of forty is of a romantic poetical turn,
+and has given her three admirers A STAR APIECE; saying to one and
+the other, "Alphonse, when yon pale orb rises in heaven, think of
+me;" "Isadore, when that bright planet sparkles in the sky,
+remember your Caroline," &c.
+
+"Un Acte de Vertu," from which we have taken Dambergeac's history,
+contains him, the husband--a wife--and a brace of lovers; and a
+great deal of fun takes place in the manner in which one lover
+supplants the other.--Pretty morals truly!
+
+If we examine an author who rejoices in the aristocratic name of le
+Comte Horace de Viel-Castel, we find, though with infinitely less
+wit, exactly the same intrigues going on.  A noble Count lives in
+the Faubourg St. Honore, and has a noble Duchess for a mistress: he
+introduces her Grace to the Countess his wife.  The Countess his
+wife, in order to ramener her lord to his conjugal duties, is
+counselled, by a friend, TO PRETEND TO TAKE A LOVER: one is found,
+who, poor fellow! takes the affair in earnest: climax--duel, death,
+despair, and what not?  In the "Faubourg St. Germain," another
+novel by the same writer, which professes to describe the very pink
+of that society which Napoleon dreaded more than Russia, Prussia,
+and Austria, there is an old husband, of course; a sentimental
+young German nobleman, who falls in love with his wife; and the
+moral of the piece lies in the showing up of the conduct of the
+lady, who is reprehended--not for deceiving her husband (poor
+devil!)--but for being a flirt, AND TAKING A SECOND LOVER, to the
+utter despair, confusion, and annihilation of the first.
+
+Why, ye gods, do Frenchmen marry at all?  Had Pere Enfantin (who,
+it is said, has shaved his ambrosial beard, and is now a clerk in a
+banking-house) been allowed to carry out his chaste, just,
+dignified social scheme, what a deal of marital discomfort might
+have been avoided:--would it not be advisable that a great reformer
+and lawgiver of our own, Mr. Robert Owen, should be presented at
+the Tuileries, and there propound his scheme for the regeneration
+of France?
+
+He might, perhaps, be spared, for our country is not yet sufficiently
+advanced to give such a philosopher fair play.  In London, as yet,
+there are no blessed Bureaux de Mariage, where an old bachelor may
+have a charming young maiden--for his money; or a widow of seventy
+may buy a gay young fellow of twenty, for a certain number of
+bank-billets.  If mariages de convenance take place here (as they
+will wherever avarice, and poverty, and desire, and yearning after
+riches are to be found), at least, thank God, such unions are not
+arranged upon a regular organized SYSTEM: there is a fiction of
+attachment with us, and there is a consolation in the deceit ("the
+homage," according to the old mot of Rochefoucauld) "which vice pays
+to virtue"; for the very falsehood shows that the virtue exists
+somewhere.  We once heard a furious old French colonel inveighing
+against the chastity of English demoiselles: "Figurez-vous, sir,"
+said he (he had been a prisoner in England), "that these women come
+down to dinner in low dresses, and walk out alone with the men!"--
+and, pray heaven, so may they walk, fancy-free in all sorts of
+maiden meditations, and suffer no more molestation than that young
+lady of whom Moore sings, and who (there must have been a famous
+lord-lieutenant in those days) walked through all Ireland, with rich
+and rare gems, beauty, and a gold ring on her stick, without meeting
+or thinking of harm.
+
+Now, whether Monsieur de Viel-Castel has given a true picture of
+the Faubourg St. Germain, it is impossible for most foreigners to
+say; but some of his descriptions will not fail to astonish the
+English reader; and all are filled with that remarkable naif
+contempt of the institution called marriage, which we have seen in
+M. de Bernard.  The romantic young nobleman of Westphalia arrives
+at Paris, and is admitted into what a celebrated female author
+calls la creme de la creme de la haute volee of Parisian society.
+He is a youth of about twenty years of age.  "No passion had as yet
+come to move his heart, and give life to his faculties; he was
+awaiting and fearing the moment of love; calling for it, and yet
+trembling at its approach; feeling in the depths of his soul, that
+that moment would create a mighty change in his being, and decide,
+perhaps, by its influence, the whole of his future life."
+
+Is it not remarkable, that a young nobleman, with these ideas,
+should not pitch upon a demoiselle, or a widow, at least? but no,
+the rogue must have a married woman, bad luck to him; and what his
+fate is to be, is thus recounted by our author, in the shape of
+
+
+A FRENCH FASHIONABLE CONVERSATION.
+
+
+"A lady, with a great deal of esprit, to whom forty years'
+experience of the great world had given a prodigious perspicacity
+of judgment, the Duchess of Chalux, arbitress of the opinion to be
+held on all new comers to the Faubourg Saint Germain, and of their
+destiny and reception in it;--one of those women, in a word, who
+make or ruin a man,--said, in speaking of Gerard de Stolberg, whom
+she received at her own house, and met everywhere, 'This young
+German will never gain for himself the title of an exquisite, or a
+man of bonnes fortunes, among us.  In spite of his calm and
+politeness, I think I can see in his character some rude and
+insurmountable difficulties, which time will only increase, and
+which will prevent him for ever from bending to the exigencies of
+either profession; but, unless I very much deceive myself, he will,
+one day, be the hero of a veritable romance.'
+
+"'He, madame?' answered a young man, of fair complexion and fair
+hair, one of the most devoted slaves of the fashion:--'He, Madame
+la Duchesse? why, the man is, at best, but an original, fished out
+of the Rhine: a dull, heavy creature, as much capable of
+understanding a woman's heart as I am of speaking bas-Breton.'
+
+"'Well, Monsieur de Belport, you will speak bas-Breton.  Monsieur
+de Stolberg has not your admirable ease of manner, nor your
+facility of telling pretty nothings, nor your--in a word, that
+particular something which makes you the most recherche man of the
+Faubourg Saint Germain; and even I avow to you that, were I still
+young, and a coquette, AND THAT I TOOK IT INTO MY HEAD TO HAVE A
+LOVER, I would prefer you.'
+
+"All this was said by the Duchess, with a certain air of raillery
+and such a mixture of earnest and malice, that Monsieur de Belport,
+piqued not a little, could not help saying, as he bowed profoundly
+before the Duchess's chair, 'And might I, madam, be permitted to
+ask the reason of this preference?'
+
+"'O mon Dieu, oui,' said the Duchess, always in the same tone;
+'because a lover like you would never think of carrying his
+attachment to the height of passion; and these passions, do you
+know, have frightened me all my life.  One cannot retreat at will
+from the grasp of a passionate lover; one leaves behind one some
+fragment of one's moral SELF, or the best part of one's physical
+life.  A passion, if it does not kill you, adds cruelly to your
+years; in a word, it is the very lowest possible taste.  And now
+you understand why I should prefer you, M. de Belport--you who are
+reputed to be the leader of the fashion.'
+
+"'Perfectly,' murmured the gentleman, piqued more and more.
+
+"'Gerard de Stolberg WILL be passionate.  I don't know what woman
+will please him, or will be pleased by him' (here the Duchess of
+Chalux spoke more gravely); 'but his love will be no play, I repeat
+it to you once more.  All this astonishes you, because you, great
+leaders of the ton that you are, never fancy that a hero of romance
+should be found among your number.  Gerard de Stolberg--but, look,
+here he comes!'
+
+"M. de Belport rose, and quitted the Duchess, without believing in
+her prophecy; but he could not avoid smiling as he passed near the
+HERO OF ROMANCE.
+
+"It was because M. de Stolberg had never, in all his life, been a
+hero of romance, or even an apprentice-hero of romance.
+
+
+"Gerard de Stolberg was not, as yet, initiated into the thousand
+secrets in the chronicle of the great world: he knew but
+superficially the society in which he lived; and, therefore, he
+devoted his evening to the gathering of all the information which
+he could acquire from the indiscreet conversations of the people
+about him.  His whole man became ear and memory; so much was
+Stolberg convinced of the necessity of becoming a diligent student
+in this new school, where was taught the art of knowing and
+advancing in the great world.  In the recess of a window he learned
+more on this one night than months of investigation would have
+taught him.  The talk of a ball is more indiscreet than the
+confidential chatter of a company of idle women.  No man present at
+a ball, whether listener or speaker, thinks he has a right to
+affect any indulgence for his companions, and the most learned in
+malice will always pass for the most witty.
+
+"'How!' said the Viscount de Mondrage: 'the Duchess of Rivesalte
+arrives alone to-night, without her inevitable Dormilly!'--And the
+Viscount, as he spoke, pointed towards a tall and slender young
+woman, who, gliding rather than walking, met the ladies by whom she
+passed, with a graceful and modest salute, and replied to the looks
+of the men BY BRILLIANT VEILED GLANCES FULL OF COQUETRY AND ATTACK.
+
+"'Parbleu!' said an elegant personage standing near the Viscount de
+Mondrage, 'don't you see Dormilly ranged behind the Duchess, in
+quality of train-bearer, and hiding, under his long locks and his
+great screen of moustaches, the blushing consciousness of his good
+luck?--They call him THE FOURTH CHAPTER of the Duchess's memoirs.
+The little Marquise d'Alberas is ready to die out of spite; but the
+best of the joke is, that she has only taken poor de Vendre for a
+lover in order to vent her spleen on him.  Look at him against the
+chimney yonder; if the Marchioness do not break at once with him by
+quitting him for somebody else, the poor fellow will turn an idiot.'
+
+"'Is he jealous?' asked a young man, looking as if he did not know
+what jealousy was and as if he had no time to be jealous.
+
+"'Jealous! the very incarnation of jealousy; the second edition,
+revised, corrected, and considerably enlarged; as jealous as poor
+Gressigny, who is dying of it.'
+
+"'What!  Gressigny too?  why, 'tis growing quite into fashion:
+egad! I must try and be jealous,' said Monsieur de Beauval.  'But
+see! here comes the delicious Duchess of Bellefiore,'" &c. &c. &c.
+
+
+Enough, enough: this kind of fashionable Parisian conversation,
+which is, says our author, "a prodigious labor of improvising," a
+"chef-d'oeuvre," a "strange and singular thing, in which monotony
+is unknown," seems to be, if correctly reported, a "strange and
+singular thing" indeed; but somewhat monotonous at least to an
+English reader, and "prodigious" only, if we may take leave to say
+so, for the wonderful rascality which all the conversationists
+betray.  Miss Neverout and the Colonel, in Swift's famous dialogue,
+are a thousand times more entertaining and moral; and, besides, we
+can laugh AT those worthies as well as with them; whereas the
+"prodigious" French wits are to us quite incomprehensible.  Fancy a
+duchess as old as Lady ---- herself, and who should begin to tell
+us "of what she would do if ever she had a mind to take a lover;"
+and another duchess, with a fourth lover, tripping modestly among
+the ladies, and returning the gaze of the men by veiled glances,
+full of coquetry and attack!--Parbleu, if Monsieur de Viel-Castel
+should find himself among a society of French duchesses, and they
+should tear his eyes out, and send the fashionable Orpheus floating
+by the Seine, his slaughter might almost be considered as
+justifiable COUNTICIDE.
+
+
+
+
+A GAMBLER'S DEATH.
+
+
+Anybody who was at C---- school some twelve years since, must
+recollect Jack Attwood: he was the most dashing lad in the place,
+with more money in his pocket than belonged to the whole fifth form
+in which we were companions.
+
+When he was about fifteen, Jack suddenly retreated from C----, and
+presently we heard that he had a commission in a cavalry regiment,
+and was to have a great fortune from his father, when that old
+gentleman should die.  Jack himself came to confirm these stories a
+few months after, and paid a visit to his old school chums.  He had
+laid aside his little school-jacket and inky corduroys, and now
+appeared in such a splendid military suit as won the respect of all
+of us.  His hair was dripping with oil, his hands were covered with
+rings, he had a dusky down over his upper lip which looked not
+unlike a moustache, and a multiplicity of frogs and braiding on his
+surtout which would have sufficed to lace a field-marshal.  When
+old Swishtail, the usher, passed in his seedy black coat and
+gaiters, Jack gave him such a look of contempt as set us all a-
+laughing: in fact it was his turn to laugh now; for he used to roar
+very stoutly some months before, when Swishtail was in the custom
+of belaboring him with his great cane.
+
+Jack's talk was all about the regiment and the fine fellows in it:
+how he had ridden a steeple-chase with Captain Boldero, and licked
+him at the last hedge; and how he had very nearly fought a duel
+with Sir George Grig, about dancing with Lady Mary Slamken at a
+ball.  "I soon made the baronet know what it was to deal with a man
+of the n--th," said Jack.  "Dammee, sir, when I lugged out my
+barkers, and talked of fighting across the mess-room table, Grig
+turned as pale as a sheet, or as--"
+
+"Or as you used to do, Attwood, when Swishtail hauled you up,"
+piped out little Hicks, the foundation-boy.
+
+It was beneath Jack's dignity to thrash anybody, now, but a grown-
+up baronet; so he let off little Hicks, and passed over the general
+titter which was raised at his expense.  However, he entertained us
+with his histories about lords and ladies, and so-and-so "of ours,"
+until we thought him one of the greatest men in his Majesty's
+service, and until the school-bell rung; when, with a heavy heart,
+we got our books together, and marched in to be whacked by old
+Swishtail.  I promise you he revenged himself on us for Jack's
+contempt of him.  I got that day at least twenty cuts to my share,
+which ought to have belonged to Cornet Attwood, of the n--th
+dragoons.
+
+When we came to think more coolly over our quondam schoolfellow's
+swaggering talk and manner, we were not quite so impressed by his
+merits as at his first appearance among us.  We recollected how he
+used, in former times, to tell us great stories, which were so
+monstrously improbable that the smallest boy in the school would
+scout them; how often we caught him tripping in facts, and how
+unblushingly he admitted his little errors in the score of
+veracity.  He and I, though never great friends, had been close
+companions: I was Jack's form-fellow (we fought with amazing
+emulation for the LAST place in the class); but still I was rather
+hurt at the coolness of my old comrade, who had forgotten all our
+former intimacy, in his steeple-chases with Captain Boldero and his
+duel with Sir George Grig.
+
+Nothing more was heard of Attwood for some years; a tailor one day
+came down to C----, who had made clothes for Jack in his school-
+days, and furnished him with regimentals: he produced a long bill
+for one hundred and twenty pounds and upwards, and asked where news
+might be had of his customer.  Jack was in India, with his
+regiment, shooting tigers and jackals, no doubt.  Occasionally,
+from that distant country, some magnificent rumor would reach us of
+his proceedings.  Once I heard that he had been called to a court-
+martial for unbecoming conduct; another time, that he kept twenty
+horses, and won the gold plate at the Calcutta races.  Presently,
+however, as the recollections of the fifth form wore away, Jack's
+image disappeared likewise, and I ceased to ask or think about my
+college chum.
+
+A year since, as I was smoking my cigar in the "Estaminet du Grand
+Balcon," an excellent smoking-shop, where the tobacco is
+unexceptionable, and the Hollands of singular merit, a dark-
+looking, thick-set man, in a greasy well-cut coat, with a shabby
+hat, cocked on one side of his dirty face, took the place opposite
+me, at the little marble table, and called for brandy.  I did not
+much admire the impudence or the appearance of my friend, nor the
+fixed stare with which he chose to examine me.  At last, he thrust
+a great greasy hand across the table, and said, "Titmarsh, do you
+forget your old friend Attwood?"
+
+I confess my recognition of him was not so joyful as on the day ten
+years earlier, when he had come, bedizened with lace and gold
+rings, to see us at C---- school: a man in the tenth part of a
+century learns a deal of worldly wisdom, and his hand, which goes
+naturally forward to seize the gloved finger of a millionnaire, or
+a milor, draws instinctively back from a dirty fist, encompassed by
+a ragged wristband and a tattered cuff.  But Attwood was in nowise
+so backward; and the iron squeeze with which he shook my passive
+paw, proved that he was either very affectionate or very poor.
+You, my dear sir, who are reading this history, know very well the
+great art of shaking hands: recollect how you shook Lord Dash's
+hand the other day, and how you shook OFF poor Blank, when he came
+to borrow five pounds of you.
+
+However, the genial influence of the Hollands speedily dissipated
+anything like coolness between us and, in the course of an hour's
+conversation, we became almost as intimate as when we were
+suffering together under the ferule of old Swishtail.  Jack told me
+that he had quitted the army in disgust; and that his father, who
+was to leave him a fortune, had died ten thousand pounds in debt:
+he did not touch upon his own circumstances; but I could read them
+in his elbows, which were peeping through his old frock.  He talked
+a great deal, however, of runs of luck, good and bad; and related
+to me an infallible plan for breaking all the play-banks in Europe--
+a great number of old tricks;--and a vast quantity of gin-punch
+was consumed on the occasion; so long, in fact, did our conversation
+continue, that, I confess it with shame, the sentiment, or something
+stronger, quite got the better of me, and I have, to this day, no
+sort of notion how our palaver concluded.--Only, on the next
+morning, I did not possess a certain five-pound note which on the
+previous evening was in my sketch-book (by far the prettiest drawing
+by the way in the collection) but there, instead, was a strip of
+paper, thus inscribed:--
+
+
+IOU
+Five Pounds.  JOHN ATTWOOD,
+Late of the N--th Dragoons.
+
+
+I suppose Attwood borrowed the money, from this remarkable and
+ceremonious acknowledgment on his part: had I been sober I would
+just as soon have lent him the nose on my face; for, in my then
+circumstances, the note was of much more consequence to me.
+
+As I lay, cursing my ill fortune, and thinking how on earth I
+should manage to subsist for the next two months, Attwood burst
+into my little garret--his face strangely flushed--singing and
+shouting as if it had been the night before.  "Titmarsh," cried he,
+"you are my preserver!--my best friend!  Look here, and here, and
+here!"  And at every word Mr. Attwood produced a handful of gold,
+or a glittering heap of five-franc pieces, or a bundle of greasy,
+dusky bank-notes, more beautiful than either silver or gold:--he
+had won thirteen thousand francs after leaving me at midnight in my
+garret.  He separated my poor little all, of six pieces, from this
+shining and imposing collection; and the passion of envy entered my
+soul: I felt far more anxious now than before, although starvation
+was then staring me in the face; I hated Attwood for CHEATING me
+out of all this wealth.  Poor fellow! it had been better for him
+had he never seen a shilling of it.
+
+However, a grand breakfast at the Cafe Anglais dissipated my
+chagrin; and I will do my friend the justice to say, that he nobly
+shared some portion of his good fortune with me.  As far as the
+creature comforts were concerned I feasted as well as he, and never
+was particular as to settling my share of the reckoning.
+
+Jack now changed his lodgings; had cards, with Captain Attwood
+engraved on them, and drove about a prancing cab-horse, as tall as
+the giraffe at the Jardin des Plantes; he had as many frogs on his
+coat as in the old days, and frequented all the flash restaurateurs'
+and boarding-houses of the capital.  Madame de Saint Laurent, and
+Madame la Baronne de Vaudrey, and Madame la Comtesse de Jonville,
+ladies of the highest rank, who keep a societe choisie and
+condescend to give dinners at five-francs a head, vied with each
+other in their attentions to Jack.  His was the wing of the fowl,
+and the largest portion of the Charlotte-Russe; his was the place at
+the ecarte table, where the Countess would ease him nightly of a few
+pieces, declaring that he was the most charming cavalier, la fleur
+d'Albion.  Jack's society, it may be seen, was not very select; nor,
+in truth, were his inclinations: he was a careless, daredevil,
+Macheath kind of fellow, who might be seen daily with a wife on each
+arm.
+
+It may be supposed that, with the life he led, his five hundred
+pounds of winnings would not last him long; nor did they; but, for
+some time, his luck never deserted him; and his cash, instead of
+growing lower, seemed always to maintain a certain level: he played
+every night.
+
+Of course, such a humble fellow as I, could not hope for a
+continued acquaintance and intimacy with Attwood.  He grew
+overbearing and cool, I thought; at any rate I did not admire my
+situation as his follower and dependant, and left his grand dinner
+for a certain ordinary, where I could partake of five capital
+dishes for ninepence.  Occasionally, however, Attwood favored me
+with a visit, or gave me a drive behind his great cab-horse.  He
+had formed a whole host of friends besides.  There was Fips, the
+barrister; heaven knows what he was doing at Paris; and Gortz, the
+West Indian, who was there on the same business, and Flapper, a
+medical student,--all these three I met one night at Flapper's
+rooms, where Jack was invited, and a great "spread" was laid in
+honor of him.
+
+Jack arrived rather late--he looked pale and agitated; and, though
+he ate no supper, he drank raw brandy in such a manner as made
+Flapper's eyes wink: the poor fellow had but three bottles, and
+Jack bade fair to swallow them all.  However, the West Indian
+generously remedied the evil, and producing a napoleon, we speedily
+got the change for it in the shape of four bottles of champagne.
+
+Our supper was uproariously harmonious; Fips sung the good "Old
+English Gentleman;" Jack the "British Grenadiers;" and your humble
+servant, when called upon, sang that beautiful ditty, "When the
+Bloom is on the Rye," in a manner that drew tears from every eye,
+except Flapper's, who was asleep, and Jack's, who was singing the
+"Bay of Biscay O," at the same time.  Gortz and Fips were all the
+time lunging at each other with a pair of single-sticks, the
+barrister having a very strong notion that he was Richard the
+Third.  At last Fips hit the West Indian such a blow across his
+sconce, that the other grew furious; he seized a champagne-bottle,
+which was, providentially, empty, and hurled it across the room at
+Fips: had that celebrated barrister not bowed his head at the
+moment, the Queen's Bench would have lost one of its most eloquent
+practitioners.
+
+Fips stood as straight as he could; his cheek was pale with wrath.
+"M-m-ister Go-gortz," he said, "I always heard you were a
+blackguard; now I can pr-pr-peperove it.  Flapper, your pistols!
+every ge-ge-genlmn knows what I mean."
+
+Young Mr. Flapper had a small pair of pocket-pistols, which the
+tipsy barrister had suddenly remembered, and with which he proposed
+to sacrifice the West Indian.  Gortz was nothing loth, but was
+quite as valorous as the lawyer.
+
+Attwood, who, in spite of his potations, seemed the soberest man of
+the party, had much enjoyed the scene, until this sudden demand for
+the weapons.  "Pshaw!" said he, eagerly, "don't give these men the
+means of murdering each other; sit down and let us have another
+song."  But they would not be still; and Flapper forthwith produced
+his pistol-case, and opened it, in order that the duel might take
+place on the spot.  There were no pistols there!  "I beg your
+pardon," said Attwood, looking much confused; "I--I took the
+pistols home with me to clean them!"
+
+I don't know what there was in his tone, or in the words, but we
+were sobered all of a sudden.  Attwood was conscious of the
+singular effect produced by him, for he blushed, and endeavored to
+speak of other things, but we could not bring our spirits back to
+the mark again, and soon separated for the night.  As we issued
+into the street Jack took me aside, and whispered, "Have you a
+napoleon, Titmarsh, in your purse?'  Alas! I was not so rich.  My
+reply was, that I was coming to Jack, only in the morning, to
+borrow a similar sum.
+
+He did not make any reply, but turned away homeward: I never heard
+him speak another word.
+
+
+Two mornings after (for none of our party met on the day succeeding
+the supper), I was awakened by my porter, who brought a pressing
+letter from Mr. Gortz:--
+
+
+"DEAR T.,--I wish you would come over here to breakfast.  There's a
+row about Attwood.--Yours truly,
+
+"SOLOMON GORTZ."
+
+
+I immediately set forward to Gortz's; he lived in the Rue du
+Helder, a few doors from Attwood's new lodging.  If the reader is
+curious to know the house in which the catastrophe of this history
+took place, he has but to march some twenty doors down from the
+Boulevard des Italiens, when he will see a fine door, with a naked
+Cupid shooting at him from the hall, and a Venus beckoning him up
+the stairs.  On arriving at the West Indian's, at about mid-day (it
+was a Sunday morning), I found that gentleman in his dressing-gown,
+discussing, in the company of Mr Fips, a large plate of bifteck aux
+pommes.
+
+"Here's a pretty row!" said Gortz, quoting from his letter;--
+"Attwood's off--have a bit of beefsteak?"
+
+"What do you mean?" exclaimed I, adopting the familiar phraseology
+of my acquaintances:--"Attwood off?--has he cut his stick?"
+
+"Not bad," said the feeling and elegant Fips--"not such a bad
+guess, my boy; but he has not exactly CUT HIS STICK."
+
+"What then?"
+
+"WHY, HIS THROAT."  The man's mouth was full of bleeding beef as he
+uttered this gentlemanly witticism.
+
+I wish I could say that I was myself in the least affected by the
+news.  I did not joke about it like my friend Fips; this was more
+for propriety's sake than for feeling's: but for my old school
+acquaintance, the friend of my early days, the merry associate of
+the last few months, I own, with shame, that I had not a tear or a
+pang.  In some German tale there is an account of a creature most
+beautiful and bewitching, whom all men admire and follow; but this
+charming and fantastic spirit only leads them, one by one, into
+ruin, and then leaves them.  The novelist, who describes her
+beauty, says that his heroine is a fairy, and HAS NO HEART.  I
+think the intimacy which is begotten over the wine-bottle, is a
+spirit of this nature; I never knew a good feeling come from it, or
+an honest friendship made by it; it only entices men and ruins
+them; it is only a phantom of friendship and feeling, called up by
+the delirious blood, and the wicked spells of the wine.
+
+But to drop this strain of moralizing (in which the writer is not
+too anxious to proceed, for he cuts in it a most pitiful figure),
+we passed sundry criticisms upon poor Attwood's character,
+expressed our horror at his death--which sentiment was fully proved
+by Mr. Fips, who declared that the notion of it made him feel quite
+faint, and was obliged to drink a large glass of brandy; and,
+finally, we agreed that we would go and see the poor fellow's
+corpse, and witness, if necessary, his burial.
+
+Flapper, who had joined us, was the first to propose this visit: he
+said he did not mind the fifteen francs which Jack owed him for
+billiards, but he was anxious to GET BACK HIS PISTOL.  Accordingly,
+we sallied forth, and speedily arrived at the hotel which Attwood
+inhabited still.  He had occupied, for a time, very fine apartments
+in this house: and it was only on arriving there that day that we
+found he had been gradually driven from his magnificent suite of
+rooms au premier, to a little chamber in the fifth story:--we
+mounted, and found him.  It was a little shabby room, with a few
+articles of rickety furniture, and a bed in an alcove; the light
+from the one window was falling full upon the bed and the body.
+Jack was dressed in a fine lawn shirt; he had kept it, poor fellow,
+TO DIE IN; for in all his drawers and cupboards there was not a
+single article of clothing; he had pawned everything by which he
+could raise a penny--desk, books, dressing-case, and clothes; and
+not a single halfpenny was found in his possession.*
+
+
+* In order to account for these trivial details, the reader must be
+told that the story is, for the chief part, a fact; and that the
+little sketch in this page was TAKEN FROM NATURE.  The latter was
+likewise a copy from one found in the manner described.
+
+
+He was lying as I have drawn him,* one hand on his breast, the
+other falling towards the ground.  There was an expression of
+perfect calm on the face, and no mark of blood to stain the side
+towards the light.  On the other side, however, there was a great
+pool of black blood, and in it the pistol; it looked more like a
+toy than a weapon to take away the life of this vigorous young man.
+In his forehead, at the side, was a small black wound; Jack's life
+had passed through it; it was little bigger than a mole.
+
+
+* This refers to an illustrated edition of the work.
+
+
+"Regardez un peu," said the landlady, "messieurs, il m'a gate trois
+matelas, et il me doit quarante quatre francs."
+
+This was all his epitaph: he had spoiled three mattresses, and owed
+the landlady four-and-forty francs.  In the whole world there was
+not a soul to love him or lament him.  We, his friends, were
+looking at his body more as an object of curiosity, watching it
+with a kind of interest with which one follows the fifth act of a
+tragedy, and leaving it with the same feeling with which one leaves
+the theatre when the play is over and the curtain is down.
+
+Beside Jack's bed, on his little "table de nuit," lay the remains
+of his last meal, and an open letter, which we read.  It was from
+one of his suspicious acquaintances of former days, and ran thus:--
+
+
+"Ou es tu, cher Jack? why you not come and see me--tu me dois de
+l'argent, entends tu?--un chapeau, une cachemire, a box of the
+Play.  Viens demain soir, je t'attendrai at eight o'clock, Passage
+des Panoramas.  My Sir is at his country.
+
+"Adieu a demain.
+
+"Fifine.
+
+"Samedi."
+
+
+I shuddered as I walked through this very Passage des Panoramas, in
+the evening.  The girl was there, pacing to and fro, and looking in
+the countenance of every passer-by, to recognize Attwood.  "ADIEU A
+DEMAIN!"--there was a dreadful meaning in the words, which the
+writer of them little knew.  "Adieu a demain!"--the morrow was
+come, and the soul of the poor suicide was now in the presence of
+God.  I dare not think of his fate; for, except in the fact of his
+poverty and desperation, was he worse than any of us, his
+companions, who had shared his debauches, and marched with him up
+to the very brink of the grave?
+
+There is but one more circumstance to relate regarding poor Jack--
+his burial; it was of a piece with his death.
+
+He was nailed into a paltry coffin and buried, at the expense of
+the arrondissement, in a nook of the burial-place beyond the
+Barriere de l'Etoile.  They buried him at six o'clock, of a bitter
+winter's morning, and it was with difficulty that an English
+clergyman could be found to read a service over his grave.  The
+three men who have figured in this history acted as Jack's
+mourners; and as the ceremony was to take place so early in the
+morning, these men sat up the night through, AND WERE ALMOST DRUNK
+as they followed his coffin to its resting-place.
+
+
+MORAL.
+
+
+"When we turned out in our great-coats," said one of them afterwards,
+"reeking of cigars and brandy-and-water, d--e, sir, we quite
+frightened the old buck of a parson; he did not much like our
+company."  After the ceremony was concluded, these gentlemen were
+very happy to get home to a warm and comfortable breakfast, and
+finished the day royally at Frascati's.
+
+
+
+
+NAPOLEON AND HIS SYSTEM.
+
+ON PRINCE LOUIS NAPOLEON'S WORK.
+
+
+Any person who recollects the history of the absurd outbreak of
+Strasburg, in which Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte figured, three
+years ago, must remember that, however silly the revolt was,
+however, foolish its pretext, however doubtful its aim, and
+inexperienced its leader, there was, nevertheless, a party, and a
+considerable one in France, that were not unwilling to lend the new
+projectors their aid.  The troops who declared against the Prince,
+were, it was said, all but willing to declare for him; and it was
+certain that, in many of the regiments of the army, there existed a
+strong spirit of disaffection, and an eager wish for the return of
+the imperial system and family.
+
+As to the good that was to be derived from the change, that is
+another question.  Why the Emperor of the French should be better
+than the King of the French, or the King of the French better than
+the King of France and Navarre, it is not our business to inquire;
+but all the three monarchs have no lack of supporters; republicanism
+has no lack of supporters; St. Simoninnism was followed by a
+respectable body of admirers; Robespierrism has a select party of
+friends.  If, in a country where so many quacks have had their day,
+Prince Louis Napoleon thought he might renew the imperial quackery,
+why should he not?  It has recollections with it that must always be
+dear to a gallant nation; it has certain claptraps in its vocabulary
+that can never fail to inflame a vain, restless, grasping,
+disappointed one.
+
+In the first place, and don't let us endeavor to disguise it, they
+hate us.  Not all the protestations of friendship, not all the
+wisdom of Lord Palmerston, not all the diplomacy of our distinguished
+plenipotentiary, Mr. Henry Lytton Bulwer--and let us add, not all
+the benefit which both countries would derive from the alliance--can
+make it, in our times at least, permanent and cordial.  They hate
+us.  The Carlist organs revile us with a querulous fury that never
+sleeps; the moderate party, if they admit the utility of our
+alliance, are continually pointing out our treachery, our insolence,
+and our monstrous infractions of it; and for the Republicans, as
+sure as the morning comes, the columns of their journals thunder out
+volleys of fierce denunciations against our unfortunate country.
+They live by feeding the natural hatred against England, by keeping
+old wounds open, by recurring ceaselessly to the history of old
+quarrels, and as in these we, by God's help, by land and by sea, in
+old times and late, have had the uppermost, they perpetuate the
+shame and mortification of the losing party, the bitterness of past
+defeats, and the eager desire to avenge them.  A party which knows
+how to exploiter this hatred will always be popular to a certain
+extent; and the imperial scheme has this, at least, among its
+conditions.
+
+Then there is the favorite claptrap of the "natural frontier."  The
+Frenchman yearns to be bounded by the Rhine and the Alps; and next
+follows the cry, "Let France take her place among nations, and
+direct, as she ought to do, the affairs of Europe."  These are the
+two chief articles contained in the new imperial programme, if we
+may credit the journal which has been established to advocate the
+cause.  A natural boundary--stand among the nations--popular
+development--Russian alliance, and a reduction of la perfide Albion
+to its proper insignificance.  As yet we know little more of the
+plan: and yet such foundations are sufficient to build a party
+upon, and with such windy weapons a substantial Government is to be
+overthrown!
+
+In order to give these doctrines, such as they are, a chance of
+finding favor with his countrymen, Prince Louis has the advantage
+of being able to refer to a former great professor of them--his
+uncle Napoleon.  His attempt is at once pious and prudent; it
+exalts the memory of the uncle, and furthers the interests of the
+nephew, who attempts to show what Napoleon's ideas really were;
+what good had already resulted from the practice of them; how
+cruelly they had been thwarted by foreign wars and difficulties;
+and what vast benefits WOULD have resulted from them; ay, and (it
+is reasonable to conclude) might still, if the French nation would
+be wise enough to pitch upon a governor that would continue the
+interrupted scheme.  It is, however, to be borne in mind that the
+Emperor Napoleon had certain arguments in favor of his opinions for
+the time being, which his nephew has not employed.  On the 13th
+Vendemiaire, when General Bonaparte believed in the excellence of a
+Directory, it may be remembered that he aided his opinions by forty
+pieces of artillery, and by Colonel Murat at the head of his
+dragoons.  There was no resisting such a philosopher; the Directory
+was established forthwith, and the sacred cause of the minority
+triumphed, in like manner, when the General was convinced of the
+weakness of the Directory, and saw fully the necessity of
+establishing a Consulate, what were his arguments?  Moreau, Lannes,
+Murat, Berthier, Leclerc, Lefebvre--gentle apostles of the truth!--
+marched to St. Cloud, and there, with fixed bayonets, caused it to
+prevail.  Error vanished in an instant.  At once five hundred of
+its high-priests tumbled out of windows, and lo! three Consuls
+appeared to guide the destinies of France!  How much more
+expeditious, reasonable, and clinching was this argument of the
+18th Brumaire, than any one that can be found in any pamphlet!  A
+fig for your duodecimos and octavos!  Talk about points, there are
+none like those at the end of a bayonet; and the most powerful of
+styles is a good rattling "article" from a nine-pounder.
+
+At least this is our interpretation of the manner in which were
+always propagated the Idees Napoleoniennes.  Not such, however, is
+Prince Louis's belief; and, if you wish to go along with him in
+opinion, you will discover that a more liberal, peaceable, prudent
+Prince never existed: you will read that "the mission of Napoleon"
+was to be the "testamentary executor of the revolution;" and the
+Prince should have added the legatee; or, more justly still, as
+well as the EXECUTOR, he should be called the EXECUTIONER, and then
+his title would be complete.  In Vendemiaire, the military
+Tartuffe, he threw aside the Revolution's natural heirs, and made
+her, as it were, ALTER HER WILL; on the 18th of Brumaire he
+strangled her, and on the 19th seized on her property, and kept it
+until force deprived him of it.  Illustrations, to be sure, are no
+arguments, but the example is the Prince's, not ours.
+
+In the Prince's eyes, then, his uncle is a god; of all monarchs,
+the most wise, upright, and merciful.  Thirty years ago the opinion
+had millions of supporters; while millions again were ready to
+avouch the exact contrary.  It is curious to think of the former
+difference of opinion concerning Napoleon; and, in reading his
+nephew's rapturous encomiums of him, one goes back to the days when
+we ourselves were as loud and mad in his dispraise.  Who does not
+remember his own personal hatred and horror, twenty-five years ago,
+for the man whom we used to call the "bloody Corsican upstart and
+assassin?"  What stories did we not believe of him?--what murders,
+rapes, robberies, not lay to his charge?--we who were living within
+a few miles of his territory, and might, by books and newspapers,
+be made as well acquainted with his merits or demerits as any of
+his own countrymen.
+
+Then was the age when the Idees Napoleoniennes might have passed
+through many editions; for while we were thus outrageously bitter,
+our neighbors were as extravagantly attached to him by a strange
+infatuation--adored him like a god, whom we chose to consider as a
+fiend; and vowed that, under his government, their nation had
+attained its highest pitch of grandeur and glory.  In revenge there
+existed in England (as is proved by a thousand authentic documents)
+a monster so hideous, a tyrant so ruthless and bloody, that the
+world's history cannot show his parallel.  This ruffian's name was,
+during the early part of the French revolution, Pittetcobourg.
+Pittetcobourg's emissaries were in every corner of France;
+Pittetcobourg's gold chinked in the pockets of every traitor in
+Europe; it menaced the life of the godlike Robespierre; it drove
+into cellars and fits of delirium even the gentle philanthropist
+Marat; it fourteen times caused the dagger to be lifted against the
+bosom of the First Consul, Emperor, and King,--that first, great,
+glorious, irresistible, cowardly, contemptible, bloody hero and
+fiend, Bonaparte, before mentioned.
+
+On our side of the Channel we have had leisure, long since, to re-
+consider our verdict against Napoleon; though, to be sure, we have
+not changed our opinion about Pittetcobourg.  After five-and-thirty
+years all parties bear witness to his honesty, and speak with
+affectionate reverence of his patriotism, his genius, and his
+private virtue.  In France, however, or, at least among certain
+parties in France, there has been no such modification of opinion.
+With the Republicans, Pittetcobourg is Pittetcobourg still,--
+crafty, bloody, seeking whom he may devour; and perfide Albion more
+perfidious than ever.  This hatred is the point of union between
+the Republic and the Empire; it has been fostered ever since, and
+must be continued by Prince Louis, if he would hope to conciliate
+both parties.
+
+With regard to the Emperor, then, Prince Louis erects to his memory
+as fine a monument as his wits can raise.  One need not say that
+the imperial apologist's opinion should be received with the utmost
+caution; for a man who has such a hero for an uncle may naturally
+be proud of and partial to him; and when this nephew of the great
+man would be his heir likewise, and, hearing his name, step also
+into his imperial shoes, one may reasonably look for much
+affectionate panegyric.  "The empire was the best of empires,"
+cries the Prince; and possibly it was; undoubtedly, the Prince
+thinks it was; but he is the very last person who would convince a
+man with the proper suspicious impartiality.  One remembers a
+certain consultation of politicians which is recorded in the
+Spelling-book; and the opinion of that patriotic sage who avowed
+that, for a real blameless constitution, an impenetrable shield for
+liberty, and cheap defence of nations, there was nothing like
+leather.
+
+Let us examine some of the Prince's article.  If we may be allowed
+humbly to express an opinion, his leather is not only quite
+insufficient for those vast public purposes for which he destines
+it, but is, moreover, and in itself, very BAD LEATHER.  The hides
+are poor, small, unsound slips of skin; or, to drop this cobbling
+metaphor, the style is not particularly brilliant, the facts not
+very startling, and, as for the conclusions, one may differ with
+almost every one of them.  Here is an extract from his first
+chapter, "on governments in general:"--
+
+"I speak it with regret, I can see but two governments, at this
+day, which fulfil the mission that Providence has confided to them;
+they are the two colossi at the end of the world; one at the
+extremity of the old world, the other at the extremity of the new.
+Whilst our old European centre is as a volcano, consuming itself in
+its crater, the two nations of the East and the West, march without
+hesitation, towards perfection; the one under the will of a single
+individual, the other under liberty.
+
+"Providence has confided to the United States of North America the
+task of peopling and civilizing that immense territory which
+stretches from the Atlantic to the South Sea, and from the North
+Pole to the Equator.  The Government, which is only a simple
+administration, has only hitherto been called upon to put in
+practice the old adage, Laissez faire, laissez passer, in order to
+favor that irresistible instinct which pushes the people of America
+to the west.
+
+In Russia it is to the imperial dynasty that is owing all the vast
+progress which, in a century and a half, has rescued that empire
+from barbarism.  The imperial power must contend against all the
+ancient prejudices of our old Europe: it must centralize, as far as
+possible, all the powers of the state in the hands of one person,
+in order to destroy the abuses which the feudal and communal
+franchises have served to perpetuate.  The last alone can hope to
+receive from it the improvements which it expects.
+
+"But thou, France of Henry IV., of Louis XIV., of Carnot, of
+Napoleon--thou, who wert always for the west of Europe the source
+of progress, who possessest in thyself the two great pillars of
+empire, the genius for the arts of peace and the genius of war--
+hast thou no further mission to fulfil?  Wilt thou never cease to
+waste thy force and energies in intestine struggles?  No; such
+cannot be thy destiny: the day will soon come, when, to govern
+thee, it will be necessary to understand that thy part is to place
+in all treaties thy sword of Brennus on the side of civilization."
+
+These are the conclusions of the Prince's remarks upon governments
+in general; and it must be supposed that the reader is very little
+wiser at the end than at the beginning.  But two governments in the
+world fulfil their mission: the one government, which is no
+government; the other, which is a despotism.  The duty of France is
+IN ALL TREATIES to place her sword of Brennus in the scale of
+civilization.  Without quarrelling with the somewhat confused
+language of the latter proposition, may we ask what, in heaven's
+name, is the meaning of all the three?  What is this epee de
+Brennus? and how is France to use it?  Where is the great source of
+political truth, from which, flowing pure, we trace American
+republicanism in one stream, Russian despotism in another?  Vastly
+prosperous is the great republic, if you will: if dollars and cents
+constitute happiness, there is plenty for all: but can any one, who
+has read of the American doings in the late frontier troubles, and
+the daily disputes on the slave question, praise the GOVERNMENT of
+the States?--a Government which dares not punish homicide or arson
+performed before its very eyes, and which the pirates of Texas and
+the pirates of Canada can brave at their will?  There is no
+government, but a prosperous anarchy; as the Prince's other
+favorite government is a prosperous slavery.  What, then, is to be
+the epee de Brennus government?  Is it to be a mixture of the two?
+"Society," writes the Prince, axiomatically, "contains in itself
+two principles--the one of progress and immortality, the other of
+disease and disorganization."  No doubt; and as the one tends
+towards liberty, so the other is only to be cured by order: and
+then, with a singular felicity, Prince Louis picks us out a couple
+of governments, in one of which the common regulating power is as
+notoriously too weak, as it is in the other too strong, and talks
+in rapturous terms of the manner in which they fulfil their
+"providential mission!"
+
+From these considerations on things in general, the Prince conducts
+us to Napoleon in particular, and enters largely into a discussion
+of the merits of the imperial system.  Our author speaks of the
+Emperor's advent in the following grandiose way:--
+
+"Napoleon, on arriving at the public stage, saw that his part was
+to be the TESTAMENTARY EXECUTOR of the Revolution.  The destructive
+fire of parties was extinct; and when the Revolution, dying, but
+not vanquished, delegated to Napoleon the accomplishment of her
+last will, she said to him, 'Establish upon solid bases the
+principal result of my efforts.  Unite divided Frenchmen.  Defeat
+feudal Europe that is leagued against me.  Cicatrize my wounds.
+Enlighten the nations.  Execute that in width, which I have had to
+perform in depth.  Be for Europe what I have been for France.  And,
+even if you must water the tree of civilization with your blood--if
+you must see your projects misunderstood, and your sons without a
+country, wandering over the face of the earth, never abandon the
+sacred cause of the French people.  Insure its triumph by all the
+means which genius can discover and humanity approve.'
+
+"This grand mission Napoleon performed to the end.  His task was
+difficult.  He had to place upon new principles a society still
+boiling with hatred and revenge; and to use, for building up, the
+same instruments which had been employed for pulling down.
+
+"The common lot of every new truth that arises, is to wound rather
+than to convince--rather than to gain proselytes, to awaken fear.
+For, oppressed as it long has been, it rushes forward with
+additional force; having to encounter obstacles, it is compelled to
+combat them, and overthrow them; until, at length, comprehended and
+adopted by the generality, it becomes the basis of new social
+order.
+
+"Liberty will follow the same march as the Christian religion.
+Armed with death from the ancient society of Rome, it for a long
+while excited the hatred and fear of the people.  At last, by force
+of martyrdoms and persecutions, the religion of Christ penetrated
+into the conscience and the soul; it soon had kings and armies at
+its orders, and Constantine and Charlemagne bore it triumphant
+throughout Europe.  Religion then laid down her arms of war.  It
+laid open to all the principles of peace and order which it
+contained; it became the prop of Government, as it was the
+organizing element of society.  Thus will it be with liberty.  In
+1793 it frightened people and sovereigns alike; then, having
+clothed itself in a milder garb, IT INSINUATED ITSELF EVERYWHERE IN
+THE TRAIN OF OUR BATTALIONS.  In 1815 all parties adopted its flag,
+and armed themselves with its moral force--covered themselves with
+its colors.  The adoption was not sincere, and liberty was soon
+obliged to reassume its warlike accoutrements.  With the contest
+their fears returned.  Let us hope that they will soon cease, and
+that liberty will soon resume her peaceful standards, to quit them
+no more.
+
+"The Emperor Napoleon contributed more than any one else towards
+accelerating the reign of liberty, by saving the moral influence
+of the revolution, and diminishing the fears which it imposed.
+Without the Consulate and the Empire, the revolution would have
+been only a grand drama, leaving grand revolutions but no traces:
+the revolution would have been drowned in the counter-revolution.
+The contrary, however, was the case.  Napoleon rooted the
+revolution in France, and introduced, throughout Europe, the
+principal benefits of the crisis of 1789.  To use his own words,
+'He purified the revolution, he confirmed kings, and ennobled
+people.'  He purified the revolution, in separating the truths
+which it contained from the passions that, during its delirium,
+disfigured it.  He ennobled the people in giving them the
+consciousness of their force, and those institutions which raise
+men in their own eyes.  The Emperor may be considered as the
+Messiah of the new ideas; for--and we must confess it--in the
+moments immediately succeeding a social revolution, it is not so
+essential to put rigidly into practice all the propositions
+resulting from the new theory, but to become master of the
+regenerative genius, to identify one's self with the sentiments of
+the people, and boldly to direct them towards the desired point.
+To accomplish such a task YOUR FIBRE SHOULD RESPOND TO THAT OF THE
+PEOPLE, as the Emperor said; you should feel like it, your
+interests should be so intimately raised with its own, that you
+should vanquish or fall together."
+
+Let us take breath after these big phrases,--grand round figures of
+speech,--which, when put together, amount like certain other
+combinations of round figures to exactly 0.  We shall not stop to
+argue the merits and demerits of Prince Louis's notable comparison
+between the Christian religion and the Imperial-revolutionary
+system.  There are many blunders in the above extract as we read
+it; blundering metaphors, blundering arguments, and blundering
+assertions; but this is surely the grandest blunder of all; and one
+wonders at the blindness of the legislator and historian who can
+advance such a parallel.  And what are we to say of the legacy of
+the dying revolution to Napoleon?  Revolutions do not die, and, on
+their death-beds, making fine speeches, hand over their property to
+young officers of artillery.  We have all read the history of his
+rise.  The constitution of the year III. was carried.  Old men of
+the Montagne, disguised royalists, Paris sections, PITTETCOBOURG,
+above all, with his money-bags, thought that here was a fine
+opportunity for a revolt, and opposed the new constitution in arms:
+the new constitution had knowledge of a young officer who would not
+hesitate to defend its cause, and who effectually beat the
+majority.  The tale may be found in every account of the
+revolution, and the rest of his story need not be told.  We know
+every step that he took: we know how, by doses of cannon-balls
+promptly administered, he cured the fever of the sections--that
+fever which another camp-physician (Menou) declined to prescribe
+for; we know how he abolished the Directory; and how the Consulship
+came; and then the Empire; and then the disgrace, exile, and lonely
+death.  Has not all this been written by historians in all
+tongues?--by memoir-writing pages, chamberlains, marshals, lackeys,
+secretaries, contemporaries, and ladies of honor?  Not a word of
+miracle is there in all this narration; not a word of celestial
+missions, or political Messiahs.  From Napoleon's rise to his fall,
+the bayonet marches alongside of him: now he points it at the tails
+of the scampering "five hundred,"--now he charges with it across
+the bloody planks of Arcola--now he flies before it over the fatal
+plain of Waterloo.
+
+Unwilling, however, as he may be to grant that there are any spots
+in the character of his hero's government, the Prince is,
+nevertheless, obliged to allow that such existed; that the
+Emperor's manner of rule was a little more abrupt and dictatorial
+than might possibly be agreeable.  For this the Prince has always
+an answer ready--it is the same poor one that Napoleon uttered a
+million of times to his companions in exile--the excuse of
+necessity.  He WOULD have been very liberal, but that the people
+were not fit for it; or that the cursed war prevented him--or any
+other reason why.  His first duty, however, says his apologist, was
+to form a general union of Frenchmen, and he set about his plan in
+this wise:--
+
+"Let us not forget, that all which Napoleon undertook, in order to
+create a general fusion, he performed without renouncing the
+principles of the revolution.  He recalled the emigres, without
+touching upon the law by which their goods had been confiscated and
+sold as public property.  He reestablished the Catholic religion at
+the same time that he proclaimed the liberty of conscience, and
+endowed equally the ministers of all sects.  He caused himself to
+be consecrated by the Sovereign Pontiff, without conceding to the
+Pope's demand any of the liberties of the Gallican church.  He
+married a daughter of the Emperor of Austria, without abandoning
+any of the rights of France to the conquests she had made.  He
+reestablished noble titles, without attaching to them any
+privileges or prerogatives, and these titles were conferred on all
+ranks, on all services, on all professions.  Under the empire all
+idea of caste was destroyed; no man ever thought of vaunting his
+pedigree--no man ever was asked how he was born, but what he had
+done.
+
+"The first quality of a people which aspires to liberal government,
+is respect to the law.  Now, a law has no other power than lies in
+the interest which each citizen has to defend or to contravene it.
+In order to make a people respect the law, it was necessary that it
+should be executed in the interest of all, and should consecrate
+the principle of equality in all its extension.  It was necessary
+to restore the prestige with which the Government had been formerly
+invested, and to make the principles of the revolution take root in
+the public manners.  At the commencement of a new society, it is
+the legislator who makes or corrects the manners; later, it is the
+manners which make the law, or preserve it from age to age intact."
+
+Some of these fusions are amusing.  No man in the empire was asked
+how he was born, but what he had done; and, accordingly, as a man's
+actions were sufficient to illustrate him, the Emperor took care to
+make a host of new title-bearers, princes, dukes, barons, and what
+not, whose rank has descended to their children.  He married a
+princess of Austria; but, for all that, did not abandon his
+conquests--perhaps not actually; but he abandoned his allies, and,
+eventually, his whole kingdom.  Who does not recollect his answer
+to the Poles, at the commencement of the Russian campaign?  But for
+Napoleon's imperial father-in-law, Poland would have been a
+kingdom, and his race, perhaps, imperial still.  Why was he to
+fetch this princess out of Austria to make heirs for his throne?
+Why did not the man of the people marry a girl of the people?  Why
+must he have a Pope to crown him--half a dozen kings for brothers,
+and a bevy of aides-de-camp dressed out like so many mountebanks
+from Astley's, with dukes' coronets, and grand blue velvet
+marshals' batons?  We have repeatedly his words for it.  He wanted
+to create an aristocracy--another acknowledgment on his part of the
+Republican dilemma--another apology for the revolutionary blunder.
+To keep the republic within bounds, a despotism is necessary; to
+rally round the despotism, an aristocracy must be created; and for
+what have we been laboring all this while? for what have bastiles
+been battered down, and king's heads hurled, as a gage of battle,
+in the face of armed Europe?  To have a Duke of Otranto instead of
+a Duke de la Tremouille, and Emperor Stork in place of King Log.  O
+lame conclusion!  Is the blessed revolution which is prophesied for
+us in England only to end in establishing a Prince Fergus O'Connor,
+or a Cardinal Wade, or a Duke Daniel Whittle Harvey?  Great as
+those patriots are, we love them better under their simple family
+names, and scorn titles and coronets.
+
+At present, in France, the delicate matter of titles seems to be
+better arranged, any gentleman, since the Revolution, being free to
+adopt any one he may fix upon; and it appears that the Crown no
+longer confers any patents of nobility, but contents itself with
+saying, as in the case of M. de Pontois, the other day, "Le Roi
+trouve convenable that you take the title of," &c.
+
+To execute the legacy of the revolution, then; to fulfil his
+providential mission; to keep his place,--in other words, for the
+simplest are always the best,--to keep his place, and to keep his
+Government in decent order, the Emperor was obliged to establish a
+military despotism, to re-establish honors and titles; it was
+necessary, as the Prince confesses, to restore the old prestige of
+the Government, in order to make the people respect it; and he
+adds--a truth which one hardly would expect from him,--"At the
+commencement of a new society, it is the legislator who makes and
+corrects the manners; later, it is the manners which preserve
+the laws."  Of course, and here is the great risk that all
+revolutionizing people run--they must tend to despotism; "they must
+personify themselves in a man," is the Prince's phrase; and,
+according as is his temperament or disposition--according as he is
+a Cromwell, a Washington, or a Napoleon--the revolution becomes
+tyranny or freedom, prospers or falls.
+
+Somewhere in the St. Helena memorials, Napoleon reports a message
+of his to the Pope.  "Tell the Pope," he says to an archbishop, "to
+remember that I have six hundred thousand armed Frenchmen, qui
+marcheront avec moi, pour moi, et comme moi."  And this is the
+legacy of the revolution, the advancement of freedom!  A hundred
+volumes of imperial special pleading will not avail against such
+a speech as this--one so insolent, and at the same time so
+humiliating, which gives unwittingly the whole of the Emperor's
+progress, strength, and weakness.  The six hundred thousand armed
+Frenchmen were used up, and the whole fabric falls; the six hundred
+thousand are reduced to sixty thousand, and straightway all the
+rest of the fine imperial scheme vanishes: the miserable senate, so
+crawling and abject but now, becomes of a sudden endowed with a
+wondrous independence; the miserable sham nobles, sham empress,
+sham kings, dukes, princes, chamberlains, pack up their plumes and
+embroideries, pounce upon what money and plate they can lay their
+hands on, and when the allies appear before Paris, when for courage
+and manliness there is yet hope, when with fierce marches hastening
+to the relief of his capital, bursting through ranks upon ranks of
+the enemy, and crushing or scattering them from the path of his
+swift and victorious despair, the Emperor at last is at home,--
+where are the great dignitaries and the lieutenant-generals of the
+empire?  Where is Maria Louisa, the Empress Eagle, with her little
+callow king of Rome?  Is she going to defend her nest and her
+eaglet?  Not she.  Empress-queen, lieutenant-general, and court
+dignitaries, are off on the wings of all the winds--profligati
+sunt, they are away with the money-bags, and Louis Stanislas Xavier
+rolls into the palace of his fathers.
+
+With regard to Napoleon's excellences as an administrator, a
+legislator, a constructor of public works, and a skilful financier,
+his nephew speaks with much diffuse praise, and few persons, we
+suppose, will be disposed to contradict him.  Whether the Emperor
+composed his famous code, or borrowed it, is of little importance;
+but he established it, and made the law equal for every man in
+France except one.  His vast public works and vaster wars were
+carried on without new loans or exorbitant taxes; it was only the
+blood and liberty of the people that were taxed, and we shall want
+a better advocate than Prince Louis to show us that these were not
+most unnecessarily and lavishly thrown away.  As for the former and
+material improvements, it is not necessary to confess here that a
+despotic energy can effect such far more readily than a Government
+of which the strength is diffused in many conflicting parties.  No
+doubt, if we could create a despotical governing machine, a steam
+autocrat,--passionless, untiring, and supreme,--we should advance
+further, and live more at ease than under any other form of
+government.  Ministers might enjoy their pensions and follow their
+own devices; Lord John might compose histories or tragedies at his
+leisure, and Lord Palmerston, instead of racking his brains to
+write leading articles for Cupid, might crown his locks with
+flowers, and sing [Greek text omitted], his natural Anacreontics;
+but alas! not so: if the despotic Government has its good side,
+Prince Louis Napoleon must acknowledge that it has its bad, and it
+is for this that the civilized world is compelled to substitute for
+it something more orderly and less capricious.  Good as the
+Imperial Government might have been, it must be recollected, too,
+that since its first fall, both the Emperor and his admirer and
+would-be successor have had their chance of re-establishing it.
+"Fly from steeple to steeple" the eagles of the former did
+actually, and according to promise perch for a while on the towers
+of Notre Dame.  We know the event: if the fate of war declared
+against the Emperor, the country declared against him too; and,
+with old Lafayette for a mouthpiece, the representatives of the
+nation did, in a neat speech, pronounce themselves in permanence,
+but spoke no more of the Emperor than if he had never been.
+Thereupon the Emperor proclaimed his son the Emperor Napoleon II.
+"L'Empereur est mort, vive l'Empereur!" shouted Prince Lucien.
+Psha! not a soul echoed the words: the play was played, and as for
+old Lafayette and his "permanent" representatives, a corporal with
+a hammer nailed up the door of their spouting-club, and once more
+Louis Stanislas Xavier rolled back to the bosom of his people.
+
+In like manner Napoleon III. returned from exile, and made his
+appearance on the frontier.  His eagle appeared at Strasburg, and
+from Strasburg advanced to the capital; but it arrived at Paris
+with a keeper, and in a post-chaise; whence, by the orders of the
+sovereign, it was removed to the American shores, and there
+magnanimously let loose.  Who knows, however, how soon it may be on
+the wing again, and what a flight it will take?
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF MARY ANCEL.
+
+
+"Go, my nephew," said old Father Jacob to me, "and complete thy
+studies at Strasburg: Heaven surely hath ordained thee for the
+ministry in these times of trouble, and my excellent friend
+Schneider will work out the divine intention."
+
+Schneider was an old college friend of uncle Jacob's, was a
+Benedictine monk, and a man famous for his learning; as for me,
+I was at that time my uncle's chorister, clerk, and sacristan;
+I swept the church, chanted the prayers with my shrill treble, and
+swung the great copper incense-pot on Sundays and feasts; and I
+toiled over the Fathers for the other days of the week.
+
+The old gentleman said that my progress was prodigious, and,
+without vanity, I believe he was right, for I then verily
+considered that praying was my vocation, and not fighting, as
+I have found since.
+
+You would hardly conceive (said the Captain, swearing a great oath)
+how devout and how learned I was in those days; I talked Latin
+faster than my own beautiful patois of Alsacian French; I could
+utterly overthrow in argument every Protestant (heretics we called
+them) parson in the neighborhood, and there was a confounded
+sprinkling of these unbelievers in our part of the country.  I
+prayed half a dozen times a day; I fasted thrice in a week; and, as
+for penance, I used to scourge my little sides, till they had no
+more feeling than a peg-top: such was the godly life I led at my
+uncle Jacob's in the village of Steinbach.
+
+Our family had long dwelt in this place, and a large farm and a
+pleasant house were then in the possession of another uncle--uncle
+Edward.  He was the youngest of the three sons of my grandfather;
+but Jacob, the elder, had shown a decided vocation for the church,
+from, I believe, the age of three, and now was by no means tired of
+it at sixty.  My father, who was to have inherited the paternal
+property, was, as I hear, a terrible scamp and scapegrace,
+quarrelled with his family, and disappeared altogether, living and
+dying at Paris; so far we knew through my mother, who came, poor
+woman, with me, a child of six months, on her bosom, was refused
+all shelter by my grandfather, but was housed and kindly cared for
+by my good uncle Jacob.
+
+Here she lived for about seven years, and the old gentleman, when
+she died, wept over her grave a great deal more than I did, who was
+then too young to mind anything but toys or sweetmeats.
+
+During this time my grandfather was likewise carried off: he left,
+as I said, the property to his son Edward, with a small proviso in
+his will that something should be done for me, his grandson.
+
+Edward was himself a widower, with one daughter, Mary, about three
+years older than I, and certainly she was the dearest little
+treasure with which Providence ever blessed a miserly father; by
+the time she was fifteen, five farmers, three lawyers, twelve
+Protestant parsons, and a lieutenant of Dragoons had made her
+offers: it must not be denied that she was an heiress as well as a
+beauty, which, perhaps, had something to do with the love of these
+gentlemen.  However, Mary declared that she intended to live
+single, turned away her lovers one after another, and devoted
+herself to the care of her father.
+
+Uncle Jacob was as fond of her as he was of any saint or martyr.
+As for me, at the mature age of twelve I had made a kind of
+divinity of her, and when we sang "Ave Maria" on Sundays I could
+not refrain from turning to her, where she knelt, blushing and
+praying and looking like an angel, as she was.  Besides her beauty,
+Mary had a thousand good qualities; she could play better on the
+harpsichord, she could dance more lightly, she could make better
+pickles and puddings, than any girl in Alsace; there was not a want
+or a fancy of the old hunks her father, or a wish of mine or my
+uncle's, that she would not gratify if she could; as for herself,
+the sweet soul had neither wants nor wishes except to see us happy.
+
+I could talk to you for a year of all the pretty kindnesses that
+she would do for me; how, when she found me of early mornings among
+my books, her presence "would cast a light upon the day;" how she
+used to smooth and fold my little surplice, and embroider me caps
+and gowns for high feast-days; how she used to bring flowers for
+the altar, and who could deck it so well as she?  But sentiment
+does not come glibly from under a grizzled moustache, so I will
+drop it, if you please.
+
+Amongst other favors she showed me, Mary used to be particularly
+fond of kissing me: it was a thing I did not so much value in those
+days, but I found that the more I grew alive to the extent of the
+benefit, the less she would condescend to confer it on me; till at
+last, when I was about fourteen, she discontinued it altogether, of
+her own wish at least; only sometimes I used to be rude, and take
+what she had now become so mighty unwilling to give.
+
+I was engaged in a contest of this sort one day with Mary, when,
+just as I was about to carry off a kiss from her cheek, I was
+saluted with a staggering slap on my own, which was bestowed by
+uncle Edward, and sent me reeling some yards down the garden.
+
+The old gentleman, whose tongue was generally as close as his
+purse, now poured forth a flood of eloquence which quite astonished
+me.  I did not think that so much was to be said on any subject as
+he managed to utter on one, and that was abuse of me; he stamped,
+he swore, he screamed; and then, from complimenting me, he turned
+to Mary, and saluted her in a manner equally forcible and
+significant; she, who was very much frightened at the commencement
+of the scene, grew very angry at the coarse words he used, and the
+wicked motives he imputed to her.
+
+"The child is but fourteen," she said; "he is your own nephew, and
+a candidate for holy orders:--father, it is a shame that you should
+thus speak of me, your daughter, or of one of his holy profession."
+
+I did not particularly admire this speech myself, but it had an
+effect on my uncle, and was the cause of the words with which this
+history commences.  The old gentleman persuaded his brother that I
+must be sent to Strasburg, and there kept until my studies for the
+church were concluded.  I was furnished with a letter to my uncle's
+old college chum, Professor Schneider, who was to instruct me in
+theology and Greek.
+
+I was not sorry to see Strasburg, of the wonders of which I had
+heard so much; but felt very loth as the time drew near when I must
+quit my pretty cousin, and my good old uncle.  Mary and I managed,
+however, a parting walk, in which a number of tender things were
+said on both sides.  I am told that you Englishmen consider it
+cowardly to cry; as for me, I wept and roared incessantly: when
+Mary squeezed me, for the last time, the tears came out of me as if
+I had been neither more nor less than a great wet sponge.  My
+cousin's eyes were stoically dry; her ladyship had a part to play,
+and it would have been wrong for her to be in love with a young
+chit of fourteen--so she carried herself with perfect coolness, as
+if there was nothing the matter.  I should not have known that she
+cared for me, had it not been for a letter which she wrote me a
+month afterwards--THEN, nobody was by, and the consequence was that
+the letter was half washed away with her weeping; if she had used a
+watering-pot the thing could not have been better done.
+
+Well, I arrived at Strasburg--a dismal, old-fashioned, rickety town
+in those days--and straightway presented myself and letter at
+Schneider's door; over it was written--
+
+
+     COMITE DE SALUT PUBLIC.
+
+
+Would you believe it?  I was so ignorant a young fellow, that I had
+no idea of the meaning of the words; however, I entered the
+citizen's room without fear, and sat down in his ante-chamber until
+I could be admitted to see him.
+
+Here I found very few indications of his reverence's profession;
+the walls were hung round with portraits of Robespierre, Marat, and
+the like; a great bust of Mirabeau, mutilated, with the word
+Traitre underneath; lists and republican proclamations, tobacco-
+pipes and fire-arms.  At a deal-table, stained with grease and
+wine, sat a gentleman, with a huge pigtail dangling down to that
+part of his person which immediately succeeds his back, and a red
+nightcap, containing a TRICOLOR cockade as large as a pancake.  He
+was smoking a short pipe, reading a little book, and sobbing as if
+his heart would break.  Every now and then he would make brief
+remarks upon the personages or the incidents of his book, by which
+I could judge that he was a man of the very keenest sensibilities--
+"Ah, brigand!"  "O malheureuse!"  "O Charlotte, Charlotte!"  The
+work which this gentleman was perusing is called "The Sorrows of
+Werter;" it was all the rage, in those days, and my friend was only
+following the fashion.  I asked him if I could see Father
+Schneider? he turned towards me a hideous, pimpled face, which I
+dream of now at forty years' distance.
+
+"Father who?" said he.  "Do you imagine that citizen Schneider has
+not thrown off the absurd mummery of priesthood?  If you were a
+little older you would go to prison for calling him Father
+Schneider--many a man has died for less;" and he pointed to a
+picture of a guillotine, which was hanging in the room.
+
+I was in amazement.
+
+"What is he?  Is he not a teacher of Greek, an abbe, a monk, until
+monasteries were abolished, the learned editor of the songs of
+'Anacreon?'"
+
+"He WAS all this," replied my grim friend; "he is now a Member of
+the Committee of Public Safety, and would think no more of ordering
+your head off than of drinking this tumbler of beer."
+
+He swallowed, himself, the frothy liquid, and then proceeded to
+give me the history of the man to whom my uncle had sent me for
+instruction.
+
+Schneider was born in 1756: was a student at Wurzburg, and
+afterwards entered a convent, where he remained nine years.  He
+here became distinguished for his learning and his talents as a
+preacher, and became chaplain to Duke Charles of Wurtemberg.  The
+doctrines of the Illuminati began about this time to spread in
+Germany, and Schneider speedily joined the sect.  He had been a
+professor of Greek at Cologne; and being compelled, on account of
+his irregularity, to give up his chair, he came to Strasburg at the
+commencement of the French Revolution, and acted for some time a
+principal part as a revolutionary agent at Strasburg.
+
+["Heaven knows what would have happened to me had I continued long
+under his tuition!" said the Captain.  "I owe the preservation of
+my morals entirely to my entering the army.  A man, sir, who is a
+soldier, has very little time to be wicked; except in the case of a
+siege and the sack of a town, when a little license can offend
+nobody."]
+
+By the time that my friend had concluded Schneider's biography, we
+had grown tolerably intimate, and I imparted to him (with that
+experience so remarkable in youth) my whole history--my course of
+studies, my pleasant country life, the names and qualities of my
+dear relations, and my occupations in the vestry before religion
+was abolished by order of the Republic.  In the course of my speech
+I recurred so often to the name of my cousin Mary, that the
+gentleman could not fail to perceive what a tender place she had in
+my heart.
+
+Then we reverted to "The Sorrows of Werter," and discussed the
+merits of that sublime performance.  Although I had before felt
+some misgivings about my new acquaintance, my heart now quite
+yearned towards him.  He talked about love and sentiment in a
+manner which made me recollect that I was in love myself; and you
+know that when a man is in that condition, his taste is not very
+refined, any maudlin trash of prose or verse appearing sublime to
+him, provided it correspond, in some degree, with his own
+situation.
+
+"Candid youth!" cried my unknown, "I love to hear thy innocent
+story and look on thy guileless face.  There is, alas! so much of
+the contrary in this world, so much terror and crime and blood,
+that we who mingle with it are only too glad to forget it.  Would
+that we could shake off our cares as men, and be boys, as thou art,
+again!"
+
+Here my friend began to weep once more, and fondly shook my hand.
+I blessed my stars that I had, at the very outset of my career, met
+with one who was so likely to aid me.  What a slanderous world it
+is, thought I; the people in our village call these Republicans
+wicked and bloody-minded; a lamb could not be more tender than this
+sentimental bottle-nosed gentleman!  The worthy man then gave me to
+understand that he held a place under Government.  I was busy in
+endeavoring to discover what his situation might be, when the door
+of the next apartment opened, and Schneider made his appearance.
+
+At first he did not notice me, but he advanced to my new
+acquaintance, and gave him, to my astonishment, something very like
+a blow.
+
+"You drunken, talking fool," he said, "you are always after your
+time.  Fourteen people are cooling their heels yonder, waiting
+until you have finished your beer and your sentiment!"
+
+My friend slunk muttering out of the room.
+
+"That fellow," said Schneider, turning to me, "is our public
+executioner: a capital hand too if he would but keep decent time;
+but the brute is always drunk, and blubbering over 'The Sorrows of
+Werter!'"
+
+
+I know not whether it was his old friendship for my uncle, or my
+proper merits, which won the heart of this the sternest ruffian of
+Robespierre's crew; but certain it is, that he became strangely
+attached to me, and kept me constantly about his person.  As for
+the priesthood and the Greek, they were of course very soon out of
+the question.  The Austrians were on our frontier; every day
+brought us accounts of battles won; and the youth of Strasburg, and
+of all France, indeed, were bursting with military ardor.  As for
+me, I shared the general mania, and speedily mounted a cockade as
+large as that of my friend, the executioner.
+
+The occupations of this worthy were unremitting.  Saint Just, who
+had come down from Paris to preside over our town, executed the
+laws and the aristocrats with terrible punctuality; and Schneider
+used to make country excursions in search of offenders with this
+fellow, as a provost-marshal, at his back.  In the meantime, having
+entered my sixteenth year, and being a proper lad of my age, I had
+joined a regiment of cavalry, and was scampering now after the
+Austrians who menaced us, and now threatening the Emigres, who were
+banded at Coblentz.  My love for my dear cousin increased as my
+whiskers grew; and when I was scarcely seventeen, I thought myself
+man enough to marry her, and to cut the throat of any one who
+should venture to say me nay.
+
+I need not tell you that during my absence at Strasburg, great
+changes had occurred in our little village, and somewhat of the
+revolutionary rage had penetrated even to that quiet and distant
+place.  The hideous "Fete of the Supreme Being" had been celebrated
+at Paris; the practice of our ancient religion was forbidden; its
+professors were most of them in concealment, or in exile, or had
+expiated on the scaffold their crime of Christianity.  In our poor
+village my uncle's church was closed, and he, himself, an inmate in
+my brother's house, only owing his safety to his great popularity
+among his former flock, and the influence of Edward Ancel.
+
+The latter had taken in the Revolution a somewhat prominent part;
+that is, he had engaged in many contracts for the army, attended
+the clubs regularly, corresponded with the authorities of his
+department, and was loud in his denunciations of the aristocrats in
+the neighborhood.  But owing, perhaps, to the German origin of the
+peasantry, and their quiet and rustic lives, the revolutionary fury
+which prevailed in the cities had hardly reached the country
+people.  The occasional visit of a commissary from Paris or
+Strasburg served to keep the flame alive, and to remind the rural
+swains of the existence of a Republic in France.
+
+Now and then, when I could gain a week's leave of absence, I
+returned to the village, and was received with tolerable politeness
+by my uncle, and with a warmer feeling by his daughter.
+
+I won't describe to you the progress of our love, or the wrath of
+my uncle Edward, when he discovered that it still continued.  He
+swore and he stormed; he locked Mary into her chamber, and vowed
+that he would withdraw the allowance he made me, if ever I ventured
+near her.  His daughter, he said, should never marry a hopeless,
+penniless subaltern; and Mary declared she would not marry without
+his consent.  What had I to do?--to despair and to leave her.  As
+for my poor uncle Jacob, he had no counsel to give me, and, indeed,
+no spirit left: his little church was turned into a stable, his
+surplice torn off his shoulders, and he was only too lucky in
+keeping HIS HEAD on them.  A bright thought struck him: suppose you
+were to ask the advice of my old friend Schneider regarding this
+marriage? he has ever been your friend, and may help you now as
+before.
+
+(Here the Captain paused a little.)  You may fancy (continued he)
+that it was droll advice of a reverend gentleman like uncle Jacob
+to counsel me in this manner, and to bid me make friends with such
+a murderous cut-throat as Schneider; but we thought nothing of it
+in those days; guillotining was as common as dancing, and a man was
+only thought the better patriot the more severe he might be.  I
+departed forthwith to Strasburg, and requested the vote and
+interest of the Citizen President of the Committee of Public
+Safety.
+
+He heard me with a great deal of attention.  I described to him
+most minutely the circumstance, expatiated upon the charms of my
+dear Mary, and painted her to him from head to foot.  Her golden
+hair and her bright blushing cheeks, her slim waist and her
+tripping tiny feet; and furthermore, I added that she possessed a
+fortune which ought, by rights, to be mine, but for the miserly old
+father.  "Curse him for an aristocrat!" concluded I, in my wrath.
+
+As I had been discoursing about Mary's charms Schneider listened
+with much complacency and attention: when I spoke about her
+fortune, his interest redoubled; and when I called her father an
+aristocrat, the worthy ex-Jesuit gave a grin of satisfaction, which
+was really quite terrible.  O fool that I was to trust him so far!
+
+
+The very same evening an officer waited upon me with the following
+note from Saint Just:--
+
+
+"STRASBURG, Fifth year of the Republic, one and indivisible, 11
+Ventose.
+
+"The citizen Pierre Ancel is to leave Strasburg within two hours,
+and to carry the enclosed despatches to the President of the
+Committee of Public Safety at Paris.  The necessary leave of
+absence from his military duties has been provided.  Instant
+punishment will follow the slightest delay on the road.
+
+Salut et Fraternite."
+
+
+There was no choice but obedience, and off I sped on my weary way
+to the capital.
+
+As I was riding out of the Paris gate I met an equipage which I
+knew to be that of Schneider.  The ruffian smiled at me as I
+passed, and wished me a bon voyage.  Behind his chariot came a
+curious machine, or cart; a great basket, three stout poles, and
+several planks, all painted red, were lying in this vehicle, on the
+top of which was seated my friend with the big cockade.  It was the
+PORTABLE GUILLOTINE which Schneider always carried with him on his
+travels.  The bourreau was reading "The Sorrows of Werter," and
+looked as sentimental as usual.
+
+I will not speak of my voyage in order to relate to you
+Schneider's.  My story had awakened the wretch's curiosity and
+avarice, and he was determined that such a prize as I had shown my
+cousin to be should fall into no hands but his own.  No sooner, in
+fact, had I quitted his room than he procured the order for my
+absence, and was on the way to Steinbach as I met him.
+
+The journey is not a very long one; and on the next day my uncle
+Jacob was surprised by receiving a message that the citizen
+Schneider was in the village, and was coming to greet his old
+friend.  Old Jacob was in an ecstasy, for he longed to see his
+college acquaintance, and he hoped also that Schneider had come
+into that part of the country upon the marriage-business of your
+humble servant.  Of course Mary was summoned to give her best
+dinner, and wear her best frock; and her father made ready to
+receive the new State dignitary.
+
+Schneider's carriage speedily rolled into the court-yard, and
+Schneider's CART followed, as a matter of course.  The ex-priest
+only entered the house; his companion remaining with the horses to
+dine in private.  Here was a most touching meeting between him and
+Jacob.  They talked over their old college pranks and successes;
+they capped Greek verses, and quoted ancient epigrams upon their
+tutors, who had been dead since the Seven Years' War.  Mary
+declared it was quite touching to listen to the merry friendly talk
+of these two old gentlemen.
+
+After the conversation had continued for a time in this strain,
+Schneider drew up all of a sudden, and said quietly, that he had
+come on particular and unpleasant business--hinting about
+troublesome times, spies, evil reports, and so forth.  Then he
+called uncle Edward aside, and had with him a long and earnest
+conversation: so Jacob went out and talked with Schneider's FRIEND;
+they speedily became very intimate, for the ruffian detailed all
+the circumstances of his interview with me.  When he returned into
+the house, some time after this pleasing colloquy, he found the
+tone of the society strangely altered.  Edward Ancel, pale as a
+sheet, trembling, and crying for mercy; poor Mary weeping; and
+Schneider pacing energetically about the apartment, raging about
+the rights of man, the punishment of traitors, and the one and
+indivisible republic.
+
+"Jacob," he said, as my uncle entered the room, "I was willing, for
+the sake of our old friendship, to forget the crimes of your
+brother.  He is a known and dangerous aristocrat; he holds
+communications with the enemy on the frontier; he is a possessor of
+great and ill-gotten wealth, of which he has plundered the
+Republic.  Do you know," said he, turning to Edward Ancel, "where
+the least of these crimes, or the mere suspicion of them, would
+lead you?"
+
+Poor Edward sat trembling in his chair, and answered not a word.
+He knew full well how quickly, in this dreadful time, punishment
+followed suspicion; and, though guiltless of all treason with the
+enemy, perhaps he was aware that, in certain contracts with the
+Government, he had taken to himself a more than patriotic share of
+profit.
+
+"Do you know," resumed Schneider, in a voice of thunder, "for what
+purpose I came hither, and by whom I am accompanied?  I am the
+administrator of the justice of the Republic.  The life of yourself
+and your family is in my hands: yonder man, who follows me, is the
+executor of the law; he has rid the nation of hundreds of wretches
+like yourself.  A single word from me, and your doom is sealed
+without hope, and your last hour is come.  Ho! Gregoire!" shouted
+he; "is all ready?"
+
+Gregoire replied from the court, "I can put up the machine in half
+an hour.  Shall I go down to the village and call the troops and
+the law people?"
+
+"Do you hear him?" said Schneider.  "The guillotine is in the
+court-yard; your name is on my list, and I have witnesses to prove
+your crime.  Have you a word in your defence?"
+
+Not a word came; the old gentleman was dumb; but his daughter, who
+did not give way to his terror, spoke for him.
+
+"You cannot, sir," said she, "although you say it, FEEL that my
+father is guilty; you would not have entered our house thus alone
+if you had thought it.  You threaten him in this manner because you
+have something to ask and to gain from us: what is it, citizen?--
+tell us how much you value our lives, and what sum we are to pay
+for our ransom?"
+
+"Sum!" said uncle Jacob; "he does not want money of us: my old
+friend, my college chum, does not come hither to drive bargains
+with anybody belonging to Jacob Ancel?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir, no, you can't want money of us," shrieked Edward; "we
+are the poorest people of the village: ruined, Monsieur Schneider,
+ruined in the cause of the Republic."
+
+"Silence, father," said my brave Mary; "this man wants a PRICE: he
+comes, with his worthy friend yonder, to frighten us, not to kill
+us.  If we die, he cannot touch a sou of our money; it is
+confiscated to the State.  Tell us, sir, what is the price of our
+safety?"
+
+Schneider smiled, and bowed with perfect politeness.
+
+"Mademoiselle Marie," he said, "is perfectly correct in her
+surmise.  I do not want the life of this poor drivelling old man:
+my intentions are much more peaceable, be assured.  It rests
+entirely with this accomplished young lady (whose spirit I like,
+and whose ready wit I admire), whether the business between us
+shall be a matter of love or death.  I humbly offer myself, citizen
+Ancel, as a candidate for the hand of your charming daughter.  Her
+goodness, her beauty, and the large fortune which I know you intend
+to give her, would render her a desirable match for the proudest
+man in the republic, and, I am sure, would make me the happiest."
+
+"This must be a jest, Monsieur Schneider," said Mary, trembling,
+and turning deadly pale: "you cannot mean this; you do not know me:
+you never heard of me until to-day."
+
+"Pardon me, belle dame," replied he; "your cousin Pierre has often
+talked to me of your virtues; indeed, it was by his special
+suggestion that I made the visit."
+
+"It is false!--it is a base and cowardly lie!" exclaimed she (for
+the young lady's courage was up),--"Pierre never could have
+forgotten himself and me so as to offer me to one like you.  You
+come here with a lie on your lips--a lie against my father, to
+swear his life away, against my dear cousin's honor and love.  It
+is useless now to deny it: father, I love Pierre Ancel; I will
+marry no other but him--no, though our last penny were paid to this
+man as the price of our freedom."
+
+Schneider's only reply to this was a call to his friend Gregoire.
+
+"Send down to the village for the maire and some gendarmes; and
+tell your people to make ready."
+
+"Shall I put THE MACHINE up?" shouted he of the sentimental turn.
+
+"You hear him," said Schneider; "Marie Ancel, you may decide the
+fate of your father.  I shall return in a few hours," concluded he,
+"and will then beg to know your decision."
+
+The advocate of the rights of man then left the apartment, and left
+the family, as you may imagine, in no very pleasant mood.
+
+Old uncle Jacob, during the few minutes which had elapsed in the
+enactment of this strange scene, sat staring wildly at Schneider,
+and holding Mary on his knees: the poor little thing had fled to
+him for protection, and not to her father, who was kneeling almost
+senseless at the window, gazing at the executioner and his hideous
+preparations.  The instinct of the poor girl had not failed her;
+she knew that Jacob was her only protector, if not of her life--
+heaven bless him!--of her honor.  "Indeed," the old man said, in a
+stout voice, "this must never be, my dearest child--you must not
+marry this man.  If it be the will of Providence that we fall, we
+shall have at least the thought to console us that we die innocent.
+Any man in France at a time like this, would be a coward and
+traitor if he feared to meet the fate of the thousand brave and
+good who have preceded us."
+
+"Who speaks of dying?" said Edward.  "You, Brother Jacob?--you
+would not lay that poor girl's head on the scaffold, or mine, your
+dear brother's.  You will not let us die, Mary; you will not, for a
+small sacrifice, bring your poor old father into danger?"
+
+Mary made no answer.  "Perhaps," she said, "there is time for
+escape: he is to be here but in two hours; in two hours we may be
+safe, in concealment, or on the frontier."  And she rushed to the
+door of the chamber, as if she would have instantly made the
+attempt: two gendarmes were at the door.  "We have orders,
+Mademoiselle," they said, "to allow no one to leave this apartment
+until the return of the citizen Schneider."
+
+Alas! all hope of escape was impossible.  Mary became quite silent
+for a while; she would not speak to uncle Jacob; and, in reply to
+her father's eager questions, she only replied, coldly, that she
+would answer Schneider when he arrived.
+
+The two dreadful hours passed away only too quickly; and, punctual
+to his appointment, the ex-monk appeared.  Directly he entered,
+Mary advanced to him, and said, calmly,--
+
+"Sir, I could not deceive you if I said that I freely accepted the
+offer which you have made me.  I will be your wife; but I tell you
+that I love another; and that it is only to save the lives of those
+two old men that I yield my person up to you."
+
+Schneider bowed, and said,--
+
+"It is bravely spoken.  I like your candor--your beauty.  As for
+the love, excuse me for saying that is a matter of total
+indifference.  I have no doubt, however, that it will come as soon
+as your feelings in favor of the young gentleman, your cousin, have
+lost their present fervor.  That engaging young man has, at
+present, another mistress--Glory.  He occupies, I believe, the
+distinguished post of corporal in a regiment which is about to
+march to--Perpignan, I believe."
+
+It was, in fact, Monsieur Schneider’s polite intention to banish
+me as far as possible from the place of my birth; and he had,
+accordingly, selected the Spanish frontier as the spot where I was
+to display my future military talents.
+
+Mary gave no answer to this sneer: she seemed perfectly resigned
+and calm: she only said,--
+
+"I must make, however, some conditions regarding our proposed
+marriage, which a gentleman of Monsieur Schneider’s gallantry
+cannot refuse."
+
+"Pray command me," replied the husband elect.  "Fair lady, you know
+I am your slave."
+
+"You occupy a distinguished political rank, citizen representative,"
+said she; "and we in our village are likewise known and beloved.  I
+should be ashamed, I confess, to wed you here; for our people would
+wonder at the sudden marriage, and imply that it was only by
+compulsion that I gave you my hand.  Let us, then, perform this
+ceremony at Strasburg, before the public authorities of the city,
+with the state and solemnity which befits the marriage of one of the
+chief men of the Republic."
+
+"Be it so, madam," he answered, and gallantly proceeded to embrace
+his bride.
+
+Mary did not shrink from this ruffian’s kiss; nor did she reply
+when poor old Jacob, who sat sobbing in a corner, burst out, and
+said,--
+
+"O Mary, Mary, I did not think this of thee!"
+
+"Silence, brother!" hastily said Edward; "my good son-in-law will
+pardon your ill-humor."
+
+I believe uncle Edward in his heart was pleased at the notion of
+the marriage; he only cared for money and rank, and was little
+scrupulous as to the means of obtaining them.
+
+The matter then was finally arranged; and presently, after
+Schneider had transacted the affairs which brought him into that
+part of the country, the happy bridal party set forward for
+Strasburg.  Uncles Jacob and Edward occupied the back seat of the
+old family carriage, and the young bride and bridegroom (he was
+nearly Jacob’s age) were seated majestically in front.  Mary has
+often since talked to me of this dreadful journey.  She said she
+wondered at the scrupulous politeness of Schneider during the
+route; nay, that at another period she could have listened to and
+admired the singular talent of this man, his great learning, his
+fancy, and wit; but her mind was bent upon other things, and the
+poor girl firmly thought that her last day was come.
+
+In the meantime, by a blessed chance, I had not ridden three
+leagues from Strasburg, when the officer of a passing troop of a
+cavalry regiment, looking at the beast on which I was mounted, was
+pleased to take a fancy to it, and ordered me, in an authoritative
+tone, to descend, and to give up my steed for the benefit of the
+Republic.  I represented to him, in vain, that I was a soldier,
+like himself, and the bearer of despatches to Paris.  "Fool!" he
+said; "do you think they would send despatches by a man who can
+ride at best but ten leagues a day?"  And the honest soldier was so
+wroth at my supposed duplicity, that he not only confiscated my
+horse, but my saddle, and the little portmanteau which contained
+the chief part of my worldly goods and treasure.  I had nothing
+for it but to dismount, and take my way on foot back again to
+Strasburg.  I arrived there in the evening, determining the next
+morning to make my case known to the citizen St. Just; and though I
+made my entry without a sou, I don’t know what secret exultation I
+felt at again being able to return.
+
+The ante-chamber of such a great man as St. Just was, in those
+days, too crowded for an unprotected boy to obtain an early
+audience; two days passed before I could obtain a sight of the
+friend of Robespierre.  On the third day, as I was still waiting
+for the interview, I heard a great bustle in the courtyard of the
+house, and looked out with many others at the spectacle.
+
+A number of men and women, singing epithalamiums, and dressed in
+some absurd imitation of Roman costume, a troop of soldiers and
+gendarmerie, and an immense crowd of the badauds of Strasburg, were
+surrounding a carriage which then entered the court of the
+mayoralty.  In this carriage, great God! I saw my dear Mary, and
+Schneider by her side.  The truth instantly came upon me: the
+reason for Schneider’s keen inquiries and my abrupt dismissal; but
+I could not believe that Mary was false to me.  I had only to look
+in her face, white and rigid as marble, to see that this proposed
+marriage was not with her consent.
+
+I fell back in the crowd as the procession entered the great room
+in which I was, and hid my face in my hands: I could not look upon
+her as the wife of another,--upon her so long loved and truly--the
+saint of my childhood--the pride and hope of my youth--torn from me
+for ever, and delivered over to the unholy arms of the murderer who
+stood before me.
+
+The door of St. Just’s private apartment opened, and he took his
+seat at the table of mayoralty just as Schneider and his cortege
+arrived before it.
+
+Schneider then said that he came in before the authorities of the
+Republic to espouse the citoyenne Marie Ancel.
+
+"Is she a minor?" asked St. Just.
+
+"She is a minor, but her father is here to give her away."
+
+"I am here," said uncle Edward, coming eagerly forward and bowing.
+"Edward Ancel, so please you, citizen representative.  The worthy
+citizen Schneider has done me the honor of marrying into my
+family."
+
+"But my father has not told you the terms of the marriage," said
+Mary, interrupting him, in a loud, clear voice.
+
+Here Schneider seized her hand, and endeavored to prevent her from
+speaking.  Her father turned pale, and cried, "Stop, Mary, stop!
+For heaven’s sake, remember your poor old father’s danger!"
+
+"Sir, may I speak?"
+
+"Let the young woman speak," said St. Just, "if she have a desire
+to talk."  He did not suspect what would be the purport of her
+story.
+
+"Sir," she said, "two days since the citizen Schneider entered for
+the first time our house; and you will fancy that it must be a love
+of very sudden growth which has brought either him or me before you
+to-day.  He had heard from a person who is now unhappily not
+present, of my name and of the wealth which my family was said to
+possess; and hence arose this mad design concerning me.  He came
+into our village with supreme power, an executioner at his heels,
+and the soldiery and authorities of the district entirely under his
+orders.  He threatened my father with death if he refused to give
+up his daughter; and I, who knew that there was no chance of
+escape, except here before you, consented to become his wife.  My
+father I know to be innocent, for all his transactions with the
+State have passed through my hands.  Citizen representative, I
+demand to be freed from this marriage; and I charge Schneider as a
+traitor to the Republic, as a man who would have murdered an
+innocent citizen for the sake of private gain."
+
+During the delivery of this little speech, uncle Jacob had been
+sobbing and panting like a broken-winded horse; and when Mary had
+done, he rushed up to her and kissed her, and held her tight in his
+arms.  "Bless thee, my child!" he cried, "for having had the
+courage to speak the truth, and shame thy old father and me, who
+dared not say a word."
+
+"The girl amazes me," said Schneider, with a look of astonishment.
+"I never saw her, it is true, till yesterday; but I used no force:
+her father gave her to me with his free consent, and she yielded as
+gladly.  Speak, Edward Ancel, was it not so?"
+
+"It was, indeed, by my free consent," said Edward, trembling.
+
+"For shame, brother!" cried old Jacob.  "Sir, it was by Edward’s
+free consent and my niece’s; but the guillotine was in the court-
+yard!  Question Schneider’s famulus, the man Gregoire, him who
+reads ‘The Sorrows of Werter.’"
+
+Gregoire stepped forward, and looked hesitatingly at Schneider, as
+he said, "I know not what took place within doors; but I was
+ordered to put up the scaffold without; and I was told to get
+soldiers, and let no one leave the house."
+
+"Citizen St. Just," cried Schneider, "you will not allow the
+testimony of a ruffian like this, of a foolish girl, and a mad ex-
+priest, to weigh against the word of one who has done such service
+to the Republic: it is a base conspiracy to betray me; the whole
+family is known to favor the interest of the emigres."
+
+"And therefore you would marry a member of the family, and allow
+the others to escape; you must make a better defence, citizen
+Schneider," said St. Just, sternly.
+
+Here I came forward, and said that, three days since, I had
+received an order to quit Strasburg for Paris immediately after a
+conversation with Schneider, in which I had asked him his aid in
+promoting my marriage with my cousin, Mary Ancel; that he had heard
+from me full accounts regarding her father’s wealth; and that he
+had abruptly caused my dismissal, in order to carry on his scheme
+against her.
+
+"You are in the uniform of a regiment of this town; who sent you
+from it?" said St. Just.
+
+I produced the order, signed by himself, and the despatches which
+Schneider had sent me.
+
+"The signature is mine, but the despatches did not come from my
+office.  Can you prove in any way your conversation with Schneider?"
+
+"Why," said my sentimental friend Gregoire, "for the matter of
+that, I can answer that the lad was always talking about this young
+woman: he told me the whole story himself, and many a good laugh I
+had with citizen Schneider as we talked about it."
+
+"The charge against Edward Ancel must be examined into," said St.
+Just.  "The marriage cannot take place.  But if I had ratified it,
+Mary Ancel, what then would have been your course?"
+
+Mary felt for a moment in her bosom, and said--"He would have died
+to-night--I would have stabbed him with this dagger."*
+
+
+* This reply, and, indeed, the whole of the story, is historical.
+An account, by Charles Nodier, in the Revue de Paris, suggested it
+to the writer.
+
+
+The rain was beating down the streets, and yet they were thronged;
+all the world was hastening to the market-place, where the worthy
+Gregoire was about to perform some of the pleasant duties of his
+office.  On this occasion, it was not death that he was to inflict;
+he was only to expose a criminal who was to be sent on afterwards
+to Paris.  St. Just had ordered that Schneider should stand for six
+hours in the public place of Strasburg, and then be sent on to the
+capital to be dealt with as the authorities might think fit.
+
+The people followed with execrations the villain to his place of
+punishment; and Gregoire grinned as he fixed up to the post the man
+whose orders he had obeyed so often--who had delivered over to
+disgrace and punishment so many who merited it not.
+
+Schneider was left for several hours exposed to the mockery and
+insults of the mob; he was then, according to his sentence, marched
+on to Paris, where it is probable that he would have escaped death,
+but for his own fault.  He was left for some time in prison, quite
+unnoticed, perhaps forgotten: day by day fresh victims were carried
+to the scaffold, and yet the Alsacian tribune remained alive; at
+last, by the mediation of one of his friends, a long petition was
+presented to Robespierre, stating his services and his innocence,
+and demanding his freedom.  The reply to this was an order for his
+instant execution: the wretch died in the last days of Robespierre’s
+reign.  His comrade, St. Just, followed him, as you know; but Edward
+Ancel had been released before this, for the action of my brave Mary
+had created a strong feeling in his favor.
+
+"And Mary?" said I.
+
+Here a stout and smiling old lady entered the Captain’s little
+room: she was leaning on the arm of a military-looking man of some
+forty years, and followed by a number of noisy, rosy children.
+
+"This is Mary Ancel," said the Captain, "and I am Captain Pierre,
+and yonder is the Colonel, my son; and you see us here assembled in
+force, for it is the fete of little Jacob yonder, whose brothers
+and sisters have all come from their schools to dance at his
+birthday."
+
+
+
+
+BEATRICE MERGER.
+
+
+Beatrice Merger, whose name might figure at the head of one of Mr.
+Colburn’s politest romances--so smooth and aristocratic does it
+sound--is no heroine, except of her own simple history; she is not
+a fashionable French Countess, nor even a victim of the Revolution.
+
+She is a stout, sturdy girl of two-and-twenty, with a face beaming
+with good nature, and marked dreadfully by smallpox; and a pair of
+black eyes, which might have done some execution had they been
+placed in a smoother face.  Beatrice’s station in society is not
+very exalted; she is a servant of all-work: she will dress your
+wife, your dinner, your children; she does beefsteaks and plain
+work; she makes beds, blacks boots, and waits at table;--such, at
+least, were the offices which she performed in the fashionable
+establishment of the writer of this book: perhaps her history may
+not inaptly occupy a few pages of it.
+
+"My father died," said Beatrice, "about six years since, and left
+my poor mother with little else but a small cottage and a strip of
+land, and four children too young to work.  It was hard enough in
+my father’s time to supply so many little mouths with food; and how
+was a poor widowed woman to provide for them now, who had neither
+the strength nor the opportunity for labor?
+
+"Besides us, to be sure, there was my old aunt; and she would have
+helped us, but she could not, for the old woman is bed-ridden; so
+she did nothing but occupy our best room, and grumble from morning
+till night: heaven knows, poor old soul, that she had no great
+reason to be very happy; for you know, sir, that it frets the
+temper to be sick; and that it is worse still to be sick and hungry
+too.
+
+"At that time, in the country where we lived (in Picardy, not very
+far from Boulogne), times were so bad that the best workman could
+hardly find employ; and when he did, he was happy if he could earn
+a matter of twelve sous a day.  Mother, work as she would, could
+not gain more than six; and it was a hard job, out of this, to put
+meat into six bellies, and clothing on six backs.  Old Aunt Bridget
+would scold, as she got her portion of black bread; and my little
+brothers used to cry if theirs did not come in time.  I, too, used
+to cry when I got my share; for mother kept only a little, little
+piece for herself, and said that she had dined in the fields,--God
+pardon her for the lie! and bless her, as I am sure He did; for,
+but for Him, no working man or woman could subsist upon such a
+wretched morsel as my dear mother took.
+
+"I was a thin, ragged, barefooted girl, then, and sickly and weak
+for want of food; but I think I felt mother’s hunger more than my
+own: and many and many a bitter night I lay awake, crying, and
+praying to God to give me means of working for myself and aiding
+her.  And he has, indeed, been good to me," said pious Beatrice,
+"for He has given me all this!
+
+"Well, time rolled on, and matters grew worse than ever: winter
+came, and was colder to us than any other winter, for our clothes
+were thinner and more torn; mother sometimes could find no work,
+for the fields in which she labored were hidden under the snow; so
+that when we wanted them most we had them least--warmth, work, or
+food.
+
+"I knew that, do what I would, mother would never let me leave her,
+because I looked to my little brothers and my old cripple of an
+aunt; but still, bread was better for us than all my service; and
+when I left them the six would have a slice more; so I determined
+to bid good-by to nobody, but to go away, and look for work
+elsewhere.  One Sunday, when mother and the little ones were at
+church, I went in to Aunt Bridget, and said, ‘Tell mother, when she
+comes back, that Beatrice is gone.’  I spoke quite stoutly, as if I
+did not care about it.
+
+"‘Gone! gone where?’ said she.  ‘You ain’t going to leave me alone,
+you nasty thing; you ain’t going to the village to dance, you
+ragged, barefooted slut: you’re all of a piece in this house--your
+mother, your brothers, and you.  I know you’ve got meat in the
+kitchen, and you only give me black bread;’ and here the old lady
+began to scream as if her heart would break; but we did not mind
+it, we were so used to it.
+
+"'Aunt,' said I, 'I'm going, and took this very opportunity because
+you WERE alone: tell mother I am too old now to eat her bread, and
+do no work for it: I am going, please God, where work and bread can
+be found:' and so I kissed her: she was so astonished that she
+could not move or speak; and I walked away through the old room,
+and the little garden, God knows whither!
+
+"I heard the old woman screaming after me, but I did not stop nor
+turn round.  I don't think I could, for my heart was very full; and
+if I had gone back again, I should never have had the courage to go
+away.  So I walked a long, long way, until night fell; and I
+thought of poor mother coming home from mass, and not finding me;
+and little Pierre shouting out, in his clear voice, for Beatrice to
+bring him his supper.  I think I should like to have died that
+night, and I thought I should too; for when I was obliged to throw
+myself on the cold, hard ground, my feet were too torn and weary to
+bear me any further.
+
+"Just then the moon got up; and do you know I felt a comfort in
+looking at it, for I knew it was shining on our little cottage, and
+it seemed like an old friend's face?  A little way on, as I saw by
+the moon, was a village: and I saw, too, that a man was coming
+towards me; he must have heard me crying, I suppose.
+
+"Was not God good to me?  This man was a farmer, who had need of a
+girl in his house; he made me tell him why I was alone, and I told
+him the same story I have told you, and he believed me and took me
+home.  I had walked six long leagues from our village that day,
+asking everywhere for work in vain; and here, at bedtime, I found a
+bed and a supper!
+
+"Here I lived very well for some months; my master was very good
+and kind to me; but, unluckily, too poor to give me any wages; so
+that I could save nothing to send to my poor mother.  My mistress
+used to scold; but I was used to that at home, from Aunt Bridget:
+and she beat me sometimes, but I did not mind it; for your hardy
+country girl is not like your tender town lasses, who cry if a pin
+pricks them, and give warning to their mistresses at the first hard
+word.  The only drawback to my comfort was, that I had no news of
+my mother; I could not write to her, nor could she have read my
+letter, if I had; so there I was, at only six leagues' distance
+from home, as far off as if I had been to Paris or to 'Merica.
+
+"However, in a few months I grew so listless and homesick, that my
+mistress said she would keep me no longer; and though I went away
+as poor as I came, I was still too glad to go back to the old
+village again, and see dear mother, if it were but for a day.  I
+knew she would share her crust with me, as she had done for so long
+a time before; and hoped that, now, as I was taller and stronger, I
+might find work more easily in the neighborhood.
+
+"You may fancy what a fete it was when I came back; though I'm sure
+we cried as much as if it had been a funeral.  Mother got into a
+fit, which frightened us all; and as for Aunt Bridget, she SKREELED
+away for hours together, and did not scold for two days at least.
+Little Pierre offered me the whole of his supper; poor little man!
+his slice of bread was no bigger than before I went away.
+
+"Well, I got a little work here and a little there; but still I was
+a burden at home rather than a bread-winner; and, at the closing-in
+of the winter, was very glad to hear of a place at two leagues'
+distance, where work, they said, was to be had.  Off I set, one
+morning, to find it, but missed my way, somehow, until it was
+night-time before I arrived.  Night-time and snow again; it seemed
+as if all my journeys were to be made in this bitter weather.
+
+"When I came to the farmer's door, his house was shut up, and his
+people all a-bed; I knocked for a long while in vain; at last he
+made his appearance at a window up stairs, and seemed so frightened,
+and looked so angry that I suppose he took me for a thief.  I told
+him how I had come for work.  'Who comes for work at such an hour?'
+said he.  'Go home, you impudent baggage, and do not disturb honest
+people out of their sleep.'  He banged the window to; and so I was
+left alone to shift for myself as I might.  There was no shed, no
+cow-house, where I could find a bed; so I got under a cart, on some
+straw; it was no very warm berth.  I could not sleep for the cold:
+and the hours passed so slowly, that it seemed as if I had been
+there a week instead of a night; but still it was not so bad as the
+first night when I left home, and when the good farmer found me.
+
+"In the morning, before it was light, the farmer's people came out,
+and saw me crouching under the cart: they told me to get up; but I
+was so cold that I could not: at last the man himself came, and
+recognized me as the girl who had disturbed him the night before.
+When he heard my name, and the purpose for which I came, this good
+man took me into the house, and put me into one of the beds out of
+which his sons had just got; and, if I was cold before, you may be
+sure I was warm and comfortable now! such a bed as this I had never
+slept in, nor ever did I have such good milk-soup as he gave me out
+of his own breakfast.  Well, he agreed to hire me; and what do you
+think he gave me?--six sous a day! and let me sleep in the cow-
+house besides: you may fancy how happy I was now, at the prospect
+of earning so much money.
+
+"There was an old woman among the laborers who used to sell us
+soup: I got a cupful every day for a half-penny, with a bit of
+bread in it; and might eat as much beet-root besides as I liked;
+not a very wholesome meal, to be sure, but God took care that it
+should not disagree with me.
+
+"So, every Saturday, when work was over, I had thirty sous to carry
+home to mother; and tired though I was, I walked merrily the two
+leagues to our village, to see her again.  On the road there was a
+great wood to pass through, and this frightened me; for if a thief
+should come and rob me of my whole week's earnings, what could a
+poor lone girl do to help herself?  But I found a remedy for this
+too, and no thieves ever came near me; I used to begin saying my
+prayers as I entered the forest, and never stopped until I was safe
+at home; and safe I always arrived, with my thirty sons in my
+pocket.  Ah! you may be sure, Sunday was a merry day for us all."
+
+
+This is the whole of Beatrice's history which is worthy of
+publication; the rest of it only relates to her arrival in Paris,
+and the various masters and mistresses whom she there had the honor
+to serve.  As soon as she enters the capital the romance
+disappears, and the poor girl's sufferings and privations luckily
+vanish with it.  Beatrice has got now warm gowns, and stout shoes,
+and plenty of good food.  She has had her little brother from
+Picardy; clothed, fed, and educated him: that young gentleman is
+now a carpenter, and an honor to his profession.  Madame Merger is
+in easy circumstances, and receives, yearly, fifty francs from her
+daughter.  To crown all, Mademoiselle Beatrice herself is a funded
+proprietor, and consulted the writer of this biography as to the
+best method of laying out a capital of two hundred francs, which is
+the present amount of her fortune.
+
+God bless her! she is richer than his Grace the Duke of Devonshire;
+and, I dare say, has, in her humble walk, been more virtuous and
+more happy than all the dukes in the realm.
+
+It is, indeed, for the benefit of dukes and such great people (who,
+I make no doubt, have long since ordered copies of these Sketches),
+that poor little Beatrice's story has been indited.  Certain it is,
+that the young woman would never have been immortalized in this
+way, but for the good which her betters may derive from her
+example.  If your ladyship will but reflect a little, after
+boasting of the sums which you spend in charity; the beef and
+blankets which you dole out at Christmas; the poonah-painting which
+you execute for fancy fairs; the long, long sermons which you
+listen to at St. George's, the whole year through;--your ladyship,
+I say, will allow that, although perfectly meritorious in your
+line, as a patroness of the Church of England, of Almack's, and of
+the Lying-in Asylum, yours is but a paltry sphere of virtue, a
+pitiful attempt at benevolence, and that this honest servant-girl
+puts you to shame!  And you, my Lord Bishop: do you, out of your
+six sous a day, give away five to support your flock and family?
+Would you drop a single coach-horse (I do not say, A DINNER, for
+such a notion is monstrous, in one of your lordship's degree), to
+feed any one of the starving children of your lordship's mother--
+the Church?
+
+I pause for a reply.  His lordship took too much turtle and cold
+punch for dinner yesterday, and cannot speak just now: but we have,
+by this ingenious question, silenced him altogether: let the world
+wag as it will, and poor Christians and curates starve as they may,
+my lord's footmen must have their new liveries, and his horses
+their four feeds a day.
+
+
+When we recollect his speech about the Catholics--when we remember
+his last charity sermon,--but I say nothing.  Here is a poor
+benighted superstitious creature, worshipping images, without a rag
+to her tail, who has as much faith, and humility, and charity as
+all the reverend bench.
+
+
+This angel is without a place; and for this reason (besides the
+pleasure of composing the above slap at episcopacy)--I have indited
+her history.  If the Bishop is going to Paris, and wants a good
+honest maid-of-all-work, he can have her, I have no doubt; or if he
+chooses to give a few pounds to her mother, they can be sent to Mr.
+Titmarsh, at the publisher's.
+
+Here is Miss Merger's last letter and autograph.  The note was
+evidently composed by an Ecrivain public:--
+
+
+"Madame,--Ayant apris par ce Monsieur, que vous vous portiez bien,
+ainsi que Monsieur, ayant su aussi que vous parliez de moi dans
+votre lettre cette nouvelle m'a fait bien plaisir Je profite de
+l'occasion pour vous faire passer ce petit billet ou Je voudrais
+pouvoir m'enveloper pour aller vous voir et pour vous dire que Je
+suis encore sans place Je m'ennuye tojours de ne pas vous voir
+ainsi que Minette (Minette is a cat) qui semble m'interroger tour a
+tour et demander ou vous etes.  Je vous envoye aussi la note du
+linge a blanchir--ah, Madame!  Je vais cesser de vous ecrire mais
+non de vous regretter."
+
+Beatrice Merger.
+
+
+
+
+CARICATURES AND LITHOGRAPHY IN PARIS.
+
+
+Fifty years ago there lived at Munich a poor fellow, by name Aloys
+Senefelder, who was in so little repute as an author and artist,
+that printers and engravers refused to publish his works at their
+own charges, and so set him upon some plan for doing without their
+aid.  In the first place, Aloys invented a certain kind of ink,
+which would resist the action of the acid that is usually employed
+by engravers, and with this he made his experiments upon copper-
+plates, as long as he could afford to purchase them.  He found that
+to write upon the plates backwards, after the manner of engravers,
+required much skill and many trials; and he thought that, were he
+to practise upon any other polished surface--a smooth stone, for
+instance, the least costly article imaginable--he might spare the
+expense of the copper until he had sufficient skill to use it.
+
+One day, it is said, that Aloys was called upon to write--rather a
+humble composition for an author and artist--a washing-bill.  He
+had no paper at hand, and so he wrote out the bill with some of his
+newly-invented ink upon one of his Kelheim stones.  Some time
+afterwards he thought he would try and take an IMPRESSION of his
+washing-bill: he did, and succeeded.  Such is the story, which the
+reader most likely knows very well; and having alluded to the
+origin of the art, we shall not follow the stream through its
+windings and enlargement after it issued from the little parent
+rock, or fill our pages with the rest of the pedigree.  Senefelder
+invented Lithography.  His invention has not made so much noise and
+larum in the world as some others, which have an origin quite as
+humble and unromantic; but it is one to which we owe no small
+profit, and a great deal of pleasure; and, as such, we are bound to
+speak of it with all gratitude and respect.  The schoolmaster, who
+is now abroad, has taught us, in our youth, how the cultivation of
+art "emollit mores nec sinit esse"--(it is needless to finish the
+quotation); and Lithography has been, to our thinking, the very
+best ally that art ever had; the best friend of the artist,
+allowing him to produce rapidly multiplied and authentic copies of
+his own works (without trusting to the tedious and expensive
+assistance of the engraver); and the best friend to the people
+likewise, who have means of purchasing these cheap and beautiful
+productions, and thus having their ideas "mollified" and their
+manners "feros" no more.
+
+With ourselves, among whom money is plenty, enterprise so great,
+and everything matter of commercial speculation, Lithography has
+not been so much practised as wood or steel engraving; which, by
+the aid of great original capital and spread of sale, are able more
+than to compete with the art of drawing on stone.  The two former
+may be called art done by MACHINERY.  We confess to a prejudice in
+favor of the honest work of HAND, in matters of art, and prefer the
+rough workmanship of the painter to the smooth copies of his
+performances which are produced, for the most part, on the wood-
+block or the steel-plate.
+
+The theory will possibly be objected to by many of our readers: the
+best proof in its favor, we think, is, that the state of art
+amongst the people in France and Germany, where publishers are not
+so wealthy or enterprising as with us,* and where Lithography is
+more practised, is infinitely higher than in England, and the
+appreciation more correct.  As draughtsmen, the French and German
+painters are incomparably superior to our own; and with art, as
+with any other commodity, the demand will be found pretty equal to
+the supply: with us, the general demand is for neatness, prettiness,
+and what is called EFFECT in pictures, and these can be rendered
+completely, nay, improved, by the engraver's conventional manner of
+copying the artist's performances.  But to copy fine expression and
+fine drawing, the engraver himself must be a fine artist; and let
+anybody examine the host of picture-books which appear every
+Christmas, and say whether, for the most part, painters or engravers
+possess any artistic merit?  We boast, nevertheless, of some of the
+best engravers and painters in Europe. Here, again, the supply is
+accounted for by the demand; our highest class is richer than any
+other aristocracy, quite as well instructed, and can judge and pay
+for fine pictures and engravings. But these costly productions are
+for the few, and not for the many, who have not yet certainly
+arrived at properly appreciating fine art.
+
+
+* These countries are, to be sure, inundated with the productions
+of our market, in the shape of Byron Beauties, reprints from the
+"Keepsakes," "Books of Beauty," and such trash; but these are only
+of late years, and their original schools of art are still
+flourishing.
+
+
+Take the standard "Album" for instance--that unfortunate collection
+of deformed Zuleikas and Medoras (from the "Byron Beauties"), the
+Flowers, Gems, Souvenirs, Caskets of Loveliness, Beauty, as they
+way be called; glaring caricatures of flowers, singly, in groups,
+in flower-pots, or with hideous deformed little Cupids sporting
+among them; of what are called "mezzotinto," pencil-drawings,
+"poonah-paintings," and what not.  "The Album" is to be found
+invariably upon the round rosewood brass-inlaid drawing-room table
+of the middle classes, and with a couple of "Annuals" besides,
+which flank it on the same table, represents the art of the house;
+perhaps there is a portrait of the master of the house in the
+dining-room, grim-glancing from above the mantel-piece; and of the
+mistress over the piano up stairs; add to these some odious
+miniatures of the sons and daughters, on each side of the chimney-
+glass; and here, commonly (we appeal to the reader if this is an
+overcharged picture), the collection ends.  The family goes to the
+Exhibition once a year, to the National Gallery once in ten years:
+to the former place they have an inducement to go; there are their
+own portraits, or the portraits of their friends, or the portraits
+of public characters; and you will see them infallibly wondering
+over No. 2645 in the catalogue, representing "The Portrait of a
+Lady," or of the "First Mayor of Little Pedlington since the
+passing of the Reform Bill;" or else bustling and squeezing among
+the miniatures, where lies the chief attraction of the Gallery.
+England has produced, owing to the effects of this class of
+admirers of art, two admirable, and five hundred very clever,
+portrait painters.  How many ARTISTS?  Let the reader count upon
+his five fingers, and see if, living at the present moment, he can
+name one for each.
+
+If, from this examination of our own worthy middle classes, we look
+to the same class in France, what a difference do we find!  Humble
+cafe's in country towns have their walls covered with pleasing
+picture papers, representing "Les Gloires de l'Armee Francaise,"
+the "Seasons," the "Four Quarters of the World," "Cupid and
+Psyche," or some other allegory, landscape or history, rudely
+painted, as papers for walls usually are; but the figures are all
+tolerably well drawn; and the common taste, which has caused a
+demand for such things, is undeniable.  In Paris, the manner in
+which the cafes and houses of the restaurateurs are ornamented, is,
+of course, a thousand times richer, and nothing can be more
+beautiful, or more exquisitely finished and correct, than the
+designs which adorn many of them.  We are not prepared to say what
+sums were expended upon the painting of "Very's" or "Vefour's," of
+the "Salle Musard," or of numberless other places of public resort
+in the capital.  There is many a shop-keeper whose sign is a very
+tolerable picture; and often have we stopped to admire (the reader
+will give us credit for having remained OUTSIDE) the excellent
+workmanship of the grapes and vine-leaves over the door of some
+very humble, dirty, inodorous shop of a marchand de vin.
+
+These, however, serve only to educate the public taste, and are
+ornaments for the most part much too costly for the people.  But
+the same love of ornament which is shown in their public places of
+resort, appears in their houses likewise; and every one of our
+readers who has lived in Paris, in any lodging, magnificent or
+humble, with any family, however poor, may bear witness how
+profusely the walls of his smart salon in the English quarter, or
+of his little room au sixieme in the Pays Latin, has been decorated
+with prints of all kinds.  In the first, probably, with bad
+engravings on copper from the bad and tawdry pictures of the
+artists of the time of the Empire; in the latter, with gay
+caricatures of Granville or Monnier: military pieces, such as are
+dashed off by Raffet, Charlet, Vernet (one can hardly say which of
+the three designers has the greatest merit, or the most vigorous
+hand); or clever pictures from the crayon of the Deverias, the
+admirable Roqueplan, or Decamp.  We have named here, we believe,
+the principal lithographic artists in Paris; and those--as
+doubtless there are many--of our readers who have looked over
+Monsieur Aubert's portfolios, or gazed at that famous caricature-
+shop window in the Rue de Coq, or are even acquainted with the
+exterior of Monsieur Delaporte's little emporium in the Burlington
+Arcade, need not be told how excellent the productions of all these
+artists are in their genre.  We get in these engravings the loisirs
+of men of genius, not the finikin performances of labored mediocrity,
+as with us: all these artists are good painters, as well as good
+designers; a design from them is worth a whole gross of Books of
+Beauty; and if we might raise a humble supplication to the artists
+in our own country of similar merit--to such men as Leslie, Maclise,
+Herbert, Cattermole, and others--it would be, that they should,
+after the example of their French brethren and of the English
+landscape painters, take chalk in hand, produce their own copies of
+their own sketches, and never more draw a single "Forsaken One,"
+"Rejected One," "Dejected One" at the entreaty of any publisher or
+for the pages of any Book of Beauty, Royalty, or Loveliness
+whatever.
+
+Can there be a more pleasing walk in the whole world than a stroll
+through the Gallery of the Louvre on a fete-day; not to look so
+much at the pictures as at the lookers-on?  Thousands of the poorer
+classes are there: mechanics in their Sunday clothes, smiling
+grisettes, smart dapper soldiers of the line, with bronzed
+wondering faces, marching together in little companies of six or
+seven, and stopping every now and then at Napoleon or Leonidas as
+they appear in proper vulgar heroics in the pictures of David or
+Gros.  The taste of these people will hardly be approved by the
+connoisseur, but they have A taste for art.  Can the same be said
+of our lower classes, who, if they are inclined to be sociable and
+amused in their holidays, have no place of resort but the tap-room
+or tea-garden, and no food for conversation except such as can be
+built upon the politics or the police reports of the last Sunday
+paper?  So much has Church and State puritanism done for us--so
+well has it succeeded in materializing and binding down to the
+earth the imagination of men, for which God has made another world
+(which certain statesmen take but too little into account)--that
+fair and beautiful world of heart, in which there CAN be nothing
+selfish or sordid, of which Dulness has forgotten the existence,
+and which Bigotry has endeavored to shut out from sight--
+
+
+     "On a banni les demons et les fees,
+      Le raisonner tristement s'accredite:
+      On court, helas! apres la verite:
+      Ah! croyez moi, l'erreur a son merite!"
+
+
+We are not putting in a plea here for demons and fairies, as
+Voltaire does in the above exquisite lines; nor about to expatiate
+on the beauties of error, for it has none; but the clank of steam-
+engines, and the shouts of politicians, and the struggle for gain
+or bread, and the loud denunciations of stupid bigots, have
+wellnigh smothered poor Fancy among us.  We boast of our science,
+and vaunt our superior morality.  Does the latter exist?  In spite
+of all the forms which our policy has invented to secure it--in
+spite of all the preachers, all the meeting-houses, and all the
+legislative enactments--if any person will take upon himself the
+painful labor of purchasing and perusing some of the cheap
+periodical prints which form the people's library of amusement, and
+contain what may be presumed to be their standard in matters of
+imagination and fancy, he will see how false the claim is that we
+bring forward of superior morality.  The aristocracy who are so
+eager to maintain, were, of course, not the last to feel annoyance
+of the legislative restrictions on the Sabbath, and eagerly seized
+upon that happy invention for dissipating the gloom and ennui
+ordered by Act of Parliament to prevail on that day--the Sunday
+paper.  It might be read in a club-room, where the poor could not
+see how their betters ordained one thing for the vulgar, and
+another for themselves; or in an easy-chair, in the study, whither
+my lord retires every Sunday for his devotions.  It dealt in
+private scandal and ribaldry, only the more piquant for its pretty
+flimsy veil of double-entendre.  It was a fortune to the publisher,
+and it became a necessary to the reader, which he could not do
+without, any more than without his snuff-box, his opera-box, or his
+chasse after coffee.  The delightful novelty could not for any time
+be kept exclusively for the haut ton; and from my lord it descended
+to his valet or tradesmen, and from Grosvenor Square it spread all
+the town through; so that now the lower classes have their scandal
+and ribaldry organs, as well as their betters (the rogues, they
+WILL imitate them!) and as their tastes are somewhat coarser than
+my lord's, and their numbers a thousand to one, why of course the
+prints have increased, and the profligacy has been diffused in a
+ratio exactly proportionable to the demand, until the town is
+infested with such a number of monstrous publications of the kind
+as would have put Abbe Dubois to the blush, or made Louis XV. cry
+shame.  Talk of English morality!--the worst licentiousness, in the
+worst period of the French monarchy, scarcely equalled the
+wickedness of this Sabbath-keeping country of ours.
+
+The reader will be glad, at last, to come to the conclusion that
+we would fain draw from all these descriptions--why does this
+immorality exist?  Because the people MUST be amused, and have not
+been taught HOW; because the upper classes, frightened by stupid
+cant, or absorbed in material wants, have not as yet learned the
+refinement which only the cultivation of art can give; and when
+their intellects are uneducated, and their tastes are coarse, the
+tastes and amusements of classes still more ignorant must be coarse
+and vicious likewise, in an increased proportion.
+
+Such discussions and violent attacks upon high and low, Sabbath
+Bills, politicians, and what not, may appear, perhaps, out of place
+in a few pages which purport only to give an account of some French
+drawings: all we would urge is, that, in France, these prints are
+made because they are liked and appreciated; with us they are not
+made, because they are not liked and appreciated: and the more is
+the pity.  Nothing merely intellectual will be popular among us: we
+do not love beauty for beauty's sake, as Germans; or wit, for wit's
+sake, as the French: for abstract art we have no appreciation.  We
+admire H. B.'s caricatures, because they are the caricatures of
+well-known political characters, not because they are witty; and
+Boz, because he writes us good palpable stories (if we may use such
+a word to a story); and Madame Vestris, because she has the most
+beautifully shaped legs;--the ART of the designer, the writer, the
+actress (each admirable in its way,) is a very minor consideration;
+each might have ten times the wit, and would be quite unsuccessful
+without their substantial points of popularity.
+
+In France such matters are far better managed, and the love of art
+is a thousand times more keen; and (from this feeling, surely) how
+much superiority is there in French SOCIETY over our own; how much
+better is social happiness understood; how much more manly equality
+is there between Frenchman and Frenchman, than between rich and
+poor in our own country, with all our superior wealth, instruction,
+and political freedom!  There is, amongst the humblest, a gayety,
+cheerfulness, politeness, and sobriety, to which, in England, no
+class can show a parallel: and these, be it remembered, are not
+only qualities for holidays, but for working-days too, and add to
+the enjoyment of human life as much as good clothes, good beef, or
+good wages.  If, to our freedom, we could but add a little of their
+happiness!--it is one, after all, of the cheapest commodities in
+the world, and in the power of every man (with means of gaining
+decent bread) who has the will or the skill to use it.
+
+We are not going to trace the history of the rise and progress of
+art in France; our business, at present, is only to speak of one
+branch of art in that country--lithographic designs, and those
+chiefly of a humorous character.  A history of French caricature
+was published in Paris, two or three years back, illustrated by
+numerous copies of designs, from the time of Henry III. to our own
+day.  We can only speak of this work from memory, having been
+unable, in London, to procure the sight of a copy; but our
+impression, at the time we saw the collection, was as unfavorable
+as could possibly be: nothing could be more meagre than the wit, or
+poorer than the execution, of the whole set of drawings.  Under the
+Empire, art, as may be imagined, was at a very low ebb; and, aping
+the Government of the day, and catering to the national taste and
+vanity, it was a kind of tawdry caricature of the sublime; of which
+the pictures of David and Girodet, and almost the entire collection
+now at the Luxembourg Palace, will give pretty fair examples.
+Swollen, distorted, unnatural, the painting was something like the
+politics of those days; with force in it, nevertheless, and
+something of grandeur, that will exist in spite of taste, and is
+born of energetic will.  A man, disposed to write comparisons of
+characters, might, for instance, find some striking analogies
+between mountebank Murat, with his irresistible bravery and
+horsemanship, who was a kind of mixture of Dugueselin and Ducrow,
+and Mountebank David, a fierce, powerful painter and genius, whose
+idea of beauty and sublimity seemed to have been gained from the
+bloody melodramas on the Boulevard.  Both, however, were great in
+their way, and were worshipped as gods, in those heathen times of
+false belief and hero-worship.
+
+As for poor caricature and freedom of the press, they, like the
+rightful princess in a fairy tale, with the merry fantastic dwarf,
+her attendant, were entirely in the power of the giant who ruled
+the land.  The Princess Press was so closely watched and guarded
+(with some little show, nevertheless, of respect for her rank),
+that she dared not utter a word of her own thoughts; and, for poor
+Caricature, he was gagged, and put out of the way altogether:
+imprisoned as completely as ever Asmodeus was in his phial.
+
+How the Press and her attendant fared in succeeding reigns, is well
+known; their condition was little bettered by the downfall of
+Napoleon: with the accession of Charles X. they were more oppressed
+even than before--more than they could bear; for so hard were they
+pressed, that, as one has seen when sailors are working a capstan,
+back of a sudden the bars flew, knocking to the earth the men who
+were endeavoring to work them.  The Revolution came, and up sprung
+Caricature in France; all sorts of fierce epigrams were discharged
+at the flying monarch, and speedily were prepared, too, for the new
+one.
+
+About this time there lived at Paris (if our information be
+correct) a certain M. Philipon, an indifferent artist (painting was
+his profession), a tolerable designer, and an admirable wit.  M.
+Philipon designed many caricatures himself, married the sister of
+an eminent publisher of prints (M. Aubert), and the two, gathering
+about them a body of wits and artists like themselves, set up
+journals of their own:--La Caricature, first published once a week;
+and the Charivari afterwards, a daily paper, in which a design also
+appears daily.
+
+At first the caricatures inserted in the Charivari were chiefly
+political; and a most curious contest speedily commenced between
+the State and M. Philipon's little army in the Galerie Vero-Dodat.
+Half a dozen poor artists on the one side, and his Majesty Louis
+Philippe, his august family, and the numberless placemen and
+supporters of the monarchy, on the other; it was something like
+Thersites girding at Ajax, and piercing through the folds of the
+clypei septemplicis with the poisonous shafts of his scorn.  Our
+French Thersites was not always an honest opponent, it must be
+confessed; and many an attack was made upon the gigantic enemy,
+which was cowardly, false, and malignant.  But to see the monster
+writhing under the effects of the arrow--to see his uncouth fury in
+return, and the blind blows that he dealt at his diminutive
+opponent!--not one of these told in a hundred; when they DID tell,
+it may be imagined that they were fierce enough in all conscience,
+and served almost to annihilate the adversary.
+
+To speak more plainly, and to drop the metaphor of giant and dwarf,
+the King of the French suffered so much, his Ministers were so
+mercilessly ridiculed, his family and his own remarkable figure
+drawn with such odious and grotesque resemblance, in fanciful
+attitudes, circumstances, and disguises, so ludicrously mean, and
+often so appropriate, that the King was obliged to descend into the
+lists and battle his ridiculous enemy in form.  Prosecutions,
+seizures, fines, regiments of furious legal officials, were first
+brought into play against poor M. Philipon and his little dauntless
+troop of malicious artists; some few were bribed out of his ranks;
+and if they did not, like Gilray in England, turn their weapons
+upon their old friends, at least laid down their arms, and would
+fight no more.  The bribes, fines, indictments, and loud-tongued
+avocats du roi made no impression; Philipon repaired the defeat of
+a fine by some fresh and furious attack upon his great enemy; if
+his epigrams were more covert, they were no less bitter; if he was
+beaten a dozen times before a jury, he had eighty or ninety
+victories to show in the same field of battle, and every victory
+and every defeat brought him new sympathy.  Every one who was at
+Paris a few years since must recollect the famous "poire" which was
+chalked upon all the walls of the city, and which bore so ludicrous
+a resemblance to Louis Philippe.  The poire became an object of
+prosecution, and M. Philipon appeared before a jury to answer for
+the crime of inciting to contempt against the King's person, by
+giving such a ludicrous version of his face.  Philipon, for
+defence, produced a sheet of paper, and drew a poire, a real large
+Burgundy pear: in the lower parts round and capacious, narrower
+near the stalk, and crowned with two or three careless leaves.
+"There was no treason in THAT," he said to the jury; "could any one
+object to such a harmless botanical representation?"  Then he drew
+a second pear, exactly like the former, except that one or two
+lines were scrawled in the midst of it, which bore somehow a
+ludicrous resemblance to the eyes, nose, and mouth of a celebrated
+personage; and, lastly, he drew the exact portrait of Louis
+Philippe; the well-known toupet, the ample whiskers and jowl were
+there, neither extenuated nor set down in malice.  "Can I help it,
+gentlemen of the jury, then," said he, "if his Majesty's face is
+like a pear?  Say yourselves, respectable citizens, is it, or is it
+not, like a pear?"  Such eloquence could not fail of its effect;
+the artist was acquitted, and La poire is immortal.
+
+At last came the famous September laws: the freedom of the Press,
+which, from August, 1830, was to be "desormais une verite," was
+calmly strangled by the Monarch who had gained his crown for his
+supposed championship of it; by his Ministers, some of whom had
+been stout Republicans on paper but a few years before; and by the
+Chamber, which, such is the blessed constitution of French
+elections, will generally vote, unvote, revote in any way the
+Government wishes.  With a wondrous union, and happy forgetfulness
+of principle, monarch, ministers, and deputies issued the
+restriction laws; the Press was sent to prison; as for the poor
+dear Caricature, it was fairly murdered.  No more political satires
+appear now, and "through the eye, correct the heart;" no more
+poires ripen on the walls of the metropolis; Philipon's political
+occupation is gone.
+
+But there is always food for satire; and the French caricaturists,
+being no longer allowed to hold up to ridicule and reprobation the
+King and the deputies, have found no lack of subjects for the
+pencil in the ridicules and rascalities of common life.  We have
+said that public decency is greater amongst the French than amongst
+us, which, to some of our readers, may appear paradoxical; but we
+shall not attempt to argue that, in private roguery, our neighbors
+are not our equals.  The proces of Gisquet, which has appeared
+lately in the papers, shows how deep the demoralization must be,
+and how a Government, based itself on dishonesty (a tyranny, that
+is, under the title and fiction of a democracy,) must practise and
+admit corruption in its own and in its agents' dealings with the
+nation.  Accordingly, of cheating contracts, of ministers dabbling
+with the funds, or extracting underhand profits for the granting of
+unjust privileges and monopolies,--of grasping, envious police
+restrictions, which destroy the freedom, and, with it, the
+integrity of commerce,--those who like to examine such details may
+find plenty in French history: the whole French finance system has
+been a swindle from the days of Luvois, or Law, down to the present
+time.  The Government swindles the public, and the small traders
+swindle their customers, on the authority and example of the
+superior powers.  Hence the art of roguery, under such high
+patronage, maintains in France a noble front of impudence, and a
+fine audacious openness, which it does not wear in our country.
+
+Among the various characters of roguery which the French satirists
+have amused themselves by depicting, there is one of which the
+GREATNESS (using the word in the sense which Mr. Jonathan Wild gave
+to it) so far exceeds that of all others, embracing, as it does,
+all in turn, that it has come to be considered the type of roguery
+in general; and now, just as all the political squibs were made to
+come of old from the lips of Pasquin, all the reflections on the
+prevailing cant, knavery, quackery, humbug, are put into the mouth
+of Monsieur Robert Macaire.
+
+A play was written, some twenty years since, called the "Auberge
+des Adrets," in which the characters of two robbers escaped from
+the galleys were introduced--Robert Macaire, the clever rogue above
+mentioned, and Bertrand, the stupid rogue, his friend, accomplice,
+butt, and scapegoat, on all occasions of danger.  It is needless to
+describe the play--a witless performance enough, of which the joke
+was Macaire's exaggerated style of conversation, a farrago of all
+sorts of high-flown sentiments such as the French love to indulge
+in--contrasted with his actions, which were philosophically
+unscrupulous, and his appearance, which was most picturesquely
+sordid.  The play had been acted, we believe, and forgotten, when a
+very clever actor, M. Frederick Lemaitre, took upon himself the
+performance of the character of Robert Macaire, and looked, spoke,
+and acted it to such admirable perfection, that the whole town rung
+with applauses of the performance, and the caricaturists delighted
+to copy his singular figure and costume.  M. Robert Macaire appears
+in a most picturesque green coat, with a variety of rents and
+patches, a pair of crimson pantaloons ornamented in the same way,
+enormous whiskers and ringlets, an enormous stock and shirt-frill,
+as dirty and ragged as stock and shirt-frill can be, the relic of a
+hat very gayly cocked over one eye, and a patch to take away
+somewhat from the brightness of the other--these are the principal
+pieces of his costume--a snuff-box like a creaking warming-pan, a
+handkerchief hanging together by a miracle, and a switch of about
+the thickness of a man's thigh, formed the ornaments of this
+exquisite personage.  He is a compound of Fielding's "Blueskin" and
+Goldsmith's "Beau Tibbs."  He has the dirt and dandyism of the one,
+with the ferocity of the other: sometimes he is made to swindle,
+but where he can get a shilling more, M. Macaire will murder
+without scruple: he performs one and the other act (or any in the
+scale between them) with a similar bland imperturbability, and
+accompanies his actions with such philosophical remarks as may be
+expected from a person of his talents, his energies, his amiable
+life and character.
+
+Bertrand is the simple recipient of Macaire's jokes, and makes
+vicarious atonement for his crimes, acting, in fact, the part which
+pantaloon performs in the pantomime, who is entirely under the
+fatal influence of clown.  He is quite as much a rogue as that
+gentleman, but he has not his genius and courage.  So, in
+pantomimes, (it may, doubtless, have been remarked by the reader,)
+clown always leaps first, pantaloon following after, more clumsily
+and timidly than his bold and accomplished friend and guide.
+Whatever blows are destined for clown, fall, by some means of ill-
+luck, upon the pate of pantaloon: whenever the clown robs, the
+stolen articles are sure to be found in his companion's pocket; and
+thus exactly Robert Macaire and his companion Bertrand are made to
+go through the world; both swindlers, but the one more accomplished
+than the other.  Both robbing all the world, and Robert robbing his
+friend, and, in the event of danger, leaving him faithfully in the
+lurch.  There is, in the two characters, some grotesque good for
+the spectator--a kind of "Beggars' Opera" moral.
+
+Ever since Robert, with his dandified rags and airs, his cane and
+snuff-box, and Bertrand with torn surtout and all-absorbing pocket,
+have appeared on the stage, they have been popular with the
+Parisians; and with these two types of clever and stupid knavery,
+M. Philipon and his companion Daumier have created a world of
+pleasant satire upon all the prevailing abuses of the day.
+
+Almost the first figure that these audacious caricaturists dared to
+depict was a political one: in Macaire's red breeches and tattered
+coat appeared no less a personage than the King himself--the old
+Poire--in a country of humbugs and swindlers the facile princeps;
+fit to govern, as he is deeper than all the rogues in his
+dominions.  Bertrand was opposite to him, and having listened with
+delight and reverence to some tale of knavery truly royal, was
+exclaiming with a look and voice expressive of the most intense
+admiration, "AH VIEUX BLAGEUR! va!"--the word blague is
+untranslatable--it means FRENCH humbug as distinct from all other;
+and only those who know the value of an epigram in France, an
+epigram so wonderfully just, a little word so curiously
+comprehensive, can fancy the kind of rage and rapture with which it
+was received.  It was a blow that shook the whole dynasty.
+Thersites had there given such a wound to Ajax, as Hector in arms
+could scarcely have inflicted: a blow sufficient almost to create
+the madness to which the fabulous hero of Homer and Ovid fell a
+prey.
+
+Not long, however, was French caricature allowed to attack
+personages so illustrious: the September laws came, and henceforth
+no more epigrams were launched against politics; but the
+caricaturists were compelled to confine their satire to subjects
+and characters that had nothing to do with the State.  The Duke of
+Orleans was no longer to figure in lithography as the fantastic
+Prince Rosolin; no longer were multitudes (in chalk) to shelter
+under the enormous shadow of M. d'Argout's nose: Marshal Loban's
+squirt was hung up in peace, and M. Thiers's pigmy figure and round
+spectacled face were no more to appear in print.*  Robert Macaire
+was driven out of the Chambers and the Palace--his remarks were a
+great deal too appropriate and too severe for the ears of the great
+men who congregated in those places.
+
+
+* Almost all the principal public men had been most ludicrously
+caricatured in the Charivari: those mentioned above were usually
+depicted with the distinctive attributes mentioned by us.
+
+
+The Chambers and the Palace were shut to him; but the rogue, driven
+out of his rogue's paradise, saw "that the world was all before him
+where to choose," and found no lack of opportunities for exercising
+his wit.  There was the Bar, with its roguish practitioners,
+rascally attorneys, stupid juries, and forsworn judges; there was
+the Bourse, with all its gambling, swindling, and hoaxing, its
+cheats and its dupes; the Medical Profession, and the quacks who
+ruled it, alternately; the Stage, and the cant that was prevalent
+there; the Fashion, and its thousand follies and extravagances.
+Robert Macaire had all these to exploiter.  Of all the empire,
+through all the ranks, professions, the lies, crimes, and
+absurdities of men, he may make sport at will; of all except of a
+certain class.  Like Bluebeard's wife, he may see everything, but
+is bidden TO BEWARE OF THE BLUE CHAMBER.  Robert is more wise than
+Bluebeard's wife, and knows that it would cost him his head to
+enter it.  Robert, therefore, keeps aloof for the moment.  Would
+there be any use in his martyrdom?  Bluebeard cannot live for ever;
+perhaps, even now, those are on their way (one sees a suspicious
+cloud of dust or two) that are to destroy him.
+
+In the meantime Robert and his friend have been furnishing the
+designs that we have before us, and of which perhaps the reader
+will be edified by a brief description.  We are not, to be sure, to
+judge of the French nation by M. Macaire, any more than we are to
+judge of our own national morals in the last century by such a book
+as the "Beggars' Opera;" but upon the morals and the national
+manners, works of satire afford a world of light that one would in
+vain look for in regular books of history.  Doctor Smollett would
+have blushed to devote any considerable portion of his pages to a
+discussion of the acts and character of Mr. Jonathan Wild, such a
+figure being hardly admissible among the dignified personages who
+usually push all others out from the possession of the historical
+page; but a chapter of that gentleman's memoirs, as they are
+recorded in that exemplary recueil--the "Newgate Calendar;" nay, a
+canto of the great comic epic (involving many fables, and
+containing much exaggeration, but still having the seeds of truth)
+which the satirical poet of those days wrote in celebration of him--
+we mean Fielding's "History of Jonathan Wild the Great"--does seem
+to us to give a more curious picture of the manners of those times
+than any recognized history of them.  At the close of his history
+of George II., Smollett condescends to give a short chapter on
+Literature and Manners.  He speaks of Glover's "Leonidas," Cibber's
+"Careless Husband," the poems of Mason, Gray, the two Whiteheads,
+"the nervous style, extensive erudition, and superior sense of a
+Corke; the delicate taste, the polished muse, and tender feeling of
+a Lyttelton."  "King," he says, "shone unrivalled in Roman
+eloquence, the female sex distinguished themselves by their taste
+and ingenuity.  Miss Carter rivalled the celebrated Dacier in
+learning and critical knowledge; Mrs. Lennox signalized herself by
+many successful efforts of genius both in poetry and prose; and
+Miss Reid excelled the celebrated Rosalba in portrait-painting,
+both in miniature and at large, in oil as well as in crayons.  The
+genius of Cervantes was transferred into the novels of Fielding,
+who painted the characters and ridiculed the follies of life with
+equal strength, humor, and propriety.  The field of history and
+biography was cultivated by many writers of ability, among whom we
+distinguish the copious Guthrie, the circumstantial Ralph, the
+laborious Carte, the learned and elegant Robertson, and above all,
+the ingenious, penetrating, and comprehensive Hume," &c. &c.  We
+will quote no more of the passage.  Could a man in the best humor
+sit down to write a graver satire?  Who cares for the tender muse
+of Lyttelton?  Who knows the signal efforts of Mrs. Lennox's
+genius?  Who has seen the admirable performances, in miniature and
+at large, in oil as well as in crayons, of Miss Reid?  Laborious
+Carte, and circumstantial Ralph, and copious Guthrie, where are
+they, their works, and their reputation?  Mrs. Lennox's name is
+just as clean wiped out of the list of worthies as if she had never
+been born; and Miss Reid, though she was once actual flesh and
+blood, "rival in miniature and at large" of the celebrated Rosalba,
+she is as if she had never been at all; her little farthing
+rushlight of a soul and reputation having burnt out, and left
+neither wick nor tallow.  Death, too, has overtaken copious Guthrie
+and circumstantial Ralph.  Only a few know whereabouts is the grave
+where lies laborious Carte; and yet, O wondrous power of genius!
+Fielding's men and women are alive, though History's are not.  The
+progenitors of circumstantial Ralph sent forth, after much labor
+and pains of making, educating, feeding, clothing, a real man
+child, a great palpable mass of flesh, bones, and blood (we say
+nothing about the spirit), which was to move through the world,
+ponderous, writing histories, and to die, having achieved the title
+of circumstantial Ralph; and lo! without any of the trouble that
+the parents of Ralph had undergone, alone perhaps in a watch or
+spunging-house, fuddled most likely, in the blandest, easiest, and
+most good-humored way in the world, Henry Fielding makes a number
+of men and women on so many sheets of paper, not only more amusing
+than Ralph or Miss Reid, but more like flesh and blood, and more
+alive now than they.  Is not Amelia preparing her husband's little
+supper?  Is not Miss Snapp chastely preventing the crime of Mr.
+Firebrand?  Is not Parson Adams in the midst of his family, and Mr.
+Wild taking his last bowl of punch with the Newgate Ordinary?  Is
+not every one of them a real substantial HAVE-been personage now--
+more real than Reid or Ralph?  For our parts, we will not take upon
+ourselves to say that they do not exist somewhere else: that the
+actions attributed to them have not really taken place; certain we
+are that they are more worthy of credence than Ralph, who may or
+may not have been circumstantial; who may or may not even have
+existed, a point unworthy of disputation.  As for Miss Reid, we
+will take an affidavit that neither in miniature nor at large did
+she excel the celebrated Rosalba; and with regard to Mrs. Lennox,
+we consider her to be a mere figment, like Narcissa, Miss Tabitha
+Bramble, or any hero or heroine depicted by the historian of
+"Peregrine Pickle."
+
+In like manner, after viewing nearly ninety portraits of Robert
+Macaire and his friend Bertrand, all strongly resembling each
+other, we are inclined to believe in them as historical personages,
+and to canvass gravely the circumstances of their lives.  Why
+should we not?  Have we not their portraits?  Are not they
+sufficient proofs?  If not, we must discredit Napoleon (as
+Archbishop Whately teaches), for about his figure and himself we
+have no more authentic testimony.
+
+Let the reality of M. Robert Macaire and his friend M. Bertrand be
+granted, if but to gratify our own fondness for those exquisite
+characters: we find the worthy pair in the French capital, mingling
+with all grades of its society, pars magna in the intrigues,
+pleasures, perplexities, rogueries, speculations, which are carried
+on in Paris, as in our own chief city; for it need not be said that
+roguery is of no country nor clime, but finds [Greek text omitted],
+is a citizen of all countries where the quarters are good; among
+our merry neighbors it finds itself very much at its ease.
+
+Not being endowed, then, with patrimonial wealth, but compelled to
+exercise their genius to obtain distinction, or even subsistence,
+we see Messrs. Bertrand and Macaire, by turns, adopting all trades
+and professions, and exercising each with their own peculiar
+ingenuity.  As public men, we have spoken already of their
+appearance in one or two important characters, and stated that the
+Government grew fairly jealous of them, excluding them from office,
+as the Whigs did Lord Brougham.  As private individuals, they are
+made to distinguish themselves as the founders of journals,
+societes en commandite (companies of which the members are
+irresponsible beyond the amount of their shares), and all sorts of
+commercial speculations, requiring intelligence and honesty on the
+part of the directors, confidence and liberal disbursements from
+the shareholders.
+
+These are, among the French, so numerous, and have been of late
+years (in the shape of Newspaper Companies, Bitumen Companies,
+Galvanized-Iron Companies, Railroad Companies, &c.) pursued with
+such a blind FUROR and lust of gain, by that easily excited and
+imaginative people, that, as may be imagined, the satirist has
+found plenty of occasion for remark, and M. Macaire and his friend
+innumerable opportunities for exercising their talents.
+
+We know nothing of M. Emile de Girardin, except that, in a duel, he
+shot the best man in France, Armaud Carrel; and in Girardin's favor
+it must be said, that he had no other alternative; but was right in
+provoking the duel, seeing that the whole Republican party had
+vowed his destruction, and that he fought and killed their
+champion, as it were.  We know nothing of M. Girardin's private
+character: but, as far as we can judge from the French public
+prints, he seems to be the most speculative of speculators, and, of
+course, a fair butt for the malice of the caricaturists.  His one
+great crime, in the eyes of the French Republicans and Republican
+newspaper proprietors, was, that Girardin set up a journal, as he
+called it, "franchement monarchique,"--a journal in the pay of the
+monarchy, that is,--and a journal that cost only forty francs by
+the year.  The National costs twice as much; the Charivari itself
+costs half as much again; and though all newspapers, of all
+parties, concurred in "snubbing" poor M. Girardin and his journal,
+the Republican prints, were by far the most bitter against him,
+thundering daily accusations and personalities; whether the abuse
+was well or ill founded, we know not.  Hence arose the duel with
+Carrel; after the termination of which, Girardin put by his pistol,
+and vowed, very properly, to assist in the shedding of no more
+blood.  Girardin had been the originator of numerous other
+speculations besides the journal: the capital of these, like that
+of the journal, was raised by shares, and the shareholders, by some
+fatality, have found themselves wofully in the lurch; while
+Girardin carries on the war gayly, is, or was, a member of the
+Chamber of Deputies, has money, goes to Court, and possesses a
+certain kind of reputation.  He invented, we believe, the
+"Institution Agronome de Coetbo,"* the "Physionotype," the "Journal
+des Connoissances Utiles," the "Pantheon Litteraire," and the
+system of "Primes"--premiums, that is--to be given, by lottery, to
+certain subscribers in these institutions.  Could Robert Macaire
+see such things going on, and have no hand in them?
+
+
+* It is not necessary to enter into descriptions of these various
+inventions.
+
+
+Accordingly Messrs. Macaire and Bertrand are made the heroes of
+many speculations of the kind.  In almost the first print of our
+collection, Robert discourses to Bertrand of his projects.
+"Bertrand," says the disinterested admirer of talent and
+enterprise, "j'adore l'industrie.  Si tu veux nous creons une
+banque, mais la, une vraie banque: capital cent millions de
+millions, cent milliards de milliards d'actions.  Nous enfoncons la
+banque de France, les banquiers, les banquistes; nous enfoncons
+tout le monde."  "Oui," says Bertrand, very calm and stupid, "mais
+les gendarmes?"  "Que tu es bete, Bertrand: est-ce qu'on arrete un
+millionaire?"  Such is the key to M. Macaire's philosophy; and a
+wise creed too, as times go.
+
+Acting on these principles, Robert appears soon after; he has not
+created a bank, but a journal.  He sits in a chair of state, and
+discourses to a shareholder.  Bertrand, calm and stupid as before,
+stands humbly behind.  "Sir," says the editor of La Blague, journal
+quotidienne, "our profits arise from a new combination.  The
+journal costs twenty francs; we sell it for twenty-three and a
+half.  A million subscribers make three millions and a half of
+profits; there are my figures; contradict me by figures, or I will
+bring an action for libel."  The reader may fancy the scene takes
+place in England, where many such a swindling prospectus has
+obtained credit ere now.  At Plate 33, Robert is still a journalist;
+he brings to the editor of a paper an article of his composition, a
+violent attack on a law.  "My dear M. Macaire," says the editor,
+"this must be changed; we must PRAISE this law."  "Bon, bon!" says
+our versatile Macaire.  "Je vais retoucher ca, et je vous fais en
+faveur de la loi UN ARTICLE MOUSSEUX."
+
+Can such things be?  Is it possible that French journalists can so
+forget themselves?  The rogues! they should come to England and
+learn consistency.  The honesty of the Press in England is like the
+air we breathe, without it we die.  No, no! in France, the satire
+may do very well; but for England it is too monstrous.  Call the
+press stupid, call it vulgar, call it violent,--but honest it is.
+Who ever heard of a journal changing its politics?  O tempora!  O
+mores! as Robert Macaire says, this would be carrying the joke too
+far.
+
+When he has done with newspapers, Robert Macaire begins to
+distinguish himself on 'Change,* as a creator of companies, a
+vender of shares, or a dabbler in foreign stock.  "Buy my coal-mine
+shares," shouts Robert; "gold mines, silver mines, diamond mines,
+'sont de la pot-bouille de la ratatouille en comparaison de ma
+houille.'"  "Look," says he, on another occasion, to a very timid,
+open-countenanced client, "you have a property to sell!  I have
+found the very man, a rich capitalist, a fellow whose bills are
+better than bank-notes."  His client sells; the bills are taken in
+payment, and signed by that respectable capitalist, Monsieur de
+Saint Bertrand.  At Plate 81, we find him inditing a circular
+letter to all the world, running thus: "Sir,--I regret to say that
+your application for shares in the Consolidated European
+Incombustible Blacking Association cannot be complied with, as all
+the shares of the C. E. I. B. A. were disposed of on the day they
+were issued.  I have, nevertheless, registered your name, and in
+case a second series should be put forth, I shall have the honor of
+immediately giving you notice.  I am, sir, yours, &c., the
+Director, Robert Macaire."--"Print 300,000 of these," he says to
+Bertrand, "and poison all France with them."  As usual, the stupid
+Bertrand remonstrates--"But we have not sold a single share; you
+have not a penny in your pocket, and"--"Bertrand, you are an ass;
+do as I bid you."
+
+
+* We have given a description of a genteel Macaire in the account
+of M. de Bernard's novels.
+
+
+Will this satire apply anywhere in England?  Have we any
+Consolidated European Blacking Associations amongst us?  Have we
+penniless directors issuing El Dorado prospectuses, and jockeying
+their shares through the market?  For information on this head, we
+must refer the reader to the newspapers; or if he be connected with
+the city, and acquainted with commercial men, he will be able to
+say whether ALL the persons whose names figure at the head of
+announcements of projected companies are as rich as Rothschild, or
+quite as honest as heart could desire.
+
+When Macaire has sufficiently exploite the Bourse, whether as a
+gambler in the public funds or other companies, he sagely perceives
+that it is time to turn to some other profession, and, providing
+himself with a black gown, proposes blandly to Bertrand to set up--
+a new religion.  "Mon ami," says the repentant sinner, "le temps de
+la commandite va passer, MAIS LES BADAUDS NE PASSERONT PAS."  (O
+rare sentence! it should be written in letters of gold!)  "OCCUPONS
+NOUS DE CE QUI EST ETERNEL.  Si nous fassions une religion?"  On
+which M. Bertrand remarks, "A religion! what the devil--a religion
+is not an easy thing to make."  But Macaire's receipt is easy.
+"Get a gown, take a shop," he says, "borrow some chairs, preach
+about Napoleon, or the discovery of America, or Moliere--and
+there's a religion for you."
+
+We have quoted this sentence more for the contrast it offers with
+our own manners, than for its merits.  After the noble paragraph,
+"Les badauds ne passeront pas.  Occupons nous de ce qui est
+eternel," one would have expected better satire upon cant than the
+words that follow.  We are not in a condition to say whether the
+subjects chosen are those that had been selected by Pere Enfantin,
+or Chatel, or Lacordaire; but the words are curious, we think, for
+the very reason that the satire is so poor.  The fact is, there is
+no religion in Paris; even clever M. Philipon, who satirizes
+everything, and must know, therefore, some little about the subject
+which he ridicules, has nothing to say but, "Preach a sermon, and
+that makes a religion; anything will do."  If ANYTHING will do, it
+is clear that the religious commodity is not in much demand.
+Tartuffe had better things to say about hypocrisy in his time; but
+then Faith was alive; now, there is no satirizing religious cant in
+France, for its contrary, true religion, has disappeared altogether;
+and having no substance, can cast no shadow.  If a satirist would
+lash the religious hypocrites in ENGLAND now--the High Church
+hypocrites, the Low Church hypocrites, the promiscuous Dissenting
+hypocrites, the No Popery hypocrites--he would have ample subject
+enough.  In France, the religious hypocrites went out with the
+Bourbons.  Those who remain pious in that country (or, rather, we
+should say, in the capital, for of that we speak,) are unaffectedly
+so, for they have no worldly benefit to hope for from their piety;
+the great majority have no religion at all, and do not scoff at the
+few, for scoffing is the minority's weapon, and is passed always to
+the weaker side, whatever that may be.  Thus H. B. caricatures the
+Ministers: if by any accident that body of men should be dismissed
+from their situations, and be succeeded by H. B.'s friends, the
+Tories,--what must the poor artist do?  He must pine away and die,
+if he be not converted; he cannot always be paying compliments; for
+caricature has a spice of Goethe's Devil in it, and is "der Geist
+der stets verneint," the Spirit that is always denying.
+
+With one or two of the French writers and painters of caricatures,
+the King tried the experiment of bribery; which succeeded
+occasionally in buying off the enemy, and bringing him from the
+republican to the royal camp; but when there, the deserter was
+never of any use.  Figaro, when so treated, grew fat and
+desponding, and lost all his sprightly VERVE; and Nemesis became as
+gentle as a Quakeress.  But these instances of "ratting" were not
+many.  Some few poets were bought over; but, among men following
+the profession of the press, a change of politics is an
+infringement of the point of honor, and a man must FIGHT as well as
+apostatize.  A very curious table might be made, signalizing the
+difference of the moral standard between us and the French.  Why is
+the grossness and indelicacy, publicly permitted in England,
+unknown in France, where private morality is certainly at a lower
+ebb?  Why is the point of private honor now more rigidly maintained
+among the French?  Why is it, as it should be, a moral disgrace for
+a Frenchman to go into debt, and no disgrace for him to cheat his
+customer?  Why is there more honesty and less--more propriety and
+less?--and how are we to account for the particular vices or
+virtues which belong to each nation in its turn?
+
+The above is the Reverend M. Macaire's solitary exploit as a
+spiritual swindler: as MAITRE Macaire in the courts of law, as
+avocat, avoue--in a humbler capacity even, as a prisoner at the
+bar, he distinguishes himself greatly, as may be imagined.  On one
+occasion we find the learned gentleman humanely visiting an
+unfortunate detenu--no other person, in fact, than his friend M.
+Bertrand, who has fallen into some trouble, and is awaiting the
+sentence of the law.  He begins--
+
+"Mon cher Bertrand, donne moi cent ecus, je te fais acquitter
+d'emblee."
+
+"J'ai pas d'argent."
+
+"He bien, donne moi cent francs."
+
+"Pas le sou."
+
+"Tu n'as pas dix francs?"
+
+"Pas un liard."
+
+"Alors donne moi tes bottes, je plaiderai la circonstance
+attenuante."
+
+The manner in which Maitre Macaire soars from the cent ecus (a high
+point already) to the sublime of the boots, is in the best comic
+style.  In another instance he pleads before a judge, and,
+mistaking his client, pleads for defendant, instead of plaintiff.
+"The infamy of the plaintiff's character, my LUDS, renders his
+testimony on such a charge as this wholly unavailing."  "M.
+Macaire, M. Macaire," cries the attorney, in a fright, "you are for
+the plaintiff!"  "This, my lords, is what the defendant WILL SAY.
+This is the line of defence which the opposite party intend to
+pursue; as if slanders like these could weigh with an enlightened
+jury, or injure the spotless reputation of my client!"  In this
+story and expedient M. Macaire has been indebted to the English
+bar.  If there be an occupation for the English satirist in the
+exposing of the cant and knavery of the pretenders to religion,
+what room is there for him to lash the infamies of the law!  On
+this point the French are babes in iniquity compared to us--a
+counsel prostituting himself for money is a matter with us so
+stale, that it is hardly food for satire: which, to be popular,
+must find some much more complicated and interesting knavery
+whereon to exercise its skill.
+
+M. Macaire is more skilful in love than in law, and appears once or
+twice in a very amiable light while under the influence of the
+tender passion.  We find him at the head of one of those useful
+establishments unknown in our country--a Bureau de Mariage: half a
+dozen of such places are daily advertised in the journals: and "une
+veuve de trente ans ayant une fortune de deux cent mille francs,"
+or "une demoiselle de quinze aus, jolie, d'une famille tres
+distinguee, qui possede trente mille livres de rentes,"--
+continually, in this kind-hearted way, are offering themselves to
+the public: sometimes it is a gentleman, with a "physique
+agreable,--des talens de societe"--and a place under Government,
+who makes a sacrifice of himself in a similar manner.  In our
+little historical gallery we find this philanthropic anti-Malthusian
+at the head of an establishment of this kind, introducing a very
+meek, simple-looking bachelor to some distinguished ladies of his
+connoissance.  "Let me present you, sir, to Madame de St. Bertrand"
+(it is our old friend), "veuve de la grande armee, et Mdlle Eloa de
+Wormspire.  Ces dames brulent de l'envie de faire votre connoissance.
+Je les ai invitees a diner chez vous ce soir: vous nous menerez a
+l'opera, et nous ferons une petite partie d'ecarte.  Tenez vous bien,
+M. Gobard! ces dames ont des projets sur vous!"
+
+Happy Gobard! happy system, which can thus bring the pure and
+loving together, and acts as the best ally of Hymen!  The
+announcement of the rank and titles of Madame de St. Bertrand--
+"veuve de la grande armee"--is very happy.  "La grande armee" has
+been a father to more orphans, and a husband to more widows, than
+it ever made.  Mistresses of cafes, old governesses, keepers of
+boarding-houses, genteel beggars, and ladies of lower rank still,
+have this favorite pedigree.  They have all had malheurs (what kind
+it is needless to particularize), they are all connected with the
+grand homme, and their fathers were all colonels.  This title
+exactly answers to the "clergyman's daughter" in England--as, "A
+young lady, the daughter of a clergyman, is desirous to teach," &c.
+"A clergyman's widow receives into her house a few select," and so
+forth.  "Appeal to the benevolent.--By a series of unheard-of
+calamities, a young lady, daughter of a clergyman in the west of
+England, has been plunged," &c. &c.  The difference is curious, as
+indicating the standard of respectability.
+
+The male beggar of fashion is not so well known among us as in
+Paris, where street-doors are open; six or eight families live in a
+house; and the gentleman who earns his livelihood by this
+profession can make half a dozen visits without the trouble of
+knocking from house to house, and the pain of being observed by the
+whole street, while the footman is examining him from the area.
+Some few may be seen in England about the inns of court, where the
+locality is favorable (where, however, the owners of the chambers
+are not proverbially soft of heart, so that the harvest must be
+poor); but Paris is full of such adventurers,--fat, smooth-tongued,
+and well dressed, with gloves and gilt-headed canes, who would be
+insulted almost by the offer of silver, and expect your gold as
+their right.  Among these, of course, our friend Robert plays his
+part; and an excellent engraving represents him, snuff-box in hand,
+advancing to an old gentleman, whom, by his poodle, his powdered
+head, and his drivelling, stupid look, one knows to be a Carlist of
+the old regime.  "I beg pardon," says Robert; "is it really
+yourself to whom I have the honor of speaking?"--"It is."  "Do you
+take snuff?"--"I thank you."--"Sir, I have had misfortunes--I want
+assistance.  I am a Vendean of illustrious birth.  You know the
+family of Macairbec--we are of Brest.  My grandfather served the
+King in his galleys; my father and I belong, also, to the marine.
+Unfortunate suits at law have plunged us into difficulties, and I
+do not hesitate to ask you for the succor of ten francs."--"Sir, I
+never give to those I don't know."--"Right, sir, perfectly right.
+Perhaps you will have the kindness to LEND me ten francs?"
+
+The adventures of Doctor Macaire need not be described, because the
+different degrees in quackery which are taken by that learned
+physician are all well known in England, where we have the
+advantage of many higher degrees in the science, which our
+neighbors know nothing about.  We have not Hahnemann, but we have
+his disciples; we have not Broussais, but we have the College of
+Health; and surely a dose of Morrison's pills is a sublimer
+discovery than a draught of hot water.  We had St. John Long, too--
+where is his science?--and we are credibly informed that some
+important cures have been effected by the inspired dignitaries of
+"the church" in Newman Street which, if it continue to practise,
+will sadly interfere with the profits of the regular physicians,
+and where the miracles of the Abbe of Paris are about to be acted
+over again.
+
+In speaking of M. Macaire and his adventures, we have managed so
+entirely to convince ourselves of the reality of the personage,
+that we have quite forgotten to speak of Messrs. Philipon and
+Daumier, who are, the one the inventor, the other the designer, of
+the Macaire Picture Gallery.  As works of esprit, these drawings
+are not more remarkable than they are as works of art, and we never
+recollect to have seen a series of sketches possessing more
+extraordinary cleverness and variety.  The countenance and figure
+of Macaire and the dear stupid Bertrand are preserved, of course,
+with great fidelity throughout; but the admirable way in which each
+fresh character is conceived, the grotesque appropriateness of
+Robert's every successive attitude and gesticulation, and the
+variety of Bertrand's postures of invariable repose, the exquisite
+fitness of all the other characters, who act their little part and
+disappear from the scene, cannot be described on paper, or too
+highly lauded.  The figures are very carelessly drawn; but, if the
+reader can understand us, all the attitudes and limbs are perfectly
+CONCEIVED, and wonderfully natural and various.  After pondering
+over these drawings for some hours, as we have been while compiling
+this notice of them, we have grown to believe that the personages
+are real, and the scenes remain imprinted on the brain as if we had
+absolutely been present at their acting.  Perhaps the clever way in
+which the plates are colored, and the excellent effect which is put
+into each, may add to this illusion.  Now, in looking, for
+instance, at H. B.'s slim vapory figures, they have struck us as
+excellent LIKENESSES of men and women, but no more: the bodies want
+spirit, action, and individuality.  George Cruikshank, as a
+humorist, has quite as much genius, but he does not know the art of
+"effect" so well as Monsieur Daumier; and, if we might venture to
+give a word of advice to another humorous designer, whose works are
+extensively circulated--the illustrator of "Pickwick" and "Nicholas
+Nickleby,"--it would be to study well these caricatures of Monsieur
+Daumier; who, though he executes very carelessly, knows very well
+what he would express, indicates perfectly the attitude and
+identity of his figure, and is quite aware, beforehand, of the
+effect which he intends to produce.  The one we should fancy to be
+a practised artist, taking his ease; the other, a young one,
+somewhat bewildered: a very clever one, however, who, if he would
+think more, and exaggerate less, would add not a little to his
+reputation.
+
+Having pursued, all through these remarks, the comparison between
+English art and French art, English and French humor, manners, and
+morals, perhaps we should endeavor, also, to write an analytical
+essay on English cant or humbug, as distinguished from French.  It
+might be shown that the latter was more picturesque and startling,
+the former more substantial and positive.  It has none of the
+poetic flights of the French genius, but advances steadily, and
+gains more ground in the end than its sprightlier compeer.  But
+such a discussion would carry us through the whole range of French
+and English history, and the reader has probably read quite enough
+of the subject in this and the foregoing pages.
+
+We shall, therefore, say no more of French and English caricatures
+generally, or of Mr. Macaire's particular accomplishments and
+adventures.  They are far better understood by examining the
+original pictures, by which Philipon and Daumier have illustrated
+them, than by translations first into print and afterwards into
+English.  They form a very curious and instructive commentary upon
+the present state of society in Paris, and a hundred years hence,
+when the whole of this struggling, noisy, busy, merry race shall
+have exchanged their pleasures or occupations for a quiet coffin
+(and a tawdry lying epitaph) at Montmartre, or Pere la Chaise; when
+the follies here recorded shall have been superseded by new ones,
+and the fools now so active shall have given up the inheritance of
+the world to their children: the latter will, at least, have the
+advantage of knowing, intimately and exactly, the manners of life
+and being of their grandsires, and calling up, when they so choose
+it, our ghosts from the grave, to live, love, quarrel, swindle,
+suffer, and struggle on blindly as of yore.  And when the amused
+speculator shall have laughed sufficiently at the immensity of our
+follies, and the paltriness of our aims, smiled at our exploded
+superstitions, wondered how this man should be considered great,
+who is now clean forgotten (as copious Guthrie before mentioned);
+how this should have been thought a patriot who is but a knave
+spouting commonplace; or how that should have been dubbed a
+philosopher who is but a dull fool, blinking solemn, and pretending
+to see in the dark; when he shall have examined all these at his
+leisure, smiling in a pleasant contempt and good-humored
+superiority, and thanking heaven for his increased lights, he will
+shut the book, and be a fool as his fathers were before him.
+
+It runs in the blood.  Well hast thou said, O ragged Macaire,--"Le
+jour va passer, MAIS LES BADAUDS NE PASSERONT PAS."
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE POINSINET.
+
+
+About the year 1760, there lived, at Paris, a little fellow, who
+was the darling of all the wags of his acquaintance.  Nature
+seemed, in the formation of this little man, to have amused
+herself, by giving loose to half a hundred of her most comical
+caprices.  He had some wit and drollery of his own, which sometimes
+rendered his sallies very amusing; but, where his friends laughed
+with him once, they laughed at him a thousand times, for he had a
+fund of absurdity in himself that was more pleasant than all the
+wit in the world.  He was as proud as a peacock, as wicked as an
+ape, and as silly as a goose.  He did not possess one single grain
+of common sense; but, in revenge, his pretensions were enormous,
+his ignorance vast, and his credulity more extensive still.  From
+his youth upwards, he had read nothing but the new novels, and the
+verses in the almanacs, which helped him not a little in making,
+what he called, poetry of his own; for, of course, our little hero
+was a poet.  All the common usages of life, all the ways of the
+world, and all the customs of society, seemed to be quite unknown
+to him; add to these good qualities, a magnificent conceit, a
+cowardice inconceivable, and a face so irresistibly comic, that
+every one who first beheld it was compelled to burst out a-
+laughing, and you will have some notion of this strange little
+gentleman.  He was very proud of his voice, and uttered all his
+sentences in the richest tragic tone.  He was little better than a
+dwarf; but he elevated his eyebrows, held up his neck, walked on
+the tips of his toes, and gave himself the airs of a giant.  He had
+a little pair of bandy legs, which seemed much too short to support
+anything like a human body; but, by the help of these crooked
+supporters, he thought he could dance like a Grace; and, indeed,
+fancied all the graces possible were to be found in his person.
+His goggle eyes were always rolling about wildly, as if in
+correspondence with the disorder of his little brain and his
+countenance thus wore an expression of perpetual wonder.  With such
+happy natural gifts, he not only fell into all traps that were laid
+for him, but seemed almost to go out of his way to seek them;
+although, to be sure, his friends did not give him much trouble in
+that search, for they prepared hoaxes for him incessantly.
+
+One day the wags introduced him to a company of ladies, who, though
+not countesses and princesses exactly, took, nevertheless, those
+titles upon themselves for the nonce; and were all, for the same
+reason, violently smitten with Master Poinsinet's person.  One of
+them, the lady of the house, was especially tender; and, seating
+him by her side at supper, so plied him with smiles, ogles, and
+champagne, that our little hero grew crazed with ecstasy, and wild
+with love.  In the midst of his happiness, a cruel knock was heard
+below, accompanied by quick loud talking, swearing, and shuffling
+of feet: you would have thought a regiment was at the door.  "Oh
+heavens!" cried the marchioness, starting up, and giving to the
+hand of Poinsinet one parting squeeze; "fly--fly, my Poinsinet:
+'tis the colonel--my husband!"  At this, each gentleman of the
+party rose, and, drawing his rapier, vowed to cut his way through
+the colonel and all his mousquetaires, or die, if need be, by the
+side of Poinsinet.
+
+The little fellow was obliged to lug out his sword too, and went
+shuddering down stairs, heartily repenting of his passion for
+marchionesses.  When the party arrived in the street, they found,
+sure enough, a dreadful company of mousquetaires, as they seemed,
+ready to oppose their passage.  Swords crossed,--torches blazed;
+and, with the most dreadful shouts and imprecations, the contending
+parties rushed upon one another; the friends of Poinsinet
+surrounding and supporting that little warrior, as the French
+knights did King Francis at Pavia, otherwise the poor fellow
+certainly would have fallen down in the gutter from fright.
+
+But the combat was suddenly interrupted; for the neighbors, who
+knew nothing of the trick going on, and thought the brawl was real,
+had been screaming with all their might for the police, who began
+about this time to arrive.  Directly they appeared, friends and
+enemies of Poinsinet at once took to their heels; and, in THIS
+part of the transaction, at least, our hero himself showed that he
+was equal to the longest-legged grenadier that ever ran away.
+
+When, at last, those little bandy legs of his had borne him safely
+to his lodgings, all Poinsinet's friends crowded round him, to
+congratulate him on his escape and his valor.
+
+"Egad, how he pinked that great red-haired fellow!" said one.
+
+"No; did I?" said Poinsinet.
+
+"Did you?  Psha! don't try to play the modest, and humbug US; you
+know you did.  I suppose you will say, next, that you were not for
+three minutes point to point with Cartentierce himself, the most
+dreadful swordsman of the army."
+
+"Why, you see," says Poinsinet, quite delighted, "it was so dark
+that I did not know with whom I was engaged; although, corbleu, I
+DID FOR one or two of the fellows."  And after a little more of
+such conversation, during which he was fully persuaded that he had
+done for a dozen of the enemy at least, Poinsinet went to bed, his
+little person trembling with fright and pleasure; and he fell
+asleep, and dreamed of rescuing ladies, and destroying monsters,
+like a second Amadis de Gaul.
+
+When he awoke in the morning, he found a party of his friends in
+his room: one was examining his coat and waistcoat; another was
+casting many curious glances at his inexpressibles.  "Look here!"
+said this gentleman, holding up the garment to the light; "one--
+two--three gashes!  I am hanged if the cowards did not aim at
+Poinsinet's legs!  There are four holes in the sword arm of his
+coat, and seven have gone right through coat and waistcoat.  Good
+heaven! Poinsinet, have you had a surgeon to your wounds?"
+
+"Wounds!" said the little man, springing up, "I don't know--that
+is, I hope--that is--O Lord! O Lord! I hope I'm not wounded!" and,
+after a proper examination, he discovered he was not.
+
+"Thank heaven! thank heaven!" said one of the wags (who, indeed,
+during the slumbers of Poinsinet had been occupied in making these
+very holes through the garments of that individual), "if you have
+escaped, it is by a miracle.  Alas! alas! all your enemies have not
+been so lucky."
+
+"How! is anybody wounded?" said Poinsinet.
+
+"My dearest friend, prepare yourself; that unhappy man who came to
+revenge his menaced honor--that gallant officer--that injured
+husband, Colonel Count de Cartentierce--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"IS NO MORE! he died this morning, pierced through with nineteen
+wounds from your hand, and calling upon his country to revenge his
+murder."
+
+When this awful sentence was pronounced, all the auditory gave a
+pathetic and simultaneous sob; and as for Poinsinet, he sank back
+on his bed with a howl of terror, which would have melted a
+Visigoth to tears, or to laughter.  As soon as his terror and
+remorse had, in some degree, subsided, his comrades spoke to him of
+the necessity of making his escape; and, huddling on his clothes,
+and bidding them all a tender adieu, he set off, incontinently,
+without his breakfast, for England, America, or Russia, not knowing
+exactly which.
+
+One of his companions agreed to accompany him on a part of this
+journey,--that is, as far as the barrier of St. Denis, which is, as
+everybody knows, on the high road to Dover; and there, being
+tolerably secure, they entered a tavern for breakfast; which meal,
+the last that he ever was to take, perhaps, in his native city,
+Poinsinet was just about to discuss, when, behold! a gentleman
+entered the apartment where Poinsinet and his friend were seated,
+and, drawing from his pocket a paper, with "AU NOM DU ROY"
+flourished on the top, read from it, or rather from Poinsinet's own
+figure, his exact signalement, laid his hand on his shoulder, and
+arrested him in the name of the King, and of the provost-marshal of
+Paris.  "I arrest you, sir," said he, gravely, "with regret; you
+have slain, with seventeen wounds, in single combat, Colonel Count
+de Cartentierce, one of his Majesty's household; and, as his
+murderer, you fall under the immediate authority of the provost-
+marshal, and die without trial or benefit of clergy."
+
+You may fancy how the poor little man's appetite fell when he heard
+this speech.  "In the provost-marshal's hands?" said his friend:
+"then it is all over, indeed!  When does my poor friend suffer,
+sir?"
+
+"At half-past six o'clock, the day after to-morrow," said the
+officer, sitting down, and helping himself to wine.  "But stop,"
+said he, suddenly; "sure I can't mistake?  Yes--no--yes, it is.  My
+dear friend, my dear Durand! don't you recollect your old
+schoolfellow, Antoine?"  And herewith the officer flung himself
+into the arms of Durand, Poinsinet's comrade, and they performed a
+most affecting scene of friendship.
+
+"This may be of some service to you," whispered Durand to
+Poinsinet; and, after some further parley, he asked the officer
+when he was bound to deliver up his prisoner; and, hearing that he
+was not called upon to appear at the Marshalsea before six o'clock
+at night, Monsieur Durand prevailed upon Monsieur Antoine to wait
+until that hour, and in the meantime to allow his prisoner to walk
+about the town in his company.  This request was, with a little
+difficulty, granted; and poor Poinsinet begged to be carried to the
+houses of his various friends, and bid them farewell.  Some were
+aware of the trick that had been played upon him: others were not;
+but the poor little man's credulity was so great, that it was
+impossible to undeceive him; and he went from house to house
+bewailing his fate, and followed by the complaisant marshal's
+officer.
+
+The news of his death he received with much more meekness than
+could have been expected; but what he could not reconcile to
+himself was, the idea of dissection afterwards.  "What can they
+want with me?" cried the poor wretch, in an unusual fit of candor.
+"I am very small and ugly; it would be different if I were a tall
+fine-looking fellow."  But he was given to understand that beauty
+made very little difference to the surgeons, who, on the contrary,
+would, on certain occasions, prefer a deformed man to a handsome
+one; for science was much advanced by the study of such
+monstrosities.  With this reason Poinsinet was obliged to be
+content; and so paid his rounds of visits, and repeated his dismal
+adieux.
+
+The officer of the provost-marshal, however amusing Poinsinet's
+woes might have been, began, by this time, to grow very weary of
+them, and gave him more than one opportunity to escape.  He would
+stop at shop-windows, loiter round corners, and look up in the sky,
+but all in vain: Poinsinet would not escape, do what the other
+would.  At length, luckily, about dinner-time, the officer met one
+of Poinsinet's friends and his own: and the three agreed to dine at
+a tavern, as they had breakfasted; and here the officer, who vowed
+that he had been up for five weeks incessantly, fell suddenly
+asleep, in the profoundest fatigue; and Poinsinet was persuaded,
+after much hesitation on his part, to take leave of him.
+
+And now, this danger overcome, another was to be avoided.  Beyond a
+doubt the police were after him, and how was he to avoid them?  He
+must be disguised, of course; and one of his friends, a tall, gaunt
+lawyer's clerk, agreed to provide him with habits.
+
+So little Poinsinet dressed himself out in the clerk's dingy black
+suit, of which the knee-breeches hung down to his heels, and the
+waist of the coat reached to the calves of his legs; and,
+furthermore, he blacked his eyebrows, and wore a huge black
+periwig, in which his friend vowed that no one could recognize him.
+But the most painful incident, with regard to the periwig, was,
+that Poinsinet, whose solitary beauty--if beauty it might be
+called--was a head of copious, curling, yellow hair, was compelled
+to snip off every one of his golden locks, and to rub the bristles
+with a black dye; "for if your wig were to come off," said the
+lawyer, "and your fair hair to tumble over your shoulders, every
+man would know, or at least suspect you."  So off the locks were
+cut, and in his black suit and periwig little Poinsinet went
+abroad.
+
+His friends had their cue; and when he appeared amongst them, not
+one seemed to know him.  He was taken into companies where his
+character was discussed before him, and his wonderful escape spoken
+of.  At last he was introduced to the very officer of the provost-
+marshal who had taken him into custody, and who told him that he
+had been dismissed the provost's service, in consequence of the
+escape of the prisoner.  Now, for the first time, poor Poinsinet
+thought himself tolerably safe, and blessed his kind friends who
+had procured for him such a complete disguise.  How this affair
+ended I know not,--whether some new lie was coined to account for
+his release, or whether he was simply told that he had been hoaxed:
+it mattered little; for the little man was quite as ready to be
+hoaxed the next day.
+
+Poinsinet was one day invited to dine with one of the servants of
+the Tuileries; and, before his arrival, a person in company had
+been decorated with a knot of lace and a gold key, such as
+chamberlains wear; he was introduced to Poinsinet as the Count de
+Truchses, chamberlain to the King of Prussia.  After dinner the
+conversation fell upon the Count's visit to Paris; when his
+Excellency, with a mysterious air, vowed that he had only come for
+pleasure.  "It is mighty well," said a third person, "and, of
+course, we can't cross-question your lordship too closely;" but at
+the same time it was hinted to Poinsinet that a person of such
+consequence did not travel for NOTHING, with which opinion
+Poinsinet solemnly agreed; and, indeed, it was borne out by a
+subsequent declaration of the Count, who condescended, at last, to
+tell the company, in confidence, that he HAD a mission, and a most
+important one--to find, namely, among the literary men of France, a
+governor for the Prince Royal of Prussia.  The company seemed
+astonished that the King had not made choice of Voltaire or
+D'Alembert, and mentioned a dozen other distinguished men who might
+be competent to this important duty; but the Count, as may be
+imagined, found objections to every one of them; and, at last, one
+of the guests said, that, if his Prussian Majesty was not
+particular as to age, he knew a person more fitted for the place
+than any other who could be found,--his honorable friend, M.
+Poinsinet, was the individual to whom he alluded.
+
+"Good heavens!" cried the Count, "is it possible that the
+celebrated Poinsinet would take such a place?  I would give the
+world to see him?"  And you may fancy how Poinsinet simpered and
+blushed when the introduction immediately took place.
+
+The Count protested to him that the King would be charmed to know
+him; and added, that one of his operas (for it must be told that
+our little friend was a vaudeville-maker by trade) had been acted
+seven-and-twenty times at the theatre at Potsdam.  His Excellency
+then detailed to him all the honors and privileges which the
+governor of the Prince Royal might expect; and all the guests
+encouraged the little man's vanity, by asking him for his
+protection and favor.  In a short time our hero grew so inflated
+with pride and vanity, that he was for patronizing the chamberlain
+himself, who proceeded to inform him that he was furnished with
+all the necessary powers by his sovereign, who had specially
+enjoined him to confer upon the future governor of his son the
+royal order of the Black Eagle.
+
+Poinsinet, delighted, was ordered to kneel down; and the Count
+produced a large yellow ribbon, which he hung over his shoulder,
+and which was, he declared, the grand cordon of the order.  You
+must fancy Poinsinet's face, and excessive delight at this; for as
+for describing them, nobody can.  For four-and-twenty hours the
+happy chevalier paraded through Paris with this flaring yellow
+ribbon; and he was not undeceived until his friends had another
+trick in store for him.
+
+He dined one day in the company of a man who understood a little of
+the noble art of conjuring, and performed some clever tricks on the
+cards.  Poinsinet's organ of wonder was enormous; he looked on with
+the gravity and awe of a child, and thought the man's tricks sheer
+miracles.  It wanted no more to set his companions to work.
+
+"Who is this wonderful man?" said he to his neighbor.
+
+"Why," said the other, mysteriously, "one hardly knows who he is;
+or, at least, one does not like to say to such an indiscreet fellow
+as you are."  Poinsinet at once swore to be secret.  "Well, then,"
+said his friend, "you will hear that man--that wonderful man--
+called by a name which is not his: his real name is Acosta: he is a
+Portuguese Jew, a Rosicrucian, and Cabalist of the first order, and
+compelled to leave Lisbon for fear of the Inquisition.  He performs
+here, as you see, some extraordinary things, occasionally; but the
+master of the house, who loves him excessively, would not, for the
+world, that his name should be made public."
+
+"Ah, bah!" said Poinsinet, who affected the bel esprit; "you don't
+mean to say that you believe in magic, and cabalas, and such
+trash?"
+
+"Do I not?  You shall judge for yourself."  And, accordingly,
+Poinsinet was presented to the magician, who pretended to take a
+vast liking for him, and declared that he saw in him certain marks
+which would infallibly lead him to great eminence in the magic art,
+if he chose to study it.
+
+Dinner was served, and Poinsinet placed by the side of the miracle-
+worker, who became very confidential with him, and promised him--
+ay, before dinner was over--a remarkable instance of his power.
+Nobody, on this occasion, ventured to cut a single joke against
+poor Poinsinet; nor could he fancy that any trick was intended
+against him, for the demeanor of the society towards him was
+perfectly grave and respectful, and the conversation serious.  On a
+sudden, however, somebody exclaimed, "Where is Poinsinet?  Did any
+one see him leave the room?"
+
+All the company exclaimed how singular the disappearance was; and
+Poinsinet himself, growing alarmed, turned round to his neighbor,
+and was about to explain.
+
+"Hush!" said the magician, in a whisper; "I told you that you
+should see what I could do.  I HAVE MADE YOU INVISIBLE; be quiet,
+and you shall see some more tricks that I shall play with these
+fellows."
+
+Poinsinet remained then silent, and listened to his neighbors, who
+agreed, at last, that he was a quiet, orderly personage, and had
+left the table early, being unwilling to drink too much.  Presently
+they ceased to talk about him, and resumed their conversation upon
+other matters.
+
+At first it was very quiet and grave, but the master of the house
+brought back the talk to the subject of Poinsinet, and uttered all
+sorts of abuse concerning him.  He begged the gentleman, who had
+introduced such a little scamp into his house, to bring him thither
+no more: whereupon the other took up, warmly, Poinsinet's defence;
+declared that he was a man of the greatest merit, frequenting the
+best society, and remarkable for his talents as well as his
+virtues.
+
+"Ah!" said Poinsinet to the magician, quite charmed at what he
+heard, "how ever shall I thank you, my dear sir, for thus showing
+me who my true friends are?"
+
+The magician promised him still further favors in prospect; and
+told him to look out now, for he was about to throw all the company
+into a temporary fit of madness, which, no doubt, would be very
+amusing.
+
+In consequence, all the company, who had heard every syllable of
+the conversation, began to perform the most extraordinary antics,
+much to the delight of Poinsinet.  One asked a nonsensical
+question, and the other delivered an answer not at all to the
+purpose.  If a man asked for a drink, they poured him out a pepper-
+box or a napkin: they took a pinch of snuff, and swore it was
+excellent wine; and vowed that the bread was the most delicious
+mutton ever tasted.  The little man was delighted.
+
+"Ah!" said he, "these fellows are prettily punished for their
+rascally backbiting of me!"
+
+"Gentlemen," said the host, "I shall now give you some celebrated
+champagne," and he poured out to each a glass of water.
+
+"Good heavens!" said one, spitting it out, with the most horrible
+grimace, "where did you get this detestable claret?"
+
+"Ah, faugh!" said a second, "I never tasted such vile corked
+burgundy in all my days!" and he threw the glass of water into
+Poinsinet's face, as did half a dozen of the other guests,
+drenching the poor wretch to the skin.  To complete this pleasant
+illusion, two of the guests fell to boxing across Poinsinet, who
+received a number of the blows, and received them with the patience
+of a fakir, feeling himself more flattered by the precious
+privilege of beholding this scene invisible, than hurt by the blows
+and buffets which the mad company bestowed upon him.
+
+The fame of this adventure spread quickly over Paris, and all the
+world longed to have at their houses the representation of
+Poinsinet the Invisible.  The servants and the whole company used
+to be put up to the trick; and Poinsinet, who believed in his
+invisibility as much as he did in his existence, went about with
+his friend and protector the magician.  People, of course, never
+pretended to see him, and would very often not talk of him at all
+for some time, but hold sober conversation about anything else in
+the world.  When dinner was served, of course there was no cover
+laid for Poinsinet, who carried about a little stool, on which he
+sat by the side of the magician, and always ate off his plate.
+Everybody was astonished at the magician's appetite and at the
+quantity of wine he drank; as for little Poinsinet, he never once
+suspected any trick, and had such a confidence in his magician,
+that, I do believe, if the latter had told him to fling himself out
+of window, he would have done so, without the slightest trepidation.
+
+Among other mystifications in which the Portuguese enchanter
+plunged him, was one which used to afford always a good deal of
+amusement.  He informed Poinsinet, with great mystery, that HE WAS
+NOT HIMSELF; he was not, that is to say, that ugly, deformed little
+monster, called Poinsinet; but that his birth was most illustrious,
+and his real name Polycarte.  He was, in fact, the son of a
+celebrated magician; but other magicians, enemies of his father,
+had changed him in his cradle, altering his features into their
+present hideous shape, in order that a silly old fellow, called
+Poinsinet, might take him to be his own son, which little monster
+the magician had likewise spirited away.
+
+The poor wretch was sadly cast down at this; for he tried to fancy
+that his person was agreeable to the ladies, of whom he was one of
+the warmest little admirers possible; and to console him somewhat,
+the magician told him that his real shape was exquisitely
+beautiful, and as soon as he should appear in it, all the beauties
+in Paris would be at his feet.  But how to regain it?  "Oh, for one
+minute of that beauty!" cried the little man; "what would he not
+give to appear under that enchanting form!"  The magician hereupon
+waved his stick over his head, pronounced some awful magical words,
+and twisted him round three times; at the third twist, the men in
+company seemed struck with astonishment and envy, the ladies
+clasped their hands, and some of them kissed his.  Everybody
+declared his beauty to be supernatural.
+
+Poinsinet, enchanted, rushed to a glass.  "Fool!" said the
+magician; "do you suppose that YOU can see the change?  My power to
+render you invisible, beautiful, or ten times more hideous even
+than you are, extends only to others, not to you.  You may look a
+thousand times in the glass, and you will only see those deformed
+limbs and disgusting features with which devilish malice has
+disguised you."  Poor little Poinsinet looked, and came back in
+tears.  "But," resumed the magician,--"ha, ha, ha!--I know a way in
+which to disappoint the machinations of these fiendish magi."
+
+"Oh, my benefactor!--my great master!--for heaven's sake tell it!"
+gasped Poinsinet.
+
+"Look you--it is this.  A prey to enchantment and demoniac art all
+your life long, you have lived until your present age perfectly
+satisfied; nay, absolutely vain of a person the most singularly
+hideous that ever walked the earth!"
+
+"IS it?" whispered Poinsinet.  "Indeed and indeed I didn't think it
+so bad!"
+
+"He acknowledges it! he acknowledges it!" roared the magician.
+"Wretch, dotard, owl, mole, miserable buzzard!  I have no reason to
+tell thee now that thy form is monstrous, that children cry, that
+cowards turn pale, that teeming matrons shudder to behold it.  It
+is not thy fault that thou art thus ungainly: but wherefore so
+blind? wherefore so conceited of thyself!  I tell thee, Poinsinet,
+that over every fresh instance of thy vanity the hostile enchanters
+rejoice and triumph.  As long as thou art blindly satisfied with
+thyself; as long as thou pretendest, in thy present odious shape,
+to win the love of aught above a negress; nay, further still, until
+thou hast learned to regard that face, as others do, with the most
+intolerable horror and disgust, to abuse it when thou seest it, to
+despise it, in short, and treat that miserable disguise in which
+the enchanters have wrapped thee with the strongest, hatred and
+scorn, so long art thou destined to wear it."
+
+Such speeches as these, continually repeated, caused Poinsinet to
+be fully convinced of his ugliness; he used to go about in
+companies, and take every opportunity of inveighing against
+himself; he made verses and epigrams against himself; he talked
+about "that dwarf, Poinsinet;" "that buffoon, Poinsinet;" "that
+conceited, hump-backed Poinsinet;" and he would spend hours before
+the glass, abusing his own face as he saw it reflected there, and
+vowing that he grew handsomer at every fresh epithet that he
+uttered.
+
+Of course the wags, from time to time, used to give him every
+possible encouragement, and declared that since this exercise, his
+person was amazingly improved.  The ladies, too, began to be so
+excessively fond of him, that the little fellow was obliged to
+caution them at last--for the good, as he said, of society; he
+recommended them to draw lots, for he could not gratify them all;
+but promised when his metamorphosis was complete, that the one
+chosen should become the happy Mrs. Poinsinet; or, to speak more
+correctly, Mrs. Polycarte.
+
+I am sorry to say, however, that, on the score of gallantry,
+Poinsinet was never quite convinced of the hideousness of his
+appearance.  He had a number of adventures, accordingly, with the
+ladies, but strange to say, the husbands or fathers were always
+interrupting him.  On one occasion he was made to pass the night in
+a slipper-bath full of water; where, although he had all his
+clothes on, he declared that he nearly caught his death of cold.
+Another night, in revenge, the poor fellow
+
+
+              --"dans le simple appareil
+     D'une beaute, qu'on vient d'arracher au sommeil,"
+
+
+spent a number of hours contemplating the beauty of the moon on the
+tiles.  These adventures are pretty numerous in the memoirs of M.
+Poinsinet; but the fact is, that people in France were a great deal
+more philosophical in those days than the English are now, so that
+Poinsinet's loves must be passed over, as not being to our taste.
+His magician was a great diver, and told Poinsinet the most
+wonderful tales of his two minutes' absence under water.  These two
+minutes, he said, lasted through a year, at least, which he spent
+in the company of a naiad, more beautiful than Venus, in a palace
+more splendid than even Versailles.  Fired by the description,
+Poinsinet used to dip, and dip, but he never was known to make any
+mermaid acquaintances, although he fully believed that one day he
+should find such.
+
+The invisible joke was brought to an end by Poinsinet's too great
+reliance on it; for being, as we have said, of a very tender and
+sanguine disposition, he one day fell in love with a lady in whose
+company he dined, and whom he actually proposed to embrace; but the
+fair lady, in the hurry of the moment, forgot to act up to the
+joke; and instead of receiving Poinsinet's salute with calmness,
+grew indignant, called him an impudent little scoundrel, and lent
+him a sound box on the ear.  With this slap the invisibility of
+Poinsinet disappeared, the gnomes and genii left him, and he
+settled down into common life again, and was hoaxed only by vulgar
+means.
+
+A vast number of pages might be filled with narratives of the
+tricks that were played upon him; but they resemble each other a
+good deal, as may be imagined, and the chief point remarkable about
+them is the wondrous faith of Poinsinet.  After being introduced to
+the Prussian ambassador at the Tuileries, he was presented to the
+Turkish envoy at the Place Vendome, who received him in state,
+surrounded by the officers of his establishment, all dressed in the
+smartest dresses that the wardrobe of the Opera Comique could
+furnish.
+
+As the greatest honor that could be done to him, Poinsinet was
+invited to eat, and a tray was produced, on which was a delicate
+dish prepared in the Turkish manner.  This consisted of a
+reasonable quantity of mustard, salt, cinnamon and ginger, nutmegs
+and cloves, with a couple of tablespoonfuls of cayenne pepper, to
+give the whole a flavor; and Poinsinet's countenance may be
+imagined when he introduced into his mouth a quantity of this
+exquisite compound.
+
+"The best of the joke was," says the author who records so many of
+the pitiless tricks practised upon poor Poinsinet, "that the little
+man used to laugh at them afterwards himself with perfect good
+humor; and lived in the daily hope that, from being the sufferer,
+he should become the agent in these hoaxes, and do to others as he
+had been done by."  Passing, therefore, one day, on the Pont Neuf,
+with a friend, who had been one of the greatest performers, the
+latter said to him, "Poinsinet, my good fellow, thou hast suffered
+enough, and thy sufferings have made thee so wise and cunning, that
+thou art worthy of entering among the initiated, and hoaxing in thy
+turn."  Poinsinet was charmed; he asked when he should be
+initiated, and how?  It was told him that a moment would suffice,
+and that the ceremony might be performed on the spot.  At this
+news, and according to order, Poinsinet flung himself straightway
+on his knees in the kennel; and the other, drawing his sword,
+solemnly initiated him into the sacred order of jokers.  From that
+day the little man believed himself received into the society; and
+to this having brought him, let us bid him a respectful adieu.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL'S WAGER.
+
+
+It was the hour of the night when there be none stirring save
+churchyard ghosts--when all doors are closed except the gates of
+graves, and all eyes shut but the eyes of wicked men.
+
+When there is no sound on the earth except the ticking of the
+grasshopper, or the croaking of obscene frogs in the poole.
+
+And no light except that of the blinking starres, and the wicked
+and devilish wills-o'-the-wisp, as they gambol among the marshes,
+and lead good men astraye.
+
+When there is nothing moving in heaven except the owle, as he
+flappeth along lazily; or the magician, as he rides on his infernal
+broomsticke, whistling through the aire like the arrowes of a
+Yorkshire archere.
+
+It was at this hour (namely, at twelve o'clock of the night,) that
+two beings went winging through the black clouds, and holding
+converse with each other.
+
+Now the first was Mercurius, the messenger, not of gods (as the
+heathens feigned), but of daemons; and the second, with whom he held
+company, was the soul of Sir Roger de Rollo, the brave knight.  Sir
+Roger was Count of Chauchigny, in Champagne; Seigneur of Santerre,
+Villacerf and aultre lieux.  But the great die as well as the
+humble; and nothing remained of brave Rodger now, but his coffin
+and his deathless soul.
+
+And Mercurius, in order to keep fast the soul, his companion, had
+bound him round the neck with his tail; which, when the soul was
+stubborn, he would draw so tight as to strangle him wellnigh,
+sticking into him the barbed point thereof; whereat the poor soul,
+Sir Rollo, would groan and roar lustily.
+
+Now they two had come together from the gates of purgatorie, being
+bound to those regions of fire and flame where poor sinners fry and
+roast in saecula saeculorum.
+
+"It is hard," said the poor Sir Rollo, as they went gliding through
+the clouds, "that I should thus be condemned for ever, and all for
+want of a single ave."
+
+"How, Sir Soul?" said the daemon.  "You were on earth so wicked,
+that not one, or a million of aves, could suffice to keep from
+hell-flame a creature like thee; but cheer up and be merry; thou
+wilt be but a subject of our lord the Devil, as am I; and, perhaps,
+thou wilt be advanced to posts of honor, as am I also:" and to show
+his authoritie, he lashed with his tail the ribbes of the wretched
+Rollo.
+
+"Nevertheless, sinner as I am, one more ave would have saved me;
+for my sister, who was Abbess of St. Mary of Chauchigny, did so
+prevail, by her prayer and good works, for my lost and wretched
+soul, that every day I felt the pains of purgatory decrease; the
+pitchforks which, on my first entry, had never ceased to vex and
+torment my poor carcass, were now not applied above once a week;
+the roasting had ceased, the boiling had discontinued; only a
+certain warmth was kept up, to remind me of my situation."
+
+"A gentle stewe," said the daemon.
+
+"Yea, truly, I was but in a stew, and all from the effects of the
+prayers of my blessed sister.  But yesterday, he who watched me in
+purgatory told me, that yet another prayer from my sister, and my
+bonds should be unloosed, and I, who am now a devil, should have
+been a blessed angel."
+
+"And the other ave?" said the daemon.
+
+"She died, sir--my sister died--death choked her in the middle of
+the prayer."  And hereat the wretched spirit began to weepe and
+whine piteously; his salt tears falling over his beard, and
+scalding the tail of Mercurius the devil.
+
+"It is, in truth, a hard case," said the daemon; "but I know of no
+remedy save patience, and for that you will have an excellent
+opportunity in your lodgings below."
+
+"But I have relations," said the Earl; "my kinsman Randal, who has
+inherited my lands, will he not say a prayer for his uncle?"
+
+"Thou didst hate and oppress him when living."
+
+"It is true; but an ave is not much; his sister, my niece, Matilda--"
+
+"You shut her in a convent, and hanged her lover."
+
+"Had I not reason? besides, has she not others?"
+
+"A dozen, without doubt."
+
+"And my brother, the prior?"
+
+"A liege subject of my lord the Devil: he never opens his mouth,
+except to utter an oath, or to swallow a cup of wine."
+
+"And yet, if but one of these would but say an ave for me, I should
+be saved."
+
+"Aves with them are rarae aves," replied Mercurius, wagging his tail
+right waggishly; "and, what is more, I will lay thee any wager that
+not one of these will say a prayer to save thee."
+
+"I would wager willingly," responded he of Chauchigny; "but what
+has a poor soul like me to stake?"
+
+"Every evening, after the day's roasting, my lord Satan giveth a
+cup of cold water to his servants; I will bet thee thy water for a
+year, that none of the three will pray for thee."
+
+"Done!" said Rollo.
+
+"Done!" said the daemon; "and here, if I mistake not, is thy castle
+of Chauchigny."
+
+Indeed, it was true.  The soul, on looking down, perceived the tall
+towers, the courts, the stables, and the fair gardens of the
+castle.  Although it was past midnight, there was a blaze of light
+in the banqueting-hall, and a lamp burning in the open window of
+the Lady Matilda.
+
+"With whom shall we begin?" said the daemon: "with the baron or the
+lady?"
+
+"With the lady, if you will."
+
+"Be it so; her window is open, let us enter."
+
+So they descended, and entered silently into Matilda's chamber.
+
+
+The young lady's eyes were fixed so intently on a little clock,
+that it was no wonder that she did not perceive the entrance of her
+two visitors.  Her fair cheek rested on her white arm, and her
+white arm on the cushion of a great chair in which she sat,
+pleasantly supported by sweet thoughts and swan's down; a lute was
+at her side, and a book of prayers lay under the table (for piety
+is always modest).  Like the amorous Alexander, she sighed and
+looked (at the clock)--and sighed for ten minutes or more, when she
+softly breathed the word "Edward!"
+
+At this the soul of the Baron was wroth.  "The jade is at her old
+pranks," said he to the devil; and then addressing Matilda: "I pray
+thee, sweet niece, turn thy thoughts for a moment from that
+villanous page, Edward, and give them to thine affectionate uncle."
+
+When she heard the voice, and saw the awful apparition of her uncle
+(for a year's sojourn in purgatory had not increased the comeliness
+of his appearance), she started, screamed, and of course fainted.
+
+But the devil Mercurius soon restored her to herself.  "What's
+o'clock?" said she, as soon as she had recovered from her fit: "is
+he come?"
+
+"Not thy lover, Maude, but thine uncle--that is, his soul.  For the
+love of heaven, listen to me: I have been frying in purgatory for a
+year past, and should have been in heaven but for the want of a
+single ave."
+
+"I will say it for thee to-morrow, uncle."
+
+"To-night, or never."
+
+"Well, to-night be it:" and she requested the devil Mercurius to
+give her the prayer-book from under the table; but he had no sooner
+touched the holy book than he dropped it with a shriek and a yell.
+"It was hotter," he said, "than his master Sir Lucifer's own
+particular pitchfork."  And the lady was forced to begin her ave
+without the aid of her missal.
+
+At the commencement of her devotions the daemon retired, and carried
+with him the anxious soul of poor Sir Roger de Rollo.
+
+The lady knelt down--she sighed deeply; she looked again at the
+clock, and began--
+
+"Ave Maria."
+
+When a lute was heard under the window, and a sweet voice singing--
+
+"Hark!" said Matilda.
+
+
+     "Now the toils of day are over,
+        And the sun hath sunk to rest,
+      Seeking, like a fiery lover,
+        The bosom of the blushing west--
+
+     "The faithful night keeps watch and ward,
+        Raising the moon, her silver shield,
+      And summoning the stars to guard
+        The slumbers of my fair Mathilde!"
+
+
+"For mercy's sake!" said Sir Rollo, "the ave first, and next the
+song."
+
+So Matilda again dutifully betook her to her devotions, and began--
+
+"Ave Maria gratia plena!" but the music began again, and the prayer
+ceased of course.
+
+
+     "The faithful night!  Now all things lie
+        Hid by her mantle dark and dim,
+      In pious hope I hither hie,
+        And humbly chant mine ev'ning hymn.
+
+     "Thou art my prayer, my saint, my shrine!
+        (For never holy pilgrim kneel'd,
+      Or wept at feet more pure than thine),
+        My virgin love, my sweet Mathilde!"
+
+
+"Virgin love!" said the Baron.  "Upon my soul, this is too bad!"
+and he thought of the lady's lover whom he had caused to be hanged.
+
+But SHE only thought of him who stood singing at her window.
+
+"Niece Matilda!" cried Sir Roger, agonizedly, "wilt thou listen to
+the lies of an impudent page, whilst thine uncle is waiting but a
+dozen words to make him happy?"
+
+At this Matilda grew angry: "Edward is neither impudent nor a liar,
+Sir Uncle, and I will listen to the end of the song."
+
+"Come away," said Mercurius; "he hath yet got wield, field, sealed,
+congealed, and a dozen other rhymes beside; and after the song will
+come the supper."
+
+So the poor soul was obliged to go; while the lady listened, and
+the page sung away till morning.
+
+
+"My virtues have been my ruin," said poor Sir Rollo, as he and
+Mercurius slunk silently out of the window.  "Had I hanged that
+knave Edward, as I did the page his predecessor, my niece would
+have sung mine ave, and I should have been by this time an angel in
+heaven."
+
+"He is reserved for wiser purposes," responded the devil: "he will
+assassinate your successor, the lady Mathilde's brother; and, in
+consequence, will be hanged.  In the love of the lady he will be
+succeeded by a gardener, who will be replaced by a monk, who will
+give way to an ostler, who will be deposed by a Jew pedler, who
+shall, finally, yield to a noble earl, the future husband of the
+fair Mathilde.  So that, you see, instead of having one poor soul
+a-frying, we may now look forward to a goodly harvest for our lord
+the Devil."
+
+The soul of the Baron began to think that his companion knew too
+much for one who would make fair bets; but there was no help for
+it; he would not, and he could not, cry off: and he prayed inwardly
+that the brother might be found more pious than the sister.
+
+But there seemed little chance of this.  As they crossed the court,
+lackeys, with smoking dishes and, full jugs, passed and repassed
+continually, although it was long past midnight.  On entering the
+hall, they found Sir Randal at the head of a vast table, surrounded
+by a fiercer and more motley collection of individuals than had
+congregated there even in the time of Sir Rollo.  The lord of the
+castle had signified that "it was his royal pleasure to be drunk,"
+and the gentlemen of his train had obsequiously followed their
+master.  Mercurius was delighted with the scene, and relaxed his
+usually rigid countenance into a bland and benevolent smile, which
+became him wonderfully.
+
+The entrance of Sir Roger, who had been dead about a year, and a
+person with hoofs, horns, and a tail, rather disturbed the hilarity
+of the company.  Sir Randal dropped his cup of wine; and Father
+Peter, the confessor, incontinently paused in the midst of a
+profane song, with which he was amusing the society.
+
+"Holy Mother!" cried he, "it is Sir Roger."
+
+"Alive!" screamed Sir Randal.
+
+"No, my lord," Mercurius said; "Sir Roger is dead, but cometh on a
+matter of business; and I have the honor to act as his counsellor
+and attendant."
+
+"Nephew," said Sir Roger, "the daemon saith justly; I am come on a
+trifling affair, in which thy service is essential."
+
+"I will do anything, uncle, in my power."
+
+"Thou canst give me life, if thou wilt?"  But Sir Randal looked
+very blank at this proposition.  "I mean life spiritual, Randal,"
+said Sir Roger; and thereupon he explained to him the nature of the
+wager.
+
+Whilst he was telling his story, his companion Mercurius was
+playing all sorts of antics in the hall; and, by his wit and fun,
+became so popular with this godless crew, that they lost all the
+fear which his first appearance had given them.  The friar was
+wonderfully taken with him, and used his utmost eloquence and
+endeavors to convert the devil; the knights stopped drinking to
+listen to the argument; the men-at-arms forbore brawling; and the
+wicked little pages crowded round the two strange disputants, to
+hear their edifying discourse.  The ghostly man, however, had
+little chance in the controversy, and certainly little learning to
+carry it on.  Sir Randal interrupted him.  "Father Peter," said he,
+"our kinsman is condemned for ever, for want of a single ave: wilt
+thou say it for him?"  "Willingly, my lord," said the monk, "with
+my book;" and accordingly he produced his missal to read, without
+which aid it appeared that the holy father could not manage the
+desired prayer.  But the crafty Mercurius had, by his devilish art,
+inserted a song in the place of the ave, so that Father Peter,
+instead of chanting an hymn, sang the following irreverent ditty--
+
+
+     "Some love the matin-chimes, which toll
+        The hour of prayer to sinner:
+      But better far's the mid-day bell,
+        Which speaks the hour of dinner;
+      For when I see a smoking fish,
+        Or capon drown'd in gravy,
+      Or noble haunch on silver dish,
+        Full glad I sing mine ave.
+
+     "My pulpit is an ale-house bench,
+        Whereon I sit so jolly;
+      A smiling rosy country wench
+        My saint and patron holy.
+      I kiss her cheek so red and sleek,
+        I press her ringlets wavy;
+      And in her willing ear I speak
+        A most religious ave.
+
+     "And if I'm blind, yet heaven is kind,
+        And holy saints forgiving;
+      For sure he leads a right good life
+        Who thus admires good living.
+      Above, they say, our flesh is air,
+        Our blood celestial ichor:
+      Oh, grant! mid all the changes there,
+        They may not change our liquor!"
+
+
+And with this pious wish the holy confessor tumbled under the table
+in an agony of devout drunkenness; whilst the knights, the men-at-
+arms, and the wicked little pages, rang out the last verse with a
+most melodious and emphatic glee.  "I am sorry, fair uncle,"
+hiccupped Sir Randal, "that, in the matter of the ave, we could not
+oblige thee in a more orthodox manner; but the holy father has
+failed, and there is not another man in the hall who hath an idea
+of a prayer."
+
+"It is my own fault," said Sir Rollo; "for I hanged the last
+confessor."  And he wished his nephew a surly good-night, as he
+prepared to quit the room.
+
+"Au revoir, gentlemen," said the devil Mercurius; and once more
+fixed his tail round the neck of his disappointed companion.
+
+The spirit of poor Rollo was sadly cast down; the devil, on the
+contrary, was in high good humor.  He wagged his tail with the most
+satisfied air in the world, and cut a hundred jokes at the expense
+of his poor associate.  On they sped, cleaving swiftly through the
+cold night winds, frightening the birds that were roosting in the
+woods, and the owls that were watching in the towers.
+
+In the twinkling of an eye, as it is known, devils can fly hundreds
+of miles: so that almost the same beat of the clock which left
+these two in Champagne, found them hovering over Paris.  They
+dropped into the court of the Lazarist Convent, and winded their
+way, through passage and cloister, until they reached the door of
+the prior's cell.
+
+Now the prior, Rollo's brother, was a wicked and malignant
+sorcerer; his time was spent in conjuring devils and doing wicked
+deeds, instead of fasting, scourging, and singing holy psalms: this
+Mercurius knew; and he, therefore, was fully at ease as to the
+final result of his wager with poor Sir Roger.
+
+"You seem to be well acquainted with the road," said the knight.
+
+"I have reason," answered Mercurius, "having, for a long period,
+had the acquaintance of his reverence, your brother; but you have
+little chance with him."
+
+"And why?" said Sir Rollo.
+
+"He is under a bond to my master, never to say a prayer, or else
+his soul and his body are forfeited at once."
+
+"Why, thou false and traitorous devil!" said the enraged knight;
+"and thou knewest this when we made our wager?"
+
+"Undoubtedly: do you suppose I would have done so had there been
+any chance of losing?"
+
+And with this they arrived at Father Ignatius's door.
+
+"Thy cursed presence threw a spell on my niece, and stopped the
+tongue of my nephew's chaplain; I do believe that had I seen either
+of them alone, my wager had been won."
+
+"Certainly; therefore, I took good care to go with thee: however,
+thou mayest see the prior alone, if thou wilt; and lo! his door is
+open.  I will stand without for five minutes, when it will be time
+to commence our journey."
+
+It was the poor Baron's last chance: and he entered his brother's
+room more for the five minutes' respite than from any hope of
+success.
+
+Father Ignatius, the prior, was absorbed in magic calculations: he
+stood in the middle of a circle of skulls, with no garment except
+his long white beard, which reached to his knees; he was waving a
+silver rod, and muttering imprecations in some horrible tongue.
+
+But Sir Rollo came forward and interrupted his incantation.  "I
+am," said he, "the shade of thy brother Roger de Rollo; and have
+come, from pure brotherly love, to warn thee of thy fate."
+
+"Whence camest thou?"
+
+"From the abode of the blessed in Paradise," replied Sir Roger, who
+was inspired with a sudden thought; "it was but five minutes ago
+that the Patron Saint of thy church told me of thy danger, and of
+thy wicked compact with the fiend.  'Go,' said he, 'to thy
+miserable brother, and tell him there is but one way by which he
+may escape from paying the awful forfeit of his bond.'"
+
+"And how may that be?" said the prior; "the false fiend hath
+deceived me; I have given him my soul, but have received no worldly
+benefit in return.  Brother! dear brother! how may I escape?"
+
+"I will tell thee.  As soon as I heard the voice of blessed St.
+Mary Lazarus" (the worthy Earl had, at a pinch, coined the name of
+a saint), "I left the clouds, where, with other angels, I was
+seated, and sped hither to save thee.  'Thy brother,' said the
+Saint, 'hath but one day more to live, when he will become for all
+eternity the subject of Satan; if he would escape, he must boldly
+break his bond, by saying an ave.'"
+
+"It is the express condition of the agreement," said the unhappy
+monk, "I must say no prayer, or that instant I become Satan's, body
+and soul."
+
+"It is the express condition of the Saint," answered Roger,
+fiercely; "pray, brother, pray, or thou art lost for ever."
+
+So the foolish monk knelt down, and devoutly sung out an ave.
+"Amen!" said Sir Roger, devoutly.
+
+"Amen!" said Mercurius, as, suddenly, coming behind, he seized
+Ignatius by his long beard, and flew up with him to the top of the
+church-steeple.
+
+The monk roared, and screamed, and swore against his brother; but
+it was of no avail: Sir Roger smiled kindly on him, and said, "Do
+not fret, brother; it must have come to this in a year or two."
+
+And he flew alongside of Mercurius to the steeple-top: BUT THIS
+TIME THE DEVIL HAD NOT HIS TAIL ROUND HIS NECK.  "I will let thee
+off thy bet," said he to the daemon; for he could afford, now, to be
+generous.
+
+"I believe, my lord," said the daemon, politely, "that our ways
+separate here."  Sir Roger sailed gayly upwards: while Mercurius
+having bound the miserable monk faster than ever, he sunk downwards
+to earth, and perhaps lower.  Ignatius was heard roaring and
+screaming as the devil dashed him against the iron spikes and
+buttresses of the church.
+
+
+The moral of this story will be given in the second edition.
+
+
+
+
+MADAME SAND AND THE NEW APOCALYPSE.
+
+
+I don't know an impression more curious than that which is formed
+in a foreigner's mind, who has been absent from this place for two
+or three years, returns to it, and beholds the change which has
+taken place, in the meantime, in French fashions and ways of
+thinking.  Two years ago, for instance, when I left the capital, I
+left the young gentlemen of France with their hair brushed en
+toupet in front, and the toes of their boots round; now the boot-
+toes are pointed, and the hair combed flat, and, parted in the
+middle, falls in ringlets on the fashionable shoulders; and, in
+like manner, with books as with boots, the fashion has changed
+considerably, and it is not a little curious to contrast the old
+modes with the new.  Absurd as was the literary dandyism of those
+days, it is not a whit less absurd now: only the manner is changed,
+and our versatile Frenchmen have passed from one caricature to
+another.
+
+The revolution may be called a caricature of freedom, as the empire
+was of glory; and what they borrow from foreigners undergoes the
+same process.  They take top-boots and mackintoshes from across the
+water, and caricature our fashions; they read a little, very
+little, Shakespeare, and caricature our poetry: and while in
+David's time art and religion were only a caricature of Heathenism,
+now, on the contrary, these two commodities are imported from
+Germany; and distorted caricatures originally, are still farther
+distorted on passing the frontier.
+
+I trust in heaven that German art and religion will take no hold in
+our country (where there is a fund of roast-beef that will expel
+any such humbug in the end); but these sprightly Frenchmen have
+relished the mystical doctrines mightily; and having watched the
+Germans, with their sanctified looks, and quaint imitations of the
+old times, and mysterious transcendental talk, are aping many of
+their fashions; as well and solemnly as they can: not very
+solemnly, God wot; for I think one should always prepare to grin
+when a Frenchman looks particularly grave, being sure that there
+is something false and ridiculous lurking under the owl-like
+solemnity.
+
+When last in Paris, we were in the midst of what was called a
+Catholic reaction.  Artists talked of faith in poems and pictures;
+churches were built here and there; old missals were copied and
+purchased; and numberless portraits of saints, with as much gilding
+about them as ever was used in the fifteenth century, appeared in
+churches, ladies' boudoirs, and picture-shops.  One or two
+fashionable preachers rose, and were eagerly followed; the very
+youth of the schools gave up their pipes and billiards for some
+time, and flocked in crowds to Notre Dame, to sit under the feet of
+Lacordaire.  I went to visit the Church of Notre Dame de Lorette
+yesterday, which was finished in the heat of this Catholic rage,
+and was not a little struck by the similarity of the place to the
+worship celebrated in it, and the admirable manner in which the
+architect has caused his work to express the public feeling of the
+moment.  It is a pretty little bijou of a church: it is supported
+by sham marble pillars; it has a gaudy ceiling of blue and gold,
+which will look very well for some time; and is filled with gaudy
+pictures and carvings, in the very pink of the mode.  The
+congregation did not offer a bad illustration of the present state
+of Catholic reaction.  Two or three stray people were at prayers;
+there was no service; a few countrymen and idlers were staring
+about at the pictures; and the Swiss, the paid guardian of the
+place, was comfortably and appropriately asleep on his bench at the
+door.  I am inclined to think the famous reaction is over: the
+students have taken to their Sunday pipes and billiards again; and
+one or two cafes have been established, within the last year, that
+are ten times handsomer than Notre Dame de Lorette.
+
+However, if the immortal Gorres and the German mystics have had
+their day, there is the immortal Gothe, and the Pantheists; and I
+incline to think that the fashion has set very strongly in their
+favor.  Voltaire and the Encyclopaedians are voted, now, barbares,
+and there is no term of reprobation strong enough for heartless
+Humes and Helvetiuses, who lived but to destroy, and who only
+thought to doubt.  Wretched as Voltaire's sneers and puns are, I
+think there is something more manly and earnest even in them, than
+in the present muddy French transcendentalism.  Pantheism is the
+word now; one and all have begun to eprouver the besoin of a
+religious sentiment; and we are deluged with a host of gods
+accordingly.  Monsieur de Balzac feels himself to be inspired;
+Victor Hugo is a god; Madame Sand is a god; that tawdry man of
+genius, Jules Janin, who writes theatrical reviews for the Debats,
+has divine intimations; and there is scarce a beggarly, beardless
+scribbler of poems and prose, but tells you, in his preface, of the
+saintete of the sacerdoce litteraire; or a dirty student, sucking
+tobacco and beer, and reeling home with a grisette from the
+chaumiere, who is not convinced of the necessity of a new
+"Messianism," and will hiccup, to such as will listen, chapters of
+his own drunken Apocalypse.  Surely, the negatives of the old days
+were far less dangerous than the assertions of the present; and you
+may fancy what a religion that must be, which has such high
+priests.
+
+There is no reason to trouble the reader with details of the lives
+of many of these prophets and expounders of new revelations.
+Madame Sand, for instance, I do not know personally, and can only
+speak of her from report.  True or false, the history, at any rate,
+is not very edifying; and so may be passed over: but, as a certain
+great philosopher told us, in very humble and simple words, that we
+are not to expect to gather grapes from thorns, or figs from
+thistles, we may, at least, demand, in all persons assuming the
+character of moralist or philosopher--order, soberness, and
+regularity of life; for we are apt to distrust the intellect that
+we fancy can be swayed by circumstance or passion; and we know how
+circumstance and passion WILL sway the intellect: how mortified
+vanity will form excuses for itself; and how temper turns angrily
+upon conscience, that reproves it.  How often have we called our
+judge our enemy, because he has given sentence against us!--How
+often have we called the right wrong, because the right condemns
+us!  And in the lives of many of the bitter foes of the Christian
+doctrine, can we find no personal reason for their hostility?  The
+men in Athens said it was out of regard for religion that they
+murdered Socrates; but we have had time, since then, to reconsider
+the verdict; and Socrates' character is pretty pure now, in spite
+of the sentence and the jury of those days.
+
+The Parisian philosophers will attempt to explain to you the
+changes through which Madame Sand's mind has passed,--the
+initiatory trials, labors, and sufferings which she has had to go
+through,--before she reached her present happy state of mental
+illumination.  She teaches her wisdom in parables, that are,
+mostly, a couple of volumes long; and began, first, by an eloquent
+attack on marriage, in the charming novel of "Indiana."  "Pity,"
+cried she, "for the poor woman who, united to a being whose brute
+force makes him her superior, should venture to break the bondage
+which is imposed on her, and allow her heart to be free."
+
+In support of this claim of pity, she writes two volumes of the
+most exquisite prose.  What a tender, suffering creature is
+Indiana; how little her husband appreciates that gentleness which
+he is crushing by his tyranny and brutal scorn; how natural it is
+that, in the absence of his sympathy, she, poor clinging confiding
+creature, should seek elsewhere for shelter; how cautious should we
+be, to call criminal--to visit with too heavy a censure--an act
+which is one of the natural impulses of a tender heart, that seeks
+but for a worthy object of love.  But why attempt to tell the tale
+of beautiful Indiana?  Madame Sand has written it so well, that not
+the hardest-hearted husband in Christendom can fail to be touched
+by her sorrows, though he may refuse to listen to her argument.
+Let us grant, for argument's sake, that the laws of marriage,
+especially the French laws of marriage, press very cruelly upon
+unfortunate women.
+
+But if one wants to have a question of this, or any nature,
+honestly argued, it is, better, surely, to apply to an indifferent
+person for an umpire.  For instance, the stealing of pocket-
+handkerchiefs or snuff-boxes may or may not be vicious; but if we,
+who have not the wit, or will not take the trouble to decide the
+question ourselves, want to hear the real rights of the matter, we
+should not, surely, apply to a pickpocket to know what he thought
+on the point.  It might naturally be presumed that he would be
+rather a prejudiced person--particularly as his reasoning, if
+successful, might get him OUT OF GAOL.  This is a homely
+illustration, no doubt; all we would urge by it is, that Madame
+Sand having, according to the French newspapers, had a stern
+husband, and also having, according to the newspapers, sought
+"sympathy" elsewhere, her arguments may be considered to be
+somewhat partial, and received with some little caution.
+
+And tell us who have been the social reformers?--the haters, that
+is, of the present system, according to which we live, love, marry,
+have children, educate them, and endow them--ARE THEY PURE
+THEMSELVES?  I do believe not one; and directly a man begins to
+quarrel with the world and its ways, and to lift up, as he calls
+it, the voice of his despair, and preach passionately to mankind
+about this tyranny of faith, customs, laws; if we examine what the
+personal character of the preacher is, we begin pretty clearly to
+understand the value of the doctrine.  Any one can see why Rousseau
+should be such a whimpering reformer, and Byron such a free and
+easy misanthropist, and why our accomplished Madame Sand, who has a
+genius and eloquence inferior to neither, should take the present
+condition of mankind (French-kind) so much to heart, and labor so
+hotly to set it right.
+
+After "Indiana" (which, we presume, contains the lady's notions
+upon wives and husbands) came "Valentine," which may be said to
+exhibit her doctrine, in regard of young men and maidens, to whom
+the author would accord, as we fancy, the same tender license.
+"Valentine" was followed by "Lelia," a wonderful book indeed,
+gorgeous in eloquence, and rich in magnificent poetry: a regular
+topsyturvyfication of morality, a thieves' and prostitutes'
+apotheosis.  This book has received some late enlargements and
+emendations by the writer; it contains her notions on morals,
+which, as we have said, are so peculiar, that, alas! they only can
+be mentioned here, not particularized: but of "Spiridion" we may
+write a few pages, as it is her religious manifesto.
+
+In this work, the lady asserts her pantheistical doctrine, and
+openly attacks the received Christian creed.  She declares it to be
+useless now, and unfitted to the exigencies and the degree of
+culture of the actual world; and, though it would be hardly worth
+while to combat her opinions in due form, it is, at least, worth
+while to notice them, not merely from the extraordinary eloquence
+and genius of the woman herself, but because they express the
+opinions of a great number of people besides: for she not only
+produces her own thoughts, but imitates those of others very
+eagerly; and one finds in her writings so much similarity with
+others, or, in others, so much resemblance to her, that the book
+before us may pass for the expression of the sentiments of a
+certain French party.
+
+"Dieu est mort," says another writer of the same class, and of
+great genius too.--"Dieu est mort," writes Mr. Henry Heine,
+speaking of the Christian God; and he adds, in a daring figure of
+speech;--"N'entendez-vous pas sonner la Clochette?--on porte les
+sacremens a un Dieu qui se meurt!"  Another of the pantheist
+poetical philosophers, Mr. Edgar Quinet, has a poem, in which
+Christ and the Virgin Mary are made to die similarly, and the
+former is classed with Prometheus.  This book of "Spiridion" is a
+continuation of the theme, and perhaps you will listen to some of
+the author's expositions of it.
+
+It must be confessed that the controversialists of the present day
+have an eminent advantage over their predecessors in the days of
+folios; it required some learning then to write a book, and some
+time, at least--for the very labor of writing out a thousand such
+vast pages would demand a considerable period.  But now, in the age
+of duodecimos, the system is reformed altogether: a male or female
+controversialist draws upon his imagination, and not his learning;
+makes a story instead of an argument, and, in the course of 150
+pages (where the preacher has it all his own way) will prove or
+disprove you anything.  And, to our shame be it said, we
+Protestants have set the example of this kind of proselytism--those
+detestable mixtures of truth, lies, false sentiment, false
+reasoning, bad grammar, correct and genuine philanthropy and piety--
+I mean our religious tracts, which any woman or man, be he ever so
+silly, can take upon himself to write, and sell for a penny, as if
+religious instruction were the easiest thing in the world.  We, I
+say, have set the example in this kind of composition, and all the
+sects of the earth will, doubtless, speedily follow it.  I can
+point you out blasphemies in famous pious tracts that are as
+dreadful as those above mentioned; but this is no place for such
+discussions, and we had better return to Madame Sand.  As Mrs.
+Sherwood expounds, by means of many touching histories and
+anecdotes of little boys and girls, her notions of church history,
+church catechism, church doctrine;--as the author of "Father
+Clement, a Roman Catholic Story," demolishes the stately structure
+of eighteen centuries, the mighty and beautiful Roman Catholic
+faith, in whose bosom repose so many saints and sages,--by the
+means of a three-and-sixpenny duodecimo volume, which tumbles over
+the vast fabric, as David's pebble-stone did Goliath;--as, again,
+the Roman Catholic author of "Geraldine" falls foul of Luther and
+Calvin, and drowns the awful echoes of their tremendous protest by
+the sounds of her little half-crown trumpet: in like manner, by
+means of pretty sentimental tales, and cheap apologues, Mrs. Sand
+proclaims HER truth--that we need a new Messiah, and that the
+Christian religion is no more!  O awful, awful name of God!  Light
+unbearable!  Mystery unfathomable!  Vastness immeasurable!--Who are
+these who come forward to explain the mystery, and gaze unblinking
+into the depths of the light, and measure the immeasurable vastness
+to a hair?  O name, that God's people of old did fear to utter!  O
+light, that God's prophet would have perished had he seen!  Who are
+these that are now so familiar with it?--Women, truly; for the most
+part weak women--weak in intellect, weak mayhap in spelling and
+grammar, but marvellously strong in faith:--women, who step down to
+the people with stately step and voice of authority, and deliver
+their twopenny tablets, as if there were some Divine authority for
+the wretched nonsense recorded there!
+
+With regard to the spelling and grammar, our Parisian Pythoness
+stands, in the goodly fellowship, remarkable.  Her style is a
+noble, and, as far as a foreigner can judge, a strange tongue,
+beautifully rich and pure.  She has a very exuberant imagination,
+and, with it, a very chaste style of expression.  She never
+scarcely indulges in declamation, as other modern prophets do, and
+yet her sentences are exquisitely melodious and full.  She seldom
+runs a thought to death (after the manner of some prophets, who,
+when they catch a little one, toy with it until they kill it), but
+she leaves you at the end of one of her brief, rich, melancholy
+sentences, with plenty of food for future cogitation.  I can't
+express to you the charm of them; they seem to me like the sound of
+country bells--provoking I don't know what vein of musing and
+meditation, and falling sweetly and sadly on the ear.
+
+This wonderful power of language must have been felt by most people
+who read Madame Sand's first books, "Valentine" and "Indiana": in
+"Spiridion" it is greater, I think, than ever; and for those who
+are not afraid of the matter of the novel, the manner will be found
+most delightful.  The author's intention, I presume, is to
+describe, in a parable, her notions of the downfall of the Catholic
+church; and, indeed, of the whole Christian scheme: she places her
+hero in a monastery in Italy, where, among the characters about
+him, and the events which occur, the particular tenets of Madame
+Dudevant's doctrine are not inaptly laid down.  Innocent, faithful,
+tender-hearted, a young monk, by name Angel, finds himself, when he
+has pronounced his vows, an object of aversion and hatred to the
+godly men whose lives he so much respects, and whose love he would
+make any sacrifice to win.  After enduring much, he flings himself
+at the feet of his confessor, and begs for his sympathy and
+counsel; but the confessor spurns him away, and accuses him,
+fiercely, of some unknown and terrible crime--bids him never return
+to the confessional until contrition has touched his heart, and the
+stains which sully his spirit are, by sincere repentance, washed
+away.
+
+"Thus speaking," says Angel, "Father Hegesippus tore away his robe,
+which I was holding in my supplicating hands.  In a sort of
+wildness I still grasped it tighter; he pushed me fiercely from
+him, and I fell with my face towards the ground.  He quitted me,
+closing violently after him the door of the sacristy, in which this
+scene had passed.  I was left alone in the darkness.  Either from
+the violence of my fall, or the excess of my grief, a vein had
+burst in my throat, and a haemorrhage ensued.  I had not the force
+to rise; I felt my senses rapidly sinking, and, presently, I lay
+stretched on the pavement, unconscious, and bathed in my blood."
+
+[Now the wonderful part of the story begins.]
+
+"I know not how much time I passed in this way.  As I came to
+myself I felt an agreeable coolness.  It seemed as if some
+harmonious air was playing round about me, stirring gently in my
+hair, and drying the drops of perspiration on my brow.  It seemed
+to approach, and then again to withdraw, breathing now softly and
+sweetly in the distance, and now returning, as if to give me
+strength and courage to rise.
+
+"I would not, however, do so as yet; for I felt myself, as I lay,
+under the influence of a pleasure quite new to me; and listened, in
+a kind of peaceful aberration, to the gentle murmurs of the summer
+wind, as it breathed on me through the closed window-blinds above
+me.  Then I fancied I heard a voice that spoke to me from the end
+of the sacristy: it whispered so low that I could not catch the
+words.  I remained motionless, and gave it my whole attention.  At
+last I heard, distinctly, the following sentence:--'Spirit of
+Truth, raise up these victims of ignorance and imposture.'  'Father
+Hegesippus,' said I, in a weak voice, 'is that you who are
+returning to me?'  But no one answered.  I lifted myself on my
+hands and knees, I listened again, but I heard nothing.  I got up
+completely, and looked about me: I had fallen so near to the only
+door in this little room, that none, after the departure of the
+confessor, could have entered it without passing over me; besides,
+the door was shut, and only opened from the inside by a strong lock
+of the ancient shape.  I touched it, and assured myself that it was
+closed.  I was seized with terror, and, for some moments, did not
+dare to move.  Leaning against the door, I looked round, and
+endeavored to see into the gloom in which the angles of the room
+were enveloped.  A pale light, which came from an upper window,
+half closed, was seen to be trembling in the midst of the
+apartment.  The wind beat the shutter to and fro, and enlarged or
+diminished the space through which the light issued.  The objects
+which were in this half light--the praying-desk, surmounted by its
+skull--a few books lying on the benches--a surplice hanging against
+the wall--seemed to move with the shadow of the foliage that the
+air agitated behind the window.  When I thought I was alone, I felt
+ashamed of my former timidity; I made the sign of the cross, and
+was about to move forward in order to open the shutter altogether,
+but a deep sigh came from the praying-desk, and kept me nailed to
+my place.  And yet I saw the desk distinctly enough to be sure that
+no person was near it.  Then I had an idea which gave me courage.
+Some person, I thought, is behind the shutter, and has been saying
+his prayers outside without thinking of me.  But who would be so
+bold as to express such wishes and utter such a prayer as I had
+just heard?
+
+"Curiosity, the only passion and amusement permitted in a cloister,
+now entirely possessed me, and I advanced towards the window.  But
+I had not made a step when a black shadow, as it seemed to me,
+detaching itself from the praying-desk, traversed the room,
+directing itself towards the window, and passed swiftly by me.  The
+movement was so rapid that I had not time to avoid what seemed a
+body advancing towards me, and my fright was so great that I
+thought I should faint a second time.  But I felt nothing, and, as
+if the shadow had passed through me, I saw it suddenly disappear to
+my left.
+
+"I rushed to the window, I pushed back the blind with precipitation,
+and looked round the sacristy: I was there, entirely alone.  I
+looked into the garden--it was deserted, and the mid-day wind was
+wandering among the flowers.  I took courage, I examined all the
+corners of the room; I looked behind the praying-desk, which was
+very large, and I shook all the sacerdotal vestments which were
+hanging on the walls, everything was in its natural condition, and
+could give me no explanation of what had just occurred.  The sight
+of all the blood I had lost led me to fancy that my brain had,
+probably, been weakened by the haemorrhage, and that I had been a
+prey to some delusion.  I retired to my cell, and remained shut up
+there until the next day."
+
+I don't know whether the reader has been as much struck with the
+above mysterious scene as the writer has; but the fancy of it
+strikes me as very fine; and the natural SUPERNATURALNESS is kept
+up in the best style.  The shutter swaying to and fro, the fitful
+LIGHT APPEARING over the furniture of the room, and giving it an
+air of strange motion--the awful shadow which passed through the
+body of the timid young novice--are surely very finely painted.  "I
+rushed to the shutter, and flung it back: there was no one in the
+sacristy.  I looked into the garden; it was deserted, and the mid-
+day wind was roaming among the flowers."  The dreariness is
+wonderfully described: only the poor pale boy looking eagerly out
+from the window of the sacristy, and the hot mid-day wind walking
+in the solitary garden.  How skilfully is each of these little
+strokes dashed in, and how well do all together combine to make a
+picture!  But we must have a little more about Spiridion's
+wonderful visitant.
+
+
+"As I entered into the garden, I stepped a little on one side, to
+make way for a person whom I saw before me.  He was a young man of
+surprising beauty, and attired in a foreign costume.  Although
+dressed in the large black robe which the superiors of our order
+wear, he had, underneath, a short jacket of fine cloth, fastened
+round the waist by a leathern belt, and a buckle of silver, after
+the manner of the old German students.  Like them, he wore, instead
+of the sandals of our monks, short tight boots; and over the collar
+of his shirt, which fell on his shoulders, and was as white as
+snow, hung, in rich golden curls, the most beautiful hair I ever
+saw.  He was tall, and his elegant posture seemed to reveal to me
+that he was in the habit of commanding.  With much respect, and yet
+uncertain, I half saluted him.  He did not return my salute; but he
+smiled on me with so benevolent an air, and at the same time, his
+eyes severe and blue, looked towards me with an expression of such
+compassionate tenderness, that his features have never since then
+passed away from my recollection.  I stopped, hoping he would speak
+to me, and persuading myself, from the majesty of his aspect, that
+he had the power to protect me; but the monk, who was walking
+behind me, and who did not seem to remark him in the least, forced
+him brutally to step aside from the walk, and pushed me so rudely
+as almost to cause me to fall.  Not wishing to engage in a quarrel
+with this coarse monk, I moved away; but, after having taken a few
+steps in the garden, I looked back, and saw the unknown still
+gazing on me with looks of the tenderest solicitude.  The sun shone
+full upon him, and made his hair look radiant.  He sighed, and
+lifted his fine eyes to heaven, as if to invoke its justice in my
+favor, and to call it to bear witness to my misery; he turned
+slowly towards the sanctuary, entered into the quire, and was lost,
+presently, in the shade.  I longed to return, spite of the monk, to
+follow this noble stranger, and to tell him my afflictions; but who
+was he, that I imagined he would listen to them, and cause them to
+cease?  I felt, even while his softness drew me towards him, that
+he still inspired me with a kind of fear; for I saw in his
+physiognomy as much austerity as sweetness."
+
+
+Who was he?--we shall see that.  He was somebody very mysterious
+indeed; but our author has taken care, after the manner of her sex,
+to make a very pretty fellow of him, and to dress him in the most
+becoming costumes possible.
+
+
+The individual in tight boots and a rolling collar, with the
+copious golden locks, and the solemn blue eyes, who had just gazed
+on Spiridion, and inspired him with such a feeling of tender awe,
+is a much more important personage than the reader might suppose at
+first sight.  This beautiful, mysterious, dandy ghost, whose
+costume, with a true woman's coquetry, Madame Dudevant has so
+rejoiced to describe--is her religious type, a mystical
+representation of Faith struggling up towards Truth, through
+superstition, doubt, fear, reason,--in tight inexpressibles, with
+"a belt such as is worn by the old German students."  You will
+pardon me for treating such an awful person as this somewhat
+lightly; but there is always, I think, such a dash of the
+ridiculous in the French sublime, that the critic should try and do
+justice to both, or he may fail in giving a fair account of either.
+This character of Hebronius, the type of Mrs. Sand's convictions--
+if convictions they may be called--or, at least, the allegory under
+which her doubts are represented, is, in parts, very finely drawn;
+contains many passages of truth, very deep and touching, by the
+side of others so entirely absurd and unreasonable, that the
+reader's feelings are continually swaying between admiration and
+something very like contempt--always in a kind of wonder at the
+strange mixture before him.  But let us hear Madame Sand:--
+
+"Peter Hebronius," says our author, "was not originally so named.
+His real name was Samuel.  He was a Jew, and born in a little
+village in the neighborhood of Innspruck.  His family, which
+possessed a considerable fortune, left him, in his early youth,
+completely free to his own pursuits.  From infancy he had shown
+that these were serious.  He loved to be alone and passed his days,
+and sometimes his nights, wandering among the mountains and valleys
+in the neighborhood of his birthplace.  He would often sit by the
+brink of torrents, listening to the voice of their waters, and
+endeavoring to penetrate the meaning which Nature had hidden in
+those sounds.  As he advanced in years, his inquiries became more
+curious and more grave.  It was necessary that he should receive a
+solid education, and his parents sent him to study in the German
+universities.  Luther had been dead only a century, and his words
+and his memory still lived in the enthusiasm of his disciples.
+The new faith was strengthening the conquests it had made; the
+Reformers were as ardent as in the first days, but their ardor was
+more enlightened and more measured.  Proselytism was still carried
+on with zeal, and new converts were made every day.  In listening
+to the morality and to the dogmas which Lutheranism had taken from
+Catholicism, Samuel was filled with admiration.  His bold and
+sincere spirit instantly compared the doctrines which were now
+submitted to him, with those in the belief of which he had been
+bred; and, enlightened by the comparison, was not slow to
+acknowledge the inferiority of Judaism.  He said to himself, that a
+religion made for a single people, to the exclusion of all others,--
+which only offered a barbarous justice for rule of conduct,--which
+neither rendered the present intelligible nor satisfactory, and
+left the future uncertain,--could not be that of noble souls and
+lofty intellects; and that he could not be the God of truth who had
+dictated, in the midst of thunder, his vacillating will, and had
+called to the performance of his narrow wishes the slaves of a
+vulgar terror.  Always conversant with himself, Samuel, who had
+spoken what he thought, now performed what he had spoken; and, a
+year after his arrival in Germany, solemnly abjured Judaism, and
+entered into the bosom of the Reformed Church.  As he did not wish
+to do things by halves, and desired as much as was in him to put
+off the old man and lead a new life, he changed his name of Samuel
+to that of Peter.  Some time passed, during which he strengthened
+and instructed himself in his new religion.  Very soon he arrived
+at the point of searching for objections to refute, and adversaries
+to overthrow.  Bold and enterprising, he went at once to the
+strongest, and Bossuet was the first Catholic author that he set
+himself to read.  He commenced with a kind of disdain; believing
+that the faith which he had just embraced contained the pure truth.
+He despised all the attacks which could be made against it, and
+laughed already at the irresistible arguments which he was to find
+in the works of the Eagle of Meaux.  But his mistrust and irony
+soon gave place to wonder first, and then to admiration: he thought
+that the cause pleaded by such an advocate must, at least, be
+respectable; and, by a natural transition, came to think that great
+geniuses would only devote themselves to that which was great.  He
+then studied Catholicism with the same ardor and impartiality which
+he had bestowed on Lutheranism.  He went into France to gain
+instruction from the professors of the Mother Church, as he had
+from the Doctors of the reformed creed in Germany.  He saw Arnauld
+Fenelon, that second Gregory of Nazianzen, and Bossuet himself.
+Guided by these masters, whose virtues made him appreciate their
+talents the more, he rapidly penetrated to the depth of the
+mysteries of the Catholic doctrine and morality.  He found, in this
+religion, all that had for him constituted the grandeur and beauty
+of Protestantism,--the dogmas of the Unity and Eternity of God,
+which the two religions had borrowed from Judaism; and, what seemed
+the natural consequence of the last doctrine--a doctrine, however,
+to which the Jews had not arrived--the doctrine of the immortality
+of the soul; free will in this life; in the next, recompense for
+the good, and punishment for the evil.  He found, more pure,
+perhaps, and more elevated in Catholicism than in Protestantism,
+that sublime morality which preaches equality to man, fraternity,
+love, charity, renouncement of self, devotion to your neighbor;
+Catholicism, in a word, seemed to possess that vast formula, and
+that vigorous unity, which Lutheranism wanted.  The latter had,
+indeed, in its favor, the liberty of inquiry, which is also a want
+of the human mind; and had proclaimed the authority of individual
+reason: but it had so lost that which is the necessary basis and
+vital condition of all revealed religion--the principle of
+infallibility; because nothing can live except in virtue of the
+laws that presided at its birth; and, in consequence, one
+revelation cannot be continued and confirmed without another.  Now,
+infallibility is nothing but revelation continued by God, or the
+Word, in the person of his vicars.
+
+
+"At last, after much reflection, Hebronius acknowledged himself
+entirely and sincerely convinced, and received baptism from the
+hands of Bossuet.  He added the name of Spiridion to that of Peter,
+to signify that he had been twice enlightened by the Spirit.
+Resolved thenceforward to consecrate his life to the worship of the
+new God who had called him to Him, and to the study of His
+doctrines, he passed into Italy, and, with the aid of a large
+fortune, which one of his uncles, a Catholic like himself, had left
+to him, he built this convent where we now are."
+
+
+A friend of mine, who has just come from Italy, says that he has
+there left Messrs. Sp--r, P--l, and W. Dr--d, who were the lights
+of the great church in Newman Street, who were themselves apostles,
+and declared and believed that every word of nonsense which fell
+from their lips was a direct spiritual intervention.  These
+gentlemen have become Puseyites already, and are, my friend states,
+in the high way to Catholicism.  Madame Sand herself was a Catholic
+some time since: having been converted to that faith along with M.
+N--, of the Academy of Music; Mr. L--, the pianoforte player; and
+one or two other chosen individuals, by the famous Abbe de la M--.
+Abbe de la M-- (so told me in the Diligence, a priest, who read his
+breviary and gossiped alternately very curiously and pleasantly) is
+himself an ame perdue: the man spoke of his brother clergyman with
+actual horror; and it certainly appears that the Abbe's works of
+conversion have not prospered; for Madame Sand, having brought her
+hero (and herself, as we may presume) to the point of Catholicism,
+proceeds directly to dispose of that as she has done of Judaism and
+Protestantism, and will not leave, of the whole fabric of
+Christianity, a single stone standing.
+
+I think the fate of our English Newman Street apostles, and of M.
+de la M--, the mad priest, and his congregation of mad converts,
+should be a warning to such of us as are inclined to dabble in
+religious speculations; for, in them, as in all others, our flighty
+brains soon lose themselves, and we find our reason speedily lying
+prostrated at the mercy of our passions; and I think that Madame
+Sand's novel of Spiridion may do a vast deal of good, and bears a
+good moral with it; though not such an one, perhaps, as our fair
+philosopher intended.  For anything he learned, Samuel-Peter-
+Spiridion-Hebronius might have remained a Jew from the beginning to
+the end.  Wherefore be in such a hurry to set up new faiths?
+Wherefore, Madame Sand, try and be so preternaturally wise?
+Wherefore be so eager to jump out of one religion, for the purpose
+of jumping into another?  See what good this philosophical
+friskiness has done you, and on what sort of ground you are come at
+last.  You are so wonderfully sagacious, that you flounder in mud
+at every step; so amazingly clear-sighted, that your eyes cannot
+see an inch before you, having put out, with that extinguishing
+genius of yours, every one of the lights that are sufficient for
+the conduct of common men.  And for what?  Let our friend Spiridion
+speak for himself.  After setting up his convent, and filling it
+with monks, who entertain an immense respect for his wealth and
+genius, Father Hebronius, unanimously elected prior, gives himself
+up to further studies, and leaves his monks to themselves.
+Industrious and sober as they were, originally, they grow quickly
+intemperate and idle; and Hebronius, who does not appear among his
+flock until he has freed himself of the Catholic religion, as he
+has of the Jewish and the Protestant, sees, with dismay, the evil
+condition of his disciples, and regrets, too late, the precipitancy
+by which he renounced, then and for ever, Christianity.  "But, as
+he had no new religion to adopt in its place, and as, grown more
+prudent and calm, he did not wish to accuse himself unnecessarily,
+once more, of inconstancy and apostasy, he still maintained all the
+exterior forms of the worship which inwardly he had abjured.  But
+it was not enough for him to have quitted error, it was necessary
+to discover truth.  But Hebronius had well looked round to discover
+it; he could not find anything that resembled it.  Then commenced
+for him a series of sufferings, unknown and terrible.  Placed face
+to face with doubt, this sincere and religious spirit was
+frightened at its own solitude; and as it had no other desire nor
+aim on earth than truth, and nothing else here below interested it,
+he lived absorbed in his own sad contemplations, looked ceaselessly
+into the vague that surrounded him like an ocean without bounds,
+and seeing the horizon retreat and retreat as ever he wished to
+near it.  Lost in this immense uncertainty, he felt as if attacked
+by vertigo, and his thoughts whirled within his brain.  Then,
+fatigued with his vain toils and hopeless endeavors, he would sink
+down depressed, unmanned, life-wearied, only living in the sensation
+of that silent grief which he felt and could not comprehend."
+
+It is a pity that this hapless Spiridion, so eager in his passage
+from one creed to another, and so loud in his profession of the
+truth, wherever he fancied that he had found it, had not waited a
+little, before he avowed himself either Catholic or Protestant, and
+implicated others in errors and follies which might, at least, have
+been confined to his own bosom, and there have lain comparatively
+harmless.  In what a pretty state, for instance, will Messrs. Dr--d
+and P--l have left their Newman Street congregation, who are still
+plunged in their old superstitions, from which their spiritual
+pastors and masters have been set free!  In what a state, too, do
+Mrs. Sand and her brother and sister philosophers, Templars, Saint
+Simonians, Fourierites, Lerouxites, or whatever the sect may be,
+leave the unfortunate people who have listened to their doctrines,
+and who have not the opportunity, or the fiery versatility of
+belief, which carries their teachers from one creed to another,
+leaving only exploded lies and useless recantations behind them!  I
+wish the state would make a law that one individual should not be
+allowed to preach more than one doctrine in his life, or, at any
+rate, should be soundly corrected for every change of creed.  How
+many charlatans would have been silenced,--how much conceit would
+have been kept within bounds,--how many fools, who are dazzled by
+fine sentences, and made drunk by declamation, would have remained,
+quiet and sober, in that quiet and sober way of faith which their
+fathers held before them.  However, the reader will be glad to
+learn that, after all his doubts and sorrows, Spiridion does
+discover the truth (THE truth, what a wise Spiridion!) and some
+discretion with it; for, having found among his monks, who are
+dissolute, superstitious--and all hate him--one only being,
+Fulgentius, who is loving, candid, and pious, he says to him, "If
+you were like myself, if the first want of your nature were, like
+mine, to know, I would, without hesitation, lay bare to you my
+entire thoughts.  I would make you drink the cup of truth, which I
+myself have filled with so many tears, at the risk of intoxicating
+you with the draught.  But it is not so, alas! you are made to love
+rather than to know, and your heart is stronger than your
+intellect.  You are attached to Catholicism,--I believe so, at
+least,--by bonds of sentiment which you could not break without
+pain, and which, if you were to break, the truth which I could lay
+bare to you in return would not repay you for what you had
+sacrificed.  Instead of exalting, it would crush you, very likely.
+It is a food too strong for ordinary men, and which, when it does
+not revivify, smothers.  I will not, then, reveal to you this
+doctrine, which is the triumph of my life, and the consolation of
+my last days; because it might, perhaps, be for you only a cause of
+mourning and despair. . . . .  Of all the works which my long
+studies have produced, there is one alone which I have not given to
+the flames; for it alone is complete.  In that you will find me
+entire, and there LIES THE TRUTH.  And, as the sage has said you
+must not bury your treasures in a well, I will not confide mine to
+the brutal stupidity of these monks.  But as this volume should
+only pass into hands worthy to touch it, and be laid open for eyes
+that are capable of comprehending its mysteries, I shall exact from
+the reader one condition, which, at the same time, shall be a
+proof: I shall carry it with me to the tomb, in order that he who
+one day shall read it, may have courage enough to brave the vain
+terrors of the grave, in searching for it amid the dust of my
+sepulchre.  As soon as I am dead, therefore, place this writing on
+my breast. . . . .  Ah! when the time comes for reading it, I think
+my withered heart will spring up again, as the frozen grass at the
+return of the sun, and that, from the midst of its infinite
+transformations, my spirit will enter into immediate communication
+with thine!"
+
+
+Does not the reader long to be at this precious manuscript, which
+contains THE TRUTH; and ought he not to be very much obliged to
+Mrs. Sand, for being so good as to print it for him?  We leave all
+the story aside: how Fulgentius had not the spirit to read the
+manuscript, but left the secret to Alexis; how Alexis, a stern old
+philosophical unbelieving monk as ever was, tried in vain to lift
+up the gravestone, but was taken with fever, and obliged to forego
+the discovery; and how, finally, Angel, his disciple, a youth
+amiable and innocent as his name, was the destined person who
+brought the long-buried treasure to light.  Trembling and
+delighted, the pair read this tremendous MANUSCRIPT OF SPIRIDION.
+
+Will it be believed, that of all the dull, vague, windy documents
+that mortal ever set eyes on, this is the dullest?  If this be
+absolute truth, a quoi bon search for it, since we have long, long
+had the jewel in our possession, or since, at least, it has been
+held up as such by every sham philosopher who has had a mind to
+pass off his wares on the public?  Hear Spiridion:--
+
+"How much have I wept, how much have I suffered, how much have I
+prayed, how much have I labored, before I understood the cause and
+the aim of my passage on this earth!  After many incertitudes,
+after much remorse, after many scruples, I HAVE COMPREHENDED THAT I
+WAS A MARTYR!--But why my martyrdom? said I; what crimne did I
+commit before I was born, thus to be condemned to labor and
+groaning, from the hour when I first saw the day up to that when I
+am about to enter into the night of the tomb?
+
+"At last, by dint of imploring God--by dint of inquiry into the
+history of man, a ray of the truth has descended on my brow, and
+the shadows of the past have melted from before my eyes.  I have
+lifted a corner of the curtain: I have seen enough to know that my
+life, like that of the rest of the human race, has been a series of
+necessary errors, yet, to speak more correctly, of incomplete
+truths, conducting, more or less slowly and directly, to absolute
+truth and ideal perfection.  But when will they rise on the face of
+the earth--when will they issue from the bosom of the Divinity--
+those generations who shall salute the august countenance of Truth,
+and proclaim the reign of the ideal on earth?  I see well how
+humanity marches, but I neither can see its cradle nor its
+apotheosis.  Man seems to me a transitory race, between the beast
+and the angel; but I know not how many centuries have been
+required, that he might pass from the state of brute to the state
+of man, and I cannot tell how many ages are necessary that he may
+pass from the state of man to the state of angel!
+
+"Yet I hope, and I feel within me, at the approach of death, that
+which warns me that great destinies await humanity.  In this life
+all is over for me.  Much have I striven, to advance but little: I
+have labored without ceasing, and have done almost nothing.  Yet,
+after pains immeasurable, I die content, for I know that I have
+done all I could, and am sure that the little I have done will not
+be lost.
+
+"What, then, have I done? this wilt thou demand of me, man of a
+future age, who will seek for truth in the testaments of the past.
+Thou who wilt be no more Catholic--no more Christian, thou wilt ask
+of the poor monk, lying in the dust, an account of his life and
+death.  Thou wouldst know wherefore were his vows, why his
+austerities, his labors, his retreat, his prayers?
+
+"You who turn back to me, in order that I may guide you on your
+road, and that you may arrive more quickly at the goal which it has
+not been my lot to attain, pause, yet, for a moment, and look upon
+the past history of humanity.  You will see that its fate has been
+ever to choose between the least of two evils, and ever to commit
+great faults in order to avoid others still greater.  You will
+see . . . . on one side, the heathen mythology, that debased the
+spirit, in its efforts to deify the flesh; on the other, the
+austere Christian principle, that debased the flesh too much, in
+order to raise the worship of the spirit.  You will see, afterwards,
+how the religion of Christ embodies itself in a church, and raises
+itself a generous democratic power against the tyranny of princes.
+Later still, you will see how that power has attained its end, and
+passed beyond it.  You will see it, having chained and conquered
+princes, league itself with them, in order to oppress the people,
+and seize on temporal power.  Schism, then, raises up against it the
+standard of revolt, and preaches the bold and legitimate principle
+of liberty of conscience: but, also, you will see how this liberty
+of conscience brings religious anarchy in its train; or, worse
+still, religious indifference and disgust.  And if your soul,
+shattered in the tempestuous changes which you behold humanity
+undergoing, would strike out for itself a passage through the rocks,
+amidst which, like a frail bark, lies tossing trembling truth, you
+will be embarrassed to choose between the new philosophers--who, in
+preaching tolerance, destroy religious and social unity--and the
+last Christians, who, to preserve society, that is, religion and
+philosophy, are obliged to brave the principle of toleration.  Man
+of truth! to whom I address, at once, my instruction and my
+justification, at the time when you shall live, the science of truth
+no doubt will have advanced a step.  Think, then, of all your fathers
+have suffered, as, bending beneath the weight of their ignorance and
+uncertainty, they have traversed the desert across which, with so
+much pain, they have conducted thee!  And if the pride of thy young
+learning shall make thee contemplate the petty strifes in which our
+life has been consumed, pause and tremble, as you think of that
+which is still unknown to yourself, and of the judgment that your
+descendants will pass on you.  Think of this, and learn to respect
+all those who, seeking their way in all sincerity, have wandered
+from the path, frightened by the storm, and sorely tried by the
+severe hand of the All-Powerful.  Think of this, and prostrate
+yourself; for all these, even the most mistaken among them, are
+saints and martyrs.
+
+"Without their conquests and their defeats, thou wert in darkness
+still.  Yes, their failures, their errors even, have a right to
+your respect; for man is weak. . . . .  Weep then, for us obscure
+travellers--unknown victims, who, by our mortal sufferings and
+unheard-of labors, have prepared the way before you.  Pity me, who
+have passionately loved justice, and perseveringly sought for
+truth, only opened my eyes to shut them again for ever, and saw
+that I had been in vain endeavoring to support a ruin, to take
+refuge in a vault of which the foundations were worn away." . . . .
+
+The rest of the book of Spiridion is made up of a history of the
+rise, progress, and (what our philosopher is pleased to call) decay
+of Christianity--of an assertion, that the "doctrine of Christ is
+incomplete;" that "Christ may, nevertheless, take his place in the
+Pantheon of divine men!" and of a long, disgusting, absurd, and
+impious vision, in which the Saviour, Moses, David, and Elijah are
+represented, and in which Christ is made to say--"WE ARE ALL
+MESSIAHS, when we wish to bring the reign of truth upon earth; we
+are all Christs, when we suffer for it!"
+
+And this is the ultimatum, the supreme secret, the absolute truth!
+and it has been published by Mrs. Sand, for so many napoleons per
+sheet, in the Revue des Deux Mondes: and the Deux Mondes are to
+abide by it for the future.  After having attained it, are we a
+whit wiser?  "Man is between an angel and a beast: I don't know how
+long it is since he was a brute--I can't say how long it will be
+before he is an angel."  Think of people living by their wits, and
+living by such a wit as this!  Think of the state of mental debauch
+and disease which must have been passed through, ere such words
+could be written, and could be popular!
+
+When a man leaves our dismal, smoky London atmosphere, and
+breathes, instead of coal-smoke and yellow fog, this bright, clear,
+French air, he is quite intoxicated by it at first, and feels a
+glow in his blood, and a joy in his spirits, which scarcely thrice
+a year, and then only at a distance from London, he can attain in
+England.  Is the intoxication, I wonder, permanent among the
+natives? and may we not account for the ten thousand frantic freaks
+of these people by the peculiar influence of French air and sun?
+The philosophers are from night to morning drunk, the politicians
+are drunk, the literary men reel and stagger from one absurdity to
+another, and how shall we understand their vagaries?  Let us
+suppose, charitably, that Madame Sand had inhaled a more than
+ordinary quantity of this laughing gas when she wrote for us this
+precious manuscript of Spiridion.  That great destinies are in
+prospect for the human race we may fancy, without her ladyship's
+word for it: but more liberal than she, and having a little
+retrospective charity, as well as that easy prospective benevolence
+which Mrs. Sand adopts, let us try and think there is some hope for
+our fathers (who were nearer brutality than ourselves, according to
+the Sandean creed), or else there is a very poor chance for us,
+who, great philosophers as we are, are yet, alas! far removed from
+that angelic consummation which all must wish for so devoutly.  She
+cannot say--is it not extraordinary?--how many centuries have been
+necessary before man could pass from the brutal state to his
+present condition, or how many ages will be required ere we may
+pass from the state of man to the state of angels?  What the deuce
+is the use of chronology or philosophy?  We were beasts, and we
+can't tell when our tails dropped off: we shall be angels; but when
+our wings are to begin to sprout, who knows?  In the meantime, O
+man of genius, follow our counsel: lead an easy life, don't stick
+at trifles; never mind about DUTY, it is only made for slaves; if
+the world reproach you, reproach the world in return, you have a
+good loud tongue in your head: if your straight-laced morals injure
+your mental respiration, fling off the old-fashioned stays, and
+leave your free limbs to rise and fall as Nature pleases; and when
+you have grown pretty sick of your liberty, and yet unfit to return
+to restraint, curse the world, and scorn it, and be miserable, like
+my Lord Byron and other philosophers of his kidney; or else mount a
+step higher, and, with conceit still more monstrous, and mental
+vision still more wretchedly debauched and weak, begin suddenly to
+find yourself afflicted with a maudlin compassion for the human
+race, and a desire to set them right after your own fashion.  There
+is the quarrelsome stage of drunkenness, when a man can as yet walk
+and speak, when he can call names, and fling plates and wine-
+glasses at his neighbor's head with a pretty good aim; after this
+comes the pathetic stage, when the patient becomes wondrous
+philanthropic, and weeps wildly, as he lies in the gutter, and
+fancies he is at home in bed--where he ought to be; but this is an
+allegory.
+
+I don't wish to carry this any farther, or to say a word in defence
+of the doctrine which Mrs. Dudevant has found "incomplete";--here,
+at least, is not the place for discussing its merits, any more than
+Mrs. Sand's book was the place for exposing, forsooth, its errors:
+our business is only with the day and the new novels, and the
+clever or silly people who write them.  Oh! if they but knew their
+places, and would keep to them, and drop their absurd philosophical
+jargon!  Not all the big words in the world can make Mrs. Sand talk
+like a philosopher: when will she go back to her old trade, of
+which she was the very ablest practitioner in France?
+
+I should have been glad to give some extracts from the dramatic and
+descriptive parts of the novel, that cannot, in point of style and
+beauty, be praised too highly.  One must suffice,--it is the
+descent of Alexis to seek that unlucky manuscript, Spiridion.
+
+"It seemed to me," he begins, "that the descent was eternal; and
+that I was burying myself in the depths of Erebus: at last, I
+reached a level place,--and I heard a mournful voice deliver these
+words, as it were, to the secret centre of the earth--'He will
+mount that ascent no more!'--Immediately I heard arise towards me,
+from the depth of invisible abysses, a myriad of formidable voices
+united in a strange chant--'Let us destroy him!  Let him be
+destroyed!  What does he here among the dead?  Let him be delivered
+back to torture!  Let him be given again to life!'
+
+"Then a feeble light began to pierce the darkness, and I perceived
+that I stood on the lowest step of a staircase, vast as the foot of
+a mountain.  Behind me were thousands of steps of lurid iron;
+before me, nothing but a void--an abyss, and ether; the blue gloom
+of midnight beneath my feet, as above my head.  I became delirious,
+and quitting that staircase, which methought it was impossible for
+me to reascend, I sprung forth into the void with an execration.
+But, immediately, when I had uttered the curse, the void began to
+be filled with forms and colors, and I presently perceived that I
+was in a vast gallery, along which I advanced, trembling.  There
+was still darkness round me; but the hollows of the vaults gleamed
+with a red light, and showed me the strange and hideous forms of
+their building. . . . .  I did not distinguish the nearest objects;
+but those towards which I advanced assumed an appearance more and
+more ominous, and my terror increased with every step I took.  The
+enormous pillars which supported the vault, and the tracery thereof
+itself, were figures of men, of supernatural stature, delivered to
+tortures without a name.  Some hung by their feet, and, locked in
+the coils of monstrous serpents, clenched their teeth in the marble
+of the pavement; others, fastened by their waists, were dragged
+upwards, these by their feet, those by their heads, towards
+capitals, where other figures stooped towards them, eager to
+torment them.  Other pillars, again, represented a struggling mass
+of figures devouring one another; each of which only offered a
+trunk severed to the knees or to the shoulders, the fierce heads
+whereof retained life enough to seize and devour that which was
+near them.  There were some who, half hanging down, agonized
+themselves by attempting, with their upper limbs, to flay the lower
+moiety of their bodies, which drooped from the columns, or were
+attached to the pedestals; and others, who, in their fight with
+each other, were dragged along by morsels of flesh,--grasping
+which, they clung to each other with a countenance of unspeakable
+hate and agony.  Along, or rather in place of, the frieze, there
+were on either side a range of unclean beings, wearing the human
+form, but of a loathsome ugliness, busied in tearing human corpses
+to pieces--in feasting upon their limbs and entrails.  From the
+vault, instead of bosses and pendants, hung the crushed and wounded
+forms of children; as if to escape these eaters of man's flesh,
+they would throw themselves downwards, and be dashed to pieces on
+the pavement. . . . .  The silence and motionlessness of the whole
+added to its awfulness.  I became so faint with terror, that I
+stopped, and would fain have returned.  But at that moment I heard,
+from the depths of the gloom through which I had passed, confused
+noises, like those of a multitude on its march.  And the sounds
+soon became more distinct, and the clamor fiercer, and the steps
+came hurrying on tumultuously--at every new burst nearer, more
+violent, more threatening.  I thought that I was pursued by this
+disorderly crowd; and I strove to advance, hurrying into the midst
+of those dismal sculptures.  Then it seemed as if those figures
+began to heave,--and to sweat blood,--and their beady eyes to move
+in their sockets.  At once I beheld that they were all looking upon
+me, that they were all leaning towards me,--some with frightful
+derision, others with furious aversion.  Every arm was raised
+against me, and they made as though they would crush me with the
+quivering limbs they had torn one from the other." . . . .
+
+It is, indeed, a pity that the poor fellow gave himself the trouble
+to go down into damp, unwholesome graves, for the purpose of
+fetching up a few trumpery sheets of manuscript; and if the public
+has been rather tired with their contents, and is disposed to ask
+why Mrs. Sand's religious or irreligious notions are to be brought
+forward to people who are quite satisfied with their own, we can
+only say that this lady is the representative of a vast class of
+her countrymen, whom the wits and philosophers of the eighteenth
+century have brought to this condition.  The leaves of the Diderot
+and Rousseau tree have produced this goodly fruit: here it is,
+ripe, bursting, and ready to fall;--and how to fall?  Heaven send
+that it may drop easily, for all can see that the time is come.
+
+
+
+
+THE CASE OF PEYTEL:
+
+IN A LETTER TO EDWARD BRIEFLESS, ESQUIRE, OF PUMP COURT, TEMPLE.
+
+
+PARIS, November, 1839.
+
+MY DEAR BRIEFLESS,--Two months since, when the act of accusation
+first appeared, containing the sum of the charges against Sebastian
+Peytel, all Paris was in a fervor on the subject.  The man's trial
+speedily followed, and kept for three days the public interest
+wound up to a painful point.  He was found guilty of double murder
+at the beginning of September; and, since that time, what with
+Maroto's disaffection and Turkish news, we have had leisure to
+forget Monsieur Peytel, and to occupy ourselves with [Greek text
+omitted].  Perhaps Monsieur de Balzac helped to smother what little
+sparks of interest might still have remained for the murderous
+notary.  Balzac put forward a letter in his favor, so very long, so
+very dull, so very pompous, promising so much, and performing so
+little, that the Parisian public gave up Peytel and his case
+altogether; nor was it until to-day that some small feeling was
+raised concerning him, when the newspapers brought the account how
+Peytel's head had been cut off at Bourg.
+
+He had gone through the usual miserable ceremonies and delays which
+attend what is called, in this country, the march of justice.  He
+had made his appeal to the Court of Cassation, which had taken time
+to consider the verdict of the Provincial Court, and had confirmed
+it.  He had made his appeal for mercy; his poor sister coming up
+all the way from Bourg (a sad journey, poor thing!) to have an
+interview with the King, who had refused to see her.  Last Monday
+morning, at nine o'clock, an hour before Peytel's breakfast, the
+Greffier of Assize Court, in company with the Cure of Bourg, waited
+on him, and informed him that he had only three hours to live.  At
+twelve o'clock, Peytel's head was off his body: an executioner from
+Lyons had come over the night before, to assist the professional
+throat-cutter of Bourg.
+
+I am not going to entertain you with any sentimental lamentations
+for this scoundrel's fate, or to declare my belief in his
+innocence, as Monsieur de Balzac has done.  As far as moral
+conviction can go, the man's guilt is pretty clearly brought home
+to him.  But any man who has read the "Causes Celebres," knows that
+men have been convicted and executed upon evidence ten times more
+powerful than that which was brought against Peytel.  His own
+account of his horrible case may be true; there is nothing adduced
+in the evidence which is strong enough to overthrow it.  It is a
+serious privilege, God knows, that society takes upon itself, at
+any time, to deprive one of God's creatures of existence.  But when
+the slightest doubt remains, what a tremendous risk does it incur!
+In England, thank heaven, the law is more wise and more merciful:
+an English jury would never have taken a man's blood upon such
+testimony: an English judge and Crown advocate would never have
+acted as these Frenchmen have done; the latter inflaming the public
+mind by exaggerated appeals to their passions: the former seeking,
+in every way, to draw confessions from the prisoner, to perplex and
+confound him, to do away, by fierce cross-questioning and bitter
+remarks from the bench, with any effect that his testimony might
+have on the jury.  I don't mean to say that judges and lawyers have
+been more violent and inquisitorial against the unhappy Peytel than
+against any one else; it is the fashion of the country: a man is
+guilty until he proves himself to be innocent; and to batter down
+his defence, if he have any, there are the lawyers, with all their
+horrible ingenuity, and their captivating passionate eloquence.  It
+is hard thus to set the skilful and tried champions of the law
+against men unused to this kind of combat; nay, give a man all the
+legal aid that he can purchase or procure, still, by this plan, you
+take him at a cruel, unmanly disadvantage; he has to fight against
+the law, clogged with the dreadful weight of his presupposed guilt.
+Thank God that, in England, things are not managed so.
+
+However, I am not about to entertain you with ignorant disquisitions
+about the law.  Peytel's case may, nevertheless, interest you; for
+the tale is a very stirring and mysterious one; and you may see how
+easy a thing it is for a man's life to be talked away in France, if
+ever he should happen to fall under the suspicion of a crime.  The
+French "Acte d'accusation" begins in the following manner:--
+
+"Of all the events which, in these latter times, have afflicted the
+department of the Ain, there is none which has caused a more
+profound and lively sensation than the tragical death of the lady,
+Felicite Alcazar, wife of Sebastian Benedict Peytel, notary, at
+Belley.  At the end of October, 1838, Madame Peytel quitted that
+town, with her husband, and their servant Louis Rey, in order to
+pass a few days at Macon: at midnight, the inhabitants of Belley
+were suddenly awakened by the arrival of Monsieur Peytel, by his
+cries, and by the signs which he exhibited of the most lively
+agitation: he implored the succors of all the physicians in the
+town; knocked violently at their doors; rung at the bells of their
+houses with a sort of frenzy, and announced that his wife,
+stretched out, and dying, in his carriage, had just been shot, on
+the Lyons road, by his domestic, whose life Peytel himself had
+taken.
+
+"At this recital a number of persons assembled, and what a
+spectacle was presented to their eyes.
+
+"A young woman lay at the bottom of a carriage, deprived of life;
+her whole body was wet, and seemed as if it had just been plunged
+into the water.  She appeared to be severely wounded in the face;
+and her garments, which were raised up, in spite of the cold and
+rainy weather, left the upper part of her knees almost entirely
+exposed.  At the sight of this half-naked and inanimate body, all
+the spectators were affected.  People said that the first duty to
+pay to a dying woman was, to preserve her from the cold, to cover
+her.  A physician examined the body; he declared that all remedies
+were useless; that Madame Peytel was dead and cold.
+
+"The entreaties of Peytel were redoubled; he demanded fresh
+succors, and, giving no heed to the fatal assurance which had just
+been given him, required that all the physicians in the place
+should be sent for.  A scene so strange and so melancholy; the
+incoherent account given by Peytel of the murder of his wife; his
+extraordinary movements; and the avowal which he continued to make,
+that he had despatched the murderer, Rey, with strokes of his
+hammer, excited the attention of Lieutenant Wolf, commandant of
+gendarmes: that officer gave orders for the immediate arrest of
+Peytel; but the latter threw himself into the arms of a friend, who
+interceded for him, and begged the police not immediately to seize
+upon his person.
+
+"The corpse of Madame Peytel was transported to her apartment; the
+bleeding body of the domestic was likewise brought from the road,
+where it lay; and Peytel, asked to explain the circumstance, did
+so." . . . .
+
+Now, as there is little reason to tell the reader, when an English
+counsel has to prosecute a prisoner on the part of the Crown for a
+capital offence, he produces the articles of his accusation in the
+most moderate terms, and especially warns the jury to give the
+accused person the benefit of every possible doubt that the
+evidence may give, or may leave.  See how these things are managed
+in France, and how differently the French counsel for the Crown
+sets about his work.
+
+He first prepares his act of accusation, the opening of which we
+have just read; it is published six days before the trial, so that
+an unimpassioned, unprejudiced jury has ample time to study it, and
+to form its opinions accordingly, and to go into court with a
+happy, just prepossession against the prisoner.
+
+Read the first part of the Peytel act of accusation; it is as
+turgid and declamatory as a bad romance; and as inflated as a
+newspaper document, by an unlimited penny-a-liner:--"The department
+of the Ain is in a dreadful state of excitement; the inhabitants of
+Belley come trooping from their beds,--and what a sight do they
+behold;--a young woman at the bottom of a carriage, toute
+ruisselante, just out of a river; her garments, in spite of the
+cold and rain, raised, so as to leave the upper part of her knees
+entirely exposed, at which all the beholders were affected, and
+cried, that the FIRST DUTY was to cover her from the cold."  This
+settles the case at once; the first duty of a man is to cover the
+legs of the sufferer; the second to call for help.  The eloquent
+"Substitut du Procureur du Roi" has prejudged the case, in the
+course of a few sentences.  He is putting his readers, among whom
+his future jury is to be found, into a proper state of mind; he
+works on them with pathetic description, just as a romance-writer
+would: the rain pours in torrents; it is a dreary evening in
+November; the young creature's situation is neatly described; the
+distrust which entered into the breast of the keen old officer of
+gendarmes strongly painted, the suspicions which might, or might
+not, have been entertained by the inhabitants, eloquently argued.
+How did the advocate know that the people had such? did all the
+bystanders say aloud, "I suspect that this is a case of murder by
+Monsieur Peytel, and that his story about the domestic is all
+deception?" or did they go off to the mayor, and register their
+suspicion? or was the advocate there to hear them?  Not he; but he
+paints you the whole scene, as though it had existed, and gives
+full accounts of suspicions, as if they had been facts, positive,
+patent, staring, that everybody could see and swear to.
+
+Having thus primed his audience, and prepared them for the
+testimony of the accused party, "Now," says he, with a fine show of
+justice, "let us hear Monsieur Peytel;" and that worthy's narrative
+is given as follows:--
+
+"He said that he had left Macon on the 31st October, at eleven
+o'clock in the morning, in order to return to Belley, with his wife
+and servant.  The latter drove, or led, an open car; he himself was
+driving his wife in a four-wheeled carriage, drawn by one horse:
+they reached Bourg at five o'clock in the evening; left it at
+seven, to sleep at Pont d'Ain, where they did not arrive before
+midnight.  During the journey, Peytel thought he remarked that Rey
+had slackened his horse's pace.  When they alighted at the inn,
+Peytel bade him deposit in his chamber 7,500 francs, which he
+carried with him; but the domestic refused to do so, saying that
+the inn gates were secure, and there was no danger.  Peytel was,
+therefore, obliged to carry his money up stairs himself.  The next
+day, the 1st November, they set out on their journey again, at nine
+o'clock in the morning; Louis did not come, according to custom, to
+take his master's orders.  They arrived at Tenay about three,
+stopped there a couple of hours to dine, and it was eight o'clock
+when they reached the bourg of Rossillon, where they waited half an
+hour to bait the horses.
+
+"As they left Rossillon, the weather became bad, and the rain began
+to fall: Peytel told his domestic to get a covering for the
+articles in the open chariot; but Rey refused to do so, adding, in
+an ironical tone, that the weather was fine.  For some days past,
+Peytel had remarked that his servant was gloomy, and scarcely spoke
+at all.
+
+"After they had gone about 500 paces beyond the bridge of Andert,
+that crosses the river Furans, and ascended to the least steep part
+of the hill of Darde, Peytel cried out to his servant, who was
+seated in the car, to come down from it, and finish the ascent on
+foot.
+
+"At this moment a violent wind was blowing from the south, and the
+rain was falling heavily: Peytel was seated back in the right
+corner of the carriage, and his wife, who was close to him, was
+asleep, with her head on his left shoulder.  All of a sudden he
+heard the report of a fire-arm (he had seen the light of it at some
+paces' distance), and Madame Peytel cried out, 'My poor husband,
+take your pistols;' the horse was frightened, and began to trot.
+Peytel immediately drew the pistol, and fired, from the interior of
+the carriage, upon an individual whom he saw running by the side of
+the road.
+
+"Not knowing, as yet, that his wife had been hit, he jumped out on
+one side of the carriage, while Madame Peytel descended from the
+other; and he fired a second pistol at his domestic, Louis Rey,
+whom he had just recognized.  Redoubling his pace, he came up with
+Rey, and struck him, from behind, a blow with the hammer.  Rey
+turned at this, and raised up his arm to strike his master with the
+pistol which he had just discharged at him; but Peytel, more quick
+than he, gave the domestic a blow with the hammer, which felled him
+to the ground (he fell his face forwards), and then Peytel,
+bestriding the body, despatched him, although the brigand asked for
+mercy.
+
+"He now began to think of his wife and ran back, calling out her
+name repeatedly, and seeking for her, in vain, on both sides of the
+road.  Arrived at the bridge of Andert, he recognized his wife,
+stretched in a field, covered with water, which bordered the
+Furans.  This horrible discovery had so much the more astonished
+him, because he had no idea, until now, that his wife had been
+wounded: he endeavored to draw her from the water; and it was only
+after considerable exertions that he was enabled to do so, and to
+place her, with her face towards the ground, on the side of the
+road.  Supposing that, here, she would be sheltered from any
+farther danger, and believing, as yet, that she was only wounded,
+he determined to ask for help at a lone house, situated on the road
+towards Rossillon; and at this instant he perceived, without at all
+being able to explain how, that his horse had followed him back to
+the spot, having turned back of its own accord, from the road to
+Belley.
+
+"The house at which he knocked was inhabited by two men, of the
+name of Thannet, father and son, who opened the door to him, and
+whom he entreated to come to his aid, saying that his wife had just
+been assassinated by his servant.  The elder Thannet approached to,
+and examined the body, and told Peytel that it was quite dead; he
+and his son took up the corpse, and placed it in the bottom of the
+carriage, which they all mounted themselves, and pursued their
+route to Belley.  In order to do so, they had to pass by Rey's
+body, on the road, which Peytel wished to crush under the wheels of
+his carriage.  It was to rob him of 7,500 francs, said Peytel, that
+the attack had been made."
+
+Our friend, the Procureur's Substitut, has dropped, here, the
+eloquent and pathetic style altogether, and only gives the unlucky
+prisoner's narrative in the baldest and most unimaginative style.
+How is a jury to listen to such a fellow? they ought to condemn
+him, if but for making such an uninteresting statement.  Why not
+have helped poor Peytel with some of those rhetorical graces which
+have been so plentifully bestowed in the opening part of the act of
+accusation?  He might have said:--
+
+"Monsieur Peytel is an eminent notary at Belley; he is a man
+distinguished for his literary and scientific acquirements; he has
+lived long in the best society of the capital; he had been but a
+few months married to that young and unfortunate lady, whose loss
+has plunged her bereaved husband into despair--almost into madness.
+Some early differences had marked, it is true, the commencement of
+their union; but these, which, as can be proved by evidence, were
+almost all the unhappy lady's fault,--had happily ceased, to give
+place to sentiments far more delightful and tender.  Gentlemen,
+Madame Peytel bore in her bosom a sweet pledge of future concord
+between herself and her husband: in three brief months she was to
+become a mother.
+
+"In the exercise of his honorable profession,--in which, to
+succeed, a man must not only have high talents, but undoubted
+probity,--and, gentlemen, Monsieur Peytel DID succeed--DID inspire
+respect and confidence, as you, his neighbors, well know;--in the
+exercise, I say, of his high calling, Monsieur Peytel, towards the
+end of October last, had occasion to make a journey in the
+neighborhood, and visit some of his many clients.
+
+"He travelled in his own carriage, his young wife beside him.  Does
+this look like want of affection, gentlemen? or is it not a mark of
+love--of love and paternal care on his part towards the being with
+whom his lot in life was linked,--the mother of his coming child,--
+the young girl, who had everything to gain from the union with a
+man of his attainments of intellect, his kind temper, his great
+experience, and his high position?  In this manner they travelled,
+side by side, lovingly together.  Monsieur Peytel was not a lawyer
+merely, but a man of letters and varied learning; of the noble and
+sublime science of geology he was, especially, an ardent devotee."
+
+(Suppose, here, a short panegyric upon geology.  Allude to the
+creation of this mighty world, and then, naturally, to the Creator.
+Fancy the conversations which Peytel, a religious man,* might have
+with his young wife upon the subject.)
+
+
+* He always went to mass; it is in the evidence.
+
+
+"Monsieur Peytel had lately taken into his service a man named
+Louis Rey.  Rey was a foundling, and had passed many years in a
+regiment--a school, gentlemen, where much besides bravery, alas! is
+taught; nay, where the spirit which familiarizes one with notions
+of battle and death, I fear, may familiarize one with ideas, too,
+of murder.  Rey, a dashing reckless fellow, from the army, had
+lately entered Peytel's service, was treated by him with the most
+singular kindness; accompanied him (having charge of another
+vehicle) upon the journey before alluded to; and KNEW THAT HIS
+MASTER CARRIED WITH HIM A CONSIDERABLE SUM OF MONEY; for a man like
+Rey an enormous sum, 7,500 francs.  At midnight on the 1st of
+November, as Madame Peytel and her husband were returning home, an
+attack was made upon their carriage.  Remember, gentlemen, the hour
+at which the attack was made; remember the sum of money that was in
+the carriage; and remember that the Savoy frontier IS WITHIN A
+LEAGUE OF THE SPOT where the desperate deed was done."
+
+Now, my dear Briefless, ought not Monsieur Procureur, in common
+justice to Peytel, after he had so eloquently proclaimed, not the
+facts, but the suspicions, which weighed against that worthy, to
+have given a similar florid account of the prisoner's case?
+Instead of this, you will remark, that it is the advocate's
+endeavor to make Peytel's statements as uninteresting in style as
+possible; and then he demolishes them in the following way:--
+
+"Scarcely was Peytel's statement known, when the common sense of
+the public rose against it.  Peytel had commenced his story upon
+the bridge of Andert, over the cold body of his wife.  On the 2nd
+November he had developed it in detail, in the presence of the
+physicians, in the presence of the assembled neighbors--of the
+persons who, on the day previous only, were his friends.  Finally,
+he had completed it in his interrogatories, his conversations, his
+writings, and letters to the magistrates and everywhere these
+words, repeated so often, were only received with a painful
+incredulity.  The fact was that, besides the singular character
+which Peytel's appearance, attitude, and talk had worn ever since
+the event, there was in his narrative an inexplicable enigma; its
+contradictions and impossibilities were such, that calm persons
+were revolted at it, and that even friendship itself refused to
+believe it."
+
+Thus Mr. Attorney speaks, not for himself alone, but for the whole
+French public; whose opinions, of course, he knows.  Peytel's
+statement is discredited EVERYWHERE; the statement which he had
+made over the cold body of his wife--the monster!  It is not enough
+simply to prove that the man committed the murder, but to make the
+jury violently angry against him, and cause them to shudder in the
+jury-box, as he exposes the horrid details of the crime.
+
+"Justice," goes on Mr. Substitute (who answers for the feelings of
+everybody), "DISTURBED BY THE PRE-OCCUPATIONS OF PUBLIC OPINION,
+commenced, without delay, the most active researches.  The bodies
+of the victims were submitted to the investigations of men of art;
+the wounds and projectiles were examined; the place where the event
+took place explored with care.  The morality of the author of this
+frightful scene became the object of rigorous examination; the
+exigeances of the prisoner, the forms affected by him, his
+calculating silence, and his answers, coldly insulting, were feeble
+obstacles; and justice at length arrived, by its prudence, and by
+the discoveries it made, to the most cruel point of certainty."
+
+You see that a man's demeanor is here made a crime against him; and
+that Mr. Substitute wishes to consider him guilty, because he has
+actually the audacity to hold his tongue.  Now follows a touching
+description of the domestic, Louis Rey:--
+
+
+"Louis Rey, a child of the Hospital at Lyons, was confided, at a
+very early age, to some honest country people, with whom he stayed
+until he entered the army.  At their house, and during this long
+period of time, his conduct, his intelligence, and the sweetness of
+his manners were such, that the family of his guardians became to
+him as an adopted family; and his departure caused them the most
+sincere affliction.  When Louis quitted the army, he returned to
+his benefactors, and was received as a son.  They found him just as
+they had ever known him" (I acknowledge that this pathos beats my
+humble defence of Peytel entirely), "except that he had learned to
+read and write; and the certificates of his commanders proved him
+to be a good and gallant soldier.
+
+"The necessity of creating some resources for himself, obliged him
+to quit his friends, and to enter the service of Monsieur de
+Montrichard, a lieutenant of gendarmerie, from whom he received
+fresh testimonials of regard.  Louis, it is true, might have a
+fondness for wine and a passion for women; but he had been a
+soldier, and these faults were, according to the witnesses, amply
+compensated for by his activity, his intelligence, and the
+agreeable manner in which he performed his service.  In the month
+of July, 1839, Rey quitted, voluntarily, the service of M. de
+Montrichard; and Peytel, about this period, meeting him at Lyons,
+did not hesitate to attach him to his service.  Whatever may be the
+prisoner's present language, it is certain that up to the day of
+Louis's death, he served Peytel with diligence and fidelity.
+
+"More than once his master and mistress spoke well of him.
+EVERYBODY who has worked, or been at the house of Madame Peytel,
+has spoken in praise of his character; and, indeed, it may be said,
+that these testimonials were general.
+
+"On the very night of the 1st of November, and immediately after
+the catastrophe, we remark how Peytel begins to make insinuations
+against his servant; and how artfully, in order to render them more
+sure, he disseminates them through the different parts of his
+narrative.  But, in the course of the proceeding, these charges
+have met with a most complete denial.  Thus we find the disobedient
+servant who, at Pont d'Ain, refused to carry the money-chest to his
+master's room, under the pretext that the gates of the inn were
+closed securely, occupied with tending the horses after their long
+journey: meanwhile Peytel was standing by, and neither master nor
+servant exchanged a word, and the witnesses who beheld them both
+have borne testimony to the zeal and care of the domestic.
+
+"In like manner, we find that the servant, who was so remiss in the
+morning as to neglect to go to his master for orders, was ready for
+departure before seven o'clock, and had eagerly informed himself
+whether Monsieur and Madame Peytel were awake; learning from the
+maid of the inn, that they had ordered nothing for their breakfast.
+This man, who refused to carry with him a covering for the car,
+was, on the contrary, ready to take off his own cloak, and with it
+shelter articles of small value; this man, who had been for many
+days so silent and gloomy, gave, on the contrary, many proofs of
+his gayety--almost of his indiscretion, speaking, at all the inns,
+in terms of praise of his master and mistress.  The waiter at the
+inn at Dauphin, says he was a tall young fellow, mild and good-
+natured; 'we talked for some time about horses, and such things; he
+seemed to be perfectly natural, and not pre-occupied at all.'  At
+Pont d'Ain, he talked of his being a foundling; of the place where
+he had been brought up, and where he had served; and finally, at
+Rossillon, an hour before his death, he conversed familiarly with
+the master of the port, and spoke on indifferent subjects.
+
+"All Peytel's insinuations against his servant had no other end
+than to show, in every point of Rey's conduct, the behavior of a
+man who was premeditating attack.  Of what, in fact, does he accuse
+him?  Of wishing to rob him of 7,500 francs, and of having had
+recourse to assassination, in order to effect the robbery.  But,
+for a premeditated crime, consider what singular improvidence the
+person showed who had determined on committing it; what folly and
+what weakness there is in the execution of it.
+
+"How many insurmountable obstacles are there in the way of
+committing and profiting by crime!  On leaving Belley, Louis Rey,
+according to Peytel's statement, knowing that his master would
+return with money, provided himself with a holster pistol, which
+Madame Peytel had once before perceived among his effects.  In
+Peytel's cabinet there were some balls; four of these were found in
+Rey's trunk, on the 6th of November.  And, in order to commit the
+crime, this domestic had brought away with him a pistol, and no
+ammunition; for Peytel has informed us that Rey, an hour before his
+departure from Macon, purchased six balls at a gunsmith's.  To gain
+his point, the assassin must immolate his victims; for this, he has
+only one pistol, knowing, perfectly well, that Peytel, in all his
+travels, had two on his person; knowing that, at a late hour of the
+night, his shot might fail of effect; and that, in this case, he
+would be left to the mercy of his opponent.
+
+"The execution of the crime is, according to Peytel's account,
+still more singular.  Louis does not get off the carriage, until
+Peytel tells him to descend.  He does not think of taking his
+master's life until he is sure that the latter has his eyes open.
+It is dark, and the pair are covered in one cloak; and Rey only
+fires at them at six paces' distance: he fires at hazard, without
+disquieting himself as to the choice of his victim; and the
+soldier, who was bold enough to undertake this double murder, has
+not force nor courage to consummate it.  He flies, carrying in his
+hand a useless whip, with a heavy mantle on his shoulders, in spite
+of the detonation of two pistols at his ears, and the rapid steps
+of an angry master in pursuit, which ought to have set him upon
+some better means of escape.  And we find this man, full of youth
+and vigor, lying with his face to the ground, in the midst of a
+public road, falling without a struggle, or resistance, under the
+blows of a hammer!
+
+"And suppose the murderer had succeeded in his criminal projects,
+what fruit could he have drawn from them?--Leaving, on the road,
+the two bleeding bodies; obliged to lead two carriages at a time,
+for fear of discovery; not able to return himself, after all the
+pains he had taken to speak, at every place at which they had
+stopped, of the money which his master was carrying with him; too
+prudent to appear alone at Belley; arrested at the frontier, by the
+excise officers, who would present an impassable barrier to him
+till morning, what could he do, or hope to do?  The examination of
+the car has shown that Rey, at the moment of the crime, had neither
+linen, nor clothes, nor effects of any kind.  There was found in
+his pockets, when the body was examined, no passport, nor
+certificate; one of his pockets contained a ball, of large calibre,
+which he had shown, in play, to a girl, at the inn at Macon, a
+little horn-handled knife, a snuff-box, a little packet of
+gunpowder, and a purse, containing only a halfpenny and some
+string.  Here is all the baggage, with which, after the execution
+of his homicidal plan, Louis Rey intended to take refuge in a
+foreign country.*  Beside these absurd contradictions, there is
+another remarkable fact, which must not be passed over; it is
+this:--the pistol found by Rey is of antique form, and the original
+owner of it has been found.  He is a curiosity-merchant at Lyons;
+and, though he cannot affirm that Peytel was the person who bought
+this pistol of him, he perfectly recognizes Peytel as having been a
+frequent customer at his shop!
+
+
+* This sentence is taken from another part of the "Acte
+d'accusation."
+
+
+"No, we may fearlessly affirm that Louis Rey was not guilty of the
+crime which Peytel lays to his charge.  If, to those who knew him,
+his mild and open disposition, his military career, modest and
+without a stain, the touching regrets of his employers, are
+sufficient proofs of his innocence,--the calm and candid observer,
+who considers how the crime was conceived, was executed, and what
+consequences would have resulted from it, will likewise acquit him,
+and free him of the odious imputation which Peytel endeavors to
+cast upon his memory.
+
+"But justice has removed the veil, with which an impious hand
+endeavored to cover itself.  Already, on the night of the 1st of
+November, suspicion was awakened by the extraordinary agitation of
+Peytel; by those excessive attentions towards his wife, which came
+so late; by that excessive and noisy grief, and by those calculated
+bursts of sorrow, which are such as Nature does not exhibit.  The
+criminal, whom the public conscience had fixed upon; the man whose
+frightful combinations have been laid bare, and whose falsehoods,
+step by step, have been exposed, during the proceedings previous to
+the trial; the murderer, at whose hands a heart-stricken family,
+and society at large, demands an account of the blood of a wife;--
+that murderer is Peytel."
+
+When, my dear Briefless, you are a judge (as I make no doubt you
+will be, when you have left off the club all night, cigar-smoking
+of mornings, and reading novels in bed), will you ever find it in
+your heart to order a fellow-sinner's head off upon such evidence
+as this?  Because a romantic Substitut du Procureur de Roi chooses
+to compose and recite a little drama, and draw tears from juries,
+let us hope that severe Rhadamanthine judges are not to be melted
+by such trumpery.  One wants but the description of the characters
+to render the piece complete, as thus:--
+
+
+      Personages                             Costumes.
+
+SEBASTIAN PEYTAL  Meurtrier        Habillement complet de notaire
+                                   perfide: figure pale, barbe
+                                   noire, cheveux noirs.
+
+LOUIS REY   Soldat retire, bon,    Costume ordinaire; il porte sur
+            brave, franc, jovial   ses epaules une couverture de
+            aimant le vin, les     cheval.
+            femmes, la gaiete,
+            ses maitres surtout;
+            vrai Francais, enfin
+
+WOLF     Lieutenant de gendarmerie.
+
+FELICITE D'ALCAZAR   Femme et victime de Peytel.
+
+Medecins, Villageois, Filles d'Auberge, Garcons d'Ecurie, &c. &c.
+
+La scene se passe sur le pont d'Andert, entre Macon et Belley.  Il
+est minuit.  La pluie tombe: les tonnerres grondent.  Le ciel est
+convert de nuages, et sillonne d'eclairs.
+
+
+All these personages are brought into play in the Procureur's
+drama; the villagers come in with their chorus; the old lieutenant
+of gendarmes with his suspicions; Rey's frankness and gayety, the
+romantic circumstances of his birth, his gallantry and fidelity,
+are all introduced, in order to form a contrast with Peytel, and to
+call down the jury's indignation against the latter.  But are these
+proofs? or anything like proofs?  And the suspicions, that are to
+serve instead of proofs, what are they?
+
+"My servant, Louis Rey, was very sombre and reserved," says Peytel;
+"he refused to call me in the morning, to carry my money-chest to
+my room, to cover the open car when it rained."  The Prosecutor
+disproves this by stating that Rey talked with the inn maids and
+servants, asked if his master was up, and stood in the inn-yard,
+grooming the horses, with his master by his side, neither speaking
+to the other.  Might he not have talked to the maids, and yet been
+sombre when speaking to his master?  Might he not have neglected to
+call his master, and yet have asked whether he was awake?  Might he
+not have said that the inn-gates were safe, out of hearing of the
+ostler witness?  Mr. Substitute's answers to Peytel's statements
+are no answer at all.  Every word Peytel said might be true, and
+yet Louis Rey might not have committed the murder; or every word
+might have been false, and yet Louis Rey might have committed the
+murder.
+
+"Then," says Mr. Substitute, "how many obstacles are there to the
+commission of the crime?  And these are--
+
+"1.  Rey provided himself with ONE holster pistol, to kill two
+people, knowing well that one of them had always a brace of pistols
+about him.
+
+"2.  He does not think of firing until his master's eyes are open:
+fires at six paces, not caring at whom he fires, and then runs
+away.
+
+"3.  He could not have intended to kill his master, because he had
+no passport in his pocket, and no clothes; and because he must have
+been detained at the frontier until morning; and because he would
+have had to drive two carriages, in order to avoid suspicion.
+
+"4.  And, a most singular circumstance, the very pistol which was
+found by his side had been bought at the shop of a man at Lyons,
+who perfectly recognized Peytel as one of his customers, though he
+could not say he had sold that particular weapon to Peytel."
+
+Does it follow, from this, that Louis Rey is not the murderer, much
+more, that Peytel is?  Look at argument No. 1.  Rey had no need to
+kill two people: he wanted the money, and not the blood.  Suppose
+he had killed Peytel, would he not have mastered Madame Peytel
+easily?--a weak woman, in an excessively delicate situation,
+incapable of much energy, at the best of times.
+
+2.  "He does not fire till he knows his master's eyes are open."
+Why, on a stormy night, does a man driving a carriage go to sleep?
+Was Rey to wait until his master snored?  "He fires at six paces,
+not caring whom he hits;"--and might not this happen too?  The
+night is not so dark but that he can see his master, in HIS USUAL
+PLACE, driving.  He fires and hits--whom?  Madame Peytel, who had
+left her place, AND WAS WRAPPED UP WITH PEYTEL IN HIS CLOAK.  She
+screams out, "Husband, take your pistols."  Rey knows that his
+master has a brace, thinks that he has hit the wrong person, and,
+as Peytel fires on him, runs away.  Peytel follows, hammer in hand;
+as he comes up with the fugitive, he deals him a blow on the back
+of the head, and Rey falls--his face to the ground.  Is there
+anything unnatural in this story?--anything so monstrously unnatural,
+that is, that it might not be true?
+
+3.  These objections are absurd.  Why need a man have change of
+linen?  If he had taken none for the journey, why should he want
+any for the escape?  Why need he drive two carriages?--He might
+have driven both into the river, and Mrs. Peytel in one.  Why is he
+to go to the douane, and thrust himself into the very jaws of
+danger?  Are there not a thousand ways for a man to pass a
+frontier?  Do smugglers, when they have to pass from one country to
+another, choose exactly those spots where a police is placed?
+
+And, finally, the gunsmith of Lyons, who knows Peytel quite well,
+cannot say that he sold the pistol to him; that is, he did NOT sell
+the pistol to him; for you have only one man's word, in this case
+(Peytel's), to the contrary; and the testimony, as far as it goes,
+is in his favor.  I say, my lud, and gentlemen of the jury, that
+these objections of my learned friend, who is engaged for the
+Crown, are absurd, frivolous, monstrous; that to SUSPECT away the
+life of a man upon such suppositions as these, is wicked, illegal,
+and inhuman; and, what is more, that Louis Rey, if he wanted to
+commit the crime--if he wanted to possess himself of a large sum of
+money, chose the best time and spot for so doing; and, no doubt,
+would have succeeded, if Fate had not, in a wonderful manner,
+caused Madame Peytel TO TAKE HER HUSBAND'S PLACE, and receive the
+ball intended for him in her own head.
+
+But whether these suspicions are absurd or not, hit or miss, it is
+the advocate's duty, as it appears, to urge them.  He wants to make
+as unfavorable an impression as possible with regard to Peytel's
+character; he, therefore, must, for contrast's sake, give all sorts
+of praise to his victim, and awaken every sympathy in the poor
+fellow's favor.  Having done this, as far as lies in his power,
+having exaggerated every circumstance that can be unfavorable to
+Peytel, and given his own tale in the baldest manner possible--
+having declared that Peytel is the murderer of his wife and
+servant, the Crown now proceeds to back this assertion, by showing
+what interested motives he had, and by relating, after its own
+fashion, the circumstances of his marriage.
+
+They may be told briefly here.  Peytel was of a good family, of
+Macon, and entitled, at his mother's death, to a considerable
+property.  He had been educated as a notary, and had lately
+purchased a business, in that line, in Belley, for which he had
+paid a large sum of money; part of the sum, 15,000 francs, for
+which he had given bills, was still due.
+
+Near Belley, Peytel first met Felicite Alcazar, who was residing
+with her brother-in-law, Monsieur de Montrichard; and, knowing that
+the young lady's fortune was considerable, he made an offer of
+marriage to the brother-in-law, who thought the match advantageous,
+and communicated on the subject with Felicite's mother, Madame
+Alcazar, at Paris.  After a time Peytel went to Paris, to press his
+suit, and was accepted.  There seems to have been no affectation of
+love on his side; and some little repugnance on the part of the
+lady, who yielded, however, to the wishes of her parents, and was
+married.  The parties began to quarrel on the very day of the
+marriage, and continued their disputes almost to the close of the
+unhappy connection.  Felicite was half blind, passionate, sarcastic,
+clumsy in her person and manners, and ill educated; Peytel, a man of
+considerable intellect and pretensions, who had lived for some time
+at Paris, where he had mingled with good literary society.  The lady
+was, in fact, as disagreeable a person as could well be, and the
+evidence describes some scenes which took place between her and her
+husband, showing how deeply she must have mortified and enraged him.
+
+A charge very clearly made out against Peytel, is that of dishonesty;
+he procured from the notary of whom he bought his place an
+acquittance in full, whereas there were 15,000 francs owing, as we
+have seen.  He also, in the contract of marriage, which was to have
+resembled, in all respects, that between Monsieur Broussais and
+another Demoiselle Alcazar, caused an alteration to be made in his
+favor, which gave him command over his wife's funded property,
+without furnishing the guarantees by which the other son-in-law was
+bound.  And, almost immediately after his marriage, Peytel sold out
+of the funds a sum of 50,000 francs, that belonged to his wife, and
+used it for his own purposes.
+
+About two months after his marriage, PEYTEL PRESSED HIS WIFE TO
+MAKE HER WILL.  He had made his, he said, leaving everything to
+her, in case of his death: after some parley, the poor thing
+consented.*  This is a cruel suspicion against him; and Mr.
+Substitute has no need to enlarge upon it.  As for the previous
+fact, the dishonest statement about the 15,000 francs, there is
+nothing murderous in that--nothing which a man very eager to make
+a good marriage might not do.  The same may be said of the
+suppression, in Peytel's marriage contract, of the clause to be
+found in Broussais's, placing restrictions upon the use of the
+wife's money.  Mademoiselle d'Alcazar's friends read the contract
+before they signed it, and might have refused it, had they so
+pleased.
+
+
+* "Peytel," says the act of accusation, "did not fail to see the
+danger which would menace him, if this will (which had escaped the
+magistrates in their search of Peytel's papers) was discovered.
+He, therefore, instructed his agent to take possession of it, which
+he did, and the fact was not mentioned for several months
+afterwards.  Peytel and his agent were called upon to explain the
+circumstance, but refused, and their silence for a long time
+interrupted the 'instruction'" (getting up of the evidence).  "All
+that could be obtained from them was an avowal, that such a will
+existed, constituting Peytel his wife's sole legatee; and a
+promise, on their parts, to produce it before the court gave its
+sentence."  But why keep the will secret?  The anxiety about it was
+surely absurd and unnecessary: the whole of Madame Peytel's family
+knew that such a will was made.  She had consulted her sister
+concerning it, who said--"If there is no other way of satisfying
+him, make the will;" and the mother, when she heard of it, cried
+out--"Does he intend to poison her?"
+
+
+After some disputes, which took place between Peytel and his wife
+(there were continual quarrels, and continual letters passing
+between them from room to room), the latter was induced to write
+him a couple of exaggerated letters, swearing "by the ashes of her
+father" that she would be an obedient wife to him, and entreating
+him to counsel and direct her.  These letters were seen by members
+of the lady's family, who, in the quarrels between the couple,
+always took the husband's part.  They were found in Peytel's
+cabinet, after he had been arrested for the murder, and after he
+had had full access to all his papers, of which he destroyed or
+left as many as he pleased.  The accusation makes it a matter of
+suspicion against Peytel, that he should have left these letters of
+his wife's in a conspicuous situation.
+
+"All these circumstances," says the accusation, "throw a frightful
+light upon Peytel's plans.  The letters and will of Madame Peytel
+are in the hands of her husband.  Three months pass away, and this
+poor woman is brought to her home, in the middle of the night, with
+two balls in her head, stretched at the bottom of her carriage, by
+the side of a peasant."
+
+"What other than Sebastian Peytel could have committed this
+murder?--whom could it profit?--who but himself had an odious chain
+to break, and an inheritance to receive?  Why speak of the
+servant's projected robbery?  The pistols found by the side of
+Louis's body, the balls bought by him at Macon, and those
+discovered at Belley among his effects, were only the result of a
+perfidious combination.  The pistol, indeed, which was found on the
+hill of Darde, on the night of the 1st of November, could only have
+belonged to Peytel, and must have been thrown by him, near the body
+of his domestic, with the paper which had before enveloped it.
+Who had seen this pistol in the hands of Louis?  Among all the
+gendarmes, work-women, domestics, employed by Peytel and his
+brother-in-law, is there one single witness who had seen this
+weapon in Louis's possession?  It is true that Madame Peytel did,
+on one occasion, speak to M. de Montrichard of a pistol; which had
+nothing to do, however, with that found near Louis Rey."
+
+Is this justice, or good reason?  Just reverse the argument, and
+apply it to Rey.  "Who but Rey could have committed this murder?--
+who but Rey had a large sum of money to seize upon?--a pistol is
+found by his side, balls and powder in his pocket, other balls in
+his trunks at home.  The pistol found near his body could not,
+indeed, have belonged to Peytel: did any man ever see it in his
+possession?  The very gunsmith who sold it, and who knew Peytel,
+would he not have known that he had sold him this pistol?  At his
+own house, Peytel has a collection of weapons of all kinds;
+everybody has seen them--a man who makes such collections is
+anxious to display them.  Did any one ever see this weapon?--Not
+one.  And Madame Peytel did, in her lifetime, remark a pistol in
+the valet's possession.  She was short-sighted, and could not
+particularize what kind of pistol it was; but she spoke of it to
+her husband and her brother-in-law."  This is not satisfactory, if
+you please; but, at least, it is as satisfactory as the other set
+of suppositions.  It is the very chain of argument which would have
+been brought against Louis Rey by this very same compiler of the
+act of accusation, had Rey survived, instead of Peytel, and had he,
+as most undoubtedly would have been the case, been tried for the
+murder.
+
+This argument was shortly put by Peytel's counsel:--"if Peytel had
+been killed by Rey in the struggle, would you not have found Rey
+guilty of the murder of his master and mistress?"  It is such a
+dreadful dilemma, that I wonder how judges and lawyers could have
+dared to persecute Peytel in the manner which they did.
+
+After the act of accusation, which lays down all the suppositions
+against Peytel as facts, which will not admit the truth of one of
+the prisoner's allegations in his own defence, comes the trial.
+The judge is quite as impartial as the preparer of the indictment,
+as will be seen by the following specimens of his interrogatories:--
+
+Judge.  "The act of accusation finds in your statement
+contradictions, improbabilities, impossibilities.  Thus your
+domestic, who had determined to assassinate you, in order to rob
+you, and who MUST HAVE CALCULATED UPON THE CONSEQUENCE OF A
+FAILURE, had neither passport nor money upon him.  This is very
+unlikely; because he could not have gone far with only a single
+halfpenny, which was all he had."
+
+Prisoner.  "My servant was known, and often passed the frontier
+without a passport."
+
+Judge.  "YOUR DOMESTIC HAD TO ASSASSINATE TWO PERSONS, and had no
+weapon but a single pistol.  He had no dagger; and the only thing
+found on him was a knife."
+
+Prisoner.  "In the car there were several turner's implements,
+which he might have used."
+
+Judge.  "But he had not those arms upon him, because you pursued
+him immediately.  He had, according to you, only this old pistol."
+
+Prisoner.  "I have nothing to say."
+
+Judge.  "Your domestic, instead of flying into woods, which skirt
+the road, ran straight forward on the road itself: THIS, AGAIN, IS
+VERY UNLIKELY."
+
+Prisoner.  "This is a conjecture I could answer by another
+conjecture; I can only reason on the facts."
+
+Judge.  "How far did you pursue him?"
+
+Prisoner.  "I don't know exactly."
+
+Judge.  "You said 'two hundred paces.'"
+
+No answer from the prisoner.
+
+Judge.  "Your domestic was young, active, robust, and tall.  He was
+ahead of you.  You were in a carriage, from which you had to
+descend: you had to take your pistols from a cushion, and THEN your
+hammer;--how are we to believe that you could have caught him, if
+he ran?  It is IMPOSSIBLE."
+
+Prisoner.  "I can't explain it: I think that Rey had some defect in
+one leg.  I, for my part, run tolerably fast."
+
+Judge.  "At what distance from him did you fire your first shot?"
+
+Prisoner.  "I can't tell."
+
+Judge.  "Perhaps he was not running when you fired."
+
+Prisoner.  "I saw him running."
+
+Judge.  "In what position was your wife?"
+
+Prisoner.  "She was leaning on my left arm, and the man was on the
+right side of the carriage."
+
+Judge.  "The shot must have been fired a bout portant, because it
+burned the eyebrows and lashes entirely.  The assassin must have
+passed his pistol across your breast."
+
+Prisoner.  "The shot was not fired so close; I am convinced of it:
+professional gentlemen will prove it."
+
+Judge.  "That is what you pretend, because you understand perfectly
+the consequences of admitting the fact.  Your wife was hit with two
+balls--one striking downwards, to the right, by the nose, the other
+going horizontally through the cheek, to the left."
+
+Prisoner.  "The contrary will be shown by the witnesses called for
+the purpose."
+
+Judge.  "IT IS A VERY UNLUCKY COMBINATION FOR YOU that these balls,
+which went, you say, from the same pistol, should have taken two
+different directions."
+
+Prisoner.  "I can't dispute about the various combinations of fire-
+arms--professional persons will be heard."
+
+Judge.  "According to your statement, your wife said to you, 'My
+poor husband, take your pistols.'"
+
+Prisoner.  "She did."
+
+Judge.  "In a manner quite distinct."
+
+Prisoner.  "Yes."
+
+Judge.  "So distinct that you did not fancy she was hit?"
+
+Prisoner.  "Yes; that is the fact."
+
+Judge.  "HERE, AGAIN, IS AN IMPOSSIBILITY; and nothing is more
+precise than the declaration of the medical men.  They affirm that
+your wife could not have spoken--their report is unanimous."
+
+Prisoner.  "I can only oppose to it quite contrary opinions from
+professional men, also: you must hear them."
+
+Judge.  "What did your wife do next?"
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+Judge.  "You deny the statements of the witnesses:" (they related
+to Peytel's demeanor and behavior, which the judge wishes to show
+were very unusual;--and what if they were?)  "Here, however, are
+some mute witnesses, whose testimony, you will not perhaps refuse.
+Near Louis Rey's body was found a horse-cloth, a pistol, and a
+whip. . . . .  Your domestic must have had this cloth upon him when
+he went to assassinate you: it was wet and heavy.  An assassin
+disencumbers himself of anything that is likely to impede him,
+especially when he is going to struggle with a man as young as
+himself."
+
+Prisoner.  "My servant had, I believe, this covering on his body;
+it might be useful to him to keep the priming of his pistol dry."
+
+The president caused the cloth to be opened, and showed that there
+was no hook, or tie, by which it could be held together; and that
+Rey must have held it with one hand, and, in the other, his whip,
+and the pistol with which he intended to commit the crime; which
+was impossible.
+
+Prisoner.  "These are only conjectures."
+
+And what conjectures, my God! upon which to take away the life of a
+man.  Jeffreys, or Fouquier Tinville, could scarcely have dared to
+make such.  Such prejudice, such bitter persecution, such priming
+of the jury, such monstrous assumptions and unreason--fancy them
+coming from an impartial judge!  The man is worse than the public
+accuser.
+
+"Rey," says the Judge, "could not have committed the murder,
+BECAUSE HE HAD NO MONEY IN HIS POCKET, TO FLY, IN CASE OF FAILURE."
+And what is the precise sum that his lordship thinks necessary for
+a gentleman to have, before he makes such an attempt?  Are the men
+who murder for money, usually in possession of a certain
+independence before they begin?  How much money was Rey, a servant,
+who loved wine and women, had been stopping at a score of inns on
+the road, and had, probably, an annual income of 400 francs,--how
+much money was Rey likely to have?
+
+"Your servant had to assassinate two persons."  This I have
+mentioned before.  Why had he to assassinate two persons,* when one
+was enough?  If he had killed Peytel, could he not have seized and
+gagged his wife immediately?
+
+
+* M. Balzac's theory of the case is, that Rey had intrigued with
+Madame Peytel; having known her previous to her marriage, when she
+was staying in the house of her brother-in-law, Monsieur de
+Montrichard, where Rey had been a servant.
+
+
+"Your domestic ran straight forward, instead of taking to the
+woods, by the side of the rood: this is very unlikely."  How does
+his worship know?  Can any judge, however enlightened, tell the
+exact road that a man will take, who has just missed a coup of
+murder, and is pursued by a man who is firing pistols at him?  And
+has a judge a right to instruct a jury in this way, as to what they
+shall, or shall not, believe?
+
+"You have to run after an active man, who has the start of you: to
+jump out of a carriage; to take your pistols; and THEN, your
+hammer.  THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE."  By heavens! does it not make a man's
+blood boil, to read such blundering, blood-seeking sophistry?  This
+man, when it suits him, shows that Rey would be slow in his
+motions; and when it suits him, declares that Rey ought to be
+quick; declares ex cathedra, what pace Rey should go, and what
+direction he should take; shows, in a breath, that he must have run
+faster than Peytel; and then, that he could not run fast, because
+the cloak clogged him; settles how he is to be dressed when he
+commits a murder, and what money he is to have in his pocket; gives
+these impossible suppositions to the jury, and tells them that the
+previous statements are impossible; and, finally, informs them of
+the precise manner in which Rey must have stood holding his horse-
+cloth in one hand, his whip and pistol in the other, when he made
+the supposed attempt at murder.  Now, what is the size of a horse-
+cloth?  Is it as big as a pocket-handkerchief?  Is there no
+possibility that it might hang over one shoulder; that the whip
+should be held under that very arm?  Did you never see a carter so
+carry it, his hands in his pockets all the while?  Is it monstrous,
+abhorrent to nature, that a man should fire a pistol from under a
+cloak on a rainy day?--that he should, after firing the shot, be
+frightened, and run; run straight before him, with the cloak on his
+shoulders, and the weapon in his hand?  Peytel's story is possible,
+and very possible; it is almost probable.  Allow that Rey had the
+cloth on, and you allow that he must have been clogged in his
+motions; that Peytel may have come up with him--felled him with a
+blow of the hammer; the doctors say that he would have so fallen by
+one blow--he would have fallen on his face, as he was found: the
+paper might have been thrust into his breast, and tumbled out as he
+fell.  Circumstances far more impossible have occurred ere this;
+and men have been hanged for them, who were as innocent of the
+crime laid to their charge as the judge on the bench, who convicted
+them.
+
+In like manner, Peytel may not have committed the crime charged to
+him; and Mr. Judge, with his arguments as to possibilities and
+impossibilities,--Mr. Public Prosecutor, with his romantic
+narrative and inflammatory harangues to the jury,--may have used
+all these powers to bring to death an innocent man.  From the
+animus with which the case had been conducted from beginning to
+end, it was easy to see the result.  Here it is, in the words of
+the provincial paper:--
+
+
+BOURG, 28 October, 1839.
+
+"The condemned Peytel has just undergone his punishment, which took
+place four days before the anniversary of his crime.  The terrible
+drama of the bridge of Andert, which cost the life of two persons,
+has just terminated on the scaffold.  Mid-day had just sounded on
+the clock of the Palais: the same clock tolled midnight when, on
+the 30th of August, his sentence was pronounced.
+
+"Since the rejection of his appeal in Cassation, on which his
+principal hopes were founded, Peytel spoke little of his petition
+to the King.  The notion of transportation was that which he seemed
+to cherish most.  However, he made several inquiries from the
+gaoler of the prison, when he saw him at meal-time, with regard to
+the place of execution, the usual hour, and other details on the
+subject.  From that period, the words 'Champ de Foire' (the fair-
+field, where the execution was to be held), were frequently used by
+him in conversation.
+
+"Yesterday, the idea that the time had arrived seemed to be more
+strongly than ever impressed upon him; especially after the
+departure of the cure, who latterly has been with him every day.
+The documents connected with the trial had arrived in the morning.
+He was ignorant of this circumstance, but sought to discover from
+his guardians what they tried to hide from him; and to find out
+whether his petition was rejected, and when he was to die.
+
+"Yesterday, also, he had written to demand the presence of his
+counsel, M. Margerand, in order that he might have some
+conversation with him, and regulate his affairs, before he ----; he
+did not write down the word, but left in its place a few points of
+the pen.
+
+"In the evening, whilst he was at supper, he begged earnestly to be
+allowed a little wax-candle, to finish what he was writing:
+otherwise, he said, TIME MIGHT FAIL.  This was a new, indirect
+manner of repeating his ordinary question.  As light, up to that
+evening, had been refused him, it was thought best to deny him in
+this, as in former instances; otherwise his suspicions might have
+been confirmed.  The keeper refused his demand.
+
+"This morning, Monday, at nine o'clock, the Greffier of the Assize
+Court, in fulfilment of the painful duty which the law imposes upon
+him, came to the prison, in company with the cure of Bourg, and
+announced to the convict that his petition was rejected, and that
+he had only three hours to live.  He received this fatal news with
+a great deal of calmness, and showed himself to be no more affected
+than he had been on the trial.  'I am ready; but I wish they had
+given me four-and-twenty hours' notice,'--were all the words he
+used.
+
+"The Greffier now retired, leaving Peytel alone with the cure, who
+did not thenceforth quit him.  Peytel breakfasted at ten o'clock.
+
+"At eleven, a piquet of mounted gendarmerie and infantry took their
+station upon the place before the prison, where a great concourse
+of people had already assembled.  An open car was at the door.
+Before he went out Peytel asked the gaoler for a looking-glass;
+and having examined his face for a moment, said, 'At least, the
+inhabitants of Bourg will see that I have not grown thin.'
+
+"As twelve o'clock sounded, the prison gates opened, an aide
+appeared, followed by Peytel, leaning on the arm of the cure.
+Peytel's face was pale, he had a long black beard, a blue cap on
+his head, and his great-coat flung over his shoulders, and buttoned
+at the neck.
+
+"He looked about at the place and the crowd; he asked if the
+carriage would go at a trot; and on being told that that would be
+difficult, he said he would prefer walking, and asked what the road
+was.  He immediately set out, walking at a firm and rapid pace.  He
+was not bound at all.
+
+"An immense crowd of people encumbered the two streets through
+which he had to pass to the place of execution.  He cast his eyes
+alternately upon them and upon the guillotine, which was before
+him.
+
+"Arrived at the foot of the scaffold, Peytel embraced the cure, and
+bade him adieu.  He then embraced him again; perhaps, for his
+mother and sister.  He then mounted the steps rapidly, and gave
+himself into the hands of the executioner, who removed his coat and
+cap.  He asked how he was to place himself, and on a sign being
+made, he flung himself briskly on the plank, and stretched his
+neck.  In another moment he was no more.
+
+"The crowd, which had been quite silent, retired, profoundly moved
+by the sight it had witnessed.  As at all executions, there was a
+very great number of women present.
+
+"Under the scaffold there had been, ever since the morning, a
+coffin.  The family had asked for his remains, and had them
+immediately buried, privately: and thus the unfortunate man's head
+escaped the modellers in wax, several of whom had arrived to take
+an impression of it."
+
+Down goes the axe; the poor wretch's head rolls gasping into the
+basket; the spectators go home, pondering; and Mr. Executioner and
+his aides have, in half an hour, removed all traces of the august
+sacrifice, and of the altar on which it had been performed.  Say,
+Mr. Briefless, do you think that any single person, meditating
+murder, would be deterred therefrom by beholding this--nay, a
+thousand more executions?  It is not for moral improvement, as I
+take it, nor for opportunity to make appropriate remarks upon the
+punishment of crime, that people make a holiday of a killing-day,
+and leave their homes and occupations, to flock and witness the
+cutting off of a head.  Do we crowd to see Mr. Macready in the new
+tragedy, or Mademoiselle Ellssler in her last new ballet and flesh-
+colored stockinnet pantaloons, out of a pure love of abstract
+poetry and beauty; or from a strong notion that we shall be
+excited, in different ways, by the actor and the dancer?  And so,
+as we go to have a meal of fictitious terror at the tragedy, of
+something more questionable in the ballet, we go for a glut of
+blood to the execution.  The lust is in every man's nature, more or
+less.  Did you ever witness a wrestling or boxing match?  The first
+clatter of the kick on the shins, or the first drawing of blood,
+makes the stranger shudder a little; but soon the blood is his
+chief enjoyment, and he thirsts for it with a fierce delight.  It
+is a fine grim pleasure that we have in seeing a man killed; and I
+make no doubt that the organs of destructiveness must begin to
+throb and swell as we witness the delightful savage spectacle.
+
+Three or four years back, when Fieschi and Lacenaire were executed,
+I made attempts to see the execution of both; but was disappointed
+in both cases.  In the first instance, the day for Fieschi's death
+was, purposely, kept secret; and he was, if I remember rightly,
+executed at some remote quarter of the town.  But it would have
+done a philanthropist good, to witness the scene which we saw on
+the morning when his execution did NOT take place.
+
+It was carnival time, and the rumor had pretty generally been
+carried abroad that he was to die on that morning.  A friend, who
+accompanied me, came many miles, through the mud and dark, in order
+to be in at the death.  We set out before light, floundering
+through the muddy Champs Elysees; where, besides, were many other
+persons floundering, and all bent upon the same errand.  We passed
+by the Concert of Musard, then held in the Rue St. Honore; and
+round this, in the wet, a number of coaches were collected.  The
+ball was just up, and a crowd of people in hideous masquerade,
+drunk, tired, dirty, dressed in horrible old frippery, and daubed
+with filthy rouge, were trooping out of the place: tipsy women and
+men, shrieking, jabbering, gesticulating, as French will do;
+parties swaggering, staggering forwards, arm in arm, reeling to and
+fro across the street, and yelling songs in chorus: hundreds of
+these were bound for the show, and we thought ourselves lucky in
+finding a vehicle to the execution place, at the Barriere d'Enfer.
+As we crossed the river and entered the Enfer Street, crowds of
+students, black workmen, and more drunken devils from more carnival
+balls, were filling it; and on the grand place there were thousands
+of these assembled, looking out for Fiaschi and his cortege.  We
+waited and waited; but alas! no fun for us that morning: no throat-
+cutting; no august spectacle of satisfied justice; and the eager
+spectators were obliged to return, disappointed of their expected
+breakfast of blood.  It would have been a fine scene, that
+execution, could it but have taken place in the midst of the mad
+mountebanks and tipsy strumpets who had flocked so far to witness
+it, wishing to wind up the delights of their carnival by a
+bonnebouche of a murder.
+
+The other attempt was equally unfortunate.  We arrived too late on
+the ground to be present at the execution of Lacenaire and his co-
+mate in murder, Avril.  But as we came to the ground (a gloomy
+round space, within the barrier--three roads lead to it; and,
+outside, you see the wine-shops and restaurateurs' of the barrier
+looking gay and inviting,)--as we came to the ground, we only
+found, in the midst of it, a little pool of ice, just partially
+tinged with red.  Two or three idle street-boys were dancing and
+stamping about this pool; and when I asked one of them whether the
+execution had taken place, he began dancing more madly than ever,
+and shrieked out with a loud fantastical, theatrical voice, "Venez
+tous Messieurs et Dames, voyez ici le sang du monstre Lacenaire, et
+de son compagnon he traitre Avril," or words to that effect; and
+straightway all the other gamins screamed out the words in chorus,
+and took hands and danced round the little puddle.
+
+O august Justice, your meal was followed by a pretty appropriate
+grace!  Was any man, who saw the show, deterred, or frightened, or
+moralized in any way?  He had gratified his appetite for blood, and
+this was all.  There is something singularly pleasing, both in the
+amusement of execution-seeing, and in the results.  You are not
+only delightfully excited at the time, but most pleasingly relaxed
+afterwards; the mind, which has been wound up painfully until now,
+becomes quite complacent and easy.  There is something agreeable in
+the misfortunes of others, as the philosopher has told us.  Remark
+what a good breakfast you eat after an execution; how pleasant it
+is to cut jokes after it, and upon it.  This merry, pleasant mood
+is brought on by the blood tonic.
+
+But, for God's sake, if we are to enjoy this, let us do so in
+moderation; and let us, at least, be sure of a man's guilt before
+we murder him.  To kill him, even with the full assurance that he
+is guilty is hazardous enough.  Who gave you the right to do so?--
+you, who cry out against suicides, as impious and contrary to
+Christian law?  What use is there in killing him?  You deter no one
+else from committing the crime by so doing: you give us, to be
+sure, half an hour's pleasant entertainment; but it is a great
+question whether we derive much moral profit from the sight.  If
+you want to keep a murderer from farther inroads upon society, are
+there not plenty of hulks and prisons, God wot; treadmills,
+galleys, and houses of correction?  Above all, as in the case of
+Sebastian Peytel and his family, there have been two deaths
+already; was a third death absolutely necessary? and, taking the
+fallibility of judges and lawyers into his heart, and remembering
+the thousand instances of unmerited punishment that have been
+suffered, upon similar and stronger evidence before, can any man
+declare, positively and upon his oath, that Peytel was guilty, and
+that this was not THE THIRD MURDER IN THE FAMILY?
+
+
+
+
+FOUR IMITATIONS OF BERANGER
+
+
+LE ROI D'YVETOT.
+
+
+Il etait un roi d'Yvetot,
+  Peu connu dans l'histoire;
+Se levant tard, se couchant tot,
+  Dormant fort bien sans gloire,
+Et couronne par Jeanneton
+D'un simple bonnet de coton,
+             Dit-on.
+    Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah!
+    Quel bon petit roi c'etait la!
+             La, la.
+
+Il fesait ses quatre repas
+  Dans son palais de chaume,
+Et sur un ane, pas a pas,
+  Parcourait son royaume.
+Joyeux, simple et croyant le bien,
+Pour toute garde il n'avait rien
+             Qu'un chien.
+    Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! &c.
+             La, la.
+
+Il n'avait de gout onereux
+  Qu'une soif un peu vive;
+Mais, en rendant son peuple heureux,
+  Il faux bien qu'un roi vive.
+Lui-meme a table, et sans suppot,
+Sur chaque muid levait un pot
+             D'impot.
+    Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! &c.
+             La, la.
+
+Aux filles de bonnes maisons
+  Comme il avait su plaire,
+Ses sujets avaient cent raisons
+  De le nommer leur pere:
+D'ailleurs il ne levait de ban
+Que pour tirer quatre fois l'an
+             Au blanc.
+    Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! &c.
+             La, la.
+
+Il n'agrandit point ses etats,
+  Fut un voisin commode,
+Et, modele des potentats,
+  Prit le plaisir pour code.
+Ce n'est que lorsqu'il expira,
+Que le peuple qui l'enterra
+             Pleura.
+    Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! &c.
+             La, la.
+
+On conserve encor le portrait
+  De ce digne et bon prince;
+C'est l'enseigne d'un cabaret
+  Fameux dans la province.
+Les jours de fete, bien souvent,
+La foule s'ecrie en buvant
+             Devant:
+    Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah!
+    Quel bon petit roi c'etait la!
+             La, la.
+
+
+
+THE KING OF YVETOT.
+
+
+There was a king of Yvetot,
+  Of whom renown hath little said,
+Who let all thoughts of glory go,
+  And dawdled half his days a-bed;
+And every night, as night came round,
+By Jenny, with a nightcap crowned,
+            Slept very sound:
+     Sing ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he!
+     That's the kind of king for me.
+
+And every day it came to pass,
+  That four lusty meals made he;
+And, step by step, upon an ass,
+  Rode abroad, his realms to see;
+And wherever he did stir,
+What think you was his escort, sir?
+            Why, an old cur.
+     Sing ho, ho, ho! &c.
+
+If e'er he went into excess,
+  'Twas from a somewhat lively thirst;
+But he who would his subjects bless,
+  Odd's fish!--must wet his whistle first;
+And so from every cask they got,
+Our king did to himself allot,
+            At least a pot.
+     Sing ho, ho! &c.
+
+To all the ladies of the land,
+  A courteous king, and kind, was he;
+The reason why you'll understand,
+  They named him Pater Patriae.
+Each year he called his fighting men,
+And marched a league from home, and then
+            Marched back again.
+     Sing ho, ho! &c.
+
+Neither by force nor false pretence,
+  He sought to make his kingdom great,
+And made (O princes, learn from hence),--
+  "Live and let live," his rule of state.
+'Twas only when he came to die,
+That his people who stood by,
+            Were known to cry.
+     Sing ho, ho! &c.
+
+The portrait of this best of kings
+  Is extant still, upon a sign
+That on a village tavern swings,
+  Famed in the country for good wine.
+The people in their Sunday trim,
+Filling their glasses to the brim,
+            Look up to him,
+     Singing ha, ha, ha! and he, he, he!
+     That's the sort of king for me.
+
+
+
+THE KING OF BRENTFORD.
+
+ANOTHER VERSION.
+
+
+There was a king in Brentford,--of whom no legends tell,
+But who, without his glory,--could eat and sleep right well.
+His Polly's cotton nightcap,--it was his crown of state,
+He slept of evenings early,--and rose of mornings late.
+
+All in a fine mud palace,--each day he took four meals,
+And for a guard of honor,--a dog ran at his heels,
+Sometimes, to view his kingdoms,--rode forth this monarch good,
+And then a prancing jackass--he royally bestrode.
+
+There were no costly habits--with which this king was curst,
+Except (and where's the harm on't?)--a somewhat lively thirst;
+But people must pay taxes,--and kings must have their sport,
+So out of every gallon--His Grace he took a quart.
+
+He pleased the ladies round him,--with manners soft and bland;
+With reason good, they named him,--the father of his land.
+Each year his mighty armies--marched forth in gallant show;
+Their enemies were targets--their bullets they were tow.
+
+He vexed no quiet neighbor,--no useless conquest made,
+But by the laws of pleasure,--his peaceful realm he swayed.
+And in the years he reigned,--through all this country wide,
+There was no cause for weeping,--save when the good man died.
+
+The faithful men of Brentford,--do still their king deplore,
+His portrait yet is swinging,--beside an alehouse door.
+And topers, tender-hearted,--regard his honest phiz,
+And envy times departed--that knew a reign like his.
+
+
+
+LE GRENIER.
+
+
+Je viens revoir l'asile ou ma jeunesse
+De la misere a subi les lecons.
+J'avais vingt ans, une folle maitresse,
+De francs amis et l'amour des chansons
+Bravant le monde et les sots et les sages,
+Sans avenir, riche de mon printemps,
+Leste et joyeux je montais six etages.
+Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt ans!
+
+C'est un grenier, point ne veux qu'on l'ignore.
+La fut mon lit, bien chetif et bien dur;
+La fut ma table; et je retrouve encore
+Trois pieds d'un vers charbonnes sur le mur.
+Apparaissez, plaisirs de mon bel age,
+Que d'un coup d'aile a fustiges le temps,
+Vingt fois pour vous j'ai mis ma montre en gage.
+Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt ans!
+
+Lisette ici doit surtout apparaitre,
+Vive, jolie, avec un frais chapeau;
+Deja sa main a l'etroite fenetre
+Suspend son schal, en guise de rideau.
+Sa robe aussi va parer ma couchette;
+Respecte, Amour, ses plis longs et flottans.
+J'ai su depuis qui payait sa toilette.
+Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt ans!
+
+A table un jour, jour de grande richesse,
+De mes amis les voix brillaient en choeur,
+Quand jusqu'ici monte un cri d'allegresse:
+A Marengo Bonaparte est vainqueur.
+Le canon gronde; un autre chant commence;
+Nous celebrons tant de faits eclatans.
+Les rois jamais n'envahiront la France.
+Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt ans!
+
+Quittons ce toit ou ma raison s'enivre.
+Oh! qu'ils sont loin ces jours si regrettes!
+J'echangerais ce qu'il me reste a vivre
+Contre un des mois qu'ici Dieu m'a comptes,
+Pour rever gloire, amour, plaisir, folie,
+Pour depenser sa vie en peu d'instans,
+D'un long espoir pour la voir embellie,
+Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt ans!
+
+
+
+THE GARRET.
+
+
+With pensive eyes the little room I view,
+  Where, in my youth, I weathered it so long;
+With a wild mistress, a stanch friend or two,
+  And a light heart still breaking into song:
+Making a mock of life, and all its cares,
+  Rich in the glory of my rising sun,
+Lightly I vaulted up four pair of stairs,
+  In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
+
+Yes; 'tis a garret--let him know't who will--
+  There was my bed--full hard it was and small.
+My table there--and I decipher still
+  Half a lame couplet charcoaled on the wall.
+Ye joys, that Time hath swept with him away,
+  Come to mine eyes, ye dreams of love and fun;
+For you I pawned my watch how many a day,
+  In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
+
+And see my little Jessy, first of all;
+  She comes with pouting lips and sparkling eyes:
+Behold, how roguishly she pins her shawl
+  Across the narrow casement, curtain-wise;
+Now by the bed her petticoat glides down,
+  And when did woman look the worse in none?
+I have heard since who paid for many a gown,
+  In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
+
+One jolly evening, when my friends and I
+  Made happy music with our songs and cheers,
+A shout of triumph mounted up thus high,
+  And distant cannon opened on our ears:
+We rise,--we join in the triumphant strain,--
+  Napoleon conquers--Austerlitz is won--
+Tyrants shall never tread us down again,
+  In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
+
+Let us begone--the place is sad and strange--
+  How far, far off, these happy times appear;
+All that I have to live I'd gladly change
+  For one such month as I have wasted here--
+To draw long dreams of beauty, love, and power,
+  From founts of hope that never will outrun,
+And drink all life's quintessence in an hour,
+  Give me the days when I was twenty-one!
+
+
+
+ROGER-BONTEMPS.
+
+
+Aux gens atrabilaires
+Pour exemple donne,
+En un temps de miseres
+Roger-Bontemps est ne.
+Vivre obscur a sa guise,
+Narguer les mecontens:
+Eh gai! c'est la devise
+Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+Du chapeau de son pere
+Coiffe dans le grands jours,
+De roses ou de lierre
+Le rajeunir toujours;
+Mettre un manteau de bure,
+Vieil ami de vingt ans;
+Eh gai! c'est la parure
+Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+Posseder dans sa hutte
+Une table, un vieux lit,
+Des cartes, une flute,
+Un broc que Dieu remplit;
+Un portrait de maitresse,
+Un coffre et rien dedans;
+Eh gai! c'est la richesse
+Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+Aux enfans de la ville
+Montrer de petits jeux;
+Etre fesseur habile
+De contes graveleux;
+Ne parler que de danse
+Et d'almanachs chantans;
+Eh gai! c'est la science
+Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+Faute de vins d'elite,
+Sabler ceux du canton:
+Preferer Marguerite
+Aux dames du grand ton:
+De joie et de tendresse
+Remplir tous ses instans;
+Eh gai! c'est la sagesse
+Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+Dire au ciel: Je me fie,
+Mon pere, a ta bonte;
+De ma philosophie
+Pardonne le gaite
+Que ma saison derniere
+Soit encore un printemps;
+Eh gai! c'est la priere
+Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+Vous, pauvres pleins d'envie,
+Vous, riches desireux,
+Vous, dont le char devie
+Apres un cours heureux;
+Vous, qui perdrez peut-etre
+Des titres eclatans,
+Eh gai! prenez pour maitre
+Le gros Roger Bontemps.
+
+
+
+JOLLY JACK.
+
+
+When fierce political debate
+  Throughout the isle was storming,
+And Rads attacked the throne and state,
+  And Tories the reforming,
+To calm the furious rage of each,
+  And right the land demented,
+Heaven sent us Jolly Jack, to teach
+ The way to be contented.
+
+Jack's bed was straw, 'twas warm and soft,
+  His chair, a three-legged stool;
+His broken jug was emptied oft,
+  Yet, somehow, always full.
+His mistress' portrait decked the wall,
+  His mirror had a crack;
+Yet, gay and glad, though this was all
+  His wealth, lived Jolly Jack.
+
+To give advice to avarice,
+  Teach pride its mean condition,
+And preach good sense to dull pretence,
+  Was honest Jack's high mission.
+Our simple statesman found his rule
+  Of moral in the flagon,
+And held his philosophic school
+  Beneath the "George and Dragon."
+
+When village Solons cursed the Lords,
+  And called the malt-tax sinful,
+Jack heeded not their angry words,
+  But smiled and drank his skinful.
+And when men wasted health and life,
+  In search of rank and riches,
+Jack marked, aloof, the paltry strife,
+  And wore his threadbare breeches.
+
+"I enter not the church," he said,
+  But I'll not seek to rob it;"
+So worthy Jack Joe Miller read,
+  While others studied Cobbett.
+His talk it was of feast and fun;
+  His guide the Almanack;
+From youth to age thus gayly run
+  The life of Jolly Jack.
+
+And when Jack prayed, as oft he would,
+  He humbly thanked his Maker;
+"I am," said he, "O Father good!
+  Nor Catholic nor Quaker:
+Give each his creed, let each proclaim
+  His catalogue of curses;
+I trust in Thee, and not in them,
+  In Thee, and in Thy mercies!
+
+"Forgive me if, midst all Thy works,
+  No hint I see of damning;
+And think there's faith among the Turks,
+  And hope for e'en the Brahmin.
+Harmless my mind is, and my mirth,
+  And kindly is my laughter:
+I cannot see the smiling earth,
+  And think there's hell hereafter."
+
+Jack died; he left no legacy,
+  Save that his story teaches:--
+Content to peevish poverty;
+  Humility to riches.
+Ye scornful great, ye envious small,
+  Come follow in his track;
+We all were happier, if we all
+  Would copy JOLLY JACK.
+
+
+
+
+FRENCH DRAMAS AND MELODRAMAS.
+
+
+There are three kinds of drama in France, which you may subdivide
+as much as you please.
+
+There is the old classical drama, wellnigh dead, and full time too:
+old tragedies, in which half a dozen characters appear, and spout
+sonorous Alexandrines for half a dozen hours.  The fair Rachel has
+been trying to revive this genre, and to untomb Racine; but be not
+alarmed, Racine will never come to life again, and cause audiences
+to weep as of yore.  Madame Rachel can only galvanize the corpse,
+not revivify it.  Ancient French tragedy, red-heeled, patched, and
+be-periwigged, lies in the grave; and it is only the ghost of it
+that we see, which the fair Jewess has raised.  There are classical
+comedies in verse, too, wherein the knavish valets, rakish heroes,
+stolid old guardians, and smart, free-spoken serving-women,
+discourse in Alexandrines, as loud as the Horaces or the Cid.  An
+Englishman will seldom reconcile himself to the roulement of the
+verses, and the painful recurrence of the rhymes; for my part, I
+had rather go to Madame Saqui's or see Deburau dancing on a rope:
+his lines are quite as natural and poetical.
+
+Then there is the comedy of the day, of which Monsieur Scribe is
+the father.  Good heavens! with what a number of gay colonels,
+smart widows, and silly husbands has that gentleman peopled the
+play-books.  How that unfortunate seventh commandment has been
+maltreated by him and his disciples.  You will see four pieces, at
+the Gymnase, of a night; and so sure as you see them, four husbands
+shall be wickedly used.  When is this joke to cease?  Mon Dieu!
+Play-writers have handled it for about two thousand years, and the
+public, like a great baby, must have the tale repeated to it over
+and over again.
+
+Finally, there is the Drama, that great monster which has sprung
+into life of late years; and which is said, but I don't believe a
+word of it, to have Shakspeare for a father.  If Monsieur Scribe's
+plays may be said to be so many ingenious examples how to break one
+commandment, the drame is a grand and general chaos of them all;
+nay, several crimes are added, not prohibited in the Decalogue,
+which was written before dramas were.  Of the drama, Victor Hugo
+and Dumas are the well-known and respectable guardians.  Every
+piece Victor Hugo has written, since "Hernani," has contained a
+monster--a delightful monster, saved by one virtue.  There is
+Triboulet, a foolish monster; Lucrece Borgia, a maternal monster;
+Mary Tudor, a religious monster; Monsieur Quasimodo, a humpback
+monster; and others, that might be named, whose monstrosities we
+are induced to pardon--nay, admiringly to witness--because they are
+agreeably mingled with some exquisite display of affection.  And,
+as the great Hugo has one monster to each play, the great Dumas
+has, ordinarily, half a dozen, to whom murder is nothing; common
+intrigue, and simple breakage of the before-mentioned commandment,
+nothing; but who live and move in a vast, delightful complication
+of crime, that cannot be easily conceived in England, much less
+described.
+
+When I think over the number of crimes that I have seen Mademoiselle
+Georges, for instance, commit, I am filled with wonder at her
+greatness, and the greatness of the poets who have conceived these
+charming horrors for her.  I have seen her make love to, and murder,
+her sons, in the "Tour de Nesle."  I have seen her poison a company
+of no less than nine gentlemen, at Ferrara, with an affectionate son
+in the number; I have seen her, as Madame de Brinvilliers, kill off
+numbers of respectable relations in the first four acts; and, at the
+last, be actually burned at the stake, to which she comes shuddering,
+ghastly, barefooted, and in a white sheet.  Sweet excitement of
+tender sympathies!  Such tragedies are not so good as a real,
+downright execution; but, in point of interest, the next thing to
+it: with what a number of moral emotions do they fill the breast;
+with what a hatred for vice, and yet a true pity and respect for
+that grain of virtue that is to be found in us all: our bloody,
+daughter-loving Brinvilliers; our warmhearted, poisonous Lucretia
+Borgia; above all, what a smart appetite for a cool supper
+afterwards, at the Cafe Anglais, when the horrors of the play act
+as a piquant sauce to the supper!
+
+Or, to speak more seriously, and to come, at last, to the point.
+After having seen most of the grand dramas which have been produced
+at Paris for the last half-dozen years, and thinking over all that
+one has seen,--the fictitious murders, rapes, adulteries, and other
+crimes, by which one has been interested and excited,--a man may
+take leave to be heartily ashamed of the manner in which he has
+spent his time; and of the hideous kind of mental intoxication in
+which he has permitted himself to indulge.
+
+Nor are simple society outrages the only sort of crime in which the
+spectator of Paris plays has permitted himself to indulge; he has
+recreated himself with a deal of blasphemy besides, and has passed
+many pleasant evenings in beholding religion defiled and ridiculed.
+
+Allusion has been made, in a former paper, to a fashion that lately
+obtained in France, and which went by the name of Catholic
+reaction; and as, in this happy country, fashion is everything, we
+have had not merely Catholic pictures and quasi religious books,
+but a number of Catholic plays have been produced, very edifying to
+the frequenters of the theatres or the Boulevards, who have learned
+more about religion from these performances than they have
+acquired, no doubt, in the whole of their lives before.  In the
+course of a very few years we have seen--"The Wandering Jew;"
+"Belshazzar's Feast;" "Nebuchadnezzar:" and the "Massacre of the
+Innocents;" "Joseph and his Brethren;" "The Passage of the Red
+Sea;" and "The Deluge."
+
+The great Dumas, like Madame Sand before mentioned, has brought a
+vast quantity of religion before the foot-lights.  There was his
+famous tragedy of "Caligula," which, be it spoken to the shame of
+the Paris critics, was coldly received; nay, actually hissed, by
+them.  And why?  Because, says Dumas, it contained a great deal too
+much piety for the rogues.  The public, he says, was much more
+religious, and understood him at once.
+
+"As for the critics," says he, nobly, "let those who cried out
+against the immorality of Antony and Marguerite de Bourgogne,
+reproach me for THE CHASTITY OF MESSALINA."  (This dear creature is
+the heroine of the play of "Caligula.")  "It matters little to me.
+These people have but seen the form of my work: they have walked
+round the tent, but have not seen the arch which it covered; they
+have examined the vases and candles of the altar, but have not
+opened the tabernacle!
+
+"The public alone has, instinctively, comprehended that there was,
+beneath this outward sign, an inward and mysterious grace: it
+followed the action of the piece in all its serpentine windings; it
+listened for four hours, with pious attention (avec recueillement
+et religion), to the sound of this rolling river of thoughts, which
+may have appeared to it new and bold, perhaps, but chaste and
+grave; and it retired, with its head on its breast, like a man who
+had just perceived, in a dream, the solution of a problem which he
+has long and vainly sought in his waking hours."
+
+You see that not only Saint Sand is an apostle, in her way; but
+Saint Dumas is another.  We have people in England who write for
+bread, like Dumas and Sand, and are paid so much for their line;
+but they don't set up for prophets.  Mrs. Trollope has never
+declared that her novels are inspired by heaven; Mr. Buckstone has
+written a great number of farces, and never talked about the altar
+and the tabernacle.  Even Sir Edward Bulwer (who, on a similar
+occasion, when the critics found fault with a play of his, answered
+them by a pretty decent declaration of his own merits,) never
+ventured to say that he had received a divine mission, and was
+uttering five-act revelations.
+
+All things considered, the tragedy of "Caligula" is a decent
+tragedy; as decent as the decent characters of the hero and heroine
+can allow it to be; it may be almost said, provokingly decent: but
+this, it must be remembered, is the characteristic of the modern
+French school (nay, of the English school too); and if the writer
+take the character of a remarkable scoundrel, it is ten to one but
+he turns out an amiable fellow, in whom we have all the warmest
+sympathy.  "Caligula" is killed at the end of the performance;
+Messalina is comparatively well-behaved; and the sacred part of the
+performance, the tabernacle-characters apart from the mere "vase"
+and "candlestick" personages, may be said to be depicted in the
+person of a Christian convert, Stella, who has had the good fortune
+to be converted by no less a person than Mary Magdalene, when she,
+Stella, was staying on a visit to her aunt, near Narbonne.
+
+
+STELLA (Continuant.)                   Voila
+Que je vois s'avancer, sans pilote et sans rames,
+Une barque portant deux hommes et deux femmes,
+Et, spectacle inoui qui me ravit encor,
+Tous quatre avaient au front une aureole d'or
+D'ou partaient des rayons de si vive lumiere
+Que je fus obligee a baisser la paupiere;
+Et, lorsque je rouvris les yeux avec effroi,
+Les voyageurs divins etaient aupres de moi.
+Un jour de chacun d'eux et dans toute sa gloire
+Je te raconterai la marveilleuse histoire,
+Et tu l'adoreras, j'espere; en ce moment,
+Ma mere, il te suffit de savoir seulement
+Que tous quatre venaient du fond de la Syrie:
+Un edit les avait bannis de leur patrie,
+Et, se faisant bourreaux, des hommes irrites,
+Sans avirons, sans eau, sans pain et garrotes,
+Sur une frele barque echouee au rivage,
+Les avaient a la mer pousses dans un orage.
+Mais a peine l'esquif eut-il touche les flots
+Qu'au cantique chante par les saints matelots,
+L'ouragan replia ses ailes fremissantes,
+Que la mer aplanit ses vagues mugissantes,
+Et qu'un soleil plus pur, reparaissant aux cieux,
+Enveloppa l'esquif d'un cercle radieux! . . .
+
+JUNIA.--Mais c'etait un prodige.
+
+STELLA.--                        Un miracle, ma mere!
+Leurs fers tomberent seuls, l'eau cessa d'etre amere,
+Et deux fois chaque jour le bateau fut couvert
+D'une manne pareille a celle du desert:
+C'est ainsi que, pousses par une main celeste,
+Je les vis aborder.
+
+JUNIA.--             Oh! dis vite le reste!
+
+STELLA.--A l'aube, trois d'entre eux quitterent la maison:
+Marthe prit le chemin qui mene a Tarascon,
+Lazare et Maximin celui de Massilie,
+Et celle qui resta . . . . C'ETAIT LA PLUS JOLIE, (how truly French!)
+Nous faisant appeler vers le milieu du jour,
+Demanda si les monts ou les bois d'alentour
+Cachaient quelque retraite inconnue et profonde,
+Qui la put separer a tout jamais du monde. . . . .
+Aquila se souvint qu'il avait penetre
+Dans un antre sauvage et de tous ignore,
+Grotte creusee aux flancs de ces Alpes sublimes,
+Ou l'aigle fait son aire au-dessus des abimes.
+Il offrit cet asile, et des le lendemain
+Tous deux, pour l'y guider, nous etions en chemin.
+Le soir du second jour nous touchames sa base:
+La, tombant a genoux dans une sainte extase,
+Elle pria long-temps, puis vers l'antre inconnu,
+Denouant se chaussure, elle marcha pied nu.
+Nos prieres, nos cris resterent sans reponses:
+Au milieu des cailloux, des epines, des ronces,
+Nous la vimes monter, un baton a la main,
+Et ce n'est qu'arrivee au terme du chemin,
+Qu'enfin elle tomba sans force et sans haleine . . . .
+
+JUNIA.--Comment la nommait-on, ma fille?
+
+STELLA.--                                Madeleine.
+
+
+Walking, says Stella, by the sea-shore, "A bark drew near, that had
+nor sail nor oar; two women and two men the vessel bore: each of
+that crew, 'twas wondrous to behold, wore round his head a ring of
+blazing gold; from which such radiance glittered all around, that I
+was fain to look towards the ground.  And when once more I raised
+my frightened eyne, before me stood the travellers divine; their
+rank, the glorious lot that each befell, at better season, mother,
+will I tell.  Of this anon: the time will come when thou shalt
+learn to worship as I worship now.  Suffice it, that from Syria's
+land they came; an edict from their country banished them.  Fierce,
+angry men had seized upon the four, and launched them in that
+vessel from the shore.  They launched these victims on the waters
+rude; nor rudder gave to steer, nor bread for food.  As the doomed
+vessel cleaves the stormy main, that pious crew uplifts a sacred
+strain; the angry waves are silent as it sings; the storm, awe-
+stricken, folds its quivering wings.  A purer sun appears the
+heavens to light, and wraps the little bark in radiance bright.
+
+"JUNIA.--Sure, 'twas a prodigy.
+
+"STELLA.--A miracle.  Spontaneous from their hands the fetters
+fell.  The salt sea-wave grew fresh, and, twice a day, manna (like
+that which on the desert lay) covered the bark and fed them on
+their way.  Thus, hither led, at heaven's divine behest, I saw them
+land--
+
+"JUNIA.--My daughter, tell the rest.
+
+"STELLA.--Three of the four, our mansion left at dawn.  One,
+Martha, took the road to Tarascon; Lazarus and Maximin to Massily;
+but one remained (the fairest of the three), who asked us, if i'
+the woods or mountains near, there chanced to be some cavern lone
+and drear; where she might hide, for ever, from all men.  It
+chanced, my cousin knew of such a den; deep hidden in a mountain's
+hoary breast, on which the eagle builds his airy nest.  And thither
+offered he the saint to guide.  Next day upon the journey forth we
+hied; and came, at the second eve, with weary pace, unto the lonely
+mountain's rugged base.  Here the worn traveller, falling on her
+knee, did pray awhile in sacred ecstasy; and, drawing off her
+sandals from her feet, marched, naked, towards that desolate
+retreat.  No answer made she to our cries or groans; but walking
+midst the prickles and rude stones, a staff in hand, we saw her
+upwards toil; nor ever did she pause, nor rest the while, save at
+the entry of that savage den.  Here, powerless and panting, fell
+she then.
+
+"JUNIA.--What was her name, my daughter?
+
+"STELLA.                                 MAGDALEN."
+
+
+Here the translator must pause--having no inclination to enter "the
+tabernacle," in company with such a spotless high-priest as
+Monsieur Dumas.
+
+Something "tabernacular" may be found in Dumas's famous piece of
+"Don Juan de Marana."  The poet has laid the scene of his play in a
+vast number of places: in heaven (where we have the Virgin Mary and
+little angels, in blue, swinging censers before her!)--on earth,
+under the earth, and in a place still lower, but not mentionable to
+ears polite; and the plot, as it appears from a dialogue between a
+good and a bad angel, with which the play commences, turns upon a
+contest between these two worthies for the possession of the soul
+of a member of the family of Marana.
+
+"Don Juan de Marana" not only resembles his namesake, celebrated by
+Mozart and Moliere, in his peculiar successes among the ladies, but
+possesses further qualities which render his character eminently
+fitting for stage representation: he unites the virtues of Lovelace
+and Lacenaire; he blasphemes upon all occasions; he murders, at the
+slightest provocation, and without the most trifling remorse; he
+overcomes ladies of rigid virtue, ladies of easy virtue, and ladies
+of no virtue at all; and the poet, inspired by the contemplation of
+such a character, has depicted his hero's adventures and
+conversation with wonderful feeling and truth.
+
+The first act of the play contains a half-dozen of murders and
+intrigues; which would have sufficed humbler genius than M.
+Dumas's, for the completion of, at least, half a dozen tragedies.
+In the second act our hero flogs his elder brother, and runs away
+with his sister-in-law; in the third, he fights a duel with a
+rival, and kills him: whereupon the mistress of his victim takes
+poison, and dies, in great agonies, on the stage.  In the fourth
+act, Don Juan, having entered a church for the purpose of carrying
+off a nun, with whom he is in love, is seized by the statue of one
+of the ladies whom he has previously victimized, and made to behold
+the ghosts of all those unfortunate persons whose deaths he has
+caused.
+
+This is a most edifying spectacle.  The ghosts rise solemnly, each
+in a white sheet, preceded by a wax-candle; and, having declared
+their names and qualities, call, in chorus, for vengeance upon Don
+Juan, as thus:--
+
+
+DON SANDOVAL loquitur.
+
+"I am Don Sandoval d'Ojedo.  I played against Don Juan my fortune,
+the tomb of my fathers, and the heart of my mistress;--I lost all:
+I played against him my life, and I lost it.  Vengeance against the
+murderer! vengeance!"--(The candle goes out.)
+
+
+THE CANDLE GOES OUT, and an angel descends--a flaming sword in his
+hand--and asks: "Is there no voice in favor of Don Juan?" when lo!
+Don Juan's father (like one of those ingenious toys called "Jack-
+in-the-box,") jumps up from his coffin, and demands grace for his
+son.
+
+When Martha the nun returns, having prepared all things for her
+elopement, she finds Don Juan fainting upon the ground.--"I am no
+longer your husband," says he, upon coming to himself; "I am no
+longer Don Juan; I am Brother Juan the Trappist.  Sister Martha,
+recollect that you must die!"
+
+This was a most cruel blow upon Sister Martha, who is no less a
+person than an angel, an angel in disguise--the good spirit of the
+house of Marana, who has gone to the length of losing her wings and
+forfeiting her place in heaven, in order to keep company with Don
+Juan on earth, and, if possible, to convert him.  Already, in her
+angelic character, she had exhorted him to repentance, but in vain;
+for, while she stood at one elbow, pouring not merely hints, but
+long sermons, into his ear, at the other elbow stood a bad spirit,
+grinning and sneering at all her pious counsels, and obtaining by
+far the greater share of the Don's attention.
+
+In spite, however, of the utter contempt with which Don Juan treats
+her,--in spite of his dissolute courses, which must shock her
+virtue,--and his impolite neglect, which must wound her vanity, the
+poor creature (who, from having been accustomed to better company,
+might have been presumed to have had better taste), the unfortunate
+angel feels a certain inclination for the Don, and actually flies
+up to heaven to ask permission to remain with him on earth.
+
+And when the curtain draws up, to the sound of harps, and discovers
+white-robed angels walking in the clouds, we find the angel of
+Marana upon her knees, uttering the following address:--
+
+
+LE BON ANGE.
+
+Vierge, a qui le calice a la liqueur amere
+      Fut si souvent offert,
+Mere, que l'on nomma la douloureuse mere,
+      Tant vous avez souffert!
+
+Vous, dont les yeux divins sur la terre des hommes
+      Ont verse plus de pleurs
+Que vos pieds n'ont depuis, dans le ciel ou nous sommes,
+      Fait eclore de fleurs.
+
+Vase d'election, etoile matinale,
+     Miroir de purete,
+Vous qui priez pour nous, d'une voix virginale,
+     La supreme bonte;
+
+A mon tour, aujourd'hui, bienheureuse Marie,
+     Je tombe a vos genoux;
+Daignez donc m'ecouter, car c'est vous que je prie,
+     Vous qui priez pour nous.
+
+
+Which may be thus interpreted:--
+
+
+O Virgin blest! by whom the bitter draught
+     So often has been quaffed,
+That, for thy sorrow, thou art named by us
+     The Mother Dolorous!
+
+Thou, from whose eyes have fallen more tears of woe,
+     Upon the earth below,
+Than 'neath thy footsteps, in this heaven of ours,
+     Have risen flowers!
+
+O beaming morning star! O chosen vase!
+     O mirror of all grace!
+Who, with thy virgin voice, dost ever pray
+     Man's sins away;
+
+Bend down thine ear, and list, O blessed saint!
+     Unto my sad complaint;
+Mother! to thee I kneel, on thee I call,
+     Who hearest all.
+
+
+She proceeds to request that she may be allowed to return to earth,
+and follow the fortunes of Don Juan; and, as there is one
+difficulty, or, to use her own words,--
+
+
+Mais, comme vous savez qu'aux voutes eternelles,
+     Malgre moi, tend mon vol,
+Soufflez sur mon etoile et detachez mes ailes,
+     Pour m'enchainer au sol;
+
+
+her request is granted, her star is BLOWN OUT (O poetic allusion!)
+and she descends to earth to love, and to go mad, and to die for
+Don Juan!
+
+The reader will require no further explanation, in order to be
+satisfied as to the moral of this play: but is it not a very bitter
+satire upon the country, which calls itself the politest nation in
+the world, that the incidents, the indecency, the coarse blasphemy,
+and the vulgar wit of this piece, should find admirers among the
+public, and procure reputation for the author?  Could not the
+Government, which has re-established, in a manner, the theatrical
+censorship, and forbids or alters plays which touch on politics,
+exert the same guardianship over public morals?  The honest English
+reader, who has a faith in his clergyman, and is a regular
+attendant at Sunday worship, will not be a little surprised at the
+march of intellect among our neighbors across the Channel, and at
+the kind of consideration in which they hold their religion.  Here
+is a man who seizes upon saints and angels, merely to put sentiments
+in their mouths which might suit a nymph of Drury Lane. He shows
+heaven, in order that he may carry debauch into it; and avails
+himself of the most sacred and sublime parts of our creed as a
+vehicle for a scene-painter's skill, or an occasion for a handsome
+actress to wear a new dress.
+
+M. Dumas's piece of "Kean" is not quite so sublime; it was brought
+out by the author as a satire upon the French critics, who, to
+their credit be it spoken, had generally attacked him, and was
+intended by him, and received by the public, as a faithful
+portraiture of English manners.  As such, it merits special
+observation and praise.  In the first act you find a Countess and
+an Ambassadress, whose conversation relates purely to the great
+actor.  All the ladies in London are in love with him, especially
+the two present.  As for the Ambassadress, she prefers him to her
+husband (a matter of course in all French plays), and to a more
+seducing person still--no less a person than the Prince of Wales!
+who presently waits on the ladies, and joins in their conversation
+concerning Kean.  "This man," says his Royal Highness, "is the very
+pink of fashion.  Brummell is nobody when compared to him; and I
+myself only an insignificant private gentleman.  He has a
+reputation among ladies, for which I sigh in vain; and spends an
+income twice as great as mine."  This admirable historic touch at
+once paints the actor and the Prince; the estimation in which the
+one was held, and the modest economy for which the other was so
+notorious.
+
+Then we have Kean, at a place called the Trou de Charbon, the "Coal
+Hole," where, to the edification of the public, he engages in a
+fisty combat with a notorious boxer.  This scene was received by
+the audience with loud exclamations of delight, and commented on,
+by the journals, as a faultless picture of English manners.  "The
+Coal Hole" being on the banks of the Thames, a nobleman--LORD
+MELBOURN!--has chosen the tavern as a rendezvous for a gang of
+pirates, who are to have their ship in waiting, in order to carry
+off a young lady with whom his lordship is enamored.  It need not
+be said that Kean arrives at the nick of time, saves the innocent
+Meess Anna, and exposes the infamy of the Peer.  A violent tirade
+against noblemen ensues, and Lord Melbourn slinks away, disappointed,
+to meditate revenge.  Kean's triumphs continue through all the acts:
+the Ambassadress falls madly in love with him; the Prince becomes
+furious at his ill success, and the Ambassador dreadfully jealous.
+They pursue Kean to his dressing-room at the theatre; where,
+unluckily, the Ambassadress herself has taken refuge.  Dreadful
+quarrels ensue; the tragedian grows suddenly mad upon the stage, and
+so cruelly insults the Prince of Wales that his Royal Highness
+determines to send HIM TO BOTANY BAY.  His sentence, however, is
+commuted to banishment to New York; whither, of course, Miss Anna
+accompanies him; rewarding him, previously, with her hand and twenty
+thousand a year!
+
+This wonderful performance was gravely received and admired by the
+people of Paris: the piece was considered to be decidedly moral,
+because the popular candidate was made to triumph throughout, and
+to triumph in the most virtuous manner; for, according to the
+French code of morals, success among women is, at once, the proof
+and the reward of virtue.
+
+The sacred personage introduced in Dumas's play behind a cloud,
+figures bodily in the piece of the Massacre of the Innocents,
+represented at Paris last year.  She appears under a different
+name, but the costume is exactly that of Carlo Dolce's Madonna; and
+an ingenious fable is arranged, the interest of which hangs upon
+the grand Massacre of the Innocents, perpetrated in the fifth act.
+One of the chief characters is Jean le Precurseur, who threatens
+woe to Herod and his race, and is beheaded by orders of that
+sovereign.
+
+In the Festin de Balthazar, we are similarly introduced to Daniel,
+and the first scene is laid by the waters of Babylon, where a
+certain number of captive Jews are seated in melancholy postures; a
+Babylonian officer enters, exclaiming, "Chantez nous quelques
+chansons de Jerusalem," and the request is refused in the language
+of the Psalm.  Belshazzar's Feast is given in a grand tableau,
+after Martin's picture.  That painter, in like manner, furnished
+scenes for the Deluge.  Vast numbers of schoolboys and children are
+brought to see these pieces; the lower classes delight in them.
+The famous Juif Errant, at the theatre of the Porte St. Martin, was
+the first of the kind, and its prodigious success, no doubt,
+occasioned the number of imitations which the other theatres have
+produced.
+
+The taste of such exhibitions, of course, every English person will
+question; but we must remember the manners of the people among whom
+they are popular; and, if I may be allowed to hazard such an
+opinion, there is in every one of these Boulevard mysteries, a kind
+of rude moral.  The Boulevard writers don't pretend to "tabernacles"
+and divine gifts, like Madame Sand and Dumas before mentioned.  If
+they take a story from the sacred books, they garble it without
+mercy, and take sad liberties with the text; but they do not deal in
+descriptions of the agreeably wicked, or ask pity and admiration for
+tender-hearted criminals and philanthropic murderers, as their
+betters do.  Vice is vice on the Boulevard; and it is fine to hear
+the audience, as a tyrant king roars out cruel sentences of death,
+or a bereaved mother pleads for the life of her child, making their
+remarks on the circumstances of the scene.  "Ah, le gredin!" growls
+an indignant countryman.  "Quel monstre!" says a grisette, in a
+fury.  You see very fat old men crying like babies, and, like
+babies, sucking enormous sticks of barley-sugar.  Actors and audience
+enter warmly into the illusion of the piece; and so especially are
+the former affected, that at Franconi's, where the battles of the
+Empire are represented, there is as regular gradation in the ranks
+of the mimic army as in the real imperial legions.  After a man has
+served, with credit, for a certain number of years in the line, he
+is promoted to be an officer--an acting officer.  If he conducts
+himself well, he may rise to be a Colonel or a General of Division;
+if ill, he is degraded to the ranks again; or, worst degradation of
+all, drafted into a regiment of Cossacks or Austrians.  Cossacks is
+the lowest depth, however; nay, it is said that the men who perform
+these Cossack parts receive higher wages than the mimic grenadiers
+and old guard.  They will not consent to be beaten every night, even
+in play; to be pursued in hundreds, by a handful of French; to fight
+against their beloved Emperor.  Surely there is fine hearty virtue
+in this, and pleasant child-like simplicity.
+
+So that while the drama of Victor Hugo, Dumas, and the enlightened
+classes, is profoundly immoral and absurd, the DRAMA of the common
+people is absurd, if you will, but good and right-hearted.  I have
+made notes of one or two of these pieces, which all have good
+feeling and kindness in them, and which turn, as the reader will
+see, upon one or two favorite points of popular morality.  A drama
+that obtained a vast success at the Porte Saint Martin was "La
+Duchesse de la Vauballiere."  The Duchess is the daughter of a poor
+farmer, who was carried off in the first place, and then married by
+M. le Duc de la Vauballiere, a terrible roue, the farmer's
+landlord, and the intimate friend of Philippe d'Orleans, the Regent
+of France.
+
+Now the Duke, in running away with the lady, intended to dispense
+altogether with ceremony, and make of Julie anything but his wife;
+but Georges, her father, and one Morisseau, a notary, discovered
+him in his dastardly act, and pursued him to the very feet of the
+Regent, who compelled the pair to marry and make it up.
+
+Julie complies; but though she becomes a Duchess, her heart remains
+faithful to her old flame, Adrian, the doctor; and she declares
+that, beyond the ceremony, no sort of intimacy shall take place
+between her husband and herself.
+
+Then the Duke begins to treat her in the most ungentleman-like
+manner: he abuses her in every possible way; he introduces improper
+characters into her house; and, finally, becomes so disgusted with
+her, that he determines to make away with her altogether.
+
+For this purpose, he sends forth into the highways and seizes a
+doctor, bidding him, on pain of death, to write a poisonous
+prescription for Madame la Duchesse.  She swallows the potion; and
+O horror! the doctor turns out to be Dr. Adrian; whose woe may be
+imagined, upon finding that he has been thus committing murder on
+his true love!
+
+Let not the reader, however, be alarmed as to the fate of the
+heroine; no heroine of a tragedy ever yet died in the third act;
+and, accordingly, the Duchess gets up perfectly well again in the
+fourth, through the instrumentality of Morisseau, the good lawyer.
+
+And now it is that vice begins to be really punished.  The Duke,
+who, after killing his wife, thinks it necessary to retreat, and
+take refuge in Spain, is tracked to the borders of that country by
+the virtuous notary, and there receives such a lesson as he will
+never forget to his dying day.
+
+Morisseau, in the first instance, produces a deed (signed by his
+Holiness the Pope), which annuls the marriage of the Duke de la
+Vauballiere; then another deed, by which it is proved that he was
+not the eldest son of old La Vauballiere, the former Duke; then
+another deed, by which he shows that old La Vauballiere (who seems
+to have been a disreputable old fellow) was a bigamist, and that,
+in consequence, the present man, styling himself Duke, is
+illegitimate; and finally, Morisseau brings forward another
+document, which proves that the REG'LAR Duke is no other than
+Adrian, the doctor!
+
+Thus it is that love, law, and physic combined, triumph over the
+horrid machinations of this star-and-gartered libertine.
+
+"Hermann l'Ivrogne" is another piece of the same order; and though
+not very refined, yet possesses considerable merit.  As in the case
+of the celebrated Captain Smith of Halifax, who "took to drinking
+ratafia, and thought of poor Miss Bailey,"--a woman and the bottle
+have been the cause of Hermann's ruin.  Deserted by his mistress,
+who has been seduced from him by a base Italian Count, Hermann, a
+German artist, gives himself entirely up to liquor and revenge: but
+when he finds that force, and not infidelity, have been the cause
+of his mistress's ruin, the reader can fancy the indignant ferocity
+with which he pursues the infame ravisseur.  A scene, which is
+really full of spirit, and excellently well acted, here ensues!
+Hermann proposes to the Count, on the eve of their duel, that the
+survivor should bind himself to espouse the unhappy Marie; but the
+Count declares himself to be already married, and the student,
+finding a duel impossible (for his object was to restore, at all
+events, the honor of Marie), now only thinks of his revenge, and
+murders the Count.  Presently, two parties of men enter Hermann's
+apartment: one is a company of students, who bring him the news
+that he has obtained the prize of painting; the other the
+policemen, who carry him to prison, to suffer the penalty of
+murder.
+
+I could mention many more plays in which the popular morality is
+similiarly expressed.  The seducer, or rascal of the piece, is
+always an aristocrat,--a wicked count, or licentious marquis, who
+is brought to condign punishment just before the fall of the
+curtain.  And too good reason have the French people had to lay
+such crimes to the charge of the aristocracy, who are expiating
+now, on the stage, the wrongs which they did a hundred years since.
+The aristocracy is dead now; but the theatre lives upon traditions:
+and don't let us be too scornful at such simple legends as are
+handed down by the people from race to race.  Vulgar prejudice
+against the great it may be; but prejudice against the great is
+only a rude expression of sympathy with the poor; long, therefore,
+may fat epiciers blubber over mimic woes, and honest proletaires
+shake their fists, shouting--"Gredin, scelerat, monstre de
+marquis!" and such republican cries.
+
+Remark, too, another development of this same popular feeling of
+dislike against men in power.  What a number of plays and legends
+have we (the writer has submitted to the public, in the preeeding
+pages, a couple of specimens; one of French, and the other of
+Polish origin,) in which that great and powerful aristocrat,
+the Devil, is made to be miserably tricked, humiliated, and
+disappointed?  A play of this class, which, in the midst of all its
+absurdities and claptraps, had much of good in it, was called "Le
+Maudit des Mers."  Le Maudit is a Dutch captain, who, in the midst
+of a storm, while his crew were on their knees at prayers,
+blasphemed and drank punch; but what was his astonishment at
+beholding an archangel with a sword all covered with flaming resin,
+who told him that as he, in this hour of danger, was too daring, or
+too wicked, to utter a prayer, he never should cease roaming the
+seas until he could find some being who would pray to heaven for
+him!
+
+Once only, in a hundred years, was the skipper allowed to land for
+this purpose; and this piece runs through four centuries, in as
+many acts, describing the agonies and unavailing attempts of the
+miserable Dutchman.  Willing to go any lengths in order to obtain
+his prayer, he, in the second act, betrays a Virgin of the Sun to a
+follower of Pizarro: and, in the third, assassinates the heroic
+William of Nassau; but ever before the dropping of the curtain, the
+angel and sword make their appearance--"Treachery," says the
+spirit, "cannot lessen thy punishment;--crime will not obtain thy
+release--A la mer! a la mer!" and the poor devil returns to the
+ocean, to be lonely, and tempest-tossed, and sea-sick for a hundred
+years more.
+
+But his woes are destined to end with the fourth act.  Having
+landed in America, where the peasants on the sea-shore, all dressed
+in Italian costumes, are celebrating, in a quadrille, the victories
+of Washington, he is there lucky enough to find a young girl to
+pray for him.  Then the curse is removed, the punishment is over,
+and a celestial vessel, with angels on the decks and "sweet little
+cherubs" fluttering about the shrouds and the poop, appear to
+receive him.
+
+This piece was acted at Franconi's, where, for once, an angel-ship
+was introduced in place of the usual horsemanship.
+
+One must not forget to mention here, how the English nation is
+satirized by our neighbors; who have some droll traditions
+regarding us.  In one of the little Christmas pieces produced at
+the Palais Royal (satires upon the follies of the past twelve
+months, on which all the small theatres exhaust their wit), the
+celebrated flight of Messrs. Green and Monck Mason was parodied,
+and created a good deal of laughter at the expense of John Bull.
+Two English noblemen, Milor Cricri and Milor Hanneton, appear as
+descending from a balloon, and one of them communicates to the
+public the philosophic observations which were made in the course
+of his aerial tour.
+
+"On leaving Vauxhall," says his lordship, "we drank a bottle of
+Madeira, as a health to the friends from whom we parted, and
+crunched a few biscuits to support nature during the hours before
+lunch.  In two hours we arrived at Canterbury, enveloped in clouds:
+lunch, bottled porter: at Dover, carried several miles in a tide of
+air, bitter cold, cherry-brandy; crossed over the Channel safely,
+and thought with pity of the poor people who were sickening in the
+steamboats below: more bottled porter: over Calais, dinner, roast-
+beef of Old England; near Dunkirk,--night falling, lunar rainbow,
+brandy-and-water; night confoundedly thick; supper, nightcap of
+rum-punch, and so to bed.  The sun broke beautifully through the
+morning mist, as we boiled the kettle and took our breakfast over
+Cologne.  In a few more hours we concluded this memorable voyage,
+and landed safely at Weilburg, in good time for dinner."
+
+The joke here is smart enough; but our honest neighbors make many
+better, when they are quite unconscious of the fun.  Let us leave
+plays, for a moment, for poetry, and take an instance of French
+criticism, concerning England, from the works of a famous French
+exquisite and man of letters.  The hero of the poem addresses his
+mistress--
+
+
+Londres, tu le sais trop, en fait de capitale,
+Est-ce que fit le ciel de plus froid et plus pale,
+C'est la ville du gaz, des marins, du brouillard;
+On s'y couche a minuit, et l'on s'y leve tard;
+Ses raouts tant vantes ne sont qu'une boxade,
+Sur ses grands quais jamais echelle ou serenade,
+Mais de volumineux bourgeois pris de porter
+Qui passent sans lever le front a Westminster;
+Et n'etait sa foret de mats percant la brume,
+Sa tour dont a minuit le vieil oeil s'allume,
+Et tes deux yeux, Zerline, illumines bien plus,
+Je dirais que, ma foi, des romans que j'ai lus,
+Il n'en est pas un seul, plus lourd, plus lethargique
+Que cette nation qu'on nomme Britannique!
+
+
+The writer of the above lines (which let any man who can translate)
+is Monsieur Roger de Beauvoir, a gentleman who actually lived many
+months in England, as an attache to the embassy of M. de Polignac.
+He places the heroine of his tale in a petit reduit pres le Strand,
+"with a green and fresh jalousie, and a large blind, let down all
+day; you fancied you were entering a bath of Asia, as soon as you
+had passed the perfumed threshold of this charming retreat!"  He
+next places her--
+
+
+Dans un square ecarte, morne et couverte de givre,
+Ou se cache un hotel, aux vieux lions de cuivre;
+
+
+and the hero of the tale, a young French poet, who is in London, is
+truly unhappy in that village.
+
+
+Arthur desseche et meurt.  Dans la ville de Sterne,
+Rien qu'en voyant le peuple il a le mal de mer
+Il n'aime ni le Parc, gai comme une citerne,
+Ni le tir au pigeon, ni le soda-water.
+
+Liston ne le fait plus sourciller!  Il rumine
+Sur les trottoirs du Strand, droit comme un echiquier,
+Contre le peuple anglais, les negres, la vermine,
+Et les mille cokneys du peuple boutiquier,
+
+Contre tous les bas-bleus, contre les patissieres,
+Les parieurs d'Epsom, le gin, le parlement,
+La quaterly, le roi, la pluie et les libraires,
+Dont il ne touche plus, helas! un sou d'argent!
+
+Et chaque gentleman lui dit: L'heureux poete!
+
+
+"L'heureux poete" indeed!  I question if a poet in this wide world
+is so happy as M. de Beauvoir, or has made such wonderful
+discoveries.  "The bath of Asia, with green jalousies," in which
+the lady dwells; "the old hotel, with copper lions, in a lonely
+square;"--were ever such things heard of, or imagined, but by a
+Frenchman?  The sailors, the negroes, the vermin, whom he meets in
+the street,--how great and happy are all these discoveries!  Liston
+no longer makes the happy poet frown; and "gin," "cokneys," and the
+"quaterly" have not the least effect upon him!  And this gentleman
+has lived many months amongst us; admires Williams Shakspear, the
+"grave et vieux prophete," as he calls him, and never, for an
+instant, doubts that his description contains anything absurd!
+
+I don't know whether the great Dumas has passed any time in
+England; but his plays show a similar intimate knowledge of our
+habits.  Thus in Kean, the stage-manager is made to come forward
+and address the pit, with a speech beginning, "My Lords and
+Gentlemen;" and a company of Englishwomen are introduced (at the
+memorable "Coal hole"), and they all wear PINAFORES; as if the
+British female were in the invariable habit of wearing this outer
+garment, or slobbering her gown without it.  There was another
+celebrated piece, enacted some years since, upon the subject of
+Queen Caroline, where our late adored sovereign, George, was made
+to play a most despicable part; and where Signor Bergami fought a
+duel with Lord Londonderry.  In the last act of this play, the
+House of Lords was represented, and Sir Brougham made an eloquent
+speech in the Queen's favor.  Presently the shouts of the mob were
+heard without; from shouting they proceeded to pelting; and
+pasteboard-brickbats and cabbages came flying among the
+representatives of our hereditary legislature.  At this unpleasant
+juncture, SIR HARDINGE, the Secretary-at-War, rises and calls in
+the military; the act ends in a general row, and the ignominious
+fall of Lord Liverpool, laid low by a brickbat from the mob!
+
+The description of these scenes is, of course, quite incapable of
+conveying any notion of their general effect.  You must have the
+solemnity of the actors, as they Meess and Milor one another, and
+the perfect gravity and good faith with which the audience listen
+to them.  Our stage Frenchman is the old Marquis, with sword, and
+pigtail, and spangled court coat.  The Englishman of the French
+theatre has, invariably, a red wig, and almost always leather
+gaiters, and a long white upper Benjamin: he remains as he was
+represented in the old caricatures after the peace, when Vernet
+designed him.
+
+And to conclude this catalogue of blunders: in the famous piece of
+the "Naufrage de la Meduse," the first act is laid on board an
+English ship-of-war, all the officers of which appeared in light
+blue or green coats (the lamp-light prevented our distinguishing
+the color accurately), and TOP-BOOTS!
+
+
+Let us not attempt to deaden the force of this tremendous blow by
+any more remarks.  The force of blundering can go no further.
+Would a Chinese playwright or painter have stranger notions about
+the barbarians than our neighbors, who are separated from us but by
+two hours of salt water?
+
+
+
+
+MEDITATIONS AT VERSAILLES.
+
+
+The palace of Versailles has been turned into a bricabrac shop of
+late years, and its time-honored walls have been covered with many
+thousand yards of the worst pictures that eye ever looked on.  I
+don't know how many leagues of battles and sieges the unhappy
+visitor is now obliged to march through, amidst a crowd of
+chattering Paris cockneys, who are never tired of looking at the
+glories of the Grenadier Francais; to the chronicling of whose
+deeds this old palace of the old kings is now altogether devoted.
+A whizzing, screaming steam-engine rushes hither from Paris,
+bringing shoals of badauds in its wake.  The old coucous are all
+gone, and their place knows them no longer.  Smooth asphaltum
+terraces, tawdry lamps, and great hideous Egyptian obelisks, have
+frightened them away from the pleasant station they used to occupy
+under the trees of the Champs Elysees; and though the old coucous
+were just the most uncomfortable vehicles that human ingenuity ever
+constructed, one can't help looking back to the days of their
+existence with a tender regret; for there was pleasure then in the
+little trip of three leagues: and who ever had pleasure in a
+railway journey?  Does any reader of this venture to say that, on
+such a voyage, he ever dared to be pleasant?  Do the most hardened
+stokers joke with one another?  I don't believe it.  Look into
+every single car of the train, and you will see that every single
+face is solemn.  They take their seats gravely, and are silent, for
+the most part, during the journey; they dare not look out of
+window, for fear of being blinded by the smoke that comes whizzing
+by, or of losing their heads in one of the windows of the down
+train; they ride for miles in utter damp and darkness: through
+awful pipes of brick, that have been run pitilessly through the
+bowels of gentle mother earth, the cast-iron Frankenstein of an
+engine gallops on, puffing and screaming.  Does any man pretend to
+say that he ENJOYS the journey?--he might as well say that he
+enjoyed having his hair cut; he bears it, but that is all: he will
+not allow the world to laugh at him, for any exhibition of slavish
+fear; and pretends, therefore, to be at his ease; but he IS afraid:
+nay, ought to be, under the circumstances.  I am sure Hannibal or
+Napoleon would, were they locked suddenly into a car; there kept
+close prisoners for a certain number of hours, and whirled along at
+this dizzy pace.  You can't stop, if you would:--you may die, but
+you can't stop; the engine may explode upon the road, and up you go
+along with it; or, may be a bolter and take a fancy to go down a
+hill, or into a river: all this you must bear, for the privilege of
+travelling twenty miles an hour.
+
+This little journey, then, from Paris to Versailles, that used to
+be so merry of old, has lost its pleasures since the disappearance
+of the coucous; and I would as lief have for companions the statues
+that lately took a coach from the bridge opposite the Chamber of
+Deputies, and stepped out in the court of Versailles, as the most
+part of the people who now travel on the railroad.  The stone
+figures are not a whit more cold and silent than these persons, who
+used to be, in the old coucous, so talkative and merry.  The
+prattling grisette and her swain from the Ecole de Droit; the huge
+Alsacian carabineer, grimly smiling under his sandy moustaches and
+glittering brass helmet; the jolly nurse, in red calico, who had
+been to Paris to show mamma her darling Lolo, or Auguste;--what
+merry companions used one to find squeezed into the crazy old
+vehicles that formerly performed the journey!  But the age of
+horseflesh is gone--that of engineers, economists, and calculators
+has succeeded; and the pleasure of coucoudom is extinguished for
+ever.  Why not mourn over it, as Mr. Burke did over his cheap
+defence of nations and unbought grace of life; that age of
+chivalry, which he lamented, apropos of a trip to Versailles, some
+half a century back?
+
+Without stopping to discuss (as might be done, in rather a neat and
+successful manner) whether the age of chivalry was cheap or dear,
+and whether, in the time of the unbought grace of life, there was
+not more bribery, robbery, villainy, tyranny, and corruption, than
+exists even in our own happy days,--let us make a few moral and
+historical remarks upon the town of Versailles; where, between
+railroad and coucou, we are surely arrived by this time.
+
+The town is, certainly, the most moral of towns.  You pass from the
+railroad station through a long, lonely suburb, with dusty rows of
+stunted trees on either side, and some few miserable beggars, idle
+boys, and ragged old women under them.  Behind the trees are gaunt,
+mouldy houses; palaces once, where (in the days of the unbought
+grace of life) the cheap defence of nations gambled, ogled,
+swindled, intrigued; whence high-born duchesses used to issue, in
+old times, to act as chambermaids to lovely Du Barri; and mighty
+princes rolled away, in gilt caroches, hot for the honor of
+lighting his Majesty to bed, or of presenting his stockings when he
+rose, or of holding his napkin when he dined.  Tailors, chandlers,
+tinmen, wretched hucksters, and greengrocers, are now established
+in the mansions of the old peers; small children are yelling at the
+doors, with mouths besmeared with bread and treacle; damp rags are
+hanging out of every one of the windows, steaming in the sun;
+oyster-shells, cabbage-stalks, broken crockery, old papers, lie
+basking in the same cheerful light.  A solitary water-cart goes
+jingling down the wide pavement, and spirts a feeble refreshment
+over the dusty, thirsty stones.
+
+After pacing for some time through such dismal streets, we
+deboucher on the grande place; and before us lies the palace
+dedicated to all the glories of France.  In the midst of the great
+lonely plain this famous residence of King Louis looks low and
+mean.--Honored pile!  Time was when tall musketeers and gilded
+body-guards allowed none to pass the gate.  Fifty years ago, ten
+thousand drunken women from Paris broke through the charm; and now
+a tattered commissioner will conduct you through it for a penny,
+and lead you up to the sacred entrance of the palace.
+
+We will not examine all the glories of France, as here they are
+portrayed in pictures and marble: catalogues are written about
+these miles of canvas, representing all the revolutionary battles,
+from Valmy to Waterloo,--all the triumphs of Louis XIV.--all the
+mistresses of his successor--and all the great men who have
+flourished since the French empire began.  Military heroes are
+most of these--fierce constables in shining steel, marshals in
+voluminous wigs, and brave grenadiers in bearskin caps; some dozens
+of whom gained crowns, principalities, dukedoms; some hundreds,
+plunder and epaulets; some millions, death in African sands, or in
+icy Russian plains, under the guidance, and for the good, of that
+arch-hero, Napoleon.  By far the greater part of "all the glories"
+of France (as of most other countries) is made up of these military
+men: and a fine satire it is on the cowardice of mankind, that they
+pay such an extraordinary homage to the virtue called courage;
+filling their history-books with tales about it, and nothing but
+it.
+
+Let them disguise the place, however, as they will, and plaster the
+walls with bad pictures as they please, it will be hard to think of
+any family but one, as one traverses this vast gloomy edifice.  It
+has not been humbled to the ground, as a certain palace of Babel
+was of yore; but it is a monument of fallen pride, not less awful,
+and would afford matter for a whole library of sermons.  The cheap
+defence of nations expended a thousand millions in the erection of
+this magnificent dwelling-place.  Armies were employed, in the
+intervals of their warlike labors, to level hills, or pile them up;
+to turn rivers, and to build aqueducts, and transplant woods, and
+construct smooth terraces, and long canals.  A vast garden grew up
+in a wilderness, and a stupendous palace in the garden, and a
+stately city round the palace: the city was peopled with parasites,
+who daily came to do worship before the creator of these wonders--
+the Great King.  "Dieu seul est grand," said courtly Massillon; but
+next to him, as the prelate thought, was certainly Louis, his
+vicegerent here upon earth--God's lieutenant-governor of the
+world,--before whom courtiers used to fall on their knees, and
+shade their eyes, as if the light of his countenance, like the sun,
+which shone supreme in heaven, the type of him, was too dazzling to
+bear.
+
+Did ever the sun shine upon such a king before, in such a palace?--
+or, rather, did such a king ever shine upon the sun?  When Majesty
+came out of his chamber, in the midst of his superhuman splendors,
+viz, in his cinnamon-colored coat, embroidered with diamonds; his
+pyramid of a wig,* his red-heeled shoes, that lifted him four inches
+from the ground, "that he scarcely seemed to touch;" when he came
+out, blazing upon the dukes and duchesses that waited his rising,--
+what could the latter do, but cover their eyes, and wink, and
+tremble?  And did he not himself believe, as he stood there, on his
+high heels, under his ambrosial periwig, that there was something
+in him more than man--something above Fate?
+
+
+* It is fine to think that, in the days of his youth, his Majesty
+Louis XIV. used to POWDER HIS WIG WITH GOLD-DUST.
+
+
+This, doubtless, was he fain to believe; and if, on very fine days,
+from his terrace before his gloomy palace of Saint Germains, he
+could catch a glimpse, in the distance, of a certain white spire
+of St. Denis, where his race lay buried, he would say to his
+courtiers, with a sublime condescension, "Gentlemen, you must
+remember that I, too, am mortal."  Surely the lords in waiting
+could hardly think him serious, and vowed that his Majesty always
+loved a joke.  However, mortal or not, the sight of that sharp
+spire wounded his Majesty's eyes; and is said, by the legend, to
+have caused the building of the palace of Babel-Versailles.
+
+In the year 1681, then, the great king, with bag and baggage,--with
+guards, cooks, chamberlains, mistresses, Jesuits, gentlemen,
+lackeys, Fenelons, Molieres, Lauzuns, Bossuets, Villars, Villeroys,
+Louvois, Colberts,--transported himself to his new palace: the old
+one being left for James of England and Jaquette his wife, when
+their time should come.  And when the time did come, and James
+sought his brother's kingdom, it is on record that Louis hastened
+to receive and console him, and promised to restore, incontinently,
+those islands from which the canaille had turned him.  Between
+brothers such a gift was a trifle; and the courtiers said to one
+another reverently:* "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my
+right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool."  There was
+no blasphemy in the speech: on the contrary, it was gravely said,
+by a faithful believing man, who thought it no shame to the latter,
+to compare his Majesty with God Almighty.  Indeed, the books of the
+time will give one a strong idea how general was this Louis-
+worship.  I have just been looking at one, which was written by an
+honest Jesuit and Protege of Pere la Chaise, who dedicates a book
+of medals to the august Infants of France, which does, indeed, go
+almost as far in print.  He calls our famous monarch "Louis le
+Grand:--1, l'invincible; 2, le sage; 3, le conquerant; 4, la
+merveille de son siecle; 5, la terreur de ses ennemis; 6, l'amour
+de ses peuples; 7, l'arbitre de la paix et de la guerre; 8,
+l'admiration de l'univers; 9, et digne d'en etre le maitre; 10, le
+modele d'un heros acheve; 11, digne de l'immortalite, et de la
+veneration de tous les siecles!"
+
+
+* I think it is in the amusing "Memoirs of Madame de Crequi" (a
+forgery, but a work remarkable for its learning and accuracy) that
+the above anecdote is related.
+
+
+A pretty Jesuit declaration, truly, and a good honest judgment upon
+the great king!  In thirty years more--1.  The invincible had been
+beaten a vast number of times.  2.  The sage was the puppet of an
+artful old woman, who was the puppet of more artful priests.
+3.  The conqueror had quite forgotten his early knack of conquering.
+5.  The terror of his enemies (for 4, the marvel of his age, we
+pretermit, it being a loose term, that may apply to any person or
+thing) was now terrified by his enemies in turn.  6.  The love of
+his people was as heartily detested by them as scarcely any other
+monarch, not even his great-grandson, has been, before or since.
+7.  The arbiter of peace and war was fain to send superb
+ambassadors to kick their heels in Dutch shopkeepers' ante-
+chambers.  8, is again a general term.  9.  The man fit to be
+master of the universe, was scarcely master of his own kingdom.
+10.  The finished hero was all but finished, in a very commonplace
+and vulgar way.  And 11.  The man worthy of immortality was just at
+the point of death, without a friend to soothe or deplore him; only
+withered old Maintenon to utter prayers at his bedside, and
+croaking Jesuits to prepare him,* with heaven knows what wretched
+tricks and mummeries, for his appearance in that Great Republic
+that lies on the other side of the grave.  In the course of his
+fourscore splendid miserable years, he never had but one friend,
+and he ruined and left her.  Poor La Valliere, what a sad tale is
+yours!  "Look at this Galerie des Glaces," cries Monsieur Vatout,
+staggering with surprise at the appearance of the room, two hundred
+and forty-two feet long, and forty high.  "Here it was that Louis
+displayed all the grandeur of royalty; and such was the splendor of
+his court, and the luxury of the times, that this immense room
+could hardly contain the crowd of courtiers that pressed around the
+monarch."  Wonderful! wonderful!  Eight thousand four hundred and
+sixty square feet of courtiers!  Give a square yard to each, and
+you have a matter of three thousand of them.  Think of three
+thousand courtiers per day, and all the chopping and changing of
+them for near forty years: some of them dying, some getting their
+wishes, and retiring to their provinces to enjoy their plunder;
+some disgraced, and going home to pine away out of the light of the
+sun;** new ones perpetually arriving,--pushing, squeezing, for
+their place, in the crowded Galerie des Glaces.  A quarter of a
+million of noble countenances, at the very least, must those
+glasses have reflected.  Rouge, diamonds, ribbons, patches, upon
+the faces of smiling ladies: towering periwigs, sleek shaven
+crowns, tufted moustaches, scars, and grizzled whiskers, worn by
+ministers, priests, dandies, and grim old commanders.--So many
+faces, O ye gods! and every one of them lies!  So many tongues,
+vowing devotion and respectful love to the great king in his six-
+inch wig; and only poor La Valliere's amongst them all which had a
+word of truth for the dull ears of Louis of Bourbon.
+
+
+* They made a Jesuit of him on his death-bed.
+
+** Saint Simon's account of Lauzun, in disgrace, is admirably
+facetious and pathetic; Lauzun's regrets are as monstrous as those
+of Raleigh when deprived of the sight of his adorable Queen and
+Mistress, Elizabeth.
+
+
+"Quand j'aurai de la peine aux Carmelites," says unhappy Louise,
+about to retire from these magnificent courtiers and their grand
+Galerie des Glaces, "je me souviendrai de ce que ces gens la m'ont
+fait souffrir!"--A troop of Bossuets inveighing against the
+vanities of courts could not preach such an affecting sermon.  What
+years of anguish and wrong had the poor thing suffered, before
+these sad words came from her gentle lips!  How these courtiers
+have bowed and flattered, kissed the ground on which she trod,
+fought to have the honor of riding by her carriage, written
+sonnets, and called her goddess; who, in the days of her prosperity,
+was kind and beneficent, gentle and compassionate to all; then (on a
+certain day, when it is whispered that his Majesty hath cast the
+eyes of his gracious affection upon another) behold three thousand
+courtiers are at the feet of the new divinity.--"O divine Athenais!
+what blockheads have we been to worship any but you.--THAT a
+goddess?--a pretty goddess forsooth;--a witch, rather, who, for a
+while, kept our gracious monarch blind!  Look at her: the woman
+limps as she walks; and, by sacred Venus, her mouth stretches almost
+to her diamond ear-rings?"*  The same tale may be told of many more
+deserted mistresses; and fair Athenais de Montespan was to hear it
+of herself one day.  Meantime, while La Valliere's heart is
+breaking, the model of a finished hero is yawning; as, on such
+paltry occasions, a finished hero should.  LET her heart break: a
+plague upon her tears and repentance; what right has she to repent?
+Away with her to her convent.  She goes, and the finished hero never
+sheds a tear.  What a noble pitch of stoicism to have reached!  Our
+Louis was so great, that the little woes of mean people were beyond
+him: his friends died, his mistresses left him; his children, one by
+one, were cut off before his eyes, and great Louis is not moved in
+the slightest degree!  As how, indeed, should a god be moved?
+
+
+* A pair of diamond ear-rings, given by the King to La Valliere,
+caused much scandal; and some lampoons are extant, which impugn the
+taste of Louis XIV. for loving a lady with such an enormous mouth.
+
+
+I have often liked to think about this strange character in the
+world, who moved in it, bearing about a full belief in his own
+infallibility; teaching his generals the art of war, his ministers
+the science of government, his wits taste, his courtiers dress;
+ordering deserts to become gardens, turning villages into palaces
+at a breath; and indeed the august figure of the man, as he towers
+upon his throne, cannot fail to inspire one with respect and awe:--
+how grand those flowing locks appear; how awful that sceptre; how
+magnificent those flowing robes!  In Louis, surely, if in any one,
+the majesty of kinghood is represented.
+
+But a king is not every inch a king, for all the poet may say; and
+it is curious to see how much precise majesty there is in that
+majestic figure of Ludovicus Rex.  In the Frontispiece, we have
+endeavored to make the exact calculation.  The idea of kingly
+dignity is equally strong in the two outer figures; and you see, at
+once, that majesty is made out of the wig, the high-heeled shoes,
+and cloak, all fleurs-de-lis bespangled.  As for the little lean,
+shrivelled, paunchy old man, of five feet two, in a jacket and
+breeches, there is no majesty in HIM at any rate; and yet he has
+just stepped out of that very suit of clothes.  Put the wig and
+shoes on him, and he is six feet high;--the other fripperies, and
+he stands before you majestic, imperial, and heroic!  Thus do
+barbers and cobblers make the gods that we worship: for do we not
+all worship him?  Yes; though we all know him to be stupid,
+heartless, short, of doubtful personal courage, worship and admire
+him we must; and have set up, in our hearts, a grand image of him,
+endowed with wit, magnanimity, valor, and enormous heroical
+stature.
+
+And what magnanimous acts are attributed to him! or, rather, how
+differently do we view the actions of heroes and common men, and
+find that the same thing shall be a wonderful virtue in the former,
+which, in the latter, is only an ordinary act of duty.  Look at
+yonder window of the king's chamber;--one morning a royal cane was
+seen whirling out of it, and plumped among the courtiers and guard
+of honor below.  King Louis had absolutely, and with his own hand,
+flung his own cane out of the window, "because," said he, "I won't
+demean myself by striking a gentleman!"  O miracle of magnanimity!
+Lauzun was not caned, because he besought majesty to keep his
+promise,--only imprisoned for ten years in Pignerol, along with
+banished Fouquet;--and a pretty story is Fouquet's too.
+
+Out of the window the king's august head was one day thrust, when
+old Conde was painfully toiling up the steps of the court below.
+"Don't hurry yourself, my cousin," cries magnanimity, "one who has
+to carry so many laurels cannot walk fast."  At which all the
+courtiers, lackeys, mistresses, chamberlains, Jesuits, and
+scullions, clasp their hands and burst into tears.  Men are
+affected by the tale to this very day.  For a century and three-
+quarters, have not all the books that speak of Versailles, or Louis
+Quatorze, told the story?--"Don't hurry yourself, my cousin!"  O
+admirable king and Christian! what a pitch of condescension is
+here, that the greatest king of all the world should go for to say
+anything so kind, and really tell a tottering old gentleman, worn
+out with gout, age, and wounds, not to walk too fast!
+
+What a proper fund of slavishness is there in the composition of
+mankind, that histories like these should be found to interest and
+awe them.  Till the world's end, most likely, this story will have
+its place in the history-books; and unborn generations will read
+it, and tenderly be moved by it.  I am sure that Magnanimity went
+to bed that night, pleased and happy, intimately convinced that he
+had done an action of sublime virtue, and had easy slumbers and
+sweet dreams,--especially if he had taken a light supper, and not
+too vehemently attacked his en cas de nuit.
+
+That famous adventure, in which the en cas de nuit was brought into
+use, for the sake of one Poquelin alias Moliere;--how often has it
+been described and admired?  This Poquelin, though king's valet-de-
+chambre, was by profession a vagrant; and as such, looked coldly on
+by the great lords of the palace, who refused to eat with him.
+Majesty hearing of this, ordered his en cas de nuit to be placed on
+the table, and positively cut off a wing with his own knife and
+fork for Poquelin's use.  O thrice happy Jean Baptiste!  The king
+has actually sat down with him cheek by jowl, had the liver-wing of
+a fowl, and given Moliere the gizzard; put his imperial legs under
+the same mahogany (sub iisdem trabibus).  A man, after such an
+honor, can look for little else in this world: he has tasted the
+utmost conceivable earthly happiness, and has nothing to do now but
+to fold his arms, look up to heaven, and sing "Nunc dimittis" and
+die.
+
+Do not let us abuse poor old Louis on account of this monstrous
+pride; but only lay it to the charge of the fools who believed and
+worshipped it.  If, honest man, he believed himself to be almost a
+god, it was only because thousands of people had told him so--
+people only half liars, too; who did, in the depths of their
+slavish respect, admire the man almost as much as they said they
+did.  If, when he appeared in his five-hundred-million coat, as he
+is said to have done, before the Siamese ambassadors, the courtiers
+began to shade their eyes and long for parasols, as if this
+Bourbonic sun was too hot for them; indeed, it is no wonder that he
+should believe that there was something dazzling about his person:
+he had half a million of eager testimonies to this idea.  Who was
+to tell him the truth?--Only in the last years of his life did
+trembling courtiers dare whisper to him, after much circumlocution,
+that a certain battle had been fought at a place called Blenheim,
+and that Eugene and Marlborough had stopped his long career of
+triumphs.
+
+"On n'est plus heureux a notre age," says the old man, to one of
+his old generals, welcoming Tallard after his defeat; and he
+rewards him with honors, as if he had come from a victory.  There
+is, if you will, something magnanimous in this welcome to his
+conquered general, this stout protest against Fate.  Disaster
+succeeds disaster; armies after armies march out to meet fiery
+Eugene and that dogged, fatal Englishman, and disappear in the
+smoke of the enemies' cannon.  Even at Versailles you may almost
+hear it roaring at last; but when courtiers, who have forgotten
+their god, now talk of quitting this grand temple of his, old Louis
+plucks up heart and will never hear of surrender.  All the gold and
+silver at Versailles he melts, to find bread for his armies: all
+the jewels on his five-hundred-million coat he pawns resolutely;
+and, bidding Villars go and make the last struggle but one,
+promises, if his general is defeated, to place himself at the head
+of his nobles, and die King of France.  Indeed, after a man, for
+sixty years, has been performing the part of a hero, some of the
+real heroic stuff must have entered into his composition, whether
+he would or not.  When the great Elliston was enacting the part of
+King George the Fourth, in the play of "The Coronation," at Drury
+Lane, the galleries applauded very loudly his suavity and majestic
+demeanor, at which Elliston, inflamed by the popular loyalty (and
+by some fermented liquor in which, it is said, he was in the habit
+of indulging), burst into tears, and spreading out his arms,
+exclaimed: "Bless ye, bless ye, my people!"  Don't let us laugh at
+his Ellistonian majesty, nor at the people who clapped hands and
+yelled "bravo!" in praise of him.  The tipsy old manager did really
+feel that he was a hero at that moment; and the people, wild with
+delight and attachment for a magnificent coat and breeches, surely
+were uttering the true sentiments of loyalty: which consists in
+reverencing these and other articles of costume.  In this fifth
+act, then, of his long royal drama, old Louis performed his part
+excellently; and when the curtain drops upon him, he lies, dressed
+majestically, in a becoming kingly attitude, as a king should.
+
+The king his successor has not left, at Versailles, half so much
+occasion for moralizing; perhaps the neighboring Parc aux Cerfs
+would afford better illustrations of his reign.  The life of his
+great grandsire, the Grand Llama of France, seems to have
+frightened Louis the well-beloved; who understood that loneliness
+is one of the necessary conditions of divinity, and being of a
+jovial, companionable turn, aspired not beyond manhood.  Only in
+the matter of ladies did he surpass his predecessor, as Solomon did
+David.  War he eschewed, as his grandfather bade him; and his
+simple taste found little in this world to enjoy beyond the mulling
+of chocolate and the frying of pancakes.  Look, here is the room
+called Laboratoire du Roi, where, with his own hands, he made his
+mistress's breakfast:--here is the little door through which, from
+her apartments in the upper story, the chaste Du Barri came
+stealing down to the arms of the weary, feeble, gloomy old man.
+But of women he was tired long since, and even pancake-frying had
+palled upon him.  What had he to do, after forty years of reign;--
+after having exhausted everything?  Every pleasure that Dubois
+could invent for his hot youth, or cunning Lebel could minister to
+his old age, was flat and stale; used up to the very dregs: every
+shilling in the national purse had been squeezed out, by Pompadour
+and Du Barri and such brilliant ministers of state.  He had found
+out the vanity of pleasure, as his ancestor had discovered the
+vanity of glory: indeed it was high time that he should die.  And
+die he did; and round his tomb, as round that of his grandfather
+before him, the starving people sang a dreadful chorus of curses,
+which were the only epitaphs for good or for evil that were raised
+to his memory.
+
+As for the courtiers--the knights and nobles, the unbought grace of
+life--they, of course, forgot him in one minute after his death, as
+the way is.  When the king dies, the officer appointed opens his
+chamber window, and calling out into the court below, Le Roi est
+mort, breaks his cane, takes another and waves it, exclaiming, vive
+le Roi!  Straightway all the loyal nobles begin yelling vive le
+Roi! and the officer goes round solemnly and sets yonder great
+clock in the Cour de Marbre to the hour of the king's death.  This
+old Louis had solemnly ordained; but the Versailles clock was only
+set twice: there was no shouting of Vive le Roi when the successor
+of Louis XV. mounted to heaven to join his sainted family.
+
+Strange stories of the deaths of kings have always been very
+recreating and profitable to us: what a fine one is that of the
+death of Louis XV., as Madame Campan tells it.  One night the
+gracious monarch came back ill from Trianon; the disease turned out
+to be the small-pox; so violent that ten people of those who had to
+enter his chamber caught the infection and died.  The whole court
+flies from him; only poor old fat Mesdames the King's daughters
+persist in remaining at his bedside, and praying for his soul's
+welfare.
+
+On the 10th May, 1774, the whole court had assembled at the
+chateau; the oeil de Boeuf was full.  The Dauphin had determined to
+depart as soon as the king had breathed his last.  And it was
+agreed by the people of the stables, with those who watched in the
+king's room, that a lighted candle should be placed in a window,
+and should be extinguished as soon as he had ceased to live.  The
+candle was put out.  At that signal, guards, pages, and squires
+mounted on horseback, and everything was made ready for departure.
+The Dauphin was with the Dauphiness, waiting together for the news
+of the king's demise.  AN IMMENSE NOISE, AS IF OF THUNDER, WAS
+HEARD IN THE NEXT ROOM; it was the crowd of courtiers, who were
+deserting the dead king's apartment, in order to pay their court to
+the new power of Louis XVI.  Madame de Noailles entered, and was
+the first to salute the queen by her title of Queen of France, and
+begged their Majesties to quit their apartments, to receive the
+princes and great lords of the court desirous to pay their homage
+to the new sovereigns.  Leaning on her husband's arm, a handkerchief
+to her eyes, in the most touching attitude, Marie Antoinette
+received these first visits.  On quitting the chamber where the dead
+king lay, the Duc de Villequier bade M. Anderville, first surgeon of
+the king, to open and embalm the body: it would have been certain
+death to the surgeon.  "I am ready, sir," said he; "but whilst I am
+operating, you must hold the head of the corpse: your charge demands
+it."  The Duke went away without a word, and the body was neither
+opened nor embalmed.  A few humble domestics and poor workmen
+watched by the remains, and performed the last offices to their
+master.  The surgeons ordered spirits of wine to be poured into the
+coffin.
+
+They huddled the king's body into a post-chaise; and in this
+deplorable equipage, with an escort of about forty men, Louis the
+well-beloved was carried, in the dead of night, from Versailles to
+St.  Denis, and then thrown into the tomb of the kings of France!
+
+If any man is curious, and can get permission, he may mount to the
+roof of the palace, and see where Louis XVI. used royally to amuse
+himself, by gazing upon the doings of all the townspeople below
+with a telescope.  Behold that balcony, where, one morning, he, his
+queen, and the little Dauphin stood, with Cromwell Grandison
+Lafayette by their side, who kissed her Majesty's hand, and
+protected her; and then, lovingly surrounded by his people, the
+king got into a coach and came to Paris: nor did his Majesty ride
+much in coaches after that.
+
+There is a portrait of the king, in the upper galleries, clothed in
+red and gold, riding a fat horse, brandishing a sword, on which the
+word "Justice" is inscribed, and looking remarkably stupid and
+uncomfortable.  You see that the horse will throw him at the very
+first fling; and as for the sword, it never was made for such hands
+as his, which were good at holding a corkscrew or a carving-knife,
+but not clever at the management of weapons of war.  Let those pity
+him who will: call him saint and martyr if you please; but a martyr
+to what principle was he?  Did he frankly support either party in
+his kingdom, or cheat and tamper with both?  He might have escaped;
+but he must have his supper: and so his family was butchered and
+his kingdom lost, and he had his bottle of Burgundy in comfort at
+Varennes.  A single charge upon the fatal 10th of August, and the
+monarchy might have been his once more; but he is so tender-
+hearted, that he lets his friends be murdered before his eyes
+almost: or, at least, when he has turned his back upon his duty and
+his kingdom, and has skulked for safety into the reporters' box, at
+the National Assembly.  There were hundreds of brave men who died
+that day, and were martyrs, if you will; poor neglected tenth-rate
+courtiers, for the most part, who had forgotten old slights and
+disappointments, and left their places of safety to come and die,
+if need were, sharing in the supreme hour of the monarchy.
+Monarchy was a great deal too humane to fight along with these, and
+so left them to the pikes of Santerre and the mercy of the men of
+the Sections.  But we are wandering a good ten miles from
+Versailles, and from the deeds which Louis XVI. performed there.
+
+He is said to have been such a smart journeyman blacksmith, that he
+might, if Fate had not perversely placed a crown on his head, have
+earned a couple of louis every week by the making of locks and
+keys.  Those who will may see the workshop where he employed many
+useful hours: Madame Elizabeth was at prayers meanwhile; the queen
+was making pleasant parties with her ladies.  Monsieur the Count
+d'Artois was learning to dance on the tight-rope; and Monsieur de
+Provence was cultivating l'eloquence du billet and studying his
+favorite Horace.  It is said that each member of the august family
+succeeded remarkably well in his or her pursuits; big Monsieur's
+little notes are still cited.  At a minuet or syllabub, poor
+Antoinette was unrivalled; and Charles, on the tight-rope, was so
+graceful and so gentil, that Madame Saqui might envy him.  The time
+only was out of joint.  O cursed spite, that ever such harmless
+creatures as these were bidden to right it!
+
+A walk to the little Trianon is both pleasing and moral: no doubt
+the reader has seen the pretty fantastical gardens which environ
+it; the groves and temples; the streams and caverns (whither, as
+the guide tells you, during the heat of summer, it was the custom
+of Marie Antoinette to retire, with her favorite, Madame de
+Lamballe): the lake and Swiss village are pretty little toys,
+moreover; and the cicerone of the place does not fail to point out
+the different cottages which surround the piece of water, and tell
+the names of the royal masqueraders who inhabited each.  In the
+long cottage, close upon the lake, dwelt the Seigneur du Village,
+no less a personage than Louis XV.; Louis XVI., the Dauphin, was
+the Bailli; near his cottage is that of Monseigneur the Count
+d'Artois, who was the Miller; opposite lived the Prince de Conde,
+who enacted the part of Gamekeeper (or, indeed, any other role, for
+it does not signify much); near him was the Prince de Rohan, who
+was the Aumonier; and yonder is the pretty little dairy, which was
+under the charge of the fair Marie Antoinette herself.
+
+I forget whether Monsieur the fat Count of Provence took any share
+of this royal masquerading; but look at the names of the other six
+actors of the comedy, and it will be hard to find any person for
+whom Fate had such dreadful visitations in store.  Fancy the party,
+in the days of their prosperity, here gathered at Trianon, and
+seated under the tall poplars by the lake, discoursing familiarly
+together: suppose of a sudden some conjuring Cagliostro of the time
+is introduced among them, and foretells to them the woes that are
+about to come.  "You, Monsieur l'Aumonier, the descendant of a long
+line of princes, the passionate admirer of that fair queen who sits
+by your side, shall be the cause of her ruin and your own,* and
+shall die in disgrace and exile.  You, son of the Condes, shall
+live long enough to see your royal race overthrown, and shall die
+by the hands of a hangman.**  You, oldest son of Saint Louis, shall
+perish by the executioner's axe; that beautiful head, O Antoinette,
+the same ruthless blade shall sever."  "They shall kill me first,"
+says Lamballe, at the queen's side.  "Yes, truly," replies the
+soothsayer, "for Fate prescribes ruin for your mistress and all who
+love her."***  "And," cries Monsieur d'Artois, "do I not love my
+sister, too?  I pray you not to omit me in your prophecies."
+
+
+* In the diamond-necklace affair.
+
+** He was found hanging in his own bedroom.
+
+*** Among the many lovers that rumor gave to the queen, poor Ferscu
+is the most remarkable.  He seems to have entertained for her a
+high and perfectly pure devotion.  He was the chief agent in the
+luckless escape to Varennes; was lurking in Paris during the time
+of her captivity; and was concerned in the many fruitless plots
+that were made for her rescue.  Ferscu lived to be an old man, but
+died a dreadful and violent death.  He was dragged from his
+carriage by the mob, in Stockholm, and murdered by them.
+
+
+To whom Monsieur Cagliostro says, scornfully, "You may look forward
+to fifty years of life, after most of these are laid in the grave.
+You shall be a king, but not die one; and shall leave the crown
+only; not the worthless head that shall wear it.  Thrice shall you
+go into exile: you shall fly from the people, first, who would have
+no more of you and your race; and you shall return home over half a
+million of human corpses, that have been made for the sake of you,
+and of a tyrant as great as the greatest of your family.  Again
+driven away, your bitterest enemy shall bring you back.  But the
+strong limbs of France are not to be chained by such a paltry yoke
+as you can put on her: you shall be a tyrant, but in will only; and
+shall have a sceptre, but to see it robbed from your hand."
+
+"And pray, Sir Conjurer, who shall be the robber?" asked Monsieur
+the Count d'Artois.
+
+
+This I cannot say, for here my dream ended.  The fact is, I had
+fallen asleep on one of the stone benches in the Avenue de Paris,
+and at this instant was awakened by a whirling of carriages and a
+great clattering of national guards, lancers and outriders, in red.
+His MAJESTY LOUIS PHILIPPE was going to pay a visit to the palace;
+which contains several pictures of his own glorious actions, and
+which has been dedicated, by him, to all the glories of France.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext The Paris Sketch Book, by W. M. Thackeray
+
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+Project Gutenberg Etext The Paris Sketch Book, by W. M. Thackeray
+#21 in our series by William Makepeace Thackeray
+
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+Title:  The Paris Sketch Book
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+Author:  William Makepeace Thackeray
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+August, 2001  [Etext #2768]
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+Project Gutenberg Etext The Paris Sketch Book, by W. M. Thackeray
+******This file should be named 7tpsb10.txt or 7tpsb10.zip******
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+
+This etext was prepared by Donald Lainson, charlie@idirect.com.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK
+
+OF
+
+MR. M. A. TITMARSH
+
+by
+
+WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
+
+
+
+ESTES AND LAURIAT, BOSTON
+
+Publishers
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK.
+
+
+An Invasion of France
+
+A Caution to Travellers
+
+The Fêtes of July 
+
+On the French School of Painting
+
+The Painter's Bargain
+
+Cartouche
+
+On some French Fashionable Novels
+
+A Gambler's Death
+
+Napoleon and his System
+
+The Story of Mary Ancel
+
+Beatrice Merger
+
+Caricatures and Lithography in Paris
+
+Little Poinsinet
+
+The Devil's Wager
+
+Madame Sand and the new Apocalypse 
+
+The Case of Peytel
+
+Four Imitations of Béranger
+
+French Dramas and Melodramas
+
+Meditations at Versailles
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATORY LETTER
+
+TO
+
+M. ARETZ, TAILOR, ETC.
+
+27, RUE RICHELIEU, PARIS.
+
+
+SIR,--It becomes every man in his station to acknowledge and praise 
+virtue wheresoever he may find it, and to point it out for the 
+admiration and example of his fellow-men.
+
+Some months since, when you presented to the writer of these pages 
+a small account for coats and pantaloons manufactured by you, and 
+when you were met by a statement from your creditor, that an 
+immediate settlement of your bill would be extremely inconvenient 
+to him; your reply was, "Mon Dieu, Sir, let not that annoy you; if 
+you want money, as a gentleman often does in a strange country, I 
+have a thousand-franc note at my house which is quite at your 
+service."
+
+History or experience, Sir, makes us acquainted with so few actions 
+that can be compared to yours,--an offer like this from a stranger 
+and a tailor seems to me so astonishing,--that you must pardon me 
+for thus making your virtue public, and acquainting the English 
+nation with your merit and your name.  Let me add, Sir, that you 
+live on the first floor; that your clothes and fit are excellent, 
+and your charges moderate and just; and, as a humble tribute of my 
+admiration, permit me to lay these volumes at your feet.
+
+Your obliged, faithful servant,
+
+M. A. TITMARSH.
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION.
+
+
+About half of the sketches in these volumes have already appeared 
+in print, in various periodical works.  A part of the text of one 
+tale, and the plots of two others, have been borrowed from French 
+originals; the other stories, which are, in the main, true, have 
+been written upon facts and characters that came within the 
+Author's observation during a residence in Paris.
+
+As the remaining papers relate to public events which occurred 
+during the same period, or to Parisian Art and Literature, he has 
+ventured to give his publication the title which it bears.
+
+LONDON, July 1, 1840.
+
+
+
+
+AN INVASION OF FRANCE.
+
+
+Caesar venit in Galliam summâ diligentiâ."
+
+
+About twelve o'clock, just as the bell of the packet is tolling a 
+farewell to London Bridge, and warning off the blackguard-boys with 
+the newspapers, who have been shoving Times, Herald, Penny Paul-
+Pry, Penny Satirist, Flare-up, and other abominations, into your 
+face--just as the bell has tolled, and the Jews, strangers, people-
+taking-leave-of-their-families, and blackguard-boys aforesaid, are 
+making a rush for the narrow plank which conducts from the paddle-
+box of the "Emerald" steamboat unto the quay--you perceive, 
+staggering down Thames Street, those two hackney-coaches, for the 
+arrival of which you have been praying, trembling, hoping, 
+despairing, swearing--sw--, I beg your pardon, I believe the word 
+is not used in polite company--and transpiring, for the last half-
+hour.  Yes, at last, the two coaches draw near, and from thence an 
+awful number of trunks, children, carpet-bags, nursery-maids, hat-
+boxes, band-boxes, bonnet-boxes, desks, cloaks, and an affectionate 
+wife, are discharged on the quay.
+
+"Elizabeth, take care of Miss Jane," screams that worthy woman, who 
+has been for a fortnight employed in getting this tremendous body 
+of troops and baggage into marching order.  "Hicks!  Hicks! for 
+heaven's sake mind the babies!"--"George--Edward, sir, if you go 
+near that porter with the trunk, he will tumble down and kill you, 
+you naughty boy!--My love, DO take the cloaks and umbrellas, and 
+give a hand to Fanny and Lucy; and I wish you would speak to the 
+hackney-coachmen, dear, they want fifteen shillings, and count the 
+packages, love--twenty-seven packages,--and bring little Flo; 
+where's little Flo?--Flo! Flo!"--(Flo comes sneaking in; she has 
+been speaking a few parting words to a one-eyed terrier, that 
+sneaks off similarly, landward.)
+
+As when the hawk menaces the hen-roost, in like manner, when such a 
+danger as a voyage menaces a mother, she becomes suddenly endowed 
+with a ferocious presence of mind, and bristling up and screaming 
+in the front of her brood, and in the face of circumstances, 
+succeeds, by her courage, in putting her enemy to flight; in like 
+manner you will always, I think, find your wife (if that lady be 
+good for twopence) shrill, eager, and ill-humored, before, and 
+during a great family move of this nature.  Well, the swindling 
+hackney-coachmen are paid, the mother leading on her regiment of 
+little ones, and supported by her auxiliary nurse-maids, are safe 
+in the cabin;--you have counted twenty-six of the twenty-seven 
+parcels, and have them on board, and that horrid man on the paddle-
+box, who, for twenty minutes past, has been roaring out, NOW, SIR!--
+says, NOW, SIR, no more.
+
+I never yet knew how a steamer began to move, being always too busy 
+among the trunks and children, for the first half-hour, to mark any 
+of the movements of the vessel.  When these private arrangements 
+are made, you find yourself opposite Greenwich (farewell, sweet, 
+sweet whitebait!), and quiet begins to enter your soul.  Your wife 
+smiles for the first time these ten days; you pass by plantations 
+of ship-masts, and forests of steam-chimneys; the sailors are 
+singing on board the ships, the bargees salute you with oaths, 
+grins, and phrases facetious and familiar; the man on the paddle-
+box roars, "Ease her, stop her!" which mysterious words a shrill 
+voice from below repeats, and pipes out, "Ease her, stop her!" in 
+echo; the deck is crowded with groups of figures, and the sun 
+shines over all.
+
+The sun shines over all, and the steward comes up to say, "Lunch, 
+ladies and gentlemen!  Will any lady or gentleman please to take 
+anythink?"  About a dozen do: boiled beef and pickles, and great 
+red raw Cheshire cheese, tempt the epicure: little dumpy bottles of 
+stout are produced, and fizz and bang about with a spirit one would 
+never have looked for in individuals of their size and stature.
+
+The decks have a strange, look; the people on them, that is.  
+Wives, elderly stout husbands, nurse-maids, and children 
+predominate, of course, in English steamboats.  Such may be 
+considered as the distinctive marks of the English gentleman at 
+three or four and forty: two or three of such groups have pitched 
+their camps on the deck.  Then there are a number of young men, of 
+whom three or four have allowed their moustaches to BEGIN to grow 
+since last Friday; for they are going "on the Continent," and they 
+look, therefore, as if their upper lips were smeared with snuff.
+
+A danseuse from the opera is on her way to Paris.  Followed by her 
+bonne and her little dog, she paces the deck, stepping out, in the 
+real dancer fashion, and ogling all around.  How happy the two 
+young Englishmen are, who can speak French, and make up to her: and 
+how all criticise her points and paces!  Yonder is a group of young 
+ladies, who are going to Paris to learn how to be governesses: 
+those two splendidly dressed ladies are milliners from the Rue 
+Richelieu, who have just brought over, and disposed of, their cargo 
+of Summer fashions.  Here sits the Rev. Mr. Snodgrass with his 
+pupils, whom he is conducting to his establishment, near Boulogne, 
+where, in addition to a classical and mathematical education 
+(washing included), the young gentlemen have the benefit of 
+learning French among THE FRENCH THEMSELVES.  Accordingly, the 
+young gentlemen are locked up in a great rickety house, two miles 
+from Boulogne and never see a soul, except the French usher and the 
+cook.
+
+Some few French people are there already, preparing to be ill--(I 
+never shall forget a dreadful sight I once had in the little dark, 
+dirty, six-foot cabin of a Dover steamer.  Four gaunt Frenchmen, 
+but for their pantaloons, in the costume of Adam in Paradise, 
+solemnly anointing themselves with some charm against sea-
+sickness!)--a few Frenchmen are there, but these, for the most 
+part, and with a proper philosophy, go to the fore-cabin of the 
+ship, and you see them on the fore-deck (is that the name for that 
+part of the vessel which is in the region of the bowsprit?) 
+lowering in huge cloaks and caps; snuffy, wretched, pale, and wet; 
+and not jabbering now, as their wont is on shore.  I never could 
+fancy the Mounseers formidable at sea.
+
+There are, of course, many Jews on board.  Who ever travelled by 
+steamboat, coach, diligence, eilwagen, vetturino, mule-back, or 
+sledge, without meeting some of the wandering race?
+
+By the time these remarks have been made the steward is on the deck 
+again, and dinner is ready: and about two hours after dinner comes 
+tea; and then there is brandy-and-water, which he eagerly presses 
+as a preventive against what may happen; and about this time you 
+pass the Foreland, the wind blowing pretty fresh; and the groups 
+on deck disappear, and your wife, giving you an alarmed look, 
+descends, with her little ones, to the ladies' cabin, and you see 
+the steward and his boys issuing from their den under the paddle-
+box, with each a heap of round tin vases, like those which are 
+called, I believe, in America, expectoratoons, only these are 
+larger.
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+The wind blows, the water looks greener and more beautiful than 
+ever--ridge by ridge of long white rock passes away.  "That's 
+Ramsgit," says the man at the helm; and, presently, "That there's 
+Deal--it's dreadful fallen off since the war;" and "That's Dover, 
+round that there pint, only you can't see it."  And, in the 
+meantime, the sun has plumped his hot face into the water, and the 
+moon has shown hers as soon as ever his back is turned, and Mrs.--
+(the wife in general,) has brought up her children and self from 
+the horrid cabin, in which she says it is impossible to breathe; 
+and the poor little wretches are, by the officious stewardess and 
+smart steward (expectoratoonifer), accommodated with a heap of 
+blankets, pillows, and mattresses, in the midst of which they 
+crawl, as best they may, and from the heaving heap of which are, 
+during the rest of the voyage, heard occasional faint cries, and 
+sounds of puking woe!
+
+Dear, dear Maria!  Is this the woman who, anon, braved the jeers 
+and brutal wrath of swindling hackney-coachmen; who repelled the 
+insolence of haggling porters, with a scorn that brought down their 
+demands at least eighteenpence?  Is this the woman at whose voice 
+servants tremble; at the sound of whose steps the nursery, ay, and 
+mayhap the parlor, is in order?  Look at her now, prostrate, 
+prostrate--no strength has she to speak, scarce power to push to 
+her youngest one--her suffering, struggling Rosa,--to push to her 
+the--the instrumentoon!
+
+In the midst of all these throes and agonies, at which all the 
+passengers, who have their own woes (you yourself--for how can you 
+help THEM?--you are on your back on a bench, and if you move all is 
+up with you,) are looking on indifferent--one man there is who has 
+been watching you with the utmost care, and bestowing on your 
+helpless family the tenderness that a father denies them.  He is a 
+foreigner, and you have been conversing with him, in the course of 
+the morning, in French--which, he says, you speak remarkably well, 
+like a native in fact, and then in English (which, after all, you 
+find is more convenient).  What can express your gratitude to this 
+gentleman for all his goodness towards your family and yourself--
+you talk to him, he has served under the Emperor, and is, for all 
+that, sensible, modest, and well-informed.  He speaks, indeed, of 
+his countrymen almost with contempt, and readily admits the 
+superiority of a Briton, on the seas and elsewhere.  One loves to 
+meet with such genuine liberality in a foreigner, and respects 
+the man who can sacrifice vanity to truth.  This distinguished 
+foreigner has travelled much; he asks whither you are going?--where 
+you stop? if you have a great quantity of luggage on board?--and 
+laughs when he hears of the twenty-seven packages, and hopes you 
+have some friend at the custom-house, who can spare you the 
+monstrous trouble of unpacking that which has taken you weeks to 
+put up.  Nine, ten, eleven, the distinguished foreigner is ever 
+at your side; you find him now, perhaps, (with characteristic 
+ingratitude,) something of a bore, but, at least, he has been most 
+tender to the children and their mamma.  At last a Boulogne light 
+comes in sight, (you see it over the bows of the vessel, when, 
+having bobbed violently upwards, it sinks swiftly down,) Boulogne 
+harbor is in sight, and the foreigner says,--
+
+The distinguished foreigner says, says he--"Sare, eef you af no 
+'otel, I sall recommend you, milor, to ze 'Otel Betfort, in ze 
+Quay, sare, close to the bathing-machines and custom-ha-oose.  Good 
+bets and fine garten, sare; table-d'hôte, sare, à cinq heures; 
+breakfast, sare, in French or English style;--I am the 
+commissionaire, sare, and vill see to your loggish."
+
+. . . Curse the fellow, for an impudent, swindling, sneaking French 
+humbug!--Your tone instantly changes, and you tell him to go about 
+his business: but at twelve o'clock at night, when the voyage is 
+over, and the custom-house business done, knowing not whither to 
+go, with a wife and fourteen exhausted children, scarce able to 
+stand, and longing for bed, you find yourself, somehow, in the 
+Hôtel Bedford (and you can't be better), and smiling chambermaids 
+carry off your children to snug beds; while smart waiters produce 
+for your honor--a cold fowl, say, and a salad, and a bottle of 
+Bordeaux and Seltzer-water.
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+The morning comes--I don't know a pleasanter feeling than that of 
+waking with the sun shining on objects quite new, and (although you 
+have made the voyage a dozen times,) quite strange.  Mrs. X. and 
+you occupy a very light bed, which has a tall canopy of red 
+"percale;" the windows are smartly draped with cheap gaudy calicoes 
+and muslins; there are little mean strips of carpet about the tiled 
+floor of the room, and yet all seems as gay and as comfortable as 
+may be--the sun shines brighter than you have seen it for a year, 
+the sky is a thousand times bluer, and what a cheery clatter of 
+shrill quick French voices comes up from the court-yard under the 
+windows!  Bells are jangling; a family, mayhap, is going to Paris, 
+en poste, and wondrous is the jabber of the courier, the postilion, 
+the inn-waiters, and the lookers-on.  The landlord calls out for 
+"Quatre biftecks aux pommes pour le trente-trois,"--(O my 
+countrymen, I love your tastes and your ways!)--the chambermaid is 
+laughing and says, "Finissez donc, Monsieur Pierre!" (what can they 
+be about?)--a fat Englishman has opened his window violently, and 
+says, "Dee dong, garsong, vooly voo me donny lo sho, ou vooly voo 
+pah?"  He has been ringing for half an hour--the last energetic 
+appeal succeeds, and shortly he is enabled to descend to the 
+coffee-room, where, with three hot rolls, grilled ham, cold fowl, 
+and four boiled eggs, he makes what he calls his first FRENCH 
+breakfast.
+
+It is a strange, mongrel, merry place, this town of Boulogne; the 
+little French fishermen's children are beautiful, and the little 
+French soldiers, four feet high, red-breeched, with huge pompons on 
+their caps, and brown faces, and clear sharp eyes, look, for all 
+their littleness, far more military and more intelligent than the 
+heavy louts one has seen swaggering about the garrison towns in 
+England.  Yonder go a crowd of bare-legged fishermen; there is the 
+town idiot, mocking a woman who is screaming "Fleuve du Tage," at 
+an inn-window, to a harp, and there are the little gamins mocking 
+HIM.  Lo! these seven young ladies, with red hair and green veils, 
+they are from neighboring Albion, and going to bathe.  Here comes 
+three Englishmen, habitués evidently of the place,--dandy specimens 
+of our countrymen: one wears a marine dress, another has a shooting 
+dress, a third has a blouse and a pair of guiltless spurs--all have 
+as much hair on the face as nature or art can supply, and all wear 
+their hats very much on one side.  Believe me, there is on the face 
+of this world no scamp like an English one, no blackguard like one 
+of these half-gentlemen, so mean, so low, so vulgar,--so ludicrously
+ignorant and conceited, so desperately heartless and depraved.
+
+But why, my dear sir, get into a passion?--Take things coolly.  As 
+the poet has observed, "Those only is gentlemen who behave as 
+sich;" with such, then, consort, be they cobblers or dukes.  Don't 
+give us, cries the patriotic reader, any abuse of our fellow-
+countrymen (anybody else can do that), but rather continue in that 
+good-humored, facetious, descriptive style with which your letter 
+has commenced.--Your remark, sir, is perfectly just, and does honor 
+to your head and excellent heart.
+
+There is little need to give a description of the good town of 
+Boulogne, which, haute and basse, with the new light-house and the 
+new harbor, and the gas-lamps, and the manufactures, and the 
+convents, and the number of English and French residents, and the 
+pillar erected in honor of the grand Armée d'Angleterre, so called 
+because it DIDN'T go to England, have all been excellently 
+described by the facetious Coglan, the learned Dr. Millingen, and 
+by innumerable guide-books besides.  A fine thing it is to hear the 
+stout old Frenchmen of Napoleon's time argue how that audacious 
+Corsican WOULD have marched to London, after swallowing Nelson and 
+all his gun-boats, but for cette malheureuse guerre d'Espagne and 
+cette glorieuse campagne d'Autriche, which the gold of Pitt caused 
+to be raised at the Emperor's tail, in order to call him off from 
+the helpless country in his front.  Some Frenchmen go farther 
+still, and vow that in Spain they were never beaten at all; indeed, 
+if you read in the Biographie des Hommes du Jour, article "Soult," 
+you will fancy that, with the exception of the disaster at 
+Vittoria, the campaigns in Spain and Portugal were a series of 
+triumphs.  Only, by looking at a map, it is observable that Vimeiro 
+is a mortal long way from Toulouse, where, at the end of certain 
+years of victories, we somehow find the honest Marshal.  And what 
+then?--he went to Toulouse for the purpose of beating the English 
+there, to be sure;--a known fact, on which comment would be 
+superfluous.  However, we shall never get to Paris at this rate; 
+let us break off further palaver, and away at once. . . .
+
+(During this pause, the ingenious reader is kindly requested to pay 
+his bill at the Hotel at Boulogne, to mount the Diligence of 
+Laffitte, Caillard and Company, and to travel for twenty-five 
+hours, amidst much jingling of harness-bells and screaming of 
+postilions.)
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+The French milliner, who occupies one of the corners, begins to 
+remove the greasy pieces of paper which have enveloped her locks 
+during the journey.  She withdraws the "Madras" of dubious hue 
+which has bound her head for the last five-and-twenty hours, and 
+replaces it by the black velvet bonnet, which, bobbing against your 
+nose, has hung from the Diligence roof since your departure from 
+Boulogne.  The old lady in the opposite corner, who has been 
+sucking bonbons, and smells dreadfully of anisette, arranges her 
+little parcels in that immense basket of abominations which all old 
+women carry in their laps.  She rubs her mouth and eyes with her 
+dusty cambric handkerchief, she ties up her nightcap into a little 
+bundle, and replaces it by a more becoming head-piece, covered with 
+withered artificial flowers, and crumpled tags of ribbon; she looks 
+wistfully at the company for an instant, and then places her 
+handkerchief before her mouth:--her eyes roll strangely about for 
+an instant, and you hear a faint clattering noise: the old lady has 
+been getting ready her teeth, which had lain in her basket among 
+the bonbons, pins, oranges, pomatum, bits of cake, lozenges, 
+prayer-books, peppermint-water, copper money, and false hair--
+stowed away there during the voyage.  The Jewish gentleman, who has 
+been so attentive to the milliner during the journey, and is a 
+traveller and bagman by profession, gathers together his various 
+goods.  The sallow-faced English lad, who has been drunk ever since 
+we left Boulogne yesterday, and is coming to Paris to pursue the 
+study of medicine, swears that he rejoices to leave the cursed 
+Diligence, is sick of the infernal journey, and d--d glad that the 
+d--d voyage is so nearly over.  "Enfin!" says your neighbor, 
+yawning, and inserting an elbow into the mouth of his right and 
+left hand companion, "nous voilà."
+
+NOUS VOILÀ!--We are at Paris!  This must account for the removal of 
+the milliner's curl-papers, and the fixing of the old lady's 
+teeth.--Since the last relais, the Diligence has been travelling 
+with extraordinary speed.  The postilion cracks his terrible whip, 
+and screams shrilly.  The conductor blows incessantly on his horn, 
+the bells of the harness, the bumping and ringing of the wheels and 
+chains, and the clatter of the great hoofs of the heavy snorting 
+Norman stallions, have wondrously increased within this, the last 
+ten minutes; and the Diligence, which has been proceeding hitherto 
+at the rate of a league in an hour, now dashes gallantly forward, 
+as if it would traverse at least six miles in the same space of 
+time.  Thus it is, when Sir Robert maketh a speech at Saint 
+Stephen's--he useth his strength at the beginning, only, and the 
+end.  He gallopeth at the commencement; in the middle he lingers; 
+at the close, again, he rouses the House, which has fallen asleep; 
+he cracketh the whip of his satire; he shouts the shout of his 
+patriotism; and, urging his eloquence to its roughest canter, 
+awakens the sleepers, and inspires the weary, until men say, What a 
+wondrous orator!  What a capital coach!  We will ride henceforth in 
+it, and in no other!
+
+But, behold us at Paris!  The Diligence has reached a rude-looking 
+gate, or grille, flanked by two lodges; the French Kings of old 
+made their entry by this gate; some of the hottest battles of the 
+late revolution were fought before it.  At present, it is blocked 
+by carts and peasants, and a busy crowd of men, in green, examining 
+the packages before they enter, probing the straw with long 
+needles.  It is the Barrier of St. Denis, and the green men are the 
+customs'-men of the city of Paris.  If you are a countryman, who 
+would introduce a cow into the metropolis, the city demands twenty-
+four francs for such a privilege: if you have a hundredweight of 
+tallow-candles, you must, previously, disburse three francs: if a 
+drove of hogs, nine francs per whole hog: but upon these subjects 
+Mr. Bulwer, Mrs. Trollope, and other writers, have already 
+enlightened the public.  In the present instance, after a momentary 
+pause, one of the men in green mounts by the side of the conductor, 
+and the ponderous vehicle pursues its journey.
+
+The street which we enter, that of the Faubourg St. Denis, presents 
+a strange contrast to the dark uniformity of a London street, where 
+everything, in the dingy and smoky atmosphere, looks as though it 
+were painted in India-ink--black houses, black passengers, and 
+black sky.  Here, on the contrary, is a thousand times more life 
+and color.  Before you, shining in the sun, is a long glistening 
+line of GUTTER,--not a very pleasing object in a city, but in a 
+picture invaluable.  On each side are houses of all dimensions and 
+hues; some but of one story; some as high as the tower of Babel.  
+From these the haberdashers (and this is their favorite street) 
+flaunt long strips of gaudy calicoes, which give a strange air of 
+rude gayety to the street.  Milk-women, with a little crowd of 
+gossips round each, are, at this early hour of morning, selling the 
+chief material of the Parisian café-au-lait.  Gay wine-shops, 
+painted red, and smartly decorated with vines and gilded railings, 
+are filled with workmen taking their morning's draught.  That 
+gloomy-looking prison on your right is a prison for women; once it 
+was a convent for Lazarists: a thousand unfortunate individuals of 
+the softer sex now occupy that mansion: they bake, as we find in 
+the guide-books, the bread of all the other prisons; they mend and 
+wash the shirts and stockings of all the other prisoners; they make 
+hooks-and-eyes and phosphorus-boxes, and they attend chapel every 
+Sunday:--if occupation can help them, sure they have enough of it.  
+Was it not a great stroke of the legislature to superintend the 
+morals and linen at once, and thus keep these poor creatures 
+continually mending?--But we have passed the prison long ago, and 
+are at the Porte St. Denis itself.
+
+There is only time to take a hasty glance as we pass: it 
+commemorates some of the wonderful feats of arms of Ludovicus 
+Magnus, and abounds in ponderous allegories--nymphs, and river-
+gods, and pyramids crowned with fleurs-de-lis; Louis passing over 
+the Rhine in triumph, and the Dutch Lion giving up the ghost, in 
+the year of our Lord 1672.  The Dutch Lion revived, and overcame 
+the man some years afterwards; but of this fact, singularly enough, 
+the inscriptions make no mention.  Passing, then, round the gate, 
+and not under it (after the general custom, in respect of triumphal 
+arches), you cross the boulevard, which gives a glimpse of trees 
+and sunshine, and gleaming white buildings; then, dashing down the 
+Rue de Bourbon Villeneuve, a dirty street, which seems interminable,
+and the Rue St. Eustache, the conductor gives a last blast on his
+horn, and the great vehicle clatters into the court- yard, where the
+journey is destined to conclude.
+
+If there was a noise before of screaming postilions and cracked 
+horns, it was nothing to the Babel-like clatter which greets us 
+now.  We are in a great court, which Hajji Baba would call the 
+father of Diligences.  Half a dozen other coaches arrive at the 
+same minute--no light affairs, like your English vehicles, but 
+ponderous machines, containing fifteen passengers inside, more in 
+the cabriolet, and vast towers of luggage on the roof: others are 
+loading: the yard is filled with passengers coming or departing;--
+bustling porters and screaming commissionaires.  These latter seize 
+you as you descend from your place,--twenty cards are thrust into 
+your hand, and as many voices, jabbering with inconceivable 
+swiftness, shriek into your ear, "Dis way, sare; are you for ze' 
+'Otel of Rhin?' 'Hôtel de l'Amirauté!'--'Hotel Bristol,' sare!--
+Monsieur, 'l'Hôtel de Lille?'  Sacr-rrré 'nom de Dieu, laissez 
+passer ce petit, monsieur!  Ow mosh loggish ave you, sare?"
+
+And now, if you are a stranger in Paris, listen to the words of 
+Titmarsh.--If you cannot speak a syllable of French, and love 
+English comfort, clean rooms, breakfasts, and waiters; if you would 
+have plentiful dinners, and are not particular (as how should you 
+be?) concerning wine; if, in this foreign country, you WILL have 
+your English companions, your porter, your friend, and your brandy-
+and-water--do not listen to any of these commissioner fellows, but 
+with your best English accent, shout out boldly, "MEURICE!" and 
+straightway a man will step forward to conduct you to the Rue de 
+Rivoli.
+
+Here you will find apartments at any price: a very neat room, for 
+instance, for three francs daily; an English breakfast of eternal 
+boiled eggs, or grilled ham; a nondescript dinner, profuse but 
+cold; and a society which will rejoice your heart.  Here are young 
+gentlemen from the universities; young merchants on a lark; large 
+families of nine daughters, with fat father and mother; officers of 
+dragoons, and lawyers' clerks.  The last time we dined at 
+"Meurice's" we hobbed and nobbed with no less a person than Mr. 
+Moses, the celebrated bailiff of Chancery Lane; Lord Brougham was 
+on his right, and a clergyman's lady, with a train of white-haired 
+girls, sat on his left, wonderfully taken with the diamond rings of 
+the fascinating stranger!
+
+It is, as you will perceive, an admirable way to see Paris, 
+especially if you spend your days reading the English papers at 
+Galignani's, as many of our foreign tourists do.
+
+But all this is promiscuous, and not to the purpose.  If,--to 
+continue on the subject of hotel choosing,--if you love quiet, 
+heavy bills, and the best table-d'hôte in the city, go, O stranger! 
+to the "Hôtel des Princes;" it is close to the Boulevard, and 
+convenient for Frascati's.  The "Hôtel Mirabeau" possesses scarcely 
+less attraction; but of this you will find, in Mr. Bulwer's 
+"Autobiography of Pelham," a faithful and complete account.  
+"Lawson's Hotel" has likewise its merits, as also the "Hôtel de 
+Lille," which may be described as a "second chop" Meurice.
+
+If you are a poor student come to study the humanities, or the 
+pleasant art of amputation, cross the water forthwith, and proceed 
+to the "Hôtel Corneille," near the Odéon, or others of its species; 
+there are many where you can live royally (until you economize by 
+going into lodgings) on four francs a day; and where, if by any 
+strange chance you are desirous for a while to get rid of your 
+countrymen, you will find that they scarcely ever penetrate.
+
+But above all, O my countrymen! shun boarding-houses, especially if 
+you have ladies in your train; or ponder well, and examine the 
+characters of the keepers thereof, before you lead your innocent 
+daughters, and their mamma, into places so dangerous.  In the first 
+place, you have bad dinners; and, secondly, bad company.  If you 
+play cards, you are very likely playing with a swindler; if you 
+dance, you dance with a ---- person with whom you had better have 
+nothing to do.
+
+
+Note (which ladies are requested not to read).--In one of these 
+establishments, daily advertised as most eligible for English, a 
+friend of the writer lived.  A lady, who had passed for some time 
+as the wife of one of the inmates, suddenly changed her husband and 
+name, her original husband remaining in the house, and saluting her 
+by her new title.
+
+
+
+
+A CAUTION TO TRAVELLERS.
+
+
+A million dangers and snares await the traveller, as soon as he 
+issues out of that vast messagerie which we have just quitted: and 
+as each man cannot do better than relate such events as have 
+happened in the course of his own experience, and may keep the 
+unwary from the path of danger, let us take this, the very earliest 
+opportunity, of imparting to the public a little of the wisdom 
+which we painfully have acquired.
+
+And first, then, with regard to the city of Paris, it is to be 
+remarked, that in that metropolis flourish a greater number of 
+native and exotic swindlers than are to be found in any other 
+European nursery.  What young Englishman that visits it, but has 
+not determined, in his heart, to have a little share of the 
+gayeties that go on--just for once, just to see what they are like?  
+How many, when the horrible gambling dens were open, did resist a 
+sight of them?--nay, was not a young fellow rather flattered by a 
+dinner invitation from the Salon, whither he went, fondly 
+pretending that he should see "French society," in the persons of 
+certain Dukes and Counts who used to frequent the place?
+
+My friend Pogson is a young fellow, not much worse, although 
+perhaps a little weaker and simpler than his neighbors; and coming 
+to Paris with exactly the same notions that bring many others of 
+the British youth to that capital, events befell him there, last 
+winter, which are strictly true, and shall here be narrated, by way 
+of warning to all.
+
+Pog, it must be premised, is a city man, who travels in drugs for a 
+couple of the best London houses, blows the flute, has an album, 
+drives his own gig, and is considered, both on the road and in the 
+metropolis, a remarkably nice, intelligent, thriving young man.  
+Pogson's only fault is too great an attachment to the fair:--"the 
+sex," as he says often "will be his ruin:" the fact is, that Pog 
+never travels without a "Don Juan" under his driving-cushion, and 
+is a pretty-looking young fellow enough.
+
+Sam Pogson had occasion to visit Paris, last October; and it was in 
+that city that his love of the sex had liked to have cost him dear.  
+He worked his way down to Dover; placing, right and left, at the 
+towns on his route, rhubarb, sodas, and other such delectable wares 
+as his masters dealt in ("the sweetest sample of castor oil, smelt 
+like a nosegay--went off like wildfire--hogshead and a half at 
+Rochester, eight-and twenty gallons at Canterbury," and so on), and 
+crossed to Calais, and thence voyaged to Paris in the coupé of the 
+Diligence.  He paid for two places, too, although a single man, and 
+the reason shall now be made known.
+
+Dining at the table-d'hôte at "Quillacq's"--it is the best inn on 
+the Continent of Europe--our little traveller had the happiness to 
+be placed next to a lady, who was, he saw at a glance, one of the 
+extreme pink of the nobility.  A large lady, in black satin, with 
+eyes and hair as black as sloes, with gold chains, scent-bottles, 
+sable tippet, worked pocket-handkerchief, and four twinkling rings 
+on each of her plump white fingers.  Her cheeks were as pink as the 
+finest Chinese rouge could make them.  Pog knew the article: he 
+travelled in it.  Her lips were as red as the ruby lip salve: she 
+used the very best, that was clear.
+
+She was a fine-looking woman, certainly (holding down her eyes, and 
+talking perpetually of "mes trente-deux ans"); and Pogson, the 
+wicked young dog, who professed not to care for young misses, 
+saying they smelt so of bread-and-butter, declared, at once, that 
+the lady was one of HIS beauties; in fact, when he spoke to us 
+about her, he said, "She's a slap-up thing, I tell you; a reg'lar 
+good one; ONE OF MY SORT!"  And such was Pogson's credit in all 
+commercial rooms, that one of HIS sort was considered to surpass 
+all other sorts.
+
+During dinner-time, Mr. Pogson was profoundly polite and attentive 
+to the lady at his side, and kindly communicated to her, as is the 
+way with the best-bred English on their first arrival "on the 
+Continent," all his impressions regarding the sights and persons he 
+had seen.  Such remarks having been made during half an hour's 
+ramble about the ramparts and town, and in the course of a walk 
+down to the custom-house, and a confidential communication with the 
+commissionaire, must be, doubtless, very valuable to Frenchmen in 
+their own country; and the lady listened to Pogson's opinions: not 
+only with benevolent attention, but actually, she said, with 
+pleasure and delight.  Mr. Pogson said that there was no such thing 
+as good meat in France, and that's why they cooked their victuals 
+in this queer way; he had seen many soldiers parading about the 
+place, and expressed a true Englishman's abhorrence of an armed 
+force; not that he feared such fellows as these--little whipper-
+snappers--our men would eat them.  Hereupon the lady admitted that 
+our Guards were angels, but that Monsieur must not be too hard upon 
+the French; "her father was a General of the Emperor."
+
+Pogson felt a tremendous respect for himself at the notion that he 
+was dining with a General's daughter, and instantly ordered a 
+bottle of champagne to keep up his consequence.
+
+"Mrs. Bironn, ma'am," said he, for he had heard the waiter call her 
+by some such name, "if you WILL accept a glass of champagne, ma'am, 
+you'll do me, I'm sure, great honor: they say it's very good, and a 
+precious sight cheaper than it is on our side of the way, too--not 
+that I care for money.  Mrs. Bironn, ma'am, your health, ma'am."
+
+The lady smiled very graciously, and drank the wine.
+
+"Har you any relation, ma'am, if I may make so bold; har you 
+anyways connected with the family of our immortal bard?"
+
+"Sir, I beg your pardon."
+
+"Don't mention it, ma'am: but BiRONN and BYron are hevidently the 
+same names, only you pronounce in the French way; and I thought you 
+might be related to his lordship: his horigin, ma'am, was of French 
+extraction:" and here Pogson began to repeat,--
+
+
+     "Hare thy heyes like thy mother's, my fair child,
+      Hada! sole daughter of my 'ouse and 'art?"
+
+
+"Oh!" said the lady, laughing, "you speak of LOR Byron?
+
+"Hauthor of 'Don Juan,' 'Child 'Arold,' and 'Cain, a Mystery,'" 
+said Pogson:--"I do; and hearing the waiter calling you Madam la 
+Bironn, took the liberty of hasking whether you were connected with 
+his lordship; that's hall:" and my friend here grew dreadfully red, 
+and began twiddling his long ringlets in his fingers, and examining 
+very eagerly the contents of his plate.
+
+"Oh, no: Madame la Baronne means Mistress Baroness; my husband was 
+Baron, and I am Baroness."
+
+"What! 'ave I the honor--I beg your pardon, ma'am--is your ladyship 
+a Baroness, and I not know it? pray excuse me for calling you 
+ma'am."
+
+The Baroness smiled most graciously--with such a look as Juno cast 
+upon unfortunate Jupiter when she wished to gain her wicked ends 
+upon him--the Baroness smiled; and, stealing her hand into a black 
+velvet bag, drew from it an ivory card-case, and from the ivory 
+card-case extracted a glazed card, printed in gold; on it was 
+engraved a coronet, and under the coronet the words
+
+
+    BARONNE DE FLORVAL-DELVAL,
+
+      NÉE DE MELVAL-NORVAL.
+
+                 Rue Taitbout.
+
+
+The grand Pitt diamond--the Queen's own star of the garter--a 
+sample of otto-of-roses at a guinea a drop, would not be handled 
+more curiously, or more respectfully, than this porcelain card of 
+the Baroness.  Trembling he put it into his little Russia-leather 
+pocket-book: and when he ventured to look up, and saw the eyes of 
+the Baroness de Florval-Delval, née de Melval-Norval, gazing upon 
+him with friendly and serene glances, a thrill of pride tingled 
+through Pogson's blood: he felt himself to be the very happiest 
+fellow "on the Continent."
+
+But Pogson did not, for some time, venture to resume that sprightly 
+and elegant familiarity which generally forms the great charm of 
+his conversation: he was too much frightened at the presence he 
+was in, and contented himself by graceful and solemn bows, deep 
+attention, and ejaculations of "Yes, my lady," and "No, your 
+ladyship," for some minutes after the discovery had been made.  
+Pogson piqued himself on his breeding: "I hate the aristocracy," 
+he said, "but that's no reason why I shouldn't behave like a 
+gentleman."
+
+A surly, silent little gentleman, who had been the third at the 
+ordinary, and would take no part either in the conversation or in 
+Pogson's champagne, now took up his hat, and, grunting, left the 
+room, when the happy bagman had the delight of a tête-à-tête.  The 
+Baroness did not appear inclined to move: it was cold; a fire was 
+comfortable, and she had ordered none in her apartment.  Might 
+Pogson give her one more glass of champagne, or would her ladyship 
+prefer "something hot."  Her ladyship gravely said, she never took 
+ANYTHING hot.  "Some champagne, then; a leetle drop?"  She would! 
+she would!  O gods! how Pogson's hand shook as he filled and 
+offered her the glass!
+
+What took place during the rest of the evening had better be 
+described by Mr. Pogson himself, who has given us permission to 
+publish his letter.
+
+
+"QUILLACQ'S HOTEL (pronounced KILLYAX), CALAIS.
+
+"DEAR TIT,--I arrived at Cally, as they call it, this day, or, 
+rather, yesterday; for it is past midnight, as I sit thinking of a 
+wonderful adventure that has just befallen me.  A woman in course; 
+that's always the case with ME, you know: but oh, Tit! if you COULD 
+but see her!  Of the first family in France, the Florval-Delvals, 
+beautiful as an angel, and no more caring for money than I do for 
+split peas.
+
+"I'll tell you how it occurred.  Everybody in France, you know, 
+dines at the ordinary--it's quite distangy to do so.  There was 
+only three of us to-day, however,--the Baroness, me, and a gent, 
+who never spoke a word; and we didn't want him to, neither: do you 
+mark that?
+
+"You know my way with the women: champagne's the thing; make 'em 
+drink, make 'em talk;--make 'em talk, make 'em do anything.  So I 
+orders a bottle, as if for myself; and, 'Ma'am,' says I, 'will you 
+take a glass of Sham--just one?'  Take it she did--for you know 
+it's quite distangy here: everybody dines at the table de hôte, and 
+everybody accepts everybody's wine.  Bob Irons, who travels in 
+linen on our circuit, told me that he had made some slap-up 
+acquaintances among the genteelest people at Paris, nothing but by 
+offering them Sham.
+
+"Well, my Baroness takes one glass, two glasses, three glasses--the 
+old fellow goes--we have a deal of chat (she took me for a military 
+man, she said: is it not singular that so many people should?), and 
+by ten o'clock we had grown so intimate, that I had from her her 
+whole history, knew where she came from, and where she was going.  
+Leave me alone with 'em: I can find out any woman's history in half 
+an hour.
+
+"And where do you think she IS going? to Paris to be sure: she has 
+her seat in what they call the coopy (though you're not near so 
+cooped in it as in our coaches.  I've been to the office and seen 
+one of 'em).  She has her place in the coopy, and the coopy holds 
+THREE; so what does Sam Pogson do?--he goes and takes the other 
+two.  Ain't I up to a thing or two?  Oh, no, not the least; but I 
+shall have her to myself the whole of the way.
+
+"We shall be in the French metropolis the day after this reaches 
+you: please look out for a handsome lodging for me, and never mind 
+the expense.  And I say, if you could, in her hearing, when you 
+came down to the coach, call me Captain Pogson, I wish you would--
+it sounds well travelling, you know; and when she asked me if I was 
+not an officer, I couldn't say no.  Adieu, then, my dear fellow, 
+till Monday, and vive le joy, as they say.  The Baroness says I 
+speak French charmingly, she talks English as well as you or I.
+
+"Your affectionate friend,
+
+"S. Pogson."
+
+
+This letter reached us duly, in our garrets, and we engaged such an 
+apartment for Mr. Pogson, as beseemed a gentleman of his rank in 
+the world and the army.  At the appointed hour, too, we repaired to 
+the Diligence office, and there beheld the arrival of the machine 
+which contained him and his lovely Baroness.
+
+Those who have much frequented the society of gentlemen of his 
+profession (and what more delightful?) must be aware, that, when 
+all the rest of mankind look hideous, dirty, peevish, wretched, 
+after a forty hours' coach-journey, a bagman appears as gay and 
+spruce as when he started; having within himself a thousand little 
+conveniences for the voyage, which common travellers neglect.  
+Pogson had a little portable toilet, of which he had not failed to 
+take advantage, and with his long, curling, flaxen hair, flowing 
+under a seal-skin cap, with a gold tassel, with a blue and gold 
+satin handkerchief, a crimson velvet waistcoat, a light green cut-
+away coat, a pair of barred brickdust-colored pantaloons, and a 
+neat mackintosh, presented, altogether, as elegant and distingué an 
+appearance as any one could desire.  He had put on a clean collar 
+at breakfast, and a pair of white kids as he entered the barrier, 
+and looked, as he rushed into my arms, more like a man stepping out 
+of a band-box, than one descending from a vehicle that has just 
+performed one of the laziest, dullest, flattest, stalest, dirtiest 
+journeys in Europe.
+
+To my surprise, there were TWO ladies in the coach with my friend, 
+and not ONE, as I had expected.  One of these, a stout female, 
+carrying sundry baskets, bags, umbrellas, and woman's wraps, was 
+evidently a maid-servant: the other, in black, was Pogson's fair 
+one, evidently.  I could see a gleam of curl-papers over a sallow 
+face,--of a dusky nightcap flapping over the curl-papers,--but 
+these were hidden by a lace veil and a huge velvet bonnet, of which 
+the crowning birds-of-paradise were evidently in a moulting state.  
+She was encased in many shawls and wrappers; she put, hesitatingly, 
+a pretty little foot out of the carriage--Pogson was by her side in 
+an instant, and, gallantly putting one of his white kids round her 
+waist, aided this interesting creature to descend.  I saw, by her 
+walk, that she was five-and-forty, and that my little Pogson was a 
+lost man.
+
+After some brief parley between them--in which it was charming to 
+hear how my friend Samuel WOULD speak, what he called French, to a 
+lady who could not understand one syllable of his jargon--the 
+mutual hackney-coaches drew up; Madame la Baronne waved to the 
+Captain a graceful French curtsy.  "Adyou!" said Samuel, and waved 
+his lily hand.  "Adyou-addimang."
+
+A brisk little gentleman, who had made the journey in the same 
+coach with Pogson, but had more modestly taken a seat in the 
+Imperial, here passed us, and greeted me with a "How d'ye do?"  He 
+had shouldered his own little valise, and was trudging off, 
+scattering a cloud of commissionaires, who would fain have spared 
+him the trouble.
+
+"Do you know that chap?" says Pogson; "surly fellow, ain't he?"
+
+"The kindest man in existence," answered I; "all the world knows 
+little Major British."
+
+"He's a Major, is he?--why, that's the fellow that dined with us at 
+Killyax's; it's lucky I did not call myself Captain before him, he 
+mightn't have liked it, you know:" and then Sam fell into a 
+reverie;--what was the subject of his thoughts soon appeared.
+
+"Did you ever SEE such a foot and ankle?" said Sam, after sitting 
+for some time, regardless of the novelty of the scene, his hands in 
+his pockets, plunged in the deepest thought.
+
+"ISN'T she a slap-up woman, eh, now?" pursued he; and began 
+enumerating her attractions, as a horse-jockey would the points of 
+a favorite animal.
+
+"You seem to have gone a pretty length already," said I, "by 
+promising to visit her to-morrow."
+
+"A good length?--I believe you.  Leave ME alone for that."
+
+"But I thought you were only to be two in the coupé, you wicked 
+rogue."
+
+"Two in the coopy?  Oh! ah! yes, you know--why, that is, I didn't 
+know she had her maid with her (what an ass I was to think of a 
+noblewoman travelling without one!) and couldn't, in course, 
+refuse, when she asked me to let the maid in."
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"Couldn't, you know, as a man of honor; but I made up for all 
+that," said Pogson, winking slyly, and putting his hand to his 
+little bunch of a nose, in a very knowing way.
+
+"You did, and how?"
+
+"Why, you dog, I sat next to her; sat in the middle the whole way, 
+and my back's half broke, I can tell you:" and thus, having 
+depicted his happiness, we soon reached the inn where this back-
+broken young man was to lodge during his stay in Paris.
+
+The next day at five we met; Mr. Pogson had seen his Baroness, and 
+described her lodgings, in his own expressive way, as "slap-up."  
+She had received him quite like an old friend; treated him to eau 
+sucrée, of which beverage he expressed himself a great admirer; and 
+actually asked him to dine the next day.  But there was a cloud 
+over the ingenuous youth's brow, and I inquired still farther.
+
+"Why," said he, with a sigh, "I thought she was a widow; and, hang 
+it! who should come in but her husband the Baron: a big fellow, 
+sir, with a blue coat, a red ribbing, and SUCH a pair of mustachios!"
+
+"Well," said I, "he didn't turn you out, I suppose?"
+
+"Oh, no! on the contrary, as kind as possible; his lordship said 
+that he respected the English army; asked me what corps I was in,--
+said he had fought in Spain against us,--and made me welcome."
+
+"What could you want more?"
+
+Mr. Pogson at this only whistled; and if some very profound 
+observer of human nature had been there to read into this little 
+bagman's heart, it would, perhaps, have been manifest, that the 
+appearance of a whiskered soldier of a husband had counteracted 
+some plans that the young scoundrel was concocting.
+
+I live up a hundred and thirty-seven steps in the remote quarter 
+of the Luxembourg, and it is not to be expected that such a 
+fashionable fellow as Sam Pogson, with his pockets full of money, 
+and a new city to see, should be always wandering to my dull 
+quarters; so that, although he did not make his appearance for some 
+time, he must not be accused of any luke-warmness of friendship on 
+that score.
+
+He was out, too, when I called at his hotel; but once, I had the 
+good fortune to see him, with his hat curiously on one side, 
+looking as pleased as Punch, and being driven, in an open cab, in 
+the Champs Elysées.  "That's ANOTHER tip-top chap," said he, when 
+we met, at length.  "What do you think of an Earl's son, my boy?  
+Honorable Tom Ringwood, son of the Earl of Cinqbars: what do you 
+think of that, eh?"
+
+I thought he was getting into very good society.  Sam was a dashing 
+fellow, and was always above his own line of life; he had met Mr. 
+Ringwood at the Baron's, and they'd been to the play together; and 
+the honorable gent, as Sam called him, had joked with him about 
+being well to do IN A CERTAIN QUARTER; and he had had a game of 
+billiards with the Baron, at the Estaminy, "a very distangy place, 
+where you smoke," said Sam; "quite select, and frequented by the 
+tip-top nobility;" and they were as thick as peas in a shell; and 
+they were to dine that day at Ringwood's, and sup, the next night, 
+with the Baroness.
+
+"I think the chaps down the road will stare," said Sam, "when they 
+hear how I've been coming it."  And stare, no doubt, they would; 
+for it is certain that very few commercial gentlemen have had Mr. 
+Pogson's advantages.
+
+The next morning we had made an arrangement to go out shopping 
+together, and to purchase some articles of female gear, that Sam 
+intended to bestow on his relations when he returned.  Seven 
+needle-books, for his sisters; a gilt buckle, for his mamma; a 
+handsome French cashmere shawl and bonnet, for his aunt (the old 
+lady keeps an inn in the Borough, and has plenty of money, and no 
+heirs); and a toothpick case, for his father.  Sam is a good fellow 
+to all his relations, and as for his aunt, he adores her.  Well, we 
+were to go and make these purchases, and I arrived punctually at my 
+time; but Sam was stretched on a sofa, very pale and dismal.
+
+I saw how it had been.--"A little too much of Mr. Ringwood's 
+claret, I suppose?"
+
+He only gave a sickly stare.
+
+"Where does the Honorable Tom live?" says I.
+
+"HONORABLE!" says Sam, with a hollow, horrid laugh; "I tell you, 
+Tit, he's no more Honorable than you are."
+
+"What, an impostor?"
+
+"No, no; not that.  He is a real Honorable, only--"
+
+"Oh, ho! I smell a rat--a little jealous, eh?"
+
+"Jealousy be hanged!  I tell you he's a thief; and the Baron's a 
+thief; and, hang me, if I think his wife is any better.  Eight-and-
+thirty pounds he won of me before supper; and made me drunk, and 
+sent me home:--is THAT honorable?  How can I afford to lose forty 
+pounds?  It's took me two years to save it up--if my old aunt gets 
+wind of it, she'll cut me off with a shilling: hang me!"--and here 
+Sam, in an agony, tore his fair hair.
+
+While bewailing his lot in this lamentable strain, his bell was 
+rung, which signal being answered by a surly "Come in," a tall, 
+very fashionable gentleman, with a fur coat, and a fierce tuft to 
+his chin, entered the room.  "Pogson my buck, how goes it?" said 
+he, familiarly, and gave a stare at me: I was making for my hat.
+
+"Don't go," said Sam, rather eagerly; and I sat down again.
+
+The Honorable Mr. Ringwood hummed and ha'd: and, at last, said he 
+wished to speak to Mr. Pogson on business, in private, if possible.
+
+"There's no secrets betwixt me and my friend," cried Sam.
+
+Mr. Ringwood paused a little:--"An awkward business that of last 
+night," at length exclaimed he.
+
+"I believe it WAS an awkward business," said Sam, dryly.
+
+"I really am very sorry for your losses."
+
+"Thank you: and so am I, I can tell you," said Sam.
+
+"You must mind, my good fellow, and not drink; for, when you drink, 
+you WILL play high: by Gad, you led US in, and not we you."
+
+"I dare say," answered Sam, with something of peevishness; "losses 
+is losses: there's no use talking about 'em when they're over and 
+paid."
+
+"And paid?" here wonderingly spoke Mr. Ringwood; "why, my dear fel--
+what the deuce--has Florval been with you?"
+
+"D--- Florval!" growled Sam, "I've never set eyes on his face since 
+last night; and never wish to see him again."
+
+"Come, come, enough of this talk; how do you intend to settle the 
+bills which you gave him last night?"
+
+"Bills I what do you mean?"
+
+"I mean, sir, these bills," said the Honorable Tom, producing two 
+out of his pocket-book, and looking as stern as a lion.  "'I 
+promise to pay, on demand, to the Baron de Florval, the sum of four 
+hundred pounds.  October 20, 1838.'  'Ten days after date I promise 
+to pay the Baron de et caetera et caetera, one hundred and ninety-
+eight pounds.  Samuel Pogson.'  You didn't say what regiment you 
+were in."
+
+"WHAT!" shouted poor Sam, as from a dream, starting up and looking 
+preternaturally pale and hideous.
+
+"D--- it, sir, you don't affect ignorance: you don't pretend not to 
+remember that you signed these bills, for money lost in my rooms: 
+money LENT to you, by Madame de Florval, at your own request, and 
+lost to her husband?  You don't suppose, sir, that I shall be such 
+an infernal idiot as to believe you, or such a coward as to put up 
+with a mean subterfuge of this sort.  Will you, or will you not, 
+pay the money, sir?"
+
+"I will not," said Sam, stoutly; "it's a d----d swin--"
+
+Here Mr. Ringwood sprung up, clenching his riding-whip, and looking 
+so fierce that Sam and I bounded back to the other end of the room.  
+"Utter that word again, and, by heaven, I'll murder you!" shouted 
+Mr. Ringwood, and looked as if he would, too: "once more, will you, 
+or will you not, pay this money?"
+
+"I can't," said Sam faintly.
+
+"I'll call again, Captain Pogson," said Mr. Ringwood, "I'll call 
+again in one hour; and, unless you come to some arrangement, you 
+must meet my friend, the Baron de Florval, or I'll post you for a 
+swindler and a coward."  With this he went out: the door thundered 
+to after him, and when the clink of his steps departing had 
+subsided, I was enabled to look round at Pog.  The poor little man 
+had his elbows on the marble table, his head between his hands, and 
+looked, as one has seen gentlemen look over a steam-vessel off 
+Ramsgate, the wind blowing remarkably fresh: at last he fairly 
+burst out crying.
+
+"If Mrs. Pogson heard of this," said I, "what would become of the 
+'Three Tuns?'" (for I wished to give him a lesson).  "If your Ma, 
+who took you every Sunday to meeting, should know that her boy was 
+paying attention to married women;--if Drench, Glauber and Co., 
+your employers, were to know that their confidential agent was a 
+gambler, and unfit to be trusted with their money, how long do you 
+think your connection would last with them, and who would 
+afterwards employ you?"
+
+To this poor Pog had not a word of answer; but sat on his sofa 
+whimpering so bitterly, that the sternest of moralists would have 
+relented towards him, and would have been touched by the little 
+wretch's tears.  Everything, too, must be pleaded in excuse for 
+this unfortunate bagman: who, if he wished to pass for a captain, 
+had only done so because he had an intense respect and longing for 
+rank: if he had made love to the Baroness, had only done so because 
+he was given to understand by Lord Byron's "Don Juan" that making 
+love was a very correct, natty thing: and if he had gambled, had 
+only been induced to do so by the bright eyes and example of the 
+Baron and the Baroness.  O ye Barons and Baronesses of England! if 
+ye knew what a number of small commoners are daily occupied in 
+studying your lives, and imitating your aristocratic ways, how 
+careful would ye be of your morals, manners, and conversation!
+
+My soul was filled, then, with a gentle yearning pity for Pogson, 
+and revolved many plans for his rescue: none of these seeming to 
+be practicable, at last we hit on the very wisest of all, and 
+determined to apply for counsel to no less a person than Major 
+British.
+
+A blessing it is to be acquainted with my worthy friend, little 
+Major British; and heaven, sure, it was that put the Major into my 
+head, when I heard of this awkward scrape of poor Fog's.  The Major 
+is on half-pay, and occupies a modest apartment au quatrième, in 
+the very hotel which Pogson had patronized at my suggestion; 
+indeed, I had chosen it from Major British's own peculiar 
+recommendation.
+
+There is no better guide to follow than such a character as the 
+honest Major, of whom there are many likenesses now scattered over 
+the Continent of Europe: men who love to live well, and are forced 
+to live cheaply, and who find the English abroad a thousand times 
+easier, merrier, and more hospitable than the same persons at home.  
+I, for my part, never landed on Calais pier without feeling that a 
+load of sorrows was left on the other side of the water; and have 
+always fancied that black care stepped on board the steamer, along 
+with the custom-house officers at Gravesend, and accompanied one to 
+yonder black louring towers of London--so busy, so dismal, and so 
+vast.
+
+British would have cut any foreigner's throat who ventured to say 
+so much, but entertained, no doubt, private sentiments of this 
+nature; for he passed eight months of the year, regularly, abroad, 
+with headquarters at Paris (the garrets before alluded to), and 
+only went to England for the month's shooting, on the grounds of 
+his old colonel, now an old lord, of whose acquaintance the Major 
+was passably inclined to boast.
+
+He loved and respected, like a good staunch Tory as he is, every 
+one of the English nobility; gave himself certain little airs of 
+a man of fashion, that were by no means disagreeable; and was, 
+indeed, kindly regarded by such English aristocracy as he met, in 
+his little annual tours among the German courts, in Italy or in 
+Paris, where he never missed an ambassador's night: he retailed to 
+us, who didn't go, but were delighted to know all that had taken 
+place, accurate accounts of the dishes, the dresses, and the 
+scandal which had there fallen under his observation.
+
+He is, moreover, one of the most useful persons in society that can 
+possibly be; for besides being incorrigibly duelsome on his own 
+account, he is, for others, the most acute and peaceable counsellor 
+in the world, and has carried more friends through scrapes and 
+prevented more deaths than any member of the Humane Society.  
+British never bought a single step in the army, as is well known.  
+In '14 he killed a celebrated French fire-eater,, who had slain a 
+young friend of his, and living, as he does, a great deal with 
+young men of pleasure, and good old sober family people, he is 
+loved by them both and has as welcome a place made for him at a 
+roaring bachelor's supper at the "Café Anglais," as at a staid 
+dowager's dinner-table in the Faubourg St. Honoré.  Such pleasant 
+old boys are very profitable acquaintances, let me tell you; and 
+lucky is the young man who has one or two such friends in his list.
+
+Hurrying on Fogson in his dress, I conducted him, panting, up to 
+the Major's quatrième, where we were cheerfully bidden to come in.  
+The little gentleman was in his travelling jacket, and occupied in 
+painting, elegantly, one of those natty pairs of boots in which he 
+daily promenaded the Boulevards.  A couple of pairs of tough buff 
+gloves had been undergoing some pipe-claying operation under his 
+hands; no man stepped out so spick and span, with a hat so nicely 
+brushed, with a stiff cravat tied so neatly under a fat little red 
+face, with a blue frock-coat so scrupulously fitted to a punchy 
+little person, as Major British, about whom we have written these 
+two pages.  He stared rather hardly at my companion, but gave me a 
+kind shake of the hand, and we proceeded at once to business.  
+"Major British," said I, "we want your advice in regard to an 
+unpleasant affair which has just occurred to my friend Pogson."
+
+"Pogson, take a chair."
+
+"You must know, sir, that Mr. Pogson, coming from Calais the other 
+day, encountered, in the diligence, a very handsome woman."
+
+British winked at Pogson, who, wretched as he was, could not help 
+feeling pleased.
+
+"Mr. Pogson was not more pleased with this lovely creature than was 
+she with him; for, it appears, she gave him her card, invited him 
+to her house, where he has been constantly, and has been received 
+with much kindness."
+
+"I see," says British.
+
+"Her husband the Baron--"
+
+"NOW it's coming," said the Major, with a grin: "her husband is 
+jealous, I suppose, and there is a talk of the Bois de Boulogne: my 
+dear sir, you can't refuse--can't refuse."
+
+"It's not that," said Pogson, wagging his head passionately.
+
+"Her husband the Baron seemed quite as much taken with Pogson as 
+his lady was, and has introduced him to some very distingué friends 
+of his own set.  Last night one of the Baron's friends gave a party 
+in honor of my friend Pogson, who lost forty-eight pounds at cards 
+BEFORE he was made drunk, and heaven knows how much after."
+
+"Not a shilling, by sacred heaven!--not a shilling!" yelled out 
+Pogson.  "After the supper I 'ad such an 'eadach', I couldn't do 
+anything but fall asleep on the sofa."
+
+"You 'ad such an 'eadach', sir," says British, sternly, who piques 
+himself on his grammar and pronunciation, and scorns a cockney.
+
+Such a H-eadache, sir," replied Pogson, with much meekness.
+
+"The unfortunate man is brought home at two o'clock, as tipsy as 
+possible, dragged up stairs, senseless, to bed, and, on waking, 
+receives a visit from his entertainer of the night before--a lord's 
+son, Major, a tip-top fellow,--who brings a couple of bills that my 
+friend Pogson is said to have signed."
+
+"Well, my dear fellow, the thing's quite simple,--he must pay 
+them."
+
+"I can't pay them."
+
+"He can't pay them," said we both in a breath: "Pogson is a 
+commercial traveller, with thirty shillings a week, and how the 
+deuce is he to pay five hundred pounds?"
+
+"A bagman, sir! and what right has a bagman to gamble?  Gentlemen 
+gamble, sir; tradesmen, sir, have no business with the amusements 
+of the gentry.  What business had you with barons and lords' sons, 
+sir?--serve you right, sir."
+
+"Sir," says Pogson, with some dignity, "merit, and not birth, is 
+the criterion of a man: I despise an hereditary aristocracy, and 
+admire only Nature's gentlemen.  For my part, I think that a 
+British merch--"
+
+"Hold your tongue, sir," bounced out the Major, "and don't lecture 
+me; don't come to me, sir, with your slang about Nature's 
+gentlemen--Nature's tomfools, sir!  Did Nature open a cash account 
+for you at a banker's, sir?  Did Nature give you an education, sir?  
+What do you mean by competing with people to whom Nature has given 
+all these things?  Stick to your bags, Mr. Pogson, and your bagmen, 
+and leave barons and their like to their own ways."
+
+"Yes, but, Major," here cried that faithful friend, who has always 
+stood by Pogson; "they won't leave him alone."
+
+"The honorable gent says I must fight if I don't pay," whimpered 
+Sam.
+
+"What! fight YOU?  Do you mean that the honorable gent, as you call 
+him, will go out with a bagman?"
+
+"He doesn't know I'm a--I'm a commercial man," blushingly said Sam: 
+"he fancies I'm a military gent."
+
+The Major's gravity was quite upset at this absurd notion; and he 
+laughed outrageously.  "Why, the fact is, sir," said I, "that my 
+friend Pogson, knowing the value of the title of Captain, and being 
+complimented by the Baroness on his warlike appearance, said, 
+boldly, he was in the army.  He only assumed the rank in order to 
+dazzle her weak imagination, never fancying that there was a 
+husband, and a circle of friends, with whom he was afterwards to 
+make an acquaintance; and then, you know, it was too late to 
+withdraw."
+
+"A pretty pickle you have put yourself in, Mr. Pogson, by making 
+love to other men's wives, and calling yourself names," said the 
+Major, who was restored to good humor.  "And pray, who is the 
+honorable gent?"
+
+"The Earl of Cinqbars' son," says Pogson, "the Honorable Tom 
+Ringwood."
+
+"I thought it was some such character; and the Baron is the Baron 
+de Florval-Delval?"
+
+"The very same."
+
+"And his wife a black-haired woman, with a pretty foot and ankle; 
+calls herself Athenais; and is always talking about her trente-deux 
+ans?  Why, sir, that woman was an actress on the Boulevard, when we 
+were here in '15.  She's no more his wife than I am.  Delval's name 
+is Chicot.  The woman is always travelling between London and 
+Paris: I saw she was hooking you at Calais; she has hooked ten men, 
+in the course of the last two years, in this very way.  She lent 
+you money, didn't she?"  "Yes."  "And she leans on your shoulder, 
+and whispers, 'Play half for me,' and somebody wins it, and the 
+poor thing is as sorry as you are, and her husband storms and 
+rages, and insists on double stakes; and she leans over your 
+shoulder again, and tells every card in your hand to your 
+adversary, and that's the way it's done, Mr. Pogson."
+
+"I've been 'AD, I see I 'ave," said Pogson, very humbly.
+
+"Well, sir," said the Major, "in consideration, not of you, sir--
+for, give me leave to tell you, Mr. Pogson, that you are a pitiful 
+little scoundrel--in consideration for my Lord Cinqbars, sir, with 
+whom, I am proud to say, I am intimate," (the Major dearly loved a 
+lord, and was, by his own showing, acquainted with half the 
+peerage,) "I will aid you in this affair.  Your cursed vanity, sir, 
+and want of principle, has set you, in the first place, intriguing 
+with other men's wives; and if you had been shot for your pains, a 
+bullet would have only served you right, sir.  You must go about as 
+an impostor, sir, in society; and you pay richly for your swindling,
+sir, by being swindled yourself: but, as I think your punishment has
+been already pretty severe, I shall do my best, out of regard for my
+friend, Lord Cinqbars, to prevent the matter going any farther; and
+I recommend you to leave Paris without delay.  Now let me wish you a
+good morning."--Wherewith British made a majestic bow, and began
+giving the last touch to his varnished boots.
+
+We departed: poor Sam perfectly silent and chapfallen; and I 
+meditating on the wisdom of the half-pay philosopher, and wondering 
+what means he would employ to rescue Pogson from his fate.
+
+What these means were I know not; but Mr. Ringwood did NOT make his 
+appearance at six; and, at eight, a letter arrived for "Mr. Pogson, 
+commercial traveller," &c. &c.  It was blank inside, but contained 
+his two bills.  Mr. Ringwood left town, almost immediately, for 
+Vienna; nor did the Major explain the circumstances which caused 
+his departure; but he muttered something about "knew some of his 
+old tricks," "threatened police, and made him disgorge directly."
+
+Mr. Ringwood is, as yet, young at his trade; and I have often 
+thought it was very green of him to give up the bills to the Major, 
+who, certainly, would never have pressed the matter before the 
+police, out of respect for his friend, Lord Cinqbars.
+
+
+
+
+THE FÊTES OF JULY.
+
+IN A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE "BUNGAY BEACON."
+
+
+PARIS, July 30th, 1839.
+
+We have arrived here just in time for the fêtes of July.--You have 
+read, no doubt, of that glorious revolution which took place here 
+nine years ago, and which is now commemorated annually, in a pretty 
+facetious manner, by gun-firing, student-processions, pole-
+climbing-for-silver-spoons, gold-watches and legs-of-mutton, 
+monarchical orations, and what not, and sanctioned, moreover, by 
+Chamber-of-Deputies, with a grant of a couple of hundred thousand 
+francs to defray the expenses of all the crackers, gun-firings, and 
+legs-of-mutton aforesaid.  There is a new fountain in the Place 
+Louis Quinze, otherwise called the Place Louis Seize, or else the 
+Place de la Révolution, or else the Place de la Concorde (who can 
+say why?)--which, I am told, is to run bad wine during certain 
+hours to-morrow, and there WOULD have been a review of the National 
+Guards and the Line--only, since the Fieschi business, reviews are 
+no joke, and so this latter part of the festivity has been 
+discontinued.
+
+Do you not laugh, O Pharos of Bungay, at the continuance of a 
+humbug such as this?--at the humbugging anniversary of a humbug?  
+The King of the Barricades is, next to the Emperor Nicholas, the 
+most absolute Sovereign in Europe; yet there is not in the whole of 
+this fair kingdom of France a single man who cares sixpence about 
+him, or his dynasty: except, mayhap, a few hangers-on at the 
+Château, who eat his dinners, and put their hands in his purse.  
+The feeling of loyalty is as dead as old Charles the Tenth; the 
+Chambers have been laughed at, the country has been laughed at, all 
+the successive ministries have been laughed at (and you know who is 
+the wag that has amused himself with them all); and, behold, here 
+come three days at the end of July, and cannons think it necessary 
+to fire off, squibs and crackers to blaze and fizz, fountains to 
+run wine, kings to make speeches, and subjects to crawl up greasy 
+mâts-de-cocagne in token of gratitude and réjouissance publique!--
+My dear sir, in their aptitude to swallow, to utter, to enact 
+humbugs, these French people, from Majesty downwards, beat all the 
+other nations of this earth.  In looking at these men, their 
+manners, dresses, opinions, politics, actions, history, it is 
+impossible to preserve a grave countenance; instead of having 
+Carlyle to write a History of the French Revolution, I often think 
+it should be handed over to Dickens or Theodore Hook: and oh! where 
+is the Rabelais to be the faithful historian of the last phase of 
+the Revolution--the last glorious nine years of which we are now 
+commemorating the last glorious three days?
+
+I had made a vow not to say a syllable on the subject, although I 
+have seen, with my neighbors, all the gingerbread stalls down the 
+Champs Elysées, and some of the "catafalques" erected to the memory 
+of the heroes of July, where the students and others, not connected 
+personally with the victims, and not having in the least profited 
+by their deaths, come and weep; but the grief shown on the first 
+day is quite as absurd and fictitious as the joy exhibited on the 
+last.  The subject is one which admits of much wholesome reflection 
+and food for mirth; and, besides, is so richly treated by the 
+French themselves, that it would be a sin and a shame to pass it 
+over.  Allow me to have the honor of translating, for your 
+edification, an account of the first day's proceedings--it is 
+mighty amusing, to my thinking.
+
+
+"CELEBRATION OF THE DAYS OF JULY.
+
+"To-day (Saturday), funeral ceremonies, in honor of the victims of 
+July, were held in the various edifices consecrated to public 
+worship.
+
+"These edifices, with the exception of some churches (especially 
+that of the Petits-Pères), were uniformly hung with black on the 
+outside; the hangings bore only this inscription: 27, 28, 29 July, 
+1830--surrounded by a wreath of oak-leaves.
+
+"In the interior of the Catholic churches, it had only been thought 
+proper to dress LITTLE CATAFALQUES, as for burials of the third and 
+fourth class.  Very few clergy attended; but a considerable number 
+of the National Guard.
+
+"The Synagogue of the Israelites was entirely hung with black; and 
+a great concourse of people attended.  The service was performed 
+with the greatest pomp.
+
+"In the Protestant temples there was likewise a very full 
+attendance: APOLOGETICAL DISCOURSES on the Revolution of July were 
+pronounced by the pastors.
+
+"The absence of M. de Quélen (Archbishop of Paris), and of many 
+members of the superior clergy, was remarked at Notre Dame.
+
+"The civil authorities attended service in their several districts.
+
+"The poles, ornamented with tri-colored flags, which formerly were 
+placed on Notre Dame, were, it was remarked, suppressed.  The flags 
+on the Pont Neuf were, during the ceremony, only half-mast high, 
+and covered with crape."
+
+Et caetera, et caetera, et caetera.
+
+"The tombs of the Louvre were covered with black hangings, and 
+adorned with tri-colored flags.  In front and in the middle was 
+erected an expiatory monument of a pyramidical shape, and 
+surmounted by a funeral vase.
+
+"These tombs were guarded by the MUNICIPAL GUARD, THE TROOPS OF THE 
+LINE, THE SERGENS DE VILLE (town patrol), AND A BRIGADE OF AGENTS 
+OF POLICE IN PLAIN CLOTHES, under the orders of peace-officer 
+Vassal.
+
+"Between eleven and twelve o'clock, some young men, to the number 
+of 400 or 500, assembled on the Place de la Bourse, one of them 
+bearing a tri-colored banner with an inscription, 'TO THE MANES OF 
+JULY:' ranging themselves in order, they marched five abreast to 
+the Marché des Innocens.  On their arrival, the Municipal Guards of 
+the Halle aux Draps, where the post had been doubled, issued out 
+without arms, and the town-sergeants placed themselves before the 
+market to prevent the entry of the procession.  The young men 
+passed in perfect order, and without saying a word--only lifting 
+their hats as they defiled before the tombs.  When they arrived at 
+the Louvre they found the gates shut, and the garden evacuated.  
+The troops were under arms, and formed in battalion.
+
+"After the passage of the procession, the Garden was again open to 
+the public."
+
+And the evening and the morning were the first day.
+
+There's nothing serious in mortality: is there, from the beginning 
+of this account to the end thereof, aught but sheer, open, 
+monstrous, undisguised humbug?  I said, before, that you should 
+have a history of these people by Dickens or Theodore Hook, but 
+there is little need of professed wags;--do not the men write their 
+own tale with an admirable Sancho-like gravity and naïveté, which 
+one could not desire improved?  How good is that touch of sly 
+indignation about the LITTLE CATAFALQUES! how rich the contrast 
+presented by the economy of the Catholics to the splendid disregard 
+of expense exhibited by the devout Jews! and how touching the 
+"APOLOGETICAL DISCOURSES on the Revolution," delivered by the 
+Protestant pastors!  Fancy the profound affliction of the Gardes 
+Municipaux, the Sergens de Ville, the police agents in plain 
+clothes, and the troops with fixed bayonets, sobbing round the 
+"expiatory monuments of a pyramidical shape, surmounted by funeral 
+vases," and compelled, by sad duty, to fire into the public who 
+might wish to indulge in the same woe!  O "manes of July!" (the 
+phrase is pretty and grammatical) why did you with sharp bullets 
+break those Louvre windows?  Why did you bayonet red-coated Swiss 
+behind that fair white façade, and, braving cannon, musket, sabre, 
+perspective guillotine, burst yonder bronze gates, rush through 
+that peaceful picture-gallery, and hurl royalty, loyalty, and a 
+thousand years of Kings, head-over-heels out of yonder Tuileries' 
+windows?
+
+It is, you will allow, a little difficult to say:--there is, 
+however, ONE benefit that the country has gained (as for liberty of 
+press, or person, diminished taxation, a juster representation, who 
+ever thinks of them?)--ONE benefit they have gained, or nearly--
+abolition de la peine-de-mort pour délit politique: no more wicked 
+guillotining for revolutions.  A Frenchman must have his revolution--
+it is his nature to knock down omnibuses in the street, and across
+them to fire at troops of the line--it is a sin to balk it.  Did not
+the King send off Revolutionary Prince Napoleon in a coach-and-four?
+Did not the jury, before the face of God and Justice, proclaim
+Revolutionary Colonel Vaudrey not guilty?--One may hope, soon, that
+if a man shows decent courage and energy in half a dozen émeutes, he
+will get promotion and a premium.
+
+I do not (although, perhaps, partial to the subject,) want to talk 
+more nonsense than the occasion warrants, and will pray you to cast 
+your eyes over the following anecdote, that is now going the round 
+of the papers, and respects the commutation of the punishment of 
+that wretched, fool-hardy Barbés, who, on his trial, seemed to 
+invite the penalty which has just been remitted to him.  You 
+recollect the braggart's speech: "When the Indian falls into the 
+power of the enemy, he knows the fate that awaits him, and submits 
+his head to the knife:--I am the Indian!"
+
+"Well--"
+
+"M. Hugo was at the Opera on the night the sentence of the Court of 
+Peers, condemning Barbés to death, was published.  The great poet 
+composed the following verses:--
+
+
+     'Par votre ange envolée, ainsi qu'une colombe, 
+      Par le royal enfant, doux et frêle roseau, 
+      Grace encore une fois!  Grace au nom de la tombe!
+         Grace au nom du berçeau!'*
+
+
+"M. Victor Hugo wrote the lines out instantly on a sheet of paper, 
+which he folded, and simply despatched them to the King of the 
+French by the penny-post.
+
+"That truly is a noble voice, which can at all hours thus speak to 
+the throne.  Poetry, in old days, was called the language of the 
+Gods--it is better named now--it is the language of the Kings.
+
+"But the clemency of the King had anticipated the letter of the 
+Poet.  His Majesty had signed the commutation of Barbés, while the 
+poet was still writing.
+
+"Louis Philippe replied to the author of 'Ruy Blas' most 
+graciously, that he had already subscribed to a wish so noble, and 
+that the verses had only confirmed his previous disposition to 
+mercy."
+
+
+* Translated for the benefit of country gentlemen:--
+
+     "By your angel flown away just like a dove, 
+      By the royal infant, that frail and tender reed, 
+      Pardon yet once more!  Pardon in the name of the tomb! 
+      Pardon in the name of the cradle!"
+
+
+Now in countries where fools most abound, did one ever read of more 
+monstrous, palpable folly?  In any country, save this, would a poet 
+who chose to write four crack-brained verses, comparing an angel to 
+a dove, and a little boy to a reed, and calling upon the chief 
+magistrate, in the name of the angel, or dove (the Princess Mary), 
+in her tomb, and the little infant in his cradle, to spare a 
+criminal, have received a "gracious answer" to his nonsense?  Would 
+he have ever despatched the nonsense? and would any journalist have 
+been silly enough to talk of "the noble voice that could thus speak 
+to the throne," and the noble throne that could return such a noble 
+answer to the noble voice?  You get nothing done here gravely and 
+decently.  Tawdry stage tricks are played, and braggadocio 
+claptraps uttered, on every occasion, however sacred or solemn: in 
+the face of death, as by Barbés with his hideous Indian metaphor; 
+in the teeth of reason, as by M. Victor Hugo with his twopenny-post 
+poetry; and of justice, as by the King's absurd reply to this 
+absurd demand!  Suppose the Count of Paris to be twenty times a 
+reed, and the Princess Mary a host of angels, is that any reason 
+why the law should not have its course?  Justice is the God of our 
+lower world, our great omnipresent guardian: as such it moves, or 
+should move on majestic, awful, irresistible, having no passions--
+like a God: but, in the very midst of the path across which it is 
+to pass, lo! M. Victor Hugo trips forward, smirking, and says, 
+O divine Justice! I will trouble you to listen to the following 
+trifling effusion of mine:--
+
+
+     Par votre ange envolée, ainsi qu'une," &c.
+
+
+Awful Justice stops, and, bowing gravely, listens to M. Hugo's 
+verses, and, with true French politeness, says, "Mon cher Monsieur, 
+these verses are charming, ravissans, délicieux, and, coming from 
+such a célébrité littéraire as yourself, shall meet with every 
+possible attention--in fact, had I required anything to confirm my 
+own previous opinions, this charming poem would have done so.  Bon 
+jour, mon cher Monsieur Hugo, au revoir!"--and they part:--Justice 
+taking off his hat and bowing, and the author of "Ruy Blas" quite 
+convinced that he has been treating with him d'égal en égal.  I can 
+hardly bring my mind to fancy that anything is serious in France--
+it seems to be all rant, tinsel, and stage-play.  Sham liberty, 
+sham monarchy, sham glory, sham justice,--où diable donc la vérité 
+va-t-elle se nicher?
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+The last rocket of the fête of July has just mounted, exploded, 
+made a portentous bang, and emitted a gorgeous show of blue lights, 
+and then (like many reputations) disappeared totally: the hundredth 
+gun on the Invalid terrace has uttered its last roar--and a great 
+comfort it is for eyes and ears that the festival is over.  We 
+shall be able to go about our everyday business again, and not be 
+hustled by the gendarmes or the crowd.
+
+The sight which I have just come away from is as brilliant, happy, 
+and beautiful as can be conceived; and if you want to see French 
+people to the greatest advantage, you should go to a festival like 
+this, where their manners, and innocent gayety, show a very 
+pleasing contrast to the coarse and vulgar hilarity which the same 
+class would exhibit in our own country--at Epsom racecourse, for 
+instance, or Greenwich Fair.  The greatest noise that I heard 
+was that of a company of jolly villagers from a place in the 
+neighborhood of Paris, who, as soon as the fireworks were over, 
+formed themselves into a line, three or four abreast, and so 
+marched singing home.  As for the fireworks, squibs and crackers 
+are very hard to describe, and very little was to be seen of them: 
+to me, the prettiest sight was the vast, orderly, happy crowd, the 
+number of children, and the extraordinary care and kindness of the 
+parents towards these little creatures.  It does one good to see 
+honest, heavy épiciers, fathers of families, playing with them in 
+the Tuileries, or, as to-night, bearing them stoutly on their 
+shoulders, through many long hours, in order that the little ones 
+too may have their share of the fun.  John Bull, I fear, is more 
+selfish: he does not take Mrs. Bull to the public-house; but leaves 
+her, for the most part, to take care of the children at home.
+
+The fête, then, is over; the pompous black pyramid at the Louvre is 
+only a skeleton now; all the flags have been miraculously whisked 
+away during the night, and the fine chandeliers which glittered 
+down the Champs Elysées for full half a mile, have been consigned 
+to their dens and darkness.  Will they ever be reproduced for other 
+celebrations of the glorious 29th of July?--I think not; the 
+Government which vowed that there should be no more persecutions of 
+the press, was, on that very 29th, seizing a Legitimist paper, for 
+some real or fancied offence against it: it had seized, and was 
+seizing daily, numbers of persons merely suspected of being 
+disaffected (and you may fancy how liberty is understood, when some 
+of these prisoners, the other day, on coming to trial, were found 
+guilty and sentenced to ONE day's imprisonment, after THIRTY-SIX 
+DAYS' DETENTION ON SUSPICION).  I think the Government which 
+follows such a system, cannot be very anxious about any farther 
+revolutionary fêtes, and that the Chamber may reasonably refuse to 
+vote more money for them.  Why should men be so mighty proud of 
+having, on a certain day, cut a certain number of their fellow-
+countrymen's throats?  The Guards and the Line employed this time 
+nine years did no more than those who cannonaded the starving 
+Lyonnese, or bayoneted the luckless inhabitants of the Rue 
+Transnounain:--they did but fulfil the soldier's honorable duty:--
+his superiors bid him kill and he killeth:--perhaps, had he gone to 
+his work with a little more heart, the result would have been 
+different, and then--would the conquering party have been justified 
+in annually rejoicing over the conquered?  Would we have thought 
+Charles X. justified in causing fireworks to be blazed, and 
+concerts to be sung, and speeches to be spouted, in commemoration 
+of his victory over his slaughtered countrymen?--I wish for my part 
+they would allow the people to go about their business as on the 
+other 362 days of the year, and leave the Champs Elysées free for 
+the omnibuses to run, and the Tuileries' in quiet, so that the 
+nurse-maids might come as usual, and the newspapers be read for a 
+halfpenny apiece.
+
+Shall I trouble you with an account of the speculations of these 
+latter, and the state of the parties which they represent?  The 
+complication is not a little curious, and may form, perhaps, a 
+subject of graver disquisition.  The July fêtes occupy, as you may 
+imagine, a considerable part of their columns just now, and it is 
+amusing to follow them one by one; to read Tweedledum's praise, and 
+Tweedledee's indignation--to read, in the Débats how the King was 
+received with shouts and loyal vivats--in the Nation, how not a 
+tongue was wagged in his praise, but, on the instant of his 
+departure, how the people called for the "Marseillaise" and 
+applauded THAT.--But best say no more about the fête.  The 
+Legitimists were always indignant at it.  The high Philippist party 
+sneers at and despises it; the Republicans hate it: it seems a joke 
+against THEM.  Why continue it?--If there be anything sacred in the 
+name and idea of loyalty, why renew this fête?  It only shows how a 
+rightful monarch was hurled from his throne, and a dexterous 
+usurper stole his precious diadem.  If there be anything noble in 
+the memory of a day, when citizens, unused to war, rose against 
+practised veterans, and, armed with the strength of their cause, 
+overthrew them, why speak of it now? or renew the bitter 
+recollections of the bootless struggle and victory?  O Lafayette!  
+O hero of two worlds!  O accomplished Cromwell Grandison! you have 
+to answer for more than any mortal man who has played a part in 
+history: two republics and one monarchy does the world owe to you; 
+and especially grateful should your country be to you.  Did you 
+not, in '90, make clear the path for honest Robespierre, and in 
+'30, prepare the way for--
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+[The Editor of the Bungay Beacon would insert no more of this 
+letter, which is, therefore, for ever lost to the public.]
+
+
+
+
+ON THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF PAINTING:
+
+WITH APPROPRIATE ANECDOTES, ILLUSTRATIONS, AND PHILOSOPHICAL 
+DISQUISITIONS.
+
+
+IN A LETTER TO MR. MACGILP, OF LONDON.
+
+
+The three collections of pictures at the Louvre, the Luxembourg, 
+and the Ecole des Beaux Arts, contain a number of specimens of 
+French art, since its commencement almost, and give the stranger a 
+pretty fair opportunity to study and appreciate the school.  The 
+French list of painters contains some very good names--no very 
+great ones, except Poussin (unless the admirers of Claude choose to 
+rank him among great painters),--and I think the school was never 
+in so flourishing a condition as it is at the present day.  They 
+say there are three thousand artists in this town alone: of these a 
+handsome minority paint not merely tolerably, but well understand 
+their business: draw the figure accurately; sketch with cleverness; 
+and paint portraits, churches, or restaurateurs' shops, in a decent 
+manner.
+
+To account for a superiority over England which, I think, as 
+regards art, is incontestable--it must be remembered that the 
+painter's trade, in France, is a very good one; better appreciated, 
+better understood, and, generally, far better paid than with us.  
+There are a dozen excellent schools which a lad may enter here, 
+and, under the eye of a practised master, learn the apprenticeship 
+of his art at an expense of about ten pounds a year.  In England 
+there is no school except the Academy, unless the student can 
+afford to pay a very large sum, and place himself under the tuition 
+of some particular artist.  Here, a young man, for his ten pounds, 
+has all sorts of accessory instruction, models, &c.; and has 
+further, and for nothing, numberless incitements to study his 
+profession which are not to be found in England:--the streets are 
+filled with picture-shops, the people themselves are pictures 
+walking about; the churches, theatres, eating-houses, concert-rooms 
+are covered with pictures: Nature itself is inclined more kindly to 
+him, for the sky is a thousand times more bright and beautiful, and 
+the sun shines for the greater part of the year.  Add to this, 
+incitements more selfish, but quite as powerful: a French artist is 
+paid very handsomely; for five hundred a year is much where all are 
+poor; and has a rank in society rather above his merits than below 
+them, being caressed by hosts and hostesses in places where titles 
+are laughed at and a baron is thought of no more account than a 
+banker's clerk.
+
+The life of the young artist here is the easiest, merriest, 
+dirtiest existence possible.  He comes to Paris, probably at 
+sixteen, from his province; his parents settle forty pounds a year 
+on him, and pay his master; he establishes himself in the Pays 
+Latin, or in the new quarter of Notre Dame de Lorette (which is 
+quite peopled with painters); he arrives at his atelier at a 
+tolerably early hour, and labors among a score of companions as 
+merry and poor as himself.  Each gentleman has his favorite 
+tobacco-pipe; and the pictures are painted in the midst of a cloud 
+of smoke, and a din of puns and choice French slang, and a roar of 
+choruses, of which no one can form an idea who has not been present 
+at such an assembly.
+
+You see here every variety of coiffure that has ever been known.  
+Some young men of genius have ringlets hanging over their 
+shoulders--you may smell the tobacco with which they are scented 
+across the street; some have straight locks, black, oily, and 
+redundant; some have toupets in the famous Louis-Philippe fashion; 
+some are cropped close; some have adopted the present mode--which 
+he who would follow must, in order to do so, part his hair in the 
+middle, grease it with grease, and gum it with gum, and iron it 
+flat down over his ears; when arrived at the ears, you take the 
+tongs and make a couple of ranges of curls close round the whole 
+head,--such curls as you may see under a gilt three-cornered hat, 
+and in her Britannic Majesty's coachman's state wig.
+
+This is the last fashion.  As for the beards, there is no end of 
+them; all my friends the artists have beards who can raise them; 
+and Nature, though she has rather stinted the bodies and limbs of 
+the French nation, has been very liberal to them of hair, as you 
+may see by the following specimen.  Fancy these heads and beards 
+under all sorts of caps--Chinese caps, Mandarin caps, Greek skull-
+caps, English jockey-caps, Russian or Kuzzilbash caps, Middle-age 
+caps (such as are called, in heraldry, caps of maintenance), 
+Spanish nets, and striped worsted nightcaps.  Fancy all the jackets 
+you have ever seen, and you have before you, as well as pen can 
+describe, the costumes of these indescribable Frenchmen.
+
+In this company and costume the French student of art passes his 
+days and acquires knowledge; how he passes his evenings, at what 
+theatres, at what guinguettes, in company with what seducing little 
+milliner, there is no need to say; but I knew one who pawned his 
+coat to go to a carnival ball, and walked abroad very cheerfully in 
+his blouse for six weeks, until he could redeem the absent garment.
+
+These young men (together with the students of sciences) comport 
+themselves towards the sober citizen pretty much as the German 
+bursch towards the philister, or as the military man, during the 
+empire, did to the pékin:--from the height of their poverty they 
+look down upon him with the greatest imaginable scorn--a scorn, I 
+think, by which the citizen seems dazzled, for his respect for the 
+arts is intense.  The case is very different in England, where a 
+grocer's daughter would think she made a misalliance by marrying a 
+painter, and where a literary man (in spite of all we can say 
+against it) ranks below that class of gentry composed of the 
+apothecary, the attorney, the wine-merchant, whose positions, in 
+country towns at least, are so equivocal.  As, for instance, my 
+friend the Rev. James Asterisk, who has an undeniable pedigree, a 
+paternal estate, and a living to boot, once dined in Warwickshire, 
+in company with several squires and parsons of that enlightened 
+county.  Asterisk, as usual, made himself extraordinarily agreeable 
+at dinner, and delighted all present with his learning and wit.  
+"Who is that monstrous pleasant fellow?" said one of the squires.  
+"Don't you know?" replied another.  "It's Asterisk, the author of 
+so-and-so, and a famous contributor to such and such a magazine."  
+"Good heavens!" said the squire, quite horrified! "a literary man!  
+I thought he had been a gentleman!"
+
+Another instance: M. Guizot, when he was Minister here, had the 
+grand hotel of the Ministry, and gave entertainments to all the 
+great de par le monde, as Brantôme says, and entertained them in a 
+proper ministerial magnificence.  The splendid and beautiful 
+Duchess of Dash was at one of his ministerial parties; and went, a 
+fortnight afterwards, as in duty bound, to pay her respects to M. 
+Guizot.  But it happened, in this fortnight, that M. Guizot was 
+Minister no longer; having given up his portfolio, and his grand 
+hotel, to retire into private life, and to occupy his humble 
+apartments in the house which he possesses, and of which he lets 
+the greater portion.  A friend of mine was present at one of the 
+ex-Minister's soirées, where the Duchess of Dash made her 
+appearance.  He says the Duchess, at her entrance, seemed quite 
+astounded, and examined the premises with a most curious wonder.  
+Two or three shabby little rooms, with ordinary furniture, and a 
+Minister en retraite, who lives by letting lodgings!  In our 
+country was ever such a thing heard of?  No, thank heaven! and a 
+Briton ought to be proud of the difference.
+
+But to our muttons.  This country is surely the paradise of 
+painters and penny-a-liners; and when one reads of M. Horace Vernet 
+at Rome, exceeding ambassadors at Rome by his magnificence, and 
+leading such a life as Rubens or Titian did of old; when one sees 
+M. Thiers's grand villa in the Rue St. George (a dozen years ago he 
+was not even a penny-a-liner: no such luck); when one contemplates, 
+in imagination, M. Gudin, the marine painter, too lame to walk 
+through the picture-gallery of the Louvre, accommodated, therefore, 
+with a wheel-chair, a privilege of princes only, and accompanied--
+nay, for what I know, actually trundled--down the gallery by 
+majesty itself--who does not long to make one of the great nation, 
+exchange his native tongue for the melodious jabber of France; or, 
+at least, adopt it for his native country, like Marshal Saxe, 
+Napoleon, and Anacharsis Clootz?  Noble people! they made Tom Paine 
+a deputy; and as for Tom Macaulay, they would make a DYNASTY of 
+him.
+
+Well, this being the case, no wonder there are so many painters in 
+France; and here, at least, we are back to them.  At the Ecole 
+Royale des Beaux Arts, you see two or three hundred specimens of 
+their performances; all the prize-men, since 1750, I think, being 
+bound to leave their prize sketch or picture.  Can anything good 
+come out of the Royal Academy? is a question which has been 
+considerably mooted in England (in the neighborhood of Suffolk 
+Street especially).  The hundreds of French samples are, I think, 
+not very satisfactory.  The subjects are almost all what are called 
+classical: Orestes pursued by every variety of Furies; numbers of 
+little wolf-sucking Romuluses; Hectors and Andromaches in a 
+complication of parting embraces, and so forth; for it was the 
+absurd maxim of our forefathers, that because these subjects had 
+been the fashion twenty centuries ago, they must remain so in 
+saecula saeculorum; because to these lofty heights giants had scaled, 
+behold the race of pigmies must get upon stilts and jump at them 
+likewise! and on the canvas, and in the theatre, the French frogs 
+(excuse the pleasantry) were instructed to swell out and roar as 
+much as possible like bulls.
+
+What was the consequence, my dear friend?  In trying to make 
+themselves into bulls, the frogs make themselves into jackasses, as 
+might be expected.  For a hundred and ten years the classical 
+humbug oppressed the nation; and you may see, in this gallery of 
+the Beaux Arts, seventy years' specimens of the dulness which it 
+engendered.
+
+Now, as Nature made every man with a nose and eyes of his own, she 
+gave him a character of his own too; and yet we, O foolish race! 
+must try our very best to ape some one or two of our neighbors, 
+whose ideas fit us no more than their breeches!  It is the study of 
+nature, surely, that profits us, and not of these imitations of 
+her.  A man, as a man, from a dustman up to Æschylus, is God's 
+work, and good to read, as all works of Nature are: but the silly 
+animal is never content; is ever trying to fit itself into another 
+shape; wants to deny its own identity, and has not the courage to 
+utter its own thoughts.  Because Lord Byron was wicked, and 
+quarrelled with the world; and found himself growing fat, and 
+quarrelled with his victuals, and thus, naturally, grew ill-
+humored, did not half Europe grow ill-humored too?  Did not every 
+poet feel his young affections withered, and despair and darkness 
+cast upon his soul?  Because certain mighty men of old could make 
+heroical statues and plays, must we not be told that there is no 
+other beauty but classical beauty?--must not every little whipster 
+of a French poet chalk you out plays, "Henriades," and such-like, 
+and vow that here was the real thing, the undeniable Kalon?
+
+The undeniable fiddlestick!  For a hundred years, my dear sir, the 
+world was humbugged by the so-called classical artists, as they now 
+are by what is called the Christian art (of which anon); and it is 
+curious to look at the pictorial traditions as here handed down.  
+The consequence of them is, that scarce one of the classical 
+pictures exhibited is worth much more than two-and-sixpence.  
+Borrowed from statuary, in the first place, the color of the 
+paintings seems, as much as possible, to participate in it; they 
+are mostly of a misty, stony green, dismal hue, as if they had been 
+painted in a world where no color was.  In every picture, there 
+are, of course, white mantles, white urns, white columns, white 
+statues--those obligé accomplishments of the sublime.  There are 
+the endless straight noses, long eyes, round chins, short upper 
+lips, just as they are ruled down for you in the drawing-books, as 
+if the latter were the revelations of beauty, issued by supreme 
+authority, from which there was no appeal?  Why is the classical 
+reign to endure?  Why is yonder simpering Venus de' Medicis to be 
+our standard of beauty, or the Greek tragedies to bound our notions 
+of the sublime?  There was no reason why Agamemnon should set the 
+fashions, and remain [Greek text omitted] to eternity: and there 
+is a classical quotation, which you may have occasionally heard, 
+beginning Vixere fortes, &c., which, as it avers that there were a 
+great number of stout fellows before Agamemnon, may not unreasonably
+induce us to conclude that similar heroes were to succeed him.
+Shakspeare made a better man when his imagination moulded the mighty
+figure of Macbeth.  And if you will measure Satan by Prometheus, the
+blind old Puritan's work by that of the fiery Grecian poet, does not
+Milton's angel surpass Æschylus's--surpass him by "many a rood?"
+
+In the same school of the Beaux Arts, where are to be found such a 
+number of pale imitations of the antique, Monsieur Thiers (and he 
+ought to be thanked for it) has caused to be placed a full-sized 
+copy of "The Last Judgment" of Michel Angelo, and a number of casts 
+from statues by the same splendid hand.  There IS the sublime, if 
+you please--a new sublime--an original sublime--quite as sublime as 
+the Greek sublime.  See yonder, in the midst of his angels, the 
+Judge of the world descending in glory; and near him, beautiful and 
+gentle, and yet indescribably august and pure, the Virgin by his 
+side.  There is the "Moses," the grandest figure that ever was 
+carved in stone.  It has about it something frightfully majestic, 
+if one may so speak.  In examining this, and the astonishing 
+picture of "The Judgment," or even a single figure of it, the 
+spectator's sense amounts almost to pain.  I would not like to be 
+left in a room alone with the "Moses."  How did the artist live 
+amongst them, and create them?  How did he suffer the painful labor 
+of invention?  One fancies that he would have been scorched up, 
+like Semele, by sights too tremendous for his vision to bear.  
+One cannot imagine him, with our small physical endowments and 
+weaknesses, a man like ourselves.
+
+As for the Ecole Royale des Beaux Arts, then, and all the good its 
+students have done, as students, it is stark naught.  When the men 
+did anything, it was after they had left the academy, and began 
+thinking for themselves.  There is only one picture among the many 
+hundreds that has, to my idea, much merit (a charming composition 
+of Homer singing, signed Jourdy); and the only good that the 
+Academy has done by its pupils was to send them to Rome, where they 
+might learn better things.  At home, the intolerable, stupid 
+classicalities, taught by men who, belonging to the least erudite 
+country in Europe, were themselves, from their profession, the 
+least learned among their countrymen, only weighed the pupils down, 
+and cramped their hands, their eyes, and their imaginations; drove 
+them away from natural beauty, which, thank God, is fresh and 
+attainable by us all, to-day, and yesterday, and to-morrow; and 
+sent them rambling after artificial grace, without the proper means 
+of judging or attaining it.
+
+A word for the building of the Palais des Beaux Arts.  It is 
+beautiful, and as well finished and convenient as beautiful.  With 
+its light and elegant fabric, its pretty fountain, its archway of 
+the Renaissance, and fragments of sculpture, you can hardly see, on 
+a fine day, a place more riant and pleasing.
+
+Passing from thence up the picturesque Rue de Seine, let us walk to 
+the Luxembourg, where bonnes, students, grisettes, and old 
+gentlemen with pigtails, love to wander in the melancholy, quaint 
+old gardens; where the peers have a new and comfortable court of 
+justice, to judge all the émeutes which are to take place; and 
+where, as everybody knows, is the picture-gallery of modern French 
+artists, whom government thinks worthy of patronage.
+
+A very great proportion of the pictures, as we see by the 
+catalogue, are by the students whose works we have just been to 
+visit at the Beaux Arts, and who, having performed their pilgrimage 
+to Rome, have taken rank among the professors of the art.  I don't 
+know a more pleasing exhibition; for there are not a dozen really 
+bad pictures in the collection, some very good, and the rest 
+showing great skill and smartness of execution.
+
+In the same way, however, that it has been supposed that no man 
+could be a great poet unless he wrote a very big poem, the 
+tradition is kept up among the painters, and we have here a vast 
+number of large canvases, with figures of the proper heroical 
+length and nakedness.  The anticlassicists did not arise in France 
+until about 1827; and, in consequence, up to that period, we have 
+here the old classical faith in full vigor.  There is Brutus, 
+having chopped his son's head off, with all the agony of a father, 
+and then, calling for number two; there is Æneas carrying off old 
+Anchises; there are Paris and Venus, as naked as two Hottentots, 
+and many more such choice subjects from Lemprière.
+
+But the chief specimens of the sublime are in the way of murders, 
+with which the catalogue swarms.  Here are a few extracts from it:--
+
+
+7. Beaume, Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur.  "The Grand Dauphiness 
+Dying.
+
+18. Blondel, Chevalier de la, &c.  "Zenobia found Dead."
+
+36. Debay, Chevalier.  "The Death of Lucretia."
+
+38. Dejuinne.  "The Death of Hector."
+
+34. Court, Chevalier de la, &c.  "The Death of Caesar."
+
+39, 40, 41.  Delacroix, Chevalier.  "Dante and Virgil in the 
+    Infernal Lake," "The Massacre of Scio," and "Medea going to 
+    Murder her Children."
+
+43. Delaroche, Chevalier.  "Joas taken from among the Dead."
+
+44. "The Death of Queen Elizabeth."
+
+45. "Edward V. and his Brother" (preparing for death).
+
+50. "Hecuba going to be Sacrificed."  Drolling, Chevalier.
+
+51. Dubois.  "Young Clovis found Dead."
+
+56. Henry, Chevalier.  "The Massacre of St. Bartholomew."
+
+75. Guérin, Chevalier.  "Cain, after the Death of Abel."
+
+83. Jacquand.  "Death of Adelaide de Comminges."
+
+88. "The Death of Eudamidas."
+
+93. "The Death of Hymetto."
+
+103. "The Death of Philip of Austria."--And so on.
+
+
+You see what woful subjects they take, and how profusely they are 
+decorated with knighthood.  They are like the Black Brunswickers, 
+these painters, and ought to be called Chevaliers de la Mort.  I 
+don't know why the merriest people in the world should please 
+themselves with such grim representations and varieties of murder, 
+or why murder itself should be considered so eminently sublime and 
+poetical.  It is good at the end of a tragedy; but, then, it is 
+good because it is the end, and because, by the events foregone, 
+the mind is prepared for it.  But these men will have nothing but 
+fifth acts; and seem to skip, as unworthy, all the circumstances 
+leading to them.  This, however, is part of the scheme--the 
+bloated, unnatural, stilted, spouting, sham sublime, that our 
+teachers have believed and tried to pass off as real, and which 
+your humble servant and other antihumbuggists should heartily, 
+according to the strength that is in them, endeavor to pull down.  
+What, for instance, could Monsieur Lafond care about the death of 
+Eudamidas?  What was Hecuba to Chevalier Drolling, or Chevalier 
+Drolling to Hecuba?  I would lay a wager that neither of them ever 
+conjugated [Greek text omitted], and that their school learning 
+carried them not as far as the letter, but only to the game of taw.  
+How were they to be inspired by such subjects?  From having seen 
+Talma and Mademoiselle Georges flaunting in sham Greek costumes, 
+and having read up the articles Eudamidas, Hecuba, in the 
+"Mythological Dictionary."  What a classicism, inspired by rouge, 
+gas-lamps, and a few lines in Lemprière, and copied, half from 
+ancient statues, and half from a naked guardsman at one shilling 
+and sixpence the hour!
+
+Delacroix is a man of a very different genius, and his "Medea" is a 
+genuine creation of a noble fancy.  For most of the others, Mrs. 
+Brownrigg, and her two female 'prentices, would have done as well 
+as the desperate Colchian with her [Greek text omitted].  M. 
+Delacroix has produced a number of rude, barbarous pictures; but 
+there is the stamp of genius on all of them,--the great poetical 
+INTENTION, which is worth all your execution.  Delaroche is another 
+man of high merit; with not such a great HEART, perhaps, as the 
+other, but a fine and careful draughtsman, and an excellent 
+arranger of his subject.  "The Death of Elizabeth" is a raw young 
+performance seemingly--not, at least, to my taste.  The "Enfans 
+d'Edouard" is renowned over Europe, and has appeared in a hundred 
+different ways in print.  It is properly pathetic and gloomy, and 
+merits fully its high reputation.  This painter rejoices in such 
+subjects--in what Lord Portsmouth used to call "black jobs."  He 
+has killed Charles I. and Lady Jane Grey, and the Dukes of Guise, 
+and I don't know whom besides.  He is, at present, occupied with a 
+vast work at the Beaux Arts, where the writer of this had the honor 
+of seeing him,--a little, keen-looking man, some five feet in 
+height.  He wore, on this important occasion, a bandanna round his 
+head, and was in the act of smoking a cigar.
+
+Horace Vernet, whose beautiful daughter Delaroche married, is the 
+king of French battle-painters--an amazingly rapid and dexterous 
+draughtsman, who has Napoleon and all the campaigns by heart, and 
+has painted the Grenadier Français under all sorts of attitudes.  
+His pictures on such subjects are spirited, natural, and excellent; 
+and he is so clever a man, that all he does is good to a certain 
+degree.  His "Judith" is somewhat violent, perhaps.  His "Rebecca" 
+most pleasing; and not the less so for a little pretty affectation 
+of attitude and needless singularity of costume.  "Raphael and 
+Michael Angelo" is as clever a picture as can be--clever is just 
+the word--the groups and drawing excellent, the coloring pleasantly 
+bright and gaudy; and the French students study it incessantly; 
+there are a dozen who copy it for one who copies Delacroix.  His 
+little scraps of wood-cuts, in the now publishing "Life of 
+Napoleon," are perfect gems in their way, and the noble price paid 
+for them not a penny more than he merits.
+
+The picture, by Court, of "The Death of Caesar," is remarkable for 
+effect and excellent workmanship: and the head of Brutus (who looks 
+like Armand Carrel) is full of energy.  There are some beautiful 
+heads of women, and some very good color in the picture.  
+Jacquand's "Death of Adelaide de Comminges" is neither more nor 
+less than beautiful.  Adelaide had, it appears, a lover, who betook 
+himself to a convent of Trappists.  She followed him thither, 
+disguised as a man, took the vows, and was not discovered by him 
+till on her death-bed.  The painter has told this story in a most 
+pleasing and affecting manner: the picture is full of onction and 
+melancholy grace.  The objects, too, are capitally represented; and 
+the tone and color very good.  Decaisne's "Guardian Angel" is not 
+so good in color, but is equally beautiful in expression and grace.  
+A little child and a nurse are asleep: an angel watches the infant.  
+You see women look very wistfully at this sweet picture; and what 
+triumph would a painter have more?
+
+We must not quit the Luxembourg without noticing the dashing sea-
+pieces of Gudin, and one or two landscapes by Giroux (the plain of 
+Grasivaudan), and "The Prometheus" of Aligny.  This is an 
+imitation, perhaps; as is a noble picture of "Jesus Christ and the 
+Children," by Flandrin: but the artists are imitating better 
+models, at any rate; and one begins to perceive that the odious 
+classical dynasty is no more.  Poussin's magnificent "Polyphemus" 
+(I only know a print of that marvellous composition) has, perhaps, 
+suggested the first-named picture; and the latter has been inspired 
+by a good enthusiastic study of the Roman schools.
+
+Of this revolution, Monsieur Ingres has been one of the chief 
+instruments.  He was, before Horace Vernet, president of the French 
+Academy at Rome, and is famous as a chief of a school.  When he 
+broke up his atelier here, to set out for his presidency, many of 
+his pupils attended him faithfully some way on his journey; and 
+some, with scarcely a penny in their pouches, walked through France 
+and across the Alps, in a pious pilgrimage to Rome, being 
+determined not to forsake their old master.  Such an action was 
+worthy of them, and of the high rank which their profession holds 
+in France, where the honors to be acquired by art are only inferior 
+to those which are gained in war.  One reads of such peregrinations 
+in old days, when the scholars of some great Italian painter 
+followed him from Venice to Rome, or from Florence to Ferrara.  In 
+regard of Ingres's individual merit as a painter, the writer of 
+this is not a fair judge, having seen but three pictures by him; 
+one being a plafond in the Louvre, which his disciples much admire.
+
+Ingres stands between the Imperio-Davido-classical school of French 
+art, and the namby-pamby mystical German school, which is for 
+carrying us back to Cranach and Dürer, and which is making progress 
+here.
+
+For everything here finds imitation: the French have the genius of 
+imitation and caricature.  This absurd humbug, called the Christian 
+or Catholic art, is sure to tickle our neighbors, and will be a 
+favorite with them, when better known.  My dear MacGilp, I do 
+believe this to be a greater humbug than the humbug of David and 
+Girodet, inasmuch as the latter was founded on Nature at least; 
+whereas the former is made up of silly affectations, and 
+improvements upon Nature.  Here, for instance, is Chevalier 
+Ziegler's picture of "St. Luke painting the Virgin."  St. Luke has 
+a monk's dress on, embroidered, however, smartly round the sleeves.  
+The Virgin sits in an immense yellow-ochre halo, with her son in 
+her arms.  She looks preternaturally solemn; as does St. Luke, who 
+is eying his paint-brush with an intense ominous mystical look.  
+They call this Catholic art.  There is nothing, my dear friend, 
+more easy in life.  First take your colors, and rub them down 
+clean,--bright carmine, bright yellow, bright sienna, bright 
+ultramarine, bright green.  Make the costumes of your figures as 
+much as possible like the costumes of the early part of the 
+fifteenth century.  Paint them in with the above colors; and if on 
+a gold ground, the more "Catholic" your art is.  Dress your 
+apostles like priests before the altar; and remember to have a good 
+commodity of crosiers, censers, and other such gimcracks, as you 
+may see in the Catholic chapels, in Sutton Street and elsewhere.  
+Deal in Virgins, and dress them like a burgomaster's wife by 
+Cranach or Van Eyck.  Give them all long twisted tails to their 
+gowns, and proper angular draperies.  Place all their heads on one 
+side, with the eyes shut, and the proper solemn simper.  At the 
+back of the head, draw, and gild with gold-leaf, a halo or glory, 
+of the exact shape of a cart-wheel: and you have the thing done.  
+It is Catholic art tout craché, as Louis Philippe says.  We have it 
+still in England, handed down to us for four centuries, in the 
+pictures on the cards, as the redoubtable king and queen of clubs.  
+Look at them: you will see that the costumes and attitudes are 
+precisely similar to those which figure in the catholicities of the 
+school of Overbeck and Cornelius.
+
+Before you take your cane at the door, look for one instant at the 
+statue-room.  Yonder is Jouffley's "Jeune Fille confiant son 
+premier secret à Vénus."  Charming, charming!  It is from the 
+exhibition of this year only; and I think the best sculpture in the 
+gallery--pretty, fanciful, naïve; admirable in workmanship and 
+imitation of Nature.  I have seldom seen flesh better represented 
+in marble.  Examine, also, Jaley's "Pudeur," Jacquot's "Nymph," and 
+Rude's "Boy with the Tortoise."  These are not very exalted 
+subjects, or what are called exalted, and do not go beyond simple, 
+smiling beauty and nature.  But what then?  Are we gods, Miltons, 
+Michel Angelos, that can leave earth when we please; and soar to 
+heights immeasurable?  No, my dear MacGilp; but the fools of 
+academicians would fain make us so.  Are you not, and half the 
+painters in London, panting for an opportunity to show your genius 
+in a great "historical picture?"  O blind race!  Have you wings?  
+Not a feather: and yet you must be ever puffing, sweating up to the 
+tops of rugged hills; and, arrived there, clapping and shaking your 
+ragged elbows, and making as if you would fly!  Come down, silly 
+Daedalus; come down to the lowly places in which Nature ordered you 
+to walk.  The sweet flowers are springing there; the fat muttons 
+are waiting there; the pleasant sun shines there; be content and 
+humble, and take your share of the good cheer.
+
+While we have been indulging in this discussion, the omnibus has 
+gayly conducted us across the water; and le garde qui veille a la 
+porte du Louvre ne défend pas our entry.
+
+What a paradise this gallery is for French students, or foreigners 
+who sojourn in the capital!  It is hardly necessary to say that the 
+brethren of the brush are not usually supplied by Fortune with any 
+extraordinary wealth, or means of enjoying the luxuries with which 
+Paris, more than any other city, abounds.  But here they have a 
+luxury which surpasses all others, and spend their days in a palace 
+which all the money of all the Rothschilds could not buy.  They 
+sleep, perhaps, in a garret, and dine in a cellar; but no grandee 
+in Europe has such a drawing-room.  Kings' houses have, at best, 
+but damask hangings, and gilt cornices.  What are these to a wall 
+covered with canvas by Paul Veronese, or a hundred yards of Rubens?  
+Artists from England, who have a national gallery that resembles a 
+moderate-sized gin-shop, who may not copy pictures, except under 
+particular restrictions, and on rare and particular days, may revel 
+here to their hearts' content.  Here is a room half a mile long, 
+with as many windows as Aladdin's palace, open from sunrise till 
+evening, and free to all manners and all varieties of study: the 
+only puzzle to the student is to select the one he shall begin 
+upon, and keep his eyes away from the rest.
+
+Fontaine's grand staircase, with its arches, and painted ceilings 
+and shining Doric columns, leads directly to the gallery; but it 
+is thought too fine for working days, and is only opened for the 
+public entrance on Sabbath.  A little back stair (leading from a 
+court, in which stand numerous bas-reliefs, and a solemn sphinx, 
+of polished granite,) is the common entry for students and others, 
+who, during the week, enter the gallery.
+
+Hither have lately been transported a number of the works of French 
+artists, which formerly covered the walls of the Luxembourg (death 
+only entitles the French painter to a place in the Louvre); and let 
+us confine ourselves to the Frenchmen only, for the space of this 
+letter.
+
+I have seen, in a fine private collection at St. Germain, one or 
+two admirable single figures of David, full of life, truth, and 
+gayety.  The color is not good, but all the rest excellent; and one 
+of these so much-lauded pictures is the portrait of a washer-woman.  
+"Pope Pius," at the Louvre, is as bad in color as remarkable for 
+its vigor and look of life.  The man had a genius for painting 
+portraits and common life, but must attempt the heroic;--failed 
+signally; and what is worse, carried a whole nation blundering 
+after him.  Had you told a Frenchman so, twenty years ago, he would 
+have thrown the démenti in your teeth; or, at least, laughed at you 
+in scornful incredulity.  They say of us that we don't know when we 
+are beaten: they go a step further, and swear their defeats are 
+victories.  David was a part of the glory of the empire; and one 
+might as well have said then that "Romulus" was a bad picture, as 
+that Toulouse was a lost battle.  Old-fashioned people, who believe 
+in the Emperor, believe in the Théâtre Français, and believe that 
+Ducis improved upon Shakspeare, have the above opinion.  Still, it 
+is curious to remark, in this place, how art and literature become 
+party matters, and political sects have their favorite painters and 
+authors.
+
+Nevertheless, Jacques Louis David is dead, he died about a year 
+after his bodily demise in 1825.  The romanticism killed him.  
+Walter Scott, from his Castle of Abbotsford, sent out a troop of 
+gallant young Scotch adventurers, merry outlaws, valiant knights, 
+and savage Highlanders, who, with trunk hosen and buff jerkins, 
+fierce two-handed swords, and harness on their back, did challenge, 
+combat, and overcome the heroes and demigods of Greece and Rome.  
+Notre Dame à la rescousse!  Sir Brian de Bois Guilbert has borne 
+Hector of Troy clear out of his saddle.  Andromache may weep: but 
+her spouse is beyond the reach of physic.  See! Robin Hood twangs 
+his bow, and the heathen gods fly, howling.  Montjoie Saint Denis! 
+down goes Ajax under the mace of Dunois; and yonder are Leonidas 
+and Romulus begging their lives of Rob Roy Macgregor.  Classicism 
+is dead.  Sir John Froissart has taken Dr. Lemprière by the nose, 
+and reigns sovereign.
+
+Of the great pictures of David the defunct, we need not, then, say 
+much.  Romulus is a mighty fine young fellow, no doubt; and if he 
+has come out to battle stark naked (except a very handsome helmet), 
+it is because the costume became him, and shows off his figure to 
+advantage.  But was there ever anything so absurd as this passion 
+for the nude, which was followed by all the painters of the 
+Davidian epoch?  And how are we to suppose yonder straddle to be 
+the true characteristic of the heroic and the sublime?  Romulus 
+stretches his legs as far as ever nature will allow; the Horatii, 
+in receiving their swords, think proper to stretch their legs too, 
+and to thrust forward their arms, thus,--
+
+
+[Drawing omitted]
+
+
+Romulus's is in the exact action of a telegraph; and the Horatii 
+are all in the position of the lunge.  Is this the sublime?  Mr. 
+Angelo, of Bond Street, might admire the attitude; his namesake, 
+Michel, I don't think would.
+
+The little picture of "Paris and Helen," one of the master's 
+earliest, I believe, is likewise one of his best: the details are 
+exquisitely painted.  Helen looks needlessly sheepish, and Paris 
+has a most odious ogle; but the limbs of the male figure are 
+beautifully designed, and have not the green tone which you see in 
+the later pictures of the master.  What is the meaning of this 
+green?  Was it the fashion, or the varnish?  Girodet's pictures
+are green; Gros's emperors and grenadiers have universally the 
+jaundice.  Gerard's "Psyche" has a most decided green-sickness; and 
+I am at a loss, I confess, to account for the enthusiasm which this 
+performance inspired on its first appearance before the public.
+
+In the same room with it is Girodet's ghastly "Deluge," and 
+Gericault's dismal "Medusa."  Gericault died, they say, for want of 
+fame.  He was a man who possessed a considerable fortune of his 
+own; but pined because no one in his day would purchase his 
+pictures, and so acknowledge his talent.  At present, a scrawl from 
+his pencil brings an enormous price.  All his works have a grand 
+cachet: he never  did anything mean.  When he painted the "Raft of 
+the Medusa," it is said he lived for a long time among the corpses 
+which he painted, and that his studio was a second Morgue.  If you 
+have not seen the picture, you are familiar probably, with 
+Reynolds's admirable engraving of it.  A huge black sea; a raft 
+beating upon it; a horrid company of men dead, half dead, writhing 
+and frantic with hideous hunger or hideous hope; and, far away, 
+black, against a stormy sunset, a sail.  The story is powerfully 
+told, and has a legitimate tragic interest, so to speak,--deeper, 
+because more natural, than Girodet's green "Deluge," for instance: 
+or his livid "Orestes," or red-hot "Clytemnestra."
+
+Seen from a distance the latter's "Deluge" has a certain awe-
+inspiring air with it.  A slimy green man stands on a green rock, 
+and clutches hold of a tree.  On the green man's shoulders is his 
+old father, in a green old age; to him hangs his wife, with a babe 
+on her breast, and dangling at her hair, another child.  In the 
+water floats a corpse (a beautiful head) and a green sea and 
+atmosphere envelops all this dismal group.  The old father is 
+represented with a bag of money in his hand; and the tree, which 
+the man catches, is cracking, and just on the point of giving way.  
+These two points were considered very fine by the critics: they are 
+two such ghastly epigrams as continually disfigure French Tragedy.  
+For this reason I have never been able to read Racine with 
+pleasure,--the dialogue is so crammed with these lugubrious good 
+things--melancholy antitheses--sparkling undertakers' wit; but this 
+is heresy, and had better be spoken discreetly.
+
+The gallery contains a vast number of Poussin's pictures; they put 
+me in mind of the color of objects in dreams,--a strange, hazy, 
+lurid hue.  How noble are some of his landscapes!  What a depth of 
+solemn shadow is in yonder wood, near which, by the side of a black 
+water, halts Diogenes.  The air is thunder-laden, and breathes 
+heavily.  You hear ominous whispers in the vast forest gloom.
+
+Near it is a landscape, by Carel Dujardin, I believe, conceived in 
+quite a different mood, but exquisitely poetical too.  A horseman 
+is riding up a hill, and giving money to a blowsy beggar-wench.  
+O matutini rores auraeque salubres! in what a wonderful way has the 
+artist managed to create you out of a few bladders of paint and 
+pots of varnish.  You can see the matutinal dews twinkling in the 
+grass, and feel the fresh, salubrious airs ("the breath of Nature 
+blowing free," as the corn-law man sings) blowing free over the 
+heath; silvery vapors are rising up from the blue lowlands.  You 
+can tell the hour of the morning and the time of the year: you can 
+do anything but describe it in words.  As with regard to the 
+Poussin above mentioned, one can never pass it without bearing away 
+a certain pleasing, dreamy feeling of awe and musing; the other 
+landscape inspires the spectator infallibly with the most 
+delightful briskness and cheerfulness of spirit.  Herein lies the 
+vast privilege of the landscape-painter: he does not address you 
+with one fixed particular subject or expression, but with a 
+thousand never contemplated by himself, and which only arise out of 
+occasion.  You may always be looking at a natural landscape as at a 
+fine pictorial imitation of one; it seems eternally producing new 
+thoughts in your bosom, as it does fresh beauties from its own.  I 
+cannot fancy more delightful, cheerful, silent companions for a man 
+than half a dozen landscapes hung round his study.  Portraits, on 
+the contrary, and large pieces of figures, have a painful, fixed, 
+staring look, which must jar upon the mind in many of its moods.  
+Fancy living in a room with David's sans-culotte Leonidas staring 
+perpetually in your face!
+
+There is a little Watteau here, and a rare piece of fantastical 
+brightness and gayety it is.  What a delightful affectation about 
+yonder ladies flirting their fans, and trailing about in their long 
+brocades!  What splendid dandies are those, ever-smirking, turning 
+out their toes, with broad blue ribbons to tie up their crooks and 
+their pigtails, and wonderful gorgeous crimson satin breeches!  
+Yonder, in the midst of a golden atmosphere, rises a bevy of little 
+round Cupids, bubbling up in clusters as out of a champagne-bottle, 
+and melting away in air.  There is, to be sure, a hidden analogy 
+between liquors and pictures: the eye is deliciously tickled by 
+these frisky Watteaus, and yields itself up to a light, smiling, 
+gentlemanlike intoxication.  Thus, were we inclined to pursue 
+further this mighty subject, yonder landscape of Claude,--calm, 
+fresh, delicate, yet full of flavor,--should be likened to a bottle 
+of Château Margaux.  And what is the Poussin before spoken of but 
+Romanée Gelée?--heavy, sluggish,--the luscious odor almost sickens 
+you; a sultry sort of drink; your limbs sink under it; you feel as 
+if you had been drinking hot blood.
+
+An ordinary man would be whirled away in a fever, or would hobble 
+off this mortal stage in a premature gout-fit, if he too early or 
+too often indulged in such tremendous drink.  I think in my heart 
+I am fonder of pretty third-rate pictures than of your great 
+thundering first-rates.  Confess how many times you have read 
+Béranger, and how many Milton?  If you go to the "Star and Garter," 
+don't you grow sick of that vast, luscious landscape, and long for 
+the sight of a couple of cows, or a donkey, and a few yards of 
+common?  Donkeys, my dear MacGilp, since we have come to this 
+subject, say not so; Richmond Hill for them.  Milton they never 
+grow tired of; and are as familiar with Raphael as Bottom with 
+exquisite Titania.  Let us thank heaven, my dear sir, for according 
+to us the power to taste and appreciate the pleasures of 
+mediocrity.  I have never heard that we were great geniuses.  
+Earthy are we, and of the earth; glimpses of the sublime are but 
+rare to us; leave we them to great geniuses, and to the donkeys; 
+and if it nothing profit us aërias tentâsse domos along with them, 
+let us thankfully remain below, being merry and humble.
+
+I have now only to mention the charming "Cruche Cassée" of Greuze, 
+which all the young ladies delight to copy; and of which the color 
+(a thought too blue, perhaps) is marvellously graceful and 
+delicate.  There are three more pictures by the artist, containing 
+exquisite female heads and color; but they have charms for French 
+critics which are difficult to be discovered by English eyes; and 
+the pictures seem weak to me.  A very fine picture by Bon 
+Bollongue, "Saint Benedict resuscitating a Child," deserves 
+particular attention, and is superb in vigor and richness of color.  
+You must look, too, at the large, noble, melancholy landscapes of 
+Philippe de Champagne; and the two magnificent Italian pictures of 
+Léopold Robert: they are, perhaps, the very finest pictures that 
+the French school has produced,--as deep as Poussin, of a better 
+color, and of a wonderful minuteness and veracity in the 
+representation of objects.
+
+Every one of Lesueur's church-pictures is worth examining and 
+admiring; they are full of "unction" and pious mystical grace.  
+"Saint Scholastica" is divine; and the "Taking down from the Cross" 
+as noble a composition as ever was seen; I care not by whom the 
+other may be.  There is more beauty, and less affectation, about 
+this picture than you will find in the performances of many Italian 
+masters, with high-sounding names (out with it, and say RAPHAEL at 
+once).  I hate those simpering Madonnas.  I declare that the 
+"Jardinière" is a puking, smirking miss, with nothing heavenly 
+about her.  I vow that the "Saint Elizabeth" is a bad picture,--a 
+bad composition, badly drawn, badly colored, in a bad imitation of 
+Titian,--a piece of vile affectation.  I say, that when Raphael 
+painted this picture two years before his death, the spirit of 
+painting had gone from out of him; he was no longer inspired; IT 
+WAS TIME THAT HE SHOULD DIE!!
+
+There,--the murder is out!  My paper is filled to the brim, and 
+there is no time to speak of Lesueur's "Crucifixion," which is 
+odiously colored, to be sure; but earnest, tender, simple, holy.  
+But such things are most difficult to translate into words;--one 
+lays down the pen, and thinks and thinks.  The figures appear, and 
+take their places one by one: ranging themselves according to 
+order, in light or in gloom, the colors are reflected duly in the 
+little camera obscura of the brain, and the whole picture lies 
+there complete; but can you describe it?  No, not if pens were 
+fitch-brushes, and words were bladders of paint.  With which, for 
+the present, adieu.
+
+Your faithful
+
+M. A. T.
+
+To Mr. ROBERT MACGILP,
+
+NEWMAN STREET, LONDON.
+
+
+
+
+THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN.
+
+
+Simon Gambouge was the son of Solomon Gambouge; and as all the 
+world knows, both father and son were astonishingly clever fellows 
+at their profession.  Solomon painted landscapes, which nobody 
+bought; and Simon took a higher line, and painted portraits to 
+admiration, only nobody came to sit to him.
+
+As he was not gaining five pounds a year by his profession, and had 
+arrived at the age of twenty, at least, Simon determined to better 
+himself by taking a wife,--a plan which a number of other wise men 
+adopt, in similar years and circumstances.  So Simon prevailed upon 
+a butcher's daughter (to whom he owed considerably for cutlets) to 
+quit the meat-shop and follow him.  Griskinissa--such was the fair 
+creature's name--"was as lovely a bit of mutton," her father said, 
+"as ever a man would wish to stick a knife into."  She had sat to 
+the painter for all sorts of characters; and the curious who 
+possess any of Gambouge's pictures will see her as Venus, Minerva, 
+Madonna, and in numberless other characters: Portrait of a lady--
+Griskinissa; Sleeping Nymph--Griskinissa, without a rag of clothes, 
+lying in a forest; Maternal Solicitude--Griskinissa again, with 
+young Master Gambouge, who was by this time the offspring of their 
+affections.
+
+The lady brought the painter a handsome little fortune of a couple 
+of hundred pounds; and as long as this sum lasted no woman could be 
+more lovely or loving.  But want began speedily to attack their 
+little household; bakers' bills were unpaid; rent was due, and the 
+reckless landlord gave no quarter; and, to crown the whole, her 
+father, unnatural butcher! suddenly stopped the supplies of mutton-
+chops; and swore that his daughter, and the dauber; her husband, 
+should have no more of his wares.  At first they embraced tenderly, 
+and, kissing and crying over their little infant, vowed to heaven 
+that they would do without: but in the course of the evening 
+Griskinissa grew peckish, and poor Simon pawned his best coat.
+
+When this habit of pawning is discovered, it appears to the poor a 
+kind of Eldorado.  Gambouge and his wife were so delighted, that 
+they, in the course of a month, made away with her gold chain, her 
+great warming-pan, his best crimson plush inexpressibles, two wigs, 
+a washhand basin and ewer, fire-irons, window-curtains, crockery, 
+and arm-chairs.  Griskinissa said, smiling, that she had found a 
+second father in HER UNCLE,--a base pun, which showed that her 
+mind was corrupted, and that she was no longer the tender, simple 
+Griskinissa of other days.
+
+I am sorry to say that she had taken to drinking; she swallowed the 
+warming-pan in the course of three days, and fuddled herself one 
+whole evening with the crimson plush breeches.
+
+Drinking is the devil--the father, that is to say, of all vices.  
+Griskinissa's face and her mind grew ugly together; her good humor 
+changed to bilious, bitter discontent; her pretty, fond epithets, 
+to foul abuse and swearing; her tender blue eyes grew watery and 
+blear, and the peach-color on her cheeks fled from its old 
+habitation, and crowded up into her nose, where, with a number of 
+pimples, it stuck fast.  Add to this a dirty, draggle-tailed 
+chintz; long, matted hair, wandering into her eyes, and over her 
+lean shoulders, which were once so snowy, and you have the picture 
+of drunkenness and Mrs. Simon Gambouge.
+
+Poor Simon, who had been a gay, lively fellow enough in the days of 
+his better fortune, was completely cast down by his present ill 
+luck, and cowed by the ferocity of his wife.  From morning till 
+night the neighbors could hear this woman's tongue, and understand 
+her doings; bellows went skimming across the room, chairs were 
+flumped down on the floor, and poor Gambouge's oil and varnish pots 
+went clattering through the windows, or down the stairs.  The baby 
+roared all day; and Simon sat pale and idle in a corner, taking a 
+small sup at the brandy-bottle, when Mrs. Gambouge was out of the 
+way.
+
+One day, as he sat disconsolately at his easel, furbishing up a 
+picture of his wife, in the character of Peace, which he had 
+commenced a year before, he was more than ordinarily desperate, and 
+cursed and swore in the most pathetic manner.  "O miserable fate of 
+genius!" cried he, "was I, a man of such commanding talents, born 
+for this? to be bullied by a fiend of a wife; to have my 
+masterpieces neglected by the world, or sold only for a few pieces?  
+Cursed be the love which has misled me; cursed, be the art which is 
+unworthy of me!  Let me dig or steal, let me sell myself as a 
+soldier, or sell myself to the Devil, I should not be more wretched 
+than I am now!"
+
+"Quite the contrary," cried a small, cheery voice.
+
+"What!" exclaimed Gambouge, trembling and surprised.  "Who's 
+there?--where are you?--who are you?"
+
+"You were just speaking of me," said the voice.
+
+Gambouge held, in his left hand, his palette; in his right, a 
+bladder of crimson lake, which he was about to squeeze out upon the 
+mahogany.  "Where are you?" cried he again.
+
+"S-q-u-e-e-z-e!" exclaimed the little voice.
+
+Gambouge picked out the nail from the bladder, and gave a squeeze; 
+when, as sure as I am living, a little imp spurted out from the 
+hole upon the palette, and began laughing in the most singular and 
+oily manner.
+
+When first born he was little bigger than a tadpole; then he grew 
+to be as big as a mouse; then he arrived at the size of a cat; and 
+then he jumped off the palette, and, turning head over heels, asked 
+the poor painter what he wanted with him.
+
+The strange little animal twisted head over heels, and fixed 
+himself at last upon the top of Gambouge's easel,--smearing out, 
+with his heels, all the white and vermilion which had just been 
+laid on the allegoric portrait of Mrs. Gambouge.
+
+"What!" exclaimed Simon, "is it the--"
+
+"Exactly so; talk of me, you know, and I am always at hand: 
+besides, I am not half so black as I am painted, as you will see 
+when you know me a little better."
+
+"Upon my word," said the painter, "it is a very singular surprise 
+which you have given me.  To tell truth, I did not even believe in 
+your existence."
+
+The little imp put on a theatrical air, and, with one of Mr. 
+Macready's best looks, said,--
+
+
+     "There are more things in heaven and earth, Gambogio,
+      Than are dreamed of in your philosophy."
+
+
+Gambouge, being a Frenchman, did not understand the quotation, but 
+felt somehow strangely and singularly interested in the conversation
+of his new friend.
+
+Diabolus continued: "You are a man of merit, and want money; you 
+will starve on your merit; you can only get money from me.  Come, 
+my friend, how much is it?  I ask the easiest interest in the 
+world: old Mordecai, the usurer, has made you pay twice as heavily 
+before now: nothing but the signature of a bond, which is a mere 
+ceremony, and the transfer of an article which, in itself, is a 
+supposition--a valueless, windy, uncertain property of yours, 
+called, by some poet of your own, I think, an animula, vagula, 
+blandula--bah! there is no use beating about the bush--I mean A 
+SOUL.  Come, let me have it; you know you will sell it some other 
+way, and not get such good pay for your bargain!"--and, having made 
+this speech, the Devil pulled out from his fob a sheet as big as a 
+double Times, only there was a different STAMP in the corner.
+
+It is useless and tedious to describe law documents: lawyers only 
+love to read them; and they have as good in Chitty as any that are 
+to be found in the Devil's own; so nobly have the apprentices 
+emulated the skill of the master.  Suffice it to say, that poor 
+Gambouge read over the paper, and signed it.  He was to have all he 
+wished for seven years, and at the end of that time was to become 
+the property of the -----; PROVIDED that, during the course of the 
+seven years, every single wish which he might form should be 
+gratified by the other of the contracting parties; otherwise the 
+deed became null and non-avenue, and Gambouge should be left "to go 
+to the ----- his own way."
+
+"You will never see me again," said Diabolus, in shaking hands with 
+poor Simon, on whose fingers he left such a mark as is to be seen 
+at this day--"never, at least, unless you want me; for everything 
+you ask will be performed in the most quiet and every-day manner: 
+believe me, it is best and most gentlemanlike, and avoids anything 
+like scandal.  But if you set me about anything which is 
+extraordinary, and out of the course of nature, as it were, come I 
+must, you know; and of this you are the best judge."  So saying, 
+Diabolus disappeared; but whether up the chimney, through the 
+keyhole, or by any other aperture or contrivance, nobody knows.  
+Simon Gambouge was left in a fever of delight, as, heaven forgive 
+me! I believe many a worthy man would be, if he were allowed an 
+opportunity to make a similar bargain.
+
+"Heigho!" said Simon.  "I wonder whether this be a reality or a 
+dream.--I am sober, I know; for who will give me credit for the 
+means to be drunk? and as for sleeping, I'm too hungry for that.  I 
+wish I could see a capon and a bottle of white wine."
+
+"MONSIEUR SIMON!" cried a voice on the landing-place.
+
+"C'est ici," quoth Gambouge, hastening to open the door.  He did 
+so; and lo! there was a restaurateur's boy at the door, supporting 
+a tray, a tin-covered dish, and plates on the same; and, by its 
+side, a tall amber-colored flask of Sauterne.
+
+"I am the new boy, sir," exclaimed this youth, on entering; "but I 
+believe this is the right door, and you asked for these things."
+
+Simon grinned, and said, "Certainly, I did ASK FOR these things."  
+But such was the effect which his interview with the demon had had 
+on his innocent mind, that he took them, although he knew that they 
+were for old Simon, the Jew dandy, who was mad after an opera girl, 
+and lived on the floor beneath.
+
+"Go, my boy," he said; "it is good: call in a couple of hours, and 
+remove the plates and glasses."
+
+The little waiter trotted down stairs, and Simon sat greedily down 
+to discuss the capon and the white wine.  He bolted the legs, he 
+devoured the wings, he cut every morsel of flesh from the breast;--
+seasoning his repast with pleasant draughts of wine, and caring 
+nothing for the inevitable bill, which was to follow all.
+
+"Ye gods!" said he, as he scraped away at the backbone, "what a 
+dinner! what wine!--and how gayly served up too!"  There were 
+silver forks and spoons, and the remnants of the fowl were upon a 
+silver dish.  "Why, the money for this dish and these spoons," 
+cried Simon, "would keep me and Mrs. G. for a month!  I WISH"--and 
+here Simon whistled, and turned round to see that nobody was 
+peeping--"I wish the plate were mine."
+
+Oh, the horrid progress of the Devil!  "Here they are," thought 
+Simon to himself; "why should not I TAKE THEM?"  And take them he 
+did.  "Detection," said he, "is not so bad as starvation; and I 
+would as soon live at the galleys as live with Madame Gambouge."
+
+So Gambouge shovelled dish and spoons into the flap of his surtout, 
+and ran down stairs as if the Devil were behind him--as, indeed, he 
+was.
+
+He immediately made for the house of his old friend the pawnbroker--
+that establishment which is called in France the Mont de Piété.  
+"I am obliged to come to you again, my old friend," said Simon, 
+"with some family plate, of which I beseech you to take care."
+
+The pawnbroker smiled as he examined the goods.  "I can give you 
+nothing upon them," said he.
+
+"What!" cried Simon; "not even the worth of the silver?"
+
+"No; I could buy them at that price at the 'Café Morisot,' Rue de 
+la Verrerie, where, I suppose, you got them a little cheaper."  
+And, so saying, he showed to the guilt-stricken Gambouge how the 
+name of that coffee-house was inscribed upon every one of the 
+articles which he had wished to pawn.
+
+The effects of conscience are dreadful indeed.  Oh! how fearful is 
+retribution, how deep is despair, how bitter is remorse for crime--
+WHEN CRIME IS FOUND OUT!--otherwise, conscience takes matters much 
+more easily.  Gambouge cursed his fate, and swore henceforth to be 
+virtuous.
+
+"But, hark ye, my friend," continued the honest broker, "there is 
+no reason why, because I cannot lend upon these things, I should 
+not buy them: they will do to melt, if for no other purpose.  Will 
+you have half the money?--speak, or I peach."
+
+Simon's resolves about virtue were dissipated instantaneously.  
+"Give me half," he said, "and let me go.--What scoundrels are these 
+pawnbrokers!" ejaculated he, as he passed out of the accursed shop, 
+"seeking every wicked pretext to rob the poor man of his hard-won 
+gain."
+
+When he had marched forwards for a street or two, Gambouge counted 
+the money which he had received, and found that he was in possession
+of no less than a hundred francs.  It was night, as he reckoned out
+his equivocal gains, and he counted them at the light of a lamp.  He
+looked up at the lamp, in doubt as to the course he should next
+pursue: upon it was inscribed the simple number, 152.  "A
+gambling-house," thought Gambouge.  "I wish I had half the money
+that is now on the table, up stairs."
+
+He mounted, as many a rogue has done before him, and found half a 
+hundred persons busy at a table of rouge et noir.  Gambouge's five 
+napoleons looked insignificant by the side of the heaps which were 
+around him; but the effects of the wine, of the theft, and of the 
+detection by the pawnbroker, were upon him, and he threw down his 
+capital stoutly upon the 0 0.
+
+It is a dangerous spot that 0 0, or double zero; but to Simon it 
+was more lucky than to the rest of the world.  The ball went 
+spinning round--in "its predestined circle rolled," as Shelley has 
+it, after Goethe--and plumped down at last in the double zero.  One 
+hundred and thirty-five gold napoleons (louis they were then) were 
+counted out to the delighted painter.  "Oh, Diabolus!" cried he, 
+"now it is that I begin to believe in thee!  Don't talk about 
+merit," he cried; "talk about fortune.  Tell me not about heroes 
+for the future--tell me of ZEROES."  And down went twenty napoleons 
+more upon the 0.
+
+The Devil was certainly in the ball: round it twirled, and dropped 
+into zero as naturally as a duck pops its head into a pond.  Our 
+friend received five hundred pounds for his stake; and the 
+croupiers and lookers-on began to stare at him.
+
+There were twelve thousand pounds on the table.  Suffice it to say, 
+that Simon won half, and retired from the Palais Royal with a thick 
+bundle of bank-notes crammed into his dirty three-cornered hat.  He 
+had been but half an hour in the place, and he had won the revenues 
+of a prince for half a year!
+
+Gambouge, as soon as he felt that he was a capitalist, and that he 
+had a stake in the country, discovered that he was an altered man.  
+He repented of his foul deed, and his base purloining of the 
+restaurateur's plate.  "O honesty!" he cried, "how unworthy is an 
+action like this of a man who has a property like mine!"  So he 
+went back to the pawnbroker with the gloomiest face imaginable.  
+"My friend," said he, "I have sinned against all that I hold most 
+sacred: I have forgotten my family and my religion.  Here is thy 
+money.  In the name of heaven, restore me the plate which I have 
+wrongfully sold thee!"
+
+But the pawnbroker grinned, and said, "Nay, Mr. Gambouge, I will 
+sell that plate for a thousand francs to you, or I never will sell 
+it at all."
+
+"Well," cried Gambouge, "thou art an inexorable ruffian, Troisboules;
+but I will give thee all I am worth."  And here he produced a billet
+of five hundred francs.  "Look," said he, "this money is all I own;
+it is the payment of two years' lodging.  To raise it, I have toiled
+for many months; and, failing, I have been a criminal.  O heaven!  
+I STOLE that plate that I might pay my debt, and keep my dear wife
+from wandering houseless.  But I cannot bear this load of ignominy--
+I cannot suffer the thought of this crime.  I will go to the person
+to whom I did wrong, I will starve, I will confess; but I will, I
+WILL do right!"
+
+The broker was alarmed.  "Give me thy note," he cried; "here is the 
+plate."
+
+"Give me an acquittal first," cried Simon, almost broken-hearted; 
+"sign me a paper, and the money is yours."  So Troisboules wrote 
+according to Gambouge's dictation; "Received, for thirteen ounces 
+of plate, twenty pounds."
+
+"Monster of iniquity!" cried the painter, "fiend of wickedness! 
+thou art caught in thine own snares.  Hast thou not sold me five 
+pounds' worth of plate for twenty?  Have I it not in my pocket?  
+Art thou not a convicted dealer in stolen goods?  Yield, scoundrel, 
+yield thy money, or I will bring thee to justice!"
+
+The frightened pawnbroker bullied and battled for a while; but he 
+gave up his money at last, and the dispute ended.  Thus it will be 
+seen that Diabolus had rather a hard bargain in the wily Gambouge.  
+He had taken a victim prisoner, but he had assuredly caught a 
+Tartar.  Simon now returned home, and, to do him justice, paid the 
+bill for his dinner, and restored the plate.
+
+And now I may add (and the reader should ponder upon this, as a 
+profound picture of human life), that Gambouge, since he had grown 
+rich, grew likewise abundantly moral.  He was a most exemplary 
+father.  He fed the poor, and was loved by them.  He scorned a 
+base action.  And I have no doubt that Mr. Thurtell, or the late 
+lamented Mr. Greenacre, in similar circumstances, would have acted 
+like the worthy Simon Gambouge.
+
+There was but one blot upon his character--he hated Mrs. Gam. worse 
+than ever.  As he grew more benevolent, she grew more virulent: 
+when he went to plays, she went to Bible societies, and vice versâ: 
+in fact, she led him such a life as Xantippe led Socrates, or as a 
+dog leads a cat in the same kitchen.  With all his fortune--for, as 
+may be supposed, Simon prospered in all worldly things--he was the 
+most miserable dog in the whole city of Paris.  Only in the point 
+of drinking did he and Mrs. Simon agree; and for many years, and 
+during a considerable number of hours in each day, he thus 
+dissipated, partially, his domestic chagrin.  O philosophy! we may 
+talk of thee: but, except at the bottom of the winecup, where thou 
+liest like truth in a well, where shall we find thee?
+
+He lived so long, and in his worldly matters prospered so much, 
+there was so little sign of devilment in the accomplishment of his 
+wishes, and the increase of his prosperity, that Simon, at the end 
+of six years, began to doubt whether he had made any such bargain 
+at all, as that which we have described at the commencement of this 
+history.  He had grown, as we said, very pious and moral.  He went 
+regularly to mass, and had a confessor into the bargain.  He 
+resolved, therefore, to consult that reverend gentleman, and to lay 
+before him the whole matter.
+
+"I am inclined to think, holy sir," said Gambouge, after he had 
+concluded his history, and shown how, in some miraculous way, all 
+his desires were accomplished, "that, after all, this demon was no 
+other than the creation of my own brain, heated by the effects of 
+that bottle of wine, the cause of my crime and my prosperity."
+
+The confessor agreed with him, and they walked out of church 
+comfortably together, and entered afterwards a café, where they sat 
+down to refresh themselves after the fatigues of their devotion.
+
+A respectable old gentleman, with a number of orders at his 
+buttonhole, presently entered the room, and sauntered up to the 
+marble table, before which reposed Simon and his clerical friend.  
+"Excuse me, gentlemen," he said, as he took a place opposite them, 
+and began reading the papers of the day.
+
+"Bah!" said he, at last,--"sont-ils grands ces journaux Anglais?  
+Look, sir," he said, handing over an immense sheet of The Times to 
+Mr. Gambouge, "was ever anything so monstrous?"
+
+Gambouge smiled politely, and examined the proffered page.  "It is 
+enormous" he said; "but I do not read English."
+
+"Nay," said the man with the orders, "look closer at it, Signor 
+Gambouge; it is astonishing how easy the language is." 
+
+Wondering, Simon took a sheet of paper.  He turned pale as he 
+looked at it, and began to curse the ices and the waiter.  "Come, 
+M. l'Abbé," he said; "the heat and glare of this place are 
+intolerable."
+
+The stranger rose with them.  "Au plaisir de vous revoir, mon cher 
+monsieur," said he; "I do not mind speaking before the Abbé here, 
+who will be my very good friend one of these days: but I thought it 
+necessary to refresh your memory, concerning our little business 
+transaction six years since; and could not exactly talk of it AT 
+CHURCH, as you may fancy."
+
+Simon Gambouge had seen, in the double-sheeted Times, the paper 
+signed by himself, which the little Devil had pulled out of his 
+fob.
+
+There was no doubt on the subject; and Simon, who had but a year 
+to live, grew more pious, and more careful than ever.  He had 
+consultations with all the doctors of the Sorbonne and all the 
+lawyers of the Palais.  But his magnificence grew as wearisome to 
+him as his poverty had been before; and not one of the doctors whom 
+he consulted could give him a pennyworth of consolation.
+
+Then he grew outrageous in his demands upon the Devil, and put him 
+to all sorts of absurd and ridiculous tasks; but they were all 
+punctually performed, until Simon could invent no new ones, and the 
+Devil sat all day with his hands in his pockets doing nothing.
+
+One day, Simon's confessor came bounding into the room, with the 
+greatest glee.  "My friend," said he, "I have it!  Eureka!--I have 
+found it.  Send the Pope a hundred thousand crowns, build a new 
+Jesuit college at Rome, give a hundred gold candlesticks to St. 
+Peter's; and tell his Holiness you will double all, if he will give 
+you absolution!"
+
+Gambouge caught at the notion, and hurried off a courier to Rome 
+ventre à terre.  His Holiness agreed to the request of the 
+petition, and sent him an absolution, written out with his own 
+fist, and all in due form.
+
+"Now," said he, "foul fiend, I defy you! arise, Diabolus! your 
+contract is not worth a jot: the Pope has absolved me, and I am 
+safe on the road to salvation."  In a fervor of gratitude he 
+clasped the hand of his confessor, and embraced him: tears of joy 
+ran down the cheeks of these good men.
+
+They heard an inordinate roar of laughter, and there was Diabolus 
+sitting opposite to them, holding his sides, and lashing his tail 
+about, as if he would have gone mad with glee.
+
+"Why," said he, "what nonsense is this! do you suppose I care about 
+THAT?" and he tossed the Pope's missive into a corner.  "M. l'Abbé 
+knows," he said, bowing and grinning, "that though the Pope's paper 
+may pass current HERE, it is not worth twopence in our country.  
+What do I care about the Pope's absolution?  You might just as well 
+be absolved by your under butler."
+
+"Egad," said the Abbé, "the rogue is right--I quite forgot the 
+fact, which he points out clearly enough."
+
+"No, no, Gambouge," continued Diabolus, with horrid familiarity.  
+"go thy ways, old fellow, that COCK WON'T FIGHT."  And he retired 
+up the chimney, chuckling at his wit and his triumph.  Gambouge 
+heard his tail scuttling all the way up, as if he had been a 
+sweeper by profession.
+
+Simon was left in that condition of grief in which, according to 
+the newspapers, cities and nations are found when a murder is 
+committed, or a lord ill of the gout--a situation, we say, more 
+easy to imagine than to describe.
+
+To add to his woes, Mrs. Gambouge, who was now first made acquainted
+with his compact, and its probable consequences, raised such a storm
+about his ears, as made him wish almost that his seven years were
+expired.  She screamed, she scolded, she swore, she wept, she went
+into such fits of hysterics, that poor Gambouge, who had completely
+knocked under to her, was worn out of his life.  He was allowed no
+rest, night or day: he moped about his fine house, solitary and
+wretched, and cursed his stars that he ever had married the
+butcher's daughter.
+
+It wanted six months of the time.
+
+A sudden and desperate resolution seemed all at once to have taken 
+possession of Simon Gambouge.  He called his family and his friends 
+together--he gave one of the greatest feasts that ever was known in 
+the city of Paris--he gayly presided at one end of his table, while 
+Mrs. Gam., splendidly arrayed, gave herself airs at the other 
+extremity.
+
+After dinner, using the customary formula, he called upon Diabolus 
+to appear.  The old ladies screamed, and hoped he would not appear 
+naked; the young ones tittered, and longed to see the monster: 
+everybody was pale with expectation and affright.
+
+A very quiet, gentlemanly man, neatly dressed in black, made his 
+appearance, to the surprise of all present, and bowed all round to 
+the company.  "I will not show my CREDENTIALS," he said, blushing, 
+and pointing to his hoofs, which were cleverly hidden by his pumps 
+and shoe-buckles, "unless the ladies absolutely wish it; but I am 
+the person you want, Mr. Gambouge; pray tell me what is your will."
+
+"You know," said that gentleman, in a stately and determined voice, 
+"that you are bound to me, according to our agreement, for six 
+months to come."
+
+"I am," replied the new comer.
+
+"You are to do all that I ask, whatsoever it may be, or you forfeit 
+the bond which I gave you?"
+
+"It is true."
+
+"You declare this before the present company?"
+
+"Upon my honor, as a gentleman," said Diabolus, bowing, and laying 
+his hand upon his waistcoat.
+
+A whisper of applause ran round the room: all were charmed with the 
+bland manners of the fascinating stranger.
+
+"My love," continued Gambouge, mildly addressing his lady, "will 
+you be so polite as to step this way?  You know I must go soon, and 
+I am anxious, before this noble company, to make a provision for 
+one who, in sickness as in health, in poverty as in riches, has 
+been my truest and fondest companion."
+
+Gambouge mopped his eyes with his handkerchief--all the company did 
+likewise.  Diabolus sobbed audibly, and Mrs. Gambouge sidled up to 
+her husband's side, and took him tenderly by the hand.  "Simon!" 
+said she, "is it true? and do you really love your Griskinissa?"
+
+Simon continued solemnly: "Come hither, Diabolus; you are bound to 
+obey me in all things for the six months during which our contract 
+has to run; take, then, Griskinissa Gambouge, live alone with her 
+for half a year, never leave her from morning till night, obey all 
+her caprices, follow all her whims, and listen to all the abuse 
+which falls from her infernal tongue.  Do this, and I ask no more 
+of you; I will deliver myself up at the appointed time."
+
+Not Lord G---, when flogged by lord B---, in the House,--not Mr. 
+Cartlitch, of Astley's Amphitheatre, in his most pathetic passages, 
+could look more crestfallen, and howl more hideously, than Diabolus 
+did now.  "Take another year, Gambouge," screamed he; "two more--
+ten more--a century; roast me on Lawrence's gridiron, boil me in 
+holy water, but don't ask that: don't, don't bid me live with Mrs. 
+Gambouge!"
+
+Simon smiled sternly.  "I have said it," he cried; "do this, or our 
+contract is at an end."
+
+The Devil, at this, grinned so horribly that every drop of beer in 
+the house turned sour: he gnashed his teeth so frightfully that 
+every person in the company wellnigh fainted with the cholic.  He 
+slapped down the great parchment upon the floor, trampled upon 
+it madly, and lashed it with his hoofs and his tail: at last, 
+spreading out a mighty pair of wings as wide as from here to Regent 
+Street, he slapped Gambouge with his tail over one eye, and 
+vanished, abruptly, through the keyhole.
+
+Gambouge screamed with pain and started up.  "You drunken, lazy 
+scoundrel!" cried a shrill and well-known voice, "you have been 
+asleep these two hours:" and here he received another terrific box 
+on the ear.
+
+It was too true, he had fallen asleep at his work; and the 
+beautiful vision had been dispelled by the thumps of the tipsy 
+Griskinissa.  Nothing remained to corroborate his story, except the 
+bladder of lake, and this was spirted all over his waistcoat and 
+breeches.
+
+"I wish," said the poor fellow, rubbing his tingling cheeks, "that 
+dreams were true;" and he went to work again at his portrait.
+
+My last accounts of Gambouge are, that he has left the arts, and is 
+footman in a small family.  Mrs. Gam. takes in washing; and it is 
+said that, her continual dealings with soap-suds and hot water have 
+been the only things in life which have kept her from spontaneous 
+combustion.
+
+
+
+CARTOUCHE.
+
+
+I have been much interested with an account of the exploits of 
+Monsieur Louis Dominic Cartouche, and as Newgate and the highways 
+are so much the fashion with us in England, we may be allowed to 
+look abroad for histories of a similar tendency.  It is pleasant to 
+find that virtue is cosmopolite, and may exist among wooden-shoed 
+Papists as well as honest Church-of-England men.
+
+Louis Dominic was born in a quarter of Paris called the Courtille, 
+says the historian whose work lies before me;--born in the 
+Courtille, and in the year 1693.  Another biographer asserts that 
+he was born two years later, and in the Marais;--of respectable 
+parents, of course.  Think of the talent that our two countries 
+produced about this time: Marlborough, Villars, Mandrin, Turpin, 
+Boileau, Dryden, Swift, Addison, Molière, Racine, Jack Sheppard, 
+and Louis Cartouche,--all famous within the same twenty years, and 
+fighting, writing, robbing à l'envi!
+
+Well, Marlborough was no chicken when he began to show his genius; 
+Swift was but a dull, idle, college lad; but if we read the 
+histories of some other great men mentioned in the above list--
+I mean the thieves, especially--we shall find that they all
+commenced very early: they showed a passion for their art, as 
+little Raphael did, or little Mozart; and the history of Cartouche's
+knaveries begins almost with his breeches.
+
+Dominic's parents sent him to school at the college of Clermont 
+(now Louis le Grand); and although it has never been discovered 
+that the Jesuits, who directed that seminary, advanced him much in 
+classical or theological knowledge, Cartouche, in revenge, showed, 
+by repeated instances, his own natural bent and genius, which no 
+difficulties were strong enough to overcome.  His first great 
+action on record, although not successful in the end, and tinctured 
+with the innocence of youth, is yet highly creditable to him.  He 
+made a general swoop of a hundred and twenty nightcaps belonging to 
+his companions, and disposed of them to his satisfaction; but as it 
+was discovered that of all the youths in the college of Clermont, 
+he only was the possessor of a cap to sleep in, suspicion (which, 
+alas! was confirmed) immediately fell upon him: and by this little 
+piece of youthful naïveté, a scheme, prettily conceived and smartly 
+performed, was rendered naught.
+
+Cartouche had a wonderful love for good eating, and put all the 
+apple-women and cooks, who came to supply the students, under 
+contribution.  Not always, however, desirous of robbing these, he 
+used to deal with them, occasionally, on honest principles of 
+barter; that is, whenever he could get hold of his schoolfellows' 
+knives, books, rulers, or playthings, which he used fairly to 
+exchange for tarts and gingerbread.
+
+It seemed as if the presiding genius of evil was determined to 
+patronize this young man; for before he had been long at college, 
+and soon after he had, with the greatest difficulty, escaped from 
+the nightcap scrape, an opportunity occurred by which he was 
+enabled to gratify both his propensities at once, and not only to 
+steal, but to steal sweetmeats.  It happened that the principal of 
+the college received some pots of Narbonne honey, which came under 
+the eyes of Cartouche, and in which that young gentleman, as soon 
+as ever he saw them, determined to put his fingers.  The president 
+of the college put aside his honey-pots in an apartment within his 
+own; to which, except by the one door which led into the room which 
+his reverence usually occupied, there was no outlet.  There was no 
+chimney in the room; and the windows looked into the court, where 
+there was a porter at night, and where crowds passed by day.  What 
+was Cartouche to do?--have the honey he must.
+
+Over this chamber, which contained what his soul longed after, and 
+over the president's rooms, there ran a set of unoccupied garrets, 
+into which the dexterous Cartouche penetrated.  These were divided 
+from the rooms below, according to the fashion of those days, by a 
+set of large beams, which reached across the whole building, and 
+across which rude planks were laid, which formed the ceiling of the 
+lower story and the floor of the upper.  Some of these planks did 
+young Cartouche remove; and having descended by means of a rope, 
+tied a couple of others to the neck of the honey-pots, climbed back 
+again, and drew up his prey in safety.  He then cunningly fixed the 
+planks again in their old places, and retired to gorge himself upon 
+his booty.  And, now, see the punishment of avarice!  Everybody 
+knows that the brethren of the order of Jesus are bound by a vow to 
+have no more than a certain small sum of money in their possession.  
+The principal of the college of Clermont had amassed a larger sum, 
+in defiance of this rule: and where do you think the old gentleman 
+had hidden it?  In the honey-pots!  As Cartouche dug his spoon into 
+one of them, he brought out, besides a quantity of golden honey, a 
+couple of golden louis, which, with ninety-eight more of their 
+fellows, were comfortably hidden in the pots.  Little Dominic, who, 
+before, had cut rather a poor figure among his fellow-students, now 
+appeared in as fine clothes as any of them could boast of; and when 
+asked by his parents, on going home, how he came by them, said that 
+a young nobleman of his schoolfellows had taken a violent fancy to 
+him, and made him a present of a couple of his suits.  Cartouche 
+the elder, good man, went to thank the young nobleman; but none 
+such could be found, and young Cartouche disdained to give any 
+explanation of his manner of gaining the money.
+
+Here, again, we have to regret and remark the inadvertence of 
+youth.  Cartouche lost a hundred louis--for what?  For a pot of 
+honey not worth a couple of shillings.  Had he fished out the 
+pieces, and replaced the pots and the honey, he might have been 
+safe, and a respectable citizen all his life after.  The principal 
+would not have dared to confess the loss of his money, and did not, 
+openly; but he vowed vengeance against the stealer of his 
+sweetmeat, and a rigid search was made.  Cartouche, as usual, was 
+fixed upon; and in the tick of his bed, lo! there were found a 
+couple of empty honey-pots!  From this scrape there is no knowing 
+how he would have escaped, had not the president himself been a 
+little anxious to hush the matter up; and accordingly, young 
+Cartouche was made to disgorge the residue of his ill-gotten gold 
+pieces, old Cartouche made up the deficiency, and his son was 
+allowed to remain unpunished--until the next time.
+
+This, you may fancy, was not very long in coming; and though 
+history has not made us acquainted with the exact crime which Louis 
+Dominic next committed, it must have been a serious one; for 
+Cartouche, who had borne philosophically all the whippings and 
+punishments which were administered to him at college, did not dare 
+to face that one which his indignant father had in pickle for him.  
+As he was coming home from school, on the first day after his 
+crime, when he received permission to go abroad, one of his 
+brothers, who was on the look-out for him, met him at a short 
+distance from home, and told him what was in preparation; which so 
+frightened this young thief, that he declined returning home 
+altogether, and set out upon the wide world to shift for himself 
+as he could.
+
+Undoubted as his genius was, he had not arrived at the full 
+exercise of it, and his gains were by no means equal to his 
+appetite.  In whatever professions he tried,--whether he joined the 
+gipsies, which he did,--whether he picked pockets on the Pont Neuf, 
+which occupation history attributes to him,--poor Cartouche was 
+always hungry.  Hungry and ragged, he wandered from one place and 
+profession to another, and regretted the honey-pots at Clermont, 
+and the comfortable soup and bouilli at home.
+
+Cartouche had an uncle, a kind man, who was a merchant, and had 
+dealings at Rouen.  One day, walking on the quays of that city, 
+this gentleman saw a very miserable, dirty, starving lad, who had 
+just made a pounce upon some bones and turnip-peelings, that had 
+been flung out on the quay, and was eating them as greedily as if 
+they had been turkeys and truffles.  The worthy man examined the 
+lad a little closer.  O heavens! it was their runaway prodigal--it 
+was little Louis Dominic!  The merchant was touched by his case; 
+and forgetting the nightcaps, the honey-pots, and the rags and dirt 
+of little Louis, took him to his arms, and kissed and hugged him 
+with the tenderest affection.  Louis kissed and hugged too, and 
+blubbered a great deal: he was very repentant, as a man often is 
+when he is hungry; and he went home with his uncle, and his peace 
+was made; and his mother got him new clothes, and filled his belly, 
+and for a while Louis was as good a son as might be.
+
+But why attempt to balk the progress of genius?  Louis's was not to 
+be kept down.  He was sixteen years of age by this time--a smart, 
+lively young fellow, and, what is more, desperately enamored of a 
+lovely washerwoman.  To be successful in your love, as Louis knew, 
+you must have something more than mere flames and sentiment;--a 
+washer, or any other woman, cannot live upon sighs only; but must 
+have new gowns and caps, and a necklace every now and then, and a 
+few handkerchiefs and silk stockings, and a treat into the country 
+or to the play.  Now, how are all these things to be had without 
+money?  Cartouche saw at once that it was impossible; and as his 
+father would give him none, he was obliged to look for it 
+elsewhere.  He took to his old courses, and lifted a purse here, 
+and a watch there; and found, moreover, an accommodating gentleman, 
+who took the wares off his hands.
+
+This gentleman introduced him into a very select and agreeable 
+society, in which Cartouche's merit began speedily to be 
+recognized, and in which he learnt how pleasant it is in life to 
+have friends to assist one, and how much may be done by a proper 
+division of labor.  M. Cartouche, in fact, formed part of a regular 
+company or gang of gentlemen, who were associated together for the 
+purpose of making war on the public and the law.
+
+Cartouche had a lovely young sister, who was to be married to a 
+rich young gentleman from the provinces.  As is the fashion in 
+France, the parents had arranged the match among themselves; and 
+the young people had never met until just before the time appointed 
+for the marriage, when the bridegroom came up to Paris with his 
+title-deeds, and settlements, and money.  Now there can hardly be 
+found in history a finer instance of devotion than Cartouche now 
+exhibited.  He went to his captain, explained the matter to him, 
+and actually, for the good of his country, as it were (the thieves 
+might be called his country), sacrificed his sister's husband's 
+property.  Informations were taken, the house of the bridegroom was 
+reconnoitred, and, one night, Cartouche, in company with some 
+chosen friends, made his first visit to the house of his brother-
+in-law.  All the people were gone to bed; and, doubtless, for fear 
+of disturbing the porter, Cartouche and his companions spared him 
+the trouble of opening the door, by ascending quietly at the 
+window.  They arrived at the room where the bridegroom kept his 
+great chest, and set industriously to work, filing and picking the 
+locks which defended the treasure.
+
+The bridegroom slept in the next room; but however tenderly 
+Cartouche and his workmen handled their tools, from fear of 
+disturbing his slumbers, their benevolent design was disappointed, 
+for awaken him they did; and quietly slipping out of bed, he came 
+to a place where he had a complete view of all that was going on.  
+He did not cry out, or frighten himself sillily; but, on the 
+contrary, contented himself with watching the countenances of the 
+robbers, so that he might recognize them on another occasion; and, 
+though an avaricious man, he did not feel the slightest anxiety 
+about his money-chest; for the fact is, he had removed all the cash 
+and papers the day before.
+
+As soon, however, as they had broken all the locks, and found the 
+nothing which lay at the bottom of the chest, he shouted with such 
+a loud voice, "Here, Thomas!--John!--officer!--keep the gate, fire 
+at the rascals!" that they, incontinently taking fright, skipped 
+nimbly out of window, and left the house free.
+
+Cartouche, after this, did not care to meet his brother-in-law, but 
+eschewed all those occasions on which the latter was to be present 
+at his father's house.  The evening before the marriage came; and 
+then his father insisted upon his appearance among the other 
+relatives of the bride's and bridegroom's families, who were all to 
+assemble and make merry.  Cartouche was obliged to yield; and 
+brought with him one or two of his companions, who had been, by the 
+way, present in the affair of the empty money-boxes; and though he 
+never fancied that there was any danger in meeting his brother-in-
+law, for he had no idea that he had been seen on the night of the 
+attack, with a natural modesty, which did him really credit, he 
+kept out of the young bridegroom's sight as much as he could, and 
+showed no desire to be presented to him.  At supper, however, as he 
+was sneaking modestly down to a side-table, his father shouted 
+after him, "Ho, Dominic, come hither, and sit opposite to your 
+brother-in-law:" which Dominic did, his friends following.  The 
+bridegroom pledged him very gracefully in a bumper; and was in the 
+act of making him a pretty speech, on the honor of an alliance with 
+such a family, and on the pleasures of brother-in-lawship in 
+general, when, looking in his face--ye gods! he saw the very man 
+who had been filing at his money-chest a few nights ago!  By his 
+side, too, sat a couple more of the gang.  The poor fellow turned 
+deadly pale and sick, and, setting his glass down, ran quickly out 
+of the room, for he thought he was in company of a whole gang of 
+robbers.  And when he got home, he wrote a letter to the elder 
+Cartouche, humbly declining any connection with his family.
+
+Cartouche the elder, of course, angrily asked the reason of such an 
+abrupt dissolution of the engagement; and then, much to his horror, 
+heard of his eldest son's doings.  "You would not have me marry 
+into such a family?" said the ex-bridegroom.  And old Cartouche, an 
+honest old citizen, confessed, with a heavy heart, that he would 
+not.  What was he to do with the lad?  He did not like to ask for a 
+lettre de cachet, and shut him up in the Bastile.  He determined to 
+give him a year's discipline at the monastery of St. Lazare.
+
+But how to catch the young gentleman?  Old Cartouche knew that, 
+were he to tell his son of the scheme, the latter would never obey, 
+and, therefore, he determined to be very cunning.  He told Dominic 
+that he was about to make a heavy bargain with the fathers, and 
+should require a witness; so they stepped into a carriage together, 
+and drove unsuspectingly to the Rue St. Denis.  But, when they 
+arrived near the convent, Cartouche saw several ominous figures 
+gathering round the coach, and felt that his doom was sealed.  
+However, he made as if he knew nothing of the conspiracy; and the 
+carriage drew up, and his father, descended, and, bidding him wait 
+for a minute in the coach, promised to return to him.  Cartouche 
+looked out; on the other side of the way half a dozen men were 
+posted, evidently with the intention of arresting him.
+
+Cartouche now performed a great and celebrated stroke of genius, 
+which, if he had not been professionally employed in the morning, 
+he never could have executed.  He had in his pocket a piece of 
+linen, which he had laid hold of at the door of some shop, and from 
+which he quickly tore three suitable stripes.  One he tied round 
+his head, after the fashion of a nightcap; a second round his 
+waist, like an apron; and with the third he covered his hat, a 
+round one, with a large brim.  His coat and his periwig lie left 
+behind him in the carriage; and when he stepped out from it (which 
+he did without asking the coachman to let down the steps), he bore 
+exactly the appearance of a cook's boy carrying a dish; and with 
+this he slipped through the exempts quite unsuspected, and bade 
+adieu to the Lazarists and his honest father, who came out speedily 
+to seek him, and was not a little annoyed to find only his coat and 
+wig.
+
+With that coat and wig, Cartouche left home, father, friends, 
+conscience, remorse, society, behind him.  He discovered (like a 
+great number of other philosophers and poets, when they have 
+committed rascally actions) that the world was all going wrong, and 
+he quarrelled with it outright.  One of the first stories told of 
+the illustrious Cartouche, when he became professionally and openly 
+a robber, redounds highly to his credit, and shows that he knew how 
+to take advantage of the occasion, and how much he had improved in 
+the course of a very few years' experience.  His courage and 
+ingenuity were vastly admired by his friends; so much so, that, one 
+day, the captain of the band thought fit to compliment him, and 
+vowed that when he (the captain) died, Cartouche should infallibly 
+be called to the command-in-chief.  This conversation, so 
+flattering to Cartouche, was carried on between the two gentlemen, 
+as they were walking, one night, on the quays by the side of the 
+Seine.  Cartouche, when the captain made the last remark, 
+blushingly protested against it, and pleaded his extreme youth as 
+a reason why his comrades could never put entire trust in him.  
+"Psha, man!" said the captain, "thy youth is in thy favor; thou 
+wilt live only the longer to lead thy troops to victory.  As for 
+strength, bravery, and cunning, wert thou as old as Methuselah, 
+thou couldst not be better provided than thou art now, at 
+eighteen."  What was the reply of Monsieur Cartouche?  He answered, 
+not by words, but by actions.  Drawing his knife from his girdle, 
+he instantly dug it into the captain's left side, as near his heart 
+as possible; and then, seizing that imprudent commander, 
+precipitated him violently into the waters of the Seine, to keep 
+company with the gudgeons and river-gods.  When he returned to 
+the band, and recounted how the captain had basely attempted to 
+assassinate him, and how he, on the contrary, had, by exertion of 
+superior skill, overcome the captain, not one of the society 
+believed a word of his history; but they elected him captain 
+forthwith.  I think his Excellency Don Rafael Maroto, the 
+pacificator of Spain, is an amiable character, for whom history 
+has not been written in vain.
+
+Being arrived at this exalted position, there is no end of the 
+feats which Cartouche performed; and his band reached to such a 
+pitch of glory, that if there had been a hundred thousand, instead 
+of a hundred of them, who knows but that a new and popular dynasty 
+might not have been founded, and "Louis Dominic, premier Empereur 
+des Français," might have performed innumerable glorious actions, 
+and fixed himself in the hearts of his people, just as other 
+monarchs have done, a hundred years after Cartouche's death.
+
+A story similar to the above, and equally moral, is that of 
+Cartouche, who, in company with two other gentlemen, robbed the 
+coche, or packet-boat, from Melun, where they took a good quantity 
+of booty,--making the passengers lie down on the decks, and rifling 
+them at leisure.  "This money will be but very little among three," 
+whispered Cartouche to his neighbor, as the three conquerors were 
+making merry over their gains; "if you were but to pull the trigger 
+of your pistol in the neighborhood of your comrade's ear, perhaps 
+it might go off, and then there would be but two of us to share."  
+Strangely enough, as Cartouche said, the pistol DID go off, and No. 
+3 perished.  "Give him another ball," said Cartouche; and another 
+was fired into him.  But no sooner had Cartouche's comrade 
+discharged both his pistols, than Cartouche himself, seized with a 
+furious indignation, drew his: "Learn, monster," cried he, "not to 
+be so greedy of gold, and perish, the victim of thy disloyalty and 
+avarice!"  So Cartouche slew the second robber; and there is no man 
+in Europe who can say that the latter did not merit well his 
+punishment.
+
+I could fill volumes, and not mere sheets of paper, with tales of 
+the triumphs of Cartouche and his band; how he robbed the Countess 
+of O----, going to Dijon, in her coach, and how the Countess fell 
+in love with him, and was faithful to him ever after; how, when the 
+lieutenant of police offered a reward of a hundred pistoles to any 
+man who would bring Cartouche before him, a noble Marquess, in a 
+coach and six, drove up to the hotel of the police; and the noble 
+Marquess, desiring to see Monsieur de la Reynie, on matters of the 
+highest moment, alone, the latter introduced him into his private 
+cabinet; and how, when there, the Marquess drew from his pocket a 
+long, curiously shaped dagger: "Look at this, Monsieur de la 
+Reynie," said he; "this dagger is poisoned!"
+
+"Is it possible?" said M. de la Reynie.
+
+"A prick of it would do for any man," said the Marquess.
+
+"You don't say so!" said M. de la Reynie.
+
+"I do, though; and, what is more," says the Marquess, in a terrible 
+voice, "if you do not instantly lay yourself flat on the ground, 
+with your face towards it, and your hands crossed over your back, 
+or if you make the slightest noise or cry, I will stick this 
+poisoned dagger between your ribs, as sure as my name is Cartouche?"
+
+At the sound of this dreadful name, M. de la Reynie sunk 
+incontinently down on his stomach, and submitted to be carefully 
+gagged and corded; after which Monsieur Cartouche laid his hands 
+upon all the money which was kept in the lieutenant's cabinet.  
+Alas! and alas! many a stout bailiff, and many an honest fellow of 
+a spy, went, for that day, without his pay and his victuals.
+
+There is a story that Cartouche once took the diligence to Lille, 
+and found in it a certain Abbé Potter, who was full of indignation 
+against this monster of a Cartouche, and said that when he went 
+back to Paris, which he proposed to do in about a fortnight, he 
+should give the lieutenant of police some information, which would 
+infallibly lead to the scoundrel's capture.  But poor Potter was 
+disappointed in his designs; for, before he could fulfil them, he 
+was made the victim of Cartouche's cruelty.
+
+A letter came to the lieutenant of police, to state that Cartouche 
+had travelled to Lille, in company with the Abbé de Potter, of that 
+town; that, on the reverend gentleman's return towards Paris, 
+Cartouche had waylaid him, murdered him, taken his papers, and 
+would come to Paris himself, bearing the name and clothes of the 
+unfortunate Abbé, by the Lille coach, on such a day.  The Lille 
+coach arrived, was surrounded by police agents; the monster 
+Cartouche was there, sure enough, in the Abbé's guise.  He was 
+seized, bound, flung into prison, brought out to be examined, and, 
+on examination, found to be no other than the Abbé Potter himself!  
+It is pleasant to read thus of the relaxations of great men, and 
+find them condescending to joke like the meanest of us.
+
+Another diligence adventure is recounted of the famous Cartouche.  
+It happened that he met, in the coach, a young and lovely lady, 
+clad in widow's weeds, and bound to Paris, with a couple of 
+servants.  The poor thing was the widow of a rich old gentleman 
+of Marseilles, and was going to the capital to arrange with her 
+lawyers, and to settle her husband's will.  The Count de Grinche 
+(for so her fellow-passenger was called) was quite as candid as the 
+pretty widow had been, and stated that he was a captain in the 
+regiment of Nivernois; that he was going to Paris to buy a 
+colonelcy, which his relatives, the Duke de Bouillon, the Prince 
+de Montmorency, the Commandeur de la Trémoille, with all their 
+interest at court, could not fail to procure for him.  To be short, 
+in the course of the four days' journey, the Count Louis Dominic de 
+Grinche played his cards so well, that the poor little widow half 
+forgot her late husband; and her eyes glistened with tears as the 
+Count kissed her hand at parting--at parting, he hoped, only for a 
+few hours.
+
+Day and night the insinuating Count followed her; and when, at the 
+end of a fortnight, and in the midst of a tête-à-tête, he plunged, 
+one morning, suddenly on his knees, and said, Leonora, do you love 
+me?" the poor thing heaved the gentlest, tenderest, sweetest sigh 
+in the world; and sinking her blushing head on his shoulder, 
+whispered, "Oh, Dominic, je t'aime!  Ah!" said she, "how noble is 
+it of my Dominic to take me with the little I have, and he so rich 
+a nobleman!"  The fact is, the old Baron's titles and estates had 
+passed away to his nephews; his dowager was only left with three 
+hundred thousand livres, in rentes sur l'état--a handsome sum, but 
+nothing to compare to the rent-roll of Count Dominic, Count de la 
+Grinche, Seigneur de la Haute Pigre, Baron de la Bigorne; he had 
+estates and wealth which might authorize him to aspire to the hand 
+of a duchess, at least.
+
+The unfortunate widow never for a moment suspected the cruel trick 
+that was about to be played on her; and, at the request of her 
+affianced husband, sold out her money, and realized it in gold, to 
+be made over to him on the day when the contract was to be signed.  
+The day arrived; and, according to the custom in France, the 
+relations of both parties attended.  The widow's relatives, though 
+respectable, were not of the first nobility, being chiefly persons 
+of the finance or the robe: there was the president of the court of 
+Arras, and his lady; a farmer-general; a judge of a court of Paris; 
+and other such grave and respectable people.  As for Monsieur le 
+Comte de la Grinche, he was not bound for names; and, having the 
+whole peerage to choose from, brought a host of Montmorencies, 
+Créquis, De la Tours, and Guises at his back.  His homme d'affaires 
+brought his papers in a sack, and displayed the plans of his 
+estates, and the titles of his glorious ancestry.  The widow's 
+lawyers had her money in sacks; and between the gold on the one 
+side, and the parchments on the other, lay the contract which was 
+to make the widow's three hundred thousand francs the property of 
+the Count de Grinche.  The Count de la Grinche was just about to 
+sign; when the Marshal de Villars, stepping up to him, said, 
+"Captain, do you know who the president of the court of Arras, 
+yonder, is?  It is old Manasseh, the fence, of Brussels.  I pawned 
+a gold watch to him, which I stole from Cadogan, when I was with 
+Malbrook's army in Flanders."
+
+Here the Duc de la Roche Guyon came forward, very much alarmed.  
+"Run me through the body!" said his Grace, "but the comptroller-
+general's lady, there, is no other than that old hag of a Margoton 
+who keeps the ----"  Here the Duc de la Roche Guyon's voice fell.
+
+Cartouche smiled graciously, and walked up to the table.  He took 
+up one of the widow's fifteen thousand gold pieces;--it was as 
+pretty a bit of copper as you could wish to see.  "My dear," said 
+he politely, "there is some mistake here, and this business had 
+better stop."
+
+"Count!" gasped the poor widow.
+
+"Count be hanged!" answered the bridegroom, sternly "my name is 
+CARTOUCHE!"
+
+
+
+ON SOME FRENCH FASHIONABLE NOVELS.
+
+WITH A PLEA FOR ROMANCES IN GENERAL.
+
+
+There is an old story of a Spanish court painter, who, being 
+pressed for money, and having received a piece of damask, which he 
+was to wear in a state procession, pawned the damask, and appeared, 
+at the show, dressed out in some very fine sheets of paper, which 
+he had painted so as exactly to resemble silk.  Nay, his coat 
+looked so much richer than the doublets of all the rest, that the 
+Emperor Charles, in whose honor the procession was given, remarked 
+the painter, and so his deceit was found out.
+
+I have often thought that, in respect of sham and real histories, a 
+similar fact may be noticed; the sham story appearing a great deal 
+more agreeable, life-like, and natural than the true one: and all 
+who, from laziness as well as principle, are inclined to follow the 
+easy and comfortable study of novels, may console themselves with 
+the notion that they are studying matters quite as important as 
+history, and that their favorite duodecimos are as instructive as 
+the biggest quartos in the world.
+
+If then, ladies, the big-wigs begin to sneer at the course of our 
+studies, calling our darling romances foolish, trivial, noxious to 
+the mind, enervators of intellect, fathers of idleness, and what 
+not, let us at once take a high ground, and say,--Go you to your 
+own employments, and to such dull studies as you fancy; go and bob 
+for triangles, from the Pons Asinorum; go enjoy your dull black 
+draughts of metaphysics; go fumble over history books, and dissert 
+upon Herodotus and Livy; OUR histories are, perhaps, as true as 
+yours; our drink is the brisk sparkling champagne drink, from the 
+presses of Colburn, Bentley and Co.; our walks are over such 
+sunshiny pleasure-grounds as Scott and Shakspeare have laid out for 
+us; and if our dwellings are castles in the air, we find them 
+excessively splendid and commodious;--be not you envious because 
+you have no wings to fly thither.  Let the big-wigs despise us; 
+such contempt of their neighbors is the custom of all barbarous 
+tribes;--witness, the learned Chinese: Tippoo Sultaun declared that 
+there were not in all Europe ten thousand men: the Sklavonic 
+hordes, it is said, so entitled themselves from a word in their 
+jargon, which signifies "to speak;" the ruffians imagining that 
+they had a monopoly of this agreeable faculty, and that all other 
+nations were dumb.
+
+Not so: others may be DEAF; but the novelist has a loud, eloquent, 
+instructive language, though his enemies may despise or deny it 
+ever so much.  What is more, one could, perhaps, meet the stoutest 
+historian on his own ground, and argue with him; showing that sham 
+histories were much truer than real histories; which are, in fact, 
+mere contemptible catalogues of names and places, that can have no 
+moral effect upon the reader.
+
+As thus:--
+
+
+  Julius Caesar beat Pompey, at Pharsalia.
+  The Duke of Marlborough beat Marshal Tallard at Blenheim.
+  The Constable of Bourbon beat Francis the First, at Pavia.
+
+
+And what have we here?--so many names, simply.  Suppose Pharsalia 
+had been, at that mysterious period when names were given, called 
+Pavia; and that Julius Caesar's family name had been John 
+Churchill;--the fact would have stood in history, thus:--
+
+
+  "Pompey ran away from the Duke of Marlborough at Pavia."
+
+
+And why not?--we should have been just as wise.  Or it might be 
+stated that--
+
+
+  "The tenth legion charged the French infantry at Blenheim; and 
+   Caesar, writing home to his mamma, said, 'Madame, tout est perdu 
+   fors l'honneur.'" 
+
+
+What a contemptible science this is, then, about which quartos are 
+written, and sixty-volumed Biographies Universelles, and Lardner's 
+Cabinet Cyclopaedias, and the like! the facts are nothing in it, the 
+names everything and a gentleman might as well improve his mind by 
+learning Walker's "Gazetteer," or getting by heart a fifty-years-
+old edition of the "Court Guide."
+
+Having thus disposed of the historians, let us come to the point in 
+question--the novelists.
+
+
+On the title-page of these volumes the reader has, doubtless, 
+remarked, that among the pieces introduced, some are announced as 
+"copies" and "compositions."  Many of the histories have, 
+accordingly, been neatly stolen from the collections of French 
+authors (and mutilated, according to the old saying, so that their 
+owners should not know them) and, for compositions, we intend to 
+favor the public with some studies of French modern works, that 
+have not as yet, we believe, attracted the notice of the English 
+public.
+
+Of such works there appear many hundreds yearly, as may be seen by 
+the French catalogues; but the writer has not so much to do with 
+works political, philosophical, historical, metaphysical, 
+scientifical, theological, as with those for which he has been 
+putting forward a plea--novels, namely; on which he has expended a 
+great deal of time and study.  And passing from novels in general 
+to French novels, let us confess, with much humiliation, that we 
+borrow from these stories a great deal more knowledge of French 
+society than from our own personal observation we ever can hope to 
+gain: for, let a gentleman who has dwelt two, four, or ten years in 
+Paris (and has not gone thither for the purpose of making a book, 
+when three weeks are sufficient--let an English gentleman say, at 
+the end of any given period, how much he knows of French society, 
+how many French houses he has entered, and how many French friends 
+he has made?--He has enjoyed, at the end of the year, say--
+
+
+  At the English Ambassador's, so many soirées.
+  At houses to which he has brought letters, so many tea-parties.
+  At Cafés, so many dinners.
+  At French private houses, say three dinners, and very lucky too.
+
+
+He has, we say, seen an immense number of wax candles, cups of tea, 
+glasses of orgeat, and French people, in best clothes, enjoying the 
+same; but intimacy there is none; we see but the outsides of the 
+people.  Year by year we live in France, and grow gray, and see no 
+more.  We play écarté with Monsieur de Trêfle every night; but what 
+know we of the heart of the man--of the inward ways, thoughts, and 
+customs of Trêfle?  If we have good legs, and love the amusement, 
+we dance with Countess Flicflac, Tuesday's and Thursdays, ever 
+since the Peace; and how far are we advanced in acquaintance with 
+her since we first twirled her round a room?  We know her velvet 
+gown, and her diamonds (about three-fourths of them are sham, by 
+the way); we know her smiles, and her simpers, and her rouge--but 
+no more: she may turn into a kitchen wench at twelve on Thursday 
+night, for aught we know; her voiture, a pumpkin; and her gens, so 
+many rats: but the real, rougeless, intime Flicflac, we know not.  
+This privilege is granted to no Englishman: we may understand the 
+French language as well as Monsieur de Levizac, but never can 
+penetrate into Flicflac's confidence: our ways are not her ways; 
+our manners of thinking, not hers: when we say a good thing, in the 
+course of the night, we are wondrous lucky and pleased; Flicflac 
+will trill you off fifty in ten minutes, and wonder at the bêtise 
+of the Briton, who has never a word to say.  We are married, and 
+have fourteen children, and would just as soon make love to the 
+Pope of Rome as to any one but our own wife.  If you do not make 
+love to Flicflac, from the day after her marriage to the day she 
+reaches sixty, she thinks you a fool.  We won't play at écarté with 
+Trêfle on Sunday nights; and are seen walking, about one o'clock 
+(accompanied by fourteen red-haired children, with fourteen 
+gleaming prayer-books), away from the church.  "Grand Dieu!" cries 
+Trêfle, "is that man mad?  He won't play at cards on a Sunday; he 
+goes to church on a Sunday: he has fourteen children!"
+
+Was ever Frenchman known to do likewise?  Pass we on to our 
+argument, which is, that with our English notions and moral and 
+physical constitution, it is quite impossible that we should become 
+intimate with our brisk neighbors; and when such authors as Lady 
+Morgan and Mrs. Trollope, having frequented a certain number of 
+tea-parties in the French capital, begin to prattle about French 
+manners and men,--with all respect for the talents of those ladies, 
+we do believe their information not to be worth a sixpence; they 
+speak to us not of men but of tea-parties.  Tea-parties are the 
+same all the world over; with the exception that, with the French, 
+there are more lights and prettier dresses; and with us, a mighty 
+deal more tea in the pot.
+
+There is, however, a cheap and delightful way of travelling, that a 
+man may perform in his easy-chair, without expense of passports or 
+post-boys.  On the wings of a novel, from the next circulating 
+library, he sends his imagination a-gadding, and gains acquaintance 
+with people and manners whom he could not hope otherwise to know.  
+Twopence a volume bears us whithersoever we will;--back to Ivanhoe 
+and Coeur de Lion, or to Waverley and the Young Pretender, along 
+with Walter Scott; up the heights of fashion with the charming 
+enchanters of the silver-fork school; or, better still, to the snug 
+inn-parlor, or the jovial tap-room, with Mr. Pickwick and his 
+faithful Sancho Weller.  I am sure that a man who, a hundred years 
+hence should sit down to write the history of our time, would do 
+wrong to put that great contemporary history of "Pickwick" aside as 
+a frivolous work.  It contains true character under false names; 
+and, like "Roderick Random," an inferior work, and "Tom Jones" (one 
+that is immeasurably superior), gives us a better idea of the state 
+and ways of the people than one could gather from any more pompous 
+or authentic histories.
+
+We have, therefore, introduced into these volumes one or two short 
+reviews of French fiction writers, of particular classes, whose 
+Paris sketches may give the reader some notion of manners in that 
+capital.  If not original, at least the drawings are accurate; for, 
+as a Frenchman might have lived a thousand years in England, and 
+never could have written "Pickwick," an Englishman cannot hope to 
+give a good description of the inward thoughts and ways of his 
+neighbors.
+
+To a person inclined to study these, in that light and amusing 
+fashion in which the novelist treats them, let us recommend the 
+works of a new writer, Monsieur de Bernard, who has painted actual 
+manners, without those monstrous and terrible exaggerations in 
+which late French writers have indulged; and who, if he 
+occasionally wounds the English sense of propriety (as what French 
+man or woman alive will not?) does so more by slighting than by 
+outraging it, as, with their labored descriptions of all sorts of 
+imaginable wickedness, some of his brethren of the press have done.  
+M. de Bernard's characters are men and women of genteel society--
+rascals enough, but living in no state of convulsive crimes; and we 
+follow him in his lively, malicious account of their manners, 
+without risk of lighting upon any such horrors as Balzac or Dumas 
+has provided for us.
+
+Let us give an instance:--it is from the amusing novel called "Les 
+Ailes d'Icare," and contains what is to us quite a new picture of a 
+French fashionable rogue.  The fashions will change in a few years, 
+and the rogue, of course, with them.  Let us catch this delightful 
+fellow ere he flies.  It is impossible to sketch the character in a 
+more sparkling, gentlemanlike way than M. de Bernard's; but such 
+light things are very difficult of translation, and the sparkle 
+sadly evaporates during the process of DECANTING.  
+
+
+A FRENCH FASHIONABLE LETTER.
+
+"MY DEAR VICTOR--It is six in the morning: I have just come from 
+the English Ambassador's ball, and as my plans, for the day do not 
+admit of my sleeping, I write you a line; for, at this moment, 
+saturated as I am with the enchantments of a fairy night, all other 
+pleasures would be too wearisome to keep me awake, except that of 
+conversing with you.  Indeed, were I not to write to you now, when 
+should I find the possibility of doing so?  Time flies here with 
+such a frightful rapidity, my pleasures and my affairs whirl 
+onwards together in such a torrentuous galopade, that I am 
+compelled to seize occasion by the forelock; for each moment has 
+its imperious employ.  Do not then accuse me of negligence: if my 
+correspondence has not always that regularity which I would fain 
+give it, attribute the fault solely to the whirlwind in which I 
+live, and which carries me hither and thither at its will.
+
+"However, you are not the only person with whom I am behindhand: I 
+assure you, on the contrary, that you are one of a very numerous 
+and fashionable company, to whom, towards the discharge of my 
+debts, I propose to consecrate four hours to-day.  I give you the 
+preference to all the world, even to the lovely Duchess of San 
+Severino, a delicious Italian, whom, for my special happiness, I 
+met last summer at the Waters of Aix.  I have also a most important 
+negotiation to conclude with one of our Princes of Finance: but 
+n'importe, I commence with thee: friendship before love or money--
+friendship before everything.  My despatches concluded, I am 
+engaged to ride with the Marquis de Grigneure, the Comte de 
+Castijars, and Lord Cobham, in order that we may recover, for a 
+breakfast at the Rocher de Cancale that Grigneure has lost, the 
+appetite which we all of us so cruelly abused last night at the 
+Ambassador's gala.  On my honor, my dear fellow, everybody was of a 
+caprice prestigieux and a comfortable mirobolant.  Fancy, for a 
+banquet-hall, a royal orangery hung with white damask; the boxes of 
+the shrubs transformed into so many sideboards; lights gleaming 
+through the foliage; and, for guests, the loveliest women and most 
+brilliant cavaliers of Paris.  Orleans and Nemours were there, 
+dancing and eating like simple mortals.  In a word, Albion did the 
+thing very handsomely, and I accord it my esteem.
+
+"Here I pause, to call for my valet-de-chambre, and call for tea; 
+for my head is heavy, and I've no time for a headache.  In serving 
+me, this rascal of a Frédéric has broken a cup, true Japan, upon my 
+honor--the rogue does nothing else.  Yesterday, for instance, did 
+he not thump me prodigiously, by letting fall a goblet, after 
+Cellini, of which the carving alone cost me three hundred francs?  
+I must positively put the wretch out of doors, to ensure the safety
+of my furniture; and in consequence of this, Eneas, an audacious
+young negro, in whom wisdom hath not waited for years--Eneas, my
+groom, I say, will probably be elevated to the post of valet-de-
+chambre. But where was I?  I think I was speaking to you of an
+oyster breakfast, to which, on our return from the Park (du Bois), a
+company of pleasant rakes are invited.  After quitting Borel's, we
+propose to adjourn to the Barrière du Combat, where Lord Cobham
+proposes to try some bull-dogs, which he has brought over from
+England--one of these, O'Connell (Lord Cobham is a Tory,) has a face
+in which I place much confidence; I have a bet of ten louis with
+Castijars on the strength of it.  After the fight, we shall make our
+accustomed appearance at the 'Cafe de Paris,' (the only place, by
+the way, where a man who respects himself may be seen,)-- and then
+away with frocks and spurs, and on with our dress-coats for the rest
+of the evening.  In the first place, I shall go doze for a couple of
+hours at the Opera, where my presence is indispensable; for Coralie,
+a charming creature, passes this evening from the rank of the RATS
+to that of the TIGERS, in a pas-de-trois, and our box patronizes
+her.  After the Opera, I must show my face to two or three salons in
+the Faubourg St. Honoré; and having thus performed my duties to the
+world of fashion, I return to the exercise of my rights as a member
+of the Carnival.  At two o'clock all the world meets at the Théâtre
+Ventadour: lions and tigers--the whole of our menagerie will be
+present.  Evoé! off we go! roaring and bounding Bacchanal and
+Saturnal; 'tis agreed that we shall be everything that is low.  To
+conclude, we sup with Castijars, the most 'furiously dishevelled'
+orgy that ever was known."
+
+
+The rest of the letter is on matters of finance, equally curious 
+and instructive.  But pause we for the present, to consider the 
+fashionable part: and caricature as it is, we have an accurate 
+picture of the actual French dandy.  Bets, breakfasts, riding, 
+dinners at the "Café de Paris," and delirious Carnival balls: the 
+animal goes through all such frantic pleasures at the season that 
+precedes Lent.  He has a wondrous respect for English "gentlemen-
+sportsmen;" he imitates their clubs--their love of horse-flesh: he 
+calls his palefrenier a groom, wears blue birds's-eye neck-cloths, 
+sports his pink out hunting, rides steeple-chases, and has his 
+Jockey Club.  The "tigers and lions" alluded to in the report have 
+been borrowed from our own country, and a great compliment is it to 
+Monsieur de Bernard, the writer of the above amusing sketch, that 
+he has such a knowledge of English names and things, as to give a 
+Tory lord the decent title of Lord Cobham, and to call his dog 
+O'Connell.  Paul de Kock calls an English nobleman, in one of his 
+last novels, Lord Boulingrog, and appears vastly delighted at the 
+verisimilitude of the title.
+
+For the "rugissements et bondissements, bacchanale et saturnale, 
+galop infernal, ronde du sabbat tout le tremblement," these words 
+give a most clear, untranslatable idea of the Carnival ball.  A 
+sight more hideous can hardly strike a man's eye.  I was present at 
+one where the four thousand guests whirled screaming, reeling, 
+roaring, out of the ball-room in the Rue St. Honoré, and tore down 
+to the column in the Place Vendôme, round which they went shrieking 
+their own music, twenty miles an hour, and so tore madly back 
+again.  Let a man go alone to such a place of amusement, and the 
+sight for him is perfectly terrible: the horrid frantic gayety of 
+the place puts him in mind more of the merriment of demons than of 
+men: bang, bang, drums, trumpets, chairs, pistol-shots, pour out of 
+the orchestra, which seems as mad as the dancers; whiz, a whirlwind 
+of paint and patches, all the costumes under the sun, all the ranks 
+in the empire, all the he and she scoundrels of the capital, 
+writhed and twisted together, rush by you; if a man falls, woe be 
+to him: two thousand screaming menads go trampling over his 
+carcass: they have neither power nor will to stop.
+
+A set of Malays drunk with bhang and running amuck, a company of 
+howling dervishes, may possibly, in our own day, go through similar 
+frantic vagaries; but I doubt if any civilized European people but 
+the French would permit and enjoy such scenes.  Yet our neighbors 
+see little shame in them; and it is very true that men of all 
+classes, high and low, here congregate and give themselves up to 
+the disgusting worship of the genius of the place.--From the dandy 
+of the Boulevard and the "Café Anglais," let us turn to the dandy 
+of "Flicoteau's" and the Pays Latin--the Paris student, whose 
+exploits among the grisettes are so celebrated, and whose fierce 
+republicanism keeps gendarmes for ever on the alert.  The following 
+is M. de Bernard's description of him:--
+
+
+"I became acquainted with Dambergeac when we were students at the 
+Ecole de Droit; we lived in the same Hotel on the Place du 
+Panthéon.  No doubt, madam, you have occasionally met little 
+children dedicated to the Virgin, and, to this end, clothed in 
+white raiment from head to foot: my friend, Dambergeac, had 
+received a different consecration.  His father, a great patriot of 
+the Revolution, had determined that his son should bear into the 
+world a sign of indelible republicanism; so, to the great 
+displeasure of his godmother and the parish curate, Dambergeac was 
+christened by the pagan name of Harmodius.  It was a kind of moral 
+tricolor-cockade, which the child was to bear through the 
+vicissitudes of all the revolutions to come.  Under such 
+influences, my friend's character began to develop itself, and, 
+fired by the example of his father, and by the warm atmosphere of 
+his native place, Marseilles, he grew up to have an independent 
+spirit, and a grand liberality of politics, which were at their 
+height when first I made his acquaintance.
+
+"He was then a young man of eighteen, with a tall, slim figure, a 
+broad chest, and a flaming black eye, out of all which personal 
+charms he knew how to draw the most advantage; and though his 
+costume was such as Staub might probably have criticised, he had, 
+nevertheless, a style peculiar to himself--to himself and the 
+students, among whom he was the leader of the fashion.  A tight 
+black coat, buttoned up to the chin, across the chest, set off that 
+part of his person; a low-crowned hat, with a voluminous rim, cast 
+solemn shadows over a countenance bronzed by a southern sun: he 
+wore, at one time, enormous flowing black locks, which he sacrificed
+pitilessly, however, and adopted a Brutus, as being more 
+revolutionary: finally, he carried an enormous club, that was his
+code and digest: in like manner, De Retz used to carry a stiletto in
+his pocket by way of a breviary.
+
+"Although of different ways of thinking in politics, certain 
+sympathies of character and conduct united Dambergeac and myself, 
+and we speedily became close friends.  I don't think, in the whole 
+course of his three years' residence, Dambergeac ever went through 
+a single course of lectures.  For the examinations, he trusted to 
+luck, and to his own facility, which was prodigious: as for honors, 
+he never aimed at them, but was content to do exactly as little as 
+was necessary for him to gain his degree.  In like manner he 
+sedulously avoided those horrible circulating libraries, where 
+daily are seen to congregate the 'reading men' of our schools.  
+But, in revenge, there was not a milliner's shop, or a lingère's, 
+in all our quartier Latin, which he did not industriously frequent, 
+and of which he was not the oracle.  Nay, it was said that his 
+victories were not confined to the left bank of the Seine; reports 
+did occasionally come to us of fabulous adventures by him 
+accomplished in the far regions of the Rue de la Paix and the 
+Boulevard Poissonnière.  Such recitals were, for us less favored 
+mortals, like tales of Bacchus conquering in the East; they excited 
+our ambition, but not our jealousy; for the superiority of 
+Harmodius was acknowledged by us all, and we never thought of a 
+rivalry with him.  No man ever cantered a hack through the Champs 
+Elysées with such elegant assurance; no man ever made such a 
+massacre of dolls at the shooting-gallery; or won you a rubber at 
+billiards with more easy grace; or thundered out a couplet out of 
+Béranger with such a roaring melodious bass.  He was the monarch of 
+the Prado in winter: in summer of the Chaumière and Mont Parnasse.  
+Not a frequenter of those fashionable places of entertainment 
+showed a more amiable laisser-aller in the dance--that peculiar 
+dance at which gendarmes think proper to blush, and which squeamish 
+society has banished from her salons.  In a word, Harmodius was the 
+prince of mauvais sujets, a youth with all the accomplishments of 
+Göttingen and Jena, and all the eminent graces of his own country.
+
+"Besides dissipation and gallantry, our friend had one other vast 
+and absorbing occupation--politics, namely; in which he was as 
+turbulent and enthusiastic as in pleasure.  La Patrie was his idol, 
+his heaven, his nightmare; by day he spouted, by night he dreamed, 
+of his country.  I have spoken to you of his coiffure à la Sylla; 
+need I mention his pipe, his meerschaum pipe, of which General 
+Foy's head was the bowl; his handkerchief with the Charte printed 
+thereon; and his celebrated tricolor braces, which kept the 
+rallying sign of his country ever close to his heart?  Besides 
+these outward and visible signs of sedition, he had inward and 
+secret plans of revolution: he belonged to clubs, frequented 
+associations, read the Constitutionnel (Liberals, in those days, 
+swore by the Constitutionnel), harangued peers and deputies who had 
+deserved well of their country; and if death happened to fall on 
+such, and the Constitutionnel declared their merit, Harmodius was 
+the very first to attend their obsequies, or to set his shoulder to 
+their coffins.
+
+"Such were his tastes and passions: his antipathies were not less 
+lively.  He detested three things: a Jesuit, a gendarme, and a 
+claqueur at a theatre.  At this period, missionaries were rife 
+about Paris, and endeavored to re-illume the zeal of the faithful 
+by public preachings in the churches.  'Infâmes jesuites!' would 
+Harmodius exclaim, who, in the excess of his toleration, tolerated 
+nothing; and, at the head of a band of philosophers like himself, 
+would attend with scrupulous exactitude the meetings of the 
+reverend gentlemen.  But, instead of a contrite heart, Harmodius 
+only brought the abomination of desolation into their sanctuary.  A 
+perpetual fire of fulminating balls would bang from under the feet 
+of the faithful; odors of impure assafoetida would mingle with the 
+fumes of the incense; and wicked drinking choruses would rise up 
+along with the holy canticles, in hideous dissonance, reminding one 
+of the old orgies under the reign of the Abbot of Unreason.
+
+"His hatred of the gendarmes was equally ferocious: and as for the 
+claqueurs, woe be to them when Harmodius was in the pit!  They knew 
+him, and trembled before him, like the earth before Alexander; and 
+his famous war-cry, 'La Carte au chapeau!' was so much dreaded, 
+that the 'entrepreneurs de succès dramatiques' demanded twice as 
+much to do the Odeon Theatre (which we students and Harmodius 
+frequented), as to applaud at any other place of amusement: and, 
+indeed, their double pay was hardly gained; Harmodius taking care 
+that they should earn the most of it under the benches."
+
+
+This passage, with which we have taken some liberties, will give 
+the reader a more lively idea of the reckless, jovial, turbulent 
+Paris student, than any with which a foreigner could furnish him: 
+the grisette is his heroine; and dear old Béranger, the cynic-
+epicurean, has celebrated him and her in the most delightful verses 
+in the world.  Of these we may have occasion to say a word or two 
+anon.  Meanwhile let us follow Monsieur de Bernard in his amusing 
+descriptions of his countrymen somewhat farther; and, having seen 
+how Dambergeac was a ferocious republican, being a bachelor, let us 
+see how age, sense, and a little government pay--the great agent of 
+conversions in France--nay, in England--has reduced him to be a 
+pompous, quiet, loyal supporter of the juste milieu: his former 
+portrait was that of the student, the present will stand for an 
+admirable lively likeness of
+
+
+THE SOUS-PRÉFET.
+
+
+"Saying that I would wait for Dambergeac in his own study, I was 
+introduced into that apartment, and saw around me the usual 
+furniture of a man in his station.  There was, in the middle of the 
+room, a large bureau, surrounded by orthodox arm-chairs; and there 
+were many shelves with boxes duly ticketed; there were a number of 
+maps, and among them a great one of the department over which 
+Dambergeac ruled; and facing the windows, on a wooden pedestal, 
+stood a plaster-cast of the 'Roi des Français.'  Recollecting my 
+friend's former republicanism, I smiled at this piece of furniture; 
+but before I had time to carry my observations any farther, a heavy 
+rolling sound of carriage-wheels, that caused the windows to rattle 
+and seemed to shake the whole edifice of the sub-prefecture, called 
+my attention to the court without.  Its iron gates were flung open, 
+and in rolled, with a great deal of din, a chariot escorted by a 
+brace of gendarmes, sword in hand.  A tall gentleman, with a 
+cocked-hat and feathers, wearing a blue and silver uniform coat, 
+descended from the vehicle; and having, with much grave 
+condescension, saluted his escort, mounted the stair.  A moment 
+afterwards the door of the study was opened, and I embraced my 
+friend.
+
+"After the first warmth and salutations, we began to examine each 
+other with an equal curiosity, for eight years had elapsed since we 
+had last met.
+
+"'You are grown very thin and pale,' said Harmodius, after a 
+moment.
+
+"'In revenge I find you fat and rosy: if I am a walking satire on 
+celibacy,--you, at least, are a living panegyric on marriage.'
+
+"In fact a great change, and such an one as many people would call 
+a change for the better, had taken place in my friend: he had grown 
+fat, and announced a decided disposition to become what French 
+people call a bel homme: that is, a very fat one.  His complexion, 
+bronzed before, was now clear white and red: there were no more 
+political allusions in his hair, which was, on the contrary, neatly 
+frizzed, and brushed over the forehead, shell-shape.  This head-
+dress, joined to a thin pair of whiskers, cut crescent-wise from 
+the ear to the nose, gave my friend a regular bourgeois 
+physiognomy, wax-doll-like: he looked a great deal too well; and, 
+added to this, the solemnity of his prefectural costume, gave his 
+whole appearance a pompous well-fed look that by no means pleased.
+
+"'I surprise you,' said I, 'in the midst of your splendor: do you 
+know that this costume and yonder attendants have a look 
+excessively awful and splendid?  You entered your palace just now 
+with the air of a pasha.'
+
+"'You see me in uniform in honor of Monseigneur the Bishop, who has 
+just made his diocesan visit, and whom I have just conducted to the 
+limit of the arrondissement.'
+
+"'What!' said I, 'you have gendarmes for guards, and dance 
+attendance on bishops?  There are no more janissaries and Jesuits, 
+I suppose?'  The sub-prefect smiled.
+
+"'I assure you that my gendarmes are very worthy fellows; and that 
+among the gentlemen who compose our clergy there are some of the 
+very best rank and talent: besides, my wife is niece to one of the 
+vicars-general.'
+
+"'What have you done with that great Tasso beard that poor 
+Armandine used to love so?'
+
+"'My wife does not like a beard; and you know that what is 
+permitted to a student is not very becoming to a magistrate.'
+
+"I began to laugh.  'Harmodius and a magistrate!--how shall I ever 
+couple the two words together?  But tell me, in your correspondences,
+your audiences, your sittings with village mayors and petty councils,
+how do you manage to remain awake?'
+
+"'In the commencement,' said Harmodius, gravely, 'it WAS very 
+difficult; and, in order to keep my eyes open, I used to stick pins 
+into my legs: now, however, I am used to it; and I'm sure I don't 
+take more than fifty pinches of snuff at a sitting.'
+
+"'Ah! apropos of snuff: you are near Spain here, and were always a 
+famous smoker.  Give me a cigar,--it will take away the musty odor 
+of these piles of papers.'
+
+"'Impossible, my dear; I don't smoke; my wife cannot bear a cigar.'
+
+"His wife! thought I; always his wife: and I remember Juliette, who 
+really grew sick at the smell of a pipe, and Harmodius would smoke, 
+until, at last, the poor thing grew to smoke herself, like a 
+trooper.  To compensate, however, as much as possible for the loss 
+of my cigar, Dambergeac drew from his pocket an enormous gold 
+snuff-box, on which figured the self-same head that I had before 
+remarked in plaster, but this time surrounded with a ring of pretty 
+princes and princesses, all nicely painted in miniature.  As for 
+the statue of Louis Philippe, that, in the cabinet of an official, 
+is a thing of course; but the snuff-box seemed to indicate a degree 
+of sentimental and personal devotion, such as the old Royalists 
+were only supposed to be guilty of.
+
+"'What! you are turned decided juste milieu?' said I.
+
+"'I am a sous-préfet,' answered Harmodius.
+
+"I had nothing to say, but held my tongue, wondering, not at the 
+change which had taken place in the habits, manners, and opinions 
+of my friend, but at my own folly, which led me to fancy that I 
+should find the student of '26 in the functionary of '34.  At this 
+moment a domestic appeared.
+
+"'Madame is waiting for Monsieur,' said he: 'the last bell has 
+gone, and mass beginning.'
+
+"'Mass!' said I, bounding up from my chair.  'You at mass like a 
+decent serious Christian, without crackers in your pocket, and 
+bored keys to whistle through?'--The sous-préfet rose, his 
+countenance was calm, and an indulgent smile played upon his lips, 
+as he said, 'My arrondissement is very devout; and not to interfere 
+with the belief of the population is the maxim of every wise 
+politician: I have precise orders from Government on the point, 
+too, and go to eleven o'clock mass every Sunday."'
+
+
+There is a great deal of curious matter for speculation in the 
+accounts here so wittily given by M. de Bernard: but, perhaps, it 
+is still more curious to think of what he has NOT written, and to 
+judge of his characters, not so much by the words in which he 
+describes them, as by the unconscious testimony that the words all 
+together convey.  In the first place, our author describes a 
+swindler imitating the manners of a dandy; and many swindlers and 
+dandies be there, doubtless, in London as well as in Paris.  But 
+there is about the present swindler, and about Monsieur Dambergeac 
+the student, and Monsieur Dambergeac the sous-préfet, and his 
+friend, a rich store of calm internal debauch, which does not, let 
+us hope and pray, exist in England.  Hearken to M. de Gustan, and 
+his smirking whispers, about the Duchess of San Severino, who pour 
+son bonheur particulier, &c. &c.  Listen to Monsieur Dambergeac's 
+friend's remonstrances concerning pauvre Juliette who grew sick at 
+the smell of a pipe; to his naïve admiration at the fact that the 
+sous-préfet goes to church: and we may set down, as axioms, that 
+religion is so uncommon among the Parisians, as to awaken the 
+surprise of all candid observers; that gallantry is so common as to 
+create no remark, and to be considered as a matter of course.  With 
+us, at least, the converse of the proposition prevails: it is the 
+man professing irreligion who would be remarked and reprehended in 
+England; and, if the second-named vice exists, at any rate, it 
+adopts the decency of secrecy and is not made patent and notorious 
+to all the world.  A French gentleman thinks no more of proclaiming 
+that he has a mistress than that he has a tailor; and one lives the 
+time of Boccaccio over again, in the thousand and one French novels 
+which depict society in that country.
+
+For instance, here are before us a few specimens (do not, madam, be 
+alarmed, you can skip the sentence if you like,) to be found in as 
+many admirable witty tales, by the before-lauded Monsieur de 
+Bernard.  He is more remarkable than any other French author, to 
+our notion, for writing like a gentleman: there is ease, grace and 
+ton, in his style, which, if we judge aright, cannot be discovered 
+in Balzac, or Soulié, or Dumas.  We have then--"Gerfaut," a novel: 
+a lovely creature is married to a brave, haughty, Alsacian 
+nobleman, who allows her to spend her winters at Paris, he 
+remaining on his terres, cultivating, carousing, and hunting the 
+boar.  The lovely-creature meets the fascinating Gerfaut at Paris; 
+instantly the latter makes love to her; a duel takes place: baron 
+killed; wife throws herself out of window; Gerfaut plunges into 
+dissipation; and so the tale ends.
+
+Next: "La Femme de Quarante Ans," a capital tale, full of exquisite 
+fun and sparkling satire: La femme de quarante ans has a husband 
+and THREE lovers; all of whom find out their mutual connection one 
+starry night; for the lady of forty is of a romantic poetical turn, 
+and has given her three admirers A STAR APIECE; saying to one and 
+the other, "Alphonse, when yon pale orb rises in heaven, think of 
+me;" "Isadore, when that bright planet sparkles in the sky, 
+remember your Caroline," &c.
+
+"Un Acte de Vertu," from which we have taken Dambergeac's history, 
+contains him, the husband--a wife--and a brace of lovers; and a 
+great deal of fun takes place in the manner in which one lover 
+supplants the other.--Pretty morals truly!
+
+If we examine an author who rejoices in the aristocratic name of le 
+Comte Horace de Viel-Castel, we find, though with infinitely less 
+wit, exactly the same intrigues going on.  A noble Count lives in 
+the Faubourg St. Honoré, and has a noble Duchess for a mistress: he 
+introduces her Grace to the Countess his wife.  The Countess his 
+wife, in order to ramener her lord to his conjugal duties, is 
+counselled, by a friend, TO PRETEND TO TAKE A LOVER: one is found, 
+who, poor fellow! takes the affair in earnest: climax--duel, death, 
+despair, and what not?  In the "Faubourg St. Germain," another 
+novel by the same writer, which professes to describe the very pink 
+of that society which Napoleon dreaded more than Russia, Prussia, 
+and Austria, there is an old husband, of course; a sentimental 
+young German nobleman, who falls in love with his wife; and the 
+moral of the piece lies in the showing up of the conduct of the 
+lady, who is reprehended--not for deceiving her husband (poor 
+devil!)--but for being a flirt, AND TAKING A SECOND LOVER, to the 
+utter despair, confusion, and annihilation of the first.
+
+Why, ye gods, do Frenchmen marry at all?  Had Père Enfantin (who, 
+it is said, has shaved his ambrosial beard, and is now a clerk in a 
+banking-house) been allowed to carry out his chaste, just, 
+dignified social scheme, what a deal of marital discomfort might 
+have been avoided:--would it not be advisable that a great reformer 
+and lawgiver of our own, Mr. Robert Owen, should be presented at 
+the Tuileries, and there propound his scheme for the regeneration 
+of France?
+
+He might, perhaps, be spared, for our country is not yet sufficiently
+advanced to give such a philosopher fair play.  In London, as yet,
+there are no blessed Bureaux de Mariage, where an old bachelor may
+have a charming young maiden--for his money; or a widow of seventy
+may buy a gay young fellow of twenty, for a certain number of
+bank-billets.  If mariages de convenance take place here (as they
+will wherever avarice, and poverty, and desire, and yearning after
+riches are to be found), at least, thank God, such unions are not
+arranged upon a regular organized SYSTEM: there is a fiction of
+attachment with us, and there is a consolation in the deceit ("the
+homage," according to the old mot of Rochefoucauld) "which vice pays
+to virtue"; for the very falsehood shows that the virtue exists
+somewhere.  We once heard a furious old French colonel inveighing
+against the chastity of English demoiselles: "Figurez-vous, sir,"
+said he (he had been a prisoner in England), "that these women come
+down to dinner in low dresses, and walk out alone with the men!"--
+and, pray heaven, so may they walk, fancy-free in all sorts of
+maiden meditations, and suffer no more molestation than that young
+lady of whom Moore sings, and who (there must have been a famous
+lord-lieutenant in those days) walked through all Ireland, with rich
+and rare gems, beauty, and a gold ring on her stick, without meeting
+or thinking of harm.
+
+Now, whether Monsieur de Viel-Castel has given a true picture of 
+the Faubourg St. Germain, it is impossible for most foreigners to 
+say; but some of his descriptions will not fail to astonish the 
+English reader; and all are filled with that remarkable naïf 
+contempt of the institution called marriage, which we have seen in 
+M. de Bernard.  The romantic young nobleman of Westphalia arrives 
+at Paris, and is admitted into what a celebrated female author 
+calls la crême de la crême de la haute volée of Parisian society.  
+He is a youth of about twenty years of age.  "No passion had as yet 
+come to move his heart, and give life to his faculties; he was 
+awaiting and fearing the moment of love; calling for it, and yet 
+trembling at its approach; feeling in the depths of his soul, that 
+that moment would create a mighty change in his being, and decide, 
+perhaps, by its influence, the whole of his future life."
+
+Is it not remarkable, that a young nobleman, with these ideas, 
+should not pitch upon a demoiselle, or a widow, at least? but no, 
+the rogue must have a married woman, bad luck to him; and what his 
+fate is to be, is thus recounted by our author, in the shape of
+
+
+A FRENCH FASHIONABLE CONVERSATION.
+
+
+"A lady, with a great deal of esprit, to whom forty years' 
+experience of the great world had given a prodigious perspicacity 
+of judgment, the Duchess of Chalux, arbitress of the opinion to be 
+held on all new comers to the Faubourg Saint Germain, and of their 
+destiny and reception in it;--one of those women, in a word, who 
+make or ruin a man,--said, in speaking of Gerard de Stolberg, whom 
+she received at her own house, and met everywhere, 'This young 
+German will never gain for himself the title of an exquisite, or a 
+man of bonnes fortunes, among us.  In spite of his calm and 
+politeness, I think I can see in his character some rude and 
+insurmountable difficulties, which time will only increase, and 
+which will prevent him for ever from bending to the exigencies of 
+either profession; but, unless I very much deceive myself, he will, 
+one day, be the hero of a veritable romance.'
+
+"'He, madame?' answered a young man, of fair complexion and fair 
+hair, one of the most devoted slaves of the fashion:--'He, Madame 
+la Duchesse? why, the man is, at best, but an original, fished out 
+of the Rhine: a dull, heavy creature, as much capable of 
+understanding a woman's heart as I am of speaking bas-Breton.'
+
+"'Well, Monsieur de Belport, you will speak bas-Breton.  Monsieur 
+de Stolberg has not your admirable ease of manner, nor your 
+facility of telling pretty nothings, nor your--in a word, that 
+particular something which makes you the most recherché man of the 
+Faubourg Saint Germain; and even I avow to you that, were I still 
+young, and a coquette, AND THAT I TOOK IT INTO MY HEAD TO HAVE A 
+LOVER, I would prefer you.'
+
+"All this was said by the Duchess, with a certain air of raillery 
+and such a mixture of earnest and malice, that Monsieur de Belport, 
+piqued not a little, could not help saying, as he bowed profoundly 
+before the Duchess's chair, 'And might I, madam, be permitted to 
+ask the reason of this preference?'
+
+"'O mon Dieu, oui,' said the Duchess, always in the same tone; 
+'because a lover like you would never think of carrying his 
+attachment to the height of passion; and these passions, do you 
+know, have frightened me all my life.  One cannot retreat at will 
+from the grasp of a passionate lover; one leaves behind one some 
+fragment of one's moral SELF, or the best part of one's physical 
+life.  A passion, if it does not kill you, adds cruelly to your 
+years; in a word, it is the very lowest possible taste.  And now 
+you understand why I should prefer you, M. de Belport--you who are 
+reputed to be the leader of the fashion.'
+
+"'Perfectly,' murmured the gentleman, piqued more and more.
+
+"'Gerard de Stolberg WILL be passionate.  I don't know what woman 
+will please him, or will be pleased by him' (here the Duchess of 
+Chalux spoke more gravely); 'but his love will be no play, I repeat 
+it to you once more.  All this astonishes you, because you, great 
+leaders of the ton that you are, never fancy that a hero of romance 
+should be found among your number.  Gerard de Stolberg--but, look, 
+here he comes!'
+
+"M. de Belport rose, and quitted the Duchess, without believing in 
+her prophecy; but he could not avoid smiling as he passed near the 
+HERO OF ROMANCE.
+
+"It was because M. de Stolberg had never, in all his life, been a 
+hero of romance, or even an apprentice-hero of romance.
+
+
+"Gerard de Stolberg was not, as yet, initiated into the thousand 
+secrets in the chronicle of the great world: he knew but 
+superficially the society in which he lived; and, therefore, he 
+devoted his evening to the gathering of all the information which 
+he could acquire from the indiscreet conversations of the people 
+about him.  His whole man became ear and memory; so much was 
+Stolberg convinced of the necessity of becoming a diligent student 
+in this new school, where was taught the art of knowing and 
+advancing in the great world.  In the recess of a window he learned 
+more on this one night than months of investigation would have 
+taught him.  The talk of a ball is more indiscreet than the 
+confidential chatter of a company of idle women.  No man present at 
+a ball, whether listener or speaker, thinks he has a right to 
+affect any indulgence for his companions, and the most learned in 
+malice will always pass for the most witty.
+
+"'How!' said the Viscount de Mondragé: 'the Duchess of Rivesalte 
+arrives alone to-night, without her inevitable Dormilly!'--And the 
+Viscount, as he spoke, pointed towards a tall and slender young 
+woman, who, gliding rather than walking, met the ladies by whom she 
+passed, with a graceful and modest salute, and replied to the looks 
+of the men BY BRILLIANT VEILED GLANCES FULL OF COQUETRY AND ATTACK.
+
+"'Parbleu!' said an elegant personage standing near the Viscount de 
+Mondragé, 'don't you see Dormilly ranged behind the Duchess, in 
+quality of train-bearer, and hiding, under his long locks and his 
+great screen of moustaches, the blushing consciousness of his good 
+luck?--They call him THE FOURTH CHAPTER of the Duchess's memoirs.  
+The little Marquise d'Alberas is ready to die out of spite; but the 
+best of the joke is, that she has only taken poor de Vendre for a 
+lover in order to vent her spleen on him.  Look at him against the 
+chimney yonder; if the Marchioness do not break at once with him by 
+quitting him for somebody else, the poor fellow will turn an idiot.'
+
+"'Is he jealous?' asked a young man, looking as if he did not know 
+what jealousy was and as if he had no time to be jealous.
+
+"'Jealous! the very incarnation of jealousy; the second edition, 
+revised, corrected, and considerably enlarged; as jealous as poor 
+Gressigny, who is dying of it.'
+
+"'What!  Gressigny too?  why, 'tis growing quite into fashion: 
+egad! I must try and be jealous,' said Monsieur de Beauval.  'But 
+see! here comes the delicious Duchess of Bellefiore,'" &c. &c. &c.
+
+
+Enough, enough: this kind of fashionable Parisian conversation, 
+which is, says our author, "a prodigious labor of improvising," a 
+"chef-d'oeuvre," a "strange and singular thing, in which monotony 
+is unknown," seems to be, if correctly reported, a "strange and 
+singular thing" indeed; but somewhat monotonous at least to an 
+English reader, and "prodigious" only, if we may take leave to say 
+so, for the wonderful rascality which all the conversationists 
+betray.  Miss Neverout and the Colonel, in Swift's famous dialogue, 
+are a thousand times more entertaining and moral; and, besides, we 
+can laugh AT those worthies as well as with them; whereas the 
+"prodigious" French wits are to us quite incomprehensible.  Fancy a 
+duchess as old as Lady ---- herself, and who should begin to tell 
+us "of what she would do if ever she had a mind to take a lover;" 
+and another duchess, with a fourth lover, tripping modestly among 
+the ladies, and returning the gaze of the men by veiled glances, 
+full of coquetry and attack!--Parbleu, if Monsieur de Viel-Castel 
+should find himself among a society of French duchesses, and they 
+should tear his eyes out, and send the fashionable Orpheus floating 
+by the Seine, his slaughter might almost be considered as 
+justifiable COUNTICIDE.
+
+
+
+
+A GAMBLER'S DEATH.
+
+
+Anybody who was at C---- school some twelve years since, must 
+recollect Jack Attwood: he was the most dashing lad in the place, 
+with more money in his pocket than belonged to the whole fifth form 
+in which we were companions.
+
+When he was about fifteen, Jack suddenly retreated from C----, and 
+presently we heard that he had a commission in a cavalry regiment, 
+and was to have a great fortune from his father, when that old 
+gentleman should die.  Jack himself came to confirm these stories a 
+few months after, and paid a visit to his old school chums.  He had 
+laid aside his little school-jacket and inky corduroys, and now 
+appeared in such a splendid military suit as won the respect of all 
+of us.  His hair was dripping with oil, his hands were covered with 
+rings, he had a dusky down over his upper lip which looked not 
+unlike a moustache, and a multiplicity of frogs and braiding on his 
+surtout which would have sufficed to lace a field-marshal.  When 
+old Swishtail, the usher, passed in his seedy black coat and 
+gaiters, Jack gave him such a look of contempt as set us all a-
+laughing: in fact it was his turn to laugh now; for he used to roar 
+very stoutly some months before, when Swishtail was in the custom 
+of belaboring him with his great cane.
+
+Jack's talk was all about the regiment and the fine fellows in it: 
+how he had ridden a steeple-chase with Captain Boldero, and licked 
+him at the last hedge; and how he had very nearly fought a duel 
+with Sir George Grig, about dancing with Lady Mary Slamken at a 
+ball.  "I soon made the baronet know what it was to deal with a man 
+of the n--th," said Jack.  "Dammee, sir, when I lugged out my 
+barkers, and talked of fighting across the mess-room table, Grig 
+turned as pale as a sheet, or as--"
+
+"Or as you used to do, Attwood, when Swishtail hauled you up," 
+piped out little Hicks, the foundation-boy.
+
+It was beneath Jack's dignity to thrash anybody, now, but a grown-
+up baronet; so he let off little Hicks, and passed over the general 
+titter which was raised at his expense.  However, he entertained us 
+with his histories about lords and ladies, and so-and-so "of ours," 
+until we thought him one of the greatest men in his Majesty's 
+service, and until the school-bell rung; when, with a heavy heart, 
+we got our books together, and marched in to be whacked by old 
+Swishtail.  I promise you he revenged himself on us for Jack's 
+contempt of him.  I got that day at least twenty cuts to my share, 
+which ought to have belonged to Cornet Attwood, of the n--th 
+dragoons.
+
+When we came to think more coolly over our quondam schoolfellow's 
+swaggering talk and manner, we were not quite so impressed by his 
+merits as at his first appearance among us.  We recollected how he 
+used, in former times, to tell us great stories, which were so 
+monstrously improbable that the smallest boy in the school would 
+scout them; how often we caught him tripping in facts, and how 
+unblushingly he admitted his little errors in the score of 
+veracity.  He and I, though never great friends, had been close 
+companions: I was Jack's form-fellow (we fought with amazing 
+emulation for the LAST place in the class); but still I was rather 
+hurt at the coolness of my old comrade, who had forgotten all our 
+former intimacy, in his steeple-chases with Captain Boldero and his 
+duel with Sir George Grig.
+
+Nothing more was heard of Attwood for some years; a tailor one day 
+came down to C----, who had made clothes for Jack in his school-
+days, and furnished him with regimentals: he produced a long bill 
+for one hundred and twenty pounds and upwards, and asked where news 
+might be had of his customer.  Jack was in India, with his 
+regiment, shooting tigers and jackals, no doubt.  Occasionally, 
+from that distant country, some magnificent rumor would reach us of 
+his proceedings.  Once I heard that he had been called to a court-
+martial for unbecoming conduct; another time, that he kept twenty 
+horses, and won the gold plate at the Calcutta races.  Presently, 
+however, as the recollections of the fifth form wore away, Jack's 
+image disappeared likewise, and I ceased to ask or think about my 
+college chum.
+
+A year since, as I was smoking my cigar in the "Estaminet du Grand 
+Balcon," an excellent smoking-shop, where the tobacco is 
+unexceptionable, and the Hollands of singular merit, a dark-
+looking, thick-set man, in a greasy well-cut coat, with a shabby 
+hat, cocked on one side of his dirty face, took the place opposite 
+me, at the little marble table, and called for brandy.  I did not 
+much admire the impudence or the appearance of my friend, nor the 
+fixed stare with which he chose to examine me.  At last, he thrust 
+a great greasy hand across the table, and said, "Titmarsh, do you 
+forget your old friend Attwood?"
+
+I confess my recognition of him was not so joyful as on the day ten 
+years earlier, when he had come, bedizened with lace and gold 
+rings, to see us at C---- school: a man in the tenth part of a 
+century learns a deal of worldly wisdom, and his hand, which goes 
+naturally forward to seize the gloved finger of a millionnaire, or 
+a milor, draws instinctively back from a dirty fist, encompassed by 
+a ragged wristband and a tattered cuff.  But Attwood was in nowise 
+so backward; and the iron squeeze with which he shook my passive 
+paw, proved that he was either very affectionate or very poor.  
+You, my dear sir, who are reading this history, know very well the 
+great art of shaking hands: recollect how you shook Lord Dash's 
+hand the other day, and how you shook OFF poor Blank, when he came 
+to borrow five pounds of you.
+
+However, the genial influence of the Hollands speedily dissipated 
+anything like coolness between us and, in the course of an hour's 
+conversation, we became almost as intimate as when we were 
+suffering together under the ferule of old Swishtail.  Jack told me 
+that he had quitted the army in disgust; and that his father, who 
+was to leave him a fortune, had died ten thousand pounds in debt: 
+he did not touch upon his own circumstances; but I could read them 
+in his elbows, which were peeping through his old frock.  He talked 
+a great deal, however, of runs of luck, good and bad; and related 
+to me an infallible plan for breaking all the play-banks in Europe--
+a great number of old tricks;--and a vast quantity of gin-punch 
+was consumed on the occasion; so long, in fact, did our conversation
+continue, that, I confess it with shame, the sentiment, or something
+stronger, quite got the better of me, and I have, to this day, no
+sort of notion how our palaver concluded.--Only, on the next
+morning, I did not possess a certain five-pound note which on the
+previous evening was in my sketch-book (by far the prettiest drawing
+by the way in the collection) but there, instead, was a strip of
+paper, thus inscribed:--
+
+
+IOU
+Five Pounds.  JOHN ATTWOOD,
+Late of the N--th Dragoons.
+
+
+I suppose Attwood borrowed the money, from this remarkable and 
+ceremonious acknowledgment on his part: had I been sober I would 
+just as soon have lent him the nose on my face; for, in my then 
+circumstances, the note was of much more consequence to me.
+
+As I lay, cursing my ill fortune, and thinking how on earth I 
+should manage to subsist for the next two months, Attwood burst 
+into my little garret--his face strangely flushed--singing and 
+shouting as if it had been the night before.  "Titmarsh," cried he, 
+"you are my preserver!--my best friend!  Look here, and here, and 
+here!"  And at every word Mr. Attwood produced a handful of gold, 
+or a glittering heap of five-franc pieces, or a bundle of greasy, 
+dusky bank-notes, more beautiful than either silver or gold:--he 
+had won thirteen thousand francs after leaving me at midnight in my 
+garret.  He separated my poor little all, of six pieces, from this 
+shining and imposing collection; and the passion of envy entered my 
+soul: I felt far more anxious now than before, although starvation 
+was then staring me in the face; I hated Attwood for CHEATING me 
+out of all this wealth.  Poor fellow! it had been better for him 
+had he never seen a shilling of it.
+
+However, a grand breakfast at the Café Anglais dissipated my 
+chagrin; and I will do my friend the justice to say, that he nobly 
+shared some portion of his good fortune with me.  As far as the 
+creature comforts were concerned I feasted as well as he, and never 
+was particular as to settling my share of the reckoning.
+
+Jack now changed his lodgings; had cards, with Captain Attwood 
+engraved on them, and drove about a prancing cab-horse, as tall as 
+the giraffe at the Jardin des Plantes; he had as many frogs on his 
+coat as in the old days, and frequented all the flash restaurateurs'
+and boarding-houses of the capital.  Madame de Saint Laurent, and
+Madame la Baronne de Vaudrey, and Madame la Comtesse de Jonville,
+ladies of the highest rank, who keep a société choisie and
+condescend to give dinners at five-francs a head, vied with each
+other in their attentions to Jack.  His was the wing of the fowl,
+and the largest portion of the Charlotte-Russe; his was the place at
+the écarté table, where the Countess would ease him nightly of a few
+pieces, declaring that he was the most charming cavalier, la fleur
+d'Albion.  Jack's society, it may be seen, was not very select; nor,
+in truth, were his inclinations: he was a careless, daredevil,
+Macheath kind of fellow, who might be seen daily with a wife on each
+arm.
+
+It may be supposed that, with the life he led, his five hundred 
+pounds of winnings would not last him long; nor did they; but, for 
+some time, his luck never deserted him; and his cash, instead of 
+growing lower, seemed always to maintain a certain level: he played 
+every night.
+
+Of course, such a humble fellow as I, could not hope for a 
+continued acquaintance and intimacy with Attwood.  He grew 
+overbearing and cool, I thought; at any rate I did not admire my 
+situation as his follower and dependant, and left his grand dinner 
+for a certain ordinary, where I could partake of five capital 
+dishes for ninepence.  Occasionally, however, Attwood favored me 
+with a visit, or gave me a drive behind his great cab-horse.  He 
+had formed a whole host of friends besides.  There was Fips, the 
+barrister; heaven knows what he was doing at Paris; and Gortz, the 
+West Indian, who was there on the same business, and Flapper, a 
+medical student,--all these three I met one night at Flapper's 
+rooms, where Jack was invited, and a great "spread" was laid in 
+honor of him.
+
+Jack arrived rather late--he looked pale and agitated; and, though 
+he ate no supper, he drank raw brandy in such a manner as made 
+Flapper's eyes wink: the poor fellow had but three bottles, and 
+Jack bade fair to swallow them all.  However, the West Indian 
+generously remedied the evil, and producing a napoleon, we speedily 
+got the change for it in the shape of four bottles of champagne.
+
+Our supper was uproariously harmonious; Fips sung the good "Old 
+English Gentleman;" Jack the "British Grenadiers;" and your humble 
+servant, when called upon, sang that beautiful ditty, "When the 
+Bloom is on the Rye," in a manner that drew tears from every eye, 
+except Flapper's, who was asleep, and Jack's, who was singing the 
+"Bay of Biscay O," at the same time.  Gortz and Fips were all the 
+time lunging at each other with a pair of single-sticks, the 
+barrister having a very strong notion that he was Richard the 
+Third.  At last Fips hit the West Indian such a blow across his 
+sconce, that the other grew furious; he seized a champagne-bottle, 
+which was, providentially, empty, and hurled it across the room at 
+Fips: had that celebrated barrister not bowed his head at the 
+moment, the Queen's Bench would have lost one of its most eloquent 
+practitioners.
+
+Fips stood as straight as he could; his cheek was pale with wrath.  
+"M-m-ister Go-gortz," he said, "I always heard you were a 
+blackguard; now I can pr-pr-peperove it.  Flapper, your pistols! 
+every ge-ge-genlmn knows what I mean."
+
+Young Mr. Flapper had a small pair of pocket-pistols, which the 
+tipsy barrister had suddenly remembered, and with which he proposed 
+to sacrifice the West Indian.  Gortz was nothing loth, but was 
+quite as valorous as the lawyer.
+
+Attwood, who, in spite of his potations, seemed the soberest man of 
+the party, had much enjoyed the scene, until this sudden demand for 
+the weapons.  "Pshaw!" said he, eagerly, "don't give these men the 
+means of murdering each other; sit down and let us have another 
+song."  But they would not be still; and Flapper forthwith produced 
+his pistol-case, and opened it, in order that the duel might take 
+place on the spot.  There were no pistols there!  "I beg your 
+pardon," said Attwood, looking much confused; "I--I took the 
+pistols home with me to clean them!"
+
+I don't know what there was in his tone, or in the words, but we 
+were sobered all of a sudden.  Attwood was conscious of the 
+singular effect produced by him, for he blushed, and endeavored to 
+speak of other things, but we could not bring our spirits back to 
+the mark again, and soon separated for the night.  As we issued 
+into the street Jack took me aside, and whispered, "Have you a 
+napoleon, Titmarsh, in your purse?'  Alas! I was not so rich.  My 
+reply was, that I was coming to Jack, only in the morning, to 
+borrow a similar sum.
+
+He did not make any reply, but turned away homeward: I never heard 
+him speak another word.
+
+
+Two mornings after (for none of our party met on the day succeeding 
+the supper), I was awakened by my porter, who brought a pressing 
+letter from Mr. Gortz:--
+
+
+"DEAR T.,--I wish you would come over here to breakfast.  There's a 
+row about Attwood.--Yours truly,
+
+"SOLOMON GORTZ."
+
+
+I immediately set forward to Gortz's; he lived in the Rue du 
+Helder, a few doors from Attwood's new lodging.  If the reader is 
+curious to know the house in which the catastrophe of this history 
+took place, he has but to march some twenty doors down from the 
+Boulevard des Italiens, when he will see a fine door, with a naked 
+Cupid shooting at him from the hall, and a Venus beckoning him up 
+the stairs.  On arriving at the West Indian's, at about mid-day (it 
+was a Sunday morning), I found that gentleman in his dressing-gown, 
+discussing, in the company of Mr Fips, a large plate of bifteck aux 
+pommes.
+
+"Here's a pretty row!" said Gortz, quoting from his letter;--
+"Attwood's off--have a bit of beefsteak?"
+
+"What do you mean?" exclaimed I, adopting the familiar phraseology 
+of my acquaintances:--"Attwood off?--has he cut his stick?"
+
+"Not bad," said the feeling and elegant Fips--"not such a bad 
+guess, my boy; but he has not exactly CUT HIS STICK."
+
+"What then?"
+
+"WHY, HIS THROAT."  The man's mouth was full of bleeding beef as he 
+uttered this gentlemanly witticism.
+
+I wish I could say that I was myself in the least affected by the 
+news.  I did not joke about it like my friend Fips; this was more 
+for propriety's sake than for feeling's: but for my old school 
+acquaintance, the friend of my early days, the merry associate of 
+the last few months, I own, with shame, that I had not a tear or a 
+pang.  In some German tale there is an account of a creature most 
+beautiful and bewitching, whom all men admire and follow; but this 
+charming and fantastic spirit only leads them, one by one, into 
+ruin, and then leaves them.  The novelist, who describes her 
+beauty, says that his heroine is a fairy, and HAS NO HEART.  I 
+think the intimacy which is begotten over the wine-bottle, is a 
+spirit of this nature; I never knew a good feeling come from it, or 
+an honest friendship made by it; it only entices men and ruins 
+them; it is only a phantom of friendship and feeling, called up by 
+the delirious blood, and the wicked spells of the wine.
+
+But to drop this strain of moralizing (in which the writer is not 
+too anxious to proceed, for he cuts in it a most pitiful figure), 
+we passed sundry criticisms upon poor Attwood's character, 
+expressed our horror at his death--which sentiment was fully proved 
+by Mr. Fips, who declared that the notion of it made him feel quite 
+faint, and was obliged to drink a large glass of brandy; and, 
+finally, we agreed that we would go and see the poor fellow's 
+corpse, and witness, if necessary, his burial.
+
+Flapper, who had joined us, was the first to propose this visit: he 
+said he did not mind the fifteen francs which Jack owed him for 
+billiards, but he was anxious to GET BACK HIS PISTOL.  Accordingly, 
+we sallied forth, and speedily arrived at the hotel which Attwood 
+inhabited still.  He had occupied, for a time, very fine apartments 
+in this house: and it was only on arriving there that day that we 
+found he had been gradually driven from his magnificent suite of 
+rooms au premier, to a little chamber in the fifth story:--we 
+mounted, and found him.  It was a little shabby room, with a few 
+articles of rickety furniture, and a bed in an alcove; the light 
+from the one window was falling full upon the bed and the body.  
+Jack was dressed in a fine lawn shirt; he had kept it, poor fellow, 
+TO DIE IN; for in all his drawers and cupboards there was not a 
+single article of clothing; he had pawned everything by which he 
+could raise a penny--desk, books, dressing-case, and clothes; and 
+not a single halfpenny was found in his possession.*
+
+
+* In order to account for these trivial details, the reader must be 
+told that the story is, for the chief part, a fact; and that the 
+little sketch in this page was TAKEN FROM NATURE.  The latter was 
+likewise a copy from one found in the manner described.
+
+
+He was lying as I have drawn him,* one hand on his breast, the 
+other falling towards the ground.  There was an expression of 
+perfect calm on the face, and no mark of blood to stain the side 
+towards the light.  On the other side, however, there was a great 
+pool of black blood, and in it the pistol; it looked more like a 
+toy than a weapon to take away the life of this vigorous young man.  
+In his forehead, at the side, was a small black wound; Jack's life 
+had passed through it; it was little bigger than a mole.
+
+
+* This refers to an illustrated edition of the work.
+
+
+"Regardez un peu," said the landlady, "messieurs, il m'a gâté trois 
+matelas, et il me doit quarante quatre francs."
+
+This was all his epitaph: he had spoiled three mattresses, and owed 
+the landlady four-and-forty francs.  In the whole world there was 
+not a soul to love him or lament him.  We, his friends, were 
+looking at his body more as an object of curiosity, watching it 
+with a kind of interest with which one follows the fifth act of a 
+tragedy, and leaving it with the same feeling with which one leaves 
+the theatre when the play is over and the curtain is down.
+
+Beside Jack's bed, on his little "table de nuit," lay the remains 
+of his last meal, and an open letter, which we read.  It was from 
+one of his suspicious acquaintances of former days, and ran thus:--
+
+
+"Où es tu, cher Jack? why you not come and see me--tu me dois de 
+l'argent, entends tu?--un chapeau, une cachemire, a box of the 
+Play.  Viens demain soir, je t'attendrai at eight o'clock, Passage 
+des Panoramas.  My Sir is at his country.
+
+"Adieu à demain.
+
+"Fifine.
+
+"Samedi."
+
+
+I shuddered as I walked through this very Passage des Panoramas, in 
+the evening.  The girl was there, pacing to and fro, and looking in 
+the countenance of every passer-by, to recognize Attwood.  "ADIEU À 
+DEMAIN!"--there was a dreadful meaning in the words, which the 
+writer of them little knew.  "Adieu à demain!"--the morrow was 
+come, and the soul of the poor suicide was now in the presence of 
+God.  I dare not think of his fate; for, except in the fact of his 
+poverty and desperation, was he worse than any of us, his 
+companions, who had shared his debauches, and marched with him up 
+to the very brink of the grave?
+
+There is but one more circumstance to relate regarding poor Jack--
+his burial; it was of a piece with his death.
+
+He was nailed into a paltry coffin and buried, at the expense of 
+the arrondissement, in a nook of the burial-place beyond the 
+Barrière de l'Etoile.  They buried him at six o'clock, of a bitter 
+winter's morning, and it was with difficulty that an English 
+clergyman could be found to read a service over his grave.  The 
+three men who have figured in this history acted as Jack's 
+mourners; and as the ceremony was to take place so early in the 
+morning, these men sat up the night through, AND WERE ALMOST DRUNK 
+as they followed his coffin to its resting-place.
+
+
+MORAL.
+
+
+"When we turned out in our great-coats," said one of them afterwards,
+"reeking of cigars and brandy-and-water, d--e, sir, we quite
+frightened the old buck of a parson; he did not much like our
+company."  After the ceremony was concluded, these gentlemen were
+very happy to get home to a warm and comfortable breakfast, and
+finished the day royally at Frascati's.
+
+
+
+
+NAPOLEON AND HIS SYSTEM.
+
+ON PRINCE LOUIS NAPOLEON'S WORK.
+
+
+Any person who recollects the history of the absurd outbreak of 
+Strasburg, in which Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte figured, three 
+years ago, must remember that, however silly the revolt was, 
+however, foolish its pretext, however doubtful its aim, and 
+inexperienced its leader, there was, nevertheless, a party, and a 
+considerable one in France, that were not unwilling to lend the new 
+projectors their aid.  The troops who declared against the Prince, 
+were, it was said, all but willing to declare for him; and it was 
+certain that, in many of the regiments of the army, there existed a 
+strong spirit of disaffection, and an eager wish for the return of 
+the imperial system and family.
+
+As to the good that was to be derived from the change, that is 
+another question.  Why the Emperor of the French should be better 
+than the King of the French, or the King of the French better than 
+the King of France and Navarre, it is not our business to inquire; 
+but all the three monarchs have no lack of supporters; republicanism
+has no lack of supporters; St. Simoninnism was followed by a
+respectable body of admirers; Robespierrism has a select party of
+friends.  If, in a country where so many quacks have had their day,
+Prince Louis Napoleon thought he might renew the imperial quackery,
+why should he not?  It has recollections with it that must always be
+dear to a gallant nation; it has certain claptraps in its vocabulary
+that can never fail to inflame a vain, restless, grasping,
+disappointed one.
+
+In the first place, and don't let us endeavor to disguise it, they 
+hate us.  Not all the protestations of friendship, not all the 
+wisdom of Lord Palmerston, not all the diplomacy of our distinguished
+plenipotentiary, Mr. Henry Lytton Bulwer--and let us add, not all
+the benefit which both countries would derive from the alliance--can
+make it, in our times at least, permanent and cordial.  They hate
+us.  The Carlist organs revile us with a querulous fury that never
+sleeps; the moderate party, if they admit the utility of our
+alliance, are continually pointing out our treachery, our insolence,
+and our monstrous infractions of it; and for the Republicans, as
+sure as the morning comes, the columns of their journals thunder out
+volleys of fierce denunciations against our unfortunate country.
+They live by feeding the natural hatred against England, by keeping
+old wounds open, by recurring ceaselessly to the history of old
+quarrels, and as in these we, by God's help, by land and by sea, in
+old times and late, have had the uppermost, they perpetuate the
+shame and mortification of the losing party, the bitterness of past
+defeats, and the eager desire to avenge them.  A party which knows
+how to exploiter this hatred will always be popular to a certain
+extent; and the imperial scheme has this, at least, among its
+conditions.
+
+Then there is the favorite claptrap of the "natural frontier."  The 
+Frenchman yearns to be bounded by the Rhine and the Alps; and next 
+follows the cry, "Let France take her place among nations, and 
+direct, as she ought to do, the affairs of Europe."  These are the 
+two chief articles contained in the new imperial programme, if we 
+may credit the journal which has been established to advocate the 
+cause.  A natural boundary--stand among the nations--popular 
+development--Russian alliance, and a reduction of la perfide Albion 
+to its proper insignificance.  As yet we know little more of the 
+plan: and yet such foundations are sufficient to build a party 
+upon, and with such windy weapons a substantial Government is to be 
+overthrown!
+
+In order to give these doctrines, such as they are, a chance of 
+finding favor with his countrymen, Prince Louis has the advantage 
+of being able to refer to a former great professor of them--his 
+uncle Napoleon.  His attempt is at once pious and prudent; it 
+exalts the memory of the uncle, and furthers the interests of the 
+nephew, who attempts to show what Napoleon's ideas really were; 
+what good had already resulted from the practice of them; how 
+cruelly they had been thwarted by foreign wars and difficulties; 
+and what vast benefits WOULD have resulted from them; ay, and (it 
+is reasonable to conclude) might still, if the French nation would 
+be wise enough to pitch upon a governor that would continue the 
+interrupted scheme.  It is, however, to be borne in mind that the 
+Emperor Napoleon had certain arguments in favor of his opinions for 
+the time being, which his nephew has not employed.  On the 13th 
+Vendemiaire, when General Bonaparte believed in the excellence of a 
+Directory, it may be remembered that he aided his opinions by forty 
+pieces of artillery, and by Colonel Murat at the head of his 
+dragoons.  There was no resisting such a philosopher; the Directory 
+was established forthwith, and the sacred cause of the minority 
+triumphed, in like manner, when the General was convinced of the 
+weakness of the Directory, and saw fully the necessity of 
+establishing a Consulate, what were his arguments?  Moreau, Lannes, 
+Murat, Berthier, Leclerc, Lefebvre--gentle apostles of the truth!--
+marched to St. Cloud, and there, with fixed bayonets, caused it to 
+prevail.  Error vanished in an instant.  At once five hundred of 
+its high-priests tumbled out of windows, and lo! three Consuls 
+appeared to guide the destinies of France!  How much more 
+expeditious, reasonable, and clinching was this argument of the 
+18th Brumaire, than any one that can be found in any pamphlet!  A 
+fig for your duodecimos and octavos!  Talk about points, there are 
+none like those at the end of a bayonet; and the most powerful of 
+styles is a good rattling "article" from a nine-pounder.
+
+At least this is our interpretation of the manner in which were 
+always propagated the Idées Napoléoniennes.  Not such, however, is 
+Prince Louis's belief; and, if you wish to go along with him in 
+opinion, you will discover that a more liberal, peaceable, prudent 
+Prince never existed: you will read that "the mission of Napoleon" 
+was to be the "testamentary executor of the revolution;" and the 
+Prince should have added the legatee; or, more justly still, as 
+well as the EXECUTOR, he should be called the EXECUTIONER, and then 
+his title would be complete.  In Vendemiaire, the military 
+Tartuffe, he threw aside the Revolution's natural heirs, and made 
+her, as it were, ALTER HER WILL; on the 18th of Brumaire he 
+strangled her, and on the 19th seized on her property, and kept it 
+until force deprived him of it.  Illustrations, to be sure, are no 
+arguments, but the example is the Prince's, not ours.
+
+In the Prince's eyes, then, his uncle is a god; of all monarchs, 
+the most wise, upright, and merciful.  Thirty years ago the opinion 
+had millions of supporters; while millions again were ready to 
+avouch the exact contrary.  It is curious to think of the former 
+difference of opinion concerning Napoleon; and, in reading his 
+nephew's rapturous encomiums of him, one goes back to the days when 
+we ourselves were as loud and mad in his dispraise.  Who does not 
+remember his own personal hatred and horror, twenty-five years ago, 
+for the man whom we used to call the "bloody Corsican upstart and 
+assassin?"  What stories did we not believe of him?--what murders, 
+rapes, robberies, not lay to his charge?--we who were living within 
+a few miles of his territory, and might, by books and newspapers, 
+be made as well acquainted with his merits or demerits as any of 
+his own countrymen.
+
+Then was the age when the Idées Napoléoniennes might have passed 
+through many editions; for while we were thus outrageously bitter, 
+our neighbors were as extravagantly attached to him by a strange 
+infatuation--adored him like a god, whom we chose to consider as a 
+fiend; and vowed that, under his government, their nation had 
+attained its highest pitch of grandeur and glory.  In revenge there 
+existed in England (as is proved by a thousand authentic documents) 
+a monster so hideous, a tyrant so ruthless and bloody, that the 
+world's history cannot show his parallel.  This ruffian's name was, 
+during the early part of the French revolution, Pittetcobourg.  
+Pittetcobourg's emissaries were in every corner of France; 
+Pittetcobourg's gold chinked in the pockets of every traitor in 
+Europe; it menaced the life of the godlike Robespierre; it drove 
+into cellars and fits of delirium even the gentle philanthropist 
+Marat; it fourteen times caused the dagger to be lifted against the 
+bosom of the First Consul, Emperor, and King,--that first, great, 
+glorious, irresistible, cowardly, contemptible, bloody hero and 
+fiend, Bonaparte, before mentioned.
+
+On our side of the Channel we have had leisure, long since, to re-
+consider our verdict against Napoleon; though, to be sure, we have 
+not changed our opinion about Pittetcobourg.  After five-and-thirty 
+years all parties bear witness to his honesty, and speak with 
+affectionate reverence of his patriotism, his genius, and his 
+private virtue.  In France, however, or, at least among certain 
+parties in France, there has been no such modification of opinion.  
+With the Republicans, Pittetcobourg is Pittetcobourg still,--
+crafty, bloody, seeking whom he may devour; and perfide Albion more 
+perfidious than ever.  This hatred is the point of union between 
+the Republic and the Empire; it has been fostered ever since, and 
+must be continued by Prince Louis, if he would hope to conciliate 
+both parties.
+
+With regard to the Emperor, then, Prince Louis erects to his memory 
+as fine a monument as his wits can raise.  One need not say that 
+the imperial apologist's opinion should be received with the utmost 
+caution; for a man who has such a hero for an uncle may naturally 
+be proud of and partial to him; and when this nephew of the great 
+man would be his heir likewise, and, hearing his name, step also 
+into his imperial shoes, one may reasonably look for much 
+affectionate panegyric.  "The empire was the best of empires," 
+cries the Prince; and possibly it was; undoubtedly, the Prince 
+thinks it was; but he is the very last person who would convince a 
+man with the proper suspicious impartiality.  One remembers a 
+certain consultation of politicians which is recorded in the 
+Spelling-book; and the opinion of that patriotic sage who avowed 
+that, for a real blameless constitution, an impenetrable shield for 
+liberty, and cheap defence of nations, there was nothing like 
+leather.
+
+Let us examine some of the Prince's article.  If we may be allowed 
+humbly to express an opinion, his leather is not only quite 
+insufficient for those vast public purposes for which he destines 
+it, but is, moreover, and in itself, very BAD LEATHER.  The hides 
+are poor, small, unsound slips of skin; or, to drop this cobbling 
+metaphor, the style is not particularly brilliant, the facts not 
+very startling, and, as for the conclusions, one may differ with 
+almost every one of them.  Here is an extract from his first 
+chapter, "on governments in general:"--
+
+"I speak it with regret, I can see but two governments, at this 
+day, which fulfil the mission that Providence has confided to them; 
+they are the two colossi at the end of the world; one at the 
+extremity of the old world, the other at the extremity of the new.  
+Whilst our old European centre is as a volcano, consuming itself in 
+its crater, the two nations of the East and the West, march without 
+hesitation, towards perfection; the one under the will of a single 
+individual, the other under liberty.
+
+"Providence has confided to the United States of North America the 
+task of peopling and civilizing that immense territory which 
+stretches from the Atlantic to the South Sea, and from the North 
+Pole to the Equator.  The Government, which is only a simple 
+administration, has only hitherto been called upon to put in 
+practice the old adage, Laissez faire, laissez passer, in order to 
+favor that irresistible instinct which pushes the people of America 
+to the west.
+
+In Russia it is to the imperial dynasty that is owing all the vast 
+progress which, in a century and a half, has rescued that empire 
+from barbarism.  The imperial power must contend against all the 
+ancient prejudices of our old Europe: it must centralize, as far as 
+possible, all the powers of the state in the hands of one person, 
+in order to destroy the abuses which the feudal and communal 
+franchises have served to perpetuate.  The last alone can hope to 
+receive from it the improvements which it expects.
+
+"But thou, France of Henry IV., of Louis XIV., of Carnot, of 
+Napoleon--thou, who wert always for the west of Europe the source 
+of progress, who possessest in thyself the two great pillars of 
+empire, the genius for the arts of peace and the genius of war--
+hast thou no further mission to fulfil?  Wilt thou never cease to 
+waste thy force and energies in intestine struggles?  No; such 
+cannot be thy destiny: the day will soon come, when, to govern 
+thee, it will be necessary to understand that thy part is to place 
+in all treaties thy sword of Brennus on the side of civilization."
+
+These are the conclusions of the Prince's remarks upon governments 
+in general; and it must be supposed that the reader is very little 
+wiser at the end than at the beginning.  But two governments in the 
+world fulfil their mission: the one government, which is no 
+government; the other, which is a despotism.  The duty of France is 
+IN ALL TREATIES to place her sword of Brennus in the scale of 
+civilization.  Without quarrelling with the somewhat confused 
+language of the latter proposition, may we ask what, in heaven's 
+name, is the meaning of all the three?  What is this épée de 
+Brennus? and how is France to use it?  Where is the great source of 
+political truth, from which, flowing pure, we trace American 
+republicanism in one stream, Russian despotism in another?  Vastly 
+prosperous is the great republic, if you will: if dollars and cents 
+constitute happiness, there is plenty for all: but can any one, who 
+has read of the American doings in the late frontier troubles, and 
+the daily disputes on the slave question, praise the GOVERNMENT of 
+the States?--a Government which dares not punish homicide or arson 
+performed before its very eyes, and which the pirates of Texas and 
+the pirates of Canada can brave at their will?  There is no 
+government, but a prosperous anarchy; as the Prince's other 
+favorite government is a prosperous slavery.  What, then, is to be 
+the épée de Brennus government?  Is it to be a mixture of the two?  
+"Society," writes the Prince, axiomatically, "contains in itself 
+two principles--the one of progress and immortality, the other of 
+disease and disorganization."  No doubt; and as the one tends 
+towards liberty, so the other is only to be cured by order: and 
+then, with a singular felicity, Prince Louis picks us out a couple 
+of governments, in one of which the common regulating power is as 
+notoriously too weak, as it is in the other too strong, and talks 
+in rapturous terms of the manner in which they fulfil their 
+"providential mission!"
+
+From these considerations on things in general, the Prince conducts 
+us to Napoleon in particular, and enters largely into a discussion 
+of the merits of the imperial system.  Our author speaks of the 
+Emperor's advent in the following grandiose way:--
+
+"Napoleon, on arriving at the public stage, saw that his part was 
+to be the TESTAMENTARY EXECUTOR of the Revolution.  The destructive 
+fire of parties was extinct; and when the Revolution, dying, but 
+not vanquished, delegated to Napoleon the accomplishment of her 
+last will, she said to him, 'Establish upon solid bases the 
+principal result of my efforts.  Unite divided Frenchmen.  Defeat 
+feudal Europe that is leagued against me.  Cicatrize my wounds.  
+Enlighten the nations.  Execute that in width, which I have had to 
+perform in depth.  Be for Europe what I have been for France.  And, 
+even if you must water the tree of civilization with your blood--if 
+you must see your projects misunderstood, and your sons without a 
+country, wandering over the face of the earth, never abandon the 
+sacred cause of the French people.  Insure its triumph by all the 
+means which genius can discover and humanity approve.'
+
+"This grand mission Napoleon performed to the end.  His task was 
+difficult.  He had to place upon new principles a society still 
+boiling with hatred and revenge; and to use, for building up, the 
+same instruments which had been employed for pulling down.
+
+"The common lot of every new truth that arises, is to wound rather 
+than to convince--rather than to gain proselytes, to awaken fear.  
+For, oppressed as it long has been, it rushes forward with 
+additional force; having to encounter obstacles, it is compelled to 
+combat them, and overthrow them; until, at length, comprehended and 
+adopted by the generality, it becomes the basis of new social 
+order.
+
+"Liberty will follow the same march as the Christian religion.  
+Armed with death from the ancient society of Rome, it for a long 
+while excited the hatred and fear of the people.  At last, by force 
+of martyrdoms and persecutions, the religion of Christ penetrated 
+into the conscience and the soul; it soon had kings and armies at 
+its orders, and Constantine and Charlemagne bore it triumphant 
+throughout Europe.  Religion then laid down her arms of war.  It 
+laid open to all the principles of peace and order which it 
+contained; it became the prop of Government, as it was the 
+organizing element of society.  Thus will it be with liberty.  In 
+1793 it frightened people and sovereigns alike; then, having 
+clothed itself in a milder garb, IT INSINUATED ITSELF EVERYWHERE IN 
+THE TRAIN OF OUR BATTALIONS.  In 1815 all parties adopted its flag, 
+and armed themselves with its moral force--covered themselves with 
+its colors.  The adoption was not sincere, and liberty was soon 
+obliged to reassume its warlike accoutrements.  With the contest 
+their fears returned.  Let us hope that they will soon cease, and 
+that liberty will soon resume her peaceful standards, to quit them 
+no more.
+
+"The Emperor Napoleon contributed more than any one else towards 
+accelerating the reign of liberty, by saving the moral influence 
+of the revolution, and diminishing the fears which it imposed.  
+Without the Consulate and the Empire, the revolution would have 
+been only a grand drama, leaving grand revolutions but no traces: 
+the revolution would have been drowned in the counter-revolution.  
+The contrary, however, was the case.  Napoleon rooted the 
+revolution in France, and introduced, throughout Europe, the 
+principal benefits of the crisis of 1789.  To use his own words, 
+'He purified the revolution, he confirmed kings, and ennobled 
+people.'  He purified the revolution, in separating the truths 
+which it contained from the passions that, during its delirium, 
+disfigured it.  He ennobled the people in giving them the 
+consciousness of their force, and those institutions which raise 
+men in their own eyes.  The Emperor may be considered as the 
+Messiah of the new ideas; for--and we must confess it--in the 
+moments immediately succeeding a social revolution, it is not so 
+essential to put rigidly into practice all the propositions 
+resulting from the new theory, but to become master of the 
+regenerative genius, to identify one's self with the sentiments of 
+the people, and boldly to direct them towards the desired point.  
+To accomplish such a task YOUR FIBRE SHOULD RESPOND TO THAT OF THE 
+PEOPLE, as the Emperor said; you should feel like it, your 
+interests should be so intimately raised with its own, that you 
+should vanquish or fall together."
+
+Let us take breath after these big phrases,--grand round figures of 
+speech,--which, when put together, amount like certain other 
+combinations of round figures to exactly 0.  We shall not stop to 
+argue the merits and demerits of Prince Louis's notable comparison 
+between the Christian religion and the Imperial-revolutionary 
+system.  There are many blunders in the above extract as we read 
+it; blundering metaphors, blundering arguments, and blundering 
+assertions; but this is surely the grandest blunder of all; and one 
+wonders at the blindness of the legislator and historian who can 
+advance such a parallel.  And what are we to say of the legacy of 
+the dying revolution to Napoleon?  Revolutions do not die, and, on 
+their death-beds, making fine speeches, hand over their property to 
+young officers of artillery.  We have all read the history of his 
+rise.  The constitution of the year III. was carried.  Old men of 
+the Montagne, disguised royalists, Paris sections, PITTETCOBOURG, 
+above all, with his money-bags, thought that here was a fine 
+opportunity for a revolt, and opposed the new constitution in arms: 
+the new constitution had knowledge of a young officer who would not 
+hesitate to defend its cause, and who effectually beat the 
+majority.  The tale may be found in every account of the 
+revolution, and the rest of his story need not be told.  We know 
+every step that he took: we know how, by doses of cannon-balls 
+promptly administered, he cured the fever of the sections--that 
+fever which another camp-physician (Menou) declined to prescribe 
+for; we know how he abolished the Directory; and how the Consulship 
+came; and then the Empire; and then the disgrace, exile, and lonely 
+death.  Has not all this been written by historians in all 
+tongues?--by memoir-writing pages, chamberlains, marshals, lackeys, 
+secretaries, contemporaries, and ladies of honor?  Not a word of 
+miracle is there in all this narration; not a word of celestial 
+missions, or political Messiahs.  From Napoleon's rise to his fall, 
+the bayonet marches alongside of him: now he points it at the tails 
+of the scampering "five hundred,"--now he charges with it across 
+the bloody planks of Arcola--now he flies before it over the fatal 
+plain of Waterloo.
+
+Unwilling, however, as he may be to grant that there are any spots 
+in the character of his hero's government, the Prince is, 
+nevertheless, obliged to allow that such existed; that the 
+Emperor's manner of rule was a little more abrupt and dictatorial 
+than might possibly be agreeable.  For this the Prince has always 
+an answer ready--it is the same poor one that Napoleon uttered a 
+million of times to his companions in exile--the excuse of 
+necessity.  He WOULD have been very liberal, but that the people 
+were not fit for it; or that the cursed war prevented him--or any 
+other reason why.  His first duty, however, says his apologist, was 
+to form a general union of Frenchmen, and he set about his plan in 
+this wise:--
+
+"Let us not forget, that all which Napoleon undertook, in order to 
+create a general fusion, he performed without renouncing the 
+principles of the revolution.  He recalled the émigrés, without 
+touching upon the law by which their goods had been confiscated and 
+sold as public property.  He reestablished the Catholic religion at 
+the same time that he proclaimed the liberty of conscience, and 
+endowed equally the ministers of all sects.  He caused himself to 
+be consecrated by the Sovereign Pontiff, without conceding to the 
+Pope's demand any of the liberties of the Gallican church.  He 
+married a daughter of the Emperor of Austria, without abandoning 
+any of the rights of France to the conquests she had made.  He 
+reestablished noble titles, without attaching to them any 
+privileges or prerogatives, and these titles were conferred on all 
+ranks, on all services, on all professions.  Under the empire all 
+idea of caste was destroyed; no man ever thought of vaunting his 
+pedigree--no man ever was asked how he was born, but what he had 
+done.
+
+"The first quality of a people which aspires to liberal government, 
+is respect to the law.  Now, a law has no other power than lies in 
+the interest which each citizen has to defend or to contravene it.  
+In order to make a people respect the law, it was necessary that it 
+should be executed in the interest of all, and should consecrate 
+the principle of equality in all its extension.  It was necessary 
+to restore the prestige with which the Government had been formerly 
+invested, and to make the principles of the revolution take root in 
+the public manners.  At the commencement of a new society, it is 
+the legislator who makes or corrects the manners; later, it is the 
+manners which make the law, or preserve it from age to age intact."
+
+Some of these fusions are amusing.  No man in the empire was asked 
+how he was born, but what he had done; and, accordingly, as a man's 
+actions were sufficient to illustrate him, the Emperor took care to 
+make a host of new title-bearers, princes, dukes, barons, and what 
+not, whose rank has descended to their children.  He married a 
+princess of Austria; but, for all that, did not abandon his 
+conquests--perhaps not actually; but he abandoned his allies, and, 
+eventually, his whole kingdom.  Who does not recollect his answer 
+to the Poles, at the commencement of the Russian campaign?  But for 
+Napoleon's imperial father-in-law, Poland would have been a 
+kingdom, and his race, perhaps, imperial still.  Why was he to 
+fetch this princess out of Austria to make heirs for his throne?  
+Why did not the man of the people marry a girl of the people?  Why 
+must he have a Pope to crown him--half a dozen kings for brothers, 
+and a bevy of aides-de-camp dressed out like so many mountebanks 
+from Astley's, with dukes' coronets, and grand blue velvet 
+marshals' bâtons?  We have repeatedly his words for it.  He wanted 
+to create an aristocracy--another acknowledgment on his part of the 
+Republican dilemma--another apology for the revolutionary blunder.  
+To keep the republic within bounds, a despotism is necessary; to 
+rally round the despotism, an aristocracy must be created; and for 
+what have we been laboring all this while? for what have bastiles 
+been battered down, and king's heads hurled, as a gage of battle, 
+in the face of armed Europe?  To have a Duke of Otranto instead of 
+a Duke de la Tremouille, and Emperor Stork in place of King Log.  O 
+lame conclusion!  Is the blessed revolution which is prophesied for 
+us in England only to end in establishing a Prince Fergus O'Connor, 
+or a Cardinal Wade, or a Duke Daniel Whittle Harvey?  Great as 
+those patriots are, we love them better under their simple family 
+names, and scorn titles and coronets.
+
+At present, in France, the delicate matter of titles seems to be 
+better arranged, any gentleman, since the Revolution, being free to 
+adopt any one he may fix upon; and it appears that the Crown no 
+longer confers any patents of nobility, but contents itself with 
+saying, as in the case of M. de Pontois, the other day, "Le Roi 
+trouve convenable that you take the title of," &c.
+
+To execute the legacy of the revolution, then; to fulfil his 
+providential mission; to keep his place,--in other words, for the 
+simplest are always the best,--to keep his place, and to keep his 
+Government in decent order, the Emperor was obliged to establish a 
+military despotism, to re-establish honors and titles; it was 
+necessary, as the Prince confesses, to restore the old prestige of 
+the Government, in order to make the people respect it; and he 
+adds--a truth which one hardly would expect from him,--"At the 
+commencement of a new society, it is the legislator who makes and 
+corrects the manners; later, it is the manners which preserve 
+the laws."  Of course, and here is the great risk that all 
+revolutionizing people run--they must tend to despotism; "they must 
+personify themselves in a man," is the Prince's phrase; and, 
+according as is his temperament or disposition--according as he is 
+a Cromwell, a Washington, or a Napoleon--the revolution becomes 
+tyranny or freedom, prospers or falls.
+
+Somewhere in the St. Helena memorials, Napoleon reports a message 
+of his to the Pope.  "Tell the Pope," he says to an archbishop, "to 
+remember that I have six hundred thousand armed Frenchmen, qui 
+marcheront avec moi, pour moi, et comme moi."  And this is the 
+legacy of the revolution, the advancement of freedom!  A hundred 
+volumes of imperial special pleading will not avail against such 
+a speech as this--one so insolent, and at the same time so 
+humiliating, which gives unwittingly the whole of the Emperor's 
+progress, strength, and weakness.  The six hundred thousand armed 
+Frenchmen were used up, and the whole fabric falls; the six hundred 
+thousand are reduced to sixty thousand, and straightway all the 
+rest of the fine imperial scheme vanishes: the miserable senate, so 
+crawling and abject but now, becomes of a sudden endowed with a 
+wondrous independence; the miserable sham nobles, sham empress, 
+sham kings, dukes, princes, chamberlains, pack up their plumes and 
+embroideries, pounce upon what money and plate they can lay their 
+hands on, and when the allies appear before Paris, when for courage 
+and manliness there is yet hope, when with fierce marches hastening 
+to the relief of his capital, bursting through ranks upon ranks of 
+the enemy, and crushing or scattering them from the path of his 
+swift and victorious despair, the Emperor at last is at home,--
+where are the great dignitaries and the lieutenant-generals of the 
+empire?  Where is Maria Louisa, the Empress Eagle, with her little 
+callow king of Rome?  Is she going to defend her nest and her 
+eaglet?  Not she.  Empress-queen, lieutenant-general, and court 
+dignitaries, are off on the wings of all the winds--profligati 
+sunt, they are away with the money-bags, and Louis Stanislas Xavier 
+rolls into the palace of his fathers.
+
+With regard to Napoleon's excellences as an administrator, a 
+legislator, a constructor of public works, and a skilful financier, 
+his nephew speaks with much diffuse praise, and few persons, we 
+suppose, will be disposed to contradict him.  Whether the Emperor 
+composed his famous code, or borrowed it, is of little importance; 
+but he established it, and made the law equal for every man in 
+France except one.  His vast public works and vaster wars were 
+carried on without new loans or exorbitant taxes; it was only the 
+blood and liberty of the people that were taxed, and we shall want 
+a better advocate than Prince Louis to show us that these were not 
+most unnecessarily and lavishly thrown away.  As for the former and 
+material improvements, it is not necessary to confess here that a 
+despotic energy can effect such far more readily than a Government 
+of which the strength is diffused in many conflicting parties.  No 
+doubt, if we could create a despotical governing machine, a steam 
+autocrat,--passionless, untiring, and supreme,--we should advance 
+further, and live more at ease than under any other form of 
+government.  Ministers might enjoy their pensions and follow their 
+own devices; Lord John might compose histories or tragedies at his 
+leisure, and Lord Palmerston, instead of racking his brains to 
+write leading articles for Cupid, might crown his locks with 
+flowers, and sing [Greek text omitted], his natural Anacreontics; 
+but alas! not so: if the despotic Government has its good side, 
+Prince Louis Napoleon must acknowledge that it has its bad, and it 
+is for this that the civilized world is compelled to substitute for 
+it something more orderly and less capricious.  Good as the 
+Imperial Government might have been, it must be recollected, too, 
+that since its first fall, both the Emperor and his admirer and 
+would-be successor have had their chance of re-establishing it.  
+"Fly from steeple to steeple" the eagles of the former did 
+actually, and according to promise perch for a while on the towers 
+of Notre Dame.  We know the event: if the fate of war declared 
+against the Emperor, the country declared against him too; and, 
+with old Lafayette for a mouthpiece, the representatives of the 
+nation did, in a neat speech, pronounce themselves in permanence, 
+but spoke no more of the Emperor than if he had never been.  
+Thereupon the Emperor proclaimed his son the Emperor Napoleon II.  
+"L'Empereur est mort, vive l'Empereur!" shouted Prince Lucien.  
+Psha! not a soul echoed the words: the play was played, and as for 
+old Lafayette and his "permanent" representatives, a corporal with 
+a hammer nailed up the door of their spouting-club, and once more 
+Louis Stanislas Xavier rolled back to the bosom of his people.
+
+In like manner Napoleon III. returned from exile, and made his 
+appearance on the frontier.  His eagle appeared at Strasburg, and 
+from Strasburg advanced to the capital; but it arrived at Paris 
+with a keeper, and in a post-chaise; whence, by the orders of the 
+sovereign, it was removed to the American shores, and there 
+magnanimously let loose.  Who knows, however, how soon it may be on 
+the wing again, and what a flight it will take?
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF MARY ANCEL.
+
+
+"Go, my nephew," said old Father Jacob to me, "and complete thy 
+studies at Strasburg: Heaven surely hath ordained thee for the 
+ministry in these times of trouble, and my excellent friend 
+Schneider will work out the divine intention."
+
+Schneider was an old college friend of uncle Jacob's, was a 
+Benedictine monk, and a man famous for his learning; as for me, 
+I was at that time my uncle's chorister, clerk, and sacristan;
+I swept the church, chanted the prayers with my shrill treble, and 
+swung the great copper incense-pot on Sundays and feasts; and I 
+toiled over the Fathers for the other days of the week.
+
+The old gentleman said that my progress was prodigious, and, 
+without vanity, I believe he was right, for I then verily 
+considered that praying was my vocation, and not fighting, as 
+I have found since.
+
+You would hardly conceive (said the Captain, swearing a great oath) 
+how devout and how learned I was in those days; I talked Latin 
+faster than my own beautiful patois of Alsacian French; I could 
+utterly overthrow in argument every Protestant (heretics we called 
+them) parson in the neighborhood, and there was a confounded 
+sprinkling of these unbelievers in our part of the country.  I 
+prayed half a dozen times a day; I fasted thrice in a week; and, as 
+for penance, I used to scourge my little sides, till they had no 
+more feeling than a peg-top: such was the godly life I led at my 
+uncle Jacob's in the village of Steinbach.
+
+Our family had long dwelt in this place, and a large farm and a 
+pleasant house were then in the possession of another uncle--uncle 
+Edward.  He was the youngest of the three sons of my grandfather; 
+but Jacob, the elder, had shown a decided vocation for the church, 
+from, I believe, the age of three, and now was by no means tired of 
+it at sixty.  My father, who was to have inherited the paternal 
+property, was, as I hear, a terrible scamp and scapegrace, 
+quarrelled with his family, and disappeared altogether, living and 
+dying at Paris; so far we knew through my mother, who came, poor 
+woman, with me, a child of six months, on her bosom, was refused 
+all shelter by my grandfather, but was housed and kindly cared for 
+by my good uncle Jacob.
+
+Here she lived for about seven years, and the old gentleman, when 
+she died, wept over her grave a great deal more than I did, who was 
+then too young to mind anything but toys or sweetmeats.
+
+During this time my grandfather was likewise carried off: he left, 
+as I said, the property to his son Edward, with a small proviso in 
+his will that something should be done for me, his grandson.
+
+Edward was himself a widower, with one daughter, Mary, about three 
+years older than I, and certainly she was the dearest little 
+treasure with which Providence ever blessed a miserly father; by 
+the time she was fifteen, five farmers, three lawyers, twelve 
+Protestant parsons, and a lieutenant of Dragoons had made her 
+offers: it must not be denied that she was an heiress as well as a 
+beauty, which, perhaps, had something to do with the love of these 
+gentlemen.  However, Mary declared that she intended to live 
+single, turned away her lovers one after another, and devoted 
+herself to the care of her father.
+
+Uncle Jacob was as fond of her as he was of any saint or martyr.  
+As for me, at the mature age of twelve I had made a kind of 
+divinity of her, and when we sang "Ave Maria" on Sundays I could 
+not refrain from turning to her, where she knelt, blushing and 
+praying and looking like an angel, as she was.  Besides her beauty, 
+Mary had a thousand good qualities; she could play better on the 
+harpsichord, she could dance more lightly, she could make better 
+pickles and puddings, than any girl in Alsace; there was not a want 
+or a fancy of the old hunks her father, or a wish of mine or my 
+uncle's, that she would not gratify if she could; as for herself, 
+the sweet soul had neither wants nor wishes except to see us happy.
+
+I could talk to you for a year of all the pretty kindnesses that 
+she would do for me; how, when she found me of early mornings among 
+my books, her presence "would cast a light upon the day;" how she 
+used to smooth and fold my little surplice, and embroider me caps 
+and gowns for high feast-days; how she used to bring flowers for 
+the altar, and who could deck it so well as she?  But sentiment 
+does not come glibly from under a grizzled moustache, so I will 
+drop it, if you please.
+
+Amongst other favors she showed me, Mary used to be particularly 
+fond of kissing me: it was a thing I did not so much value in those 
+days, but I found that the more I grew alive to the extent of the 
+benefit, the less she would condescend to confer it on me; till at 
+last, when I was about fourteen, she discontinued it altogether, of 
+her own wish at least; only sometimes I used to be rude, and take 
+what she had now become so mighty unwilling to give.
+
+I was engaged in a contest of this sort one day with Mary, when, 
+just as I was about to carry off a kiss from her cheek, I was 
+saluted with a staggering slap on my own, which was bestowed by 
+uncle Edward, and sent me reeling some yards down the garden.
+
+The old gentleman, whose tongue was generally as close as his 
+purse, now poured forth a flood of eloquence which quite astonished 
+me.  I did not think that so much was to be said on any subject as 
+he managed to utter on one, and that was abuse of me; he stamped, 
+he swore, he screamed; and then, from complimenting me, he turned 
+to Mary, and saluted her in a manner equally forcible and 
+significant; she, who was very much frightened at the commencement 
+of the scene, grew very angry at the coarse words he used, and the 
+wicked motives he imputed to her.
+
+"The child is but fourteen," she said; "he is your own nephew, and 
+a candidate for holy orders:--father, it is a shame that you should 
+thus speak of me, your daughter, or of one of his holy profession."
+
+I did not particularly admire this speech myself, but it had an 
+effect on my uncle, and was the cause of the words with which this 
+history commences.  The old gentleman persuaded his brother that I 
+must be sent to Strasburg, and there kept until my studies for the 
+church were concluded.  I was furnished with a letter to my uncle's 
+old college chum, Professor Schneider, who was to instruct me in 
+theology and Greek.
+
+I was not sorry to see Strasburg, of the wonders of which I had 
+heard so much; but felt very loth as the time drew near when I must 
+quit my pretty cousin, and my good old uncle.  Mary and I managed, 
+however, a parting walk, in which a number of tender things were 
+said on both sides.  I am told that you Englishmen consider it 
+cowardly to cry; as for me, I wept and roared incessantly: when 
+Mary squeezed me, for the last time, the tears came out of me as if 
+I had been neither more nor less than a great wet sponge.  My 
+cousin's eyes were stoically dry; her ladyship had a part to play, 
+and it would have been wrong for her to be in love with a young 
+chit of fourteen--so she carried herself with perfect coolness, as 
+if there was nothing the matter.  I should not have known that she 
+cared for me, had it not been for a letter which she wrote me a 
+month afterwards--THEN, nobody was by, and the consequence was that 
+the letter was half washed away with her weeping; if she had used a 
+watering-pot the thing could not have been better done.
+
+Well, I arrived at Strasburg--a dismal, old-fashioned, rickety town 
+in those days--and straightway presented myself and letter at 
+Schneider's door; over it was written--
+
+
+     COMITÉ DE SALUT PUBLIC.
+
+
+Would you believe it?  I was so ignorant a young fellow, that I had 
+no idea of the meaning of the words; however, I entered the 
+citizen's room without fear, and sat down in his ante-chamber until 
+I could be admitted to see him.
+
+Here I found very few indications of his reverence's profession; 
+the walls were hung round with portraits of Robespierre, Marat, and 
+the like; a great bust of Mirabeau, mutilated, with the word 
+Traître underneath; lists and republican proclamations, tobacco-
+pipes and fire-arms.  At a deal-table, stained with grease and 
+wine, sat a gentleman, with a huge pigtail dangling down to that 
+part of his person which immediately succeeds his back, and a red 
+nightcap, containing a TRICOLOR cockade as large as a pancake.  He 
+was smoking a short pipe, reading a little book, and sobbing as if 
+his heart would break.  Every now and then he would make brief 
+remarks upon the personages or the incidents of his book, by which 
+I could judge that he was a man of the very keenest sensibilities--
+"Ah, brigand!"  "O malheureuse!"  "O Charlotte, Charlotte!"  The 
+work which this gentleman was perusing is called "The Sorrows of 
+Werter;" it was all the rage, in those days, and my friend was only 
+following the fashion.  I asked him if I could see Father 
+Schneider? he turned towards me a hideous, pimpled face, which I 
+dream of now at forty years' distance.
+
+"Father who?" said he.  "Do you imagine that citizen Schneider has 
+not thrown off the absurd mummery of priesthood?  If you were a 
+little older you would go to prison for calling him Father 
+Schneider--many a man has died for less;" and he pointed to a 
+picture of a guillotine, which was hanging in the room.
+
+I was in amazement.
+
+"What is he?  Is he not a teacher of Greek, an abbé, a monk, until 
+monasteries were abolished, the learned editor of the songs of 
+'Anacreon?'"
+
+"He WAS all this," replied my grim friend; "he is now a Member of 
+the Committee of Public Safety, and would think no more of ordering 
+your head off than of drinking this tumbler of beer."
+
+He swallowed, himself, the frothy liquid, and then proceeded to 
+give me the history of the man to whom my uncle had sent me for 
+instruction.
+
+Schneider was born in 1756: was a student at Würzburg, and 
+afterwards entered a convent, where he remained nine years.  He 
+here became distinguished for his learning and his talents as a 
+preacher, and became chaplain to Duke Charles of Würtemberg.  The 
+doctrines of the Illuminati began about this time to spread in 
+Germany, and Schneider speedily joined the sect.  He had been a 
+professor of Greek at Cologne; and being compelled, on account of 
+his irregularity, to give up his chair, he came to Strasburg at the 
+commencement of the French Revolution, and acted for some time a 
+principal part as a revolutionary agent at Strasburg.
+
+["Heaven knows what would have happened to me had I continued long 
+under his tuition!" said the Captain.  "I owe the preservation of 
+my morals entirely to my entering the army.  A man, sir, who is a 
+soldier, has very little time to be wicked; except in the case of a 
+siege and the sack of a town, when a little license can offend 
+nobody."]
+
+By the time that my friend had concluded Schneider's biography, we 
+had grown tolerably intimate, and I imparted to him (with that 
+experience so remarkable in youth) my whole history--my course of 
+studies, my pleasant country life, the names and qualities of my 
+dear relations, and my occupations in the vestry before religion 
+was abolished by order of the Republic.  In the course of my speech 
+I recurred so often to the name of my cousin Mary, that the 
+gentleman could not fail to perceive what a tender place she had in 
+my heart.
+
+Then we reverted to "The Sorrows of Werter," and discussed the 
+merits of that sublime performance.  Although I had before felt 
+some misgivings about my new acquaintance, my heart now quite 
+yearned towards him.  He talked about love and sentiment in a 
+manner which made me recollect that I was in love myself; and you 
+know that when a man is in that condition, his taste is not very 
+refined, any maudlin trash of prose or verse appearing sublime to 
+him, provided it correspond, in some degree, with his own 
+situation.
+
+"Candid youth!" cried my unknown, "I love to hear thy innocent 
+story and look on thy guileless face.  There is, alas! so much of 
+the contrary in this world, so much terror and crime and blood, 
+that we who mingle with it are only too glad to forget it.  Would 
+that we could shake off our cares as men, and be boys, as thou art, 
+again!"
+
+Here my friend began to weep once more, and fondly shook my hand.  
+I blessed my stars that I had, at the very outset of my career, met 
+with one who was so likely to aid me.  What a slanderous world it 
+is, thought I; the people in our village call these Republicans 
+wicked and bloody-minded; a lamb could not be more tender than this 
+sentimental bottle-nosed gentleman!  The worthy man then gave me to 
+understand that he held a place under Government.  I was busy in 
+endeavoring to discover what his situation might be, when the door 
+of the next apartment opened, and Schneider made his appearance.
+
+At first he did not notice me, but he advanced to my new 
+acquaintance, and gave him, to my astonishment, something very like 
+a blow.
+
+"You drunken, talking fool," he said, "you are always after your 
+time.  Fourteen people are cooling their heels yonder, waiting 
+until you have finished your beer and your sentiment!"
+
+My friend slunk muttering out of the room.
+
+"That fellow," said Schneider, turning to me, "is our public 
+executioner: a capital hand too if he would but keep decent time; 
+but the brute is always drunk, and blubbering over 'The Sorrows of 
+Werter!'"
+
+
+I know not whether it was his old friendship for my uncle, or my 
+proper merits, which won the heart of this the sternest ruffian of 
+Robespierre's crew; but certain it is, that he became strangely 
+attached to me, and kept me constantly about his person.  As for 
+the priesthood and the Greek, they were of course very soon out of 
+the question.  The Austrians were on our frontier; every day 
+brought us accounts of battles won; and the youth of Strasburg, and 
+of all France, indeed, were bursting with military ardor.  As for 
+me, I shared the general mania, and speedily mounted a cockade as 
+large as that of my friend, the executioner.
+
+The occupations of this worthy were unremitting.  Saint Just, who 
+had come down from Paris to preside over our town, executed the 
+laws and the aristocrats with terrible punctuality; and Schneider 
+used to make country excursions in search of offenders with this 
+fellow, as a provost-marshal, at his back.  In the meantime, having 
+entered my sixteenth year, and being a proper lad of my age, I had 
+joined a regiment of cavalry, and was scampering now after the 
+Austrians who menaced us, and now threatening the Emigrés, who were 
+banded at Coblentz.  My love for my dear cousin increased as my 
+whiskers grew; and when I was scarcely seventeen, I thought myself 
+man enough to marry her, and to cut the throat of any one who 
+should venture to say me nay.
+
+I need not tell you that during my absence at Strasburg, great 
+changes had occurred in our little village, and somewhat of the 
+revolutionary rage had penetrated even to that quiet and distant 
+place.  The hideous "Fête of the Supreme Being" had been celebrated 
+at Paris; the practice of our ancient religion was forbidden; its 
+professors were most of them in concealment, or in exile, or had 
+expiated on the scaffold their crime of Christianity.  In our poor 
+village my uncle's church was closed, and he, himself, an inmate in 
+my brother's house, only owing his safety to his great popularity 
+among his former flock, and the influence of Edward Ancel.
+
+The latter had taken in the Revolution a somewhat prominent part; 
+that is, he had engaged in many contracts for the army, attended 
+the clubs regularly, corresponded with the authorities of his 
+department, and was loud in his denunciations of the aristocrats in 
+the neighborhood.  But owing, perhaps, to the German origin of the 
+peasantry, and their quiet and rustic lives, the revolutionary fury 
+which prevailed in the cities had hardly reached the country 
+people.  The occasional visit of a commissary from Paris or 
+Strasburg served to keep the flame alive, and to remind the rural 
+swains of the existence of a Republic in France.
+
+Now and then, when I could gain a week's leave of absence, I 
+returned to the village, and was received with tolerable politeness 
+by my uncle, and with a warmer feeling by his daughter.
+
+I won't describe to you the progress of our love, or the wrath of 
+my uncle Edward, when he discovered that it still continued.  He 
+swore and he stormed; he locked Mary into her chamber, and vowed 
+that he would withdraw the allowance he made me, if ever I ventured 
+near her.  His daughter, he said, should never marry a hopeless, 
+penniless subaltern; and Mary declared she would not marry without 
+his consent.  What had I to do?--to despair and to leave her.  As 
+for my poor uncle Jacob, he had no counsel to give me, and, indeed, 
+no spirit left: his little church was turned into a stable, his 
+surplice torn off his shoulders, and he was only too lucky in 
+keeping HIS HEAD on them.  A bright thought struck him: suppose you 
+were to ask the advice of my old friend Schneider regarding this 
+marriage? he has ever been your friend, and may help you now as 
+before.
+
+(Here the Captain paused a little.)  You may fancy (continued he) 
+that it was droll advice of a reverend gentleman like uncle Jacob 
+to counsel me in this manner, and to bid me make friends with such 
+a murderous cut-throat as Schneider; but we thought nothing of it 
+in those days; guillotining was as common as dancing, and a man was 
+only thought the better patriot the more severe he might be.  I 
+departed forthwith to Strasburg, and requested the vote and 
+interest of the Citizen President of the Committee of Public 
+Safety.
+
+He heard me with a great deal of attention.  I described to him 
+most minutely the circumstance, expatiated upon the charms of my 
+dear Mary, and painted her to him from head to foot.  Her golden 
+hair and her bright blushing cheeks, her slim waist and her 
+tripping tiny feet; and furthermore, I added that she possessed a 
+fortune which ought, by rights, to be mine, but for the miserly old 
+father.  "Curse him for an aristocrat!" concluded I, in my wrath.
+
+As I had been discoursing about Mary's charms Schneider listened 
+with much complacency and attention: when I spoke about her 
+fortune, his interest redoubled; and when I called her father an 
+aristocrat, the worthy ex-Jesuit gave a grin of satisfaction, which 
+was really quite terrible.  O fool that I was to trust him so far!
+
+
+The very same evening an officer waited upon me with the following 
+note from Saint Just:--
+
+
+"STRASBURG, Fifth year of the Republic, one and indivisible, 11 
+Ventose.
+
+"The citizen Pierre Ancel is to leave Strasburg within two hours, 
+and to carry the enclosed despatches to the President of the 
+Committee of Public Safety at Paris.  The necessary leave of 
+absence from his military duties has been provided.  Instant 
+punishment will follow the slightest delay on the road.
+
+Salut et Fraternité."
+
+
+There was no choice but obedience, and off I sped on my weary way 
+to the capital.
+
+As I was riding out of the Paris gate I met an equipage which I 
+knew to be that of Schneider.  The ruffian smiled at me as I 
+passed, and wished me a bon voyage.  Behind his chariot came a 
+curious machine, or cart; a great basket, three stout poles, and 
+several planks, all painted red, were lying in this vehicle, on the 
+top of which was seated my friend with the big cockade.  It was the 
+PORTABLE GUILLOTINE which Schneider always carried with him on his 
+travels.  The bourreau was reading "The Sorrows of Werter," and 
+looked as sentimental as usual.
+
+I will not speak of my voyage in order to relate to you 
+Schneider's.  My story had awakened the wretch's curiosity and 
+avarice, and he was determined that such a prize as I had shown my 
+cousin to be should fall into no hands but his own.  No sooner, in 
+fact, had I quitted his room than he procured the order for my 
+absence, and was on the way to Steinbach as I met him.
+
+The journey is not a very long one; and on the next day my uncle 
+Jacob was surprised by receiving a message that the citizen 
+Schneider was in the village, and was coming to greet his old 
+friend.  Old Jacob was in an ecstasy, for he longed to see his 
+college acquaintance, and he hoped also that Schneider had come 
+into that part of the country upon the marriage-business of your 
+humble servant.  Of course Mary was summoned to give her best 
+dinner, and wear her best frock; and her father made ready to 
+receive the new State dignitary.
+
+Schneider's carriage speedily rolled into the court-yard, and 
+Schneider's CART followed, as a matter of course.  The ex-priest 
+only entered the house; his companion remaining with the horses to 
+dine in private.  Here was a most touching meeting between him and 
+Jacob.  They talked over their old college pranks and successes; 
+they capped Greek verses, and quoted ancient epigrams upon their 
+tutors, who had been dead since the Seven Years' War.  Mary 
+declared it was quite touching to listen to the merry friendly talk 
+of these two old gentlemen.
+
+After the conversation had continued for a time in this strain, 
+Schneider drew up all of a sudden, and said quietly, that he had 
+come on particular and unpleasant business--hinting about 
+troublesome times, spies, evil reports, and so forth.  Then he 
+called uncle Edward aside, and had with him a long and earnest 
+conversation: so Jacob went out and talked with Schneider's FRIEND; 
+they speedily became very intimate, for the ruffian detailed all 
+the circumstances of his interview with me.  When he returned into 
+the house, some time after this pleasing colloquy, he found the 
+tone of the society strangely altered.  Edward Ancel, pale as a 
+sheet, trembling, and crying for mercy; poor Mary weeping; and 
+Schneider pacing energetically about the apartment, raging about 
+the rights of man, the punishment of traitors, and the one and 
+indivisible republic.
+
+"Jacob," he said, as my uncle entered the room, "I was willing, for 
+the sake of our old friendship, to forget the crimes of your 
+brother.  He is a known and dangerous aristocrat; he holds 
+communications with the enemy on the frontier; he is a possessor of 
+great and ill-gotten wealth, of which he has plundered the 
+Republic.  Do you know," said he, turning to Edward Ancel, "where 
+the least of these crimes, or the mere suspicion of them, would 
+lead you?"
+
+Poor Edward sat trembling in his chair, and answered not a word.  
+He knew full well how quickly, in this dreadful time, punishment 
+followed suspicion; and, though guiltless of all treason with the 
+enemy, perhaps he was aware that, in certain contracts with the 
+Government, he had taken to himself a more than patriotic share of 
+profit.
+
+"Do you know," resumed Schneider, in a voice of thunder, "for what 
+purpose I came hither, and by whom I am accompanied?  I am the 
+administrator of the justice of the Republic.  The life of yourself 
+and your family is in my hands: yonder man, who follows me, is the 
+executor of the law; he has rid the nation of hundreds of wretches 
+like yourself.  A single word from me, and your doom is sealed 
+without hope, and your last hour is come.  Ho! Gregoire!" shouted 
+he; "is all ready?"
+
+Gregoire replied from the court, "I can put up the machine in half 
+an hour.  Shall I go down to the village and call the troops and 
+the law people?"
+
+"Do you hear him?" said Schneider.  "The guillotine is in the 
+court-yard; your name is on my list, and I have witnesses to prove 
+your crime.  Have you a word in your defence?"
+
+Not a word came; the old gentleman was dumb; but his daughter, who 
+did not give way to his terror, spoke for him.
+
+"You cannot, sir," said she, "although you say it, FEEL that my 
+father is guilty; you would not have entered our house thus alone 
+if you had thought it.  You threaten him in this manner because you 
+have something to ask and to gain from us: what is it, citizen?--
+tell us how much you value our lives, and what sum we are to pay 
+for our ransom?"
+
+"Sum!" said uncle Jacob; "he does not want money of us: my old 
+friend, my college chum, does not come hither to drive bargains 
+with anybody belonging to Jacob Ancel?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir, no, you can't want money of us," shrieked Edward; "we 
+are the poorest people of the village: ruined, Monsieur Schneider, 
+ruined in the cause of the Republic."
+
+"Silence, father," said my brave Mary; "this man wants a PRICE: he 
+comes, with his worthy friend yonder, to frighten us, not to kill 
+us.  If we die, he cannot touch a sou of our money; it is 
+confiscated to the State.  Tell us, sir, what is the price of our 
+safety?"
+
+Schneider smiled, and bowed with perfect politeness.
+
+"Mademoiselle Marie," he said, "is perfectly correct in her 
+surmise.  I do not want the life of this poor drivelling old man: 
+my intentions are much more peaceable, be assured.  It rests 
+entirely with this accomplished young lady (whose spirit I like, 
+and whose ready wit I admire), whether the business between us 
+shall be a matter of love or death.  I humbly offer myself, citizen 
+Ancel, as a candidate for the hand of your charming daughter.  Her 
+goodness, her beauty, and the large fortune which I know you intend 
+to give her, would render her a desirable match for the proudest 
+man in the republic, and, I am sure, would make me the happiest."
+
+"This must be a jest, Monsieur Schneider," said Mary, trembling, 
+and turning deadly pale: "you cannot mean this; you do not know me: 
+you never heard of me until to-day."
+
+"Pardon me, belle dame," replied he; "your cousin Pierre has often 
+talked to me of your virtues; indeed, it was by his special 
+suggestion that I made the visit."
+
+"It is false!--it is a base and cowardly lie!" exclaimed she (for 
+the young lady's courage was up),--"Pierre never could have 
+forgotten himself and me so as to offer me to one like you.  You 
+come here with a lie on your lips--a lie against my father, to 
+swear his life away, against my dear cousin's honor and love.  It 
+is useless now to deny it: father, I love Pierre Ancel; I will 
+marry no other but him--no, though our last penny were paid to this 
+man as the price of our freedom."
+
+Schneider's only reply to this was a call to his friend Gregoire.
+
+"Send down to the village for the maire and some gendarmes; and 
+tell your people to make ready."
+
+"Shall I put THE MACHINE up?" shouted he of the sentimental turn.
+
+"You hear him," said Schneider; "Marie Ancel, you may decide the 
+fate of your father.  I shall return in a few hours," concluded he, 
+"and will then beg to know your decision."
+
+The advocate of the rights of man then left the apartment, and left 
+the family, as you may imagine, in no very pleasant mood.
+
+Old uncle Jacob, during the few minutes which had elapsed in the 
+enactment of this strange scene, sat staring wildly at Schneider, 
+and holding Mary on his knees: the poor little thing had fled to 
+him for protection, and not to her father, who was kneeling almost 
+senseless at the window, gazing at the executioner and his hideous 
+preparations.  The instinct of the poor girl had not failed her; 
+she knew that Jacob was her only protector, if not of her life--
+heaven bless him!--of her honor.  "Indeed," the old man said, in a 
+stout voice, "this must never be, my dearest child--you must not 
+marry this man.  If it be the will of Providence that we fall, we 
+shall have at least the thought to console us that we die innocent.  
+Any man in France at a time like this, would be a coward and 
+traitor if he feared to meet the fate of the thousand brave and 
+good who have preceded us."
+
+"Who speaks of dying?" said Edward.  "You, Brother Jacob?--you 
+would not lay that poor girl's head on the scaffold, or mine, your 
+dear brother's.  You will not let us die, Mary; you will not, for a 
+small sacrifice, bring your poor old father into danger?"
+
+Mary made no answer.  "Perhaps," she said, "there is time for 
+escape: he is to be here but in two hours; in two hours we may be 
+safe, in concealment, or on the frontier."  And she rushed to the 
+door of the chamber, as if she would have instantly made the 
+attempt: two gendarmes were at the door.  "We have orders, 
+Mademoiselle," they said, "to allow no one to leave this apartment 
+until the return of the citizen Schneider."
+
+Alas! all hope of escape was impossible.  Mary became quite silent 
+for a while; she would not speak to uncle Jacob; and, in reply to 
+her father's eager questions, she only replied, coldly, that she 
+would answer Schneider when he arrived.
+
+The two dreadful hours passed away only too quickly; and, punctual 
+to his appointment, the ex-monk appeared.  Directly he entered, 
+Mary advanced to him, and said, calmly,--
+
+"Sir, I could not deceive you if I said that I freely accepted the 
+offer which you have made me.  I will be your wife; but I tell you 
+that I love another; and that it is only to save the lives of those 
+two old men that I yield my person up to you."
+
+Schneider bowed, and said,--
+
+"It is bravely spoken.  I like your candor--your beauty.  As for 
+the love, excuse me for saying that is a matter of total 
+indifference.  I have no doubt, however, that it will come as soon 
+as your feelings in favor of the young gentleman, your cousin, have 
+lost their present fervor.  That engaging young man has, at 
+present, another mistress--Glory.  He occupies, I believe, the 
+distinguished post of corporal in a regiment which is about to 
+march to--Perpignan, I believe."
+
+It was, in fact, Monsieur Schneider’s polite intention to banish 
+me as far as possible from the place of my birth; and he had, 
+accordingly, selected the Spanish frontier as the spot where I was 
+to display my future military talents.
+
+Mary gave no answer to this sneer: she seemed perfectly resigned 
+and calm: she only said,--
+
+"I must make, however, some conditions regarding our proposed 
+marriage, which a gentleman of Monsieur Schneider’s gallantry 
+cannot refuse."
+
+"Pray command me," replied the husband elect.  "Fair lady, you know 
+I am your slave."
+
+"You occupy a distinguished political rank, citizen representative,"
+said she; "and we in our village are likewise known and beloved.  I
+should be ashamed, I confess, to wed you here; for our people would
+wonder at the sudden marriage, and imply that it was only by
+compulsion that I gave you my hand.  Let us, then, perform this
+ceremony at Strasburg, before the public authorities of the city,
+with the state and solemnity which befits the marriage of one of the
+chief men of the Republic."
+
+"Be it so, madam," he answered, and gallantly proceeded to embrace 
+his bride.
+
+Mary did not shrink from this ruffian’s kiss; nor did she reply 
+when poor old Jacob, who sat sobbing in a corner, burst out, and 
+said,--
+
+"O Mary, Mary, I did not think this of thee!"
+
+"Silence, brother!" hastily said Edward; "my good son-in-law will 
+pardon your ill-humor."
+
+I believe uncle Edward in his heart was pleased at the notion of 
+the marriage; he only cared for money and rank, and was little 
+scrupulous as to the means of obtaining them.
+
+The matter then was finally arranged; and presently, after 
+Schneider had transacted the affairs which brought him into that 
+part of the country, the happy bridal party set forward for 
+Strasburg.  Uncles Jacob and Edward occupied the back seat of the 
+old family carriage, and the young bride and bridegroom (he was 
+nearly Jacob’s age) were seated majestically in front.  Mary has 
+often since talked to me of this dreadful journey.  She said she 
+wondered at the scrupulous politeness of Schneider during the 
+route; nay, that at another period she could have listened to and 
+admired the singular talent of this man, his great learning, his 
+fancy, and wit; but her mind was bent upon other things, and the 
+poor girl firmly thought that her last day was come.
+
+In the meantime, by a blessed chance, I had not ridden three 
+leagues from Strasburg, when the officer of a passing troop of a 
+cavalry regiment, looking at the beast on which I was mounted, was 
+pleased to take a fancy to it, and ordered me, in an authoritative 
+tone, to descend, and to give up my steed for the benefit of the 
+Republic.  I represented to him, in vain, that I was a soldier, 
+like himself, and the bearer of despatches to Paris.  "Fool!" he 
+said; "do you think they would send despatches by a man who can 
+ride at best but ten leagues a day?"  And the honest soldier was so 
+wroth at my supposed duplicity, that he not only confiscated my 
+horse, but my saddle, and the little portmanteau which contained 
+the chief part of my worldly goods and treasure.  I had nothing 
+for it but to dismount, and take my way on foot back again to 
+Strasburg.  I arrived there in the evening, determining the next 
+morning to make my case known to the citizen St. Just; and though I 
+made my entry without a sou, I don’t know what secret exultation I 
+felt at again being able to return.
+
+The ante-chamber of such a great man as St. Just was, in those 
+days, too crowded for an unprotected boy to obtain an early 
+audience; two days passed before I could obtain a sight of the 
+friend of Robespierre.  On the third day, as I was still waiting 
+for the interview, I heard a great bustle in the courtyard of the 
+house, and looked out with many others at the spectacle.
+
+A number of men and women, singing epithalamiums, and dressed in 
+some absurd imitation of Roman costume, a troop of soldiers and 
+gendarmerie, and an immense crowd of the badauds of Strasburg, were 
+surrounding a carriage which then entered the court of the 
+mayoralty.  In this carriage, great God! I saw my dear Mary, and 
+Schneider by her side.  The truth instantly came upon me: the 
+reason for Schneider’s keen inquiries and my abrupt dismissal; but 
+I could not believe that Mary was false to me.  I had only to look 
+in her face, white and rigid as marble, to see that this proposed 
+marriage was not with her consent.
+
+I fell back in the crowd as the procession entered the great room 
+in which I was, and hid my face in my hands: I could not look upon 
+her as the wife of another,--upon her so long loved and truly--the 
+saint of my childhood--the pride and hope of my youth--torn from me 
+for ever, and delivered over to the unholy arms of the murderer who 
+stood before me.
+
+The door of St. Just’s private apartment opened, and he took his 
+seat at the table of mayoralty just as Schneider and his cortège 
+arrived before it.
+
+Schneider then said that he came in before the authorities of the 
+Republic to espouse the citoyenne Marie Ancel.
+
+"Is she a minor?" asked St. Just.
+
+"She is a minor, but her father is here to give her away."
+
+"I am here," said uncle Edward, coming eagerly forward and bowing.  
+"Edward Ancel, so please you, citizen representative.  The worthy 
+citizen Schneider has done me the honor of marrying into my 
+family."
+
+"But my father has not told you the terms of the marriage," said 
+Mary, interrupting him, in a loud, clear voice.
+
+Here Schneider seized her hand, and endeavored to prevent her from 
+speaking.  Her father turned pale, and cried, "Stop, Mary, stop!  
+For heaven’s sake, remember your poor old father’s danger!"
+
+"Sir, may I speak?"
+
+"Let the young woman speak," said St. Just, "if she have a desire 
+to talk."  He did not suspect what would be the purport of her 
+story.
+
+"Sir," she said, "two days since the citizen Schneider entered for 
+the first time our house; and you will fancy that it must be a love 
+of very sudden growth which has brought either him or me before you 
+to-day.  He had heard from a person who is now unhappily not 
+present, of my name and of the wealth which my family was said to 
+possess; and hence arose this mad design concerning me.  He came 
+into our village with supreme power, an executioner at his heels, 
+and the soldiery and authorities of the district entirely under his 
+orders.  He threatened my father with death if he refused to give 
+up his daughter; and I, who knew that there was no chance of 
+escape, except here before you, consented to become his wife.  My 
+father I know to be innocent, for all his transactions with the 
+State have passed through my hands.  Citizen representative, I 
+demand to be freed from this marriage; and I charge Schneider as a 
+traitor to the Republic, as a man who would have murdered an 
+innocent citizen for the sake of private gain."
+
+During the delivery of this little speech, uncle Jacob had been 
+sobbing and panting like a broken-winded horse; and when Mary had 
+done, he rushed up to her and kissed her, and held her tight in his 
+arms.  "Bless thee, my child!" he cried, "for having had the 
+courage to speak the truth, and shame thy old father and me, who 
+dared not say a word."
+
+"The girl amazes me," said Schneider, with a look of astonishment.  
+"I never saw her, it is true, till yesterday; but I used no force: 
+her father gave her to me with his free consent, and she yielded as 
+gladly.  Speak, Edward Ancel, was it not so?"
+
+"It was, indeed, by my free consent," said Edward, trembling.
+
+"For shame, brother!" cried old Jacob.  "Sir, it was by Edward’s 
+free consent and my niece’s; but the guillotine was in the court-
+yard!  Question Schneider’s famulus, the man Gregoire, him who 
+reads ‘The Sorrows of Werter.’"
+
+Gregoire stepped forward, and looked hesitatingly at Schneider, as 
+he said, "I know not what took place within doors; but I was 
+ordered to put up the scaffold without; and I was told to get 
+soldiers, and let no one leave the house."
+
+"Citizen St. Just," cried Schneider, "you will not allow the 
+testimony of a ruffian like this, of a foolish girl, and a mad ex-
+priest, to weigh against the word of one who has done such service 
+to the Republic: it is a base conspiracy to betray me; the whole 
+family is known to favor the interest of the émigrés."
+
+"And therefore you would marry a member of the family, and allow 
+the others to escape; you must make a better defence, citizen 
+Schneider," said St. Just, sternly.
+
+Here I came forward, and said that, three days since, I had 
+received an order to quit Strasburg for Paris immediately after a 
+conversation with Schneider, in which I had asked him his aid in 
+promoting my marriage with my cousin, Mary Ancel; that he had heard 
+from me full accounts regarding her father’s wealth; and that he 
+had abruptly caused my dismissal, in order to carry on his scheme 
+against her.
+
+"You are in the uniform of a regiment of this town; who sent you 
+from it?" said St. Just.
+
+I produced the order, signed by himself, and the despatches which 
+Schneider had sent me.
+
+"The signature is mine, but the despatches did not come from my 
+office.  Can you prove in any way your conversation with Schneider?"
+
+"Why," said my sentimental friend Gregoire, "for the matter of 
+that, I can answer that the lad was always talking about this young 
+woman: he told me the whole story himself, and many a good laugh I 
+had with citizen Schneider as we talked about it."
+
+"The charge against Edward Ancel must be examined into," said St. 
+Just.  "The marriage cannot take place.  But if I had ratified it, 
+Mary Ancel, what then would have been your course?"
+
+Mary felt for a moment in her bosom, and said--"He would have died 
+to-night--I would have stabbed him with this dagger."*
+
+
+* This reply, and, indeed, the whole of the story, is historical.  
+An account, by Charles Nodier, in the Revue de Paris, suggested it 
+to the writer.
+
+
+The rain was beating down the streets, and yet they were thronged; 
+all the world was hastening to the market-place, where the worthy 
+Gregoire was about to perform some of the pleasant duties of his 
+office.  On this occasion, it was not death that he was to inflict; 
+he was only to expose a criminal who was to be sent on afterwards 
+to Paris.  St. Just had ordered that Schneider should stand for six 
+hours in the public place of Strasburg, and then be sent on to the 
+capital to be dealt with as the authorities might think fit.
+
+The people followed with execrations the villain to his place of 
+punishment; and Gregoire grinned as he fixed up to the post the man 
+whose orders he had obeyed so often--who had delivered over to 
+disgrace and punishment so many who merited it not.
+
+Schneider was left for several hours exposed to the mockery and 
+insults of the mob; he was then, according to his sentence, marched 
+on to Paris, where it is probable that he would have escaped death, 
+but for his own fault.  He was left for some time in prison, quite 
+unnoticed, perhaps forgotten: day by day fresh victims were carried 
+to the scaffold, and yet the Alsacian tribune remained alive; at 
+last, by the mediation of one of his friends, a long petition was 
+presented to Robespierre, stating his services and his innocence, 
+and demanding his freedom.  The reply to this was an order for his 
+instant execution: the wretch died in the last days of Robespierre’s
+reign.  His comrade, St. Just, followed him, as you know; but Edward
+Ancel had been released before this, for the action of my brave Mary
+had created a strong feeling in his favor.
+
+"And Mary?" said I.
+
+Here a stout and smiling old lady entered the Captain’s little 
+room: she was leaning on the arm of a military-looking man of some 
+forty years, and followed by a number of noisy, rosy children.
+
+"This is Mary Ancel," said the Captain, "and I am Captain Pierre, 
+and yonder is the Colonel, my son; and you see us here assembled in 
+force, for it is the fête of little Jacob yonder, whose brothers 
+and sisters have all come from their schools to dance at his 
+birthday."
+
+
+
+
+BEATRICE MERGER.
+
+
+Beatrice Merger, whose name might figure at the head of one of Mr. 
+Colburn’s politest romances--so smooth and aristocratic does it 
+sound--is no heroine, except of her own simple history; she is not 
+a fashionable French Countess, nor even a victim of the Revolution.
+
+She is a stout, sturdy girl of two-and-twenty, with a face beaming 
+with good nature, and marked dreadfully by smallpox; and a pair of 
+black eyes, which might have done some execution had they been 
+placed in a smoother face.  Beatrice’s station in society is not 
+very exalted; she is a servant of all-work: she will dress your 
+wife, your dinner, your children; she does beefsteaks and plain 
+work; she makes beds, blacks boots, and waits at table;--such, at 
+least, were the offices which she performed in the fashionable 
+establishment of the writer of this book: perhaps her history may 
+not inaptly occupy a few pages of it.
+
+"My father died," said Beatrice, "about six years since, and left 
+my poor mother with little else but a small cottage and a strip of 
+land, and four children too young to work.  It was hard enough in 
+my father’s time to supply so many little mouths with food; and how 
+was a poor widowed woman to provide for them now, who had neither 
+the strength nor the opportunity for labor?
+
+"Besides us, to be sure, there was my old aunt; and she would have 
+helped us, but she could not, for the old woman is bed-ridden; so 
+she did nothing but occupy our best room, and grumble from morning 
+till night: heaven knows, poor old soul, that she had no great 
+reason to be very happy; for you know, sir, that it frets the 
+temper to be sick; and that it is worse still to be sick and hungry 
+too.
+
+"At that time, in the country where we lived (in Picardy, not very 
+far from Boulogne), times were so bad that the best workman could 
+hardly find employ; and when he did, he was happy if he could earn 
+a matter of twelve sous a day.  Mother, work as she would, could 
+not gain more than six; and it was a hard job, out of this, to put 
+meat into six bellies, and clothing on six backs.  Old Aunt Bridget 
+would scold, as she got her portion of black bread; and my little 
+brothers used to cry if theirs did not come in time.  I, too, used 
+to cry when I got my share; for mother kept only a little, little 
+piece for herself, and said that she had dined in the fields,--God 
+pardon her for the lie! and bless her, as I am sure He did; for, 
+but for Him, no working man or woman could subsist upon such a 
+wretched morsel as my dear mother took.
+
+"I was a thin, ragged, barefooted girl, then, and sickly and weak 
+for want of food; but I think I felt mother’s hunger more than my 
+own: and many and many a bitter night I lay awake, crying, and 
+praying to God to give me means of working for myself and aiding 
+her.  And he has, indeed, been good to me," said pious Beatrice, 
+"for He has given me all this!
+
+"Well, time rolled on, and matters grew worse than ever: winter 
+came, and was colder to us than any other winter, for our clothes 
+were thinner and more torn; mother sometimes could find no work, 
+for the fields in which she labored were hidden under the snow; so 
+that when we wanted them most we had them least--warmth, work, or 
+food.
+
+"I knew that, do what I would, mother would never let me leave her, 
+because I looked to my little brothers and my old cripple of an 
+aunt; but still, bread was better for us than all my service; and 
+when I left them the six would have a slice more; so I determined 
+to bid good-by to nobody, but to go away, and look for work 
+elsewhere.  One Sunday, when mother and the little ones were at 
+church, I went in to Aunt Bridget, and said, ‘Tell mother, when she 
+comes back, that Beatrice is gone.’  I spoke quite stoutly, as if I 
+did not care about it.
+
+"‘Gone! gone where?’ said she.  ‘You ain’t going to leave me alone, 
+you nasty thing; you ain’t going to the village to dance, you 
+ragged, barefooted slut: you’re all of a piece in this house--your 
+mother, your brothers, and you.  I know you’ve got meat in the 
+kitchen, and you only give me black bread;’ and here the old lady 
+began to scream as if her heart would break; but we did not mind 
+it, we were so used to it.
+
+"'Aunt,' said I, 'I'm going, and took this very opportunity because 
+you WERE alone: tell mother I am too old now to eat her bread, and 
+do no work for it: I am going, please God, where work and bread can 
+be found:' and so I kissed her: she was so astonished that she 
+could not move or speak; and I walked away through the old room, 
+and the little garden, God knows whither!
+
+"I heard the old woman screaming after me, but I did not stop nor 
+turn round.  I don't think I could, for my heart was very full; and 
+if I had gone back again, I should never have had the courage to go 
+away.  So I walked a long, long way, until night fell; and I 
+thought of poor mother coming home from mass, and not finding me; 
+and little Pierre shouting out, in his clear voice, for Beatrice to 
+bring him his supper.  I think I should like to have died that 
+night, and I thought I should too; for when I was obliged to throw 
+myself on the cold, hard ground, my feet were too torn and weary to 
+bear me any further.
+
+"Just then the moon got up; and do you know I felt a comfort in 
+looking at it, for I knew it was shining on our little cottage, and 
+it seemed like an old friend's face?  A little way on, as I saw by 
+the moon, was a village: and I saw, too, that a man was coming 
+towards me; he must have heard me crying, I suppose.
+
+"Was not God good to me?  This man was a farmer, who had need of a 
+girl in his house; he made me tell him why I was alone, and I told 
+him the same story I have told you, and he believed me and took me 
+home.  I had walked six long leagues from our village that day, 
+asking everywhere for work in vain; and here, at bedtime, I found a 
+bed and a supper!
+
+"Here I lived very well for some months; my master was very good 
+and kind to me; but, unluckily, too poor to give me any wages; so 
+that I could save nothing to send to my poor mother.  My mistress 
+used to scold; but I was used to that at home, from Aunt Bridget: 
+and she beat me sometimes, but I did not mind it; for your hardy 
+country girl is not like your tender town lasses, who cry if a pin 
+pricks them, and give warning to their mistresses at the first hard 
+word.  The only drawback to my comfort was, that I had no news of 
+my mother; I could not write to her, nor could she have read my 
+letter, if I had; so there I was, at only six leagues' distance 
+from home, as far off as if I had been to Paris or to 'Merica.
+
+"However, in a few months I grew so listless and homesick, that my 
+mistress said she would keep me no longer; and though I went away 
+as poor as I came, I was still too glad to go back to the old 
+village again, and see dear mother, if it were but for a day.  I 
+knew she would share her crust with me, as she had done for so long 
+a time before; and hoped that, now, as I was taller and stronger, I 
+might find work more easily in the neighborhood.
+
+"You may fancy what a fête it was when I came back; though I'm sure 
+we cried as much as if it had been a funeral.  Mother got into a 
+fit, which frightened us all; and as for Aunt Bridget, she SKREELED 
+away for hours together, and did not scold for two days at least.  
+Little Pierre offered me the whole of his supper; poor little man! 
+his slice of bread was no bigger than before I went away.
+
+"Well, I got a little work here and a little there; but still I was 
+a burden at home rather than a bread-winner; and, at the closing-in 
+of the winter, was very glad to hear of a place at two leagues' 
+distance, where work, they said, was to be had.  Off I set, one 
+morning, to find it, but missed my way, somehow, until it was 
+night-time before I arrived.  Night-time and snow again; it seemed 
+as if all my journeys were to be made in this bitter weather.
+
+"When I came to the farmer's door, his house was shut up, and his 
+people all a-bed; I knocked for a long while in vain; at last he 
+made his appearance at a window up stairs, and seemed so frightened,
+and looked so angry that I suppose he took me for a thief.  I told
+him how I had come for work.  'Who comes for work at such an hour?'
+said he.  'Go home, you impudent baggage, and do not disturb honest
+people out of their sleep.'  He banged the window to; and so I was
+left alone to shift for myself as I might.  There was no shed, no
+cow-house, where I could find a bed; so I got under a cart, on some
+straw; it was no very warm berth.  I could not sleep for the cold:
+and the hours passed so slowly, that it seemed as if I had been
+there a week instead of a night; but still it was not so bad as the
+first night when I left home, and when the good farmer found me.
+
+"In the morning, before it was light, the farmer's people came out, 
+and saw me crouching under the cart: they told me to get up; but I 
+was so cold that I could not: at last the man himself came, and 
+recognized me as the girl who had disturbed him the night before.  
+When he heard my name, and the purpose for which I came, this good 
+man took me into the house, and put me into one of the beds out of 
+which his sons had just got; and, if I was cold before, you may be 
+sure I was warm and comfortable now! such a bed as this I had never 
+slept in, nor ever did I have such good milk-soup as he gave me out 
+of his own breakfast.  Well, he agreed to hire me; and what do you 
+think he gave me?--six sous a day! and let me sleep in the cow-
+house besides: you may fancy how happy I was now, at the prospect 
+of earning so much money.
+
+"There was an old woman among the laborers who used to sell us 
+soup: I got a cupful every day for a half-penny, with a bit of 
+bread in it; and might eat as much beet-root besides as I liked; 
+not a very wholesome meal, to be sure, but God took care that it 
+should not disagree with me.
+
+"So, every Saturday, when work was over, I had thirty sous to carry 
+home to mother; and tired though I was, I walked merrily the two 
+leagues to our village, to see her again.  On the road there was a 
+great wood to pass through, and this frightened me; for if a thief 
+should come and rob me of my whole week's earnings, what could a 
+poor lone girl do to help herself?  But I found a remedy for this 
+too, and no thieves ever came near me; I used to begin saying my 
+prayers as I entered the forest, and never stopped until I was safe 
+at home; and safe I always arrived, with my thirty sons in my 
+pocket.  Ah! you may be sure, Sunday was a merry day for us all."
+
+
+This is the whole of Beatrice's history which is worthy of 
+publication; the rest of it only relates to her arrival in Paris, 
+and the various masters and mistresses whom she there had the honor 
+to serve.  As soon as she enters the capital the romance 
+disappears, and the poor girl's sufferings and privations luckily 
+vanish with it.  Beatrice has got now warm gowns, and stout shoes, 
+and plenty of good food.  She has had her little brother from 
+Picardy; clothed, fed, and educated him: that young gentleman is 
+now a carpenter, and an honor to his profession.  Madame Merger is 
+in easy circumstances, and receives, yearly, fifty francs from her 
+daughter.  To crown all, Mademoiselle Beatrice herself is a funded 
+proprietor, and consulted the writer of this biography as to the 
+best method of laying out a capital of two hundred francs, which is 
+the present amount of her fortune.
+
+God bless her! she is richer than his Grace the Duke of Devonshire; 
+and, I dare say, has, in her humble walk, been more virtuous and 
+more happy than all the dukes in the realm.
+
+It is, indeed, for the benefit of dukes and such great people (who, 
+I make no doubt, have long since ordered copies of these Sketches), 
+that poor little Beatrice's story has been indited.  Certain it is, 
+that the young woman would never have been immortalized in this 
+way, but for the good which her betters may derive from her 
+example.  If your ladyship will but reflect a little, after 
+boasting of the sums which you spend in charity; the beef and 
+blankets which you dole out at Christmas; the poonah-painting which 
+you execute for fancy fairs; the long, long sermons which you 
+listen to at St. George's, the whole year through;--your ladyship, 
+I say, will allow that, although perfectly meritorious in your 
+line, as a patroness of the Church of England, of Almack's, and of 
+the Lying-in Asylum, yours is but a paltry sphere of virtue, a 
+pitiful attempt at benevolence, and that this honest servant-girl 
+puts you to shame!  And you, my Lord Bishop: do you, out of your 
+six sous a day, give away five to support your flock and family?  
+Would you drop a single coach-horse (I do not say, A DINNER, for 
+such a notion is monstrous, in one of your lordship's degree), to 
+feed any one of the starving children of your lordship's mother--
+the Church?
+
+I pause for a reply.  His lordship took too much turtle and cold 
+punch for dinner yesterday, and cannot speak just now: but we have, 
+by this ingenious question, silenced him altogether: let the world 
+wag as it will, and poor Christians and curates starve as they may, 
+my lord's footmen must have their new liveries, and his horses 
+their four feeds a day.
+
+
+When we recollect his speech about the Catholics--when we remember 
+his last charity sermon,--but I say nothing.  Here is a poor 
+benighted superstitious creature, worshipping images, without a rag 
+to her tail, who has as much faith, and humility, and charity as 
+all the reverend bench.
+
+
+This angel is without a place; and for this reason (besides the 
+pleasure of composing the above slap at episcopacy)--I have indited 
+her history.  If the Bishop is going to Paris, and wants a good 
+honest maid-of-all-work, he can have her, I have no doubt; or if he 
+chooses to give a few pounds to her mother, they can be sent to Mr. 
+Titmarsh, at the publisher's.
+
+Here is Miss Merger's last letter and autograph.  The note was 
+evidently composed by an Ecrivain public:--
+
+
+"Madame,--Ayant apris par ce Monsieur, que vous vous portiez bien, 
+ainsi que Monsieur, ayant su aussi que vous parliez de moi dans 
+votre lettre cette nouvelle m'a fait bien plaisir Je profite de 
+l'occasion pour vous faire passer ce petit billet où Je voudrais 
+pouvoir m'enveloper pour aller vous voir et pour vous dire que Je 
+suis encore sans place Je m'ennuye tojours de ne pas vous voir 
+ainsi que Minette (Minette is a cat) qui semble m'interroger tour a 
+tour et demander où vous êtes.  Je vous envoye aussi la note du 
+linge a blanchir--ah, Madame!  Je vais cesser de vous ecrire mais 
+non de vous regretter."
+
+Beatrice Merger.
+
+
+
+
+CARICATURES AND LITHOGRAPHY IN PARIS.
+
+
+Fifty years ago there lived at Munich a poor fellow, by name Aloys 
+Senefelder, who was in so little repute as an author and artist, 
+that printers and engravers refused to publish his works at their 
+own charges, and so set him upon some plan for doing without their 
+aid.  In the first place, Aloys invented a certain kind of ink, 
+which would resist the action of the acid that is usually employed 
+by engravers, and with this he made his experiments upon copper-
+plates, as long as he could afford to purchase them.  He found that 
+to write upon the plates backwards, after the manner of engravers, 
+required much skill and many trials; and he thought that, were he 
+to practise upon any other polished surface--a smooth stone, for 
+instance, the least costly article imaginable--he might spare the 
+expense of the copper until he had sufficient skill to use it.
+
+One day, it is said, that Aloys was called upon to write--rather a 
+humble composition for an author and artist--a washing-bill.  He 
+had no paper at hand, and so he wrote out the bill with some of his 
+newly-invented ink upon one of his Kelheim stones.  Some time 
+afterwards he thought he would try and take an IMPRESSION of his 
+washing-bill: he did, and succeeded.  Such is the story, which the 
+reader most likely knows very well; and having alluded to the 
+origin of the art, we shall not follow the stream through its 
+windings and enlargement after it issued from the little parent 
+rock, or fill our pages with the rest of the pedigree.  Senefelder 
+invented Lithography.  His invention has not made so much noise and 
+larum in the world as some others, which have an origin quite as 
+humble and unromantic; but it is one to which we owe no small 
+profit, and a great deal of pleasure; and, as such, we are bound to 
+speak of it with all gratitude and respect.  The schoolmaster, who 
+is now abroad, has taught us, in our youth, how the cultivation of 
+art "emollit mores nec sinit esse"--(it is needless to finish the 
+quotation); and Lithography has been, to our thinking, the very 
+best ally that art ever had; the best friend of the artist, 
+allowing him to produce rapidly multiplied and authentic copies of 
+his own works (without trusting to the tedious and expensive 
+assistance of the engraver); and the best friend to the people 
+likewise, who have means of purchasing these cheap and beautiful 
+productions, and thus having their ideas "mollified" and their 
+manners "feros" no more.
+
+With ourselves, among whom money is plenty, enterprise so great, 
+and everything matter of commercial speculation, Lithography has 
+not been so much practised as wood or steel engraving; which, by 
+the aid of great original capital and spread of sale, are able more 
+than to compete with the art of drawing on stone.  The two former 
+may be called art done by MACHINERY.  We confess to a prejudice in 
+favor of the honest work of HAND, in matters of art, and prefer the 
+rough workmanship of the painter to the smooth copies of his 
+performances which are produced, for the most part, on the wood-
+block or the steel-plate.
+
+The theory will possibly be objected to by many of our readers: the 
+best proof in its favor, we think, is, that the state of art 
+amongst the people in France and Germany, where publishers are not 
+so wealthy or enterprising as with us,* and where Lithography is 
+more practised, is infinitely higher than in England, and the 
+appreciation more correct.  As draughtsmen, the French and German 
+painters are incomparably superior to our own; and with art, as 
+with any other commodity, the demand will be found pretty equal to 
+the supply: with us, the general demand is for neatness, prettiness,
+and what is called EFFECT in pictures, and these can be rendered
+completely, nay, improved, by the engraver's conventional manner of
+copying the artist's performances.  But to copy fine expression and
+fine drawing, the engraver himself must be a fine artist; and let
+anybody examine the host of picture-books which appear every
+Christmas, and say whether, for the most part, painters or engravers
+possess any artistic merit?  We boast, nevertheless, of some of the
+best engravers and painters in Europe. Here, again, the supply is
+accounted for by the demand; our highest class is richer than any
+other aristocracy, quite as well instructed, and can judge and pay
+for fine pictures and engravings. But these costly productions are
+for the few, and not for the many, who have not yet certainly
+arrived at properly appreciating fine art.
+
+
+* These countries are, to be sure, inundated with the productions 
+of our market, in the shape of Byron Beauties, reprints from the 
+"Keepsakes," "Books of Beauty," and such trash; but these are only 
+of late years, and their original schools of art are still 
+flourishing.
+
+
+Take the standard "Album" for instance--that unfortunate collection 
+of deformed Zuleikas and Medoras (from the "Byron Beauties"), the 
+Flowers, Gems, Souvenirs, Caskets of Loveliness, Beauty, as they 
+way be called; glaring caricatures of flowers, singly, in groups, 
+in flower-pots, or with hideous deformed little Cupids sporting 
+among them; of what are called "mezzotinto," pencil-drawings, 
+"poonah-paintings," and what not.  "The Album" is to be found 
+invariably upon the round rosewood brass-inlaid drawing-room table 
+of the middle classes, and with a couple of "Annuals" besides, 
+which flank it on the same table, represents the art of the house; 
+perhaps there is a portrait of the master of the house in the 
+dining-room, grim-glancing from above the mantel-piece; and of the 
+mistress over the piano up stairs; add to these some odious 
+miniatures of the sons and daughters, on each side of the chimney-
+glass; and here, commonly (we appeal to the reader if this is an 
+overcharged picture), the collection ends.  The family goes to the 
+Exhibition once a year, to the National Gallery once in ten years: 
+to the former place they have an inducement to go; there are their 
+own portraits, or the portraits of their friends, or the portraits 
+of public characters; and you will see them infallibly wondering 
+over No. 2645 in the catalogue, representing "The Portrait of a 
+Lady," or of the "First Mayor of Little Pedlington since the 
+passing of the Reform Bill;" or else bustling and squeezing among 
+the miniatures, where lies the chief attraction of the Gallery.  
+England has produced, owing to the effects of this class of 
+admirers of art, two admirable, and five hundred very clever, 
+portrait painters.  How many ARTISTS?  Let the reader count upon 
+his five fingers, and see if, living at the present moment, he can 
+name one for each.
+
+If, from this examination of our own worthy middle classes, we look 
+to the same class in France, what a difference do we find!  Humble 
+café's in country towns have their walls covered with pleasing 
+picture papers, representing "Les Gloires de l'Armée Française," 
+the "Seasons," the "Four Quarters of the World," "Cupid and 
+Psyche," or some other allegory, landscape or history, rudely 
+painted, as papers for walls usually are; but the figures are all 
+tolerably well drawn; and the common taste, which has caused a 
+demand for such things, is undeniable.  In Paris, the manner in 
+which the cafés and houses of the restaurateurs are ornamented, is, 
+of course, a thousand times richer, and nothing can be more 
+beautiful, or more exquisitely finished and correct, than the 
+designs which adorn many of them.  We are not prepared to say what 
+sums were expended upon the painting of "Véry's" or "Véfour's," of 
+the "Salle Musard," or of numberless other places of public resort 
+in the capital.  There is many a shop-keeper whose sign is a very 
+tolerable picture; and often have we stopped to admire (the reader 
+will give us credit for having remained OUTSIDE) the excellent 
+workmanship of the grapes and vine-leaves over the door of some 
+very humble, dirty, inodorous shop of a marchand de vin.
+
+These, however, serve only to educate the public taste, and are 
+ornaments for the most part much too costly for the people.  But 
+the same love of ornament which is shown in their public places of 
+resort, appears in their houses likewise; and every one of our 
+readers who has lived in Paris, in any lodging, magnificent or 
+humble, with any family, however poor, may bear witness how 
+profusely the walls of his smart salon in the English quarter, or 
+of his little room au sixième in the Pays Latin, has been decorated 
+with prints of all kinds.  In the first, probably, with bad 
+engravings on copper from the bad and tawdry pictures of the 
+artists of the time of the Empire; in the latter, with gay 
+caricatures of Granville or Monnier: military pieces, such as are 
+dashed off by Raffet, Charlet, Vernet (one can hardly say which of 
+the three designers has the greatest merit, or the most vigorous 
+hand); or clever pictures from the crayon of the Deverias, the 
+admirable Roqueplan, or Decamp.  We have named here, we believe, 
+the principal lithographic artists in Paris; and those--as 
+doubtless there are many--of our readers who have looked over 
+Monsieur Aubert's portfolios, or gazed at that famous caricature-
+shop window in the Rue de Coq, or are even acquainted with the 
+exterior of Monsieur Delaporte's little emporium in the Burlington 
+Arcade, need not be told how excellent the productions of all these 
+artists are in their genre.  We get in these engravings the loisirs 
+of men of genius, not the finikin performances of labored mediocrity,
+as with us: all these artists are good painters, as well as good
+designers; a design from them is worth a whole gross of Books of
+Beauty; and if we might raise a humble supplication to the artists
+in our own country of similar merit--to such men as Leslie, Maclise,
+Herbert, Cattermole, and others--it would be, that they should,
+after the example of their French brethren and of the English
+landscape painters, take chalk in hand, produce their own copies of
+their own sketches, and never more draw a single "Forsaken One,"
+"Rejected One," "Dejected One" at the entreaty of any publisher or
+for the pages of any Book of Beauty, Royalty, or Loveliness
+whatever.
+
+Can there be a more pleasing walk in the whole world than a stroll 
+through the Gallery of the Louvre on a fête-day; not to look so 
+much at the pictures as at the lookers-on?  Thousands of the poorer 
+classes are there: mechanics in their Sunday clothes, smiling 
+grisettes, smart dapper soldiers of the line, with bronzed 
+wondering faces, marching together in little companies of six or 
+seven, and stopping every now and then at Napoleon or Leonidas as 
+they appear in proper vulgar heroics in the pictures of David or 
+Gros.  The taste of these people will hardly be approved by the 
+connoisseur, but they have A taste for art.  Can the same be said 
+of our lower classes, who, if they are inclined to be sociable and 
+amused in their holidays, have no place of resort but the tap-room 
+or tea-garden, and no food for conversation except such as can be 
+built upon the politics or the police reports of the last Sunday 
+paper?  So much has Church and State puritanism done for us--so 
+well has it succeeded in materializing and binding down to the 
+earth the imagination of men, for which God has made another world 
+(which certain statesmen take but too little into account)--that 
+fair and beautiful world of heart, in which there CAN be nothing 
+selfish or sordid, of which Dulness has forgotten the existence, 
+and which Bigotry has endeavored to shut out from sight--
+
+
+     "On a banni les démons et les fées,
+      Le raisonner tristement s'accrédite:
+      On court, helas! après la vérité:
+      Ah! croyez moi, l'erreur a son mérite!"
+
+
+We are not putting in a plea here for demons and fairies, as 
+Voltaire does in the above exquisite lines; nor about to expatiate 
+on the beauties of error, for it has none; but the clank of steam-
+engines, and the shouts of politicians, and the struggle for gain 
+or bread, and the loud denunciations of stupid bigots, have 
+wellnigh smothered poor Fancy among us.  We boast of our science, 
+and vaunt our superior morality.  Does the latter exist?  In spite 
+of all the forms which our policy has invented to secure it--in 
+spite of all the preachers, all the meeting-houses, and all the 
+legislative enactments--if any person will take upon himself the 
+painful labor of purchasing and perusing some of the cheap 
+periodical prints which form the people's library of amusement, and 
+contain what may be presumed to be their standard in matters of 
+imagination and fancy, he will see how false the claim is that we 
+bring forward of superior morality.  The aristocracy who are so 
+eager to maintain, were, of course, not the last to feel annoyance 
+of the legislative restrictions on the Sabbath, and eagerly seized 
+upon that happy invention for dissipating the gloom and ennui 
+ordered by Act of Parliament to prevail on that day--the Sunday 
+paper.  It might be read in a club-room, where the poor could not 
+see how their betters ordained one thing for the vulgar, and 
+another for themselves; or in an easy-chair, in the study, whither 
+my lord retires every Sunday for his devotions.  It dealt in 
+private scandal and ribaldry, only the more piquant for its pretty 
+flimsy veil of double-entendre.  It was a fortune to the publisher, 
+and it became a necessary to the reader, which he could not do 
+without, any more than without his snuff-box, his opera-box, or his 
+chasse after coffee.  The delightful novelty could not for any time 
+be kept exclusively for the haut ton; and from my lord it descended 
+to his valet or tradesmen, and from Grosvenor Square it spread all 
+the town through; so that now the lower classes have their scandal 
+and ribaldry organs, as well as their betters (the rogues, they 
+WILL imitate them!) and as their tastes are somewhat coarser than 
+my lord's, and their numbers a thousand to one, why of course the 
+prints have increased, and the profligacy has been diffused in a 
+ratio exactly proportionable to the demand, until the town is 
+infested with such a number of monstrous publications of the kind 
+as would have put Abbé Dubois to the blush, or made Louis XV. cry 
+shame.  Talk of English morality!--the worst licentiousness, in the 
+worst period of the French monarchy, scarcely equalled the 
+wickedness of this Sabbath-keeping country of ours.
+
+The reader will be glad, at last, to come to the conclusion that 
+we would fain draw from all these descriptions--why does this 
+immorality exist?  Because the people MUST be amused, and have not 
+been taught HOW; because the upper classes, frightened by stupid 
+cant, or absorbed in material wants, have not as yet learned the 
+refinement which only the cultivation of art can give; and when 
+their intellects are uneducated, and their tastes are coarse, the 
+tastes and amusements of classes still more ignorant must be coarse 
+and vicious likewise, in an increased proportion.
+
+Such discussions and violent attacks upon high and low, Sabbath 
+Bills, politicians, and what not, may appear, perhaps, out of place 
+in a few pages which purport only to give an account of some French 
+drawings: all we would urge is, that, in France, these prints are 
+made because they are liked and appreciated; with us they are not 
+made, because they are not liked and appreciated: and the more is 
+the pity.  Nothing merely intellectual will be popular among us: we 
+do not love beauty for beauty's sake, as Germans; or wit, for wit's 
+sake, as the French: for abstract art we have no appreciation.  We 
+admire H. B.'s caricatures, because they are the caricatures of 
+well-known political characters, not because they are witty; and 
+Boz, because he writes us good palpable stories (if we may use such 
+a word to a story); and Madame Vestris, because she has the most 
+beautifully shaped legs;--the ART of the designer, the writer, the 
+actress (each admirable in its way,) is a very minor consideration; 
+each might have ten times the wit, and would be quite unsuccessful 
+without their substantial points of popularity.
+
+In France such matters are far better managed, and the love of art 
+is a thousand times more keen; and (from this feeling, surely) how 
+much superiority is there in French SOCIETY over our own; how much 
+better is social happiness understood; how much more manly equality 
+is there between Frenchman and Frenchman, than between rich and 
+poor in our own country, with all our superior wealth, instruction, 
+and political freedom!  There is, amongst the humblest, a gayety, 
+cheerfulness, politeness, and sobriety, to which, in England, no 
+class can show a parallel: and these, be it remembered, are not 
+only qualities for holidays, but for working-days too, and add to 
+the enjoyment of human life as much as good clothes, good beef, or 
+good wages.  If, to our freedom, we could but add a little of their 
+happiness!--it is one, after all, of the cheapest commodities in 
+the world, and in the power of every man (with means of gaining 
+decent bread) who has the will or the skill to use it.
+
+We are not going to trace the history of the rise and progress of 
+art in France; our business, at present, is only to speak of one 
+branch of art in that country--lithographic designs, and those 
+chiefly of a humorous character.  A history of French caricature 
+was published in Paris, two or three years back, illustrated by 
+numerous copies of designs, from the time of Henry III. to our own 
+day.  We can only speak of this work from memory, having been 
+unable, in London, to procure the sight of a copy; but our 
+impression, at the time we saw the collection, was as unfavorable 
+as could possibly be: nothing could be more meagre than the wit, or 
+poorer than the execution, of the whole set of drawings.  Under the 
+Empire, art, as may be imagined, was at a very low ebb; and, aping 
+the Government of the day, and catering to the national taste and 
+vanity, it was a kind of tawdry caricature of the sublime; of which 
+the pictures of David and Girodet, and almost the entire collection 
+now at the Luxembourg Palace, will give pretty fair examples.  
+Swollen, distorted, unnatural, the painting was something like the 
+politics of those days; with force in it, nevertheless, and 
+something of grandeur, that will exist in spite of taste, and is 
+born of energetic will.  A man, disposed to write comparisons of 
+characters, might, for instance, find some striking analogies 
+between mountebank Murat, with his irresistible bravery and 
+horsemanship, who was a kind of mixture of Dugueselin and Ducrow, 
+and Mountebank David, a fierce, powerful painter and genius, whose 
+idea of beauty and sublimity seemed to have been gained from the 
+bloody melodramas on the Boulevard.  Both, however, were great in 
+their way, and were worshipped as gods, in those heathen times of 
+false belief and hero-worship.
+
+As for poor caricature and freedom of the press, they, like the 
+rightful princess in a fairy tale, with the merry fantastic dwarf, 
+her attendant, were entirely in the power of the giant who ruled 
+the land.  The Princess Press was so closely watched and guarded 
+(with some little show, nevertheless, of respect for her rank), 
+that she dared not utter a word of her own thoughts; and, for poor 
+Caricature, he was gagged, and put out of the way altogether: 
+imprisoned as completely as ever Asmodeus was in his phial.
+
+How the Press and her attendant fared in succeeding reigns, is well 
+known; their condition was little bettered by the downfall of 
+Napoleon: with the accession of Charles X. they were more oppressed 
+even than before--more than they could bear; for so hard were they 
+pressed, that, as one has seen when sailors are working a capstan, 
+back of a sudden the bars flew, knocking to the earth the men who 
+were endeavoring to work them.  The Revolution came, and up sprung 
+Caricature in France; all sorts of fierce epigrams were discharged 
+at the flying monarch, and speedily were prepared, too, for the new 
+one.
+
+About this time there lived at Paris (if our information be 
+correct) a certain M. Philipon, an indifferent artist (painting was 
+his profession), a tolerable designer, and an admirable wit.  M. 
+Philipon designed many caricatures himself, married the sister of 
+an eminent publisher of prints (M. Aubert), and the two, gathering 
+about them a body of wits and artists like themselves, set up 
+journals of their own:--La Caricature, first published once a week; 
+and the Charivari afterwards, a daily paper, in which a design also 
+appears daily.
+
+At first the caricatures inserted in the Charivari were chiefly 
+political; and a most curious contest speedily commenced between 
+the State and M. Philipon's little army in the Galérie Véro-Dodat.  
+Half a dozen poor artists on the one side, and his Majesty Louis 
+Philippe, his august family, and the numberless placemen and 
+supporters of the monarchy, on the other; it was something like 
+Thersites girding at Ajax, and piercing through the folds of the 
+clypei septemplicis with the poisonous shafts of his scorn.  Our 
+French Thersites was not always an honest opponent, it must be 
+confessed; and many an attack was made upon the gigantic enemy, 
+which was cowardly, false, and malignant.  But to see the monster 
+writhing under the effects of the arrow--to see his uncouth fury in 
+return, and the blind blows that he dealt at his diminutive 
+opponent!--not one of these told in a hundred; when they DID tell, 
+it may be imagined that they were fierce enough in all conscience, 
+and served almost to annihilate the adversary.
+
+To speak more plainly, and to drop the metaphor of giant and dwarf, 
+the King of the French suffered so much, his Ministers were so 
+mercilessly ridiculed, his family and his own remarkable figure 
+drawn with such odious and grotesque resemblance, in fanciful 
+attitudes, circumstances, and disguises, so ludicrously mean, and 
+often so appropriate, that the King was obliged to descend into the 
+lists and battle his ridiculous enemy in form.  Prosecutions, 
+seizures, fines, regiments of furious legal officials, were first 
+brought into play against poor M. Philipon and his little dauntless 
+troop of malicious artists; some few were bribed out of his ranks; 
+and if they did not, like Gilray in England, turn their weapons 
+upon their old friends, at least laid down their arms, and would 
+fight no more.  The bribes, fines, indictments, and loud-tongued 
+avocats du roi made no impression; Philipon repaired the defeat of 
+a fine by some fresh and furious attack upon his great enemy; if 
+his epigrams were more covert, they were no less bitter; if he was 
+beaten a dozen times before a jury, he had eighty or ninety 
+victories to show in the same field of battle, and every victory 
+and every defeat brought him new sympathy.  Every one who was at 
+Paris a few years since must recollect the famous "poire" which was 
+chalked upon all the walls of the city, and which bore so ludicrous 
+a resemblance to Louis Philippe.  The poire became an object of 
+prosecution, and M. Philipon appeared before a jury to answer for 
+the crime of inciting to contempt against the King's person, by 
+giving such a ludicrous version of his face.  Philipon, for 
+defence, produced a sheet of paper, and drew a poire, a real large 
+Burgundy pear: in the lower parts round and capacious, narrower 
+near the stalk, and crowned with two or three careless leaves.  
+"There was no treason in THAT," he said to the jury; "could any one 
+object to such a harmless botanical representation?"  Then he drew 
+a second pear, exactly like the former, except that one or two 
+lines were scrawled in the midst of it, which bore somehow a 
+ludicrous resemblance to the eyes, nose, and mouth of a celebrated 
+personage; and, lastly, he drew the exact portrait of Louis 
+Philippe; the well-known toupet, the ample whiskers and jowl were 
+there, neither extenuated nor set down in malice.  "Can I help it, 
+gentlemen of the jury, then," said he, "if his Majesty's face is 
+like a pear?  Say yourselves, respectable citizens, is it, or is it 
+not, like a pear?"  Such eloquence could not fail of its effect; 
+the artist was acquitted, and La poire is immortal.
+
+At last came the famous September laws: the freedom of the Press, 
+which, from August, 1830, was to be "désormais une vérité," was 
+calmly strangled by the Monarch who had gained his crown for his 
+supposed championship of it; by his Ministers, some of whom had 
+been stout Republicans on paper but a few years before; and by the 
+Chamber, which, such is the blessed constitution of French 
+elections, will generally vote, unvote, revote in any way the 
+Government wishes.  With a wondrous union, and happy forgetfulness 
+of principle, monarch, ministers, and deputies issued the 
+restriction laws; the Press was sent to prison; as for the poor 
+dear Caricature, it was fairly murdered.  No more political satires 
+appear now, and "through the eye, correct the heart;" no more 
+poires ripen on the walls of the metropolis; Philipon's political 
+occupation is gone.
+
+But there is always food for satire; and the French caricaturists, 
+being no longer allowed to hold up to ridicule and reprobation the 
+King and the deputies, have found no lack of subjects for the 
+pencil in the ridicules and rascalities of common life.  We have 
+said that public decency is greater amongst the French than amongst 
+us, which, to some of our readers, may appear paradoxical; but we 
+shall not attempt to argue that, in private roguery, our neighbors 
+are not our equals.  The procès of Gisquet, which has appeared 
+lately in the papers, shows how deep the demoralization must be, 
+and how a Government, based itself on dishonesty (a tyranny, that 
+is, under the title and fiction of a democracy,) must practise and 
+admit corruption in its own and in its agents' dealings with the 
+nation.  Accordingly, of cheating contracts, of ministers dabbling 
+with the funds, or extracting underhand profits for the granting of 
+unjust privileges and monopolies,--of grasping, envious police 
+restrictions, which destroy the freedom, and, with it, the 
+integrity of commerce,--those who like to examine such details may 
+find plenty in French history: the whole French finance system has 
+been a swindle from the days of Luvois, or Law, down to the present 
+time.  The Government swindles the public, and the small traders 
+swindle their customers, on the authority and example of the 
+superior powers.  Hence the art of roguery, under such high 
+patronage, maintains in France a noble front of impudence, and a 
+fine audacious openness, which it does not wear in our country.
+
+Among the various characters of roguery which the French satirists 
+have amused themselves by depicting, there is one of which the 
+GREATNESS (using the word in the sense which Mr. Jonathan Wild gave 
+to it) so far exceeds that of all others, embracing, as it does, 
+all in turn, that it has come to be considered the type of roguery 
+in general; and now, just as all the political squibs were made to 
+come of old from the lips of Pasquin, all the reflections on the 
+prevailing cant, knavery, quackery, humbug, are put into the mouth 
+of Monsieur Robert Macaire.
+
+A play was written, some twenty years since, called the "Auberge 
+des Adrets," in which the characters of two robbers escaped from 
+the galleys were introduced--Robert Macaire, the clever rogue above 
+mentioned, and Bertrand, the stupid rogue, his friend, accomplice, 
+butt, and scapegoat, on all occasions of danger.  It is needless to 
+describe the play--a witless performance enough, of which the joke 
+was Macaire's exaggerated style of conversation, a farrago of all 
+sorts of high-flown sentiments such as the French love to indulge 
+in--contrasted with his actions, which were philosophically 
+unscrupulous, and his appearance, which was most picturesquely 
+sordid.  The play had been acted, we believe, and forgotten, when a 
+very clever actor, M. Frederick Lemaitre, took upon himself the 
+performance of the character of Robert Macaire, and looked, spoke, 
+and acted it to such admirable perfection, that the whole town rung 
+with applauses of the performance, and the caricaturists delighted 
+to copy his singular figure and costume.  M. Robert Macaire appears 
+in a most picturesque green coat, with a variety of rents and 
+patches, a pair of crimson pantaloons ornamented in the same way, 
+enormous whiskers and ringlets, an enormous stock and shirt-frill, 
+as dirty and ragged as stock and shirt-frill can be, the relic of a 
+hat very gayly cocked over one eye, and a patch to take away 
+somewhat from the brightness of the other--these are the principal 
+pièces of his costume--a snuff-box like a creaking warming-pan, a 
+handkerchief hanging together by a miracle, and a switch of about 
+the thickness of a man's thigh, formed the ornaments of this 
+exquisite personage.  He is a compound of Fielding's "Blueskin" and 
+Goldsmith's "Beau Tibbs."  He has the dirt and dandyism of the one, 
+with the ferocity of the other: sometimes he is made to swindle, 
+but where he can get a shilling more, M. Macaire will murder 
+without scruple: he performs one and the other act (or any in the 
+scale between them) with a similar bland imperturbability, and 
+accompanies his actions with such philosophical remarks as may be 
+expected from a person of his talents, his energies, his amiable 
+life and character.
+
+Bertrand is the simple recipient of Macaire's jokes, and makes 
+vicarious atonement for his crimes, acting, in fact, the part which 
+pantaloon performs in the pantomime, who is entirely under the 
+fatal influence of clown.  He is quite as much a rogue as that 
+gentleman, but he has not his genius and courage.  So, in 
+pantomimes, (it may, doubtless, have been remarked by the reader,) 
+clown always leaps first, pantaloon following after, more clumsily 
+and timidly than his bold and accomplished friend and guide.  
+Whatever blows are destined for clown, fall, by some means of ill-
+luck, upon the pate of pantaloon: whenever the clown robs, the 
+stolen articles are sure to be found in his companion's pocket; and 
+thus exactly Robert Macaire and his companion Bertrand are made to 
+go through the world; both swindlers, but the one more accomplished 
+than the other.  Both robbing all the world, and Robert robbing his 
+friend, and, in the event of danger, leaving him faithfully in the 
+lurch.  There is, in the two characters, some grotesque good for 
+the spectator--a kind of "Beggars' Opera" moral.
+
+Ever since Robert, with his dandified rags and airs, his cane and 
+snuff-box, and Bertrand with torn surtout and all-absorbing pocket, 
+have appeared on the stage, they have been popular with the 
+Parisians; and with these two types of clever and stupid knavery, 
+M. Philipon and his companion Daumier have created a world of 
+pleasant satire upon all the prevailing abuses of the day.
+
+Almost the first figure that these audacious caricaturists dared to 
+depict was a political one: in Macaire's red breeches and tattered 
+coat appeared no less a personage than the King himself--the old 
+Poire--in a country of humbugs and swindlers the facile princeps; 
+fit to govern, as he is deeper than all the rogues in his 
+dominions.  Bertrand was opposite to him, and having listened with 
+delight and reverence to some tale of knavery truly royal, was 
+exclaiming with a look and voice expressive of the most intense 
+admiration, "AH VIEUX BLAGEUR! va!"--the word blague is 
+untranslatable--it means FRENCH humbug as distinct from all other; 
+and only those who know the value of an epigram in France, an 
+epigram so wonderfully just, a little word so curiously 
+comprehensive, can fancy the kind of rage and rapture with which it 
+was received.  It was a blow that shook the whole dynasty.  
+Thersites had there given such a wound to Ajax, as Hector in arms 
+could scarcely have inflicted: a blow sufficient almost to create 
+the madness to which the fabulous hero of Homer and Ovid fell a 
+prey.
+
+Not long, however, was French caricature allowed to attack 
+personages so illustrious: the September laws came, and henceforth 
+no more epigrams were launched against politics; but the 
+caricaturists were compelled to confine their satire to subjects 
+and characters that had nothing to do with the State.  The Duke of 
+Orleans was no longer to figure in lithography as the fantastic 
+Prince Rosolin; no longer were multitudes (in chalk) to shelter 
+under the enormous shadow of M. d'Argout's nose: Marshal Loban's 
+squirt was hung up in peace, and M. Thiers's pigmy figure and round 
+spectacled face were no more to appear in print.*  Robert Macaire 
+was driven out of the Chambers and the Palace--his remarks were a 
+great deal too appropriate and too severe for the ears of the great 
+men who congregated in those places.
+
+
+* Almost all the principal public men had been most ludicrously 
+caricatured in the Charivari: those mentioned above were usually 
+depicted with the distinctive attributes mentioned by us.
+
+
+The Chambers and the Palace were shut to him; but the rogue, driven 
+out of his rogue's paradise, saw "that the world was all before him 
+where to choose," and found no lack of opportunities for exercising 
+his wit.  There was the Bar, with its roguish practitioners, 
+rascally attorneys, stupid juries, and forsworn judges; there was 
+the Bourse, with all its gambling, swindling, and hoaxing, its 
+cheats and its dupes; the Medical Profession, and the quacks who 
+ruled it, alternately; the Stage, and the cant that was prevalent 
+there; the Fashion, and its thousand follies and extravagances.  
+Robert Macaire had all these to exploiter.  Of all the empire, 
+through all the ranks, professions, the lies, crimes, and 
+absurdities of men, he may make sport at will; of all except of a 
+certain class.  Like Bluebeard's wife, he may see everything, but 
+is bidden TO BEWARE OF THE BLUE CHAMBER.  Robert is more wise than 
+Bluebeard's wife, and knows that it would cost him his head to 
+enter it.  Robert, therefore, keeps aloof for the moment.  Would 
+there be any use in his martyrdom?  Bluebeard cannot live for ever; 
+perhaps, even now, those are on their way (one sees a suspicious 
+cloud of dust or two) that are to destroy him.
+
+In the meantime Robert and his friend have been furnishing the 
+designs that we have before us, and of which perhaps the reader 
+will be edified by a brief description.  We are not, to be sure, to 
+judge of the French nation by M. Macaire, any more than we are to 
+judge of our own national morals in the last century by such a book 
+as the "Beggars' Opera;" but upon the morals and the national 
+manners, works of satire afford a world of light that one would in 
+vain look for in regular books of history.  Doctor Smollett would 
+have blushed to devote any considerable portion of his pages to a 
+discussion of the acts and character of Mr. Jonathan Wild, such a 
+figure being hardly admissible among the dignified personages who 
+usually push all others out from the possession of the historical 
+page; but a chapter of that gentleman's memoirs, as they are 
+recorded in that exemplary recueil--the "Newgate Calendar;" nay, a 
+canto of the great comic epic (involving many fables, and 
+containing much exaggeration, but still having the seeds of truth) 
+which the satirical poet of those days wrote in celebration of him--
+we mean Fielding's "History of Jonathan Wild the Great"--does seem 
+to us to give a more curious picture of the manners of those times 
+than any recognized history of them.  At the close of his history 
+of George II., Smollett condescends to give a short chapter on 
+Literature and Manners.  He speaks of Glover's "Leonidas," Cibber's 
+"Careless Husband," the poems of Mason, Gray, the two Whiteheads, 
+"the nervous style, extensive erudition, and superior sense of a 
+Corke; the delicate taste, the polished muse, and tender feeling of 
+a Lyttelton."  "King," he says, "shone unrivalled in Roman 
+eloquence, the female sex distinguished themselves by their taste 
+and ingenuity.  Miss Carter rivalled the celebrated Dacier in 
+learning and critical knowledge; Mrs. Lennox signalized herself by 
+many successful efforts of genius both in poetry and prose; and 
+Miss Reid excelled the celebrated Rosalba in portrait-painting, 
+both in miniature and at large, in oil as well as in crayons.  The 
+genius of Cervantes was transferred into the novels of Fielding, 
+who painted the characters and ridiculed the follies of life with 
+equal strength, humor, and propriety.  The field of history and 
+biography was cultivated by many writers of ability, among whom we 
+distinguish the copious Guthrie, the circumstantial Ralph, the 
+laborious Carte, the learned and elegant Robertson, and above all, 
+the ingenious, penetrating, and comprehensive Hume," &c. &c.  We 
+will quote no more of the passage.  Could a man in the best humor 
+sit down to write a graver satire?  Who cares for the tender muse 
+of Lyttelton?  Who knows the signal efforts of Mrs. Lennox's 
+genius?  Who has seen the admirable performances, in miniature and 
+at large, in oil as well as in crayons, of Miss Reid?  Laborious 
+Carte, and circumstantial Ralph, and copious Guthrie, where are 
+they, their works, and their reputation?  Mrs. Lennox's name is 
+just as clean wiped out of the list of worthies as if she had never 
+been born; and Miss Reid, though she was once actual flesh and 
+blood, "rival in miniature and at large" of the celebrated Rosalba, 
+she is as if she had never been at all; her little farthing 
+rushlight of a soul and reputation having burnt out, and left 
+neither wick nor tallow.  Death, too, has overtaken copious Guthrie 
+and circumstantial Ralph.  Only a few know whereabouts is the grave 
+where lies laborious Carte; and yet, O wondrous power of genius!  
+Fielding's men and women are alive, though History's are not.  The 
+progenitors of circumstantial Ralph sent forth, after much labor 
+and pains of making, educating, feeding, clothing, a real man 
+child, a great palpable mass of flesh, bones, and blood (we say 
+nothing about the spirit), which was to move through the world, 
+ponderous, writing histories, and to die, having achieved the title 
+of circumstantial Ralph; and lo! without any of the trouble that 
+the parents of Ralph had undergone, alone perhaps in a watch or 
+spunging-house, fuddled most likely, in the blandest, easiest, and 
+most good-humored way in the world, Henry Fielding makes a number 
+of men and women on so many sheets of paper, not only more amusing 
+than Ralph or Miss Reid, but more like flesh and blood, and more 
+alive now than they.  Is not Amelia preparing her husband's little 
+supper?  Is not Miss Snapp chastely preventing the crime of Mr. 
+Firebrand?  Is not Parson Adams in the midst of his family, and Mr. 
+Wild taking his last bowl of punch with the Newgate Ordinary?  Is 
+not every one of them a real substantial HAVE-been personage now--
+more real than Reid or Ralph?  For our parts, we will not take upon 
+ourselves to say that they do not exist somewhere else: that the 
+actions attributed to them have not really taken place; certain we 
+are that they are more worthy of credence than Ralph, who may or 
+may not have been circumstantial; who may or may not even have 
+existed, a point unworthy of disputation.  As for Miss Reid, we 
+will take an affidavit that neither in miniature nor at large did 
+she excel the celebrated Rosalba; and with regard to Mrs. Lennox, 
+we consider her to be a mere figment, like Narcissa, Miss Tabitha 
+Bramble, or any hero or heroine depicted by the historian of 
+"Peregrine Pickle."
+
+In like manner, after viewing nearly ninety portraits of Robert 
+Macaire and his friend Bertrand, all strongly resembling each 
+other, we are inclined to believe in them as historical personages, 
+and to canvass gravely the circumstances of their lives.  Why 
+should we not?  Have we not their portraits?  Are not they 
+sufficient proofs?  If not, we must discredit Napoleon (as 
+Archbishop Whately teaches), for about his figure and himself we 
+have no more authentic testimony.
+
+Let the reality of M. Robert Macaire and his friend M. Bertrand be 
+granted, if but to gratify our own fondness for those exquisite 
+characters: we find the worthy pair in the French capital, mingling 
+with all grades of its society, pars magna in the intrigues, 
+pleasures, perplexities, rogueries, speculations, which are carried 
+on in Paris, as in our own chief city; for it need not be said that 
+roguery is of no country nor clime, but finds [Greek text omitted], 
+is a citizen of all countries where the quarters are good; among 
+our merry neighbors it finds itself very much at its ease.
+
+Not being endowed, then, with patrimonial wealth, but compelled to 
+exercise their genius to obtain distinction, or even subsistence, 
+we see Messrs. Bertrand and Macaire, by turns, adopting all trades 
+and professions, and exercising each with their own peculiar 
+ingenuity.  As public men, we have spoken already of their 
+appearance in one or two important characters, and stated that the 
+Government grew fairly jealous of them, excluding them from office, 
+as the Whigs did Lord Brougham.  As private individuals, they are 
+made to distinguish themselves as the founders of journals, 
+sociétés en commandite (companies of which the members are 
+irresponsible beyond the amount of their shares), and all sorts of 
+commercial speculations, requiring intelligence and honesty on the 
+part of the directors, confidence and liberal disbursements from 
+the shareholders.
+
+These are, among the French, so numerous, and have been of late 
+years (in the shape of Newspaper Companies, Bitumen Companies, 
+Galvanized-Iron Companies, Railroad Companies, &c.) pursued with 
+such a blind FUROR and lust of gain, by that easily excited and 
+imaginative people, that, as may be imagined, the satirist has 
+found plenty of occasion for remark, and M. Macaire and his friend 
+innumerable opportunities for exercising their talents.
+
+We know nothing of M. Emile de Girardin, except that, in a duel, he 
+shot the best man in France, Armaud Carrel; and in Girardin's favor 
+it must be said, that he had no other alternative; but was right in 
+provoking the duel, seeing that the whole Republican party had 
+vowed his destruction, and that he fought and killed their 
+champion, as it were.  We know nothing of M. Girardin's private 
+character: but, as far as we can judge from the French public 
+prints, he seems to be the most speculative of speculators, and, of 
+course, a fair butt for the malice of the caricaturists.  His one 
+great crime, in the eyes of the French Republicans and Republican 
+newspaper proprietors, was, that Girardin set up a journal, as he 
+called it, "franchement monarchique,"--a journal in the pay of the 
+monarchy, that is,--and a journal that cost only forty francs by 
+the year.  The National costs twice as much; the Charivari itself 
+costs half as much again; and though all newspapers, of all 
+parties, concurred in "snubbing" poor M. Girardin and his journal, 
+the Republican prints, were by far the most bitter against him, 
+thundering daily accusations and personalities; whether the abuse 
+was well or ill founded, we know not.  Hence arose the duel with 
+Carrel; after the termination of which, Girardin put by his pistol, 
+and vowed, very properly, to assist in the shedding of no more 
+blood.  Girardin had been the originator of numerous other 
+speculations besides the journal: the capital of these, like that 
+of the journal, was raised by shares, and the shareholders, by some 
+fatality, have found themselves wofully in the lurch; while 
+Girardin carries on the war gayly, is, or was, a member of the 
+Chamber of Deputies, has money, goes to Court, and possesses a 
+certain kind of reputation.  He invented, we believe, the 
+"Institution Agronome de Coetbo,"* the "Physionotype," the "Journal 
+des Connoissances Utiles," the "Pantheon Littéraire," and the 
+system of "Primes"--premiums, that is--to be given, by lottery, to 
+certain subscribers in these institutions.  Could Robert Macaire 
+see such things going on, and have no hand in them?
+
+
+* It is not necessary to enter into descriptions of these various 
+inventions.
+
+
+Accordingly Messrs. Macaire and Bertrand are made the heroes of 
+many speculations of the kind.  In almost the first print of our 
+collection, Robert discourses to Bertrand of his projects.  
+"Bertrand," says the disinterested admirer of talent and 
+enterprise, "j'adore l'industrie.  Si tu veux nous créons une 
+banque, mais là, une vraie banque: capital cent millions de 
+millions, cent milliards de milliards d'actions.  Nous enfonçons la 
+banque de France, les banquiers, les banquistes; nous enfonçons 
+tout le monde."  "Oui," says Bertrand, very calm and stupid, "mais 
+les gendarmes?"  "Que tu es bête, Bertrand: est-ce qu'on arrête un 
+millionaire?"  Such is the key to M. Macaire's philosophy; and a 
+wise creed too, as times go.
+
+Acting on these principles, Robert appears soon after; he has not 
+created a bank, but a journal.  He sits in a chair of state, and 
+discourses to a shareholder.  Bertrand, calm and stupid as before, 
+stands humbly behind.  "Sir," says the editor of La Blague, journal 
+quotidienne, "our profits arise from a new combination.  The 
+journal costs twenty francs; we sell it for twenty-three and a 
+half.  A million subscribers make three millions and a half of 
+profits; there are my figures; contradict me by figures, or I will 
+bring an action for libel."  The reader may fancy the scene takes 
+place in England, where many such a swindling prospectus has 
+obtained credit ere now.  At Plate 33, Robert is still a journalist;
+he brings to the editor of a paper an article of his composition, a
+violent attack on a law.  "My dear M. Macaire," says the editor,
+"this must be changed; we must PRAISE this law."  "Bon, bon!" says
+our versatile Macaire.  "Je vais retoucher ça, et je vous fais en
+faveur de la loi UN ARTICLE MOUSSEUX."
+
+Can such things be?  Is it possible that French journalists can so 
+forget themselves?  The rogues! they should come to England and 
+learn consistency.  The honesty of the Press in England is like the 
+air we breathe, without it we die.  No, no! in France, the satire 
+may do very well; but for England it is too monstrous.  Call the 
+press stupid, call it vulgar, call it violent,--but honest it is.  
+Who ever heard of a journal changing its politics?  O tempora!  O 
+mores! as Robert Macaire says, this would be carrying the joke too 
+far.
+
+When he has done with newspapers, Robert Macaire begins to 
+distinguish himself on 'Change,* as a creator of companies, a 
+vender of shares, or a dabbler in foreign stock.  "Buy my coal-mine 
+shares," shouts Robert; "gold mines, silver mines, diamond mines, 
+'sont de la pot-bouille de la ratatouille en comparaison de ma 
+houille.'"  "Look," says he, on another occasion, to a very timid, 
+open-countenanced client, "you have a property to sell!  I have 
+found the very man, a rich capitalist, a fellow whose bills are 
+better than bank-notes."  His client sells; the bills are taken in 
+payment, and signed by that respectable capitalist, Monsieur de 
+Saint Bertrand.  At Plate 81, we find him inditing a circular 
+letter to all the world, running thus: "Sir,--I regret to say that 
+your application for shares in the Consolidated European 
+Incombustible Blacking Association cannot be complied with, as all 
+the shares of the C. E. I. B. A. were disposed of on the day they 
+were issued.  I have, nevertheless, registered your name, and in 
+case a second series should be put forth, I shall have the honor of 
+immediately giving you notice.  I am, sir, yours, &c., the 
+Director, Robert Macaire."--"Print 300,000 of these," he says to 
+Bertrand, "and poison all France with them."  As usual, the stupid 
+Bertrand remonstrates--"But we have not sold a single share; you 
+have not a penny in your pocket, and"--"Bertrand, you are an ass; 
+do as I bid you."
+
+
+* We have given a description of a genteel Macaire in the account 
+of M. de Bernard's novels.
+
+
+Will this satire apply anywhere in England?  Have we any 
+Consolidated European Blacking Associations amongst us?  Have we 
+penniless directors issuing El Dorado prospectuses, and jockeying 
+their shares through the market?  For information on this head, we 
+must refer the reader to the newspapers; or if he be connected with 
+the city, and acquainted with commercial men, he will be able to 
+say whether ALL the persons whose names figure at the head of 
+announcements of projected companies are as rich as Rothschild, or 
+quite as honest as heart could desire.
+
+When Macaire has sufficiently exploité the Bourse, whether as a 
+gambler in the public funds or other companies, he sagely perceives 
+that it is time to turn to some other profession, and, providing 
+himself with a black gown, proposes blandly to Bertrand to set up--
+a new religion.  "Mon ami," says the repentant sinner, "le temps de 
+la commandite va passer, MAIS LES BADAUDS NE PASSERONT PAS."  (O 
+rare sentence! it should be written in letters of gold!)  "OCCUPONS 
+NOUS DE CE QUI EST ÉTERNEL.  Si nous fassions une réligion?"  On 
+which M. Bertrand remarks, "A religion! what the devil--a religion 
+is not an easy thing to make."  But Macaire's receipt is easy.  
+"Get a gown, take a shop," he says, "borrow some chairs, preach 
+about Napoleon, or the discovery of America, or Molière--and 
+there's a religion for you."
+
+We have quoted this sentence more for the contrast it offers with 
+our own manners, than for its merits.  After the noble paragraph, 
+"Les badauds ne passeront pas.  Occupons nous de ce qui est 
+éternel," one would have expected better satire upon cant than the 
+words that follow.  We are not in a condition to say whether the 
+subjects chosen are those that had been selected by Père Enfantin, 
+or Chatel, or Lacordaire; but the words are curious, we think, for 
+the very reason that the satire is so poor.  The fact is, there is 
+no religion in Paris; even clever M. Philipon, who satirizes 
+everything, and must know, therefore, some little about the subject 
+which he ridicules, has nothing to say but, "Preach a sermon, and 
+that makes a religion; anything will do."  If ANYTHING will do, it 
+is clear that the religious commodity is not in much demand.  
+Tartuffe had better things to say about hypocrisy in his time; but 
+then Faith was alive; now, there is no satirizing religious cant in 
+France, for its contrary, true religion, has disappeared altogether;
+and having no substance, can cast no shadow.  If a satirist would
+lash the religious hypocrites in ENGLAND now--the High Church
+hypocrites, the Low Church hypocrites, the promiscuous Dissenting
+hypocrites, the No Popery hypocrites--he would have ample subject
+enough.  In France, the religious hypocrites went out with the
+Bourbons.  Those who remain pious in that country (or, rather, we
+should say, in the capital, for of that we speak,) are unaffectedly
+so, for they have no worldly benefit to hope for from their piety;
+the great majority have no religion at all, and do not scoff at the
+few, for scoffing is the minority's weapon, and is passed always to
+the weaker side, whatever that may be.  Thus H. B. caricatures the
+Ministers: if by any accident that body of men should be dismissed
+from their situations, and be succeeded by H. B.'s friends, the
+Tories,--what must the poor artist do?  He must pine away and die,
+if he be not converted; he cannot always be paying compliments; for
+caricature has a spice of Goethe's Devil in it, and is "der Geist
+der stets verneint," the Spirit that is always denying.
+
+With one or two of the French writers and painters of caricatures, 
+the King tried the experiment of bribery; which succeeded 
+occasionally in buying off the enemy, and bringing him from the 
+republican to the royal camp; but when there, the deserter was 
+never of any use.  Figaro, when so treated, grew fat and 
+desponding, and lost all his sprightly VERVE; and Nemesis became as 
+gentle as a Quakeress.  But these instances of "ratting" were not 
+many.  Some few poets were bought over; but, among men following 
+the profession of the press, a change of politics is an 
+infringement of the point of honor, and a man must FIGHT as well as 
+apostatize.  A very curious table might be made, signalizing the 
+difference of the moral standard between us and the French.  Why is 
+the grossness and indelicacy, publicly permitted in England, 
+unknown in France, where private morality is certainly at a lower 
+ebb?  Why is the point of private honor now more rigidly maintained 
+among the French?  Why is it, as it should be, a moral disgrace for 
+a Frenchman to go into debt, and no disgrace for him to cheat his 
+customer?  Why is there more honesty and less--more propriety and 
+less?--and how are we to account for the particular vices or 
+virtues which belong to each nation in its turn?
+
+The above is the Reverend M. Macaire's solitary exploit as a 
+spiritual swindler: as MAÎTRE Macaire in the courts of law, as 
+avocat, avoué--in a humbler capacity even, as a prisoner at the 
+bar, he distinguishes himself greatly, as may be imagined.  On one 
+occasion we find the learned gentleman humanely visiting an 
+unfortunate détenu--no other person, in fact, than his friend M. 
+Bertrand, who has fallen into some trouble, and is awaiting the 
+sentence of the law.  He begins--
+
+"Mon cher Bertrand, donne moi cent écus, je te fais acquitter 
+d'emblée."
+
+"J'ai pas d'argent."
+
+"Hé bien, donne moi cent francs."
+
+"Pas le sou."
+
+"Tu n'as pas dix francs?"
+
+"Pas un liard."
+
+"Alors donne moi tes bottes, je plaiderai la circonstance 
+atténuante."
+
+The manner in which Maitre Macaire soars from the cent écus (a high 
+point already) to the sublime of the boots, is in the best comic 
+style.  In another instance he pleads before a judge, and, 
+mistaking his client, pleads for defendant, instead of plaintiff.  
+"The infamy of the plaintiff's character, my LUDS, renders his 
+testimony on such a charge as this wholly unavailing."  "M. 
+Macaire, M. Macaire," cries the attorney, in a fright, "you are for 
+the plaintiff!"  "This, my lords, is what the defendant WILL SAY.  
+This is the line of defence which the opposite party intend to 
+pursue; as if slanders like these could weigh with an enlightened 
+jury, or injure the spotless reputation of my client!"  In this 
+story and expedient M. Macaire has been indebted to the English 
+bar.  If there be an occupation for the English satirist in the 
+exposing of the cant and knavery of the pretenders to religion, 
+what room is there for him to lash the infamies of the law!  On 
+this point the French are babes in iniquity compared to us--a 
+counsel prostituting himself for money is a matter with us so 
+stale, that it is hardly food for satire: which, to be popular, 
+must find some much more complicated and interesting knavery 
+whereon to exercise its skill.
+
+M. Macaire is more skilful in love than in law, and appears once or 
+twice in a very amiable light while under the influence of the 
+tender passion.  We find him at the head of one of those useful 
+establishments unknown in our country--a Bureau de Mariage: half a 
+dozen of such places are daily advertised in the journals: and "une 
+veuve de trente ans ayant une fortune de deux cent mille francs," 
+or "une demoiselle de quinze aus, jolie, d'une famille très 
+distinguée, qui possède trente mille livres de rentes,"--
+continually, in this kind-hearted way, are offering themselves to 
+the public: sometimes it is a gentleman, with a "physique 
+agréable,--des talens de société"--and a place under Government, 
+who makes a sacrifice of himself in a similar manner.  In our 
+little historical gallery we find this philanthropic anti-Malthusian
+at the head of an establishment of this kind, introducing a very
+meek, simple-looking bachelor to some distinguished ladies of his
+connoissance.  "Let me present you, sir, to Madame de St. Bertrand"
+(it is our old friend), "veuve de la grande armée, et Mdlle Eloa de
+Wormspire.  Ces dames brûlent de l'envie de faire votre connoissance.
+Je les ai invitées à dîner chez vous ce soir: vous nous menerez à
+l'opéra, et nous ferons une petite partie d'écarté.  Tenez vous bien,
+M. Gobard! ces dames ont des projets sur vous!"
+
+Happy Gobard! happy system, which can thus bring the pure and 
+loving together, and acts as the best ally of Hymen!  The 
+announcement of the rank and titles of Madame de St. Bertrand--
+"veuve de la grande armée"--is very happy.  "La grande armée" has 
+been a father to more orphans, and a husband to more widows, than 
+it ever made.  Mistresses of cafés, old governesses, keepers of 
+boarding-houses, genteel beggars, and ladies of lower rank still, 
+have this favorite pedigree.  They have all had malheurs (what kind 
+it is needless to particularize), they are all connected with the 
+grand homme, and their fathers were all colonels.  This title 
+exactly answers to the "clergyman's daughter" in England--as, "A 
+young lady, the daughter of a clergyman, is desirous to teach," &c.  
+"A clergyman's widow receives into her house a few select," and so 
+forth.  "Appeal to the benevolent.--By a series of unheard-of 
+calamities, a young lady, daughter of a clergyman in the west of 
+England, has been plunged," &c. &c.  The difference is curious, as 
+indicating the standard of respectability.
+
+The male beggar of fashion is not so well known among us as in 
+Paris, where street-doors are open; six or eight families live in a 
+house; and the gentleman who earns his livelihood by this 
+profession can make half a dozen visits without the trouble of 
+knocking from house to house, and the pain of being observed by the 
+whole street, while the footman is examining him from the area.  
+Some few may be seen in England about the inns of court, where the 
+locality is favorable (where, however, the owners of the chambers 
+are not proverbially soft of heart, so that the harvest must be 
+poor); but Paris is full of such adventurers,--fat, smooth-tongued, 
+and well dressed, with gloves and gilt-headed canes, who would be 
+insulted almost by the offer of silver, and expect your gold as 
+their right.  Among these, of course, our friend Robert plays his 
+part; and an excellent engraving represents him, snuff-box in hand, 
+advancing to an old gentleman, whom, by his poodle, his powdered 
+head, and his drivelling, stupid look, one knows to be a Carlist of 
+the old régime.  "I beg pardon," says Robert; "is it really 
+yourself to whom I have the honor of speaking?"--"It is."  "Do you 
+take snuff?"--"I thank you."--"Sir, I have had misfortunes--I want 
+assistance.  I am a Vendéan of illustrious birth.  You know the 
+family of Macairbec--we are of Brest.  My grandfather served the 
+King in his galleys; my father and I belong, also, to the marine.  
+Unfortunate suits at law have plunged us into difficulties, and I 
+do not hesitate to ask you for the succor of ten francs."--"Sir, I 
+never give to those I don't know."--"Right, sir, perfectly right.  
+Perhaps you will have the kindness to LEND me ten francs?"
+
+The adventures of Doctor Macaire need not be described, because the 
+different degrees in quackery which are taken by that learned 
+physician are all well known in England, where we have the 
+advantage of many higher degrees in the science, which our 
+neighbors know nothing about.  We have not Hahnemann, but we have 
+his disciples; we have not Broussais, but we have the College of 
+Health; and surely a dose of Morrison's pills is a sublimer 
+discovery than a draught of hot water.  We had St. John Long, too--
+where is his science?--and we are credibly informed that some 
+important cures have been effected by the inspired dignitaries of 
+"the church" in Newman Street which, if it continue to practise, 
+will sadly interfere with the profits of the regular physicians, 
+and where the miracles of the Abbé of Paris are about to be acted 
+over again.
+
+In speaking of M. Macaire and his adventures, we have managed so 
+entirely to convince ourselves of the reality of the personage, 
+that we have quite forgotten to speak of Messrs. Philipon and 
+Daumier, who are, the one the inventor, the other the designer, of 
+the Macaire Picture Gallery.  As works of esprit, these drawings 
+are not more remarkable than they are as works of art, and we never 
+recollect to have seen a series of sketches possessing more 
+extraordinary cleverness and variety.  The countenance and figure 
+of Macaire and the dear stupid Bertrand are preserved, of course, 
+with great fidelity throughout; but the admirable way in which each 
+fresh character is conceived, the grotesque appropriateness of 
+Robert's every successive attitude and gesticulation, and the 
+variety of Bertrand's postures of invariable repose, the exquisite 
+fitness of all the other characters, who act their little part and 
+disappear from the scene, cannot be described on paper, or too 
+highly lauded.  The figures are very carelessly drawn; but, if the 
+reader can understand us, all the attitudes and limbs are perfectly 
+CONCEIVED, and wonderfully natural and various.  After pondering 
+over these drawings for some hours, as we have been while compiling 
+this notice of them, we have grown to believe that the personages 
+are real, and the scenes remain imprinted on the brain as if we had 
+absolutely been present at their acting.  Perhaps the clever way in 
+which the plates are colored, and the excellent effect which is put 
+into each, may add to this illusion.  Now, in looking, for 
+instance, at H. B.'s slim vapory figures, they have struck us as 
+excellent LIKENESSES of men and women, but no more: the bodies want 
+spirit, action, and individuality.  George Cruikshank, as a 
+humorist, has quite as much genius, but he does not know the art of 
+"effect" so well as Monsieur Daumier; and, if we might venture to 
+give a word of advice to another humorous designer, whose works are 
+extensively circulated--the illustrator of "Pickwick" and "Nicholas 
+Nickleby,"--it would be to study well these caricatures of Monsieur 
+Daumier; who, though he executes very carelessly, knows very well 
+what he would express, indicates perfectly the attitude and 
+identity of his figure, and is quite aware, beforehand, of the 
+effect which he intends to produce.  The one we should fancy to be 
+a practised artist, taking his ease; the other, a young one, 
+somewhat bewildered: a very clever one, however, who, if he would 
+think more, and exaggerate less, would add not a little to his 
+reputation.
+
+Having pursued, all through these remarks, the comparison between 
+English art and French art, English and French humor, manners, and 
+morals, perhaps we should endeavor, also, to write an analytical 
+essay on English cant or humbug, as distinguished from French.  It 
+might be shown that the latter was more picturesque and startling, 
+the former more substantial and positive.  It has none of the 
+poetic flights of the French genius, but advances steadily, and 
+gains more ground in the end than its sprightlier compeer.  But 
+such a discussion would carry us through the whole range of French 
+and English history, and the reader has probably read quite enough 
+of the subject in this and the foregoing pages.
+
+We shall, therefore, say no more of French and English caricatures 
+generally, or of Mr. Macaire's particular accomplishments and 
+adventures.  They are far better understood by examining the 
+original pictures, by which Philipon and Daumier have illustrated 
+them, than by translations first into print and afterwards into 
+English.  They form a very curious and instructive commentary upon 
+the present state of society in Paris, and a hundred years hence, 
+when the whole of this struggling, noisy, busy, merry race shall 
+have exchanged their pleasures or occupations for a quiet coffin 
+(and a tawdry lying epitaph) at Montmartre, or Père la Chaise; when 
+the follies here recorded shall have been superseded by new ones, 
+and the fools now so active shall have given up the inheritance of 
+the world to their children: the latter will, at least, have the 
+advantage of knowing, intimately and exactly, the manners of life 
+and being of their grandsires, and calling up, when they so choose 
+it, our ghosts from the grave, to live, love, quarrel, swindle, 
+suffer, and struggle on blindly as of yore.  And when the amused 
+speculator shall have laughed sufficiently at the immensity of our 
+follies, and the paltriness of our aims, smiled at our exploded 
+superstitions, wondered how this man should be considered great, 
+who is now clean forgotten (as copious Guthrie before mentioned); 
+how this should have been thought a patriot who is but a knave 
+spouting commonplace; or how that should have been dubbed a 
+philosopher who is but a dull fool, blinking solemn, and pretending 
+to see in the dark; when he shall have examined all these at his 
+leisure, smiling in a pleasant contempt and good-humored 
+superiority, and thanking heaven for his increased lights, he will 
+shut the book, and be a fool as his fathers were before him.
+
+It runs in the blood.  Well hast thou said, O ragged Macaire,--"Le 
+jour va passer, MAIS LES BADAUDS NE PASSERONT PAS."
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE POINSINET.
+
+
+About the year 1760, there lived, at Paris, a little fellow, who 
+was the darling of all the wags of his acquaintance.  Nature 
+seemed, in the formation of this little man, to have amused 
+herself, by giving loose to half a hundred of her most comical 
+caprices.  He had some wit and drollery of his own, which sometimes 
+rendered his sallies very amusing; but, where his friends laughed 
+with him once, they laughed at him a thousand times, for he had a 
+fund of absurdity in himself that was more pleasant than all the 
+wit in the world.  He was as proud as a peacock, as wicked as an 
+ape, and as silly as a goose.  He did not possess one single grain 
+of common sense; but, in revenge, his pretensions were enormous, 
+his ignorance vast, and his credulity more extensive still.  From 
+his youth upwards, he had read nothing but the new novels, and the 
+verses in the almanacs, which helped him not a little in making, 
+what he called, poetry of his own; for, of course, our little hero 
+was a poet.  All the common usages of life, all the ways of the 
+world, and all the customs of society, seemed to be quite unknown 
+to him; add to these good qualities, a magnificent conceit, a 
+cowardice inconceivable, and a face so irresistibly comic, that 
+every one who first beheld it was compelled to burst out a-
+laughing, and you will have some notion of this strange little 
+gentleman.  He was very proud of his voice, and uttered all his 
+sentences in the richest tragic tone.  He was little better than a 
+dwarf; but he elevated his eyebrows, held up his neck, walked on 
+the tips of his toes, and gave himself the airs of a giant.  He had 
+a little pair of bandy legs, which seemed much too short to support 
+anything like a human body; but, by the help of these crooked 
+supporters, he thought he could dance like a Grace; and, indeed, 
+fancied all the graces possible were to be found in his person.  
+His goggle eyes were always rolling about wildly, as if in 
+correspondence with the disorder of his little brain and his 
+countenance thus wore an expression of perpetual wonder.  With such 
+happy natural gifts, he not only fell into all traps that were laid 
+for him, but seemed almost to go out of his way to seek them; 
+although, to be sure, his friends did not give him much trouble in 
+that search, for they prepared hoaxes for him incessantly.
+
+One day the wags introduced him to a company of ladies, who, though 
+not countesses and princesses exactly, took, nevertheless, those 
+titles upon themselves for the nonce; and were all, for the same 
+reason, violently smitten with Master Poinsinet's person.  One of 
+them, the lady of the house, was especially tender; and, seating 
+him by her side at supper, so plied him with smiles, ogles, and 
+champagne, that our little hero grew crazed with ecstasy, and wild 
+with love.  In the midst of his happiness, a cruel knock was heard 
+below, accompanied by quick loud talking, swearing, and shuffling 
+of feet: you would have thought a regiment was at the door.  "Oh 
+heavens!" cried the marchioness, starting up, and giving to the 
+hand of Poinsinet one parting squeeze; "fly--fly, my Poinsinet: 
+'tis the colonel--my husband!"  At this, each gentleman of the 
+party rose, and, drawing his rapier, vowed to cut his way through 
+the colonel and all his mousquetaires, or die, if need be, by the 
+side of Poinsinet.
+
+The little fellow was obliged to lug out his sword too, and went 
+shuddering down stairs, heartily repenting of his passion for 
+marchionesses.  When the party arrived in the street, they found, 
+sure enough, a dreadful company of mousquetaires, as they seemed, 
+ready to oppose their passage.  Swords crossed,--torches blazed; 
+and, with the most dreadful shouts and imprecations, the contending 
+parties rushed upon one another; the friends of Poinsinet 
+surrounding and supporting that little warrior, as the French 
+knights did King Francis at Pavia, otherwise the poor fellow 
+certainly would have fallen down in the gutter from fright.
+
+But the combat was suddenly interrupted; for the neighbors, who 
+knew nothing of the trick going on, and thought the brawl was real, 
+had been screaming with all their might for the police, who began 
+about this time to arrive.  Directly they appeared, friends and 
+enemies of Poinsinet at once took to their heels; and, in THIS 
+part of the transaction, at least, our hero himself showed that he 
+was equal to the longest-legged grenadier that ever ran away.
+
+When, at last, those little bandy legs of his had borne him safely 
+to his lodgings, all Poinsinet's friends crowded round him, to 
+congratulate him on his escape and his valor.
+
+"Egad, how he pinked that great red-haired fellow!" said one.
+
+"No; did I?" said Poinsinet.
+
+"Did you?  Psha! don't try to play the modest, and humbug US; you 
+know you did.  I suppose you will say, next, that you were not for 
+three minutes point to point with Cartentierce himself, the most 
+dreadful swordsman of the army."
+
+"Why, you see," says Poinsinet, quite delighted, "it was so dark 
+that I did not know with whom I was engaged; although, corbleu, I 
+DID FOR one or two of the fellows."  And after a little more of 
+such conversation, during which he was fully persuaded that he had 
+done for a dozen of the enemy at least, Poinsinet went to bed, his 
+little person trembling with fright and pleasure; and he fell 
+asleep, and dreamed of rescuing ladies, and destroying monsters, 
+like a second Amadis de Gaul.
+
+When he awoke in the morning, he found a party of his friends in 
+his room: one was examining his coat and waistcoat; another was 
+casting many curious glances at his inexpressibles.  "Look here!" 
+said this gentleman, holding up the garment to the light; "one--
+two--three gashes!  I am hanged if the cowards did not aim at 
+Poinsinet's legs!  There are four holes in the sword arm of his 
+coat, and seven have gone right through coat and waistcoat.  Good 
+heaven! Poinsinet, have you had a surgeon to your wounds?"
+
+"Wounds!" said the little man, springing up, "I don't know--that 
+is, I hope--that is--O Lord! O Lord! I hope I'm not wounded!" and, 
+after a proper examination, he discovered he was not.
+
+"Thank heaven! thank heaven!" said one of the wags (who, indeed, 
+during the slumbers of Poinsinet had been occupied in making these 
+very holes through the garments of that individual), "if you have 
+escaped, it is by a miracle.  Alas! alas! all your enemies have not 
+been so lucky."
+
+"How! is anybody wounded?" said Poinsinet.
+
+"My dearest friend, prepare yourself; that unhappy man who came to 
+revenge his menaced honor--that gallant officer--that injured 
+husband, Colonel Count de Cartentierce--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"IS NO MORE! he died this morning, pierced through with nineteen 
+wounds from your hand, and calling upon his country to revenge his 
+murder."
+
+When this awful sentence was pronounced, all the auditory gave a 
+pathetic and simultaneous sob; and as for Poinsinet, he sank back 
+on his bed with a howl of terror, which would have melted a 
+Visigoth to tears, or to laughter.  As soon as his terror and 
+remorse had, in some degree, subsided, his comrades spoke to him of 
+the necessity of making his escape; and, huddling on his clothes, 
+and bidding them all a tender adieu, he set off, incontinently, 
+without his breakfast, for England, America, or Russia, not knowing 
+exactly which.
+
+One of his companions agreed to accompany him on a part of this 
+journey,--that is, as far as the barrier of St. Denis, which is, as 
+everybody knows, on the high road to Dover; and there, being 
+tolerably secure, they entered a tavern for breakfast; which meal, 
+the last that he ever was to take, perhaps, in his native city, 
+Poinsinet was just about to discuss, when, behold! a gentleman 
+entered the apartment where Poinsinet and his friend were seated, 
+and, drawing from his pocket a paper, with "AU NOM DU ROY" 
+flourished on the top, read from it, or rather from Poinsinet's own 
+figure, his exact signalement, laid his hand on his shoulder, and 
+arrested him in the name of the King, and of the provost-marshal of 
+Paris.  "I arrest you, sir," said he, gravely, "with regret; you 
+have slain, with seventeen wounds, in single combat, Colonel Count 
+de Cartentierce, one of his Majesty's household; and, as his 
+murderer, you fall under the immediate authority of the provost-
+marshal, and die without trial or benefit of clergy."
+
+You may fancy how the poor little man's appetite fell when he heard 
+this speech.  "In the provost-marshal's hands?" said his friend: 
+"then it is all over, indeed!  When does my poor friend suffer, 
+sir?"
+
+"At half-past six o'clock, the day after to-morrow," said the 
+officer, sitting down, and helping himself to wine.  "But stop," 
+said he, suddenly; "sure I can't mistake?  Yes--no--yes, it is.  My 
+dear friend, my dear Durand! don't you recollect your old 
+schoolfellow, Antoine?"  And herewith the officer flung himself 
+into the arms of Durand, Poinsinet's comrade, and they performed a 
+most affecting scene of friendship.
+
+"This may be of some service to you," whispered Durand to 
+Poinsinet; and, after some further parley, he asked the officer 
+when he was bound to deliver up his prisoner; and, hearing that he 
+was not called upon to appear at the Marshalsea before six o'clock 
+at night, Monsieur Durand prevailed upon Monsieur Antoine to wait 
+until that hour, and in the meantime to allow his prisoner to walk 
+about the town in his company.  This request was, with a little 
+difficulty, granted; and poor Poinsinet begged to be carried to the 
+houses of his various friends, and bid them farewell.  Some were 
+aware of the trick that had been played upon him: others were not; 
+but the poor little man's credulity was so great, that it was 
+impossible to undeceive him; and he went from house to house 
+bewailing his fate, and followed by the complaisant marshal's 
+officer.
+
+The news of his death he received with much more meekness than 
+could have been expected; but what he could not reconcile to 
+himself was, the idea of dissection afterwards.  "What can they 
+want with me?" cried the poor wretch, in an unusual fit of candor.  
+"I am very small and ugly; it would be different if I were a tall 
+fine-looking fellow."  But he was given to understand that beauty 
+made very little difference to the surgeons, who, on the contrary, 
+would, on certain occasions, prefer a deformed man to a handsome 
+one; for science was much advanced by the study of such 
+monstrosities.  With this reason Poinsinet was obliged to be 
+content; and so paid his rounds of visits, and repeated his dismal 
+adieux.
+
+The officer of the provost-marshal, however amusing Poinsinet's 
+woes might have been, began, by this time, to grow very weary of 
+them, and gave him more than one opportunity to escape.  He would 
+stop at shop-windows, loiter round corners, and look up in the sky, 
+but all in vain: Poinsinet would not escape, do what the other 
+would.  At length, luckily, about dinner-time, the officer met one 
+of Poinsinet's friends and his own: and the three agreed to dine at 
+a tavern, as they had breakfasted; and here the officer, who vowed 
+that he had been up for five weeks incessantly, fell suddenly 
+asleep, in the profoundest fatigue; and Poinsinet was persuaded, 
+after much hesitation on his part, to take leave of him.
+
+And now, this danger overcome, another was to be avoided.  Beyond a 
+doubt the police were after him, and how was he to avoid them?  He 
+must be disguised, of course; and one of his friends, a tall, gaunt 
+lawyer's clerk, agreed to provide him with habits.
+
+So little Poinsinet dressed himself out in the clerk's dingy black 
+suit, of which the knee-breeches hung down to his heels, and the 
+waist of the coat reached to the calves of his legs; and, 
+furthermore, he blacked his eyebrows, and wore a huge black 
+periwig, in which his friend vowed that no one could recognize him.  
+But the most painful incident, with regard to the periwig, was, 
+that Poinsinet, whose solitary beauty--if beauty it might be 
+called--was a head of copious, curling, yellow hair, was compelled 
+to snip off every one of his golden locks, and to rub the bristles 
+with a black dye; "for if your wig were to come off," said the 
+lawyer, "and your fair hair to tumble over your shoulders, every 
+man would know, or at least suspect you."  So off the locks were 
+cut, and in his black suit and periwig little Poinsinet went 
+abroad.
+
+His friends had their cue; and when he appeared amongst them, not 
+one seemed to know him.  He was taken into companies where his 
+character was discussed before him, and his wonderful escape spoken 
+of.  At last he was introduced to the very officer of the provost-
+marshal who had taken him into custody, and who told him that he 
+had been dismissed the provost's service, in consequence of the 
+escape of the prisoner.  Now, for the first time, poor Poinsinet 
+thought himself tolerably safe, and blessed his kind friends who 
+had procured for him such a complete disguise.  How this affair 
+ended I know not,--whether some new lie was coined to account for 
+his release, or whether he was simply told that he had been hoaxed: 
+it mattered little; for the little man was quite as ready to be 
+hoaxed the next day.
+
+Poinsinet was one day invited to dine with one of the servants of 
+the Tuileries; and, before his arrival, a person in company had 
+been decorated with a knot of lace and a gold key, such as 
+chamberlains wear; he was introduced to Poinsinet as the Count de 
+Truchses, chamberlain to the King of Prussia.  After dinner the 
+conversation fell upon the Count's visit to Paris; when his 
+Excellency, with a mysterious air, vowed that he had only come for 
+pleasure.  "It is mighty well," said a third person, "and, of 
+course, we can't cross-question your lordship too closely;" but at 
+the same time it was hinted to Poinsinet that a person of such 
+consequence did not travel for NOTHING, with which opinion 
+Poinsinet solemnly agreed; and, indeed, it was borne out by a 
+subsequent declaration of the Count, who condescended, at last, to 
+tell the company, in confidence, that he HAD a mission, and a most 
+important one--to find, namely, among the literary men of France, a 
+governor for the Prince Royal of Prussia.  The company seemed 
+astonished that the King had not made choice of Voltaire or 
+D'Alembert, and mentioned a dozen other distinguished men who might 
+be competent to this important duty; but the Count, as may be 
+imagined, found objections to every one of them; and, at last, one 
+of the guests said, that, if his Prussian Majesty was not 
+particular as to age, he knew a person more fitted for the place 
+than any other who could be found,--his honorable friend, M. 
+Poinsinet, was the individual to whom he alluded.
+
+"Good heavens!" cried the Count, "is it possible that the 
+celebrated Poinsinet would take such a place?  I would give the 
+world to see him?"  And you may fancy how Poinsinet simpered and 
+blushed when the introduction immediately took place.
+
+The Count protested to him that the King would be charmed to know 
+him; and added, that one of his operas (for it must be told that 
+our little friend was a vaudeville-maker by trade) had been acted 
+seven-and-twenty times at the theatre at Potsdam.  His Excellency 
+then detailed to him all the honors and privileges which the 
+governor of the Prince Royal might expect; and all the guests 
+encouraged the little man's vanity, by asking him for his 
+protection and favor.  In a short time our hero grew so inflated 
+with pride and vanity, that he was for patronizing the chamberlain 
+himself, who proceeded to inform him that he was furnished with 
+all the necessary powers by his sovereign, who had specially 
+enjoined him to confer upon the future governor of his son the 
+royal order of the Black Eagle.
+
+Poinsinet, delighted, was ordered to kneel down; and the Count 
+produced a large yellow ribbon, which he hung over his shoulder, 
+and which was, he declared, the grand cordon of the order.  You 
+must fancy Poinsinet's face, and excessive delight at this; for as 
+for describing them, nobody can.  For four-and-twenty hours the 
+happy chevalier paraded through Paris with this flaring yellow 
+ribbon; and he was not undeceived until his friends had another 
+trick in store for him.
+
+He dined one day in the company of a man who understood a little of 
+the noble art of conjuring, and performed some clever tricks on the 
+cards.  Poinsinet's organ of wonder was enormous; he looked on with 
+the gravity and awe of a child, and thought the man's tricks sheer 
+miracles.  It wanted no more to set his companions to work.
+
+"Who is this wonderful man?" said he to his neighbor.
+
+"Why," said the other, mysteriously, "one hardly knows who he is; 
+or, at least, one does not like to say to such an indiscreet fellow 
+as you are."  Poinsinet at once swore to be secret.  "Well, then," 
+said his friend, "you will hear that man--that wonderful man--
+called by a name which is not his: his real name is Acosta: he is a 
+Portuguese Jew, a Rosicrucian, and Cabalist of the first order, and 
+compelled to leave Lisbon for fear of the Inquisition.  He performs 
+here, as you see, some extraordinary things, occasionally; but the 
+master of the house, who loves him excessively, would not, for the 
+world, that his name should be made public."
+
+"Ah, bah!" said Poinsinet, who affected the bel esprit; "you don't 
+mean to say that you believe in magic, and cabalas, and such 
+trash?"
+
+"Do I not?  You shall judge for yourself."  And, accordingly, 
+Poinsinet was presented to the magician, who pretended to take a 
+vast liking for him, and declared that he saw in him certain marks 
+which would infallibly lead him to great eminence in the magic art, 
+if he chose to study it.
+
+Dinner was served, and Poinsinet placed by the side of the miracle-
+worker, who became very confidential with him, and promised him--
+ay, before dinner was over--a remarkable instance of his power.  
+Nobody, on this occasion, ventured to cut a single joke against 
+poor Poinsinet; nor could he fancy that any trick was intended 
+against him, for the demeanor of the society towards him was 
+perfectly grave and respectful, and the conversation serious.  On a 
+sudden, however, somebody exclaimed, "Where is Poinsinet?  Did any 
+one see him leave the room?"
+
+All the company exclaimed how singular the disappearance was; and 
+Poinsinet himself, growing alarmed, turned round to his neighbor, 
+and was about to explain.
+
+"Hush!" said the magician, in a whisper; "I told you that you 
+should see what I could do.  I HAVE MADE YOU INVISIBLE; be quiet, 
+and you shall see some more tricks that I shall play with these 
+fellows."
+
+Poinsinet remained then silent, and listened to his neighbors, who 
+agreed, at last, that he was a quiet, orderly personage, and had 
+left the table early, being unwilling to drink too much.  Presently 
+they ceased to talk about him, and resumed their conversation upon 
+other matters.
+
+At first it was very quiet and grave, but the master of the house 
+brought back the talk to the subject of Poinsinet, and uttered all 
+sorts of abuse concerning him.  He begged the gentleman, who had 
+introduced such a little scamp into his house, to bring him thither 
+no more: whereupon the other took up, warmly, Poinsinet's defence; 
+declared that he was a man of the greatest merit, frequenting the 
+best society, and remarkable for his talents as well as his 
+virtues.
+
+"Ah!" said Poinsinet to the magician, quite charmed at what he 
+heard, "how ever shall I thank you, my dear sir, for thus showing 
+me who my true friends are?"
+
+The magician promised him still further favors in prospect; and 
+told him to look out now, for he was about to throw all the company 
+into a temporary fit of madness, which, no doubt, would be very 
+amusing.
+
+In consequence, all the company, who had heard every syllable of 
+the conversation, began to perform the most extraordinary antics, 
+much to the delight of Poinsinet.  One asked a nonsensical 
+question, and the other delivered an answer not at all to the 
+purpose.  If a man asked for a drink, they poured him out a pepper-
+box or a napkin: they took a pinch of snuff, and swore it was 
+excellent wine; and vowed that the bread was the most delicious 
+mutton ever tasted.  The little man was delighted.
+
+"Ah!" said he, "these fellows are prettily punished for their 
+rascally backbiting of me!"
+
+"Gentlemen," said the host, "I shall now give you some celebrated 
+champagne," and he poured out to each a glass of water.
+
+"Good heavens!" said one, spitting it out, with the most horrible 
+grimace, "where did you get this detestable claret?"
+
+"Ah, faugh!" said a second, "I never tasted such vile corked 
+burgundy in all my days!" and he threw the glass of water into 
+Poinsinet's face, as did half a dozen of the other guests, 
+drenching the poor wretch to the skin.  To complete this pleasant 
+illusion, two of the guests fell to boxing across Poinsinet, who 
+received a number of the blows, and received them with the patience 
+of a fakir, feeling himself more flattered by the precious 
+privilege of beholding this scene invisible, than hurt by the blows 
+and buffets which the mad company bestowed upon him.
+
+The fame of this adventure spread quickly over Paris, and all the 
+world longed to have at their houses the representation of 
+Poinsinet the Invisible.  The servants and the whole company used 
+to be put up to the trick; and Poinsinet, who believed in his 
+invisibility as much as he did in his existence, went about with 
+his friend and protector the magician.  People, of course, never 
+pretended to see him, and would very often not talk of him at all 
+for some time, but hold sober conversation about anything else in 
+the world.  When dinner was served, of course there was no cover 
+laid for Poinsinet, who carried about a little stool, on which he 
+sat by the side of the magician, and always ate off his plate.  
+Everybody was astonished at the magician's appetite and at the 
+quantity of wine he drank; as for little Poinsinet, he never once 
+suspected any trick, and had such a confidence in his magician, 
+that, I do believe, if the latter had told him to fling himself out 
+of window, he would have done so, without the slightest trepidation.
+
+Among other mystifications in which the Portuguese enchanter 
+plunged him, was one which used to afford always a good deal of 
+amusement.  He informed Poinsinet, with great mystery, that HE WAS 
+NOT HIMSELF; he was not, that is to say, that ugly, deformed little 
+monster, called Poinsinet; but that his birth was most illustrious, 
+and his real name Polycarte.  He was, in fact, the son of a 
+celebrated magician; but other magicians, enemies of his father, 
+had changed him in his cradle, altering his features into their 
+present hideous shape, in order that a silly old fellow, called 
+Poinsinet, might take him to be his own son, which little monster 
+the magician had likewise spirited away.
+
+The poor wretch was sadly cast down at this; for he tried to fancy 
+that his person was agreeable to the ladies, of whom he was one of 
+the warmest little admirers possible; and to console him somewhat, 
+the magician told him that his real shape was exquisitely 
+beautiful, and as soon as he should appear in it, all the beauties 
+in Paris would be at his feet.  But how to regain it?  "Oh, for one 
+minute of that beauty!" cried the little man; "what would he not 
+give to appear under that enchanting form!"  The magician hereupon 
+waved his stick over his head, pronounced some awful magical words, 
+and twisted him round three times; at the third twist, the men in 
+company seemed struck with astonishment and envy, the ladies 
+clasped their hands, and some of them kissed his.  Everybody 
+declared his beauty to be supernatural.
+
+Poinsinet, enchanted, rushed to a glass.  "Fool!" said the 
+magician; "do you suppose that YOU can see the change?  My power to 
+render you invisible, beautiful, or ten times more hideous even 
+than you are, extends only to others, not to you.  You may look a 
+thousand times in the glass, and you will only see those deformed 
+limbs and disgusting features with which devilish malice has 
+disguised you."  Poor little Poinsinet looked, and came back in 
+tears.  "But," resumed the magician,--"ha, ha, ha!--I know a way in 
+which to disappoint the machinations of these fiendish magi."
+
+"Oh, my benefactor!--my great master!--for heaven's sake tell it!" 
+gasped Poinsinet.
+
+"Look you--it is this.  A prey to enchantment and demoniac art all 
+your life long, you have lived until your present age perfectly 
+satisfied; nay, absolutely vain of a person the most singularly 
+hideous that ever walked the earth!"
+
+"IS it?" whispered Poinsinet.  "Indeed and indeed I didn't think it 
+so bad!"
+
+"He acknowledges it! he acknowledges it!" roared the magician.  
+"Wretch, dotard, owl, mole, miserable buzzard!  I have no reason to 
+tell thee now that thy form is monstrous, that children cry, that 
+cowards turn pale, that teeming matrons shudder to behold it.  It 
+is not thy fault that thou art thus ungainly: but wherefore so 
+blind? wherefore so conceited of thyself!  I tell thee, Poinsinet, 
+that over every fresh instance of thy vanity the hostile enchanters 
+rejoice and triumph.  As long as thou art blindly satisfied with 
+thyself; as long as thou pretendest, in thy present odious shape, 
+to win the love of aught above a negress; nay, further still, until 
+thou hast learned to regard that face, as others do, with the most 
+intolerable horror and disgust, to abuse it when thou seest it, to 
+despise it, in short, and treat that miserable disguise in which 
+the enchanters have wrapped thee with the strongest, hatred and 
+scorn, so long art thou destined to wear it."
+
+Such speeches as these, continually repeated, caused Poinsinet to 
+be fully convinced of his ugliness; he used to go about in 
+companies, and take every opportunity of inveighing against 
+himself; he made verses and epigrams against himself; he talked 
+about "that dwarf, Poinsinet;" "that buffoon, Poinsinet;" "that 
+conceited, hump-backed Poinsinet;" and he would spend hours before 
+the glass, abusing his own face as he saw it reflected there, and 
+vowing that he grew handsomer at every fresh epithet that he 
+uttered.
+
+Of course the wags, from time to time, used to give him every 
+possible encouragement, and declared that since this exercise, his 
+person was amazingly improved.  The ladies, too, began to be so 
+excessively fond of him, that the little fellow was obliged to 
+caution them at last--for the good, as he said, of society; he 
+recommended them to draw lots, for he could not gratify them all; 
+but promised when his metamorphosis was complete, that the one 
+chosen should become the happy Mrs. Poinsinet; or, to speak more 
+correctly, Mrs. Polycarte.
+
+I am sorry to say, however, that, on the score of gallantry, 
+Poinsinet was never quite convinced of the hideousness of his 
+appearance.  He had a number of adventures, accordingly, with the 
+ladies, but strange to say, the husbands or fathers were always 
+interrupting him.  On one occasion he was made to pass the night in 
+a slipper-bath full of water; where, although he had all his 
+clothes on, he declared that he nearly caught his death of cold.  
+Another night, in revenge, the poor fellow
+
+
+              --"dans le simple appareil
+     D'une beauté, qu'on vient d'arracher au sommeil,"
+
+
+spent a number of hours contemplating the beauty of the moon on the 
+tiles.  These adventures are pretty numerous in the memoirs of M. 
+Poinsinet; but the fact is, that people in France were a great deal 
+more philosophical in those days than the English are now, so that 
+Poinsinet's loves must be passed over, as not being to our taste.  
+His magician was a great diver, and told Poinsinet the most 
+wonderful tales of his two minutes' absence under water.  These two 
+minutes, he said, lasted through a year, at least, which he spent 
+in the company of a naiad, more beautiful than Venus, in a palace 
+more splendid than even Versailles.  Fired by the description, 
+Poinsinet used to dip, and dip, but he never was known to make any 
+mermaid acquaintances, although he fully believed that one day he 
+should find such.
+
+The invisible joke was brought to an end by Poinsinet's too great 
+reliance on it; for being, as we have said, of a very tender and 
+sanguine disposition, he one day fell in love with a lady in whose 
+company he dined, and whom he actually proposed to embrace; but the 
+fair lady, in the hurry of the moment, forgot to act up to the 
+joke; and instead of receiving Poinsinet's salute with calmness, 
+grew indignant, called him an impudent little scoundrel, and lent 
+him a sound box on the ear.  With this slap the invisibility of 
+Poinsinet disappeared, the gnomes and genii left him, and he 
+settled down into common life again, and was hoaxed only by vulgar 
+means.
+
+A vast number of pages might be filled with narratives of the 
+tricks that were played upon him; but they resemble each other a 
+good deal, as may be imagined, and the chief point remarkable about 
+them is the wondrous faith of Poinsinet.  After being introduced to 
+the Prussian ambassador at the Tuileries, he was presented to the 
+Turkish envoy at the Place Vendôme, who received him in state, 
+surrounded by the officers of his establishment, all dressed in the 
+smartest dresses that the wardrobe of the Opéra Comique could 
+furnish.
+
+As the greatest honor that could be done to him, Poinsinet was 
+invited to eat, and a tray was produced, on which was a delicate 
+dish prepared in the Turkish manner.  This consisted of a 
+reasonable quantity of mustard, salt, cinnamon and ginger, nutmegs 
+and cloves, with a couple of tablespoonfuls of cayenne pepper, to 
+give the whole a flavor; and Poinsinet's countenance may be 
+imagined when he introduced into his mouth a quantity of this 
+exquisite compound.
+
+"The best of the joke was," says the author who records so many of 
+the pitiless tricks practised upon poor Poinsinet, "that the little 
+man used to laugh at them afterwards himself with perfect good 
+humor; and lived in the daily hope that, from being the sufferer, 
+he should become the agent in these hoaxes, and do to others as he 
+had been done by."  Passing, therefore, one day, on the Pont Neuf, 
+with a friend, who had been one of the greatest performers, the 
+latter said to him, "Poinsinet, my good fellow, thou hast suffered 
+enough, and thy sufferings have made thee so wise and cunning, that 
+thou art worthy of entering among the initiated, and hoaxing in thy 
+turn."  Poinsinet was charmed; he asked when he should be 
+initiated, and how?  It was told him that a moment would suffice, 
+and that the ceremony might be performed on the spot.  At this 
+news, and according to order, Poinsinet flung himself straightway 
+on his knees in the kennel; and the other, drawing his sword, 
+solemnly initiated him into the sacred order of jokers.  From that 
+day the little man believed himself received into the society; and 
+to this having brought him, let us bid him a respectful adieu.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVIL'S WAGER.
+
+
+It was the hour of the night when there be none stirring save 
+churchyard ghosts--when all doors are closed except the gates of 
+graves, and all eyes shut but the eyes of wicked men.
+
+When there is no sound on the earth except the ticking of the 
+grasshopper, or the croaking of obscene frogs in the poole.
+
+And no light except that of the blinking starres, and the wicked 
+and devilish wills-o'-the-wisp, as they gambol among the marshes, 
+and lead good men astraye.
+
+When there is nothing moving in heaven except the owle, as he 
+flappeth along lazily; or the magician, as he rides on his infernal 
+broomsticke, whistling through the aire like the arrowes of a 
+Yorkshire archere.
+
+It was at this hour (namely, at twelve o'clock of the night,) that 
+two beings went winging through the black clouds, and holding 
+converse with each other.
+
+Now the first was Mercurius, the messenger, not of gods (as the 
+heathens feigned), but of daemons; and the second, with whom he held 
+company, was the soul of Sir Roger de Rollo, the brave knight.  Sir 
+Roger was Count of Chauchigny, in Champagne; Seigneur of Santerre, 
+Villacerf and aultre lieux.  But the great die as well as the 
+humble; and nothing remained of brave Rodger now, but his coffin 
+and his deathless soul.
+
+And Mercurius, in order to keep fast the soul, his companion, had 
+bound him round the neck with his tail; which, when the soul was 
+stubborn, he would draw so tight as to strangle him wellnigh, 
+sticking into him the barbed point thereof; whereat the poor soul, 
+Sir Rollo, would groan and roar lustily.
+
+Now they two had come together from the gates of purgatorie, being 
+bound to those regions of fire and flame where poor sinners fry and 
+roast in saecula saeculorum.
+
+"It is hard," said the poor Sir Rollo, as they went gliding through 
+the clouds, "that I should thus be condemned for ever, and all for 
+want of a single ave."
+
+"How, Sir Soul?" said the daemon.  "You were on earth so wicked, 
+that not one, or a million of aves, could suffice to keep from 
+hell-flame a creature like thee; but cheer up and be merry; thou 
+wilt be but a subject of our lord the Devil, as am I; and, perhaps, 
+thou wilt be advanced to posts of honor, as am I also:" and to show 
+his authoritie, he lashed with his tail the ribbes of the wretched 
+Rollo.
+
+"Nevertheless, sinner as I am, one more ave would have saved me; 
+for my sister, who was Abbess of St. Mary of Chauchigny, did so 
+prevail, by her prayer and good works, for my lost and wretched 
+soul, that every day I felt the pains of purgatory decrease; the 
+pitchforks which, on my first entry, had never ceased to vex and 
+torment my poor carcass, were now not applied above once a week; 
+the roasting had ceased, the boiling had discontinued; only a 
+certain warmth was kept up, to remind me of my situation."
+
+"A gentle stewe," said the daemon.
+
+"Yea, truly, I was but in a stew, and all from the effects of the 
+prayers of my blessed sister.  But yesterday, he who watched me in 
+purgatory told me, that yet another prayer from my sister, and my 
+bonds should be unloosed, and I, who am now a devil, should have 
+been a blessed angel."
+
+"And the other ave?" said the daemon.
+
+"She died, sir--my sister died--death choked her in the middle of 
+the prayer."  And hereat the wretched spirit began to weepe and 
+whine piteously; his salt tears falling over his beard, and 
+scalding the tail of Mercurius the devil.
+
+"It is, in truth, a hard case," said the daemon; "but I know of no 
+remedy save patience, and for that you will have an excellent 
+opportunity in your lodgings below."
+
+"But I have relations," said the Earl; "my kinsman Randal, who has 
+inherited my lands, will he not say a prayer for his uncle?"
+
+"Thou didst hate and oppress him when living."
+
+"It is true; but an ave is not much; his sister, my niece, Matilda--"
+
+"You shut her in a convent, and hanged her lover."
+
+"Had I not reason? besides, has she not others?"
+
+"A dozen, without doubt."
+
+"And my brother, the prior?"
+
+"A liege subject of my lord the Devil: he never opens his mouth, 
+except to utter an oath, or to swallow a cup of wine."
+
+"And yet, if but one of these would but say an ave for me, I should 
+be saved."
+
+"Aves with them are rarae aves," replied Mercurius, wagging his tail 
+right waggishly; "and, what is more, I will lay thee any wager that 
+not one of these will say a prayer to save thee."
+
+"I would wager willingly," responded he of Chauchigny; "but what 
+has a poor soul like me to stake?"
+
+"Every evening, after the day's roasting, my lord Satan giveth a 
+cup of cold water to his servants; I will bet thee thy water for a 
+year, that none of the three will pray for thee."
+
+"Done!" said Rollo.
+
+"Done!" said the daemon; "and here, if I mistake not, is thy castle 
+of Chauchigny."
+
+Indeed, it was true.  The soul, on looking down, perceived the tall 
+towers, the courts, the stables, and the fair gardens of the 
+castle.  Although it was past midnight, there was a blaze of light 
+in the banqueting-hall, and a lamp burning in the open window of 
+the Lady Matilda.
+
+"With whom shall we begin?" said the daemon: "with the baron or the 
+lady?"
+
+"With the lady, if you will."
+
+"Be it so; her window is open, let us enter."
+
+So they descended, and entered silently into Matilda's chamber.
+
+
+The young lady's eyes were fixed so intently on a little clock, 
+that it was no wonder that she did not perceive the entrance of her 
+two visitors.  Her fair cheek rested on her white arm, and her 
+white arm on the cushion of a great chair in which she sat, 
+pleasantly supported by sweet thoughts and swan's down; a lute was 
+at her side, and a book of prayers lay under the table (for piety 
+is always modest).  Like the amorous Alexander, she sighed and 
+looked (at the clock)--and sighed for ten minutes or more, when she 
+softly breathed the word "Edward!"
+
+At this the soul of the Baron was wroth.  "The jade is at her old 
+pranks," said he to the devil; and then addressing Matilda: "I pray 
+thee, sweet niece, turn thy thoughts for a moment from that 
+villanous page, Edward, and give them to thine affectionate uncle."
+
+When she heard the voice, and saw the awful apparition of her uncle 
+(for a year's sojourn in purgatory had not increased the comeliness 
+of his appearance), she started, screamed, and of course fainted.
+
+But the devil Mercurius soon restored her to herself.  "What's 
+o'clock?" said she, as soon as she had recovered from her fit: "is 
+he come?"
+
+"Not thy lover, Maude, but thine uncle--that is, his soul.  For the 
+love of heaven, listen to me: I have been frying in purgatory for a 
+year past, and should have been in heaven but for the want of a 
+single ave."
+
+"I will say it for thee to-morrow, uncle."
+
+"To-night, or never."
+
+"Well, to-night be it:" and she requested the devil Mercurius to 
+give her the prayer-book from under the table; but he had no sooner 
+touched the holy book than he dropped it with a shriek and a yell.  
+"It was hotter," he said, "than his master Sir Lucifer's own 
+particular pitchfork."  And the lady was forced to begin her ave 
+without the aid of her missal.
+
+At the commencement of her devotions the daemon retired, and carried 
+with him the anxious soul of poor Sir Roger de Rollo.
+
+The lady knelt down--she sighed deeply; she looked again at the 
+clock, and began--
+
+"Ave Maria."
+
+When a lute was heard under the window, and a sweet voice singing--
+
+"Hark!" said Matilda.
+
+
+     "Now the toils of day are over,
+        And the sun hath sunk to rest,
+      Seeking, like a fiery lover,
+        The bosom of the blushing west--
+
+     "The faithful night keeps watch and ward,
+        Raising the moon, her silver shield,
+      And summoning the stars to guard
+        The slumbers of my fair Mathilde!"
+
+
+"For mercy's sake!" said Sir Rollo, "the ave first, and next the 
+song."
+
+So Matilda again dutifully betook her to her devotions, and began--
+
+"Ave Maria gratiâ plena!" but the music began again, and the prayer 
+ceased of course.
+
+
+     "The faithful night!  Now all things lie
+        Hid by her mantle dark and dim,
+      In pious hope I hither hie,
+        And humbly chant mine ev'ning hymn.
+
+     "Thou art my prayer, my saint, my shrine!
+        (For never holy pilgrim kneel'd,
+      Or wept at feet more pure than thine),
+        My virgin love, my sweet Mathilde!"
+
+
+"Virgin love!" said the Baron.  "Upon my soul, this is too bad!" 
+and he thought of the lady's lover whom he had caused to be hanged.
+
+But SHE only thought of him who stood singing at her window.
+
+"Niece Matilda!" cried Sir Roger, agonizedly, "wilt thou listen to 
+the lies of an impudent page, whilst thine uncle is waiting but a 
+dozen words to make him happy?"
+
+At this Matilda grew angry: "Edward is neither impudent nor a liar, 
+Sir Uncle, and I will listen to the end of the song."
+
+"Come away," said Mercurius; "he hath yet got wield, field, sealed, 
+congealed, and a dozen other rhymes beside; and after the song will 
+come the supper."
+
+So the poor soul was obliged to go; while the lady listened, and 
+the page sung away till morning.
+
+
+"My virtues have been my ruin," said poor Sir Rollo, as he and 
+Mercurius slunk silently out of the window.  "Had I hanged that 
+knave Edward, as I did the page his predecessor, my niece would 
+have sung mine ave, and I should have been by this time an angel in 
+heaven."
+
+"He is reserved for wiser purposes," responded the devil: "he will 
+assassinate your successor, the lady Mathilde's brother; and, in 
+consequence, will be hanged.  In the love of the lady he will be 
+succeeded by a gardener, who will be replaced by a monk, who will 
+give way to an ostler, who will be deposed by a Jew pedler, who 
+shall, finally, yield to a noble earl, the future husband of the 
+fair Mathilde.  So that, you see, instead of having one poor soul 
+a-frying, we may now look forward to a goodly harvest for our lord 
+the Devil."
+
+The soul of the Baron began to think that his companion knew too 
+much for one who would make fair bets; but there was no help for 
+it; he would not, and he could not, cry off: and he prayed inwardly 
+that the brother might be found more pious than the sister.
+
+But there seemed little chance of this.  As they crossed the court, 
+lackeys, with smoking dishes and, full jugs, passed and repassed 
+continually, although it was long past midnight.  On entering the 
+hall, they found Sir Randal at the head of a vast table, surrounded 
+by a fiercer and more motley collection of individuals than had 
+congregated there even in the time of Sir Rollo.  The lord of the 
+castle had signified that "it was his royal pleasure to be drunk," 
+and the gentlemen of his train had obsequiously followed their 
+master.  Mercurius was delighted with the scene, and relaxed his 
+usually rigid countenance into a bland and benevolent smile, which 
+became him wonderfully.
+
+The entrance of Sir Roger, who had been dead about a year, and a 
+person with hoofs, horns, and a tail, rather disturbed the hilarity 
+of the company.  Sir Randal dropped his cup of wine; and Father 
+Peter, the confessor, incontinently paused in the midst of a 
+profane song, with which he was amusing the society.
+
+"Holy Mother!" cried he, "it is Sir Roger."
+
+"Alive!" screamed Sir Randal.
+
+"No, my lord," Mercurius said; "Sir Roger is dead, but cometh on a 
+matter of business; and I have the honor to act as his counsellor 
+and attendant."
+
+"Nephew," said Sir Roger, "the daemon saith justly; I am come on a 
+trifling affair, in which thy service is essential."
+
+"I will do anything, uncle, in my power."
+
+"Thou canst give me life, if thou wilt?"  But Sir Randal looked 
+very blank at this proposition.  "I mean life spiritual, Randal," 
+said Sir Roger; and thereupon he explained to him the nature of the 
+wager.
+
+Whilst he was telling his story, his companion Mercurius was 
+playing all sorts of antics in the hall; and, by his wit and fun, 
+became so popular with this godless crew, that they lost all the 
+fear which his first appearance had given them.  The friar was 
+wonderfully taken with him, and used his utmost eloquence and 
+endeavors to convert the devil; the knights stopped drinking to 
+listen to the argument; the men-at-arms forbore brawling; and the 
+wicked little pages crowded round the two strange disputants, to 
+hear their edifying discourse.  The ghostly man, however, had 
+little chance in the controversy, and certainly little learning to 
+carry it on.  Sir Randal interrupted him.  "Father Peter," said he, 
+"our kinsman is condemned for ever, for want of a single ave: wilt 
+thou say it for him?"  "Willingly, my lord," said the monk, "with 
+my book;" and accordingly he produced his missal to read, without 
+which aid it appeared that the holy father could not manage the 
+desired prayer.  But the crafty Mercurius had, by his devilish art, 
+inserted a song in the place of the ave, so that Father Peter, 
+instead of chanting an hymn, sang the following irreverent ditty--
+
+
+     "Some love the matin-chimes, which toll
+        The hour of prayer to sinner:
+      But better far's the mid-day bell,
+        Which speaks the hour of dinner;
+      For when I see a smoking fish,
+        Or capon drown'd in gravy,
+      Or noble haunch on silver dish,
+        Full glad I sing mine ave.
+
+     "My pulpit is an ale-house bench,
+        Whereon I sit so jolly;
+      A smiling rosy country wench
+        My saint and patron holy.
+      I kiss her cheek so red and sleek,
+        I press her ringlets wavy;
+      And in her willing ear I speak
+        A most religious ave.
+
+     "And if I'm blind, yet heaven is kind,
+        And holy saints forgiving;
+      For sure he leads a right good life
+        Who thus admires good living.
+      Above, they say, our flesh is air,
+        Our blood celestial ichor:
+      Oh, grant! mid all the changes there,
+        They may not change our liquor!"
+
+
+And with this pious wish the holy confessor tumbled under the table 
+in an agony of devout drunkenness; whilst the knights, the men-at-
+arms, and the wicked little pages, rang out the last verse with a 
+most melodious and emphatic glee.  "I am sorry, fair uncle," 
+hiccupped Sir Randal, "that, in the matter of the ave, we could not 
+oblige thee in a more orthodox manner; but the holy father has 
+failed, and there is not another man in the hall who hath an idea 
+of a prayer."
+
+"It is my own fault," said Sir Rollo; "for I hanged the last 
+confessor."  And he wished his nephew a surly good-night, as he 
+prepared to quit the room.
+
+"Au revoir, gentlemen," said the devil Mercurius; and once more 
+fixed his tail round the neck of his disappointed companion.
+
+The spirit of poor Rollo was sadly cast down; the devil, on the 
+contrary, was in high good humor.  He wagged his tail with the most 
+satisfied air in the world, and cut a hundred jokes at the expense 
+of his poor associate.  On they sped, cleaving swiftly through the 
+cold night winds, frightening the birds that were roosting in the 
+woods, and the owls that were watching in the towers.
+
+In the twinkling of an eye, as it is known, devils can fly hundreds 
+of miles: so that almost the same beat of the clock which left 
+these two in Champagne, found them hovering over Paris.  They 
+dropped into the court of the Lazarist Convent, and winded their 
+way, through passage and cloister, until they reached the door of 
+the prior's cell.
+
+Now the prior, Rollo's brother, was a wicked and malignant 
+sorcerer; his time was spent in conjuring devils and doing wicked 
+deeds, instead of fasting, scourging, and singing holy psalms: this 
+Mercurius knew; and he, therefore, was fully at ease as to the 
+final result of his wager with poor Sir Roger.
+
+"You seem to be well acquainted with the road," said the knight.
+
+"I have reason," answered Mercurius, "having, for a long period, 
+had the acquaintance of his reverence, your brother; but you have 
+little chance with him."
+
+"And why?" said Sir Rollo.
+
+"He is under a bond to my master, never to say a prayer, or else 
+his soul and his body are forfeited at once."
+
+"Why, thou false and traitorous devil!" said the enraged knight; 
+"and thou knewest this when we made our wager?"
+
+"Undoubtedly: do you suppose I would have done so had there been 
+any chance of losing?"
+
+And with this they arrived at Father Ignatius's door.
+
+"Thy cursed presence threw a spell on my niece, and stopped the 
+tongue of my nephew's chaplain; I do believe that had I seen either 
+of them alone, my wager had been won."
+
+"Certainly; therefore, I took good care to go with thee: however, 
+thou mayest see the prior alone, if thou wilt; and lo! his door is 
+open.  I will stand without for five minutes, when it will be time 
+to commence our journey."
+
+It was the poor Baron's last chance: and he entered his brother's 
+room more for the five minutes' respite than from any hope of 
+success.
+
+Father Ignatius, the prior, was absorbed in magic calculations: he 
+stood in the middle of a circle of skulls, with no garment except 
+his long white beard, which reached to his knees; he was waving a 
+silver rod, and muttering imprecations in some horrible tongue.
+
+But Sir Rollo came forward and interrupted his incantation.  "I 
+am," said he, "the shade of thy brother Roger de Rollo; and have 
+come, from pure brotherly love, to warn thee of thy fate."
+
+"Whence camest thou?"
+
+"From the abode of the blessed in Paradise," replied Sir Roger, who 
+was inspired with a sudden thought; "it was but five minutes ago 
+that the Patron Saint of thy church told me of thy danger, and of 
+thy wicked compact with the fiend.  'Go,' said he, 'to thy 
+miserable brother, and tell him there is but one way by which he 
+may escape from paying the awful forfeit of his bond.'"
+
+"And how may that be?" said the prior; "the false fiend hath 
+deceived me; I have given him my soul, but have received no worldly 
+benefit in return.  Brother! dear brother! how may I escape?"
+
+"I will tell thee.  As soon as I heard the voice of blessed St. 
+Mary Lazarus" (the worthy Earl had, at a pinch, coined the name of 
+a saint), "I left the clouds, where, with other angels, I was 
+seated, and sped hither to save thee.  'Thy brother,' said the 
+Saint, 'hath but one day more to live, when he will become for all 
+eternity the subject of Satan; if he would escape, he must boldly 
+break his bond, by saying an ave.'"
+
+"It is the express condition of the agreement," said the unhappy 
+monk, "I must say no prayer, or that instant I become Satan's, body 
+and soul."
+
+"It is the express condition of the Saint," answered Roger, 
+fiercely; "pray, brother, pray, or thou art lost for ever."
+
+So the foolish monk knelt down, and devoutly sung out an ave.  
+"Amen!" said Sir Roger, devoutly.
+
+"Amen!" said Mercurius, as, suddenly, coming behind, he seized 
+Ignatius by his long beard, and flew up with him to the top of the 
+church-steeple.
+
+The monk roared, and screamed, and swore against his brother; but 
+it was of no avail: Sir Roger smiled kindly on him, and said, "Do 
+not fret, brother; it must have come to this in a year or two."
+
+And he flew alongside of Mercurius to the steeple-top: BUT THIS 
+TIME THE DEVIL HAD NOT HIS TAIL ROUND HIS NECK.  "I will let thee 
+off thy bet," said he to the daemon; for he could afford, now, to be 
+generous.
+
+"I believe, my lord," said the daemon, politely, "that our ways 
+separate here."  Sir Roger sailed gayly upwards: while Mercurius 
+having bound the miserable monk faster than ever, he sunk downwards 
+to earth, and perhaps lower.  Ignatius was heard roaring and 
+screaming as the devil dashed him against the iron spikes and 
+buttresses of the church.
+
+
+The moral of this story will be given in the second edition.
+
+
+
+
+MADAME SAND AND THE NEW APOCALYPSE.
+
+
+I don't know an impression more curious than that which is formed 
+in a foreigner's mind, who has been absent from this place for two 
+or three years, returns to it, and beholds the change which has 
+taken place, in the meantime, in French fashions and ways of 
+thinking.  Two years ago, for instance, when I left the capital, I 
+left the young gentlemen of France with their hair brushed en 
+toupet in front, and the toes of their boots round; now the boot-
+toes are pointed, and the hair combed flat, and, parted in the 
+middle, falls in ringlets on the fashionable shoulders; and, in 
+like manner, with books as with boots, the fashion has changed 
+considerably, and it is not a little curious to contrast the old 
+modes with the new.  Absurd as was the literary dandyism of those 
+days, it is not a whit less absurd now: only the manner is changed, 
+and our versatile Frenchmen have passed from one caricature to 
+another.
+
+The revolution may be called a caricature of freedom, as the empire 
+was of glory; and what they borrow from foreigners undergoes the 
+same process.  They take top-boots and mackintoshes from across the 
+water, and caricature our fashions; they read a little, very 
+little, Shakespeare, and caricature our poetry: and while in 
+David's time art and religion were only a caricature of Heathenism, 
+now, on the contrary, these two commodities are imported from 
+Germany; and distorted caricatures originally, are still farther 
+distorted on passing the frontier.
+
+I trust in heaven that German art and religion will take no hold in 
+our country (where there is a fund of roast-beef that will expel 
+any such humbug in the end); but these sprightly Frenchmen have 
+relished the mystical doctrines mightily; and having watched the 
+Germans, with their sanctified looks, and quaint imitations of the 
+old times, and mysterious transcendental talk, are aping many of 
+their fashions; as well and solemnly as they can: not very 
+solemnly, God wot; for I think one should always prepare to grin 
+when a Frenchman looks particularly grave, being sure that there
+is something false and ridiculous lurking under the owl-like 
+solemnity.
+
+When last in Paris, we were in the midst of what was called a 
+Catholic reaction.  Artists talked of faith in poems and pictures; 
+churches were built here and there; old missals were copied and 
+purchased; and numberless portraits of saints, with as much gilding 
+about them as ever was used in the fifteenth century, appeared in 
+churches, ladies' boudoirs, and picture-shops.  One or two 
+fashionable preachers rose, and were eagerly followed; the very 
+youth of the schools gave up their pipes and billiards for some 
+time, and flocked in crowds to Notre Dame, to sit under the feet of 
+Lacordaire.  I went to visit the Church of Notre Dame de Lorette 
+yesterday, which was finished in the heat of this Catholic rage, 
+and was not a little struck by the similarity of the place to the 
+worship celebrated in it, and the admirable manner in which the 
+architect has caused his work to express the public feeling of the 
+moment.  It is a pretty little bijou of a church: it is supported 
+by sham marble pillars; it has a gaudy ceiling of blue and gold, 
+which will look very well for some time; and is filled with gaudy 
+pictures and carvings, in the very pink of the mode.  The 
+congregation did not offer a bad illustration of the present state 
+of Catholic reaction.  Two or three stray people were at prayers; 
+there was no service; a few countrymen and idlers were staring 
+about at the pictures; and the Swiss, the paid guardian of the 
+place, was comfortably and appropriately asleep on his bench at the 
+door.  I am inclined to think the famous reaction is over: the 
+students have taken to their Sunday pipes and billiards again; and 
+one or two cafés have been established, within the last year, that 
+are ten times handsomer than Notre Dame de Lorette.
+
+However, if the immortal Görres and the German mystics have had 
+their day, there is the immortal Göthe, and the Pantheists; and I 
+incline to think that the fashion has set very strongly in their 
+favor.  Voltaire and the Encyclopaedians are voted, now, barbares, 
+and there is no term of reprobation strong enough for heartless 
+Humes and Helvetiuses, who lived but to destroy, and who only 
+thought to doubt.  Wretched as Voltaire's sneers and puns are, I 
+think there is something more manly and earnest even in them, than 
+in the present muddy French transcendentalism.  Pantheism is the 
+word now; one and all have begun to éprouver the besoin of a 
+religious sentiment; and we are deluged with a host of gods 
+accordingly.  Monsieur de Balzac feels himself to be inspired; 
+Victor Hugo is a god; Madame Sand is a god; that tawdry man of 
+genius, Jules Janin, who writes theatrical reviews for the Débats, 
+has divine intimations; and there is scarce a beggarly, beardless 
+scribbler of poems and prose, but tells you, in his preface, of the 
+sainteté of the sacerdoce littéraire; or a dirty student, sucking 
+tobacco and beer, and reeling home with a grisette from the 
+chaumière, who is not convinced of the necessity of a new 
+"Messianism," and will hiccup, to such as will listen, chapters of 
+his own drunken Apocalypse.  Surely, the negatives of the old days 
+were far less dangerous than the assertions of the present; and you 
+may fancy what a religion that must be, which has such high 
+priests.
+
+There is no reason to trouble the reader with details of the lives 
+of many of these prophets and expounders of new revelations.  
+Madame Sand, for instance, I do not know personally, and can only 
+speak of her from report.  True or false, the history, at any rate, 
+is not very edifying; and so may be passed over: but, as a certain 
+great philosopher told us, in very humble and simple words, that we 
+are not to expect to gather grapes from thorns, or figs from 
+thistles, we may, at least, demand, in all persons assuming the 
+character of moralist or philosopher--order, soberness, and 
+regularity of life; for we are apt to distrust the intellect that 
+we fancy can be swayed by circumstance or passion; and we know how 
+circumstance and passion WILL sway the intellect: how mortified 
+vanity will form excuses for itself; and how temper turns angrily 
+upon conscience, that reproves it.  How often have we called our 
+judge our enemy, because he has given sentence against us!--How 
+often have we called the right wrong, because the right condemns 
+us!  And in the lives of many of the bitter foes of the Christian 
+doctrine, can we find no personal reason for their hostility?  The 
+men in Athens said it was out of regard for religion that they 
+murdered Socrates; but we have had time, since then, to reconsider 
+the verdict; and Socrates' character is pretty pure now, in spite 
+of the sentence and the jury of those days.
+
+The Parisian philosophers will attempt to explain to you the 
+changes through which Madame Sand's mind has passed,--the 
+initiatory trials, labors, and sufferings which she has had to go 
+through,--before she reached her present happy state of mental 
+illumination.  She teaches her wisdom in parables, that are, 
+mostly, a couple of volumes long; and began, first, by an eloquent 
+attack on marriage, in the charming novel of "Indiana."  "Pity," 
+cried she, "for the poor woman who, united to a being whose brute 
+force makes him her superior, should venture to break the bondage 
+which is imposed on her, and allow her heart to be free."
+
+In support of this claim of pity, she writes two volumes of the 
+most exquisite prose.  What a tender, suffering creature is 
+Indiana; how little her husband appreciates that gentleness which 
+he is crushing by his tyranny and brutal scorn; how natural it is 
+that, in the absence of his sympathy, she, poor clinging confiding 
+creature, should seek elsewhere for shelter; how cautious should we 
+be, to call criminal--to visit with too heavy a censure--an act 
+which is one of the natural impulses of a tender heart, that seeks 
+but for a worthy object of love.  But why attempt to tell the tale 
+of beautiful Indiana?  Madame Sand has written it so well, that not 
+the hardest-hearted husband in Christendom can fail to be touched 
+by her sorrows, though he may refuse to listen to her argument.  
+Let us grant, for argument's sake, that the laws of marriage, 
+especially the French laws of marriage, press very cruelly upon 
+unfortunate women.
+
+But if one wants to have a question of this, or any nature, 
+honestly argued, it is, better, surely, to apply to an indifferent 
+person for an umpire.  For instance, the stealing of pocket-
+handkerchiefs or snuff-boxes may or may not be vicious; but if we, 
+who have not the wit, or will not take the trouble to decide the 
+question ourselves, want to hear the real rights of the matter, we 
+should not, surely, apply to a pickpocket to know what he thought 
+on the point.  It might naturally be presumed that he would be 
+rather a prejudiced person--particularly as his reasoning, if 
+successful, might get him OUT OF GAOL.  This is a homely 
+illustration, no doubt; all we would urge by it is, that Madame 
+Sand having, according to the French newspapers, had a stern 
+husband, and also having, according to the newspapers, sought 
+"sympathy" elsewhere, her arguments may be considered to be 
+somewhat partial, and received with some little caution.
+
+And tell us who have been the social reformers?--the haters, that 
+is, of the present system, according to which we live, love, marry, 
+have children, educate them, and endow them--ARE THEY PURE 
+THEMSELVES?  I do believe not one; and directly a man begins to 
+quarrel with the world and its ways, and to lift up, as he calls 
+it, the voice of his despair, and preach passionately to mankind 
+about this tyranny of faith, customs, laws; if we examine what the 
+personal character of the preacher is, we begin pretty clearly to 
+understand the value of the doctrine.  Any one can see why Rousseau 
+should be such a whimpering reformer, and Byron such a free and 
+easy misanthropist, and why our accomplished Madame Sand, who has a 
+genius and eloquence inferior to neither, should take the present 
+condition of mankind (French-kind) so much to heart, and labor so 
+hotly to set it right.
+
+After "Indiana" (which, we presume, contains the lady's notions 
+upon wives and husbands) came "Valentine," which may be said to 
+exhibit her doctrine, in regard of young men and maidens, to whom 
+the author would accord, as we fancy, the same tender license.  
+"Valentine" was followed by "Lelia," a wonderful book indeed, 
+gorgeous in eloquence, and rich in magnificent poetry: a regular 
+topsyturvyfication of morality, a thieves' and prostitutes' 
+apotheosis.  This book has received some late enlargements and 
+emendations by the writer; it contains her notions on morals, 
+which, as we have said, are so peculiar, that, alas! they only can 
+be mentioned here, not particularized: but of "Spiridion" we may 
+write a few pages, as it is her religious manifesto.
+
+In this work, the lady asserts her pantheistical doctrine, and 
+openly attacks the received Christian creed.  She declares it to be 
+useless now, and unfitted to the exigencies and the degree of 
+culture of the actual world; and, though it would be hardly worth 
+while to combat her opinions in due form, it is, at least, worth 
+while to notice them, not merely from the extraordinary eloquence 
+and genius of the woman herself, but because they express the 
+opinions of a great number of people besides: for she not only 
+produces her own thoughts, but imitates those of others very 
+eagerly; and one finds in her writings so much similarity with 
+others, or, in others, so much resemblance to her, that the book 
+before us may pass for the expression of the sentiments of a 
+certain French party.
+
+"Dieu est mort," says another writer of the same class, and of 
+great genius too.--"Dieu est mort," writes Mr. Henry Heine, 
+speaking of the Christian God; and he adds, in a daring figure of 
+speech;--"N'entendez-vous pas sonner la Clochette?--on porte les 
+sacremens à un Dieu qui se meurt!"  Another of the pantheist 
+poetical philosophers, Mr. Edgar Quinet, has a poem, in which 
+Christ and the Virgin Mary are made to die similarly, and the 
+former is classed with Prometheus.  This book of "Spiridion" is a 
+continuation of the theme, and perhaps you will listen to some of 
+the author's expositions of it.
+
+It must be confessed that the controversialists of the present day 
+have an eminent advantage over their predecessors in the days of 
+folios; it required some learning then to write a book, and some 
+time, at least--for the very labor of writing out a thousand such 
+vast pages would demand a considerable period.  But now, in the age 
+of duodecimos, the system is reformed altogether: a male or female 
+controversialist draws upon his imagination, and not his learning; 
+makes a story instead of an argument, and, in the course of 150 
+pages (where the preacher has it all his own way) will prove or 
+disprove you anything.  And, to our shame be it said, we 
+Protestants have set the example of this kind of proselytism--those 
+detestable mixtures of truth, lies, false sentiment, false 
+reasoning, bad grammar, correct and genuine philanthropy and piety--
+I mean our religious tracts, which any woman or man, be he ever so 
+silly, can take upon himself to write, and sell for a penny, as if 
+religious instruction were the easiest thing in the world.  We, I 
+say, have set the example in this kind of composition, and all the 
+sects of the earth will, doubtless, speedily follow it.  I can 
+point you out blasphemies in famous pious tracts that are as 
+dreadful as those above mentioned; but this is no place for such 
+discussions, and we had better return to Madame Sand.  As Mrs. 
+Sherwood expounds, by means of many touching histories and 
+anecdotes of little boys and girls, her notions of church history, 
+church catechism, church doctrine;--as the author of "Father 
+Clement, a Roman Catholic Story," demolishes the stately structure 
+of eighteen centuries, the mighty and beautiful Roman Catholic 
+faith, in whose bosom repose so many saints and sages,--by the 
+means of a three-and-sixpenny duodecimo volume, which tumbles over 
+the vast fabric, as David's pebble-stone did Goliath;--as, again, 
+the Roman Catholic author of "Geraldine" falls foul of Luther and 
+Calvin, and drowns the awful echoes of their tremendous protest by 
+the sounds of her little half-crown trumpet: in like manner, by 
+means of pretty sentimental tales, and cheap apologues, Mrs. Sand 
+proclaims HER truth--that we need a new Messiah, and that the 
+Christian religion is no more!  O awful, awful name of God!  Light 
+unbearable!  Mystery unfathomable!  Vastness immeasurable!--Who are 
+these who come forward to explain the mystery, and gaze unblinking 
+into the depths of the light, and measure the immeasurable vastness 
+to a hair?  O name, that God's people of old did fear to utter!  O 
+light, that God's prophet would have perished had he seen!  Who are 
+these that are now so familiar with it?--Women, truly; for the most 
+part weak women--weak in intellect, weak mayhap in spelling and 
+grammar, but marvellously strong in faith:--women, who step down to 
+the people with stately step and voice of authority, and deliver 
+their twopenny tablets, as if there were some Divine authority for 
+the wretched nonsense recorded there!
+
+With regard to the spelling and grammar, our Parisian Pythoness 
+stands, in the goodly fellowship, remarkable.  Her style is a 
+noble, and, as far as a foreigner can judge, a strange tongue, 
+beautifully rich and pure.  She has a very exuberant imagination, 
+and, with it, a very chaste style of expression.  She never 
+scarcely indulges in declamation, as other modern prophets do, and 
+yet her sentences are exquisitely melodious and full.  She seldom 
+runs a thought to death (after the manner of some prophets, who, 
+when they catch a little one, toy with it until they kill it), but 
+she leaves you at the end of one of her brief, rich, melancholy 
+sentences, with plenty of food for future cogitation.  I can't 
+express to you the charm of them; they seem to me like the sound of 
+country bells--provoking I don't know what vein of musing and 
+meditation, and falling sweetly and sadly on the ear.
+
+This wonderful power of language must have been felt by most people 
+who read Madame Sand's first books, "Valentine" and "Indiana": in 
+"Spiridion" it is greater, I think, than ever; and for those who 
+are not afraid of the matter of the novel, the manner will be found 
+most delightful.  The author's intention, I presume, is to 
+describe, in a parable, her notions of the downfall of the Catholic 
+church; and, indeed, of the whole Christian scheme: she places her 
+hero in a monastery in Italy, where, among the characters about 
+him, and the events which occur, the particular tenets of Madame 
+Dudevant's doctrine are not inaptly laid down.  Innocent, faithful, 
+tender-hearted, a young monk, by name Angel, finds himself, when he 
+has pronounced his vows, an object of aversion and hatred to the 
+godly men whose lives he so much respects, and whose love he would 
+make any sacrifice to win.  After enduring much, he flings himself 
+at the feet of his confessor, and begs for his sympathy and 
+counsel; but the confessor spurns him away, and accuses him, 
+fiercely, of some unknown and terrible crime--bids him never return 
+to the confessional until contrition has touched his heart, and the 
+stains which sully his spirit are, by sincere repentance, washed 
+away.
+
+"Thus speaking," says Angel, "Father Hegesippus tore away his robe, 
+which I was holding in my supplicating hands.  In a sort of 
+wildness I still grasped it tighter; he pushed me fiercely from 
+him, and I fell with my face towards the ground.  He quitted me, 
+closing violently after him the door of the sacristy, in which this 
+scene had passed.  I was left alone in the darkness.  Either from 
+the violence of my fall, or the excess of my grief, a vein had 
+burst in my throat, and a haemorrhage ensued.  I had not the force 
+to rise; I felt my senses rapidly sinking, and, presently, I lay 
+stretched on the pavement, unconscious, and bathed in my blood."
+
+[Now the wonderful part of the story begins.]
+
+"I know not how much time I passed in this way.  As I came to 
+myself I felt an agreeable coolness.  It seemed as if some 
+harmonious air was playing round about me, stirring gently in my 
+hair, and drying the drops of perspiration on my brow.  It seemed 
+to approach, and then again to withdraw, breathing now softly and 
+sweetly in the distance, and now returning, as if to give me 
+strength and courage to rise.
+
+"I would not, however, do so as yet; for I felt myself, as I lay, 
+under the influence of a pleasure quite new to me; and listened, in 
+a kind of peaceful aberration, to the gentle murmurs of the summer 
+wind, as it breathed on me through the closed window-blinds above 
+me.  Then I fancied I heard a voice that spoke to me from the end 
+of the sacristy: it whispered so low that I could not catch the 
+words.  I remained motionless, and gave it my whole attention.  At 
+last I heard, distinctly, the following sentence:--'Spirit of 
+Truth, raise up these victims of ignorance and imposture.'  'Father 
+Hegesippus,' said I, in a weak voice, 'is that you who are 
+returning to me?'  But no one answered.  I lifted myself on my 
+hands and knees, I listened again, but I heard nothing.  I got up 
+completely, and looked about me: I had fallen so near to the only 
+door in this little room, that none, after the departure of the 
+confessor, could have entered it without passing over me; besides, 
+the door was shut, and only opened from the inside by a strong lock 
+of the ancient shape.  I touched it, and assured myself that it was 
+closed.  I was seized with terror, and, for some moments, did not 
+dare to move.  Leaning against the door, I looked round, and 
+endeavored to see into the gloom in which the angles of the room 
+were enveloped.  A pale light, which came from an upper window, 
+half closed, was seen to be trembling in the midst of the 
+apartment.  The wind beat the shutter to and fro, and enlarged or 
+diminished the space through which the light issued.  The objects 
+which were in this half light--the praying-desk, surmounted by its 
+skull--a few books lying on the benches--a surplice hanging against 
+the wall--seemed to move with the shadow of the foliage that the 
+air agitated behind the window.  When I thought I was alone, I felt 
+ashamed of my former timidity; I made the sign of the cross, and 
+was about to move forward in order to open the shutter altogether, 
+but a deep sigh came from the praying-desk, and kept me nailed to 
+my place.  And yet I saw the desk distinctly enough to be sure that 
+no person was near it.  Then I had an idea which gave me courage.  
+Some person, I thought, is behind the shutter, and has been saying 
+his prayers outside without thinking of me.  But who would be so 
+bold as to express such wishes and utter such a prayer as I had 
+just heard?
+
+"Curiosity, the only passion and amusement permitted in a cloister, 
+now entirely possessed me, and I advanced towards the window.  But 
+I had not made a step when a black shadow, as it seemed to me, 
+detaching itself from the praying-desk, traversed the room, 
+directing itself towards the window, and passed swiftly by me.  The 
+movement was so rapid that I had not time to avoid what seemed a 
+body advancing towards me, and my fright was so great that I 
+thought I should faint a second time.  But I felt nothing, and, as 
+if the shadow had passed through me, I saw it suddenly disappear to 
+my left.
+
+"I rushed to the window, I pushed back the blind with precipitation,
+and looked round the sacristy: I was there, entirely alone.  I
+looked into the garden--it was deserted, and the mid-day wind was
+wandering among the flowers.  I took courage, I examined all the
+corners of the room; I looked behind the praying-desk, which was
+very large, and I shook all the sacerdotal vestments which were
+hanging on the walls, everything was in its natural condition, and
+could give me no explanation of what had just occurred.  The sight
+of all the blood I had lost led me to fancy that my brain had,
+probably, been weakened by the haemorrhage, and that I had been a
+prey to some delusion.  I retired to my cell, and remained shut up
+there until the next day."
+
+I don't know whether the reader has been as much struck with the 
+above mysterious scene as the writer has; but the fancy of it 
+strikes me as very fine; and the natural SUPERNATURALNESS is kept 
+up in the best style.  The shutter swaying to and fro, the fitful 
+LIGHT APPEARING over the furniture of the room, and giving it an 
+air of strange motion--the awful shadow which passed through the 
+body of the timid young novice--are surely very finely painted.  "I 
+rushed to the shutter, and flung it back: there was no one in the 
+sacristy.  I looked into the garden; it was deserted, and the mid-
+day wind was roaming among the flowers."  The dreariness is 
+wonderfully described: only the poor pale boy looking eagerly out 
+from the window of the sacristy, and the hot mid-day wind walking 
+in the solitary garden.  How skilfully is each of these little 
+strokes dashed in, and how well do all together combine to make a 
+picture!  But we must have a little more about Spiridion's 
+wonderful visitant.
+
+
+"As I entered into the garden, I stepped a little on one side, to 
+make way for a person whom I saw before me.  He was a young man of 
+surprising beauty, and attired in a foreign costume.  Although 
+dressed in the large black robe which the superiors of our order 
+wear, he had, underneath, a short jacket of fine cloth, fastened 
+round the waist by a leathern belt, and a buckle of silver, after 
+the manner of the old German students.  Like them, he wore, instead 
+of the sandals of our monks, short tight boots; and over the collar 
+of his shirt, which fell on his shoulders, and was as white as 
+snow, hung, in rich golden curls, the most beautiful hair I ever 
+saw.  He was tall, and his elegant posture seemed to reveal to me 
+that he was in the habit of commanding.  With much respect, and yet 
+uncertain, I half saluted him.  He did not return my salute; but he 
+smiled on me with so benevolent an air, and at the same time, his 
+eyes severe and blue, looked towards me with an expression of such 
+compassionate tenderness, that his features have never since then 
+passed away from my recollection.  I stopped, hoping he would speak 
+to me, and persuading myself, from the majesty of his aspect, that 
+he had the power to protect me; but the monk, who was walking 
+behind me, and who did not seem to remark him in the least, forced 
+him brutally to step aside from the walk, and pushed me so rudely 
+as almost to cause me to fall.  Not wishing to engage in a quarrel 
+with this coarse monk, I moved away; but, after having taken a few 
+steps in the garden, I looked back, and saw the unknown still 
+gazing on me with looks of the tenderest solicitude.  The sun shone 
+full upon him, and made his hair look radiant.  He sighed, and 
+lifted his fine eyes to heaven, as if to invoke its justice in my 
+favor, and to call it to bear witness to my misery; he turned 
+slowly towards the sanctuary, entered into the quire, and was lost, 
+presently, in the shade.  I longed to return, spite of the monk, to 
+follow this noble stranger, and to tell him my afflictions; but who 
+was he, that I imagined he would listen to them, and cause them to 
+cease?  I felt, even while his softness drew me towards him, that 
+he still inspired me with a kind of fear; for I saw in his 
+physiognomy as much austerity as sweetness."
+
+
+Who was he?--we shall see that.  He was somebody very mysterious 
+indeed; but our author has taken care, after the manner of her sex, 
+to make a very pretty fellow of him, and to dress him in the most 
+becoming costumes possible.
+
+
+The individual in tight boots and a rolling collar, with the 
+copious golden locks, and the solemn blue eyes, who had just gazed 
+on Spiridion, and inspired him with such a feeling of tender awe, 
+is a much more important personage than the reader might suppose at 
+first sight.  This beautiful, mysterious, dandy ghost, whose 
+costume, with a true woman's coquetry, Madame Dudevant has so 
+rejoiced to describe--is her religious type, a mystical 
+representation of Faith struggling up towards Truth, through 
+superstition, doubt, fear, reason,--in tight inexpressibles, with 
+"a belt such as is worn by the old German students."  You will 
+pardon me for treating such an awful person as this somewhat 
+lightly; but there is always, I think, such a dash of the 
+ridiculous in the French sublime, that the critic should try and do 
+justice to both, or he may fail in giving a fair account of either.  
+This character of Hebronius, the type of Mrs. Sand's convictions--
+if convictions they may be called--or, at least, the allegory under 
+which her doubts are represented, is, in parts, very finely drawn; 
+contains many passages of truth, very deep and touching, by the 
+side of others so entirely absurd and unreasonable, that the 
+reader's feelings are continually swaying between admiration and 
+something very like contempt--always in a kind of wonder at the 
+strange mixture before him.  But let us hear Madame Sand:--
+
+"Peter Hebronius," says our author, "was not originally so named.  
+His real name was Samuel.  He was a Jew, and born in a little 
+village in the neighborhood of Innsprück.  His family, which 
+possessed a considerable fortune, left him, in his early youth, 
+completely free to his own pursuits.  From infancy he had shown 
+that these were serious.  He loved to be alone and passed his days, 
+and sometimes his nights, wandering among the mountains and valleys 
+in the neighborhood of his birthplace.  He would often sit by the 
+brink of torrents, listening to the voice of their waters, and 
+endeavoring to penetrate the meaning which Nature had hidden in 
+those sounds.  As he advanced in years, his inquiries became more 
+curious and more grave.  It was necessary that he should receive a 
+solid education, and his parents sent him to study in the German 
+universities.  Luther had been dead only a century, and his words 
+and his memory still lived in the enthusiasm of his disciples.  
+The new faith was strengthening the conquests it had made; the 
+Reformers were as ardent as in the first days, but their ardor was 
+more enlightened and more measured.  Proselytism was still carried 
+on with zeal, and new converts were made every day.  In listening 
+to the morality and to the dogmas which Lutheranism had taken from 
+Catholicism, Samuel was filled with admiration.  His bold and 
+sincere spirit instantly compared the doctrines which were now 
+submitted to him, with those in the belief of which he had been 
+bred; and, enlightened by the comparison, was not slow to 
+acknowledge the inferiority of Judaism.  He said to himself, that a 
+religion made for a single people, to the exclusion of all others,--
+which only offered a barbarous justice for rule of conduct,--which 
+neither rendered the present intelligible nor satisfactory, and 
+left the future uncertain,--could not be that of noble souls and 
+lofty intellects; and that he could not be the God of truth who had 
+dictated, in the midst of thunder, his vacillating will, and had 
+called to the performance of his narrow wishes the slaves of a 
+vulgar terror.  Always conversant with himself, Samuel, who had 
+spoken what he thought, now performed what he had spoken; and, a 
+year after his arrival in Germany, solemnly abjured Judaism, and 
+entered into the bosom of the Reformed Church.  As he did not wish 
+to do things by halves, and desired as much as was in him to put 
+off the old man and lead a new life, he changed his name of Samuel 
+to that of Peter.  Some time passed, during which he strengthened 
+and instructed himself in his new religion.  Very soon he arrived 
+at the point of searching for objections to refute, and adversaries 
+to overthrow.  Bold and enterprising, he went at once to the 
+strongest, and Bossuet was the first Catholic author that he set 
+himself to read.  He commenced with a kind of disdain; believing 
+that the faith which he had just embraced contained the pure truth.  
+He despised all the attacks which could be made against it, and 
+laughed already at the irresistible arguments which he was to find 
+in the works of the Eagle of Meaux.  But his mistrust and irony 
+soon gave place to wonder first, and then to admiration: he thought 
+that the cause pleaded by such an advocate must, at least, be 
+respectable; and, by a natural transition, came to think that great 
+geniuses would only devote themselves to that which was great.  He 
+then studied Catholicism with the same ardor and impartiality which 
+he had bestowed on Lutheranism.  He went into France to gain 
+instruction from the professors of the Mother Church, as he had 
+from the Doctors of the reformed creed in Germany.  He saw Arnauld 
+Fénélon, that second Gregory of Nazianzen, and Bossuet himself.  
+Guided by these masters, whose virtues made him appreciate their 
+talents the more, he rapidly penetrated to the depth of the 
+mysteries of the Catholic doctrine and morality.  He found, in this 
+religion, all that had for him constituted the grandeur and beauty 
+of Protestantism,--the dogmas of the Unity and Eternity of God, 
+which the two religions had borrowed from Judaism; and, what seemed 
+the natural consequence of the last doctrine--a doctrine, however, 
+to which the Jews had not arrived--the doctrine of the immortality 
+of the soul; free will in this life; in the next, recompense for 
+the good, and punishment for the evil.  He found, more pure, 
+perhaps, and more elevated in Catholicism than in Protestantism, 
+that sublime morality which preaches equality to man, fraternity, 
+love, charity, renouncement of self, devotion to your neighbor; 
+Catholicism, in a word, seemed to possess that vast formula, and 
+that vigorous unity, which Lutheranism wanted.  The latter had, 
+indeed, in its favor, the liberty of inquiry, which is also a want 
+of the human mind; and had proclaimed the authority of individual 
+reason: but it had so lost that which is the necessary basis and 
+vital condition of all revealed religion--the principle of 
+infallibility; because nothing can live except in virtue of the 
+laws that presided at its birth; and, in consequence, one 
+revelation cannot be continued and confirmed without another.  Now, 
+infallibility is nothing but revelation continued by God, or the 
+Word, in the person of his vicars.
+
+
+"At last, after much reflection, Hebronius acknowledged himself 
+entirely and sincerely convinced, and received baptism from the 
+hands of Bossuet.  He added the name of Spiridion to that of Peter, 
+to signify that he had been twice enlightened by the Spirit.  
+Resolved thenceforward to consecrate his life to the worship of the 
+new God who had called him to Him, and to the study of His 
+doctrines, he passed into Italy, and, with the aid of a large 
+fortune, which one of his uncles, a Catholic like himself, had left 
+to him, he built this convent where we now are."
+
+
+A friend of mine, who has just come from Italy, says that he has 
+there left Messrs. Sp--r, P--l, and W. Dr--d, who were the lights 
+of the great church in Newman Street, who were themselves apostles, 
+and declared and believed that every word of nonsense which fell 
+from their lips was a direct spiritual intervention.  These 
+gentlemen have become Puseyites already, and are, my friend states, 
+in the high way to Catholicism.  Madame Sand herself was a Catholic 
+some time since: having been converted to that faith along with M. 
+N--, of the Academy of Music; Mr. L--, the pianoforte player; and 
+one or two other chosen individuals, by the famous Abbé de la M--.  
+Abbé de la M-- (so told me in the Diligence, a priest, who read his 
+breviary and gossiped alternately very curiously and pleasantly) is 
+himself an âme perdue: the man spoke of his brother clergyman with 
+actual horror; and it certainly appears that the Abbé's works of 
+conversion have not prospered; for Madame Sand, having brought her 
+hero (and herself, as we may presume) to the point of Catholicism, 
+proceeds directly to dispose of that as she has done of Judaism and 
+Protestantism, and will not leave, of the whole fabric of 
+Christianity, a single stone standing.
+
+I think the fate of our English Newman Street apostles, and of M. 
+de la M--, the mad priest, and his congregation of mad converts, 
+should be a warning to such of us as are inclined to dabble in 
+religious speculations; for, in them, as in all others, our flighty 
+brains soon lose themselves, and we find our reason speedily lying 
+prostrated at the mercy of our passions; and I think that Madame 
+Sand's novel of Spiridion may do a vast deal of good, and bears a 
+good moral with it; though not such an one, perhaps, as our fair 
+philosopher intended.  For anything he learned, Samuel-Peter-
+Spiridion-Hebronius might have remained a Jew from the beginning to 
+the end.  Wherefore be in such a hurry to set up new faiths?  
+Wherefore, Madame Sand, try and be so preternaturally wise?  
+Wherefore be so eager to jump out of one religion, for the purpose 
+of jumping into another?  See what good this philosophical 
+friskiness has done you, and on what sort of ground you are come at 
+last.  You are so wonderfully sagacious, that you flounder in mud 
+at every step; so amazingly clear-sighted, that your eyes cannot 
+see an inch before you, having put out, with that extinguishing 
+genius of yours, every one of the lights that are sufficient for 
+the conduct of common men.  And for what?  Let our friend Spiridion 
+speak for himself.  After setting up his convent, and filling it 
+with monks, who entertain an immense respect for his wealth and 
+genius, Father Hebronius, unanimously elected prior, gives himself 
+up to further studies, and leaves his monks to themselves.  
+Industrious and sober as they were, originally, they grow quickly 
+intemperate and idle; and Hebronius, who does not appear among his 
+flock until he has freed himself of the Catholic religion, as he 
+has of the Jewish and the Protestant, sees, with dismay, the evil 
+condition of his disciples, and regrets, too late, the precipitancy 
+by which he renounced, then and for ever, Christianity.  "But, as 
+he had no new religion to adopt in its place, and as, grown more 
+prudent and calm, he did not wish to accuse himself unnecessarily, 
+once more, of inconstancy and apostasy, he still maintained all the 
+exterior forms of the worship which inwardly he had abjured.  But 
+it was not enough for him to have quitted error, it was necessary 
+to discover truth.  But Hebronius had well looked round to discover 
+it; he could not find anything that resembled it.  Then commenced 
+for him a series of sufferings, unknown and terrible.  Placed face 
+to face with doubt, this sincere and religious spirit was 
+frightened at its own solitude; and as it had no other desire nor 
+aim on earth than truth, and nothing else here below interested it, 
+he lived absorbed in his own sad contemplations, looked ceaselessly 
+into the vague that surrounded him like an ocean without bounds, 
+and seeing the horizon retreat and retreat as ever he wished to 
+near it.  Lost in this immense uncertainty, he felt as if attacked 
+by vertigo, and his thoughts whirled within his brain.  Then, 
+fatigued with his vain toils and hopeless endeavors, he would sink 
+down depressed, unmanned, life-wearied, only living in the sensation
+of that silent grief which he felt and could not comprehend."
+
+It is a pity that this hapless Spiridion, so eager in his passage 
+from one creed to another, and so loud in his profession of the 
+truth, wherever he fancied that he had found it, had not waited a 
+little, before he avowed himself either Catholic or Protestant, and 
+implicated others in errors and follies which might, at least, have 
+been confined to his own bosom, and there have lain comparatively 
+harmless.  In what a pretty state, for instance, will Messrs. Dr--d 
+and P--l have left their Newman Street congregation, who are still 
+plunged in their old superstitions, from which their spiritual 
+pastors and masters have been set free!  In what a state, too, do 
+Mrs. Sand and her brother and sister philosophers, Templars, Saint 
+Simonians, Fourierites, Lerouxites, or whatever the sect may be, 
+leave the unfortunate people who have listened to their doctrines, 
+and who have not the opportunity, or the fiery versatility of 
+belief, which carries their teachers from one creed to another, 
+leaving only exploded lies and useless recantations behind them!  I 
+wish the state would make a law that one individual should not be 
+allowed to preach more than one doctrine in his life, or, at any 
+rate, should be soundly corrected for every change of creed.  How 
+many charlatans would have been silenced,--how much conceit would 
+have been kept within bounds,--how many fools, who are dazzled by 
+fine sentences, and made drunk by declamation, would have remained, 
+quiet and sober, in that quiet and sober way of faith which their 
+fathers held before them.  However, the reader will be glad to 
+learn that, after all his doubts and sorrows, Spiridion does 
+discover the truth (THE truth, what a wise Spiridion!) and some 
+discretion with it; for, having found among his monks, who are 
+dissolute, superstitious--and all hate him--one only being, 
+Fulgentius, who is loving, candid, and pious, he says to him, "If 
+you were like myself, if the first want of your nature were, like 
+mine, to know, I would, without hesitation, lay bare to you my 
+entire thoughts.  I would make you drink the cup of truth, which I 
+myself have filled with so many tears, at the risk of intoxicating 
+you with the draught.  But it is not so, alas! you are made to love 
+rather than to know, and your heart is stronger than your 
+intellect.  You are attached to Catholicism,--I believe so, at 
+least,--by bonds of sentiment which you could not break without 
+pain, and which, if you were to break, the truth which I could lay 
+bare to you in return would not repay you for what you had 
+sacrificed.  Instead of exalting, it would crush you, very likely.  
+It is a food too strong for ordinary men, and which, when it does 
+not revivify, smothers.  I will not, then, reveal to you this 
+doctrine, which is the triumph of my life, and the consolation of 
+my last days; because it might, perhaps, be for you only a cause of 
+mourning and despair. . . . .  Of all the works which my long 
+studies have produced, there is one alone which I have not given to 
+the flames; for it alone is complete.  In that you will find me 
+entire, and there LIES THE TRUTH.  And, as the sage has said you 
+must not bury your treasures in a well, I will not confide mine to 
+the brutal stupidity of these monks.  But as this volume should 
+only pass into hands worthy to touch it, and be laid open for eyes 
+that are capable of comprehending its mysteries, I shall exact from 
+the reader one condition, which, at the same time, shall be a 
+proof: I shall carry it with me to the tomb, in order that he who 
+one day shall read it, may have courage enough to brave the vain 
+terrors of the grave, in searching for it amid the dust of my 
+sepulchre.  As soon as I am dead, therefore, place this writing on 
+my breast. . . . .  Ah! when the time comes for reading it, I think 
+my withered heart will spring up again, as the frozen grass at the 
+return of the sun, and that, from the midst of its infinite 
+transformations, my spirit will enter into immediate communication 
+with thine!"
+
+
+Does not the reader long to be at this precious manuscript, which 
+contains THE TRUTH; and ought he not to be very much obliged to 
+Mrs. Sand, for being so good as to print it for him?  We leave all 
+the story aside: how Fulgentius had not the spirit to read the 
+manuscript, but left the secret to Alexis; how Alexis, a stern old 
+philosophical unbelieving monk as ever was, tried in vain to lift 
+up the gravestone, but was taken with fever, and obliged to forego 
+the discovery; and how, finally, Angel, his disciple, a youth 
+amiable and innocent as his name, was the destined person who 
+brought the long-buried treasure to light.  Trembling and 
+delighted, the pair read this tremendous MANUSCRIPT OF SPIRIDION.
+
+Will it be believed, that of all the dull, vague, windy documents 
+that mortal ever set eyes on, this is the dullest?  If this be 
+absolute truth, à quoi bon search for it, since we have long, long 
+had the jewel in our possession, or since, at least, it has been 
+held up as such by every sham philosopher who has had a mind to 
+pass off his wares on the public?  Hear Spiridion:--
+
+"How much have I wept, how much have I suffered, how much have I 
+prayed, how much have I labored, before I understood the cause and 
+the aim of my passage on this earth!  After many incertitudes, 
+after much remorse, after many scruples, I HAVE COMPREHENDED THAT I 
+WAS A MARTYR!--But why my martyrdom? said I; what crimne did I 
+commit before I was born, thus to be condemned to labor and 
+groaning, from the hour when I first saw the day up to that when I 
+am about to enter into the night of the tomb?
+
+"At last, by dint of imploring God--by dint of inquiry into the 
+history of man, a ray of the truth has descended on my brow, and 
+the shadows of the past have melted from before my eyes.  I have 
+lifted a corner of the curtain: I have seen enough to know that my 
+life, like that of the rest of the human race, has been a series of 
+necessary errors, yet, to speak more correctly, of incomplete 
+truths, conducting, more or less slowly and directly, to absolute 
+truth and ideal perfection.  But when will they rise on the face of 
+the earth--when will they issue from the bosom of the Divinity--
+those generations who shall salute the august countenance of Truth, 
+and proclaim the reign of the ideal on earth?  I see well how 
+humanity marches, but I neither can see its cradle nor its 
+apotheosis.  Man seems to me a transitory race, between the beast 
+and the angel; but I know not how many centuries have been 
+required, that he might pass from the state of brute to the state 
+of man, and I cannot tell how many ages are necessary that he may 
+pass from the state of man to the state of angel!
+
+"Yet I hope, and I feel within me, at the approach of death, that 
+which warns me that great destinies await humanity.  In this life 
+all is over for me.  Much have I striven, to advance but little: I 
+have labored without ceasing, and have done almost nothing.  Yet, 
+after pains immeasurable, I die content, for I know that I have 
+done all I could, and am sure that the little I have done will not 
+be lost.
+
+"What, then, have I done? this wilt thou demand of me, man of a 
+future age, who will seek for truth in the testaments of the past.  
+Thou who wilt be no more Catholic--no more Christian, thou wilt ask 
+of the poor monk, lying in the dust, an account of his life and 
+death.  Thou wouldst know wherefore were his vows, why his 
+austerities, his labors, his retreat, his prayers?
+
+"You who turn back to me, in order that I may guide you on your 
+road, and that you may arrive more quickly at the goal which it has 
+not been my lot to attain, pause, yet, for a moment, and look upon 
+the past history of humanity.  You will see that its fate has been 
+ever to choose between the least of two evils, and ever to commit 
+great faults in order to avoid others still greater.  You will 
+see . . . . on one side, the heathen mythology, that debased the 
+spirit, in its efforts to deify the flesh; on the other, the 
+austere Christian principle, that debased the flesh too much, in 
+order to raise the worship of the spirit.  You will see, afterwards,
+how the religion of Christ embodies itself in a church, and raises
+itself a generous democratic power against the tyranny of princes.
+Later still, you will see how that power has attained its end, and
+passed beyond it.  You will see it, having chained and conquered
+princes, league itself with them, in order to oppress the people,
+and seize on temporal power.  Schism, then, raises up against it the
+standard of revolt, and preaches the bold and legitimate principle
+of liberty of conscience: but, also, you will see how this liberty
+of conscience brings religious anarchy in its train; or, worse
+still, religious indifference and disgust.  And if your soul,
+shattered in the tempestuous changes which you behold humanity
+undergoing, would strike out for itself a passage through the rocks,
+amidst which, like a frail bark, lies tossing trembling truth, you
+will be embarrassed to choose between the new philosophers--who, in
+preaching tolerance, destroy religious and social unity--and the
+last Christians, who, to preserve society, that is, religion and
+philosophy, are obliged to brave the principle of toleration.  Man
+of truth! to whom I address, at once, my instruction and my
+justification, at the time when you shall live, the science of truth
+no doubt will have advanced a step.  Think, then, of all your fathers
+have suffered, as, bending beneath the weight of their ignorance and
+uncertainty, they have traversed the desert across which, with so
+much pain, they have conducted thee!  And if the pride of thy young
+learning shall make thee contemplate the petty strifes in which our
+life has been consumed, pause and tremble, as you think of that
+which is still unknown to yourself, and of the judgment that your
+descendants will pass on you.  Think of this, and learn to respect
+all those who, seeking their way in all sincerity, have wandered
+from the path, frightened by the storm, and sorely tried by the
+severe hand of the All-Powerful.  Think of this, and prostrate
+yourself; for all these, even the most mistaken among them, are
+saints and martyrs.
+
+"Without their conquests and their defeats, thou wert in darkness 
+still.  Yes, their failures, their errors even, have a right to 
+your respect; for man is weak. . . . .  Weep then, for us obscure 
+travellers--unknown victims, who, by our mortal sufferings and 
+unheard-of labors, have prepared the way before you.  Pity me, who 
+have passionately loved justice, and perseveringly sought for 
+truth, only opened my eyes to shut them again for ever, and saw 
+that I had been in vain endeavoring to support a ruin, to take 
+refuge in a vault of which the foundations were worn away." . . . .
+
+The rest of the book of Spiridion is made up of a history of the 
+rise, progress, and (what our philosopher is pleased to call) decay 
+of Christianity--of an assertion, that the "doctrine of Christ is 
+incomplete;" that "Christ may, nevertheless, take his place in the 
+Pantheon of divine men!" and of a long, disgusting, absurd, and 
+impious vision, in which the Saviour, Moses, David, and Elijah are 
+represented, and in which Christ is made to say--"WE ARE ALL 
+MESSIAHS, when we wish to bring the reign of truth upon earth; we 
+are all Christs, when we suffer for it!"
+
+And this is the ultimatum, the supreme secret, the absolute truth! 
+and it has been published by Mrs. Sand, for so many napoleons per 
+sheet, in the Revue des Deux Mondes: and the Deux Mondes are to 
+abide by it for the future.  After having attained it, are we a 
+whit wiser?  "Man is between an angel and a beast: I don't know how 
+long it is since he was a brute--I can't say how long it will be 
+before he is an angel."  Think of people living by their wits, and 
+living by such a wit as this!  Think of the state of mental debauch 
+and disease which must have been passed through, ere such words 
+could be written, and could be popular!
+
+When a man leaves our dismal, smoky London atmosphere, and 
+breathes, instead of coal-smoke and yellow fog, this bright, clear, 
+French air, he is quite intoxicated by it at first, and feels a 
+glow in his blood, and a joy in his spirits, which scarcely thrice 
+a year, and then only at a distance from London, he can attain in 
+England.  Is the intoxication, I wonder, permanent among the 
+natives? and may we not account for the ten thousand frantic freaks 
+of these people by the peculiar influence of French air and sun?  
+The philosophers are from night to morning drunk, the politicians 
+are drunk, the literary men reel and stagger from one absurdity to 
+another, and how shall we understand their vagaries?  Let us 
+suppose, charitably, that Madame Sand had inhaled a more than 
+ordinary quantity of this laughing gas when she wrote for us this 
+precious manuscript of Spiridion.  That great destinies are in 
+prospect for the human race we may fancy, without her ladyship's 
+word for it: but more liberal than she, and having a little 
+retrospective charity, as well as that easy prospective benevolence 
+which Mrs. Sand adopts, let us try and think there is some hope for 
+our fathers (who were nearer brutality than ourselves, according to 
+the Sandean creed), or else there is a very poor chance for us, 
+who, great philosophers as we are, are yet, alas! far removed from 
+that angelic consummation which all must wish for so devoutly.  She 
+cannot say--is it not extraordinary?--how many centuries have been 
+necessary before man could pass from the brutal state to his 
+present condition, or how many ages will be required ere we may 
+pass from the state of man to the state of angels?  What the deuce 
+is the use of chronology or philosophy?  We were beasts, and we 
+can't tell when our tails dropped off: we shall be angels; but when 
+our wings are to begin to sprout, who knows?  In the meantime, O 
+man of genius, follow our counsel: lead an easy life, don't stick 
+at trifles; never mind about DUTY, it is only made for slaves; if 
+the world reproach you, reproach the world in return, you have a 
+good loud tongue in your head: if your straight-laced morals injure 
+your mental respiration, fling off the old-fashioned stays, and 
+leave your free limbs to rise and fall as Nature pleases; and when 
+you have grown pretty sick of your liberty, and yet unfit to return 
+to restraint, curse the world, and scorn it, and be miserable, like 
+my Lord Byron and other philosophers of his kidney; or else mount a 
+step higher, and, with conceit still more monstrous, and mental 
+vision still more wretchedly debauched and weak, begin suddenly to 
+find yourself afflicted with a maudlin compassion for the human 
+race, and a desire to set them right after your own fashion.  There 
+is the quarrelsome stage of drunkenness, when a man can as yet walk 
+and speak, when he can call names, and fling plates and wine-
+glasses at his neighbor's head with a pretty good aim; after this 
+comes the pathetic stage, when the patient becomes wondrous 
+philanthropic, and weeps wildly, as he lies in the gutter, and 
+fancies he is at home in bed--where he ought to be; but this is an 
+allegory.
+
+I don't wish to carry this any farther, or to say a word in defence 
+of the doctrine which Mrs. Dudevant has found "incomplete";--here, 
+at least, is not the place for discussing its merits, any more than 
+Mrs. Sand's book was the place for exposing, forsooth, its errors: 
+our business is only with the day and the new novels, and the 
+clever or silly people who write them.  Oh! if they but knew their 
+places, and would keep to them, and drop their absurd philosophical 
+jargon!  Not all the big words in the world can make Mrs. Sand talk 
+like a philosopher: when will she go back to her old trade, of 
+which she was the very ablest practitioner in France?
+
+I should have been glad to give some extracts from the dramatic and 
+descriptive parts of the novel, that cannot, in point of style and 
+beauty, be praised too highly.  One must suffice,--it is the 
+descent of Alexis to seek that unlucky manuscript, Spiridion.
+
+"It seemed to me," he begins, "that the descent was eternal; and 
+that I was burying myself in the depths of Erebus: at last, I 
+reached a level place,--and I heard a mournful voice deliver these 
+words, as it were, to the secret centre of the earth--'He will 
+mount that ascent no more!'--Immediately I heard arise towards me, 
+from the depth of invisible abysses, a myriad of formidable voices 
+united in a strange chant--'Let us destroy him!  Let him be 
+destroyed!  What does he here among the dead?  Let him be delivered 
+back to torture!  Let him be given again to life!'
+
+"Then a feeble light began to pierce the darkness, and I perceived 
+that I stood on the lowest step of a staircase, vast as the foot of 
+a mountain.  Behind me were thousands of steps of lurid iron; 
+before me, nothing but a void--an abyss, and ether; the blue gloom 
+of midnight beneath my feet, as above my head.  I became delirious, 
+and quitting that staircase, which methought it was impossible for 
+me to reascend, I sprung forth into the void with an execration.  
+But, immediately, when I had uttered the curse, the void began to 
+be filled with forms and colors, and I presently perceived that I 
+was in a vast gallery, along which I advanced, trembling.  There 
+was still darkness round me; but the hollows of the vaults gleamed 
+with a red light, and showed me the strange and hideous forms of 
+their building. . . . .  I did not distinguish the nearest objects; 
+but those towards which I advanced assumed an appearance more and 
+more ominous, and my terror increased with every step I took.  The 
+enormous pillars which supported the vault, and the tracery thereof 
+itself, were figures of men, of supernatural stature, delivered to 
+tortures without a name.  Some hung by their feet, and, locked in 
+the coils of monstrous serpents, clenched their teeth in the marble 
+of the pavement; others, fastened by their waists, were dragged 
+upwards, these by their feet, those by their heads, towards 
+capitals, where other figures stooped towards them, eager to 
+torment them.  Other pillars, again, represented a struggling mass 
+of figures devouring one another; each of which only offered a 
+trunk severed to the knees or to the shoulders, the fierce heads 
+whereof retained life enough to seize and devour that which was 
+near them.  There were some who, half hanging down, agonized 
+themselves by attempting, with their upper limbs, to flay the lower 
+moiety of their bodies, which drooped from the columns, or were 
+attached to the pedestals; and others, who, in their fight with 
+each other, were dragged along by morsels of flesh,--grasping 
+which, they clung to each other with a countenance of unspeakable 
+hate and agony.  Along, or rather in place of, the frieze, there 
+were on either side a range of unclean beings, wearing the human 
+form, but of a loathsome ugliness, busied in tearing human corpses 
+to pieces--in feasting upon their limbs and entrails.  From the 
+vault, instead of bosses and pendants, hung the crushed and wounded 
+forms of children; as if to escape these eaters of man's flesh, 
+they would throw themselves downwards, and be dashed to pieces on 
+the pavement. . . . .  The silence and motionlessness of the whole 
+added to its awfulness.  I became so faint with terror, that I 
+stopped, and would fain have returned.  But at that moment I heard, 
+from the depths of the gloom through which I had passed, confused 
+noises, like those of a multitude on its march.  And the sounds 
+soon became more distinct, and the clamor fiercer, and the steps 
+came hurrying on tumultuously--at every new burst nearer, more 
+violent, more threatening.  I thought that I was pursued by this 
+disorderly crowd; and I strove to advance, hurrying into the midst 
+of those dismal sculptures.  Then it seemed as if those figures 
+began to heave,--and to sweat blood,--and their beady eyes to move 
+in their sockets.  At once I beheld that they were all looking upon 
+me, that they were all leaning towards me,--some with frightful 
+derision, others with furious aversion.  Every arm was raised 
+against me, and they made as though they would crush me with the 
+quivering limbs they had torn one from the other." . . . .
+
+It is, indeed, a pity that the poor fellow gave himself the trouble 
+to go down into damp, unwholesome graves, for the purpose of 
+fetching up a few trumpery sheets of manuscript; and if the public 
+has been rather tired with their contents, and is disposed to ask 
+why Mrs. Sand's religious or irreligious notions are to be brought 
+forward to people who are quite satisfied with their own, we can 
+only say that this lady is the representative of a vast class of 
+her countrymen, whom the wits and philosophers of the eighteenth 
+century have brought to this condition.  The leaves of the Diderot 
+and Rousseau tree have produced this goodly fruit: here it is, 
+ripe, bursting, and ready to fall;--and how to fall?  Heaven send 
+that it may drop easily, for all can see that the time is come.
+
+
+
+
+THE CASE OF PEYTEL:
+
+IN A LETTER TO EDWARD BRIEFLESS, ESQUIRE, OF PUMP COURT, TEMPLE.
+
+
+PARIS, November, 1839.
+
+MY DEAR BRIEFLESS,--Two months since, when the act of accusation 
+first appeared, containing the sum of the charges against Sebastian 
+Peytel, all Paris was in a fervor on the subject.  The man's trial 
+speedily followed, and kept for three days the public interest 
+wound up to a painful point.  He was found guilty of double murder 
+at the beginning of September; and, since that time, what with 
+Maroto's disaffection and Turkish news, we have had leisure to 
+forget Monsieur Peytel, and to occupy ourselves with [Greek text 
+omitted].  Perhaps Monsieur de Balzac helped to smother what little 
+sparks of interest might still have remained for the murderous 
+notary.  Balzac put forward a letter in his favor, so very long, so 
+very dull, so very pompous, promising so much, and performing so 
+little, that the Parisian public gave up Peytel and his case 
+altogether; nor was it until to-day that some small feeling was 
+raised concerning him, when the newspapers brought the account how 
+Peytel's head had been cut off at Bourg.
+
+He had gone through the usual miserable ceremonies and delays which 
+attend what is called, in this country, the march of justice.  He 
+had made his appeal to the Court of Cassation, which had taken time 
+to consider the verdict of the Provincial Court, and had confirmed 
+it.  He had made his appeal for mercy; his poor sister coming up 
+all the way from Bourg (a sad journey, poor thing!) to have an 
+interview with the King, who had refused to see her.  Last Monday 
+morning, at nine o'clock, an hour before Peytel's breakfast, the 
+Greffier of Assize Court, in company with the Curé of Bourg, waited 
+on him, and informed him that he had only three hours to live.  At 
+twelve o'clock, Peytel's head was off his body: an executioner from 
+Lyons had come over the night before, to assist the professional 
+throat-cutter of Bourg.
+
+I am not going to entertain you with any sentimental lamentations 
+for this scoundrel's fate, or to declare my belief in his 
+innocence, as Monsieur de Balzac has done.  As far as moral 
+conviction can go, the man's guilt is pretty clearly brought home 
+to him.  But any man who has read the "Causes Célèbres," knows that 
+men have been convicted and executed upon evidence ten times more 
+powerful than that which was brought against Peytel.  His own 
+account of his horrible case may be true; there is nothing adduced 
+in the evidence which is strong enough to overthrow it.  It is a 
+serious privilege, God knows, that society takes upon itself, at 
+any time, to deprive one of God's creatures of existence.  But when 
+the slightest doubt remains, what a tremendous risk does it incur!  
+In England, thank heaven, the law is more wise and more merciful: 
+an English jury would never have taken a man's blood upon such 
+testimony: an English judge and Crown advocate would never have 
+acted as these Frenchmen have done; the latter inflaming the public 
+mind by exaggerated appeals to their passions: the former seeking, 
+in every way, to draw confessions from the prisoner, to perplex and 
+confound him, to do away, by fierce cross-questioning and bitter 
+remarks from the bench, with any effect that his testimony might 
+have on the jury.  I don't mean to say that judges and lawyers have 
+been more violent and inquisitorial against the unhappy Peytel than 
+against any one else; it is the fashion of the country: a man is 
+guilty until he proves himself to be innocent; and to batter down 
+his defence, if he have any, there are the lawyers, with all their 
+horrible ingenuity, and their captivating passionate eloquence.  It 
+is hard thus to set the skilful and tried champions of the law 
+against men unused to this kind of combat; nay, give a man all the 
+legal aid that he can purchase or procure, still, by this plan, you 
+take him at a cruel, unmanly disadvantage; he has to fight against 
+the law, clogged with the dreadful weight of his presupposed guilt.  
+Thank God that, in England, things are not managed so.
+
+However, I am not about to entertain you with ignorant disquisitions
+about the law.  Peytel's case may, nevertheless, interest you; for
+the tale is a very stirring and mysterious one; and you may see how
+easy a thing it is for a man's life to be talked away in France, if
+ever he should happen to fall under the suspicion of a crime.  The
+French "Acte d'accusation" begins in the following manner:--
+
+"Of all the events which, in these latter times, have afflicted the 
+department of the Ain, there is none which has caused a more 
+profound and lively sensation than the tragical death of the lady, 
+Félicité Alcazar, wife of Sebastian Benedict Peytel, notary, at 
+Belley.  At the end of October, 1838, Madame Peytel quitted that 
+town, with her husband, and their servant Louis Rey, in order to 
+pass a few days at Macon: at midnight, the inhabitants of Belley 
+were suddenly awakened by the arrival of Monsieur Peytel, by his 
+cries, and by the signs which he exhibited of the most lively 
+agitation: he implored the succors of all the physicians in the 
+town; knocked violently at their doors; rung at the bells of their 
+houses with a sort of frenzy, and announced that his wife, 
+stretched out, and dying, in his carriage, had just been shot, on 
+the Lyons road, by his domestic, whose life Peytel himself had 
+taken.
+
+"At this recital a number of persons assembled, and what a 
+spectacle was presented to their eyes.
+
+"A young woman lay at the bottom of a carriage, deprived of life; 
+her whole body was wet, and seemed as if it had just been plunged 
+into the water.  She appeared to be severely wounded in the face; 
+and her garments, which were raised up, in spite of the cold and 
+rainy weather, left the upper part of her knees almost entirely 
+exposed.  At the sight of this half-naked and inanimate body, all 
+the spectators were affected.  People said that the first duty to 
+pay to a dying woman was, to preserve her from the cold, to cover 
+her.  A physician examined the body; he declared that all remedies 
+were useless; that Madame Peytel was dead and cold.
+
+"The entreaties of Peytel were redoubled; he demanded fresh 
+succors, and, giving no heed to the fatal assurance which had just 
+been given him, required that all the physicians in the place 
+should be sent for.  A scene so strange and so melancholy; the 
+incoherent account given by Peytel of the murder of his wife; his 
+extraordinary movements; and the avowal which he continued to make, 
+that he had despatched the murderer, Rey, with strokes of his 
+hammer, excited the attention of Lieutenant Wolf, commandant of 
+gendarmes: that officer gave orders for the immediate arrest of 
+Peytel; but the latter threw himself into the arms of a friend, who 
+interceded for him, and begged the police not immediately to seize 
+upon his person.
+
+"The corpse of Madame Peytel was transported to her apartment; the 
+bleeding body of the domestic was likewise brought from the road, 
+where it lay; and Peytel, asked to explain the circumstance, did 
+so." . . . .
+
+Now, as there is little reason to tell the reader, when an English 
+counsel has to prosecute a prisoner on the part of the Crown for a 
+capital offence, he produces the articles of his accusation in the 
+most moderate terms, and especially warns the jury to give the 
+accused person the benefit of every possible doubt that the 
+evidence may give, or may leave.  See how these things are managed 
+in France, and how differently the French counsel for the Crown 
+sets about his work.
+
+He first prepares his act of accusation, the opening of which we 
+have just read; it is published six days before the trial, so that 
+an unimpassioned, unprejudiced jury has ample time to study it, and 
+to form its opinions accordingly, and to go into court with a 
+happy, just prepossession against the prisoner.
+
+Read the first part of the Peytel act of accusation; it is as 
+turgid and declamatory as a bad romance; and as inflated as a 
+newspaper document, by an unlimited penny-a-liner:--"The department 
+of the Ain is in a dreadful state of excitement; the inhabitants of 
+Belley come trooping from their beds,--and what a sight do they 
+behold;--a young woman at the bottom of a carriage, toute 
+ruisselante, just out of a river; her garments, in spite of the 
+cold and rain, raised, so as to leave the upper part of her knees 
+entirely exposed, at which all the beholders were affected, and 
+cried, that the FIRST DUTY was to cover her from the cold."  This 
+settles the case at once; the first duty of a man is to cover the 
+legs of the sufferer; the second to call for help.  The eloquent 
+"Substitut du Procureur du Roi" has prejudged the case, in the 
+course of a few sentences.  He is putting his readers, among whom 
+his future jury is to be found, into a proper state of mind; he 
+works on them with pathetic description, just as a romance-writer 
+would: the rain pours in torrents; it is a dreary evening in 
+November; the young creature's situation is neatly described; the 
+distrust which entered into the breast of the keen old officer of 
+gendarmes strongly painted, the suspicions which might, or might 
+not, have been entertained by the inhabitants, eloquently argued.  
+How did the advocate know that the people had such? did all the 
+bystanders say aloud, "I suspect that this is a case of murder by 
+Monsieur Peytel, and that his story about the domestic is all 
+deception?" or did they go off to the mayor, and register their 
+suspicion? or was the advocate there to hear them?  Not he; but he 
+paints you the whole scene, as though it had existed, and gives 
+full accounts of suspicions, as if they had been facts, positive, 
+patent, staring, that everybody could see and swear to.
+
+Having thus primed his audience, and prepared them for the 
+testimony of the accused party, "Now," says he, with a fine show of 
+justice, "let us hear Monsieur Peytel;" and that worthy's narrative 
+is given as follows:--
+
+"He said that he had left Macon on the 31st October, at eleven 
+o'clock in the morning, in order to return to Belley, with his wife 
+and servant.  The latter drove, or led, an open car; he himself was 
+driving his wife in a four-wheeled carriage, drawn by one horse: 
+they reached Bourg at five o'clock in the evening; left it at 
+seven, to sleep at Pont d'Ain, where they did not arrive before 
+midnight.  During the journey, Peytel thought he remarked that Rey 
+had slackened his horse's pace.  When they alighted at the inn, 
+Peytel bade him deposit in his chamber 7,500 francs, which he 
+carried with him; but the domestic refused to do so, saying that 
+the inn gates were secure, and there was no danger.  Peytel was, 
+therefore, obliged to carry his money up stairs himself.  The next 
+day, the 1st November, they set out on their journey again, at nine 
+o'clock in the morning; Louis did not come, according to custom, to 
+take his master's orders.  They arrived at Tenay about three, 
+stopped there a couple of hours to dine, and it was eight o'clock 
+when they reached the bourg of Rossillon, where they waited half an 
+hour to bait the horses.
+
+"As they left Rossillon, the weather became bad, and the rain began 
+to fall: Peytel told his domestic to get a covering for the 
+articles in the open chariot; but Rey refused to do so, adding, in 
+an ironical tone, that the weather was fine.  For some days past, 
+Peytel had remarked that his servant was gloomy, and scarcely spoke 
+at all.
+
+"After they had gone about 500 paces beyond the bridge of Andert, 
+that crosses the river Furans, and ascended to the least steep part 
+of the hill of Darde, Peytel cried out to his servant, who was 
+seated in the car, to come down from it, and finish the ascent on 
+foot.
+
+"At this moment a violent wind was blowing from the south, and the 
+rain was falling heavily: Peytel was seated back in the right 
+corner of the carriage, and his wife, who was close to him, was 
+asleep, with her head on his left shoulder.  All of a sudden he 
+heard the report of a fire-arm (he had seen the light of it at some 
+paces' distance), and Madame Peytel cried out, 'My poor husband, 
+take your pistols;' the horse was frightened, and began to trot.  
+Peytel immediately drew the pistol, and fired, from the interior of 
+the carriage, upon an individual whom he saw running by the side of 
+the road.
+
+"Not knowing, as yet, that his wife had been hit, he jumped out on 
+one side of the carriage, while Madame Peytel descended from the 
+other; and he fired a second pistol at his domestic, Louis Rey, 
+whom he had just recognized.  Redoubling his pace, he came up with 
+Rey, and struck him, from behind, a blow with the hammer.  Rey 
+turned at this, and raised up his arm to strike his master with the 
+pistol which he had just discharged at him; but Peytel, more quick 
+than he, gave the domestic a blow with the hammer, which felled him 
+to the ground (he fell his face forwards), and then Peytel, 
+bestriding the body, despatched him, although the brigand asked for 
+mercy.
+
+"He now began to think of his wife and ran back, calling out her 
+name repeatedly, and seeking for her, in vain, on both sides of the 
+road.  Arrived at the bridge of Andert, he recognized his wife, 
+stretched in a field, covered with water, which bordered the 
+Furans.  This horrible discovery had so much the more astonished 
+him, because he had no idea, until now, that his wife had been 
+wounded: he endeavored to draw her from the water; and it was only 
+after considerable exertions that he was enabled to do so, and to 
+place her, with her face towards the ground, on the side of the 
+road.  Supposing that, here, she would be sheltered from any 
+farther danger, and believing, as yet, that she was only wounded, 
+he determined to ask for help at a lone house, situated on the road 
+towards Rossillon; and at this instant he perceived, without at all 
+being able to explain how, that his horse had followed him back to 
+the spot, having turned back of its own accord, from the road to 
+Belley.
+
+"The house at which he knocked was inhabited by two men, of the 
+name of Thannet, father and son, who opened the door to him, and 
+whom he entreated to come to his aid, saying that his wife had just 
+been assassinated by his servant.  The elder Thannet approached to, 
+and examined the body, and told Peytel that it was quite dead; he 
+and his son took up the corpse, and placed it in the bottom of the 
+carriage, which they all mounted themselves, and pursued their 
+route to Belley.  In order to do so, they had to pass by Rey's 
+body, on the road, which Peytel wished to crush under the wheels of 
+his carriage.  It was to rob him of 7,500 francs, said Peytel, that 
+the attack had been made."
+
+Our friend, the Procureur's Substitut, has dropped, here, the 
+eloquent and pathetic style altogether, and only gives the unlucky 
+prisoner's narrative in the baldest and most unimaginative style.  
+How is a jury to listen to such a fellow? they ought to condemn 
+him, if but for making such an uninteresting statement.  Why not 
+have helped poor Peytel with some of those rhetorical graces which 
+have been so plentifully bestowed in the opening part of the act of 
+accusation?  He might have said:--
+
+"Monsieur Peytel is an eminent notary at Belley; he is a man 
+distinguished for his literary and scientific acquirements; he has 
+lived long in the best society of the capital; he had been but a 
+few months married to that young and unfortunate lady, whose loss 
+has plunged her bereaved husband into despair--almost into madness.  
+Some early differences had marked, it is true, the commencement of 
+their union; but these, which, as can be proved by evidence, were 
+almost all the unhappy lady's fault,--had happily ceased, to give 
+place to sentiments far more delightful and tender.  Gentlemen, 
+Madame Peytel bore in her bosom a sweet pledge of future concord 
+between herself and her husband: in three brief months she was to 
+become a mother.
+
+"In the exercise of his honorable profession,--in which, to 
+succeed, a man must not only have high talents, but undoubted 
+probity,--and, gentlemen, Monsieur Peytel DID succeed--DID inspire 
+respect and confidence, as you, his neighbors, well know;--in the 
+exercise, I say, of his high calling, Monsieur Peytel, towards the 
+end of October last, had occasion to make a journey in the 
+neighborhood, and visit some of his many clients.
+
+"He travelled in his own carriage, his young wife beside him.  Does 
+this look like want of affection, gentlemen? or is it not a mark of 
+love--of love and paternal care on his part towards the being with 
+whom his lot in life was linked,--the mother of his coming child,--
+the young girl, who had everything to gain from the union with a 
+man of his attainments of intellect, his kind temper, his great 
+experience, and his high position?  In this manner they travelled, 
+side by side, lovingly together.  Monsieur Peytel was not a lawyer 
+merely, but a man of letters and varied learning; of the noble and 
+sublime science of geology he was, especially, an ardent devotee."
+
+(Suppose, here, a short panegyric upon geology.  Allude to the 
+creation of this mighty world, and then, naturally, to the Creator.  
+Fancy the conversations which Peytel, a religious man,* might have 
+with his young wife upon the subject.)
+
+
+* He always went to mass; it is in the evidence.
+
+
+"Monsieur Peytel had lately taken into his service a man named 
+Louis Rey.  Rey was a foundling, and had passed many years in a 
+regiment--a school, gentlemen, where much besides bravery, alas! is 
+taught; nay, where the spirit which familiarizes one with notions 
+of battle and death, I fear, may familiarize one with ideas, too, 
+of murder.  Rey, a dashing reckless fellow, from the army, had 
+lately entered Peytel's service, was treated by him with the most 
+singular kindness; accompanied him (having charge of another 
+vehicle) upon the journey before alluded to; and KNEW THAT HIS 
+MASTER CARRIED WITH HIM A CONSIDERABLE SUM OF MONEY; for a man like 
+Rey an enormous sum, 7,500 francs.  At midnight on the 1st of 
+November, as Madame Peytel and her husband were returning home, an 
+attack was made upon their carriage.  Remember, gentlemen, the hour 
+at which the attack was made; remember the sum of money that was in 
+the carriage; and remember that the Savoy frontier IS WITHIN A 
+LEAGUE OF THE SPOT where the desperate deed was done."
+
+Now, my dear Briefless, ought not Monsieur Procureur, in common 
+justice to Peytel, after he had so eloquently proclaimed, not the 
+facts, but the suspicions, which weighed against that worthy, to 
+have given a similar florid account of the prisoner's case?  
+Instead of this, you will remark, that it is the advocate's 
+endeavor to make Peytel's statements as uninteresting in style as 
+possible; and then he demolishes them in the following way:--
+
+"Scarcely was Peytel's statement known, when the common sense of 
+the public rose against it.  Peytel had commenced his story upon 
+the bridge of Andert, over the cold body of his wife.  On the 2nd 
+November he had developed it in detail, in the presence of the 
+physicians, in the presence of the assembled neighbors--of the 
+persons who, on the day previous only, were his friends.  Finally, 
+he had completed it in his interrogatories, his conversations, his 
+writings, and letters to the magistrates and everywhere these 
+words, repeated so often, were only received with a painful 
+incredulity.  The fact was that, besides the singular character 
+which Peytel's appearance, attitude, and talk had worn ever since 
+the event, there was in his narrative an inexplicable enigma; its 
+contradictions and impossibilities were such, that calm persons 
+were revolted at it, and that even friendship itself refused to 
+believe it."
+
+Thus Mr. Attorney speaks, not for himself alone, but for the whole 
+French public; whose opinions, of course, he knows.  Peytel's 
+statement is discredited EVERYWHERE; the statement which he had 
+made over the cold body of his wife--the monster!  It is not enough 
+simply to prove that the man committed the murder, but to make the 
+jury violently angry against him, and cause them to shudder in the 
+jury-box, as he exposes the horrid details of the crime.
+
+"Justice," goes on Mr. Substitute (who answers for the feelings of 
+everybody), "DISTURBED BY THE PRE-OCCUPATIONS OF PUBLIC OPINION, 
+commenced, without delay, the most active researches.  The bodies 
+of the victims were submitted to the investigations of men of art; 
+the wounds and projectiles were examined; the place where the event 
+took place explored with care.  The morality of the author of this 
+frightful scene became the object of rigorous examination; the 
+exigeances of the prisoner, the forms affected by him, his 
+calculating silence, and his answers, coldly insulting, were feeble 
+obstacles; and justice at length arrived, by its prudence, and by 
+the discoveries it made, to the most cruel point of certainty."
+
+You see that a man's demeanor is here made a crime against him; and 
+that Mr. Substitute wishes to consider him guilty, because he has 
+actually the audacity to hold his tongue.  Now follows a touching 
+description of the domestic, Louis Rey:--
+
+
+"Louis Rey, a child of the Hospital at Lyons, was confided, at a 
+very early age, to some honest country people, with whom he stayed 
+until he entered the army.  At their house, and during this long 
+period of time, his conduct, his intelligence, and the sweetness of 
+his manners were such, that the family of his guardians became to 
+him as an adopted family; and his departure caused them the most 
+sincere affliction.  When Louis quitted the army, he returned to 
+his benefactors, and was received as a son.  They found him just as 
+they had ever known him" (I acknowledge that this pathos beats my 
+humble defence of Peytel entirely), "except that he had learned to 
+read and write; and the certificates of his commanders proved him 
+to be a good and gallant soldier.
+
+"The necessity of creating some resources for himself, obliged him 
+to quit his friends, and to enter the service of Monsieur de 
+Montrichard, a lieutenant of gendarmerie, from whom he received 
+fresh testimonials of regard.  Louis, it is true, might have a 
+fondness for wine and a passion for women; but he had been a 
+soldier, and these faults were, according to the witnesses, amply 
+compensated for by his activity, his intelligence, and the 
+agreeable manner in which he performed his service.  In the month 
+of July, 1839, Rey quitted, voluntarily, the service of M. de 
+Montrichard; and Peytel, about this period, meeting him at Lyons, 
+did not hesitate to attach him to his service.  Whatever may be the 
+prisoner's present language, it is certain that up to the day of 
+Louis's death, he served Peytel with diligence and fidelity.
+
+"More than once his master and mistress spoke well of him.  
+EVERYBODY who has worked, or been at the house of Madame Peytel, 
+has spoken in praise of his character; and, indeed, it may be said, 
+that these testimonials were general.
+
+"On the very night of the 1st of November, and immediately after 
+the catastrophe, we remark how Peytel begins to make insinuations 
+against his servant; and how artfully, in order to render them more 
+sure, he disseminates them through the different parts of his 
+narrative.  But, in the course of the proceeding, these charges 
+have met with a most complete denial.  Thus we find the disobedient 
+servant who, at Pont d'Ain, refused to carry the money-chest to his 
+master's room, under the pretext that the gates of the inn were 
+closed securely, occupied with tending the horses after their long 
+journey: meanwhile Peytel was standing by, and neither master nor 
+servant exchanged a word, and the witnesses who beheld them both 
+have borne testimony to the zeal and care of the domestic.
+
+"In like manner, we find that the servant, who was so remiss in the 
+morning as to neglect to go to his master for orders, was ready for 
+departure before seven o'clock, and had eagerly informed himself 
+whether Monsieur and Madame Peytel were awake; learning from the 
+maid of the inn, that they had ordered nothing for their breakfast.  
+This man, who refused to carry with him a covering for the car, 
+was, on the contrary, ready to take off his own cloak, and with it 
+shelter articles of small value; this man, who had been for many 
+days so silent and gloomy, gave, on the contrary, many proofs of 
+his gayety--almost of his indiscretion, speaking, at all the inns, 
+in terms of praise of his master and mistress.  The waiter at the 
+inn at Dauphin, says he was a tall young fellow, mild and good-
+natured; 'we talked for some time about horses, and such things; he 
+seemed to be perfectly natural, and not pre-occupied at all.'  At 
+Pont d'Ain, he talked of his being a foundling; of the place where 
+he had been brought up, and where he had served; and finally, at 
+Rossillon, an hour before his death, he conversed familiarly with 
+the master of the port, and spoke on indifferent subjects.
+
+"All Peytel's insinuations against his servant had no other end 
+than to show, in every point of Rey's conduct, the behavior of a 
+man who was premeditating attack.  Of what, in fact, does he accuse 
+him?  Of wishing to rob him of 7,500 francs, and of having had 
+recourse to assassination, in order to effect the robbery.  But, 
+for a premeditated crime, consider what singular improvidence the 
+person showed who had determined on committing it; what folly and 
+what weakness there is in the execution of it.
+
+"How many insurmountable obstacles are there in the way of 
+committing and profiting by crime!  On leaving Belley, Louis Rey, 
+according to Peytel's statement, knowing that his master would 
+return with money, provided himself with a holster pistol, which 
+Madame Peytel had once before perceived among his effects.  In 
+Peytel's cabinet there were some balls; four of these were found in 
+Rey's trunk, on the 6th of November.  And, in order to commit the 
+crime, this domestic had brought away with him a pistol, and no 
+ammunition; for Peytel has informed us that Rey, an hour before his 
+departure from Macon, purchased six balls at a gunsmith's.  To gain 
+his point, the assassin must immolate his victims; for this, he has 
+only one pistol, knowing, perfectly well, that Peytel, in all his 
+travels, had two on his person; knowing that, at a late hour of the 
+night, his shot might fail of effect; and that, in this case, he 
+would be left to the mercy of his opponent.
+
+"The execution of the crime is, according to Peytel's account, 
+still more singular.  Louis does not get off the carriage, until 
+Peytel tells him to descend.  He does not think of taking his 
+master's life until he is sure that the latter has his eyes open.  
+It is dark, and the pair are covered in one cloak; and Rey only 
+fires at them at six paces' distance: he fires at hazard, without 
+disquieting himself as to the choice of his victim; and the 
+soldier, who was bold enough to undertake this double murder, has 
+not force nor courage to consummate it.  He flies, carrying in his 
+hand a useless whip, with a heavy mantle on his shoulders, in spite 
+of the detonation of two pistols at his ears, and the rapid steps 
+of an angry master in pursuit, which ought to have set him upon 
+some better means of escape.  And we find this man, full of youth 
+and vigor, lying with his face to the ground, in the midst of a 
+public road, falling without a struggle, or resistance, under the 
+blows of a hammer!
+
+"And suppose the murderer had succeeded in his criminal projects, 
+what fruit could he have drawn from them?--Leaving, on the road, 
+the two bleeding bodies; obliged to lead two carriages at a time, 
+for fear of discovery; not able to return himself, after all the 
+pains he had taken to speak, at every place at which they had 
+stopped, of the money which his master was carrying with him; too 
+prudent to appear alone at Belley; arrested at the frontier, by the 
+excise officers, who would present an impassable barrier to him 
+till morning, what could he do, or hope to do?  The examination of 
+the car has shown that Rey, at the moment of the crime, had neither 
+linen, nor clothes, nor effects of any kind.  There was found in 
+his pockets, when the body was examined, no passport, nor 
+certificate; one of his pockets contained a ball, of large calibre, 
+which he had shown, in play, to a girl, at the inn at Macon, a 
+little horn-handled knife, a snuff-box, a little packet of 
+gunpowder, and a purse, containing only a halfpenny and some 
+string.  Here is all the baggage, with which, after the execution 
+of his homicidal plan, Louis Rey intended to take refuge in a 
+foreign country.*  Beside these absurd contradictions, there is 
+another remarkable fact, which must not be passed over; it is 
+this:--the pistol found by Rey is of antique form, and the original 
+owner of it has been found.  He is a curiosity-merchant at Lyons; 
+and, though he cannot affirm that Peytel was the person who bought 
+this pistol of him, he perfectly recognizes Peytel as having been a 
+frequent customer at his shop!
+
+
+* This sentence is taken from another part of the "Acte 
+d'accusation."
+
+
+"No, we may fearlessly affirm that Louis Rey was not guilty of the 
+crime which Peytel lays to his charge.  If, to those who knew him, 
+his mild and open disposition, his military career, modest and 
+without a stain, the touching regrets of his employers, are 
+sufficient proofs of his innocence,--the calm and candid observer, 
+who considers how the crime was conceived, was executed, and what 
+consequences would have resulted from it, will likewise acquit him, 
+and free him of the odious imputation which Peytel endeavors to 
+cast upon his memory.
+
+"But justice has removed the veil, with which an impious hand 
+endeavored to cover itself.  Already, on the night of the 1st of 
+November, suspicion was awakened by the extraordinary agitation of 
+Peytel; by those excessive attentions towards his wife, which came 
+so late; by that excessive and noisy grief, and by those calculated 
+bursts of sorrow, which are such as Nature does not exhibit.  The 
+criminal, whom the public conscience had fixed upon; the man whose 
+frightful combinations have been laid bare, and whose falsehoods, 
+step by step, have been exposed, during the proceedings previous to 
+the trial; the murderer, at whose hands a heart-stricken family, 
+and society at large, demands an account of the blood of a wife;--
+that murderer is Peytel."
+
+When, my dear Briefless, you are a judge (as I make no doubt you 
+will be, when you have left off the club all night, cigar-smoking 
+of mornings, and reading novels in bed), will you ever find it in 
+your heart to order a fellow-sinner's head off upon such evidence 
+as this?  Because a romantic Substitut du Procureur de Roi chooses 
+to compose and recite a little drama, and draw tears from juries, 
+let us hope that severe Rhadamanthine judges are not to be melted 
+by such trumpery.  One wants but the description of the characters 
+to render the piece complete, as thus:--
+
+
+      Personages                             Costumes.
+
+SEBASTIAN PEYTAL  Meurtrier        Habillement complet de notaire 
+                                   perfide: figure pâle, barbe 
+                                   noire, cheveux noirs. 
+
+LOUIS REY   Soldat rétiré, bon,    Costume ordinaire; il porte sur
+            brave, franc, jovial   ses épaules une couverture de 
+            aimant le vin, les     cheval.
+            femmes, la gaieté, 
+            ses maîtres surtout; 
+            vrai Français, enfin
+
+WOLF     Lieutenant de gendarmerie.
+
+FÉLICITÉ D'ALCAZAR   Femme et victime de Peytel.
+
+Médecins, Villageois, Filles d'Auberge, Garçons d'Ecurie, &c. &c.
+
+La scène se passe sur le pont d'Andert, entre Macon et Belley.  Il 
+est minuit.  La pluie tombe: les tonnerres grondent.  Le ciel est 
+convert de nuages, et sillonné d'éclairs.
+
+
+All these personages are brought into play in the Procureur's 
+drama; the villagers come in with their chorus; the old lieutenant 
+of gendarmes with his suspicions; Rey's frankness and gayety, the 
+romantic circumstances of his birth, his gallantry and fidelity, 
+are all introduced, in order to form a contrast with Peytel, and to 
+call down the jury's indignation against the latter.  But are these 
+proofs? or anything like proofs?  And the suspicions, that are to 
+serve instead of proofs, what are they?
+
+"My servant, Louis Rey, was very sombre and reserved," says Peytel; 
+"he refused to call me in the morning, to carry my money-chest to 
+my room, to cover the open car when it rained."  The Prosecutor 
+disproves this by stating that Rey talked with the inn maids and 
+servants, asked if his master was up, and stood in the inn-yard, 
+grooming the horses, with his master by his side, neither speaking 
+to the other.  Might he not have talked to the maids, and yet been 
+sombre when speaking to his master?  Might he not have neglected to 
+call his master, and yet have asked whether he was awake?  Might he 
+not have said that the inn-gates were safe, out of hearing of the 
+ostler witness?  Mr. Substitute's answers to Peytel's statements 
+are no answer at all.  Every word Peytel said might be true, and 
+yet Louis Rey might not have committed the murder; or every word 
+might have been false, and yet Louis Rey might have committed the 
+murder.
+
+"Then," says Mr. Substitute, "how many obstacles are there to the 
+commission of the crime?  And these are--
+
+"1.  Rey provided himself with ONE holster pistol, to kill two 
+people, knowing well that one of them had always a brace of pistols 
+about him.
+
+"2.  He does not think of firing until his master's eyes are open: 
+fires at six paces, not caring at whom he fires, and then runs 
+away.
+
+"3.  He could not have intended to kill his master, because he had 
+no passport in his pocket, and no clothes; and because he must have 
+been detained at the frontier until morning; and because he would 
+have had to drive two carriages, in order to avoid suspicion.
+
+"4.  And, a most singular circumstance, the very pistol which was 
+found by his side had been bought at the shop of a man at Lyons, 
+who perfectly recognized Peytel as one of his customers, though he 
+could not say he had sold that particular weapon to Peytel."
+
+Does it follow, from this, that Louis Rey is not the murderer, much 
+more, that Peytel is?  Look at argument No. 1.  Rey had no need to 
+kill two people: he wanted the money, and not the blood.  Suppose 
+he had killed Peytel, would he not have mastered Madame Peytel 
+easily?--a weak woman, in an excessively delicate situation, 
+incapable of much energy, at the best of times.
+
+2.  "He does not fire till he knows his master's eyes are open."  
+Why, on a stormy night, does a man driving a carriage go to sleep?  
+Was Rey to wait until his master snored?  "He fires at six paces, 
+not caring whom he hits;"--and might not this happen too?  The 
+night is not so dark but that he can see his master, in HIS USUAL 
+PLACE, driving.  He fires and hits--whom?  Madame Peytel, who had 
+left her place, AND WAS WRAPPED UP WITH PEYTEL IN HIS CLOAK.  She 
+screams out, "Husband, take your pistols."  Rey knows that his 
+master has a brace, thinks that he has hit the wrong person, and, 
+as Peytel fires on him, runs away.  Peytel follows, hammer in hand; 
+as he comes up with the fugitive, he deals him a blow on the back 
+of the head, and Rey falls--his face to the ground.  Is there 
+anything unnatural in this story?--anything so monstrously unnatural,
+that is, that it might not be true?
+
+3.  These objections are absurd.  Why need a man have change of 
+linen?  If he had taken none for the journey, why should he want 
+any for the escape?  Why need he drive two carriages?--He might 
+have driven both into the river, and Mrs. Peytel in one.  Why is he 
+to go to the douane, and thrust himself into the very jaws of 
+danger?  Are there not a thousand ways for a man to pass a 
+frontier?  Do smugglers, when they have to pass from one country to 
+another, choose exactly those spots where a police is placed?
+
+And, finally, the gunsmith of Lyons, who knows Peytel quite well, 
+cannot say that he sold the pistol to him; that is, he did NOT sell 
+the pistol to him; for you have only one man's word, in this case 
+(Peytel's), to the contrary; and the testimony, as far as it goes, 
+is in his favor.  I say, my lud, and gentlemen of the jury, that 
+these objections of my learned friend, who is engaged for the 
+Crown, are absurd, frivolous, monstrous; that to SUSPECT away the 
+life of a man upon such suppositions as these, is wicked, illegal, 
+and inhuman; and, what is more, that Louis Rey, if he wanted to 
+commit the crime--if he wanted to possess himself of a large sum of 
+money, chose the best time and spot for so doing; and, no doubt, 
+would have succeeded, if Fate had not, in a wonderful manner, 
+caused Madame Peytel TO TAKE HER HUSBAND'S PLACE, and receive the 
+ball intended for him in her own head.
+
+But whether these suspicions are absurd or not, hit or miss, it is 
+the advocate's duty, as it appears, to urge them.  He wants to make 
+as unfavorable an impression as possible with regard to Peytel's 
+character; he, therefore, must, for contrast's sake, give all sorts 
+of praise to his victim, and awaken every sympathy in the poor 
+fellow's favor.  Having done this, as far as lies in his power, 
+having exaggerated every circumstance that can be unfavorable to 
+Peytel, and given his own tale in the baldest manner possible--
+having declared that Peytel is the murderer of his wife and 
+servant, the Crown now proceeds to back this assertion, by showing 
+what interested motives he had, and by relating, after its own 
+fashion, the circumstances of his marriage.
+
+They may be told briefly here.  Peytel was of a good family, of 
+Macon, and entitled, at his mother's death, to a considerable 
+property.  He had been educated as a notary, and had lately 
+purchased a business, in that line, in Belley, for which he had 
+paid a large sum of money; part of the sum, 15,000 francs, for 
+which he had given bills, was still due.
+
+Near Belley, Peytel first met Félicité Alcazar, who was residing 
+with her brother-in-law, Monsieur de Montrichard; and, knowing that 
+the young lady's fortune was considerable, he made an offer of 
+marriage to the brother-in-law, who thought the match advantageous, 
+and communicated on the subject with Félicité's mother, Madame 
+Alcazar, at Paris.  After a time Peytel went to Paris, to press his 
+suit, and was accepted.  There seems to have been no affectation of 
+love on his side; and some little repugnance on the part of the 
+lady, who yielded, however, to the wishes of her parents, and was 
+married.  The parties began to quarrel on the very day of the 
+marriage, and continued their disputes almost to the close of the 
+unhappy connection.  Félicité was half blind, passionate, sarcastic,
+clumsy in her person and manners, and ill educated; Peytel, a man of
+considerable intellect and pretensions, who had lived for some time
+at Paris, where he had mingled with good literary society.  The lady
+was, in fact, as disagreeable a person as could well be, and the
+evidence describes some scenes which took place between her and her
+husband, showing how deeply she must have mortified and enraged him.
+
+A charge very clearly made out against Peytel, is that of dishonesty;
+he procured from the notary of whom he bought his place an
+acquittance in full, whereas there were 15,000 francs owing, as we
+have seen.  He also, in the contract of marriage, which was to have
+resembled, in all respects, that between Monsieur Broussais and
+another Demoiselle Alcazar, caused an alteration to be made in his
+favor, which gave him command over his wife's funded property,
+without furnishing the guarantees by which the other son-in-law was
+bound.  And, almost immediately after his marriage, Peytel sold out
+of the funds a sum of 50,000 francs, that belonged to his wife, and
+used it for his own purposes.
+
+About two months after his marriage, PEYTEL PRESSED HIS WIFE TO 
+MAKE HER WILL.  He had made his, he said, leaving everything to 
+her, in case of his death: after some parley, the poor thing 
+consented.*  This is a cruel suspicion against him; and Mr. 
+Substitute has no need to enlarge upon it.  As for the previous 
+fact, the dishonest statement about the 15,000 francs, there is 
+nothing murderous in that--nothing which a man very eager to make 
+a good marriage might not do.  The same may be said of the 
+suppression, in Peytel's marriage contract, of the clause to be 
+found in Broussais's, placing restrictions upon the use of the 
+wife's money.  Mademoiselle d'Alcazar's friends read the contract 
+before they signed it, and might have refused it, had they so 
+pleased.
+
+
+* "Peytel," says the act of accusation, "did not fail to see the 
+danger which would menace him, if this will (which had escaped the 
+magistrates in their search of Peytel's papers) was discovered.  
+He, therefore, instructed his agent to take possession of it, which 
+he did, and the fact was not mentioned for several months 
+afterwards.  Peytel and his agent were called upon to explain the 
+circumstance, but refused, and their silence for a long time 
+interrupted the 'instruction'" (getting up of the evidence).  "All 
+that could be obtained from them was an avowal, that such a will 
+existed, constituting Peytel his wife's sole legatee; and a 
+promise, on their parts, to produce it before the court gave its 
+sentence."  But why keep the will secret?  The anxiety about it was 
+surely absurd and unnecessary: the whole of Madame Peytel's family 
+knew that such a will was made.  She had consulted her sister 
+concerning it, who said--"If there is no other way of satisfying 
+him, make the will;" and the mother, when she heard of it, cried 
+out--"Does he intend to poison her?"
+
+
+After some disputes, which took place between Peytel and his wife 
+(there were continual quarrels, and continual letters passing 
+between them from room to room), the latter was induced to write 
+him a couple of exaggerated letters, swearing "by the ashes of her 
+father" that she would be an obedient wife to him, and entreating 
+him to counsel and direct her.  These letters were seen by members 
+of the lady's family, who, in the quarrels between the couple, 
+always took the husband's part.  They were found in Peytel's 
+cabinet, after he had been arrested for the murder, and after he 
+had had full access to all his papers, of which he destroyed or 
+left as many as he pleased.  The accusation makes it a matter of 
+suspicion against Peytel, that he should have left these letters of 
+his wife's in a conspicuous situation.
+
+"All these circumstances," says the accusation, "throw a frightful 
+light upon Peytel's plans.  The letters and will of Madame Peytel 
+are in the hands of her husband.  Three months pass away, and this 
+poor woman is brought to her home, in the middle of the night, with 
+two balls in her head, stretched at the bottom of her carriage, by 
+the side of a peasant."
+
+"What other than Sebastian Peytel could have committed this 
+murder?--whom could it profit?--who but himself had an odious chain 
+to break, and an inheritance to receive?  Why speak of the 
+servant's projected robbery?  The pistols found by the side of 
+Louis's body, the balls bought by him at Macon, and those 
+discovered at Belley among his effects, were only the result of a 
+perfidious combination.  The pistol, indeed, which was found on the 
+hill of Darde, on the night of the 1st of November, could only have 
+belonged to Peytel, and must have been thrown by him, near the body 
+of his domestic, with the paper which had before enveloped it.  
+Who had seen this pistol in the hands of Louis?  Among all the 
+gendarmes, work-women, domestics, employed by Peytel and his 
+brother-in-law, is there one single witness who had seen this 
+weapon in Louis's possession?  It is true that Madame Peytel did, 
+on one occasion, speak to M. de Montrichard of a pistol; which had 
+nothing to do, however, with that found near Louis Rey."
+
+Is this justice, or good reason?  Just reverse the argument, and 
+apply it to Rey.  "Who but Rey could have committed this murder?--
+who but Rey had a large sum of money to seize upon?--a pistol is 
+found by his side, balls and powder in his pocket, other balls in 
+his trunks at home.  The pistol found near his body could not, 
+indeed, have belonged to Peytel: did any man ever see it in his 
+possession?  The very gunsmith who sold it, and who knew Peytel, 
+would he not have known that he had sold him this pistol?  At his 
+own house, Peytel has a collection of weapons of all kinds; 
+everybody has seen them--a man who makes such collections is 
+anxious to display them.  Did any one ever see this weapon?--Not 
+one.  And Madame Peytel did, in her lifetime, remark a pistol in 
+the valet's possession.  She was short-sighted, and could not 
+particularize what kind of pistol it was; but she spoke of it to 
+her husband and her brother-in-law."  This is not satisfactory, if 
+you please; but, at least, it is as satisfactory as the other set 
+of suppositions.  It is the very chain of argument which would have 
+been brought against Louis Rey by this very same compiler of the 
+act of accusation, had Rey survived, instead of Peytel, and had he, 
+as most undoubtedly would have been the case, been tried for the 
+murder.
+
+This argument was shortly put by Peytel's counsel:--"if Peytel had 
+been killed by Rey in the struggle, would you not have found Rey 
+guilty of the murder of his master and mistress?"  It is such a 
+dreadful dilemma, that I wonder how judges and lawyers could have 
+dared to persecute Peytel in the manner which they did.
+
+After the act of accusation, which lays down all the suppositions 
+against Peytel as facts, which will not admit the truth of one of 
+the prisoner's allegations in his own defence, comes the trial.  
+The judge is quite as impartial as the preparer of the indictment, 
+as will be seen by the following specimens of his interrogatories:--
+
+Judge.  "The act of accusation finds in your statement 
+contradictions, improbabilities, impossibilities.  Thus your 
+domestic, who had determined to assassinate you, in order to rob 
+you, and who MUST HAVE CALCULATED UPON THE CONSEQUENCE OF A 
+FAILURE, had neither passport nor money upon him.  This is very 
+unlikely; because he could not have gone far with only a single 
+halfpenny, which was all he had."
+
+Prisoner.  "My servant was known, and often passed the frontier 
+without a passport."
+
+Judge.  "YOUR DOMESTIC HAD TO ASSASSINATE TWO PERSONS, and had no 
+weapon but a single pistol.  He had no dagger; and the only thing 
+found on him was a knife."
+
+Prisoner.  "In the car there were several turner's implements, 
+which he might have used."
+
+Judge.  "But he had not those arms upon him, because you pursued 
+him immediately.  He had, according to you, only this old pistol."
+
+Prisoner.  "I have nothing to say."
+
+Judge.  "Your domestic, instead of flying into woods, which skirt 
+the road, ran straight forward on the road itself: THIS, AGAIN, IS 
+VERY UNLIKELY."
+
+Prisoner.  "This is a conjecture I could answer by another 
+conjecture; I can only reason on the facts."
+
+Judge.  "How far did you pursue him?"
+
+Prisoner.  "I don't know exactly."
+
+Judge.  "You said 'two hundred paces.'"
+
+No answer from the prisoner.
+
+Judge.  "Your domestic was young, active, robust, and tall.  He was 
+ahead of you.  You were in a carriage, from which you had to 
+descend: you had to take your pistols from a cushion, and THEN your 
+hammer;--how are we to believe that you could have caught him, if 
+he ran?  It is IMPOSSIBLE."
+
+Prisoner.  "I can't explain it: I think that Rey had some defect in 
+one leg.  I, for my part, run tolerably fast."
+
+Judge.  "At what distance from him did you fire your first shot?"
+
+Prisoner.  "I can't tell."
+
+Judge.  "Perhaps he was not running when you fired."
+
+Prisoner.  "I saw him running."
+
+Judge.  "In what position was your wife?"
+
+Prisoner.  "She was leaning on my left arm, and the man was on the 
+right side of the carriage."
+
+Judge.  "The shot must have been fired à bout portant, because it 
+burned the eyebrows and lashes entirely.  The assassin must have 
+passed his pistol across your breast."
+
+Prisoner.  "The shot was not fired so close; I am convinced of it: 
+professional gentlemen will prove it."
+
+Judge.  "That is what you pretend, because you understand perfectly 
+the consequences of admitting the fact.  Your wife was hit with two 
+balls--one striking downwards, to the right, by the nose, the other 
+going horizontally through the cheek, to the left."
+
+Prisoner.  "The contrary will be shown by the witnesses called for 
+the purpose."
+
+Judge.  "IT IS A VERY UNLUCKY COMBINATION FOR YOU that these balls, 
+which went, you say, from the same pistol, should have taken two 
+different directions."
+
+Prisoner.  "I can't dispute about the various combinations of fire-
+arms--professional persons will be heard."
+
+Judge.  "According to your statement, your wife said to you, 'My 
+poor husband, take your pistols.'"
+
+Prisoner.  "She did."
+
+Judge.  "In a manner quite distinct."
+
+Prisoner.  "Yes."
+
+Judge.  "So distinct that you did not fancy she was hit?"
+
+Prisoner.  "Yes; that is the fact."
+
+Judge.  "HERE, AGAIN, IS AN IMPOSSIBILITY; and nothing is more 
+precise than the declaration of the medical men.  They affirm that 
+your wife could not have spoken--their report is unanimous."
+
+Prisoner.  "I can only oppose to it quite contrary opinions from 
+professional men, also: you must hear them."
+
+Judge.  "What did your wife do next?"
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+Judge.  "You deny the statements of the witnesses:" (they related 
+to Peytel's demeanor and behavior, which the judge wishes to show 
+were very unusual;--and what if they were?)  "Here, however, are 
+some mute witnesses, whose testimony, you will not perhaps refuse.  
+Near Louis Rey's body was found a horse-cloth, a pistol, and a 
+whip. . . . .  Your domestic must have had this cloth upon him when 
+he went to assassinate you: it was wet and heavy.  An assassin 
+disencumbers himself of anything that is likely to impede him, 
+especially when he is going to struggle with a man as young as 
+himself."
+
+Prisoner.  "My servant had, I believe, this covering on his body; 
+it might be useful to him to keep the priming of his pistol dry."
+
+The president caused the cloth to be opened, and showed that there 
+was no hook, or tie, by which it could be held together; and that 
+Rey must have held it with one hand, and, in the other, his whip, 
+and the pistol with which he intended to commit the crime; which 
+was impossible.
+
+Prisoner.  "These are only conjectures."
+
+And what conjectures, my God! upon which to take away the life of a 
+man.  Jeffreys, or Fouquier Tinville, could scarcely have dared to 
+make such.  Such prejudice, such bitter persecution, such priming 
+of the jury, such monstrous assumptions and unreason--fancy them 
+coming from an impartial judge!  The man is worse than the public 
+accuser.
+
+"Rey," says the Judge, "could not have committed the murder, 
+BECAUSE HE HAD NO MONEY IN HIS POCKET, TO FLY, IN CASE OF FAILURE."  
+And what is the precise sum that his lordship thinks necessary for 
+a gentleman to have, before he makes such an attempt?  Are the men 
+who murder for money, usually in possession of a certain 
+independence before they begin?  How much money was Rey, a servant, 
+who loved wine and women, had been stopping at a score of inns on 
+the road, and had, probably, an annual income of 400 francs,--how 
+much money was Rey likely to have?
+
+"Your servant had to assassinate two persons."  This I have 
+mentioned before.  Why had he to assassinate two persons,* when one 
+was enough?  If he had killed Peytel, could he not have seized and 
+gagged his wife immediately?
+
+
+* M. Balzac's theory of the case is, that Rey had intrigued with 
+Madame Peytel; having known her previous to her marriage, when she 
+was staying in the house of her brother-in-law, Monsieur de 
+Montrichard, where Rey had been a servant.
+
+
+"Your domestic ran straight forward, instead of taking to the 
+woods, by the side of the rood: this is very unlikely."  How does 
+his worship know?  Can any judge, however enlightened, tell the 
+exact road that a man will take, who has just missed a coup of 
+murder, and is pursued by a man who is firing pistols at him?  And 
+has a judge a right to instruct a jury in this way, as to what they 
+shall, or shall not, believe?
+
+"You have to run after an active man, who has the start of you: to 
+jump out of a carriage; to take your pistols; and THEN, your 
+hammer.  THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE."  By heavens! does it not make a man's 
+blood boil, to read such blundering, blood-seeking sophistry?  This 
+man, when it suits him, shows that Rey would be slow in his 
+motions; and when it suits him, declares that Rey ought to be 
+quick; declares ex cathedrâ, what pace Rey should go, and what 
+direction he should take; shows, in a breath, that he must have run 
+faster than Peytel; and then, that he could not run fast, because 
+the cloak clogged him; settles how he is to be dressed when he 
+commits a murder, and what money he is to have in his pocket; gives 
+these impossible suppositions to the jury, and tells them that the 
+previous statements are impossible; and, finally, informs them of 
+the precise manner in which Rey must have stood holding his horse-
+cloth in one hand, his whip and pistol in the other, when he made 
+the supposed attempt at murder.  Now, what is the size of a horse-
+cloth?  Is it as big as a pocket-handkerchief?  Is there no 
+possibility that it might hang over one shoulder; that the whip 
+should be held under that very arm?  Did you never see a carter so 
+carry it, his hands in his pockets all the while?  Is it monstrous, 
+abhorrent to nature, that a man should fire a pistol from under a 
+cloak on a rainy day?--that he should, after firing the shot, be 
+frightened, and run; run straight before him, with the cloak on his 
+shoulders, and the weapon in his hand?  Peytel's story is possible, 
+and very possible; it is almost probable.  Allow that Rey had the 
+cloth on, and you allow that he must have been clogged in his 
+motions; that Peytel may have come up with him--felled him with a 
+blow of the hammer; the doctors say that he would have so fallen by 
+one blow--he would have fallen on his face, as he was found: the 
+paper might have been thrust into his breast, and tumbled out as he 
+fell.  Circumstances far more impossible have occurred ere this; 
+and men have been hanged for them, who were as innocent of the 
+crime laid to their charge as the judge on the bench, who convicted 
+them.
+
+In like manner, Peytel may not have committed the crime charged to 
+him; and Mr. Judge, with his arguments as to possibilities and 
+impossibilities,--Mr. Public Prosecutor, with his romantic 
+narrative and inflammatory harangues to the jury,--may have used 
+all these powers to bring to death an innocent man.  From the 
+animus with which the case had been conducted from beginning to 
+end, it was easy to see the result.  Here it is, in the words of 
+the provincial paper:--
+
+
+BOURG, 28 October, 1839.
+
+"The condemned Peytel has just undergone his punishment, which took 
+place four days before the anniversary of his crime.  The terrible 
+drama of the bridge of Andert, which cost the life of two persons, 
+has just terminated on the scaffold.  Mid-day had just sounded on 
+the clock of the Palais: the same clock tolled midnight when, on 
+the 30th of August, his sentence was pronounced.
+
+"Since the rejection of his appeal in Cassation, on which his 
+principal hopes were founded, Peytel spoke little of his petition 
+to the King.  The notion of transportation was that which he seemed 
+to cherish most.  However, he made several inquiries from the 
+gaoler of the prison, when he saw him at meal-time, with regard to 
+the place of execution, the usual hour, and other details on the 
+subject.  From that period, the words 'Champ de Foire' (the fair-
+field, where the execution was to be held), were frequently used by 
+him in conversation.
+
+"Yesterday, the idea that the time had arrived seemed to be more 
+strongly than ever impressed upon him; especially after the 
+departure of the curé, who latterly has been with him every day.  
+The documents connected with the trial had arrived in the morning.  
+He was ignorant of this circumstance, but sought to discover from 
+his guardians what they tried to hide from him; and to find out 
+whether his petition was rejected, and when he was to die.
+
+"Yesterday, also, he had written to demand the presence of his 
+counsel, M. Margerand, in order that he might have some 
+conversation with him, and regulate his affairs, before he ----; he 
+did not write down the word, but left in its place a few points of 
+the pen.
+
+"In the evening, whilst he was at supper, he begged earnestly to be 
+allowed a little wax-candle, to finish what he was writing: 
+otherwise, he said, TIME MIGHT FAIL.  This was a new, indirect 
+manner of repeating his ordinary question.  As light, up to that 
+evening, had been refused him, it was thought best to deny him in 
+this, as in former instances; otherwise his suspicions might have 
+been confirmed.  The keeper refused his demand.
+
+"This morning, Monday, at nine o'clock, the Greffier of the Assize 
+Court, in fulfilment of the painful duty which the law imposes upon 
+him, came to the prison, in company with the curé of Bourg, and 
+announced to the convict that his petition was rejected, and that 
+he had only three hours to live.  He received this fatal news with 
+a great deal of calmness, and showed himself to be no more affected 
+than he had been on the trial.  'I am ready; but I wish they had 
+given me four-and-twenty hours' notice,'--were all the words he 
+used.
+
+"The Greffier now retired, leaving Peytel alone with the curé, who 
+did not thenceforth quit him.  Peytel breakfasted at ten o'clock.
+
+"At eleven, a piquet of mounted gendarmerie and infantry took their 
+station upon the place before the prison, where a great concourse 
+of people had already assembled.  An open car was at the door.  
+Before he went out Peytel asked the gaoler for a looking-glass; 
+and having examined his face for a moment, said, 'At least, the 
+inhabitants of Bourg will see that I have not grown thin.'
+
+"As twelve o'clock sounded, the prison gates opened, an aide 
+appeared, followed by Peytel, leaning on the arm of the curé.  
+Peytel's face was pale, he had a long black beard, a blue cap on 
+his head, and his great-coat flung over his shoulders, and buttoned 
+at the neck.
+
+"He looked about at the place and the crowd; he asked if the 
+carriage would go at a trot; and on being told that that would be 
+difficult, he said he would prefer walking, and asked what the road 
+was.  He immediately set out, walking at a firm and rapid pace.  He 
+was not bound at all.
+
+"An immense crowd of people encumbered the two streets through 
+which he had to pass to the place of execution.  He cast his eyes 
+alternately upon them and upon the guillotine, which was before 
+him.
+
+"Arrived at the foot of the scaffold, Peytel embraced the curé, and 
+bade him adieu.  He then embraced him again; perhaps, for his 
+mother and sister.  He then mounted the steps rapidly, and gave 
+himself into the hands of the executioner, who removed his coat and 
+cap.  He asked how he was to place himself, and on a sign being 
+made, he flung himself briskly on the plank, and stretched his 
+neck.  In another moment he was no more.
+
+"The crowd, which had been quite silent, retired, profoundly moved 
+by the sight it had witnessed.  As at all executions, there was a 
+very great number of women present.
+
+"Under the scaffold there had been, ever since the morning, a 
+coffin.  The family had asked for his remains, and had them 
+immediately buried, privately: and thus the unfortunate man's head 
+escaped the modellers in wax, several of whom had arrived to take 
+an impression of it."
+
+Down goes the axe; the poor wretch's head rolls gasping into the 
+basket; the spectators go home, pondering; and Mr. Executioner and 
+his aides have, in half an hour, removed all traces of the august 
+sacrifice, and of the altar on which it had been performed.  Say, 
+Mr. Briefless, do you think that any single person, meditating 
+murder, would be deterred therefrom by beholding this--nay, a 
+thousand more executions?  It is not for moral improvement, as I 
+take it, nor for opportunity to make appropriate remarks upon the 
+punishment of crime, that people make a holiday of a killing-day, 
+and leave their homes and occupations, to flock and witness the 
+cutting off of a head.  Do we crowd to see Mr. Macready in the new 
+tragedy, or Mademoiselle Ellssler in her last new ballet and flesh-
+colored stockinnet pantaloons, out of a pure love of abstract 
+poetry and beauty; or from a strong notion that we shall be 
+excited, in different ways, by the actor and the dancer?  And so, 
+as we go to have a meal of fictitious terror at the tragedy, of 
+something more questionable in the ballet, we go for a glut of 
+blood to the execution.  The lust is in every man's nature, more or 
+less.  Did you ever witness a wrestling or boxing match?  The first 
+clatter of the kick on the shins, or the first drawing of blood, 
+makes the stranger shudder a little; but soon the blood is his 
+chief enjoyment, and he thirsts for it with a fierce delight.  It 
+is a fine grim pleasure that we have in seeing a man killed; and I 
+make no doubt that the organs of destructiveness must begin to 
+throb and swell as we witness the delightful savage spectacle.
+
+Three or four years back, when Fieschi and Lacenaire were executed, 
+I made attempts to see the execution of both; but was disappointed 
+in both cases.  In the first instance, the day for Fieschi's death 
+was, purposely, kept secret; and he was, if I remember rightly, 
+executed at some remote quarter of the town.  But it would have 
+done a philanthropist good, to witness the scene which we saw on 
+the morning when his execution did NOT take place.
+
+It was carnival time, and the rumor had pretty generally been 
+carried abroad that he was to die on that morning.  A friend, who 
+accompanied me, came many miles, through the mud and dark, in order 
+to be in at the death.  We set out before light, floundering 
+through the muddy Champs Elysées; where, besides, were many other 
+persons floundering, and all bent upon the same errand.  We passed 
+by the Concert of Musard, then held in the Rue St. Honoré; and 
+round this, in the wet, a number of coaches were collected.  The 
+ball was just up, and a crowd of people in hideous masquerade, 
+drunk, tired, dirty, dressed in horrible old frippery, and daubed 
+with filthy rouge, were trooping out of the place: tipsy women and 
+men, shrieking, jabbering, gesticulating, as French will do; 
+parties swaggering, staggering forwards, arm in arm, reeling to and 
+fro across the street, and yelling songs in chorus: hundreds of 
+these were bound for the show, and we thought ourselves lucky in 
+finding a vehicle to the execution place, at the Barrière d'Enfer.  
+As we crossed the river and entered the Enfer Street, crowds of 
+students, black workmen, and more drunken devils from more carnival 
+balls, were filling it; and on the grand place there were thousands 
+of these assembled, looking out for Fiaschi and his cortège.  We 
+waited and waited; but alas! no fun for us that morning: no throat-
+cutting; no august spectacle of satisfied justice; and the eager 
+spectators were obliged to return, disappointed of their expected 
+breakfast of blood.  It would have been a fine scene, that 
+execution, could it but have taken place in the midst of the mad 
+mountebanks and tipsy strumpets who had flocked so far to witness 
+it, wishing to wind up the delights of their carnival by a 
+bonnebouche of a murder.
+
+The other attempt was equally unfortunate.  We arrived too late on 
+the ground to be present at the execution of Lacenaire and his co-
+mate in murder, Avril.  But as we came to the ground (a gloomy 
+round space, within the barrier--three roads lead to it; and, 
+outside, you see the wine-shops and restaurateurs' of the barrier 
+looking gay and inviting,)--as we came to the ground, we only 
+found, in the midst of it, a little pool of ice, just partially 
+tinged with red.  Two or three idle street-boys were dancing and 
+stamping about this pool; and when I asked one of them whether the 
+execution had taken place, he began dancing more madly than ever, 
+and shrieked out with a loud fantastical, theatrical voice, "Venez 
+tous Messieurs et Dames, voyez ici le sang du monstre Lacenaire, et 
+de son compagnon he traître Avril," or words to that effect; and 
+straightway all the other gamins screamed out the words in chorus, 
+and took hands and danced round the little puddle.
+
+O august Justice, your meal was followed by a pretty appropriate 
+grace!  Was any man, who saw the show, deterred, or frightened, or 
+moralized in any way?  He had gratified his appetite for blood, and 
+this was all.  There is something singularly pleasing, both in the 
+amusement of execution-seeing, and in the results.  You are not 
+only delightfully excited at the time, but most pleasingly relaxed 
+afterwards; the mind, which has been wound up painfully until now, 
+becomes quite complacent and easy.  There is something agreeable in 
+the misfortunes of others, as the philosopher has told us.  Remark 
+what a good breakfast you eat after an execution; how pleasant it 
+is to cut jokes after it, and upon it.  This merry, pleasant mood 
+is brought on by the blood tonic.
+
+But, for God's sake, if we are to enjoy this, let us do so in 
+moderation; and let us, at least, be sure of a man's guilt before 
+we murder him.  To kill him, even with the full assurance that he 
+is guilty is hazardous enough.  Who gave you the right to do so?--
+you, who cry out against suicides, as impious and contrary to 
+Christian law?  What use is there in killing him?  You deter no one 
+else from committing the crime by so doing: you give us, to be 
+sure, half an hour's pleasant entertainment; but it is a great 
+question whether we derive much moral profit from the sight.  If 
+you want to keep a murderer from farther inroads upon society, are 
+there not plenty of hulks and prisons, God wot; treadmills, 
+galleys, and houses of correction?  Above all, as in the case of 
+Sebastian Peytel and his family, there have been two deaths 
+already; was a third death absolutely necessary? and, taking the 
+fallibility of judges and lawyers into his heart, and remembering 
+the thousand instances of unmerited punishment that have been 
+suffered, upon similar and stronger evidence before, can any man 
+declare, positively and upon his oath, that Peytel was guilty, and 
+that this was not THE THIRD MURDER IN THE FAMILY?
+
+
+
+
+FOUR IMITATIONS OF BÉRANGER
+
+
+LE ROI D'YVETOT.
+
+
+Il était un roi d'Yvetot,
+  Peu connu dans l'histoire;
+Se levant tard, se couchant tôt,
+  Dormant fort bien sans gloire,
+Et couronné par Jeanneton
+D'un simple bonnet de coton,
+             Dit-on.
+    Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah!
+    Quel bon petit roi c'était là!
+             La, la.
+
+Il fesait ses quatre repas
+  Dans son palais de chaume,
+Et sur un âne, pas à pas,
+  Parcourait son royaume.
+Joyeux, simple et croyant le bien,
+Pour toute garde il n'avait rien
+             Qu'un chien.
+    Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! &c.  
+             La, la.
+
+Il n'avait de goût onéreux 
+  Qu'une soif un peu vive;
+Mais, en rendant son peuple heureux,
+  Il faux bien qu'un roi vive.
+Lui-même à table, et sans suppôt,
+Sur chaque muid levait un pot
+             D'impôt.
+    Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! &c.  
+             La, la.
+
+Aux filles de bonnes maisons 
+  Comme il avait su plaire,
+Ses sujets avaient cent raisons
+  De le nommer leur père:
+D'ailleurs il ne levait de ban
+Que pour tirer quatre fois l'an
+             Au blanc.
+    Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! &c.  
+             La, la.
+
+Il n'agrandit point ses états, 
+  Fut un voisin commode,
+Et, modèle des potentats,
+  Prit le plaisir pour code.
+Ce n'est que lorsqu'il expira,
+Que le peuple qui l'enterra
+             Pleura.
+    Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! &c.  
+             La, la.
+
+On conserve encor le portrait
+  De ce digne et bon prince;
+C'est l'enseigne d'un cabaret
+  Fameux dans la province.
+Les jours de fête, bien souvent, 
+La foule s'écrie en buvant
+             Devant:
+    Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! 
+    Quel bon petit roi c'était là!
+             La, la.
+
+
+
+THE KING OF YVETOT.
+
+
+There was a king of Yvetot,
+  Of whom renown hath little said, 
+Who let all thoughts of glory go,
+  And dawdled half his days a-bed; 
+And every night, as night came round, 
+By Jenny, with a nightcap crowned,
+            Slept very sound:
+     Sing ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he! 
+     That's the kind of king for me.
+
+And every day it came to pass, 
+  That four lusty meals made he;
+And, step by step, upon an ass, 
+  Rode abroad, his realms to see;
+And wherever he did stir, 
+What think you was his escort, sir?
+            Why, an old cur.
+     Sing ho, ho, ho! &c.
+
+If e'er he went into excess, 
+  'Twas from a somewhat lively thirst;
+But he who would his subjects bless, 
+  Odd's fish!--must wet his whistle first;
+And so from every cask they got, 
+Our king did to himself allot,
+            At least a pot.
+     Sing ho, ho! &c.
+
+To all the ladies of the land,
+  A courteous king, and kind, was he; 
+The reason why you'll understand,
+  They named him Pater Patriae. 
+Each year he called his fighting men, 
+And marched a league from home, and then
+            Marched back again.
+     Sing ho, ho! &c.
+
+Neither by force nor false pretence, 
+  He sought to make his kingdom great,
+And made (O princes, learn from hence),--
+  "Live and let live," his rule of state.
+'Twas only when he came to die, 
+That his people who stood by,
+            Were known to cry.
+     Sing ho, ho! &c.
+
+The portrait of this best of kings 
+  Is extant still, upon a sign
+That on a village tavern swings, 
+  Famed in the country for good wine.
+The people in their Sunday trim, 
+Filling their glasses to the brim,
+            Look up to him,
+     Singing ha, ha, ha! and he, he, he!
+     That's the sort of king for me.
+
+
+
+THE KING OF BRENTFORD.
+
+ANOTHER VERSION.
+
+
+There was a king in Brentford,--of whom no legends tell,
+But who, without his glory,--could eat and sleep right well.
+His Polly's cotton nightcap,--it was his crown of state,
+He slept of evenings early,--and rose of mornings late.
+
+All in a fine mud palace,--each day he took four meals,
+And for a guard of honor,--a dog ran at his heels,
+Sometimes, to view his kingdoms,--rode forth this monarch good,
+And then a prancing jackass--he royally bestrode.
+
+There were no costly habits--with which this king was curst,
+Except (and where's the harm on't?)--a somewhat lively thirst;
+But people must pay taxes,--and kings must have their sport,
+So out of every gallon--His Grace he took a quart.
+
+He pleased the ladies round him,--with manners soft and bland;
+With reason good, they named him,--the father of his land.
+Each year his mighty armies--marched forth in gallant show;
+Their enemies were targets--their bullets they were tow.
+
+He vexed no quiet neighbor,--no useless conquest made,
+But by the laws of pleasure,--his peaceful realm he swayed.
+And in the years he reigned,--through all this country wide,
+There was no cause for weeping,--save when the good man died.
+
+The faithful men of Brentford,--do still their king deplore,
+His portrait yet is swinging,--beside an alehouse door.
+And topers, tender-hearted,--regard his honest phiz,
+And envy times departed--that knew a reign like his.
+
+
+
+LE GRENIER.
+
+
+Je viens revoir l'asile où ma jeunesse
+De la misère a subi les leçons.
+J'avais vingt ans, une folle maîtresse,
+De francs amis et l'amour des chansons
+Bravant le monde et les sots et les sages,
+Sans avenir, riche de mon printemps,
+Leste et joyeux je montais six étages.
+Dans un grenier qu'on est bien à vingt ans!
+
+C'est un grenier, point ne veux qu'on l'ignore.
+Là fut mon lit, bien chétif et bien dur;
+Là fut ma table; et je retrouve encore
+Trois pieds d'un vers charbonnés sur le mur.
+Apparaissez, plaisirs de mon bel âge,
+Que d'un coup d'aile a fustigés le temps,
+Vingt fois pour vous j'ai mis ma montre en gage.
+Dans un grenier qu'on est bien à vingt ans!
+
+Lisette ici doit surtout apparaître,
+Vive, jolie, avec un frais chapeau;
+Déjà sa main à l'étroite fenêtre
+Suspend son schal, en guise de rideau.
+Sa robe aussi va parer ma couchette;
+Respecte, Amour, ses plis longs et flottans.
+J'ai su depuis qui payait sa toilette.
+Dans un grenier qu'on est bien à vingt ans!
+
+A table un jour, jour de grande richesse,
+De mes amis les voix brillaient en choeur,
+Quand jusqu'ici monte un cri d'allégresse:
+A Marengo Bonaparte est vainqueur.
+Le canon gronde; un autre chant commence;
+Nous célébrons tant de faits éclatans.
+Les rois jamais n'envahiront la France.
+Dans un grenier qu'on est bien à vingt ans!
+
+Quittons ce toit où ma raison s'enivre.
+Oh! qu'ils sont loin ces jours si regrettés!
+J'échangerais ce qu'il me reste à vivre
+Contre un des mois qu'ici Dieu m'a comptés,
+Pour rêver gloire, amour, plaisir, folie,
+Pour dépenser sa vie en peu d'instans,
+D'un long espoir pour la voir embellie,
+Dans un grenier qu'on est bien à vingt ans!
+
+
+
+THE GARRET.
+
+
+With pensive eyes the little room I view,
+  Where, in my youth, I weathered it so long;
+With a wild mistress, a stanch friend or two,
+  And a light heart still breaking into song:
+Making a mock of life, and all its cares, 
+  Rich in the glory of my rising sun,
+Lightly I vaulted up four pair of stairs, 
+  In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
+ 
+Yes; 'tis a garret--let him know't who will--
+  There was my bed--full hard it was and small.
+My table there--and I decipher still 
+  Half a lame couplet charcoaled on the wall.
+Ye joys, that Time hath swept with him away,
+  Come to mine eyes, ye dreams of love and fun;
+For you I pawned my watch how many a day,
+  In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
+
+And see my little Jessy, first of all;
+  She comes with pouting lips and sparkling eyes:
+Behold, how roguishly she pins her shawl
+  Across the narrow casement, curtain-wise;
+Now by the bed her petticoat glides down,
+  And when did woman look the worse in none?
+I have heard since who paid for many a gown,
+  In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
+
+One jolly evening, when my friends and I
+  Made happy music with our songs and cheers,
+A shout of triumph mounted up thus high,
+  And distant cannon opened on our ears:
+We rise,--we join in the triumphant strain,--
+  Napoleon conquers--Austerlitz is won-- 
+Tyrants shall never tread us down again,
+  In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
+
+Let us begone--the place is sad and strange--
+  How far, far off, these happy times appear;
+All that I have to live I'd gladly change
+  For one such month as I have wasted here--
+To draw long dreams of beauty, love, and power,
+  From founts of hope that never will outrun,
+And drink all life's quintessence in an hour,
+  Give me the days when I was twenty-one!
+
+
+
+ROGER-BONTEMPS.
+
+
+Aux gens atrabilaires
+Pour exemple donné,
+En un temps de misères
+Roger-Bontemps est né.
+Vivre obscur à sa guise,
+Narguer les mécontens:
+Eh gai! c'est la devise
+Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+Du chapeau de son père
+Coîffé dans le grands jours,
+De roses ou de lierre
+Le rajeunir toujours;
+Mettre un manteau de bure,
+Vieil ami de vingt ans;
+Eh gai! c'est la parure
+Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+Posséder dans sa hutte
+Une table, un vieux lit,
+Des cartes, une flûte,
+Un broc que Dieu remplit;
+Un portrait de maîtresse,
+Un coffre et rien dedans;
+Eh gai! c'est la richesse
+Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+Aux enfans de la ville
+Montrer de petits jeux;
+Etre fesseur habile
+De contes graveleux;
+Ne parler que de danse
+Et d'almanachs chantans;
+Eh gai! c'est la science
+Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+Faute de vins d'élite,
+Sabler ceux du canton:
+Préférer Marguerite
+Aux dames du grand ton:
+De joie et de tendresse
+Remplir tous ses instans;
+Eh gai! c'est la sagesse
+Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+Dire au ciel: Je me fie,
+Mon père, à ta bonté;
+De ma philosophie
+Pardonne le gaîté
+Que ma saison dernière
+Soit encore un printemps;
+Eh gai! c'est la prière
+Du gros Roger-Bontemps.
+
+Vous, pauvres pleins d'envie,
+Vous, riches désireux,
+Vous, dont le char dévie
+Après un cours heureux;
+Vous, qui perdrez peut-être
+Des titres éclatans,
+Eh gai! prenez pour maître
+Le gros Roger Bontemps.
+
+
+
+JOLLY JACK.
+
+
+When fierce political debate 
+  Throughout the isle was storming,
+And Rads attacked the throne and state,
+  And Tories the reforming, 
+To calm the furious rage of each,
+  And right the land demented, 
+Heaven sent us Jolly Jack, to teach
+ The way to be contented.
+
+Jack's bed was straw, 'twas warm and soft,
+  His chair, a three-legged stool; 
+His broken jug was emptied oft,
+  Yet, somehow, always full. 
+His mistress' portrait decked the wall,
+  His mirror had a crack;
+Yet, gay and glad, though this was all 
+  His wealth, lived Jolly Jack.
+
+To give advice to avarice,
+  Teach pride its mean condition, 
+And preach good sense to dull pretence,
+  Was honest Jack's high mission. 
+Our simple statesman found his rule
+  Of moral in the flagon,
+And held his philosophic school 
+  Beneath the "George and Dragon."
+
+When village Solons cursed the Lords, 
+  And called the malt-tax sinful,
+Jack heeded not their angry words, 
+  But smiled and drank his skinful.
+And when men wasted health and life, 
+  In search of rank and riches,
+Jack marked, aloof, the paltry strife, 
+  And wore his threadbare breeches.
+
+"I enter not the church," he said, 
+  But I'll not seek to rob it;"
+So worthy Jack Joe Miller read, 
+  While others studied Cobbett.
+His talk it was of feast and fun; 
+  His guide the Almanack;
+From youth to age thus gayly run 
+  The life of Jolly Jack.
+
+And when Jack prayed, as oft he would,
+  He humbly thanked his Maker; 
+"I am," said he, "O Father good!
+  Nor Catholic nor Quaker:
+Give each his creed, let each proclaim 
+  His catalogue of curses;
+I trust in Thee, and not in them, 
+  In Thee, and in Thy mercies!
+
+"Forgive me if, midst all Thy works, 
+  No hint I see of damning;
+And think there's faith among the Turks,
+  And hope for e'en the Brahmin. 
+Harmless my mind is, and my mirth,
+  And kindly is my laughter:
+I cannot see the smiling earth, 
+  And think there's hell hereafter."
+
+Jack died; he left no legacy, 
+  Save that his story teaches:--
+Content to peevish poverty; 
+  Humility to riches.
+Ye scornful great, ye envious small, 
+  Come follow in his track;
+We all were happier, if we all 
+  Would copy JOLLY JACK.
+
+
+
+
+FRENCH DRAMAS AND MELODRAMAS.
+
+
+There are three kinds of drama in France, which you may subdivide 
+as much as you please.
+
+There is the old classical drama, wellnigh dead, and full time too: 
+old tragedies, in which half a dozen characters appear, and spout 
+sonorous Alexandrines for half a dozen hours.  The fair Rachel has 
+been trying to revive this genre, and to untomb Racine; but be not 
+alarmed, Racine will never come to life again, and cause audiences 
+to weep as of yore.  Madame Rachel can only galvanize the corpse, 
+not revivify it.  Ancient French tragedy, red-heeled, patched, and 
+be-periwigged, lies in the grave; and it is only the ghost of it 
+that we see, which the fair Jewess has raised.  There are classical 
+comedies in verse, too, wherein the knavish valets, rakish heroes, 
+stolid old guardians, and smart, free-spoken serving-women, 
+discourse in Alexandrines, as loud as the Horaces or the Cid.  An 
+Englishman will seldom reconcile himself to the roulement of the 
+verses, and the painful recurrence of the rhymes; for my part, I 
+had rather go to Madame Saqui's or see Deburau dancing on a rope: 
+his lines are quite as natural and poetical.
+
+Then there is the comedy of the day, of which Monsieur Scribe is 
+the father.  Good heavens! with what a number of gay colonels, 
+smart widows, and silly husbands has that gentleman peopled the 
+play-books.  How that unfortunate seventh commandment has been 
+maltreated by him and his disciples.  You will see four pieces, at 
+the Gymnase, of a night; and so sure as you see them, four husbands 
+shall be wickedly used.  When is this joke to cease?  Mon Dieu!  
+Play-writers have handled it for about two thousand years, and the 
+public, like a great baby, must have the tale repeated to it over 
+and over again.
+
+Finally, there is the Drama, that great monster which has sprung 
+into life of late years; and which is said, but I don't believe a 
+word of it, to have Shakspeare for a father.  If Monsieur Scribe's 
+plays may be said to be so many ingenious examples how to break one 
+commandment, the drame is a grand and general chaos of them all; 
+nay, several crimes are added, not prohibited in the Decalogue, 
+which was written before dramas were.  Of the drama, Victor Hugo 
+and Dumas are the well-known and respectable guardians.  Every 
+piece Victor Hugo has written, since "Hernani," has contained a 
+monster--a delightful monster, saved by one virtue.  There is 
+Triboulet, a foolish monster; Lucrèce Borgia, a maternal monster; 
+Mary Tudor, a religious monster; Monsieur Quasimodo, a humpback 
+monster; and others, that might be named, whose monstrosities we 
+are induced to pardon--nay, admiringly to witness--because they are 
+agreeably mingled with some exquisite display of affection.  And, 
+as the great Hugo has one monster to each play, the great Dumas 
+has, ordinarily, half a dozen, to whom murder is nothing; common 
+intrigue, and simple breakage of the before-mentioned commandment, 
+nothing; but who live and move in a vast, delightful complication 
+of crime, that cannot be easily conceived in England, much less 
+described.
+
+When I think over the number of crimes that I have seen Mademoiselle
+Georges, for instance, commit, I am filled with wonder at her
+greatness, and the greatness of the poets who have conceived these
+charming horrors for her.  I have seen her make love to, and murder,
+her sons, in the "Tour de Nesle."  I have seen her poison a company
+of no less than nine gentlemen, at Ferrara, with an affectionate son
+in the number; I have seen her, as Madame de Brinvilliers, kill off
+numbers of respectable relations in the first four acts; and, at the
+last, be actually burned at the stake, to which she comes shuddering,
+ghastly, barefooted, and in a white sheet.  Sweet excitement of
+tender sympathies!  Such tragedies are not so good as a real,
+downright execution; but, in point of interest, the next thing to
+it: with what a number of moral emotions do they fill the breast;
+with what a hatred for vice, and yet a true pity and respect for
+that grain of virtue that is to be found in us all: our bloody,
+daughter-loving Brinvilliers; our warmhearted, poisonous Lucretia
+Borgia; above all, what a smart appetite for a cool supper
+afterwards, at the Café Anglais, when the horrors of the play act 
+as a piquant sauce to the supper!
+
+Or, to speak more seriously, and to come, at last, to the point.  
+After having seen most of the grand dramas which have been produced 
+at Paris for the last half-dozen years, and thinking over all that 
+one has seen,--the fictitious murders, rapes, adulteries, and other 
+crimes, by which one has been interested and excited,--a man may 
+take leave to be heartily ashamed of the manner in which he has 
+spent his time; and of the hideous kind of mental intoxication in 
+which he has permitted himself to indulge.
+
+Nor are simple society outrages the only sort of crime in which the 
+spectator of Paris plays has permitted himself to indulge; he has 
+recreated himself with a deal of blasphemy besides, and has passed 
+many pleasant evenings in beholding religion defiled and ridiculed.
+
+Allusion has been made, in a former paper, to a fashion that lately 
+obtained in France, and which went by the name of Catholic 
+reaction; and as, in this happy country, fashion is everything, we 
+have had not merely Catholic pictures and quasi religious books, 
+but a number of Catholic plays have been produced, very edifying to 
+the frequenters of the theatres or the Boulevards, who have learned 
+more about religion from these performances than they have 
+acquired, no doubt, in the whole of their lives before.  In the 
+course of a very few years we have seen--"The Wandering Jew;" 
+"Belshazzar's Feast;" "Nebuchadnezzar:" and the "Massacre of the 
+Innocents;" "Joseph and his Brethren;" "The Passage of the Red 
+Sea;" and "The Deluge."
+
+The great Dumas, like Madame Sand before mentioned, has brought a 
+vast quantity of religion before the foot-lights.  There was his 
+famous tragedy of "Caligula," which, be it spoken to the shame of 
+the Paris critics, was coldly received; nay, actually hissed, by 
+them.  And why?  Because, says Dumas, it contained a great deal too 
+much piety for the rogues.  The public, he says, was much more 
+religious, and understood him at once.
+
+"As for the critics," says he, nobly, "let those who cried out 
+against the immorality of Antony and Marguérite de Bourgogne, 
+reproach me for THE CHASTITY OF MESSALINA."  (This dear creature is 
+the heroine of the play of "Caligula.")  "It matters little to me.  
+These people have but seen the form of my work: they have walked 
+round the tent, but have not seen the arch which it covered; they 
+have examined the vases and candles of the altar, but have not 
+opened the tabernacle!
+
+"The public alone has, instinctively, comprehended that there was, 
+beneath this outward sign, an inward and mysterious grace: it 
+followed the action of the piece in all its serpentine windings; it 
+listened for four hours, with pious attention (avec recueillement 
+et religion), to the sound of this rolling river of thoughts, which 
+may have appeared to it new and bold, perhaps, but chaste and 
+grave; and it retired, with its head on its breast, like a man who 
+had just perceived, in a dream, the solution of a problem which he 
+has long and vainly sought in his waking hours."
+
+You see that not only Saint Sand is an apostle, in her way; but 
+Saint Dumas is another.  We have people in England who write for 
+bread, like Dumas and Sand, and are paid so much for their line; 
+but they don't set up for prophets.  Mrs. Trollope has never 
+declared that her novels are inspired by heaven; Mr. Buckstone has 
+written a great number of farces, and never talked about the altar 
+and the tabernacle.  Even Sir Edward Bulwer (who, on a similar 
+occasion, when the critics found fault with a play of his, answered 
+them by a pretty decent declaration of his own merits,) never 
+ventured to say that he had received a divine mission, and was 
+uttering five-act revelations.
+
+All things considered, the tragedy of "Caligula" is a decent 
+tragedy; as decent as the decent characters of the hero and heroine 
+can allow it to be; it may be almost said, provokingly decent: but 
+this, it must be remembered, is the characteristic of the modern 
+French school (nay, of the English school too); and if the writer 
+take the character of a remarkable scoundrel, it is ten to one but 
+he turns out an amiable fellow, in whom we have all the warmest 
+sympathy.  "Caligula" is killed at the end of the performance; 
+Messalina is comparatively well-behaved; and the sacred part of the 
+performance, the tabernacle-characters apart from the mere "vase" 
+and "candlestick" personages, may be said to be depicted in the 
+person of a Christian convert, Stella, who has had the good fortune 
+to be converted by no less a person than Mary Magdalene, when she, 
+Stella, was staying on a visit to her aunt, near Narbonne.
+
+
+STELLA (Continuant.)                   Voilà
+Que je vois s'avancer, sans pilote et sans rames,
+Une barque portant deux hommes et deux femmes,
+Et, spectacle inouï qui me ravit encor,
+Tous quatre avaient au front une auréole d'or
+D'où partaient des rayons de si vive lumière
+Que je fus obligée à baisser la paupière;
+Et, lorsque je rouvris les yeux avec effroi,
+Les voyageurs divins étaient auprès de moi.
+Un jour de chacun d'eux et dans toute sa gloire
+Je te raconterai la marveilleuse histoire,
+Et tu l'adoreras, j'espère; en ce moment,
+Ma mère, il te suffit de savoir seulement
+Que tous quatre venaient du fond de la Syrie:
+Un édit les avait bannis de leur patrie,
+Et, se faisant bourreaux, des hommes irrités,
+Sans avirons, sans eau, sans pain et garrotés,
+Sur une frêle barque échouée au rivage,
+Les avaient à la mer poussés dans un orage.
+Mais à peine l'esquif eut-il touché les flots
+Qu'au cantique chanté par les saints matelots,
+L'ouragan replia ses ailes frémissantes,
+Que la mer aplanit ses vagues mugissantes,
+Et qu'un soleil plus pur, reparaissant aux cieux,
+Enveloppa l'esquif d'un cercle radieux! . . .
+
+JUNIA.--Mais c'était un prodige.
+
+STELLA.--                        Un miracle, ma mère!
+Leurs fers tombèrent seuls, l'eau cessa d'être amère,
+Et deux fois chaque jour le bateau fut couvert
+D'une manne pareille à celle du désert:
+C'est ainsi que, poussés par une main céleste,
+Je les vis aborder.
+
+JUNIA.--             Oh! dis vîte le reste!
+
+STELLA.--A l'aube, trois d'entre eux quittèrent la maison:
+Marthe prit le chemin qui mène à Tarascon,
+Lazare et Maximin celui de Massilie,
+Et celle qui resta . . . . C'ETAIT LA PLUS JOLIE, (how truly French!)
+Nous faisant appeler vers le milieu du jour,
+Demanda si les monts ou les bois d'alentour
+Cachaient quelque retraite inconnue et profonde,
+Qui la pût séparer à tout jamais du monde. . . . . 
+Aquila se souvint qu'il avait pénétré
+Dans un antre sauvage et de tous ignoré,
+Grotte creusée aux flancs de ces Alpes sublimes,
+Ou l'aigle fait son aire au-dessus des abîmes.
+Il offrit cet asile, et dès le lendemain
+Tous deux, pour l'y guider, nous étions en chemin.
+Le soir du second jour nous touchâmes sa base:
+Là, tombant à genoux dans une sainte extase,
+Elle pria long-temps, puis vers l'antre inconnu,
+Dénouant se chaussure, elle marcha pied nu.
+Nos prières, nos cris restèrent sans réponses:
+Au milieu des cailloux, des épines, des ronces,
+Nous la vîmes monter, un bâton à la main,
+Et ce n'est qu'arrivée au terme du chemin,
+Qu'enfin elle tomba sans force et sans haleine . . . . 
+
+JUNIA.--Comment la nommait-on, ma fille?
+
+STELLA.--                                Madeleine.
+
+
+Walking, says Stella, by the sea-shore, "A bark drew near, that had 
+nor sail nor oar; two women and two men the vessel bore: each of 
+that crew, 'twas wondrous to behold, wore round his head a ring of 
+blazing gold; from which such radiance glittered all around, that I 
+was fain to look towards the ground.  And when once more I raised 
+my frightened eyne, before me stood the travellers divine; their 
+rank, the glorious lot that each befell, at better season, mother, 
+will I tell.  Of this anon: the time will come when thou shalt 
+learn to worship as I worship now.  Suffice it, that from Syria's 
+land they came; an edict from their country banished them.  Fierce, 
+angry men had seized upon the four, and launched them in that 
+vessel from the shore.  They launched these victims on the waters 
+rude; nor rudder gave to steer, nor bread for food.  As the doomed 
+vessel cleaves the stormy main, that pious crew uplifts a sacred 
+strain; the angry waves are silent as it sings; the storm, awe-
+stricken, folds its quivering wings.  A purer sun appears the 
+heavens to light, and wraps the little bark in radiance bright.
+
+"JUNIA.--Sure, 'twas a prodigy.
+
+"STELLA.--A miracle.  Spontaneous from their hands the fetters 
+fell.  The salt sea-wave grew fresh, and, twice a day, manna (like 
+that which on the desert lay) covered the bark and fed them on 
+their way.  Thus, hither led, at heaven's divine behest, I saw them 
+land--
+
+"JUNIA.--My daughter, tell the rest.
+
+"STELLA.--Three of the four, our mansion left at dawn.  One, 
+Martha, took the road to Tarascon; Lazarus and Maximin to Massily; 
+but one remained (the fairest of the three), who asked us, if i' 
+the woods or mountains near, there chanced to be some cavern lone 
+and drear; where she might hide, for ever, from all men.  It 
+chanced, my cousin knew of such a den; deep hidden in a mountain's 
+hoary breast, on which the eagle builds his airy nest.  And thither 
+offered he the saint to guide.  Next day upon the journey forth we 
+hied; and came, at the second eve, with weary pace, unto the lonely 
+mountain's rugged base.  Here the worn traveller, falling on her 
+knee, did pray awhile in sacred ecstasy; and, drawing off her 
+sandals from her feet, marched, naked, towards that desolate 
+retreat.  No answer made she to our cries or groans; but walking 
+midst the prickles and rude stones, a staff in hand, we saw her 
+upwards toil; nor ever did she pause, nor rest the while, save at 
+the entry of that savage den.  Here, powerless and panting, fell 
+she then.
+
+"JUNIA.--What was her name, my daughter?
+
+"STELLA.                                 MAGDALEN."
+
+
+Here the translator must pause--having no inclination to enter "the 
+tabernacle," in company with such a spotless high-priest as 
+Monsieur Dumas.
+
+Something "tabernacular" may be found in Dumas's famous piece of 
+"Don Juan de Marana."  The poet has laid the scene of his play in a 
+vast number of places: in heaven (where we have the Virgin Mary and 
+little angels, in blue, swinging censers before her!)--on earth, 
+under the earth, and in a place still lower, but not mentionable to 
+ears polite; and the plot, as it appears from a dialogue between a 
+good and a bad angel, with which the play commences, turns upon a 
+contest between these two worthies for the possession of the soul 
+of a member of the family of Marana.
+
+"Don Juan de Marana" not only resembles his namesake, celebrated by 
+Mozart and Molière, in his peculiar successes among the ladies, but 
+possesses further qualities which render his character eminently 
+fitting for stage representation: he unites the virtues of Lovelace 
+and Lacenaire; he blasphemes upon all occasions; he murders, at the 
+slightest provocation, and without the most trifling remorse; he 
+overcomes ladies of rigid virtue, ladies of easy virtue, and ladies 
+of no virtue at all; and the poet, inspired by the contemplation of 
+such a character, has depicted his hero's adventures and 
+conversation with wonderful feeling and truth.
+
+The first act of the play contains a half-dozen of murders and 
+intrigues; which would have sufficed humbler genius than M. 
+Dumas's, for the completion of, at least, half a dozen tragedies.  
+In the second act our hero flogs his elder brother, and runs away 
+with his sister-in-law; in the third, he fights a duel with a 
+rival, and kills him: whereupon the mistress of his victim takes 
+poison, and dies, in great agonies, on the stage.  In the fourth 
+act, Don Juan, having entered a church for the purpose of carrying 
+off a nun, with whom he is in love, is seized by the statue of one 
+of the ladies whom he has previously victimized, and made to behold 
+the ghosts of all those unfortunate persons whose deaths he has 
+caused.
+
+This is a most edifying spectacle.  The ghosts rise solemnly, each 
+in a white sheet, preceded by a wax-candle; and, having declared 
+their names and qualities, call, in chorus, for vengeance upon Don 
+Juan, as thus:--
+
+
+DON SANDOVAL loquitur.
+
+"I am Don Sandoval d'Ojedo.  I played against Don Juan my fortune, 
+the tomb of my fathers, and the heart of my mistress;--I lost all: 
+I played against him my life, and I lost it.  Vengeance against the 
+murderer! vengeance!"--(The candle goes out.)
+
+
+THE CANDLE GOES OUT, and an angel descends--a flaming sword in his 
+hand--and asks: "Is there no voice in favor of Don Juan?" when lo! 
+Don Juan's father (like one of those ingenious toys called "Jack-
+in-the-box,") jumps up from his coffin, and demands grace for his 
+son.
+
+When Martha the nun returns, having prepared all things for her 
+elopement, she finds Don Juan fainting upon the ground.--"I am no 
+longer your husband," says he, upon coming to himself; "I am no 
+longer Don Juan; I am Brother Juan the Trappist.  Sister Martha, 
+recollect that you must die!"
+
+This was a most cruel blow upon Sister Martha, who is no less a 
+person than an angel, an angel in disguise--the good spirit of the 
+house of Marana, who has gone to the length of losing her wings and 
+forfeiting her place in heaven, in order to keep company with Don 
+Juan on earth, and, if possible, to convert him.  Already, in her 
+angelic character, she had exhorted him to repentance, but in vain; 
+for, while she stood at one elbow, pouring not merely hints, but 
+long sermons, into his ear, at the other elbow stood a bad spirit, 
+grinning and sneering at all her pious counsels, and obtaining by 
+far the greater share of the Don's attention.
+
+In spite, however, of the utter contempt with which Don Juan treats 
+her,--in spite of his dissolute courses, which must shock her 
+virtue,--and his impolite neglect, which must wound her vanity, the 
+poor creature (who, from having been accustomed to better company, 
+might have been presumed to have had better taste), the unfortunate 
+angel feels a certain inclination for the Don, and actually flies 
+up to heaven to ask permission to remain with him on earth.
+
+And when the curtain draws up, to the sound of harps, and discovers 
+white-robed angels walking in the clouds, we find the angel of 
+Marana upon her knees, uttering the following address:--
+
+
+LE BON ANGE.
+
+Vierge, à qui le calice à la liqueur amère
+      Fut si souvent offert,
+Mère, que l'on nomma la douloureuse mère, 
+      Tant vous avez souffert!
+
+Vous, dont les yeux divins sur la terre des hommes 
+      Ont versé plus de pleurs
+Que vos pieds n'ont depuis, dans le ciel où nous sommes, 
+      Fait éclore de fleurs.
+
+Vase d'élection, étoile matinale, 
+     Miroir de pureté, 
+Vous qui priez pour nous, d'une voix virginale, 
+     La suprême bonté;
+
+A mon tour, aujourd'hui, bienheureuse Marie, 
+     Je tombe à vos genoux;
+Daignez donc m'écouter, car c'est vous que je prie, 
+     Vous qui priez pour nous.
+
+
+Which may be thus interpreted:--
+
+
+O Virgin blest! by whom the bitter draught 
+     So often has been quaffed,
+That, for thy sorrow, thou art named by us
+     The Mother Dolorous!
+
+Thou, from whose eyes have fallen more tears of woe, 
+     Upon the earth below,
+Than 'neath thy footsteps, in this heaven of ours, 
+     Have risen flowers!
+
+O beaming morning star! O chosen vase! 
+     O mirror of all grace!
+Who, with thy virgin voice, dost ever pray
+     Man's sins away;
+
+Bend down thine ear, and list, O blessed saint!
+     Unto my sad complaint;
+Mother! to thee I kneel, on thee I call,
+     Who hearest all.
+
+
+She proceeds to request that she may be allowed to return to earth, 
+and follow the fortunes of Don Juan; and, as there is one 
+difficulty, or, to use her own words,--
+
+
+Mais, comme vous savez qu'aux voûtes éternelles, 
+     Malgré moi, tend mon vol,
+Soufflez sur mon étoile et détachez mes ailes,
+     Pour m'enchainer au sol;
+
+
+her request is granted, her star is BLOWN OUT (O poetic allusion!) 
+and she descends to earth to love, and to go mad, and to die for 
+Don Juan!
+
+The reader will require no further explanation, in order to be 
+satisfied as to the moral of this play: but is it not a very bitter 
+satire upon the country, which calls itself the politest nation in 
+the world, that the incidents, the indecency, the coarse blasphemy, 
+and the vulgar wit of this piece, should find admirers among the 
+public, and procure reputation for the author?  Could not the 
+Government, which has re-established, in a manner, the theatrical 
+censorship, and forbids or alters plays which touch on politics, 
+exert the same guardianship over public morals?  The honest English 
+reader, who has a faith in his clergyman, and is a regular 
+attendant at Sunday worship, will not be a little surprised at the 
+march of intellect among our neighbors across the Channel, and at 
+the kind of consideration in which they hold their religion.  Here 
+is a man who seizes upon saints and angels, merely to put sentiments
+in their mouths which might suit a nymph of Drury Lane. He shows
+heaven, in order that he may carry debauch into it; and avails
+himself of the most sacred and sublime parts of our creed as a
+vehicle for a scene-painter's skill, or an occasion for a handsome
+actress to wear a new dress.
+
+M. Dumas's piece of "Kean" is not quite so sublime; it was brought 
+out by the author as a satire upon the French critics, who, to 
+their credit be it spoken, had generally attacked him, and was 
+intended by him, and received by the public, as a faithful 
+portraiture of English manners.  As such, it merits special 
+observation and praise.  In the first act you find a Countess and 
+an Ambassadress, whose conversation relates purely to the great 
+actor.  All the ladies in London are in love with him, especially 
+the two present.  As for the Ambassadress, she prefers him to her 
+husband (a matter of course in all French plays), and to a more 
+seducing person still--no less a person than the Prince of Wales! 
+who presently waits on the ladies, and joins in their conversation 
+concerning Kean.  "This man," says his Royal Highness, "is the very 
+pink of fashion.  Brummell is nobody when compared to him; and I 
+myself only an insignificant private gentleman.  He has a 
+reputation among ladies, for which I sigh in vain; and spends an 
+income twice as great as mine."  This admirable historic touch at 
+once paints the actor and the Prince; the estimation in which the 
+one was held, and the modest economy for which the other was so 
+notorious.
+
+Then we have Kean, at a place called the Trou de Charbon, the "Coal 
+Hole," where, to the edification of the public, he engages in a 
+fisty combat with a notorious boxer.  This scene was received by 
+the audience with loud exclamations of delight, and commented on, 
+by the journals, as a faultless picture of English manners.  "The 
+Coal Hole" being on the banks of the Thames, a nobleman--LORD 
+MELBOURN!--has chosen the tavern as a rendezvous for a gang of 
+pirates, who are to have their ship in waiting, in order to carry 
+off a young lady with whom his lordship is enamored.  It need not 
+be said that Kean arrives at the nick of time, saves the innocent 
+Meess Anna, and exposes the infamy of the Peer.  A violent tirade 
+against noblemen ensues, and Lord Melbourn slinks away, disappointed,
+to meditate revenge.  Kean's triumphs continue through all the acts:
+the Ambassadress falls madly in love with him; the Prince becomes
+furious at his ill success, and the Ambassador dreadfully jealous.
+They pursue Kean to his dressing-room at the theatre; where,
+unluckily, the Ambassadress herself has taken refuge.  Dreadful
+quarrels ensue; the tragedian grows suddenly mad upon the stage, and
+so cruelly insults the Prince of Wales that his Royal Highness
+determines to send HIM TO BOTANY BAY.  His sentence, however, is
+commuted to banishment to New York; whither, of course, Miss Anna
+accompanies him; rewarding him, previously, with her hand and twenty
+thousand a year!
+
+This wonderful performance was gravely received and admired by the 
+people of Paris: the piece was considered to be decidedly moral, 
+because the popular candidate was made to triumph throughout, and 
+to triumph in the most virtuous manner; for, according to the 
+French code of morals, success among women is, at once, the proof 
+and the reward of virtue.
+
+The sacred personage introduced in Dumas's play behind a cloud, 
+figures bodily in the piece of the Massacre of the Innocents, 
+represented at Paris last year.  She appears under a different 
+name, but the costume is exactly that of Carlo Dolce's Madonna; and 
+an ingenious fable is arranged, the interest of which hangs upon 
+the grand Massacre of the Innocents, perpetrated in the fifth act.  
+One of the chief characters is Jean le Précurseur, who threatens 
+woe to Herod and his race, and is beheaded by orders of that 
+sovereign.
+
+In the Festin de Balthazar, we are similarly introduced to Daniel, 
+and the first scene is laid by the waters of Babylon, where a 
+certain number of captive Jews are seated in melancholy postures; a 
+Babylonian officer enters, exclaiming, "Chantez nous quelques 
+chansons de Jerusalem," and the request is refused in the language 
+of the Psalm.  Belshazzar's Feast is given in a grand tableau, 
+after Martin's picture.  That painter, in like manner, furnished 
+scenes for the Deluge.  Vast numbers of schoolboys and children are 
+brought to see these pieces; the lower classes delight in them.  
+The famous Juif Errant, at the theatre of the Porte St. Martin, was 
+the first of the kind, and its prodigious success, no doubt, 
+occasioned the number of imitations which the other theatres have 
+produced.
+
+The taste of such exhibitions, of course, every English person will 
+question; but we must remember the manners of the people among whom 
+they are popular; and, if I may be allowed to hazard such an 
+opinion, there is in every one of these Boulevard mysteries, a kind 
+of rude moral.  The Boulevard writers don't pretend to "tabernacles"
+and divine gifts, like Madame Sand and Dumas before mentioned.  If
+they take a story from the sacred books, they garble it without
+mercy, and take sad liberties with the text; but they do not deal in
+descriptions of the agreeably wicked, or ask pity and admiration for
+tender-hearted criminals and philanthropic murderers, as their
+betters do.  Vice is vice on the Boulevard; and it is fine to hear
+the audience, as a tyrant king roars out cruel sentences of death,
+or a bereaved mother pleads for the life of her child, making their
+remarks on the circumstances of the scene.  "Ah, le gredin!" growls
+an indignant countryman.  "Quel monstre!" says a grisette, in a
+fury.  You see very fat old men crying like babies, and, like
+babies, sucking enormous sticks of barley-sugar.  Actors and audience
+enter warmly into the illusion of the piece; and so especially are
+the former affected, that at Franconi's, where the battles of the
+Empire are represented, there is as regular gradation in the ranks
+of the mimic army as in the real imperial legions.  After a man has
+served, with credit, for a certain number of years in the line, he
+is promoted to be an officer--an acting officer.  If he conducts
+himself well, he may rise to be a Colonel or a General of Division;
+if ill, he is degraded to the ranks again; or, worst degradation of
+all, drafted into a regiment of Cossacks or Austrians.  Cossacks is
+the lowest depth, however; nay, it is said that the men who perform
+these Cossack parts receive higher wages than the mimic grenadiers
+and old guard.  They will not consent to be beaten every night, even
+in play; to be pursued in hundreds, by a handful of French; to fight
+against their beloved Emperor.  Surely there is fine hearty virtue
+in this, and pleasant child-like simplicity.
+
+So that while the drama of Victor Hugo, Dumas, and the enlightened 
+classes, is profoundly immoral and absurd, the DRAMA of the common 
+people is absurd, if you will, but good and right-hearted.  I have 
+made notes of one or two of these pieces, which all have good 
+feeling and kindness in them, and which turn, as the reader will 
+see, upon one or two favorite points of popular morality.  A drama 
+that obtained a vast success at the Porte Saint Martin was "La 
+Duchesse de la Vauballière."  The Duchess is the daughter of a poor 
+farmer, who was carried off in the first place, and then married by 
+M. le Duc de la Vauballière, a terrible roué, the farmer's 
+landlord, and the intimate friend of Philippe d'Orléans, the Regent 
+of France.
+
+Now the Duke, in running away with the lady, intended to dispense 
+altogether with ceremony, and make of Julie anything but his wife; 
+but Georges, her father, and one Morisseau, a notary, discovered 
+him in his dastardly act, and pursued him to the very feet of the 
+Regent, who compelled the pair to marry and make it up.
+
+Julie complies; but though she becomes a Duchess, her heart remains 
+faithful to her old flame, Adrian, the doctor; and she declares 
+that, beyond the ceremony, no sort of intimacy shall take place 
+between her husband and herself.
+
+Then the Duke begins to treat her in the most ungentleman-like 
+manner: he abuses her in every possible way; he introduces improper 
+characters into her house; and, finally, becomes so disgusted with 
+her, that he determines to make away with her altogether.
+
+For this purpose, he sends forth into the highways and seizes a 
+doctor, bidding him, on pain of death, to write a poisonous 
+prescription for Madame la Duchesse.  She swallows the potion; and 
+O horror! the doctor turns out to be Dr. Adrian; whose woe may be 
+imagined, upon finding that he has been thus committing murder on 
+his true love!
+
+Let not the reader, however, be alarmed as to the fate of the 
+heroine; no heroine of a tragedy ever yet died in the third act; 
+and, accordingly, the Duchess gets up perfectly well again in the 
+fourth, through the instrumentality of Morisseau, the good lawyer.
+
+And now it is that vice begins to be really punished.  The Duke, 
+who, after killing his wife, thinks it necessary to retreat, and 
+take refuge in Spain, is tracked to the borders of that country by 
+the virtuous notary, and there receives such a lesson as he will 
+never forget to his dying day.
+
+Morisseau, in the first instance, produces a deed (signed by his 
+Holiness the Pope), which annuls the marriage of the Duke de la 
+Vauballière; then another deed, by which it is proved that he was 
+not the eldest son of old La Vauballière, the former Duke; then 
+another deed, by which he shows that old La Vauballière (who seems 
+to have been a disreputable old fellow) was a bigamist, and that, 
+in consequence, the present man, styling himself Duke, is 
+illegitimate; and finally, Morisseau brings forward another 
+document, which proves that the REG'LAR Duke is no other than 
+Adrian, the doctor!
+
+Thus it is that love, law, and physic combined, triumph over the 
+horrid machinations of this star-and-gartered libertine.
+
+"Hermann l'Ivrogne" is another piece of the same order; and though 
+not very refined, yet possesses considerable merit.  As in the case 
+of the celebrated Captain Smith of Halifax, who "took to drinking 
+ratafia, and thought of poor Miss Bailey,"--a woman and the bottle 
+have been the cause of Hermann's ruin.  Deserted by his mistress, 
+who has been seduced from him by a base Italian Count, Hermann, a 
+German artist, gives himself entirely up to liquor and revenge: but 
+when he finds that force, and not infidelity, have been the cause 
+of his mistress's ruin, the reader can fancy the indignant ferocity 
+with which he pursues the infame ravisseur.  A scene, which is 
+really full of spirit, and excellently well acted, here ensues!  
+Hermann proposes to the Count, on the eve of their duel, that the 
+survivor should bind himself to espouse the unhappy Marie; but the 
+Count declares himself to be already married, and the student, 
+finding a duel impossible (for his object was to restore, at all 
+events, the honor of Marie), now only thinks of his revenge, and 
+murders the Count.  Presently, two parties of men enter Hermann's 
+apartment: one is a company of students, who bring him the news 
+that he has obtained the prize of painting; the other the 
+policemen, who carry him to prison, to suffer the penalty of 
+murder.
+
+I could mention many more plays in which the popular morality is 
+similiarly expressed.  The seducer, or rascal of the piece, is 
+always an aristocrat,--a wicked count, or licentious marquis, who 
+is brought to condign punishment just before the fall of the 
+curtain.  And too good reason have the French people had to lay 
+such crimes to the charge of the aristocracy, who are expiating 
+now, on the stage, the wrongs which they did a hundred years since.  
+The aristocracy is dead now; but the theatre lives upon traditions: 
+and don't let us be too scornful at such simple legends as are 
+handed down by the people from race to race.  Vulgar prejudice 
+against the great it may be; but prejudice against the great is 
+only a rude expression of sympathy with the poor; long, therefore, 
+may fat épiciers blubber over mimic woes, and honest prolétaires 
+shake their fists, shouting--"Gredin, scélérat, monstre de 
+marquis!" and such republican cries.
+
+Remark, too, another development of this same popular feeling of 
+dislike against men in power.  What a number of plays and legends 
+have we (the writer has submitted to the public, in the preeeding 
+pages, a couple of specimens; one of French, and the other of 
+Polish origin,) in which that great and powerful aristocrat, 
+the Devil, is made to be miserably tricked, humiliated, and 
+disappointed?  A play of this class, which, in the midst of all its 
+absurdities and claptraps, had much of good in it, was called "Le 
+Maudit des Mers."  Le Maudit is a Dutch captain, who, in the midst 
+of a storm, while his crew were on their knees at prayers, 
+blasphemed and drank punch; but what was his astonishment at 
+beholding an archangel with a sword all covered with flaming resin, 
+who told him that as he, in this hour of danger, was too daring, or 
+too wicked, to utter a prayer, he never should cease roaming the 
+seas until he could find some being who would pray to heaven for 
+him!
+
+Once only, in a hundred years, was the skipper allowed to land for 
+this purpose; and this piece runs through four centuries, in as 
+many acts, describing the agonies and unavailing attempts of the 
+miserable Dutchman.  Willing to go any lengths in order to obtain 
+his prayer, he, in the second act, betrays a Virgin of the Sun to a 
+follower of Pizarro: and, in the third, assassinates the heroic 
+William of Nassau; but ever before the dropping of the curtain, the 
+angel and sword make their appearance--"Treachery," says the 
+spirit, "cannot lessen thy punishment;--crime will not obtain thy 
+release--A la mer! à la mer!" and the poor devil returns to the 
+ocean, to be lonely, and tempest-tossed, and sea-sick for a hundred 
+years more.
+
+But his woes are destined to end with the fourth act.  Having 
+landed in America, where the peasants on the sea-shore, all dressed 
+in Italian costumes, are celebrating, in a quadrille, the victories 
+of Washington, he is there lucky enough to find a young girl to 
+pray for him.  Then the curse is removed, the punishment is over, 
+and a celestial vessel, with angels on the decks and "sweet little 
+cherubs" fluttering about the shrouds and the poop, appear to 
+receive him.
+
+This piece was acted at Franconi's, where, for once, an angel-ship 
+was introduced in place of the usual horsemanship.
+
+One must not forget to mention here, how the English nation is 
+satirized by our neighbors; who have some droll traditions 
+regarding us.  In one of the little Christmas pieces produced at 
+the Palais Royal (satires upon the follies of the past twelve 
+months, on which all the small theatres exhaust their wit), the 
+celebrated flight of Messrs. Green and Monck Mason was parodied, 
+and created a good deal of laughter at the expense of John Bull.  
+Two English noblemen, Milor Cricri and Milor Hanneton, appear as 
+descending from a balloon, and one of them communicates to the 
+public the philosophic observations which were made in the course 
+of his aërial tour.
+
+"On leaving Vauxhall," says his lordship, "we drank a bottle of 
+Madeira, as a health to the friends from whom we parted, and 
+crunched a few biscuits to support nature during the hours before 
+lunch.  In two hours we arrived at Canterbury, enveloped in clouds: 
+lunch, bottled porter: at Dover, carried several miles in a tide of 
+air, bitter cold, cherry-brandy; crossed over the Channel safely, 
+and thought with pity of the poor people who were sickening in the 
+steamboats below: more bottled porter: over Calais, dinner, roast-
+beef of Old England; near Dunkirk,--night falling, lunar rainbow, 
+brandy-and-water; night confoundedly thick; supper, nightcap of 
+rum-punch, and so to bed.  The sun broke beautifully through the 
+morning mist, as we boiled the kettle and took our breakfast over 
+Cologne.  In a few more hours we concluded this memorable voyage, 
+and landed safely at Weilburg, in good time for dinner."
+
+The joke here is smart enough; but our honest neighbors make many 
+better, when they are quite unconscious of the fun.  Let us leave 
+plays, for a moment, for poetry, and take an instance of French 
+criticism, concerning England, from the works of a famous French 
+exquisite and man of letters.  The hero of the poem addresses his 
+mistress--
+
+
+Londres, tu le sais trop, en fait de capitale,
+Est-ce que fit le ciel de plus froid et plus pâle,
+C'est la ville du gaz, des marins, du brouillard;
+On s'y couche à minuit, et l'on s'y lève tard;
+Ses raouts tant vantés ne sont qu'une boxade,
+Sur ses grands quais jamais échelle ou sérénade,
+Mais de volumineux bourgeois pris de porter
+Qui passent sans lever le front à Westminster;
+Et n'était sa forêt de mâts perçant la brume,
+Sa tour dont à minuit le vieil oeil s'allume,
+Et tes deux yeux, Zerline, illuminés bien plus,
+Je dirais que, ma foi, des romans que j'ai lus,
+Il n'en est pas un seul, plus lourd, plus léthargique
+Que cette nation qu'on nomme Britannique!
+
+
+The writer of the above lines (which let any man who can translate) 
+is Monsieur Roger de Beauvoir, a gentleman who actually lived many 
+months in England, as an attaché to the embassy of M. de Polignac.  
+He places the heroine of his tale in a petit réduit près le Strand, 
+"with a green and fresh jalousie, and a large blind, let down all 
+day; you fancied you were entering a bath of Asia, as soon as you 
+had passed the perfumed threshold of this charming retreat!"  He 
+next places her--
+
+
+Dans un square écarté, morne et couverte de givre, 
+Où se cache un hôtel, aux vieux lions de cuivre;
+
+
+and the hero of the tale, a young French poet, who is in London, is 
+truly unhappy in that village.
+
+
+Arthur dessèche et meurt.  Dans la ville de Sterne, 
+Rien qu'en voyant le peuple il a le mal de mer 
+Il n'aime ni le Parc, gai comme une citerne, 
+Ni le tir au pigeon, ni le soda-water.
+
+Liston ne le fait plus sourciller!  Il rumine
+Sur les trottoirs du Strand, droit comme un échiquier,
+Contre le peuple anglais, les nègres, la vermine,
+Et les mille cokneys du peuple boutiquier,
+
+Contre tous les bas-bleus, contre les pâtissières,
+Les parieurs d'Epsom, le gin, le parlement,
+La quaterly, le roi, la pluie et les libraires,
+Dont il ne touche plus, hélas! un sou d'argent!
+
+Et chaque gentleman lui dit: L'heureux poète!
+
+
+"L'heureux poète" indeed!  I question if a poet in this wide world 
+is so happy as M. de Beauvoir, or has made such wonderful 
+discoveries.  "The bath of Asia, with green jalousies," in which 
+the lady dwells; "the old hotel, with copper lions, in a lonely 
+square;"--were ever such things heard of, or imagined, but by a 
+Frenchman?  The sailors, the negroes, the vermin, whom he meets in 
+the street,--how great and happy are all these discoveries!  Liston 
+no longer makes the happy poet frown; and "gin," "cokneys," and the 
+"quaterly" have not the least effect upon him!  And this gentleman 
+has lived many months amongst us; admires Williams Shakspear, the 
+"grave et vieux prophète," as he calls him, and never, for an 
+instant, doubts that his description contains anything absurd!
+
+I don't know whether the great Dumas has passed any time in 
+England; but his plays show a similar intimate knowledge of our 
+habits.  Thus in Kean, the stage-manager is made to come forward 
+and address the pit, with a speech beginning, "My Lords and 
+Gentlemen;" and a company of Englishwomen are introduced (at the 
+memorable "Coal hole"), and they all wear PINAFORES; as if the 
+British female were in the invariable habit of wearing this outer 
+garment, or slobbering her gown without it.  There was another 
+celebrated piece, enacted some years since, upon the subject of 
+Queen Caroline, where our late adored sovereign, George, was made 
+to play a most despicable part; and where Signor Bergami fought a 
+duel with Lord Londonderry.  In the last act of this play, the 
+House of Lords was represented, and Sir Brougham made an eloquent 
+speech in the Queen's favor.  Presently the shouts of the mob were 
+heard without; from shouting they proceeded to pelting; and 
+pasteboard-brickbats and cabbages came flying among the 
+representatives of our hereditary legislature.  At this unpleasant 
+juncture, SIR HARDINGE, the Secretary-at-War, rises and calls in 
+the military; the act ends in a general row, and the ignominious 
+fall of Lord Liverpool, laid low by a brickbat from the mob!
+
+The description of these scenes is, of course, quite incapable of 
+conveying any notion of their general effect.  You must have the 
+solemnity of the actors, as they Meess and Milor one another, and 
+the perfect gravity and good faith with which the audience listen 
+to them.  Our stage Frenchman is the old Marquis, with sword, and 
+pigtail, and spangled court coat.  The Englishman of the French 
+theatre has, invariably, a red wig, and almost always leather 
+gaiters, and a long white upper Benjamin: he remains as he was 
+represented in the old caricatures after the peace, when Vernet 
+designed him.
+
+And to conclude this catalogue of blunders: in the famous piece of 
+the "Naufrage de la Meduse," the first act is laid on board an 
+English ship-of-war, all the officers of which appeared in light 
+blue or green coats (the lamp-light prevented our distinguishing 
+the color accurately), and TOP-BOOTS!
+
+
+Let us not attempt to deaden the force of this tremendous blow by 
+any more remarks.  The force of blundering can go no further.  
+Would a Chinese playwright or painter have stranger notions about 
+the barbarians than our neighbors, who are separated from us but by 
+two hours of salt water?
+
+
+
+
+MEDITATIONS AT VERSAILLES.
+
+
+The palace of Versailles has been turned into a bricabrac shop of 
+late years, and its time-honored walls have been covered with many 
+thousand yards of the worst pictures that eye ever looked on.  I 
+don't know how many leagues of battles and sieges the unhappy 
+visitor is now obliged to march through, amidst a crowd of 
+chattering Paris cockneys, who are never tired of looking at the 
+glories of the Grenadier Français; to the chronicling of whose 
+deeds this old palace of the old kings is now altogether devoted.  
+A whizzing, screaming steam-engine rushes hither from Paris, 
+bringing shoals of badauds in its wake.  The old coucous are all 
+gone, and their place knows them no longer.  Smooth asphaltum 
+terraces, tawdry lamps, and great hideous Egyptian obelisks, have 
+frightened them away from the pleasant station they used to occupy 
+under the trees of the Champs Elysées; and though the old coucous 
+were just the most uncomfortable vehicles that human ingenuity ever 
+constructed, one can't help looking back to the days of their 
+existence with a tender regret; for there was pleasure then in the 
+little trip of three leagues: and who ever had pleasure in a 
+railway journey?  Does any reader of this venture to say that, on 
+such a voyage, he ever dared to be pleasant?  Do the most hardened 
+stokers joke with one another?  I don't believe it.  Look into 
+every single car of the train, and you will see that every single 
+face is solemn.  They take their seats gravely, and are silent, for 
+the most part, during the journey; they dare not look out of 
+window, for fear of being blinded by the smoke that comes whizzing 
+by, or of losing their heads in one of the windows of the down 
+train; they ride for miles in utter damp and darkness: through 
+awful pipes of brick, that have been run pitilessly through the 
+bowels of gentle mother earth, the cast-iron Frankenstein of an 
+engine gallops on, puffing and screaming.  Does any man pretend to 
+say that he ENJOYS the journey?--he might as well say that he 
+enjoyed having his hair cut; he bears it, but that is all: he will 
+not allow the world to laugh at him, for any exhibition of slavish 
+fear; and pretends, therefore, to be at his ease; but he IS afraid: 
+nay, ought to be, under the circumstances.  I am sure Hannibal or 
+Napoleon would, were they locked suddenly into a car; there kept 
+close prisoners for a certain number of hours, and whirled along at 
+this dizzy pace.  You can't stop, if you would:--you may die, but 
+you can't stop; the engine may explode upon the road, and up you go 
+along with it; or, may be a bolter and take a fancy to go down a 
+hill, or into a river: all this you must bear, for the privilege of 
+travelling twenty miles an hour.
+
+This little journey, then, from Paris to Versailles, that used to 
+be so merry of old, has lost its pleasures since the disappearance 
+of the coucous; and I would as lief have for companions the statues 
+that lately took a coach from the bridge opposite the Chamber of 
+Deputies, and stepped out in the court of Versailles, as the most 
+part of the people who now travel on the railroad.  The stone 
+figures are not a whit more cold and silent than these persons, who 
+used to be, in the old coucous, so talkative and merry.  The 
+prattling grisette and her swain from the Ecole de Droit; the huge 
+Alsacian carabineer, grimly smiling under his sandy moustaches and 
+glittering brass helmet; the jolly nurse, in red calico, who had 
+been to Paris to show mamma her darling Lolo, or Auguste;--what 
+merry companions used one to find squeezed into the crazy old 
+vehicles that formerly performed the journey!  But the age of 
+horseflesh is gone--that of engineers, economists, and calculators 
+has succeeded; and the pleasure of coucoudom is extinguished for 
+ever.  Why not mourn over it, as Mr. Burke did over his cheap 
+defence of nations and unbought grace of life; that age of 
+chivalry, which he lamented, àpropos of a trip to Versailles, some 
+half a century back?
+
+Without stopping to discuss (as might be done, in rather a neat and 
+successful manner) whether the age of chivalry was cheap or dear, 
+and whether, in the time of the unbought grace of life, there was 
+not more bribery, robbery, villainy, tyranny, and corruption, than 
+exists even in our own happy days,--let us make a few moral and 
+historical remarks upon the town of Versailles; where, between 
+railroad and coucou, we are surely arrived by this time.
+
+The town is, certainly, the most moral of towns.  You pass from the 
+railroad station through a long, lonely suburb, with dusty rows of 
+stunted trees on either side, and some few miserable beggars, idle 
+boys, and ragged old women under them.  Behind the trees are gaunt, 
+mouldy houses; palaces once, where (in the days of the unbought 
+grace of life) the cheap defence of nations gambled, ogled, 
+swindled, intrigued; whence high-born duchesses used to issue, in 
+old times, to act as chambermaids to lovely Du Barri; and mighty 
+princes rolled away, in gilt caroches, hot for the honor of 
+lighting his Majesty to bed, or of presenting his stockings when he 
+rose, or of holding his napkin when he dined.  Tailors, chandlers, 
+tinmen, wretched hucksters, and greengrocers, are now established 
+in the mansions of the old peers; small children are yelling at the 
+doors, with mouths besmeared with bread and treacle; damp rags are 
+hanging out of every one of the windows, steaming in the sun; 
+oyster-shells, cabbage-stalks, broken crockery, old papers, lie 
+basking in the same cheerful light.  A solitary water-cart goes 
+jingling down the wide pavement, and spirts a feeble refreshment 
+over the dusty, thirsty stones.
+
+After pacing for some time through such dismal streets, we 
+deboucher on the grande place; and before us lies the palace 
+dedicated to all the glories of France.  In the midst of the great 
+lonely plain this famous residence of King Louis looks low and 
+mean.--Honored pile!  Time was when tall musketeers and gilded 
+body-guards allowed none to pass the gate.  Fifty years ago, ten 
+thousand drunken women from Paris broke through the charm; and now 
+a tattered commissioner will conduct you through it for a penny, 
+and lead you up to the sacred entrance of the palace.
+
+We will not examine all the glories of France, as here they are 
+portrayed in pictures and marble: catalogues are written about 
+these miles of canvas, representing all the revolutionary battles, 
+from Valmy to Waterloo,--all the triumphs of Louis XIV.--all the 
+mistresses of his successor--and all the great men who have 
+flourished since the French empire began.  Military heroes are 
+most of these--fierce constables in shining steel, marshals in 
+voluminous wigs, and brave grenadiers in bearskin caps; some dozens 
+of whom gained crowns, principalities, dukedoms; some hundreds, 
+plunder and epaulets; some millions, death in African sands, or in 
+icy Russian plains, under the guidance, and for the good, of that 
+arch-hero, Napoleon.  By far the greater part of "all the glories" 
+of France (as of most other countries) is made up of these military 
+men: and a fine satire it is on the cowardice of mankind, that they 
+pay such an extraordinary homage to the virtue called courage; 
+filling their history-books with tales about it, and nothing but 
+it.
+
+Let them disguise the place, however, as they will, and plaster the 
+walls with bad pictures as they please, it will be hard to think of 
+any family but one, as one traverses this vast gloomy edifice.  It 
+has not been humbled to the ground, as a certain palace of Babel 
+was of yore; but it is a monument of fallen pride, not less awful, 
+and would afford matter for a whole library of sermons.  The cheap 
+defence of nations expended a thousand millions in the erection of 
+this magnificent dwelling-place.  Armies were employed, in the 
+intervals of their warlike labors, to level hills, or pile them up; 
+to turn rivers, and to build aqueducts, and transplant woods, and 
+construct smooth terraces, and long canals.  A vast garden grew up 
+in a wilderness, and a stupendous palace in the garden, and a 
+stately city round the palace: the city was peopled with parasites, 
+who daily came to do worship before the creator of these wonders--
+the Great King.  "Dieu seul est grand," said courtly Massillon; but 
+next to him, as the prelate thought, was certainly Louis, his 
+vicegerent here upon earth--God's lieutenant-governor of the 
+world,--before whom courtiers used to fall on their knees, and 
+shade their eyes, as if the light of his countenance, like the sun, 
+which shone supreme in heaven, the type of him, was too dazzling to 
+bear.
+
+Did ever the sun shine upon such a king before, in such a palace?--
+or, rather, did such a king ever shine upon the sun?  When Majesty 
+came out of his chamber, in the midst of his superhuman splendors, 
+viz, in his cinnamon-colored coat, embroidered with diamonds; his 
+pyramid of a wig,* his red-heeled shoes, that lifted him four inches 
+from the ground, "that he scarcely seemed to touch;" when he came 
+out, blazing upon the dukes and duchesses that waited his rising,--
+what could the latter do, but cover their eyes, and wink, and 
+tremble?  And did he not himself believe, as he stood there, on his 
+high heels, under his ambrosial periwig, that there was something 
+in him more than man--something above Fate?
+
+
+* It is fine to think that, in the days of his youth, his Majesty 
+Louis XIV. used to POWDER HIS WIG WITH GOLD-DUST.
+
+
+This, doubtless, was he fain to believe; and if, on very fine days, 
+from his terrace before his gloomy palace of Saint Germains, he 
+could catch a glimpse, in the distance, of a certain white spire 
+of St. Denis, where his race lay buried, he would say to his 
+courtiers, with a sublime condescension, "Gentlemen, you must 
+remember that I, too, am mortal."  Surely the lords in waiting 
+could hardly think him serious, and vowed that his Majesty always 
+loved a joke.  However, mortal or not, the sight of that sharp 
+spire wounded his Majesty's eyes; and is said, by the legend, to 
+have caused the building of the palace of Babel-Versailles.
+
+In the year 1681, then, the great king, with bag and baggage,--with 
+guards, cooks, chamberlains, mistresses, Jesuits, gentlemen, 
+lackeys, Fénélons, Molières, Lauzuns, Bossuets, Villars, Villeroys, 
+Louvois, Colberts,--transported himself to his new palace: the old 
+one being left for James of England and Jaquette his wife, when 
+their time should come.  And when the time did come, and James 
+sought his brother's kingdom, it is on record that Louis hastened 
+to receive and console him, and promised to restore, incontinently, 
+those islands from which the canaille had turned him.  Between 
+brothers such a gift was a trifle; and the courtiers said to one 
+another reverently:* "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my 
+right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool."  There was 
+no blasphemy in the speech: on the contrary, it was gravely said, 
+by a faithful believing man, who thought it no shame to the latter, 
+to compare his Majesty with God Almighty.  Indeed, the books of the 
+time will give one a strong idea how general was this Louis-
+worship.  I have just been looking at one, which was written by an 
+honest Jesuit and Protégé of Père la Chaise, who dedicates a book 
+of medals to the august Infants of France, which does, indeed, go 
+almost as far in print.  He calls our famous monarch "Louis le 
+Grand:--1, l'invincible; 2, le sage; 3, le conquérant; 4, la 
+merveille de son siècle; 5, la terreur de ses ennemis; 6, l'amour 
+de ses peuples; 7, l'arbitre de la paix et de la guerre; 8, 
+l'admiration de l'univers; 9, et digne d'en être le maître; 10, le 
+modèle d'un héros achevé; 11, digne de l'immortalité, et de la 
+vénération de tous les siècles!"
+
+
+* I think it is in the amusing "Memoirs of Madame de Crequi" (a 
+forgery, but a work remarkable for its learning and accuracy) that 
+the above anecdote is related.
+
+
+A pretty Jesuit declaration, truly, and a good honest judgment upon 
+the great king!  In thirty years more--1.  The invincible had been 
+beaten a vast number of times.  2.  The sage was the puppet of an 
+artful old woman, who was the puppet of more artful priests.  
+3.  The conqueror had quite forgotten his early knack of conquering.  
+5.  The terror of his enemies (for 4, the marvel of his age, we 
+pretermit, it being a loose term, that may apply to any person or 
+thing) was now terrified by his enemies in turn.  6.  The love of 
+his people was as heartily detested by them as scarcely any other 
+monarch, not even his great-grandson, has been, before or since.  
+7.  The arbiter of peace and war was fain to send superb 
+ambassadors to kick their heels in Dutch shopkeepers' ante-
+chambers.  8, is again a general term.  9.  The man fit to be 
+master of the universe, was scarcely master of his own kingdom.  
+10.  The finished hero was all but finished, in a very commonplace 
+and vulgar way.  And 11.  The man worthy of immortality was just at 
+the point of death, without a friend to soothe or deplore him; only 
+withered old Maintenon to utter prayers at his bedside, and 
+croaking Jesuits to prepare him,* with heaven knows what wretched 
+tricks and mummeries, for his appearance in that Great Republic 
+that lies on the other side of the grave.  In the course of his 
+fourscore splendid miserable years, he never had but one friend, 
+and he ruined and left her.  Poor La Vallière, what a sad tale is 
+yours!  "Look at this Galerie des Glaces," cries Monsieur Vatout, 
+staggering with surprise at the appearance of the room, two hundred 
+and forty-two feet long, and forty high.  "Here it was that Louis 
+displayed all the grandeur of royalty; and such was the splendor of 
+his court, and the luxury of the times, that this immense room 
+could hardly contain the crowd of courtiers that pressed around the 
+monarch."  Wonderful! wonderful!  Eight thousand four hundred and 
+sixty square feet of courtiers!  Give a square yard to each, and 
+you have a matter of three thousand of them.  Think of three 
+thousand courtiers per day, and all the chopping and changing of 
+them for near forty years: some of them dying, some getting their 
+wishes, and retiring to their provinces to enjoy their plunder; 
+some disgraced, and going home to pine away out of the light of the 
+sun;** new ones perpetually arriving,--pushing, squeezing, for 
+their place, in the crowded Galerie des Glaces.  A quarter of a 
+million of noble countenances, at the very least, must those 
+glasses have reflected.  Rouge, diamonds, ribbons, patches, upon 
+the faces of smiling ladies: towering periwigs, sleek shaven 
+crowns, tufted moustaches, scars, and grizzled whiskers, worn by 
+ministers, priests, dandies, and grim old commanders.--So many 
+faces, O ye gods! and every one of them lies!  So many tongues, 
+vowing devotion and respectful love to the great king in his six-
+inch wig; and only poor La Vallière's amongst them all which had a 
+word of truth for the dull ears of Louis of Bourbon.
+
+
+* They made a Jesuit of him on his death-bed.
+
+** Saint Simon's account of Lauzun, in disgrace, is admirably 
+facetious and pathetic; Lauzun's regrets are as monstrous as those 
+of Raleigh when deprived of the sight of his adorable Queen and 
+Mistress, Elizabeth.
+
+
+"Quand j'aurai de la peine aux Carmélites," says unhappy Louise, 
+about to retire from these magnificent courtiers and their grand 
+Galerie des Glaces, "je me souviendrai de ce que ces gens là m'ont 
+fait souffrir!"--A troop of Bossuets inveighing against the 
+vanities of courts could not preach such an affecting sermon.  What 
+years of anguish and wrong had the poor thing suffered, before 
+these sad words came from her gentle lips!  How these courtiers 
+have bowed and flattered, kissed the ground on which she trod, 
+fought to have the honor of riding by her carriage, written 
+sonnets, and called her goddess; who, in the days of her prosperity,
+was kind and beneficent, gentle and compassionate to all; then (on a
+certain day, when it is whispered that his Majesty hath cast the
+eyes of his gracious affection upon another) behold three thousand
+courtiers are at the feet of the new divinity.--"O divine Athenais!
+what blockheads have we been to worship any but you.--THAT a
+goddess?--a pretty goddess forsooth;--a witch, rather, who, for a
+while, kept our gracious monarch blind!  Look at her: the woman
+limps as she walks; and, by sacred Venus, her mouth stretches almost
+to her diamond ear-rings?"*  The same tale may be told of many more
+deserted mistresses; and fair Athenais de Montespan was to hear it
+of herself one day.  Meantime, while La Vallière's heart is
+breaking, the model of a finished hero is yawning; as, on such
+paltry occasions, a finished hero should.  LET her heart break: a
+plague upon her tears and repentance; what right has she to repent?
+Away with her to her convent.  She goes, and the finished hero never
+sheds a tear.  What a noble pitch of stoicism to have reached!  Our
+Louis was so great, that the little woes of mean people were beyond
+him: his friends died, his mistresses left him; his children, one by
+one, were cut off before his eyes, and great Louis is not moved in
+the slightest degree!  As how, indeed, should a god be moved?
+
+
+* A pair of diamond ear-rings, given by the King to La Vallière, 
+caused much scandal; and some lampoons are extant, which impugn the 
+taste of Louis XIV. for loving a lady with such an enormous mouth.
+
+
+I have often liked to think about this strange character in the 
+world, who moved in it, bearing about a full belief in his own 
+infallibility; teaching his generals the art of war, his ministers 
+the science of government, his wits taste, his courtiers dress; 
+ordering deserts to become gardens, turning villages into palaces 
+at a breath; and indeed the august figure of the man, as he towers 
+upon his throne, cannot fail to inspire one with respect and awe:--
+how grand those flowing locks appear; how awful that sceptre; how 
+magnificent those flowing robes!  In Louis, surely, if in any one, 
+the majesty of kinghood is represented.
+
+But a king is not every inch a king, for all the poet may say; and 
+it is curious to see how much precise majesty there is in that 
+majestic figure of Ludovicus Rex.  In the Frontispiece, we have 
+endeavored to make the exact calculation.  The idea of kingly 
+dignity is equally strong in the two outer figures; and you see, at 
+once, that majesty is made out of the wig, the high-heeled shoes, 
+and cloak, all fleurs-de-lis bespangled.  As for the little lean, 
+shrivelled, paunchy old man, of five feet two, in a jacket and 
+breeches, there is no majesty in HIM at any rate; and yet he has 
+just stepped out of that very suit of clothes.  Put the wig and 
+shoes on him, and he is six feet high;--the other fripperies, and 
+he stands before you majestic, imperial, and heroic!  Thus do 
+barbers and cobblers make the gods that we worship: for do we not 
+all worship him?  Yes; though we all know him to be stupid, 
+heartless, short, of doubtful personal courage, worship and admire 
+him we must; and have set up, in our hearts, a grand image of him, 
+endowed with wit, magnanimity, valor, and enormous heroical 
+stature.
+
+And what magnanimous acts are attributed to him! or, rather, how 
+differently do we view the actions of heroes and common men, and 
+find that the same thing shall be a wonderful virtue in the former, 
+which, in the latter, is only an ordinary act of duty.  Look at 
+yonder window of the king's chamber;--one morning a royal cane was 
+seen whirling out of it, and plumped among the courtiers and guard 
+of honor below.  King Louis had absolutely, and with his own hand, 
+flung his own cane out of the window, "because," said he, "I won't 
+demean myself by striking a gentleman!"  O miracle of magnanimity!  
+Lauzun was not caned, because he besought majesty to keep his 
+promise,--only imprisoned for ten years in Pignerol, along with 
+banished Fouquet;--and a pretty story is Fouquet's too.
+
+Out of the window the king's august head was one day thrust, when 
+old Condé was painfully toiling up the steps of the court below.  
+"Don't hurry yourself, my cousin," cries magnanimity, "one who has 
+to carry so many laurels cannot walk fast."  At which all the 
+courtiers, lackeys, mistresses, chamberlains, Jesuits, and 
+scullions, clasp their hands and burst into tears.  Men are 
+affected by the tale to this very day.  For a century and three-
+quarters, have not all the books that speak of Versailles, or Louis 
+Quatorze, told the story?--"Don't hurry yourself, my cousin!"  O 
+admirable king and Christian! what a pitch of condescension is 
+here, that the greatest king of all the world should go for to say 
+anything so kind, and really tell a tottering old gentleman, worn 
+out with gout, age, and wounds, not to walk too fast!
+
+What a proper fund of slavishness is there in the composition of 
+mankind, that histories like these should be found to interest and 
+awe them.  Till the world's end, most likely, this story will have 
+its place in the history-books; and unborn generations will read 
+it, and tenderly be moved by it.  I am sure that Magnanimity went 
+to bed that night, pleased and happy, intimately convinced that he 
+had done an action of sublime virtue, and had easy slumbers and 
+sweet dreams,--especially if he had taken a light supper, and not 
+too vehemently attacked his en cas de nuit.
+
+That famous adventure, in which the en cas de nuit was brought into 
+use, for the sake of one Poquelin alias Molière;--how often has it 
+been described and admired?  This Poquelin, though king's valet-de-
+chambre, was by profession a vagrant; and as such, looked coldly on 
+by the great lords of the palace, who refused to eat with him.  
+Majesty hearing of this, ordered his en cas de nuit to be placed on 
+the table, and positively cut off a wing with his own knife and 
+fork for Poquelin's use.  O thrice happy Jean Baptiste!  The king 
+has actually sat down with him cheek by jowl, had the liver-wing of 
+a fowl, and given Molière the gizzard; put his imperial legs under 
+the same mahogany (sub iisdem trabibus).  A man, after such an 
+honor, can look for little else in this world: he has tasted the 
+utmost conceivable earthly happiness, and has nothing to do now but 
+to fold his arms, look up to heaven, and sing "Nunc dimittis" and 
+die.
+
+Do not let us abuse poor old Louis on account of this monstrous 
+pride; but only lay it to the charge of the fools who believed and 
+worshipped it.  If, honest man, he believed himself to be almost a 
+god, it was only because thousands of people had told him so--
+people only half liars, too; who did, in the depths of their 
+slavish respect, admire the man almost as much as they said they 
+did.  If, when he appeared in his five-hundred-million coat, as he 
+is said to have done, before the Siamese ambassadors, the courtiers 
+began to shade their eyes and long for parasols, as if this 
+Bourbonic sun was too hot for them; indeed, it is no wonder that he 
+should believe that there was something dazzling about his person: 
+he had half a million of eager testimonies to this idea.  Who was 
+to tell him the truth?--Only in the last years of his life did 
+trembling courtiers dare whisper to him, after much circumlocution, 
+that a certain battle had been fought at a place called Blenheim, 
+and that Eugene and Marlborough had stopped his long career of 
+triumphs.
+
+"On n'est plus heureux à notre âge," says the old man, to one of 
+his old generals, welcoming Tallard after his defeat; and he 
+rewards him with honors, as if he had come from a victory.  There 
+is, if you will, something magnanimous in this welcome to his 
+conquered general, this stout protest against Fate.  Disaster 
+succeeds disaster; armies after armies march out to meet fiery 
+Eugene and that dogged, fatal Englishman, and disappear in the 
+smoke of the enemies' cannon.  Even at Versailles you may almost 
+hear it roaring at last; but when courtiers, who have forgotten 
+their god, now talk of quitting this grand temple of his, old Louis 
+plucks up heart and will never hear of surrender.  All the gold and 
+silver at Versailles he melts, to find bread for his armies: all 
+the jewels on his five-hundred-million coat he pawns resolutely; 
+and, bidding Villars go and make the last struggle but one, 
+promises, if his general is defeated, to place himself at the head 
+of his nobles, and die King of France.  Indeed, after a man, for 
+sixty years, has been performing the part of a hero, some of the 
+real heroic stuff must have entered into his composition, whether 
+he would or not.  When the great Elliston was enacting the part of 
+King George the Fourth, in the play of "The Coronation," at Drury 
+Lane, the galleries applauded very loudly his suavity and majestic 
+demeanor, at which Elliston, inflamed by the popular loyalty (and 
+by some fermented liquor in which, it is said, he was in the habit 
+of indulging), burst into tears, and spreading out his arms, 
+exclaimed: "Bless ye, bless ye, my people!"  Don't let us laugh at 
+his Ellistonian majesty, nor at the people who clapped hands and 
+yelled "bravo!" in praise of him.  The tipsy old manager did really 
+feel that he was a hero at that moment; and the people, wild with 
+delight and attachment for a magnificent coat and breeches, surely 
+were uttering the true sentiments of loyalty: which consists in 
+reverencing these and other articles of costume.  In this fifth 
+act, then, of his long royal drama, old Louis performed his part 
+excellently; and when the curtain drops upon him, he lies, dressed 
+majestically, in a becoming kingly attitude, as a king should.
+
+The king his successor has not left, at Versailles, half so much 
+occasion for moralizing; perhaps the neighboring Parc aux Cerfs 
+would afford better illustrations of his reign.  The life of his 
+great grandsire, the Grand Llama of France, seems to have 
+frightened Louis the well-beloved; who understood that loneliness 
+is one of the necessary conditions of divinity, and being of a 
+jovial, companionable turn, aspired not beyond manhood.  Only in 
+the matter of ladies did he surpass his predecessor, as Solomon did 
+David.  War he eschewed, as his grandfather bade him; and his 
+simple taste found little in this world to enjoy beyond the mulling 
+of chocolate and the frying of pancakes.  Look, here is the room 
+called Laboratoire du Roi, where, with his own hands, he made his 
+mistress's breakfast:--here is the little door through which, from 
+her apartments in the upper story, the chaste Du Barri came 
+stealing down to the arms of the weary, feeble, gloomy old man.  
+But of women he was tired long since, and even pancake-frying had 
+palled upon him.  What had he to do, after forty years of reign;--
+after having exhausted everything?  Every pleasure that Dubois 
+could invent for his hot youth, or cunning Lebel could minister to 
+his old age, was flat and stale; used up to the very dregs: every 
+shilling in the national purse had been squeezed out, by Pompadour 
+and Du Barri and such brilliant ministers of state.  He had found 
+out the vanity of pleasure, as his ancestor had discovered the 
+vanity of glory: indeed it was high time that he should die.  And 
+die he did; and round his tomb, as round that of his grandfather 
+before him, the starving people sang a dreadful chorus of curses, 
+which were the only epitaphs for good or for evil that were raised 
+to his memory.
+
+As for the courtiers--the knights and nobles, the unbought grace of 
+life--they, of course, forgot him in one minute after his death, as 
+the way is.  When the king dies, the officer appointed opens his 
+chamber window, and calling out into the court below, Le Roi est 
+mort, breaks his cane, takes another and waves it, exclaiming, vive 
+le Roi!  Straightway all the loyal nobles begin yelling vive le 
+Roi! and the officer goes round solemnly and sets yonder great 
+clock in the Cour de Marbre to the hour of the king's death.  This 
+old Louis had solemnly ordained; but the Versailles clock was only 
+set twice: there was no shouting of Vive le Roi when the successor 
+of Louis XV. mounted to heaven to join his sainted family.
+
+Strange stories of the deaths of kings have always been very 
+recreating and profitable to us: what a fine one is that of the 
+death of Louis XV., as Madame Campan tells it.  One night the 
+gracious monarch came back ill from Trianon; the disease turned out 
+to be the small-pox; so violent that ten people of those who had to 
+enter his chamber caught the infection and died.  The whole court 
+flies from him; only poor old fat Mesdames the King's daughters 
+persist in remaining at his bedside, and praying for his soul's 
+welfare.
+
+On the 10th May, 1774, the whole court had assembled at the 
+château; the oeil de Boeuf was full.  The Dauphin had determined to 
+depart as soon as the king had breathed his last.  And it was 
+agreed by the people of the stables, with those who watched in the 
+king's room, that a lighted candle should be placed in a window, 
+and should be extinguished as soon as he had ceased to live.  The 
+candle was put out.  At that signal, guards, pages, and squires 
+mounted on horseback, and everything was made ready for departure.  
+The Dauphin was with the Dauphiness, waiting together for the news 
+of the king's demise.  AN IMMENSE NOISE, AS IF OF THUNDER, WAS 
+HEARD IN THE NEXT ROOM; it was the crowd of courtiers, who were 
+deserting the dead king's apartment, in order to pay their court to 
+the new power of Louis XVI.  Madame de Noailles entered, and was 
+the first to salute the queen by her title of Queen of France, and 
+begged their Majesties to quit their apartments, to receive the 
+princes and great lords of the court desirous to pay their homage 
+to the new sovereigns.  Leaning on her husband's arm, a handkerchief
+to her eyes, in the most touching attitude, Marie Antoinette
+received these first visits.  On quitting the chamber where the dead
+king lay, the Duc de Villequier bade M. Anderville, first surgeon of
+the king, to open and embalm the body: it would have been certain
+death to the surgeon.  "I am ready, sir," said he; "but whilst I am
+operating, you must hold the head of the corpse: your charge demands
+it."  The Duke went away without a word, and the body was neither
+opened nor embalmed.  A few humble domestics and poor workmen
+watched by the remains, and performed the last offices to their
+master.  The surgeons ordered spirits of wine to be poured into the
+coffin.
+
+They huddled the king's body into a post-chaise; and in this 
+deplorable equipage, with an escort of about forty men, Louis the 
+well-beloved was carried, in the dead of night, from Versailles to 
+St.  Denis, and then thrown into the tomb of the kings of France!
+
+If any man is curious, and can get permission, he may mount to the 
+roof of the palace, and see where Louis XVI. used royally to amuse 
+himself, by gazing upon the doings of all the townspeople below 
+with a telescope.  Behold that balcony, where, one morning, he, his 
+queen, and the little Dauphin stood, with Cromwell Grandison 
+Lafayette by their side, who kissed her Majesty's hand, and 
+protected her; and then, lovingly surrounded by his people, the 
+king got into a coach and came to Paris: nor did his Majesty ride 
+much in coaches after that.
+
+There is a portrait of the king, in the upper galleries, clothed in 
+red and gold, riding a fat horse, brandishing a sword, on which the 
+word "Justice" is inscribed, and looking remarkably stupid and 
+uncomfortable.  You see that the horse will throw him at the very 
+first fling; and as for the sword, it never was made for such hands 
+as his, which were good at holding a corkscrew or a carving-knife, 
+but not clever at the management of weapons of war.  Let those pity 
+him who will: call him saint and martyr if you please; but a martyr 
+to what principle was he?  Did he frankly support either party in 
+his kingdom, or cheat and tamper with both?  He might have escaped; 
+but he must have his supper: and so his family was butchered and 
+his kingdom lost, and he had his bottle of Burgundy in comfort at 
+Varennes.  A single charge upon the fatal 10th of August, and the 
+monarchy might have been his once more; but he is so tender-
+hearted, that he lets his friends be murdered before his eyes 
+almost: or, at least, when he has turned his back upon his duty and 
+his kingdom, and has skulked for safety into the reporters' box, at 
+the National Assembly.  There were hundreds of brave men who died 
+that day, and were martyrs, if you will; poor neglected tenth-rate 
+courtiers, for the most part, who had forgotten old slights and 
+disappointments, and left their places of safety to come and die, 
+if need were, sharing in the supreme hour of the monarchy.  
+Monarchy was a great deal too humane to fight along with these, and 
+so left them to the pikes of Santerre and the mercy of the men of 
+the Sections.  But we are wandering a good ten miles from 
+Versailles, and from the deeds which Louis XVI. performed there.
+
+He is said to have been such a smart journeyman blacksmith, that he 
+might, if Fate had not perversely placed a crown on his head, have 
+earned a couple of louis every week by the making of locks and 
+keys.  Those who will may see the workshop where he employed many 
+useful hours: Madame Elizabeth was at prayers meanwhile; the queen 
+was making pleasant parties with her ladies.  Monsieur the Count 
+d'Artois was learning to dance on the tight-rope; and Monsieur de 
+Provence was cultivating l'eloquence du billet and studying his 
+favorite Horace.  It is said that each member of the august family 
+succeeded remarkably well in his or her pursuits; big Monsieur's 
+little notes are still cited.  At a minuet or syllabub, poor 
+Antoinette was unrivalled; and Charles, on the tight-rope, was so 
+graceful and so gentil, that Madame Saqui might envy him.  The time 
+only was out of joint.  O cursed spite, that ever such harmless 
+creatures as these were bidden to right it!
+
+A walk to the little Trianon is both pleasing and moral: no doubt 
+the reader has seen the pretty fantastical gardens which environ 
+it; the groves and temples; the streams and caverns (whither, as 
+the guide tells you, during the heat of summer, it was the custom 
+of Marie Antoinette to retire, with her favorite, Madame de 
+Lamballe): the lake and Swiss village are pretty little toys, 
+moreover; and the cicerone of the place does not fail to point out 
+the different cottages which surround the piece of water, and tell 
+the names of the royal masqueraders who inhabited each.  In the 
+long cottage, close upon the lake, dwelt the Seigneur du Village, 
+no less a personage than Louis XV.; Louis XVI., the Dauphin, was 
+the Bailli; near his cottage is that of Monseigneur the Count 
+d'Artois, who was the Miller; opposite lived the Prince de Condé, 
+who enacted the part of Gamekeeper (or, indeed, any other rôle, for 
+it does not signify much); near him was the Prince de Rohan, who 
+was the Aumônier; and yonder is the pretty little dairy, which was 
+under the charge of the fair Marie Antoinette herself.
+
+I forget whether Monsieur the fat Count of Provence took any share 
+of this royal masquerading; but look at the names of the other six 
+actors of the comedy, and it will be hard to find any person for 
+whom Fate had such dreadful visitations in store.  Fancy the party, 
+in the days of their prosperity, here gathered at Trianon, and 
+seated under the tall poplars by the lake, discoursing familiarly 
+together: suppose of a sudden some conjuring Cagliostro of the time 
+is introduced among them, and foretells to them the woes that are 
+about to come.  "You, Monsieur l'Aumônier, the descendant of a long 
+line of princes, the passionate admirer of that fair queen who sits 
+by your side, shall be the cause of her ruin and your own,* and 
+shall die in disgrace and exile.  You, son of the Condés, shall 
+live long enough to see your royal race overthrown, and shall die 
+by the hands of a hangman.**  You, oldest son of Saint Louis, shall 
+perish by the executioner's axe; that beautiful head, O Antoinette, 
+the same ruthless blade shall sever."  "They shall kill me first," 
+says Lamballe, at the queen's side.  "Yes, truly," replies the 
+soothsayer, "for Fate prescribes ruin for your mistress and all who 
+love her."***  "And," cries Monsieur d'Artois, "do I not love my 
+sister, too?  I pray you not to omit me in your prophecies."
+
+
+* In the diamond-necklace affair.
+
+** He was found hanging in his own bedroom.
+
+*** Among the many lovers that rumor gave to the queen, poor Ferscu 
+is the most remarkable.  He seems to have entertained for her a 
+high and perfectly pure devotion.  He was the chief agent in the 
+luckless escape to Varennes; was lurking in Paris during the time 
+of her captivity; and was concerned in the many fruitless plots 
+that were made for her rescue.  Ferscu lived to be an old man, but 
+died a dreadful and violent death.  He was dragged from his 
+carriage by the mob, in Stockholm, and murdered by them.
+
+
+To whom Monsieur Cagliostro says, scornfully, "You may look forward 
+to fifty years of life, after most of these are laid in the grave.  
+You shall be a king, but not die one; and shall leave the crown 
+only; not the worthless head that shall wear it.  Thrice shall you 
+go into exile: you shall fly from the people, first, who would have 
+no more of you and your race; and you shall return home over half a 
+million of human corpses, that have been made for the sake of you, 
+and of a tyrant as great as the greatest of your family.  Again 
+driven away, your bitterest enemy shall bring you back.  But the 
+strong limbs of France are not to be chained by such a paltry yoke 
+as you can put on her: you shall be a tyrant, but in will only; and 
+shall have a sceptre, but to see it robbed from your hand."
+
+"And pray, Sir Conjurer, who shall be the robber?" asked Monsieur 
+the Count d'Artois.
+
+
+This I cannot say, for here my dream ended.  The fact is, I had 
+fallen asleep on one of the stone benches in the Avenue de Paris, 
+and at this instant was awakened by a whirling of carriages and a 
+great clattering of national guards, lancers and outriders, in red.  
+His MAJESTY LOUIS PHILIPPE was going to pay a visit to the palace; 
+which contains several pictures of his own glorious actions, and 
+which has been dedicated, by him, to all the glories of France.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext The Paris Sketch Book, by W. M. Thackeray
+
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