Albert Lunel
Author: Henry Brougham
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

ALBERT LUNEL;

OR,

THE CHÂTEAU OF LANGUEDOC.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

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LONDON:

CHARLES KNIGHT & CO., 22, LUDGATE STREET.

——

1844.

LONDON:
Printed by William Clowes and Sons,
Stamford Street.

TO

SAMUEL ROGERS, Esq., F.R.S.,

ETC. ETC. ETC.

It is natural that the countenance of a great name, the certainty of obtaining an enlightened reader, the benefit of having a candid though severe critic, should be sought by one who has no name at all, and only desires justice and intelligence in his judge. These attributes the writer of this work found united in you, and to you he has taken the liberty of inscribing it.

Should such an accident ever happen as your indulging in any curiosity upon so trifling a matter, you will find the mystery in which your unknown admirer is wrapped impossible to pierce. Your sagacity may, from internal evidence, serve to point a conjecture towards France and her colonies, as his country,—her language, as that in which his book may have been written.

But upon one subject, no doubt must be allowed to rest. In all that relates to political events, and political characters; to the manners, the genius, the conduct of nations; above all, to the state of society beyond the Atlantic; there is no fiction, no colouring whatever, any more than in the sacred doctrines most connected with human happiness—peace and freedom—religion, rational as well as pure—morality, uncompromising though charitable—benevolence, universal, but discriminating—which it is the design of these pages to teach.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

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CHAPTER I.

THE BEGINNING.

CHAPTER II.

THE CAVE.

CHAPTER III.

THE MONK.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CONVERT.

CHAPTER V.

THE OUTLAW.

CHAPTER VI.

CONVERSATION IN LANGUEDOC.

CHAPTER VII.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF A LANGUEDOC PASTOR.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE EXILE.

CHAPTER IX.

THE HOUSE OF MOURNING.

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

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CHAPTER I.

THE HOUSE OF MIRTH.

CHAPTER II.

THE LOVERS.

CHAPTER III.

THE WANDERER.

CHAPTER IV.

THE WAY-FARING MAN.

CHAPTER V.

THE ADVANCE OF CHANGE.

CHAPTER VI.

THE NEW WORLD.

CHAPTER VII.

A SECOND CHAPTER: THE NEW WORLD.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE WEST INDIES—SLAVE PEASANTRY.

CHAPTER IX.

THE WEST INDIES—SLAVE OWNERS.

CONTENTS OF VOL. III.

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CHAPTER I.

PROGRESS OF REVOLUTION.

CHAPTER II.

THE WANDERER'S RETURN.

CHAPTER III.

FREE PEASANTRY.

CHAPTER IV.

POPULAR CONTAGION.

CHAPTER V.

VARIETY.

CHAPTER VI.

A KNIGHT—A FRIAR.

CHAPTER VII.

LEAVING THE CHÂTEAU.

CHAPTER VIII.

REVOLUTION—GENERAL AND PERSONAL.

CHAPTER IX.

THE END.

VOLUME I.

THE CHÂTEAU.

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CHAPTER I.

THE BEGINNING.

It was one of those truly delicious evenings of which untravelled Englishmen know scarcely five or six throughout the summer, but which in Southern France are frequent, indeed almost constant, during half the year. The sultry heats of midsummer and early autumn, extending into the night, scarcely leave its relish to that sweet season, and the exhaustion of the day hardly permits a desire for any exercise; but as August fades away, the air becomes more temperate, and nothing can be figured more truly delightful than those evenings which succeed the latest heats of the declining sun. A lively pleasure is felt in mere existence; the air is balmy; if any breeze moves it, there is refreshment conveyed on its wing; the lightsome feeling which is diffused cannot be described to those who have never known it; there is as much enjoyment as can be tasted without any excitement, and the languor which succeeds to more boisterous and short-lived pleasures, and is itself of brief duration, now becomes the habitual feeling and the pure solace of hours. An Englishman never fails to be deeply struck with these delights of climate; he finds within him unwonted emotions; his senses are stirred with new enjoyments; and he comprehends the Italian's meaning when, against all the joys of active exertion, congenial to our ungenial sky, he sets with an unhesitating preference the sweets of his idol Far Niente, sometimes extolled as dolce, and sometimes exalted to a higher rank by the prefix of santo, or even sacro-santo.

As we proceed further southward, the grove is filled with the sweet perfumes of those regions; each breeze wafts a scent to rouse the jaded senses, or to excite some feeling that may break the languor diffused over them, by providing some new sensation. The corruscations of the sky become more vivid and unremitting, and while the glow-worm's lamp is hung out to allure her volatile love, and fix him for a while in her stationary bower, the fire-fly sparkles from bush to bush of the shrubbery, giving a lively but a mild illumination, that animates the scene without breaking its stillness or disturbing its repose. There wants, indeed, in those delightful regions only one charm; "Morn ascends not with the charm of earliest birds," and "Her solemn bird attends not silent night." The grove is perfumed; it is not vocal.

These evenings are the seasons of our existence, when, the soul, free from the interruptions of the senses, at least in their stormy mood, unprovoked by the stimulus of pleasure, nor vexed by the stings of pain, in calm and serene possession of itself, naturally falls into contemplations removed from earthly influence; expatiates over the prospect of human affairs, if informed for such views, or, at least, ponders upon its own past existence, its future lot; and rises oftentimes above all merely human scenes to speculate upon its fate in another state of being. The devout Catholic in those moments of repose, like the Brahmin under the shade of his Areka tree, is absorbed in heavenly contemplation, ruffled sometimes by passing doubts, but far more commonly indulging those ecstatic visions of unbounded and unceasing bliss, which his infallible Church has declared to her believing sons, and has in tender compassion to human infirmity, as well as in skilful regard to her hopes of human adhesion, annexed to the easy performance of duties within the reach of the least rigid virtue, and calling for the most moderate exercise of self-denial.

This climate and these nights are enjoyed by the people of Languedoc in a greater degree than their Provençal neighbours know; because there is not the same parching drought which forms the curse of the South, especially beyond the Alpine ridge, and because there is a far more exuberant foliage, and everywhere an ampler vegetation than is to be found in the rocky, arid, though shrubby, region of the "Sweet-scented Mendicant."[1]

On such an evening as we have faintly described, and about the hour of sunset, arrived in the extensive grounds of the Marquess de Bagnolles, a travelling carriage, with a gentleman and a single servant, who leaving his master at the gate proceeded to deliver a letter to the Marquess. The consequence was an immediate invitation to the Château; where a party was assembled, and had just taken their coffee after dinner. The stranger advanced, courteously but somewhat shyly, if not proudly, and made his obeisance to the circle with some excuse for intruding at so late an hour, but ascribing this to the illness of his niece, whom he had left at the village cabaret, and for whom he was anxious to obtain the hospitality of the Château, as they found it wholly impossible to continue their journey. A servant was immediately dispatched, and the young lady was soon safely placed in a suitable apartment, where the quiet which her ailment required could be secured. The travellers had been enjoying their visit at Nismes, exploring the rich remains of Roman architecture in which it abounds more than any place out of Rome, feasting their eyes upon the exquisite beauties of the Maison Carrée, which transports the imagination back to the Augustan age, by its entire preservation and appearance of a temple in actual use, and then gazing with increased wonder on the magnificence of the Pont du Gard, contrasted with its romantic environs, a magnificence to which even the Eternal City itself has nothing at all superior, if indeed, it have any thing equal. The fatigues of this day with its excitements had, the Baron de Moulin said, proved too great for the feeble health of Emmeline, and he desired leave to retire and visit her in order to relieve the anxiety her illness had occasioned him.

Upon his withdrawing, the Marquess mentioned that the new guest of the château was well known to him by reputation, as a person of extraordinary faculties and great attainments, though of a character somewhat lofty and ungracious, yet one destined for great things, should the ferment continue which now existed in the nation by the state of public affairs; for though residing in Flanders, where his property lay, and where he had held high office, his family was French. "I am too young," said he, "to have any pretension to share in these things, and my father's premature death has called me to the discharge of private duties, that must for some time exclude me from public affairs. But the Baron, whose mature years and great capacity point him out to the friends of improvement as their powerful and natural leader, has only to struggle against the obstacles interposed by the weight of years; for the letter he brings me says, he is long past his prime, although his marvellous vigour both of body and mind appear to gather new strength, and impart to all his actions new life. He has all his days been the most active of men, insomuch that it used to be a joke on him ever since he left the University of Montpellier that he slept with one eye ever open, and could write with both hands at the same time. Had he only your age" (continued the Marquess, addressing himself to M. de Chatillon), "he might reach the utmost heights of our state, should any of the storms that now threaten France unsettle the form of our ancient Monarchy."—"Alas, Marquess," said M. de Chatillon, "how far better would it be for us all that such spirits as you describe the Baron should pass through life like our forefathers, occupied with the care of their peasantry, or the improvement of their estates, and only seeking to excel in the tranquil walks of literature, or shine in the harmless splendour of courts!"

The Baron now returned to join the party in their walk upon the terrace, and he returned with a countenance that showed how much he had been relieved by finding his young charge greatly recovered and fallen into a sweet sleep, the refreshment of which he expected would enable her to appear next morning.

They walked along a spacious lawn, which constant care and watering enabled the Marchioness to maintain in a somewhat green state, unless in the most burnt-up season of the year, but which the earlier rains of autumn had refreshed and really made somewhat like grass, if it could not be called turf. It was closed at one extremity by a pavilion in which were groups of marble figures by good artists, and one by Canova of the Graces, with a fountain that played in the centre of the vestibule. Through the pavilion you entered the flower-garden, which was extensive and rich and various. The other extremity of the terrace lost itself in a shrubbery, which ended in a woody walk, that wound along the side of an eminence near the Château, and conducted the party to a path of natural gravel on the margin of a small lake, whose deep blue water now reflected the last rays of the setting sun. Nothing could be imagined more truly delicious than this walk. Its course along the lake under the thick shade of the trees was both beautiful and refreshing; and from its extremity there led several footpaths through the deepest recesses of the wood. When you followed these, you came into a perfect wilderness, without the least vestige of culture or care. Tangled thickets on every side almost impeded your progress; the underwood was dense, filling up the space between the trees; the ground indeed was carpeted with odoriferous plants of every kind, which in this delicious climate abundantly yield their perfumes to each passing breeze. But wildness was the prevailing character of the scene, and you plainly perceived that you were, indeed, in a desert wilderness, where nothing reminded you of human cares or even human existence. All at once, after labouring through the thicket, you broke upon a flower-garden of small extent, but of exquisite beauty, whose complete culture was visible in every plant, flower, stem, and group. A fountain played in the centre, and a rustic bower afforded a seat on one side. The effects of the contrast were remarkable; and the pleasure It yielded was the reverse of that which they feel who visit in Holland the thick wood of the Hague, the only piece of natural scenery in that country of artificial existence, alike for vegetable and for animal nature.

In these grounds the company wandered to enjoy the twilight, and the heat being still too little abated to allow much walking, they sat down in one of the arbours reared near the lake; when a small choir of singers, part of the company that had gone round by another route, struck up the national air of Henri Quatre; and then recited some of the fine Troubadour Songs so intimately associated with all recollections of Languedoc and Provence.

The evening passed in the enjoyment of these delightful scenes; in reading and in games, rather of skill than chance, as chess; for the family of the Marquess was of strict Huguenot principles, like so many of those in that part of France, and the Marchioness was of the most rigid Calvinistic faith, her family having traced its descent from the old Covenanters of Scotland. The Baron felt this some kind of restraint; for he sincerely respected the religious feelings of others, how much soever he differed with them, and was always delicately apprehensive of giving them pain, by any of the levities into which his wit or humour might naturally betray him, and above all, by any appearance of making their puritanism a subject of his ridicule; but the early hour at which all retired to rest soon relieved him, and he promised himself the greatest pleasure he could taste, in the restoration of his niece to society after the refreshment of a night's rest.

The breakfast next morning, according to the custom of the Marchioness (whose family was English) preserved our social fashion so much approved by Madame de Staël. After this pleasant and lively meal, where all are fresh and gay, and all are full of the morning's projects, or the day's occupation, the family circle had scarcely been formed in the drawing-room, when a slender and graceful figure was seen to rise and salute the Marchioness in her mother-tongue, with a peculiar sweetness of voice, and a manner modest even to timidity. Her complexion wore not the hue of health; but it added to the charm of her most delicate features, and her eyes at once shone with tenderness and spirit. Her form, though slight, was admirable, and without the traits of regular beauty, the whole effect of her face, figure, air, and expression had something far more attractive than mere loveliness of shape and colour can bestow. The rapture of the Baron's eyes when he presented her to his new friends, at once showed that this was his Emmeline, then in her eighteenth year: the cherished object of all his cares; the only child of a brother with whom he had grown up from childhood in the most undivided intimacy, and whose true affection, whose sage counsels had guided, whose manly spirit had supported him through all his trials, and whose death had inflicted upon him the only great sorrow he had ever known. Since the loss of her father, while yet a child, her mother having died in giving her birth, she had centered all her affections in her uncle, whom indeed she regarded as if she had never known a parent; nor was he more wrapped up in her than she in him. The Marchioness seeing her embarrassed by the entrance of so many strangers from the breakfast parlour, asked if she would accompany her to sit awhile in the Orangery, to which she gently answered, "Please," and with the Baron they retired. She of course became the subject of conversation. "One plainly perceives," said the Countess de Chatillon, "that this tender creature is not the Baron's immediate descendant. His hard metal would not easily cut into so soft a trinket."—"And why," asked the Marquess, "should not his solid gold be beaten into a leaf so light that a breath might move it?"—"Rather," rejoined the Countess, "take your comparison from the iron ribbons into which we saw that powerful and intractable metal fashioned the other day at St. Etienne."[2]

"However," said the Count de Chatillon, "I think you will admit that Mdlle. Emmeline is a very attractive person in all that we can see of her appearance and her manner, which alone we as yet know; and I am told by her uncle that she is extremely clever and well-informed."—"Aye, indeed, my good lord," said his gifted spouse, "I doubt not he gives his wares a good character as he brings them to market; but were I a man, I should prefer a less tender helpmate."—"My darling," said her husband, "you are eternally speculating on people's designs about their daughters; when from all I can perceive of the Baron, and indeed from all I have ever heard of him, my belief is that nothing enters less into his head than any such event as you are dreaming of, and that to lose his niece in that way would give him the greatest concern."

"May be so," said his inexorable partner, "may be so. Did you just observe how tenderly this young exquisite drawled out her 'Please' when the Marchioness offered her a seat in the Orangery?"—"My love," said the Count, "you are a very clever and a very clear-seeing person, and God knows how very clever and clear-sighted you may be without being quite as infallible as you conceive yourself; but anything more unlike one of your exquisites, those compounds, or rather, let me say, those composts of affectations, selfishness, and false sentiment, I never did see than Mdlle. de Moulin; and as for her 'please,' which offends you so much, I could not hear it without being convinced that it was merely her giving thanks to unburthen her mind of gratitude, without putting the other party to the trouble of receiving them."—"Charming! sentimental! truly becoming a young innocent girl, or a professional poet! But from you whose tastes and habits we all know"—"Come, Countess," said the host, willing to break off a dialogue which plainly annoyed the husband, and did not cover the wife with any glory save that of ability and eloquence—"Come, let us have a drive through the Forest ride before the great heat begins." The Countess felt this rebuke, how delicately soever administered, and the anger, which her husband's less polished weapon had inflicted, was exasperated to something bordering upon fury by the keen cutting of the Marquess's oil-dipped razor; but it was a suppressed fury; and the consequences were startling to each beholder. The fine colour of her face had given place to a harsh paleness that covered as with a shroud each feature; her eye was not so much animated with rage as glazed in her head; the expression of her beautiful countenance had become hard rather than fierce; while in her throat there seemed some obstruction, as if a portion of it were swollen by something she could not swallow. The lips from vermilion became pale and were compressed within the narrowest dimensions, betokening a strong effort of restraint under which she was endeavouring to lay herself. This appearance, altogether the most repulsive that can well be imagined, only lasted a few moments. By a continuance of the same effort she, who without any effort so often conquered others, had now subdued herself; she regained her noble look and wonted self-possession; nor could any one entering the room at that moment have supposed that a scene had preceded his coming. But, also, no one who had witnessed that scene could easily forget it; all felt it alike; and each said to himself, "What would this have burst out in, had she been alone with either the Marquess, or the Count, or even the Baron, whom she now saw for the first time?" Nor could any one who had witnessed this scene ever fail to recall it to recollection, as often as he afterwards felt the power of her incomparable beauty, extraordinary talents, and commanding position in society.

While these things were passing in the saloon, Emmeline, with her uncle, was quietly reposing in the Orangery, where the Marchioness had left them to make her morning visit to the children's school-room, and to exercise them in religious offices. The heavenly weather, and the relief from her yesterday's illness, which she now enjoyed, made her give loose to those pious feelings, which, interwoven with her gentle and affectionate nature, made her whole existence one continued thanksgiving and prayer; and she could not retain any emotion of her heart from her second parent. "How gracious, dearest Zio[3] (so she always called him), are all the dispensations of our bountiful Father in heaven! Seldom he visits us with pain, and if he does, how surely does he make the compensation which I am now enjoying, in giving to our state of mind and of body on emerging from sickness a sweet zest unknown to those who have never suffered. I would cheerfully undergo all I yesterday felt to purchase the relish of returning health I now enjoy." The Baron clasped to his bosom this dear charge, "My blessed child," he said, "I pray it may not be your lot often to exercise your faith and your piety by such devout thankfulness; yet His will be done who disposes all for our good!" As she earnestly whispered "Amen," he felt what had so often tried his faith and exercised his piety, the awful doubts which are engendered in the mind by the touching spectacle of patient virtue suffering always and never repining, while the children of vice, or the votaries of folly, so often revel in their indulgence without any pain, as without any stint, and complain of the order of nature, should but a rose-leaf be ruffled on their couch.

When they returned to the drawing-room, Emmeline was soon placed by her uncle near the Marchioness, who entered into conversation with her, on the beauties of Nismes, and the wonders of the Pont du Gard; while the Countess engaged the Baron in a lively talk. Scenery she could not endure to hear mentioned, far less discussed. Her proper study was man; and as her understanding was wholly masculine, her tastes were somewhat guided if not formed by it. She disregarded most topics of female interest; was not much satisfied with the talk which well-bred men even of intelligence and information addressed to women of her rank; cared somewhat more for homage done to her matchless beauty, the female stratum here fusing by the central heat and breaking through the harder crust above; but chiefly she delighted in either attack or defence of distinguished personages, or in examinations of literary merit, or above all in political discussion. The fame of the Baron, both as a savant and a statesman, had preceded him; she cared little for the repulsive plainness of his exterior, and his somewhat brusque though sufficiently high-bred manners; and she at once gave herself up to discover, as she told the Count, "what he really was made of."

For his part he was instantaneously attracted by her numberless charms, so fitted to fascinate one like him, because her features were instinct with expression, reflecting the spirit within that supported the exterior, diffused itself through each part, inspired the mass, and mingled itself with the ample but graceful person. Little cared he for her proverbial coldness, so he might hope to thaw it by assiduous efforts; or even for her hardness, ill suited to harmonize with such truly feminine charms, so he might aspire to soften it, and reduce it within what he deemed the limits of her proper gender.

Thus prepared, these distinguished parties now first met in the single combat of society; for few besides themselves cared to bear a part in the conversation.

"What opinion, may I ask, has M. le Baron formed of the expected meeting of the States at Grenoble?"[4]

"Truth to tell, I have not as yet made up my mind, nor have I indeed had time to examine the grounds of the hopes and the fears I find entertained and extending far beyond Dauphiné. I met M. Courdemont at Nismes, and heard him say his say."

"Oh then tell us what he told you."

"Really," rejoined the Baron, "he is a person with all his abilities and acquirements but little suited to my taste, and who don't inspire much confidence, either in his facts or in his views; at least no confidence that bears any proportion to that which he himself reposes in both."

"Aye, truly," said the Count, "I hold him to be but a light material."

"Except as regards his pleasantry," said the Countess; "that you'll allow is no light matter."

"Nor any laughing matter either;" said the Count. "He is, however, a well-meaning, as he is a well-read man, full half eaten up with self-sufficiency. But he is after all not much disliked, except by those who hate bores; and he is, generally speaking, on good terms with everybody he knows."

"Including himself," said the Baron drily, "whom he does not much know, and with whom he seems in no particular haste to improve his acquaintance. He has, indeed, a most undivided and even exclusive good opinion of himself—for he has it much to himself; few share it with him."

"Yes, yes,"—said the Marquess, "he is at the head of a small knot of admirers, all of whom have a share in the opinion of him; like a joint-stock company formed to manage a patent for exclusive sale of an invention, the inventor and patentee himself being at the head of it."

"Nevertheless," said the Baron, "he is a man of shining abilities, much book-learning, so profound a mathematician as to have passed all his contemporaries at Montpellier, of as profound a knowledge of the law as ignorance of the world, extraordinary powers of conversation—eloquent in a high degree—fluent in the highest."

"God knows that he is," quoth the Countess; "I have groaned under his fluency; not indeed of conversation, of which he is incapable, but of talk. I do assure you I last Sunday suffered under him at Nismes, where I met him at dinner; and it is a far greater evil than the ordinary inflictions of society."

"What, dear," said the Count, "did he cut you out; leave you no niche in the talk?"

"Chatillon," said she sharply, "your pleasantry is ill placed. I am not apt to engross conversation, nor to grumble when deprived of my share; I can generally take it when I please; or if not, I can listen as well as most people to most people. But to the Sieur Courdemont I positively cannot. It is one eternal, unceasing, unbroken babble, wholly without relief; a constant glare without any shade, a perpetual flash, or endless prosing, a stream of words that chokes you or makes you nervous. I protest that I could not recollect any one thing he said, after having been exposed to his talk for two hours by the clock; from the egg to the apple,[5] which, as he with infinite prolixity and self-approbation expounded to a young lady ignorant of Latin, meant from the beginning to the end of dinner—So, you see, I have really contrived to retain one thing he said. But, oh heavens! how much besides of this ceaseless and stintless chatter passed through both ears without in any way reaching the mind, or at least the memory!—I declare I never again, while I live, will run the risk of a like penance."

"I find people," said the Count, "require express notice to be given when he dines any where, and that some, like skilful generals, make it a rule to keep their carriages waiting until dinner is announced in order to secure their retreat, should they find he has effected a lodgment."

"How strange it is," said the Marquess, "that mere faults of exuberance should be so fatal! Could he not cut himself down to the dimensions of an ordinary talker? The parings would set up half a dozen men endued with some sense, taste, and breeding."

"No, no," said the Baron: "were any one to tell him all this, he would turn a deaf ear; not indeed more deaf than he now does to all that every one says but himself. He has too long spoken to the little circle of admirers, the directors of the joint-stock company you spoke of, to bear the hard-hearted, hard-headed, indifferent public. His ear has been far too long tickled with the sweet music of his own voice, to bear being told how it grates on all the ears on other heads, and gives with his volubility a pain or at least an uneasiness in the stomach to his unhappy audience."

"Like a concert of drummers learning their trade," said the Countess. "But at least, Baron, you may recount something of his Grenoble intelligence."

"Alas, Madam, he was far too much in love with his own theories and historical recollections to tell me anything I could repeat. He pinned me by the button for half an hour, while he treated me to a review of the assemblies, States General, Provincial States, and Parliaments. I believe he began with Charlemagne, if not with Clovis, and I only escaped towards the reign of Louis XIII. by the stratagem of a fainting fit, whereupon he pursued me to the Hotel, and when I was forced to revive he was prelecting to Madame Faure, the mistress of the house, and the head-waiter Corvon, upon the circulation of the blood, and organic diseases of the heart. They both kindly prescribed repose, in the hope that I might defer my journey a day or two, and take an apartment. So my tormentor went off in a kind of round trot, half walk, half run, speaking to himself with much vehemence, an auditory of whose attention and admiration he can always make sure; I understand he was taken for Janon the cobbler, by Madame de la Roche, who met him, and asked where his shop was, as she wanted to have her half-boot mended. Be that as it may, I escaped, and soon after we left Nismes."

"I perceive plainly enough," said the Countess, "that your taste does not much differ from mine in regard to the Prince of Bores; and he often reminds me of the Bishop of Autun's[6] saying, as I have heard it repeated, that to reach eminence in that dismal art, the black art of boring, a person must have something in him—persons merely null cannot attain it."

"Why, I really must say," replied the Baron, "with all my respect for so high an authority, so great a judge's opinion, I somewhat hesitate on the point. One sees accomplished practitioners go on with marvellous little capital, with very little if anything in them."

"Yet try to recollect," said she, "and I think you will find not one of those whom you have dreaded as Bores, but had some talent beside that of wearying you to death. It seems as if the instrument required some sharpness as well as strength to penetrate and perform its office. It may be that we shake off the feebler species of the animal more easily, while the stronger can lodge and fix themselves like the forest-flies, that drive our cattle mad. People vary, like the cattle, in the degree to which they feel the infliction."

"Yes," said the Baron, "I am unfortunate in this respect; I am extremely sensitive to the Bore as I am to the musquito; easily catch the malady it gives; and sigh for a Bore-net, a para-bore, to protect me, like our musquito-curtains—I believe I am the natural prey of the Bore."

"Not so much. Baron," said the Marchioness, "as an old gentleman from India, whom I knew in England, and who had brought back the heats of Bengal to make his nature, if possible, more warm and impatient than it originally was. Once he was under the operation of an artist in this branch, whom he could not in any way brush off, being pinned up in a corner: and the good easy man was going on descanting, like M. Courdemont, with infinite self-applause, and laying down propositions on all his five figures, in the pleasing belief that the old Nabob's twitches and shrugs were the result of the intense interest he took in the lecture. All of a sudden, the patient"—

"If one may so call him," said the Baron.

"Well, the impatient, if you so please, broke out, and collared the talker, exclaiming, with an oath, 'There's no bearing this one moment longer!' and thus escaped. The bystanders describe the face of the astonished performer as beyond the power of conception to any that had not witnessed it."

"I was once circumvented," said the Baron, "by Courdemont, whom I had innocently suffered to get me into a corner, the constant and as it were instinctive stratagem of the species; and my friends, hearing I was in durance, were busy planning means for the relief of the garrison, or to raise the siege. One proposed a ladder applied to the window, by which I might march out; another the cry of fire; but they ended in the simple expedient of a flag of truce—a letter by a courier—so I made my escape for that time."

"But, after all," said the Countess, "I can learn nothing of what most interests me,—Grenoble!"—

"Love," said the Count, taking his fair partner into the library, "you let politics run between you and your wits."

"Chatillon," said she, "I have often told you not to interfere with my tastes, as I don't interfere with yours."

"It is entirely for your own sake I speak, and to make you more perfectly amiable than you will allow yourself to be, with every advantage from figure and position that woman can possess."

"Spare your kind pains," she answered, with a look of no very mild description, "and let me try, what, I grant you, may prove impossible, to raise you into something more worthy of your position, and make you more respectable than you are pleased to make yourself, with every advantage of station that man can possess."

"Why, dearest," said he, "what would you have me do?"

"Almost anything you don't now do! Why not go to Grenoble and take your seat among the state deputies about to assemble? I wish to go there without delay; instead of lingering here, to vegetate, and kill time and patience together. I would be near the scene of action. Something must come of this ferment; and let us be on the spot to look after our own interest. I plainly perceive that the Baron expects it to increase and to spread, for all he turned me aside to discuss Courdemont and Boring."

It would not be easy to express the effect which this whole conversation produced on the mind of Emmeline, who heard all of it but the last part in the library. She never before had seen a female politician, nor had witnessed the effects of a passion not natural to the person or the sex over whom its ravages sweep. With all the Countess's great beauty, all her talents, and all her information, Emmeline felt so much shocked at the unamiable harshness which the indulgence of humours and tastes little suited to a young woman diffused over her manner and even her appearance, that she gently whispered the Baron, "Dearest Zio, I had far rather look as silly and empty as my maid Susette, who is good-humoured, than shine in repartee, or deal out deep views and form large plans like that great Countess."

Of the lawyer, on the other hand, she formed a far more merciful opinion than the rest of the party; and she was so far right that he possessed great acquirements, but his judgment was defective. M. Courdemont was not content with his college fame as a mathematician; nor with confining his geometry and his algebra to their more ordinary and legitimate employment. He had his peculiar theories on various other matters, into which he imported the services of the severer sciences. Thus being long-sighted, as persons past their prime are apt to be, and aware that this arises from the lens of the eye becoming flattened by age, he must needs apply muscular exertion to his eyes when reading or writing, and was in a state of hideous contortion, while his neighbour quietly sate with a pair of spectacles on his nose, and saw a deal better, though ten years older. So too, he had his theory of the moves at chess, and would, while a cause was going on in court, be going through a game according to his own rules. Whether he had as bad fortune when matched against himself, may be uncertain; but it is quite certain that playing with any one else he was always sure to be beaten. His adversary, however, had reason, like Pyrrhus of old, to rue his victory, and exclaim, that another such would be his ruin; for he had to suffer under an hour's lecture, demonstrating by the rules of algebra that he ought clearly to have been check-mated.

Next day there came to the Château two visitors, whose arrival could not be otherwise than interesting,—M. and Mme. de Montricard. They belonged to Aix, but passed part of the year at Nismes, near which M. de Montricard had property. He was a young gentleman in high estimation for his abilities and accomplishments, which fitted him for filling any station, but his tastes led him rather to the active sports of the chase and the manège; while his wife was almost as fond of politics as Mme.de Chatillon herself. In some particulars they differed widely; Madame de Montricard, though a person of great beauty, was not equal in this respect to the Countess, having a less brilliant air, and less handsome figure; but in all other respects, as talents, information, even wit, she shone equally, and her temper and disposition were incomparably more amiable. She had a large family, to whom she was an exemplary mother, and the breath of slander never having assailed her reputation, the men of Nismes indemnified themselves by pronouncing her as cold as ice. It was a cold, however, that repulsed not, if it encouraged not; and she wisely reckoned that it served to secure her friendships as well as her respectability. She would quietly make it the subject of a pleasantry or a sensible remark; and once on being charged with it by a person whom she thought somewhat pertinacious in his objection, and who was constantly saying, that she had all manner of knowledge except knowing how to love—she wrote a quatrain with her pencil, as her explanation and her defence, which may be thus translated, though she said at the time that if fiction be the soul of song, her lines were much too true to be poetical.

"Platonic love too chill may seem
For mortals to endure;
Two merits yet that fault redeem—
'Tis lasting, and 'tis pure."

All the wise men, both literary and political, of Nismes and of Aix, were fond of consulting her. With none was she so intimate as with the Second Judge in Languedoc, M. de Balaye; but love-making, of course, neither suited his station nor her tastes; and hence their intercourse was uninterrupted with any quarrels, though it so happened that he had been a strong political opponent of her father, a man of great eminence in his day. The Judge used to consult her in all matters, even scientific, declaring he knew no sounder judgment, and few more amiable dispositions.

Her success in society was universal. The Countess could not bear the mention of her name, undervalued her looks, laughed at her pretensions, and assured the Baron that he would find the grapes in this quarter really sour, if they were, by any miracle, to drop into his mouth. There was little fear of his trying their flavour; for he was already enslaved elsewhere, and he took but little pleasure in her conversation.

The Château de Bagnolles in its interior arrangements corresponded with the beauty of its structure, and the scale and the style of its grounds. A convenient parlour, but not so vast as the dining-room, received the family at breakfast. It was hung with Canaletti pictures of Venice and the terra-firma towns; the freshness of the colour, especially the blue canals, pleasing and resting the eye. At either end was a sofa, under a case of books, to prevent the time from hanging heavy on those that might assemble a little earlier than the rest. On one or other sofa, you might find a priest of the Church and a pastor from Nismes discussing points of doctrine or of discipline, till the entry of the Marchioness announced that it was time to descend from the higher regions and pay a due attention to the demands of our humbler nature. From the breakfast the company generally retired either to the spacious library, so laid out that no book was above reach, and indented with recesses for reading or conversing uninterruptedly; or they went out to enjoy the fine air, free from heat, in a shady portico upon which the parlour opened. In this portico were benches placed conveniently among the pillars and marbles which supported or adorned it. Here much time was usually passed; and as the steps, only two in number, led to the fine walk communicating at one end with the garden, at the other with the wood and the lake, the portico naturally became a rendezvous both before the drives and walks which the party might take and after they returned home; so that it was a joke in the Château, borrowed from the old steward, Gaspar, who had been brought up in trade at Marseilles, that the portico was the Exchange of Bagnolles (Bourse de Bagnolles).

The hospitality of the house kept a full proportion to its ample means; there was no distinction of sects suffered to interfere; the family, though Protestant, were highly respected by the clergy for their sincere yet tolerant piety; to see their friends about them, and contribute to their comforts or enjoyment, seemed to be their own chief gratification; few distinguished strangers passed through Languedoc without visiting Bagnolles, and when the parties were found to suit each other, a second visit never failed to follow, and to last for such a time that the Sieur Gaspar would remark on the Marquess keeping the best inn in all France, and the most reasonable.

One thing, however, detracted, it was said, from the accuracy of the Sieur's comparison. Guests who proved tiresome, or empty and frivolous, or in any way either unpleasant or unprofitable companions, never stopped long nor came twice. "Aye," said Gaspar, "then we do make travellers pay; somewhat they must contribute, though it may be in their person, and not in their purse."

CHAPTER II.

THE CAVE.

The Countess, whose attention was ever awake, and whose observation was always on the alert regarding others, as she never had any love-affairs upon her own hands, had remarked that every day when the heat of the weather permitted, the Marchioness went out alone through the flower-garden upon which her boudoir opened, and which was commanded by the windows of the Countess's apartment. She had a small basket in her hand, somewhat larger than could be used merely to carry flowers, and she generally covered this over with the loose cloak thrown upon her arm. Had Mme. de Chatillon seen this but once or twice, it might not have struck her as extraordinary. But when it happened day after day, and never less than three or four times in a week, some mystery seemed to be involved—the rather that having once taken notice of it, and offered to accompany her friend to "the cottage where she went to dispense her charities" (so she framed what our lawyers call her fishing question), she perceived an evident embarrassment, the subject being immediately warded off by a change on the Marchioness's part in the conversation.

The suspicious nature of the Countess now had full scope, and as she connected everything with politics, nothing with love, she failed not to imagine that some refugee from the arbitrary power of the government, or of the church, was concealed in the forest, to whose wants the hostess was ministering. The family being not only Huguenot, but having embraced the liberal opinions now spreading so fast over France, and the people of Nismes having shown on various occasions a strong disposition to ferment, greatly strengthened the Countess's suspicions, which she communicated to her husband; but his easy and careless nature could not be fixed upon the question, which seemed little to concern him, while he pursued his favourite occupations of the chase and of the riding-house. She therefore took her own course, and set a watch upon the Marchioness in the person of her maid, holding it quite clear that the manner in which her inquiries had been balked by her friend gave her a full right to prosecute them in her own way. She had at different times spoken on the subject to the two or three young men who were visitors at the Château, and who professed a devotion to her commands, while she used them to gather information for her, and in all other respects, except graciously accepting their services and their admiration, treated them with sufficient contempt, above all laughing without any reserve at their gallantry as often as they thought fit to express any feeling beyond mere admiration. None of them had on the present occasion shown any activity in the matter, possibly from feeling that the indulgence of any curiosity on a subject plainly covered with a veil by their kind and amiable hostess, would betoken a want of due delicacy in her guests. The Abigail was therefore, in the natural course of things, resorted to, and she, in the same natural course, opened a communication with her friend, the valet, who having been unfaithful to his sweetheart, for whom he daily vowed the most eternal and exuberant love, had solaced himself with an attempt upon the heart of the Countess's confidential woman, and had so plied her with Parisian anecdotes, with court gossip, with political gossip, with travelling gossip, and so dazzled her with cheap trinkets and mock laces, that he had gained upon the country and Huguenot fair one, notwithstanding her suspicions of all who went to mass and crossed themselves before and after meat. Through these worthy and sharp-sighted personages the inquiry made some progress; for it was ascertained that the mysterious basket contained provisions, and that the Marchioness's walk lasted seldom less than an hour, so that she must have some way to go; it was also certain that the basket returned empty. The Countess's curiosity was now exalted to the utmost pitch, and she once more made an attempt, but it was the last one her courage ventured upon, to wring the secret from her friend. It was an offer to assist her in what she "plainly saw was a compassionate work." "Beware the anger of a good-natured man,"—is a proverb, or at least is so true, so much the practical result of experience, that it deserves to be one. The mild and even-tempered Marchioness, who had already felt annoyed with her friend's questions, and especially with the plots she perceived her laying to inveigle her into a disclosure, broke forth: "Countess, you have more than once pursued this course with me, and you have failed. Once for all hear me, and believe me when I tell you that all your manœuvring will not succeed in drawing from me the least hint to gratify your restless and endless curiosity. I let your secrets alone; pray leave me in possession of my own." So unwonted a vigour, and such plain indications of humour, had two effects on the Countess; she felt her stay at the Château become somewhat irksome, and she felt all her curiosity redoubled by this signal failure, with the addition of resentment, for the treatment she had experienced at the hands of one whose understanding she despised. She concealed her feelings, gave a general assurance of regret at having unintentionally given pain, and retired within herself to meditate the means of healing the wound she had received, and gratifying at once her curiosity and her revenge.

Her trusty minions failed not soon to make some progress in their investigations. Their speculations were short; the theory to which they led was plain and simple; it was embraced with the most unhesitating confidence. The Marchioness, it was quite plain, had a lover; she met him secretly in the forest, and her basket contained a slender repast for the tender pair, while it threw over their transgression the all-covering cloak of charity. But still curiosity was on the stretch to find out the person favoured by the Marchioness, and above all to show her that she was discovered and so in their power. Many days did not pass before the valet found in the deepest recess of the forest, a track branching from the thicket to which one of the unfrequented paths led. Following this track, he came upon a torrent which lost itself among lofty rocks crowned with overhanging wood, in a dell as gloomy as the fancy could paint, and more dark than the eye could pierce. The first rains of autumn had swelled this water-course, and yet there were blocks of stone rudely fashioned and placed across it, over which it did not flow. The accident of finding a lady's hair pin on the first of these blocks, left no doubt in the man's enquiring mind, that this was the path which led to the supposed Dido's cave; and he crossed over with breathless impatience, making sure of no longer being balked, as he so often had been, by the thickness of the wood during the last week of his pursuit, when he had taken more exercise than in any whole year of his lazy life.

He was soon on the other side, and found another path by which his steps were again led to the torrent, and here he lost all trace of any foot-way. He thought, however, that he could perceive a plank resting against a part of the rock that jutted out over the stream, and felt assured that this was used by some one to ascend from the edge of the water. With the utmost difficulty he clambered up the steep sides of the bank among the tangled bushes and trees. Having reached the summit he looked down towards the torrent, and saw standing upon a narrow but flat space on its margin, in a musing posture, with his arms folded, a tall man dressed in black with long brown hair, and a beard of the same colour that descended towards his breast. So sudden an apparition affrighted him, and he retreated down the bank, having hardly ventured to look at the stranger's features. He hurried home by the path he had taken, and full of his discovery hastened to communicate all he had seen to his friend Jeanette, who repeated it with the usual exaggerations to the Countess, not forgetting to paint the lonely stranger as in the prime of youth, and of the rarest beauty; facts necessarily unknown to her, inasmuch as her sweetheart had been in much too great a fright to observe any thing of the kind before he fled.

That lady was now completely gratified. She had her revenge within her own power. Falling into the doctrine of the servants, she no longer doubted that the secret walks of the Marchioness were connected with a deeply rooted, and as deeply concealed passion. Her curiosity was appeased. But how to obtain the full measure of revenge was a more difficult matter. With all her courage, she hardly ventured to charge her friend directly, for she knew the irreproachable reputation which belonged to her; nor could she bear the thought of having her stratagems found out, and the low agents through whom she had been working, known. After much reflection she resolved to obtain the directions of the servant, and herself to pursue the track he had taken; so she made the Count her confidant, whom she found enamoured of the Marchioness (a thing that gave her no pain), and whose own attachment was thus interested in pursuing the discovery. Ever obedient to her will, indeed, he easily consented to accompany her, according to the description given by the maid from her lover's account. It was afterwards settled that at first he alone should explore; and after several fruitless attempts, he, one day that the Marchioness had gone to pass the morning at Nismes, succeeded in reaching the rock where the foot-plank was found placed so as to join the edge of the river with that eminence. The Count bounded up the path with the lightness of the roe, and in an instant found himself in the presence of the mysterious Solitary; and almost at the same moment felt his throat grasped hard by a powerful hand, while another held a dagger to his heart.

The Count's orders on his breast at once showed that he was there by accident or from curiosity alone; he was also unarmed; the grip was relaxed, and the dagger withdrawn. But the long-bearded man burst forth in furious accents:—"And who art thou that darest to intrude upon my deep concealment with thy poor, paltry, unmannerly curiosity? Knowest thou the risk its mean gratification exposed thee to? Had but the weapon of chase or the gun of the huntsman been about thy person, at this moment thou hadst ceased to live! Yes! I am a Christian, aye, a Christian Minister. Yet yielding obedience to the first of laws, the law of self-defence, had it been possible for me to believe that there stood here in my power a minister of the justice which pursues me for yielding obedience to the second law of nature, the law that rules our social affections, my dagger would have been plunged into his bosom, and his corse have been buried in the torrent, my protector and my accomplice, that roars beneath this cave!"

The horror with which Chatillon heard that he stood in the presence of a felon, perhaps a murderer, certainly of one who was prepared for deeds of slaughter, hardly left him the power of observing how perfectly beautiful a form and expressive a countenance was worn by the stranger. He endeavoured to excuse himself for an intrusion which he felt to be rash and also unwarranted, or warranted only by his habitual obedience to her who had commissioned him on this errand. But he was speedily interrupted with—"Enough! No more! Begone! and learn to respect and to avoid this spot, well assured that if the knowledge you have chanced to gain of this retreat shall ever lead to others approaching it with different designs, you shall then have seen the sun for the last time; you will be pursued, though the mountains were to cover you, and your punishment be instantaneous, before my destruction can be accomplished!"

The Count waited not for a second warning; he swiftly descended the plank which he heard rapidly moved up the rock after he had passed down; and in a very short time he was stretched breathless, exhausted, and agitated on the sofa in his wife's apartment. She felt somewhat of his alarm at so unexpected a sight, and was impatient for his being able to tell his story. It threw her into one of those fits of reflection and imagination in which her designs were usually conceived. Her first impression was one of disappointment at her theory of the Marchioness's conduct being found less intelligible, though she still adhered to its outline; but the feeling that next succeeded was pointed against her unfortunate partner, whom she at once charged with want of spirit and determination.—"Had I been a man, or any thing in the shape of one, think you I should have let this concealed paramour throttle me unpunished?"—"My love," replied the Count, with his accustomed mildness, which never failed to increase her irritation, "pray reflect that I put myself completely in the wrong by intruding where I had no right to be."—"In the wrong?" she replied, "as if that signified, when he profaned your person with his hands!"—"Well then, dearest, recollect that he had drawn from his girdle a dagger, while I was unarmed; to say nothing of his far greater strength."—"Had you not the roaring torrent close beneath for your ally? Could you not have at once washed out in its waters your own disgrace, and buried in them the pious Marchioness's sins?"—"Catherine! Catherine!" said her justly offended and shocked husband, "stay these your unseemly reproaches, and a thousand times more unseemly suggestions! What man can do have I ever done to love, honour, and obey you, giving honour, as it seemed due, to the stronger vessel! But one step will I not take in the path of crime to gratify your inordinate ambition, or slake your boundless thirst for vengeance! God of his mercy forbid that any blood, most of all any innocent blood, should ever lie on my soul!"

There was a determination of manner and of purpose so marked in the loud tone and the firm voice which now, for the first time, filled her ear, that she was reduced to silence, and even said, "Perhaps I was wrong. But I will not forgive her whose intrigues have caused me this. I will steadily pursue the inquiry. Be you sure of that!"

Chatillon, who, far from sharing in her suspicions, felt entirely convinced that the whole matter, on the Marchioness's part, had its origin in feelings very different from lawless love, yet dreading his wife's reckless and restless disposition when once any scheme had got possession of her, was determined at once to make Mme. de Bagnolles herself his confidant, to prevent any further mischief, and even assist in a design, which he could not doubt was wholly founded in charity and compassion for some unhappy, perhaps persecuted, individual. She, on her part, having the utmost reliance upon his honour, and knowing that she could trust the kindness of his nature, also gave him every encouragement in his disclosure, and though she was deeply impressed with his wife's misconduct, yet, holding him free from all blame but that of having too yielding a nature when his duty required more firm resistance, promised to beg that the Hermit would receive him, and, in the course of a few days, took him with her to the cave, by a somewhat less entangled path, with which she alone was acquainted.

She had taken the very necessary precaution of preparing the Solitary for his reception; giving a just panegyric of his amiable and honourable character; and accordingly, the stern and even terrible manner which he had before been dismayed with, was now composed into a calm and not uncourteous dignity of demeanour, which only served to render his countenance more impressive, and his figure more striking. There was still, however, a lofty and distant tone in all he said; and the first interview passed without more than a permission to come alone, of which the Count soon availed himself. This led to a repetition of these visits; for he took much interest in this intercourse with a person so singular in his circumstances, and had a natural curiosity to hear more of his history than the few general intimations of the Marchioness disclosed. The Solitary on the other hand was exceedingly attracted by his new acquaintance, whose suavity of temper and ingenuous disposition gained much upon him, and whose acute understanding he soon learnt to appreciate. His principles too, were of that liberal cast which were then beginning to spread over France. A confidence thus growing up between them, very unlike the feelings that attended the beginning of their acquaintance, the stranger desired him to come one morning early to his retreat, when he thus unfolded, for his own defence and that of his kind protectress, the mystery of his present situation.

CHAPTER III.

THE MONK.

"If I say that the sun does not rise upon a more wretched being to light him on his way towards the much-wished-for tomb which every motive drives to seek, and one paramount duty forbids to enter, I use not words of common course, ever in the mouths of those who only half know sorrow; I speak the sentiments of my inmost heart. You are young; you may live to be old; but through all your life, be it ever so prolonged, your eye will never rest upon more misery than it now beholds.

"Know, then, that I was born of a noble family, though somewhat reduced in its circumstances, and no longer, as its ancestors had done in past times, dispensing the charities and performing the duties of large possessions. My early years, however, were spent with kind parents who had ample means of supporting and educating me. I had a brother much older than myself, to whom all the family looked up as endowed with commanding and various talents, capable of anything, as was the current expression of the house; but ruled by a fiery and ungovernable temper, which gave him, it was thought, little prospect of worldly success. He left us when I was but a boy, and he had reached man's estate; nor did we even discover which road he took, much less what were his future fortunes. One parent still survives; the other I have lost; she believed I had, like my brother, paid the debt of nature; and it is not one of my least afflictions that I shall never more be permitted to look upon her whom, of all human beings save one, I most constantly and warmly loved.

"You will perceive, from what I have said, that the choice of a profession was likely to be made for me, or by me, with a view to pressing as lightly as possible upon the family resources. I was destined for the bar; and it was the design of my father to save by practising the strictest economy as much as might suffice to purchase a judicial place in either the courts of Montpellier or of Toulouse; these offices being saleable by one of the ancient abuses of our government, an abuse the effects of which are so far mitigated by manners and the habits of society that it produces very few of the evils naturally to be apprehended from its manifestly mischievous tendency. In the course, however, of my preparatory studies for assuming the robe, I had been brought in contact with several ecclesiastics; and I had formed as great an intimacy with one of this body as could well be cemented between persons of ages so unequal. I was barely eighteen and he was turned of five-and-thirty.

"He was a friar of the Benedictine order, a man of profound learning, and of the most winning address; of a temper the most placid I have ever known, but of principles as fixed as his feelings were lofty; and, although singularly gifted with both a liberal judgment and a calm mind, yet from the perfect sincerity of his nature, and the powerful hold which his opinions had of his mind, as strongly touched with enthusiasm as was consistent with an intellect so vigorous and acute. Indeed, even in these early years, and while the sphere of my observation was still as limited as that of my experience, I used to remark with interest and curiosity the kind of conflict which his zeal maintained against his extraordinary sagacity; and to contrast the ease and the quickness of his perception when other men's errors were the subject of discussion, with the slowness he evinced to give up his own. I had been carefully educated by my excellent mother in the habit of consulting my reason on all subjects of dispute; and, although the dogmas and the mysteries of religion were excluded from the list, yet I could not believe that the peculiar tenets and observances of the cloister were reconcileable either with right reason or with the genuine spirit of the Christian revelation. To those tenets and observances, he without any reasoning clung. Such was Father Jerome. The vast superiority of his attainments, the large experience by which he was trained, the practice of disputation which had rendered him a consummate master of the logical art, above all his varied and accurate learning, placed me at a distance from him so immeasurable, that I by degrees, and without being sensible of it, became so entirely subjected to his influence, that my original habit of thinking for myself left me, and I seemed, not only to feel with his heart and yield to his understanding, but to see with his eyes, to have but one being and one soul with him. But I doubt if all his solid acquirements and real talents could have gained such a mastery over me at that age, when the most solid merits are far from making their due impression, had I not also been dazzled with his great knowledge of the world and of mankind, for I was to live in that world and not in the cloister. He had taken the vow after attaining a certain age, in consequence of a disappointment in love; and I have often since reflected on the nice discrimination of character and the profound and just remarks on manners which shone through his conversation, and which, though I might not at the time perceive their deep sense, I have since learnt fully to appreciate. For example, he would say, 'Observe the noblesse of our provinces, imitators of their caste in Paris, and, indeed, importing from thence much of the vice and frivolity with which they make our society corrupt and ridiculous. See the riddles which they present, but which may all be solved by selfishness. Most of our Counts and Barons pass their time in laying siege to the virtue of our countrywomen, and manifestly proceed upon the supposition that not one is impregnable to their stratagems and their assaults. Whom they cannot wear out by blockade, they think they can take by storm. Yet only mention to any man of them all that this Countess or that Marchioness has yielded to any one of their friends, and he will at once deny it, as if he were the lady's champion. And, why? Merely because every man is jealous of all others, even with regard to women whose virtue he never attempted. For if, without naming any particular person as successful, you give the lady the far worse character of promiscuous libertinage, M. le Comte will at once acquiesce.'

" 'Are the same things to be remarked in the women?' I have asked. 'No, not the same— but they have their paradox too, though they will eagerly lower everyone to their own standard, there being nothing so credulous of other women's frailties as those who are themselves frail. Yet as to the charms of others, you may always expect to find them extremely niggard of their admiration where real beauty or fascination exists, and abundantly apt to commend generously the plain and the unattractive.'

"Then he would comment on the folly of the world, as living, he would say, at cross purposes and in voluntary self-deception. 'See our great merchants giving their entertainments and their wives giving their assemblies at which no cost is spared, nor any pains to invite guests. They ask you as if the favour was done to them by your acceptance; yet they all the while have a feeling that they are obliging you, and their gratitude seems to be because you let yourself be laid under that obligation to them; perhaps, too, it is their thankfulness for having an opportunity of displaying their wealth; for certainly what is called hospitality very mainly consists in this; in saying inwardly, "See how much I can afford to spend;" and not seldom it is all false and hollow, and much more than can be afforded is spent to give colour to that vain trumpery boast.' He used to tell me of another class by no means in small numbers whom I should frequently meet in the world, persons who were always very reasonably expecting that men should give them credit for uniting in their own persons the most opposite and repugnant qualities. 'I have known,' he would say, 'libertines who were extremely offended if you supposed them tight-laced; and yet must needs desire to pass with men of probity, for leading strict and temperate lives. But if you should say that this is only a common kind of hypocrisy or double dealing, what say you to a class by no means rare in society, of persons who will insist upon having credit for the very conduct they never held, and the very qualities that don't belong to them? There is the Baron de l'Escaut, whose family came from Flanders, and who is narrow and saving even to meanness. Yet he is haunted with a love of ostentation that torments him unceasingly. While he is doing the very shabbiest things in the world, he will insist upon passing for a mighty lord, who cares nothing for expense, and is the munificent patron of all who approach him. He gave as a wedding present to his cousin an old carriage not worth repairing, and fit only to be broken up for firewood, and spoke of this bounty as if he had set the young man up with a span new equipage!'—I recollect once when Father Jerome was dwelling on this chapter of human folly, having remarked that it was not confined, apparently, to persons living in the great world, and pampered by the caprices they figured among, for I had remarked in one or two of our teachers a similar inconsistency. They would be extremely wroth if any one charged them with having written certain papers that were admired, but of somewhat free opinions on political matters, in the Montpellier Journal, and yet would be not a little ruffled if any one either ascribed them to other pens, or declared themselves incapable of propagating such doctrines, 'Aye, truly,' said the

Father, 'they remind one of Charles XII., who travelled incognito, and went to war with a German Prince for taking him to be what he pretended, and treating him as a Baron, not a King.' He added, however, more seriously, 'My good young man, never forget the lesson these men teach by their folly—it is to shun anonymous writing. It only exposes them, perhaps, to a little ridicule, if it does not also taint them with a little duplicity. But it is for a person of your abilities, and who are rising into a learned rank, the most dangerous of seductions, nourishing the worst of vices, the roots of all evil, the sappers of character.'—'And which,' I asked, 'be they?'—'Malice, falsehood, and cowardice,' was the reply.

"I have said enough to show how near an observer of men this friar was while yet in the world, and how little he had forgotten them when buried in the cloister. It was in minute particulars as in greater things, that his perspicacity was acute. Nothing seemed too small for his fine vision. 'You will find,' said he one day while I observed upon the form of a fellow-student's finger; 'you will find that nobody, no man at least, cares to have you look narrowly at his hands. I believe, from what

I have heard, that women are as scrupulous about having their feet examined unless when well covered.' It struck me at the time that this latter remark betokened a larger experience than I had given him credit for, but with the intuitive sagacity of his nature, and as if he had read what was passing within me, he added, 'Sister Ursula first made this remark to me upon her sex.'

"Such was Father Jerome, and so formed to captivate a novice as I was, yet more inexperienced in the ways of the world than in the forces which disturbed the paths of the planets. The fascination of his rare qualities and of his delightful manners was increased by the affection which he showed me. Precluded by his state, and by the cruel, unnatural law under which he lived, from all the endearments of a family, he seemed to regard me as his son; and I cannot well express the joy I felt when I found the object of my admiration and deep respect took a pleasure in my society, and even in consulting me, whose mind his instructions had formed and trained. There is a delight not easy to describe conveyed to a youth escaped from the season of careless boyhood and from its thraldom, when, touching upon man's estate but of a doubtful title to its privileges, he finds himself cherished as a friend by one much older, and who admits him to a footing of equality like a man. Ambition may have some part in this feeling; vanity, thus gratified, has more; and with this is mingled the leaning upon the superior mind for protection. All these things enter largely into the love of woman for our sex. The homage we pay them, though their masters in strength and in understanding, soothes them, and they look up to us for defence; they lean upon us for counsel and guidance. The ardent love which they often feel for men much older than themselves, and of comparatively feeble personal attractions, is only to be explained by these sentiments, in which all love mainly originates.

"I never shall forget the exultation which filled my mind when, after having for two years set him before me as the object of unceasing admiration, I found that he entertained for me feelings of friendship and confidence. These he had not before shown, apprehensive that favouritism might be imputed to him by the five or six other pupils who were with me pursuing their studies at the same convent. It was one evening, while taking our accustomed walk in the beautiful garden of the House, where, under a fine lime-walk, we sat down upon a bench, and he went on to descant upon the extraordinary provisions by which the stability of the solar system is secured, referring to the chain of demonstration by which he had shown in his lectures that the mutual actions of the heavenly bodies upon each other, while they prevent their motions from being ever continued in one orbit, yet also set limits to their deviations from the elliptical path. He perceived my eye glisten with the feeling of rapture which such proofs of divine power and skill naturally excite, and, seizing my hand, he said, 'I know, and have long known, you to be superior to my other pupils. You are cast in another mould. You inspire me with a confidence which springs from congenial character; and I regard you more as a friend than a pupil.' When he spoke of confidence, it was not that he had any secrets to disclose either as to his conduct or his opinions. That was pure and blameless; these were strictly orthodox; nor did his devotion to human science ever lead him away from his religious pursuits, much less interfere with the submissive deference wherewithal he bowed in all things to the decisions of an infallible church. If he did not, with the commentators on Newton, affect to disbelieve the true doctrine of astronomy; if with Galileo, rising from a recantation of his heterodoxy, he firmly exclaimed, 'e pur si muove!'—he yet meditated much with the holy men of Galilee on divine things, and could easily reconcile the implicit belief of revelation with the discoveries of science which the Divine Author of that revelation has graciously enabled his creatures to make by the faculties he has bestowed on them. But by 'confidence,' he meant that he could share with me his feelings, communicate his opinions, and discuss the numberless little points of dispute which arise among the members of a monastery; few of whom had anything like his enlargement of views, and none of whom possessed his modest, amiable, humble disposition. To be thus treated by such a man as his equal, filled me with joy and pride; it was the gratification of all the ambition I had ever felt; and I never looked forward to the honours of my destined profession as capable of raising me more in my own estimation than did the friendship and the confidence of Father Jerome.

"A year glided away in this delightful intercourse; but it was a year not wholly devoted to studies that might prepare me for the courts of Toulouse and Montpellier. I enjoyed the purest gratification in the continued society of my accomplished teacher; and my studious attention to the lessons he taught was only exceeded by my devotion to his authority. I found, however, that my father was alarmed at the small portion of my time which was given to jurisprudence; and perceiving the ascendant which Father Jerome had gained over me, and the pride I took in his friendship, he one day seriously warned me against imbibing a taste for the monastic life. My mother joined in the same entreaties, with that greater gentleness and more fond affection which armed every word of hers with irresistible force. Alas! the deed was done; the taste already imbibed! Though the friar had never spoken one word to me on the subject, nay, rather had received with a repulsive coldness my advances to proselytism, I yet had become enamoured of the tranquil life he led, the sublime studies which I saw he pursued in his convent; and I could little bear the vulgar contention of the courts which I occasionally had witnessed, with all the more disrelish that they were petty, provincial tribunals. I could still less endure the thoughts of being separated from my guide and friend, being severed by a great distance from his fixed residence, and being thrown among strangers, towards whom I felt neither affection nor admiration. It was not long before he discovered the bent of my inclinations; nor did he fail to combat it. He honestly and strongly opened to me all the evils of monastic life; the jealousies and heartburnings of the monks; the rigour of their discipline; the tyranny, often the caprice of the superior; above all, the unnatural subjugation of our strongest passions, and the yet more dreadful restraint of our most powerful and most innocent feelings, which the inflexible severity of the vow imposes. With delicacy he alluded to my naturally ardent temperament, and more plainly hinted at the strength of my affections, that bore their due proportion to the constitution of my bodily frame; and he never failed to set before me the one prevailing motto:—'Whoso enters the cloister seals his fate for ever in this world, leaving himself no return from his voluntary grave!' But though his honest nature led him thus far, and to the very edge of his duty, his vow to further the interests of his order would not suffer him to go one step beyond it; and most brethren, in his situation, would rather have removed than raised any obstacles to my becoming a novice. His pains were taken only in setting fairly before me the consequences of the step I was bent on taking; and this he did with all the force of his persuasive eloquence. But all was in vain. I was too young to take prospective views, to cast my look forward into the dark future; too ardent to see difficulties, or weigh the sober lessons of experience. I saw of a convent only its quiet chambers, its noble library, its green and shady walks; saw of its inmates only the studious habits, the contemplative life, the pious devotion to religious duties, the tranquil existence, withdrawn from all worldly bustle, and consecrated to kindly charity, or to learned ease. With these prepossessions powerfully co-operated my fervent attachment to Father Jerome, and my repugnance to any change that should separate me from his guidance, and sever the ties of friendship which had insensibly been formed and had knit me to the brethren of the convent.

"A few months of earnest entreaty, and a conviction that resistance to the bent of my inclination must prove vain, coupled perhaps with some religious feeling on the subject, overcame the reluctance of my parents, and I entered upon my noviciate. The year which this requires was the happiest of my whole life; nor can anything be more groundless than the notion that in cases of voluntary entering upon the monastic state, a trial is thus made of the devotee's taste for it. That taste is far more likely to be confirmed than weakened by the probation. Accordingly the Council of Trent required that each female novice should, before being allowed to take the veil, leave the convent for some time, after her probationary year has expired, and, at her own home, be examined by her parents and by the bishop as to her fitness and her disposition for the holy state of the Saviour's wedded spouse. My year expired with a great increase of my resolution; and I finally was received and made my vows.

"I suppose no one, except perhaps he belonged to the class of the common people, who become members of the smaller orders for a lazy subsistence, and whose minds are little struck with the ceremonial of their reception, will ever forget that awful proceeding. Every particular of it remains deeply engraven on my memory after the lapse of many years; and, fully as I had been prepared for it, and entirely as my mind went along with the step I was taking, an involuntary shudder came over me as I was slowly and solemnly consigned to a living tomb. Though I had several times been present at the same ceremony in the case of others, the sensations which I experienced in my own were such as I never had been at all prepared to expect; they gave a bias to my mind which afterwards did not fail to produce the most powerful and the most unhappy effects; indeed I question if I should not have drawn back and recanted my resolution had I distinctly foreseen what I was to feel; as I suppose men have committed suicide, repenting of it after the fatal draught was swallowed which the instant before they had eagerly commended to their lips. Certain it is that my firm grasp of the chalice relaxed suddenly, and I was all but ready to dash it on the ground.

"The ceremonial of reception is abundantly calculated to impress the mind of the neophyte; and on some, to help in producing the consternation which I felt on first feeling that I had been irrevocably entombed, when just entering on man's estate. High mass succeeds to the magnificent air of Adeste Fidelis, which fills the vaulted roofs, now thundering and now warbling—solemn or delightful. The novice experiences, far more awfully than before, a feeling that the daily recurrence of the Mass had deadened the actual presence of the Deity himself, in the temple made with hands; for it seems as if the Godhead had descended to witness and to seal the vows, ready to avenge a breach of the covenant made with the Almighty Father. This is the prevailing idea that fills the mind throughout the ceremony; and more especially as the Host is raised with numberless bells to fix the attention upon the awful symbol now become a real presence; but the choirs of sweet and powerful voices which thrill the senses, the chant of the well-selected Scriptures and prayers, the full organ interposing from time to time, the multitude of tapers diffusing their dim religious light over the splendid vestments of the ministers, the devout obeisances of these, comporting themselves as actually before the Divine Majesty—all fill the mind with feelings far removed from earthly things. The exhortation, addressed partly to the novice, partly to the auditory, would perhaps make less impression than any other part of the ceremony, except that it comes immediately before the terrible vow. The time for that was now come; I pronounced the vow, and as the sacred vestment was thrown over me, with the words 'God put on thee the new man with this garment! God put off from thee the old man with all his errors!' a cold sweat broke over my brow; the tapers burnt pale; a confused noise filled my ear; I stood before God, and in that awful presence, I vowed to sever myself from the world, and in the midst of life to be in death. The dreadful comminations were then pronounced by the Bishop, 'Whoso breaketh his vow, vowed to God, whether in act, or word, or thought, let him be Anathema Maranatha! accursed for ever and ever; he is guilty of the sin against the Holy Ghost, never, never to be forgiven.'—The sacred music now once more pealed through the roofs of the chapel an anthem of joy on the victory achieved over human infirmity, or human reason.

"The kindness of my brethren, and above all of Father Jerome, soon awoke me from a trance in which I scarcely seemed to breathe. The terrible ideas that had filled my mind, and given me the feeling of being buried alive, were necessarily short-lived, as all exaggerations are; for they rested on an imagination, on a metaphor; and I soon felt that I was still in the world of living creatures, though cut off from so much that makes it worth inhabiting.

"My hours glided smoothly and silently along for some months after my reception. The novelty of the duties I had now to perform, and the interest I took in the affairs of the house, served to excite me and to fill my mind; while the studies which occupied my time made the day pass without weariness. The society of the friars, with most of whom I was well acquainted, and who were generally well informed, and some of them sensible men, was far from unpleasing; the abbot was uniformly kind and condescending; and above all I enjoyed, without restraint and in the fullest measure, that intercourse with my beloved Father Jerome, which to me was ever the greatest relish I was capable of tasting. Far from becoming less the object of admiration upon a close intimacy, like so may shining men, especially men who call in the arts of the actor to support their position, and set off their abilities and acquirements, I might truly say that at a greater distance I had not known his extraordinary endowments; and that the angelic sweetness of his disposition could only be appreciated by a long and a constant intercourse, which proved how impossible it was for anything to ruffle his temper. On his part he cultivated my friendship more than ever, now that we were brethren of the same order, and that he no longer could excite jealousy by bestowing on me any marks of his confidence and esteem. He had no greater pleasure than to consult me upon his literary pursuits, to show me his writings, to plan with me other undertakings. Sometimes he would discuss the State affairs which occasionally occupied men's minds even in the remotest provinces, when the loss of our North American colony, and the defeat of our fleets, had given to the House of Bourbon the first blow it received since the latter days of Louis XIV. His far-seeing intellect, as it pierced the walls of his cloister, penetrated also the clouds which veil futurity from our eyes; and much of the ferment now raging in different parts of this country was foreseen by his perspicacity, which could well compare the past with the present, gleaning from the history of other times lessons of wisdom applicable to our own. Inexperienced as I was, and knowing men from books alone, upon his sayings I hung as on the voice of an oracle, while he delivered his opinions with a modesty only equalled by their calmness and sound observation, and with a suavity that I never have since known in another; and explained difficulties with a clearness that seemed to leave nothing unsolved.

"Our reading and discussions were not confined to science, or even to history; through the realms of fancy we made frequent excursions; and from him I imbibed the taste both for the poets of Italy and of our own country, which has been one of the few solaces of many weary, painful hours in less happy times. Above all, he inculcated in me the duty of appreciating the awful Florentine; bade me note the manly energy, the self-denying conciseness of expression, the scorn of yoking to his chariot a number of epithets, like those who drive a substantive and six adjectives, beside adverbs as outriders; the confining of his efforts to careful selection of the best expressions, and leaving all the rest out together; the just and dignified confidence in the force of a single phrase, and disdain of making his impression by a repetition of little blows; qualities which we in vain seek in any other modern, and only find, perhaps, in two among the great masters of ancient diction, Demosthenes and Lucretius. He would then make me contrast Dante with the other masters of song, and mark their invariable inferiority. 'See,' he was wont to say, 'this poet, not satisfied with one metaphor, but he must give you a cluster, as if a constellation would ever shine bright like a planet; or that other, who, to describe an object, makes a catalogue, an inventory of all its parts, like an auctioneer or valuer, instead of seizing on the bold and leading features, bringing them out and casting the rest into the shade; while in one respect they seem all to agree; and it is the powerful contrast with the divine genius of Italy: though they often do hit upon the right word, they have in their search found so many others of some value, that they must needs make a setting of these round the jewel itself.'

"Once, I said when this critique was going on, 'Don't you rather show some lenity to them by allowing they find a jewel and make a setting for it?'—'Yes,' he said, 'indeed I do; rather they resemble sempstresses, who having cut out a flower, must needs gather up the parings and make a vile patchwork round it. But

Non ragionam di lor', ma guarda e passa.'

"When I would object to the plan and the epic of the Divina Commedia, sometimes comparing it with the Iliad, sometimes with the Odyssey (to which merely superficial readers have found more resemblance), he freely admitted its great defects; confessing that story there is none, nor hardly anything that can be called the action or the speaking of persons in their proper character; and admitting that an immeasurably inferior artist, Tasso, has far more pretension to epic powers, and that even Petrarch more successfully attains his object; that, however, being only the very humble one of a fine sonnetteer; a power showing inexhaustible fertility of resource in ringing the changes numberless times on two or three ideas. But of Dante, he naturally lauded the wondrous power also of felicitous imagination, not always restrained by severe taste; the endless gallery of striking pictures through which he leads us; the extraordinary learning he displays; and the profound metaphysical attributes, above all, of the Paradise. Nor can anything be more perfect than both his descriptions of nature with a blow, as in the doves (con l'ale aperte e ferme); or of sentiment, as in the Pia; or of moral feelings, as in the evening scene (Era già l'ora); or of horrible emotions, as in the Ugolino; or of both pain and pleasure combined, as in the Maestro Adamo. However, he recurred to the marvellous diction and the dignified self-restraint in its use, as offering the most striking contrast with other, and above all, with modern artists. He said, he understood there was an English poet who, in many passages, came near him: but he could only judge by a literal translation. One description he had seen impressed him with a very high notion of that poet's power. It was a picture of death, exceedingly sublime, and which, from first to last, raised in the mind no image of a skeleton, as all others did on the same subject, but left every thing vague, shadowy, shrouded in unutterable horror. 'Such things are,' he would say, 'worthy of Dante himself. And yet I doubt if his picturesque genius would have avoided the skeleton.' He would extend his criticism, just though severe, even to our masters, the ancients; few of whom he would allow faultless. For example, Tacitus he could little endure; though he would admit his merit of deep observation, and even his peculiar and sometimes expressive conciseness: as when he puts in two words the idea given in four by Sallust (whom he liked far less, and was prejudiced against for his libel on Cicero), the one saying "alieni cupidus; sui profusus;" the other saying "alieni prodigus." But a style so unnatural, so studded with conceits, often puerile, he little valued; and would, at times, make merry by comparing it with what he called the short-hand writer, Florus. Of all Latin prose, he most relished Livy; the least trustworthy, however, of historians: and of all Greek, Thucydides, and the Halicarnassian; Polybius, of course, the least, notwithstanding his honesty. But in Demosthenes he found every merit; the finest declamation, the most lucid statement, the most perfect narrative, the most thundering appeals to reason by sudden juxtaposition, graphic allusions to facts, vivid exposure of inconsistency, marvellous comparisons, and resemblances, and analogies (rapprochemens); only, he denied that a sustained argumentation, a logical train of reasoning, was to be found in that first of masters, nor did he conceive that the levity of an Athenian audience would have borne it. How often has he built castles in the air, and fancied us wandering in Attica: and after rowing over the Ilyssus, 'going down,' like Plato, 'to the Piræus,' visiting the glories of the Parthenon, then placing ourselves on the steps of the Ecclesia, in front of the Bema, and fancying that by the wonderful formation of that building, we heard even at a distance the voice of him who thundered over Greece, wielded at will the fierce democracy, and made the throne of the tyrant to shake. This, and the examination of the Plain of Troy, often was the subject of our waking dreams; not that, all full as he was of admiration for Homer, he much fancied that any traces of the poet's pictures could be found on the ground, or in the ruins, or that he ever had professed to describe real existence in one respect, while in all others he was purely the maker of fiction.

"But on no subject did he more love to descant, and on none was he more interesting, than on one which came close to his own sacred profession, the great topic of Pulpit Eloquence. Here he was peculiarly at home; and here Massillon, the great Bishop of Clermont, was his Demosthenes; but also he would compare him to Dante, for the power which he has of finishing a topic with a blow. I recollect his remarking how singular it is, that the most celebrated passage in all this great preacher's discourses, that of the Judgment, in the 'Petit nombre des Elus,' is imperfectly given in the book itself, and only to be found correct in a place you would the last search for it—Voltaire. He has preserved this magnificent trophy of true eloquence; the ordinary edition makes the preacher only say, 'Are you sure half here present would then (were Christ suddenly to appear as our Judge) be found among the saved? Are you sure that ten would be found?' But Voltaire's edition nobly adds, 'Would there a single one be found?' ('En trouveroit-il un seul?') It was upon this exclamation that the audience rose up in horror and dismay. I asked if he considered this as the finest passage in Massillon? He said 'No—The first four words of his funeral sermon on Louis le Grand beat every thing; this is the noblest, the most sublime, the most simple of all the feats of eloquence. "God only is great, my brethren"—("Dieu seul est grand, mes freres") words which every people can receive, because every tongue can render them alike. But it is grievous to find the sentence not, as it should have done, stop there. It goes on, "Et dans les derniers momens, surtout, où il preside à la mort des Rois de la terre."—The body of Louis then lying dead before the people, surely, when the great preacher stretched forth his hands, and with a voice as of one sent from above to improve this solemn occasion, proclaimed the King Eternal, Immortal, Invisible, the only living God; surely, to add his presiding at the death of kings, as if to evince his superiority, was somewhat needless. It was like the addition which Tasso makes to the noble simile of the lion in Dante's Sordello: "A guisa di leon quando si posa;" whereunto Tasso is pleased to subjoin, in kind compassion to the reader, for fear he should not comprehend the matter,

"Girando gli occhi e non movendo il passo."

'Surely,' added Father Jerome, 'Massillon must have for the moment been transformed into Bossuet, to make an addition which himself could no more have made than Bossuet was capable of the sublime opening.' I found Bossuet's unctuous style, his sugar sweet (doucereux) sentences, his overdone feeling, when he is touched with nothings, and calls upon his hearers, but calls in vain, to be touched too, was no great favourite of my acute friend, who, however, exceedingly admired his justly celebrated 'Discours' (on Universal History) both for its learning, its philosophy, and its composition. Bourdaloue he revered as the father of pulpit eloquence, and, contrary to common opinion, regarded him as the model on which Massillon must, after the ancient masters of speech, have formed himself.

"In these discussions and these day-dreams our hours were passed, when not engaged in the duties of the house, or in visiting the poor of the neighbourhood, and ministering to their wants; a duty which Father Jerome held the most sacred, and from the discharge of which his compassionate nature derived the purest gratification.

"Thus glided our monotonous and peaceful life. Among the fraternity, there were few indeed whom I did not esteem greatly; one only for whom I felt any thing like aversion. Father Ambrose was of a noble family, in high favour at Court; and through that influence, and his own merits, which were of a high order, he aspired to succeed the ancient abbot now at our head—Father Jerome, who by universal consent must have been their choice, having always openly declared that nothing should induce him to accept the abbacy. The faculties of Ambrose were great: his learning extensive in the branch to which with ambitious views he devoted himself,—theology and the scholastic science generally. His spirit was daring; his art profound; his resources inexhaustible. Wholly unscrupulous in the choice of his means; as wholly unbridled in the selection of his purposes; of the deepest dissimulation; of the most malignant soul when any one crossed his path; of fiery passions, which nevertheless he kept in habitual subjection to his strong will, and his firm purpose,—he seemed to revive in the eighteenth century the character of the priests who ruled the destinies of the fifteenth; and to have all the genius and all the ambition, which after raising the possessor of the one, and victim of the other, to the head of a monastery, could elevate him to the custody of the keys, could encircle his head with the triple crown, and make the 'servant of servants' a ruler over the princes and potentates of the Western World. This man had early conceived a jealousy of me, from observing that I became a favourite with the brethren, and also from perceiving that I did not pay him court; for Father Jerome, the god of my idolatry, had an unconquerable dislike to him, grounded on his perfect distrust of so designing a person, and his repugnance for one whom he knew to be perfectly unamiable; and in this feeling I easily became a sharer. Occasions frequently arose to prove how little I esteemed him, and opportunities were not wanting to show on his part a return with ample interest of the same sentiments. A trifling circumstance added to the aversion with which I viewed him; he bore a likeness to Father Jerome, so striking that I have over and over again, on seeing him at the end of our arcades or lime walks, hastened to meet him, and embrace him, my heart overflowing with affection, when I suddenly on approaching perceived by the sardonic smile on his fine and expressive, but unamiable countenance, that he both had divined my mistake, and was sensible of the feelings which I experienced on being undeceived. It was surmised by some, and among others, even by the kind and charitable Father Jerome, that Ambrose was not that one of the brethren who kept his sensual propensities under the most entire control; and rumours gained credit of his impetuous nature having broken out in the course of the charitable visits which he made to objects of the monastery's benevolent care.

"We had another brother in our convent, whom I did not much like, although certainly I had not the same aversion for him as for Ambrose. But though he was not wicked, and had great abilities, especially a lively and entertaining fancy, yet I never could either place any confidence in him, or take much pleasure in his somewhat amusing society. He was an Irishman by extraction, indeed by birth, having come over to our convent when grown up to the age of sixteen; he was called O'Halloran, of a small gentleman's family, in middling circumstances, though proud of tracing back their lineage to some obscure and local barbarous chiefs, whom they were pleased to call Ancient Kings of Ireland, and of whom I do suppose there may have been scores at a time. He was not a man who would deliberately lie, or wilfully engage in a fraud; yet it was impossible to place the least reliance on his account of any person or any thing, partly because he suffered his memory to be ever warped by his imagination, now obscuring it, now creating materials for its exercise, and partly too from a vile habit he had, and which really seemed a second nature, of looking in his narratives always to the effect they might produce; so that he would paint a transaction or a person in colours purely fantastic to give amusement to the hearer, or he would mould his statements so as precisely to suit the purpose of the moment in furthering any object he had in view. Father O'Halloran, or Pierre, as he was called, was well natured, too, but more from a joyousness of spirit and a warmth of temperament than from good disposition. A very surprising part of his character, or his temper, was the thin partition that divided his mirth and good humour from his anger: he never gave warning of a quarrel, partly from fear, partly from good humour; and you found he had passed the line and a rupture had taken place before you had the least suspicion of it. So far he was amiable that he loved to give pleasure and would go a good deal out of his way and also out of the way of truth rather than give pain. His spirits were exuberant, and he pretty indiscriminately laughed and made laugh with all. His nerves were very far from being as stout as he affected: he would bravado and bluster when there was little danger, and he always knew exactly the person with whom he could venture to behold and stout: he was anything rather than a firm-minded man. He was abundantly selfish too, always had an eye to his own interest; and, though his volatile nature kept him from very steadily pursuing it, and his habitual imprudence made him often fail of success, his defeat was never the result of indifference to the end, or of any great scrupulousness about the means. In his demeanour he was more than civil; he was subservient and fawning, partly from good humour, but partly too on calculation. His judgment was bad, with all his acuteness; you could not trust his decisions any more than his narratives. But after all it was this latter quality that mainly created my dislike for him and that of Father Jerome, who hardly had more aversion for Father Ambrose himself. He used to say that it appeared to him as if O'Halloran did not know the difference between truth and falsehood; as if some organ was wanting in him which other men had; and he would give this Irishman as an example of a remark he had made very generally, that there are no people more credulous of falsehood than those who themselves deal little in truth; as if a secret consciousness that they might have occasion for quarter from other breakers of the great moral law induced them to give help and credence to their neighbour in his need. With this brother you will readily believe I cultivated little acquaintance and no friendship. He had little solid or accurate learning; a rubbish of history and theology in his head, ill assorted and no wise arranged; but no information that could help his own views or win the confidence of others. Its sad characteristic was want of accuracy in the groundwork, of care in the superstructure, and of discretion in the application. Thus, of all the teaching brethren, he had the least success. Nothing could exceed the confidence he shewed in the task of instruction he undertook; nothing could exceed the pains he took to gain his pupil's favour. But his scholars made little or no progress, and he failed even to ensure, with all his chase of popularity, as much favour among them as others of harsh and distant, and even severe, manners obtained. His pupils had quite as little respect for him as his brethren."

CHAPTER IV.

THE CONVERT.

"Father Ambrose and Father O'Halloran, such as I have described them, formed really the only exceptions of any importance to my esteem for the brotherhood of St. Benedict. Many were inferior in amiable qualities to Jerome; all were of very far lower talents and accomplishments; and in the union of a pure angelic character, both in sweetness of disposition and sterling goodness of heart, with the rarest faculties of the understanding, none could be named as belonging to the same species. But excepting Father O'Halloran, there were none for whom I had a contempt, and excepting Ambrose, none were positively hateful, and even his character was not of a disagreeable, though it might be of a vicious, cast.

"Time accordingly wore on smoothly in the studies, the duties, and the occupations of the place.

But time also was working some change in the temperament of a youth only just arrived at man's estate, whose passions had been suppressed and whose feelings had been trained by the rigour of the monastic rule. Religion and its observances, even the religion of the Romish Church, and even of the regular clergy of that church, though impressive at the first, and well fitted to fill the mind, was not of power sufficient, especially when some time had passed away, entirely to absorb its faculties and to deaden all other feelings. A cloud of ignorance rather than of mystery would sometimes spread over the mind, and prevent it from clearly comprehending what was taught and what was believed. A reluctance would sometimes affect the mind, and weaning it from sacred things, as these had formerly weaned it from the world, would make the total abstraction from the visible world hard, the entire absorption in things unseen impossible. A doubt would sometimes steal into the mind, and beget notions that Providence which endowed men with faculties for active, and feelings for social intercourse, never could have designed any part of the species to vegetate in absolute indolence, and to sheathe their hearts against all the influences of the tender passions.

The struggles which thus arose within me, it would be difficult to describe. A war was waged with the awful sense of religious obligation which my solemn vows had completed, my pious education having begun it. Against that deep sense of duty were leagued the strength of my understanding, the passions of my frame, the feelings of my heart. In this conflict it was vain to consult any one of my brethren; even Father Jerome forbade the subject; and though he wept as he marked the agony I was enduring, with his accustomed delicacy he never even reminded me of the warnings he had given, and in spite of which I had persisted in embracing the monastic life.

"A younger brother of the order, having discovered by some chance remark the state of my mind, was the first to break silence with me upon the subject that now engaged all my waking thoughts, and forbade me at night to taste repose. He had entered the convent more in compliance with the wishes of his family, who hoped thus to obtain for him an abbacy, than from any opinions which he had formed, or any religious impressions to which he was subject. He was a fine young man, of noble mien, good abilities, strong passions, warm feelings.

and no fixed principles; by no means profligate in his notions, entirely void of guile, of an amiable disposition, and much attached to me from similarity of age, and from a likeness which he very erroneously supposed to exist in the circumstances of our situation. He had for some time begun to feel the restraints of the order more than he could well endure; and though he was fully aware that no escape from them was possible, he yet was anxious to open an unreserved communication with a fellow-sufferer, as he supposed me to be, and he was not very slow, or very nice, in finding an opportunity of unveiling his heart to me. Though fond of his society, which was amusing and agreeable, I at once repressed all such confidence, and no further disclosure was made to me, until the force of restrained passion produced its usual effect, and my comrade was soon stretched upon a bed of sickness, to which he summoned me that I might minister to his consolation. When I had given him such advice and such comfort as I could render, he gently squeezed my hand, and declared to me that my refusal to receive his confidence, and let him unburthen his mind, had been the main cause of his present severe indisposition. All further severity on my part now became impossible; it would indeed have been misplaced; and in the hope of ministering to his relief, I listened to all his complaints against the monastic rule—complaints which were one continued and mournful echo to the feelings that had for some time been secretly preying upon me, and seemed to gnaw my very heart. Discussion of every subject was the inevitable consequence; we partook of each other's sentiments; we began to take up strange unlawful opinions, to form strange unlawful wishes; and this interesting youth's recovery being much promoted by the relief which my society afforded him, he once more assumed his place in our fraternity; and our intimacy being perceived, was marked by Father Ambrose. My friend became an object of his especial suspicion and dislike, almost equally with myself.

"Father Isidore (that was his name), though not much older than myself, was much more practised in the ways of the world; and he planned for me, I verily believe with the purest wishes for my good, a scheme by which he hoped to effect my emancipation from the thraldom I still laboured under. He introduced me to a cousin of his own, whose health was feeble, whom he loved as a sister.

and who he believed would receive comfort from my ministrations. I am quite certain that he had no bad designs in this proceeding; and that, could he have foreseen how far beyond the interest taken in a penitent my attentions would go, he would at once have put a stop to our intimacy. But long before he could perceive this, long indeed before it was known to myself, the most tender feelings of our nature had been engaged, while I only imagined that I was fulfilling a religious duty, and occupying agreeably and with perfect innocence, a few spare hours of my time. The virtue, as well as the accomplishments of Mdlle. Louise Orange were unquestionable. Her family was of the first respectability. She was visited occasionally by Father Jerome, who ministered to her, when unable to attend the convent mass; and though he abstained from female society, however agreeable, upon a principle of avoiding temptation, he yet now and then saw her for half an hour at a time, holding her to be one of the most interesting and accomplished persons in Avignon. She was a creature of bewitching manners, and of a beauty far more attractive than the greatest regularity of feature, or brilliancy of colouring, or grace of form, can ever become; for her beauty was of the understanding, and her expression was as varied as powerful. It was almost impossible to see, and quite impossible to hear her unmoved; and to be fascinated was only to have a perception of what is most lovely and most striking in woman. After struggling with my feelings for weeks, after restless days and sleepless nights, after hearing all Father Jerome's warnings, enduring all Father Isidore's jibes, suffering all my own reproaches, more terrible than any that could come from without, I, at length, was compelled to commune with myself, and confess to myself, that I had become desperately enamoured of this matchless person, and had all but broken my solemn vow in thought—all but transgressed in my heart.

"Whence comes it to pass that things which at a distance seem so formidable, instead of becoming still more frightful as we approach near, are almost divested of their terrors and cease to dismay? Is it that we have conjured up ideas more terrific than the reality? Is it that we have exhausted our stock of fear and horror on the terrific prospect, on the fancied evil, so as to have none left for the thing itself? Or, is it that the mind is still under the influence of the feelings which have betrayed it, and views through the medium of those feelings the peril they have made us encounter—the mischief they have drawn down upon our heads?—I know not; but of this I am sure, that I had no sooner made to myself the confession of my fall from grace, than I felt as if a weight was removed from my heart, and as if my emancipation was finally effected. It is true, that had I instantly resorted to Father Jerome, he would at once have opened my eyes to the risks of my position, to the destruction which yawned on all sides of me. One interview with him, one sentence of his firm but sweet voice, one embrace, folding me to his affectionate heart; and all the fascination of Louise would have become powerless, all my own weakness in yielding to it would have been revealed, and my disease would at once have been cured. But alas! it was part of that weakness, of that disease, to prevent me from approaching the subject with my most loved and revered friend. I carefully avoided every thing which led to it. Father Jerome stood aloof on the shore, ignorant of the struggle in which I was plunged; and my destruction was completed, before he knew that I had been assailed. It was not so with Father Isidore; but he loved me so tenderly, and shared so entirely in all my doubts and difficulties, and himself felt so strongly all the influences under which I was falling, that anything rather than remonstrance was to be expected from him.

"The giddy, intoxicated state of my mind for some time chased away all the ideas that would naturally have haunted me. I ventured not, indeed, to whisper love in the ear of her whose slave I had become; yet I saw the delight she took in my society, and I gradually accustomed her to hear from my lips expressions of interest in her lot, nay vows of tender friendship, which a little reflection would have shown to be utterly irreconcileable with the vows I had made to heaven. Possibly my friendship for her kinsman, who lived with her family as a brother, tended to blind her, and prevent her from perceiving how full of hazard was the situation she approached, until she had actually got entangled in all its inextricable difficulties. An accidental circumstance, the reading together of a poem in which both took deep interest, at once removed the veil from her eyes—she heard me declare that could she but love me, my whole soul was devoted to her—she trembled from head to foot—she fell down on the book now closed—with a deep sigh she exclaimed 'Oh, God! Oh, God! I love you too well!'—and I became at once the most delighted and the most wretched of mortals!

"Whoever has long sighed in secret for the heart of a lovely being, to whom he never durst disclose the hidden flame that was smouldering under a cold exterior, and consuming him night and day, will comprehend the terror with which I ventured to disclose my secret, and the anxiety with which I stifled my breath during the interval of a moment that seemed an age between that avowal and her answer. Whoever has heard the sweetest of all music that can reach the impatient and greedy ear, will comprehend the state of ecstasy in which the artless expression of fervent passion that burst from her, as if she had felt my delay had been too long to tell the secret in which she took so deep an interest. But ours, alas, was not an innocent love. In me it was apostacy, it was perjury, it was flying in the face of that Divine Being, who had in his own awful person witnessed the vows voluntarily and deliberately made, vows to fly in the face of that nature which the same Being had created, to outrage all the strongest feelings which he had graciously implanted in the heart. If such rebellion was a crime in me, she who knew of my allegiance became my accomplice and shared my guilt. But all this was not felt at first. We were for the moment plunged in a trance of delight, and each only knew that the other and none else existed in the world.

"The rapture of this short interview, however, was succeeded, and quickly succeeded, by the fears and the pangs appropriate to our several situations. I can speak of myself only; and I immediately was, like our first parents after their fall, conscious of my nakedness, convinced that other eyes than mine saw it, above all that it was glared upon by the all-seeing eye and by the delegated vigilance of His appointed ministers. I durst not pray that day! I durst not enter the chapel where I had knelt to make my vow, now shivered to atoms; The bell tolled for mass; I durst not attend! The bare idea of again seeing the Host elevated, and standing once more in the presence against which I had revolted filled me with unutterable dismay. Adding falsehood to my other sins, I feigned sickness, and remained in my cell. Nor durst I next day see Father Jerome, who I could not help thinking must perceive the dreadful change which a day had wrought in me. But not only he, every one that passed seemed to be regarding me with suspicion, some with horror, and Father Ambrose with the exultation of a fiend-like nature gratified by my fall. Father Isidore alone seemed to remain with whom I feared not to converse, and in him I found all the consolation of which my situation was susceptible. He even rejoiced in the change that had come over me. His own mind was now pretty well made up that monastic vows are unlawful in the sight of God, and his scepticism had extended much further than he cared, or perhaps dared, to let me know. For the present he was satisfied with raising sundry doubts in my mind, open to receive them by the bias which a powerful interest gave to find them well founded; and, proceeding upon the principle that men easily believe what they wish to be true, he kept by me during my state of distraction without ceasing to comfort and to seduce me, and helped me to avoid Father Jerome, whose eye, mild but piercing, I durst not meet. It was thus that a person of very inferior intellectual powers to my own, and of attainments much less ample, obtained an easy ascendancy over me, aided as his assaults were by the enemy within, ready to fling open the gates and make the garrison surrender.

"By degrees my mind became tolerably calm. Father Jerome frequently walked with me. The first time I met him was in the dusk, when I could escape his eye; and his manner, kinder than ever, in consequence of my supposed illness, put to flight the notion that he was aware of my state. Our intercourse was renewed, and I even ventured to hope that I might one day prevail upon him to discuss some of Isidore's doctrines, though I secretly felt a fear of beginning the conversation, not so much lest he should forbid the subject, as lest he should put to the rout the sophisms on which I feared, perhaps felt, I had been feeding. But that which most relieved me, and best soothed my distracted mind, though it all the while added fresh fuel to the fire that kept devouring me, was the intercourse which I continued to have with her whom I now dared to call my Louise. Isidore lent himself to this intercourse, from which with the impetuosity of his age and his nature he hoped to discover the means of accomplishing his favourite purpose, our escaping from the monastery, abandoning our faith as well as our profession, and quitting for ever a country which, after such an enormity, we no longer could be suffered to inhabit. With me he had as yet confined his disputations to questioning the lawfulness of vows by persons of either sex, and consequently the whole monastic system. But it was easy to see that this led necessarily to a general investigation of the grounds of our Catholic persuasion; and the terror I lived under at having made a vow to the Deity which I was prepared to break, easily opened my mind to those irresistible arguments by which it is shown to absolute demonstration that we have much better proofs, and of the self-same kind, against the transmutation of the sacramental elements, namely the evidence of our senses, than we have of the Saviour having left a record of his authority for daily performing this miracle. He had easily made me a convert to the position that the church never could be right in making Marriage one of its sacraments, and yet excluding from partaking in it the whole body of its ministers, while it only gave half the other and holier sacrament to the lay people. He now presented to my mind the argument of the Protestants against the Real Presence; and it seemed to have a force yet more irresistible. The road to conviction and conversion was in both instances smoothed by my interests and my feelings. The one doctrine allayed my greatest apprehensions.

the other gratified my strongest feelings. Fear secured the triumph of the one argument, love that of the other.

"Meanwhile my nature, fiery and impetuous, was reasserting its rights, so long withheld; my passions and my feelings, so long kept under control, were gaining at length free scope; and the former restraint only served to make them more ungovernable. The first penalty which they made me pay was the torment of jealousy, which I was now fated to endure in a measure proportioned to the strength of the attachment I cherished. The most perfect affection for Louise, and her undeviating kindness to me, did not secure me against a whisper that often filled my inward ear. I knew she had erred, nay sinned, by becoming the accomplice of my broken vows; and she who had gone astray with one, might she not yield also to another? The hated form of Ambrose now rose before my eyes; for he had frequented her society before I knew her; and a more formidable rival no one could have to dread. His winning address, peculiarly formed to captivate the female heart; his graceful form and polished manners; his great talents and solid acquirements; above all his wit, the most fascinating I had ever known; all gave a power to his designing mind and most wily disposition, which, as it rendered escape from his toils difficult, for a victim, made suspicion of his rivalry natural and hardly to be avoided. Hitherto I had little known what the power of jealousy was; but that little I had owed to him. He had laid siege with success to Isidore, and at one time both estranged him from my society, and obtained an ascendant over him, which only ceased upon the discovery of some subtle artifice he had been employing to circumvent us both. I did not, however, soon forget this passage; and it filled me with suspicions of his designs upon Louise. I saw that his conversation not only amused but interested her. Full of love for me, she yet saw far more of him than I could reconcile with that attachment, very much more than I could easily bear. His was not the passion comparatively innocent with which I was filled, and which pointed for its only gratification to the sacrifice of all worldly ambition, and the living for love alone. He had no views but those of the order he belonged to, and hoped to rise in; his plans, and I never doubted for an instant that he had formed them, must lead to the ruin of her

I adored, and consummate my misery with her destruction.

"After suffering unspeakable torments in the struggle, and making vain efforts to overcome the suspicions which preyed on me, nay, which, added to the other miseries of my situation, often made me feel life itself a burden I would fain have shaken off, never having ventured to converse with Isidore on the subject from the pride which always enters so largely into the feeling of jealousy, I at length resolved to make Louise herself my confidant, because I could feel no humiliation in confessing my weakness to her. Nothing could be more kind than her demeanour; nothing more gentle than the rebuke which she felt she had a right to give me, for what she described as a groundless fancy, and described it with perfect frankness, and a manner so wholly unembarrassed as at once laid all my suspicions asleep. She even promised to give up all intercourse with Father Ambrose, at least never to see him but in my presence, or that of Isidore; and as the hours at which alone we could ever see her were known, there could be no difficulty in completing this satisfactory arrangement. For some weeks I perceived the wily and persevering monk repeatedly leaving the door of the house her family lived in, having been refused admittance because she was alone.

"One day I found her reading some verses which he had sent her, his own composition, and set by him to music, which she was preparing to practise. There was some humour in the remark I made on it, asking her if she intended to allow his accompaniments when she had learnt the air. There was a proportionate humour in the reply which this drew from her. 'She did not know but she might; he was the only one of her friends and familiars who played, and his guitar was admirable.' Never had I so perfectly hated him as when he was thus classed with me among her familiars (habitués). Never had I felt so little satisfied with her.

"I soon made some excuse for leaving her, and was strangely agitated when I found she made no attempt to soothe, or even to chide me, for an anger which she must have seen her remark had engendered, and that she suffered me to depart after a visit as short as it was every way unsatisfactory. I walked about in a state alternately melancholy and irritable, until the time had arrived for my return to the evening lessons of the convent pupils, and after that hour it was next to impossible that either myself or Isidore, or any of the younger brethren, should be seen without the walls of the garden.

"About eight o'clock, the evening was fine and still; the season was autumn; the day I am little likely to forget. As I was walking with Isidore I perceived Father Ambrose leaving the evergreen-walk that leads from the cypress garden through the small Gothic back porch, surrounded with flowers, and facing the part of the town where Louise's mother lived. An involuntary shudder came over me as I observed his guitar under his cloak. But I continued the walk, and mastered my feelings sufficiently to give an indifferent answer when Isidore asked if I was unwell. A few turns more brought us to his cell, and I hastened through the Gothic porch. I remember stopping to pluck an autumnal flower, which grew in peaceful solitude near the wicket; and though void of fragrance pleased the eye, and seemed to calm for an instant the ruffled surface of my soul. The flower was pansy; I have before my eyes its round form and violet leaf, with light yellow margin and two small specks. I never see that flower without a bitter pang. I went toward the gate, and stumbled on a cross which the wind had the night before blown down: it lay against a small bench, and I nearly fell over it. At the moment I thought I heard distant thunder, but was not certain. A human bone lay close by the upright limb of the cross; I recognised one of the two which our superior had over his bookcase under a skull; he would sometimes carry them with him while taking his evening walk, and I have before known him to drop one. At any other time I might not have marked it. As I opened the wicket I heard a raven scream hoarsely. After passing through, I met one of our acolytes near the gate retiring to the convent; and, in accents that were nearly choked, I asked if he had seen Father Isidore, not daring to name the other. He said he had only seen Father Ambrose going into the Countess's house. I made but one step across the Place, now nearly deserted, and sprang to the gate of the Countess's house, which I found standing ajar. The apartment of Louise was reached by a narrow and somewhat lofty stair with a rail, and ending in the passage, along which a rope was drawn, the continuation of the rail being under repair. I mounted the steps in breathless agony.

As I approached the door of her chamber, I heard the last bars of an air which she was singing, or rather had just sung; I then heard two voices for a minute or two; I could distinguish no words; I could only be sure that both parties spoke; however, it seemed to my troubled brain, that these accents were those of affection, if not of passion; a pause ensued; and then I heard a step approaching the door, but as it opened, I distinctly heard a kiss; and forth stepped Ambrose. No longer master of myself I sprang upon him, and dashed him through the rope, down upon the ground.—Louise shrieked and fell upon the floor.—I looked down into the hall and saw that it was—Father Jerome whom I had slain!"

"Gracious God!" exclaimed the Count, "Father Jerome!"—"Ah, well may you thus exclaim!" resumed the Solitary. "Well may the recounted horror thrill your frame! But mine it was to witness it, and to have done it! In the desperate effort to throw myself after my victim and terminate instantly an intolerable existence, I sunk senseless upon the passage floor. On recovering I found I was in Louise's room, but she was gone, and Father Isidore was tenderly watching over me.—I need not stop to add what I afterwards learnt, that the song I had heard was the Evening Hymn, the kiss was from Louise's lips upon the good father's hand, which had previously given her his most precious blessing.

"I must hasten over the dreadful sequel. My memory is imperfect, for my mind was disturbed for many weeks; and I have but the recollection of one scene, which never can be erased from my brain. The saint-like man survived about a day, after being conveyed home by the Countess's people, who believed he had accidentally fallen through the rope, and I was taken by Isidore to witness his last moments, or if I dared ask, or dared receive it, to obtain his forgiveness and his blessing. Even of the particulars attending this awful scene I have an indistinct remembrance. The entry of the Host, borne by the abbot himself, the solemn communication of the Sacramental elements, the anointing, the sprinkling, the bestowing of the Viaticum, I less distinctly can call to mind. But the picture that remains burnt into my soul, and which has never been absent from my eyes, is the pious father laid meekly on his lowly bed after all the necessary ceremony of the Church had been performed, and the look of unbroken mildness, of unabated affection with which his eye beamed upon me as he saw me kneel, unable to beg a blessing. That look, far, far superior to merely betokening forgiveness of his murderer, what would I give that it had been withheld! How thankful should I have been to see his countenance clothed in frowns, nay, distorted with anger! His placid smile, his heavenly look of love, his inward prayer for me piercing his exhausted and scarcely living features, made the torment I endured ten thousand times more acute; nor was it till long after this dreadful hour that I could have calmness enough to reflect on the most edifying sight which all had witnessed, and of which I alone had not been sensible at the time, the passage into endless bliss of one whose whole life had been one of innocence, of kindness, of devotion; whose latter end was peace, and an example indeed, but far above that of those who, acting a part, would teach us how a Christian can die; for in him this scene was nature; and he had been created an angel before he was made a Christian."

CHAPTER V.

THE OUTLAW.

"The effect of the death-bed scene in awakening me and collecting my faculties was but transient; soon I relapsed into a state of mind which prevents the pursuing of any reasoning, or the formation of any fixed purpose, or indeed the correct perception of what is going on around us, and easily confounds with realities, the creations of the bewildered brain. I enjoyed nothing, took an interest in nothing, but suffered nothing. I felt as strange to myself, and wholly indifferent to everything around me. The society of the brethren I could little bear; but this was from the exertion it required to answer questions, and sometimes from the acute pain they gave me by the mention of Father Jerome, the only living sensation to which I was subject—all other feelings were blunted in an extraordinary degree. I could even endure the hated presence and voice of

Ambrose, and though the watchful attention of Isidore was felt, and possibly had some tendency to soothe me, I cared little for it. The feelings of the soul, like the nerves of the body, are liable to a paralytic numbness; and as we sometimes partially lose the use of the latter, so do the former also lose their acuteness. I had lost the taste of both the bitters and the sweets which the society of my brethren afforded. But this was not all; the enchanting voice of Louise herself fell flat upon my ear, and I took no pleasure whatever in her kind affectionate care to wean my mind from its apathy by touching those chords which she was formerly wont so easily to strike and make harmonious with her own accents. Fits of mere stupor, too, would succeed to my wanderings, and possibly these were graciously given to prevent a more complete distraction; for they generally succeeded any allusion to the calamity, as it was thought, which had befallen me.

"How long a time I passed in this dreadful state I know not; except that the opening year was somewhat advanced when I slowly began to recover. The restoration of my mental health was attended with extreme suffering from a degree of irritation which

I had never experienced, and which contrasted mightily with the comparatively passive and insensible state I had so long been in. That state I had now ample reason to regret the loss of. I awoke to an acuteness of feeling almost morbid, a recollection of past scenes hardly possible to bear. Every step in the monastery and the garden called up the most lively images of past happiness, of the hours which I had passed in innocence with my venerated guide, the friend of my bosom. All his words, his lessons of wisdom, his playful mirth, his rich fund of anecdotes on the most important personages of past and of present times, above everything the traits of his pure benevolence to all, and of his unceasing kindness to myself; these came perpetually into my mind, and these never for one instant of time could be dissevered from the manner of his death. I stood before the eyes of the brethren as one to be pitied for the affliction which had deprived him of his dearest friend, his second father, whom he had loved without the admixture of fear, at least of filial respect, which places a distance between parent and child when of the same sex; for between father and daughter, son and mother, it exists not. In that light I stood in the eyes of others, the object of great compassion; in my own I stood as a criminal, as one who, minded to perpetrate one murder, had committed another, and been punished here, and would be hereafter, having sacrificed his dearest friend to his infernal lust of revenge, roused within him by another passion, which he had vowed before God never to know.

"This terrible thought soon became the one ever uppermost in my mind; but gradually another arose within me more unbearable still. I was as yet wholly unsuspected both of Father Jerome's death, and of an attachment for Louise, which would have given far more scandal to the brethren, than the greater sin that had followed from it. How long might it be before the horrid truth was discovered? How could I ever be sure that a secret known to at least two persons beside myself, would be kept? If I had no fears of Louise, was it certain that Isidore, with his fiery nature and loose principles, would never form an attachment and reveal the mystery, in the course of those endearments in which lovers ever seek excitement from adventitious circumstances, and are even consoled for the calamities that befal themselves by having a pathetic or a striking communication which offers an occasion to work on each other's sentiments, and indulge in the luxury of feeling together? But could I even be quite sure that the awful fact was not in possession of others as well as ourselves, those who might not at any time be trusted? Had no servant of the house heard the short struggle preceding the fall? Had no suspicion arisen in other minds than Father Ernest's, the lawyer of the convent, who, on seeing the rope torn down, observed that it was driven away on one side, and marked that the place where the father lay was not quite directly under the edge of the passage? Nor was it perfectly certain that Louise's maid, who was in the adjoining room, and had seen me ascend the steps, though she closed the door of her apartment, had not opened it when she found that I stood near the chamber for some minutes without entering, as usually I did, immediately upon coming up? All these things were most harassing to my mind, already both enfeebled by disease, and rendered more irritable and anxious than formerly; but it must be admitted that some of these considerations were sufficiently founded in reason to bring alarm over a more firm and healthy intellect than mine. Nor was it any relief to my apprehensions that Father Ambrose was confessor to the Countess Orange's family, and was consequently sure to be first in possession of whatever was known by any of them on so grave a subject as the death of a leading Benedictine.

"Such were the terrors that filled me, and, far from becoming less distracting by being long felt, they gathered strength each time they haunted me according to the rule of our nature by which fear long felt, from weakening the texture of the mind, acquires increased power over its functions, and filling the imagination, gains perpetually new associates to aid its operation. At first anything unusual excited my apprehensions of a discovery. Any unusual excitement among the brotherhood, any proceeding out of the common course taken by the abbot, any strange person appearing to demand an audience, any unexpected messenger arriving at the convent, all became the source of alarm, and all were connected with my horrible mystery. But presently it went further. It soon came to pass that I could hardly separate the most ordinary and indifferent matters from the idea that constantly pursued me, by day and by night, studying or walking, praying (if ever I ventured to pray), or musing; the one idea that haunted my waking hours and cast its shadow over my dreams, I could not see one of the brethren look at me as I passed without a fancy that he eyed me narrowly, and knew or suspected something. If an acolyte, or a verger, or a novice, gazed on me, possibly a little more earnestly from the prevailing notion that my mind had been affected by my loss, I straightway imagined that they had heard some whispers in the society of the town. If the superior gave me his blessing with more than ordinary unction, from my distressed state, I set it down as a proof that he had penetrated my secret and felt how much I stood in need of his prayers. I could not meet Father Ambrose's eye, glaring as it was formerly wont to be with hatred, now seeming calm with conscious superiority, though incapable of compassion; I always felt that he bore me more patiently than heretofore, because he knew me to be humbled by my guilt. He only felt that my protector was gone. I believed he knew the terrible secret of his going. I never saw two of the brothers in conversation but I took it for granted that I formed the subject of their talk. Nothing could have appeased my fears but the gratification of my restless curiosity to know all that all the house were saying, and, if possible, all that each was thinking, in order to make sure that they spoke not nor even thought of me. I could have prayed for omnipresence and omniscience, that I might know what all the people of Avignon were always speaking about when any of them met, in order to be certain that I or my secret did not form the subject of their discourse. With all this I had no resource in religion or its offices. I had remained, from mental illness, incapable of the Holy Sacrament; I continued to affect a partial indisposition that I might avoid what I so much dreaded, the standing once more before the Maker, the Searcher of hearts, of whose actual presence I still, after all my debates with Isidore, relapsed into a belief, though a waning, and shaken, and obscure belief. Confession I durst not think of, and before the season for it at Easter came, there happened an event which compelled me to make up my mind, according to Isidore's unceasing suggestions, and at once to quit the order and the Church.

"The maid who attended Louise, and who had for many years been an attached servant of the house, fell dangerously ill. Her devotion to the family had hitherto kept her strictly silent on what she knew and what she suspected. Even in confession she had let nothing escape which could be a clue to the suspicions she more than entertained. But this concealment, as it was a protection to herself against disclosing what she was by her duty bound to have made known in the proper quarter, was thus a sin on her part against the duties of the confessional; and this weight she had, though with pain, taken upon her conscience, until now when her latter end approached, she could no longer avoid disclosing what lay so heavy on her departing soul. She therefore sent for Father Ambrose, as I discovered by accident when sitting with Louise, who sincerely lamented the illness of her amiable serving-woman. My first impression was to see the dying woman before the father came to perform his office, but Louise wisely intreated me to avoid this step, as we had no reason whatever for believing she was aware of the truth, and any questions or suggestions from me would at once have converted into certainty whatever suspicions she might entertain. For the same reason Louise was afraid of conversing with her on the state of her mind, or her past recollections; added to which was the consideration that Father Ambrose must have discovered that such criminal advice had been given, and the jealousy of the confessional being roused, the consequence might have been a refusal to grant absolution, with the further gratification of his spleen in throwing the responsibility upon Louise herself, whom, for her late repulsive demeanour towards him, he very heartily disliked. Nothing remained, therefore, but awaiting the event inactive, and as patient as one so deeply interested in it could manage to be.

"Father Ambrose came; the visit was not long; he called upon Louise as he departed; the flash of his eye, and the exultation that reigned through his countenance, at once proclaimed his belief that one or both of us was in his power, and but for the absolute secresy of the confessional would be trodden under his feet, armed with the law. To know this sufficed for our agony of alarm; but this was not all. He had cunningly, but perhaps not unjustifiably, counselled the penitent to communicate to the magistrate her offence, such it undeniably was, of so long a concealment; and the unhappy woman had also told him, under no promise of secresy, that she saw through the imperfectly shut door my arm suddenly flung round, as after a great effort, and instantly heard a heavy body strike the ground. In terror at having witnessed such a thing she had retreated, and remained in her room till summoned by her mistress, who had taken refuge in it, and made her fetch Isidore from the Countess Orange's, where he had happened to be, in order that he might succour me, who had swooned away and had been with difficulty dragged into Louise's room by herself. The fall of Father Jerome, with the certainty that my action could have proceeded from no effort to save him, was quite conclusive against me; and my avoiding the duty of confession, my long delay to attend mass, my dreadfully agitated state of spirits, seemed to fill up whatever these circumstances left defective in the chain of evidence against me. Isidore, being called to our councils, saw the matter in this light; we at once made up our minds that the time for flight had arrived, and that we durst not remain one night longer in Avignon. We left it for ever, and left Louise with a faint hope of once more meeting her in other days, a hope cherished like some feeble taper's flame, and sheltered from each blast that assailed me, kept tremblingly half-alive and ever on the point of being extinguished, the only light to shed a gleam on the dismal prospect that now seemed to close in upon me from every side.

"It never struck us, until we were some distance from Avignon, and had proceeded along the banks of the Rhone in the direction of Beaucaire, that our habit was fatal, and at once must betray us. Accordingly we got rid of the cloak and hat by throwing them into a well, and we spent great part of the little money Louise had been able to give us in purchasing the brown jackets and trowsers of a farmer and his servants, at whose house we took shelter, saying we had been robbed of our clothes while sleeping on the bank and half dressed after bathing in the river. This farm was only two leagues from Avignon; and, afraid of waiting till the alarm should reach it, which was certain to spread over the town as soon as day broke, we went on our journey, and began seriously to consult on our anxious prospects. The first idea that struck us was the most painful of all. Clearly we must separate, 'My dearest friend,' said Isidore, 'anything rather than this. If I say that I hated the rule and the brotherhood less than I have ever loved you, I should speak without any exaggeration. All my ideas of happiness from being emancipated, all the castles I have built in the air, were founded on the cherished prospect of passing my life in your society and friendship; and when my sanguine temperament would ever let me build dungeons in these castles, my separation from you formed their structure.'—'Alas, Isidore!' I replied, 'we dare not, at least for the present, indulge such feelings. God knows that my state most requires joyous and soothing company like yours. But consider, for a moment, that the mere fact of two persons being in company, and whose accent declares them to come from the Contât[7], carries suspicion, if not proof, along with it; for the rumour will be, of course, that two friars, charged with murder, have escaped from the monastery.' 'How, then, shall I ever struggle alone with my fate?' said Isidore. 'I begin already to feel that I have been rash, as I ever am, in following my inclination; and that I never looked forward to probabilities until these became events. I might well have foreseen all the difficulties that now surround me, and the greater part of which would have been sure to meet me even had your catastrophe never occurred.'—'Alas, Isidore!' I replied, 'how you harrow up my feelings by that word! I have been the means of involving you, as well as myself, in calamity, and, what is far worse, in disgrace; for, with your opinions, to have only quitted the order would have been little; and it is through me that you are involved in a suspicion that will ever attach to you, the suspicion of being privy, if not aiding, to a crime of the deepest dye.'—'Let not this idea vex your mind,' said the generous youth. 'My attachment for you, and my devoted admiration of your superior nature, will never make me feel the disgrace while I know I am free from the guilt.'—'What, then, must my feelings be,' I rejoined, 'who have both loads to struggle under, and the additional pang of causing so great an aggravation of your danger? But, unhappily, part we must! and I will take the road across to Nismes, where a clergyman serving in one of the temples,[8] and connected with my family, will be ready to receive me, and give me some assistance to further my escape.'

"Isidore could not avoid perceiving that our separation was necessary for securing even a chance of safety. His plan was soon formed with his accustomed resolution, and pursued with his wonted vigour. He intended to cross the country by Arles, to Aix, and so to reach Marseilles, where he should be safe in the crowd of a great city, until he could procure employment on board a vessel for the Levant. 'The errors of Paganism,' he said, 'and the more pure superstitions of the Mahometan, can never much disturb one who has seen men assume to make their followers believe their dogmas in opposition to their own senses, pretend to create the Deity whom they worship, and usurp his most eminent attribute, that of granting pardon for sin.' Only half converted from these views, I could not resist an involuntary shudder at hearing the mysteries I had so long been used to revere, thus treated with scorn; but all other feelings were lost in the affection with which I embraced the only friend whom my guilty hand had left me in the world. He took the road to Arles, and I, avoiding Beaucaire, journeyed on towards Nismes.

"I was now left all alone; and, for the first time in my life, I knew the feeling of solitude. My own reflections were for a while absorbed in the separation from Isidore, who had gained exceedingly on my affection during some months, and whose existence I had begun to regard as knit up with my own. The severance of this tie gave me great pain; but other and far more painful reflections swiftly succeeded when my mind was left to prey upon itself. The idea of Father Jerome was never absent; the dreadful struggle on the staircase; the discovery of my fatal mistake; the mild aspect of the dying saint; his hopeless condition as he lay in his cell; and last, and worst of all, that kind look, that look of heavenly affection with which he had sought to send peace into my distracted soul; these were the recollections that haunted me, and kept me from recurring to the only idea which could have soothed my troubled spirits, the image of Louise; for that deserted me;—and I durst not pray.

"But these feelings were only those that kept me company while I was alone; one, still more harassing, was joined to them, and tormented me as soon as my solitude was broken. I came near Courbefort, a small village, as twilight began to gleam; and I hastened through it as if I were pursued, without reflecting that the news of my flight never could have reached the place, or, if it did, that I was disguised from all inquiring eyes in my peasant's brown garb. I hastened towards Nismes, hardly knowing what I did; and when I arrived there it was broad daylight. A patrol came near, and I never doubted that his intention was to seize me; but he passed me, and this reassured me. I entered the town and met a priest. This sight fixed me to the ground; I supposed he must have heard all; and that my crime and my flight was the constant topic of conversation among all churchmen, and all friars, I could not for a moment doubt. But again, I forgot the distance I had come, and the little communication there is between heretical Nismes and the orthodox Contât. I felt as if every eye was glaring upon me, and every one I met was ready to seize and deliver me to justice. In this dismay, I entirely forgot the name of the reformed minister whom I was in quest of; till seeing Rue de Gard written up as the name of a street, I remembered that it was Father Gardein I wanted, and I was easily directed to his modest dwelling.

"When I asked for him, I was told that I must wait, as the good man was going to morning prayers; but if I chose, I might partake (the female servant said) of the family worship. I entered the room in which they were assembled, and I shall not soon forget the deep impression made upon my mind by the simplicity of the service, so entirely contrasted with the grandeur and pomp to which I had been accustomed. Surrounded by the servants of his house, the pastor, first asking for the Divine assistance, read some verses of Scripture in the vulgar tongue, and then kneeling, offered up a prayer of his own, the fervour of which affected me exceedingly. Then rising, he seated himself in his chair, opened the Bible which lay before him, and read a chapter of the New Testament, upon which he delivered a few explanatory observations, and from which he drew a lesson of moral conduct. Another prayer succeeded, and then a psalm, in which all present joined. This closed the simple solemnity; and, all else leaving the room, he remained to ask what was my business with him. The disclosure of my name at once obtained his protection, but I did not venture to explain the whole cause of my flight from Avignon; I only said that I had accompanied Isidore, who had the misfortune of having accidentally occasioned a friar's death, and had quitted the monastery in consequence; taking me with him, who partook of his doubts touching the lawfulness of conventual vows. The pastor was visibly alarmed by my recital, foreseeing the risk to which he must be exposed from harbouring any one at all mixed up in such a transaction; and still more (considering his cloth barely tolerated in France) from harbouring a monk who had thrown off the garb of his order, violating one, at least, of his three vows, that of obedience. In the state of violence to which controversy then proceeded at Nismes, where the community was split into factions and sects mutually abhorring each other for Christ's sake, and living in daily breach of the Gospel law of charity, to show their zeal for that Gospel, it was undeniable that he encountered no little hazard by any shelter which he might lend me. His own gentle and peaceful nature, too, bore some repugnance to the contact of one ever so remotely, ever so innocently, mixed with deeds of blood. The friendship, however, which he bore our family, and the destitute condition in which he saw me, overcame all other feelings; and he at once introduced me to his wife, his daughter, and his grand-children. Yes, to his wife and children! This was a strange sight to me; I could hardly recover from my surprise at seeing a priest actually married, and father of a family, and served in the house by only females. It was something so repugnant to all I had ever before witnessed, and all the ideas I had ever formed of the sacred calling, that I seemed to be cast into a foreign land, or rather into a new and untried state of existence.

"The dreadful situation in which I now was placed received a new embarrassment, from the necessity under which I felt that I lay, sooner or later, to exonerate my dear Isidore from the blame I had been compelled to lay upon him, that I might not be driven forth by the good pastor in his first sensation of horror at seeing, for the first time in his life, blood-stained hands supplicating his protection. But after all, the prevailing alarm under which I suffered, was the hourly terror of being discovered. It was not long before the whole community was occupied with the news which came from Avignon: of course with great exaggerations. Two friars were said to have escaped after murdering and robbing the abbot; it was added, that they had quarrelled about the division of the spoil, and one was supposed to have killed the other, from the circumstance of a hat and garment being found in a well, on the road to Beaucaire. The police of Nismes were as much on the alert as the society; for it appeared that one, at least, of the fugitives had been traced to Beaucaire; and some one had seen a strange-looking peasant passing very early in the morning of the day after the murder.

"In the controversial state of Nismes, this dreadful affair gave rise to opposite views of the great question on which parties were divided. The reformed sect did not fail to draw from it an argument against monastic institutions; their tendency to produce an artificial and unnatural state of mind; the effect of their rigid observances, to make men's natural feelings revolt against their vows; the consequences of broken vows in leading to the breach of other and more sacred duties. The established clergy, on the other hand, ascribed the crime that had been committed to the relaxed state of discipline, arising from toleration to Protestants; the free-thinking opinions propagated by the reformers; their proselyting practices, which had manifestly beguiled two sheep from the fold of the Lord. The more strict, particularly the Regular Clergy, scrupled not to see in the event the hand of Providence, which dealt out this judgment against the abbot for his extreme spirit of toleration (confounding the abbot with the good and dear Father Jerome). It was significantly whispered, that the lenity of the age in this great particular, would lead to a belief that the edict of Nantes had never been revoked: and Nismes, the centre of Protestantism, was plainly said to be, by its neighbourhood, the cause of what had befallen the orthodox Contât. Meanwhile, all anxiously desired the discovery of the culprits; the one party to release itself from all suspicion by showing, as they expected, that Catholic hands alone had been concerned in the deed; the other to extort, as they hoped they should, confessions that the lessons of the reformers had first seduced the criminals from their duty. The police, on its part, was unceasing in its active efforts to obtain the wished-for discovery.

"It would not be easy to convey any idea of the agony I was doomed to undergo, while these things were going on. It seemed as if the world's accustomed fickleness and aptitude to be soon tired of one subject of excitement had undergone a change; for, day after day, the same topic occupied all men's minds. This was partly owing to the new matter that every day brought forward to help the search. One man having been found to possess a friar's frock marked with the name of F. Isidore, he was immediately seized; and narrowly escaped being brought to trial by showing that he had bought it of a boy, who had found it under a hedge. At length the farmer near the Rhone who had sold us the brown dress was so alarmed by the accident, and the general hue and cry, that he went to the magistrate, and related the whole story. No doubt could now remain that the criminals had escaped in this disguise. One was traced to St. Canaut on the road to Aix, but the scent was lost in that town; he plainly came alone, and plainly was a stranger from his tongue, and a fugitive, from his inquiring the road to Marseilles. The other, therefore, must have left him at Beaucaire; and as no one could be traced to Arles, and the Courbefort peasant had seen a man pass at a suspicious hour, it was at once concluded that he must have come to Nismes. Happily the man who directed me to the pastor's house was not examined, possibly had forgotten the circumstance, because it was the morning of a feast day, when the streets are crowded. Yet as the offender was concluded to be in Nismes, the activity of the police was redoubled to detect him; and a person answering the description given from Beaucaire and Courbefort, and who had fled upon being questioned, probably only to avoid being detained and troubled, was arrested and brought before the magistrate. Unfortunately for him, he proved by his dialect to be from Avignon, and he had pretended to be a Nismes man. A purse of silver was found in his girdle, when searched, though he had said a livre piece was all he possessed. He had a rosary and crucifix in his pocket, of a far better kind than peasants ever wear, and could only account for this by saying he had found it; and he had the folly, when irritated by the searching questions of the magistrate, to speak disrespectfully of the beads as having done him more harm than they could ever after do him good.

"A scene of general self-glorification was now performed, with abundant self-satisfaction to all the actors. Each person praised some others as a covert method of conveying self-laudation, by pointing towards himself the public attention. The police were duly inflated with the glory of their successful investigations, and modestly gave the credit of it to wise arrangements of their chief; that chief affirmed that Lieutenant Sartine[9] himself had never abler officers than he was happy to have under him; the magistrate complacently said from the bench, that Nismes could vie with any one city in its admirable administration of justice; a generous panegyric was pronounced upon the beautiful jurisprudence of France in general, 'a country happy above all others, in the accurate but humane administration of Criminal Justice, whereby the escape of the guilty was effectually prevented, and the innocent were thus from all suspicion effectually secured;' and the crowning proof of this position (which was applauded by all the audience) was forthwith given by condemning the wretched man to the torture, as the only step in the process now wanting to supply all the defects of the proof against him. Furthermore, the exquisite justice of the same law required that the question extraordinary, as well as ordinary, should be applied in this case, because it was one of sacrilege; thus presuming the party guilty, and dealing with him as such in the very act of ascertaining whether he was not innocent of the charge.

"The horror into which I was thrown when the account reached me, that on the next morning this unhappy man was to have his joints stretched, and his limbs broken, to make him confess a crime of which I knew that he was guiltless, cannot easily be imagined. I thought I heard his shrieks while undergoing the dreadful operation; and I saw him led away to execution for words that he might drop under the agony of his torments. In this state I threw myself on my knees before the good pastor, and besought him to go before the magistrate, with an asseveration to which his spotless character would give weight, that he knew the man was innocent; but this he could only know by also being aware of the guilty person. That he had obtained any knowledge from confession he could not say, because the Protestants have no such exercise. If a Catholic priest had been called in, he was absolutely debarred from making any communication to the magistrate, and must patiently see an innocent man suffer death rather than violate, even by negative assertion, the strict secresy of the confessional. In this grievous dilemma, in which I felt prepared to rush on my own destruction rather than see innocent blood spilt for my offence, it occurred to the pastor that the governor of the place, a man of extraordinary honour and good sense, as well as great humanity, might be entrusted with the secret, only in part as yet revealed to himself. I easily assented. To what would I not have agreed to escape the horrors of a second, and now a deliberate murder! General Talmont was accordingly seen, and implored to interpose his authority with the magistrate, and prevail upon him at least to suspend the Question, until he could communicate the particulars to the Government at Paris. The worthy officer nobly agreed to act, and disdained to consider the inevitable consequences of his conduct, that of being charged with screening an offender, for whose detection at all hazards the public, including the contending sects, all alike were eager. The Question was postponed for a fortnight; but in the meanwhile the prisoner found means to elude the vigilance of the most perfect of all police establishments, the able chief who had equalled himself to Lieut. Sartine, his much lauded officers, and contrived to prevent the most dignified and acute of magistrates from administering in his case the most admirable of all systems of criminal jurisprudence; in fact he had withdrawn from the custody of the officers, the superintendence of the jail, and the blessings of a law as humane as it was accurate, preferring the more certain blessings of freedom from all process, to those of being subject to any.

In a word he had, to my unspeakable relief, made his escape. It is very likely from all the circumstances that he was an old offender, probably come from Marseilles to maraud at the Candlemas fair of Nismes. Certain it is that he appeared no more in that quarter.

"The indignation of the police now reached a pitch of fury, and nothing could satisfy them but a general domiciliary visit; to which in the prevailing ferment a consent was obtained from the governor, to whose interposition the man's escape was not unnaturally ascribed. The Government had also taken the precaution of sending to Avignon to ask the attendance of some one of the Benedictine monastery, whose evidence would be material, but who, residing in a foreign territory, could not be summoned; and the arrival of one of the brethren was daily expected.

"My terror may easily be conceived in these circumstances. Should the domiciliary visit lead to my being in ever so slight a degree suspected, I was sure to be at once identified by the testimony of the monk who might come from Avignon; and even if I escaped this fate, he was sure to give a more correct account of the facts than common report had propagated, so that the pastor could no longer be kept ignorant of the deception I had practised upon him in laying the chief blame upon Isidore. Happily, a reluctance on the abbot's part to suffer his brother's examination in a secular court delayed the arrival I so much dreaded, and the domiciliary visit was postponed for the present. Yet I lived in perpetual fear, and learnt by experience that there is no suffering which so renders man weary of existence, and so perpetually makes life a burden. What I endured made me easily believe the accounts of persons who have destroyed themselves under the terror of dangers to which they were exposed, and as for self-murder of a like kind committed to escape disgrace and public odium, I could at all times well credit the possibility of it.

"My only solace during this period was the kindness of the pastor and his family, who, seeing how much I was suffering, exerted themselves to relieve me. Nothing more soothed my troubled spirit than the religious conversation than Monsieur Gardein, in which he mingled learned and rational argument with spiritual consolation. We discussed together freely all the points of dispute between the two churches, and certainly the result was to confirm all the impressions which Isidore's reasonings and railleries had made on me, and to wean me entirely from the errors of the Romish faith. This conversion was much aided by the judicious course which the pastor took. He was a man of great learning and much ability, but he was also of a singularly moderate disposition; tolerant of adverse opinions, and regarding those whom he deemed benighted in error with compassion, but without the least pride of conscious superiority far less any feeling of hostility. His respectful treatment of even the dogmas to which his clear judgment stood most opposed, helped him to make many a proselyte whom a more fierce and contemptuous disputant would have for ever alienated and confirmed in error at the very outset of the argument by haughty assertion, or scorn, or misplaced ridicule. Indeed he held that ridicule was never to be used in discussing sacred subjects, both because it wounds the feelings of the unconverted and because it shuts their minds up against the entrance of the truth. This subject of employing ridicule is difficult, in my apprehension, and a distinction is to be taken between the different kinds of ridicule. The statement of an absurd consequence drawn clearly from any position, the exposure of its self-repugnance, or other gross absurdity and senselessness, inevitably produces a tendency to laugh, inevitably produces a ludicrous effect. So far, and of this description, ridicule is a necessary part of demonstration. The superficial and ignorant vulgar, always confounding unlike things, are perpetually crying out on either a written or a conversational argument of this truly logical kind that it is merriment and not reasoning, whereas it is the closest and most urgent demonstration. But when to this we add any superfluous picture of a ludicrous kind, and call in anything laughable in manner, or character, or habits, anything personal to the disputant, we clearly go beyond what is the legitimate province of reasoning, especially upon sacred subjects. Nothing could, for example, be more fit than to expose the great absurdity of making our senses the test of the words received from Christ through the Evangelists, and then holding their evidence inadmissible to show that the bread and wine have retained their humble nature after the priest's benediction. You may even go so far as to show the ridiculous consequence that flows from the doctrine, namely, that a created being is supposed to make, at least to summon into his presence, the God who made him. But if you enter into details, letting your fancy luxuriate in the difference between bread and flesh, wine and blood, or speak of a God-maker, or a God-smith, a God-eater, or a God-monger, you needlessly import the ludicrous into a most solemn argument, and descend from the pure and refined wit of reason to the broad and vulgar grins of humour. From the turn of the good pastor's mind, at once serious and forbearing, he applied this principle to all controversy, even on secular matters; and he had a practice in reasoning of rather leaving his adversary to perceive the ridiculous in his own argument, or its consequences, than stating it in terms to him. He, perhaps, was skilful as well as tolerant in this course, for it is certain that there is more or less of triumph in the ordinary proceeding of disputants, who press each other with the weight of their argument, and are over-fond of the pleasure derived from the exposure of absurdity. The Socratic method of discussion by questions pressed upon the adversary, and making him state his own error, and as it were take of himself the steps to his own refutation, proceeded upon somewhat of the same view. Be that as it may, I can affirm that M. Gardein was a formidable disputant, not more from his acuteness and his learning, than from his suavity, and his carefully abstaining from showing triumph or giving offence in any other way. He in this, as in many other features of his amiable and attractive character, bore no little resemblance to my dear and ever lamented Father Jerome; and had the excellent, and indeed well-gifted, Isidore possessed somewhat of his moderation and self-command, I am certain that my conversion would have been accomplished before I left the convent.

"Much, however, as I owed my escape from the grievous errors of Romanism to the reasoning and the information of the good pastor, I believe that my liberation from the fallacies with which that most artfully contrived system enchains the mind was greatly aided by the co-operation of another cause. The domestic society in which I saw him living and teaching, the endearing company of his wife, of his daughter, and her children, those ties which, far from lessening his clerical usefulness, only redoubled his powers of persuasion, and, far from impairing his zeal in the service of God, only made it burn with the purer flame, lit at the tenderest and most innocent feelings of the heart, had a powerful influence on my mind, because I daily witnessed the practical exposure of the falsehoods which Popery inculcates, and proved, by constant evidence of my senses, that the state which is natural for man is in nowise dangerous to priests, but, on the contrary, increases their usefulness while it relieves them from the pains of unnatural restraint, and gratifies the most innocent propensities of the human heart. All Isidore's arguments about the clergy refusing themselves one of the sacraments had been feeble compared to the practical experience which I now had of a married clergyman, a pastor, at once the spiritual father of his flock and the natural father of his family.

"As the period of the domiciliary visit and the Benedictine's arrival approached, I grew more and more uneasy. I scarcely dared venture into the streets for fear of exciting suspicion. Walking in the Place at an early hour, for I never ventured out except in the morning and evening, I heard, to my extreme horror, a voice calling out my name twice, 'Albert! Albert!' I instantly turned round, and was relieved to find it was a woman calling on her child that ran across the walk. But this had at least shown her that my name was Albert.—One day I walked to the Maison Carrée to indulge in the recollections of past ages, and taste if possible of the peace which, its inscription says, had been established over the world; a face which was familiar to me almost fixed me to the ground; it was a gentleman from Avignon to whom I was known, though slightly. I had only presence of mind to turn round and abruptly quit the portico, on whose numberless beauties he was intently gazing.—I had some days before seen a travelling musician at the public gardens whom I recognized, but who knew me too little to perceive who I was; yet the alarm which even this gave me had driven me home for several days, until I supposed the minstrel had departed in pursuit of his erratic calling. But all these things, and numberless other alarms which proved false, showed me that my present place of concealment was too near the spot of my shame. The distance was not, indeed, above ten leagues, and though both political and religious considerations restrained the intercourse between the centres of heterodoxy and orthodoxy, yet intercourse there was, quite enough to bring real risk upon me.

"I accordingly seriously planned my departure, and having consulted with my kind and revered friend, he helped me, to the utmost extent of his small means, in the accomplishment of this design. All communication with my family at Avignon had of necessity been broken off. My writing or receiving letters would have led to a discovery of my retreat, and even M. Gardein was forced to keep the strictest silence on the subject in his correspondence. Once only he had an opportunity of privately apprizing my wretched parents of my being safe for the moment; and he learnt from a friend who had seen them, that their grief was largely mingled with the horror of what had passed, so natural to all persons of right feeling, especially such as strictly held by the religion of their ancestors. Any effort to supply my wants could be little expected from them; they considered me as lost to my family as well as my faith, and that they had now to bewail the loss of another son, but in circumstances far more distressing than those which accompanied their former misfortune of the like kind. But the kind good pastor did not dismiss me on my weary, solitary, and melancholy pilgrimage, merely filling as far as he was able my scrip. He thought he had a higher duty to discharge, and one peculiarly belonging to his sacred function,—the duty of giving me such counsels and such warnings as his longer experience had suggested, and as one in my circumstances peculiarly stood in need of. This conversation made a deep impression upon my mind; it was at night, after the frugal supper of the family had been succeeded by worship. He retired with me into his study, and kept me in discourse above an hour. Before I went to bed I took a memorandum of what he had then spoken, and I soon afterwards extended it so as to preserve both the substance and the expression, which was exceedingly simple but earnest. This precious memorial of my third father, I have in all the vicissitudes of my life been allowed to preserve, and I will read it to you when next you come here; for I am too much exhausted now to continue a conversation which, though it has some tendency to relieve me, is sadly mingled with the most painful recollections."

CHAPTER VI.

CONVERSATION IN LANGUEDOC.

The Count returned to the Château entirely occupied with the strange and dreadful story of Albert. As nothing more fills or distracts the mind than a constant state of anxiety and alarm, so no relations more arrest the attention, and make the hearer not merely feel sympathy, but actually partake of the painful sense of danger described; and the Count, whose imagination was sufficiently lively, and whose feelings were strong, shared largely in all that the Solitary had depicted of his state of mind. He felt uneasy; he was disturbed by the perpetual recurrence of the scenes which Albert had traced before him; he saw the officers of justice and the emissaries of the church in pursuit of his friend; and he found difficulty in believing, that even now, when all the wanderings of Albert had brought him safe to his retreat, that retreat itself, and the greatly diminished zeal of the clergy, with their much restricted power during late years, could make him quite secure against discovery and persecution. The likeness which the Baron de Moulin bore to the tenant of the cave, seemed to keep before his eyes the picture he had just come from gazing on; that resemblance was as great as could well exist between a very handsome and a very ordinary countenance, like the Baron's, whose features, however, were abundantly expressive, and had the impress of genius which always precludes any appearance of deformity. In his presence the Count's mind still more keenly dwelt upon the sad story of Albert; and he fell more than once into a reverie, which was speedily perceived by his fair partner. As soon as she could find him alone, she assailed him with an eagerness which in company she with difficulty suppressed. "Well then; and you have been to hear the wild and crazy hermit's tale? Of course he has satisfied your easy mind perfectly as to the visits of your friend the Marchioness?"—"That he most entirely has," said Chatillon, "nor was it difficult. My opinion of her is very high indeed; and I find, as I truly expected, that nothing was ever more completely groundless than the suspicions cast on her conduct."—"Oh! no doubt," said the Countess, "quite groundless; and without the least colour of probability from the first.—Mind you, Chatillon," she continued, "I will believe all you now affirm, in terms so very general, as soon as you let me know what were the Solitary's communications to you, and as certainly not otherwise."—"My love," he replied "I am most perfectly indifferent."—"None of your insolent abuse," she exclaimed; "say at once, frankly and freely, that you choose not to confide the matter to me, because it is of a kind better kept concealed, and I am satisfied; but no impertinence, I desire"—and with that she flung out of the room, all the more convinced by Chatillon's silence, that her suspicions were anything but groundless.

The Count, to relieve his mind, ruffled by his fair helpmate's temper, walked out into the delightful shrubbery that surrounded the Château. The rest of the company continued conversing on the subject which the Count's musing disposition, so new in him, suggested; and the discourse turned, as it is wont to do, upon the two absent members of the society. On no occasion are the absent ever more uniformly in the wrong, and without exception, than when they leave assembled the contents of a Château, persons for the most part idle, and who, being without pursuits when in the house, occupy themselves diligently with the concerns and the persons of their neighbours in the same society. The precise period of the day when the absent are most generally in the wrong, and when they form the most animated part of the conversation, is when dinner is waiting for their arrival. But at no time of the twenty-four hours are they apt to be very much spared by the company present. So it fared with the Count and the Countess on this occasion. While they were occupied, the one in a solitary walk, with musing over the strange adventures of Albert, the other in her boudoir with her extensive and various correspondence, and with the journals which she diligently studied, and which began now to be filled with speculations on the unquiet aspect of affairs, the company were employed in descanting upon the two absentees, each after his own fashion and humour.

"I marvel," said the Marquess, "that our good and light-hearted Count should have chosen his present wife, so different from him in both temper and taste. She was a widow, too, and had not made her first husband happy."

"Have you not observed," answered the Baron, "that men as well as women are apt to fix their affections on somebody very different from themselves? How often do you see close friendships knit between men of the greatest dissimilarity of character and of pursuits?"

"Yes, truly," the Marquess observed; "there is always one obstacle removed by such a difference—there is no interference, and thus no rivalry. However, I believe your remark has another foundation as to men's choice of a mistress or a wife. The variety is pleasing; the turn of mind so different from our own amuses; it is what we term piquant."

"For which," said the Marchioness, "I have often remarked we have in our insular language no word, though we have many that cannot be translated into your tongue."

"But surely," rejoined the Baron, with much animation, "the matchless beauty of the Countess must at once furnish a key to her husband's preference for her. Saw you ever beyond the Alps more perfect loveliness than our Tramontane fair one discloses?"

addressing himself to Prince Caramelli, who had just arrived from Florence and been visiting the Pont du Gard.

"Why, really, Baron," replied the Tuscan, "I must at once be ungallant enough to answer with a positive Yes. In the first place your fair one is of an advanced age."

"An advanced age. Prince! Why she is barely thirty."

"Barely thirty! Baron," said the Italian—"Had you said barely twenty—very well. But I own to you the addition of ten years is not very much to my taste. I might admire her society, might even relish the remains of former beauty, and let her live upon a recollection of past charms—I might make her my friend, but as for anything else, you will excuse me."

However, the rest of the company, though not so particular on the point of age, wholly denied the correctness of the phrase selected by the Baron to portray the object of his present devotion.

"Really," said the gentle Emmeline, "dear Zio, for so great a master of diction as you to choose the word 'loveliness,' and 'perfect loveliness,' as descriptive of the Countess, does, I own, a little surprise one. Incomparable beauty, if you will; but surely to loveliness there goes something beyond form."

"I agree with Mdlle. de Moulin," said the Marchioness, "and I will add, what of course she meant to allow, that though Madame de Chatillon has great expression as well as fine form—it is not a lovely expression at all. It is full of intellect, but it is also tinctured with both pride and temper."

"Two things the most inconsistent with the idea of lovely, certainly," said Emmeline. "But I hardly wished to say so much against any one I know so little, and am taught by my dear Zio to respect so highly. I only meant to say that she shows some tartness of disposition which little suits my poor humble taste."

"Come," said the Marquess, "I will not stop there. I freely confess to you, Baron, that I never could admire her at all. Her beauty is haughty; she enters the room as if she came to dictate, and expected to be obeyed without hesitation; moreover she has that sort of look as if she were the only virtuous person in whatever female society she honours with her presence, and almost the only person of talents or information in the male circles, where she most likes to move and to shine."

"Let me tell you, Marquess," said the captivated Baron, "that when a person is so endowed as she is, and leads also a life so pure, she may well hold her head high above the frivolous and the corrupt age in which she lives. But her harshness, of which you all complain—is it not well redeemed by the truth and honour it is akin to, and allied with? Who could ever charge her with a falsehood? When did the breath of slander ever settle upon her reputation?"

While these things were under discussion there arrived at the Château two guests of note from Nismes; Madame Leblanc, a widow, considerably past her prime, but who, from her position in society, had also considerable currency; and the Abbé Miltaud, a leader of the high fanatical party, to which the widow herself somewhat inclined. Accordingly the reverend personage had not scrupled to travel with her the journey from Nismes; "albeit it was," as he observed, "of more than one hour's duration; and albeit she was not much more than five-and-forty years of age complete." She naturally glided into the conversation, in which her niche was not likely to be filled in her absence. No sooner had she thus placed herself than she asked if the Countess had not set out for Grenoble; and finding she was still a guest at the Château, but also that she had retired for the morning to her extensive correspondence, and that the Count was gone to the chase, she felt it her duty to take these absentees under her especial protection; not, however, without aid of her spiritual friend the Abbé, whom she thus invoked, somewhat without asking his consent.

"Aye, truly—correspondence indeed! The Abbé and I have just been wondering what Madame de Chatillon writes about; for we hear at Nismes that her letters equal in number those of many merchants, and some ministers of state."

"Verily, Madame," said the reverend man, "I remember me not the remark you mention as having beguiled the time spent on the way. Peradventure was I then commending me to His care who maketh the rough places smooth, and guards them that travel by land and water from the perils of their path. But as to the post-office, know I little or nothing, being of them that use it not."

"But, Abbé," rejoined Madame Leblanc, "at least you must remember having said you deemed the Countess more intent on the things of this world than of another; and when I said that the case was a common one, you said, The more's the pity, and the less the excuse."

"Yes, verily, sister, did I so deliver myself; to the which you replied, that you could have more easily forgiven her worldly-mindedness if she only could now and then show a little charity toward offending brethren."

"Well, and so I still say—for, considering how many offend, surely nothing is more needful than a capacious and almost indiscriminate charity. There, for instance, is La Maréchale de Bournon, whom I never shall say one word against, nor can I say one word for her neither, for I believe she is no better than she should be."

"Truly," said the Baron, "it is a somewhat hard measure of justice to require her to be better than she ought to be."

"Well, well, as you please,"—she replied, "I speak always well of her; better than I can think—though, indeed, I like her much, only I can get nobody to agree with me. But there's the dear Countess de Pignerol, whose adventure with the Italian Prince is much talked of—and my belief is that he owes his principality to her good graces; for a lady told me that he was neither more nor less than a courier, whom some Prince turned off. But God help us! we are all but weak and sinful creatures without His aid. And if it be His pleasure the Pignerol should thus have gone astray, His will be done."

"Amen! amen!" ejaculated the holy man.

"So I say of the Countess, and when I hear people all saying she only minds politics, and having never had any children by either marriage, can think of nothing domestic, here I must take her part. She has long had a lover, to my certain knowledge, and that page of hers who is always on the fetch and carry is as like her as ever he can look."

"Certainly," said the Marchioness, "a child she never had, and as to the boy being, as you would insinuate, some kind of natural relation, some child of her father or her brother—"

"Ma'am, I only said she never had had any child since her marriage; I go not, God forbid I should, to any thing that may have happened before, either with M. Bertrand or any one else, whatever I may know personally on this subject."

"Really, Madame Leblanc, you are too bad with your anecdotes and your personal knowledge," said the Marchioness.

"Why, look you, my dear," replied the lady of much charity, "you should be cautious of discrediting even a report; for, as we are all in search of truth, how easily may we be deceived by incredulity!"

"But," said the Baron, unable longer to contain himself, "how much more injustice may we do by easy belief!"

"There I must differ with you," said she of the considerate mind; "you will observe that a great deal is always sure to be done that never gets out, so that I generally find it a safe rule to believe at least what I hear. A lady told me that she knew the affair with M. Bertrand, and that it is as much alive as ever."

"That I'll be sworn it is," said the Baron, "and I fairly tell you I don't believe one word of it."

"How extremely ill-natured that is, Baron! How hard upon the lady I have been quoting! Have you no regard for her character? Why should you so slander one you don't know?"

"And whom I never shall know, I dare swear," said the Baron.

"But, Sir," said the woman slow to blame, "you do neither more nor less than positively charge her with bearing false witness against her neighbour. How should you like any one disbelieving a story you had told, and of which you knew all the particulars?"

"Verily, and of a truth," said the Abbé, "you put the matter in a Christian manner. Howbeit, I would say a word for the other party, the Countess, but that I learn she is taking part with the evil disposed, who now infest our land—nay, purposes going with her obedient husband to Grenoble, where the work of the father of mischief is now for a season permitted by the Lord to prosper."

"Aye, truly, Abbé, well may you say so; there she says she must go, and go she will. Her obedient husband, indeed! well may you so call him; and her patient, her much-enduring, and her long-suffering husband. My heart melts when I think of him; it bleeds within me to see so much good nature so rewarded with oppression. However, he comforts himself in other quarters—of that, at least, there can be no doubt. But let us be just, even to sinners. It is not true that he keeps four mistresses and introduces them into his house. I believe he never has had more than two at one time; and if they are admitted into his house, it is always by a back door, so as no one not in the secret shall know anything about it."

The Marquess here wished to turn aside the conversation from its present channel, wherein it might have flowed without any interruption, or any end; so he reverted to Grenoble, willing to hear the Abbé upon a topic in which he took much interest. But at this moment entered the Countess herself, she having finished her day's despatches; and all eyes were at once turned upon her; as happens on any conversation being suddenly extinguished by appearance of its subject.

"Well, Baron," she said, on entering the saloon, "you will find I am right as to the great event of the States of Dauphiné. They are beginning to put themselves in an attitude; and if this does not lead to something material, I am much more mistaken than I have usually been."

"My dear Madam," answered the Baron, "I never had any doubt whatever that something would come of it. I only questioned your very sanguine view, that all grievances were to be redressed in less time than it would take to draw up a catalogue of them; and I am averse to sudden change, well knowing that the fruit which grows fast spoils quick."

"They do tell me," said the Abbé, "that some mention hath already been made of tithe, as if that were a grievance. Help us! what shall we next see?"

"Why really, Abbé," said the Countess, "were that our only grievance, there would need but little time and less trouble to rid ourselves. My opinion is for a clergy like the Swiss, among whom I was brought up, a poor and a working clergy."

"Mercy on us, to hear you talk! a poor and a working clergy! What! Shall they which serve at the altar not live by the altar? What portion of worldly goods cometh ever to my poor share, that do I freely take unto me; as knowing, that it is the portion of the Lord, and appertaining unto Him and His church, to whom and to which all glory for ever and ever!"

"Amen," ejaculated Madame Leblanc; "nevertheless, I could wish that in taking their share of our goods, they would let alone our persons. I am sure I have more than suspicions of the Abbé Lafosse and Madame Bertrand. I refer to his late visits and his long walks; and they do say the bishop has given him severe admonition."

"Sister!" said the Abbé, "it little becomes you so to speak of the church. The pious should distrust their eyes, and yet more their ears, rather than lightly believe in disparagement of the people of God. My brother Lafosse is of the elect, and can hardly fall from grace. Haply," said the pious man, "the Lord Bishop's admonition which you wot of touched some point of doctrine, wherein the Abbé might have gone astray from the path, and peradventure might lack wholesome correction."

"Abbé," said Madame Leblanc, "let you and I take a little walk in the shrubbery, before we go back to Nismes."

"Yea, verily, sister," said the holy individual, "for it now is waxing late; and I may not go on the way after the setting of the sun alone even with you in a carriage."

"Nor in a carriage even without me either. Abbé," said the charitable; "I observed you were in serious alarm each little jolt that we had on the smooth road coming out."

"Truly," said he, "and I do but regard it as a tempting of Providence, when I expose me to any kind of risk—save the hourly risk we ever run; for in the midst of life we are in death."

"Well," said the Countess, as soon as they were gone, "thank heaven, we have got rid of this canting pair! However, Madame Leblanc is not, by half, so bad as this Abbé; and as to her having some little causeries, I really hardly complain of that; for her abuse is no slander, so well is her venom known. I verily believe I am the only person of her acquaintance whom she has not freely charged with a faux pas; and that I ascribe more to my own prudence and reserve on all occasions, than to her forbearance."

"Oh! certainly," said the Marquess, "you set her at defiance. But also she may set you at defiance; for you don't hear what she says, any more than if it suited her humour she would care what you did."

There was a kind of smile on the Marquess's face as he spoke this, that seemed more significant than the fair lady, all conscious of her virtue, quite relished. Having assumed, and almost declared, that she was not merely above blame, but beyond attack, she now thought she had been under the searching operation of Madame Leblanc's unsparing tongue before she rejoined the company, and she immediately wore her enraged aspect as she said: "Well, I do believe that is the very worst woman in Nismes."

The Count here came in, having returned from the forest, where he had been shooting, to relieve his thoughts of the mournful impression made on him by the history of Albert, and to beguile the time, which he thought an age, till his curiosity should be gratified by the remainder of that strange and affecting story.

Prince Caramelli returned from his drawing excursion before dinner, and interested the party greatly by the exquisite sketches he had made of the Pont du Gard; which he pronounced more than Roman in its magnificent and perfectly preserved architecture. "I really," said he, "never could have imagined the French had such good builders. We generally plume ourselves upon our Italian masonry, and the buildings at Rome, particularly the older ones, which I suppose date as far back as our Gothic ancestors, are thought very fine, though now a good deal destroyed, and, in some places, fallen to pieces. But positively I find nothing, even in St. Peter's, equal to the Pont du Gard."

"The Pont," said the Baron, "is not a French structure, nor even one by the Gauls."

"Were the Gauls a French province?" innocently asked the Prince. But no one dared enter fully into this antiquarian discussion, out of charity towards this accomplished descendant of the brave Etrurians, who had the blood of the Medici in his veins, though he valued himself far more on his Gothic descent.

In the evening he delighted the ears of the company with his music still more than he had their eyes by his drawings. He was an admirable player both on the piano-forte and the violin, sang beautifully either a first or a second part, was so passionately fond of music that he discoursed eloquently respecting it, and had so much real taste that he almost seemed learned upon the subject. His contempt too for all others, when his favourite subjects of the pencil and the lyre were on the carpet, was only half concealed by his perfect politeness. He plainly perceived, or thought he perceived, that the French were, by some physical necessity, incapable of the least relish for the productions of either; and would cite, ten times in a day, the unfortunate mistake of a gentleman whom he had met at a Marseilles concert, and who, seeing the music-book in his hand, had asked him "If that Adagio was contemporary with Corelli?"

The conversation, however, was not suffered to rest always on the fine arts. The Countess must needs know what the feelings in Italy were on the ferment now beginning in France, and turned his attention to the assembling of the States at Grenoble. The Prince had here as much to learn on the art of discord as the amateur of Marseilles had on that of harmony. He desired to know what States were; and the Countess kindly undertook to describe that they represented the different orders of nobles, clergy, and commonalty. But the idea of anybody being represented except by his ambassador if a sovereign or his agent if a private person, could not easily enter the Tuscan mind; and when Madame de Chatillon said that this assembly shared the powers of government in a certain degree, he concluded they were officers and men raised and commissioned by the king; for he asked if they were a military corps, and drawn out occasionally, or on permanent duty? When told they were civil functionaries, he supposed they might be a great department of clerks, appointed to conduct the public business. It was impossible to make him comprehend how the government could be carried on by any person except under the king's authority; when the Countess, gently for her, but with an intelligent look that made no small impression on his southern and inflammable nature, reminded him of the republican time of Florence, her balia, her farsi publico, her parlamento, she found him as ignorant of the former history of his own country as of the present state of France. All he could say was, that no country could possibly exist in such a state of confusion as she seemed to speak of, unless perhaps England, which he had understood to be under the dominion of a lawless multitude of many hundreds, and to lie accordingly under such a heavy curse of constant confusion that nothing should ever induce him to venture near it. An orchestra of bad fiddlers, without a book or a director, seemed to him harmony compared with what he concluded the parliamentary government must needs be.

The Countess, finding all political discussion for ever shut out in this quarter, was fain to sit by while he either charmed the company with some more airs, or with the almost equally pleasing melody of his conversation; for he was a Sienese, and with the most beautiful Tuscan he had not any of the harsh guttural pronunciation so unpleasant at

Florence, Pisa, and Leghorn. His small talk, though far inferior to that of our own countrymen, was agreeable, and the animation which his excitable nature ever showed, prevented his emptiness from being dull. To his ignorance there was a compensation in his fire, which rendered him anything but insipid; while his perfect manners and imperturbable good nature made an impression on all who valued those lighter qualities. Emmeline, who had never seen an Italian, was much struck with him, and afterwards made a remark which even the profound and fastidious Countess thought had something in it: She said it was singular to see how a person might appear to have strong feelings who had only in all probability warm passions, and most likely no feelings at all; for she could not conceive it possible that a person of the Prince's station and family could have remained ignorant of every thing even relating to the history of his own country and his own house, if he had possessed the least dignity of character or any self-respect.

With all these claims to the contempt of reflecting or manly natures, there was nevertheless so much to attract in the Prince's winning exterior, and his frivolous accomplishments; his countenance, like that of so many Italians, was so intellectual, and so plainly showed that the genius was in him but asleep, and only requiring the torch of the educator to awaken its fires; and his good nature so unruffled, even by the eager animation of his southern manner, that he proved a favourite in the society of the Château, was easily borne, and even liked by all—by all save the Baron, who could not endure him; but this aversion arose from an accident that worked on his pride, which blinded, and his fiery temper, which impelled him; for he was very far from intolerant of persons inferior to himself, and even loved to repose upon their more tranquil dispositions.

Unfortunately the Prince had mistaken him for another person in the company, Major Drelincourt, an officer though not in uniform, who lived at Aix, to whom he bore some resemblance, and with whom, notwithstanding his imperturbable good nature, the Prince had had an unpleasant quarrel in a place of public resort in that town. Seeing the Baron in the ante-room of the Château soon after his arrival, he said, fiercely but not unpolitely, that until their quarrel, interrupted by the regimental colonel's interference, should be settled, one or other must quit the place. The Baron furiously turned round upon him, and asked when he, the Prince, intended to go. The mistake was instantly discovered; an ample apology was tendered with the explanation. It was dryly and very imperfectly accepted; and from that moment the Baron could not endure the sight of one whose most innocent error had, by the merest accident, been the occasion of an unintentional annoyance to his feelings. Nor could he bear the Major any more than the Prince, because his idea was mixed up with what had happened. The Marquess, having heard of the unfortunate circumstance, did all he could to accommodate matters, and it had the good effect of bringing about a reconciliation between the real parties to the only quarrel that, properly speaking, existed. But the Baron would not be appeased, or rather he could not control his humour, and he told Emmeline that they must quit the Château, and continue their journey. Her gentle nature was deeply wounded when she heard the cause. She was at first exceedingly hurt that her uncle had received any annoyance from any cause, and still more that his pride blinded him to a just view of the matter and of his position. Her calm judgment now, as on so many other occasions, saw things in their true light, and her rigid sense of justice, a prevailing character of her mind, made her really unhappy at seeing one whom she so fondly loved violating that most sacred duty. She cared little for the disappointment of leaving a place to which she had begun to feel attached, from the agreeable and instructive society assembled in it; that or any other sacrifice of her own wishes, she would cheerfully have made; and indeed one of her uncle's greatest difficulties always was to find out what she preferred, so carefully did she conceal her own likings whenever she feared they might interfere with his. But she could little endure the appearance of the Baron going away from what she could not help regarding as a somewhat childish fit of humour. "Dearest Zio," she would say, "do only, I beg and beseech you, consider that it was all a mere mistake, an accident that might have happened to any one as well as the Prince, and respecting any one as well as you. A more harmless man never lived than he seems to be, and he has many good qualities."—"And the Major too, whom he chose to take me for; I suppose, dear, he is very harmless and agreeable. I never saw any one less so, I own."—"No, no, dear Zio, I say nothing of him, excepting this, that if possible, he is even less to blame than the Prince, for he had no part whatever in it, except being of your size, and being taken for you in the dusk of the billiard-room."—"Well, well, my little love, but they are all mixed up in it; let them settle their affairs together as they will; they have all been the occasion of my getting angry before strangers, and being hurt by an empty fool; and the idea of them is hateful." A night's reflection, however, and the unwillingness to give Emmeline pain, independent of the reluctance to quit the Countess, which began to operate powerfully, restored this proud person to a more reasonable frame of mind; and he at any rate would take no step, and say no more about it, though he still said it was as hateful a thing as had for many years happened to him; and no entreaty even of Emmeline would induce him so far to throw off his humour as to offer the Prince his hand, or testify by any other courtesy his forgiveness of an unintentional error which he could not bring himself to forget.

Thus the evening and the next morning passed quietly away, and the Count, impatient to hear the continuation of Albert's story, again visited the cave, when the Solitary proceeded to read his notes of the good pastor's parting advice.

CHAPTER VII.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF A LANGUEDOC PASTOR.

" 'The young delight in action; contemplation is best suited and most pleasing to the old. But when the heart is rightly attuned to humane feelings, there is also a disposition in age to make its experience profitable to youth. Not only is there a satisfaction in dwelling upon the results of that experience, wholly apart from all ideas of egotism; there is a pleasure in conveying instruction, and in the act of making their own history useful to others they have a pleasing consciousness that they have themselves not lived in vain.

" 'Do not be alarmed, my good young man, at the prospect of a sermon. In the discharge of my pastoral duties I am never ashamed of preaching, nor reluctant to be instant in season and out of season, for the truths committed to my care. Woe be to me if I shun the service of my Master! But I have mixed with the world, as well as with the silent inmates of my study, and I have lived in society as well as in the pulpit. My lessons are of a kind that gownsmen fear too much the ridicule connected with familiar topics to teach on the Lord's day. The successors of our Saviour, even in early ages, much more the preachers of his Gospel in modern days, have lacked the gift of that divine taste as well as wisdom which dictated the exquisitely delicate composition of the parables. All their exhortations must for want of it be covered over with generalities, and, between the dread of exciting laughter and the fear of giving offence, the most impressive kinds of moral instruction are neglected, nay shunned by all who publicly teach the people. I shall address myself to you on the present occasion without any apprehension of either ridicule or resentment. My purpose is above suspicion; my heart is single; and on the margin of the grave into which I must soon descend I now stand, to give you the result of my observations upon the world into which you are entering, not forgetting also the great topic of things unseen.

" 'And I begin with that greatest of all subjects on which the mind can dwell, the highest to which it is permitted to soar.

" 'Think not that I use a clerical common-place, or am guilty of a professional exaggeration, when I affirm with the solemnity of a death-bed declaration, that in comparison with the sense of God's presence all other considerations are as of no importance, and compared with the hope of his future favour all earthly things are of no value. Whoever has known sorrow, and whoever has known sin, provided only he believes, will know also the necessity of this consolation to sustain him. When, under the pressure of either, the soul sinks within us, there is no effort from without can raise it up; and yet such is the incurable perverseness of human nature that I have generally found a less lively sense of religion in those whose lot was mournful, than in persons of happy circumstances and of a cheerful disposition. You, my dear young friend, belong, unfortunately, to the less favoured class, and on your mind there hangs a load, the accumulation of unlawful passions criminally indulged; as over your destiny there hovers a cloud which improvidence combined with accident, has gathered to darken your prospects. Oh hear the voice which bids you flee to the sanctuary for comfort! When all without frowns, and the world is bleak to the eye, the torch of piety lights us from within on our weary way. We can lay our head on the hardest pillow, and commend ourselves to his care who made the world; and even when oppressed with a sense of our own transgressions, though far from me be the attempt to inculcate an indifference or a callousness to the stings of conscience, still the sincere penitent may humbly hope for mercy, casting his look forward to the happier state of being, where sorrow shall cease, even sins be forgiven, and the inward monitor, ever jealous of neglect, shall torment no more.

" 'My hope is in revelation. I anchor my soul to that rock; then think not that anything I am about to say betokens a preference for another scheme of devotion, another ground of belief. But then I never shifted my faith like you, and it never has been shaken. You have left one church, a dogmatical, infallible, unreasoning church, and have come over, after long struggles, to another creed. I know not how much this rude trial may have unhinged your belief, how soon you may be visited with fresh doubts, with new misgivings, a thing I have so often witnessed, that for ignorant and for feeble minds I have ever considered the risks of conversion to our purer form of worship as more than counterbalancing the benefits of a nearer approach to the truth. I hope with you it may prove otherwise; yet, in case of scepticism ever invading your mind, I wish to remind you that the greatest of all religious truths, the belief in the existence of the Deity, rests upon natural reason, not upon revelation; that the belief in revelation pre-supposes a previous belief in a Divine Being; that all we observe around us, all we experience in our own minds, all we feel and see of our own bodily frame, demonstrates the truth that the greatest power and highest wisdom has created the world, both natural and moral, and presides over all its parts, all its movements, all its fortunes. No rational being can be an atheist, or even a sceptic, who examines a plant, an animal, an insect, much less who studies his own body or his own mind, or who lifts his eyes on the wonders of the planetary system and surveys the starry heavens. But the hopes of a Future State belong more clearly to the revelation of Him "who is the resurrection and the life." Nevertheless, even from these the pure theist, relying on the light of Nature, is not shut out; and I have known several men who had the great misfortune of doubting the truth of Christianity, and yet had nearly as firm a belief in a Future State as in a present Deity. The nature of the mind, its surviving the body's decay, its continuing the same while every portion of the corporeal frame is over and over again renewed and changed, forms indeed a cogent argument for its not perishing when that frame is dissolved. The improvement of the faculties to the very close of life, our greater fitness for heavenly things at the moment of our mortal existence ceasing, coupled with the prodigious goodness of the Creator, who has filled all things with proofs of his beneficence towards us, affords another, and as strong an argument for the continuance of our nobler part in another state of being. The universality of religion, and of the belief in immortality, is not to be despised as an auxiliary to the argument; perhaps we might add the kindred topic of the consent given to it by the wisest and most enlightened men of all ages and of all nations.

" 'Wherefore, whatever may betide thee, and even should doubts unhappily assail and cloud thy mind respecting revealed truth, by the faith in those matters, which natural and revealed truth alike teach, cling thou! By these eternal doctrines hold thou fast! To them, and the comfort, the unutterable comfort which they are fitted to afford, cleave thou! Cherish them; revolve them; dwell upon them; give them the first place in thy heart; meditate upon them the first thing each morning, the last each evening; let nothing ever sever thee from them: for in them of a surety shalt thou find the sweetest enjoyment in good fortune, and in evil the surest consolation!'

"Here the good old man, whose voice had sunk in loudness, and had become a mere earnest whisper, paused; he remained wrapped for a short space as if in heavenly contemplation; his hands folded devoutly over his breast; his eyes closed; his face turned upwards; his cheeks suffused with a glow that broke through their wonted paleness. When he opened his eyes, in which a tear now stood, he presented the very picture of a saint in devout contemplation; but it was a saint without ascetic austerity, a devotion without abject fear, a religion without spiritual pride, a worship which gave glory to God, and breathed good-will to men. After a few minutes he tenderly squeezed my hands between both of his, and then continued his interesting discourse.

" 'Think not that the future state of being which

I desire you ever to have before your mind, as well in the seasons of action and of suffering as in moments of calmer contemplation, is such as the vulgar feign for want of pure and refined ideas. They take the Oriental metaphors of Scripture in a literal sense, as do the Mahometans with their sensual paradise, the Hindoos with their extravagant superstitions. Unable to conceive a soul existing separate from the body with which they have always known it united, these practical materialists easily fall into the wild and gross error of fancying the fire described in the Sacred Writings to be actual fire such as consumes the body, and the torments of the wicked to be of a kind which sends up smoke to darken the air. Far more intolerable anguish than any the nerves of the flesh can endure will be the lot of those who pass their probationary time here below the slaves of lawless passion, and rebellious to the will of heaven. The ancient philosophers and orators, in their benighted state, formed not a bad notion of the fallacy that prevailed in the popular notions of Hell. Those furies, said they, which agitate the men whom they pursue, and are sometimes represented on the stage, are the insatiable passions, the vile propensities of our nature, disturbing the reason and giving the soul no rest. Such furies, unceasing in their torments, desires that vex the mental frame and never can be gratified; rage that spurns restraint and maddens the soul; revenge burning with a thirst never to be slaked: fear that sleeps not; shame that cannot be covered; self-abasement, degradation in others' eyes; the stings of a sleepless and avenging conscience; yet worse, the terrible presence of the Most High, the insupportable glare of the eye which is too pure to behold iniquity—these are among the torments in store for the wicked hereafter, and which, if constantly thought of here below, might deter men from sin. Nor is it unlikely that the very first suffering will be the most unbearable. At once the judgment being pronounced the veil will be torn away that hitherto had concealed our wicked deeds and vile thoughts from every eye but one. At once we shall stand revealed in our real colours to all. Whatever crimes we have committed in the flesh, and kept secret with unceasing pains, will all be exhibited in their true light. The secret thoughts of the heart will be made public. All our shameful propensities which we had thought would ever lie hid in the bosom that they deformed; all our shameful lusts scarce confessed to ourselves; our degrading jealousies—our low envy—the anger we had repressed when pretending indifference or affection; the fears under which we had quailed when affecting disregard of danger; the vicious thoughts that had filled us while covered with the sanctimonious garb of purity; the disregard of heaven that had lurked beneath the hypocritical mask of devotion; the furies that had agitated us and made us commit murder in thought, now from hatred, now from spite, now from sordid calculation of gain—all will now be exposed. All others will read the darkest secrets of our inmost heart; and our own minds, no longer blinded with self-love, will be astounded with the clear view of our real nature, concentrating against ourselves all the hatred and all the scorn with which we had ever hated or scorned our neighbours! Think not, then, that I mitigate the punishments of a Future State when I make them such as a spirit unconnected with the body can undergo. The Hell which I paint to you is far more dreadful than any that poets have figured or the vulgar fear.

" 'But believe me, my good young man, there are not wanting other reasons against swerving from the paths of innocence, and flying in the face of Heaven. You cannot with impunity fly in the face of your own conscience. You have felt its stints, and I will not dwell upon the jurisdiction, severely, unsparingly, unceasingly exercised by that judge, implanted in our bosoms by Him who wills not that we should swerve from the paths of virtue, but who also wills that no deviation should go unpunished here below, and therefore makes his delegated agent begin the vengeance which himself will finish hereafter.

" 'But the delight of a virtuous life is less felt in description than the sufferings of guilt, just as it is far less easy to paint the enjoyments of heaven than the torments of hell; a difference plainly experienced by Dante, as all but enthusiastic admirers of the great poet will freely admit. They partly from their prejudice, and partly from the love of singularity and the vanity of paradox, a common form of that weakness, profess to admire the Paradiso most, and they have few followers among persons of good sense and honest judgment. Yet I think I may appeal to your own experience when you contrast the peaceful existence you passed in Father Jerome's society, before you knew Louise Orange, with the turbulent state of your excited feelings after your mind was unsettled. There is a heavenly calm in feeling day after day that we have left no duty unperformed, and suffered no thought to gain admittance into our minds, of which we should care that all the world were aware as well as ourselves. When fortune smiles on us, this consciousness of rectitude doubly sweetens the cup of life; and when our lot is clouded with adversity, the feeling that we have not brought it upon ourselves, nay that we have not deserved it, enables us patiently to bear the infliction. Even in the exercise of patience itself, we come to take a pleasure, which is one of the best preparations, if indeed it be not an anticipation of a future and more perfect being.

" 'Of the extreme difficulty of this I am aware. Our nature is unhappily fundamentally gross, and lamentably feeble. It is ill fitted to maintain either its purity or its struggle with ills. We find it hard to conceive how it shall suddenly put on the mantle of innocence and strength. The doctrine of an intermediate state of existence, which shall prepare our souls for happiness, has, I am quite clear, no warrant of Scripture. Yet some such preparation does seem to me so necessary, that I regard the want of this intimation as one of the things purposely withheld from us in the volume of Revelation. That Sacred Book, which is quite clear and precise in declaring the great fact of life and immortality, and thus is far above the volume of nature in its communications, has no superiority whatever in the details, and leaves us quite in the dark as to the mode and manner of our future being. So it gives us no intimation of any purifying or perfecting process. I think it possible the omission may be owing to the Divine Will being that we should make this world the place of preparation; though after all our efforts I cannot help fearing that we shall still be found sadly wanting in capacity for at once being raised into the mansions of perfect purity, and boundless and most refined enjoyment.

" 'The nature of that enjoyment is wholly concealed from our eyes, and for the wisest reasons. It is probably such that unless our present frame of mind were wholly changed, we should be unable to sustain the burden of our existence on earth among sorrows and privations, enfeebled by weakness, and harassed by difficulties, even when not vexed by pain or worn down by sorrow. But we may conceive somewhat of the future bliss in store for the virtuous, if we reflect on the purest gratifications of which the mind is susceptible; the free interchange of thoughts and affections with those we love; the innocent recreations of alternating exertion and repose; the contemplation of new and singular truths; the pleasure of exerting our power in ministering to our own improvement; and as in our Father's home there are many mansions, we may not all at once be admitted to the full perfection which our nature is capable of attaining, but be gradually raised from step to step, and thus be always tasting the enjoyment of gratified curiosity and conscious progression.

" 'There is assuredly one part, and in the purest state of our faculties a most interesting part, of this field over which a veil is drawn that we cannot help wishing were removed. They who have known the bitterest of sublunary afflictions, naturally are anxious to be assured that those they have lost will be restored, and that they shall again know one another in the regions where there is no sorrowing, and where separation from those they love shall visit them no more. But the same wisdom, which has shrouded the rest of our future prospects in darkness, has suffered no light to beam upon this portion of it, lest we should not be able to endure our present privation and prematurely seek to end it.

" 'And now, my dear youth, you are entering into the world of action, of suffering, of misdeeds. If your mind be not strengthened and supported by fixed principles of conduct, by an unceasing regard to him in whom you live, and move, and have your being, by an unremitting dread of incurring your own self-reproach, you are gone, and can hope no more happiness either here or hereafter. Of all virtuous character, and all blameless conduct, I need hardly remind you that a sacred regard for truth is the foundation; it is the corner-stone of the moral structure. You know the scorn of yourself, the shame which you felt even when no eye saw it, at those concealments and fictions to which your offence in the convent drove you; and the agony with which you received Father Jerome's commendation for supposed conduct the reverse of that you had been pursuing. You remember too the disgust which you ever felt at the cunning devices of Father Ambrose, and the contempt with which the more venial falsehoods of the Irish friar inspired you. To have it said of one as Father Jerome said of him, "The story may be true, although Father O'Halloran told it,"—what can be more degrading? What can render a rational being more utterly despicable? Yet his untruths were not of the worst kind; they were rather invented to help himself than to hurt another; but be assured truth is so sacred and paramount a duty, that it can never with impunity be violated; and when you hear men speak of white lies and pious frauds, tell them boldly that no lies are white, though some are of a blacker shade than others, and that all frauds are impious, though some may be devised to compass a worthy end. The God of truth and purity wills that we seek good objects by right means, and has appointed no dirty road by which men may clamber even to heaven.

" 'In proportion as falsehood is abominable, and undermines every portion of the mind, so are those courses to be shunned which naturally lead to it. You have never lived in Nismes, or indeed in any society beyond the walls of your convent, else you would have seen the consequences of violated truth in the lives many of our grandees lead. The marriages which are made spring from no mutual attachment of the parties, hardly even from any personal acquaintance. Often they are arranged by the parents for their own convenience and the supposed good of their children; almost always they are matches of worldly interest, with a view to an establishment alone. The heart, however, which had not known love before the indissoluble knot was tied, soon opens to receive what, wholesome before, has now become poison. Attachments spring up, which ripen into connections, criminal in themselves and a breach of the conjugal vow, but doubly pernicious in their consequences; for they can only be indulged in secret, and must be covered over with every cloak that female ingenuity can weave. Constant dissimulation and pretence, endless contrivances devised in falsehood, disguises of the real sentiments, assumption of those not felt, an ever ready lie to meet a charge as well as a suspicion—such are the component parts of the existence thus passed in guilt; and as of the hypocrite so may it be said of the paramour, that his whole life is one lie. You have known somewhat of the same mischief produced by the unnatural restraints of the monastic state, and you have often told me that there are few inmates of a convent in whom the natural feelings and passions are so entirely dead and the obligations of the vow so cheerfully undertaken as to prevent much dissembling and much pretence. The hypocrisy thus engendered, you must have been fully sensible, could never be maintained without irreparable injury to the purity and sanctity of the character; and if you had to choose in whom your confidence should be reposed, you never could have failed to suspect those for all purposes whom you knew accustomed to practise insincerity for one.

" 'The great Christian rule of conduct forms one unerring test of right acting; we have but to ask, "How should I like to be so treated?" Another test is also of much efficacy: "How should I like this to be known?" And can anything be more humiliating, can anything lower you more in your own estimation, than to feel you are acting, or designing, or even thinking, in a manner which, were the light let in, and your deeds, or intentions, or thoughts, made known to others, you would instantly become the object of their aversion or their scorn? Can you be more degraded than by feeling that you only owe your escape from that hatred and that contempt to the veil in which you shroud yourself? You thus are wearing false colours, obtaining forbearance or even commendation to which you have no right, passing for that which you are not, not known for what you are; in a word, you are a hypocrite, and your life is a lie.

" 'Such is the sacredness of truth, so fatal is its violation, which throws open the door wide to all evil, that I will suffer nothing to palliate the least deviation. All contrivance, all trickery, all stratagem, all concealment, all pretence, I condemn as partaking of the master-crime, father of all others, falsehood. When men of experience in the ways of the world lay down such maxims as are often in their mouths, I try them by one test, "Do they consist in dissimulation?" They will advise you, when anxious to gain your object with others, that you should appear indifferent or careless, and will assure you that the less you seem anxious about it, the nearer you are to success. True; if your object be one you dare not avow; if you be in quest of something you have no right to obtain; if you want to throw your neighbour off his guard, in order to steal a march on him—true; but if your purpose be fair, why not openly avow it? If you don't want to overreach, why fear to tell what you mean and what you wish?

" 'I carry my hatred of falsehood from the highest to the lowest subjects, and I will not even permit what are called the harmless affectations of the world. The concealment of our opinions too, the avoiding of discussion when the truth is impugned before us, the appearance of assent to avoid opposition, whatever exceeds mere indolence, or good humour, and the unwillingness to give pain by differing, I proscribe as leading to dangerous habits of insincerity. But above every thing, let there be no pretence of affection that is not felt; no concealment of contempt under the guise of respect. We are not bound to express all our thoughts and feelings; but we are bound to express nothing we do not think and feel.

" 'I will freely own to you that, with the most perfect veneration for the morality of the Gospel, I am sometimes staggered when I reflect on the injunction to love our enemies. That we are bound to return good for evil, at all events that we are forbidden to injure those who have injured us, no one can doubt; this rule of the Gospel is easily obeyed; and its observance doing no violence to our nature, offers no injury to our sincerity. But it has often appeared to me singular that the same Being who made us what we are, should exact a duty from us, which before we can perform, our nature must be changed. To keep our hands, or even our tongues, from hurting an enemy is easy; it is not difficult kindly to entreat him; but to love him is beyond our power, and the effort can only, as I think, lead to self-deception. It is a violence to our nature, perhaps, even to return benefits for injuries; to love those who have hurt us seems little consistent with honesty, in the weakness of our fallen nature; it seems so great a violence done to our strongest feelings that we can hardly hope to practise it, and may be tempted to feign it even with ourselves, thus seduced into either hypocrisy or self-deception. Possibly the divine command is only an Oriental hyperbole, or rather refers to our deeds and words (which are deeds) than to our thoughts; possibly we should only read it as an injunction to act as if we loved our enemies; that we should hold out the hand of friendship and loving kindness to them, should embrace them as friends; and indeed to kiss, to give as it were the kiss of peace, is one sense of the original Greek word.

" 'It is no deviation from my fundamental principle that we should master and even smother our wrath and our other violent passions; it would be a deviation were it certain that the fire so covered would still burn; but our nature is so constituted, that by stifling we extinguish the lawless passions, which, like fire, may be suppressed, and may burn the more fiercely when uncovered to the air. This is true even of our feelings: grief, for instance, may be indulged so as to become extravagant and prey upon the mind, while some alleviation of our sorrow may be derived from avoiding the external display of it, if to suppress it be impossible.

" 'Of course I entirely disapprove some practices to which cunning men resort of concealing their angry passions in order to gratify them the more securely or the more effectually. I have known some of this class who never took offence at the moment; and, if attacked in society or in controversy, defended themselves, but not even in self-defence were much moved, and never retaliated as if to avenge the attack. They bottled up their fury, and let it loose on some occasion for which they lay in wait, that they might spring, as it were, from the thicket on their prey unwarily, and thus prevent any one from perceiving what they did was in revenge for having themselves been wounded. Women are of far more sensitive and nimble minds than men, and can better see through others. Their over-suspicious nature no doubt often fancies things to be passing in those they are inspecting, but also often hits on what really is going on within our bosoms. Hence no such stratagems as I am referring to ever deceive them; they connect the attack with its cause; they see into the thicket where resentment is lurking. This clear-seeing of women has often astounded me, even of women little remarkable for abilities. It seemed as if their passions supplied force to their intellect, and sharpened their wits. I have known a jealous woman appear actually to know what passed within the mind of her lover and her rival, as if she could see through their breasts to scan their thoughts and examine their designs.

" 'Men have discussed the question, whether or not any circumstances, any extreme juncture, can justify a breach of veracity. The dispute is really about words; for when cases are figured to show that a concealment of the truth, or even the assertion of a falsehood, is lawful, we cannot say that any obligation at all is broken. No one is bound to tell an assassin which way his victim has escaped; no one is bound to disclose the secret I have confided to him because an impertinent person asks him; and yet, in order to prevent him obtaining the information which he has no right to, and which it is a duty to withhold, you may be obliged to say No, at once, and not to refuse an answer, because he may so frame his question, that your refusal would be a confession of the truth which you are bound to conceal. The fault in these cases is not in you who only refuse the information which it would be criminal to give, but in the other party who asks you. The violation of truth is, in fact, committed by the assassin, who would make you an accomplice; or the impertinent, who would make you break your trust.

" 'If truth, and a sacred regard for it, must ever be the corner-stone of our character, the superstructure is to be reared, and the fabric maintained, by firmness of purpose. This, indeed, consolidates and strengthens the foundation itself; inasmuch, as a constant regard for truth can hardly be preserved amidst all temptations, unless our steadfastness be guarded against the disturbing forces which are continually acting upon us. How many miserable wrecks of cast-away reputations do we see in all directions, when the natural capacity was considerable, the disposition kindly, the desire to do well reasonably strong, but yet the firm and determined will wanting: and the principles, originally sound and good, were one by one sapped, and the whole crumbled down! Consider how it happens, that a life of secret indulgence is a life of falsehood and of guilt. The passion thus gratified is the father of lies, but their foster-father is fear, and to resist the one, as well as be above the other, requires the moral courage, without which no virtue can long be found to flourish. When I trained my children, I was as careful to shun whatever might expose them to terror, as I was to remove any ordinary temptation from their path. In early childhood the habit of truth must be acquired, and whosoever is severe to his child drives him to falsehood. Firmness is to be taught by example, more than by precept; and the parent who wavers himself in his treatment infects the child with his weakness or his caprice.

" 'Of pride, I know not well what to say as a general rule; so closely is it allied to both great virtues and great excesses. In so far as it prevents mean actions, it is useful: and yet, it rather acts thus as a substitute for a higher and more worthy motive; it operates by the high and overweening opinion of self. Many are saved by its influence, whose principles are unsteady in other and better respects. In itself, it cometh of evil, and often leads to the worst actions, to want of charity, to intolerance, to hardness of heart, even to cruelty; and revenge is its natural fruit. When it prevents base deeds, as doubtless it often does, we must regard it as a compensatory principle in our machine; like the parts of an engine which we sometimes see ingeniously contrived to make its aberrations correct themselves, and help the general movement by the effects of a partial obstruction.

" 'Yet after all, what mischiefs come from this same pride, and how little does it become a frail creature like man! If it occasionally rescues us from the degradation of a lie, does it not often reconcile us to falsehood, for the sake of covering a weakness that is no crime, and that no one needs be ashamed of? Don't we daily see men persisting in hurtful error, even on important subjects, rather than freely own themselves to be in the wrong? Even on the highest is this often seen. Does it not obstruct the right and wholesome course of the feelings, leading now to their suppression, now to their perversion? How often do we see men ashamed of being grateful; hating to incur obligation for fear of being compelled to admit a superior; and when the debt of gratitude has been incurred, vainly, preposterously, thinking to pay it off by fastening a quarrel on their benefactor! Oh! no, there can be no balance in settling the account. It is all on one side! The sin of the fallen angels is not redeemed by the little good that ever results from its indulgence. Vanity may make us more ridiculous; pride makes us more hateful; and they who to avoid contempt fear not encountering hatred, they who say with the tyrant, "let me be detested, so I be only dreaded, and not despised," are in imminent risk of incurring both inflictions, and of being scorned as well as hated. Yet it is more detestable than despicable: or rather our laughter is lost in our indignation. When a Protestant poet, I believe an Englishman, said that a naked human heart is a sight so horrid, as only the Deity can bear to look at, he surely must have had in his eye the dreadful havoc that pride makes in its structure.

" 'Nor is pride without an appointed punishment here below. To suffer endless mortification; to have the centre of action placed beyond our frame and our power, and suffer for what others do or withhold; to be harassed by suspicion—to be riven by jealousy—to be vexed by a sense of wrong because we have imagined a standard of injustice for ourselves; to be pressed down by a feeling of injury because we have set up a rule of justice—these are among the sufferings which the indulgence of pride inflicts; nor can its victim fail ever and anon to have a misgiving that he is not very much consulting his dignity in all he does, and all he feels; but, on the contrary, is making himself most contemptible to shun contempt. In this respect, no doubt, the despicable folly of extreme vanity is far less painful to its possessor; it may sometimes be mortified, but it ministers, for the most part, rather to his contentment than to his distress; while pride is almost always the source of uneasiness and pain.

" 'Moderation in all our feelings, my young man, should be cultivated as the parent of many virtues, the protector against many vices. This is so trite a subject that it will bear but two remarks. The utter exhaustion we feel from a relapse into tranquillity after a vehement excitement, is a paralysis of the mind brought on by ourselves: it unhinges us, and unfits us for all useful exertion, independent of the pain it occasions. Then nothing so warps the judgment as exaggerated feelings. Beware of indulging either in violent friendships or strong aversions: both are apt to drive us into the opposite extremes. The most groundless dislikes that I have ever seen succeeded to preposterous partialities; and as often as I hear a person express unreasonable hatred of another, I look forward to the day when, blind to real imperfections, he will become devoted to the object of his former antipathy.

" 'Akin to moderation, and growing out of it, is the habit of economy; itself a virtue because connected with justice and charity, and the mother of other virtues, as well as the safeguard against many evil ways. The danger of falling into the almost insanity of parsimony and avarice must at the same time be carefully shunned. The reason why men are prone to indulge the love of mere saving arises from their liking an enjoyment so entirely within their own power, and under their individual control. It also ministers to the love of security, removing day by day all the fears which can ever invade the mind of being needy or dependent.

" 'I have mentioned two simple tests of conduct, as safe to be trusted; I must add a caution of sovereign virtue as a preventative of misdeeds, because it is levelled at the great corrupter, self-delusion. The passions are of all sophists the most subtle; for they not only turn away our eyes from the surrounding perils, but blunt our sense of vision itself, so that we could not see, were our eye pointed to the quarter where the danger lies. But the worst of their sophistries is directed against conscience itself, the judge established in our own bosom by the Most High to exercise his jurisdiction, both police and penal, both preventive and vindictive. The sophistries I speak of, practised on that judge, too often succeed in swaying him over to their side. I will speak without a figure on this most important matter. Beware of the self-delusion which so often represents a vengeful act as done in self-defence! How usual is it for him who would gratify a feeling of vengeance to say, "I am attacked and must protect myself,"—for him who would profit at his neighbour's expense to say, "I have been injured by another, and must bring myself home,"—for him who would gratify hatred to say, "He has wronged me, and I have cause to dislike him;"—for him who would fly in the face of the public opinion and insult the general feeling to say, "All men scorn me, and I must be at war with the world!" Be assured of this, that it is easier by such sophistries to disarm conscience of her terrors beforehand, than to quiet her after guilt has been incurred from a neglect of her warning voice; and the same power will be found swift and stern to punish in proportion as it has been impotent to deter.

"' Nor let me among the securities against vice, pass over industry. The love of labour is a propensity not unnatural to us, and it ought to be cherished constantly, never repressed. Industry is a great safeguard to the virtue of a frail being like man, upon whose mind the wicked passions must make fearful inroads while it has no innocent pursuit wherewith to be occupied. But, independent of the usefulness both to ourselves and others of labour, independent of its being subservient to virtue; its enjoyments are great, both in the exertion of our faculties, and in the repose which succeeds that exertion. I have myself tasted of these sweets; but I have conversed with others whose lives were passed in labours far more strenuous and unremitting than my own. They have described with rapture the exquisite delights of having finished a long task, of being rewarded with delicious repose after fatiguing toil, of sinking into tranquil rest after severe or agitating efforts, of letting the mind slumber when the body may be awake, or of so changing the line of exertion as to give the faculties the same kind of solace that the limbs experience by calling new muscles into action. It is hardly needful to add among the other virtues of great labour that there is no other road to any kind of excellence. The superficial impostors who would make us believe they can by natural genius supply the want of pains, and strike out great works at a heat, may dazzle for a moment by doing badly and speedily, what others of less quick parts do not much worse in a longer time. But these works survive them not. See the inimitable remains of ancient genius! All is elaborated with a care quite equal to the skill displayed. See the works of modern art! The lyre, the chisel, the pencil, all are used by the hand of intense labour. You will find drawings even of the bones and joints by great painters, Michael Angelo for instance, as accurate as an anatomist could produce; and if the Venetian school studied design less, it was only to bestow the more pains upon the anatomy of colour and of expression; while botanists themselves have admired the accurate drawing and colouring of the foliage in Titian's finest picture.

" 'The course before you, my dear friend, is in all human probability one that will only be traced through the more private and obscure paths of life. If I believed you were of that small number whose actions could influence the destiny of their fellow-creatures, whose fortunes are connected with the fate of nations, I should have one hope to express, alike on their account as on your own. Seek to raise monuments which may give you not an imperishable name, but a name that never can be pronounced without gratitude and love; monuments which will endure, when all that marble and brass can body forth shall have crumbled in the dust—the improvement of your kind in knowledge, in virtue, in happiness, the only work worthy of a rational being, and the work which alone can elevate man towards any resemblance with his Divine Original!

" 'I close my parting advice with warning you against the extremes of too easy faith and too rigid incredulity. In the highest of all subjects you have learnt from me the imprescriptible right, and even the sacred duty of exercising your own reason. But, though I would guard you against being tossed about with every wind of doctrine, I would not have you hastily reject the deliberate opinion of honest and enlightened men, who have well considered holy subjects. The weight of that opinion is great with all rational minds, though it is not derived from the authority of their station, or from their illustrious names, unless in so far as their renown is the reward bestowed by universal consent upon their merits. Upon temporal matters you will steer a safe course by pursuing the same middle path. The most credulous persons are often those who have occasion for confidence to their asseverations, and I have often observed that ready liars are easy believers. But, on the other hand, who will venture, after what we have seen effected by science and by art, to pronounce anything impossible? You need not, even after beholding men sail in the air, and pump up rivers by steam, or rend rocks by gunpowder, believe that we shall ever live to see them travelling by steam without horses, or sailing by steam against the wind;[10] nor because we know how respiration and combustion are performed, is it very likely that we shall ever find out how the internal structure and functions of our living bodies are influenced by diseases; nor, because we now know many new metals with strange qualities, are we likely ever to see metals floating in the water and taking fire on touching the air. Yet forget not that we have already ascertained the great laws of planetary motion, of chemical action, of animal life; and turn not a deaf ear to any one that predicts the arrival of a time when we shall be able to see that all the apparent irregularities of the heavenly bodies, from their mutual disturbances, are parts of one necessarily harmonious system; that the mutual actions of substances follow mechanical laws, and their combinations observe definite proportions; and that the movement of our muscles may be traced to the nerves which connect them with the brain. These are, possibly, dreams, but they import nothing more marvellous than the existences which science has already created, and they are certainly more connected with the pleasures of refined contemplation, the gratification of learned curiosity, than with any use or any interest touching ourselves.

" 'But one inference powerfully strikes the mind from considerations like these, and gives them the closest connection with our very highest concerns.

If parts of the worldly system, which being once placed beyond our reach, appeared disjointed, without order, and without rule, now fall gradually within the scope of the laws regulating the universe, so that real harmony is found to arise out of apparent discord, and absolute regularity to reign where anarchy but yesterday seemed to revel—surely we have a right to conclude, that when the film shall be wholly removed from our eyes and we shall no longer see as through a glass darkly, we shall find what to our limited faculties now wears the aspect of evil permitted by the Great Maker and Disposer, is no longer entitled to the name, and that Perfect Goodness reigns throughout the great system which Perfect Wisdom has planned and Almighty Power has created!' "

The Solitary ceased to read; and Chatillon, who had listened with unabated attention to the philosophy of the pastor, although it interrupted the narrative and suspended the gratification of his curiosity, confessed to himself that he had not passed an unprofitable hour. Little used as he was to deep reflection, and generally careless about anything that did not immediately affect his senses, yet the great interest excited by Albert's history, and the affection he began to conceive for him, had led to a wish that nothing should be withheld, had made him engage his best attention in the story, and now made him patient of a long and general, if not somewhat abstract, discourse. Many things had in the progress of it been presented to his mind in lights which had never struck him before; many things had been discussed on which his mind had never dwelt at all; and he felt that he had listened to what he afterwards called a kind of sermon, with more profit and less weariness than he sometimes felt at the Temple, when the Countess, educated in Switzerland, and having a leaning in favour of the Reformed worship, had made him occasionally accompany her to that congregation. But Albert now resumed the narrative of his own adventures.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE EXILE.

"I retired to rest full of serious but not unpleasing reflections upon the important matters which I had just during two hours and upwards committed to paper from my recent recollections of the pastor's discourse. I could, however, take but little and interrupted sleep. The anxiety which filled my mind respecting my own situation, the dark veil which clouded the prospect around me to whatever point I carried my view, above all, the thought that I must now seek refuge in a foreign land, and quit, most probably for ever, the neighbourhood of the Contât, in which were my parents and my love—never more to be cherished by my dear mother, never more to cherish Louise—all this agitated and dismayed me; the rather that during the perpetual dread of detection in which I had been living at Nismes, and my agony lest the innocent man should suffer for my crime, I had not been able to have these tender ideas present to my mind, and had never been able to abstract it from the recollections which occupied all my thoughts, unless at seasons when the pastor administered consolation to me. and led me to discuss the articles of the Catholic and Apostolic faith, or the observances of the Romish ritual. I was now about to be left altogether in my own company, and my mind was accordingly filled both with apprehension, for the future which had never left it, and with musings on the past to which it had for some weeks been comparatively a stranger.

"Early in the next morning M. Gardein tenderly embraced me, and pronounced his blessing with a devout prayer for my welfare. He made his lad take me to a vetturino, with whom he had agreed to carry me as far as Beaucaire; and I arrived there without any accident or any occurrence worth recounting. There was no other passenger till we got within a league of the town, when, to my infinite consternation, I saw, coming up to take a place in the carriage, a person whom I at once recognized as having seen at Avignon, though I did not know him; and it immediately struck me that he must be on the look-out for me, and had received intimation of my travelling by this vetturino. I drew instinctively back, and ensconced myself in the darkest corner at the back of the long clumsy vehicle. To my no small relief, the man quietly drew out a pipe, and began to strike a light and involve himself in the clouds he exhaled, I took, however, the first opportunity of leaving the carriage and passing swiftly through Beaucaire, till, reflecting that my walking quick might excite suspicion, as I had resumed my peasant's dress, I slackened my pace, and, buying some bread and some cheese, refreshed myself for the journey before me. The road towards Aix is uninteresting; I met very few people by the way; and at night I slept in a small cabaret, where they let me lie on the bench for a few sous. Next day I arrived at Aix; and as I sat in an inn frequented by muleteers, wishing to obtain a conveyance or to accompany some one towards Dauphiné, that I might get into Switzerland, I was inexpressibly shocked to hear the conversation turn upon the murder of Avignon, as it was called. The gross exaggerations with which it was interlarded did not prevent me from recognizing the portion of truth on which the fabrication rested; and my heart sunk within me when I heard that one of the criminals had been secured on his flight towards Marseilles, and was in the Papal prison at Avignon, where he had been condemned to the rack. I gave a convulsive start, and well nigh shrieked to think of Isidore. It now seemed as if all eyes must be upon me; but so frantic did I become at the thoughts of my dear companion suffering for me, that I little regarded my own situation, and was prepared to go back and surrender myself, when a remark that escaped respecting money having been found in the prisoner's girdle made me conceive the hope that the whole was a mistake of the police proceeding at Nismes. This relieved my anxiety for the moment, but I could not leave Aix under the uncertainty; I went to a place were the Avignon Gazette could be read; and as I found nothing in it except an account of the Nismes proceeding and the escape of the prisoner, my alarm was quieted.

"I now took the road to Sisteron, in order to arrive at Grenoble. The further I removed from the Contât, I felt that my fears became less strong, and I could even enjoy the magnificent scenery and the fine weather, neither too sultry nor at all chilly, which the season, though advanced to the very end of autumn, gave. When the mind is in an agitated or a melancholy state, there is something peculiarly mournful in the serene aspect of a sunny sky, and the tranquil beauty of a fine landscape, such as many of the valleys near the Durance and the Isère present. The contrast is striking between what is felt within and seen without; but the thought which prevails when our affliction rests upon the loss of those most beloved, or upon an uncertainty as to their fate, is that we refer to them the surrounding objects.—'Shall the dear Father Jerome ever more open his eyes beaming with kindness on this glorious sun? It rises as formerly when we have walked forth in the cool of the morning to contemplate together the works of the Creator, and when the father's learning taught how that light was composed, which clothes all nature in varied hues. It sets as formerly when we have gone out to meditate at eventide, and when his lessons taught me that the reflection on a well-spent day is more serene than the summer heavens as night comes on, and the beauties of virtue dazzle more than the sparkles in the starry firmament. Yes, it rises and sets; lighting men to their labours, or suggesting to them their needful repose; but on the holy friar's grave it sheds in vain its rays; for him there is no alternation of seasons; it is dark always: it is cold the year through; the warmth of that heart is extinguished which so long glowed with love of God and man, and the gentle light of that eye is quenched, which shone with intelligence and glistened with tenderness! Whose impious hand laid the venerable Father low? Does he—can he bear yet to live, and live even to be filled with anxious fear about the burden of the vile life he carries about, not daring to shake off his hated existence? Then can I be sure of that being the last crime which rests on my loaded conscience, and should bend down my guilty head? Is it certain after all that Isidore has not fallen a sacrifice to my escape? His friendship, which made him my accomplice by aiding my concealment and sharing in my flight, has exposed him to the risk of capture; and am I sure that in my absence he has not become an expiatory offering for my sacrilege?'—It seemed as if a second time within a few weeks I had involuntarily the guilt of blood upon me, by the blow which I had wilfully and wickedly designed for others having fallen upon those I most would have desired to spare. Such were the reflections with which I cast my eyes on the magnificent landscape that is spread from the Isère by Vizille, as far as the sight can reach, terminated by the Swiss Alps. It opened upon me in a fine setting sun, as I came round the point between La Mure and La Freye. There are few more striking or more noble prospects to be seen. A vast and cultivated plain stretches to an immense distance in front, with two considerable towns in the foreground, and studded with villages and farm-houses as far as the eye can reach, Vizille is romantic from its fine buildings; and to gain La Freye, you have to cross the Isère on a handsome and spacious bridge. The Drax rolls on in ample flood below Grenoble to the left, and that fine city stands on an eminence which commands the champaign country on either side of the rapid stream. The Higher Alps, on whose chain is the Grande Chartreuse, rise behind it at a moderate distance, and the view on the other side is closed by the lofty mountains of Switzerland, among which the glaciers are seen to tower in the severe majesty of eternal snow, the loftiest of the whole, Mont Blanc, losing its purple summit in the clouds. This magnificent spectacle for the moment distracted my thoughts from melancholy contemplations, and I cast a wistful eye to the time when I used to visit new scenery, light of heart, and indulge in day-dreams of other excursions and other contemplations with those I loved and should see no more.

"As the sun sank, behind the lower chain to the west, I entered the fortifications of Grenoble, and could not help feeling a shudder when I found myself surrounded with the force of the place. It seemed as if each soldier was ready to stop and to execute justice on one who was fleeing from it. I buried myself in a low inn, frequented by Swiss cattle-dealers, and at once saw how unlike my dress was to either those persons or any one in the Grenoble country. My alarm was increased by a servant-girl of the cabaret remarking that I neither seemed to speak like the French nor the Swiss. So I stole out of the inn and took shelter in another, where, happily, I passed without observation. Next morning I sallied forth to find my way up the mountains; and observing a crowd in the public place, I safely mixed in it, all being so deeply intent on something which was passing upon a stage erected near, that none thought of regarding me at all. But what was my horror, my unspeakable dismay, to see that the object all thus gazed on was an execution! The priests were administering the last rites of the church to the unhappy culprit, a young man of most forbidding aspect, and rude, savage mien, against whom the feelings of the multitude seemed strongly excited. I would have given worlds to be at a distance from the accursed spot, but I felt as rivetted to it; and my agony of mind was severely increased when I saw the preparations for the rack before the sentence of death should be executed. I had heard those around recounting the particulars of his crime with horror; but this feeling was soon to undergo a great and a sudden change. When stretched on the terrible wheel, his screams filled the air, and were echoed by the indignant spectators. True, he had committed a cruel murder! the murder of a working man in the neighbouring wood for the lucre of gain, that he and his comrades, of a gay night, might spend the poor traveller's money, the price of his summer's labours in the Grenoble forest, with which he was hastening home to support his little family, widowed and made orphans by his fate. True, all this was well known, and had been preached upon in the sermons of the friars ever since the condemnation.

as well as promulgated in the proclamation of the sentence by the magistrates. True, the murdered peasant had long been well known as frequenting the vicinity of the town, and respected for his orderly and quiet demeanour, as well as for his unwearying industry, so that his death had been bewailed, and the public anxiety, till the murderer was discovered, had been wound up to a high pitch, making the discovery the subject of general exultation; and, if a less cruel punishment had been inflicted, even a capital punishment, all sympathy would have been interested on the side of justice. But the sanguinary, the unmerciful spectacle, of agony beyond the power of human endurance, deliberately inflicted by the officers of the law, obliterated all recollection, even the strongest and the most fresh, from the minds of the assembled thousands; all their feelings were perverted; they had only sympathy with the sufferer whose contortions they saw before them, whose shrieks and groans rent the air; and if they could find a place in their bosoms for any other feeling, it was for indignation against the merciless law, which, execrating for its needless and revolting cruelty, they unjustly accused also of violating all justice. The criminal had changed places with the murdered man, and become the object of public compassion; the law had taken the place of the crime, and was the object of detestation. Their feeling was to rescue the suffering culprit, and wreak their vengeance on the ministers of justice.

"I have often since reflected on this exhibition of popular feeling, and drawn from it the conclusion that such must ever be the effect of punishments which, either from being disproportioned to the offence, or from being of a kind needlessly cruel and revolting, fail to carry the public feelings along with them; and I have further felt persuaded from the savage spirit which I saw excited at Grenoble, that sanguinary punishments have a tendency to prepare criminals rather than repress crime by habituating to cruel sights the minds of the vulgar, uneducated, and acting from blind impulse. But such reflections were not the suggestions of that moment; I could then only think of the terrible scene before me; I felt as if each turn of the wheel was destined for my own limbs; I seemed as if doomed by Providence to a foretaste of the fate which awaited me. The finishing stroke, the coup de grace, was at length allowed to terminate the wretch's agony, and relieve the spectators as well as the principal sufferer; it seemed to terminate my bodily and my far less tolerable mental sufferings; and when the black pall was flung over the wheel on which the murderer's body lay stretched, I for the moment, could hardly avoid envying him his last, perhaps his first repose, as I hastened away from the dreadful scene, scarce conscious of what I did, and wholly careless whither I went.

"My state of mind while winding through the Alpine passes I cannot well describe, for I could think of nothing but the Public Place at Grenoble, and could only see the horribly distorted face of the tortured murderer. But this I remember, that I shunned the path which leads to the Grande Chartreuse, feeling alarmed at any approach to a monastery. After several days of suffering, caused by the cold, which had set in like winter in these elevated regions, I at length came in sight of the frontier, and reflected that I had no passport. Ignorant whether it was a Catholic or a Protestant canton that I was about to enter, I durst not say I had become a convert to the Reformed faith and was flying from persecution; and I could think of no other means of escape from the police of the boundaries than waiting till night fell, sauntering on the unfrequented road, and then clambering up to some height on the mountain at the peril of falling over a precipice. Fortunately I found a hut in which sheep had been driven for shelter against the cold, and I contrived with the aid of their warmth to pass the night, one of the most dismal I had known since my escape. Next morning I found myself among a race of peasants different from those I had seen any where in France, and I breathed freely on being assured that I had altogether escaped from my native country.

"I did not, however, venture to linger long on the frontier; I gradually made my way through the canton, reached the Lake of Geneva, and before November set in, which in these parts of the world is completely established winter, I had got as far as the neighbourhood of Vevay, on the upper part of the Leman lake.

"The country there is exceedingly fine, but I found the winter severe. What made the life more vexatious was the difficulty I found in obtaining work, for my only resource was day labour in the fields. I was afraid to seek employment as a clerk, or shopman, or any capacity showing education, lest I should betray my secret. Even among peasants I ran, or constantly felt that I ran, a risk of discovery. After I had been some time in a farm-house about a league from the town, taking care of the cattle and stables, a work which I certainly must have done very indifferently, I was one morning alarmed by a man who slept in the same room, and whom I observed looking very attentively at my bed while he thought me still asleep. I did not move, and I observed that he went to the door, and whispered to another, a servant-girl who was passing. They both came and gazed. I then perceived to my great alarm that it was at the whiteness of my skin they were wondering, one hand and arm lying over the bed-clothes as I slept or seemed to sleep. They stood wondering, and looked attentively at me and at each other. Afraid of awakening me, they stole away, and I heard them whisper something on leaving the room, as if they remarked on the language I spoke. All this was enough, and more than enough, to rouse my fears, and I resolved to go further from the town. But the day being Sunday, I determined to go there once before I left the neighbourhood, in order to see at dusk in the coffee-house or reading-room whether there was any mention made of news from Avignon. The first paragraph that struck my eye fixed me to the spot. My having been at Nismes was mentioned as a prevailing rumour, but probably connected with the police proceeding, and it was said that the daughter of a respectable family, the cause of the whole, though she did not accompany my flight, had since left the Contât and taken refuse in the Protestant city. The editor or news-writer indulged in severe remarks on the intrigues of the Reformers, and deemed it a duty incumbent on the government of the most Christian king to purge the land of their pastors, as his ancestor of pious memory had done a century ago.

"I now removed to some distance from Vevay, and sought employment on the opposite side of the lake near St. Gingoulph. On revolving the report, and reflecting upon the likelihood of Louise, who was clearly the person meant, leaving the Contât, it appeared very probable she should have heard of my going to Nismes, as the good pastor had informed my family of my retreat. I therefore ventured to write to him, and, putting no name to my letter, I informed him where I was, beseeching him to give me any information he could as to poor Louise. Day after day I went to the post-office in hope of receiving his answer; and after a month had elapsed, I was mortified beyond expression to see my letter stuck up as not having been forwarded, for want of the postage required in the case of letters going out of the canton. I durst not pay it; because, forgetting how many of the peasants in these countries can read and write, I was fearful my being able to do so might excite suspicion, as it inevitably would in France. But a fellow servant taking his own letter one day shewed me my mistake, and I franked mine over the frontier. Another period of anxious expectation now succeeded, and when I asked for letters directed to Paul Meyer, I was somewhat roughly asked by the post-mistress, if I was a German, as I spoke a kind of French, I said I came from Alsace, and was no longer molested.

"The Swiss are a people of rude manners, who possibly on that account get credit for more honesty than they really have. They are exceedingly selfish, and, though not capable of the trickery for which the Italians are famed, will go a good way from the straight path to serve their own ends. They have, I think, less warmth of heart than the Germans, as they also have less grossness. In some parts of the country, as Geneva, Lausanne, Neufchatel, they are sufficiently civilized, and show much aptitude for literary and even scientific pursuits. But their genius is not original; they are good at abridging and explaining; they have the gift of didactic faculties in rather an eminent measure; they are good also at pursuing minutely and into their details the discourses and the theories of more enlarged and original minds; but they are themselves of a narrow and petty intellect. If, however, their genius is confined, their self-sufficiency is on a very large scale; no people are better pleased with themselves, nor more easily satisfied with their own performances. This complacent temper extends from the qualities to the possessors. They regard their little country as the eye of Europe, and their paltry affairs as of incalculable importance. Their manners have the tinge of their contracted understandings, and of their selfish dispositions. They are pedantic in the extreme; the word précieux (priggish) seems to have been invented for their especial use; they are also most regular and orderly, being of cold passions as well as sluggish feelings; method is their god. I used to think they always did the same things, and almost said the same things, at the same hour every day. Their mirth is of a mournful caste; it is dulness thrown into action; so that I can well comprehend what the witty Bishop of Autun is reported to have said when asked if Geneva was not rather dull, 'Yes, particularly in its gaieties' (Oui, surtout quand on s'y amuse). I saw little of the upper classes, until a subsequent visit; but the peasantry, among whom I lived, are a simple, though a somewhat rude and abundantly selfish people. They are much attached to their country, and have credit for more love of liberty than they can with any truth pretend to, all they care for being their own institutions; and those of the aristocratic cantons are just as much attached to their slavish customs as the inhabitants of the democratic states are to their free government. They are all brave, however, and I believe would make a stout resistance with their rifles and their stones or rocks, were any foreign power to invade their valleys. The upper classes, even in the most democratic parts, are fonder of rank and value themselves on antiquity of family more than any people I ever saw.

"After some weeks of farther anxiety and suspense, I at length, when I asked for Paul Meyer's letters, had one put into my hand in the dear old pastor's handwriting. Who can depict my agitation as I ran home with it in my bosom, building a thousand castles in the air, all inhabited by Louise Orange; but now and then harassed with fears of some sinister accident having befallen her, or those whom I so dearly loved at home! I stole into a light granary of the farm-house, and closing the door, laid the letter before me, dreading to open it, and dissipate my visions or realize my fears. The state of the seal immediately caught my eye; it had been broken, it was plainly cut across with some sharp instrument, and its parts were clumsily joined. Thus, satisfied that other eyes had seen the contents, I read them with the most feverish anxiety; and though no names were mentioned, yet if the same hands had opened and the same eyes read mine to M. Gardein, it must be known that the 'young man' meant Louise, and the 'Hospital' meant the monastery. The alarm which this reflection naturally excited did not prevent me from devouring the good pastor's few lines, in which he informed me that the friars were as vigorous as ever in their search after me; that he had written to make his brother-in-law, and intimate friend, a clergyman near St. Meurice, between that and St. Gingoulph, receive me as his guest; and that from him I should learn more respecting all in whom I took most interest. I hastened to M. Girard's house, the spot pointed out, in the dusk, fortunately as the event proved; for the next day two persons strongly suspected of belonging to the French embassy at Zurich arrived at the farm where I had been working, and enquiring first for one Paul Meyer, and then for a person lately arrived from France, left no doubt as to my being the object of their search. I was thus compelled to confide a portion of my history to M. Girard, who provided me with an entirely new disguise, that of a clergyman; but I took the precaution of disguising my face with red whiskers, and wearing a pair of green spectacles."

CHAPTER IX.

THE HOUSE OF MOURNING.

"M. Girard was a very worthy man, far advanced in life, of venerable presence, of silent and reserved manners, a model of piety to his flock, and abounding in charitable dispositions; but he was both of a contracted mind compared with M. Gardein, had not any knowledge of the world like him, and gave little pleasure in his social intercourse. He excelled in the discharge of his pastoral duties. To his people he was kind and attentive, distributing among them the savings of an extremely poor income, and often relieving from absolute want the labourers who could at all times with such difficulty find employment, that work was run after, and canvassed for, and distributed among them as places of profit may be in more happy and easy communities. How I have seen the clerk after service on a Sunday, taking the poor working-people aside into the porch and communicating with an air of importance, a patronizing air, what they heard with delight and scarcely could believe to be true, that in the course of a day or two a new wall would be built, not above a league off, and some ground cleared for planting, which would give a month's employment to fourteen or fifteen men![11] They went home blessing Heaven for mercies so plenteously showered down upon them, and well convinced that in no country under the sun did more real felicity reside than among the Alps. M. Girard on such occasions never failed to improve their pious and contented feelings, and to draw a moral of patience and submission to the Divine will when things should wear a less smiling aspect.

"To see this good man in his most attractive aspect, it was necessary to go, not into his society or even his study, for his learning was small, but to be among his congregation on a Sunday. His aged aspect had a truly venerable air; his silver hair scantily covered a high and arched forehead, in which his eyes were sunk deep; his countenance was expressive, benevolent, but perfectly serious; his action, extremely simple, was yet not without the graces of a natural manner occasionally warmed with his subject; he spread his hands over his flock as if he would gather them under his wing and protect them from the blast of sin, or the blight of unbelief; his voice was sonorous, but generally of sufficient harmony; and at times when he exerted it, as in preaching a funeral or other occasional sermon, there was something peculiarly touching in his earnest simplicity. But one method he had of being impressive, of commanding attention, and creating the deepest silence—when coming to a passage intended to be striking and effective, he did not speak loud, but dropped his voice suddenly, and threw it out with extraordinary distinctness indeed, but only in a loud whisper. The effect of this was such as I never remember to have seen equalled in any other preacher or speaker. Another thing I also remarked in his preaching. When he would handle any pathetic subject, as on occasion of a funeral, his topics were all of the plainest, most ordinary, even homely kind, and his language the most simple and unadorned: the impression on the feelings which his discourse produced was in consequence very great. He used few notes; preparing himself diligently both by reading, meditation, and prayer, in which he devoutly engaged for some time before going to his church. But his sermons were the fruit of study, and not the wild effusions of extemporary fancy, or undisciplined enthusiasm. He had nothing at all fanatical in his composition; and though his knowledge was confined, it embraced the two great subjects which it most imports the preacher to know, the Sacred Writings and the human heart. He had the gift of searching both, as both had been the study of his long life. Though his occasional discourses might be more striking, I confess the ministrations in which he has produced upon me the greatest effect were his ordinary distributing of the Sacrament of the Supper, and his reading the Burial Service. He gave the former with his wonted simplicity; and I was greatly impressed with a practice which he had, I believe, himself introduced—he read with a solemn voice the Ten Commandments, laid down the book which he had held up, and then took the Elements in his hands. The effect was solemn beyond anything I can describe. I never saw him lift before his face the broad volume of inspired truth, and turn toward the congregation, without awe; and I felt a thrill through my whole frame when he said with a clear, loud, and authoritative voice, 'God spake all these words and said, I am the Lord thy God! Thou shalt have none other Gods but me.'

"The deep sorrow of which I tasted so largely while under his quiet roof, and which made me wholly forget my troubles and dangers, has mournfully impressed on my mind the recollection of all that there passed around me, nor is the remembrance so unpleasing as might be supposed. I know not if I be constituted as others are made, but I have a strange hankering after recollections of the past; and no sooner has any portion of my existence become shadowed over in the mist of distance, than I look back upon it with a pleasing emotion, as if wistful that it were renewed. Even when I have been at the time most miserable, nay, while I have the distinct recollection of my hours having then been spent far less comfortably than the ones actually flying over my head, yet still it seems enough that they should be the past hours, that their events should have sunk into the shade of distance, and their pains, or their perils, or their languor, only live in the memory, for me to regard them with regret, and sigh for their return with an unavailing and unintelligible fondness. It is this feeling that in part makes me take some pleasure in recounting to you my history, and overcomes a reluctance which I might otherwise feel to dwell on a retrospect of so much sorrow. I pursue my narrative.

"I had not been many days at M. Girard's when he took me into his study, and communicated the information that Louise had set out from Nismes to pass the spring, now beginning to break, with his granddaughter who lived with him, and was a plain but not unpleasing girl of about eighteen. Whoever has been suffered, beyond his hopes, to escape from a prison to which he saw no end, whoever has been restored to health by some sudden change, after he had been given over, and told to prepare for death, can conceive, none others well can, the sudden change in all my feelings, thoughts and prospects which the intelligence produced. I had only power to ask if she knew I was at St. Gingoulph; but I was told she did not; and that it was probable she never would have consented to come had she been apprised of it; for she was a rigid Catholic, and, having heard of my conversion, had, though with a severe struggle, done violence to her feelings, and dismissed me from her thoughts, as if the revolution in my state and my sentiments, which had truly removed the chief impediment to our union, had raised up between us an impassable barrier. There was no reasoning with her on this point, M. Girard said; for as he justly observed, it is unfortunate, that on the most momentous of all subjects, that of religion, men seldom reason at all, they only feel. However, I was young, and sanguine, and I awaited her arrival with inexpressible anxiety. She came at length, and I thought she was more beautiful than ever. Through my thick disguise, she at once recognized me, and her salutation was perfectly friendly, though it betokened feelings far different from the rapture that filled my bosom, and that she aforetime had also shared. She was calm and she was melancholy; she frankly avowed to me the state of her sentiments; declared her fixed resolution; assured me that had she known I was under M. Girard's roof, or in his neighbourhood, she never would have given me the pain or herself the uneasiness of coming; and finally, begged me to believe that, as she was inflexible in her determination, I must not only avoid any allusion whatever to our former intimacy, but frequent her society as little as it was possible to do in a very small house. Hope is strong when man is young, and though cast down I did not despair; but I own that the extreme calmness of her whole demeanour, the little effect produced on her by the surprise of finding me at St. Gingoulph, above all the extreme devotion to the observances of the Catholic faith, which I soon found had taken fast hold of her mind, and literally filled her whole time, did give me very painful apprehensions; these soon were crowned with an alarm from the intimations of her young friend, who though a Protestant had been educated at a convent in Avignon, where her father lived, and had a leaning towards Romanism, which she concealed from her grandfather, though she saw very frequently the Romish priest of St. Meurice, that Louise herself had serious thoughts of taking the veil. This, it seems, had become a favourite plan of Louise after my flight and conversion; it had become a resource in her hours of sorrow; and it fully accounted for her calmness on meeting me and her generally altered demeanour. Emilie, I found, had no such thoughts, nor, indeed, had she yet quitted the Protestant faith.

"Nevertheless, the time passed with me very differently from anything I had been accustomed to since I left Avignon, and one effect of the passion which now became once more my master, was that it absorbed all other feelings, and left little room for even the fears that were unavoidably incident to my situation. To this passion, too, fresh fuel was daily administered; I saw and conversed with Louise, though always in the presence of Mdlle. Emilie Fonrose. We generally sat in her little room, where her books, her work, her beads, her crucifixes, and her little caskets of relics, were tastefully arranged; having no other instrument in that small and frugal household, Emilie used to sing and play on a small guitar; her grandfather had given her one of the musical boxes made at Geneva, which played the three tunes she most admired. It was one of her simple and innocent relaxations to set these playing after she had fatigued herself with work; and she had a little bird which sang so sweetly that we would sit for a length of time to hear its warbling. With this enchanting Louise, and her amiable friend, the hours flew swiftly away; and the summer came on with all the loveliness of an Alpine climate. Emilie, indeed, was herself a person of very great merit. Without the least pretensions to beauty, she was pleasing in her expression of countenance, of simple and even graceful manners, of the most mild and placid temper I have ever known, and of a calm and unerring good sense which would in any one have made a profitable exchange if bartered for more showy qualities. Her humble sense of her own merits, her constantly preferring others to herself in all matters from the greatest to the most trifling, her quiet, retiring demeanour, which only let her come forward into notice when drawn out from her modest retreat, made her a favourite with all that approached her. Her benevolence was unbounded, and though almost as poor as many of the objects of her bounty, she would deny herself every thing that bore the remotest resemblance to indulgence, in order to taste what she relished far more, the delights of charity. Her small pecuniary means failing, she would take bread to give when a family was perishing for want of work; and when she could not in any way help the poor, it was one of her choicest recreations in hard weather to feed the poor little birds that flocked round her, and showed by their chirping and flapping their wings, that they knew their kind protectress as soon as she walked into the garden. She formed the only link which now connected her grandfather with this world, and he was wont to say that, should it ever please Providence to take her from him, his earthly career was closed.

"To be so many months in the society of Emilie Fonrose, without feeling deeply penetrated with her virtues, and touched with the incomparable sweetness of her disposition, was impossible. There was even something inexpressibly affecting in the poverty, not squalid, even not inelegant, that reigned through the pastor's small establishment. I have often felt moved with the innocent joy of this artless girl, when she had secretly saved a few sous, and laid them out in purchasing a little tea, a luxury unknown in the ordinary fare of the parsonage. She would then invite her grandfather and me to partake of this treat in her room. It might have made the hard and silly muscadins of Paris or of Nismes smile to see what only drew tears from my eyes; the kind of pride with which she would do the honours of her frugal feast, and the little air of patronage and of consequence which she seemed to wear, as a great lady might dispensing a nobler repast. If the good pastor's mind had not been far removed above worldly objects, the feeling which then filled him would probably have been that of repining that his child was not shining in a higher sphere, worthy of being adorned by her. But he seemed to think more justly, and more contentedly; and as he was, though of dry if not hard exterior, yet of a warm and even tender heart, it was easy to see his eye glistening with delight at marking the pleasure she seemed to enjoy.

"There is an indissoluble connection between all the feelings of the heart, as much as among the vessels that circulate its blood through our frames. Not to have felt my brotherly affection for Emilie ripen into love, had Louise been taken from me, would, I verily think, have been impossible. Shall I own it? This idea began to pass through my mind as she persevered in forbidding all renewal of the subject which she had at first proscribed; and Emilie became, naturally, the confidant of the affliction which this, coupled with the sad prospect of the nunnery ever before my eyes, occasioned. But it pleased the Great Disposer to order otherwise than that any such end of my intercourse with her should arrive.

"In order to make some small purchases for the summer, and to see an old friend of her deceased mother, married to the English chaplain, Emilie went to Geneva; and I, as well as Louise, accompanied her. We stayed over the Sunday, and attended the English service; we all understood the language well enough to admire that noble liturgy; Louise greatly preferred it to the simple Calvinistic ritual she had heard at St. Gingoulph. Alas! we were fated soon to hear a more striking portion of that fine service. After the sermon was over, we looked at the monuments; and Emilie said to the old clergyman, she should like to be buried there; but Louise would not allow that it could be called consecrated ground. Next day, we were invited to join a water-party on the lake, given by a family that lived near Secherons, about half-a-league from the town. A young English sea-officer must needs shew his naval skill by taking charge of the boat, and, for some time, he succeeded well enough, the breeze being steady. But the boatmen, accustomed to the squalls which are common to all lakes surrounded by unequal and abrupt heights, repeatedly warned, and warned him in vain, not to trust his maritime experience, which would here assuredly fail him. In trying to double a point, we met a sudden change of wind, which at once upset the boat. I rushed towards Louise, whom one of the men succeeded in saving; but poor Emilie sank to rise no more. The officer himself paid the forfeit of his rashness, for though he kept himself afloat, the rudder of the boat, as the men were righting her, struck him, and he sank in deep water. The boatmen saved the rest of the party.

"It would be in vain to describe the horror and dismay of Louise, when she came to understand her loss, after being herself rescued from a watery grave. I did not feel less the bitterness of grief, but my relief on Louise's escape, which I had supposed impossible, broke the force of the heavy blow. The body of the ill-fated Emilie was conveyed to the inn at Secherons; and I went immediately back to St. Gingoulph, as fast as a char-au-banc could take me, that I might break to the wretched old man the intelligence of this sad disaster.

"I found him just risen from his solitary meal, and having returned thanks in presence of his maid-servant, whom I begged to quit the room. My sudden appearance, unaccompanied, at once revealed, as well as my faltering manner, that I was the messenger of evil tidings, and he calmly breathed a prayer, 'God's will be done.' Though thus partly prepared for it, on learning the truth he was struck dumb, and could not weep. He grasped my arm in his long and bony hand; he looked almost vacantly in my face as if to seek some mitigation of the cruel blow; he found no comfort there; and he breathed out a disconsolate prayer, or rather a reluctant and compulsory admission that His will must be done and His name be blessed, who giveth and who taketh away.

"It seemed to soothe him when I proposed that he should accompany me back to Secherons, and attend the last solemnities due to poor Emilie. We arrived there late at night; and found Louise had given the necessary directions with great firmness and presence of mind. Before retiring to rest the ancient pastor desired to see for the last time the loved remains of his child; but we dissuaded him, as deeming that it might break that sleep he stood so much in need of, and which sorrow, by a merciful dispensation of Providence, has rather a tendency to bestow than to withhold, provided no undue excitement interrupts it. The next day was passed in dismal affliction, and as night fell, just before our family worship, he required us to accompany him to the chamber of death.

"The coffin lay upon a bed, and the face of Emilie was exposed full to our view, by the light of the tapers that burnt gloomily round the room. The calm expression of countenance was strikingly different from the distorted features of agony and alarm I had last seen while she was struggling in the water; all had now relapsed into unbroken tranquillity, as if pain, and fear, and sorrow were now and for ever no more. There was nothing frightful, nothing repulsive in the sight; on the contrary, there was a peculiar sweetness in her placid features, which wore an air even of beauty that had never before been perceived. A kind of fine transparent hue, though pale, seemed graceful; and the long lashes appeared to pronounce that the eyes were but closed in sleep, though the sleep was to endure for evermore. The dreadful idea, however, soon shrouded the mind, 'You see her for the last time!' The pastor softly, as if he feared to disturb her eternal slumber, approached the bed, and fixed a last kiss upon her cold forehead, but still he could not weep. For a whole day and night his grief had been unmitigated by tears; no refreshment had his parched eyelids bestowed on his suffering; and we quitted the chamber, throwing the last look behind upon its lifeless occupant. In the room below, to which we withdrew, the reverend old man prayed fervently to the Father of all for grace and for comfort, and that it would please Him to sustain us in this cruel bereavement wherewithal

He had seen good to visit us. As he closed his prayer a noise fell on our ears, as of screwing some board or other sounding body; instantly the idea flashed through our minds—it was the closing of Emilie's coffin. As if his prayer had been heard the old man now wept aloud, and all unused to such tender scenes, he sank into Louise's arms.

"Next day the funeral took place, and in the English chapel, where, with a prophetic warning of her fate, she had desired to be buried. As the body slowly descended the staircase, the pastor stood reverently with his head uncovered, leaning on my arm for a needful support. We followed in a mourning carriage to the town, of which the gate or wicket was first shut and then opened to let us pass onwards. The simple procession arrived at the church-yard. It was here met by Emilie's venerable friend, the English clergyman arrayed in his white vestment. I never had witnessed this solemnity, which I never shall forget. Meeting the corpse as it was slowly borne along, he uttered with a solemn but tremulous voice,—'I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord. Whoso believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and he that liveth and believeth in me shall never die!'—The thrill which this shot through my frame I never can forget. As he walked onwards before the coffin, reciting other portions of Scripture to the like effect, there was a manifest emotion excited in all the spectators of so mournful a solemnity. When the reading of the Scriptures selected for the occasion was suspended, the coffin was placed over the grave, near the remains of Emilie's paternal grandmother, an Englishwoman. A pause now succeeded in the service, when unexpectedly to me at least, the organ struck up a sweet and melodious anthem of the most solemn kind; its notes sometimes rolled over our heads like distant thunder, sometimes warbled plaintive and tender; it seemed a dirge, such as a heavenly choir might be fancied to perform, no person being seen to play it. During this solemn harmony the body was slowly lowered down into its last resting-place; and we were both shocked and moved to see poor Emilie's little lap-dog, the companion of her solitary walks, and which slept in her room, make its way through the crowd and seek to share her endless couch. It had not accompanied her, but seemed to have followed the pastor with the kind of inscrutable instinct which the more sagacious of tame animals possess. It was of course removed by the attendants; and as soon as dust had been committed to dust and ashes to ashes, with the usual solemnities, and the organ ceased to sound, the clergyman resumed the service with—'Man that is born of a woman hath but a little time to live and is full of sorrow.'—Not a dry eye could now be discerned in the chapel, and after casting a last look on the name 'Emilie Fonrose, aged 19 years,' upon the coffin, the pastor slowly left the place, followed by us; we entered a small carriage procured by his friends, and arrived sad and silent at his now desert dwelling. Nor spoke he a word that day, unable even to perform the usual family worship in the evening. His race was run; his earthly career finished: and when next morning he assembled us to prayers, he began the Song of Simeon, 'Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,'—and there he was obliged to stop, his tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth when he would have continued.

"The unhappy old man by degrees regained his tranquillity, and frequently blessed God for having reserved this heavy blow till he was so near following his beloved child, that it made only the difference of closing his long life with a few months, perhaps weeks, of wretchedness. I remarked that he was more diligent than ever in the performance of all his duties, and would take no help which his neighbouring brethren tendered him in his ministrations. He seemed, if not to derive comfort from employment, at least to have his mind seduced from the subject of his loss; and his piety assumed a more fervent appearance than before. He complained, however, that when not employed in his pastoral duties, he suffered exceedingly; and one feeling he could not get out of his mind. As the door of his room opened, he would think Emilie was coming in; he could not bring his mind to the belief she had gone for ever. In his dreams, too, she appeared to be restored to him; he never once dreamt of her death; yet, he said, there was always a something, as it were, hanging over her; she could not speak; or she turned from him; she went away; he could not follow or find her; there was always something changed from what it once had been; yet there she was, and alive again, and, as if half conscious it was a dream only, he would fear to awake. But when he did, sorrow returned the more grievous when he found it had all been a dream; and then the poor old man would wander about as if to get rid of himself.

"But to one part of his small mansion he never repaired; I did not once see him enter Emilie's room; and indeed I, for a few days, was fain myself to avoid this suffering. At last, alone, and when all were out in the fields, I went into it. Nor shall I soon forget the pang which the sight gave me. There were her books, her drawing-paper, her half-finished letter about some charity at St. Meurice, her pen and inkstand, the chair she sat on. A simple straw bonnet she had thrown off when setting out on her last fatal journey, lay on the little sofa; her guitar, now mute, was beside it; the musical box was on the chimney-piece; and, most touching sight of all, the poor little bird, hopped about in the cage, flapping its wings as I entered the room, and pecking at the bars, expecting to be taken out, and perch, as heretofore, on its mistress's finger. The sight of this goldfinch was a severe trial to me; its silence seemed mournful; but when it began its warbling, as formerly, I really felt quite unmanned. At that moment Louise, who now too, for the first time, ventured into the room on hearing my footsteps, never having dared to enter it alone, came in and found me. She saw I was moved. She heard the poor little forsaken bird; she had been deeply touched before by the sparrows flocking round her, to receive their pension from their kind protectress's hand, now stiff in the tomb. Altogether, and when she cast her eyes on the bonnet which recalled her friend, as if she had only gone out of the room, she was entirely overcome: all her resolution fled; her estrangement was suddenly put an end to; and when she saw how much my feelings were now overpowered, how entirely they were her own, she flew into my outstretched arms, fell on my neck, sobbed aloud, and could only articulate 'My dearest, dearest friend!' "

END OF VOL. I.

VOLUME II.

THE CHÂTEAU.

————

CHAPTER I.

THE HOUSE OF MIRTH.

"There is an intimate connection between all the tender emotions, as I have already said; between pity and love a close connection; between sorrow and love a closer still. The bodily frame which influences the passion of love entirely, the sentiment of love considerably, is powerfully affected by emotions of grief. That which cannot be well named, in its grossness, but

'Through some certain strainers well refined,
Is gentle love, and charms all womankind,'[12]

—that stands in the closest relation to emotions of a sorrowful cast. All this I thought not of at the moment; I have often since reflected on it. But now the sun is sinking in the west, and we must reserve our recollections of the past for another day."

The Solitary paused;—and Chatillon, full of the mournful feelings which his narrative had inspired, returned towards the Château, his mind entirely occupied with the image of Emilie Fonrose. He felt deeply the beauties of her simple and touching character; and though anything rather than a sentimental person, for he was indeed as much a man of the world as his wife was a worldly woman, yet, having a heart naturally tender, and the sweetest disposition when not perverted by the follies and vices of society, he nearly wept as he dwelt upon the sad recital of the fate which closed her quiet, innocent life; nor could he get out of his mind Albert and Louise's mournful visit to her homely apartment after her peaceful spirit had fled to the far distant mansions of spirits more peaceful still.

In this frame of mind he arrived at the Château just as the Countess returned from a long walk with the Baron, and finished a discussion on the present state of public affairs, which had lasted during the long walk. His melancholy and political forebodings were for the moment dispelled by an important addition just made to the party in the person of the Marchioness's brother, the Chevalier Deverell and his son. The original and joyous character of the Chevalier, nay, his very look and gait, seemed to shut out care and almost thought from whatever apartment he was in; he was the picture of English good cheer and good fellowship; and his son, gay, but in another line, was one of the most finished gentlemen of the Parisian circles, the admiration or the envy of all the men, the slave of all the fair ones that adorned these haunts of gaiety and refinement. But between father and son there was so little resemblance, that rumour and her twin sister, slander, were busy on the subject of their relationship, whispering it was rather nominal than real; for the one was slender as the other was gross; the one all airs and affectations, the other plain and simple; the one bent upon making himself talked of and run after; the other resolute in his determination to let nothing ruffle him, or keep him from enjoying the good things of this life. One thing they seemed to have in common, and only one. Neither was deficient in abilities, and wit and humour they had alike; but both were somewhat disposed towards lending themselves to the mirth their peculiarities occasioned. In this amiable and not unwise humour they indulged, partly from natural joyousness of temper, partly from the fearless and careless tone acquired in good society; both fearless that they should lower their dignity (and both careless if they did so), by contributing to the pleasantry of the society they moved in so conspicuously, and enjoyed with so keen a relish. They were much esteemed by the Marchioness, in spite of the wide difference of their lives and the extreme contrast of their views and observances on religious matters, they being barely tolerant of her puritanical habits, while she daily lamented over their ungracious and alarming state.

The society, to them strange, in which they had fallen, did in nowise embarrass or restrain them; for they proceeded forthwith to take their place and bear their share in the conversation, as if they had been all their lives among the persons present. "Well, sister of mine," exclaimed the Chevalier, "well, I protest the roads of Languedoc be made for the punishment of sin here below."—"Why, brother, what can you mean by your irreverent allusion to so serious a matter?"—"Serious, I grant you:" said the man of many stone, "never was I less moved to mirth in my days than while suffering the penance between Orange and Avignon. I verily thought his Holiness had from charity put forth a bull, expressly to make a heretic like me pay here in my person, to the end that I might suffer the less hereafter."—"I beseech you, dear brother," said the good Marchioness, "do not speak lightly on such sacred subjects."—"On the contrary, fair dame, I feel disposed to comfort my inward man by dining for a certain space, having no whit eaten since I solaced me with a brace or two of Rhone tench, which I much commend, and a flagon of Hermitage, which I more entirely approve: imbibing the same, as I did, in full view of the vineyard itself as I journeyed through Tain in the morn of yesterday. Your delicate nephew there marvelled at my thus breaking my fast, and would needs sip his coffee."—"Truly, sir," answered the slender party, "and my finery, which you were graciously pleased to make merry with, received its due reward. Anything less like coffee I never did taste than the villainous compound of burnt crust, brown sugar, and lean whey which they inflicted on me under the name of café-au-lait, while you seemed to enjoy yourself absolutely, with your meal and your morning pipe, looking the very picture of contentment."—"I own me," said the larger man, "to have felt comforted inwardly, during that pause in our jolting; but my bones have kept as accurate a register of jolts as ever Napier's did of sums and differences.[13] But Ernest of mine, hast thou made thy obeisance to the Countess? She has clean forgotten me, who knew her grandfather; thee she may perchance be pleased to recognise, for I made thee known to her one day at Court, more years ago than she may be graciously pleased to recollect." The young gentleman, who, however, was nearer thirty than twenty, went gracefully to the Countess, who had retired into a recess for a few moments, to ask the Count how his second visit to the cave had ended. "Permit," said Ernest, "one of your numerous troop of slaves to bend before you, should you not suffer him to be laid prostrate at your feet."—"M. Deverell," said she, "you possibly may remember enough of me to be aware that I belong not to the herd who take delight in such effusions, any more than you do to either my or any other person's troop of slaves."—"Thus spoke the great-minded personage, the Maitresse-femme, so superior to her sex's frivolous follies, so formed to play a first part in the affairs now beginning to occupy our common country."—"At all events," said she, "whether I be so or not, I am happy to meet you again, and especially under the roof of your worthy aunt."—"Be assured, Countess, the happiness is more than mutual."—"Well, possibly it may be; but you think then we are to see stirring times? What news do you bring from Court?"—"Madame, I meddle not in politics; they belong to your caste; they are above my head."—"And why? No one has better abilities than you throw away on frivolous occupations, no one could more easily excel in things of moment."—"Alas, and if I should sacrifice pleasure, and ease, and comfort, for distinctions of the kind you dream of, should I be the happier, or the state the better, for the exchange I had made?"

Some more good advice of the fair stateswoman was then thrown after bad, as happens with counsel as well as coin; and she retired to her toilette, the only female occupation to which she devoted any of her time and attention. Ernest too retired to the like pursuit; while the Chevalier, ascertaining that one or two Nismes beauties were expected to arrive in the evening, and pass a day or two at the Château, made arrangements for enjoying his pipe in his own room, with his worthy old companion, the land-steward of the Marquess, who had grown grey in the service, and could both amuse the Chevalier and be entertained by him while they quaffed their punch and smoked their tobacco, and occasionally interrupted their talk with a game at picquet.

The Countess was not, this time, so impatient with her husband's unwillingness to repeat the substance of the Solitary's communications. She had become more immersed in public topics, as the Parliament of Grenoble, now assembled, had begun to act upon the contagion caught from the meeting at Vizille; and the ease with which the Baron now lent himself to her political discussions, and even, in some sort, to the schemes of ambition she was framing, had, joined to his unceasing and daily increasing devotion, begun to make an impression upon her wholly new, and excite emotions never before felt by her. The first effect of this change, unperceived by herself, was to improve her extremely; she became softer and more feminine; she could more easily bear female society, and could, for an hour or so, permit trivial topics to be broached in her presence without showing that she was weary or disgusted. The absolute confidence she reposed in her own coldness, her utter disbelief in the possibility of any one making the slightest impression on her heart, kept her blind to her danger, until she had drunk too deep of the cup of admiration; admiration of the Baron's brilliant talents, seasoned with his far greater admiration of her varied charms, to be capable of stopping, or of rousing herself from the trance it threw her into, or of even wishing she had the power to awake. For awhile, the love of politics, which had paved the way for this revolution in her system, continued to move and to guide her intercourse with the Baron. She felt a daily increased pleasure in his society; she began to count the hours when he was absent, fancying she had lost some opportunity of reaping information from his richly-stored mind, or hints from his long and various experience; she no longer formed plans of leaving Languedoc for Dauphiné, persuading herself that Nismes was likely to become a centre of political action. She soon prolonged her walks with him; she took an interest in his niece, whose tender simplicity and shining talents alike were formed to interest her now that her own mind had become somewhat softened; she filled her letters with circumstances relating to him, or things which he had told her; she loved to see him mentioned in the letters she received from her many correspondents; she took a pleasure in being associated with him, whether by those correspondents or by the guests of the Château. Secure, as she believed, in her impregnable virtue, she was for ever desiring to be with him, and preferred being alone with him, only, as she flattered herself, that she might have a more undivided share of his conversation. As she was of an unassailable reputation, she was far from disliking the pleasantries of the Count and the Marquess on her intimacy with her new and distinguished friend; and she at length found, and confessed to herself, that she had an indescribable pleasure even in being in the same room with him, and near him, though they conversed not together. This was no sooner confessed to herself, than it was studiously forgotten; but when she saw him pay some little attention to another, a younger person of some beauty, and considerable talents, one of those who, as we have said, had come from Nismes for a few days, and when he approached not to her part of the saloon as usual in the evening, she felt her colour change, her impatience increase, her bosom heave, her indignation rise. For the first time in her life, she knew what jealousy was; because she, for the first time, had felt love: and hurrying to her room she flung herself on a sofa, and burst into tears, partly of vexation, but partly too of self-abasement, for she could no longer disguise from herself that she shared, and shared to distraction, the passion she had long perceived was raging in the Baron. These tears, however, were not so bitter as might have been expected; they had no avail in quenching the fire they were poured upon; her whole soul was occupied; she could dream of nothing but her love; and she waited with impatience till she could hear from the Baron's own lips that which she never doubted was consuming his heart.

That moment soon arrived. He was obliged to go for some days upon business to Lyons; and he might be absent even longer, though he took not Emmeline with him, that his movements might be more rapid. He seemed to avoid a walk with her the evening before his departure; he spoke to no one else in the company, when in the drawing-room, but seemed wrapped in thought; he seldom came near her, but she asked him if his going was fixed; he said it was, and made no mention of his sorrow at parting. Could it be that she had been so far mistaken? Was it possible that she had put a wrong construction on phrases of admiration, and falsely supposed compliments lavished upon all bore a peculiar reference to herself? Her pride now came to her aid; she was for the moment aroused to a sense of her danger, and within a hair's breadth of being saved from the precipice that yawned so near her; the fever of indignation succeeded to the wound of pride; she never could forgive either him or herself for this humiliating mortification. Yet, just herself, she could not condemn another unheard; true herself, she liked not to charge another with falsehood; she must ascertain the fact before he went; and it was her fate to be plunged headlong into the abyss, by the very love of truth and of justice which formed the great staple, as it was the bright ornament, of her character.

As he passed her, going towards the Orangery, she asked if he had any directions to give about Emmeline before he went, and that if he had she could receive them now, as she might not see him in the morning, his plan being to go early. He thanked her courteously, not warmly, and they were soon alone in the Orangery. "Then you must go," she said.—"Yes, Countess," he replied, "I must go."—"And for how long?"—"I know not, perhaps I hardly care."—" What! Is this your interest in us all, and in your niece?"—"I shall send a confidential servant for her and her governess, should I not return."—"Gracious heaven! Not return? Then where are you going? What are you meditating?"—"The truth is, Countess, I find by too many indications that I have remained here too long."—"Why so? How can that be? You see all here delighted to have you among them. You are the very pride of the society. The Marquess and Marchioness are vain of having you here, their guest. The chief persons of the neighbourhood flock hither to enjoy your society. The company hang upon your lips. The Count himself, all careless as his nature is, and alien from deep reflection, has taken more delight in your company than I ever saw him do in any other man's. Even I, little used to form intimate acquaintances, even I,"—here something stopped her voice; she could go no further; he looked anxiously at her; he seized her hand; he saw some moisture for the first time in her eye; her hand returned the pressure of his; he softly whispered, "Oh, could I but think you would regret my absence!"—when she, with ardour half suppressed, said, "Only promise me you won't go! or promise me you will return. I should take your remaining away very, very unkind. Say you'll come back to me;"—and as he said in a rapture, "Oh, my heavenly love!"—she at once sunk into his arms. He could only fix a burning kiss upon her unresisting lips, when the door of the Orangery opening, the Marchioness entered, and summoned them to supper.

The Countess, however, had received so violent a shock from this scene, that she really felt unwell, and retired to her apartment. The Baron was during the remainder of the evening in a state of gaiety, and even overflowing spirits, which seemed somewhat uncourteous to the society he was on the eve of leaving; and Emmeline could only account for so great a contrast to his wonted depression when about to leave her, for how short a time soever, by supposing that the effort had thrown him into a morbid state of false spirits, as she had sometimes been thrown herself in similar circumstances. Next morning he set out; but not without leaving a short letter, in which he breathed, with his habitual eloquence and power of imagery as well as of diction, the tender feelings towards the Countess which filled his heart, but carefully avoiding the least indication of the joy he felt at having made the precious and to him most unexpected discovery, that he had won that haughty, obdurate, and cold heart, and made it glow with something of the ardour which warmed his own.

The feelings of the Countess were of a mixed description. She was relieved from all doubt as to the Baron, and had escaped the last humiliation which for a moment she had dreaded as her most unbearable punishment, that of her passion not being returned. She was also occupied with that passion in a mood not unpleasing. Yet she did feel humbled, and she did feel uneasy, at the change which a few weeks had wrought in her position. She no longer could hold her head erect as one of the few women in her rank and of her figure against whom no imputation could be cast. From all guilt, even in thought, she was free, and she well knew should for ever so remain. But she had listened to a declaration of ardent love; she had confessed that she returned it all but as warmly; she had received a written avowal of the passion, respectful, indeed, even humble, far more so than her conduct the night before warranted her to expect. Yet still she had received a love-letter, and she had a lover. She had a lover, too, whose views of their future intercourse were in all probability far less pure than her own; and she knew that into the plans of men so circumstanced, men who have ascertained that they are beloved, ideas enter of a kind very different from any she would ever tolerate. All this both wounded her pride, and gave her the painful prospect of differences with the object of her attachment in their future intercourse. These feelings alone disturbed the joy she could not, help experiencing at the certainty of the Baron's devotion to her. From the Count she had nothing to apprehend. Their union had been one of convenience, merely; and neither was likely to be jealous of the other as long as the due regard was paid to the observances of society. She had long known of his forming attachments elsewhere; but they were so conducted as not to annoy her by any unpleasant exhibition of a rival's influence; and he never had thought of interfering with her intimacies, hitherto political, and which he knew would always remain such. This source of annoyance, therefore, did not exist, yet still she suffered; her pride was wounded by a consciousness quite strange to her, and her future prospects were clouded with troubles equally new. During the Baron's absence, she said to herself, "I may recover the self-respect I forfeited in an evil hour. I may write to implore he would release me, and help me, if he truly loves me, to regain the peace of mind I have lost. I may before he returns make Chatillon leave the Château and hasten to"— But this idea was too hateful to be entertained; and she at once dismissed it from her mind with the thought, a self-deception certainly, but, an easy and a natural one, "How could she quit the charge of Emmeline, committed by the Baron to her care at her own desire, and leave her among strangers?" She wholly forgot that the Marchioness was quite as little a stranger as herself. But she was calmed and reconciled to remain by this suggestion of love, the father of self-deception—and who also has a pretty numerous progeny of more vulgar and worse dressed lies.

She had, some days before, begged him to write, if any important event came within his knowledge; and she now counted the days till a letter should arrive from him. It was such as she most rejoiced to receive; for with his perfect knowledge of the female heart, and his mastery of those he sought to captivate or to keep enchained, he said not a word of his feelings, at least not a word that any one but herself could have understood; for his vehement expressions of sorrow at his separation from the Château were all referred by him to having left his dear niece; and towards the Countess herself, his language was that of the most studied, distant, and even cold respect. The subject of the letter was, in the main, the state of public feeling in Orange, a place, he said, whose inhabitants struck him as of a peculiarly fierce aspect; and other places, through which he had passed, he made mention of in the same indifferent way: only that he slightly threw in some mention of his own welfare and escape from the fatigues and risks of the long journey. He wrote from Vienne, and was to reach Lyons next day.

The morning that this letter arrived was Sunday; and kept, as usual in the Huguenot Château, with the utmost strictness. The dinner had, on the day before, been graced with the presence of Counsellor Courdemont. Madame de Chatillon, having a head-ache, kept her room to shun the infliction. The rest of the party, however, were all agreed that the former accounts of this evil were much exaggerated, and all had been agreeably surprised with his various information, and his power of language, though they all felt the excess in which the one was administered and the other used. The day was a successful one to the Counsellor, fortunate in the absence of the caustic, intolerant Baron, and only the Chevalier complained. He next morning began the conversation at breakfast with a groan, which startled the company; but it was explained when he excused himself for having left the room in the evening before coffee. "I positively will not be preached at of a Saturday, that's flat. Sunday you have, if you will, sister of me; Saturday is mine own day, and none of your parsons, be they priests or pastors, shall pin me down on that day."—" Why, brother, it was a counsellor, not a clergyman."—"I cry your mercy, Madam, I thought otherwise; but your lawyer can preach you to the full as long as any priest, and may be not so well. So I went off to my pipe, which is a safe and a silent companion." Ernest did not so much complain; for he had repeatedly broken a lance with the conversationalist, and as often had discomfited him; the play of the professed talker, the bookmonger, being nothing to the practised dexterity of the man of the world. It had seemed as if the laugh was ever ready at Ernest's bidding, and the lawyer's expense.

The Chevalier, as soon as breakfast was over, asked the Marchioness to let him have the carriage, that he might visit a neighbouring Baron. "Not for the world, brother, on Sunday," was the answer. But when she soon after wished him to accompany her to church, his reply was, "Not for the world, on a Sunday, sister;"—so she was fain to leave him lounging about the grounds, and to take Emmeline, who wanted to hear M. Gardein preach. "Is that an elderly gentleman?" asked the Count eagerly. "Alas, no," said the Marchioness, "it is his grandson and successor. The dear old pastor has been dead some little time: nor has he left a better man behind him."

The ladies of the party, except the Marchioness, stayed at home; meaning to attend mass the following day, which was the great feast of All Souls; so that Ernest had abundant scope for his gay and philandering propensities. He had very soon become familiar with these fair strangers; having that easy confidence which, without being obtrusive, or even appearing forward, soon leaps over the bounds that separate more formal natures; an inoffensive and polite confidence, which only an habitual usage of the great world, perhaps the possession of a certain station in it, can fully bestow. It looked as if, when he entered the room for the first or second time, all the party were his near cousins. He also seemed ever to be so much at his ease, that he did just as he chose; neither speaking to avoid the awkwardness of not knowing how to hold his head and body, or to dispose of his limbs, nor being silent to escape observation; standing up when he was tired of sitting, walking to and fro when he had rested long enough in one place, throwing himself down on a chair, or a sofa, or an ottoman, when he wanted to lounge, taking up a book when he chose, joining the talk when he liked it; in short, doing and saying, and being, exactly what and how he pleased, and as if he were alone in the room; never as if he thought all eyes were turned upon him, because he had long been aware of the last thing learnt by persons little accustomed to good company, that nobody was thinking of, or looking at, or caring about him, unless when it suited him to address them, or otherwise call their attention. Emmeline, who was extremely shy, remarked these things afterwards to her uncle, adding that she observed Ernest never entered with real zeal or anxiety into any discussion, but seemed somewhat indifferent on all subjects, even those he best knew and must be supposed to care most about; whereas the Counsellor was fiery and vehement on every topic, and never knew when to have done, nor seemed aware how little interest all that heard him took in the different subjects of his discussion. Nevertheless, her acute and true-judging mind, ever guided by right feelings, and unshaken purity of purpose, preferred this tiresome Counsellor, with all his faults, to the amusing man of fashion, in whose conversation she could take no pleasure. With her, sincerity and truth were the first of virtues, and the lawyer was at least sincere; nay, he was considered by the frivolous as tiresome, because of his pedantry—that is to say, his always being honestly and heartily occupied with his subject; while Ernest never seemed to be serious about anything, and, though possibly incapable of wilful falsehood, to be always in chase of amusement and effect rather than of truth. Whoever attended to Emmeline's own conversation perceived that she carefully avoided all colouring, all exaggeration, and, by a skilful selection of particulars strictly true, or of topics rigorously correct, would produce as great an effect, whether to strike or to entertain, as Ernest and his caste could, with all their romance and rhodomontade.

After the Chevalier and his son had been a day or two at the Château, and she was giving the Baron her opinion of the latter, she took occasion to express her wonder that he should not only be amused with such light material, but should prefer his society to M. Courdemont's. "Really, dearest Zio," said she, "it is so unlike your usual way of estimating men; for who so much as you are in search of valuable qualities? You always strike into the kernel, casting off the husk to get at it. You dig for pure gold, and care little how deep the one lies, so you be sure it is there."—"Love, you are right;" he replied, "and I am perhaps somewhat spoiled by refined society, which may have infected me with its fastidiousness. But I own that Counsellor does wear me out. Besides, I see no small self-complacency and love of display in him, as well as much prolixity and many corners."—"But always reflect, Zio, that the pedantry in which his hardness and his tiresomeness consists, is the attendant of good. It is the fruit of honest zeal, and the pledge of hard toil."—"Well, positively, my Emmeline, you are taking to the epigrammatic; a style I always thought your severe taste and honest nature rejected. What more could Montesquieu have said, whom I can never get you to endure?"—"Aye! but, dear Zio, his is not only the epigrammatic, it is the enigmatic, the riddle-my-riddle way of writing; and what I can't bear in him is, that he sacrifices truth to style; he seems to be guided in his theories by the sparkling things, the antitheses and the points they lead to."—"As rhymes are said to steer the course of a poet."—"And as, indeed," she replied, "they most certainly very often do." The delight which the Baron never failed to find in the extraordinary sense and nice discernment, as well as perfect purity of his niece, was the exquisite enjoyment of his life, and he consulted her as he would an older person. "But what think you," he now added, "of Ernest's father, the gay, and jolly, and good humoured Chevalier? He, I am sure, is honest and natural enough."—"Yes," answered Emmeline, "but he is too much of a mere voluptuary for me. And his discourse on sacred subjects borders on the profane. However, I fairly own that he has so little of affectation in his amusing buffoonery, that I much prefer him to his refined son, who suits not my fancy at all, at all."

The rest of the female society had a far less severe taste than Mdlle. de Moulin, and it was accordingly with the female part of the company at the Château that Ernest seemed to make most play; though, even with them, he would not leave his habitual indifference; a peculiarity that seemed to Emmeline plainly affected, in order to make them more anxious about him, and she perceived it had the effect it was desired to produce in this way. Before this young person, indeed, he set bounds to his extravagances, and even locked himself up in her presence; but when she went to her apartment, he sallied forth from his temporary confinement. The subject rolled upon his flirtation with a celebrated beauty, on whom the Countess rallied him gaily. "Madam," said he, "I vow to you, as I have repeatedly to her, that till I saw her I never knew what love was."—"Why, did she believe you?" asked Madame Leblanc, who had just arrived.—"And why not, Madam?" inquired he.—"Why? because you had, to my knowledge, said the same thing to at least three women with whom you were successively supposed to be very well. Two admitted it to me."—"Utterly untrue, my good friend!" he rejoined. "Those lovely persons are all three more cold than any icicle; and if I ever used such expressions to them in the course of my devotions, it must have been in some peculiar sense."—"But how goes on your suit with the Viscountess?" asked Madame Leblanc.—"I protest," said he, "I had, for the moment, forgotten that matter, for truly it is ten weeks old, at the least. Yes; she first taught me to love. I have been at her feet these three moons, or so."—"How do you get on?"—"Indifferent well; I am barely breaking ground; not advanced to my second parallel."—"Any flag of truce yet?" asked the Countess.—"Why, hardly, hardly; but a weak point found upon a late reconnoitring expedition."—"Then how far advanced are you with the Baroness I first spoke of, one of the many before seeing whom you never knew what love was?"—"Why, I have threatened twice to fly from Europe, and bury myself in Cayenne, where the morasses are fatal; and finding this had little effect, I made an attempt upon my life the morning I quitted Paris. The result was, on the whole, favourable, and I am supposed at present to be confined in a private madhouse. She received a raving, incoherent letter from me a few days back, scrawled with charcoal, on a sheet of brown paper; and my confidant who took it to her observed her to be visibly softened."—"How could she believe in your having attempted suicide?"—"That I know not; but this I know, that when I, by this means, stormed the heart of the Chevalier Mazel's wife, she had the surgeon's certificate. He is an old schoolfellow of mine; he sewed up my throat, and helped to save my life, and to win my love."—"Pray," asked Madame Leblanc, "what came of your affair with the fair widow you met at Château Meuron?"—"Oh! as for your widows, they are as bad as damsels, or thereabouts. Their point is holy matrimony. After a fortnight's siege, and making considerable progress, insomuch that the time seemed come for an assault, I candidly demanded a parley with the governor; an audience in her room, that we might discuss matters more at our ease when the family should have retired to rest:—she as candidly intimated that the key of her door lay in the porch of the parish church; so I desisted, and raised the siege."

The Countess, though for the moment amused with this young muscadin's eccentricities and coxcombries, became soon sufficiently tired of them, and had rather hear him speak on important subjects in a rational way, as he was well able to do when he chose to be serious. She was therefore not sorry next morning to find the conversation was taking a more grave turn at the breakfast-table. It began with the Marchioness asking the Chevalier, "Did you attend family worship this morning, brother?"—"Nay," answered he.—"Have you had your pipe before breakfast?" asked the Marquess.—"Yea," was the reply.—"I wonder much," said the Countess, "at this practice of smoking, which appears to be gaining ground everywhere."—"Madam," said the Chevalier with a complacent smile, "whoever hath not known the comforts of a pipe, I may say the genuine, inward comforts, may well so marvel as does your excellency. For me, I hold it a most special accommodation."—"But, how so?" said his fair questioner; "What internal comfort can you derive from drawing the smoke of a weed through a tube and diffusing it in the air?"—"Madam, as thus—when I am occupied in this wise, I forget the world, and retiring within mine own individual self, I feel a spiritual abstraction from all outward concerns, framing wisest plans, building choicest castles, indulging fondest hopes, peradventure smiting, with scorn and with power, bitterest foes. As the clouds of smoke veil my head, they exclude the outward world, and elevate me to a higher existence, the rather if I should have nigh my elbow some foaming tankard of a choice liquor, like that wherewithal the worthy steward Gaspar did regale me while we sat at our studies two nights ago."—"For my part," said Mdme. Leblanc, "I abominate the practice, deeming the vile weed which you inhale a poisonous defilement, and having always remarked that while men smoke, their imaginations wander in uncharitable directions."—"Wherefore, lady, I do remember me of your divers and sundry times taking large pinches of that same weed, how defiling soever, and placing the same by way of a charge in the two barrels of your gracious nose." It was in vain that the fair lady sought to prove the difference between tobacco burnt and tobacco ground; so she sheltered her behind ecclesiastical authority, and maintained that the Bishop and all the clergy of the diocese took snuff, whereas not one of them ever smoked. She was going on to cite instances of noted smokers, having to her certain knowledge, "because a lady told her," been guilty of scandalous behaviour, and even of breaking the most important of all the commandments, as she was pleased to term the seventh. "But sister Marchioness," said the Chevalier, turning to Mdme. de Bagnolles, "might I dare to hope the Counsellor, the man of much word, shall this day quit the Château?"—"Why, has he talked you to death, brother?" cried the Marchioness.—"Aye, truly, hath he, and death beyond the law, now that torture is abolished excepting for the necessary purpose of extracting the truth. Seldom suffered I so much. Wherefore did I suddenly vanish and quit the room, leaving him to torment the residue of the society. Excuse me, Madame Leblanc, for interrupting your abuse of tobacco smoke."—"But," said that fair lady (reverting to a more favourite topic), "I had forgot to mention the shocking fate of poor Madame Vidal, the Commissary's wife, who having been separated by his absence in the army for above a year, was on his return last week unhappily taken in labour, to his infinite horror."—" And I'll dare swear," said the Chevalier, "to Madames no small horror too."—"Why, yes, Chevalier," said the lady of Nismes, "I don't fancy you yourself would much have liked it."—"Why, truth to say," answered he, "it is so long since I was confined myself, that I have well nigh forgotten the taste of caudle, or the look of a monthly nurse."—"Now really, Chevalier, will nothing make you serious for a moment on the most grave, and indeed distressing, subjects?" While she thus moralized, Ernest, who had rode over to Nismes before breakfast, returned, bringing with him a rumour from Dauphiné that the flame kindled in that province was now spread to Grenoble, where the parliament of Dauphiné had pronounced Lettres de Cachet illegal, and sentenced to death whosoever should presume to execute them within the province.

A thunderbolt falling on the breakfast-table and suddenly fusing the butter, or an angel alighting upon it and dipping his wing in the cream-pot, would have created less consternation than this sudden and unexpected intelligence, which forthwith became the subject of the whole discourse. "Heard man ever the like of this?" exclaimed Madame Leblanc. "To what shall we next come, when a worthy man can no longer shut up his perfidious and cruel adversary during pleasure?"—"Ah, me!" sighed the good Abbé, "when I turned me to this hospitable mansion, to the end that I might refresh nature and be more able to prosecute my journey toward home, little dreamt I of having to hear such disastrous tidings! The noblesse are now undone, and so the throne is shaken, and not only the throne, but the state, and not only the state, but the whole lay community, and not only the lay community, but the Church herself, yea, the Church is no longer safe! Preserve us! What are we fated to see, in these awful times?"

"Why, look ye, Father," said the good Chevalier, "I do protest against placing the Church as above the whole community, crown and nobles included. Yet I heartily grieve over this invaluable privilege of the upper classes and of the sovereign. Nor see I very well how society can go on without it. Had I but exerted, my right to have a lettre de cachet, and shut up that wild youth from the age of eighteen to his present time of life, what service should I have rendered him, and how truly grateful would he have proved, being wise for his own interest!"

"Aye, truly, sir," said Ernest, "but fully more grateful for your kind and considerate proceeding in abstaining from exercising that most invaluable privilege, against which, now it is as good as dead and gone, far be it from me to speak any evil at all."

"But, truly," said the Count, "I begin to feel no little alarm at the pace which change, or improvement if you will, is taking. Had it gone on gradually and moderately, I should have felt little uneasiness. But if the Dauphiné spirit should become generally diffused, who can see the end of it?"

"I am exactly of your opinion," the Marquess added. "To excite, all at once, a great people calling into action millions with their ignorance, their rash resolves, their contempt of danger, their utter want of individual responsibility, by preaching to them their rights, and representing all the established institutions of the country as so many wrongs, is an experiment so fraught with peril, so directly leading to an universal explosion, that I dread to contemplate the consequences. I should not wonder if we had a cry for assembling the States General, which have not met since 1614, and would be as unwieldy as an old obsolete engine."

"No, no," said the Prince Caramelli, to whom the French constitution had of late been explained, "that will never happen. You might as well speak of a limited monarchy in France, as they are said to have in England."

"I hold it," said the Abbé, "well nigh as much out of all question, as if you were to propose the extinction of the sacred right to tithe, a right as old as the Mosaic dispensation, God be praised, and as unalterable."

"Stay a little there, Abbé," said Ernest, "you pray for the conversion of the ancient people of God. Then how unalterable?"—

"Verily, young man," answered the sacred individual, "it little beseemeth any one of thy years to handle the weightier matters of the law. Howbeit, not answering a fool in his folly, it may suffice to note that when we desire that people to be taken into the fold of the New Covenant, we do assume that they bring over with them the blessings of the Old also."

The conversation continued to roll upon the unsettled aspect of public affairs. The most rational and best informed person in the company, the Marquess, observed, that to imagine, as some crack-brained enthusiasts did, the possibility of a limited government being established in France, was only second in wild extravagance to the notion of those fanatics, who having served in the American war, dreamt of France existing without a monarchy, because the Republicans of Boston, and the Quakers of Philadelphia, had set up a Commonwealth in their new and thinly peopled country. However, the Count de Chatillon viewed, and alone viewed, these things in another light. His clear judgment, unembarrassed by theory, and yet emancipated from the trammels of authority, seemed to foresee a far wider spread of the new opinions and a far more universal change than others either hoped or dreaded to arise out of them.

His mind was gloomy and clouded as often as he reflected on the engrossing subject in all men's thoughts: and to relieve him, for his wonted amusements no longer had the power, he again sought the solitary retreat of Albert, who at his request thus continued his narrative.

CHAPTER II.

THE LOVERS.

"The happiness which I tasted in having contrary to all my fears regained Louise's affections, and, as I fervently hoped, chased from her mind the project of taking the veil, for the moment weaned my thoughts both from their late melancholy occupation since poor Emilie's unhappy fate, and also from the alarms in which I still lived for my own safety. The mind cannot easily become the lodging-place of more than one strong feeling at once; nor of more than a single violent passion. So far then my love for Louise, which no longer seemed hopeless, removed me from the state of perpetual apprehension in which I had so long been tortured, and was a change for the better, even under the severe sufferings and successions of disappointments with which it soon was fated to be attended.

"The first few weeks after our recent loss were, on the whole, the happiest, perhaps I should rather say the least wretched, I had for many a long day known. I wandered about with Louise in the beautiful scenery that borders the lake; I made excursions with her to the Alpine scenery at the base of Mont Blanc; we visited together the Château de Chillon, famous for its romantic story; we rowed on the silver lake when tired with walking among the cherry-tree groves, or the huge rocky fragments, that seem to have been torn from the gigantic Dent du Midi, and hurled down along the plain which stretches out below. Now and then, for variety to our rambles, we would set out early in the morning to spend the day at some farm-house, retired far from towns and roads, and embosomed in trees with meadows around, watered by mountain rills. There with the peasants we would partake of their homely fare, and join in their simple conversation; then help them to make their hay or bring home their cows to milk. Some book, generally of a theological cast, was the companion of our walks, and we freely discussed its subject, as well as its merits. Louise's mind was highly cultivated; and as her confidence in me made her give me credit for having owed my conversion from Romanism to the influence of reason, and not to the accidents of my situation, it was not unnatural that, as our intimacy became closer and our intercourse was prolonged, she should suffer me to relate the steps by which, under the ministration of M. Gardein, the change in my sentiments had been wrought. By degrees she began herself to share those doubts which had first weaned me from monastic observances, and then shaken my faith in the dogmas of Rome. I lived in hope that at no far distant day she would embrace the purer faith which formed the comfort of my life; and at any rate she gave me reason to think that her determination was well nigh fixed to unite her lot with mine. All at once a cruel, though hardly an unlooked-for interruption was given to these prospects. Her uncle, a bigoted Catholic, and not many years older than herself, arrived at St. Gingoulph, with the authority of her mother, and bade her prepare to accompany him home. The education of poor Emilie in the same convent with her, and the belief that she was secretly a Romanist, had alone reconciled the family of Orange to Louise's residing so long in the house of a Protestant pastor; and when that reason ceased to exist, her stay there could no longer be allowed.

"No sooner did I hear of M. Crenelle's intended arrival, than all my visions of happiness fled. The delightful month which had passed over my head like a morning dream, its sweets no sooner tasted than gone, was succeeded by a period of bitter vexation, not unmingled with alarm. First I had to conceal myself carefully from this uncle, who might make inquiries attended with the risk of discovery. Next I was told by M. Girard, that in his manner to his niece there was something of marked attention not calculated to quiet my fears of what awaited Louise when we should be separated; for, by the Romish law of marriage, a dispensation legalizes an union between uncle and niece as easily as between first cousins. This consideration, if he really aspired to her hand, and was approved by her surviving parent, his sister, was sure to make her conversion to Protestantism still more hateful in the family, much as, independently of any such consideration, it was sure to be disapproved. Watched as she now was, it became hardly possible for us to meet; and the only hour I passed with her before her departure was when one day

M. Crenelle accompanied the pastor to see the waterfall above St. Meurice, called the Pisse-Vache. That hour was spent in solemn promises of eternal fidelity, and above all in her plighting her faith at once to declare that she was a Protestant if her family should insist upon the match we both contemplated with equal horror and disgust. This was resolved upon as a measure of protection, although at that time she was still far from having renounced Popery.

"All interviews of lovers, and indeed all their intercourse, their meetings and their separations, their endearments and their alarms, their alternate raptures and discontents, are and have been from the beginning of time alike; they are moreover sufficiently monotonous from the circumstance that they necessarily turn on one subject, and that when the passions are strong or the feelings acute, they will admit of no interruption from other topics. Nor indeed could Petrarch with all his ingenuity and labour have contrived to make tolerable, if indeed it be tolerable even with the divine sweetness of his diction, this endless dwelling for near three hundred sonnets on the same theme, had he been so exclusively filled with the passion he is describing, and not worked with his head rather than his heart. He was forced to introduce anything but love, and then connect it with that by some far-fetched link; and even after all, who can read above a sonnet or two at a sitting? The truth is that love-scenes and love-letters are always highly interesting to two individuals, and wholly uninteresting to all the world besides. Therefore I will not weary you with reciting what you are aware must have passed at our last interview, with the pains of our separation, with the sorrowful loneliness which succeeded, with the hope of again meeting.

"The first effect of Louise's departure was to bring back the melancholy in which Emilie's death had plunged me, and this was most unpleasingly checkered with the alarms I felt about my own safety; for it is not with grief as with love: when love is our master, it exalts the spirits, and it will bear no rival near its throne, be it fear or be it prudence: when sorrow depresses us, it admits the fellowship of all other painful emotions; its chill makes way for the chill of fear; and while we are weeping for others, we can easily tremble for ourselves.

"Once more, then, I felt all eyes turned upon me and trying to penetrate my disguise. Each time I saw a strange face in the neighbourhood, some person seemed to have arrived in search of me. If M. Girard was suddenly called out I never stopped to consider it might be for the purpose of some parish duty; he was sent to be interrogated as to me. If he remained out an hour later than usual, I ascribed it not to his fatigue in the summer heat, or to the length of his visit to some sick or some dying person, but straightway concluded that he had met suspicious persons, or heard bad news which he dreaded to communicate. My relief on finding these alarms groundless was not such as to make compensation for the pain they had given me while they lasted; for no sooner was one apprehension laid to rest than another awoke to disturb me. I remember well seeing a man hastily cross the garden and run into M. Girard's study, having a staff in his hand; I never doubted it was an officer of justice, and fled towards the lake, hardly knowing what I did. It was only the clerk, an elderly man whose person I well knew; and who came in a hurry to fetch the pastor that he might christen a child not expected to live.

"In one instance however there was much more of reality in the circumstance which tormented me, and, strange to tell, I felt then far less acutely than in the other cases. M. Gardein wrote that suspicions had been excited respecting the long visit which an unknown person had paid his brother-in-law; and that an official person belonging to Avignon had heard from his brother in Vevay, of a clergyman living at the pastor's in St. Gingoulph, yet who never had been known to preach for him, or to do any professional duty in the place. The good man desired me without any delay to leave the neighbourhood and go into Germany, at a distance from the French frontier, so that I might be safe. I cannot tell why this intelligence alarmed me so little, except that it was only heard of, and distant, and connected itself with nothing actually seen and near.

"My reluctance was extreme to follow the prudent and provident advice thus given, for I dreaded as the last of evils the removal from all chance of ever meeting Louise again. I left her exposed to all the arts of her uncle and the bigotry of her family; I dreaded the effects of parental importunity and of clerical art in bringing her back to a church from which she was not yet finally severed; and while I was wandering in a remote land, she might, in despair at our ever again meeting, be over-persuaded to forget me. I was, however, obliged to make up my mind, and with a heavy heart I set out in company of a vetturino who was well known to M. Girard, and who engaged to take me as far as Zurich. A small sum of money, remitted through M. Gardein from my poor mother, now heart-broken by my absence, and indeed by my whole story, enabled me to subsist until I could obtain some employment whereby I might earn my bread.

"The journey presented for the first day or two nothing remarkable, excepting that my companion seemed exceedingly, and it appeared groundlessly, afraid of robbers. He was unarmed, however, as I was, and on my expressing one evening my surprise at his taking no precautions against a danger he seemed to dread so much, he told me that he never had seen any good come of fire-arms, as they are of no service after a single shot, whereas he always trusted to a heavy and stout piece of wood 'like this (he said, handling the thick bough of a tree). I have more than once thus saved myself when a fellow-traveller has fired his pistol, missed, and been laid low.'

"We took the Lucerne road; and as I passed through the inn-yard where we stopped, my surprise was great to see M. Crenelle's name upon a box. I remembered he had said he should take his niece to see the Little Cantons before she returned to Avignon; but I could not understand how so much time could have been spent in this town; for it was now nearly three weeks since they had set out. I soon, however, found they were in the same inn with me, and that Louise had been seriously ill, which delayed their journey. The joy which filled me at thus unexpectedly being in the same place with her, did not permit me to reckon how short must be its duration, or how difficult it would be to see her. Crenelle had not seen me at St. Gingoulph, but his niece could receive no letter unknown to him, or which would not excite his suspicions. After long racking my brain for some means of letting her know I was at Lucerne, I at last thought of calling to ask if she would buy a spar, of which I had picked up some fragments on the road. These I placed on a piece of paste-board, with labels, and presented myself in the room when her uncle had gone to look after his horse in the stable. We were at once alone, and as instantaneously in each other's arms. She had only time to apprize me that, as she was now well enough to travel, they intended setting out next morning for Zug. This lay in my vetturino's road, so it was arranged that I should there call with my spars, as this device had been unnecessary at Lucerne. But later in the evening, as I stood in the court-yard of the inn, I heard M. Crenelle giving orders for a char-au-banc to take him next morning to see the lake; and finding his plans changed, I prevailed on my vetturino to delay setting out until the following day. I then resolved to follow the char-au-banc, and was delighted to see Louise get into it with her uncle. They went on and embarked; I got into a boat which was leaving the shore to carry passengers to Brunnen, where we arrived long before M. Crenelle.

"The whole of the scenery here is most striking, and the contrast of some mountains green to their summits, with others wholly composed of barren rock, of fertile plains like that near Brunnen, wholly covered with fruit-trees, with a forest, and precipitous slopes like walls of bare rocks, or mountains whose sides are covered with foliage down to the water's edge, like those on the banks of the Uri branch of the lake, presents a view that no one can ever forget the effect of, when his eyes first have dwelt upon it. Even agitated as I was with so many hopes and fears, I could not help being deeply interested with this noble scenery. The other boat soon reached Brunnen; and while M. Crenelle was ordering his breakfast, I was delighted to see Louise walk out through a cherry-orchard towards the lake. I hastily followed, and as I passed ascertained that they were next morning to leave Lucerne, she supposed for Zug, as had at first been settled. While lingering to converse with her, I observed Crenelle following, and I instantly moved on. But it was too late; he imperiously asked who I was, and she answered a person she had known at St. Gingoulph, and who had offered her some spars for sale. This barely satisfied him; and we separated. I took my way on foot back to Lucerne, and arrived late in the evening. A violent storm of thunder and lightning had driven me for shelter into a cabin, where I obtained some refreshment: but it prevented Louise from returning before nightfall, and I could not be sure that she would be able to continue her journey next day. This anxiety kept me awake; but on rising very early I found my vetturino in conversation with Crenelle's, and learnt from him that he expected to set out. I also ascertained the inn at Zug in which he was to put up.

"At six we set out; and reached Zug before evening. We stopped at a different inn from the one named. I soon went to inquire if they had arrived, and found they had not. But lingering near the premises for about an hour, I saw them come, and soon afterwards M. Crenelle came out to make some inquiry about the road. Unfortunately he perceived me, and his look was one of suspicion as well as displeasure. I left the spot; but seeing him go out apparently towards St. Oswald's church to vespers,[14] I ventured to return after making some circuit to avoid his perceiving my design. I had not, however, knocked at the door of the apartment when he came up the stairs, and asked me in a rude tone what I was doing there. I said I thought he or the young lady might have some commands for St.

Gingoulph, where I proposed to return. 'None whatever,'—was his surly reply, accompanied by an assurance that I could not see her. I retired discomfited. There was no chance of my again being suffered to see Louise, and I could only ascertain that they went to Zurich next day, and that their vetturino used the same inn with mine. Pushed to impatience and almost despair at the prospect of seeing her no more, I imprudently made my vetturino ask theirs to let her know of my being in the Zurich inn next evening, and of my intention to walk in the church at vespers. He accomplished this with secrecy and success. When I had taken a few turns in the centre aisle, I saw her leaning on the maid of the inn, and going towards one of the side altars. She had hardly time to mention that they went the next day but one to Basil, when Crenelle entered the church, accompanied by an officer of police. He no sooner saw me than he gave me in charge to the man. My alarm may well be conceived. I never doubted that I was discovered, and I prepared for the event. What he said to the sergent-de-ville, I could not hear, except 'That's he—seize him—do your duty.' I accompanied him, and was taken to his house, the magistrate's office being shut. It was most fortunate for me that the officer was a zealous Protestant, and after listening to the story I thought fit to tell him of my being persecuted as a Reformed pastor, he took upon him to let me escape. I went towards Waldshut the same evening, slept at a wretched country inn; and in an unfrequented part of the road next morning, taking off my late disguise, I put on again my peasant's dress, which I carried with me in a bundle, with the few other clothes I possessed, and which amounted but to a single shirt and a pair of stockings. It was now, however, impossible Crenelle should again know me, and accordingly when I traced him to his inn at Basil, and had given one of the last livres I possessed for a bed and supper, I had the satisfaction of seeing Louise walking out leaning on his arm, and I contrived to look her steadily in the face as she returned following him at a few paces distant. Her look at once showed she recognized me. But whether there was something nervous in her manner on reaching their apartment, or whether the rumour had reached him of my escaping from the officer at Zurich, he was plainly upon the alert, and full of suspicion. He accordingly left Zurich early next day; I caught a glimpse of Louise as she entered the carriage of a new vetturino, whom I had not made acquaintance with; I followed as long as I could keep up with them; they disappeared in a crowded part of the street; and I had no means of even guessing which road they took. That glimpse caught as she passed, and which I know not if she was aware of, is the last I had of Louise for seven long years after the dismal day I spent in Basil on losing sight of her carriage.

"How many a time during these wearisome years of exile and of wandering, in the lonely forest, among the unfeeling stranger, in the silent watches of the night, pining it may be with want, or stretched on a sick bed—how many a time have I asked myself if it really was come to this, that I should never see Louise more? 'Is it gone,' I have said, 'all the hope of brighter days than once cheered my path, and seemed to make its darkness lightsome, and to bruise the thorns beneath my feet? Are they fled forever, those pleasing visions on which the troubled mind could dwell and find repose? Never more am I to see those eyes which lighted up with pure affection as often as they turned on me, or hear the warblings of a voice sweeter than ever awaked the grove? Must I resign all prospect of happiness on earth, because a cruel superstition, doing violence to the first laws of our nature, is enthroned in a despotic church, as intolerant as it is dogmatical, which the whole power of the State maintains in its sovereignty over the Crown and over the nation, to sow falsehoods broad-cast, to keep the mind in thraldom, to vex the body, to destroy the soul?'

"But it was all in vain to repine," added Albert, "and still it is in vain. The time may yet come when the diffusion of sounder knowledge than priests will allow to be taught, may teach men the truth, and awaken nations to a sense of their rights. When that day comes, men will no longer be found to people the cloister with lazy herds, muttering the incantations of their superstition under the cowl. The dross of religion, man's worst bane, will be separated from its pure gold, his most precious inheritance. The unholy alliance of Church and State against the happiness and the rights of the people, will be dissolved;—and I shall no longer be a fugitive and an outlaw.

"I resume my narrative of those long and dismal wanderings in which I so often revolved sentiments like these, sorrows, bitter sorrows, sometimes, but rarely, relieved by faint gleams of hope.

CHAPTER III.

THE WANDERER.

"When I had lost the last hope of rejoining Louise, it remained for me to go whither I could in order to consult my safety and to find such employment as might afford me bread and shelter. I did not hesitate long in choosing a country where literary acquirements, however humble, are secure of a market for whatever they may produce, be it of ever so coarse a fabric. I went into Germany, and I soon was put in a way of earning a moderate weekly payment as a translator from the English and Italian, with both of which languages I was well acquainted. German I knew but indifferently; however, by help of the little I knew and by the universal diffusion of my mother tongue, I was enabled to complete my translation for use, that is, for the press. In that country, where the division of literary labour is perfect, and the manufacture of books has become almost mechanical, one man could do my French, or my mixed German and French, into good Saxon who knew no English, nor Italian, and a small deduction was made from the price I charged for the translation, in order to pay for his work. I tried an original work, but it did not answer; my fancy was too much under the restraint of critical rules, my style was too much formed on the chaste models of my own country, to suit the appetite for wonders and horrors, vehement excitement and unnatural situation, fantastic sentiment and strange opinion, which seemed to be so prevalent in the constitution of the Germanic mind. Besides, I could receive very little more for a critical dissertation or a romance, than for a translation from some well known foreign author. Again, there was frequently no demand at all for my original productions, not to mention that I was not at all times in a humour of mind to execute them; and in the employment of a literary man, nothing is of such importance as a constant supply of work and of a kind which he can at all times perform. The nearer he brings his work to the common kinds of day labour, the labour at least of artizans, the better for him. He is not paid the worse in the long run, and he toils with comparative ease. The evils of a literary life resolve themselves almost entirely into the ups and downs of imaginative composition, the uncertainty of finding a demand for exertions of genius, the greater uncertainty of being able to make these exertions, the occasional idleness and consequent want which are the result. Hence the anxieties, the sufferings, the various fortunes, the too often unequal spirits, even the recourse to dissipation for relief, which chequer the lives of literary men.

"As my wants were exceedingly limited, I could live by my pen, though I was paid less than many mechanics gained by their labour; for I never could exceed, and seldom quite reached, twenty rix-thalers[15] a month. But I enjoyed in quiet a rather agreeable literary society among the Germans of Göttingen, where I took up my abode; and I soon became familiar with the respectable character of that honest, single-hearted, well-natured, though somewhat coarse and not a little fantastical people. One of the first things that struck me in their literary condition with which my avocations naturally brought me most acquainted, was the mechanical state into which authorship was come, and the recklessness with which authors would undertake works. The last thing they dreamt of was a conformity to Horace's rule of first calculating their own strength, and avoiding a load which their shoulders refused to bear. A middleman between the publisher and the author, like a regrater between the hop-grower and the hop-merchant or the brewer, a verlager, they called him, would come round to make bargains, buying up the MS. which was ready written, or else setting authors to write. Those who wanted a vent for their written works, or sought employment and could not wait till applied to, being unemployed, would go to some verlager and make their bargains. When an offer was made to an author by the verlager, he only seemed to regard the terms, the time allowed, and the money to be paid for his work, never to consider whether he could well do it or not; while the verlager on his part, though he would try to find persons capable of doing the work he wanted, yet continually made mistakes; and when there was a demand for a particular book, would not be very nice as to the qualifications of the writer he engaged with, knowing that if he got it less well done he paid the less for it. I have repeatedly seen men undertake in this way to write, let me rather say to make books, on subjects they knew hardly anything of. Once I recollect one of our club-fellows, who used to smoke his meerschaum and drink his ale with us of an evening, being rallied on the gross blunders in an Algebraical Treatise which he was known to have written, though it came forth under a feigned name. His defence was comical enough. 'How should it be otherwise? I knew nothing of mathematics.'—'But then why did you undertake it?'—'Why did I undertake it? Would you have refused two rix dollars a sheet, which the verlager, Hans Meyer, offered me, on condition of it being finished in six weeks?'—'Then how did you do it with no more blunders, if you knew no mathematics?'—'I had two treatises, Euler and Maclorren,[16] which were lent me; the former, in German, I abridged easily, making of course some cruel mistakes; the latter in English I had some help from, through the tailor I lodged with, who had been a journeyman in London for some years; so that in what I took from Maclorren, I made more blunders still. But I did my work to the day, and received no less than forty rix-dollars for six weeks' work.'

"I must give the Germans every praise for industry. They labour harder and more conscientiously in every thing they undertake than any people I have ever been among. There is no comparison in this respect between them and the French, though these certainly come next. For patient industry, joined with temperance and economy, the German stands first; the Frenchman next for both. The labour of the former is more unremitting, longer continued, more passive, if I may so speak, more machine-like, less relieved by fancy, less stimulated by impetuosity. The latter works very hard too, and for an extraordinary length of time, compared with any but a German. His labour, however, is more desultory, more prompted by passion, and, therefore, less equally sustained; his industry is warmed by the fire of his temperament; and instead of loving work for work's sake like the Gothic artist, the Celtic performer toils for fame, feels all the while that he is immortalizing himself, and never doubts that in whatever drudgery he may be employed, be it only in making an index, or correcting the press, or abridging another's book, the whole success of the work depends on himself, just as each actress who plays the soubrette's part thinks the whole fortune of the piece rests upon her performance, and just as each soldier at a review considers that he is the pivot on which the whole manœuvres of the day turn. Happy people, to live in so pleasing a delusion! But, happy country, to have its offices filled, its armies recruited, its fleets manned by myriads of such enthusiasts! Less felicitous its lot in times of trouble and change, when the mercurial temperament, the exciteable nature is prone to display its force, and no work of mischief can ever be without leaders, no incendiary leader ever want followers in doing the deeds of destruction!

"There is in the German character, according to my observation, a certain slowness, a reluctance to leave the beaten track; but it is in practical matters; or, if it be a general character of the Teutonic understanding, we must ascribe the strange vagaries of theory and of sentiment into which it plunges, to the effects of an unnatural state, the extremes to which men will go when they once break through their habitual modes of thinking or of acting. Certain it is that no people, generally speaking, are more prone to go on as those have done who lived before them. Witness the slowness with which they have embraced improvements in the art of war. and the number of times that Frederick II. defeated his enemies by the new tactics, the great scheme of manœuvres he introduced, and which the Dauns and the Laudohns were never beaten into adopting.

"To deny the Germans genius, as some superficial reasoners have done, misled by a heavy exterior and the miracles of a plodding nature, both the one and the other so manifest to the eye, is wholly absurd. Shall we look to the highest subjects, to the sublimer of the sciences, where, except in the country of Newton, do we find such discoveries as those by which Leibnitz gave, like Newton and with Newton, the key to all modern mathematical research, and Kepler and Copernicus first expounded the system of the universe? Is poetry our care, and can we forget Göthe and Klopstock? In music who have surpassed Haydn and Mozart? Painting alone furnishes any exception; though he who denies Rubens to be a German because his family was Flemish, must deny Holbein to be a Switzer because his family was German.

"I have spoken of the effects produced by deviations from the nature of men, or violent breaches of habit, their second nature. The women of Germany, perhaps, furnish the materials of a similar remark, in illustration of the Latin saying, that the corruption of the best things makes the worst. The German female is naturally pure, chaste, strict; when she deviates from her appointed path, she falls low indeed; her abandonment exceeds the grovelling, the wallowing, of less virtuous natures.

"I have heard the sobriety of the Germans called in question, and on the Rhine they perhaps drink more wine than the men of some other nations, all those of the south, as of the Spanish and Italian peninsulas, of course being abstemious in the greatest degree. But the general beverage of Germany is beer, and though with their tobacco a good deal of this is consumed, I never saw reason to doubt that the German was sufficiently sober, as he is past all doubt rigidly economical. Indeed, after passing some months in that country, I never either saw or heard of any person who did not live within his means. Having money, the German will indulge, but only in moderation; and if he have but a rix-dollar in his pocket, he will only spend three marcs.

"In a country so full of authors, and so fruitful in productions of the press, it was plain that the number of readers must be prodigious; nor was it uninteresting to observe that a vast variety of subjects were treated of in their writings so generally read. The speculations of science, and the works on belles lettres, were by no means the only ones, not even the principal ones, diffused through the country. History, above all recent history, biography, and of living persons, moral and metaphysical controversy, these often plunging into the most cloudy and abstract mysticism, jurisprudence, even political philosophy, theology, mixed with fierce controversy on all important and on many very trivial points—all these formed the catalogue weekly printed at Göttingen of new publications, and all these furnished food for the labours of the critics and abridgers who had lately set up daily reviews, the former weekly ones proving insufficient to keep pace with the hourly growing crop of books and pamphlets which shot up in so rank a soil, so peopled with hard-working cultivators. The great number of petty principalities into which the empire is divided gives a stimulus to the products of the press, and also affords security to those who live by it; they can move from place to place if in any jeopardy from the freedom of their pens; and some of the princes, and still more of the ministers, were in those days known to encourage very free opinions upon all subjects. Indeed no two of the petty sovereigns were likely to agree on any point, and still less were such near neighbours, lords of such contracted dominions, capable of living in much amity one with another. Add to all these circumstances, the effect of the Reformed faith, wherever it was established, in emancipating the human mind and causing reason alone to be consulted in all controversial matters.

"It cannot be denied that this state of things was sure to spread among the people a love of freedom, and give them a spirit of inquiry into all existing institutions, and their abuses as well as their foundations. The American revolution had recently produced a great effect in the same direction, and even the Hessian and other troops who had been hired by England to fight against the rising liberties of her colonial subjects, did not cross the Atlantic, or write to their families, or return when paid off to their homes, without bringing notions of a very free kind to spread among their untravelled countrymen. I had not been long at Göttingen when I found that there was a considerable ferment among the people in many parts of the Empire, and not merely in the

Protestant parts, for I should say Munich had fully more of it than either Leipsic or Göttingen. But what interested me more was the associations which I found were formed, and chiefly in university towns, among the young men, but to which no small number of the elderly university men, and even the professors, belonged. Some of these societies were merely public bodies that openly held meetings for discussing literary, historical, or scientific subjects; with which were occasionally mingled political controversies. But others were of a concealed and mysterious character; no one knew who belonged to them; their places of meeting were only revealed to the initiated; and the members recognized one another by secret signs. I was, after a short intimacy with a literary man older than myself, and after many minute examinations of my character, and inquiries into my past history, which I answered as best I could, admitted into one of these associations. It was called the Fehm-gerichte, or Fehm-ding, borrowing its name from a famous secret tribunal in Westphalia, established during the middle ages for the enforcement of criminal justice and police, and which was wont to execute capital sentences occasionally on offenders, as well as on those of its own body who betrayed its secrets. The plans of the society I belonged to soon unfolded themselves to my mind; having been carefully concealed from me until I had bound myself by an awful oath, borrowed like the name from the Fehm-gerichte,—an oath binding me 'by the death which God endured on the cross, to keep the holy secrets from wife and child, from father and mother, from sister and brother, from fire and wind, from all the sun shines on, or the rain falls on, from all between sky and ground, and especially from the man who knows the law.'—When I had thus become bound, and furthermore had taken the equally solemn oath of implicit and unhesitating obedience to my unknown chiefs, I was gradually allowed to know that the designs of the society were utterly incompatible with the security of the established government or the established church. Wild and levelling doctrines of a purely republican nature were freely discussed and were largely inculcated upon the newly admitted members; and the task of zealously aiding in the dissemination of these, both in society, by teaching, through the press, and by all manner of influence, personal, professional, official, was prescribed as the first of duties. The evils under which society as at present constituted labours, formed the favourite subject of declamation at all our meetings; the glorious prospect of its entire regeneration under the establishment of a more pure, more free, more philosophical system, was the pleasing hope held out to encourage our labours.

"When I found these refined speculations planted in the minds of enthusiasts, and producing fruits of a very exciting and most practical kind, I own my alarm became considerable. For nothing was more common than to hear mention made of vengeance which must be exacted from some one who was suspected of betraying the Society, and on whom a strict watch was therefore set, the office of superintending him being confided to some intimate friend whom he little suspected of such vigilance. Nor was this all. There were certain persons in authority whom the concealed rulers of our body were said to have found counteracting their proceedings, spying into their meetings, and even endeavouring to discover their persons. One and another of these public functionaries was successively named in our meetings as closely watched, and their doom was said to be inevitable were they found to have really done what was imputed. It seemed quite plain to me, however carefully wrapped up in general expressions, that assassination was one of the means contemplated as possibly to be used; in extreme cases no doubt, in order to render it safe and prevent the consequences from the active exertions of the government, but still an instrument reserved to be used on those great occasions.

"At length I was allowed to be present at the initiation of one person, whose absolute devotion to the order was deemed an important object from the rank he filled at a neighbouring court; while the great, the more than German enthusiasm of his character gave every hope of his falling an easy victim to the society's designs, and yielding to the yoke sought to be imposed on him. At the dead of the night, and in the inmost recesses of an old house in the thicket, of a neighbouring wood, we assembled in no great numbers, only about twenty being present. A short but very striking lecture on the new duties of the neophyte, and above all on the absolute devotion demanded of him to the will of his concealed superiors, was now delivered, while all stood uncovered. The oath of implicit obedience was then pronounced with great solemnity, and to that he swore obedience on his bare knees. Hitherto he had only gone through the same ceremonies which attended my own admission two months before. While he remained kneeling, an exhortation was addressed to him in much the same tone; and a chorus of the most pleasing voices then struck up a beautiful hymn, accompanied by a fine though small organ which a brother played, and played well. The newly initiated was then directed to rise, and asked what punishment he expected for treachery to the order in breach of his oath. He answered as he was bid—'Instant death, without knowing from what hand.'—Again he was asked what would be his punishment for refusing obedience to the commands of the secret superiors, in breach of his oath? He gave the same answer.—He was now told that the time had come when his virtue must be tried; he trembled visibly; but answered, 'Lead on!' He was taken, and we accompanied him, into the next room, more dimly lighted, where he saw his own brother bound to a stake with his shirt off, loaded with irons, and in a posture of supplication. The commands of the invisible tyrants were then read with a loud voice. He was ordered to put the victim of stern justice to death, as one who had been treacherous to the order—'That the weakness of human nature be spared,' said the president rising from his seat, 'your eyes may be bandaged while you perform your duty according to the obligation of your oath.'—He shrunk and seemed ready to faint away; he was blindfolded; he was led up to the victim; a dagger was placed in his right hand; he was bid to feel with his left where the heart beat and so to direct his blow; he convulsively grasped the dagger; and with a loud scream plunged it in. Loud acclamations rose from all present but me; the bandage was removed from his eyes; it was found that, he had slain a lamb with the wool shorn, and mouth muzzled; and he was covered with the poor creature's blood. But no one who saw this shocking spectacle could hesitate to believe that in a moral sense, at least, the guilt of murder had been incurred; that his brother's blood lay heavy upon his soul; and that if this trial did not open his eyes and effect the cure of his enthusiasm, it had prepared him, or proved him already prepared, for the last extremities of cruelty, in blind obedience wholly resigned to the sovereign will of an unknown master.

"It should seem that some look of mine, new as I was to such scenes, had not escaped the watchful eyes by which I was surrounded; and the conversation which followed led me to express my sentiments upon the lawfulness of the doctrines that seemed so generally diffused among the initiated. The wrongs I had suffered, and continued to endure under a tyrannical system, civil and religious, had prepared my mind to seek the overthrow of established institutions; for, as the good pastor of Nismes had observed, with the facility of self-deception which the passions, those consummate casuists, possess, we always cast upon others the blame of our own actions, as we always flatter ourselves that our worst deeds are necessary to our self-defence. Yet I was not prepared to attempt, or join in attempting, the much wished-for change, by all and by any means, and I had suffered too severely from the spilling of blood to be indifferent upon embracing so dreadful an extremity. This feeling naturally marked my conversation more after the midnight rehearsal for scenes of slaughter, the murder-drill, as I rashly termed it to a brother. Among the Germans at large all speculative opinions are freely ventilated, and all opposition to prevailing belief is fully tolerated; but when men are bound in a secret conspiracy, the case is otherwise, and mistrust becomes the consequence of any difference upon fundamental articles of the common faith. The imbuing the initiated with feelings as vehement as the principles of the association were extravagant, feelings powerful enough to counteract the strongest sentiments of our nature, was the main object of those able men who projected the Fehm-gerichte; and when it was found that my heart still beat to other measures, the inference immediately followed that I had been prematurely admitted to the inmost mysteries, and should have been stopped in my progress, with a Sta bene, outside the threshold of their temple. It was soon clear to me that I was very closely watched. I perceived some one of the brethren always threw himself in my way wheresoever I went. I never could be alone an instant, hardly when I was at my daily work; one or other would make a pretence of his bed-room being taken from him and come to read or write in mine. At last one, most intimate with me, brought a dismal story of his losing some money, and being no longer able to pay his room-rent, it was necessary he should have a bed put up in mine, or he could sleep on the floor. If ever I was seen speaking but for a moment to any uninitiated person, some brother was at my elbow as if to listen. I seldom sent any letter to the post-office; but now and then I received one from M. Girard, to whom the secret of my retreat was known, and who wrote to me under the name of Henri Claire. The director of the post had a son in the office who was one of the initiated, and I perceived that my letters were opened. Happily they contained nothing of moment: but one that I had written to M. Gardein immediately after the drill at the lone house, contained my confession of having been present, expressed how it had weighed on my mind, and though it forbade him to make any remarks on it when he should write, yet gave a plain intimation of my resolution to quit the Fehm-gerichte, and leave Göttingen also. Perceiving that a letter of M. Girard's had been opened, I could not doubt that this of mine had likewise been seen; indeed, when I recollected, I found that the brother had taken up his abode with me the same evening. I became now beyond measure anxious; never doubting that the first word which escaped me in presence of a stranger, nay, the first rash word I might be overheard to speak in my sleep, would be the signal for what was called 'executing justice,' and that I should be found dead in my bed with some circumstances provided to show that I had destroyed myself.

"The brethren, however, took another course. Resolved to make themselves secure from any disclosure of mine, and determined to do so by my effectual removal, they had set all their energies at work to trace my whole history. I soon found that they knew my name was not Claire, and that I had in Switzerland gone by another appellation. They knew moreover that I had personated a Protestant pastor; and as I had, in obtaining admission, disclosed my having been converted from Romanism, the acquaintance with the language of the Contât which one of them had from having many years before been educated at Avignon, led them to the discovery of my having come from thence. I could not even be certain that my whole history was any longer a secret among them. Certain it is that once or twice when I gave vent to my feelings and scruples on assassination, I was met, and cruelly met, with the observation that if one man could destroy his rival in a fit of mere jealousy, another might possibly make up his mind to do as much for his country and his kind by laying low a tyrant or a persecutor. There seemed to me some reference to myself in this, though it was said in an argument of a general nature. I began to believe that the Fehm-gerichte were taking their measures for having me seized and delivered up to the French authorities. I became inexpressibly anxious in consequence; and a circumstance soon occurred that left no longer any doubt on my mind. The necessity for moving from Göttingen, and again trusting to chance for concealment and subsistence, became apparent; but the blow was accompanied with a most pleasing compensation, which shed oil into the wound it made.

"It was the afternoon of a day in July, when I walked out in the gardens that surround the town, and was straying towards a stream where I used sometimes to angle for small fish, or to sit and smoke a pipe towards nightfall. The day had been extremely rainy, and even stormy; and when a fine evening succeeds such a day, and the storm is hushed, I know nothing more refreshing. The heats have been allayed; the flowers regain their fragrance; no dust flies about; every thing is fresh, and there is a peculiar balminess in the air, which highly pleases the senses. While enjoying this walk, I was overtaken by our post-office brother, who brought me a letter with M. Girard's handwriting on the back. I thanked him, and put it in my pocket, wishing to examine the seal. He soon went away, finding me little disposed to keep up the conversation he had tried to begin. I hurried to the stone seat where I often went to meditate at eventide, and I thought I could perceive no marks of the letter having been opened, for it was protected by a wafer under the wax, and this appearing round the edges of the seal, had probably scared the brother from his attempt upon it, and reduced him to the device of himself delivering it, and endeavouring to discover whence it came. As soon as I opened it, I perceived the well known hand of Louise on the inclosure, and could hardly contain my joy. Three months had now elapsed since I parted from her, and I had but faint hopes of hearing from her again. Her letter was fitted to fill me with rapture; I devoured it again and again; its alarming tidings were not sufficient to damp the joy its perusal shot through my whole frame; it was the only subject of my reading, and my thoughts for that night; it disturbed, but not unpleasingly, my rest, and it has been the cherished companion of my way in all the after wanderings and vicissitudes of my stormy life. Here is that precious relic of true love,"—said the Solitary, as he plucked it from his bosom, worn and in parts all but defaced, hid in a pocket-book of which it was the only tenant.—"Here it is, and you, Count, may yourself peruse it. I know it by heart."—The Count opened and read as follows:—

"I have learnt, my dearest Albert, from the good pastor with whom I am now on a visit at Nismes, that your retreat is in Germany, and that M. Girard can make a letter sure of reaching you living under your new disguise. I cannot resist the temptation of conversing for an hour once more with you, though only on paper and at a distance that seems impassable. My first object is to warn you that circumstances have come to my knowledge at Avignon which show you to be no longer safe in your present residence, surrounded with associates of whom we find that one was educated in the Contât, knows its dialect, and probably has correspondence with its capital. Fly then elsewhere; change your disguise once more; be even more carefully than ever on your guard against rash confidences and false friends; distrust the post-office everywhere; write nothing that can betray you; let no one but M. Gardein and M. Girard know whither you have fled; and trust to their conveying the tidings I most value, to her you best love, her who loves you with the truest, the most unalterable affection!

"How delightful, my dearest friend, thus to write without restraint, thus to pour out my whole heart to you, thus to show you how entirely it is filled with your image, and thus, as it were, to breathe my sighs in your ear! The confidence that reigns between us two is as perfect as the affection that knits us together. True, our loves have been hitherto disastrous; they have been cast and they have cast our lives into a deep shade, athwart which but a single gleam of sunshine has ever shot; yet one blessing has attended them; heaven be praised, the curse of jealousy has never blighted them, never for an instant ruffled our souls, since that one fatal moment when its fury broke out upon you, and drove you to madness and to crime. Yes, Albert! far be from me the guilt of veiling over your fault even from your recollection, which I fervently pray it may never escape, because I firmly believe the more bitterly it stings your conscience, the more hope you may indulge of forgiveness from the Father of all mercy, the more guiltlessly pass the remaining days of your trial here below!

"When I parted from you at Basil, my uncle, now became my jealous watch, and since my implacable persecutor, showed plainly that he suspected me of having met you at St. Gingoulph, and was not without his apprehensions that you were still following our steps. If anything could have more indisposed me to hear his hateful and disgusting professions of esteem soon assuming a warmer guise, it was the life of torment his suspicions made me lead. I became really ill; and I feigned that I was worse. I made him bring our excursion to a close. We struck into the road that leads towards the Rhone, and I arrived exhausted and wretched at my mother's house. The reception she gave me showed plainly the tenor of her brother's letters, and it became necessary that I should at once declare to her my fixed resolution never to allow the subject of his attachment, or pretended attachment, to be mentioned in my presence. You know how much she loves me; but her next attachment is to her brother, and my life has since been one of perpetual vexation. The cruel and designing man, finding his passion hopeless, has converted it, by the easy transition from love to hatred, into the bitterest enmity; and he never has lost any opportunity of giving me pain. There is accordingly no more choice subject of conversation with him than your history. How often has he made me quit the room with a heaving bosom, and with ill-restrained tears in my eyes, to give my sorrow and my indignation vent in the room where every object, the sofa, the guitar, the harpsichord, the library, all recall you to my view! To my mind no such mementos are wanted, for you never have left it.

"Do you remember, dearest, the beautiful evening when we strolled to Meillerie arm in arm, and after reading a few of Julie's letters, threw the book aside, chilled by the cold rhetoric of a composition in which all the love that breathes through it comes from either the head or the senses, and never has warmed the heart? 'It is not even finely written,' you said; 'if any one would see how well Jean Jacques could write French, let him read his Confessions:' and you promised to select the readable parts of that wonderful work for my perusal. 'But at all events,' you said, 'the Nouvelle Héloise is only a mixture of gross passion and frigid declamation, from which the feeling, the sentiment of love is far away.' Well; you then gave me Pascal's Provincial

Letters, and bade me often read that great performance; with another in favour of the Reformed faith. These have been my companions ever since. These have constantly occupied my thoughts, together with the lecture you read me on the lives of the first Reformers, as an antidote to the arguments of our priests drawn from them, and for the purpose of showing how the errors and impurities incident to those who suddenly cast off the restraints of an habitual faith, form no reason whatever for distrusting their reasonings, or disbelieving the facts they prove by evidence.

"In this frame of mind I have cultivated the society, the truly edifying society, of M. Gardein and his amiable family. He has received me more than once under his humble but hospitable roof. He has been made the confidant of all my sad history; of our loves, of our sorrows. My doubts, both on the Romish and on the Reformed schemes, have been freely disclosed to him; he has confirmed me in the one, he has removed the others; and I am now an openly professed follower of the Protestant faith, to the extreme grief of my poor mother, and to the unbounded anger of M. Crenelle.

"How delightful, my dearest friend, was it to feel that I was following your steps, conversing with your pious instructor, receiving from his lips the same saving lessons wherewith he had chased error from your mind, and won you over to the right faith; kneeling with the family in the same parlour where you had knelt to worship the God of mercy and of truth! I felt as if we had met once more; weaned through the same process, and from the same false doctrines, by the same kindly hand, it seemed as if, after all our earthly wanderings, storms, and perils, we had reached together the blessed haven where peace and rest await us, and where we may taste them together, to part no more!

"This place is filled with recollections of my love. His image seems to float even through the air. When I wander in the beautiful gardens, he has before been wandering there. When I survey the fine monuments of ancient arts in the Temple of Concord, he has before been carried back by the same remains to the Augustan age of Rome. When I worship in the holier Temple whose priest is the venerable pastor, I bend at the same altar where Albert offered up his penitence and his prayers. The room I now write in is the one you occupied. I rest my arm on the desk you wrote on. I see the traces of the pen which, the night you left Nismes, you used to write down the venerable pastor's wholesome advice; one word reversed by having been laid on the blotting book, I can yet read in your well-known hand; it is Providence! Oh, let me implore that gracious power to guide all your steps, that gracious mercy to descend on your head! I fold up this letter with this prayer, breathed from the bottom of my heart, and I go to lay my head on that pillow which you, dearest, dearest love, so often made wet with your tears, as if with them I could mingle my own!

"Louise Orange."

CHAPTER IV.

THE WAY-FARING MAN.

"It was not so easy as dear Louise imagined to follow the course which her important warning directed me to take. Nothing could have given our brethren so great alarm as the least intimation that I intended to quit Göttingen. The constant watch set on me made all preparation impossible. Of this I was soon made aware; for, going to the office of a diligence where I wished to inquire about a place, I found my intrusive fellow lodger, Krützener, there before me, and the postmaster's son was with him. The alarm had been given by my pressing, the morning before, for payment from my bookseller, of a small sum which he owed me; and some inquiry I had made in a Dutch tradesman's shop, as to the nearest way to Holland, had in an unaccountable way become known. A small letter-case in which I kept my writings had been evidently opened, and it contained a few lines I had written to M. Girard, mentioning my wish to leave the place, which I said was become intolerable to me. What more may have been overheard of my words while asleep I cannot tell; but it was plain from Krützener's altered manner that he was my enemy as well as the watch upon me. Nevertheless I resolved to risk everything, and if no other escape presented itself, to walk away under cloud of night, and take my chance of getting into the coach next day by the road side. Before going to bed at an early hour, which I did on pretence of illness, I was about to take a cooling draught, when I saw Krützener, in the mirror, drop a powder into it. This was quite enough to prevent me taking it, but putting it on the night-table, when he left the room for a few minutes, I contrived to spill it under the pillow. I then went to bed, and feigning after a little while to be asleep, I perceived him come with the lamp in his hand, and holding it near my eyes he stood silent over me. He turned, believing me asleep; when, unable to contain myself, I suddenly rose and sprang upon the assassin, who, being far less powerful, was easily held in my grasp. Seizing a knife that lay on the table, I held it at his throat, and bade him prepare for the death which he had intended for me. He sank on his knees, and earnestly begged his life, pleading in his defence the dreadful oath he had taken of obedience to the Unknown, whose peremptory orders were to remove me, and charge me with having voluntarily swallowed poison, for which purpose they had found in my letter-case some lines expressing that I was weary of life. I released him on one condition; that he should accompany me to the frontier, in order that I might be safe from the all-seeing eyes and all-pervading myrmidons of the Unknown Superiors. We instantly set out, and after travelling the greater part of the night, I was overtaken by a stuhlwagen, or open diligence, into which I got, leaving the wretched slave to find his way back as he could.

"Nothing particularly worth remembering occurred on the way; I only remember well the feeling of relief which I experienced on finding myself suddenly freed from the jealous and constant inspection of the Fehm-gerichte. Secure in the distance every hour was increasing between me and their odious thraldom, I little cared for any attempts which they might make against me, because

I felt assured they must fail; and I now seemed to breathe after the intolerable servitude I had lately been forced to endure; a servitude which almost abstracted from my mind the fears of being discovered for what I was. Those fears now returned, but with less than their former violence; for I hoped that, as soon as I should reach the Dutch territory, the protection of a free state would be extended to me. In the course of a week our slow-moving vehicle brought us to Emmerich, the frontier town of the Prussian States, and I panted to set my foot, for the first time, in a country governed by a constitution that secured equal rights to its subjects of all classes. Well did I then remember the touching picture which Father Jerome used to paint of the superior virtue that resides in popular governments. He had a care to temper his panegyric with an admission of the mischiefs to which popular excesses lead; but the security of person and property he justly regarded as a paramount excellence of this scheme of policy; and the toleration of the Dutch for all kinds of religious creeds, he had been wont to commend fully as much as a strict Catholic could be expected to do, while he affirmed that the practice of this virtue was more conformable to the genius of a Protestant commonwealth than to the spirit of uniformity required in a Romish monarchy. The image of the good man was before my eyes while looking forward to the emancipation from alarm which I should feel when I breathed, for the first time, the republican air of the United Provinces; and filled with these hopes, saddened by this reminiscence, I entered Holland, sleeping the first night in Nimeguen, a town of Guelderland.

"My object was to reach Amsterdam or Rotterdam, believing I might have a better chance of obtaining employment in those great towns; a thing very necessary to me, as the small sum I had compelled Krützener to advance (making over to him my claim on the bookseller) was nearly exhausted by the expenses, humble as these were, of the week's journey. I therefore got into a diligence which was to reach Amsterdam in two days. The conversation was in French, between a merchant of Brussels and a commercial traveller. It soon caught my ear, for it turned on a person who had fled from the Austrian Netherlands to Holland, on a charge of forgery; and I found, to my great dismay, that on the simple requisition of the Austrian minister at the Hague, the criminal was sure, if found, to be delivered up. 'Oh!' said a Dutch gentleman, who was a fellow-passenger, 'of that there is no doubt. God forbid that our free country should ever become the refuge of felons. We might have persons charged with murder flee hither to infect our soil, and escape the laws against which they had offended.'—'Nothing,' said the Fleming, 'can be more just, Sir, than your observation. Nor can anything be more necessary for the purposes of police than a mutual surrender of fugitives between neighbouring states.'—'This,' said the commercial traveller, 'is the more necessary where, as in Germany, and on the left bank of the Rhine, the territory is so much divided into small principalities that an offender can everywhere escape, in a few hours, across the frontier. There can hardly be said to be any law, any civilized society, or any effectual government, where every one country affords an asylum to the fugitives from every other.' To all these remarks I could not refuse my assent; but I felt, cruelly, how they bore upon my own case; and I began to foresee that, even were I able to obtain employment in Holland, I durst not long remain within a dominion governed by so wise and just a system of police.

"I arrived at Amsterdam, once the great capital of the commercial world, though now far advanced towards its decline, from the natural rise of other countries of which Holland had formerly carried on the trade, sooner or later sure to be domiciled among themselves. My stock of money was exhausted, and I lost no time in applying to a bookseller for employment, never doubting but I should find myself here on the same footing as in Germany. The case, however, was widely different. The man drily told me he had no work for either an author or a translator; that he sold few books, and these only the standard works in French, German, and Dutch; and that all the translations required had long ago been provided. I asked whether he could recommend me to any other publisher? He said they hardly had such a thing as a publisher in Amsterdam; but if I would call at a shop he named, where school-books were sold, it was possible I might find some little thing to do. Thither, accordingly, I went, and I was told that if for ten guilders (about a Louis-d'or) I chose to translate a small volume of arithmetic and geography, lately printed in London, for the use of schools, I might do so. I agreed; and received, in advance, two guilders. This work took me ten days to do; and I then sought another kind of employment, as I plainly could not earn anything like a subsistence by literary labour in Holland. I wrote a good hand, could cast accounts, should soon learn enough of the language to keep the books of some shopkeeper in a good line of business, whom I might also help as a shopman, to fill up my time and earn his wages. After some days spent in seeking for such a place, I luckily found one at a salary of a guilder or florin a day and my lodging; I had to feed myself out of this poor pittance.

"The knowledge I had acquired of English, as well as German, put a plan into my head which seemed to promise some more comfortable subsistence, and to relieve me from the apprehension I lived in that information from my cruel persecutors at Göttingen might reach the French ambassador, and that I should be discovered as having fled from Nismes. A squadron of five sail of the line and six frigates was about to sail, for the protection of a merchant fleet expected from the Baltic, and among the frigates was a fine American, the Charlestown, of size almost equal to a ship of the line. I went on board her, and finding that the place of captain's clerk was vacant, I immediately applied for it. I was hired at a salary treble of what the grocer allowed me at Amsterdam; and, fear never forming any part of my nature, I cared not whether I encountered the risks of battle or of shipwreck. After a few days we sailed; but these days gave me a pretty complete notion of the change I had made from the Dutch to the American character of my associates.

"I had, during the short period of my stay in Holland, formed an exceedingly favourable opinion of its people. They are a quiet, orderly, honest race, extremely averse to all that is adventurous or riskful, even in their own line, that of commerce; plodding on in the beaten track, and spurning speculation; content if they can obtain in safety the lowest gain on the capital, which is so overgrown as to bring down profits by almost unlimited competition, and wisely setting this restricted advantage against the risk of loss they thus avoid. Regular and precise in all their habits, they resemble machines rather than human beings; but they are not more regular than conscientious, and they number economy among their virtues so habitually that the sight of extravagance offends them, as the spectacle of vice shocks others. I recollect meeting with a peasant, in one of the Trekschuyts, when going to join the frigate at Rotterdam, and after complaining of the waste he formerly saw in the English Ambassador's kitchen, which he had supplied with garden stuff, he said he liked it not; it was not good; it looked profligate, and he had therefore ceased to supply them, and let them go to the green-grocers. This seemed to me a purely Dutch trait of character; but from one of that truth-loving nation I could well believe it, for no people have less hypocrisy, or pretence, or cant of any sort, than the worthy Hollanders. Their piety is of a like kind, being very sincere, and quite free from enthusiasm. They are, however, universally a religious people; they look to the reversion; they regard the laying up of a store hereafter, as either a benefit or an indispensable duty, like providing for their family after their decease. But they will avoid extravagance in making the one provision as well as the other; doing the needful,—no more. In a word, they think godliness a great gain, and they pursue it as they would a profit of three or three-and-a-half per cent. on their capital; nor will they run after any fanatical teacher who would show them new and more advantageous roads to salvation, any more than they would run after a projector who should tempt them with a prospect of making five or six per cent, or some other impossible profit.

"In their domestic virtues they are unimpeachable; showing perfect propriety and purity of conduct, though without any exuberant warmth of attachment. A Dutch lover seems almost a contradiction in terms; it presents to the mind a grotesque image. I saw a love-letter which my employer's son, a youth of twenty-four, wrote and asked me to correct. His mistress's 'last favour' had reached him 'in due course;' he 'noted the contents;' he took as much interest in her affairs, as she did in his; he wished the 'balance might not be on the wrong side of the account;' and he hoped her guardian would agree to let 'them join their stocks together for their mutual benefit.' I observed that he took this composition, after I had made him add a few tender lines, to his father, who gave him much praise for it; but desired him to strike out the addition, which, he said, he must have taken from some book, or some newspaper, and which, he observed, made nonsense of the whole; besides not being very easily understood. So the letter, after being carefully copied, and the copy posted among his correspondence, was despatched in its original and sensible form.

"The peace and decorum of their household is a prime consideration with the Dutch; and as I have known families that were never suffered to have a poem within their reach, so I believe a novel is rarely to be found in the hands of any. The seeing a single play in a year suffices to most for their measure of theatrical amusement; but concerts are more freely indulged in, for the Hollander has a great love of music, and does not regard indulging it as attended with any danger.

"They are strict economists of every thing, of time as well as of money. You shall see wealthy families, which give but two entertainments in a year, and these, no doubt, on the scale of the miser's feast, for nothing is spared. It is undeniable that, in many fine houses, the great hall door is only opened on occasion of a marriage or a funeral; the gravel walk that leads to it being made of glazed gravel, like cut pebbles, and kept free from weeds or dust as carefully as a polished table in a drawing-room. Their luxuries savour equally of traffic and abstinence. Your busy merchant will retire once a-week to take the Sabbath rest; but he spends not his hours in either walking, which he is unaccustomed to, and not clever at performing, or reading, of which he has no idea beyond the letters of his correspondents, the price-current, and, perhaps, the weekly Brussels Gazette. He sits in his summer or pleasure-house (loost-haus), and either smokes his pipe on the borders of the canal, or fishes for minnow or dace with, perhaps, a stick and strings, or a crooked pin. But his pipe is his chief enjoyment, whether in town, or what he calls country, which is only a few hundred yards from the town. In some things, however, he will take an extraordinary interest; they seem to savour of commerce, or at least of fisheries. The first cargo of herrings that arrives, he will pay ten or twelve florins a-piece for, that he may eat this salt relish on the earliest day. The next day, a dozen or more may be bought for a florin. Flowers sometimes have been an object of enjoyment, and have once given rise to a kind of disease in the country. Fond of gardening, and excelling in the culture of tulips, as well as garden stuff and some fruits, they gave the most extravagant prices for rare samples of that fine flower, the perfection of the gardening art; and one rich burgomaster was known to pay five hundred louis for a singular specimen which, the moment he possessed it, he crushed to pieces, that none other might enjoy the sight for which he alone had paid so dear. In this, as in other instances which I cited when speaking of the Germans, we plainly see the excesses to which any passion will carry men when indulged contrary to their nature. I have noted more than once their business-like habits, their exclusive devotion to mercantile affairs. A banker, or rather a bill-discounter, a brother-in-law of my employer, had made a large fortune in business; and I remember, on seeing his fine house richly furnished, asking him if he had never thought of fitting up a room for a library. 'Why should I do so?' said he; 'I read none, nor does any one who comes to see me. We have no time for books.' 'But on such a day as this,' I asked, 'when you don't go to your country house?' It was Sunday. 'Oh,' said he, 'I shall, after church, spend it in reading, sure enough; and these are my books,'—said he, showing me a glass case, in which were many small oblong bundles. He took out one, and I found it was a parcel of bills of exchange; he had brought it home with him for the enjoyment of his holiday, and he told me he would sit half-an-hour at a time, poring over the names on the back of a bill, weighing their solvency, and considering the risk he ran by discounting. 'Believe me,' said he, 'there is no romance, not even any newspaper, affords such pleasant reading as this.'

"The people I now found on board the Charlestown were as different as possible from those I had left; nor did I begin well to know them, though immediately aware of this diversity, till after I had long associated with them both on shipboard and on shore in their own country. The most striking characteristic of the good Dutch, their modesty amounting to humbleness of spirit, I from the first found wanting to my new companions in an extraordinary degree. Not that the Hollander is at all deficient in self-possession; on the contrary, his is a great firmness of purpose,—a cool, collected courage, especially in the form of resolute fortitude, but also rising into contempt of danger,—a perseverance amounting to obstinacy, though also proceeding from fixed and unshaken determination. I do not at all deny that I found these great qualities also in the crew of the American; but they were not relieved by the Dutchman's tranquillity, and were certainly not adorned with his modesty.

"In a few hours after we had set sail, signals were made by the Admiral Zoutman for an enemy being in sight; soon these were followed by the signal to prepare for action; and our vessel immediately presented a spectacle to me as new as it was striking. The men who had been most noisy an hour before, were become silent, thoughtful, exceedingly intent on their several duties, and all as active, though in perfect quiet, as bees in a hive, which they seemed to resemble most of anything I could call to mind. There was no confusion, no hurry, no jostling of one against another, great mutual good-will, much readiness to help one the other, and above all perfect obedience of every one to his immediate superior. The ship presented a change as great nearly as her crew had undergone; and the change was far from being an improvement. All the bulkheads of every kind were knocked away; this being the affair of a moment, we at once saw from stem to stern clear between decks; and in another minute all the decks and every part of her was flooded with water, that no risk of fire might remain which could by any possibility be avoided. The men were soon heated with their work, and were then stripped to the middle, and indeed without any clothes but their trowsers. The vessel now presented a sight to the eye as cold and uncomfortable as could well be figured; and the chill was not diminished by the prospect of the scene in which we were presently to be engaged. A distant firing was soon heard, which showed that the action was commenced with one of the Dutch men of war. The captain's glass told him that it was only a repeating frigate stationed to windward; but the battle was now inevitable, and we were nearly ready for it. A single glass of grog (a mixture of spirits and water) was now served out to each seaman and each marine, for we had a quarter company of these also on board, chiefly occupying our tops. After this, orders were given to lock the cellar; and it was proclaimed that whatever seaman having secreted any liquor should presume to taste a drop till nightfall, should instantly be shot dead. Three cheers were given on this order being proclaimed by the boatswain; and the first lieutenant then directed the powder magazine to be unlocked and the communication to be made with the decks. A wet sheet was then hoisted going round the whole of the way which joined the storehouse of destruction with its engines above; and all being thus prepared for the fight we waited calmly and silently for its commencement.

"The captain paced the quarter-deck, and spoke not a word. He constantly applied his glass to his eye, received reports from his signal lieutenant, and gave his orders in consequence. Once only he took me aside and asked if I had ever been in action. I said I had never even seen the sea till a few days ago, never had slept on board a ship till the night before last, had been sick the whole of the day before and that morning, and had only got well on the signal being given to clear away for action. 'Aye,' said he, 'that is a common case. Some men, even seamen, are never without sickness except in action or in shipwreck, and so hateful is the disease to landsmen, that I have heard them say they cared not, while it lasted, how soon they went down or were shot.' I ventured to ask if he had good hopes of the result. 'Why, look ye, young gentleman,' was his reply, 'this same bank where we be is the Dogger bank by name; some hundred years agone it was here the Englanders and Hollanders fought many severe actions with equal or varying success, twice almost beating, twice almost beaten; so I guess we shall this very day of all be having a stiffish thing of it, and you landsmen who are not accustomed to be killed aboard ship may wish night was come and all well.'

"I confess that in the novelty of my present situation I did not derive any great comfort from this remark. It seemed, indeed, to me, that I had needlessly and not very wisely got into a position I had no business whatever to be in; exposed to all the risks of war without being of the military profession. However, I had taken employment on board a frigate, engaged on the same side of the contest with my own country, and it seemed incident to this service that I should occasionally be exposed to other dangers than those of the sea. The great increase of the firing soon put an end to all reflections except those suggested by the business of the hour; the cannonade had become general along half the line, and we soon perceived an English sixty-four (the Bienfaisant, once a French ship) bearing down towards us, after giving a broadside to two or three of the Dutch as she passed. Our vessel, though called a frigate, carried such weight of metal (thirty-six forty-two pounders on one of her decks), that she was quite a match for the Englishman. Our captain ordered the guns to be all manned, with matches lighted, and not one to be fired until we were within pistol-shot; then aim to be taken at the hull rather than the rigging; for, unlike the French, who fire at the sails in the hope of rendering the enemy's ships unmanageable, he thought his heavy metal well adapted to overpower his adversary by a concentrated fire.

"The pause that succeeded this order was sufficiently awful; it indicated a general consciousness that we were to be fired at by the Englishman and not to return his fire for a while; the bravest among us held his breath, in momentary expectation of the enemy's batteries opening upon us. They opened soon enough. We received the broadside of the sixty-four; it mowed down several of our men and dismounted two of our guns. In less than five minutes from this we returned it with tremendous effect. The enemy seemed to shake and waver, and for some minutes he ceased to fire; but then came a loud cheer from his decks, and his fire was more fierce than before. I was called upon deck at this moment by the captain; two of his messenger-men having been killed by the first broadside, he wanted me to be useful in carrying orders fore and aft, observing that there was 'no pen and ink work wanted now, and I might help to write a little with gunpowder blacking, or, if I preferred it, with red ink for a change.' I was much struck, as much as I could be with any thing, to see how cool and collected he was, and how calmly and in how few words he gave his orders. His men on their part were all quiet, all obedience, all activity. Not one could be seen but whose whole limbs were in motion. 'There he goes,' said the first lieutenant, as I passed the mainmast; 'dost know, my fine fellow, how we seamen calls that there spot by the mainmast?' I confessed my ignorance; 'Then,' said he, 'we name it Hell, because it is so hot in action.' I presently saw reason to assent to the appellation. A dreadful hail of shot came pelting on us in that quarter, and laid some men dead at their guns. Three loud cheers and a dreadful broadside from our vessel was the answer given to this massacre. I had now a minute or two to look about me from the poop, and turning my eye to the rest of the line, I could see nothing but smoke and flashes in every direction, so that we could with difficulty discover the admiral's signals. That, however, was of little moment; for, as the captain observed, in a battle there was but one thing to be done, and that was; to fight on. Some cheers, however, were from time to time heard when the wind blew that way, and we made a point of returning these, in defiance if hostile, in accord if friendly. About the same time I was myself struck with a splinter so severely that it stunned me, and I was carried below. I recollect the blow, and that my last thought, for I supposed I was killed, was to think of my mother's grief; I thought not even of Louise Orange.

"When laid on a plank in the cockpit, I recovered, and saw the most ghastly sights that the mind of man can conceive. It was far worse than the blood, sometimes the brains, which I had seen profusely scattered on the deck. The cannon-shot carrying off a man's hand, a chain shot cutting him in two, a shower of grape falling on his head and destroying him at once, obliterating every vestige of his features, seemed to me, though shocking enough, yet nothing compared to what I now witnessed below; for those were only bodily, physical horrors in which the mind seemed not to share: the victim was instantly dead. But in the cockpit, I saw the wounded writhing in agony, some with the joints of their knees or elbows crushed by a musket or grape shot—some with their spine wounded and their limbs paralysed in consequence—some with their eyes knocked out, and bemoaning their hopeless darkness—some, worst of all, with mortal wounds of which they were dying swiftly, but with their countenances expressive of only agony, whether torture or terror—and once I saw what haunted me for weeks, the eye of a man half dead one instant, dead the next, yet glaring, haggard and fearful, as if he took a last, and terrified, and horrid look of the world.

"When I laid myself down in my berth, and in the silence of the night, penetrated with the contrast of the present stillness to the dreadful turmoil of the day, had offered up my thanks for the mercy which had preserved me; the visions of that horrid cockpit were perpetually before my eyes. 'Gracious God of Heaven!' said I, 'and is it possible that men should exert the powers thou hast endowed them withal to convert the fair earth in which they are placed into a dwelling of savage fiends, letting every fierce and hateful passion of their nature rage uncontrolled, and taxing their faculties to invent for one another the most exquisite torments the human frame can endure? Of all crimes surely this of war is the greatest; and it comprises within itself every form of human suffering produced by human guilt.'

"The battle had lasted between three and four hours; neither side could boast a complete victory; for though one Dutch line-of-battle ship, the Hollander, was so disabled, that she went down the night of the engagement, leaving the crew barely time to save their lives, but not to carry out the wounded, and though two others were pronounced incapable of further service, the English had suffered severely, almost all their ships having been so wounded in the rigging and masts, that they were unable to chase and capture even the disabled Dutch vessels. The Charlestown was so severely handled in battle, that she was not expected to keep the sea, and as it was for some time believed she had gone down, we were congratulated on our safety when we reached the Texel the day after. There were said to be eleven hundred killed and wounded, of the former not half so many as of the latter, though one vessel alone, the Admiral's, lost near a hundred men. They cited a remarkable trait, on board the enemy, of a boy's courage, son of a captain killed in the action, and who was alone close by his father's side at the time. He was but ten years old, and behaved through the fight with the greatest coolness and courage. The English King and Prince received Admiral Parker at dinner in the Royal Yacht, and afterwards went to visit his ship, where this boy was presented to him, and was promised a suitable provision in honour of his father's memory. 'Sire,' said the brave Admiral, 'your Majesty will excuse me; I have already adopted him as my son.'

"A portion of my story," added the Solitary, "remains to be told, but the day wanes, and I am fatigued. When next you come to this Hermitage you shall hear the conclusion of these sad adventures."

The Count returned to the Château, and his mind was deeply impressed with the sample which he had just had of "the pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war," and the effects which a near view of it is calculated to produce upon the mind of a rational being not trained to its ways. Nor could he help reflecting on the strange caprice of men which in all ages has led them with a singular unanimity to reserve for those who most successfully practise this art, the title of Great, thus holding out to every one who rules their destinies the strongest, inducements to betray the high trust committed to his hands, avoid the blessed paths of peace, and cover the fair surface of the earth with rapine and with slaughter.

CHAPTER V.

THE ADVANCE OF CHANGE.

Upon his arrival, he found the Baron had returned from Lyons during his absence, bringing with him a friend, whom he had met there, and craved permission of the Marquess to introduce: this was M. La Croasse, one of the most distinguished men of the day, or rather of the day before, he having served in a high station, during M. Sartine's short naval administration; but he had now retired from active life, and passed his time in literary ease, though still an acute and anxious observer of public events. He was described by the Baron, who intimately knew and greatly esteemed him (albeit not a person prone either to confidence or admiration), as a man of extraordinary talents, great information, and an active mind; a fearless asserter of his principles, which were extremely different from his friend's in some particulars, and one who to further those principles was capable of making great sacrifices. He had in early life belonged to the robe or bar, and had attained a high rank in the debates of the Parliament; but this position he gave up to join Sartine's administration, and he retired with him from office. His writings were of very high merit, and although his pen had been variously employed, it was never so active as in the defence of the established institutions of the State. Of these he was a warm supporter, as well of the Church established, as of the King anointed; and to both he rendered strenuous, able, effectual service, whether in office or in retirement. Like all men of great talents and success in life, he had, the Baron observed, his enemies, who pelted him incessantly, sometimes with paper pellets in the daily press, sometimes with the leaden pellets of their books; to which M. La Croasse seemed, he said, sufficiently indifferent, for indeed he had himself, while in active life, been a pretty free dealer in political gymnastics, as the Baron termed such personalities. Emmeline, who esteemed him highly too, added that the new Lion (as she merrily called him) would have his share in the conversation; but as he was of perfectly good breeding, she said, and could listen as well as talk, this never offended, the rather as he was always sure to contribute something valuable either in wit, in argument, or in narrative.

When the Baron arrived, his first object of course had been to meet his niece, whom, to his great joy, he found in as good health as she ever was used to enjoy. His next care was to see the Countess, whom he had left in a state of more than half regret at the confession unwarily wrung from her, of a passion too strong to be controlled or concealed. Her letter, the only one she wrote to him, had been cold and formal in a degree that alarmed him, and he had answered in the way he deemed best calculated to reassure her, and quiet the alarm her awakened pride seemed to have sounded. There was in his letter a careful avoiding of anything like gladness or even satisfaction: the all but unruly joy that filled his bosom, he kept in a state of close compression; and he trembled as he approached an interview which must decide his fate. Chance would have it that they met alone in the library, M. La Croasse having retired to dress, after being presented to the family in the saloon. The Countess could not resist the impulse to run up and testify her sincere happiness at again seeing her friend; she suffered him to cover her beautiful hand with ardent kisses, and gently whispered in his ear how slowly the hours of his absence had passed. He felt now satisfied, and all but secure; nothing sinister had happened; no false step had been made by him; no untoward resolution formed by her; no interference of any unfriendly friend had been attempted; and time and patience, and extreme care and indefatigable attention, he trusted would do the rest. In this frame of mind, after a little while they both met the company at dinner, and for the first time he avoided either sitting by her, or giving her his arm from the drawing-room, when it was announced that they "were served."

No day now passed without some event being reported at the Château; and though busy rumour often exaggerated and not seldom created, there was yet quite enough of reality painfully to awaken the attention of the most indifferent, and to fix in anxious forebodings the thoughts of the most careless. The ferment had spread from Dauphiné into Provence, and there were indications of Languedoc being affected. The violence which raged in Dauphiné seemed now certain. There was no longer any doubt that the decree lately talked of against lettres de cachet had been formally passed by the Parliament of Grenoble; and to denounce the penalty of death against persons for executing a royal command, formally signified by the ministers of the crown, seemed a proceeding so extreme as was wholly inconsistent with the allegiance of the body to its sovereign. Men wondered at the pause which followed, and waited in suspense to see what course the government would pursue in circumstances equally novel and alarming.

"This event," said the Marquess as soon as dinner being over, the company were assembled in the salon, "this event appears, too, beyond a doubt, to have happened, and it certainly demands all the attention of the ministers."

"Aye, and all their vigour," the Baron answered. "Can any one doubt that the very monarchy may be shaken to its foundations by such acts going unopposed, and unpunished?"

"But, Baron," the Marquess said, "I have often heard you contend against the abuse at least, of that terrible power by which a minister can shut up his political adversary, or even his rival in private life, as if he were a traitor to the state."

"Not only against the abuse of this power, this detestable power, have you heard me contend," replied the Baron, "but against its use altogether, as utterly incompatible with even the semblance of freedom, and as placing our European monarchies on a footing with the despotisms of the East. I would have it entirely abrogated; but then I dread seeing even a great good attained by violent and lawless means. Let the States General, which must now sooner or later be assembled, effect this salutary reform in our system, with such other improvements as can safely be made; but do not let a provincial assembly set itself up against that which still is the law of the land, and hang men for executing the process of that law."

"But, indeed," said M. La Croasse, who had lately been in the capital, "the Grenoble decree seems not more violent than that of the Parliament of Paris, a few weeks ago, threatening with the galleys whoever should collect the new stamp-tax, just registered by the king's command in a bed of justice."

"I must really observe," the Baron said, "that there is this broad distinction between the two cases. The parliament of the capital had refused to register the edict, and the force applied to compel the registration was deemed by them unlawful—unconstitutional it certainly was;—whereas the provincial parliament flies in the face of the known and admitted law. Besides, you forget that the Parliament of Paris has been banished to Troyes in consequence of its resistance. No, let both parliaments wait till that convocation of the States General, for which the metropolitan body has nobly and disinterestedly petitioned by a great majority; and that assembly of our ancient representatives will see right and justice done."

"Why," asked the Countess, "should you say those States General are so sure to be assembled? It is but the other day that the Notables were summoned to meet for the second time in order to consider our financial difficulties, and they will probably make salutary conditions with the Crown when they grant the relief which their last meeting did not accede to."

"No doubt, Countess, they are about to meet, and in May we shall again see that assembly. But it is a half-measure, at the most a half-measure; I give it a large allowance when I so call it; and, believe me, we are no longer in that state when any thing short of whole measures, and vigorous ones too, will do. Why, the Notables are a set of men, not exceeding one hundred and forty-four in number, princes, peers, marshals, prelates, magistrates—every body but deputies of the people, of whom there are but twelve,—and all named by the Crown. This surely is any thing rather than a popular representation, or indeed a representation at all."

"Ah, my clear Baron," interrupted M. La Croasse, "rather let us question whether it was necessary, and if not necessary surely it could not be right, to have even the Notables, such as you justly describe them, assembled at all. In our monarchy, depend upon it, whenever a public body is once assembled for debate, gather them together how you will, a power will be created repugnant to the genius of our institutions; and the government, the government of a single person, will be gotten into a false position. You may say, either go farther, or go not so far. I don't much quarrel with your dilemma, but I firmly say—not so far."

"But, Baron," said the Countess, resuming the place in the conversation from which she had been removed, "what course would you now have the Court take? The banishment to Troyes, you see, has not produced any effect. The parliament is more popular than ever, and the magnificent remonstrance which it has presented seems to me equally admirable for the talents and for the wisdom which it shows."

"Well, my dear lady," he answered, "I have little fear of our Dauphiné gentry raising themselves by any such efforts, should the same course be taken with them. And were I the Archbishop of Toulouse, I should signalize my undisputed succession to M. de Calonne as minister, by such an act of vigour as should at once show the Grenoble assembly that the law must be reformed by the law and not broken by the authorities of the country. But I doubt his firmness, and I cannot forget that he took office after opposing the truly patriotic plan of M. de Calonne, a wise scheme of Turgot, aiding in the vile factious clamour which drove that great minister into exile for nobly attempting to do his duty, and make all imposts fall upon all ranks."

"Of a truth," here interposed the Abbé, "I do prefer, as is natural and fit in me a churchman, the rule of the most reverend prelate, to that of the man who wished to lay a sacrilegious hand on the goods of the Holy Church. For the first time was there heard, and pray we it may even be for the last, a mention made of bringing these sacred possessions within the pale of profane, worldly, fleshly, taxation."

The Baron turned not aside from his argument to take any notice of this pious ejaculation, but went on to discuss with the Marquess and the Countess the prospects of the country; and he dwelt with peculiar earnestness upon the risk which the state ran, and above all the cause of sound reform, by such violence as had characterised the Grenoble proceedings, followed by the popular outbreak there and in other quarters. "I really can hardly describe," he said, "how this alarms me. I had long been cherishing the hope that the great diffusion of knowledge, which has in late years taken place among our people of the upper and even middle classes; the example of America, and the intercourse of our army with the republicans; the resort of so many of our nobles to England, and their consequent admiration of free institutions, would, combined with the financial difficulties of the government (for out of evil comes good), have produced some general measures of sound practical improvement in our constitution. But all my hopes must be dashed to the ground, if any illegal acts interpose their baneful influence; for once let loose the lawless spirit of revolt, once call in the mere multitude, without property, without information, without any wise or moderate spirit to temper their proceedings; once, in short, extend over the country such a popular ferment as we have lately heard at Grenoble immediately succeeded the ill-starred decree of the parliament, and I see but one probable result: all wise and good men will be justly alarmed at the prospect of worse mischiefs from revolution than any we now suffer under from established abuses, and the perpetuation of those abuses in future will be the consequence, beside risking all the evils of anarchy at the present time."

"I do so entirely agree with you," said the Marquess, "that I shall be most anxious till I see the government shows the vigour which can alone fit it to grapple with the occasion. I am not, like you, a reformer at all. My wish is to sit under the quiet shade of the constitution which protected our forefathers; and though dissenting conscientiously from the Established Church, I am not one of those who would see it overthrown, and the State, which leans upon it, thereby shaken."

"Marquess! Marquess!" said the very reverend the Abbé, "there did speak through you, not only the spirit of your maternal grandfather, a pillar of our Zion, but the spirit of the Holy Church herself. Verily, were all the Reformed like unto you, I should the less earnestly beseech the Blessed Virgin to reinforce and restore to its vigour the godly edict whereby Louis XIV., acting under her warning and the inspiration of the Saints, did root out that disgrace of our country, the Ordinance of Nantes."

"Aye, Abbé," said Ernest, "and also acting under certain female influence. Pray do be pleased to tell us which of all the Saints was it, that by a special miracle took the likeness of a kept-mistress, and, having first secured the king's devotion, then incited him to persecute the pious Protestants for the glory of God?"

"Truly it little becomes weak and erring mortals," rejoined the man of many masses, "to watch closely the instruments whereby the inscrutable wisdom doth compass its holy ends. An ass hath heretofore once been made the minister of heaven."

"Nor mayhap for the last time," quoth the Chevalier, leering archly at the reverend father. "Howbeit," added he, "I will not have too much blame cast on that lady, or on the sisterhood she belongs to. Many of them have I known in my day—more, good lack, than I now know—and I will aver that there be worse women abroad in the world."

"Why, truly, brother," the good Marchioness said, "I grieve to hear you thus undertaking the defence of sin. Have you so little regard to female virtue as that comes to?"

"On the contrary, sweet sister, on the very contrary, dear heart! Chastity of life do I respect mainly in others, as I strive to maintain it in my own proper person."

"Aye, truly!" said the Marquess; "and your words are chosen with a curious accuracy; for I dare swear you respect it in others pretty exactly in the same proportion in which you maintain it in yourself."

"Well, well! I quarrel not with any man about an adverb, hardly for a noun-substantive—save once knocking a sailor down in Toulon harbour for calling me a land-lubber, after I had been suffering a fortnight in that prison of his, sometimes an hospital too, and always with risk of drowning to boot. But I won't be baulked of my fancy for the character of that kind of woman, and I will maintain anywhere you please, that I have known more kind hearts, less malice, and more honesty among them than you shall easily find in any of your Paris drawing-rooms among your finest ladies."

"Why, brother," said the Marquess, "do you really mean to reverse the name of honest woman, and not only give it but confine it to your girl (fille)?"

"Not quite so," answered the merry knight, "but I only would say that with that caste, with those I may call professors, I have seldom found such glibness of lying as with your amateurs; and that you shall meet with more malice and uncharitableness in a brace of prudes of the Faubourg, than in a whole nunnery of the Rue Taitbout."

Though the season was far advanced towards Christmas, the delightful climate of Languedoc kept together the party at the Château; and, indeed, now that an intimate friendship had been formed among them by so many weeks' residence in the same house, they were well disposed to converse together on the sum of affairs, the sagacity and information of the Baron, joined to the good sense of Chatillon, the quickness and sagacity of the Countess, and the gay and worldly spirits of Ernest, affording ample means of discussing the interesting matters which each day's intelligence suggested, while the calm spirit of the Marquess, and the religious habits of his amiable wife, tempered the more lively, not to say impetuous spirit in which some others were disposed to handle political questions.

As the season drew to a close, Madame de Bagnolles ventured to have an apartment fitted up for Albert in a remote corner of the Château, believed by the servants to be haunted, and carefully shunned accordingly; an apartment to which herself and Chatillon alone had access. But it is needless to add that the Solitary never could form a part of the family circle, though he watched with the most lively interest the course which events were now taking, and which oftentimes formed the subject of his conversation with both his new friend and his kind hostess.

Before the end of November the news arrived of the King having required the registering of two most important edicts, the one for raising an immense loan of nearly twenty millions of louis, the other for granting entire equality of civil rights to the Protestants. The latter measure was universally approved; the former excited great opposition; and though the King had begun the meeting by allowing freedom of speech, he was so harassed by the nine hours' debate and the opposition given to the plan, that he abruptly, as if he had lost all patience and temper, commanded the registering of the edict; and when some of the members, headed by the Duke of Orleans, protested against this proceeding as contrary to law, suddenly left the assembly and issued a lettre de cachet banishing the Duke to his country house, and sending two magistrates of the Parliament to different prisons at a distance from Paris. This intelligence was speedily followed by the memorable remonstrance of the parliament, wherein, after agreeing to register the loan edict to save public credit, they demanded the immediate liberation of the three members, unless they should be forthwith brought to trial, and added that they did not solicit this from the sovereign as a favour, but required it as an act of mere justice to which kings are subject like their people; that his ancestor, Henry IV., avowed his having two sovereigns, God and the Law; that punishing men is no part of the King's functions, and that ordering of his own accord exile and arrest without a trial is alike contrary to the laws of the realm and the principles of eternal justice.

"I own," said the Baron, "that in all their proceedings upon this remarkable occasion, I can see no reason to differ with, much less blame, the Parliament of Paris. But the Court's want of decision, its alternate vigour beyond the law and timidity to enforce the law, its hot fit of violence to-day succeeded by the cold fit of fear to-morrow, presents one of the most pitiable spectacles ever exhibited, and unhappily shows what a broken reed we have to rely upon in the dreadful crisis which is plainly approaching."

"Baron," said the Marquess, "if our reverend friend, the Abbé, would suffer me to say so, I could wish ecclesiastics, such especially as fill the higher places in the Church, would confine their attention to only spiritual concerns, and leave secular men to manage the affairs of this lower world. Can anything be conceived more feeble and inefficient than the Archbishop's administration, unless indeed it be the conduct of the Count d'Artois and the Court?"

"I entirely agree with you," said the Baron "but I go a step further: I hold that a man who obtrudes himself from vanity or from ambition into a station of difficulty which demands capacity, and above all firmness, beyond what he possesses, commits one of the gravest offences against his country.

We are too apt to pity such men as merely weak, and not to reprobate them as ill-meaning. A minister who takes the helm of the state-vessel in perilous circumstances, and is wanting in the skill to steer her through, is in my eyes more criminal than a landsman who risks the lives of a crew by taking the command of a ship when he is utterly unable to direct her course."

"Possibly I may agree in this, but I cannot quite pronounce the same severe censure upon mere want of nerves, want of vigour, and firmness."

"Then of that I am more certain still," said M. La Croasse, "than the Baron can be of his other point. Can anything be more despicable than a man voluntarily putting himself in a position where valour is required, and the safety of an army or a kingdom depends upon his courage, who is not secure in counting on his nerves, and ruins the greatest interests by quailing in the hour of trial? No, no! despicable such a person may be; but assuredly no object of pity. Justly reprobated as well as scorned he must be by every rational observer; nor will his fault, his grievous fault, be expiated by his fate if he perishes under the ruin which he has caused."

"It seems clear to me," said the Marquess, "that neither of you are in much danger of wanting subjects of reprobation according to the canons of political morality which you now lay down. But I own, though disposed to go along with your reasoning as to ministers, I cannot quite consent so severely to blame princes, whose high station is not of their own seeking, and whose firmness as well as their capacity are constantly put to the rudest trials, beside their being really made answerable for all the errors, crimes, and weaknesses of those who serve them. Can anything be more unjust than harshly to visit our present King with the consequences, first of Calonne's rashness, then of the Archbishop's incapacity and feebleness, to say nothing of the Abbé Terray's alternate violence and wavering?"

"Why, as to kings, I grant you," said the Baron, "that, their places not having been of their own seeking, they are not blameable for their natural defects. But a most heavy load of responsibility have they assuredly for the defects and the vices too common to their station, those of negligence in administering public affairs, caprice and other personal motives in the selection of their counsellors, and indeed want of firmness either to perform their duty, or resign the trust which they dare not execute."

"Do but consider, dear Zio," said Emmeline, "how princes are educated; brought up among flatterers, pampered by indulgence, excluded from almost all wholesome intercourse, scarce ever hearing the truth spoken, but breathing from their birth upwards an atmosphere of lies! Surely this training, which seems the most perfectly fitted both to weaken the judgment and to corrupt the heart, should make us feel some tolerance for their errors; nay, compassion for their infirmities. Especially does it seem to me unjust, that the people who are the first to spoil princes by adulation should always be the loudest to complain of the vices and the follies themselves have engendered in the royal nature."

"Well argued, well declaimed, Mdlle. Emmeline," said the Countess, whose attachment to the Baron had now made her think both better and more kindly of his loved charge. "I don't think the old gentleman can easily answer that."

"Why, indeed," said the Baron, while his eyes glistened with pride at this praise of his niece, from the lips he of all others delighted should charm his ear with that soft music, "I am very far from wishing to deny Emmeline's position, especially as to the gross injustice of the people; the fond mother that first spoils the child, and then whips it for being spoilt. But though I will so far take the royal training into my account, I am yet quite certain that none but an originally bad nature could prevent a Sovereign from bestowing due care upon the discharge of an office so awfully responsible as his. He can always, if deficient in firmness, strengthen himself with steady ministers; he can always, if incapable, give up the management of affairs to more skilful hands."

"One word more, dear Zio," said Emmeline, "and I have done. Surely the choice of able servants is a proof of capacity; and you will find that weak princes have very seldom been well served; able ones always."

"I grant you this, dear child," said the Baron; "but I am only complaining of great deficiencies in great emergencies; and I really cannot doubt that when a man of a somewhat feeble capacity, and certainly as ill educated as may be, feels a crisis approaching, he must, by the mere instinct of fear, be warned that this is no time for him to govern, or let his wife and family govern. The storm is raging, and the breakers are nigh; he must have the sense to see his danger, unless he be an idiot, and then his grandees should set him aside, if his Councils or his Parliaments cannot; and, seeing his danger, he can inform himself as to other men's ability, by making pretty general enquiries, if he won't listen to the public voice, and may be thus led to give up the helm into some one's hands strong enough to hold it."

"It is certain," said the Marquess, "that we do pay a price of some amount for the inestimable advantage of a regular and fixed order of succession, which hereditary monarchy secures. A tyrant, a dunce, a profligate, an idiot, an infant, may at any time be called to exercise the most important of human trusts, for the good or for the evil of millions. Nevertheless, the tranquillity thus purchased is well worth the price. God grant we may not be approaching the time when we are to experience how costly this blessing is! As yet, however, I for one am little disposed to cast blame on the King's conduct."

"I must differ widely with you there," the Baron replied. "The King's conduct has been a model of imbecility in all its forms, almost in all its degrees, even if we acquit him of falsehood and other bad motives, which I own I find it hard to do. He was educated in profound admiration of his father, the Dauphin, who is known to have made the good Duke of Burgundy his model, a prince understood to have determined upon reviving the States General. Yet can anything be more shuffling and fickle, not to say insincere, than his Majesty's whole conduct now is respecting the convocation of that body? Then he takes M. de Brienne to his councils as prime minister, a trust very rarely given at all, and takes him merely because he had succeeded by the clamour of interested bodies against Calonne and the public good—a clamour raised on account of the very measures of finance which the King himself most approved. Next comes the refusal to register the stamp-tax, and now we have a little vigour at last; the Parliament is banished to Troyes. The discontent of the Parisians was immediately heard, and the King at once gave up his tax and restored the Parliament. The cold fit passed away; the hot fit followed; and the King in a pet, really like a spoilt child, quarrels with the Parliament for debating the proposition he had desired it to discuss, and imprisons three of its members. The fruit which he reaps from the whirlwind thus sowed by his incapable hand, is the tempest of which we have just heard the first roaring in the all but revolutionary remonstrance that arrived to-day."

It might be thought that the Lady Countess had now enjoyed a political talk to her very heart's content; for she had been discussing both with the Marquess, the Baron, and a retired statesman, formerly much, still considerably mixed up in public affairs, and whose intimacy was close with the leading politicians of the day. But since her attachment for the Baron, it appeared as if politics formed less than before a portion of her nature, probably because it is always difficult for the female mind to be moved by two strong propensities at one time. She still took an interest, and even a warm interest, in the subject; but it was when she could combine this with the more lively interest which she took in her friend's society; and she soon grew tired of discussions in which others mingled. With him she could walk or sit for hours conversing, and politics in their discussions she referred to all subjects except perhaps that which he preferred to all, his love for her, which each hour that flew over his head only served to make more engrossing and more fervent.

The debates of the company at large thus affording her less pleasure than formerly, she was rather amused than tired with the humours of the good old knight and the fantastical chat of his son. The latter had indeed a very sufficient sense of the ludicrous, and he gratified it freely in the neighbourhood. The good folks at Nismes thus furnished daily food for his mirth, not seldom of a somewhat pungent quality. All subjects came alike to him; all were welcome. The combined and contrasted vulgarity and conceit of provincial manners was never lost upon this Paris observer. But he soared above such obvious game, and would catch the peculiarities of the church and the sects; of the old trader and the young beau with local rank; of the maiden prude, and the widowed expectant; of the prudent mother looking out for a son-in-law, and the wary sire seeking to endow his damsel cost-free to himself. In this last department he had found some amusement from old M. Faucon, and amused the Countess and the Baron with his judicious and persevering examination into the affairs of a young friend of Ernest, who had lately come from Paris, and proposed to marry Mdlle. Faucon, his youngest daughter. "Well now, my good friend," said the old gentleman, "what sort of a man, what class of man, should you say he is?"—"Oh," replied Ernest, "excellent; no better man in the world."—"Very good, very good," said the senior, "but how is he in respect of outward and visible signs?"—"Not a finer looking fellow in all Paris," answered his wicked friend.—"Good, good, good again! But let us see whereabout is he? How may his father be, or so?"—"One of the best families in Auvergne; I should say one of the very best."—"Excellent, excellent, nothing can be better—nothing possibly—but his condition, as it were—how should you place him?"—"Why, as a most high-bred, well-born cavalier, who would be the honour and ornament of any family he came into."—"Aye, there it is—there it is—just exactly so—good! good!—But now—what should you say—whereabouts is he as to what may be called, as it might be, as a body may say, his property?"—"Oh," said Ernest, as if he now first saw the drift of the old Faucon's interrogatory—"Oh, as to that, his father has at the least eight thousand louis a-year in land in Auvergne, besides an excellent house in the Faubourg St. Germain, and Adolphe is the only child."—"Well! well! that you know is neither here nor there," said M. Faucon, calmly. "But, nevertheless, my good friend, as you say the young man is very worthy, and very honourable, and of a good family, and much esteemed by yourself, which I reckon a great recommendation, why then I consider that it will be a suitable match, and I for one feel disposed to give my consent."

By such little scenes as these, which he brought daily home from Nismes, occasionally with the help of the old Chevalier, who joined him in the chase, and by acting the parts amusingly and accurately enough, Ernest agreeably diversified the graver discussions of the Château; and even the fastidious Countess and the more fastidious Baron were fain to laugh heartily, and much as at first it might cost them to confess themselves interested.

The Count too would now and then amuse himself with Ernest; but he preferred stealing away to the apartment of the Solitary; and a few days after he had been established in it for the winter season, Albert thus continued his narrative.

CHAPTER VI.

THE NEW WORLD.

"As soon as we had refitted the frigate after the sea-fight, we sailed for America, and the weather proved fine till towards the middle of the month. It was then September, and the equinoctial gales came on with more than usual violence. For the first twelve hours of the storm, the men thought nothing of it, relying on their favourite maxim, that a well-found vessel in the open sea has nothing to fear. The captain, too, somewhat rashly foretold, from certain infallible signs, that the gale would go down with the sun, as it had begun at sun-rise. The sailing-master, an old and experienced navigator, was of a different opinion, and told the first lieutenant, on his evening watch, that we had only as yet seen the beginning of mischief. It came to pass as he said; for in the course of an hour after dark the gale increased rapidly, and by midnight it blew a hurricane, though we were not in the tropical latitudes. Never did I conceive beforehand anything like the waves which literally rose like mountains, with a deep and dark abyss between them, and a crest of foam crowning the summits, and seeming to eddy in light blue flame. The ceaseless noise of the wind roaring furiously through the cordage, with only bare poles of masts exposed to its force, all but a small fore-topsail and a storm-jib above the bowsprit, gave the mind a lively idea of a destroying power and of the desolation it was working all around. The extreme labouring of the ship made it necessary to throw most of our guns overboard; at length we had to cut away our main and our mizen masts. Two hours after midnight the alarm was given that we had sprung a leak; but our force on board was such that we expected easily to keep it under. In this however we were disappointed, for the water made upon us sensibly. Believing we must by our reckoning be within two days' sail of the coast, we now fired signal-guns of distress. But no one answered; no flash broke the thick darkness of the night. Meantime the water made more rapidly; the master reckoned that if we should not be relieved in two hours we must founder, and none had a chance of his life unless the few whom the two boats could save. The captain had met the whole of the emergency with the most calm composure, and the most admirable presence of mind; giving every proper direction, receiving all advice tendered by either his officers or the master, weighing the merits of every suggestion, and finally but firmly deciding for himself, and more than once trusting his own judgment, though standing alone in opposition to his whole staff. The discipline he maintained was perfect. I remember a man using some insolent expression when the precaution was taken of throwing overboard all the spirit-casks. The captain instantly felled him to the ground, and, as I thought, had killed him, with a heavy blow from an iron bar then in his hand. At this period of the night I perceived that the same men who had been as bold as lions in the battle, even while the fire was mowing down their ranks, and who at the early part of the storm were almost careless and gay when fully occupied, now began to sink and lose courage, having no longer either occupation or hope. However, this could last but a short while, and I suppose they all shared the sort of feeling which I had myself, that of sudden and profound despair for the first half-hour of inactive waiting for death, and afterwards a listless indifference to everything—a calm passive despair.

"When all exertions were unavailing, and only the pumps were kept going, the captain gave orders for prayers. I think I now see him standing reverently upright, between decks, with his hat slowly taken off, his brown weather-beaten face, grave, as usually it was, perhaps a little more pensive than his wont, and his dark grey locks covering his head except in front, where it was bald. He slowly and earnestly read the prayers appointed for the occasion from a small book which the lamp let him see to use. They are extremely short, and occupied but a minute or two. The carpenters having again sounded and examined the leak, made no more favourable report; but in half an hour more the gale slacked, and it seemed to the same men that the pumps were now keeping the water under, from which it was conjectured that some of the loose lumber, some flax or other soft matter, had got jammed into the leak. This gave the seamen fresh spirits, and, by redoubled exertions, a favourable report at length was obtained; the water in the well had diminished half a foot. This good symptom continued during the next hour; and we now were suddenly raised from the lowest despair to the other extreme of a hope too sanguine, possibly groundless. Our thanks to the Great Disposer were heartily poured forth, and the men were visibly thrown into gay spirits by the change. The captain alone retained his perfect and his wonted calmness; he appeared to feel no kind of elation; he continued unmoved to give his orders, and maintain the most exact discipline; and, to do the crew justice, he was universally respected and implicitly obeyed.

"The day broke with a great mitigation of the tempest. Before night the weather was moderate. Fortunately the wind favoured our making the land, for as the leak had again begun to pour in upon us, had we not got into Charlestown harbour next morning there was every reason to believe that we must have gone to the bottom after all. We did not see a single vessel, nor did one gun answer our signals, the hurricane having driven every thing that was spared into port.

"I landed in the New World, and felt at once the change perceptible in every direction, whether I looked at the buildings, or the trees, or the waters, or the people. The town is finely built; many of the houses large palaces; not a plant or a flower that

I had ever before seen. But the thing which most arrested my attention was the people, a full half of whom were blacks. The woolly heads, flat noses, snow-white teeth, and jet black skin of these crowds, intermixed with some of a like form but a brown hue in all shades from dark to light, presented a sight wholly new and unexpected. But I soon found more to wonder at, not certainly to admire. One of these negroes was lying in the heat of the day across a stair which a boy who might be nine years old, wished to go up. Instead of asking him to rise, the urchin gave him a severe kick on the face, which made his nose bleed, and the poor creature, with many humble apologies for not making way in time, ran off smarting under the blow. The inn I went to was served, of course, only by these people, but none of them durst go to the ship to fetch my box; the fear of their escape prevented any from being allowed ever to cross the threshold. During the two or three days that I remained in Charlestown the air continually resounded with the lash applied to punish the slaves, and the mistress of the house was the person who chiefly inflicted it, sometimes with her own hands, sometimes, when fatigued, by ordering others to take the whip. I never remember to have seen more ferocious passions painted in the expression of a human countenance than I saw in that of this woman-fiend. Though far from ugly she was frightful.

"It happened to me that I saw some people crowding round a door, and on asking what was going on in the building, I learnt it was a slave court. I entered, and found a single justice trying a slave for some offence against his master's property, with two or three persons, freeholders or owners of land, near to assist him. The poor wretch was condemned to death, and soon after executed. A French gentleman who stood near me said that there were no less than seventy offences capital in a slave, for which a white man could only be punished by imprisonment or fine; that no black could give evidence against a white, but that fellow-slaves could be witnesses against one another; and that the Trial by Jury, which the English, both of the Old and the New World, regard as their most precious right, is not known in the case of the poor negro. This statement prepared me to see grievous injustice; but on going to a white court, one of the leading tribunals of the place, I found all my previous ideas had fallen very far short of the truth; for I there saw a master tried for having cruelly ordered a slave to be tied down to a plank, and another negro to saw off his head, and then fling the blood-streaming and half living corpse into the river. The jury found the monster guilty on the clearest evidence; indeed, he hardly denied the charge, having been seen in the act of murder by a neighbouring householder; and the utmost punishment the law allowed was awarded,—he was ordered to be confined in the prison. The fine for wilful murder of a slave was, I found, about fifty louis (100l. of state or local currency), and seven for pulling out the wretched creature's tongue. This is, I understand, the general law of the slave-countries in America. The law of an English island, the oldest and the most peopled by whites, and called by them Little England, was quoted to me, which enacts that if 'any one maims or kills a slave in punishing him, he shall pay no fine; but if any one of wantonness, or bloody-mindedness, or cruel intention, wilfully kill a negro or other slave, he shall pay 11l. 4s. (about twelve louis d'or).' They said the title of this law was 'An act for the security of the subject, to prevent the forfeiture of life and alike upon killing a negro or other slave.'

"I found that a wholesale system of punishment is established in this town. There is an apparatus at the common gaol, where a public flogger attends, and any master who has suspected his slaves of rebellious designs or other offences, sends them to the place; they are tied up with their limbs stretched over a rack, and the number of stripes is then accurately administered. But I speak not of private individuals only; official authorities hold the selfsame course. I read myself an advertisement signed by the keeper of a prison and the Marshal announcing that a female of colour had been sent to the gaol suspected of being a runaway slave; that she was in a state of mental derangement; and that if she should not be claimed immediately, she must be sold to pay the prison fees. This happened in a country the inhabitants of which pride themselves upon their famous Declaration of Independence, one of the finest compositions I ever read. It proclaims as 'a truth fundamental and self-evident, that all men are created equal, and endowed by God with inalienable rights, whereof one is the title to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'—Can this passage ever be read by the American lawgivers of the south without a blush?

"I began to think I had seen enough, and expressed myself so to the captain when he came to ask me how I did after our voyage and storm. He was a man from the Eastern States, and not the slave country; and on my saying I believed I had seen slavery in its worst form, he said, 'Oh, nor any thing like it. You have but seen slavery in its holiday-dress, the slavery of the house-servants, who are tolerably well fed, not overworked, and never exposed to the sun or the night cold of this variable climate. Go to the plantations, where they perish in the unwholesome rice-grounds, and I am told that the sugar planting beats even this. But at any rate go to the market.'—'And why to the market?' asked I. 'Are the slaves sent there to bear burthens, or to wash away the offal in this sultry weather?'—'No, no,' said the Captain, 'but they be the beasts as is sold from hand to hand, after being turned up to be overhauled like other cattle. I'm agone (a-going) there as now to meet a friend, and I'll take you.'

"To this scene of special cruelty and suffering we accordingly went, and I shall not soon forget its effects on my mind. There did I see some six or seven score of human beings, fellow-creatures of ourselves, children of the same common father, Christians and heirs of the same blessed hope, penned together, men and women, the old and the young, like the beasts which perish; and all exposed to sale by their owners, who stood by explaining their merits, descanting on the healthiness of one, the strength and agility of another, the good temper of this woman to her children, the tendency of that other easily to breed. They would show the persons of their live stock, and make the purchaser feel the joints how they were knit, the muscles how firm, the sinews how powerful; affirm there was no blemish or speck; desire a torch to be brought and held near that the eyesight might be proved clear. One fine youth I observed was offered at a peculiarly high price. It seems that he had been on board ship, and by this accident had learnt to read and write, so that he might be worked as a clerk in a warehouse, or even a book-keeper in a counting-house. Then if he is expected to fetch so very much higher a price,' I asked, 'how happens it that more are not thus taught?'—'Oh, no,' said the captain, 'you are no American lawyer, I guess, or you would not ask the question. It is forbidden under the severest penalties to teach any slave or indeed any free person of colour, reading and writing; and in some of the States this is even an offence punishable with death.'—'Gracious heavens!'—I exclaimed; but my cry was stopped by the sight I now saw. A poor woman was going down on her knees, weeping and wailing more piteously than I ever remember to have before seen. But the barbarian she addressed turned a deaf ear. She was sold, and her tender infant of a year old was not sold with her, the price asked having been refused. Her agony was grievous at being now first separated from this, infant, whose little swarthy arms were stretched out towards her neck. The master, the seller 'of the lot,' as they termed it, was inexorable; the baby was rudely torn from her; and she was hauled away by the purchaser, and driven with kicks and blows off the ground. In as plain English as I could command, I expressed my horror, and said how willingly I would make up the difference in the price had I the money. I only raised a grin on the man's countenance:—'Very pretty fool you'd make on yourself, if you did such nonsense. Why, master, you must be an outlandish sort of a person, as is heard in your tongue, to think them there creatures like us. Why, they be but niggers, man, and not white like us. What would you have?'—I saw but too truly in this the fundamental principle of the whole—they were not regarded as of the same species with their masters. Everywhere in the market you saw the poor child clinging to its mother's knees, terrified at the thoughts of being torn from her. Each family group seemed frightened to distraction as often as any one of the purchasers in going round the market approached to examine them; for all had present to their minds as the worst of dangers, the risk of a separation.

Painful as were these sensations which the separation of the young gave, I know not that I felt less at the sight of age stripped of all honours, which I witnessed at a sale I presently after attended. It was by auction, and the subject was an old woman, of a mild though suffering aspect. The salesman described her as fit for a good housekeeper, one who might go for a few hundred dollars, and save yearly as much; for 'who,' he asked, 'could get any help (servant) for less than two or three hundred dollars wages, a-year? What young lady (female servant) would work for less?'—A bidder came up and began feeling under the poor creature's ribs; she coughed, and he asked if she was well? 'Oh, no; I am very ill,' answered she softly, and in a mournful tone of voice.—'And what ails you?'—'Oh, I have had a cough and pain in the side for three months.'—'Ah, the cunning old creature,' said the auctioneer, 'she but shams and shirks. A taste of the cow-hide (whip) will cure her fast enough.' However, all his puffing, which he interlarded with the most coarse, unfeeling, and often indecent jests, would not avail, and she was 'knocked down' at seventy dollars. 'A bloody lot of skin and bone,' said a bystander.—'I guess,' said another, 'the land-crabs will soon have a taste of her.' And the poor dying creature was led off by her purchaser to lay down her head, first on the ground of his plantation, and soon afterwards under it, being plainly on her passage to those realms where all are indeed equal, where none suffer, and where masters can torment no more. Here, again, I felt and expressed the inference at each moment coming over the mind on surveying such scenes, that the slave is not regarded as of his master's species. My captain, who under a somewhat rough weather-beaten outside, had really a heart in its right place, confirmed me in this observation. He added, that strange to tell, the prejudice was not confined to slaves, but went along with the colour. Even free negroes were not suffered to be taught; and so strict was the superintendence exercised over them, that no one was suffered to leave the State, on penalty should he cross the border of never being permitted to return. 'It thus happens,' said he, 'that if you have a free black in your employment, who is married and has a family here like, should you send him, inadvertently, a message across the boundary line that separates the one Carolina from the other, he is for ever banished from his family, and the same law holds as to even those who are in easy circumstances, many who are wealthy inhabitants.' I asked if there was such risk of insurrection as to account, for all these precautions. 'That there is no such risk is more than I will just go to affirm,' he said, 'though I am sure the apprehension greatly exaggerates it. But with regard to the free people of colour it is quite absurd; for they have always been found to take part with the whites, in cases of negro revolt. I guess they are proud of seeming to belong to the upper class, and drawing a distinction as wide as may be between themselves and the slaves, just,' he added, 'as you very generally see your shopkeepers to be more aristocratic and more apt to look down upon common labourers, than even gentlefolks. So at least we find it in this free country.'

" 'This free country!' I cried, 'Gracious God! and is this country, where I have within the last eight and forty hours witnessed more scenes of tyranny, of cruel capricious tyranny, not in one man but pervading the whole community—this country where half its human inhabitants are groaning, smarting, wailing in a state of bondage more bitter than any with which the far-famed despots of the East can bind their subjects—this country in which the labouring classes are all without one exception held, not metaphorically but actually, in chains and fetters, scourged, tortured, murdered, treated like cattle, and worse than any cattle are treated, only suffered to have the feelings of man that their pride may be insulted, their affections outraged, their hearts torn by every torment that a sentient nature can endure—is this country to be called free, to boast of its liberty, and its inhabitants even to look down upon the rest of mankind as enslaved and enthralled compared with themselves?'—When some such exclamations burst from me, the captain generally agreed with what I expressed, that is to say after his colder fashion, and with some national feeling for his countrymen.

He said he felt as all in the North and East of the States did, how deeply humiliating this great blot was upon the American character. 'But,' he said, 'let us all the while be just, even to slave-holders and slave-traders. The difficulty of dealing with the question is greater than may at first appear. To free the slaves at once is quite impossible. Then as long as slavery exists, the manners of the people must be changed, nay the nature of men must be changed before the miseries of the poor slave can be greatly mitigated. And one grand difficulty stands in the way of a legislative change; even of a gradual one, as gradual it must be to have a chance of being safe. The black people multiply so fast that they are sure, everywhere in the south, greatly to outnumber the whites. This much augments the embarrassment, and will speedily reduce both the local governments of the States, and the individual proprietors, to great straits in the management of the coloured population. However,' added the captain, 'bad as all you have seen is, the worst part of the dismal picture remains to appal you; I mean the import traffic by which all this misery and shame has been occasioned, the African Slave Trade; and, let us be just to the colonies,—they wished long ago to prevent it, and then desired to abolish it, as if they had foreseen the evils of which it was to prove the fruitful parent. The mother country, England, our severer tyrant, the King and the Parliament of England, to the utter disgrace both of their humanity and their wisdom, would not hear of it, and compelled the southern States to continue importing negroes, whether they would or no.'

"To all that my friend the captain could urge upon the great difficulty of an emancipation, and his demand of a plan which might be feasible and safe, I had only to answer, that in one direction I could clearly enough see my way. 'There may be,' said I, 'some difficulty in freeing the negroes now in your States; but surely there can be none in stopping the frightful enormity which brings, yearly, more of these wretched beings over from Africa; and which, while you call it a trade, you describe as a crime of the most heinous kind, telling me that the sight of it (which you have undergone) would drive from my recollection all that I have seen of negro misery in this country.'—'Why, that measure I hold to be quite inevitable,' said he. 'The total abolition of the slave-traffic, I am clear, must take place as soon as our new federal government is well settled.'—'But then,' I added, 'surely another step, in the self-same direction, must swiftly follow. Why not, at once, prohibit the internal slave-traffic; the removing, by force, without the semblance, or any pretence, of a consent on their part, thousands of negro slaves bred in one part of your territory, to be worked in another, in clearing new land, the most unhealthy of employments, as you the other day allowed, and torn, by compulsion, from the place of their birth and the society of their families?'—The captain did not feel disposed to question this position; but he also said that there was some difficulty attending its practical adoption from the overbalance of hands in some slave-settlements.

"While discussing the subject we had walked a little way out of the town, and were on the road towards the west, where Georgia lies. We saw a crowd before us, but moving though slowly, in regular order; and, on coming up with their line, it proved to be formed of negroes, yoked together like so many cattle, and secured by wooden billets or beams, through holes in which their heads seemed thrust, while the rest of the timber weighed upon them to prevent either resistance or escape.

These were slaves going, or rather driven, to the Western States, from the well supplied market of Charlestown. No slave-trader had arrived for some weeks from Africa (from 'the coast,' as it was familiarly called); so that these people had all been born and bred in the country. They were of both sexes, and of various ages, but for the most part young; some were little older than children. All were forced to keep the same pace, in order that a single driver or two, I may say drover, might suffice to superintend the convoy or herd. Being all Creoles, (or American born negroes) they spoke English, and understood it perfectly; and we entered into conversation with some of them, who appeared sufficiently intelligent, though I should say that generally their faculties are inferior in acuteness to those of Europeans. What moved me, however, beyond anything I can describe, was the feelings these poor creatures experienced, and which they expressed with a simplicity more touching than any finished eloquence could have been.—'Oh dear, dear Master' (Massa, meaning only Sir) 'I must no more see my poor old mother! she is left near Charlestown; and I have a sister with her. It grieves me very sore.' A little girl, whose mother had died long ago, kept crying all the way, that her young brother was not brought away; but most, she said, because her father never again would see her, and this, she knew, would break the poor nigger-man's old heart. It was an affecting thing to hear, as the train moved on, a low, rather sweet, sound rising from it, as of voices chaunting a hymn. In fact, these poor creatures, partly to beguile the way, but also with religious feelings that thus formed some consolation for their misery, occasionally sung one of the hymns the methodist preachers had taught them. Some of them, however, held aloof from this exercise, as if in proud disdain, and not choosing to complain. 'They tell me,' said one of a deep jet-black, and of a haughty, even fierce aspect, whom the captain at once recognized as of Koromantyn blood, 'They tell me the country we are going to in the west is good for us;—it is unwholesome; and the work in it is sure to kill us! What better can a slave to the white man desire than to be relieved from a world made for white men's pleasure, and the place of the black men's torment?'—The driver heard a few of the last words, and immediately gave the negro a heavy blow on the back, and another on the face, adding, with a sneer, 'Take that, you rebellious, discontented brute, you! You've no more religion than a black-beetle, for all you were sold at the price of a Christian.'—The look of the Koromantyn was such, so mixed with fury and scorn, that I felt for the moment relieved when I saw how heavily he was loaded, bitterly as I felt with him on his wrongs.—'Look you, then,' said the driver, 'my fine young gentleman, it's no more nor no less than right down nonsense of you to jabber with them niggers as if they were Americans or Englishers; 'cause I expect they've got no more sense than oxen, and are as obstinate as outright pigs, I calculate.' A remark which his unfeeling behaviour and stupid words drew from me gave offence to this republican. 'What, truly!' cried he, 'would you have us free-born Americans deprived of our rights? Shall we have no property in our own cattle, and our own niggers? A pretty use we've got of our long war if it is come to that! Why, I calculate we might better have been as we were than fight it hard out to be slaves, forsooth, of our own blacks!'

"The captain took me one day to visit a friend of his, in a very handsome country house, about a league from Charlestown. The grounds were agreeably laid out, the woods were beautiful, and the house fitted up and kept with every luxury which wealth could command. The family were not unpleasing; the ladies had been educated in Paris, and the master of the house had served in the Carolina militia during a part of the war, till a wound obliged him to return home. We passed two days at this villa; and I might have passed them agreeably, but the curse of the country was upon it, and upon all within it. Negro slavery!—the master, the owner and his human chattel—the tyrant and the slave!—this monstrous state of things not only filled the imagination and distressed the feelings, but exerted its baneful influence on the whole constitution of the society I was in. A blow, or a kick, was the admonition to a servant who made any mistake which in France would have called forth a word of reproof. The young ladies would hardly give themselves the trouble to turn aside the silver tea-kettle that was ready to scald the man who held the tea-pot under it. One of the men was desired to go catch a copper-head (a most poisonous snake) to shew me, and if he could find a rattle-snake in the thicket a little way off, to be sure to bring it living, that I might hear the rattle. I found that slaves were so little regarded as human beings that their presence in a room no more restrained a person than if so many dogs were there. The master and mistress of the house had a negro girl, of twenty, always sleeping, on the floor, in the same bed-room with themselves. 'Else,' said the lady, 'how should I possibly do if I wanted a glass of water in the night? Truly, there is nothing in that; she's but a nigger-girl!' The captain told me that the most delicate women will lace their stays and put on most of their clothes, while a negro-man stands by to deliver a message or take an order. Worst of all, in this house, one of the most respectable in Carolina, I was asked by an upper-servant, a kind of house steward, on going to bed, if I wished to have a negress girl brought to me as a companion for the night. The greatest laxity prevails in this respect, among even persons who would shrink from encouraging any illicit intercourse among whites. Most of the country gentlemen, the planters, were the fathers of many mulattos still held in slavery on their estates, and even in their families; nor was it supposed that great nicety was observed in avoiding impure connection with their own nearest relatives thus produced. In North America it is possible this may be little known, though it seemed not to be much doubted. I have since found it quite usual in the West Indies. The captain further assured me, that the breeding of slaves was carried on in Virginia and the Carolinas, precisely as that of cattle would be. A barren woman fetched a lower price than one who had just had her first child. A man would be compelled to have several wives, with a view to offspring; and, with the same view, a woman would occasionally be obliged to change her husband. In a word, all feelings of delicacy, all consideration of the slave, all thoughts of him as a fellow-creature, seem to be banished from the country, and extirpated from the minds of its inhabitants by this accursed system, which appears to disfigure not only the mind of man, but the very face of Nature.

"And yet all these scenes of human wretchedness, and of perverted human feelings, I witnessed in a country into whose lap bountiful Nature has poured her choicest gifts, enriching it with every variety that man's wants can require, of the most fertile soil, and adorning it with matchless beauties to please his senses. There are, perhaps, no magnificent forests in this part of the Union, nor have the rivers, noble as they are, the prodigious grandeur of the northern streams. But any thing more rich than the luxuriant and infinitely varied foliage, with every fine form and tint of flower, and every fantastic shape of leaf, and every shade of green on which the eye can dwell for refreshment or repose, it is impossible to imagine. Nor is it only such permanent hues that the American forest wears. A night of frost in autumn suddenly variegates the foliage like magic. Then the wood literally is in a blaze of orange and brown, yellow and deep red, even flaming scarlet tints. No untravelled person can picture to himself a more delightful scene. The air, too, is filled with splendour. Even to me, bred in Languedoc, the illumination of the fire-fly was almost new, so greatly did it exceed in brilliancy all that I had known at home. No sooner was the sun down than the night seemed filled, and the air peopled with myriads of this restless insect, glancing to and fro, darting their train of soft, lambent flame from twig to twig, till they seemed to light up the whole grove. But the wood was more lively by day, not only from its vegetable but its insect wonders. The flowers seemed to have taken wing, so great was the number of butterflies that painted the air, flying about in every fantastic course, and shining in the sun with all the colours of the rainbow, beside two which the rainbow has not, and which, by their contrast with each other and with the rest, form a pleasing variety, pure white and jet black, often combined in the same insect. Rose-colour, orange, bright blue, with or without spots to mottle them, on wings of a breadth and form unknown in our latitudes, flit before the eyes and dance through the air in endless variety. Here there is found also the curse of the southern clime, the reptile with the insect. The terrible rattle-snake does not approach the town; but not less venomous is the copper-head, which the Americans, with their faculty of giving everything a vulgar abbreviation when they cannot confer on it a grotesque name, call 'a copper;' and in some moist situations the plague of huge and noisy frogs is felt, and the unpleasant though harmless lizard, of prodigious size, is far from a pleasing variety in the infinite luxuriance of animal life which forms the great characteristic of the southern country, and is, I am told, still more remarkable in South America, beyond the Gulf and the Isthmus.

"It became necessary for me to think of a subsistence, and I consulted the honest captain, who found me disinclined to continue in the sea-service, now that the war being over, his frigate was sure to be paid off. He recommended me to apply for employment as a clerk in a merchant's house. But nothing could induce me to fill any place that might bring me in contact with slavery and the slave-trade, to which the dealings of all mercantile houses in these countries must have some relation. It was therefore settled that with the small sum due to me for my wages during the three months I had served on board ship, I should travel to the Northern States, where I could have little difficulty in being engaged at a moderate salary. Accordingly I set out from Charlestown by a diligence which went at a slow but steady pace, and carried me through magnificent forests, and over a number of broad and clear rivers, towards Philadelphia, where we arrived in about a week."

CHAPTER VII.

A SECOND CHAPTER:—THE NEW WORLD.

"There are seasons when a particular idea will enter the mind, take possession of it, and give rise to a train of thought, without our being able either to account for its commencement, or to break the thread and put an end to it; but I have more commonly observed this to happen with associations of a calm and not unpleasing kind than with those which agitate and harass, as if the mind had some power of rejecting the more disagreeable thoughts. Accordingly I have very rarely been visited in my dreams with any such unwelcome images, any more than indeed one is apt to dream of recent scenes; we rather go back to early life. On this tedious journey, while slowly traversing one of the vast forests filled with oaks of a truly prodigious girth as well as height, and which for want of underwood, showed their massive trunks to the eye, I found myself dwelling upon the recollections of Avignon, but above all of my beloved mother. I could not get out of my mind the picture of her sitting over her missal, praying for me or looking at some letter respecting me, and sadly heaving a sigh to think she should never see me more. The security in which I had felt ever since my arrival in America, the certainty I was in that nothing could now disturb me, provided I only obtained employment enough to support life, had no doubt relieved my mind from all the anxiety I so long suffered under, and only left a bitter recollection of the melancholy beginning of my troubles. The idea of Father Jerome had haunted me in the stillness of the voyage before the storm began; that of my parent was now the companion of my way. I felt as if I could no longer bear the thought that we should never again meet on earth. I seemed ready to resolve that I would encounter any hazard in order once more to lay my head on the bosom that had so often cherished me. It is strange how entirely these images prevented me from thinking of Louise. It seemed as if I felt all my remorse awakened with my filial affection, and that I charged myself with the sufferings my mother was enduring in her lonely hours when she thought of her wandering son as lost. But months had passed since I had had any tidings from the Contât, and months must again roll over my head ere I could hear. For until I should be settled in some one place, I could not apprize either the good pastor of Nismes or M. Girard of my address.

"There was not much difficulty on arriving at Philadelphia in procuring employment. I was not very nice as to terms, and agreed for my board and fifty louis a-year to keep a small merchant's books, whose only clerk had left him to clear a wood track and live as all do that can scrape together a few hundred dollars, and have a wife and family to help them in their speculations; for, unlike a person's situation in Europe, his having a wife and children is, in this country of cheap and good land and few inhabitants, a relief and not a burthen.

"In Philadelphia I remained for above two years thus employed; my situation was not uncomfortable. But though I respected the family I lived in, I found no inclination to cultivate the friendship of persons so entirely different from myself in their habits of thinking, and all whose feelings seemed centered in one pursuit, the acquiring of money.

My hours too passed wearily; for in the whole of the time I had but one letter from Nismes, and it gave an indifferent account of Louise's health. From herself I heard not a word; and the great age of M. Girard led me to dread that the heavy blow from which he in vain strove to seem as if he had recovered, had laid him prostrate, and that affliction had shortened his life and his misery. My hope was that had it been so M. Gardein would have apprized me of our loss.

"Having now saved some three hundred dollars, I relieved my mind from the load of anxiety that pressed upon it, by several excursions to New York and its beautiful neighbourhood, and to the Eastern cities, where the genuine character and manners of the Americans are to be seen in their most perfect state. The scenery of the north also had its attractions. The Hudson river, its rocky passes, the extent of its bays, the variety of the ground which bounds it, sometimes rocky and precipitous, sometimes champaign, here bare and awful, there crowned or fringed with wood, has certainly no equal for beauty in any stream I have ever seen. But the St. Lawrence, which I went on purpose to see, not so much for the sake of the famous falls, of which I could form an idea, but for the sake of gazing on one of the giant rivers of the earth, the mighty stream that drains a whole continent, flows a thousand leagues, and forms or traverses lakes like seas, one of three hundred leagues in length; to fill my eyes with such a spectacle seemed a kind of duty while I was residing in its neighbourhood. Accordingly I went thither, and though it did not quite answer my expectation, because it had the breadth, where I first saw it, of a firth or arm of the sea rather than a river, and moved so slow as not to have a perceptible current, yet its prodigious width, across which the eye could not reach, coupled with the certainty that it was a flowing stream, was calculated to impress the mind with awe rather than mere wonder. Some way higher up, I had a full view of it as a current; I stood in mute astonishment at the majestic stream, four leagues in width, rolling slowly its prodigious body of waters to the Atlantic main. The mind was lost in contemplation of the mighty works of nature; the creature sank into insignificance in presence of the marvels of his Maker's omnipotence; the spectacle of power on the most boundless scale laid the soul prostrate; the idea of vast magnitude seemed alone to fill the mind, to shut out all other thoughts, and to constitute the true sublime; the imagination was carried back to the creation of all things when the great tide was let loose, and piercing the iron wall of huge rock, had rolled onward through countless ages; the mind was then carried forward towards the yet more remote ages through which its flood was appointed still to roll, feeding the ocean with its waters.

"About the beginning of the year 1784, the unbroken peace abroad and at home had left the Congress free to discuss the plans of a permanent constitution for the country; but no progress had as yet been made in framing it. There were many misgivings among public men that this new, untried experiment of a great and populous country living under a purely republican government, might not be found successful in practice. But there was one comfort ever present to all men's minds; there was one man ever in their eyes upon whose wisdom, firmness, and virtue, boundless reliance might be placed in whatever difficulties the State might be involved. Washington, who had borne them triumphant through all their perils, yet lived, though retired, in the vigour of his faculties; and what form of government soever the people might ultimately shape for themselves, at its head he was sure to be set, if his unaffected preference of a private station could be overcome by the unanimous entreaties of his fellow citizens. I had a natural desire to see this extraordinary man, and a deputation of the Philosophic Society of Philadelphia having been directed to wait upon him with an address, asking him to be an honorary member, I obtained permission through a literary friend to accompany them. We arrived at Mount Vernon, his spacious, classical country-seat, like himself, grand but simple and unostentatious; and we had the high honour of being invited to dine with him and his family.

"The presence of this truly great man struck me with reverence. He was upwards of fifty years old, above the middle size, of a mild, reflecting, and noble countenance, and his manners were as calm, and, if I may so speak, as majestic, as suited his character, simple and serene. He engaged but little in conversation, though perfectly at his ease, and exceedingly affable without the least appearance of vulgar condescension. There was something at once benevolent and decided in the expression of his mouth, but I never once observed him to smile; his eyes were intelligent, but with no fire; and although he is known to be a man of vehement temper, it is still better known that he has this temper under strict and habitual control. The subjects that seemed most to interest him were those connected with farming, and the care of cattle and of woods, on which he asked several questions. Of politics he said little; nor indeed did the news of the day furnish any topics of importance, except, only that I remember his pronouncing a decided opinion in favour of Lord Lansdowne, and of Mr. Pitt, both of whom he said had been attacked most unjustly and most factiously by a set of men from part, at least, of whom—the old Whig party—he should have expected better things. Of Lord Chatham he spoke with respect for his vigour, and his free spirit; his eloquence he valued less, and in wisdom he was, according to the General, wholly deficient; nor did he think a person who had no command of himself ever could command others. He considered his son as certain to make the greater statesman of the two in all respects, but that his coming so early to power deprived him of the discipline of experience. Mr. Fox he praised, saying he supposed the character he lately had seen of him was just, that he was the most amiable of great men, and the greatest among amiable. But the General said he seemed the slave of faction, and was little likely to be set free, because he appeared to exalt party spirit into a principle of duty. Of Lord North he spoke with exemplary candour, expressing his conviction that his persisting in the American contest was owing much less to his own opinions than to his deference towards the English King; but he added that such deference was to be severely blamed, inasmuch as it deprived the country of its only security against a weak or a wicked prince, and made monarchy the very worst of all governments.

"One of our deputation made a remark on the accounts from England of some steps to be taken for reforming the representation, and some for doing away with civil disabilities on account of religious opinions. The General highly approved both proceedings; and shortly expressed his belief that some extension of the elective franchise, if granted in time, would prop up the ancient and time-worn monarchy; but on the question of toleration he was still more decided; and related an anecdote (the only one he told, and the only allusion he made to the War of Independence), that finding there was to be a Sacrament of the Lord's Supper administered while he lay encamped in New Jersey, he asked the clergyman, a sectary, if other religionists might join, whose answer was, 'It is the Lord's table, and not the Calvinists';' upon which, said the General, 'highly approving his principle, I attended myself, though of another persuasion, and sat down with my fellow Christians of all denominations, as why should I not?'—There never was, I believe, a fouler aspersion than the story propagated by some free-thinkers, that he is a man of no religion. His education has been very confined; he knows no ancient language, hardly a little French; his reading is confined to history. Of poetry he may have read somewhat; and it is said, when a youth, he excerpted and copied some hymns, and other religious writings, and no more. Of science he is only possessed to the extent of arithmetic and land-surveying, including of course a little plane geometry and trigonometry. But his celebrated address on retiring from the chief command of the army, breathes the most ardent wishes for human improvement, and the utmost reverence for the great masters of philosophy who have enlightened the world; and I heard him reprehend some one who was cited as holding cheap the votaries of religion. 'He is not so clever as many who have believed,' said the General. 'No man knew more of physical evidence than Newton, or of moral than Locke, or of legal than Hale, and all of these were sincere Christians.'—'Your young friend,' I ventured to add, 'would not perhaps be in company he should be ashamed of were he to join them.' The General nodded in assent to my remark, and seemed to testify his approval by asking me to drink a glass of wine with him after the American and English fashion.

"I came away from Mount Vernon with the deepest veneration for this great man. Many of more brilliant faculties have been seen both in civil and military life; to what is called genius he makes no pretence; his fame as a captain is so obscure that his defeats and failures are much more easily reckoned up than his victories; learning, eloquence, whatever most strikes mankind, and is most imposing, are wholly foreign to him; yet by his inflexible firmness under every difficulty, his undaunted contempt of danger, whether we regard his personal courage or his moral, his bearing manfully up at times when the stoutest hearts might well have despaired, and steadfastly persevering when any continued exertion seemed but hopeless pertinacity; he maintained the elements of a wild and undisciplined democracy in subordination and in union; he wore out the most disciplined troops and the most experienced commanders; he supplied the want of all other resources, with the inexhaustible resource of his own indomitable will; and he carried his country through her struggle—her all but hopeless struggle—to a triumph which enthroned free principles upon the ruins of a tyranny that he had crumbled in the dust, called into existence a great nation, and gave it from its birth a first place among the powers of the civilized world.

"Wherever you go in America, in whatever company—among the Federalists, as they are termed, or among the Democrats—even among the friends of monarchy, of whom there are very few indeed, but these much respected for their sacrifices and the ill-treatment they have undergone—you hear but one opinion, see but one feeling, respecting this extraordinary man; all admire, love and trust him. The moderate party, who lean more to England, know that against England he is implacable, and that the only way to ruffle his temper is to praise her, or to speak respectfully of General Arnold; yet that party look up to him as their refuge in a season of trouble. The high republicans who would level all existing institutions, and wish to see the world parcelled out among commonwealths, regard him with equal veneration as the father of liberty and their safeguard against the return of both English power and monarchy. All men are as confident as they can be of a future event, that were he placed at the head of the Federacy, as he must be by common consent when the constitution is formed, he would only keep office for the public good; would hold the balance even among contending parties; would religiously avoid all encroachments on the rights of the people; and would, after maintaining the country in unbroken peace abroad and tranquillity at home, insist upon resigning his authority the instant that the safety of the State permitted him to return once more into the privacy which he loves.

"I returned to Philadelphia well pleased with my expedition to Virginia, and I was still more pleased with seeing a letter from the dear pastor of Nismes, in which, and indeed on the same sheet of paper, were these delightful lines from Louise.

'Dearest Friend—I am wearing away my days in hopeless solitude, beginning to give up all expectation of our ever again meeting in this world. Oh, Albert! if you only knew how I have been harassed on your account, and because of my unchangeable fidelity to our vows! But God knows it is no fault of yours, dearest, and we must submit patiently to the decrees of the Great Disposer. I desire you would look to the moon's mild silver face on the first of the next month but one, at about two in the morning. I reckon that this will be six weeks hence. I shall be turning my eyes at the same silent hour towards the same sweet lamp of the sky (which however will be gone down from its meridian by two hours here, and will want three hours of its height when you see it). It will give me a pleasing sensation to think that we are gazing on the same object at the same time. Look for half an hour, that the time may be sure to agree.'

"Another year passed away in the same regular routine, without any incident worth relating. But I had more opportunity than before to witness the singular spectacle, wholly new to me of course, but also novel in the history of our species, of an extensive and populous country ruled by a pure democracy, a great state the people of which governed themselves, without a monarch, without hereditary aristocracy, without an established church. This system of policy had been far too recently formed to afford the means of judging what might be the success of so new an experiment; the government was indeed not yet framed, the first administration of the Union continuing to manage the public concerns. But that administration was purely republican; the popular voice guided the whole movements of the machine; and I had thus the means of observing the effects of democratic power. I was struck, beyond every other feature, with the unceasing, all-pervading, and absolutely uncontrolled action of this central force. Under no despotic government can the ruling authority be so searching; under none can it be more irresistible. The tyrant is everywhere; he approaches close to each of his subjects. The majority of the people is that tyrant, and none can escape him. There must be no opposition to his will, no undervaluing of his authority, no treating him lightly; the least disrespect either towards his person, or his will, or his measures, or even his language, is visited severely; and the very man who in private may have joined in expressing some sentiment contrary to the prevailing opinion, or some opinion disapproving the conduct of the ruling party, would be the first to shrink from a public repetition of the same statements as soon as the public indignation should be roused and pointed against the offending dissident.

"The laws, too, are executed, as well as made, under the immediate and direct influence of the majority; their execution is thus interfered with, and not rarely opposed. While I was at New York a newspaper editor had expressed an unpopular opinion respecting the relations of the Union with Old England. The multitude assembled; they broke the printing-presses; they attacked the dwelling-house of one editor; the armed force, the militia, was called out; no one dared come to the muster; to save the men's lives they were thrown into prison; the mob forced the gaol doors, and killed one of the editors upon the spot, severely wounding the others. When the offenders were brought to trial, the mob again prevailed, the jury not daring to give a verdict of conviction. This is certainly a kind of outrage that cannot be often committed, but it may be occasionally; and in a lesser degree the same mob-law often prevails. The total want of support from any quarter which whoever ventures to go against public opinion is sure to experience, is among the most cruel inflictions of this democratic tyranny; and it is a most bitter ingredient in the cup of popular government. My hope for America is that her new constitution may provide salutary checks upon the supreme power; and as a king or a nobility are equally beyond her reach, I naturally turn to her legal aristocracy, the body of those able and learned men who are intrusted with the administration of justice. Upon them is my first reliance placed; my next is upon the system of municipal and county government now of old date in the Union, indeed coeval with the plantation of the colonies; that system which has always been established for the local administration of affairs.

"Having now seen as much of the new republic as I desired, I began, towards the winter of 1784, to feel some impatience of the life I led; and having often heard my acquaintance who had travelled speak of the scenes which the West Indies presented to an observing mind, I resolved to go thither the first convenient opportunity. One soon offered, and I took leave of my American friends with kindness; with thanks for the hospitality I had experienced among them, but without much feeling of regret.

"The Americans of English extraction are a mixed race, and differ exceedingly both in their character and in their habits, as we travel among them from the Eastern to the Middle States, and from these to the Southern. They have, notwithstanding this diversity, a good deal in common, but it is modified in degree, and it is varied in kind. If one were to pronounce a sweeping judgment, it would be that the Eastern States have the most respectable character in point of honesty and principle, the Southern the most refined in both manners and taste. But this would be an unsatisfactory estimate; it would leave out much that is common to both North and South; it would assume by omission things to be common to both which are materially varied. Nor do I in any wise doubt that as time advances, and as political causes operate more powerfully, these diversities will be lessened, and more of an uniform national character will prevail throughout all the Union.

"The American generally is of an intelligent, acute, sagacious, bold, enterprising, persevering character. Always on the alert to protect himself, he will neither be overreached nor subdued; and beside the regard for his own credit individually which always animates him, he feels a national pride in his caste, and a contempt of all others, which makes him neither easy to deceive, nor safe to attack, nor agreeable to deal with. The intercourse of this people with the people of other countries presents them in their least amiable aspect. As among themselves, especially in the newly-settled territory, the constant feeling of the individual is, 'I am as good as you,' so this same feeling seems ever present to the mind of the whole people when they are brought into contact with any other nation. But it is a feeling which necessarily offends, because it always assumes that those they are dealing with are making some encroachment, putting forward some claim of superiority. 'You won't find us Yankees behind you Englishers either in pride or merit,' said a man I knew at New York to one who had never uttered a word claiming any superiority whatever for his nation. 'No doubt of it,' was the Englishman's reply, 'but had I said one word to show I questioned it?' Akin to this is a most vulgar and offensive spirit of braggadocio on their national prowess or force, a spirit I never have seen exhibited in any other nation—neither in the vain French, nor in the proud English, nor in the haughty Spaniards, nor in the half-mad Poles, the four nations according to my observation the most inflated with self-conceit, and patriotic enthusiasm. In truth, it is not quite correct to say that the Americans always reckon themselves equal to every other people with whom they come in contact; they never seem to doubt for a moment that they are far superior to any; and though this feeling is frequently found to prevail in the hearts of other nations, and to be sufficiently displayed among themselves—witness the English of Europe, witness, too, our own countrymen of France,—yet the Americans bear it in their countenance and have it in their language beyond all the people I have ever seen. They have it each individually, as others share it collectively among them; you would always suppose when conversing with one of them, however humble in station, that he contained within his own person the whole Federacy of the United States. I remember meeting one of these in company with an English gentleman at the Havanna, and I shall not soon forget the American's tone in speaking of the

United States Navy ('the National Marine,' as he was pleased to term it), of the things it had done, I suppose by way of privateering, during the late war, and the prodigious things it would do if war should come again, which he seemed to consider would be the making of his country's fortune. The well-bred Englishman was not at all discomposed, but he quietly said, 'All I hope is that as you are powerful, so you will be merciful, and not sail up the Thames and burn London.' The American did not appear to perceive the sneer, but gave a look as much as to say, 'Well, possibly we may spare you.'

"The vulgarity generally imputed to them I think a good deal less of, partly because I am aware that this term of reproach is so often lavished upon those who differ from ourselves merely on account of their differing from ourselves—partly because I really believe that what is called vulgarity often consists in the plain honest expression of very natural feelings. Yet I do allow that the American sensitive suspicion of offence never intended, their anxiety to defend themselves against imagined attacks, their eagerness to assert prerogatives which no one disputes, their zealous putting forward of pretensions to qualities which all possess or assume they possess as a matter of course—may savour a little of vulgarity. However, let that pass: I heed it little. A far more important defect is that the Americans seem to me deficient in the sense of honour and even of common honesty. They so exclusively direct all their faculties, all their industry, to the bettering of their condition, that they regard all means of succeeding lawful, or at least consider success as covering over the means used, and constituting a set-off to their baseness. The admiration of skill, the bowing to success, has plainly got the better of their natural sense of justice. They are industrious as the Scotch; they are thrifty as the Dutch; they are avaricious as the Jews; but they are only to be likened to themselves in their unbounded admiration of successful cunning, and their absolute carelessness of the means by which their object is attained.

"The whole race is careful and wary; and they all are like townspeople. There is a peasantry, or rather what should be a peasantry, of many hundred thousands, occupying a measureless extent of country, and far removed from all cultivation in many of its districts. Myriads of them inhabit the forest, never see the walled city, or hear the busy hum of men, or view the shores of commerce, or throng to the places where traders most do congregate; yet in the whole of this vast country you shall not meet with any vestige of the true rustic character; there is nothing rural, nothing simple, in a word, nothing peasant; all is care, if not cunning; it is a race of traders, scattered, indeed insulated, rural in their position, dispersed over a wide expanse of country, but still traders, with all the attributes of the money-getting tribe, as if they were gathered together and concentrated upon any given exchange in the Old World or in the New. Nothing struck me in America more forcibly than this peculiarity, and nothing could be less pleasing to my contemplation.

"I have purposely passed over the local characteristics of the different States. That there is much more real piety in the Eastern or New England settlements, though certainly a good deal mixed with fanaticism, cannot be doubted. But I must exempt them from all charge of either hypocrisy or intolerance. With a deep sense of religious truth, and a strong determination to abide each by his own form of faith, all the various sectaries seem to live on terms of kindness one with another, and none of them ever objects to hear the most unrestrained discussion of its tenets and its ritual. You may in one company, in a stage-coach for example, hear every shade of opinion openly professed and zealously defended, from strict Calvinism to deism and almost atheism, without the least offence being taken by any person, or the least ill-humour being testified. Probably the want of a national establishment gives rise to this freedom of thought and speech—it certainly proceeds from anything rather than indifference. In the Southern States the bane of slavery has cast a darker shade over the national character. No human being can, safely to his feelings and principles, exercise uncontrolled power, especially when the victims of his oppression are not unseen and remote, but ever before his eye and maltreated by his own hand. The manner of bringing up their children as companions and playmates of the young negroes, gives the worst effect to the dominion they are afterwards to exercise over them, and even to their early education. They learn betimes to tyrannize and to torment; and the subjects of their oppression are their playfellows. Am I wrong in tracing to slavery the disgusting cruelty of the sports in the

Southern States? I have seen a Virginian fighting with another, when the object of each savage was to maim his adversary, which one, sometimes both, fully accomplished. I once saw a brute in the shape of a man tear out the eye of another and show it on the palm of his hand with a grin of exultation to the assembled crowd, who shouted applause, while I turned away sick with disgust. 'But see there,' said a by-stander, 'My! if he as wants the eye hav'n't bit off t'other fellow's nose.'

"I pass over the outward peculiarities as less important—their offensive manners; their proneness to give offence by so easily taking it; their rudeness where they dare venture; their sulkiness where they may not find it convenient to be so bold—these things I pass over, partly because they are of inferior moment in weighing a national character—partly because they will inevitably be cured in the progress of time—partly for the reasons I have before given. But respecting, as I sincerely do, the American people, I most anxiously hope that their graver imperfections may never from individual spread to become national; that public faith may ever remain inviolate; that they may always reflect with just pride on their high lineage, the children and followers of the purest statesman who ever governed the affairs of men; and that nothing in their future annals may ever tarnish the renown which they achieved under his governance.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE WEST INDIES.—SLAVE PEASANTRY.

"Having resolved to visit the islands of the Mexican Gulf, I left New York in an American vessel bound for St. Domingo. My knowledge of the English language was now quite sufficient to enable me to pass for an American; so that I apprehended no inconvenience or risk from once more coming within the power of the French laws. We had a prosperous voyage of less than three weeks; we reached the Bay of Gonaives, and soon entered the fine harbour of Port-au-Prince, where I obtained accommodation at a boarding-house upon reasonable terms.

"It was the month of May, and the finest season of the year in that tropical climate; for the first rains were over; all was fresh and green; the air was cooled to an agreeable temperature, and this delightful summer lasts for five months without any very oppressive heat, certainly with none beyond the power of the refreshing sea breezes to cool. There was a grateful feeling in the atmosphere, above all in evening and night, which even in Languedoc I had never felt, delicious as our climate is. The heavenly bodies too are here far more splendid than in Europe. I could easily read by moonlight; when the moon failed us the brightness of the stars was almost a substitute for the lamp of night, and the planet Venus, in particular, shed a light that was dazzling. My mind was irresistibly carried back to the lessons and the discussions of dear Father Jerome, and I almost thought I might see the great Croix du Midi, of which he had always spoken as the singular glory of the southern hemisphere. But one appearance I was not prepared for; the moon, and indeed the sun, had not the same flat look with which we are familiar in the northern latitudes. They assumed a convex form, and the moon when not full was lit up round her edges, while the central portion was more wrapped in shade. In a word, the globular aspect of those great orbs was manifest, and they no longer wore the look of circular planes.

"The firefly could not be more abundant than in Carolina, or more bright than I had seen it there, nor the butterflies more gaudy. But here swarmed other most brilliant insects, as beetles studded with diamond-spots. No venomous reptiles, as on the continent, rendered the evening walk perilous, or disquieted the wanderer by day in his search of a cooling shade. The rich and gay plumage of the birds exceeded all I could have fancied. These shone through the thickets in all the luxuriance of green and yellow, alternating with blue of every shade, and red from bright scarlet to the deepest crimson; while the singular clearness of the atmosphere gave to each tint redoubled brilliancy. Some of them sung, and filled the woods with their melody, insomuch that Columbus imagined that it was the nightingale herself warbled here. The foliage of the trees and their flowers and those of the shrubs formed the body of the forest scene; orange-trees in golden fruit and aromatic flower; the vast mahogany shooting up its straight stem, bright red blossoms and oval fruit; the pomegranate and sweet-smelling acacia; the great banana with its luxuriant fruit and long graceful purple flower, sometimes delicately red streaked; the lower quassia blazing in scarlet; but above all the pimento, scenting the air with the most grateful perfume, while its blossoms filled the eye with the most elegant forms and delicate colours, but suffering nothing to grow beneath its shade, and so reigning alone over a carpet of the most splendid green turf, the effect of abundant rain in these islands, and a beauty which in our Languedoc climate we never can possess.

"The mountain districts are more wild and picturesque, the heights in the back ground being lofty and the summits deeply tinged with blue. Even near the plain and in the forest are limpid brooks of perfect transparency, rocks that rise abruptly among the trees, or form grottoes in the wood, or hang over the deep blue fountains. Streams of stainless clearness flow in all directions, sometimes forming reservoirs that resemble small lakes, sometimes fertilizing the plain to whose irrigation they easily lend themselves, not unfrequently dashing over ledges of rock in falls, but falls of a beautiful and pleasing aspect, the sight of which from their limpid water is grateful to the eye as their noise steals musically on the ear, unlike the roaring, thundering cataracts of the continent, which are an object of dread more than of admiration.

"But if such be the natural beauties of this fair land, the miracles of its cultivation present to the eye another prospect as much to be admired. The vast plain of Artibonite is the most fertile, I believe, in the world; I only at first surveyed it in the short morning twilight of the Sunday, the day after I landed; and before the noise of its waking inhabitants was heard, or their persons could be seen; and never did my eye light on a more beautiful spectacle: it seemed the triumph of human industry in turning to much profit every inch of this useful plain, and making each particle of its rich red mould carry some plant that bears fruit to man. The cane prevailed generally, and its bright green gave the whole ground the aspect of a finely cultivated garden, more than any produce I have ever seen. But coffee-plantations were also interspersed with the graceful though less picturesque green leaves of that shrub, its elegant jasmine-like white flower, and its rich red clusters of the berry. Everywhere the eye met marks of skill, of labour, of wealth, in the finely drawn canals to distribute the water, in the clean kept fences, formed of aloe hedges, to separate the properties of this precious soil, in the solid structure of the planters' houses, the substantial machinery of his water-wheels and his sugar-engines, and the countless cottages where his peasantry were lodged. Such was the scene over which as the sun rose to gild the landscape my eye wandered, and on which at that silent hour of moraine it delighted to repose.

"I was fatigued with my early walk, and could not leave the house till after breakfast next day. All that landscape was changed; and my eye now shrank back with horror from the sight. For the sun, which before had only shown me the effects of industry, had now risen, and lighted to their toil, their endless toil, that hapless race whose extorted labour, having not any semblance of industry, had covered the vast plain with all the works, and all the water-courses, and all the vegetable riches I had before admired—the tenants of the numberless cottages I had seen—the victims of Christian oppression stimulated by Christian avarice, which, in return for the inexhaustible riches of such a soil and such a climate, showed its gratitude to the Giver of all Good by the torture and the murder of his most harmless and peaceful children. Yes! I was in the greatest slave-colony in the world; I saw before me the utmost effects of this accursed system! Spread out as on a map were the fruits of the scourge and the chain; and the air, fragrant with a thousand perfumes, variegated with every colour on which the eye could dwell with most delight, pure and transparent to the sight of man, tempered to his senses with the most genial warmth, kept cool by the most healthful breeze which could fan his limbs—that air resounded with the merciless lash, echoed the clanking chain, from the rising to the going down of the sun.

"I had not recovered from my horror at finding myself, for the first time, in a slave and sugar colony, when I next had time to reflect on the other unnatural circumstances in this state of things. Of the thousands whom I saw toiling in all directions, there was scarcely scattered here and there a single white. The fields were swarming with negroes, of both sexes and of every age. In a line they all worked, the strong and the weak, the old and the young, women and men, nay, women whose form plainly indicated that they were far advanced in pregnancy—all were at work, and all must keep up with the strongest or the nimblest, at the pace prescribed; and by whom? By another slave, who moved backwards and forwards, armed with a long whip, which he sometimes only cracked over the heads of the gang, as it was called, but oftentimes laid severely upon the backs of such as he deemed indolent or found feeble. After waiting an hour or more, suffering but a little less than they, I at last perceived a white man, a person of a pale and sickly aspect, with a loose light-coloured dress, a broad straw hat lined with green silk, a parasol in one hand, and a cane in the other. He walked listlessly towards the driver, the whip-holding slave, who superintended one of the lines or gangs, and chid him for negligence, which was the name I found given to the offence of sparing the slaves. The defence of the driver was only answered with a blow from the white man's cane. He went round to several other gangs, and then, exhausted by this effort to discharge his duty, he retired to a summer-house, where I observed him regale himself with what had the appearance of a fruit-ice. The reprimand enforced with the cane of the white overseer was not thrown away upon the negro-driver. Before many minutes were over, he had secured one of the pregnant women, and threw her on the ground, in a hollow which he had scraped to allow her belly to rest, and he thus gave her a flogging with his cartwhip, while the poor creature's screams rent the air. I left the spot, and hurried home. As I again surveyed this scene of cultivation carried to its uttermost pitch, all seemed to have changed its aspect since the morning before, when I had first seen it. The fruits of negro toil were no longer pleasing to the eye; all was stained with negro blood: the canals made me shudder, not admire, for the skill that planned could not have executed them without the scourge: I hastened away from the hamlets that on the day before, the day of rest, had seemed entirely the abode of the peasantry, who I then supposed were enjoying under their shade the Sabbath repose.

"Revolting as the sight of West India slavery was, so much worse than all of what I saw in Carolina had led me to expect, I was doomed to witness horrors yet greater; and only a few days after I first saw the noble plain of Artibonite. An unusual stir was observed one morning in the streets of Port-au-Prince: clerks were seen running to and fro: signals were making at the pier head of the harbour; two vessels, one of about two hundred and the other of three hundred and fifty tons were in the offing; they were expected from the African coast; and they arrived to the exceeding great contentment of the merchants, a satisfaction shared by the neighbouring planters, and even those who had come down from a distance in expectation of the important event. Not many hours elapsed before placards were to be seen all over the place announcing that the cargoes of these two ships would be exposed for sale early next day at an African merchant's yard; and every face in the town seemed radiant with joy. Whatever gang had been diminished by death through the maltreatment of the 'stock' (as those human creatures were termed) could now be completed; whatever new work remained to be begun, at least such as newly-imported negroes could be set upon, might now be commenced, or 'seasoned hands' might be taken from common labour, their place being supplied with the raw new comers. The merchants in the town, the ship-builders and ship-fitters, who looked to the vessels speedily returning for fresh importations; the clerks, the planters, their book-keepers or overseers, the medical practitioners, the tavern-keepers, all kept the arrival from 'the coast' as a holiday. I was probably the only person in Port-au-Prince who shared not in the general joy, that some hundreds of my fellow-creatures were about to be sold like beasts to the highest bidder, and worked to death under a tropical sun, in tilling: the ground for those most cruel of task-masters, until the death they desired should put an end to their sufferings, and give them a welcome release from their toil.

"I had not remained in Carolina or Virginia long enough to see a slave-ship, or a sale of her human cargo: it was, therefore, fit that this sight should be added to the many which had made me loathe the agriculture of the Western world. And first I went on board the smaller vessel. The innkeeper who accompanied me, and had been once steward of a slave-ship, pointed out to me the interior economy of the vessel. I at first did not believe it was the slaver; and thought we had come to a wrong ship; for I saw no room, no places for accommodating two hundred and eighty negroes, the number she was advertised as having landed, to say nothing of those who might have died on the passage. My conductor took me between decks, and I there perceived a height, in most places of only eighteen inches, and nowhere above two feet. In this contracted space above three hundred human beings had been crammed; they were chained together by the legs and by the neck, for the vessel had so small a crew that mutiny was apprehended; the supply of water had been so scanty that many had died of raging fever; and one morning when thirty of them were brought upon deck to ventilate the vessel in part (for it was filled with filth and every pestilential abomination), twelve, arm in arm, before they could be stopped, had jumped overboard, grinning horribly at their tormentors, and shouting that now they must surely go to nigger-land, as they termed Africa, and be protected by the good spirit. In all, forty had died or been drowned. Some of the women had been delivered while bound in the same tier with sick and dying men; nay one, whom it drove mad, had actually brought forth the fruit of the womb while close touching a slave who had died the day before, but being chained to one yet living, and the fetters rivetted, he could not be separated before his body, in that place, in that climate, became one mass of putrefaction. These particulars we learnt from a lad who had then made his first voyage, and was so haunted with the horrors he had witnessed, that he determined to leave the ship and beg his bread rather than return to that terrible charnel-house. 'But,' said my conductor, 'bad as this is, I have seen worse in my time. Once the ophthalmia broke out in a slave-ship, in which I sailed; and thirty-nine of the miserable negroes became blind; the inhuman captain, having no chance of selling them, brought them out on deck, and threw them all overboard. Above forty still had the disease, and he allowed them to remain on board, in hopes of a cure; but they were all landed stone blind.' The horror which this excited maybe imagined; whereupon he added that during the war he had himself seen as wicked an act, and repeatedly seen it. 'When the vessel was chased by an English frigate, or privateer, the murderous captain would coolly put as many of his wretched negroes into casks, as he thought would lighten the ship and enable him to escape by throwing them into the sea. I have seen them so thrown without being put in casks; and devoured immediately by the sharks which ever attend such vessels in confident expectation of their prey, from the mortality that constantly reigns on board slavers.'

"Sick of the sight I had seen, of the pestilential air that had not yet left the ship, and of the inn-keeper's relations thus connected with her, I came on shore and resolved to see the slaves' yard, or market, the same day, that such horrors might not break in upon another. To the advertised place of sale, then, we went. The negroes were all marked on the breast or back with a red hot iron; they were many of them in a sickly state after their dreadful voyage; but some were pronounced marketable, and many of those brought by the larger vessel were of this description. I now saw the same lamentable sights, but more piteous still, which had harrowed up my feelings, when I was in the house-slave mart of Charlestown. The children clinging to their mothers' neck; the mothers grasping them to their bosoms; these unhappy creatures embracing the knees of their purchaser, and beseeching him to take their infants along with them; the clinging of those together who had been rivetted during the voyage to one chain, and thus contracted a friendship now about to be severed, when loaded with separate fetters; the various expressions of grief, of tenderness, of despair, and in some of a rage which not even the chain and the lash, and the fever of the passage had been able to quell—all presented a picture, extremely sad it is true, but also very striking. My conductor told me that the negroes, whose fury I had remarked, were from the Gold Coast, or Koromantyns; while the less deep black, of milder temper, and more subdued demeanour, were chiefly Eboes. He related the history of a Koromantyn who had been concerned in a mutiny, only quelled by the captain firing upon those engaged, and killing upwards of thirty. The man was believed to have jumped overboard, as several did upon the revolt being subdued. But he had escaped and concealed himself in the hold where the stowage was dark. He vowed vengeance; and taking a light was detected when on the point of rushing into the powder magazine with a candle in his hand, determined to blow up the ship. The captain had him secured and brought upon deck; he prepared instruments of torture; he was giving his orders to have them applied; the negro, a powerful man, shook himself loose, rushed overboard, and was drowned, uttering the most fearful imprecations against his tyrant. 'But, indeed,' added my guide, 'I have seen equal desperation in a white man. A Spanish captain, having five hundred slaves on board, had committed some acts of piracy on his voyage to Africa; for many slave-ships are fitted up as pirates, and seize weaker vessels with slave-cargoes on board, in order to obtain or to complete their complement cheaper than by bartering on the coast. She was chased by an English vessel, and being sure of punishment for the piracy if taken, the captain placed a lighted candle over his powder magazine, and took to his boat with his white crew, in hopes that the whole vessel, captors, negroes, and all, might be blown up, as soon as the candle burnt down to the powder.' I asked what became of the ship, and he said, that when she was boarded, an English sailor coolly put his hand under the candle and brought it away from the powder—thus saving the lives of above five hundred persons whom the monster had doomed to instant destruction.

"When I saw the price paid for these miserable people, and found that seventy or eighty louis were given for a 'prime negro,' who probably cost a few beads in Africa, and was brought over at the cost of four or five louis, I at once could comprehend how deep a root this infernal traffic had taken in the minds of the merchants, both of St. Domingo and of Nantes and Bordeaux. The same was the case, I found, with the Spaniards, and Portuguese, and Dutch; with the English, the traffic was great, but not so extensive, owing to the smaller extent of uncleared and fertile land in their colonies. The great demand for new slaves is, I find, to clear new land, the most lucrative speculation to the master, and the greatest favourite of the whites, while it is at the same time the employment most fatal to negro life. The importation into St. Domingo was at this period immense, greater than it ever had before been, and in all the intercourse which I had with the people of that island, and in all my observation of their slaves, one idea constantly forced itself upon my mind. How patient soever these negroes may be, however inferior to their masters in skill and in the power of combining together, they form the great bulk of the people. The whites are not here, as I had seen them on the continent, nearly as numerous as the blacks, but there are fourteen or fifteen slaves for one free person. In this state of things, thousands of new negroes are forced into the colony every year; men wholly uncivilized, having no kind of local attachment, still less any feeling of attachment, or even any habit of submission, to their task-masters. Can such a state of things exist without the most imminent hazard of an insurrection, that may carry destruction over the whole of this noble possession? For one thing seemed quite clear; to strike a spark might be difficult, watched as are the slaves; but once struck, it must needs fall into a heap of matter so combustible that an instantaneous explosion is the inevitable result. Shall I confess it? When I reflected on the horrors of the market, the field, above all, the slave-ship, I felt that such a consummation would seem a just judgment on crimes so enormous; and that I could reconcile my mind to the catastrophe, if I believed no other chance existed of extirpating such horrors, and bringing such sufferings to a close.

"After I had remained in Port-au-Prince a few weeks, enjoying the surpassing beauty of the climate and the scenery, as far as the dreadful taint of negro slavery would permit any enjoyment, I was invited by a gentleman in the country, with whom I had become acquainted on the voyage from New York, to pass a day or two at his country-house; this I knew meant at his plantation, for he was an extensive coffee-planter. The sufferings of the slaves on such an estate are as nothing compared with what they undergo in the cultivation of the sugar-cane; for they are not worked in gangs, and drilled and dressed in lines under the lash; nor is their toil by any means severe, the labour of coffee-picking being more frequently performed by task-work. The repugnance which I always felt to sugar-planting, I own, would have made a visit to a sugar-estate a season of pain rather than of relaxation.

"I arrived at the house early in the morning, before the heat had begun, and I found a villa of great beauty, and even magnificence. The house was fitted up with every elegance, and the inhabitants seemed to enjoy all the luxuries and almost all the refinements of Parisian life. The owner was of a noble family, long settled in St. Domingo, and, except sending over his children for education in the mother country, and transporting his produce for sale at Nantes, he had little or no intercourse with France. Among the comforts of a country-house, I did not observe a library; and there was no chapel, nor any parish church nearer than the town, which, being three leagues off, the family seldom went to mass. 'We perform our Easter rites,' (fesons nos pâques) my host said, 'but do not often go to mass, except on some extraordinary occasion.' I found that his religion went into nearly as moderate a compass as his literature. He bore the character of a kind master; and his negroes rather increased on his old estate; but he was bringing new land into cultivation for the cane, on a plantation a league or two distant; and he complained of the loss of life with which this operation was attended. 'An old sugar-plantation,' he said, 'which we have had for many generations, costs me only about four or at most five per cent. of my slaves in the year; but this new land stands me in twelve or fifteen.' This person who thus coolly spoke of human life, and set the waste of it on the debit side of his profit-and-loss account, against the gross proceeds of his farming speculations, was a man of kindly disposition, a good father and husband, an indulgent master to his domestic slaves, a gentleman of polite, even refined manners, representing an ancient and honourable family, that had often served the king with distinction; he had been educated in Europe, and brought up among the first circles of its most polished capital. Could I wonder that habit, the sight of human suffering, prolonged till it becomes an usual occurrence and blunts the feelings, the sight of human crimes exhibited till it ceases to shock, and then hardens the heart, producing so great a havoc in a character such as this, should cause a far more dreadful havoc in men of other natures, and other education? Could I wonder that it should finally lead to the desperate and hateful excesses which reign in the slave-market and the slave-ship?

"In the course of my walks among the richly-cultivated grounds, and in the fine scenery that surrounded the villa, I had occasion to see and converse with some of the slaves, and one, who presented a very striking appearance, greatly engaged my attention. He was a tall, finely-formed person, somewhat under the middle age, born in the island, indeed on the estate, but of parents who had been brought from Africa. His hue was a deep black of extraordinary lustre; his features expressive, though having the negro contour of thick lips and flat nose; his eye singularly animated, his voice strong and shrill. Nothing could be more active or graceful than all his motions, nothing more quick and lively than his apprehension. Wholly destitute of all education, he had yet conversed much with his fellow-slaves, and much also with the new comers, if by that name we may designate those who are by force or fraud brought across the ocean from the Old World to augment the mass of their kindred's wretchedness in the New. With these he had delighted to talk; he took a pleasure in hearing of their cruel sufferings—of their sorrow at being torn from their peaceful homes and their innocent pursuits—of their agonies at after-separations in the slave-market—of their usage when first broke in to the toils of West Indian husbandry. In these images he had a singular pleasure individually; to recount them gave him boundless gratification; he loved to converse with me because I showed my sympathy with his race, and would listen for an hour together while he repeated to me what he had heard of the negro-man's wrongs—more hard to bear than any he had himself to endure. His own mother, he said, was the daughter of a chief, inveigled by a native slave-dealer, and kidnapped at the age of sixteen; his father had been captured in an expedition undertaken expressly to obtain a cargo for a French slave-ship, which had unexpectedly come upon the coast when there were no slaves in the factory. At home both the one and the other used to be waited upon by slaves of their father's household; and neither had ever known what distress, much less work, least of all the scourge, was, until the horrid slave-ship made them familiar with wretchedness and fetters, and the driver's whip taught them to toil. While he himself was yet a child, and the comfort of their lives, they had been sold to a planter living far away, near Cape François; his mother had broken her heart at the separation, and his father had before her death been compelled, owing to the fineness of his person, to marry or cohabit with another woman for a breed. 'My solace,' said the Koromantyn negro, 'is to think of my mother's grave and my father's degradation! It refreshes my soul to drink in at these inexhaustible sources the sweet waters of a revenge that never can sleep until I too slumber in the grave. It is a new, and varied, and never-ending refreshment to quaff the same cup of vengeance from the hands of the sufferers who have just landed from the slave-ships. The white glutton is less insatiable in the masses which he devours; the pampered white epicure is less choice in the delicacies he culls to tickle his palate; the white drunkard is less assiduous in applying provocatives to stimulate his jaded appetite and excite an artificial thirst,—than I to glut myself with new horrors committed by the execrable race upon my harmless and hapless kinsmen! My sympathy with the sufferer is lost in my hatred of his tormentors; I grudge him not all he endures, so it adds fuel to the fire of my revenge, and makes it to burn more fierce. And, oh! if there be a God above, surely he will reward my long suffering with an opportunity of satisfying this craving thirst for the blood of the fiends whose pale, sickly aspect, can only inspire disgust in all beholders, as their cruelty spreads horror over all that witness or hear it!'—As he spoke his eyes seemed to glare with fire; his face was distorted with rage; his mouth showed snow-white teeth that seemed to grind as he uttered his fiery exclamation; he grasped a huge club in his hand, and, as in a paroxysm which he had lost all power to control, he dashed it wildly and fiercely upon a white stucco figure placed in the grass walk where we were standing, nor could stay his hand until he had shivered it to atoms.—'And now I know full well,' said he, 'that I have by this act of mutiny forfeited this hateful and worthless life! But not hateful shall my death be, nor yet worthless, if I can sound the trumpet of just, of holy rebellion, and rouse my countrymen to assert their freedom, and call them to join with me in slaking, or endeavouring to slake, our burning, our unquenchable thirst of Christian blood!'

"I felt deeply alarmed at the extremity to which this conversation had gone. I besought the Koromantyn to calm himself; I assured him I would take upon myself the destruction of the figure; and I prevailed upon him to walk quietly away, and leave the rest to me. But the scene made a deep impression upon my mind, and I plainly saw that the negroes would not want either instigators or leaders, if ever a time should come when the impossibility of longer endurance prepared them for a great revolt.

"But before long I had an opportunity of seeing that followers would be no more wanting than leaders in the work of destruction should an opportunity be afforded for taking their revenge. I had accompanied my former guide, the innkeeper, to the town of Cape François, in the north of the island; and we went to see the beautiful cultivation of that vast and fertile plain in its immediate neighbourhood. It even exceeds that of Artibonite, near Port-au-Prince, in wealth of every kind. The plantation which chiefly arrested my attention was that of M. Gallifet, the most extensive and valuable of the whole district, and situated about three leagues from Cape Town. The owner is of the noble and much respected family of Gallifet, near Aix, in Provence; the management of this fine property has generally been excellent, humane as well as skilful; and the treatment of the negroes so kind, that it was a proverb in St. Domingo, 'as happy as one of Gallifet's negroes' (heureux comme un negre de Gallifet)

when any person wanted to describe the comfortable circumstances of one of the humbler class of whites. Some years, however, before my arrival, the manager had been changed; a contrary system had been introduced; the numbers of the slaves were no longer kept up by breeding; the loss of hands had to be supplied from the slave-market; and, as always happens in such cases of change, the contrast between the present and the former condition of the poor negroes made their treatment the more felt and their discontent the greater, although very possibly they were not worse off than their fellow labourers in the other plantations.

"In the evening of the day on which we visited the place, a threatening aspect of the sky gave warning of a storm, which an old negro had foretold several hours before, with the sure instinct that never fails the blacks respecting changes in the weather. We perceived huge masses of cloud, soaring up aloft in a distant part of the sky, assuming fantastic shapes, sometimes rent asunder and sometimes tumbled together, but tinged with a dull light of a red or copper colour. The sun had set in the same hue and having a larger appearance than usual; the hill tops looked blue and clear, and seemed as if close by; when the moon appeared, her colour was as of blood; and each star partook of the same tint, having also a halo round it like the greater light. The air was dead calm; but in its upper regions the restless and capricious movements of the clouds indicated various currents afloat. Not a note could now be heard from any bird; the cooing of the wood-pigeon was hushed, and even the humming of the enamel-beetle had ceased. All the domestic animals about the negro huts seemed to await in mute suspense the commencement of the elemental strife, now on the eve of being engaged. We shared in this prevalent feeling; and at length heard distant peals of thunder, echoed among the surrounding mountains. Suddenly it seemed close upon us, and a tremendous clap, preceded but an instant by vivid forked lightning, seemed to break hard by. The conch or gong now sounded the signal that calls the slaves to work; it was the alarm given by the superintendent. The negroes all left their huts, as if dreading these might not be safe under the fury of the tempest. Still there was no wind, no rain—not a breath, not a drop; but endless flashes of fire lit up the firmament, and the roaring of the sea at times drowned that of the thunder. I heard the negroes speaking low to one another, but as if watching the storm with extreme interest.—'Why should we be called? We cannot help the master if his house is shaken.'—'No,' said another, 'but if our huts fall while his is shaken, we may be killed, and so he might lose his slaves.' Suddenly I saw them all pointing to one spot, and I observed a whole cane-place, house, trees, and all, whirled up in the air, the sugar-mill destroyed, and numbers of huts levelled with the ground. A chorus of triumph instantly burst from the negroes, as they beheld this havoc of the hurricane, and feasted their eyes on the ruin of their master's hopes. 'No sugar this year, thank God,' said one.—'No coffee, neither,' answered another, 'for the high grounds are swept as bare as the plain.'—'But,' said an old negress, 'our own provision-grounds are destroyed. What shall we do?'—'Hurrah!' said a Koromantyn youth close by. 'What shall we do? Why laugh to see the white man weep, and look more hideous with his pale leprosy face than ever!'—'I have no more any cottage to shelter me,' said an old female, as the rain began to descend in torrents, more like a river than a shower.—'I, too, have none,' answered a woman near her. 'But I have no longer a child to keep dry and warm; they took my boy away from me; they drove my husband to another district; let the weather fall on me as it pleases; if I can but see that great house, as ugly white as its owner, torn down by the tempest, I care not what becomes of my poor hut.'—'Saw you the lightning strike the chimney?' said the Koromantyn. 'There is smoke! God for his mercy be praised! There is smoke!—Ah! no, no—the rain has put out the fire. Oh, fetch me a pitch-ball and some flax that is dry; I will steal to the house in the dark, and see if the fire of the lightning may not be kindled anew.'

"But at this moment an alarm was spread that the white driver had fallen into a river swollen by the rain to a torrent, and the superintendent ran about for help to him, ordering all who could dive or swim to assist. Many ran, but slowly; none would bestir themselves; they saw the wretched man struggling with the flood; he cast a piteous look, discernable every other minute in the gleams of the lightning and sometimes by the torch-light; but no helping hand was stretched out, and he was carried down towards the wheels of the mill, where the flood-gate, a large fragment of which was left standing, stopped his now lifeless body; and it was taken out with sufficient alacrity by the negroes, their eyes glaring, and the whole countenance expressive of perfect, delight. This was the end of the under-manager, who had been employed for several years in executing the new plans, since the manager of the plantation was changed, and with the manager the system of kindly treatment."

CHAPTER IX.

THE WEST INDIES.—SLAVE OWNERS.

"The reflections to which this scene gave rise, were calculated to fill the mind with gloomy forebodings. I could easily perceive how rotten all the foundations were on which so noble a structure of wealth in this fine colony had been reared. If the Creole or home-born negroes seemed thus animated with such inextinguishable hatred towards their masters, what might be expected from those newly imported, of whom above thirty thousand yearly were introduced among the old and seasoned slaves? After remaining a few days at the Cape, we returned to Port-au-Prince; and I soon had an opportunity of visiting the largest of all the islands, in company with a Catholic priest, who was going upon the business of his bishop to the Havanna.

"The trade wind favours this voyage; and though the distance is nearly two hundred and fifty leagues, we arrived in little more than a week from the day we left Gonaives Bay. I was exceedingly struck with the magnificence of this noble city, by far the finest, as I take it, in the New World, and which bears quite the appearance in all respects of the great towns in the Old. The deep spacious harbour, where whole fleets may find shelter secure under the protection of the two strong forts at its entrance; the ample quays; the streets, narrow indeed in the town, wide in the suburbs, of houses many of which resemble the palaces of our European nobles; the numberless churches crowned with towers and spires; the great places for public resort; the convents, the University, the theatres; the splendid equipages of the inhabitants; the appearance of the well-appointed troops; above every thing the vast proportion of whites, exceeding considerably that of the slave population; all brings to mind the other side of the Atlantic; indeed it seemed the only part of America which was not of yesterday in its whole form and aspect. The Spaniards of the West Indies, too, are somewhat more hospitable than those of the Peninsula; I was introduced by the priest to several of their houses, and I found the magnificence of their style of living—their plate, their table, their servants,—all on the scale of the wealthiest European grandees.

"The warm praise lavished on these Spaniards by my reverend fellow-traveller prepared me to expect a most Catholic generation. In no place have I ever seen the observances of the Romish Church so much made the business of men's lives. The endless recurrence of mere ceremonial matters appears to fill up the whole day; while the bells of the churches never cease to toll, nor the chant to rise, nor the procession to darken the street. The priests are numerous, as might be expected; but that strife is not banished by raising images, telling beads, saying masses, and signing crosses, may be gathered from the countless legions of lawyers who swarm in the town, four times more than in St. Domingo, compared with the number of the people.

"In the hands of the priests, however, is the whole education, if such it can be called, of the upper classes, who alone have anything that can be designated by such a name; and the influence of the same order of men is unbounded in private families. The ignorance of the community, even of those in the better condition of life, exceeds anything I could have conceived possible in our days: it seems as if, like the inhabitants of the East, they had stood stock still, and knew no more than their ancestors who first settled in America three centuries ago.

"The character of the people is partly influenced by their extreme ignorance; but partly, too, by the two inherent vices of the Spanish nature—the love of inactive ease, and pride, hardening the heart to humane feelings and opening it to cruel passions. The Cuba planter, even, is a lazy, a listless being; he leaves to the hands of hired agents the care of his fortune and of his slaves, neither exerting himself to prevent the mismanagement of the one, nor to check the maltreatment of the other. With one branch of West Indian industry, indeed, his religious feelings interfere—he will have no direct concern in the slave-traffic. But then the whispers of piety and conscience combined are easily drowned in the louder accents of avarice; he quietly buys the slaves which others have imported, and he works them to death under the merciless cart-whip, in the burning sun, among the pestilential marshes of this great island. The Spanish planter, however, in one respect differs from the English, the Dutch, and even the French; the strict temperance of the Castilian character is maintained in its tropical variety: the indulgence, and even loose habits, prevailing among the other European settlers are in like manner unknown. Most of the proprietors reside in the island. Indeed no very great number of absentees are to be found in the French colonies, especially in St. Domingo. A far larger proportion of the property, in both the English and the Dutch settlements, is owned by persons who never see their estates, and leave all to their managers, without any control or superintendence. The sad and inevitable consequences of this, upon the treatment of the poor slaves, are apparent; but the Cuba negroes gain much less than might be expected from their master's residence in the colony; he hardly pays any attention to his concerns, and leaves the overseer almost as uncontrolled as if he lived in Cadiz or Madrid. Nor must we forget the cruel disposition shown by the Spaniards in their treatment of the native Indians, millions of whom were sacrificed to the Spanish lust of gold. They who invented the African slave-trade to mitigate the lot of their Indian serfs, are not very likely now to treat the black men more mercifully than they once did the brown.

"I was travelling in a wood some two days'

journey from the Havanna, when I heard the baying of hounds. The sound was loud, and fell heavily upon the ear; it directed my steps to the quarter whence it seemed to proceed. I soon perceived two hounds of a strange appearance; they were of extraordinary strength, and had a look of singular ferocity, so much so that I prepared to defend myself, and presented a staff to keep them off. My companion, a person living in the neighbourhood, and who had come to show me the way, desired me to stand aside behind a large mahogany-tree close by, and assured me that the dogs would not touch us. 'They are blood-hounds,' said he, 'and are trained to hunt down the runaway negroes. A white man they will always let alone.' I found they were followed at some distance by the overseer of an estate a good way off; and I joined him in following them, for I soon found that the dogs were not merely exercising, but were in their horrid quest of human game. After half-an-hour's chase we came to an opening, which they coasted half round, going by the scent, and soon burying themselves in the thicket. But I thought I perceived on the opposite side to that where they had been before they disappeared, some large body moving among the trees. Could it be a fugitive negro? I ran across the open space in hopes of being able to rescue the miserable man, if it were one; I presently saw that it was a negro, as I had supposed; he was crouching behind a projecting fragment of rock on the other side of a small brook, which he appeared to have passed, probably conceiving that the scent would be interrupted by the stream. His face was convulsed with terror, but his eye glared at the same time, as he anxiously listened to the distant baying of the hounds. My companion cautioned me against taking any part, or even seeming to encourage the slave's escape, the heaviest penalties being denounced against all such interference, which is regarded as abetting a kind of treason—the treason most reprobated in the West Indies, that against the superior authority of the master or man-owner. The poor creature continued fixed to the spot, and I was in hopes that, the river having cut off the means of tracing him, the hounds had gone away; when suddenly the dreadful sound again opened, and, with an approaching, became an unceasing loudness. No chance remained but the water interposed between the ferocious animals and their prey. Soon they came up baying more keenly than before; they approached the stream; the huntsman followed close, but saw not the negro, else he would have probably interfered to save his master's property, however careless he might have been of his fellow-creature's life. One of the hounds came to the water's edge, the other skirted the wood. The Spaniard hallooed him across a few steps above; and to my unutterable horror I saw the savage animal, though not more fierce than the huntsman, rush fiercely upon the negro, throttle him with his teeth, and in an instant stretch him dead on the spot, weltering in his gore. The huntsman came up too late to save the planter's purse, the only loss that vexed him; and when I expressed my horror at this melancholy catastrophe, 'Yes, indeed,' said the high-minded and devout Castilian, 'yes, indeed! Oh, Holy Virgin and St. Jago, protect me! this is a sad loss! How dare I face my master or his manager? The negro was well worth two hundred and fifty dollars. A dreadful thing to think of so much money sunk in the sea!'—I confess that, after all I had seen of the West Indian character, and of negro-slavery, this scene made a deeper impression on me, and shocked me more severely, than any thing I had before witnessed. Nothing had ever brought so home to my mind the entire perversion of all human feelings, which suffering man to hold man in possession as property is inevitably fitted to produce.

"I found that these cruel Spaniards not only used their blood-hounds for hunting down their own runaway slaves, but hired them out to the planters of the other islands for the same purpose. As many as forty and fifty huntsmen have been known to be hired, with their hounds, ninety or a hundred in number, to perform this work, when a great body of negroes in any island has taken flight, and established themselves in the woods. And it was no novelty with the Spaniards thus to hunt their fellow-creatures for the lucre of gain. Many original settlers in South America, those men whom sordid avarice prompted thus to acts of cruelty wholly without a parallel in the history of the most blood-thirsty of savage tribes, chased and massacred the unhappy Indians by packs of blood-hounds. It was the remains of this breed that I saw employed by the descendants of those Spaniards, when I visited Cuba.

"During this excursion into the interior of the island, I chanced to see the negro character in a perfectly new position. There are far more whites in proportion to blacks in the Havanna than in any other town of the West Indies; but there are also far more free people of colour in that than in any other place which I have seen. Some of them have acquired property to a considerable amount; and with one of these, Don Francesco Moreno, I made acquaintance, through the priest, who knew his confessor. I found him an agreeable and well-informed man. I saw him once or twice when he came to wait upon the Governor, during my stay at the Havanna, and I accepted his invitation to visit his plantation near the high land, when I went up the country. It was a singular, and to me a most gratifying sight to see this worthy man, living in all the refinement of civilized society, with its tastes and its habits as familiar to him as to one of our own race, surrounded by an amiable and accomplished family, and exercising a liberal hospitality to persons of all ranks, who favoured him with their company. I had found no Spaniard in the Havanna so well informed as this excellent negro, certainly none whose manners so much pleased me; for he had all the dignity of the Spanish decorum, without any of its over-done stateliness, or exaggerated self-importance. His conversation, too, was agreeable and racy; for he never at any time forgot his origin, nor lowered the dignity of his race by needless compliances; and occasionally, forgetting with whom he was conversing, he would rather think aloud the thoughts that might naturally correspond with his own prejudices, than adapt himself very nicely to ours.

"Talking at table after dinner, of liberality, national feeling, and the narrow-mindedness these so often engender, he said, 'For my own part, I cannot enter into such notions at all. If I find a man well-conditioned, honourable in his conduct, and correct in his behaviour, I can hold out my hand to him as a friend, though he be as white as that table-cloth.'—This remark he saw made me smile, and that led to some discussion upon the difference of the races. 'Shall we never,' said I, 'live to see our inveterate prejudice against mixing the breeds by intermarriage, wear away among us?'—'I hardly expect it,' he answered; 'there would be probably little difficulty on your parts, for obvious reasons. But I can scarcely think that any length of time or closeness of intercourse will ever get over our very strong feeling of aversion to the unnatural white colour of the European skin; to say nothing of the lank, ungraceful hair, of various grotesque colours, even before gluttony and drunkenness and all other kinds of indulgence have made it as white as the skin it covers. Besides, one not only feels the colour, and necessarily feels it, as a hideous deformity, but the idea of it is invariably connected with that of disease. I should as soon think of throwing my arms around the neck of a leper, as one of your fair countrywomen.'—I asked him 'had he ever seen the Marchesa Grua, the great beauty of the Havanna,—for surely there was warmth enough in her complexion, which was even bordering upon darkish.'—'Why yes,' he said, 'and if she had not that frightful brown hair, she might approach to a mulatto beauty; a pale, plain, and diseased mulatto, however; and, observe, I don't admit the possibility of mulatto beauty, though it is of a hue less disgusting than the white. But,' added he, 'I once bought a miniature of your other Havanna beauty, Condesa Calderon, who is frightful white itself; I took it home as a curiosity to show my family what Spaniards admire; and it was used for some time in the house as a monster to frighten the young children when they cried.' His family had no intercourse with the city; his lady

Donna Isabella alone had ever been there; and being a well-educated and accomplished person, herself superintended the education of her only remaining daughter, as Don Francesco did that of his two boys. I observed that these children were well brought up, and could easily conceal any feelings which my appearance had a tendency to excite; all but the youngest boy, who ran away on my entering the room, and raised a cry as if he had seen some hideous wild animal. His mamma excused him by saying that this was the first time they had been favoured with the company of a European, except on one occasion when the Governor passed through, and then the children were all gone to bed.

"On many points, even of some delicacy, my worthy host conversed with me freely enough in the course of the evening, during the intervals of Donna Isabella and the young lady playing and singing, and of an old negro actor and a younger one amusing us with their African airs and droll buffooneries. I found, however, that any approach to one subject was extremely painful to him. The subjection of slaves to black masters he quite understood, and his own plantation was worked by a sable peasantry, all in servitude, though treated like domestics rather than slaves. This seemed to him quite in the natural order of things; as long as his countrymen would not labour for hire, and while some were rich and others poor, no other arrangement could grow out of the circumstances of society. But nothing could reconcile his mind to a white being the owner, and master, and tyrant of blacks. He admitted the great superiority of our race in knowledge, in wealth, and in cultivation; but still it seemed like a subversion of the fundamental laws of nature that our 'pale, miserable figures should be seen domineering over the children of the sun, rejoicing in their indomitable strength, their boundless activity, and glowing with all the luxuriant warmth of their splendid beauty.' He seemed to think it like the lower animals holding man in subjection. 'But this,' he said, 'is by very far too unnatural a state of things to last. That it has endured so long seems wholly inexplicable. Every hour now brings it nearer its close. That close is hastened by the insane measures of the whites, above all by their wicked prosecution of the African traffic. Depend upon it we shall ere long see the fruits of this accursed tree gathered by our black people, who must, and will, and shall, regain the mastery, and either exterminate the whites, or subdue them.'

"I did not on this occasion thwart my worthy friend, by keeping up the argument, which I must have done had I continued the conversation. But he afterwards mentioned a circumstance to illustrate the deep feelings with which the negroes, especially of the French colonies, cherish their remembrance of oppression and degradation. A friend of his in St. Domingo now free, having been enabled to purchase his liberty by an accidental bequest of money, had thriven in the world, and become a considerable proprietor of coffee-grounds. 'I sometimes go to pay him a visit,' said Don Francesco, 'and he lives in comfort, and even in the elegance of civilized society, having a house in Cape François, from which his coffee-plantation is somewhat distant. But I always find that he retains possession of two trinkets, lodged in a box, which he keeps as carefully as any of our ladies do their jewel-caskets—an iron once round his wrist as a fetter on some apprehended disobedience and mutiny, and a lash with which he had once been scourged, and which he afterwards secured and secreted. Sometimes when we are canvassing confidentially the prospects of our noble but unhappy race, he will bring out this casket and draw forth these precious relics, the emblems of his former sufferings. When he views them his eyes sparkle, his teeth gnash; it is easy to see that his imagination is on fire, that he is intoxicating himself with the sweets of anticipated revenge upon the cruel oppressors of his kindred.'

"My curiosity was powerfully excited by these conversations, and by what I had myself seen in St. Domingo. I made many inquiries touching the negro people. My excellent host said that he could enable me to see them in peculiar circumstances, as he had the means of taking me to some of their midnight orgies, where, having no fear of the driver's lash, or the overseer's superintendence, they give a loose to their naturally gay temper, spending the night in sports, as they have been compelled to pass the day in toil; but also, he said, their naturally superstitious habits break out on the same occasion, and the turns of their affrighted and bewildered imaginations frequently have as free a scope as their mirthful disposition. It was agreed that we should repair to one of those resorts; and we chose the estate of a white planter, whose negroes were known to my friend, and would, from their confidence in him, let us be present, not only at their dances, but at their more gloomy mysteries. About eleven at night we arrived among them, and the first hour was passed in all the frolics of African humour, grotesque dances, extravagant, but not bad acting, ludicrous buffoonery, music, sometimes plaintive, more frequently noisy. Twelve o'clock came; and a body of them, not very numerous, collected itself together and retired to a cave, whither we followed. Two huge sacks were produced, and a third of lesser size. Instantly the contents of the larger ones were discharged, and the negroes, as if by a single movement, paved the cave with human skulls, hard, dry, and bleached white. In another minute the walls were hung with bloody skulls and bloody jaw-bones, all as if the life had been recently taken. The horrid mysteries of Obi were now performed, to a dismal, drawling air, which all present, but our two selves, bore their part in chaunting. The skulls of three cats were then laid upon a board in the centre of the cavern; the beak of a bird, and a tiger's tooth, as an old negro explained to us, were laid close by the skulls, with a plantain leaf, on which he said grave-dust was spread. These, we were told, were fetiches or charms. The Fetisser or priest now muttered over the board certain incantations, which, we were told, consisted of prayers to a large serpent; and then it was produced, stuffed, of hideous size, and was addressed as the 'grandfather of snakes.' I asked if these were not Christians. 'No, no,' said my friend, 'not one of them. Outwardly they conform, and pretend to be converted; but their horror of a religion whose votaries make the misery of their lives is in exact proportion to their abhorrence of its professors, and I firmly believe that a Catholic priest's life would not be safe in this cavern, though they might have confessed to him, or pretended to confess, the week or the day before. I wish we may not before we leave this spot see samples of their feelings towards the Christians and the whites. Thus, I know that such of them as are redeemed from the most degrading of their African superstitions, and no longer worship serpents, have a black idol as the good spirit, and a white as the evil one.'

"He had hardly spoken when I saw two negroes bring in a small figure, seemingly of wax, representing a man reclining on a bed. The Fetisser took it up in his arms, and approached it to the small fire, which had been lit in one corner of the cave.—'Burn thee! melt thee! end thee! curse thee!'—he said or sung, as he gradually roasted and melted and consumed each limb.—'This,' said the old negro, who had instructed us, 'this is our overseer's figure, and Obi is laid for him. He cannot escape.'—Don Francesco told me that every negro believes implicitly in the omnipotence of the Obi charms, and that as soon as it is known that Obi is laid for any one of them by the procurement of an enemy, or from jealousy, or to detect any offence, he gives himself up for lost, never doubts of his fate, and, unless his spirit is of an undaunted nature, pines away and dies. Instances had been known of one plantation losing as many as a hundred negroes in the course of a few years from the incantations of an old Fetisser, or Obi man. The laws of most colonies forbid these practices under even important penalties, and when this man was discovered and banished the island, the negroes regained their cheerfulness as if by miracle. But these men whom we now saw at their incantations implicitly believed in the fate of the overseer being now sealed; 'and indeed,' added my friend, 'if the consummation of the sorcery be long delayed, I fear means will not be wanting to the Fetisser of accomplishing his own predictions; the overseer will be found poisoned in his bed.'

"This operation of roasting apparently formed the main business of the night, But a more horrid sight was presented to the eye than the melting of an image. A procession moved through the cavern, headed by a standard-bearer, and the standard was the body of an infant, at least the image of an infant's body, impaled on a long spear. While they moved through the cave, an alarm-bell was heard to toll, as if to give warning of some fire, and this implied a muster of negroes on the estate, perhaps a visitation of their haunts. In less time than it had taken to lay them down, the skulls were taken up, and, with the bloody bones on the wall, were conveyed to the sacks, which with the fetiche board were buried in a deep recess of the cave; the fire was put out; the cavern was deserted; and all the negroes were again dancing and singing and acting on the open space near the concealed recess. It proved to be a false alarm of fire; and I accompanied my friend and host, to his house, deeply impressed with the marked abhorrence of his white oppressors, and the fixed determination to have his revenge on them, which fills the mind of the negro, and bursts forth as often as an occasion is found of indulging it with safety. The words of Don Francesco, also, recurred to my mind, when, in discussing the subject he exclaimed, 'Ere long our black people must, and will, and shall regain the mastery, and exterminate the whites or subdue them.' "

END OF VOL. II.

VOLUME III.

THE CHÂTEAU.

————

CHAPTER I.

PROGRESS OF REVOLUTION.

Albert had reached, apparently, the latest period of his singular history; but he had still more to relate than the time would now permit; and after some conversation, which naturally arose out of the picture he had presented to his young friend of West Indian society, they separated with the design of again meeting in a few days, and then finishing the long narrative.

"How is it in human nature," said the Count before he took his departure, "to witness, aye, or even to hear of such things—of the slave-mart, the slave-cargo, the accursed African ship—and not join in the natural expression, though of frightful rage, which you witnessed in the hurricane near Cape François?

My blood alternately curdles and boils when I think of the cruelties inflicted on that unhappy race; and I feel as if nothing could grieve me less than some convulsion of society which should at once snap their chains."—"Yes," said Albert, "the feeling may be natural, but it is also very unreflecting. Such a convulsion would be a frightful explosion, as fatal to the one colour as to the other. The whites would be overpowered by the vast numbers of the negroes; but these are ill-fitted for self-government; their very wrongs, the state they have been kept in, their habitual subjection, unfits them for enjoying freedom; and a scene of deplorable anarchy must succeed their violent emancipation and their extirpation of the whites."—"Still," said the Count, "it is difficult to think of the slave-ship, and the blood-hound, and the cart-whip, and not say Welcome any event that can end such horrors."—"As it might be natural," said Albert, "and yet would be very unreasonable, to wish for an earthquake which should destroy, or a deluge which should swallow up the islands, exterminating the suffering slaves with their oppressive masters. Mark well," he continued, "if I am averse to such violence, it is for the sake of the injured sufferers, not of the guilty wrong-doers. As far as they are concerned, my feelings, even my principles, go along with you."—"But the same thing," said Chatillon, "cannot be said of the Continent; of Virginia and Carolina, for example, where the same disproportion exists not between the two races, which makes any violent emancipation to be dreaded in the islands. Surely, if these Republicans who so shamefully, even against their most sacred principles, persist in holding a million of their fellow-creatures in chains, no feeling of compassion nor any notions of expediency should prevent us from desiring to see the catastrophe which must sooner or later result from their blind perseverance in the present wicked system. If all the slaves, leaving the whites alone, were to assert their freedom, and secure only as much of the land as would suffice for their support, who could either blame them, or pity their cruel masters?"—"I own," said Albert, "that my sentiments do not differ widely from yours on this great matter. But one thing I will say,—should the Americans show a proper sense of justice and of consistency, by not only stopping the importation of slaves (this they must do for their own safety), but by framing measures which may pave the way for liberating those now in their country, I should not be very anxious to hurry forward the moment of emancipation. I should be satisfied if I saw steps taken with decision for preparing to bring about, within a reasonable time, that happy consummation."

Chatillon found on leaving the hidden apartment, and returning to the inhabited rooms, that he had stayed so long as to leave him little time for seeing his friends before dinner was announced. He saw all present in a state of silent alarm, the arrival of Ernest Deverell from Nismes having brought intelligence of serious disturbances broken out in Dauphiné. The riots were said to have been most formidable at Grenoble, where the Governor, the Duke de Tonnère, had been forced to save his life by giving up the keys of the garrison to the insurgents, and these had broken into his house and pillaged his fine cabinet. Accounts had also been received of riots at Rennes in Britany. There had been other disturbances in different places. Some of the company assembled at the Château were of opinion that these excesses might prove beneficial by rousing the government to put forth its strength. "No one," said M. La Croasse, "can for a moment doubt what would be the result of so unequal a conflict." It was, however, observed by Ernest, who had seen the Governor of Nismes, that a most alarming symptom had in one or two instances been lately exhibited; the military were with difficulty prevailed upon to act, and in one case had positively refused to take part against their fellow-citizens. This was in part ascribed to the troops having been engaged in the American war, but probably without ground. It was, however, quite certain that many of the officers, some of them men of rank, who served in the contest with the Republicans, had brought back high notions of liberty, which they were not slow to promulgate, with a pretty strong expression of hatred to arbitrary power. La Croasse himself could not deny that this formed a most alarming part of the case; but he still maintained that the sound part of the army, if used with vigour, would be sufficient to prevent further mischief, and above all to ward off the greatest of evils and of dangers too, he said, the making what concessions you may admit, and what concessions are in themselves just, to the violence of the lawless mob. "To them," said he, "nothing—to justice, and reason, and kindness, everything—should be the maxim; and in order to have a shelter behind which you can exercise this wise policy, begin by putting down tumult, with a strong, that is an armed hand. After that, as much concession as you please, and as is right."

An event had happened shortly before these disturbances, which was considered of importance at the time, and still more on reflecting upon it afterwards. The Parliament, echoing the remonstrances of their brethren at Grenoble, had inveighed loudly against lettres de cachet, and called for the entire abolition of the power to issue them. The Queen and her party, seconded by the Count d'Artois, took this opportunity to press upon the King the necessity of violent measures; he had accordingly required the surrender of two obnoxious members, MM. Epresmenil and Monsambert. To enforce his demand, he surrounded the House with a body of troops, and the Colonel entering, asked which were the two members. The President starting up said, "Every man you see here is an Epresmenil and a Monsambert," intimating that all agreed in their sentiments. Such was the vacillation which followed this attempt at vigour that Colonel Degout was unable to obtain further instructions from the Court for nearly four and twenty hours after he made his report. Meanwhile the Parliament was locked up, the troops surrounded it, the Colonel came again and threatened all who refused to obey, with the pains of treason. A dead silence was the only answer made; when the two members voluntarily surrendered themselves and were immediately sent to distant prisons, one as far as the Island in Provence where the man in the Iron Mask had formerly been confined. A vehement remonstrance of the Parliament was the immediate consequence; the King was plainly charged with a design to govern unconstitutionally by arbitrary power; and a fixed determination was expressed on behalf of the nation, never to suffer the laws to be trampled upon, or to respect the Royal authority unless it were exercised according to law and justice. The second meeting of the Notables, which quickly followed, led to further discontent with the Court, and the outrages in Britany and Dauphiné plainly showed that the provinces at the least shared in the excitement of Paris and its Parliament.

"When we lately discussed the policy and the conduct of the King," said the Baron, "we made no allowance for the unfortunate influence of his family."

"On that score," the Marquess observed, "I cannot possibly make any allowance at all. To yield to their entreaty what he refuses to his lawful, regular, and responsible advisers, or what his own deliberate judgment disapproves, is only another form of charging him with misconduct, if indeed it be not an aggravation of his offence. Mark, I am speaking your high language, which imputes to sovereigns as offences all their great errors."—"But at least," said M. La Croasse, "we must allow something for the influence of one so connected with him as his Queen is, to say nothing of her fascinating personal qualities."—"I hold," said the Baron, "that a man who would suffer a woman to govern him in such a situation as the king's, and in such a crisis as the present, is wholly unworthy of a throne."—"What?" said Mme. de Chatillon, "and are we to be told that a woman, merely because she is a woman, must be regarded as a cypher, treated as a mere empty pageant of a court, brought into the ball-room, or the card-room, or the royal box at the theatre, by way ornament, and then be silenced when she would speak her mind on state-affairs, in which she has as deep a stake as any mortal breathing, with the insulting remark 'you are but a woman?' "—"I crave your mercy," said he, "but I only was considering that, there being certain most essential functions women never can perform, as sitting in council, holding office, commanding troops, and indeed our law barring the throne itself against them"—"But not the regency," she quickly replied, "and I fancy Anne of Austria was about as able a governor as either her husband or her grandson. Besides, all you say—or nearly all—is applicable to certain professions whose members you yet allow to meddle with state-affairs—what say you to priests? They can neither command troops, nor act as judges, nor be governors of provinces; and yet both in France and Spain they have more power than most of the laity,"—"Yes," said Mme. de Bagnolles, "and I recollect an anecdote of our English King, James II., who, on the Spanish ambassador's advising him rather to be counselled by his ministers than his priests, asked if the King of Spain did not go by the advice of his confessor, 'He does,' said the Spaniard, 'and that is exactly the reason why our affairs go so badly.' "

The Countess here broke out in an enumeration of the empresses and queens who had distinguished themselves by talents for governing, and was extremely wroth with young Deverell for citing the old saying, that things prosper under queens better than under kings, because men rule under those, women under these. She also was not a little irritated at the silence which the Baron kept during her dispute, in which she stood alone. He not only abstained, from the uneasiness which he laboured under on account of Emmeline, who was confined to her room that day by indisposition; but he avoided joining the conversation on account of his fair idol herself, whom he had of late found it extremely difficult to deal with. If he opposed her, she would be angry in a covert and suppressed manner; if he agreed with her, she would show an outright and open irritation. It seemed quite impossible to avoid giving her offence. She appeared to be ill at ease with herself; and to visit upon others the consequences of her own indiscreet avowal of love; but most of all upon him to whom it had been made, and who was its cause. Nothing, however, gave her more offence than his thwarting her in any place from tender care for her personal comfort or her safety. If he besought her not to expose herself to the air at sunset for fear of the inflammatory attack which such imprudence is apt to bring on; if he anxiously warned her against driving a pair of half-broken horses, which the Chevalier had yoked to a light phaeton; or if he would only have her write her letters so early as not to be hurried for the post; and when she was too late, if he offered to ride with them afterwards himself to the town—all these attentions, merely because they proceeded from a warm interest taken in whatever concerned her, seemed to pass for the fruits of some selfish suggestion, as if she mistook the Baron's care about her for a care about himself, merely because he preferred her ease to his own. But of all the offences which he could commit, the one most past forgiveness was any advice, or hint, how delicately soever conveyed, even if wrapped up in the language of devoted admiration, but which pointed to any error in her conduct. "Might I venture, dearest friend, with the deepest respect," he would say, trembling for the reception his admonition might meet, "only thinking of yourself, and desiring that you may be as perfect in all other eyes as you are in mine,—might I venture to wish you would spare those taunts thrown out upon our amiable friend the Marchioness? You lack no praise for wit, no fame as a satirist."—"Baron, I don't comprehend you," was the instant reply. "I suppose I am to have my opinion as well as other people."—"Pray, for God's sake, my dearest Countess, don't be so angry."—"I am not angry at all. Baron; I am only tired, and bored, and plagued to death with such stupid observations."—"But, dearest lady, I had but one motive or feeling—anxious friendship, a constant regard for you, and desire to see you as lovely as you are fascinating." This put an end to all possibility of continuing the conversation: she vowed that it was treating her like a child, and declared that if there was anything she disliked more than every other, it was people taking the trouble of being friendly and anxious about her.

But a very untoward circumstance soon occurred; or rather had, unknown either to the Baron or herself, occurred two months before, and was now first brought to her knowledge. Ernest Deverell had not for so long a time gazed upon her charms without being captivated, like all other gazers; but having more self-confidence, and having also had so much success in the circles of Paris, he was less discouraged than others in what to them seemed a hopeless pursuit. His cleverness, his easy and polished manners, had made his professed admiration bearable and even palatable to her; and as the slightest encouragement sufficed to raise hopes in him, a mere trifle, of no moment whatever, her asking him to drive her in his father's open carriage, inspired him with positive expectations of victory; for this incident happened at a time when some coldness between her and the Baron gave Ernest's watchful eyes the notion of a quarrel having taken place, and even of all intercourse having ceased with his happy rival. The reception he met with was most cold and humiliating; it was even contemptuous; and the tone of the Countess was to be angry, and resent his advances as an insult to her position, her married state. The youth was piqued by the severity of her language, and the scorn which she evinced, and which plainly was not put on for the occasion; he was thrown off his guard; and in a moment of irritation he hinted plainly enough that he knew more than she could wish of her friendship for M. de Moulin. He dwelt on that "friendship" with a sneering emphasis; this enraged the fair one beyond endurance; she increased the bitterness of her speech towards him; when he in a mock tender tone, and as if imitating her voice while he threw himself into her attitude, whispered tenderly the words "My dearest friend," which she had so often felt she would give worlds to recall, but which she had always believed were only breathed in the Baron's ear. She screamed and grew pale. Her anger suddenly fell, and terror only remained. Deverell, sincerely vexed at his own intemperance, tried to comfort and to soothe her. She eyed him as if she grudged him the air he breathed, and thought each moment his life was prolonged, an age. He was too honourable to leave the least doubt on the source of his information, lest the Baron might be supposed to have made a confidence to him. He at once declared that he was in the Orangery, in the dark, unknown to her, and, surprised by their coming in, had been an involuntary witness of the declaration and endearments which preceded the Baron's journey to Lyons. Of course he was lavish in his excuses for having alluded to the subject, and as lavish in his solemn vows never again to let the most remote allusion to it cross his lips. All was vain; she refused all comfort; she vowed she cared not whom he apprised of it, so he never dared to insult her by coming near the subject; and she then broke away to her own apartment, where, unable to read, or write, or speak, or think, she flung herself upon the sofa, in an agony of mortified pride and vexatious fear combined, the mixture which most entirely unhinges the mind, as that of some mineral poisons, mercury and antimony for instance, has a like power of suddenly decomposing the bodily frame in some habits.

It did not tend much to soothe her in this state of distress, that there were manifest indications of the party at length breaking up at the Château. Various accidents had led to its continuance being prolonged; but notwithstanding the near relationship of the parties, the Count could not remain much longer, and even if he did, the Baron, who had been repeatedly at the end of all the excuses he could devise for lingering on in the society he most loved, must now leave the south, and point his steps towards his own country. The prospect before her, therefore, was anything rather than cheerful. She was much in the power of one whom she neither respected nor esteemed, and who on his restoration to his proper orbit, the Parisian circles, might, for anything she could tell, make her weakness the topic of his mirth in general society, or of his confidential disclosures to those he was addressing. She was still more in the power of another, but him she passionately loved; and from him she must in all probability soon be separated, only to meet late in the ensuing season, when she might find him absorbed in politics, or changed in his feelings towards her. The aspect of public affairs gave her comparatively little uneasiness: she was not apt to be alarmed; very prone to indulge in sanguine views of all but her own personal concerns. However, a long and serious illness into which the Marchioness de Bagnolles fell about this time, and which would have made it cruel to leave the Marquess, seemed to give her a respite, and she begged, she intreated, she implored the Baron to defer his journey. Towards him she no longer could show any of her accustomed pride, as if she were unable to spare any of it from Ernest, against whom its concentrated vehemence was all levelled. For the more she stood in dread of his disclosures, and the more she felt herself in his power, the more proudly did she behave towards him, the more scornfully did she on every occasion treat him. She seemed to defy him, and acted as if she would obliterate the evidence of his senses and his memory by carrying herself like one entirely innocent, and even unjustly slandered. She behaved as if she had forgotten everything herself, and as if she could by ill-treatment erase everything from his recollection, having by some preternatural effort blotted it from her own. Ernest, on his part, heartily sorry for having been betrayed into a disclosure which he felt ought never to have escaped his lips, bore all her demeanour with the greatest calmness, and even good humour; nor did this administer much to her relief; she rather was vexed to see his imperturbable temper, so unlike her own, and drew from it a conclusion that he would take his revenge when she should not be present to protect herself.

Meanwhile events went on thickening around them. The announcement was made that the King had at length resolved upon calling the States General, and the third Assembly of the Notables was to occupy itself with arranging the plan of their election and the order of their proceedings. M. La Croasse had now left the Château, unable to prolong his visit like the other guests, but of two gentlemen from Nismes, who were frequent visitors there, one, the Chief Judge of the Languedoc Tribunal, fully supplied his place; for his principles were as much on the extreme of royalism, and his fears of change were, from his enlarged views, if possible, more disquieting. Though a man of a firm mind, M. de Chapeley could descry no bright spot in the whole of the overclouded and unsettled horizon now surrounding them. The other, M. Catteau, also a lawyer, but only a private practitioner, and though clever and not ill-informed, yet without success in his profession, gave his whole mind to politics, and had rushed into the most violent extreme of what were now termed "constitutional opinions." His respect for the judge did not in any way mitigate the extravagance of the language he held in his presence; he treated his alarms as delusions arising from his station, and avowed himself devoted to the cause of the people. When M. de Chapeley mildly reminded him of the risk which others ran who had property, rank, station, or professional distinction, and consequent gains, to lose, while he at least was playing a game entirely safe, and in which the loss of all other classes might make him, and those like him, winners, he laughed scornfully as he said,—"They who like me have what is insolently called nothing to lose, have taken no bribe from fortune, through any of the channels whereby she corrupts. We are neither gained over to the abuses of the existing system by sharing in them at Court, or by holding offices in the law, or by enjoying professional incomes, or by possessing wealth in any shape—for in any shape wealth is a bribe, being enjoyed in security only while public affairs remain steadily quiet."—"Has it never struck you, my dear Catteau," said the Marquess, "that as all true patriots must be anxious for whatever best promotes the interest of their country at large, if your principle were acted upon, and only those courses pursued which benefited or which pleased men without any stake in the country, the fearful consequence must be the sacrifice of the whole to the advantage or the gratification of a very trifling part?"—"Yes, truly," said the lawyer, "a very trifling part, if we are to be regarded as all, without reckoning those we represent. But be pleased to consider that we speak the sentiments and maintain the cause of the million. We have little ourselves, but those we represent have less; and trust me that in the end they must prevail."

"Catteau," said the Judge, "I know your doctrine, and any more dangerous never was broached or was preached. Your rule is always to go to the extreme of any opinion, and to spurn all qualification, all mitigation of it, as a compromise with the adversary, and an abandonment of principle. It was in this way you cut out Jussieu as a leader of faction, an able and learned man, but who had some reason, some moderation in his opinions, while you went to the uttermost extent on all questions."

"And if I found any one go further than I now go," said Catteau, "I should at once shoot a-head of him, provided it was in the right direction."

"Meaning thereby," said the Judge, "the high popular direction—the direction taken by those who inculcate upon the public the belief of their own unity, their own omnipotence, their own omniscience."

"I don't much quarrel," he replied, "with your description; my fixed opinion being that such is the course which the better part of the State must now take. The States General are convoked for next May. What care I for the instrument which commissions the Notables, a set of crown nominees, nobles, magistrates, and the like, to regulate their proceedings? When they shall meet will they regard the opinions of the packed and despicable Notables?"—"However," the Judge said, "the mode of electing them will, meantime, be fixed, and that must influence the constitution of the body."—"Not in the least," said Catteau. "Enough for me that a thousand or twelve hundred men are to be delegated, and two from the

Commons, or third estate, for every one from the privileged orders. I wonder how in the present temper of men's minds any such assembly can be chosen that will not run headlong towards the fundamental change, what I call the real reformation, of our whole system."—"I fear," said M. Chapeley, with a deep sigh, "I fear me your prediction is too likely to be realized; I grieve to think of the stormy times that await us. One comfort I have is that I shall not long remain to see and to suffer."—"And I, sir," said the fiery advocate of the people, his only client, "I glory in the hope that we are touching upon the age of great events; when men of genuine principle will rise to the surface; and your moderates, and compromising time-servers, with their worldly ambition, your Jussieus, in a word, will be precipitated to the bottom, and no more heard of than the other dregs to which they naturally belong in the mass."

The conversation was interrupted by a message suddenly brought to the Chevalier, who was sitting musing on the talk he heard, but taking no part in it. The purport was alarming to him, and he quitted the room. The Marquess ran after him, and returned with the intelligence that Ernest Deverell had had a severe fall; that he lay senseless at a neighbouring inn, whither his father was gone: and that he had never spoken since the accident. The Countess hastily left the room, and sent for Chatillon. "I do desire that you will instantly follow the Chevalier, and ascertain all the particulars of this accident."—"Why, really, my love," said he, "I hardly think it becoming in me to show so much more anxiety than his own nearest relations, all of whom, doubtless, feel alarmed and interested in his fate, but"—"Fate," said she, her eyes glittering with extraordinary lustre—"Fate! you speak of fate! Is there a—chance"—she added, as if hesitating for a word and then taking the wrong one—"I mean a fear—is there a fear for the young man's life?"—"Why, I apprehend there is"—her husband answered.—"Then may not I feel anxious, interested—alarmed, I mean—as well as any one else?—I suppose there's no harm in that." There was a something that powerfully struck the Count, in this extreme eagerness, so unlike her who never seemed to care for one man more than another, unless in so far as he contributed to her amusement or to her political information.

The idea hastily passed through his mind, that, had his nature been jealous, here seemed an occasion for feeling that vexation. This made his refusal any longer look like having such a feeling, and as no man can bear to be suspected of jealousy until the eve of its final explosion, he at once said he would go, as she desired it.—He went, leaving her on the very rack of anxious and eager expectation that every step she heard approach her door would bring the most interesting intelligence. Foot after foot came, the bearer of persons wholly ignorant, most of them wholly careless, of the young man's condition. At length, impatient beyond endurance at the delay, she went to the library, then to the salon, then to the billiard-room; but all were gone to their apartments before dinner, and she could find no one possessed of the least information upon that which so deeply interested her. She returned to her own room. Soon after Chatillon came, with a gay countenance and said, "Thank God!"—"Thank God, for what, then?"—she exclaimed, seizing hold of his wrist and looking as through him with her fierce eye. "For what are we to thank God?"—she repeated.—"Why, that he is quite safe, my dear."—"Quite safe!"—she roared, casting his hand from her with a swing that made it vibrate round his body. "Oh, yes!" she added, resuming her self possession; " Oh, yes! He is safe,—thank—God!—But I desire to know what kept you so long while I was waiting in anxious impatience? Did you walk on purpose to lose so much time? Was that your kind, good-natured, obliging plan?"—He now knew that something, he could not tell what, had put her in a bad humour; and that any one thing would then be made the ground of picking a quarrel, and the theme of the quarrelsome discourse. Indeed, she began upon another topic and expressed herself with extreme anger about a book she had got from him, attacking some things in it as if he had been the author rather than the owner of the work. So, muttering between his teeth somewhat like "Thank God, I have got a hat,"—he quietly withdrew to take a walk alone, when she recommended him to keep his sneers for those whom they better suited, and to save his piety for a fitter occasion, as his hat could be of little use to him while every one was dressing for dinner.

She now, by an effort, regained her outward composure; but nothing that passed that evening had the least power to engage her attention, unless when some account came from the Chevalier at the inn, or when the particulars of the accident were talked of. Her spirits were now exhausted by the two vicissitudes, each of them sudden, which her mind had in a short period of time undergone. In one minute she had heard of Ernest being seriously, she had easily believed fatally, hurt; in another mind, within only an hour from that intelligence, she had heard and believed, as certainly though less readily, that the injury proved immaterial. She was now in the self-same predicament as three hours before. But she had undergone alarm and anxiety and suspense quite sufficient to shake her nerves and exhaust her spirits, and she took no interest and bore no part in the general conversation, which again rolled upon the critical state, as all allowed it to be, of the country.

"What is your opinion, M. de Chapeley," said the Baron, "of the spirit generally prevailing among the people? Will they show that they feel much interest in the passing events, or will the movement now spreading be confined to a few places, such as Grenoble and Rennes, where the Parliaments have taken an active part in the controversy?"

The President said, "Always admitting how difficult a problem it is to determine what the people will do, or even what opinions actually prevail among them, because we never can have the requisite data for solving it, my notion is, that as a mass they do not take any great interest in the present disputes. The state of the finances, the cause of all the mischief, little affects, unless it be the Gabelle, those who have no property; the feudal exactions form no part of the grievances sought to be remedied, and if they did they only affect the country people, and chiefly the small proprietors; whereas when you speak of the people, in connection with a revolutionary movement, you mean of course the masses congregated in large towns, and not the individuals scattered over farms or only inhabiting small villages. The effects of the great grievance of all, the lettres de cachet, absolutely pass over their heads, and strike only the upper ranks. The quarrels of the Parliaments they care nothing whatever about; for the lawyers never had any popular following among us. Indeed, the parliamentary places are property, being bought, and sold, and inherited; and their holders, belonging to the aristocracy, are regarded like other proprietors."

"But, M. le Chef Juge," said the Baron, "you will recollect that both at Grenoble and Toulouse, the people took part with the Parliament, and even broke out into excesses. Count Perigord, our governor of Languedoc, was forced to fly, and the two regiments to be withdrawn, while the multitude actually took up the paving-stones as if to prepare for a siege."

"I am far from affirming," said the Judge, "that such gross indiscretion as violently banishing these two Parliaments for acting in the discharge of their public duty, how erroneously soever that of Grenoble may have proceeded on the subject of lettres de cachet, will produce no sympathy among those who, generally speaking, care nothing for those judicial and administrative bodies; and, indeed, I excepted the towns where Parliaments are, when I expressed my belief that the present ferment is not universal. I must add, that if such vigorous measures were to be taken in these places, common prudence dictated the necessity of being well prepared to support them,"

"Then," said the Baron, "don't you imagine that the issuing of this decree calling the States will produce some general excitement? Is it not natural to expect that the exercise of the right of electing deputies will soon inoculate the people with a political feeling, should they have none at present?"

"Why, hardly," said M. de Chapeley; "I hardly expect that many of the people will attend the elections. The elective office is a function they never have been used to perform; nor is the exercise of it, the mere choice of a delegate whose functions are also very obscurely conceived by them, likely to interest them greatly."

"In England, however," said M. Catteau, "the people take the liveliest interest in their elections. The sovereignty of the people there assumes a truly imposing attitude, and makes both peers and princes tremble."

"Why, Catteau," said the Judge, " you are forgetting two material things; the functions of the deputies are, in England, familiar to the electors, because they are accustomed for ages to see them exercised in the legislation, and even the government of the country; and their own functions, as electors, have become equally well known to them, from the assiduous court paid, and I fear occasionally from the undue means taken to obtain, even corruptly obtain, their suffrages."

"In France," said Catteau, "I glory to think such means must fail. The divine attributes of the people in their sovereign capacity never can be brought to so low a level by corruption any more than by intimidation. Witness the glorious conduct of Toulouse, where the military threatened in vain, and were forced to retreat."

"Catteau," said the Judge, "I have no more reliance upon the political purity than I have upon the political courage of uneducated men, or upon their political wisdom or their virtue when acting in large masses. Nor is there one of them whose judgment on any matter, be he acquainted or not with the subject, I would not infinitely rather trust, taking it from him individually, than I would the opinion of the mass to which he belongs, of which he forms a unit among thousands, and which is sure to act by impulse, consulting always its feelings, and never its reason. Nay, I go farther—there is such a contagious effect in violence, when once you assemble your mob, that the same man who individually would be safe to follow, or to command, or to advise with, shall become as heedless of consequences, and as utterly useless for all purposes, as if he were no longer the same individual, nor indeed is he."

"For all purposes, thank God," said the Advocate, "except one, and for that, thank God also, their perfect use consists in their numbers."—"And pray what may that one excepted function be, the bare thought of which makes your countenance radiant, and your breath devoutly thankful?"—"For the purpose of action!" said Catteau, with a sinister look and a grin of ferocious delight.

"Yes, yes," said the calm and clear-seeing Judge. "Yes, for action no doubt, and for something else, which I make no manner of question you also have in your eye,—for submission, for obedience to the will of its leaders, no doubt a mob, because of the very defects I am alluding to, is naturally both a blind instrument and a sharp tool; both prone to follow whatever impulsion is given by the leader's hand, and powerful to cut its way through all that may resist. But when you speak with such triumph of the force which multitudes acquire from their power as well as their mass, from the contagious feelings that influence them as well as from the numbers they consist of, don't forget the other qualify of your ally—your tool, let me again call it. If that tool be blind and be sharp, it is also apt to prove slippery; nay, apt to have its edge turned.

and turned the more easily the finer it is, when it suddenly encounters any obstacle."—"Again," said Catteau, " I cite the courage displayed at Toulouse."—"And again," said the Judge, "I will express my sad impression of the cruel injustice which closed the events of that day; when the most beloved of all the nobles in this country, I might say in France itself, he who the week before had been the darling of all ranks, even of the populace itself, was forced to fly from the seat of his government, having remained there twenty-four hours at the imminent peril of his life. Let me add that when you praise the courage of the undisciplined multitude, you also are forgetful of its fleeting nature, its capricious character. One hour they will under the influence of strong excitement face a battery, another they will fly from a couple of sentinels. Then I must observe that, whether congregated or acting separately, the unembodied people are the natural prey of a similar kind of fear. They are apt, exceedingly, incurably apt to credit all rumours, to be influenced by all panics; and, even where no such sudden influence is applied to their minds, they are exceedingly prone to bend and crouch before any authority, be it a man, a party, or a mob, parcel of their own body, in whom power is for the moment vested, and by whom it is displayed."

"I have heard," said the Marquess, "that this was exhibited in a striking manner both at Toulouse and at Grenoble during the late riots. They tell me that, at Grenoble particularly, a few hundred miscreants kept the whole people of the town in awe during their reckless, pillaging proceedings; while at Toulouse multitudes were compelled to join the insurgents, and still greater numbers lo look on as passive spectators and acquiesce in what they most disapproved, because the mob, that is, a thousand or two led on by a hundred or two, had gotten possession of the place."

"Depend upon it, Catteau," said the Judge, "it thus is and ever will be with the mere multitude. You cannot rely on their steady purpose in desiring any objects, nor can you reckon on their firm resolution in executing any plan; and they are truly, like the dealers in magic, those who are familiar with evil spirits, oftentimes the victims of the terrors they inspire."

When M. de Chapeley left the Château, which he did after dinner, good-naturedly taking M. Catteau in his carriage, the Baron mentioned to his host how much he had been struck with the learned judge's conversation, his profound sense, as well as happy expression, set off by the most winning good nature and delightful manners.

"He is indeed," said the Marquess, "all you say and more. There have been few men more eminent at our bar; nor would he discredit the most exalted station in the profession he adorns. His father was one of our most eminent artists, and the son has from college upwards been always the most distinguished of his contemporaries. At Montpellier he carried away the highest honours as a profound and elegant mathematician, his taste ever keeping pace with his solid, substantial acquirements. In manly vigour of mind, in a sagacity that never fails him, be it applied to great purposes or to smaller objects, in a happy power of throwing away the husk of any subject he has to master and reaching at once the kernel, he stands unequalled in the law. He was, as an advocate, skilful, dexterous, learned, ready, undaunted; as a judge his calm impartiality, his universal courtesy, his unwearied patience, can only be exceeded by his unexampled clearness and conciseness of statement, the soundness of his views, and the cogency of his reasoning. But if in most things he excels others, in one he seems to exceed himself. I would go any distance to enjoy again a treat I lately had the relish of, when he displayed to its utmost perfection, his great faculty of clear, connected, interesting narrative, without a single remark, or any attempt to apply his facts to his purpose—yet so completely effecting that purpose by painting to his auditory a lively picture of the whole case, that the most elaborate reasoning could not have more perfectly secured the adoption of his conclusions. They tell me that he, t'other day, equally astonished the court in which he presides, by a clear and vigorous statement of above twenty ordinances and edicts, giving the dates and the substance of each, without omitting even one figure, though without a single note to help his recollection. They say it was like a code of penal law (for penalties were the subject), from the edict of Moulins to the present time."—"And yet this extraordinary man," said the Baron, "is turned of seventy! Was he ever in greater mental force when younger?"—"Not at all; it was impossible he should. Nay, his body is as robust, and his intellect as clear as ever, that is to say, as any man's of any age can be. He has an amiable, and handsome, and accomplished daughter, whom you saw here the other day."

"I am aware of that," the Baron said; "my niece describes her as a delightful person; she has made her acquaintance, and likes her exceedingly. She tells me that M. de Chapeley is, in private life, the most amiable of men, as indeed, from all we see of him in society, one can easily believe. Pray, had he ever any political functions?"—"You are aware," said the Marquess, "that in our constitution, which, for any thing I know, differs from your Netherland system, the lawyer rarely if ever exercises any administrative functions. But M. de Chapeley, beside having been Procureur du Roi for some years, was much consulted in difficult times by the Governors of Languedoc. His unshaken firmness proved, in all difficult emergencies, a match for the occasion, and bore its full proportion to his unfailing sagacity and his fertility of resource. He often, indeed for many years generally, found himself opposed to his old and valued friend, M. de Balaye, now Second Judge in his court; and who had been a more eloquent and popular, though no man could be a more learned or skilful advocate, while both were at the bar. They resembled one another in their love of scientific pursuits, and in their agreeable manners, though the temper of our friend was always far milder than that of his fellow lawyer, but in their views of public affairs they often differed, and sometimes the one and sometimes the other prevailed. Of late, their long private friendship has never suffered even a moment's interruption from political differences, (indeed, it never did for above a moment at a time), both being now indissolubly knit together by their common apprehension of such leaders as the Catteau faction would prove; and thus their harmony is unbroken. Balaye is several years younger than the First President, and delights in making his heavy duties and important functions easy to him; and in private life they are, as indeed, they always have been, inseparable friends. There is nothing which these two humane and just judges have had more at heart than mitigating the sufferings of unfortunate persons who, without any fault of their own except poverty, being unable to pay their debts, are by the hard necessity of the judge's office consigned through his sentence, to the degradation, the suffering, and even the pollution of a prison. M. de Chapeley and M. de Balaye have given themselves unwearied pains to effect the release of this unhappy class of people, furthering every plan of compromise with their creditors, and even introducing rules of practice into their courts which have the effect of preventing many arrests, and of liberating many already in prison. It is their fixed opinion, indeed, which on all occasions they declare, that imprisonment never should be for debt, but only for fraudulent practices or other misconduct, provided the debtor be willing honestly and fairly to give up all his property for distribution among his creditors. In their endeavours to bring about the adoption of this wise and just principle, these two friends and colleagues co-operate with indefatigable zeal, while Catteau consumes the day in wild and furious talk."

"I am thankful," said the Baron, "for your kindness in giving me this portrait of these two distinguished friends. I only wish poor Emmeline had heard what, from her intimacy with Mdlle. de Chapeley, would so much have interested her. Of the Catteau tribe you have said but little."—"Nearly about as much as they merit," the Marquess said. "Nothing can well be more despicable, in all respects, but one; having no restraining connection with the power of the country, they have no principle, no fear of consequences, either here or hereafter; but, excepting the facility which this gives them to lead on the mob forces, they have no kind of resources (moyens). Without solid learning, or any learning that deserves the name; without any one valuable accomplishment; with no talent save that basest of all faculties, the power to string sentences together which may tickle the ear of the multitude; with no restraint from principle, more than any responsibility under which they act—they would willingly see all things flung into a state of hopeless anarchy, that they might gain in the confusion, they cannot clearly see what; but something and anything, how little soever, would to them be a material gain, because it has often been said that the greatest of all steps is the transition from nothing to something. I cannot help fearing that no small number of this pestilential class will find their way into the States General, where there may not be a Chapeley or a Balaye to control them."—"No," said the Baron, "but there may be a Mirabeau to lead them on."—"You agree, I perceive," said the Marquess, "in the high estimate which all men have formed of his capacity."—"Yes," the Baron replied, "and also in their low estimate of his virtue. He is a man of the most brilliant talents, and absolutely destitute of principle, which makes it singularly unfortunate that his talents should be exactly of the caste most adapted to shine in troublous times, and especially to gain the ascendant in popular assemblies. The first place, and almost without a competitor, is certainly reserved for him in the meeting of the States. When I reflect on the integrity of M. Necker, who is sure to be once more tried as minister of the Crown, and set against his Genevese pedantry and German manners, the wit, the worldly wisdom, and the eloquence of Mirabeau, hampered by no reserve or modesty, restrained by no regard for principle, I can hardly doubt which will carry the day; and though he is not at all likely to join with the base vulgar of the Catteau tribe, he is very certain to give the popular party a leader little disposed, if he were able, to curb their unbridled licentiousness."

The party remained in the saloon later than usual, in order to see the Chevalier on his return from the inn, and learn the latest accounts of Ernest's accident and state. He did not arrive home till long after midnight, and they heard nothing from him till they all met next morning at breakfast. Emmeline was now well again, and the Countess had recovered her equanimity sufficiently to join the party, which now comprehended all but the Marchioness, still confined to her apartment.

The entrance of the good Chevalier, his morning face decked in smiles, and his expression of perfect readiness for his morning meal, at once proclaimed, without any detail of particulars, that his mind was at ease, and that he had left his son quite safe the night before. But all were anxious for the particulars. "How did you leave your patient?" said the Marquess.—"Mons. Ernest, né Deverell," he answered, "is as well as it can be expected that a man should be, who was thrown from a carriage by the running away of two ill-broken colts, the property of his father."—"You were satisfied, I hope, with the medical man? M. Cirac is well spoken of by all who have anything to do with him."—"Why, brother of mine, look you, my experience in this department is limited; having never, God be thanked, had any thing to do with that faculty; but, ignorant though I be of their craft, I will hold a wager with the best professor of Montpellier, that had my lad been left to Cirac's doctoring, our faces would have been some ell or twain longer to-day."—"Why so? I never heard his cleverness called in question."—"Why, as thus: when his Serene Cleverness arrived, the lad was still senseless; and, remembering my fox-hunting experience, I apprehended a concussion, and took for granted there would be instant bleeding. No such matter; but all I could get from the doctor was that the patient was in a very alarming state, which I knew quite as well as himself, and I verily think could also as well have got him out of it. I therefore proposed bleeding at once, 'Bleeding?' said he, more drily than before. 'Bleeding,' said I more peremptorily than before. 'Sir,' said his Serene Dryness, 'Sir, as you are not, I presume, his doctor, so you'll please to leave me alone in my proper functions.' 'But,' said I, 'as I am his father, I shall insist upon his being bled. Why, what would you do, seeing him as you do senseless?' 'I may perhaps order him a leech or two to his feet, and then a little cooling physic; then I should be guided by circumstances. My rule is to follow nature.' 'But, Doctor,' I said, unable to constrain my impatience, when every moment was of the utmost importance, 'if you wait to follow nature, I shall follow my son to the grave; and, therefore, unless you let him blood stoutly and like a man, I shall send for my ally the barber in the village, in order that you may not send for your ally the undertaker.' This, I fear, somewhat offended his Serene Ability, the doctor: he flounced out of the room; I could hardly say, in any correctness of speech, that my son's blood was upon his head, but I fired after him a hearty curse, sent for the barber, and had the lad well bled; and in half an hour he was in bed as comfortable as I ever saw him in my life. I left him at past midnight preparing to sleep, after taking a cooling draught, and singing La belle Gabrielle, while he expressed his satisfaction at having escaped by any means, even a broken head, the worse accident of Catteau's society, whom he particularly dislikes. Verily," added the Chevalier, "I do protest that these doctors be a generation which one may call ignorant."—"Of medicine you mean," said the Baron, drily; "of other things they seem to know as much as the rest of us."

When the party went, as usual, after breakfast, to sit on the benches under the porch, shaded from the sun, Emmeline fell into the Countess's company, and was expressing her confidence that this accident would prove nothing. "Nothing, indeed! Who told you that?" said Madame de Chatillon.—"You heard the Chevalier's droll account," said

Emmeline. "Rely on it, unless all had been safe he would not have been merry on the subject."—"Then, I presume, you consider him as a high medical authority. I never heard a less promising case—but, perhaps, I know nothing of medicine any more than the Chevalier, and your judgment may be better."—"Dear Countess, I am the last person in the world to trust it—especially in a case of surgery; but I only go by the fact of the patient having come entirely round, and recovered his understanding and his spirits."—"Then does your medical skill approve the Chevalier's practice, as opposed to the Doctor's?"—"I have little doubt his old fox-hunting experience may have led him to treat a rather common accident in the right way; but really I may be rather speaking after my wishes than my judgment."—"Then I will only say this, that a much more unpromising case I never heard of than a person stunned to be senseless, and having a concussion of the brain, being doctored by a person as ignorant of medicine and surgery as the animals that caused the accident, and as obstinate as any mule, of whom they may be the cousins-german."—"Then, dearest Countess, what are your fears? for you alarm me."—"Why," said she, with much eagerness, "it signifies little, I suppose, what I fear; but I am next to certain that the man is gone, though he may not die to-day or to-morrow; and that if he recovers, his mind will be gone for life, as never fails to happen after concussions like his, half-cured, or not cured at all."—"Then what is the poor young man to do? " cried Emmeline; "for his place in the King's Guards will be gone, and on that he mainly depends, I fear."—"To do? Why to vegetate for life, if life remains in him; at all events to be no longer a rational being, but one whose faculties are gone—so that, though he may appear pretty well at times, his mind will always be wandering, his fancy at work, and his tongue be moved ever after by a diseased imagination." She rose at this, evidently a good deal excited, if not agitated, and Emmeline joined her uncle in the library.

"What can it possibly be, dearest Zio," she said, "that makes the Countess so irritable, not to say cross besides? When I but expressed my notion that M. Deverell was out of danger, which I really thought seemed usually admitted, she got quite angry, chid me for having an opinion at all, and pronounced with decision, but with impatience of any contradiction, that in all likelihood he could not recover."—"I protest, my love," said he, "I cannot conceive why she should be so much excited by the subject; she never seemed to care a straw about Ernest, though he made violent love to her for some time."—"Besides, said Emmeline, "if she had cared for him, which plainly she does not, why should she be so anxious to prove him worse than he is? People generally, the more they take an interest in any one, are the more ready to believe good news of them."—"But, darling child," he rejoined, "does Madame de Chatillon really think he cannot recover?"—"Why, she seemed to take hold immediately of that idea; but she then said if he did recover, he never could get back his mind, but would always wander, and never could be trusted."

There was something in this report of his friend's opinion, which set the Baron a musing for a length of time. Aware of her designing, scheming nature, which all his ardent passion for her could not blind him to; knowing she never had any feeling, formed any opinion, or conceived any wish without a meaning or a plan—he thought there must needs be something at the bottom of this extreme interest taken in Ernest's recovery, or rather in his death; and the alternative of his only getting well to be a person no longer in his right mind—a person no one could trust—seemed to him a very suspicious circumstance. Now, though it be true, as the Baron knew, that the Countess was a deep, and much reflecting schemer, never doing, seldom saying, anything for nothing, it was equally true, as the Countess did not know, that the Baron was as designing, as contriving, as deeply calculating a person as herself, and a great deal more skilful in his calculations, because he had the steadiness to pursue them, which in men makes up for the want of a suspicious fancy, the great engine of a woman's cunning. Therefore he was on the alert and on the watch; nor did many days pass in the unreserved intercourse which the two friends daily had with each other, before he had ascertained two points without the possibility of doubt; the one was that the Countess hated Ernest with a bitterness of hatred which must have some good and sufficient cause—the other that there was nothing she so earnestly desired as to see him out of the way; in plain terms, that his death would be a sensible gratification to her. A third inference he had not quite so certainly arrived at, but it was in perfect harmony with the other two, and he reserved it for further consideration with a kind of growing anxiety. It seemed to him as if she must somehow or other be in Ernest's power,—else why wish his death? Possibly, also, she was afraid of his tongue—else why perhaps believe, and at all events propagate the belief, that his mind could no longer be trusted? One subject here was wrapped in deep mystery. This young man, whom she most certainly disliked and despised, and towards whom she had always entertained even more dislike than she of late did, in what way could he possibly have the least power over her, or any means of injuring her, all he could have to tell being her rebuffs and slights of himself—perhaps to a much greater degree than he had ever experienced from any other woman? This was a mystery which the Baron left time to unravel; he was only quite at ease in his own mind upon the subject, secure of the Countess's love, and far too proud to dread a rival.

That she appeared to him in an unamiable light, through this affair, is certain—but he was blinded by great passion. He had begun to besiege her, knowing that the heart he deemed so well worth winning was not the most amiable, nor indeed in some respects the most single in the world. Finding it to be somewhat harder than he had supposed did not awaken him from his trance of love. He knew that to himself it had been thoroughly softened; and he either cared not, or endeavoured not to reflect, how exceedingly it was hardened towards others, possibly all the more since it had melted to him.

But Emmeline did not see with the same passion-blinded eyes as her uncle; and she could not easily avoid making somewhat harsher remarks than it was her habit ever to indulge in. There was something extremely unpleasant in the irritation which Madame de Chatillon had shown, and the want of feeling seemed manifest to a decree which Emmeline could hardly have believed possible, especially in a woman. As she never kept anything from her uncle that passed in her mind, she resumed the conversation soon after as they walked in the garden. "How," she asked, "can a person of so much mind, so lively a spirit, and so full of intelligence, have so little of the warmth which women's hearts are generally subject to, even beyond that of men?"—"I cannot think," said the Baron, "that our fair friend's heart can be cold, with her warmth of temper, of which you occasionally complain. These two things generally don't go together."—"Why yes, Zio," said Emmeline, "I have sometimes thought that all the warmth in our friend's composition is drawn away from her feelings by her temper."—"I hear it said," observed the Baron, "that her passions are cold."—"It may be so," Emmeline answered, "if by passions you mean a disposition to fall in love, which I believe no one ever ascribed to the Countess. But a hot temper may I fancy accompany a cold heart. From all I see of hers, I would not take a present of it, were it accompanied by all her beauty and all her wit."—"My dear, dear child," said the Baron, delighted with her uniformly right feeling and virtuous principles, even where they led to a condemnation of his enchantress—"all your sentiments, whether of the head or the heart, are ever right. Whom you judge, they are sure to have justice; and that justice ever to be tempered with mercy."

As he meditated on the subject of this conversation, he was again forcibly struck with the new light in which the Countess seemed to have shown herself on the present occasion. The thought unavoidably forced admittance to his inward judgment, through all his devoted fondness, that she was indeed made of other materials than composed the singularly attractive character of his beloved niece. Nay, he was compelled once or twice to ask himself the appalling question,—"Has she not desired the death of a fellow-creature, for some reason unknown, but merely on account of herself, her own interest, or her own fears? If so, has she not committed a murder in her heart?"—But such an idea, finding no harbour in his mind, no sooner presented itself than it was forcibly rejected; and by an effort, not hard to make, he flew for relief and for protection against such an intrusion to the mystery that veiled the whole of her conduct, clouding over with obscurity and uncertainty that which wore a very forbidding and sinister aspect.

CHAPTER II.

THE WANDERER'S RETURN.

A severe illness, the consequence of confinement, to which his late life in the open air had not accustomed him, seized the Solitary, and prevented the Count from visiting him, except to inquire after his health. At the end of some weeks he was nearly recovered, and the old and confidential housekeeper of the Marchioness, who had alone been intrusted with the secret of his asylum in the Château, and with the care of his apartment as well as the supply of his table, said she thought a longer visit of Chatillon might prove good for the spirits of the invalid. He accordingly went, and found Albert so far recovered that, after two visits of half an hour each, he was able at the third interview to continue his narrative.

"I have been revolving much in my mind," he said, "since my illness began, and especially during my recovery, the extraordinary history of my past life, and the cause I have to mingle with much blame of myself inexpressible thankfulness for the goodness of God towards me. I have also reflected on the length to which this account has extended, and the unhappy aspect of almost every portion of it. I feel disposed to close it, and relieve you from an endless demand on your patience, the rather that, although I have hitherto been able to give you some useful information, and set before your mind several important matters of opinion, in what remains there is little of the same interest to be brought forward. You must, however, be informed of the losses that befel me, the hazards I encountered, and the accidents that led to my seeking here a refuge from the tempest to which my life has been exposed, until it shall blow over.

"I left off before my illness at the island of Cuba, where I passed several weeks, not devoid of interest, but made very painful by the constant spectacle of slave-vessels arriving from Africa, laden with their dreadful freight of human wretchedness and human guilt. I felt little inclination to prolong my stay in the West Indies, or even in the slave-countries of the continent; and I was on the point of setting out for

Port-au-Prince, in order to embark for the Northern States, when the innkeeper with whom I lodged told me that a gentleman who knew me had arrived from St. Domingo, and brought me a letter which had come there from New York. I eagerly sought him out at the inn where he was said to have put up, and I received from him the letter. My heart beat high with hope and joy, not unmixed with anxiety, as all our feelings are when far away from those we love. It was a year since I had heard of Louise or my mother, and the direction of the letter was in M. Gardein's well known hand. I returned to my own inn and went to my bed-room, that I might open and read it. Alas! the first line went like a dagger to my heart. That dear mother whose image seems even now never absent from my mind, sleeping or waking, had been taken from me after a short illness, in which her constant conversation was of the children she had lost. Her idea of my two brothers, long as they had been separated from their father's house, and surely as she had ever believed they must have perished long years back, had, as she approached her own end, been awakened, and her tender feelings revived concerning them. Ever to see them more she had long ceased to hope; but still she felt that now she was about to leave the world without even knowing their fate; while of me and my checkered story she knew more, and most of what she knew could shed little comfort round her dying bed. Her latter end, however, was peace—and peace such as the world cannot give. With all her fellow-creatures she was at perfect peace; she who, in her long life, never had harmed a human being, and ever had done all the acts of kindness in her power to all. With heaven she was at peace—the peace flowing from the retrospect of so good a life, the peace which calms the soul in its struggles with mortality, and is a foretaste, almost a beginning, of its more perfect tranquillity in the realms of bliss. My father's desolation was described, and that, abandoning all hopes of ever seeing his other sons, he dwelt much upon my exile, and upon his anxious wish that he might once more see me before he departed. The pastor said nothing of Louise; and in the melancholy state of mind into which the other intelligence had thrown me, I hardly was aware at first of the omission. He added, however, an intimation of great moment to me. There were signs, he said, not to be mistaken of great events and great changes, both in civil and in ecclesiastical matters.

The clergy had no longer the same support as formerly from the civil authorities; the government itself was not equally strong; the priests, at all events, whether as powerful or not, were no longer as arrogant; they durst not venture upon holding the same high tone, or attempting the same harsh things; while most of the authorities were declared supporters of a mild and tolerant policy. The good pastor said that in all probability things would soon assume an aspect which might make my return to Languedoc safe; and he strongly recommended me to come near the spot, so that I might be prepared to rejoin my family once more, if events took, or rather went on taking, a propitious turn.

"This letter determined my course, and, truth to say, if I could hope for a tolerable chance of safety in returning to Europe, I was nothing loth to give up my scheme of again inhabiting the United States. Even the northern country, though far more tolerable than the south, little suited my taste; and I could not help sighing over my long banishment, while I began to be visited with a gleam of hope that I might be destined once more to touch the soil of dear France. A vessel freighted with produce for Seville lay in the harbour of the Havanna; I found no difficulty in obtaining a passage, with the last remains of the little store I had scraped together in America; and I soon found myself sufficiently comfortable in her as a common passenger.

"It was impossible that I could feel otherwise than extremely melancholy during the whole of the voyage, after the irreparable loss I had sustained. My waking moments were constantly passed in reflecting on that dear person whom I should never more behold. Every particular of her quiet, unobtrusive, beneficent life came constantly to my memory. I used to think, in the silence of the night, that I again saw her sitting calm and composed alone, with her work or a book in her hand; and I could see her turn towards the door, as she was wont to do for many years after my brothers disappeared, in the hope of which she never could divest herself, that some tidings of them would at length reach her. All the little tender offices she used to perform towards me in my youth—her lessons, her advice, her religious warnings, above all, her kindly recommendation of charity and good-will, as these came into my mind used to bring tears in my eyes. Then I would upbraid myself with any little offence I might ever have given her—any harsh word, any impetuous demeanour; these used to sting me to the quick as I thought of the mildness of her rebukes, or her sorrowful look when I gave her any cause of complaint. For instance, it is a trifle, but it paints the state of my mind:—I remembered having once treated lightly the cheer which she presented on her frugal table, after I perhaps had been living for a few days with comrades, who indulged in more luxury than suited the reduced circumstances of our family. My harsh, thoughtless remark brought a tear into her mild, tender eye; that one tear had at the time cost me many, but how many more did it make me shed on the passage home!—I have spent whole hours of the endless night in such gloomy reflections.

"After a week or ten days spent in the vessel, I found that another American, or one passing for such, was likewise on board; and it was natural enough that we should make acquaintance together. M. Cartigny soon expressed his opinion, that though I talked English pretty well, there must be some other language which I could speak better, and I at once confessed to him that it was not my mother tongue. Of his I entertained no manner of doubt, for he spoke like a native, at least no one but a native could have detected anything foreign either in his language or his accent. He, however, acknowledged that he came from Geneva, though he had for many years been in England and for some time in America. I then, having formed a favourable opinion of him, let him know of what country I was, at which he very frankly expressed some regret as well as surprise; for, said he, 'As I never before met with a Frenchman whom I could endure, and as you appear to be an estimable man, my prejudices are somewhat shocked.' It was rather amusing to find a person so zealous in cherishing his prejudices, as much so as most people would be in getting rid of their's. Having, as you know, seen something of Geneva and its inhabitants, I frankly gave him my opinion of his countrymen, from which I did not find him disposed to dissent very widely; but he contended that for some time past they were no longer what they once had been, and that their character for honesty as well as for ability had been seriously impaired. Still he very greatly preferred them to the French, whom it was rather amusing to hear him strip of every one quality they most plume themselves upon, and which by common consent they are allowed to possess. That he should deny their solidity, their serious and reflecting nature, their wisdom, even their sincerity, I could understand; though to limit their capacity for profound study seemed adventurous in the face of their achievements in the severer sciences to which he could only oppose his continual topic, a comparison with England, the object of all his admiration, and as the native country of Newton and Locke, exalted by his partiality into not merely a higher station than France, but invested with an exclusive claim to scientific merit and renown. But as to the lighter accomplishments, the ornamental parts of character, the graces of society, I did suppose here he might make some few admissions in favour of the French. No such thing; their manners were all grimace; their music was a constant effort and as constant a failure; their wit was flippancy, their humour non-existing, their poetry bombast; even their dancing he reckoned extravagant and far inferior to the Italian; and in short I found it in vain to look for a single confession except on cookery, and even there he dwelt with an unpleasant minuteness on the disgusting details of their kitchen. His indignation, however, reached its height when he spoke of the boasting habit, the self-complacency of our countrymen, and their contempt, not certainly quiet but rather clamorous, of other nations. I ventured sometimes to place his Genevese countrymen by the side of my own in this particular, nor did he very much object to the juxta-position, though he said the people of the 'perfect city,' as he jocosely called it, were, though quite well satisfied with themselves, yet rather more tranquil in the transports of their self-love.

"In alluding to the great names of France, some there were to whom of course he could not deny their share of renown; he only tried to show that either they had been bred, perhaps born abroad, or had foreign blood in their veins, or, which mightily comforted him when reduced to great straits, had been ill-used, abjured, and persecuted by their fellow-citizens. In some such fashion or other he got rid of Henry IV., Sully, and Coligny, the first the most amiable, and the other two the most virtuous statesmen of any age or country. But his invectives were fierce and unremitting against Charlemagne, in so much that I once rallied him on it as if he spoke from personal pique against one who had been dead ten centuries. 'To be sure,' said he, 'and our family was ill-treated and even ruined by him and his vile corrupt emissaries, his Missi, as he called them, whom he sent about the country, that is the world, to decide causes contrary to justice.' I found he derived exceeding great comfort, under the praises generally lavished on Charlemagne, from the notion of his having been thoroughly defeated in Spain. As for his private life he represented it as the most profligate ever known in ancient or modern times, and that his palace was one vast brothel, in which the Emperor's daughters were the leading characters. I need scarcely add that he in no wise gained me over to his opinion of this great man, one of the few monarchs who may be truly said to have lived before the age they flourished in. But I more easily came into his opinion of another character, his own countryman, at least by adoption, Calvin, whom, of all men after the Emperor of the West, he seemed most cordially to hate. He had raked together all the Romish slanders against his private character, affirming that he had searched the books of the Court, where he was charged with horrible offences, and durst not defend himself, and had found the statements to be founded on fact. However, his known and admitted enormities were quite sufficient to warrant any vituperation, and I went along with all he said against the cruel, malignant, and selfish persecutor, who had first tried to have his adversary in controversy destroyed by a judicial proceeding abroad, he furnishing underhand the evidence required, and failing in that, had himself brought him to a trial almost unexampled for injustice, and caused him to be burnt alive. 'The history of persecution presents no picture with harsher features,' said M. Cartigny; 'and yet such is the power of religious bigotry in blinding the eyes and searing the heart, that there are some millions of Christians, professing the religion of charity and peace, who glory in calling themselves by the name of this monster, as the most pure representative of the Christian faith.' M. Cartigny himself though a person of strong religious feelings, I found to belongs to the sect of Unitarians sometimes called Socinians. He was a man of excellent abilities, great and various information, a most amiable disposition, and as strict a sense of honour as I ever found in any human being. We became extremely intimate, and we afterwards met in his own country, where he showed me much kindness and attention.

"For the rest, our voyage was prosperous; we arrived in six weeks at the Port, and I found the day after we landed that I could for a mere trifle obtain a passage to Bordeaux in a vessel laden with fruit from the Levant. I passed easily for an American from the West Indies, and in less than a fortnight I was landed safe and unsuspected, with a white straw hat, long leather gaiters, and a calico jacket and trousers, in the noble though crowded harbour of that great and flourishing city.

"There is a feeling peculiarly strong, and mingled of pleasure and pain, that rises in the mind upon returning to our own country, after a long absence. The Roman poet says, that every land is a brave man's native country, as every sea is a fish's. But I suppose the waters, like the land, differ, and that the mullet rejoices more in our blue Mediterranean, than among the sharks of the tropics. So I felt more at home among the wine-peasants on the beautiful borders of the Garonne, than among the slave-drovers of the West Indies. I never, it is true, had before been either in Bordeaux, or any part of Guienne or Gascony, and yet I felt that I was now at home. I once more heard the same language spoken to which I had all my life long been accustomed; I saw the same people; I resumed the same habit of living. In a word, it was that home, the idea of which is interwoven with all our strongest.

because our earliest recollections, and to which even in our most prolonged, and our most distant wanderings, we have often, unconscious of it ourselves, been accustomed to refer whatever we witnessed, and whatever we felt.

"I found, however, on the banks of the Garonne, none of the relaxation of persecuting spirit which the pastor of Nismes had taught me to hope I should perceive upon my return to France; and I hastened away from a city which appeared as much priest-ridden as any great trading-town could well be. Having often heard of the simple manners and honest character of the peasantry in the Limousin, I set out determined to find my way thither; and M. Cartigny having lent me a small sum of money, with but moderate expectations of repayment, I contrived to travel so as to make it last me, till I should be able by day-labour or in some other way to support myself.

"I went by a diligence which carried me to Limoges in an easy journey, the roads being very good, and the country not uninteresting. It was singular to find everywhere traditions of the dreadful times when all Guienne was in the power of England; and one could hardly imagine we lived in the same country upon not one inch of which now would a foreign flag ever be suffered to float without causing rivers of blood to flow. They show you at Chalus the spot where the English king, Richard Cœur-de-Lion, was wounded by an arrow, and died soon after; a prince whose valour has made him the theme of universal admiration, and the especial favourite of his countrymen, though it was literally the only good quality he possessed, and his ferocious nature resembled more that of a savage beast than a man; a religious enthusiast, too, who more than any other gave into the frenzy of the times, and exhausted his kingdom by senseless crusades, in which he, one morning, for the glory of the God of mercy, and in seeking to rescue the sepulchre of the Prince of Peace from its infidel possessors, ordered five thousand hostages to be massacred in cold blood. Limoges also has its recollections of the heroism of those times, the monuments of chivalry and its glories. The flower of all knights, the Black Prince, as he was called from the colour of his armour, whom all, even the philosophical historians, represent as a perfect character, getting angry with this town of Limoges because it chose to declare for its old and rightful sovereign, the French king, massacred three thousand men, women, and children in one day. But he was a knight, and valued knightly rank and blood; therefore the knights were spared by this discriminating hero in his horrible butchery of the unoffending people. Could any one pass through such scenes, recalling to his mind such recollections, and not bless God that his lot is cast in other times? We have now the unutterable horrors of slavery and the yet worse slave-traffic; but we have long ceased to glory in them; we have begun to feel ashamed of them; soon we shall feel them to be unbearable; and another generation will not pass away before we wipe out so deep a stain on our character, and relieve our consciences from the load of such enormous guilt.

"When in scenes that recalled the vaunted age of chivalry at every step, it was impossible not to muse over the story of those times, and the extraordinary hold which their barbarous institutions took of all men's minds, a hold weakened, indeed, but far from loosened, by the progress of a more genuine refinement in after ages. I well recollect the spirit of calm philosophy, in which my dear friend. Father Jerome, was wont to discuss the subject when we dwelt upon this singular chapter of human history. Just towards all parties, and charitable even to the worst errors, when errors of the judgment they seemed to be and not of the heart, he used to admit the natural effect of brilliant exploits, their tendency to dazzle men by the noble qualities of heroism, of contempt for suffering and for death, which they displayed; and he seemed to doubt if we should ever be so far reclaimed by philosophy and religion, from this proneness to admire such qualities, as to give them only their due share of our esteem, and to see through the false glare which they shed over base and cruel actions. But he always held that the tendency of chivalrous institutions to exalt these qualities had been most pernicious. The false glare of mere warlike virtue had thus been fixed and perpetuated. The mind had become habituated to regard that virtue as occupying the first place. Men's feelings had been perverted, and their sense both of humanity and justice enfeebled. Not only had the merit of the peaceful virtues been undervalued in general estimation, and the renown of deeds truly beneficial to mankind obscured, but encouragement had been given to war, both among rulers and their subjects. The influence of chivalry in reforming the manners of a barbarous age was not, he thought, to be wholly passed over. But it must, he said, be a very barbarous age which could be softened or improved by such proceedings as those of the Crusaders, and by the fantastic code of law, the law of honour, which their times produced; while one thing was, he affirmed, quite beyond all question, that whatever benefit chivalry may in a remote age have conferred on society, it had now ceased to be of any advantage at all in its remains which, in our times, were fruitful of nothing but inconvenience and mischief."

CHAPTER III.

FREE PEASANTRY.

"As I now perceived nearly approaching the very end of my resources, it was necessary that I should betake myself to some employment for support. I dreaded offering myself to any merchant or trader in Limoges, a town of considerable traffic from its central situation, both on the Bordeaux and Marseilles road. It was not even very safe for me to remain in a place where I might be exposed to the chance of meeting persons from the Contât and its neighbourhood. Recollecting with delight the conversations I used to have with the holy and learned friar on the singular eloquence of Massillon, I had a great desire to visit Clermont, his see, that I might gaze upon the pulpit he had preached from, and be under the roof whose vaults he had made resound with the thunder of his finished oratory. But the country was extremely mountainous, though romantic, and after setting out on this pilgrimage, I changed my plan on reaching St. Germain, and took the road towards Bort. I there found myself in a perfectly rural situation, in valleys where the primitive manners of the people had been invaded by little refinement perhaps, but by no corruption, and among villages where so few were assembled, that all seemed as if in the country itself. I had never lost the peasant's dress in which Isidore and I made our first escape, after throwing aside the monastic habit, and I now had resumed it on quitting the diligence, and continuing my journey on foot. I found no difficulty in lodging myself with a peasant about three leagues from Bort, and never did I know more amiable people in any station of life.

"The family consisted of the father and mother and four children, of whom the eldest could help his father, the girl assisted her mother, and the two younger ones were left to the care of their grandmother, one of the very kindest and gentlest creatures I have ever known in this world. She gave me the very idea of what poor Emilie Fonrose would have been had her life been spared, though of course much less elevated. No notion of self entered her mind from morning till night, and even in the night she would get up if she heard any noise in the room where the children slept. Her anxiety was divided between them and their father, whose health was not robust, and who laboured above his strength, the rather that the climate is severe in the Limousin. The luxury of a fire at evening, one of the few we enjoyed, was made most grateful by the piercing cold which began in autumn and lasted till May. I was there in the three earlier of the cold months. The peasant's health made it desirable that he should have help, and this was the cause of my being engaged, at the very lowest wages, but with my keep of course. A maiden sister of the peasant was the only other member of this worthy family, which lived in a state of union that knew no interruption, and whose affection for one another really formed the chief pleasure of their lives. Education they had little beyond being able to read, and to write; but the evening's amusement was, that while the rest were working, one should read aloud some good book either of piety, or of history, or of travels, when any could be obtained; and the curé was unwearied in his kind attentions towards this and all the other families of his parish, frequently lending them from his small library such books as they could understand and relish. The work of the women within doors was unwearied as that of the two men without, whom, indeed, occasionally they helped. Their spinning provided the clothes of all; for except on great occasions to purchase a little sugar and coffee, or spice, and now and then a bottle of brandy, to give a neighbour a little treat when he came to pass the evening, there was no intercourse between the cottage and the shops. The fare was wholesome, and cleanly cooked, but of the most homely kind. A pig was reared and its bacon furnished, the hams being sold, nearly the only relish to our vegetables which we ever tasted, unless when occasionally a pigeon or a partridge, unknown to the lord of the manor, might chance to be surprised by the son in his rambles or at his field-work. Brown bread, with coarse cheese, and occasionally lard to season it, milk, the butter being carried to market, dried apples and quinces on fast-days, on great occasions a cup of coffee—as a more ordinary luxury chesnuts, which were very fine, and which the good grandmother had much skill and took great pride in roasting, as she did in superintending the poultry, which were all reared for sale. These formed the humble fare of this most happy and most contented family. I question if their ideas of indulgence ever extended beyond what they daily, morning and evening, devoutly thanked God for being permitted to enjoy. I am sure they envied no inmates of a palace their greater luxuries. The old woman would, indeed, on showing the children the little addition to their common meal which on a Sunday or saint's-day she could dispense, devoutly draw the moral how thankful they ought always to be for their comfortable lot, sheltered from the weather and indulging in dainty fare, while so many poor people were exposed to the wind and rain, without shed or clothes to cover them, and never knowing to-day where they were to find the morrow's meal.

"But it was not with the mind's food here as with the body's. Anything less coarse than the texture of their hearts have I never known; anything more refined than the sentiments their minds, as it were, lived upon, I never anywhere observed. The purest and most disinterested attachment to one another, the most anxious desire of each to consult the wishes of all, the most scrupulous regard of every one to strict decency and even the most delicate decorum, with the most unvaried sense of justice in all their dealings, and the purest spirit of charity in all their expressions towards their neighbours, reigned throughout every branch of this primitive and happy household. The father would of an evening undertake to explain the difficulties that might occur in the books they read or listened to; and when he found himself unable to do so, he never disguised his ignorance, but hoping his son might one day know more, he promised to ask the curé, or the steward of the manor, when next he saw them. The grandmother, who had in her youth lived in a large town, Perigueux, would astonish and sometimes shock the little circle with accounts of what went on in such places. The sentiment then rose from them all, 'Oh, how thankful should we be to live far out of the way of such things!' The mother, too, was a mild and gentle person, but melancholy preyed upon her when she observed the declining health of her husband, and the tears would fill her eyes as she looked at her young children who might be left orphans and unprotected. 'Dearest Matilda,' her mother would say, 'trust in the Father of all mercies; he may yet shield us from that fatal blow; and, if he suffer it to fall on us, surely he that feeds the wild ravens will have compassion on these innocent little ones.'

"I am quite certain, and it is a reflection which has often come into my mind since, and on which I have never ceased to dwell with admiration—I am certain that in the most polished society, in the most refined age, there never were sentiments of more perfect purity, never was a more unbroken delicacy both of mind and speech, and manners altogether, than prevailed in the homely dwelling of this poor peasant, who supported his family with his own hands, and that of his sister and children, and whose fare was as frugal and indeed as little abundant as can suffice to maintain life. Nor was this household an exception. I found the other inhabitants of these valleys persons of a similar description, not all possessing as gentle and kindly dispositions, but all of them equally uncorrupted, and all presenting the same striking contrast between the hardness of their lives and the tenderness of their affections, the coarseness of their fare and the refinement of their sentiments.

"No day ever passed over our head in this happy valley, without forcibly recalling to my memory the conversation of dear Father Jerome, and sighing, oh how deeply sighing, that he was not here to find so ample a confirmation of his profound and benevolent doctrines. Among the numberless amiable, and, in my sincere opinion, also wise, propensities of his nature, one was eminent over the rest—the love which he ever felt for poverty. It always seemed enough to gain his affection that any one was poor; a poor priest, a poor scholar, a poor householder, a young man struggling for advancement against adverse circumstances, a widow toiling to give her child education, a brother labouring to support a sister cast on his care—these were cases sure to touch his benevolent heart, to excite his sympathy, and obtain his help. But he had a speculative as well as a parental love for those in narrow circumstances, and he conceived that there was nothing at all to connect poverty with any squalid or coarse associations. On the contrary, he thought that the indulgences of wealth were more likely to prepare for the contagion of vice than the exhaustion of poverty; that luxury, and even comfort, dispensing with work, introducer of idleness, minister of the passions, is greatly more a corruptor than want. However, he would describe how easily, in his view of human nature, the lot of the peasant and his poverty might be united with not only the most kindly affections, but with great refinement of mind. The culture derived from education he conceived to be quite compatible with a life of hard work, and if it was also a life of hard fare, the risk was lessened of corruption creeping in to taint its innocence, and debase its worth by the worst kind of coarseness.

"But it was not merely from the exemplification of his benevolent views in the Limousin, that I was daily led to recall the good Father to my recollection. He used to cite as a proof of his doctrine the account which he had once received from Marmontel of his early life. That celebrated writer had then been for many years plunged into all the dissipation of a literary, a theatrical, and a fashionable life at Paris; but on a visit to the South, when Father Jerome fell into his company, they had conversed upon his original station, and the education which he received, partly at Mauriac College, partly at that of Clermont, when destined for the Church. 'It was plain,' said Father Jerome, 'that while revelling in the enjoyments of Paris society, he ever and anon sighed over the recollections of his youth; and he described, with the most tender interest, his life while in his father's cottage, surrounded only by his family, and with much difficulty supported at school. Marmontel was born at Bort, and the valley in which I now lived was that where he had passed the years of his childhood in simplicity, and refinement of mind, but in circumstances as hard as can well be figured. I felt, therefore, as if he were now before me, showing the sad contrast which luxury and success had produced, and as if Father Jerome too stood by to resume his old lessons on the happiness and the refinement of humble fortunes.

"I found in these valleys the same desire of education which had adorned them in the days of Marmontel. My peasant-master, finding I had been well educated, made me instruct his family; and while I remained, they all, himself included, made considerable progress in some of the common branches of learning. He would sometimes with a sigh say that his sons would perhaps live to be still better informed than they were now becoming, but that he should not be spared to see any material improvement in their condition; only he prayed with the prophet Agur that they might never know either the extremes of great poverty or great wealth.

"The other peasantry of the neighbouring district were in pretty much the same circumstances with our family, and cultivated their own small properties; but there were some farmers a little way off who had considerable holdings under the lord of the manor, and I occasionally went to see them on holidays, accompanied by the peasant's son, whom I taught in the evening. These farmers paid some of them as much as between two hundred and three hundred louis of rent, as they occupied their farms upon the old Metayer contract of receiving from the proprietor of the land seed, corn, and manure, and accounting to him for half the produce. They were of course in much more comfortable circumstances than small landowners. But I was struck and pleased with their simple and primitive mode of life. The master and his farm-servants, as they worked together in the field all day, he labouring full as much as any of his men, so they all dined together at the same table. The mistress sat at the head, and her husband by her side, and she carved the meat and distributed it among the men and women servants, who all sat around, nor was there the least difference in their fare. They talked all as if on a footing of the most perfect equality, and the harmless joke went round the table as if all had been children of the same house. The influence of the master over his men, and the mistress over her maids, may easily be conceived. They were in truth as the father and mother of the whole; nor did any parents feel in the least degree anxious or alarmed in entrusting their daughters to the care of such a pair.

"These farmers, though much wealthier than the small landowners with whom I lived, were not at all better educated, nor had they more refined notions, or a more interesting character in general. They had none of the corruptions of luxury; but their superior fortune did not elevate them above their poorer neighbours. I was present at a fête, a kind of merry-making, given in one of those farm-houses, on the christening of a first child. Fifty or more were assembled; there was a dance, with a collation of fruits and dairy-dishes (laitage), and some glasses of hot wine and water after the dance, while the older men sate in an open space before the house, smoking their pipes. There was much gaiety, and no intemperance of any kind.

"The comfort and even pleasure which I enjoyed during my stay in these peaceful and happy scenes, I never shall forget. However long I may be permitted to live, and with whatever classes of men I may become acquainted, the Limousin peasant has left a picture of rural innocence and humble refinement that never can be effaced from my mind. It raises my estimate, not merely of the peasantry, but of the species, because it shows of what excellence they are capable, even under the pressure of the hardest lot. I never have since seen a man labour in the fields, or looked at a cottage in the country, without saying to myself 'How can I tell that the same happy and virtuous minds may not inhabit that homely farm, the same tender-hearted families may not dwell under that humble roof, which I used to delight in associating with, both while labouring during the day or reposing at eventide in the valleys of the Limousin!' If my heart leaps within me as often as I see a peasant or a peasant's cot, as if I saw a brother or a home, it is from the remembrance of Bort, and the certain conviction that it only depends on the upper classes to have Bort every where around them.

"When I had been two months in the Limousin, the beloved pastor, whom I had contrived to apprise of my destination when I turned off from the Clermont road, wrote to an address I gave him at our town of Bort. This letter gave a melancholy account of my poor father's drooping health since his irreparable loss. It also inclosed a few lines from Louise, in which she expressed the most hearty and unaffected joy at my return.—'I will not be so proud or so prudish, ' she said, 'as to conceal the extraordinary delight which this most happy intelligence has given me. Why should I? Are you not my own dear love by every title and by all but every tie? If this cruel separation must last for ever, surely our minds at least may be united. And when I know you are to read these lines, which my heart pours forth upon the paper, and to read them in less than a week, my spirit takes its flight as if it had already left my body, and were hovering over my dearest friend, to comfort, to support, and to protect him. But, after all, must there be raised between us an eternal barrier? Are we never more to meet? Is your crime, which I never seek to hide from your eyes or to justify in my own, never to be atoned for by years of sorrow, by days and nights of repentance, by the retributions which conscience exacts, by the sufferings which divine justice inflicts? Can no means be devised of once more bringing us together? Oh! trust me with any project you can devise with that blessed design! Fear not either my want of prudence in acting on your suggestion, or of obedience in following your orders, or of courage in risking all that we may meet again. Think, ponder, devise, and write, oh! write, even if it be to say you can strike out nothing to comfort and relieve us.'

"This enchanting letter threw me into a rapture which I do not think I had ever experienced before. There was so much heart, such a noble spirit, such a genuine love of me, and so firm a resolution, if possible, to be mine, that I regarded the matchless creature, perfect in mind as in person, endowed with understanding equal to the spirit which animated her, as something more than earthly; and as I read her charming letter a hundred times over, and laid me down smiling with joy at the recollection of each tender and each warm expression which it contained, she seemed to me something above the standard of mortal woman. I have often observed, both before and since, that there is nothing whatever which more wins the heart of man, nothing which more makes him beside himself in his passion for a mistress, than her frankness in avowing the mutual passion she is inspired with, and her bravery in encountering all hazards for its gratification. This courage too is very contagious. I felt ashamed of myself while any remains of terror clung round my heart, and froze it, when it should have been on fire to run all risks. I went to sleep that night revolving plans of immediate adventure, schemes for rushing forwards and rescuing my Louise from her uncle, resolutions to bring her off from Avignon at all hazards; and the only feature of common prudence, or even of any reflection, in the picture that my inflamed imagination had conjured up, was the hope that, by Louise going on a visit to Nismes, she and I might more easily accomplish our escape to Switzerland. But in the morning all was gloomy; the prospect no longer smiled; the obstacles started up in every quarter; the enemy appeared in all directions. Yet the spirit of Louise's letter was enough to animate the rocks and the trees that re-echoed its sounds as I read it and repeated it without ceasing. How could I continue to tremble and to draw back? Some weeks passed in this struggle; all dangers were forgotten; I wrote a few lines which I entreated M. Gardein would convey to her. A fortnight after Christmas I set out towards a more congenial sky than that of the Limousin, and full of hope which laid all fears asleep. My plan still was our escape from France; and with this view I was to adopt a thick disguise, and meet Louise at Nismes, where she could go, as she had gone before, to visit the good pastor.

"The trifling sum which I had scraped together in the valley of Bort sufficed to defray the expenses of my journey, and I trusted to the assistance of the good pastor when I should reach his hospitable dwelling. But it was not without a real pang that I bade adieu to my kind and amiable host in the Limousin. The excellent qualities of the family had twined themselves round my heart, and had their dwelling but been beyond the frontiers of France, what more could I desire, than to seek shelter under its roof with Louise, and there pass in peace the rest of our days? The declining health of the good peasant himself, whom I could scarcely hope ever more to see, added to the melancholy of my parting. But I was full of hope as of love, and all was forgotten except the prospect before me, as soon as the Rodez diligence drove away from Bort. We went by Mauriac and Aurillac to Rodez, and I then took another coach which went by Lodève to Montpellier, from whence I could easily find my way on foot to Nismes.

"At Nismes I arrived, the whole journey having been passed in pleasing dreams, never to be realized, but dreams which effectually chased all fears from me, and all but made me forget the heavy blow which had fallen upon our house since I left the country. I purposely contrived my arrival after dark, and I went at once to the pastor's house, with a heart now beginning to beat from anxiety, of which I had felt none on the way, all the future then being steeped in rose-colour. The face of the servant boy who opened the door, and whom I at once recognized, though he knew me not, at once showed my anxious foreboding of the last half hour not to have been groundless, though it was imaginary. The pastor was no more; he had ceased to live and to love, to do justly and love mercy, a fortnight before, and after a short illness had an easy passage to his eternal rest and his rich reward. I made myself known, and was shown to the remains of that disconsolate family, who received me with the affection that he would have shown, but, alas! could ill supply the place of my deceased guide and instructor, the father of my new birth, him who had set me free from the heaviest chains that ever were forged to fetter and to gall the human mind.

"I was unable, for the first evening that I spent with this pious and amiable family, to enter upon any inquiries as to the letter I had written before I set out. But next morning I was sorely disappointed by learning that the man of business who had looked after the pastor's letters and papers, had forwarded all those which he found intended for any one else, to their destination, and that mine, having arrived during his severe illness, had in all probability been likewise sent to Louise. Soon I found but too much reason to apprehend that it had fallen into other hands than hers; for the pastor's granddaughter, who was her friend, told me when I asked if she had been lately at Nismes, that they expected her to visit them in their affliction, but received a letter from her, intimating that all intercourse with Nismes was forbidden in consequence of a letter which had been received by her uncle. The visions which had been filling my mind for weeks seemed at once to vanish. I could not think of making this young girl the confidant of an attachment which was disapproved by Louise's family; and nothing was left for me but to make the desperate attempt of going to Avignon, sending some one of whose discretion and fidelity I must run all risks, to tell her I was waiting in a calèche outside the gate, and to take the chance of her at once making up her mind to quit the place and escape the persecution which she was now enduring.

"The accounts I received of the Monastery added little to my comfort in this emergency; for they renewed my alarms for my own safety, as far as the engrossing passion which occupied me would bear any rival near the throne it had usurped. Father Ambrose had a year before succeeded to the abbacy; he had governed with rigour, though administering its affairs with such ability as might be expected from his well-known character; he had used every severity which the law would permit towards Protestants; and he had, ever since Louise's conversion became known, directed his measures in an especial manner against her, harassing her by all the means in his power, and openly taking part with her uncle, whose confessor he had been, as well as her mother's, before being raised to the head of the Convent. Her attachment to me was of course well known; it had been proclaimed by the exaggerating and perverting tongue of slander, upon my escape; it was more fully and truly made public by the rage of the disappointed uncle. It seemed needless to add what, however, I was also told, that the new abbot had by no means abandoned all hope of discovering my retreat. He had failed in Switzerland, and in Germany, and ascertained that I had left that country; but he never ceased to expect my return, from all the hints which the close watch kept upon Louise and her mother by the hateful uncle enabled him to gather together. Louise never could disguise from her parent the hope of our meeting, with which she still flattered herself—and as this could only be by my return to Nismes, that place was now to be watched; and hence, even during the pastor's life, it had become extremely difficult for her to visit him. At his death she might have obtained leave to see his family, had not my letter unluckily reached the uncle, and through him stopped her going.

"The power of the clergy, I found, though it had been exceedingly curbed at Nismes, and, indeed, no longer extended to either a direct control over men's actions, of any considerable influence in society, was yet to all appearance as great as ever in the Contât. Therefore, though I might be more safe at Nismes, from all but the inquiries of the civil magistrate, to whom I was, unhappily, as answerable as ever; at Avignon I should be under the weight of the double yoke, and had to dread the laws of the church, as well as those of the land. On revolving everything connected with our position, the best course seemed to be, that I should take up my abode near the town, in a cabaret, where I was unknown. At one time, I thought of going to my father's house; but it appeared that his declining health since my mother's death had severely impaired his understanding; and Mdlle. Gardein had heard from Louise that he was in a state that made it very doubtful if he should even recognise me. The plan of going to the cabaret, and taking my chance of forming some intimacy with one of its inmates, who might be made serviceable to my scheme, appeared, therefore, the preferable course. It was full of risk; but some risk must be run in every direction in which I could attempt to move. This, therefore, was the line I chose; and I lost no time in leaving Nismes for Avignon.

"In case my former disguise worn in Switzerland should have been reported by M, Crenelle, Louise's uncle, and in case any recollection of the peasant's brown dress should be preserved from the information of the farmer on the Rhone, who had been examined after giving shelter to Isidore and myself the morning after our escape, I was obliged to get at Nismes a sailor's jacket and straw hat, which, with colouring my face by means of walnut juice, seemed to set all suspicion at defiance. I slept at a village on the way not far from Beaucaire, and on the following evening I got to a small inn, near Avignon, used chiefly by carriers and country people. Nothing particular occurred the first night; but next morning as I lay in bed, I heard two men who were sleeping in the same room, conversing about a murder committed some years ago, which roused my attention, though I did not let them see I was awake. From the circumstances, especially one of the men saying that the suspected person had been secured at Nismes, and had escaped, but was since known to be in Switzerland, I plainly perceived, of what and of whom they were speaking. Nothing could have relieved the agitation this threw me into, but the gross exaggerations which they gave of the unhappy catastrophe I had so much too great a hand in. One was that Father Lunel (as they called me) had run off with a nun; and another that he had attempted to kill her uncle, when he pursued them into Switzerland. When a murderer remains undiscovered it is singular how the remembrance of the crime is kept alive by the public impatience that blood should atone for blood. As soon as he has been found, and has paid the forfeit of his crime, the curiosity and interest subsides of itself. Till then every one seems to have a concern as well as the law in the course of justice being free and unobstructed; and doubtless every one has an interest in it; for nothing more effectually protects life than the belief that 'Murder ever will out.' Father Jerome used to think that cruel punishments for this heinous crime were ill-judged, because they made men's minds more savage and ferocious, while the fear of punishment comes little into their recollection when under the domination of the fierce passions which in most cases prompt the perpetration of the offence. As that is the season not of calculation, but of feeling, he used to think that more depended on the general habit of mind previously formed, than upon the reasons suggested by observation, and only to be weighed at cooler moments. However, he admitted that a habit of fear might be formed by constantly seeing malefactors discovered, and if discovered severely punished; though his principle was that example deterred far fewer from the commission of crimes than was generally supposed. Among the safeguards to life, he used to dwell much upon the respect for the dead, and even the horror of approaching or lightly dealing with their remains. He thought that men would much less shudder at spilling each other's blood, if they were accustomed to treat their remains with indignity, or even neglect: and he was wont to draw from this consideration an argument that the funeral ceremonies of different nations, even of barbarous tribes, were not without their use in a moral view, independent of their salutary tendency to promote serious reflection.

"I walked out a little during the early part of the morning, and made afterwards some inquiry as to my distance from Arles, meaning, as I reported, to join my ship at Marseilles. But my object was to form some intimacy with a lad of eighteen, belonging to the house. All I could do, however, was to find that, without going into the town, I might hire a calèche, for a day, with a boy to drive me as far as Beaucaire, where the diligence would pass next morning. Seeing little chance of this boy being of any use to my plan, I was sitting near the door in the morning, when there passed a figure that at once fixed my eyes; it was Louise herself, walking towards the lime-trees which are on each side of the

Aix road. I knew not the young woman who was with her; but she had the air of a servant. Letting them pass, I followed till I could see they were in a part of the road where no one else was walking; I then came smartly up and passed them, moving on till I could turn so as to meet them. When I came near, I fixed my eyes on Louise, gave a smile, and instantly saw that I was recognized. I was right in my conjecture; it was her maid, whom she immediately left, and joined me at a few paces' distance. I had only a moment to bid her come to the last tree in the avenue at six o'clock, when I should have a calèche ready which would easily take us to Beaucaire, and the diligence to Aix would then enable us to get by Sisteron and Gap to Dauphiné, and so to Switzerland. The agitation of this meeting was calmed, or rather supplanted, in us both, by the agitation of the plan in which we were embarked. The noble girl made no objections; she resolved to follow my all but desperate fortunes; she agreed to meet me at six o'clock; and I lost no time in hiring a calèche which should take us to Beaucaire.

"As the hour approached I began to feel uneasy; but the calèche was at the place appointed, and in a quarter of an hour, which seemed a long night, I saw Louise, attended by the same maid, coming towards me. In an instant we were in the carriage, she wrapped up in her cloak, and I keeping a look-out to see if we were followed. We had hardly time to express the joy we both felt at our separation being at length ended by a meeting, though assuredly not in very auspicious circumstances, when a diligence overtook us; but it was not the one which travels to Aix. We had therefore no chance of escape but by waiting all night at Beaucaire for the Aix coach, which was to pass early in the morning. At Beaucaire, then, we arrived; and we sate for an hour exchanging vows and congratulating ourselves upon this happy deliverance. Never except the day I received Louise's charming letter in the Limousin did I pass so delightful a time as between our arrival (the driver no longer being present to prevent our speaking), and Louise's retiring to rest. But our joy was darkened by a most untoward circumstance. The driver coming into the room where we sat, to be paid, bowed to Louise and saluted her by her name. How were we, then, to prevent our escape from being known all over Avignon next morning? I tried what I could to prevent his returning till late; but he would not listen to my proposals. We then endeavoured to work upon his fears, and told him that the Commissary or Governor would punish him for having taken parties away without a passport. It was all in vain; it only made him the more desirous of returning; and he vowed to complain in the inn if he was detained a moment longer. He was therefore paid, and we immediately heard him drive off. I could not avoid feeling uneasy at this circumstance, but I endeavoured to make the least of it with Louise, whose great anxiety had exhausted her and made sleep absolutely necessary. I then resolved, in case of any unforeseen accident, to sit up all night in the room where we had supped, and also that I might have her called as soon as the time for the arrival of the diligence drew near.

"About six it was said to be nearly the hour; she was in a short time ready, indeed she had only laid herself down to sleep without undressing, in case of the coach arriving earlier than its usual time. The wheels we soon after heard, and with anxious hearts we waited to see if there was room. Happily we found two places and only two other persons, one a lady, the other a military-looking person of about twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, with a handsome countenance, though shaded with black moustachios.

This I saw by the light of the lantern as we were helped into the carriage by the inn-servant. We soon drove off, though at a pace very different from that which my impatience to be out of the Contât would have desired. Having slept none at Beaucaire, and it being still quite dark, I fell asleep, and may have continued in this state an hour when a great noise awoke me of voices roaring out, and, more frightful still, calling my own name. I was shocked again to hear the driver ordered to stop in the name of the Holy See's officers and authority, and to deliver up a party charged with murder and sacrilege. I instantly leapt out of the coach, and, snatching up a bludgeon which lay near the driver, threatened with immediate destruction any one who should dare to lay a hand on me. I perceived the officer of police was attended by another person, and from his figure and the few words I heard him speak, I could have little doubt it was Crenelle. Enraged beyond measure at his presence, I sprang upon him and secured him by the throat, when, my foot slipping in the clay, I fell, bringing him down upon me, and the policeman was in the act of securing me with a rope, when the officer from the diligence seizing the bludgeon that I had let fall in the struggle, felled him to the ground with a blow, and extricated me. He implored me to fly and take the road to Nismes, as my life was gone if I hesitated. I felt as if in his voice I recognised a well-known sound, and the squeeze of his hand which immediately followed, at once showed me I was right; it was the dear Isidore, who had been at Avignon in deep disguise, and was returning to Marseilles. I whispered that Louise was the woman under my care, but he plainly intimated that he could on no account be a party to any further violence against his uncle, which M. Crenelle was, as well as Louise's; and implored me to take the only course left, that of allowing her to return with him, and myself consulting my safety in flight. With a heavy heart I communicated this to Louise; Isidore gave him an intimation, but without discovering himself, that he took at his peril any proceeding against me. She accompanied him as we advised; Isidore, again tenderly squeezing my hand, promised to let me know what befel him and where he was, but he was compelled to fly by the same conveyance, having no small fear lest he should himself be found out and followed. The diligence went forward, taking him on towards Aix;

I got off the road upon an eminence where I could in the dim light barely see a person's figure upon the road; and as soon as I saw that Louise and her uncle were gone back towards Beaucaire, I took the road to Tarrascon, where I intended to wait till I could in the night go to Nismes. Fortunately I overtook a peasant who carried me in his car a good portion of the way; and, after lying concealed in the suburbs, I walked all the following night and reached the pastor's house before daylight.

"You will perhaps wonder when I tell you that all my love for Louise, my agony at our separation, my alarm for my own safety, was nearly lost in one feeling which now pervaded my mind, the delight of finding my dear Isidore safe, and I hoped comfortable, if not happy, my astonishment at the strange chance which had brought us together, and my regret at having seen him but for a few moments. His generous devotion to me, his abandonment of all care for himself, to which I now for the second time owed my escape, dwelt on my memory as something of a romantic kind. If any superior power had given me the choice of being restored to his loved society or to my Louise herself, probably when the election was to be actually made I should not have much hesitated; but revolving it in my mind as I journeyed along towards Nismes, I hardly could have decided which to prefer. In all my vicissitudes I have known no truer friend—in all my wanderings I have had no experience of a more single heart in man, or a more loveable disposition.

"It was now necessary that I should at once disclose to the family the danger I was in. Before I arrived, reports had reached the place; but in the course of the day these were confirmed; and my attempt to carry off Louise, with an exaggerated account of the violence I had used to her uncle, made the whole subject of conversation at Nismes in every place of resort. The certainty of my being in the country without means of conveyance, and my known connection with the pastor's family, made suspicion certain to be directed towards that quarter. Indeed, it was the very first place in which a search would be endeavoured by the spiteful uncle, now made doubly furious by the treatment which his person had received, when I had with an effort upon myself refrained from taking yet more signal and sure vengeance upon him. It was absolutely necessary, therefore, that I should immediately escape. The Papal authorities could expect no kind of aid from those of Nismes as far as regarded any spiritual proceedings, or any punishment of offenders against the ecclesiastical power. But unhappily there was a graver charge against me of a civil description, and to prosecute that the police of Nismes was bound to lend its assistance. Once arrested, my destruction was imminent, for I was undeniably a subject of the Contât, and I must, in the ordinary course of justice, be delivered up to be dealt with at Avignon according to the ecclesiastical as well as the municipal laws.

"After much consultation, it was resolved by Madame Gardein, the pastor's daughter-in-law, to whom the story of our attachment had been confided by Louise, that she should disclose the whole circumstances of my case to her bosom friend, the Marchioness de Bagnolles, and implore her protection for me. She hastened to the Château, and found no difficulty in persuading so zealous a Protestant to favour the escape of one whose offences, no doubt, were secular as well as spiritual, but who nevertheless could have been in no serious jeopardy had priests never been. But the Marchioness was most reluctant to involve her husband in the responsibility of affording shelter to one charged with grave offences. She justly observed that the same conduct in this respect, which to a woman is easily pardoned, because it is dictated by their compassion, might in a man, especially of the Marquess's rank, wear a less excusable aspect. It was, therefore, settled between these friends, that I should take refuge in the cave which was known to the Marchioness as having afforded shelter before to an unfortunate priest, the object of persecution for having changed his religion, at a time when the power of the clergy in Nismes was much more formidable than in the present day. She contrived to make the place more comfortable by causing the old housekeeper to work at it for a few hours, and to carry thither a sufficient number of blankets to make a tolerably warm bed. In the course of a few weeks the cold weather was sure to cease; and there was always good shelter from the Mistral, the only cold of any consequence experienced in this part of Languedoc. I arrived the same night, and being secreted in the room where we now are, I was early next morning guided to the cave by the housekeeper, and I inhabited it unknown and uninterrupted from that day to the morning when you found out my retreat, the dear Marchioness passing a part of most days with me during the summer and autumn, and only bringing me here when the cold weather commenced.

"These are my adventures; but on Louise have I never more set my eyes since that dreadful night, nor have I ever received any tidings whatever respecting her."

Albert Lunel ceased, having now brought his singular and melancholy history to a close. It left on Chatillon's mind a mournful impression; above all he deeply sympathised with the separated and persecuted lovers, and he formed a hundred schemes for rescuing Louise from the clutches of her hateful tyrant, and restoring her to Albert's arms.

CHAPTER IV.

POPULAR CONTAGION.

There arrived a stranger at the Château, about this time, who formed a most interesting addition to its society. This was the Earl of Mornton, an English nobleman of high family in Ireland, and great accomplishments, a member of Parliament, and holding a considerable office in the government. He was intimately the friend of the reigning minister, and by common consent was destined to take the highest place among the statesmen of that country. Nothing could exceed the elegance and suavity of his manners; and, what gave him great success in French society, he spoke the language altogether like a native, but with a purity which not many natives ever attain. He was a man of extraordinary classical acquirements, being familiar with the ancient languages and literature, above the measure even of the most educated Englishmen. But his information was general and it was accurate. Above all, his political views were enlarged and sound. He had deeply studied human affairs, and was a careful and most anxious observer of the aspect which things wore in France. At the period of his arrival having come through Paris, his opinion of what was then passing in the capital was naturally much sought after by those whom he found assembled at the Château, and in the course of the next day, the Marquess naturally summoned M. de Chapeley as well as others, to meet him. Catteau hearing of this arrival, and eager to display his own importance, and preach his own faith before so eminent a personage, rather than very anxious for information, made an excuse for calling in the morning, so that the Marquess, to show Lord Mornton a sample of the exalté school of politics in Languedoc, asked him to remain and dine with them. It appeared that his lordship had formed the most gloomy presage in, contemplating the issue of the present crisis. Perhaps, from being less involved in the deep game that was playing, he, a bystander, might see more of it than those whose stakes were in the pool. Certainly he was an alarmist, at the least to the extent in which M. de Chapeley was alarmed; as certainly his nerves were anything rather than of the texture which M. Catteau affected to despise, when he always from some such feebleness accounted for any cautious or prudent suggestion,—a texture which in fact, much more belonged to his own nerves and those of his reckless associates than to their adversaries, men of wise hesitation, and therefore of true courage, whom he made a practice of ridiculing and running down.

"The ground-work of my apprehensions," said this noble person, "is the universal unsettlement of all received ideas, and ancient opinions, which I see to pervade all classes. Nothing any longer seems sacred; no institution is beyond discussion of its title; no opinion or principle is received as fixed and admitted. All is uncertain, undetermined; all under consideration and called in question, as if we were in the woods of America; nay, much more—for, in the new states of America, the principles of English jurisprudence are held sacred; and even the principles of the English constitution are received, though under new names and other forms. But here, in France, it is as if all things were set loose, as if all was at sea, as if some wave were passing over the old monarchy like that which overwhelmed the Old

World, and a new stratum were to be thrown up, and when consolidated by time, to be the successor of the one which had perished. I pray fire rather than the great but slow innovator, time, may not be in operation."

"I cannot," said the Chief Judge, "deny that of the last forty or fifty years the writings of our philosophers, helped by those of our wits, and by the chat of our polished circles—for discussion one cannot well call it—has produced a very great change in the opinions and the feelings of the public. But it has, of course, been unable to penetrate very low in an ill-educated country. The bulk of the people have not been materially affected by it."

"Nevertheless," said Lord Mornton, "observe that all influence, whether of sound learning: or of a worse spirit, proceeds from the upper to the lower portions of society. You at first impregnate the higher bed, the upper narrow layer of the pyramid—thence the next a little larger takes its colour from the contact—and so the impregnation descends till it gets to the broader stratum of the people. I don't at all deny your position, that for the present, the higher classes and the professional men, with the more considerable merchants and bourgeoisie, are alone filled with these new-fangled notions. But how long can this last? The poison is too sweet not to be eagerly swallowed; and in proportion to men's being destitute of property, of stake in the country, will be their eagerness to drink of the cup which is to make them equal with those who have the most."

"In that sense," said the Judge, "I agree with your lordship's position; and, indeed, I am very far from affirming that some progress has not already been made towards the evil consummation which you think you see approaching. Of this at least I am certain, that if those above allow this move in the wrong direction, the lower classes will be very far indeed from offering any resistance. Nay, they will much more probably be the first to join. The peasantry alone would feel any repugnance, but from their scattered position and their lesser information, they will be as nothing compared with the mobs of the towns."

"But in these circumstances," said the Baron, "only fancy the madness of the Archbishop issuing his mandate, inviting all the whole community to send in their opinions, to print whatever theories, or fancies, or vagaries they pleased on the constitution and proceedings of the States General just convoked."

"I was at Paris," said the Earl, "when that began to operate, and the effect was magical. The whole town seemed at once to have been converted into a vast debating club. The corner of every street was thronged with knots of politicians; every wall was placarded with political addresses; and the booksellers' shops were bursting with tracts of all sorts and sizes, handling every point of political doctrine. I believe, with you, that this spirit is very much less diffused in the provinces; but I assure you it is no light matter in considering your present difficulties and dangers, that the capital should be peopled with political agitators and a political mob, while the rest of the country is comparatively sluggish and inert. I foresee from hence the tyranny of Paris over France, which really means of the mob over the community."

The wisdom as well as the eloquence of the English peer restrained M. Catteau for the greater part of the evening; but someone arrived from Nismes when they had left the dining-room, and brought accounts of the Archbishop's sudden resignation and flight to England. His last act, that of suspending the payment of one third of the public engagements, and giving bills at a year's date in security of the debt, had operated most injuriously on the funds, and was regarded as an act of national bankruptcy. Brienne, in many things weak, was utterly inexcusable in his flight, which left the Court to struggle alone with difficulties his measures had first created, at least seriously aggravated, M. Catteau was now unable to contain himself. "We have, thank God, been relieved from the old minister; the keeper of the seals must follow his chief, and then"—"Why, my good friend," said the Chief Judge, "you seem to forget that M. Lamoignon has brought forward the most important reforms which our jurisprudence ever received, measures which are enough to immortalize their author."—"As for his measures," rejoined Catteau contemptuously, "they are all well enough in their way, and may be taken as an instalment."—"Why really, friend," said the president, "my lord will hardly believe that the reforms you treat so lightly are the immediate abolition of torture, and the universal improvement of our code of laws, both criminal and civil."—"Well, well," said Catteau, "I don't deny that this is something; it is an instalment; it is a sous paid of our debt, but we must have the other nineteen of the livre."—"Catteau," said M. Chapeley, "this reference to instalments, and your livre, is what I am daily accustomed to hear, and you have no right to use the comparison; for you will please to observe that you differ from all other creditors; they have the sum of their demand fixed, and when they receive an instalment they let their debtor know fairly how much remains due, beyond which he cannot be charged. You have no such sum; your unit, your integer, is concealed: and whatever you get, you pocket, making it only the ground and the means of obtaining more, while you never let us know the amount of your whole demand. But this I will say, that the reforms of M. Lamoignon are of the greatest value, and coupled with the King's offer to give up the Gabelle,[17] and the recommendation of the Notables to abolish the Corvée,[18] and the plan originating with M. Calonne for imposing the taxes more equally, according to the men's ability, form altogether such a body of real substantial improvement as no sweeping change in our constitution is ever likely to obtain for the people of this kingdom."

"My dear sir," said Lord Mornton, " I cannot express how entirely I agree in the sound and wise, as well as liberal, view which you take of these matters. I am wholly with you (J'abonde dans voire sens). How cruel the disappointment would be to all good men and real lovers of their country, should we see the substance of real improvement sacrificed for the shadow of change, and this nation trying to obtain remote and imaginary good from some untried system, instead of seeking all the benefits they can get under a better working of the old!"—"The old," said Catteau, "is rotten and worn out; it is good for nothing; it can yield no fruit."—"Don't, M. Catteau, mistake me," the Earl said, "I am decidedly for amending it, in order that its better working may be secured. In this principle I have always agreed with Mr. Pitt, in whose zeal for reforming our Parliament I cannot always concur; but so far I approve his doctrine, that the foundation of our popular government must be strengthened in order to make the people sure of obtaining that great end of all government, a good administration of their affairs."—"Ah," said the Chief Judge, "in your changes you happily have a foundation to build upon; you already have an established representative system; we have unhappily all to begin."—"I quite agree with you," Lord Mornton said, "and I never was more annoyed, and even disgusted, than with the remonstrance of the 11th of April, in which your Parliament, with a preposterous affectation of antique lore, pretended to show that under all the three races of its monarchy, there had always been a control over the legislative power of the Crown; perverting known facts, inventing checks, and after all leaving the nomination of the controlling body in most cases to the sovereign. It is a puerile document, wholly unworthy the grave body which issued it, and as deficient in honesty and good faith as in statesmanlike qualities—I should rather say, all other statesmanlike qualities. No, no, as you say, all is to begin unfortunately."

"Why, instead of regarding this as a misfortune," M. Catteau replied, "I rather rejoice at it. Heaven be praised that we have nothing to hamper and restrain us. We have the ground all cleared away for a new building, and may suit our taste in the plan. See if we don't raise a magnificent castle to lodge freedom in."—"I pray," the Judge said very seriously, "you may not dig a dungeon for the free."—"What," asked Catteau,

"do you think we are to be duped at this time of day with your Cours Plénières, with the mockery of a constitution lately attempted to be palmed upon us, and merely to suspend the Parliaments and enable the King to break his promise of convoking the States?"—"Why, certainly not," M. Chapeley replied, "I am as far from approving that measure as you can be yourself. It was anything rather than a wise one. The Cour Plénière was to be, both in its structure and its functions, a mere tool in the king's hands; to be composed of the princes, prelates, marshals, and other grandees, with only twelve deputies from the Parliament, all the others to be nominees of the Crown—while the meeting of this new Assembly of Notables, for it was nothing else, was to depend on his majesty's pleasure."—"I don't imagine," said the Englishman, "there ever was a much greater blunder committed than this scheme, which, with all the mysterious secresy employed to wrap it up, was prematurely discovered, and when made known really seems to have done more towards aggravating the existing ferment than any other move of the ill-fated and worse advised Court. One thing must ever be borne in mind during such a crisis as the present. If you mean to allay the discontent by concession, by travelling in the direction of the movement party, either you must go a good way towards that purpose, or you may lay your account with increasing rather than stemming the mischief. But anything flimsy, colourable, and even betraying sinister designs, only increases the evil; it exasperates, by raising a doubt of your good faith."—"I could not, however, have expected," said the Judge, "that this would make the noblesse, even the clergy, take part against the Court. Think of a remonstrance signed by forty-seven peers and bishops, and in the King's present extremity! These are but gloomy signs of the times, my lord."—"They tell me," said Catteau, with visible exultation, "that the feelings of the Parisians, down to the lowest mob, are exceedingly strong. The whole town seems moved with political ardour, and we surely shall see all old abuses shaken to pieces."—"Beware, M. Catteau," Lord Mornton said very seriously, "beware how you place the pruning-knife to lop off abuses in the thousand hands of the mob, whose many heads are proverbial, and amount not in the whole to one."—"Why, really, one would think. Milord, that in your free country the maxims of some canting moralists, theological optimists, were the rule of the state; and that you held whatever is, is right."—This sally was delivered in a tone to show that one person at least of the company was very abundantly satisfied with it. But his contentment was not of long duration. "Why, truly so," said the Earl. "But I should suppose there is another country where certain of its inhabitants hold that whatever is, is wrong, and, possibly as a practical inference whereon to ground their cause, add another maxim, that whatever is not, ought to be."—M. Catteau showed little mind to prolong the discussion, and soon afterwards retired to join his club at Nismes, and to brag of having silenced an English aristocrat.

The English noble was not merely a statesman, an orator (as unfortunately all English statesmen must needs be), and a fine scholar; he was the delight of polished society; for beside the charm of captivating manners, and of the greatest personal beauty, he possessed a wit that never failed, never tired, never exceeded the bounds of perfect propriety and good taste, nor ever mixed itself with gall any more than it ever ran to coarseness. He was also fond of society, and devoted to the fair sex. It is not wonderful then that he was attracted by the

Countess, and her first impression upon him, both by her brilliant form, and her superior talents, could not be otherwise than powerful. But it was of short duration. Her hardness, her coldness, her selfishness, soon pierced through her charms; and altogether disinclined his lordship to swell the crowd of her devotees. He had a notion of which he never could divest himself, as he said in discussing the matter with Ernest whom he had known in Paris. "I will fairly own," he said, "that of a cold woman I always have my suspicions. The heat exists somewhere; and if not in the right place, it will break out in the wrong."—"Whereabout," said he, "do you imagine it burns in our fair friend?"—"Why, where but in her temper? I feel as certain as if I had seen her provoked, that that woman can be easily thrown off her guard."—"You had better not try the experiment," said Ernest.—"But, my good friend," the Earl answered, "I should not so much mind mere hot temper; it is not very becoming, but in a woman it is not dangerous. My fear is that your cold and hard woman has worse faults. She is in an unnatural position; she is masculine without our firmness, and is apt to have the bad parts without the good of our sex. Besides, has her ice never melted, her hardness never been mollified?"

"Why, I have sometimes thought," said Ernest, "the Baron had a chance. Assuredly she laid him prostrate at first sight. No sooner came he in view of Mont Blanc, than he seemed to have sworn that he should either scale this unapproachable eminence, and thaw this eternal glacier, or perish in the attempt. That, you know, even your snow-woman holds for something—takes in extreme good part."

"But how did she and he go on? I suppose she relished him?"

"As who does not? His various learning; his brilliant wit; his drollery, for it now soars to the Attic heights and now sweeps the Doric levels; his grave, serious even severe, though God wot never ascetic moments; his liveliness, alternating with sarcasm, like the clouds which course along the sky, now hiding and now revealing the sun, now screening us from his glare, and now descending in tempests of thunder—all this must have made a strongish impression on a very clever woman, though he has absolutely none of the qualities which win the ordinary female mind; he is plain, nay, as near being ugly as any intelligent countenance will allow; he sings not, plays not, paints not, dances not; he neither hunts, nor hawks, nor shoots; he gambles not; and he dresses so that, were he to appear in our salons at Paris, he must either serve a long noviciate, or attain high station, or make some happy hit that all can talk about—else success he never could have; add to all which, manners, though high enough bred, yet abrupt, a temper not under strict control, and as much pride as falls to one man's share."

"Is he amiable in other respects?" asked Lord Mornton; "for somehow he holds himself so much aloof, that the more one sees of him, the less one knows of him."

"Amiable it is quite impossible any one can be with his hot temper, and the sin raging in him without control whereby our first parents fell. But he is also revengeful, and I should say could forgive more easily than he can forget."

"Do you hold him selfish?"

"In the utmost sense of the word. I don't mean to say he is incapable of generosity; he is of course generous, because he is proud and cannot stoop to reckon pounds, shillings, and pence (louis et livres). He is munificent by force of being magnificent, would give to deserving objects rather than to others, but must give to some, that he may be above counting cost, and also make men feel grateful and dependent. But I think he despises, perhaps hates, all he confers favours upon."

"Is he a religious man with all this?"

"Why, he is a good Catholic, if you will, and I dare say condescends to bow at church, which he never will do at any earthly court. But as for religion, his share of it would I believe lie in a nut-shell."

"And yet, with all this, you tell me two odd things—he is devotedly fond of his niece, wholly wrapped up in her; and he is admired and liked, perfectly unamiable as you paint him, by a woman of such strong sense and vehement nature as the Countess."

"As for his niece, no doubt he concentrates all his tenderness in his love of her, who adores him; but as for as the Countess, it is her kind of nature to take a fancy no one else would, and by dint of his industry and his wit, he seems extremely to resemble an amiable person. They are not unlike in this; they are both fine to look at from a distance, like bright thistles set round with tearing thorns."

"But, M. Deverell, let me say, I have been wonderfully struck with his young niece. I had a walk on the terrace with her before dinner, and, though I had heard much of her from the Marchioness, I never was more pleased or more surprised. She possesses extraordinary powers, and her manners are as delightful as I ever yet saw in any person. What a relief from Madame de Chatillon's hardness, all handsome as she is, to repose upon the sweetness of Mdlle. de Moulin!"

"Aye, that you may well say," exclaimed Ernest, with more enthusiasm than could have been expected from a Parisian muscadin, only that he really was above that caste.—"She is, indeed, truly admirable. I believe a more delightful being never animated mortal clay. Her genius is, as you perceive, extraordinary, and it is not confined to one or two walks. She writes beautiful verses, full of the finest imagination, chastened by proportionably severe taste. Her quickness of apprehension is almost more than human; but her judgment, tender as are her years, is the most true, the most unerring, insomuch that my aunt tells me she can consult her upon any difficult point of conduct, with the certainty of obtaining sound and useful advice; and I know her uncle constantly relies on her opinion, even in the most weighty matters."

"With all this, which is strange," said Lord Mornton, "her feelings seem sufficiently lively; and yet do they not warp her judgment?"

"Lively they are," he answered, "and even to acuteness, yet her judgment is calm and unruffled; her mental vision never obscured; her decision never warped by them. She is the most affectionate creature alive; and with a natural impetuosity of temper, she yet continually keeps it under restraint, as if distrusting herself, and would feel agony were she in any sally of it to give pain for a moment to any human being; for her whole existence is devoted to comfort those that love her, and help those who appeal to her unceasing charity and kindness."

"I grieve to see," said his lordship, "that this most lovely person enjoys but delicate health."

"Alas, she does," Ernest answered, "and she has often told my aunt, that she reckons not upon length of days. This, with her natural sensibility, has made her profoundly religious; piety is as it were a part of her very nature, interweaves itself with all her habits and engrosses all her thoughts, yet without one atom of harshness, or intolerance, or any of the other features of fanaticism or spiritual pride. It only guides, tempers, adorns her sweet and innocent life."

"Well really, M. Deverell, you speak with warmth, if not with poetry, on this favourite topic; I should have thought one of your habits and experience the last person in the world to become enamoured of a young person like Mdlle. de Moulin."

"Oh, as for enamoured, such an idea never entered my imagination; but I do assure your lordship, it is impossible to live as I have done for a couple of months in her society and that of her uncle without feeling a deep interest in them, and in their melancholy friendship."

"And why melancholy?" asked the Earl.

"Alas, it is his mournful lot to be wholly wrapped up in his niece, and all the while to know by how slender a thread hang, suspended as it were between life and death, all his joys on earth, all (as he has told my aunt) that makes life at all desirable to him, and even gives it any interest at moments when the storm of ambition is hushed, and the passions of his nature cease to rage. He has sometimes heaved a sigh after a life of quiet and retirement, in which his existence might glide tranquil and smooth, only occupied with cultivating Emmeline's mind, helping her genius to unfold itself in some divine work of fancy, and sharing the tender affections of her kindly nature."—"And what impression has all this gentleness made on the Countess?" said the Earl.

"Why, at first none at all. She conceived her to be a mere nonentity. Since her fancy has been somewhat taken with the Baron, she can better bear his niece. But it is plain they don't suit one another; and Mdlle. de Moulin can't at all affect a friendship or admiration which she cannot feel."

"You say she writes verses?"

"Very rarely, but delicately and tenderly when she does. She will, I dare say, if you ask her, show you a slight kind of song she lately gave her uncle on his complaining of his goddess's coldness; she took the Countess's part and defended it."

"I don't much think she will let me have those verses. Can't you manage to get me them?"—"Why, they are not many, I think I can repeat them. They run somehow as this. You know she speaks and writes English almost as well as your lordship does French.

"You ask what profit is in love,
Graced with Platonic name,
When souls, like spirits from above,
Lie wrapped in lambent flame?

Then, Zio, say, in woe or weal,
What more can mortals gain,
Than doubling every joy they feel,
And halving every pain?

"Very well, very well," said the Earl, "but I could mend them, though the innocent authoress will not. It should be not 'Graced with Platonic name,' but 'Where glows no fierce desire,' and as you cannot say 'lambent fire,' for the rhyme it must be 'heavenly fire.' "

"Well, perhaps," said Ernest, "you may be in the right; I am no doctor in these matters. But Mdlle. de Moulin would assuredly reject your amendment."

Lord Mornton asked if she often amused herself with writing verses. "No," said Ernest, "she rather undervalues this accomplishment, holding it good for nothing, because always sure to be possessed in mediocrity. However, she has some pretensions as a painter of still life. I will give you her sketch of our Languedoc 'Summer Evening'—

The sun's last dying rays now gild the scene,
And gentle twilight sheds the mildest glow
O'er house, hill, tree, empurpling all the green,
And the blue rills that warbling glide below.

The lambent lightning gleams athwart the sky;
Each floweret spreads its sweetness through the grove;
The fire-fly glancing flits from bough to bough;
And wakeful turtle-doves breathe out their love.

The balmy air now scarcely stirs the leaves,
So justly tempered, that each sentient frame
No warmth, no chill from its soft gale receives,
But life flows on in smooth unbroken stream.

In this sweet season mere existence charms
The raptured sense—rapture without alloy;
'Tis perfect love—but love without alarm;
'Tis calmest pleasure—but which ne'er can cloy.

The soul looks upwards in such hours as these,
While all the feelings to devotion move;
Each sense seems kindly lent us but to please,
And perfect wisdom breathes in perfect love.

The Earl expressed his favourable opinion of these slight lines; but said that he still better liked her judicious remark on poetical merit.

When the society of the Château met at breakfast next morning, they found the important intelligence arrived from Nismes that the King had, after considerable hesitation, recalled M. Necker to the government, and placed the control of the finances in his hands, as it had been eight years before. The joy universally excited by this great event was described as unbounded; the new minister was the idol of the people; their suspicions of the Court were dispelled; their confidence in the King was restored; and nothing remained but for the great financier to retrieve public credit, which his wise measures and the belief in both his skill and integrity promised would speedily be done, and to prepare for the meeting of the States next spring. It was further stated that the new minister prefaced his acceptance of the seals by a condition, the theme of general praise, that he should serve without any salary or emolument whatever.

"Well," said the Count, "I should like much to hear what the Chief Judge says on this event; and also Lord Mornton's opinion; but he rises late, I think."—"Yes," said Ernest, "his health is delicate, and he is going to pass the winter in Italy to recruit it. But," he added, "I can tell you what M. Catteau says, for I rode over to Nismes early and met him at the post-office, when the intelligence from Paris was announced. He said that this made all secure, for the Court and the King were beaten, and Necker was a republican at heart, and, if not, was too feeble to resist the sovereign people."

"And did you make no remark on such an ungenerous return for the King's great goodness?"

"No," said Ernest, "but M. de Balaye, who was standing by, did. He said, 'Catteau, you and your party will not end before the streets of Paris run with blood.' "

"Well, of course he protested and denied."

"Oh, nothing of the kind: he said, 'Why, for the matter of that, we have some need for bleeding at Nismes as well as at Paris. But be comforted, Balaye, it won't be your blood or mine that will run; it will be the pure aristocratic liquor, of which they have so much that they can well spare a little."

"Indeed," said the Marquess, "then M. Catteau never more darkens my door; of that be assured. I had formerly thought only of his violence and his folly. He now appears to me in a more odious light, and I believe from other indications, that here are at Nismes, as the Baron lately found in Orange, and elsewhere on his journey, persons of the most fierce and even sanguinary dispositions, ready to turn whatever may happen to the most violent account."

Lord Mornton having entered the parlour, and taken his seat under the book-case (for he had breakfasted in his own room), laid down the book which he had opened, and joined the company at table. He expressed his reprobation of this Catteau and his bloodhound pack, as he termed the party with a vehement eloquence which shook those who heard him, and made them believe all that had been said of his great talents for public life. "But," he said, "there is unhappily one remark of this cannibal lawyer which is too well founded. While he, and such as he, are aspiring to lead, and while the populace of Paris, and perhaps of other great towns, are so ready to follow, assuredly a firmer hand than M. Necker's is wanted to govern France. These mischief-mongers are already reckoning on his pliancy, and, as Catteau said, his heart, even if not republican enough for their wishes, is not stout enough for such a crisis as the present." The Baron, who knew that excellent man personally, bore ample testimony to his pure honour and amiable qualities. "We want more for a public man;" the Earl said, "that is the best foundation, but we must build upon it."—"I believe," said the Baron, "that his political integrity is equally without a stain. Nothing can be more disinterested than his whole conduct when last in office, and he has begun, we see, his new reign with a noble act, the refusal of all emolument to himself."—"But," said the Earl, "even integrity will not now suffice. We must have a firm pilot to weather the storm, as well as an honest master above all design of playing falsely with the owner and cheating the underwriters."—"I much question," the Marquess said, "the wisdom of this same refusal of salary. M. Necker, who made his five or six millions as a banker, can well afford to serve for nothing. He has no right to impose a like condition on those who are without his means, no right to put them in the dilemma of refusing to be generous and disinterested, or confessing to be poor."—"I rather differ with you there," said Lord Mornton; "in general what you say is quite true and just; but mark that the present is eminently a financial crisis, which will require the greatest saving in all departments, and in my opinion M. Necker has done well in arming himself with the power to retrench all salaries, by refusing to take any himself. But for this consideration, and regarded as a mere boast, a measure to gain public confidence, I should have despised as I should any other popularity-trap."—"However," said the Baron, "I entirely agree with your lordship in the opinion that more is now wanted than even the strictest public virtue. Courage of the highest order, moral courage, the boldness to face difficulties of the worst and most opposite kind, the resolution to act on a sound system, regardless of the people when you differ with them, nay the determination to encounter the utmost hatred, if need be, of those who, while they moved in the right direction, you most cordially joined; this is absolutely necessary now, and without this my Genevese friend will do nothing."—"I wish," said the Marquess, still hankering after his former opinion, "we may not pay dear for his disinterestedness. The amount of that salary which now intoxicates our countrymen, may prove to be very dearly purchased. Pray, Baron, what are his views respecting the States? He must have long since made up his mind upon the great points of discussion, and be prepared to act on his own views?"—"He has," the Baron said, "a fixed determination on one of the questions; on the other, he has not at all made up his mind. He will, I am sure, determine in favour of allowing the Commons (tiers état), a number of deputies equal to those of the Nobles and Clergy united. The question of the three States voting apart or together, the real question of moment, he will leave to be determined when they meet,"—"Why," said Lord Mornton, "there is absolutely not even common sense in this. To what purpose give the Commons a double representation? Unless the three are to vote together, what can it signify how many deputies go to form the single vote of the tiers etat on any measure? No, no, depend upon it this Genevese literateur means that they shall sit together, but, not daring to propose it, he will give the one such a numerical force as may compel the others to join them; and then the same force will carry whatever the Catteaus please to propose."

The opinion thus entertained was combated, and feebly, by the Marquess remarking that the Archbishop's ordinance for constituting provincial assemblies, in order to make head against the Parliaments, obliged M. Necker so to shape his course, because it had both given the third estate a number equal to the other two in those bodies, and had intimated the plan of voting individually together, and not in separate chambers, each of which should have one voice. But Lord Mornton justly made answer that the importance of these assemblies was as nothing compared with that of the States General, and that what possibly was even in their case a great error, could receive no excuse from the precedent when applied to the representation of the whole kingdom. "I own," he said, "that my fears are great of the end to which all this may lead. If the violence of miserable unprincipled men, joined by those who always become the dupes of such leaders, the sincere and well-meaning, but wrong-headed, enthusiasts, shall succeed in gaining the mastery, with the base mobs of the great towns, and above all of Paris, to be the instruments of their mischief, I foresee nothing but ruin to this noble kingdom. A reign of mob-tyranny will lay waste the country; and you will end by having a much worse government established than any you now complain of, after passing through the most intolerable tyranny of all—that of the multitude. The Catteau murderers will be the sacrifice of their own wild and wicked schemes; but unhappily the worthy will fall with the vile; and, instead of gaining by the convulsion, you will end far worse than you began. Believe me, if there be a truth more sound than another in the science of government, and in that of human nature, it is this—that the people who hasten to improve their political lot faster than the safety of society permits, are as sure of going wrong, and coming to a bad end, as the individual who makes haste to be rich. Anarchy and slavery await the people, as the gibbet awaits the man."

The accounts from Paris, in letters received at Nismes, represented the temper of the people as extremely unsatisfactory. There was every indication of a disposition to excitement; the alarm was increased by the unpromising prospect of the harvest; and all who considered the subject at the Château felt disposed to take Lord Mornton's view, that the new minister was by no means the pilot required to weather the gathering storm. "I never," said his lordship, "could have so high an opinion of him after his resignation in 1781, as I had been inclined to entertain before. His first administration was marked certainly by great financial skill and unsullied integrity. It also showed great and perilous coveting of popular applause—a rock in every statesman's course, and to be carefully avoided. But when he refused to remain and preside over the execution of his own plans, and refused at a moment of great embarrassment for the King's service, as well as for the country, and retired merely because the jealousy of Maurepas, the prime minister, refused him a seat in the cabinet; probably, too, because he conceived the attacks through the press were encouraged by that colleague, I perceived, if not a man of little mind, certainly a second-rate man. It savoured of the petty, pedantic, self-conceited, Geneva character."—"I go along with you so far," said the Baron, "that I always considered this resignation to be the worst passage in my friend's public life. Yet it must be admitted, as to the libels which you mention, that the conduct of M. Maurepas was wholly inexcusable. There is not the shadow of a doubt that he set on the slanderers, and his agent was neither more nor less than Ste. Foix, who held a household place at court. M. Necker thought that his credit in the country, and consequently his power of serving it, was gone, if the King did not show his countenance and support of him by the mark of favour which was made a condition of his remaining in office. You will admit, too, Milord, that the minister who at such a season of difficulty had the whole weight of our shattered finances on his shoulders, being refused a place in the council which had to decide questions of peace and war, and commercial treaties, was an absurdity without example."—"That," his lordship said, "I don't deny; I only say, first that M. Maurepas was eighty-four years old, and that had M. Necker remained a few months he must have succeeded him as prime minister; next, that he was very ready to suppose his dislike of abuse merely originated in the dread of losing his power to serve the country. He lost that power much more effectually by retiring and letting the finances be mismanaged for seven long years. I have seen his correspondence, and that of his daughter, upon his lately taking office. I found in one of the letters an anecdote given in his praise,—that on receiving the news of his restoration to power he exclaimed, 'Oh! had I only the Archbishop's fifteen months! But now it is too late.'—And why too late? Because he went out and let in first Calonne and then the Archbishop."—"Do you believe he offered his daughter, Mademoiselle Necker, in marriage to your friend Mr. Pitt?" said the Countess.—"I am sure of it," he answered, "and a little bit of official pedantry made the offer the more ridiculous. He being at the head of the French treasury, Mr. Pitt of the English, the proposal went through neither more nor less than Mr. George Rose, the worthy secretary of the treasury in England."—"When you call the proposal ridiculous," she answered, "are you aware of the extraordinary qualities and accomplishments of Mademoiselle Necker, independent of her being the richest heiress in France, perhaps in Europe? Any man, be he your minister himself, might have been proud of such a match."—"Why, Madam," said his lordship, "I am sorry, and it was wrong, that I spoke slightingly, even in appearance, of any proposition in which, Mademoiselle Necker was concerned; for I hear from all quarters that her talents, spirit, and information, are of the highest order. But I was thinking of Mr. Pitt rather than of her: he is not a marrying man at all; less so, I may say more the reverse of it, than any one I know; and as for money I am sure all the wealth of Peru would never make him listen to a proposal which on other accounts he might wish to decline."—"I will add," said Ernest, "that much as her fortune might edify, and her talents charm me, I would give up half the one and all the other for a moderate addition to the stock of beauty which at present stands in Mademoiselle Necker's name."

CHAPTER V.

VARIETY.

It was the custom at the Château to invite on the Saturdays a larger number of guests than usually composed the society. There was no general invitation, which so near a large town would have been inconvenient, especially as party and sect greatly divided the inhabitants of Nismes. But it was a day which pretty certainly brought together a considerable party; and therefore, the young, the women, the literary men, and those ambitious of display in any manner, much enjoyed being asked to the party which agreeably closed the weekly labours of the one class, and the amusements of the other.

But among those who liked to come on Saturday was not M. Liel (called by the wits of Nismes Fiel), who eschewed such assemblies, declaring that the more of his fellow-creatures (who could, however, in no wise be called his semblables) were gathered together, he was sure to find the more folly and the more baseness; and he, therefore, prayed the Marquess to receive his respects on any other day of the seven. It must be observed, that he so far rejected the Nismes alias to derive his descent from the Roman family of Lelius, one of the few things he was vain of. But it was remarked, that if he had the wisdom of his ancestor, it could hardly be termed "meek" or "gentle" as Horace called his.

When Lord Mornton entered the room the second day after his arrival, he found this singular character, of whom he had the evening before heard from the Marchioness enough to make him, a curious observer of human nature, desirous of seeing him. He perceived, perched in an obscure corner of the library, where on that day the company chanced to assemble before dinner, an elderly man of meagre form, and a face singularly thin, and dried up, with an expression that seemed to justify the Nismes jest upon his name, and a kind of long opening of the mouth, that could scarcely be called a grin, for it was habitual, but could still less be termed a smile, for that was no production of those latitudes. There was nothing otherwise in the countenance at all ugly or repulsive; indeed, it bore a resemblance to what he recollected of Voltaire's. Much time did not elapse before he had occasion to observe that the accounts he had received of this person's misanthropy had not been exaggerated; and that it was far from having the disagreeable quality of other men's, for it made not at all that exception, which their hatred and contempt generally makes, the exception of themselves, and what belongs to themselves.

The Count having observed that M. Duras's jokes (a wit of the province) were somewhat far-fetched, "They may be so," said M. Liel, "and I'll answer for their not being worth the carriage."—"Is it true," asked the Countess, "that he lives by his wits?"—"Why if so, Madam, he must have but a meagre table."—"I am told," the Marquess said, "that he is an excellent man, very charitable according to his means towards other poor authors, and no one can find any fault with him that I can learn, if it be not a certain bitterness of expression which after all may mean no more than that it is his humour."—"I am sorry I don't know him, and should like to make his acquaintance," the Marchioness said.—"Why, perhaps it would be better for his reputation," said M. Liel, "that you should not, after the fine character just drawn of him." The

Marquess had unintentionally come upon two sore places with M. Liel; he had praised generosity and censured evil-speaking (médisance), his guest being as avaricious as he was misanthropic, and regarding any generosity in money as personal to himself, equally with any generosity in praise. He therefore boiled, or at least, simmered over, on the heat thus applied to him.—"Why, Marquess, as for his charities, how came you to know of them? Does he blow a trumpet when he gives a penny—that being all he ever has in his pocket? For my part, I defy my right hand to know what my left does; I keep both alike in my pocket, well knowing that if they be not there some other person's are sure to get in. Then, as to his evil speaking, it is perhaps the thing he most deserves to be commended for. He is honest, I suppose, and says what he thinks of his neighbours; and if they would all honestly say what they think of him, you would call them evil-speakers also."

Lord Mornton was delighted with this original, and still more when someone having mentioned that Madame Leblanc, (whom he particularly disliked) declared the evening party at the Pignerols' last night to be the best of the whole season, especially with a view to the supper, and that she foresaw they would repeat it, after such success: "Aye," said Liel, "I dare say we may foretel future events as our Roman ancestors did, from the bowels of the swine." It was said that there was no blame in the lady's being fat, any more than in another being lean, and that good-natured people generally are fat.—"But as she can have no such title to her shape," said he, "she certainly derives it from her gluttony alone. I never knew such a compound of talk about the spirit and concern about the flesh, in all my experience."—"Why, M. Liel," said the Marchioness, "I really always thought that you had been a religious man, and wonder to hear you blame Madame Leblanc for it."—"And who says I am not, Madam? But if I were compelled, as a condition of my devotion, to believe not only in religion, but in those who profess it, my faith would be soon at a low ebb. Religion gives me unspeakable consolation, and, therefore, I hate hypocrites."—"Consolation, truly," said the Marchioness, "we can hardly be said to have any other in this world."—"I agree with you entirely," he answered; "there is nothing so much raises us above it, abstracts us so much from it."—The Marchioness's face lighted up to hear such edifying sentiments. "Oh, yes, well may you say so! Well may you thus justly praise that grand solace."—"Yes, Madam, it is my refuge from the follies and the vileness of men—it abstracts me from them—it frees me from their contact—it holds out even the prospect of one day escaping from them altogether, and seeing them receive the condign reward of their conduct hereafter, which always contrives to avoid meeting with its due in this life."—"Alas, M. Liel," she replied, "I fear these are not quite the sentiments a religious mind should have."—"Madam, depend upon it that the mixture of cant and mutual flattery is the bane of our devotion, as it is of all social intercourse. To meet together for the purpose of oiling over one another, of muttering out praise of one's self and one's neighbour, to use our gift of speech for the purpose of concealing our thoughts both of others and of ourselves, to encourage every one his neighbour in all his weaknesses and all his wickednesses, by praising the one as amiable, and depicting the other as necessary—believe me all this is as foreign to true religion as it is to common honesty."—"Well, my good old friend," said the Marquess, "no one will accuse you of such things, though I often think you somewhat uncharitable."—"I hope and trust you very, very often do—but I am not much better than other people after all. I lately, as M. Deverell can witness, saw a gentleman give a beggar a livre piece, and I never even remarked (what I certainly must needs feel)—that he did it either by mistake or from ostentation. I said not one word, whatever I might think."—"No, that you did not," said Ernest, "and when I asked why you had not set the gentleman right, your answer was, if he did it from ostentation, you were only playing his game, and you never could be sure it was not so."

A kind of ejaculation, in the nature of a grunt, from M. Liel, testified the arrival of the Chevalier in the library. His good-natured countenance, betokening a spirit of contentment with himself and all about him; and his hilarity, ever unbroken, with his jolly humour, never venting itself in an ill-natured observation that did not manifestly proceed from mirth, and never was intended to wound, proved a source of acute suffering to M. Liel—indeed seemed to be a standing rebuke of him. The Sieur Gaspar used to say that the two taken and used together might make a good salad—the one being oil as the other was vinegar. Before the time came, however, for showing the Earl how impossible it was to mix them together, the announcement was made that the company were served, and they adjourned to the dining-room. It soon appeared to what tune M. Liel's politics were set. He professed his entire satisfaction with the news that had last arrived of fresh tumults in Paris, and of Necker having been recalled amidst great popular enthusiasm. The Earl ventured to hope that he did not partake of the joy which these events had diffused among the Catteau party. "But I do," said Liel. "Not one of the vile fry is happier with it than I am. They are, perhaps, more my utter detestation than any other class of the people; and I am sure that after fulfilling the object of their mission here on earth from their native regions below, they will themselves be thoroughly punished by each other before their return home to their father's warm and commodious mansion."—In his views of the probable result to be expected from these changes, the kind-hearted old gentleman did not differ widely from his lordship; though he regarded their consequences with somewhat different feelings—his being those by no means of universal benevolence, though they so far partook of rigid justice, that they were pretty equally favourable to all descriptions of his fellow creatures.—"I reckon the thing more than begun; I consider the revolution as already settled," said he.—"Then," said his lordship, "you think it not merely begun, but over."—"Over? Heaven forbid! I think it going on, and on it must go; but I hope to see it produce the condign punishment of all those classes of this huge overgrown country, with its more disproportioned aneurism of a capital, a false heart beating away, morbid itself, and filling the whole system with disease. There is scarcely one portion of our vile generation that I do not hope to see speedily suffer according to their deserts—perhaps beyond them; however, I don't require that. I shall be quite satisfied that they suffer according to their deserts—that suffering will be sufficiently ample; it will leave little to desire."

In the evening the company were agreeably entertained by looking at the Prince Caramelli's last drawings. He had not of late shown any, as he had made some excursions, and wanted to finish his sketches somewhat before exhibiting them. The display of his pencil gave little pleasure to M. Liel. His own love of natural scenery was strong, and he regarded with jealousy all the attempts to represent it on paper or on canvas. To some of the Prince's sketches he objected their being obscure, and leaving great doubts of what the different parts were intended to represent. The style was, indeed, somewhat dashy, and here and there a little indistinct. "That rock," said Liel, "to the right"—"Excuse me," the artist said, "it is a tree."—"I crave your pardon, I took it for a rock;" and he fell into, or perhaps rather made, other mistakes of the same kind; so that he recommended to the Prince a plan which he said would obviate all such difficulties. "I would have your Excellency," he said, "take the trouble of writing in the margin the names of the different objects intended to be represented, and connecting those names by a slight line with the parts of the drawing. The engineers, a sufficiently accurate race of men, always do so, and it saves trouble and prevents mistakes." It was, however, said by the Marchioness, in order to mitigate the Prince's chagrin at these criticisms, that M. Liel did not even much admire the great masters. "That I really cannot allow," said Liel; "I do greatly admire them—that is, as greatly as I can. Who does not love to gaze on Rubens' colouring, and Raphael's drawing?—though" (as if willing to eat in the praise he had been unwarily drawn into uttering), "I grant you there is as bad drawing in Rubens, as there is bad colouring in Raphael; and indeed, even as to colouring, who can quite stomach all the crimson and purple of the Fleming's fat, flabby, coarse and dropsical children, any more than their shapes? or who does not see a hardness and statuary outline in many of the Roman's figures, as well as a copper and mulatto colour, making one think he had been rather representing old Roman statues, which were coloured, than living persons?"—"But," said the Marquess, "all this is a decided point; we dare no longer dispute the judgment of ages."—"No," said M. Liel, "and because we are left bound on the merits of those who are gone, must we forge fetters for ourselves as to those who have no sentence to produce in their favour? We come into the grown up world with our minds chained by education, as we come into life with our limbs swathed. Therefore let us keep ourselves free to judge when we can. On that maxim I act."

The Prince perhaps thought he might charm the ear of this severe critic, though he had failed to please his eye; and he began to hum a tune and strike a few notes on his guitar. But unfortunately a general expression of satisfaction among the ladies showed that there was admiration stored up, secreted as it were, and ready to find vent: this M. Liel could not stand, and he escaped to bed before any bravo could be heard to grate upon his ear. He had the better excuse for this that his maxim was to get up with the cock and lie down with the crow, which, according to the old proverb, is the secret of avoiding the tomb.[19]

The conversation, as soon as the music was over, naturally enough rolled upon him who had been driven away by it. "He is," said M. de Bagnolles, "one of the strangest men I ever yet knew, and of the most unsparing misanthropy. Nor does it arise from misfortune, as is often the case; for his circumstances are affluent; he has never known affliction. But possibly living alone, and having always indulgences within his reach, has brought him to disregard whatever had no difficulty in the pursuit, and to undervalue mankind, whom he knew perhaps chiefly by bad report." The Earl remarked that he seemed to deprive himself of much gratification by his determination never to admire. "Why," said the Marquess, "it is not true that he never admires. He is enthusiastic in his love of nature. It seems as if there was a certain fund of admiration in our composition, and that, when denied an escape in one direction, it finds vent in another. This delight which he takes in natural objects is one reason why he won't easily bear pictures affecting to represent them, as you might see the other day."—"Has he any relish for poetry?" the Earl asked. "I should suppose little."—"Or rather none," the Marquess answered, "but he is patient of it compared with eloquence, which enrages him; he says it has all the folly of poetry and its emptiness; it is poetry under a false pretence; indeed he regards it as a kind of personal insult; add to which his unconquerable horror of lawyers and Romish preachers who are the practisers we of France most familiarly know in the rhetorical art. Our pastors read quietly and impressively their discourses, and have none of the action of the curés, which, he says, might save the congregation an emetic. I have heard him say, that some addresses are directed to the understanding, some to the heart, but these oily ones go straight to the stomach."—"How can he see the Maison Carrée and the Pont du Gard unmoved?" asked the Prince.—"Why, as they are works of men he naturally must condemn them; but then these men were Romans, and he makes some little exception in their favour, on account of his descent, which he firmly believes to be Roman; so that he accounts it a kind of personal or family concern, and says nothing against them, if he says not much in their behalf."—"Has he never shown any relaxation of his dislike towards the species of the present day?" asked the Earl.—"I should really say," the Marquess smilingly answered, turning to Mdlle. de Moulin, "that you are the person he is most tolerant of."—"Yet, dear Marquess," she said, "pray see how far my conquest of him, which you often rally me about, has proceeded. I showed him, and at his own desire, a copy of verses, and he said it was hard to read, as I grant he had a right to say, but he let me down mightily by adding, 'however, the words have another defect; when you have decyphered them they are not worth reading.' "—"Well, Mademoiselle, don't be offended; this is nothing to what he said, when some one having met 'old Leblanc, with the Abbé in a carriage,' said 'they were a fine pair,' not observing Madame Leblanc was in the room, behind that perfidious screen of books, and she good humouredly enough answered, 'oh, there are plainer women than old Leblanc, I promise you!'—'I deny it,' said M. Liel; and then she went on to observe, 'Well, well, that's your humour to say so; I repeat my assertion, and also that there are worse men than the Abbé.' 'There may,' said he, 'but I don't know them.' I assure you," the Marchioness added, "his humour goes consistently through all his life. Don't you recollect, my dear (mon bon ami), your experiment on his impossibility of his praising any thing?"—"Oh! yes; it was rather entertaining. He is particularly fond of a roast turkey, and never of course allows himself such an indulgence, though a great gourmand. I took extreme pains to have the very best the whole country could afford, and it was roasted most carefully, and delicately stuffed with truffles. He manifestly approved it; for he ate somewhere about half the bird, and said not a word; whereupon I was resolved to hear what objection he had to make, and asked him carelessly what he thought of it.—'I have seen worse,' was the full extent of his commendation. He never has a servant, a man at least, thinking there is a slight difference in favour of the sex, and sure that if he had a valet their mutual hatred would amount to fury, as it probably might."—"One of our men," the Marchioness said, "attends him when he sleeps at the Château. He gives him, I find from my maid, two sous on departing, and once or twice when a new servant unaccustomed to his ways, looked at this gift as if surprised, M. Liel said,—'Oh! give it me again; I made a mistake,' and took one sous back."—"Is this pattern of Christian charity for the honour of the Established Church?" Lord Mornton asked.—"Oh no!" the Marchioness said, "we (nous autres) have the benefit of his alliance; and I assure you, if his general hatreds are strong, they boil over towards the priests, and the monks especially. He actually grins convulsively when he sees a collet,[20] and he can scarcely keep his hands off a cowl. He often says, were these tribes only to oppress and frighten the people, he should be the last person to complain, but their deceiving them and fattening upon them, and above all their sometimes flattering, cajoling, and comforting them is more than he can at all bear."—"It is needless to observe," the Marquess added, "that there is little love lost between the parties. He is considered as an emissary of Satan, if not the Devil himself, by all our priests and friars. The Abbé crosses himself when he passes, as if an evil spirit were by, and has been heard to mutter—'Avaunt! thou incarnation of the Evil One.' "

It turned out from the old steward's remark, who had known him longer than any one, that the most singular part of M. Liel's case was the undoubted confidence which he at all times had that there was nothing singular in his tastes and his sentiments. "He believes," said the Sieur Gaspar, "that every one of us agrees entirely with him; and were he convinced that we had really any love of our fellow-creatures, he would only pity and not blame us. But he is actually persuaded that we hypocritically conceal our real opinions, suppress our common feelings."—"Well, that to me," said Emmeline, "is most unaccountable."—"Oh, Mademoiselle," said Gaspar, "if you will try him upon the subject, I'll assure you he is not without resources. He has a good deal more than you may suppose to urge in favour of his doctrine. He dwells upon the crimes committed by men against their fellow-creatures; he dilates much upon the faults of oppressive governments; he goes over the wicked laws that have been made in most countries; above all, he is boundless in his lectures upon the love of war which has prevailed in every age and country; and he finds it impossible to explain these things except by supposing that whatever we may pretend, we are all of us as great men-haters as himself."

The day that M. Liel left the Château happened to be Saturday, when, as has been said, a larger party was generally invited from Nismes than during the rest of the week. Not only Madame Leblanc and the Abbé came, but the Third Judge of the Languedoc court, whom Lord Mornton had not before seen; but in whom he found almost as much food for his gay humour, and as curious a field for his curious observation of men, as in the ancient hater-general.

M. Velour was a man of great abilities, much practical knowledge, and long experience in his profession, but of little good sense or judgment; of a temper somewhat impatient, and inflated with an extraordinary conceit of himself, of his own opinion, and his own power, though far from underrating others, except when their sentiments came in conflict with his own. He gave, generally speaking, great satisfaction as a judge, only that he was rather more eager to dispatch his business than to take the pains required for its accurate performance; and he was not popular with the Bar, towards whom he showed little of the courtesy that distinguished the judicial demeanour of both his colleagues, M. Chapeley and M. Balaye. He was also apt to take great likings for some practitioners, and to restore the balance by conceiving as strong dislike against others. But the peculiar characteristic of M. Velour was his little personal vanity, which made a very able and strictly honourable man really somewhat ridiculous. He affected the manners and habits of the Court, not the court of law at Nismes, but of the Governor's at Toulouse, and the King's at Versailles. He would be known among the muscadins for his elegant manners: he would ride a horse of great beauty and high action, though trained so as to be quite safe for a man of his very nervous nature—a bodily infirmity which he joined to the most dauntless spirit. He would frequent the assembly and the ball-room, avoiding however the dance, for which the extreme rigour of his limbs was little suited; but playing the fashionable games of the day with the fashionable women, who smiled in his presence, receiving his money, and smiled more when he was not by, recounting his little absurdities. To make the acquaintance of a noble or otherwise distinguished person he would go a good way; but the distinction must be of a purely secular or civil cast, rank, or fashion, or office—for of literary merit he took no account; his reading was confined to a small portion of the last newspaper, his learning to the humble, and more practical parts of his profession. He valued himself much on his savoir vivre, took great and just credit for the excellence of his entertainments, and gloried in receiving at his house, though unmarried, the greatest ladies of Nismes and its neighbourhood. To such a person the entrée of the Château was invaluable, and the Marquess frequently invited him from recollecting his intimacy with the family in his father's time, when he had been their successful advocate, while at the bar, in a great lawsuit, though they had once suffered severely by following his obstinate and over-sanguine opinion. This was his constant error: he never would hear of a doubt or a difficulty in any case; and often made his clients persist to their undoing, when by compromise they might have been saved; but this compromise assumed that there was a possibility of the opinion he had given being overruled by the court, and that possibility was a thing which he never in his whole life could bring himself even to contemplate, and which no amount of experience could ever drive into his mind.

The Marquess had prepared Lord Mornton for meeting this somewhat singular person, by giving some such account as the foregoing, adding, however, that Madame de Bagnolles did not share at all in his esteem for the judge, because, among other less blameable fopperies, he chose to think the irreligious fashion of the day a becoming finery, and looked down upon churchmen and sectaries with sovereign contempt, as persons of low understanding as well as plebeian habits. The Marquess added that, even after hearing his description, M. Velour would probably still surprise, if he did not amuse him, with his little peculiarities, of which it was not easy by any description to give a true picture.

It happened as the Marquess had said. The Earl found him a very strange compound of acuteness and folly; of the most silvery or silky speech, with occasional heat and obstinacy; of general ignorance with professional readiness; of entire self-sufficiency with overdone courtesy to others; of small personal fopperies, wrought upon a ground of high official station; in a word, a strange kind of mule or hybrid, between a pleader and a petit-maitre, with what would have seemed also a cross of the actual mule itself, could that persevering animal have been permitted to continue its kind.

The first thing that struck Lord Mornton in this new acquaintance was his precise air, each thread of his dress and coiffure, as each particle of his person, being adjusted with the most rigid attention to strict form, and arranged in the most accurate order. Then his face was clothed in smiles, and his gait was precision itself as if he moved to regular time like a puppet to music. His language next claimed attention; it no way derogated from the precision of his formal gait, and its tone was of silver or of silk, so much so that the Earl could at once comprehend the Chevalier Deverell's jocose remark, that if he had been called Soie[21] instead of Velour,[22] the name would have better indicated the thing, as he somewhat disrespectfully termed him. Ernest, however, who had one day been set down by the bursting loose of a sudden decision, said, "Sir, you forget the patte which he has."[23] The Earl soon observed that he was more liberal in giving out his decisions than lavish of his reasons; it seemed his rule never to give up a point or give out an argument. All you could drive him to by pressing him with reasons was the louder and more authoritative iteration of his disputed position, prefaced with a firm "no! no!" slowly uttered and calmly, being his only answer to your argumentation; and when he had for the second or peradventure for a third time dealt forth his dictum, he rested quite satisfied, and was clothed in a placid smile that indicated a pleasing confidence in having defeated all his antagonists and driven them from the field.

The conversation before dinner began with Ernest giving some account of a bull-fight which he had been to see in the Roman amphitheatre of Nismes, a singular and interesting sight, which recalls forcibly the ancient days of the place, and the practices of the ancient and barbarous Roman people, who delighted to meet in thousands and see their fellow-creatures destroyed by wild beasts or by one another, and even to condemn their gladiators to death by their signals as a part of the day's sport. A softer theme and a more modern pleased M. Velour; he drew the conversation to Madame Pignerol's fine assembly of the evening before, which Madame Leblanc lavishly commended for the supper, the very best and most profuse she ever remembered to have seen. "I care less for that," said M. Velour, "though I grant it was elegant and choice; but the company was perfect. I do not imagine I ever saw a finer assemblage, more people of the first rank and title."—"Why, yes," said the woman of all-comprehensive charity, "and even the Bishop among them; though, considering what women were there, one did wonder he should come."—"As how, Madam?" said the Abbé, "as how? Why should not the right reverend the Bishop of this diocese have access to the very first persons within its bounds?"—"Oh, father," said the charitable, "I meant not in respect of rank, but of reputation, which was so very deficient that I thought his lordship had no great business there. I positively looked about me among all I could see, and could hardly descry a rag of character to cover those present. There was Madame"—"I pray you," said M. Velour, "spare us any catalogue—I for one have no kind of wish to hear the enumeration. The women whom I saw were all of the first fashion and figure. The assembly was most brilliant."—"Not the less," spake the reverend father, "not the less is Madame Leblanc well warranted in bearing her testimony, should she be so minded, against the wickedness of a degenerate age, and so earning the praise of the saints. Yet, sister, suffer me to say, the right reverend prelate might be well advised in going there, seeing he might in truth have the view of sowing the good seed, and turning many unto righteousness, there being by your account not a few there who had need of being plucked from the fire."—"Doubtless, sir," said M. Velour, with an ineffable contempt on his features, which made him wholly disdain to use any such word as father, "doubtless, sir, the Bishop must have had some of the views you mention in honouring us with his presence; for I played two rubbers of whist with his Excellency, and each had as partner one of the ladies most talked of by that charitable portion of the community to which belongs Madame Leblanc." There was a difficulty in replying to this, which drove the Abbé from the subject, and also from the part of the room occupied by the Judge. Nor did much more general conversation take place before dinner; which in so large a party could give rise to but little talk.

Ernest was somewhat amused with hearing the Judge refer to his horsemanship, and recording the qualities of his animal as "a highly impetuous horse." "Does he," said the Parisian, "get well over the ground? for I should have doubted it from what I saw on Thursday afternoon."—"Oh!" said the equestrian, with a smile of unspeakable contempt for his questioner, and satisfaction with himself and his beast, " you are quite wrong to doubt it. He is a horse of the finest and the highest action."—"Possibly," said the wicked wag, "possibly, and useful of pace, unless one were minded to travel over the ground for any particular purpose."—"Oh! I don't understand what you mean. I repeat that his action is high."—"And I don't deny it. I only observed t'other day that though he lifted high his feet, they seemed to fall nearly on the ground they had before stood upon. He seemed like an old troop horse trained to mark time, and only seemed to march while he advanced not."—"Like rider, like horse," whispered the Chevalier to Lord Mornton; "you'll find that is exactly the Judge's own way of covering the ground in any discussion."

But little respectful as he was to others, and only tolerant of the Parisian because of his fashionable habits and reputation, towards the poor Abbé, a man of no fashion and also of a religious profession, he showed no forbearance at all. With others, it is true, he reasoned not, explained not, only descanted and decided oracularly. Towards the Abbé he barely took the trouble of pronouncing more than a shrill or an authoritative "yes," unless once, when he wanted to put him down, to drive him out of the conversation, better shared, he deemed, by persons of distinction. The father had thought it right to say how much pleased he was with a late decision of the court in the Church's favour, which, he added, "was only justice, and must needs be right."—"Why, sir, you'll allow me to doubt if gentlemen of your cloth are very well qualified to say whether a decree is right or not."—"Truly," said the champion of the Church, "I perceive me not the reason wherefore we should be excluded from having an opinion touching matters of grave interest to our Holy Establishment, which God and all the Saints long preserve!"—"Sir, I meant not to enter into an argument with you or any such person; only, I repeat that I can see no reason to think you can have any understanding of the case you allude to, and you, perhaps, might do well to confine yourself to the communion of the Saints you speak of."—A look of horror was here darted from the venerable man to the charitable woman across the table; but she was then wrestling with the leg of a pheasant, whereupon he, having first devoutly said something inwardly, as the motion of his mouth and his upturned eyes testified, suddenly sought consolation in a fragment of Paté de Toulouse, on which his eyes dropped down, and of which his mouth became possessed one second of time thereafter.

In the evening, it was observed that M. Velour seemed restless and uneasy until his favourite occupation of cards could be commenced. He forgot that in the Huguenot Château such indulgences were forbidden; and was heard to mutter certain not very pious ejaculations, which fortunately reached not the Marquess's ears. Nor did he hear another reflection which was drawn from him by some one saying he had met M. de Pignerol going to mass. "To mass!" he muttered, "I thought they had given over that superstition." When the Chevalier, who, as a good Protestant, bore a due aversion towards the Romish ritual, rather joined in this, saying

"he feared he should not, but he hoped to see the day when there would be an end of it, and the reformed ceremonies alone be used." "Oh, for that matter," said the most impartial Judge, "I do assure you, I have an equal respect for both."

Lord Mornton was desirous of having his opinion upon the present aspect of public affairs, and led the conversation towards the subject which then occupied all men, the approaching assembly of the States General. But the worthy Judge gave him little encouragement. "I expect," said the Earl, "that a strong effort will be made by the Court, and backed by the privileged orders, to keep their sittings apart, in three, or at least in two separate chambers. On this the safety of the monarchy depends."—"I regard it as wholly immaterial how they sit," said the Judge. "The weight of property and rank must carry all before it."—"But, sir," the Earl replied, "how can we be sure of that, when there are to be so many more of the Third Estate than of either the Clergy or the Noblesse, so that a few of these joining the Commons must carry the day?"—"No!" said M. Velour, "I hold that rank and property must carry it."—"But the question is of numbers, not of weight," rejoined the Earl.—"No!" reiterated the inflexible Judge, "I hold that it depends, and must depend, on rank and property."—"Do you mean," replied his lordship, "that the influence of the privileged sitting among the unprivileged class of deputies will gain over their numbers?"—"I enter not into details; but I hold," said the immoveable, "that rank and property will prevail, as they always must."—"In the long run, if you will," the Earl observed; "but unhappily the mischief will be done before that period can arrive, and then the influence of rank and property will come too late to save us."—"No!" decided the oracular individual, "they will save always, and inevitably must save. This I hold as quite clear."

Here the case seemed truly desperate to Lord Mornton, and he was fain to be silent with an adversary as peremptory as he was unreasoning. He, on the other hand, seemed radiant with glory, looked as if conscious of supreme power, and bore himself as if he were understood by all present to have completely silenced, as in truth he had done, the English statesman. When he walked, or rather strutted away, triumphant, to another part of the salon, the Chevalier, who held him in almost as much contempt as the Judge shewed to all other men, observed to the Marquess, that it was well for some folks there was no Court of Appeal in society. "Why," asked the Earl, "is he always as peremptory and always as sparing of his reasons and as liberal in his decisions?"—"Yes," the Marquess said, "it is the same on the Bench; and though his extraordinary industry and his power of giving undivided attention to all that comes before him, with his long practical experience in our courts, prevent him from often falling into errors, yet the Appeal Court is frequently applied to; much more frequently than successfully by those against whom he decides. For it is one evil consequence of his method, his dogmatism without argument, that often when he has decided rightly, parties are dissatisfied, and appeal with little or no chance of being the gainers; whereas the other judges, M. Chapeley and M. Balaye, carefully explaining their views, and assigning the grounds of their judgments, prevent many an appeal from dissatisfied suitors which the unreasoning, unbending Velour gives rise to when he has decided drily and sententiously the self-same questions."

The Marquess mentioned as a curious instance of M. Velour's vanity, and attention to the concerns of fashionable life, that when he was raised to the bench, and considered it incumbent on him to keep a certain state and style, and gratify his sovereign desire of shining in polished circles, he made very minute and anxious inquiries into the details of the housekeeping (ménage) at Bagnolles. He consulted the Sieur Gaspar confidentially as to the pecuniary expense of certain things; the old steward had sense enough of the ridiculous to relish this, and handed him over for other information to the upper servants and the housekeeper. These he elaborately interrogated in all the details of their several departments. "And what has been the result of all these preliminary proceedings?" asked the Earl.—"Oh, on the whole successful," was the reply. "His house is extremely well got up (montée), and his entertainments are good, always making allowance for their somewhat overdone appearance, and for the numberless coxcombries which the wags of the bar never fail to note, while they consume his cheer, and the ladies of 'rank and property' never silently see while they win his money."

Lord Mornton was glad to have had an opportunity of seeing one whom he considered almost as great an original as M. Liel, though very far from being as entertaining; and the Judge left the Château, satisfied that he had made a deep impression upon the English noble as a man of profound wisdom, but somewhat careless whether he had or not, while he was quite sure that as a man of fashion his success had been absolutely complete.

CHAPTER VI.

A KNIGHT—A FRIAR.

A letter arrived from Nismes for the Marchioness, brought, as the servant said, by a man in an odd kind of garb, a servant by his employment, but rather like a Reformed clergyman by his dress and manners, and also speaking in a strange, precise, pedantic sort of style, and with a twang in his pronunciation. Being told that it was impossible his letter should be delivered to Madame de Bagnolles, as she was sick in bed, he said,—"I do pray you, good friend, be pleased to give it the master of this house, for my orders were that it be rendered to some one of the family." The servant begged his master would see the man, whom he could not well comprehend, so the Marquess went out. When asked from whom the letter came, he said, "From my master, who is more of a friend to me, and also an instructor." But this giving scanty information, he was asked to name him. "His name, my friend," he replied, "is one of which any might be proud, if pride were lawful in limited creatures; he is the Chevalier André Agneau." The Marquess, therefore, conjectured on what the letter must be, as this Chevalier was well known to be a man of a single idea, the observance of the Sunday, or as he termed it not very correctly, the Sabbath. Having been travelling in the South he had come to Nismes, attracted, he said, by its high reputation as a "godly city," by which he meant one in which the Reformed faith abounded.

The letter, being read by M. de Bagnolles to the company, was calculated to excite the merriment of some, but the indignation or scorn of others; for its excessive cant was mixed up with an infinite degree of spiritual pride. It was pharisaical and dictatorial throughout, proceeding upon the assumption that its writer was infallible, and that his mission was to school all other mortals, as mere erring and even sinful creatures. He said how much he felt gratified at being in so "God-fearing a town as Nismes, and communing with a truly Sabbath-keeping people;" that he had also heard much in favour of the Marchioness herself, and hoped to have more ground for commending her, as it was his wish to be able to do, provided he might with a safe conscience; but, he said, "he felt it his bounden duty, which he must no wise be slack in performing, to warn her against the heinous sin of Sabbath-breaking, which she allowed to be committed by harbouring certain persons at her residence, who were seen to walk, and even to ride, nay actually to drive out in carriages on the Lord's Day."—This abomination, he said, he felt imperatively called upon to remonstrate against, and to bear his testimony for the truth, reminding the Marchioness, that Nismes was a Sabbath-observing country in the true Scriptural sense of the word; and beseeching her to reflect on the effects of the example set by her—of what he called "the overwhelming moral influence of the example of the Château." He called the Sabbath a sign, by Divine appointment, of the righteousness which exalteth a nation, and besought her above every thing to "travail with the ungodly who abode under her roof, the stranger within her gate, to the end that each one might hallow the holy day of the Lord." He referred her to the great covenant of water which had been administered at her baptism, whereby she partook of the promises, and bound herself, or was bound by proxy, to keep the Sabbath holy, and he concluded with a prayer "that it may be made a sign between God and the Marchioness, whereby she may know that He is the Lord her God."

Some discussion here arose on the answer which it would be fit to give this extraordinary letter, the more extraordinary and the less called for, as the Marquess observed, because really the Sabbath was most strictly observed in their Huguenot household. And, accordingly, the silly knight had been driven to carp at the harmless act of Sunday rides and drives. The company was divided in opinion what course to take. The Chevalier at once declared for "administering the covenant of water" to his brother knight, "to the which solemnity," he said, "the horse-pond nigh to the stable afforded a providential convenience." Lord Mornton was much disposed to write an answer, which he offered to undertake. But both these courses were rejected by the Marquess as certain to offend Madame de Bagnolles, whose leaning was very likely to be even favourable to Sir André, and who at all events would never tolerate any breach of courtesy or even respect to a man whom she regarded as entirely well-meaning, however she might possibly (and even this was not certain) consider him as mistaken. Therefore the consultation ended in their all agreeing to the suggestion of Lord Mornton, whose curiosity got the better of his love of sport, and who wished to see this Champion of the Sabbath. The Marquess accordingly invited him to the Château; and at the same time, having a presentiment of the dullness that awaited the party, he invited an Irish Friar who was passing through and had some knowledge of Lord Mornton; indeed came from the same part of the country. The Earl, however, aware of the nature of his countryman, warned the worthy host only to ask him for that day's dinner, else he might find it less difficult to dislodge the rooks from the trees than the Friar from comfortable quarters. While the party at the Château were sitting before dinner in the library, the invited guests were announced. And first there entered the knight, to whose name all present forthwith proceeded to make the addition "of the woeful countenance." The Chevalier Agneau was indeed well entitled to this honour. Of a tall figure, whose straightness much reminded the mathematician how he defined a right line, for it was length without breadth; of a stiffness so perfect that part of his toilette seemed to be swallowing a poker; of a pale and worn hue, a gaunt aspect, deeply sunken eyes, locks which rivalled his figure in observing the rectilinear course—all at once confessed that, did his moral rectitude keep parallel with his physical, and were his integrity as inflexible as his spine, he might be well entitled to enthrone himself on those heights from which he delighted, as his letter showed, to look down upon others, and to thank God he was not as they are. His gait and his manner in general were much such as his figure would probably lead to—the functions were like what the structure entitled the beholder to expect; or rather the movements to be looked for were limited to what such a mechanism was calculated to perform. The bow wherewithal he saluted the company had its origin at the lowest of the vertebrae, the centre from which the long body described a circular arc; his face exhibited no change whatever when he either performed this evolution, as he did slowly and deliberately, or when he, with a voice neither harsh nor unkind, hoped the Marchioness was mending in health, in token of the prayers of the congregation two days ago having been favourably heard. He sate him down near the Chevalier, who seemed somewhat discomposed, and gave the kind of look which one does upon the near approach of some unwelcome being that either walks on four legs or moves along without any legs at all. Accordingly he moved off, and met the Friar Patrick, who followed immediately after the dismal Knight, and presented a remarkable contrast to what M. Deverell regarded as the disgrace of chivalry. For he was a fair, sleek, comfortable-looking personage, with a ruddy face and complacent smile, sharp and somewhat cunning eyes, a stubble of beard, whereupon snuff remained like manure on the field, a great breadth and depth of chest, and a paunch to which the Chevalier could urge no objection, if it were not that of jealousy. He hardly had saluted the Marquess, when he ran up to Lord Mornton, and said how pleased he was to meet here "the very first and foremost man in all Ireland, and who would soon be at the top of them all in England too." The language in which this was conveyed saved the high-bred Earl from the annoyance which he must have felt had it been understood by any but the Doverells, who were also aware of the Irish peculiarities, and that such phrases in their mouths mean exactly nothing more than "how do you do," or "very well, I thank you."

The announcement of dinner gave Friar Patrick occasion to observe that it was news which seldom came amiss to him, after he had been walking about in the discharge of his duty to visit all the sick and dying in the town. The Chevalier André vehemently denied that this could be true, or even near the truth, because there were more persons in Nismes who would be horror-struck at seeing the Friar's habit before them than at the approach of death itself. "Och! and so much the worse for them," said the father, no way put out at his summary conviction of invention on the spot. "Och! so much the worse for them! And indeed they may happen soon to be a-seeing some one they will like worse still."—"I tell you, sir," said M. Agneau, "and I tell you very plainly, that there may be no mistake, these good souls would not like worse to see the very death you allude to, grim though it be."—"Ough," said Patrick, "and it was not death at all, at all; I was talking of some one else that comes after him, and will may be pay off my scores with your people, who you say choose to depart in sin for fear of seeing a holy friar." M. Agneau was beginning to express, but in a precise, and formal, and lugubrious fashion his horror at hearing a clergyman speak so lightly of so awful an individual, when the Marquess handed Madame de Chatillon into the dining-room, and the Father soon found it wholly impossible to divide his attention, or abstract it from temporal to spiritual matters. He only muttered that there was a time for all things, according to the wise man, whose text he thought fit to expound by adding, "And why not a dinner-time as well?" His boisterous talk was accordingly little or not at all heard for the next hour or so. The Chevalier Deverell had been somewhat alarmed at the dilemma in which he found himself, of having to shun the near neighbourhood of the thing he most hated, a monk, and, what he now thought nearly as bad, the Agneau, whom he termed a lay-brother equal to any one of the regular gang. He with some difficulty effected his escape by seating himself next his son and the Sieur Gaspar, upon whose sympathy he could securely reckon in all that regarded either of his particular aversions. They indeed enjoyed a little snug conversation together, the expense of which was borne by the Knight and the Friar in nearly equal shares. Thus when the

Knight, after touching on the many "professing folks" who dwelt in Nismes, commending the Protestants lavishly for their "diligent attendance upon ordinances," hinting at the serious "backslidings" of the Established Church, and yet giving the town generally a hearty blessing in the form of a prayer or devout ejaculation on it, as "a God-fearing quarter,"—when after this he took occasion to enter his protest, or, as he phrased it, take up his testimony, against what he termed "the unknown tongues," and commended the Apostle Paul as having denounced praying in Latin, when he said who ever did so speak spoke not to men, the Friar for one instant suspended his operations to observe that the same text also said "he spoke unto God," which, the Baron drily observed, seemed something when you were praying. M. Deverell whispered to the steward, that he did not believe any tongue was much more unknown than that of the sorrowful Knight himself, with his ordinances, his professions, his backslidings, his testimonies. The Sieur Gaspar, however, assured him that all of the same caste (or as he jocosely termed it, of the same cant) had a glimglibber of their own, and quite understood one another, like freemasons, "I suppose," said the

Chevalier, "each understanding his brother's mummery about as clearly as his brother understands it himself."

The dinner must be admitted not to have been enlivened by the addition of the worthy Knight and reverend Father; it was not the gayest that had been known at the Château. The Countess, the only lady present, would not condescend to treat with any courtesy a personage whose whole time seemed to be occupied with mere trifles; for, though by no means deficient in religious feelings, and even leaning strongly towards the Reformed faith from her Swiss education, she yet regarded all questions of a ceremonial nature with utter contempt; and when she had attended mass, or the temple, which she did indiscriminately, she considered the rest of the Sunday her own, regarding with inexpressible contempt the strict observance of it which her kinswoman maintained at the Château, and always forming a circle of less rigid "Sabbath-keepers," in her own apartment during the evening, while the rest of the family were engaged in psalmody and prayer.

When the party met in the salon Emmeline joined them, and was curious to see a person she had heard in the morning described by the Baron as a dismal original; for this union of dulness with originality she could not well comprehend. However, she was doomed to find the difficulty overcome by the infinite variety of nature; for he was a thing at once grotesque and dull, quite singular, and quite unentertaining. This Knight of the Sabbath, it appeared, had so worked up his mind to an exclusive interest in his one subject, that the fourth commandment to him was more important than all the other nine, in the habitual breach of one, at least, of which he really seemed to live; for let him but see any person do an act not of absolute necessity on that day, and he at once bore witness against him as if he had committed the most serious of offences. But he could tolerate much from any one who filled up the seventh day with prayer, and looked gloomy and dismal, and ate nothing that required cooking, took no exercise, and barely existed. He had, however, one admirable quality for an enthusiast. He was not only perfectly sincere, but he was extremely patient of contradiction. He received with perfect calmness whatever was urged in opposition to his doctrines; his features even relaxed into a kind of something between a grin and a smile, which was meant for the latter; and an air of perfect peace and quiet, something as near complacency as his visage could approach, seemed spread over it, when he either listened or replied to any objections urged against his tenets. The cause of this was very obvious. He had the most undoubting confidence in his nostrum; nothing could shake this full assurance of its absolute efficacy; it was a cure for all ills here, as well as a preservative from all evils hereafter. Hence he regarded the buffeting he occasionally was exposed to, much as a person does a storm at sea when he is looking at it from a window on shore; he eyed the combatants who roared or laughed at him, as he would so many tigers or hyaenas raging or grinning through the solid bars of their cages.

The Marquess avoided all discussion with him, because he dreaded in his excellent wife's absence saying a word which might betoken any doubt or any light feeling in what she regarded almost as devoutly as the Knight, though somewhat more rationally. But the Baron could by no means suffer the evening to pass without a tilt; and he was willingly seconded by the Earl, as soon as he could disengage himself from Father Patrick's oily talk.

The company heard little of this tête-a-tête, but the closing part would have amused them had it not been veiled in an "unknown tongue," from most of them.—"You have been as far as Italy, then, of late?" said Lord Mornton.—"That I have, sure," said the Friar. Lord Mornton said he was going there for the winter, probably to Rome.—"Och! and do that same, my lord; you will see his Holiness."—"Did you, when at Rome, Father?"—"And to be sure I did, and a mighty pleasant old gentleman he is, and has a very great respect for your Lordship."—"For me, Father?" said the Earl, with much astonishment.—"Aye, indeed, and for who but you?"—"Why, how can he possibly be aware of my existence? "—"Och! dear, and sure we all of us know your lordship, and are proud of you; and when I told his Holiness you were a-coming to Rome, he seemed mightily well pleased, I'll assure you." This was a little too gross for even one inured to the style of his countrymen, so the Earl willingly retreated upon the harder and more bearable Knight, with whom the Baron was beginning his conversation.

"Really, Chevalier," said M. de Moulin, "I cannot help thinking you are a little severe upon our good neighbours of Nismes, as to their Sabbath failings."

"Sir," replied the Knight, "those of whom I now spake were not the godly of Nismes, but the Romish portion of that people, whom I give myself no pain about, as not taking any heed of brands actually in the burning; though even, as touching the Reformed, so contagious is evil example and impure communication, I here last Lord's-day, attended the Temple, and on my going thither saw a Reformed family driving themselves out in a carriage yoked with mules, contrary to the very express letter of the law, which says 'thy ass.' Then, how could they after that expect a blessing of rain, for which they put up prayers?"

"Och! and as for that," said the Friar, glad to take the heretic at a disadvantage, as he thought, "Don't let them go to trouble themselves, and bother themselves and the blessed Saints with their prayers for rain. No rain will they have."

"I really cannot see," said the Marquess, "why the Reformed congregation's prayers are to be less efficacious than other people's."

"My dear," said the Friar, "I mean that none of them all will ever have a drop of rain while the wind keeps in the north; and so will they not."

"Why, truly, Father," the Earl observed, "that is an odd view of the subject. Then do you believe the offering of prayer depends on the wind?"

The crafty Irishman saw his grievous error, and got suddenly out of it. "Easy there, my Lord, easy. What I mean is, that it wants a good Saint to do the trick when the mistral keeps a-blowing, and never a bit of a Saint have these heretics to help them."

The Baron wished to continue his discussion with him of the sorrowful countenance, which this bye-battle had interrupted, so he came back to the charge he had begun when the meteorological divinity of Friar Patrick had broken in upon them. "I conceive. Chevalier," said he, "that this doctrine of strict Sabbath observance is not quite borne out by the authority of Scripture."

"As how?" said the Knight mildly, and even triumphantly—"Do you speak of the Old Covenant or of the New?"

"Of the New, certainly," answered the Baron. "It is said the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath."

"Aye," replied the Knight, "it is so said, and the passage contains a deep and a mysterious meaning, the very reverse of what you seem to give it."

"However," the Baron said, "I leave all controverted passages on one side. No mystery can lurk under the plain appeal to the Pharisees, your predecessors, in this rigour of Sabbath-keeping—that all of them would save his sheep or his asses on the Sabbath, if they fell into a pit."

"No mystery? Indeed!" asked Sir André. "Why, can we tell with any certainty what is meant here by sheep? As for asses, you have added them."

The Chevalier Deverell here whispered to Gaspar that it was a very natural mistake when one was conversing with the silly Knight, to think of asses. "Truly his name connects itself easily with sheep, but he never will attain the rank and station of a mad one (mouton enragé). A duller animal did I never yet come across."

"Allow me," said the Baron, "to give you my opinion at once on your Sabbath theory. I entirely approve of a due and even a strict observance of that day, that it may ever be one of rest, and no labour allowed on it. But to exclude all innocent recreation,

I hold really both contrary to the nature of rest, and impolitic for the purpose you have in view of enforcing a due observance of the day. For by compelling men to be absolutely still and idle, and avoid all recreation, you make it a day of penance, not of repose; and by taking this course you render Sabbath-keeping unpopular. Recollect, I beseech you, that our humbler fellow-citizens have no other day wherein to amuse themselves. You have the whole six, and can easily submit to pass the seventh in dullness, which after all you perhaps don't dislike. They have no other day of relaxation, and they are exceedingly averse to such dismal observances as you may delight in."

The Knight continued as placid and as grim as before; but instead of meeting the Baron's powerful and practical reasoning, he drew himself up, and involved himself in a cloud of vague generalities, clothed in language of a mysterious and spiritual kind, wherein were chiefly heard the words duty God-ward, professing Christians, godly and God-fearing, strong testimony, covenant, signs, sanctification. The discussion was thus darkened as by the coming on of night; and disputants all were wrapped in the sable gloom, and like the animals, the cattle and painted birds, stretched their weary limbs, smoothed their cares, and soothed their hearts oblivious of the labours of the day. The dismal personage rose slowly to depart; his woeful countenance no longer shed a gloom over the library; his temporary comrade, the Friar, followed to share his heretical but convenient vehicle; and they quitted the hospitable Château, leaving their characters a legacy to the Chevalier, the Baron, and the Countess, who proceeded forthwith to "do what they pleased with their own." Only Emmeline made any defence for the departed Knight. His perfect honesty and singleness of heart, his enthusiasm, however extravagant and unreflecting, yet perfectly sincere, and connecting itself with sacred subjects, his entire freedom from all gall, and his even gentle demeanour, in her eyes redeemed his unquestionable dulness; and she was ever ready to take a very small portion of the wisdom that is from above, in compensation of any lack of that in which the children of this world so far excel the children of light. For the Friar she had nothing at all to say. She was disgusted with his vulgar forwardness, and nauseated his low, indiscriminate flattery. But above all his plain carelessness about truth was offensive to her, and was not at all redeemed by the constitutional good-humour, the gaiety of the body, as much as of the mind, which he possessed, or which possessed him, allied as it was on the one hand to some wit and drollery, on the other to no little sensual indulgence.

CHAPTER VII.

LEAVING THE CHÂTEAU.

The illness of the Marchioness had gradually become manageable under the skilful advice of an eminent practitioner from Montpellier, who came several times to Bagnolles, and appeared to stand less in awe of remedies and have more dread of diseases than his learned brother of Nismes had shown in young M. Deverell's case. Madame de Bagnolles was at length restored to the society of her family and guests; she gave the merit of her recovery entirely to a higher power than the physician, whom she only regarded as an instrument; and she marked her restoration to health by not only returning thanks in the congregation of M. Gardein, but distributing her charity among the poor cottagers near the Château, who regarded her as a mother, and among the poor of the worthy pastor's flock. Not confining her benevolence, however, to the members of her own sect, she visited the noble hospital of Nismes, and left a sum with the kind-hearted and hard-labouring sisters of charity (sœurs de charite) under whose care its several departments are so admirably administered, that the Montpellier physician said he knew of no laboratory more accurately and even learnedly conducted than that of Sister Agatha and her two helpmates in this establishment. The vows of these sisters are only for twelve months, but such are the pleasures of charity combined with industry and not deprived of rational liberty, that it is rare to see those vows not renewed from year to year.

The Marchioness's health having been the cause, possibly in part the pretext, of the guests prolonging their visit, symptoms now appeared of the party which had lasted so long and proved so agreeable at length breaking up. The Chevalier and his son went first, to the no small relief of the Countess, who, however, by her frequent allusions to Ernest, her curiosity about his habits, and especially her minute enquiries into his female intimacies and attachments, evinced a continuation of the extreme uneasiness which she had already shewn the Baron he had given her, though in what way he never could discover, fearing to ask any questions or take any other means of inquiry with one so suspicious and so acute. Her restlessness on this subject was such, that not only the Baron, who watched each word and each look of his idol, but her careless husband, could not help perceiving it. "Why, Catherine," he one day said, while they were all conversing in the portico after breakfast, "what can it signify how his affair with the German Baroness ended? Is not it enough that now he is devoted to a French Countess?"—"I really, Chatillon," said she, contemptuously enough, "don't know who you allude to."—"I am sorry you don't, my love," he answered. "But I dare to say he never troubles his head about the Chevalier de Morne (her first husband). Then why should you care about the Baroness?"—"The Chevalier was a man, Chatillon, whom you would do well to imitate; such a man as few indeed are like."—"Oh, dear, I have the highest respect for him," said his successor; "I am sure no one has more reason to lament his loss than myself."—"Why, you did not know him,"—said she sharply, to the infinite amusement of the company, and especially Lord Mornton, who saw that with all her quickness she could be so seriously intent on her subject that a joke escaped her. However, with her usual tact, and her relish of a harmless pleasantry, she took it in good part, and was restored to good humour.

The conversation then turned upon the morning's news as usual, and all gave great praise to M. Necker's first measures, by which he applied the balances in the different revenue departments to the immediate service of the treasury, and retracing the Archbishop's fatal steps, ordered all the claims on it to be liquidated without delay. "Here," said Lord Mornton, "in the management and control of the finances, he is quite at home. Heaven grant that in the more important and far more arduous parts of his office, the management, and above all the control, of the people, he may show equal vigour. My fears point to his fears, his dread of popular odium—his fondness for glory, as no doubt he calls his ruling propensity—his vain love of mob-applause, as I term it—and his unwillingness to expose himself to the storm in order to save the ship committed to his care."—"I would fain hope," the Baron said, "that he will not be without powerful allies. I speak not of the Court, which seems to be utterly devoid of firmness and of wisdom, to have no resources in itself, and to be the sport of each wind that blows. But I look, I own, to the body of the privileged orders, the noblesse and the clergy. Surely they will join him in stemming the popular torrent if it sets in so strongly as you apprehend, and as, from present indications, I myself believe it will."

"My dear Baron," said the Earl, "if the French clergy and the French noblesse resembled our English church and peerage, I should have no fears at all. But these are the same names for things entirely different. You nobles are a body almost like our commoners, of perhaps a hundred thousand, who have the privileges and rank, but of whom not above two hundred families are really of the old true nobility, respected as such, and as such enjoying their privileges without any one grudging them. Why, not much above that number have even the right of going to Court, by tracing their descent back to the year 1400, yet all of them insult the people by their exemptions and their titles, and are hated accordingly, while they themselves hate those real patricians who are above them. As for the clergy, it is nearly the same thing. The parish priest, the curé, works hard and lives hard upon a small pittance, while the emoluments of the church are engrossed by the prelates, and canons, and abbots, and are the provision of the noble families. Hence you will find the inferior clergy much more likely to side with the people, from whose body they are taken, than with the Court. In England, I need hardly tell you, all this is quite the reverse; the nobility, few in number, are possessed of large wealth, much influence, direct power both judicial and legislative; the clergy are of all ranks indiscriminately, and those who work are paid; thus the throne has a barrier which no tempest is likely ever to break through."

The Marquess observed that he took the same gloomy view of the question with Lord Mornton, and he added that many persons of good judgment believed the privileged orders would shew more jealousy of the Crown by a great deal than the commoners, nay, that the discontented, intriguing, and turbulent portions of those privileged orders, the inferior nobility and clergy, were very likely to join the violent faction of the Tiers Etat, and carry the more moderate and innocent along with them to desperate extremities.

A question being started as to the mode in which the election of the deputies would be carried on, Lord Mornton professed to think it signified exceedingly little in whom the right of voting was vested on this occasion. Whatever class of the people chose, they would probably pitch upon the same persons, the men of forward manners, active habits, little solid merit, and no modesty—lawyers like M. Catteau; perhaps many of those literary men whose publications the Archbishop had advertised for. The only important point, in his lordship's view, was the sitting together or apart. If the whole body were to be melted into one mass, he regarded the monarchy of France as doomed to inevitable and to speedy destruction; and considered the desiring of the States to meet in one chamber as not a Union of States, but a Revolution. He added,—"And if it be true, as the Baron believes, that M. Necker has determined to give the Commons a number of representatives equal to the two other orders combined, then of course he means that all should unite in one mass to overthrow the monarchy; and, however little he may intend it, or desire it, I shall then regard M. Necker as the author of this Revolution."

"How hard a measure you deal out of responsibility!" said the Countess; "You almost make a minister answerable for events."—"Certainly, I do," said the firm-minded Earl, upon whom no petty consideration could have any sway in a matter of grave public concernment; "Certainly I do, whenever I can fairly connect the event with the minister's conduct. Nay, it is a safe rule to attach responsibility to office, and not to be very nice in looking for the connection between that conduct and the event."—"Why, really," she answered "you remind me of the King of Prussia, who, seeing the soldiers' hats blow off, as they said owing to the wind, flogged the first man whose hat went."—"The wise King of Prussia!" said the Earl; "And you will please to remember the result; the wind blew much as before in that bleak, open, uninhabitable country, but, some how or other, no more hats blew off. Don't, however, suppose me harsh towards M. Necker, whom all esteem and many admire. I should deal out the same measure of justice to one I love as a brother, I mean Mr. Pitt."—"What course do you expect he would hold in difficulties such as now beset our government?"—"Who can say? Hitherto he has only been tried as a financier and a debater, and in both capacities he has proved of first-rate power. I should expect—we never can be sure of the future, even in men best known to us—but I should expect a firm and unflinching hand would in such perils be found to guide us. My position, however, is quite general. I look to the minister as responsible. He volunteers to take the helm, and he is bound to bring both courage and skill to the task."

The approaching separation was a most cruel blow upon both the Baron and the Countess, who now passed their whole time together either in walking or conversing under the portico, or reading in the library. Though he stood in awe of her imperious disposition and irritable temper, the only things of which he had ever known what it was to stand in awe, yet the charms of her conversation, and above all his devoted attachment, which she fully returned, made her society a necessary part of his existence; nor could he well see how he was to pass his days, and above all his long evenings, without it. She, on the other hand, deeply felt the approaching change; for all the interest she once felt in life seemed on the point of being destroyed. She could no longer take an interest in politics without having him recalled to her recollection, him in whose society all her political discussions had so long been carried on, and in concert with whom all her little plans had been devised. She had, unhappily, no family to occupy her thoughts; he was become the sovereign care of her mind; and losing him, or separated from him, she seemed to lose all. His letters, indeed, afforded her the prospect of some resource, far more than hers offered to him; he plainly avowed that he should reckon that but a poor substitute for the delights he had enjoyed in her presence. His vows to return and meet her next year, when the Bagnolles expected a re-assembling of the same delightful party, were what she mainly relied on. But both he and she were fain to confess that a comfort delayed for twelve months, or it might be more, helped little to make those months pass swiftly away; and neither could be blind to the lowering aspect of public affairs which made all plans uncertain that were to be executed at so considerable a distance of time.

In this state of reluctance to part, day after day were allowed to pass away, and at length the Count, who was obliged to be in Paris by a certain time, fixed the hour of departure at a week's distance. This week was passed by him in constant conversation with Albert, whom he in vain besought to let him make an attempt at bringing away Louise. Albert saw the difficulty of obtaining her consent after what had happened last year; he also had awakened to what never then sufficiently occupied him, eager in the pursuit and looking neither to the right nor to the left, but fixing his eyes only on the object before him, the extreme difficulty first of his escaping with her into Switzerland, and next of his supporting her there in anything like the ease and comfort she had all her life been accustomed to enjoy. This consideration, indeed, tended exceedingly to console him for the cruel disappointment he had suffered, and softened the bitterness of a separation made doubly vexatious by the exquisite delights of the momentary meeting with her in the Contât. He resisted, therefore, all Chatillon's generous proposals of chivalrous devotion; and was resolved to continue in his present concealment until the changes now apparently inevitable should restore him to liberty, never doubting that whatever kind of constitution might arise out of the present crisis, it must be one which should relieve both Louise from thraldom and himself from alarm.

Chatillon had never communicated to the Countess the particulars of Albert's history, further than informing her that he was a convert from the Catholic religion, in which he had at one time taken orders, and that he was under persecution for a supposed offence also against the civil power. Her growing attachment for the Baron had, indeed, abated her curiosity on this as on all other subjects; and she did not trouble him to disclose what he seemed unwilling to tell. But her interest was not so lukewarm in the affairs of the Baron; and as he had often promised to unfold a mystery which he told her hung over his history, before they parted he gave her some outline of his life. The narrative fixed her entire attention; for, independent of the degree in which she felt interested about all that concerned him, the vicissitudes he had gone through, the extraordinary adventures he had engaged in, the strange scenes he had witnessed, gave the liveliest dramatic effect to his story, and at the same time displayed his character in its most striking points. His fiery temper; his indomitable passions; the depth and endurance of his revenge; his incapacity to forget either kindness or injury, though capable of forgiving the one, and overlooking the other; his pride bordering upon disease, and ever at war with his interest; his dark retirement within himself, unsocial and unapproachable; all were displayed at each successive stage of his life in colours which it required his own eloquence to use with their due effect. The picture interested her; she, less than any other, was shocked with its harsher features; she, less than any other, was repulsed by the parts which were shaded with guilt; but there was one redeeming tint thrown over the whole; one hue of aerial perspective which deadened the effect of the fiercer lights, and threw a gleam into the more sombre shades, a hue which was spread over all the canvas; it was his tender devotion to Emmeline; to her father first, afterwards to herself. This affection, the engrossing sentiment of his heart, was second nature, was the quality which redeemed all his errors, and mitigated a character otherwise unrelenting and harsh. The Countess, less disposed than almost any other woman to be touched with this, and who in any person but himself might possibly have disregarded it, felt its enchantment when she found it belonged to him who had made so deep an impression upon her heart.

But if there was much to strike, there was not a little to astonish in the facts which his history brought to her knowledge. She now found, to her amazement, that he was not originally a Fleming, though in Flanders he had long resided, and held distinguished places under the government. He came from the Venaissin, and had lately returned thither after a long absence, having left it with a brother when very young, in consequence of some domestic difference aggravated by his impetuous temper, and from his daring, adventurous disposition made the ground of quitting his family. "I tenderly loved my mother," he said, after going over the chief part of his story, "but with my father, who was harsh and severe, I, who had as much pride as himself, was on less friendly terms. It became impossible for me now to avow in Flanders that I was French; all connection with France was, therefore, of necessity to cease; it seemed better not to do things by halves; and I, therefore, suffered my family to suppose us both dead, myself and my brother whose fortunes I raised with my own. This has been to me the source of most bitter self-upbraiding. I sacrificed to worldly ambition, and a silly pride towards my father, the tenderest affections of my heart towards my other parent. As happens in such cases, the resolution was constantly taken to return, when I became prosperous, and must have been welcomed back with open arms even by my father; but my official position interposed great obstacles, and its duties gave me unceasing occupation. I delayed from year to year doing that which ought never to have been put off at all; and I was roused from this inaction by my mother's death, which left, me comparatively little inducement to make the exertion and return to Avignon. It was to see my father that I went there last summer, and I found him in a state of mind that made him wholly unable to recognize me, and to recollect that he ever had a son. He had been nearly in that hopeless condition ever since the loss of Madame Lunel."—"Gracious Heaven!" exclaimed the Countess. "Lunel? and is that your family name?"—"My dearest friend, it is, but I cannot comprehend why it should make such an impression upon you."—"Had you a brother much younger than the one you took away with you?"

"Certainly, but I barely can remember him. He was only five years old when we left the country."—"Then be assured," she said, "that there are in this house those who can tell you more things of that brother than you have any guess of. Have you never heard at Nismes of a friar who seven or eight years ago got into a dreadful scrape in Avignon; a Benedictine Friar?"—"Assuredly

I have, but what of that? What can my brother have had to do with Friar Isidore, or Friar Dominique, which were the names of the two monks that fled?"—"Of course you can tell me your brother's Christian name (nom de baptême)? You know he would take another upon his profession, if he ever became a monk."—"My dear friend, you alarm and agitate me beyond bearing. What! Gracious God! Was he, could he be Father Isidore? His name was Albert."—"Then, dearest, be not agitated more. Albert certainly is not Isidore, but he as certainly is Dominique, and—"—"Oh! Heavenly Father!" he exclaimed wildly, "Am I reserved for this? A brother of mine a fugitive, wandering about with a price set on his head, with the stigma of apostacy tainting his name, with the mark of Cain blackening his brow!"—She recoiled from the scene of wounded pride, of suffering affection, of outraged honour, which her disclosure had raised before her eyes; she never yet had seen him moved, never seen his ferocious passions—his feelings acute to an extreme degree—roused and maddened. She was alarmed at the spectacle which presented itself. She felt as if she had caused the havoc she saw. She grew nervous, then hysterical, and sunk on the sofa, where her agitation found relief in a flood of tears, and this recalled her friend to some command of himself. He became tenderly moved to see her strong feeling for him, and as soon as she recovered her self-possession she insisted upon his letting her communicate what had passed to the Count. "I only know the outlines of this sad history," she said. "He is acquainted with it all, and it will pour oil into your wounds if you learn from him, as I am sure you must, that Albert is more sinned against than sinning, and that the honour of your family is at all events preserved without a stain."

At first he hardly knew how to adopt this suggestion, kindly meant as he saw it was, and upon the whole, by far the best course that could be pointed out, as a little reflection showed it to be. His pride, his stubborn pride, raised obstacles to any communication on such a subject with any man. However, the entreaty of his dear friend, and the perfect confidence which he had in both the honour and the amiable nature of Chatillon, overcame all scruples; and in a few hours, he returned from his ride, when she met him on the terrace, and apprised him shortly of the extraordinary discovery she had made. It was agreed that he should take a walk with the Baron before dinner, and disclose the heads of Albert's history, without letting him know where he was. This accordingly was done; and the full statement of the whole transaction removed, in a very satisfactory way, all the impressions which the exaggerated and perverted reports in circulation had left on his mind. "I am far," said the Count, "from holding Albert guiltless, as he is far from acquitting himself of blame, and even of great blame. But, poor man, how severely has he suffered! Is not his penance complete to expiate his offence?"—"My dear Count," said the haughty Baron, "I feel far otherwise; and I am somewhat vexed that a brother of mine should feel as much compunction as you think he does. I go by his intention. He was desperately in love with Mdlle. Orange; the villain who had always maltreated him was in fact occupied in seducing her; Albert found him, as he thought, in her presence, and even, as he believed, in amorous dalliance with her; she singing his cursed madrigals, he accompanying her on his vile lute, she tenderly bidding him adieu; he, gracious heavens, actually imprinting a kiss upon her lips! Why, who could stand this? Who that had not been frozen to stone in a convent, where nevertheless letchers seemed to be hatched or finished, could hear and all but see this, and his blood not boil and boil over? No, no, Count, neither you nor I could so far forget ourselves; and had we been in his place, we should have made the same rush that he did on Ambrose, for on Ambrose he never doubted but he was springing."—"Well, Baron, I will not argue the matter further; only, if he intended to slay Ambrose—which I am far from saying he did, rather believing that he knew not what he intended or what he was about—but if he had so designed I should have held the guilt of blood to be on his head, though I admit with some considerable palliation. Of this I am certain, that his years have since been spent in repenting it."—"Aye, aye, he had the severe misfortune of killing his friend, and had he done so by the chance firing of a fowling-piece, or, to take a liker case, by letting off a pistol at a robber, and the ball rebounding from the wall on his friend, he would have suffered severely, like every man of good dispositions. But anything like blood-guiltiness I utterly deny he lies under."—Upon the subject of his apostacy, however, the Baron was more harsh in his judgment. Not that he was himself at all overburthened with religion; but he worshipped, so he phrased it, "the Gods of the country, as all wise men had done in all ages;" and he felt as if his family was somewhat lowered by one of its members leaving the national faith.

Finding the Baron so much relieved regarding the main point, as Chatillon considered it, he, in answer to the question now put, of where Albert had gone after he left Switzerland, shortly mentioned his wanderings in America, and his return to France, and then ventured to tell the Baron that his brother was actually under the same roof. This produced a violent effect upon him; he was choked by his feelings; he feared to shew them, and quickly left the Count in the pavilion to which they now had come, and hastening to his own apartment, where he met Emmeline, he fell on her neck and found relief in a convulsive fit of tears. She was alarmed at so unusual an occurrence, but he put off answering her inquiries, being always very careful to avoid whatever could excite her feelings or throw her into any agitation, as her health required the greatest management in this respect.

Her soothing attention and sweet conversation, so often resorted to by him to calm his troubled spirit, so certain ever to have this effect, now as always restored him to the entire possession of himself. He remained when she left him, pensive, occupied with what he had heard, revolving all his past life in his mind, looking forward to his future lot, but chiefly planning, not without lively interest, his brother's escape, and looking forward with an interest as lively to the interview he should have with him early on the morrow, if he could not persuade the Count to break the subject in an interview with Albert the same evening, so that the meeting might afterwards take place before night.

Lord Mornton quitted the Château to proceed on his journey towards Italy, delighted with his visit, and leaving all who had become acquainted with him equally charmed. Prince Caramelli, too, took his departure; and there remained only the Baron and his niece with the Chatillons. It became thus more difficult for the Count to have with Albert the explanation so much desired by his brother, and necessary before their meeting could take place. It was not therefore till next morning that this could be accomplished; and the Baron, who seldom knew what it was to pass a night blessed with sleep, was agitated, until he got up, with the most various and conflicting emotions. At length Chatillon found an opportunity of visiting the Solitary; and he easily brought him upon the subject of his family and their early history. He found that Albert retained but a slight impression of his elder brother's features, but remembered the great affection which he had ever shown towards him, and the kind of agony with which he came to embrace him when he went from his father's house. This led to the Count asking if it was quite sure Francis had ceased to exist. There was not any doubt, he replied, that Louis died many years ago, for a letter written in his last illness had been received; but nothing whatever having been heard of Francis, it was concluded that he too had died. Chatillon then said that he had every reason to believe this supposition was groundless, and that Francis had prospered in the world, but was settled in a foreign country, and lived under a different name. By degrees he broke the whole subject, and astonished Albert with the intelligence that his long-lost brother was now under the roof of the Château. The agitation into which this discovery threw him was quickly succeeded by another; his dread of his brother's impetuous, proud temper, so well known in the Lunel family, and the apprehension that his history would excite hostile feelings towards him. But Chatillon easily quieted all such alarms, by apprising him of the whole having been already communicated, and of the favourable, indeed the far too favourable, reception which it had met with from the Baron.

Nothing now remained, therefore, but to bring the two brothers together; and this was easily managed as soon as the family went out to take the usual morning drive in the Forest. The scene was touching; for they met with the same affection with which they recollected that they had parted, but the melancholy reflection upon their mother's death, indeed on Louis's fate also, embittered a meeting which else had been grateful to all their feelings. Those two afflictions, and especially the loss of their mother, went to their heart; for both felt how cruel it was that she should not have been allowed to witness their meeting, that her eldest child should have been so long lost to her, and that her youngest and favourite son should not have been permitted to close her eyes. These feelings heavily oppressed the Baron; but Albert had a resource peculiar to his own position, which soon served to occupy his mind, and exclude any painful emotion. The position of his brother rendered his escape a matter of certainty and of ease. It was settled that he should accompany the Baron as one of his suite; and the hope was held out by this happy change of circumstances, that he might, one day, perhaps at no great distance, have the happiness of once more seeing Louise, whose constancy he never for a moment doubted, and who now less than ever could have any difficulty in uniting her lot with his.

There was much care and delicacy required in breaking the whole of these things to Emmeline, or rather in apprising her of as much as it was deemed right she should know. Her strict religious opinions, and her habitual feelings of warm piety, which formed a part of her whole nature, never a moment absent from her thoughts, precluded the possibility of informing her that her newly-found uncle had left the order he belonged to, though the Romish faith, to which she so strictly adhered, was stated to have been abandoned by him on a full and sincere conviction which operated upon his conscience and left him no choice. The rest of his history, excepting the unhappy cause of his flight, was fully recounted by him. She believed his wanderings to have originated in the circumstance of his conversion, and she never wearied in listening to the strange adventures which he related on their journey, and the descriptions which he gave of far distant countries, their singular manners, and their romantic scenery. Upon points of controversy she never would touch with him. When he once or twice endeavoured to approach the subject, she firmly, though with her wonted gentleness, declined it. Satisfied herself, she desired not to re-convert him; while she sincerely respected his conscientious convictions, she had no desire to have that faith shaken which made the solace of her life; for she wisely judged that in this, as in other things, it is good to leave well alone, and she thought it might be dangerous to touch the opinions held on the forms, the discipline, and the ritual of religion, lest the substance also should be invaded.

On some subjects, however, which had a relation to these high matters, and, unknown to her, came very near Albert's case, they discoursed, reasoning with the same freedom from all restraint which characterized the relations between her and the Baron—relations of familiarity and affection which were soon extended to her newly-acquired kinsman. Thus, as they passed through Lyons, the case of a nun being mentioned who had quitted her convent and fled, under the protection of a cousin soon afterwards married to her in Switzerland, Emmeline expressed her decided reprobation of this conduct, and would not listen to the defence which Albert, naturally enough, urged with some little warmth, alleging that the poor girl was converted to the Reformed faith. "No doubt," said Emmeline; "and she found, I dare say, many very convenient reasons for conversion, and for liberating herself from her vows."—"But, my dear Emmeline," said Albert, "do you approve such vows?"—"I am far from approving them," she answered, "and I think, with many sound and orthodox divines, that our Holy Church has been too easy in giving such vows countenance and support. But though it may be ever so wrong to make these vows, once made they must be kept. The annoyance, the restraint of keeping them, is the consequence of the rash act of making them."—"How do you hold of such (for there are many) who have been drawn or compelled into taking the cowl or the veil?"—"Why, my dear Secretary" (he travelled as filling this place in the Baron's train), "that is not the question. No one pretends that this young person did not enter into the holy state with her eyes open. However, I don't hesitate to say that, had I been even compelled to make my profession, as I must have done so after all with my eyes open to the step I was taking, I should have held it to be only the consequence of that act that I should perform my vows. Even had I been what you call compelled, and even if compulsion could here have place, I should so have judged. The other case you suppose of a fraud, of a dupery, is quite different; that binds nobody; it assumes that the vow never was made."—"I fear, my love," said Albert, "you will have, on your strict principles, to go a step further, and consider a promise binding which is extorted by force."—"Why, I do go that length, dear Secretary. If I, under fear of death or other extreme mischief, gave a solemn promise, I should reckon the fulfilment of it to be the price I paid for my escape. I should think it a misfortune; but so it was my misfortune to be exposed to the threat of violence. A consequence of that is the keeping my promise. If I break it, there is fault as well as misfortune."

The more Albert saw of this engaging person, the more he was struck with her. The perfect justness of all her reasonings, and the undeviating rectitude of her feelings, could only be surpassed by her delightful manners and tender disposition. With her he loved to renew those discussions, on subjects both of history and of taste, which he had found to possess such a charm while in the society of Father Jerome. He would relate to her the Father's critical opinions, and he found that no subject either of German, or Italian, or English poetry was new to her; for of these languages she was as complete a mistress as of her mother tongue. In discussing Dante, he found she held the same opinion with Father Jerome; but she rated Tasso higher than he had done. She admitted, however, his great inferiority to the great Florentine; and she gave Albert an instance even stronger than the famous addition to the lion in the Sordello. "Look," said she, "to his murder of those most exquisite lines in the Maestro Adamo, perhaps unequalled in their kind by any passage of the Divina Commedia. Not content with making the cooling and moistening rills that trickle down the Casentino dry up the thirsty, dropsical man, when he recollects them and has their image before his eyes, Tasso must needs make them heat as well as dry up; and worse still, as if to dispel the illusion of actually seeing them before his eyes, they are made to boil over in his thoughts.

'L'asciuga, e scalda, e nel pensier ribolle.'

I really think Tasso only succeeds when he transports some phrase whole, and leaves it standing out from his own verse, without adding or changing at all, as

'Arabo le mani per dolor si morsie.' "

When they came to descant on the great French preachers, with whom Emmeline was peculiarly familiar, he found that she did not view Bossuet as Father Jerome had done. She allowed Massillon to be superior, and to have done things far above the reach of the soft and mellifluous Bossuet; but she took much pleasure in reading the latter, and found his tenderness well suited to her own strong feelings on sacred topics.

While thus they discoursed, the time passed pleasantly, and the way was beguiled. In less than a week, making no haste, they travelled along the left bank of the Rhone to Lyons, and then ascended its right bank to Geneva. Here Albert found that the worthy pastor of St. Gingoulph had recently paid the debt of nature; having survived many years longer than he earnestly prayed he might do, his darling Emilie; but having also enjoyed the comfort of preparing himself better than ever for his great change by a life spent to the end in works of charity and acts of devotion. The melancholy disposition of Emmeline, connected with her knowledge of the precarious tenure by which she held her own life, made it inexpedient to dwell on the mournful story of poor Emilie, which came fresh into Albert's mind when he visited the English chaplain and accompanied him to the grave, where a simple inscription noted the age of the deceased, and described her as "The humble follower of Jesus, and the constant friend of the poor." The pastor was buried at her side by his own desire; and his death had happened too recently to allow a stone to be erected over him.

The journey from Nismes, in which he felt easy and secure for the first time these seven years, had been delightful to Albert; and it was agreeable to Emmeline also, whom the novelty of his conversation, his engaging manners, and his singularly sweet temper, could not fail to please. The Baron had not felt so much at his ease: he had been separated from the friend whose attractions exercised so powerful an influence over him: but this was not the source of the melancholy which preyed upon him. Ever since he lost his companion and brother, Louis, he had felt all the blessings for which he was grateful to Providence were each in succession accompanied with a bitter reflection—"Alas! he is not here to share what would have given him so much pleasure!" This journey with Albert was fitted to raise up such regrets at each step; to which might be added the unceasing source of his greatest anxiety, Emmeline's health, never becoming less delicate, but on the contrary rather giving more rise than in her earlier years to gloomy forebodings. Hence it was his fate to have his cup of enjoyment ever dashed with bitterness; and as Emmeline never appeared more delightful, or filled him with more pride than during this journey with her new kinsman, the Baron was proportionately downcast when the murky shadow flitted across him which he seemed to foresee would one day veil so much excellence from his sight.

CHAPTER VIII.

REVOLUTION—GENERAL AND PERSONAL.

The Baron and his suite having passed through Switzerland returned to Flanders; the other guests of the Château arrived at their several homes; the Marquess and Marchioness continued to dispense among their dependents the blessings which a resident gentry affords, and among their neighbours the distinguished and distinguishing hospitality of Bagnolles. The same party had agreed to re-assemble at the close of the ensuing summer; and in the mean while public events did not linger in their progress. The States General assembled in May. The people of Paris were enchanted with the august solemnity of their public meeting. The plan of M. Necker having been adopted, no less than twelve hundred representatives of the three orders were convened, of whom six hundred were deputies of the commons, and the remainder represented the nobles and clergy. The minister's plan, his foolish plan, of leaving to the bodies themselves the determination of all other questions, was likewise pursued, and led, after a few weeks of fierce controversy, to the union of the three in one meeting, a narrow majority of the other two having been, chiefly by the violence of the multitude out of doors, induced or compelled to vote for this inauspicious junction. The Revolution, according to Lord Mornton's wise and sagacious prediction, was thus accomplished, and the Monarchy in effect subverted. What soon after followed might be regarded among the natural consequences of this cardinal error. But the excitement of the people, and especially of the Paris mob, broke forth in acts of violence. An easy prey to every rumour fabricated for the purpose of inflaming them, by working on the most suspicious temper of which the history of nations affords any example, and working also on an ignorance of all beyond the circle of the Parisian walls, hardly credible in the eighteenth century, those multitudes who had now begun to give over all other occupation but that of political agitation, were driven to and fro by their profligate or fanatical leaders—'tis hard to say which race is the most pestilent—and had already, before the assembling of the States General, proceeded to the most unbridled excesses. Property had been pillaged, houses burnt, lives lost, before the ominous month of May set in. One act of violence after another ensued; and on the 14th of July the Bastile was attacked, and carried by storm. M. Necker, whom in one of its oscillating fits the Court had dismissed, was recalled, and soon found that while the mob rent the air with their shouts of exultation at his return to place, they were resolved to give him none of the power, without which place is a disgrace to him who holds it, and a curse to all under his rule. The Paris mob, now made regular—what was called organised in the jargon of the day, that is, disposed in clubs of agitators—ruled the Assembly by terror; and the Assembly did as it list, or rather, as the mob list, without the least regard to the minister.

Early in August the time had arrived for assembling again the delightful society of last year at the Château de Bagnolles. The Count and Countess were there as relatives of the family, some weeks before. The Chevalier had left France for England after the revolutionary movement of July, when it seemed no longer expedient for an Englishman to remain in Paris; his son Ernest was glad, too, of an occasion for quitting the capital without giving rise to any suspicions against his patriotic dispositions; and he promised to let his father know how he found matters at his aunt's, on his arrival. The Chevalier Deverell accordingly was in anxious expectation of receiving a letter, and about the middle of August one reached him, dated the beginning of the month, but which had gone round by Yorkshire, whither he had been to visit a friend. He read with extreme interest, and in some annoyance, as follows:—

Château de Bagnolles, 2nd August, 1789.

"My dearest Father,

"I lose no time in fulfilling the promise I made on parting with you a fortnight ago, after the alarming events which induced you to prefer an English to a French residence for some time to come.

"Yesterday evening I arrived here after dinner, and found our last year's party in a great measure reassembled. My aunt and her family received me with their wonted cordiality. All the company were distributed in their several parts of the salon so nearly as they used to be last year, that I could almost have thought the interval of nine months had not been interposed, and that we were all as then the evening before the party broke up and dispersed. There was the Marquess playing at chess with the Count, in the recess as you go towards the library; there was the Marchioness with her book on the sofa between the parlour door and the great mirror; the governess and the Sieur Gaspar were looking over the new prints and maps for the school-room; the Rev. Mrs. Leblanc, as you used to call her, who is here on a visit, was walking about the adjoining part of the library, with a stranger, whom I had not before seen, a tall man of a most handsome and striking countenance, who seemed discussing with her some important matter, that both took great interest in. The Countess was reading the newspaper in the niche near the chimney-piece; and the Baron sat a little way off, neither reading nor talking, which, however, at the moment did not strike me as anything particular. I saw, in short, every one exactly as last year, with one exception. Mdlle. de Moulin's place near the small book-case was vacant; she was not there. I looked again at the Baron, and was going to ask whether she was unwell, as not unfrequently happened. Mercifully

I did not; I perceived he was in deep mourning, and that his face was care-worn, as if he had lived not nine months, but twice as many years, since we last met. The dreadful suspicion instantly passed through my mind, and I dared ask no question. My aunt, who sat near, at that moment happened to raise her eyes from the book in her hand, and her look of sorrow and despair as she eyed first me and then the unhappy Baron, too eloquently told me all that remained—if indeed anything did remain to be ascertained. The vacant place gave my heart such a chill as I am unable to describe. I durst not again turn my eyes toward it.

"I cannot express to you the gloom which this sad event has cast over the whole society. There never in this world was a more delightful or more amiable person than Emmeline de Moulin. I say nothing of her wretched uncle, now the very picture of woe, but I speak only of herself. So much talent and so admirable an understanding—such a rare union of the qualities generally found the least capable of blending together, warm and quick feelings with calm and correct judgment—so much of heart with so much genius and information—such expansion of mind with such perfect innocence and simplicity—that all this should have passed away, and left only our sorrow for its loss, is I really feel a severe dispensation! You will not wonder at my thus writing, because you know that all my Parisian nonsense used to be dissipated the moment Mdlle. de Moulin appeared, and that she exercised over me a kind of power wholly unaccountable, whether you regarded my nature or her own; my general hardness and carelessness (insouciance), or her habits and temper, which rendered anything like love-making or even ordinary admiration a thing as much out of the question as it would have been with my aunt or her children.

"Well, when once such melancholy sentiments take hold of the imagination, they do not leave any portion of it unoccupied: I walked out before breakfast this morning, after thinking very much of what I have been detailing, both before I fell asleep and after I got up. I found myself walking among the lime-trees, beyond the terrace, after you pass through the pavilion, and I sat me down on a bench, beneath the shade of one of them. It instantly came into my mind that I last saw poor Emmeline on this very spot, and that she had gently chid me here for some stupid joke which I had made upon her young friend, Mademoiselle Chapeley. You may recollect she never much liked any remark on the absent, but especially could not bear it on her friends. Just as I was saying to myself—How much would I give that she were here to chide me once more! I heard the note of the small bird which frequents the lime-tree-walk—a shrill and plaintive note—as I had often heard it when she was there enjoying her favourite walk. I can hardly tell you the pang that this gave me. No one is so little given as I am to sentimental moods: no one cares less to have his mind led away from realities to such painful sufferings or indulgences, call them which you will. But it was too much for me; I was fairly overcome, whether from having slept ill, or been fatigued with my journey, or having eaten nothing since I rose, or whatever be the cause, I caught myself fairly moved to tears, and was exceedingly glad to find, upon looking round, that I was unobserved. Had the Countess, or indeed any one that knew me, observed what was passing, it is my belief they would have thought I either had been drunk over-night, or was deranged this morning. I, of course, soon recovered myself.

"At breakfast we all again met, except the Baron.

He has only been here these three days, and my aunt (who indeed mourns over Emmeline as if she had been her own) tells me that he has been unable to bear the morning meeting as yet. He used every day, after breakfast, to lead his niece into the portico, and there to converse with her on their little plans for the day, of reading, or walking, or driving, and the Marchioness says that this recollection is stronger than for some days he may be able to bear. You know the pride, not to say haughtiness of his nature. He is as high in his affliction as in any other concern of his life. My aunt tells me no one dares approach the subject to him, within a hundred leagues. He is entirely sullen, silent, and reserved. But his looks he cannot command; he is an entirely altered man, and if he ever smiles, it is like the grin of a death's head. His coming here, the Marchioness says, was an immense exertion, and was imposed upon him by his brother, as a kind of duty, in the belief that it might tend to banish the sorrow he was secretly and silently pining under. You know she is somewhat of the most innocent in worldly matters—like poor Emmeline;—and she never seems to reflect that the dearly beloved Countess is here, whom the Baron durst no more have disobeyed, when commanded to attend, than he durst the commands of his lawful sovereign the Emperor Joseph.

"Well—that same brother of his, whom I mentioned, as the only one of the party I had not seen before. He is truly a most remarkable person. First and foremost, the handsomest man, without exception, I ever saw; and herein as little like the dear Baron as may be—but a man of great accomplishments, extensive travel, and various knowledge. Lastly, one whose conversation is singularly agreeable—having great suavity with much fire, a ready wit, and a good capacity for reasoning. He has, however, some of the particularities of the family, and he consented to accompany the Baron, upon condition that he should be allowed to occupy his own apartment in the Château, and only join the party when the family were alone. He is, it seems, a Protestant, and having come down in the evening, without knowing Madame Leblanc was there, she seized upon him, as he was about to retire, and making the Marchioness present him to her, began a controversial discussion with him, which he could not avoid, but fled from to his own chamber, as soon as he had an opportunity of escape. It seems to me, from one or two things I have incidentally observed, that there is a good deal of mystery attending these two brothers, and this younger one especially. He is very intimate with Chatillon, who quite swears by him; the Countess too extols him about as much as she does the Baron; but neither the one nor the other can give me much information respecting either brother, or if they can, they certainly prefer keeping it for their own private and separate use.

"I have, in the course of the morning, seen only those I mentioned at the beginning of my letter. The gossip of the place I can give you but a slender report of, having only seen your reverend friend for five minutes in the portico, before the company assembled after breakfast. She availed herself of that limited space to lament the poor Baron's loss. 'And,' said she, 'misfortunes never come single. He came here to be comforted by meeting the Countess, and he finds he has lost her too.'—'Lost her?' I said, 'What can you mean?—'Oh they are manifestly two;' she replied. 'Not that he cares a straw, I imagine, for it seems he suffers so much, that he cares little what now may befal him. Nevertheless, I cannot excuse her taking this opportunity of throwing him over.'—'But,' I said, 'I don't believe one word of it. The thing is utterly impossible!'—'Quite possible,' said she, 'and quite true.'—'But what account do you give of it?' I asked; 'there must be some cause.'— 'Oh, I conclude she has found him a successor. He was not her first love, and is not very likely to be her last.'—I need hardly tell you that this last matter—this explanation—must be false, whether the rest of the story be true or not. I came as near the subject as I durst venture with herself; but, owing to an accident I need not trouble you with, she hates me so cordially, that she never even tries to conceal it, and she would hardly speak to me with common civility, when I asked some question respecting her friend, the Baron. With himself, of course, I did not venture to approach the subject. My observation, therefore, as confirmatory of the tale put forth by her 'who thinketh no evil,'—that she does not speak out, is confined to the remark that I have not seen the two bosom friends take their accustomed walk to-day, and that they did not read together in the library during the morning. Possibly they may resume their studies after dinner.

"We are all here, in as much anxiety as you may suppose, for the next accounts from Paris, The wise predictions of Lord Mornton are fulfilled to the very letter, and in all their particulars. Revolution is fairly begun; where it is to end, or whither it is to go, wiser heads than mine must determine. I find the spirit of the people in Languedoc and Provence is to the full as bad as in any part of the north—indeed, from all I hear, it is even worse. The accounts from Orange, Marseilles, Toulon, are truly alarming; but nothing can be much worse than our neighbouring town of Nismes. A most turbulent spirit prevails there; scenes of tumult ending in bloodshed have already been acted; the Catteaus are full of hopes, activity, and fury, with a ferocious rabble at their heels; there have been attacks on the châteaux and on the persons of some proprietors, though not in this immediate neighbourhood; but at Nismes, I hear, there are clubs established on the model of those begun in Paris, and that persons are denounced for political offences; that private grudges are at work in many cases to have men's spite gratified under the mask of patriotic enmities; that even secret information is received by agitators, and acted upon by their mobs; and of one thing I am sure,—that if the rabble knew what a thorough- going aristocrat your humble servant is, no hiding-place in this Château would be dark enough or fast enough to screen him from them, and prevent him assisting the illumination of the place by ascending the lamp-post (lanterne).

"Your affectionate son,

"Ernest."

The first news which arrived at the Château after Ernest came, was that of the memorable 4th of August, a day wholly unexampled in the history of governments; and by governments we mean the deeds of a regularly established power regularly acting in the management of the affairs intrusted to their care; but not, perhaps, without example in in the history of the violent revolutions, and the sudden convulsions which the moral, as well as the natural world sometimes undergoes. In one night sixteen laws were passed by acclamation, and with hardly any discussion at all, each of them of great, most of them of the greatest importance; altering the whole civil polity of the country, changing the relations of society, violating the most valuable rights of property, placing the whole administrative system upon a new foundation. Many of these laws were improvements of the utmost value; almost all of them were fit to be in some shape or other introduced; but their sudden, hasty, wholesale adoption without any regard to details, without the least care to prevent serious injustice in their operation, and without the shadow of consent from those great bodies whose interests they affected, consent to be asked by previously consulting them, or at least informing them of the intended measures, was a course of headlong and precipitate action which deserved not the venerable name of legislation. The abolition of all that was oppressive in feudal rights, the equalizing of all public burthens, the vesting in one central body the imposition of all taxes, the cessation of all provincial states, and the conversion of the clergy from a proprietary into a stipendiary body, were the principal measures, all of the utmost benefit to France, thus carried by the violence of the moment, and which no subsequent deliberation could alter and modify.

But, although in the excitement of the day, the leading nobles and dignified clergy at Paris had rushed forward to make these great sacrifices, the same enthusiasm was very far from prevailing in the provinces among the classes whose property had thus been given away. In Languedoc there was not the least disposition even to acquiesce; and the nobles, finding that the peasantry were deluded into the notion, not perhaps, very unnatural after what had passed in the capital, that all rent was to cease, and that all common land was given up to them, broke out into disorders still more violent than they had lately committed, and obliged the landowners to arm in their own defence. The Marquess de Bagnolles, though he cheerfully bore his part in this resistance, to which the country owed its escape from universal anarchy, yet never ceased to cast the blame of the commotions which had rendered such defensive operations necessary, upon the precipitate measures of the National Assembly; and he plainly saw that now it was vain to think of arresting the progress of Revolution.

"I find," said he as he returned from the meeting held to take steps for a general arming, "I find that the most unmixed delight has been given at Nismes to the violent party by the late proceedings. There is now a confident expectation entertained of an entire change in our monarchy."—"That hardly surprises me," Ernest observed, "for how and where are men to stop who thus begin? What chance have we of nobility, of orders of knighthood, indeed of any distinction of rank being maintained after what has passed with respect to all feudal privileges?" The Count did not view the matter quite in the same light; but a remark of the Baron, who sat silent and as if absorbed in the book he was reading, but had listened to the conversation, seemed worthy of great attention. "The Tiers Etat have been persuaded into giving up on their part their only chance of being ennobled; for the sale of parliamentary and other judicial places is abolished with the feudal rights. Depend upon it the Commons never would have agreed to this had a month's time been given for reflection."—"And, pray, what do you infer from hence, M. le Baron?" said Mdme de Chatillon, somewhat contemptuously.—"I infer, Madame," said he, "what I presume any one of ordinary understanding, who gives himself the time to reflect, and does not prefer the easy success of a trenchant remark to the trouble of seeking after truth, would naturally infer, that the Commons being the powerful body will indemnify themselves for the involuntary sacrifice, in the most obvious quarter, that is to say, by levelling all ranks."—"That, in short," said Ernest, who perceived the profound reasoning of the Baron, "unable any longer to rise up to our rank, they will bring us down to their own."—"And, after the night of the Fourth," added the Baron, "why should I doubt that the privileged orders will be themselves forced to propose the change?"—"All extremely deep and far-sighted, I make no question," said the Countess; "we ordinary mortals don't see so long before us."—"Countess," said M. de Moulin, in a tone somewhat severe, and with a sardonic smile, which had anything rather than an amiable effect, "Countess, possibly you ordinary mortals would find your sight longer if you had experience of affairs, as well as much study, and had learnt the lesson of endeavouring to profit by these opportunities." So saying he left the portico, where the party were assembled, and took a walk alone upon the terrace.

Ernest plainly perceived that there was much foundation for his former suspicions; these two friends were no longer on their former footing; and he found in the course of the evening that Madame de Chatillon, when she ventured upon a remark to the Baron, did so with much hesitation, and was answered with that immeasurable superiority of which he was as conscious as the others were aware, no longer bending to her authority as her inferior, nor indeed, at all affecting to treat her as his equal. She seemed to be exceedingly ill at her ease, and Ernest saw, but had no means of divining what, that something very desperate and perverse must have taken place between them so entirely to alter their mutual relations. The Baron's state of mind would not in any manner of way explain the change. In affliction men cling to any friendly support, rather than abandon their attachments; and being of a good heart himself, Ernest believed both that the Baron would seek and that the Countess would be inclined to yield him that kind of solace. Hardened as he was by the ways of the world, he still could not conceive the likeness of anything in the female form taking this opportunity to abandon her former friend—yet something, he could not tell how, or what, must have happened between these two. Of one thing he was quite certain, Madame Leblanc's doctrine could not be true. He had far too extensive and accurate a knowledge of the female nature to doubt that her love for M. de Moulin was a kind of caprice, or wandering from her accustomed path; he believed it had never gone far in this instance; he was quite certain it never had been repeated in any other; and his conjecture from all he observed, was that it had, at least for the present, ceased.

Ernest was right in the main, though he saw imperfectly. He was right in believing that a change had come over the friends, and that no new attachment had caused it. He was not quite correct in his view of the fair lady's disposition. His knowledge of female nature had been limited to ordinary samples of the sex. Of the species to which Madame de Chatillon belonged, fortunately not a numerous family, he had as yet had no experience. That which he conceived impossible for anything in the female form to accomplish had been perpetrated; but only the form of the party was female—and what lurked beneath that fair form? Was it fury or was it fiend? or was it only a human nature exposed to strong gusts of passion, and drawn on from step to step by chances that presented opportune suggestions, after the perilous discipline of familiar contemplation?—This, however, if it may explain, never shall be suffered to excuse; for this is the way in which the Great Fiend of all works.

The long absence which the Countess had feared might relax the Baron's attachment, if not wean him from it, had proved much more fatal to her own. In him the passion of love was natural, not to say habitual; in her it was now first felt, and it found no easy or convenient harbour in her bosom. The pride which formed the great feature of her character was offended, because it was lowered by it; and therefore, never having easily suffered its entrance, was exceedingly watchful for an opportunity to expel the intruder. The stings of remorse, however, were added to the wounds of pride; they were indeed far less powerful; and she often represented to herself the feelings she endured as emotions which were only pride. Still remorse did operate sometimes and somewhat. Yet the master passion was pride; its wounds gave the real pang. The accident of which she had so fatally become aware, that had put Ernest in possession of her secret, continued to give her unspeakable pain, and as, from his known opinions of the sex, the fruit of his equally well known experience, she had no doubt that he believed matters to have gone much farther than she ever intended they should; she could also entertain no doubt that he was ready any day to exhibit her, if not generally among his idols, at least to the goddess of the day, in colours for laying on which she felt her conduct had given an authority. The knowledge that she was in the power of two men, both men of the world, was more than she could endure. Aloof from all intimacies she had no confidant, and took no counsel. One friend, if she had possessed such a treasure, might have soothed her, and reconciled her to her position; another of an opposite caste of mind might have advised her to break off all connection of the kind. She formed the latter resolution of herself, in a temper of mind which arose partly from wounded pride, partly from awakened conscience, and in no small degree also, from dread of discovery, however determined she was that there should be no actual guilt to find out. That which made it possible for her to form first, then to execute such a resolution, wholly beyond her force a few weeks ago, was the effect produced by absence in relaxing her attachment. Her love for the Baron was contrary to her nature and habits, and when they were separated, and she could not look forward to a renewal of their intercourse for many months, she found it possible, without any great effort, to get the better of her passion, and she was effectually cured.

About a month before Chatillon had determined to revisit Languedoc, she heard of the cruel blow that had fallen upon her friend and laid him prostrate. His letter was short, but it expressed all. He was alive; he unhappily was well and likely to bear about the burthen of an existence become utterly wretched. He hastened to tell her this, noways doubting of her sympathy, though not a tender word did he mingle with his phrase, not an approach did the few lines of his letter indicate, to any other feeling save that which might well be expected to fill and to master his soul. By a contradiction common to women, and which one little like the rest of her sex could yet exhibit, this letter, though it excited little sympathy, stayed for awhile the execution of her purpose. She felt less able to abandon her friend and cast away her passion, when she thought for a moment that he too had been cured. Instead of writing to him, therefore, she reserved the communication of her resolution till they should meet at Bagnolles, and for awhile she inclined to withhold that communication until she should have ascertained that his love burnt with as fierce a flame as before; nay, she did not exactly know if her own might not be re-kindled should his be found to have died away.

They arrived at Bagnolles,[24] a week before the Baron. When he came, she found him sullen and reserved to others and refusing to confess that he suffered; dejected in her company, but as affectionate as ever. The momentary partial renewal of her passion ceased; and in answer to his declaration that the hope of again meeting her had been the only gleam his mind had been enlightened by, and that he had now but one attachment remaining upon earth, she told him with a firm voice, and in a manner even haughty as well as determined, that all intimacy between them must cease, and that she had formed a resolution from which nothing could move her. This shock was more than the miserable man could well bear. Nor was its force lessened, by her replying, in answer to this remark, that he had really looked for sympathy from her instead of repulsion,—"If you mean pity, you should scorn it. For my part, I can't bear to be pitied. I had rather be hated by far."—With that she flung out of the room, determined to hear no more; and had she stopped to listen, she would only have heard muttered in an agony, "My God! what a woman!"

He cast his recollection back, at this moment, to the very different person in whom his affections had centered, now torn from him by death. He was moved to tears as he had not been since his loss, when the contrast struck his mind. He had, without any blame to himself, suffered his mind to be once and again diverted from the sad scene before his eyes during her last illness; he had found relief by this distraction, and by resting his thoughts on what he fondly but vainly had been dreaming would prove a sympathizing bosom. He now bitterly upbraided himself for having suffered a single instant to pass with his attention removed from what was passing before him; it seemed to him as if he had deserted in thought the death-bed of her who before all the world continued now so unspeakably dear to him; and he could not avoid the feeling that he was justly punished for what yet was a natural, nay an involuntary offence—while he sighed out again, as he gazed on the door through which the Countess had flung, "What a woman! gracious heaven! Was it for her that I deserted, though only in thought and but for a moment, the dying hours of that sweet angel, while she was passing to her eternal rest?"

The cure of the Countess was certainly not more radical than this short scene had effected on the Baron. In the composition of the remedy there was less pride; there was some little remorse, though also less of this. But there were affections the most powerful and most lasting, as they were the most pure which could sway the heart, and these expelled his passion from it, at once and for ever, with the help of the discovery he had now made, that the other spirit was not kindred to his own.

It was not long before the Countess found how entirely this had been accomplished, nor was it long before she was doomed to feel the consequences of the change. Not merely there was no devotion to her—there was not the ordinary submission of a man to a handsome and a distinguished woman. Not only there was no intimacy—almost all intercourse had ceased. For a day or two her pride kept her up, her spirit supported itself; and possibly so might it have done had she been alone in the Château with M. de Moulin. But she had now to bear the change which all perceived in his manner towards her, and above everything else in his apparent estimate of her authority and her reasonings, her fancies and her opinions; and as she had now the means of judging how much of his former deference had depended upon her real merits, so also had every one else access to the data upon which the same calculation proceeded; all could now make the deduction of amorous devotion from the sum total of the submissive respect paid, and tell to how much the remainder really amounted. It was not very agreeable for herself to work this question in subtraction; it was still less pleasant to observe others occupied with the same exercise of vulgar arithmetic.

The strength of the hatred that arises from the transmutation of love is proverbial. She now detested him she had but lately loved; and no day passed without giving herself and the rest of the party a variety of examples whereby to learn the same easy and elementary rule; for she got to be exceedingly restless under the irritation of her present position: she could not avoid rushing into conversations, however moderately she might be qualified for grappling with the subject. She had been spoilt by admiration, and had lived upon it; and, like a princess, had not been enough accustomed to the more homely and wholesome diet of unpalatable truth. Hence she fell into the error of thinking that a sentence, or a jest, or a fine look, or a gracious smile, can carry things; and omitted the consideration that knowledge, and the wisdom coming from practical experience, always win the day in the long run; but in the hands of a dexterous combatant carry away the victory at once, and leave the lighter artist floundering and laughed at.

One day the conversation had turned on the state of the market for land, and the thousands of estates intended for sale and no purchasers offering for them. Madame de Chatillon, in answer to the Marquess, who held this a fatal symptom of the revolutionary rule, said, "Why, no one has seen England flourish the less for her Revolution last century, and the Civil War some years before. No doubt property changed hands then as now."—"There being," observed the Baron, "very certainly no change whatever in the distribution of property either at the one period or the other."—Some one spoke afterwards most justly of the influence exerted by the Clubs and the Galleries over the proceedings of the Assembly. Her eyes sparkled at the prospect of regaining her advantage. "I suppose," she said with a haughty sneer, "there are no Whig Clubs in England, and no Galleries in their House of Commons."—"Assuredly,

Madam," the Baron quietly replied, "none, nor anything like it. The Whig Club is a private association of persons of rank, which never debates at all; and the Gallery of the House of Commons is cleared at the desire of any single member: no one is allowed to utter a whisper during its discussions."—"Well, well, it may be so; women are apt enough to be led away by a word being the same, as children will look through a telescope, holding it the wrong way, and wonder to see it reflect diminished instead of enlarged objects."—"I suspect neither women nor children are very likely," said the Baron, "to see such a telescope as you mention reflect anything at all."—"Why, how so. Baron? There is no getting you to admit anything, either fact or comparison. Does not every one who has a looking-glass, and is not ugly enough to dread, using it" (looking archly at her quondam friend) "know as well as I do that the glass reflects?"—"Certainly not, Madam, it is the quicksilver behind it that reflects, the glass transmits only and protects the metal; not to mention that, if the glass reflected ever so much, this would not prove that there was any the least reflection in such a refracting telescope as your ladyship spoke of. However, I beg your pardon," he added, feeling he pursued her too close, "I was wrong to set you right; it was not worth disputing about." There was something in the mingled scorn, indifference, and almost pity, with which this was both sounded and looked, that proved far more intolerable than any of his exposures which preceded. She bit her lip in a manifest agony of mortification; and, taking a book in her hand, retired from the portico.

CHAPTER IX.

THE END.

While these things were transacting in the public society of the Château, Chatillon passed much of his time with Albert in his own apartment, or in rambling over the forest; sometimes visiting together the cave where their acquaintance began, sometimes going among the peasants in the neighbourhood, or the foresters who lived in the woods, hearing their opinions of passing events, and inquiring into the condition of their families. The Marquess, though an excellent landlord, yet had estates so extensive that much of their management was necessarily devolved upon agents, and as the Sieur Gaspar was become old and less active than formerly, his subordinate functionaries were not always well looked after. Many valuable hints were therefore given by these two friends to the benevolent and sensible owner of the domain.

But the Count, while conversing with Albert, always recurred to one topic, whether in their walks, or in their evening interviews at the Château. He could no longer see any reason for refraining from the attempt to bring off Louise, which he had in vain pressed before the discovery of his friend's relationship to the Baron. His circumstances were now comparatively flourishing. The unhappy calamity that had just befallen the family rendered their fortune much greater than their wants. No chance existed of his brother marrying; it was the very last thing he ever was likely to think of; nor could he have otherwise than the wish to see Albert united with Louise. Chatillon soon found that it was only his habitual submission to the Baron's will, and his feeling apprehensive of his displeasure, should a subject be broached which he had never himself come upon, that rendered Albert unwilling to take the course pressed upon him. His friend at once undertook to remove this difficulty, and begged the Countess to take an early opportunity of bringing the whole before her friend, as Chatillon still supposed him. She gave, however, the most peremptory refusal to interfere in any way, and expressed an entire indifference to the "lovers, Don Alberto and

Donna Luigia," as she termed them, laughing not a little at the romantic adventures of Chatillon's "dear friend," their friendship furnishing constant food for her merriment. He was thus obliged to broach the subject himself with the Baron, and he found not the least disinclination to the proposal, only a positive desire that, considering his own station, he should in no way be mixed up with any step which might be taken.

The Count having now obtained Albert's full assent, proceeded to lay his plans, and he did so with the greatest judgment. He was to go, without any attendant whatever, to cross the Rhone near Orange, and then proceed by the diligence to Avignon, so as not to have the appearance of coming from Nismes, the inhabitants of which labour under general suspicion in the Contât. He was to take up his position at once in an inn of the town, and from thence to reconnoitre the persons of the Orange family. He was provided with a letter from Albert, and his first object must of course be to have this safely conveyed into Louise's hands. Never having seen her, he could only make inquiry respecting her habits, or, which he much preferred, watch about the door of Madame Orange's house, in order to see her come out. He did not venture to trust any one whom he might bribe to deliver the letter. But after waiting two days, he at length saw her enter a carriage with her mother, and from the description, he had not the least doubt of her identity. He watched another day, in the hope of her walking out, but he could only see her at the window for a moment. He instantly looked up, and held the letter in his hand. A few minutes afterwards her maid came down, and into her hands he delivered it, with a note from himself intimating that he should be ready to meet and to save her at six next morning, outside the gate, on the road leading to Orange. He went there in a close carriage which he had hired at the hotel, and she came by the time appointed. He ordered the postillion to drive off at a quick pace, and was perceived and stopped by a guard of the Vice-legate, or deputy governor residing at Avignon. The man was insolent, but Chatillon put a purse of silver in his hand, and in a minute he had galloped off to Orange. The journey was speedily performed, the river was crossed, the Avignon carriage dismissed, and in a few hours the fugitives were safely landed in the Château, no one having been able to tell which road they took after

Orange; for the Count had the foresight to station his own servant at a country inn out of the main road from the Rhone, and they went thither, a distance of above a league, on foot, when they got into his carriage, and finished their journey. It was settled that Louise should come to the old steward's house in the wood, in order not to commit the Marquess and Marchioness. She was to remain there for two days, till their plans were arranged.

The meeting of the two lovers was exceedingly affecting. Louise at length found her friend safe from all immediate personal risk, powerfully protected, and amply provided for. The contrast between his present situation, and the circumstances in which they last had met, a year and a half before, came forcibly into her mind, and she devoutly prayed for grace to make her both thankful for such blessings, and rightly and moderately to enjoy them. Albert, though his spirits continued much affected by his recent loss, and though his present enjoyment was disturbed by the ever-recurring sigh of reflecting that poor Emmeline could not share their felicity, yet deeply felt the happiness for which he had so mercifully been reserved, and only had to keep down the alarm that from time to time would intrude of other terrors still being in store to dash away from his lips a cup so sweet, but so lately tasted. The Baron was pleased with Louise, and desired to have the marriage hastened with all convenient speed. But Albert, after much reasoning on the subject, judiciously preferred travelling with her to Flanders, and being there married at a convenient distance from both the Contât and Nismes. It was, all the time of the discussions, a cruel thought, ever present to the Baron's mind, that she was no longer here whose judgment on all points would have been consulted, and whose wishes on all points have ruled. Indeed, time seemed to have none of that healing influence which it is so common to speak of. Stunned with the blow that felled him to the ground, he had at first not felt its full force. He now experienced what it was to suffer in every feeling of the heart, and at every moment of time.

The Countess gave herself little concern in all these transactions. Wholly engrossed with her feelings respecting the Baron, whom she now regarded both with hatred, and distrust, and alarm; she could only think of the unconnected expressions which she had at different times heard drop from him upon the effect which he knew the loss of Emmeline, a calamity always haunting his gloomy imagination, would be sure to have upon the tone of his mind. He was wont to say carelessly that he should probably survive it, because no one dies of grief any more than of love, but that it was his own fault if he survived it long. No one could compel him to lead a life of torment, and he had no family, nor indeed any person living, now his mother was taken from him, to whom his loss would prove an injury. She used to rally him for such views of futurity, and to say he surely was too proud to let the world see he had no power to endure calamity. "May be so! may be so!" he would reply, "but who pray told you that the world was to know it? I am quite equal to meet that difficulty, I promise you." Then she also brought to mind his way of speaking once when they were discussing in the portico the history of Themistocles, and his practice of carrying poison in a ring was mentioned with some incredulity. "For that matter," said the Baron, "I believe I could charge a much smaller ring than the ancient warrior's was, with poison enough to relieve any three men of their load of life." These, and such speeches as these, came constantly into her mind now, and as often as she saw him sitting with his eyes fixed upon vacant space—or glaring at some page of a book for half an hour together, shewing that he saw not a letter of its print,—or caught him sitting idle, contrary to all his habits, and then suddenly begin to occupy himself as soon as he was discovered—or heard him when he forgot himself, or perhaps supposed no one nigh, heave a deep, convulsive sigh, and then on being observed, begin a kind of hysterical cough, she could not refrain from laying all he now seemed to undergo together with his former predictions and half threats, and to look forward to his speedily fulfilling them and putting them in execution; insomuch that her lively imagination, ever under the guidance of her wishes, and always running much before the event, made her ask eagerly about him as often as he was later than usual in entering the breakfast-parlour, or returning from his solitary walks in the forest, and still more when he went to Nismes, and remained till after the company had left the salon and retired to rest.

Day after day however passed, and nothing happened. The great fear of her existence and its most intolerable annoyance was the Baron; his death, she had worked herself up to believe, would take a load off her soul; would dispel the cloud that hung over her existence. She longed for it far more impatiently than ever did expectant heir who is himself sinking into the vale of years while his predecessor lingers on the brink of the tomb long yawning to receive him; till at last her mind was completely familiarized with this idea, and her impatience became such as would have been something ridiculous, had it not also been something horrid to think of. Her disappointment when young Deverell's accident proved unexpectedly trifling, was great, and it was little concealed. But this impatience now for what she called "a necessary relief, and the emancipation from intolerable thraldom, to which she was fully entitled," was tenfold; it was all the more vehement, that it was mingled with a degree of rage and of constraint, of which in the former instance there had been hardly anything. It was then only fear; it was now greater fear coupled with hatred and revenge.

While in this dreadful frame of mind, and just before Albert set out for Flanders, she one day came into the library, and perceived on the sofa in one of its recesses, the Baron stretched out fast asleep with a book half cut before him, and in his hand an open penknife. Unable to sleep well at any time, and now nearly a stranger to that refreshment in the night, he not unfrequently fell into a slumber after his walk was over in the course of the morning. The family were all gone to Nismes; and she knew she was alone in the house; she suddenly saw how a wound inflicted with a knife, such as to produce instant death, would be ascribed to his own hand, when he was found in that posture, and when his frequent conversations on self-destruction were coupled with the present state of his spirits, which all his efforts to conceal what passed within him had never succeeded in preventing the company from fully perceiving. She hurried to Chatillon's room for a razor; she returned; she found him still undisturbed; he had never moved since she went; she grasped the razor in her hand; she looked round—and saw Albert who had come into the library during her absence, and who stood now clear of the division of the recess which at first concealed him from her view. She suddenly and with an hysterical laugh said she was minded to try the strength of the Baron's consistency in his own doctrines, by placing a razor within his reach, well assured, she carelessly added, that his life would be in very safe keeping, when committed to his own hands. Albert fixed upon her his large and piercing eyes: he uttered not a word; she stood abashed and unable either to speak or to stir; the Baron was awake and knew not the subject of their discourse; Albert retired, but before he went, he shook his head slowly and significantly over against the Countess, on whom he continued to glare with his widely opened eyes. She left the room before the Baron had time to begin any conversation. But next morning when he saw Albert before his departure, he asked what Madame de Chatillon and he had been disputing about, and was surprised to hear his brother say, "I believe her to be nearly the worst woman in the world; why I only say nearly, I will tell you; I think her as bad as any one can be without being false." Nothing now much interested M. de Moulin; however, he asked what his brother could mean; and when told that, from what passed the day before, he verily believed she was seeking his life, "Oh, if that is all," said the unhappy man, "I am sure she is perfectly welcome. I defy her to be half so willing to take it as I am to give it. However," he added with an indifferent tone, "why should she be in such a hurry? Let her wait a very little time, and the pear will be ripe, and fall into her lap of itself. I once thought that grief was a slow poison; my opinion is altered. I now feel, thank God, that it brings its own only remedy much quicker than I had believed."

The grief that such observations, and the calm, indifferent, and yet truly despairing manner in which they were made, gave Albert, could only be alleviated by the hurry into which his approaching departure threw him. He sincerely loved and indeed revered his brother, to whom he looked up as to a superior nature, and he felt the cruel blow which the loss of him would be to all the prospects he had begun to form of future happiness. But before he set out, it seemed absolutely necessary that he should take some steps for the Baron's protection. That any one, a woman especially, should have deliberately, or even suddenly under the influence of a momentary temptation, formed the wild project of murdering him with her own hands, and by an act of violence, seemed quite incredible. Yet that the idea had passed, through her mind he could not for an instant doubt, and drugs might be used, or accomplices might be hired when no one was by to watch or to detect. He accordingly took the Marquess aside before he went, and explained to him his apprehension, finding it quite in vain to make his brother attend seriously to the subject for a moment. The Marquess turned almost as deaf an ear to the representation as the Baron had done, and Albert departed with a heart full of anxious forebodings, though he really after all supposed it very possible he might be mistaken.

The scene which she had gone through in the library had thrown the Countess into extreme agitation. It had made her congratulate herself on the escape she had made; for she could not avoid feeling, that a moment later, and a deed would have been done, at any rate an attempt would have been made, of which a witness was unexpectedly present, and her character, if not her life, was then gone. She, however, experienced another effect of that scene, and of the part she had played in it. The second step had now been made towards blood-guiltiness. The first was her open, her almost avowed disappointment at Ernest's life being preserved last autumn; this had first made her familiar with the thirst for a fellow-creature's blood. The same thirst had again seized her in the instance of the Baron. Another step in her progress downwards had now been taken; she had all but slaked that infernal thirst; she had committed murder in her heart, and murder with her own hand. When she reflected on these things, she was shocked—she stood aghast at the contemplation of her own image;—she started back from the gulf that yawned before her; but she speedily laid all these fears and all other feelings asleep by reflecting on the risk she ran, the certainty of ruin she called it, from both the Baron and Ernest. She was haunted day and night with the loss of the character she had so long maintained of being the only beauty of Paris that never had been even suspected; she figured to herself the sneers of some (over whom she had been wont to exult), hard to bear, and the pity of others more intolerable still; she hastily decided that she had no choice; she argued that self-defence required her to act; she put the question as between the destruction of these her relentless oppressors, and her own; and she concluded that the first law of nature gave her, the right, nay, imposed on her the duty, of providing for her own security, at all hazards and all costs. She resolved, however, to proceed henceforth with redoubled caution, and never to act herself when she could by any means safely use another hand than her own.

Ernest again gave his father a short account of what was passing at his aunt's, in all whose concerns the kind-hearted Chevalier took a great interest. "We have had here," he said, "a most agreeable, and indeed, a remarkable man, of whom I think I before made mention, a brother of the Baron. He is well read, and far-travelled, but he neither overlays you with his books nor his adventures, though willing enough to be asked as to either. In short, you would like him much; for he would not treat you as those lay-preachers do, of whom you complain that there is no escaping them, their brethren of the cloth being confined to both time and place. Apropos of that race, it is well for you that you dined not here yesterday. Courdemont opened a new vein, sprung an unexpected mine upon us. Well—you, after all, never really knew what he is made of. He is an accomplished genealogist, and I see you turn as pale as this paper at reflecting on the escape you have made, like a man who, in the morning, sees the precipice or the bottomless pool he had unawares passed in the dark. He got upon this endless topic yesterday with the soup, and I question if it was run out before the coffee. Charlemagne and Attila range themselves like disciplined troops in his niches, when he goes out through the Couvelaunts and the Coryphines, and others, his ancestral walks. Be thankful for the special mercy of your escape. It is provoking that one cannot hate so learned, able, and honourable a man, as he deserves to be hated; but so it is, and this lies on one's conscience. The Baron is as when I last wrote. He tries to occupy himself with hard work, but it won't do. His brother, whose tender care of him resembles that of the most affectionate wife or child, says he never will be able to take the only cure, of hard labour, till he returns to Flanders, and has public duties to perform; and return he clearly will before many days are over; for between the lady and him all is over, most certainly. Not only is there no longer alliance; there is not even neutrality, hardly peace and common forbearance; nor does she seem aware how much better it would be to be quiet in the new circumstances. Her restless nature, her endless ambition, and her morbid pride, get her into constant struggles, and she has, of course, always the worst in the conflict. Her opinions, to judge by her way of talking, have undergone a great change; she has become quite a stout revolutionist; she is all for the popular party; won't suffer a word to be said against M. Catteau, whom she terms a very clever and interesting young man; goes to Nismes to meet him, and hear the news from the Paris agitators, who are, she says, regenerating France; and speaks slightingly of such plodders as the Chief Judge and M. Balaye, who are not worthy to be named in the same year, I suppose, with your Catteaus. You know she never can hope to meet this gentleman at her cousin's, for he long since forbade him the Château after some of his blood-thirsty speeches. To all we can urge on this topic, the fair stateswoman replies:—'Other times, other maxims. We have outlived all that sort of thing.' The Baron, one day, drily said, we had as yet outlived them, but we might not long be able to say as much. The friendship of her husband for the Baron's brother is very remarkable; they seem to be quite inseparable. The Count went for a few days over to Avignon, upon some business, and his friend appeared to reckon the hours till he came back, wondering, each time any one arrived, what had become of Chatillon. The Count, again, is now in equal pain for the loss of the Fleming, who suddenly set off for his own country two days ago, not that Chatillon is as nervous and uneasy as his friend had been during his absence, but this arises from his far more easy temper. The Fleming has all the fire and excitement of the South, which one could hardly have expected to see bred in the Low Countries."

This, alas! was one of the last letters poor Ernest ever wrote. The wish of the Countess, the daily and hourly wish, was at length gratified, and she was rid of one of the burthens that made her life hateful. But she was rid in awful circumstances, full of suspicion, and which led to tragical events. A number of anonymous letters had been received at the Château, warning its inmates of the proceedings which were going on in Nismes, and at Orange, between which two places there was constant correspondence, the mob being almost equally excited in both. The Marquess was warned to secure his Château from an attack, and to have his woods and outbuildings well watched, for fear of fire at this season, when all in the South is dried up by the heat. The Baron was probably deemed safe, as being a foreigner, and in high station under his own government, under Joseph the Second too, a favorite of the French regenerators, and termed by them, "the Imperial Avant-Courier of the Great Revolution."

But Ernest, whose aristocratic habits and connections were known, and who exposed himself by his venturing at all hours to ride about, and be seen everywhere in the town, was very positively told of his danger. One of the letters mentioned that he had been denounced at a club more than once; that information had been conveyed from the Château itself of his speeches, contemptuous towards the people and their leaders, and that Catteau had a friend there, and the people a friend, who let nothing escape. Young Deverell held all such anonymous hints very cheap, and would not alter his mode of living. The old steward provided guards for the forest, and had the peasants ready to answer the summons of the bell, in case the Château should be assailed. But Ernest would take no precautions, and indeed the Baron and the Count, when he consulted them, were much of his mind, saying there was no end of trouble, if you minded anonymous letters, which nine times in ten were written for the mere purpose of giving you that sort of annoyance. This, however, proved to be the tenth time, and the warning which was thrown away came from those who knew the facts. A furious mob, urged on by the Catteaus, against whom he was reported to have dealt in sarcastic jests, set upon him as he rode proudly through the streets of the suburb next Bagnolles. He defended himself gallantly; then attempted to escape; he was hit with a large stone, thrown from his horse by the blow, which stunned him, trampled under foot by the multitude, and expired in a few minutes, after being carried into a cabaret, by a policeman, who saw the scuffle, but had no power to save him. The mob, that day, were masters of Nismes, and only dispersed upon the troops being called out, when later in the evening there was a threat of setting fire to a baker's shop, the master of which they had nearly beaten to death.

The Countess at first seemed elated with this sad intelligence, and retired to her own apartment, leaving the Baron and the Count to offer such consolation as they could to the unhappy young man's aunt. She bore her own part of the calamity with that pious resignation which her religious feelings and her habitual devotion made a second nature. But she sighed over the poor Chevalier, wrapped up in his son, declining in the vale of years, and unable, in his solitary state, and far off from his sister, to struggle with this most heavy affliction.

The Marquess felt strongly, but he also recollected Albert's parting speech concerning the Countess. He laid all the circumstances together; the visits to Nismes, the new intimacy with Catteau, the anonymous letters hitting at least upon one truth, that Ernest had spoken lightly of the mob and its leaders, abusing Catteau by name. Caspar had told him that he had observed Madame de Chatillon occasionally directed letters in a printed hand, which she never put into the post-bag, but carried them herself to all appearance. Above all, warned by Albert's suggestions, though slighted at the time, he had looked at the Countess when the sad intelligence arrived, and had perceived an unseemly animation light up her whole countenance. All taken together made him both believe Albert's former account, sharing his strong suspicions on that occasion, and made himself entertain a strong suspicion upon the present event. He never much liked his kinswoman, or rather his kinsman's wife; he liked her now much less than ever; and he fairly told the Marchioness that he cared not how soon she left the Château, and left them to their sorrow, which plainly she did not share.

But the Countess was doomed to suffering which neither they nor herself had foreseen. As soon as the first excitement had ceased, an agitation which she understood not succeeded. In the evening, the men as usual met, the Marchioness keeping to her room. The Countess had thus a good excuse for also absenting herself. But her evening was spent differently from her wont; she was wholly unable to read or to write; her pen, as often as she took it up, fell from her hand; her eye, fixed on the page, saw not the words; on she read to the foot, and knew not a word she had read; she went to bed—she slept not; her eyes were hot and ached, but they would not close; she took a calming draught—it only made her wander and speak without coherence; she knew not what she said; she could not fix her mind for an instant on one subject, and when the morning arrived she seemed in a high fever. Chatillon sent instantly for advice; the doctor came, and pronounced that the fever would be of short duration. He proved to be right; and she was able to appear at breakfast in two days. It was, however, her turn now to receive anonymous letters, and one came which threw her into an agony of terror. It enclosed one which she had herself written in a printed hand, and plainly told her to send some money to the writer, else he would let the Marquess know of her correspondence with the agitators. She had been seen to put a letter in the post-office; it had a printed direction; and thus her correspondence was traced. That letter contained an account of Ernest's political violence on all occasions. She saw staring her in the face all the horrors of a discovery; she sent the money required; she felt that she was the slave of the anonymous correspondent; and she now discovered that a woman may be guilty of even worse acts than having a lover.

Fear sometimes opens the eyes which have been closed to more worthy warnings. But her feelings were not naturally bad; they were not naturally callous; they were only perverted by ambition, and seared by pride. She now felt that the event which she had so wished for, so rejoiced in, was the source of unmingled grief and vexation, because it was the source of regret; she would have given worlds to be relieved from the load of that catastrophe for which she had sighed as the only means of relieving her from other, far lighter evils; she would almost have given her own life that Ernest were still alive. How lightly did she now think of all the risk she ran from his tongue! How little would she now care if all Paris had witnessed what he had seen in the Orangery! How lightly did she now regard even the most criminal intercourse with the Baron, compared with the charge to which she was now exposed! One comfort, and one only, she had; she never could be grateful enough to Providence for the accident, which she had formerly considered one of the curses of her existence, the chance of Albert being in the library and saving her from a yet heavier load of guilt than now oppressed her soul.

But daily agitation now gave place to broken slumbers, or wholly sleepless nights. Her appetite was gone; her restlessness was a disease; her alternation of ceaseless talk or sullen silence excited general attention; her face was changed; the roses had forsaken her cheeks; her eyes were sunk and were restless, or were glazed in her head; she never remained a moment in one look, or in one posture. Chatillon, deeming that the fever had been ill cured, or was returning again, sent to Montpellier for the physician who had attended Madame de Bagnolles. He came, and at once pronounced it no case of fever, at least at present, though from certain symptoms he conceived that brain fever might be approaching. He ordered the most perfect quiet, and living in a darkened room, and being kept low. He remained a day, and then returned to Montpellier. She in no way appeared to mend, and the doctor was sent for again. He now said, on examining the symptoms, that he had no longer any dread of cerebral illness; but he inquired minutely into her former history, and especially wanted to ascertain if either she or any of her family ever had laboured under mental alienation. The answer was clear and decided in the negative. He then wanted to know if she had ever lost any child, or had any other affliction to prey on her spirits. He was told she never had a child at all, and no one knew of anything to afflict her, unless perhaps it might be the shock arising from Ernest's sudden fate. The physician said she always wandered upon something which oppressed her, and seemed alternately under great alarm or in much affliction. He ordered her to be most carefully watched day and night, and gave his opinion to the Count that her mind was seriously disturbed. It was a conclusion to which he had himself already come; but he hoped that her natural faculties were so strong as to throw off this present malady. The doctor shook his head, and assured him that this was a feeble reliance; for that it was less likely a strong intellect should recover its tone than a feeble one, inasmuch as the illness must have been proportionably strong to affect it, Chatillon calmly said, "God's gracious will be done; but it is a grievous blow." He now for the first time in his married life regarded that as a blessing which he had ever deemed one of his greatest misfortunes—the having no children.

The unhappy woman grew worse and worse. Her mind was now entirely gone. She raved much of the Baron and Albert; but of Ernest she spoke with scarcely any intermission. Sometimes she was seized with fits of fury, more frequently she seemed under the influence of terror, and occasionally she would burst into tears. Once or twice she spoke of poor Emmeline; and the Marchioness was infinitely touched to hear her one day sighing and crying out! "Oh, Emmeline Moulin! Emmeline Moulin! What would I give to be at peace in your grave!"

Before this sad catastrophe had befallen his unhappy friend, the Baron had left the Château, and proceeded homewards. The letters from Albert announced his marriage having taken place, and that their happiness only wanted his presence to complete it. He felt, however, too miserable to enjoy anything, and only set out mechanically because it was going to his home, to what he now called his wretched home. But at that deserted and melancholy home he never arrived. In the bed of the inn of Montelimart, he was found dead by his servant when he went to announce that the carriage was at the door. The man was closely examined by Albert when he brought to Brussels this melancholy intelligence. It seems the Baron had not been able to sleep even his usual moderate portion of time for two or three nights before he left the Château; and the servant had thought him more depressed than usual during the day on which they left Montelimart. He had even (a thing most rare with him, who never spoke to his servants) heaved a sigh as he sat down to his supper, and seemed to feel distressed at the thoughts of returning to his house near Brussels, where he should no more see his niece. He retired to rest at the usual hour; and the man saw no more of him till he found his corpse next morning in the bed stiff and cold. A phial was on the table close by the bed; it was empty, and had a kind of smell, the man said, not like laudanum, but more like bitter almonds.

Albert too clearly perceived that his brother had terminated a wretched existence by swallowing' one of those subtle poisons of which he would sometimes speak half seriously, half in jest. It was a severe affliction, but he could not upbraid himself with the neglect of any precaution against what he yet had always foreseen to be an event very probable; for he full well knew him not to be a man whom any precaution that could be taken would prevent from executing a fixed purpose.

This sad loss threw a gloom over the happiness of the new married pair. But at their age, in their circumstances, the spirits are buoyant. The Baron had left them his whole property; he had left them also the respect attached to his name; and they had before them a life which promised as much comfort as ordinarily falls to the lot of mortals, though at moments of enjoyment they would cast back a thought of sorrow at no longer having their beloved brother and niece to share it.

They had the better assurance both of the purity and the duration of their happiness, in the deep foundations of religion and virtue upon which it was built. In the sad events that had preceded and attended their union, they had lamentable examples before their eyes how frail are all the tenures of a mere worldly texture by which sublunary felicity is holden. All that beauty and rank and talents could give had not been able to make Madame de Chatillon's prosperity secure, nor had her high spirit, animating too a frame naturally cold, been able to defend her against the insidious approaches of a passion which fervent piety in women most easily subdues. She had never, it is true, departed from the path of virtue in act or deed; no sooner was she roused to a sense of her danger than she turned her back upon the precipice that yawned close to her feet; and she might have been saved, had religion come to her rescue, from afterwards falling before other worse temptations against which she was less on her guard. But even in her earlier day she had approached far too near the brink. She had suffered the vanities of the world and the splendours of worldly success to entangle her in a connection which her conjugal duty forbade; an attachment which, though sullied by no actual guilt, was yet pointed towards a guilty quarter, and had no meaning if to that consummation it did not tend. Her punishment had been signal and severe. Losing all self-esteem, she was haunted with the terror of losing also the esteem of the world in which and for which she lived. Her better nature left her; her feelings became perverted; her moral sense was unhinged; she no longer gave to vicious actions their due shares of disapproval, of blame, of reprobation, of abhorrence. One idea alone filled her whole mind. One fear beset her. She was blind to every risk but one. She thought but of a single crime and a single shame. Had she been anchored to the Rock of Ages, she would in repentance have worked out the cure of that pain which she had brought upon herself, and not plunged into guilt incomparably deeper than any with which she could be charged—a greater guilt incurred to hide a lesser shame. Her punishment had again been dreadful. She was driven to madness by the tortures, the unbearable tortures of conscience wringing, as it does, and tearing the soul in all its most sensitive regions with sleepless terrors, with self-upbraiding to lacerate or to sting, with pity that only burning consumes the soul and never melts it, with the awful aspect of the dark future, and the unbearable glance of the Eye that is too pure to behold iniquity. Before this assiduous, this never-resting tormentor, her reason had fallen, and the pride of that matchless understanding, once the admiration of the world, had been bowed to the dust, laid prostrate by the crimes to which an over-weening confidence in its powers had prepared the way.

There was another example before the eyes of Albert and Louise, which, though less striking and less terrible, yet touched them more nearly. The Baron, far less criminal, had not been without his share even of the Countess's guilt; and all their admiration of him could not conceal from their calm reflection that he too had sinned, that he too had been punished. Accustomed to regard men in the capacities in which he had worked with them, or governed them, or opposed them—as his tools, or his subjects, or his enemies—to be used, to be ruled, to be fought or be circumvented—he had far too little viewed them as his fellow-creatures; and however well disposed to promote their happiness or further their improvement in the mass, he had acquired the convenient and easily formed habit of considering them as bound, in return for his good offices towards the species, to contribute individually towards the gratification whether of his ambition or of his other passions. The code of his morality thus became exceedingly imperfect; it was a morality of the most worldly and most relaxed description; and though his vices were accompanied, they could not be redeemed, by many virtues; his pride gave him the notion either that he was above all temptation or that when he yielded there was no cause for shame or necessity for repentance. But he had fixed all his purer affections upon one object; their wounds had been the bane of his life; their final disruption he had been unable to survive. So strong a mind as his sank under the blow from which feebler natures daily recover; and unsupported by true piety, though far from being an irreligious man, he had quitted voluntarily the post which his Maker has assigned him. Albert sometimes upbraided himself with having made no attempt at ministering consolation to his brother from the only source whence it can be drawn so as to possess a healing virtue. But a conviction that with such a nature such a trial would be hopeless, had always withheld him from what plainly was a vain effort. He felt, too, deeply impressed with the reflection that there was one passage in his story to which his brother might well refer as worse than any portion of his own; a passage which no length of time nor any variety of enjoyment was ever likely to erase from his memory, or to let him feel that it had been sufficiently atoned either by repentance or by amendment of life.

If the contemplation and the recollection of these things were calculated to give him pain, there was one subject to which he never could recur without the most delightful though the most tender and melancholy impressions. He would describe to Louise his niece's perfections, dwell on her genius, her sense, her purity, her resignation, her saint-like but charitable piety, with unceasing rapture, and would oftentimes exclaim, that surely if ever an angel visited this earth, it was Emmeline Moulin.

THE END.

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London:—Printed by William Clowes and Sons, Stamford Street.

NOTES.

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1. Gueuse Parfumée—the name given to Provence, as the native country of perfumes, and nothing else.

2. The Birmingham of France.

3. Uncle.

4. States of Dauphiné.

5. The eggs came first, the apples last, at a Roman banquet.

6. M. Talleyrand.

7. Contât of Avignon, or of the Venaissin. This district was then in the Papal dominions, from which one of the earliest acts of republican aggression severed it.

8. The name given to Protestant or Reformed Churches. A large proportion of the people at Nismes are of this faith.

9. The famous chief of the Paris police.

10. A few years later, and thirty years before railways were known, Darwin distinctly foretold them in that beautiful and philosophic poem which our Cannings made the theme of their shallow wit.

11. See the 'Leonard and Gertrude' of Pestalozzi.

12. The lines of Pope render well enough the old French original:

"Ce qui epaisse paraît grossier,
Bien coulée à toute femme sait plaire."

13. Napier's bones. One of those mechanical contrivances for calculation of that illustrious man's, which would have immortalized him had they not all been eclipsed by his grand discovery of logarithms.

14. It is singular enough that a prince so very obscure, indeed so entirely unknown in his own country, as this Northumberland king, one of the Heptarchy in the eighth century, should have reached the distinction of being a patron saint in a distant state. It serves to show that Romish saints are a commodity exported as easily as they are manufactured.

15. Four pounds.

16. The great Scotch mathematician, Maclaurin, friend of Newton, and commentator on his Philosophy; as well as author of an Elementary Treatise on Algebra.

17. Oppressive tax, particularly on salt.

18. Statute labour, due from peasants to their lords.

19.

Lever du poule, coucher du corbeau,
Preserve I'homme du tombeau.

20.Priest's stock.

21.Silk.

22.Velvet.

23.Patte de Velour, a velvet paw, is by the French used to describe one who, being generally soft (doucereux) can on occasion give a squeeze, or a scratch like a cat.

24.The château, near Nismes; not the town on the Cèze which falls into the Rhone, nearly opposite to Orange.