CHAPTER XI.

THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

* * * * *

VOL. III--FEBRUARY, 1859.--NO. XVI.

* * * * *

OUGHT WOMEN TO LEARN THE ALPHABET?

Paris smiled, for an hour or two, in the year 1801, when, amidst

Napoleon's mighty projects for remodelling the religion and government

of his empire, the ironical satirist, Sylvain Maréchal, thrust in his

"Plan for a Law prohibiting the Alphabet to Women." Daring, keen,

sarcastic, learned, the little tract retains to-day so much of its

pungency, that we can hardly wonder at the honest simplicity of the

author's friend and biographer, Madame Gacon Dufour, who declared that

he must be partially insane, and proceeded to prove herself so by

replying to him. His proposed statute consists of eighty-two clauses,

and is fortified by a "whereas" of a hundred and thirteen weighty

reasons. He exhausts the range of history to show the frightful results

which have followed this taste of the fruit of the tree of knowledge;

quotes the Encyclopédie, to prove that the woman who knows the alphabet

has already lost a portion of her innocence; cites the opinion of

Molière, that any female who has unhappily learned anything in this line

should affect ignorance, when possible; asserts that knowledge rarely

makes men attractive, and females never; opines that women have no

occasion to peruse Ovid's "Art of Love," since they know it all in

advance; remarks that three-quarters of female authors are no better

than they should be; maintains that Madame Guion would have been far

more useful, had she been merely pretty and an ignoramus, such as Nature

made her,--that Ruth and Naomi could not read, and Boaz probably

would never have married into the family, had they possessed that

accomplishment,--that the Spartan women did not know the alphabet, nor

the Amazons, nor Penelope, nor Andromache, nor Lucretia, nor Joan of

Arc, nor Petrarch's Laura, nor the daughters of Charlemagne, nor the

three hundred and sixty-five wives of Mohammed;--but that Sappho and

Madame de Maintenon could read altogether too well, while the case of

Saint Brigitta, who brought forth twelve children and twelve books, was

clearly exceptional, and afforded no safe precedent.

We take it, that the brilliant Frenchman has touched the root of the

matter. Ought women to learn the alphabet? There the whole question

lies. Concede this little fulcrum, and Archimedea will move the world

before she has done with it; it becomes merely a question of time.

Resistance must be made here or nowhere. _Obsta principiis_. Woman must

be a subject or an equal; there is no middle ground. What if the Chinese

proverb should turn out to be, after all, the summit of wisdom,--"For

men, to cultivate virtue is knowledge; for women, to renounce knowledge

is virtue"?

No doubt, the progress of events is slow, like the working of the laws

of gravitation generally. Certainly, there has been but little change in

the legal position of woman since China was in its prime, until within

the last dozen years. Lawyers admit that the fundamental theory of

English and Oriental law is the same on this point: Man and wife are

one, and that one is the husband. It is the oldest of legal traditions.

When Blackstone declares that "the very being and existence of the woman

is suspended during the marriage," and American Kent echoes that "her

legal existence and authority are in a manner lost,"--when Petersdorff

asserts that "the husband has the right of imposing such corporeal

restraints as he may deem necessary," and Bacon that "the husband hath,

by law, power and dominion over his wife, and may keep her by force

within the bounds of duty, and may beat her, but not in a violent or

cruel manner,"[A]--when Mr. Justice Coleridge rules that the husband,

in certain cases, "has a right to confine his wife in his own

dwelling-house and restrain her from liberty for an indefinite time,"

and Baron Alderson sums it all up tersely, "The wife is only the

_servant_ of her husband,"--these high authorities simply reaffirm the

dogma of the Gentoo code, four thousand years old and more:--"A man,

both day and night, must keep his wife so much in subjection that she by

no means be mistress of her own actions. If the wife have her own free

will, notwithstanding she be of a superior caste, she will behave

amiss."

[Footnote A: It may be well to fortify this point by a racy extract from

that rare and amusing old book, the pioneer of its class, entitled "The

Lawes Resolutions of Women's Rights, or the Lawes Provision for Woman.

A Methodicall Collection of such Statutes and Customes, with the Cases,

Opinions, Arguments, and Points of Learning in the Law as doe properly

concern Women." London: A.D. 1632. pp. 404. 4to. The pithy sentences

lose immeasurably, however, by being removed from their original

black-letter setting.

"_Lib. III Sect. VII, The Baron may beate his Wife_.

"The rest followeth, Justice Brooke 12. H. 8. fo. 1. affirmeth plainly,

that if a man beat an out-law, a traitor, a Pagan, his villein, or his

wife, it is dispunishable, because by the Law Common these persons can

haue no action: God send Gentle women better sport, or better companie.

"But it seemeth to be very true, that there is some kind of castigation

which Law permits a Husband to vse; for if a woman be threatned by her

husband to bee beaten, mischieued, or slaine, Fitzherbert sets donne a

Writ which she may sve out of Chancery to compell him to finde surety of

honest behauiour toward her, and that he shall neither doe nor procure

to be done to her (marke I pray you) any bodily damage, otherwise then

appertaines to the office of a Husband for lawfull and reasonable

correction. See for this the new Nat. bre. fo. 80 f. & fo. 23S f.

"How farre that extendeth I cannot tell, but herein the sexe feminine is

at no very great disaduantage: for first for the lawfulnesse; If it be

in no other regard lawfull to beat a man's wife, then because the poore

wench can sve no other action for it, I pray why may not the Wife beat

the Husband againe, what action can he haue if she doe: where two

tenants in Common be on a horse, and one them will trauell and vse this

horse, hee may keepe it from his Companion a yeare two or three and so

be euen with him; so the actionlesse woman beaten by her Husband, hath

retaliation left to beate him againe, if she dare. If he come to the

Chancery or Justices in the Country of the peace against her, because

her recognizance alone will hardly bee taken, he were best be bound for

her, and then if he be beaten the second time, let him know the price of

it on God's name."]

Yet behind these unchanging institutions, a pressure has been for

centuries becoming concentrated, which, now that it has begun to act, is

threatening to overthrow them all. It has not yet operated very visibly

in the Old World, where (even in England) the majority of women have

not yet mastered the alphabet, and can not sign their own names in the

marriage-register. But in this country, the vast changes of the last

twelve years are already a matter of history. No trumpet has been

sounded, no earthquake felt, while State after State has ushered into

legal existence one half of the population within its borders. Every

Free State in the American Union, except perhaps Illinois and New

Jersey, has conceded to married women, in some form, the separate

control of property. Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and

Pennsylvania have gone farther, and given them the control of their own

earnings,--given it wholly and directly, that is,--while New York

and other States have given it partially or indirectly. Legislative

committees in Ohio and Wisconsin have recommended, in printed reports,

the extension of the right of suffrage to women; Kentucky (like Canada)

has actually extended it, in certain educational matters, and a

Massachusetts legislative committee has suggested the same thing; while

the Kansas Constitutional Convention came within a dozen votes of

extending it without reserve, and expunging the word _male_ from the

Constitution. Surely, here and now, might poor M. Maréchal exclaim. The

bitter fruits of the original seed appear, and the sad question recurs,

whether women ought ever to have tasted of the alphabet.

Mr. Everett, perhaps without due caution, advocated, last summer, the

affirmative of this question. With his accustomed eloquence, he urged on

the attention of Suleiman Bey the fact of the equal participation of the

sexes in the public-school system of Boston, while omitting to explain

to him that the equality is of very recent standing. No doubt, the

eminent Oriental would have been pleased to hear that this public

administration of the alphabet to females, on any terms, is an

institution but little more than a half-century old in the city of

Boston. It is well established by the early deeds and documents that a

large proportion of Puritan women could not write their own names; and

in Boston especially, for a hundred and fifty years, the public schools

included boys only. In the year 1789, however, the notable discovery was

made, that the average attendance of pupils from April to October was

only one half of that reported for the remainder of the year. This was

an obvious waste of money and accommodations, and it was therefore

proposed that female pupils should be annually introduced during this

intermediate period. Accordingly, school-girls, like other flowers,

blossomed in summer only; and this state of things lasted, with

but slight modification, for some forty years, according to the

School-Superintendent's Third Report. It was not till 1828 that all

distinctions were abolished in the Boston Common Schools; in the High

Schools lingering far later, sole vestige of the "good old times,"

before a mistaken economy overthrew the wholesome doctrine of M. Sylvain

Maréchal, and let loose the alphabet among women.

It is true that Eve ruined us all, according to theology, without

knowing her letters. Still, there is something to be said in defence

of that venerable ancestress. The Veronese lady, Isotta Nogarola, five

hundred and thirty-six of whose learned letters were preserved by De

Thou, composed a dialogue on the question, Whether Adam or Eve had

committed the greater sin? But Ludovico Domenichi, in his "Dialogue on

the Nobleness of Women," maintains that Eve did not sin at all, because

she was not even created when Adam was told not to eat the apple. It is

"in Adam all died," he shrewdly says; nobody died in Eve;--which

looks plausible. Be that as it may, Eve's daughters are in danger of

swallowing a whole harvest of forbidden fruit, in these revolutionary

days, unless something be done to cut off the supply.

It has been seriously asserted that during the last half-century more

books have been written by women and about women than during all the

previous uncounted ages. It may be true; although, when we think of the

innumerable volumes of _Mémoires_ by Frenchwomen of the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries,--each one justifying the existence of her own ten

volumes by the remark, that all her contemporaries were writing as

many,--we have our doubts. As to the increased multitude of general

treatises on the female sex, however,--its education, life, health,

diseases, charms, dress, deeds, sphere, rights, wrongs, work, wages,

encroachments, and idiosyncrasies generally,--there can be no doubt

whatever; and the poorest of these books recognizes a condition of

public sentiment which no other age ever dreamed of. Still, literary

history preserves the names of some reformers before the Reformation, in

this matter. There was Signora Moderata Fonte, the Venetian, who left a

book to be published after her death, in 1592, "Dei Meriti delle Donne."

There was her townswoman, Lucrezia Marinella, who followed ten years

after, with her essay, "La Nobilità e la Eccelenza delle Donne, con

Difetti e Mancamenti degli Domini,"--a comprehensive theme, truly! Then

followed the all-accomplished Anna Maria Schurman, in 1645, with her

"Dissertatio de Ingenii Muliebris ad Doctrinam et meliores Literas

Aptitudine," with a few miscellaneous letters appended, in Greek and

Hebrew. At last came boldly Jacquette Guillaume, in 1665, and threw down

the gauntlet in her title-page, "Les Dames Illustres; où par bonnes et

fortes Raisons il se prouve que le Sexe Feminin surpasse en toute Sorte

de Genre le Sexe Masculin"; and with her came Margaret Boufflet and a

host of others; and finally, in England, Mary Wollstonecraft, whose

famous book, formidable in its day, would seem rather conservative

now,--and in America, that pious and worthy dame, Mrs. H. Mather

Crocker, Cotton Mather's grandchild, who, in 1818, published the first

book on the "Rights of Woman" ever written on this side the Atlantic.

Meanwhile there have never been wanting men, and strong men, to echo

these appeals. From Cornelius Agrippa and his essay (1509) on the

excellence of woman and her preëminence over man, down to the first

youthful thesis of Agassiz, "Mens Feminae Viri Animo superior," there

has been a succession of voices crying in the wilderness. In England,

Anthony Gibson wrote a book, in 1599, called "A Woman's Woorth, defended

against all the Men in the World, proouing them to be more Perfect,

Excellent, and Absolute in all Vertuous Actions than any Man of what

Qualitie soever, _Interlarded with Poetry." Per contra,_ the learned

Acidalius published a book in Latin and afterwards in French, to prove

that women are not reasonable creatures. Modern theologians are at worst

merely sub-acid, and do not always say so, if they think so. Meanwhile

most persons have been content to leave the world to go on its old

course, in this matter as in others, and have thus acquiesced in that

stern judicial decree, with which Timon of Athens sums up all his curses

upon womankind,--"If there sit twelve women at the table, let a dozen of

them be--as they are."

Ancient or modern, nothing in any of these discussions is so valuable as

the fact of the discussion itself. There is no discussion where there is

no wrong. Nothing so indicates wrong as this morbid self-inspection. The

complaints are a perpetual protest, the defences a perpetual confession.

It is too late to ignore the question, and once opened, it can be

settled only on absolute and permanent principles. There is a wrong; but

where? Does woman already know too much, or too little? Was she created

for man's subject, or his equal? Shall she have the alphabet, or not?

Ancient mythology, which undertook to explain everything, easily

accounted for the social and political disabilities of woman. Goguet

quotes the story from St. Augustine, who got it from Varro. Cecrops,

building Athens, saw starting from the earth an olive-plant and a

fountain, side by side. The Delphic oracle said, that this indicated a

strife between Minerva and Neptune for the honor of giving a name to the

city, and that the people must decide between them. Cecrops thereupon

assembled the men, and the women also, who then had a right to vote; and

the result was that Minerva carried the election by a glorious majority

of one. Then Attica was overflowed and laid waste; of course the

citizens attributed the calamity to Neptune, and resolved to punish the

women. It was therefore determined that in future they should not vote,

nor should any child bear the name of its mother.

Thus easily did mythology explain all troublesome inconsistencies. But

it is much that it should even have recognized them, at so early an

epoch, as needing explanation. When we ask for a less symbolical

elucidation, it lies within our reach. At least, it is not hard to take

the first steps into the mystery. There are, to be sure, some flowers of

rhetoric in the way. The obstacle to the participation of woman in the

alphabet, or in any other privilege, has been thought by some to be the

fear of impairing her delicacy, or of destroying her domesticity, or of

confounding the distinction between the sexes. We think otherwise. These

have been plausible excuses; they have even been genuine, though minor,

anxieties. But the whole thing, we take it, had always one simple,

intelligible basis,--sheer contempt for the supposed intellectual

inferiority of woman. She was not to be taught, because she was not

worth teaching. The learned Acidalius, aforesaid, was in the majority.

According to Aristotle and the Peripatetics, woman was _animal

occasionatum_, as if a sort of monster and accidental production.

Mediaeval councils, charitably asserting her claims to the rank of

humanity, still pronounced her unfit for instruction. In the Hindoo

dramas, she did not even speak the same language with her master, but

used the dialect of slaves. When, in the sixteenth century, Françoise de

Saintonges wished to establish girls' schools in France, she was hooted

in the streets, and her father called together four doctors, learned in

the law, to decide whether she was not possessed by demons, to think of

educating women,--_pour s'assurer qu'instraire des femmes n'était pas un

oeuvre du démon_.

It was the same with political rights. The foundation of the Salic

Law was not any sentimental anxiety to guard female delicacy and

domesticity; it was, as stated by Froissart, a blunt, hearty contempt:

"The kingdom of France being too noble to be ruled by a woman." And

the same principle was reaffirmed for our own institutions, in rather

softened language, by Theophilus Parsons, in his famous defence of the

rights of Massachusetts _men_ (the "Essex Result," in 1778): "Women,

what age soever they are of, are not considered as having a sufficient

acquired discretion [to exercise the franchise]."

In harmony with this are the various maxims and _bon mots_ of eminent

men, in respect to women. Niebuhr thought he should not have educated a

girl well,--he should have made her know too much. Lessing said, "The

woman who thinks is like the man who puts on rouge, ridiculous."

Voltaire said, "Ideas are like beards; women and young men have none."

And witty Dr. Maginn carries to its extreme the atrocity: "We like to

hear a few words of sense from a woman, as we do from a parrot, because

they are so unexpected." Yet how can we wonder at these opinions, when

the saints have been severer than the sages? since the pious Fénelon

taught that true virgin delicacy was almost as incompatible with

learning as with vice,--and Dr. Channing complained, in his "Essay on

Exclusion and Denunciation," of "women forgetting the tenderness of

their sex" and arguing on theology.

Now this impression of feminine inferiority may be right or wrong, but

it obviously does a good deal towards explaining the facts it takes for

granted. If contempt does not originally cause failure, it perpetuates

it. Systematically discourage any individual or class, from birth to

death, and they learn, in nine cases out of ten, to acquiesce in their

degradation, if not to claim it as a crown of glory. If the Abbé Choisi

praised the Duchesse de Fontanges for being "beautiful as an angel and

silly as a goose," it was natural that all the young ladies of the court

should resolve to make up in folly what they wanted in charms. All

generations of women having been bred under the shadow of intellectual

contempt, they have of course done much to justify it. They have often

used only for frivolous purposes even the poor opportunities allowed

them. They have employed the alphabet, as Molière said, chiefly in

spelling the verb _Amo_. Their use of science has been like that of

Mlle. de Launay, who computed the decline in her lover's affection by

his abbreviation of their evening walk in the public square, preferring

to cross it rather than take the circuit,--"From which I inferred," she

says, "that his passion had diminished in the ratio between the diagonal

of a rectangular parallelogram and the sum of two adjacent sides."

And their conception, even of Art, has been too often on the scale

of Properzia de Rossi, who carved sixty-five heads on a walnut, the

smallest of all recorded symbols of woman's sphere.

All this might perhaps be overcome, if the social prejudice which

discourages woman would only reward proportionately those who surmount

the discouragement. The more obstacles the more glory, if society would

only pay in proportion to the labor; but it does not. Women, being

denied not merely the antecedent training which prepares for great

deeds, but the subsequent praise and compensation which follow them,

have been weakened in both directions. The career of eminent men

ordinarily begins with colleges and the memories of Miltiades, and ends

with fortune and fame; woman begins under discouragement, and ends

beneath the same. Single, she works with half-preparation and half-pay;

married, she puts name and wages into the keeping of her husband,

shrinks into John Smith's "lady" during life, and John Smith's "relict"

on her tombstone; and still the world wonders that her deeds, like her

opportunities, are inferior.

Evidently, then, the advocates of woman's claims--those who hold

that "the virtues of the man and the woman are the same," with

Antisthenes,--or that "the talent of the man and the woman is the same,"

with Socrates in Xenophon's "Banquet"--must be cautious lest they

attempt to prove too much. Of course, if women know as much as men

without schools and colleges, there is no need of admitting them to

these institutions. If they work as well on half-pay, it diminishes the

inducement to give them the other half. The safer position is, to claim

that they have done just enough to show what they might have done under

circumstances less discouraging. Take, for instance, the common remark,

that women have invented nothing. It is a valid answer, that the only

tools habitually needed by woman have been the needle, the spindle, and

the basket, and tradition reports that she herself invented all three.

In the same way it may be shown that the departments in which women have

equalled men have been the departments in which they have had equal

training, equal encouragement, and equal compensation,--as, for

instance, the theatre. Madame Lagrange, the _prima donna_, after years

of costly musical instruction, wins the zenith of professional success;

she receives, the newspapers affirm, sixty thousand dollars a year,

travelling-expenses for ten persons, country-houses, stables, and

liveries, besides an uncounted revenue of bracelets, bouquets, and

_billet-doux_. Of course, every young _débutante_ fancies the same thing

within her own reach, with only a brief stage-vista between. On the

stage there is no deduction for sex, and therefore woman has shown in

that sphere an equal genius. But every female common-school teacher in

the United States finds the enjoyment of her two hundred dollars a

year to be secretly embittered by the knowledge that the young

college-stripling in the next school-room is paid a thousand dollars for

work no harder or more responsible than her own,--and that, too, after

the whole pathway of education has been obstructed for her and smoothed

for him. These may be gross and carnal considerations; but Faith asks

her daily bread, and Fancy must be _fed_. We deny woman her fair share

of training, of encouragement, of remuneration, and then talk fine

nonsense about her instincts and her intuitions,--say sentimentally,

with the Oriental proverbialist, "Every book of knowledge is implanted

by nature in the heart of woman," and make the compliment a substitute

for the alphabet.

Nothing can be more absurd than to impose entirely distinct standards,

in this respect, on the two sexes, or to expect that woman, any more

than man, will accomplish anything great without due preparation and

adequate stimulus. Mrs. Patten, who navigated her husband's ship from

Cape Horn to California, would have failed in the effort, for all her

heroism, if she had not, unlike most of her sex, been taught to use her

Bowditch. Florence Nightingale, when she heard of the distresses in the

Crimea, did not, as most people imagine, rise up and say, "I am a woman,

ignorant, but intuitive, with very little sense or information, but

exceedingly sublime aspirations; my strength lies in my weakness; I can

do all things without knowing anything about them." Not at all.

During ten years she had been in hard training for precisely such

services,--had visited all the hospitals in London, Edinburgh, Dublin,

Paris, Lyons, Rome, Brussels, and Berlin.--had studied under the Sisters

of Charity, and been twice a nurse in the Protestant Institution at

Kaiserswerth. Therefore she did not merely carry to the Crimea a

woman's heart, as her stock in trade, but she knew the alphabet of

her profession better than the men around her. Of course, genius and

enthusiasm are, for both sexes, elements unforeseen and incalculable;

but, as a general rule, great achievements imply great preparations and

favorable conditions.

To disregard this truth is unreasonable in the abstract and cruel in its

consequences. If an extraordinary male gymnast can clear a height of ten

feet with the aid of a spring-board, it would be considered slightly

absurd to ask a woman to leap eleven feet without one; yet this is

precisely what society and the critics have always done. Training and

wages and social approbation are very elastic spring-boards, and the

whole course of history has seen these offered bounteously to one sex

and as sedulously withheld from the other. Let woman consent to be a

doll, and there was no finery so gorgeous, no baby-house so costly, but

she might aspire to share its lavish delights;--let her ask simply for

an equal chance to learn, to labor, and to live, and it was as if that

same doll should open its lips, and propound Euclid's forty-seventh

proposition. While we have all deplored the helpless position of

indigent women, and lamented that they had no alternative beyond the

needle, the wash-tub, the school-room, and the street, we have yet

resisted their admission into every new occupation, denied them

training, and cut their compensation down. Like Charles Lamb, who atoned

for coming late to the office in the morning by going away early in the

afternoon, we have, first, half educated women, and then, to restore

the balance, only half paid them. What innumerable obstacles have

been placed in the way of female physicians! what a complication of

difficulties has been encountered by female printers, engravers, and

designers! In London, Mr. Bennett was recently mobbed for lecturing to

women on watchmaking. In this country, we have known grave professors

to refuse to address lyceums which thought fit to employ an occasional

female lecturer. Mr. Comer states that it was "in the face of ridicule

and sneers" that he began to educate women as book-keepers, eight years

ago; and it is a little contemptible in the authoress of "A Woman's

Thoughts on Women" to revive the same satire now, when she must know

that in one half the retail shops in Paris her own sex rules the ledger,

and Mammon knows no Salic law.

We find, on investigation, what these considerations would lead us to

expect, that eminent women have commonly been more exceptional in their

training and position than even in their genius. They have excelled the

average of their own sex because they have had more of the ordinary

advantages of the other sex. Take any department of learning or skill;

take, for instance, the knowledge of languages, the universal alphabet,

philology.--On the great stairway, at Padua, stands the statue of Elena

Cornaro, professor of six languages in that once renowned university.

But Elena Cornaro was educated like a boy, by her father. On the great

door of the University of Bologna is inscribed the epitaph of Clotilda

Tambroni, the honored correspondent of Person, and the first Greek

scholar of Southern Europe in her day. But Clotilda Tambroni was

educated like a boy, by Emanuele Aponte.--How fine are those prefatory

words, "by a Right Reverend Prelate," to that pioneer book in

Anglo-Saxon lore, Elizabeth Elstob's grammar: "Our earthly possessions

are indeed our patrimony, as derived to us by the industry of our

fathers; but the language in which we speak is our mother-tongue, and

who so proper to play the critic in this as the females?" But this

particular female obtained the rudiments of her rare education from her

mother, before she was eight years old, in spite of much opposition from

her right reverend guardians.--Adelung, the highest authority, declares

that all modern philology is founded on the translation of a Russian

vocabulary into two hundred different dialects by Catherine II. But

Catherine shared, in childhood, the instructors of her brother, Prince

Frederick, and was subject to some reproach for learning, though a

girl, so much more rapidly than he did.--Christina of Sweden ironically

reproved Madame Dacier for her translation of Callimachus: "Such a

pretty girl as you are, are you not ashamed to be so learned?" But

Madame Dacier acquired Greek by contriving to do her embroidery in the

room where her father was teaching her stupid brother; and her queenly

critic had learned to read Thucydides, harder Greek than Callimachus,

before she was fourteen.--And so down to our own day, who knows how

many mute, inglorious Minervas may have perished unenlightened, while

Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Barrett Browning were being educated "like

boys"?

This expression simply means that they had the most solid training which

the times afforded. Most persons would instantly take alarm at the very

words; that is, they have so little faith in the distinctions which

Nature has established, that they think, if you teach the alphabet, or

anything else, indiscriminately to both sexes, you annul all difference

between them. The common reasoning is thus: "Boys and girls are

acknowledged to be distinct beings. Now boys study Greek and algebra,

medicine and book-keeping. Therefore girls should not." As if one

should say: "Boys and girls are distinct beings. Now boys eat beef and

potatoes. Therefore, obviously, girls should not."

The analogy between physical and spiritual food is precisely in point.

The simple truth is, that, amid the vast range of human powers and

properties, the fact of sex is but one item. Vital and momentous in

itself, it does not constitute the whole organism, but only a small part

of it. The distinction of male and female is special, aimed at a certain

end; and apart from that end, it is, throughout all the kingdoms

of Nature, of minor importance. With but trifling exceptions, from

infusorial up to man, the female animal moves, breathes, looks, listens,

runs, flies, swims, pursues its food, eats it, digests it, in precisely

the same manner as the male; all instincts, all characteristics, are the

same, except as to the one solitary fact of parentage. Mr. Ten Broeck's

race-horses, Pryor and Prioress, were foaled alike, fed alike, trained

alike, and finally ran side by side, competing for the same prize. The

eagle is not checked in soaring by any consciousness of sex, nor asks

the sex of the timid hare, its quarry. Nature, for high purposes,

creates and guards the sexual distinction, but keeps it humbly

subordinate to still more important ones.

Now all this bears directly upon the alphabet. What sort of philosophy

is that which says, "John is a fool; Jane is a genius; nevertheless,

John, being a man, should learn, lead, make laws, make money; Jane,

being a woman, shall be ignorant, dependent, disfranchised, underpaid."

Of course, the time is past when one would state this so frankly, though

Comte comes quite near it, to say nothing of the Mormons; but this

formula really lies at the bottom of the reasoning one hears every day.

The answer is: Soul before sex. Give an equal chance, and let genius and

industry to the rest. _La carrière ouverte aux talens_. Every man for

himself, every woman for herself, and the alphabet for us all.

Thus far, our whole course of argument has been defensive and

explanatory. We have shown that woman's inferiority in special

achievements, so far as it exists, is a fact of small importance,

because it is merely a corollary from her historic position of

degradation. She has not excelled, because she has had no fair chance to

excel. Man, placing his foot upon her shoulder, has taunted her with not

rising. But the ulterior question remains behind,--How came she into

this attitude, originally? Explain the explanation, the logician fairly

demands. Granted that woman is weak because she has been systematically

degraded; but why was she degraded? This is a far deeper question,--one

to be met only by a profounder philosophy and a positive solution. We

are coming on ground almost wholly untrod, and must do the best we can.

We venture to assert, then, that woman's social inferiority, in

the past, has been, to a great extent, a legitimate thing. To all

appearance, history would have been impossible without it, just as it

would have been impossible without an epoch of war and slavery. It

is simply a matter of social progress, a part of the succession of

civilizations. The past has been, and inevitably, a period of ignorance,

of engrossing physical necessities, and of brute force,--not of

freedom, of philanthropy, and of culture. During that lower epoch, woman

was necessarily an inferior,--degraded by abject labor, even in time

of peace,--degraded uniformly by war, chivalry to the contrary

notwithstanding. Behind all the courtesies of Amadis and the Cid lay the

stern fact,--woman a child or a toy. The flattering troubadours chanted

her into a poet's paradise; but, alas! that kingdom of heaven suffered

violence, and the violent took it by force. The truth simply was, that

her time had not come. Physical strength must rule for a time, and she

was the weaker. She was very properly refused a feudal grant, because,

say "Les Coustumes de Normandie," she is not trained to war or policy:

_C'est l'homme ki se bast et ki conseille_. Other authorities put it

still more plainly: "A woman cannot serve the emperor or feudal lord in

war, on account of the decorum of her sex; nor assist him with advice,

because of her limited intellect; nor keep his counsel, owing to the

infirmity of her disposition." All which was, no doubt, in the majority

of cases, true, and the degradation of woman was simply a part of

a system, which has indeed had its day, but has bequeathed its

associations.

From this reign of force woman never freed herself by force. She could

not fight, or would not. Bohemian annals, indeed, record the legend of

a literal war between the sexes, in which the women's army was led by

Libussa and Wlasla, and which finally ended with the capture, by the

army of men, of Castle Dziewin, Maiden's Tower, whose ruins are still

visible near Prague. The armor of Libussa is still shown at Vienna, and

the guide calls attention to the long-peaked toes of steel, with which,

he avers, the tender Princess was wont to pierce the hearts of her

opponents, while careering through the battle. And there are abundant

instances in which women have fought side by side with men, and on equal

terms. The ancient British women mingled in the wars of their husbands,

and their princesses were trained to the use of arms in the Maiden's

Castle at Edinburgh and in the Isle of Skye. The Moorish wives and

maidens fought in defence of their European peninsula; and the

Portuguese women fought, on the same soil, against the armies of Philip

II. The king of Siam has at present a bodyguard of four hundred women;

they are armed with lance and rifle, are admirably disciplined, and

their commander (appointed after saving the king's life at a tiger-hunt)

ranks as one of the royal family and has ten elephants at her service.

When the all-conquering Dahomian army marched upon Abbeokuta, in 1851,

they numbered ten thousand men and six thousand women; the women were,

as usual, placed foremost in the assault, as being most reliable; and

of the eighteen hundred bodies left dead before the walls, the vast

majority were of women. The Hospital of the Invalides, in Paris, has

sheltered, for half a century, a fine specimen of a female soldier,

"Lieutenant Madame Bulan," now eighty-three years old, decorated by

Napoleon's own hand with the cross of the Legion of Honor, and credited

on the hospital books with "seven years' service,--seven campaigns,--

three wounds,--several times distinguished, especially in Corsica,

in defending a fort against the English." But these cases, though

interesting to the historian, are still exceptional, and the instinctive

repugnance they inspire is condemnatory, not of women, but of war.

The reason, then, for the long subjection of woman has been simply that

humanity was passing through its first epoch, and her full career was to

be reserved for the second. As the different races of man have appeared

successively upon the stage of history, so there has been an order

of succession of the sexes. Woman's appointed era, like that of the

Scandinavian tribes, was delayed, but not omitted. It is not merely

true that the empire of the past has belonged to man, but that it has

properly belonged to him; for it was an empire of the muscles, enlisting

at best but the lower powers of the understanding. There can be no

question that the present epoch is initiating an empire of the higher

reason, of arts, affections, aspirations; and for that epoch the genius

of woman has been reserved. The spirit of the age has always kept pace

with the facts, and outstripped the statutes. Till the fulness of time

came, woman was necessarily kept a slave to the spinning-wheel and the

needle; now higher work is ready, peace has brought invention to her

aid, and the mechanical means for her emancipation are ready also. No

use in releasing her, till man, with his strong arm, had worked out his

preliminary share in civilization. "Earth waits for her queen" was a

favorite motto of Margaret Fuller's; but it would be more correct to say

that the queen has waited for her earth, till it could be smoothed and

prepared for her occupancy. Now Cinderella may begin to think of putting

on her royal robes.

Everybody sees that the times are altering the whole material position

of woman; but most persons do not appear to see the inevitable social

and moral changes which are also involved. As has been already said, the

woman of ancient history was a slave to physical necessities, both in

war and peace. In war she could do too little, in peace she did too

much, under the material compulsions which controlled the world. How

could the Jews, for instance, elevate woman? They could not spare her

from the wool and the flax and the candle that goeth not out by night.

In Rome, when the bride first stepped across her threshold, they did

not ask her, Do you know the alphabet? they asked simply, Can you spin?

There was no higher epitaph than Queen Amalasontha's,--_Domum servavit,

lanam fecit_. In Boeotia, brides were conducted home in vehicles whose

wheels were burned at the door, in token that they were never to leave

the house again. Pythagoras instituted at Crotona an annual festival

for the distaff; Confucius, in China, did the same for the spindle; and

these celebrated not the freedom, but the serfdom, of woman.

And even into modern days this same tyrannical necessity has lingered.

"Go spin, you jades! go spin!" was the only answer vouchsafed by the

Earl of Pembroke to the twice-banished nuns of Wilton. And even now,

travellers agree that throughout civilized Europe, with the partial

exception of England and France, the profound absorption of the mass of

women in household labors renders their general elevation impossible.

But with us Americans, and in this age, when all these vast labors

are being more and more transferred to arms of brass and iron,--when

Rochester grinds the flour, and Lowell weaves the cloth, and the fire on

the hearth has gone into black retirement and mourning,--when the wiser

a virgin is, the less she has to do with oil in her lamp,--when the

needle has made its last dying speech and confession in the "Song of

the Shirt," and the sewing-machine has changed those doleful marches to

delightful measures,--how is it possible for the blindest to help seeing

that a new era is begun, and that the time has come for woman to learn

the alphabet?

Nobody asks for any abolition of domestic labor for women, any more than

of outdoor labor for men. Of course, most women will still continue to

be mainly occupied with the indoor care of their families, and most men

with their external support. All that is desirable for either sex is

such an economy of labor, in this respect, as shall leave some spare

time, to be appropriated in other directions. The argument against each

new emancipation of woman is precisely that always made against the

liberation of serfs and the enfranchisement of plebeians,--that the new

position will take them from their legitimate business. "How can he [or

she] get wisdom that holdeth the plough, [or the broom,]--whose talk

is of bullocks [or of babies]?" Yet the American farmer has already

emancipated himself from these fancied incompatibilities, and so will

the farmer's wife. In a nation where there is no leisure-class and no

peasantry, this whole theory of exclusion is an absurdity. We all have a

little leisure, and we must all make the most of it. If we will confine

large interests and duties to those who have nothing else to do, we must

go back to monarchy at once; if otherwise, then the alphabet, and its

consequences, must be open to woman as to man. Jean Paul says nobly, in

his "Levana," that, "before and after being a mother, a woman is a human

being, and neither maternal nor conjugal relation can supersede the

human responsibility, but must become its means and instrument." And it

is good to read the manly speech, on this subject, of John Quincy Adams,

quoted at length by his recent venerable biographer,--in which, after

fully defending the political petitions of the women of Plymouth,

he declares that "the correct principle is, that women are not only

justified, but exhibit the most exalted virtue, when they do depart from

the domestic circle, and enter on the concerns of their country, of

humanity, and of their God."

There are duties devolving on every human being,--duties not small or

few, but vast and varied,--which spring from home and private life, and

all their sweet relations. The support or care of the humblest household

is a function worthy of men, women, and angels, so far as it goes. From

these duties none must shrink, neither man nor woman; the loftiest

genius cannot ignore them; the sublimest charity must begin with them.

They are their own exceeding great reward, their self-sacrifice is

infinite joy, and the selfishness which discards them receives in return

loneliness and a desolate old age. Yet these, though the most tender and

intimate portion of human life, do not form its whole. It is given

to noble souls to crave other interests also, added spheres, not

necessarily alien from these,--larger knowledge, larger action

also,--duties, responsibilities, anxieties, dangers, all the aliment

that history has given to its heroes. Not home less, but humanity more.

When the high-born English lady in the Crimean hospital, ordered to a

post of almost certain death, only raised her hands to heaven and said,

"Thank God!" she did not renounce her true position as woman, she

claimed it. When the queen of James I. of Scotland, already immortalized

by him in stately verse, won a higher immortality by welcoming to her

fair bosom the daggers aimed at his,--when the Countess of Buchan hung

confined in her iron cage, outside Berwick Castle, in penalty for

crowning Robert the Bruce,--when the stainless soul of Joan of Arc met

God, like Moses, in a burning flame,--these things were as they should

be. Man must not monopolize these privileges of peril, birthright of

great souls. Serenades and compliments must not replace the nobler

hospitality which shares with woman the opportunity of martyrdom. Great

administrative duties also, cares of state, for which one should be born

gray-headed, how nobly do these sit upon a female brow! Each year adds

to the storied renown of Elizabeth of England, greatest sovereign of

the greatest of historic nations. Christina of Sweden, alone among the

crowned heads of Europe, (so says Voltaire,) sustained the dignity of

the throne against Richelieu and Mazarin. And they most assuredly

did not sacrifice their womanhood in the process; for her Britannic

Majesty's wardrobe included four thousand gowns,--and Mlle. de

Montpensier declares, that, when Christina had put on a wig of the

latest fashion, "she really looked extremely pretty." Should this

evidence of feminine attributes appear to some sterner intellects

frivolous and insufficient, it is, nevertheless, adapted to the level of

the style of argument it answers.

_Les races se féminisent_, said Buffon,--"The world is growing more

feminine." It is a compliment, whether the naturalist intended it or

not. Time has brought peace; peace, invention; and the poorest woman of

to-day is born to an inheritance such as her ancestors never dreamed of.

Previous attempts to confer on women social and political equality,--as

when Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, made them magistrates, or when the

Hungarian revolutionists made them voters, or when our own New Jersey

tried the same experiment, in a guarded fashion, in early times, and

then revoked the privilege, because (as in the ancient fable) the women

voted the wrong way,--these things were premature, and valuable only as

concessions to a supposed principle. But in view of the rapid changes

now going on, he is a rash man who asserts the "Woman Question" to be

anything but a mere question of time. The fulcrum has been already

given, in the alphabet, and we must simply watch and see whether the

earth does not move.

In this present treatment of the subject, we have been more anxious to

assert broad principles than to work them out into the details of their

application. We only point out the plain fact: woman must be either

a subject or an equal; there is no other permanent ground. Every

concession to a supposed principle only involves the necessity of the

next concession for which that principle calls. Once yield the alphabet,

and we abandon the whole long theory of subjection and coverture; the

past is set aside, and we have nothing but abstractions to fall back

upon. Reasoning abstractly, it must be admitted that the argument has

been, thus far, entirely on the women's side, inasmuch as no man has yet

seriously tried to meet them with argument. It is an alarming feature of

this discussion, that it has reversed, very generally, the traditional

positions of the sexes: the women have had all the logic; and the most

intelligent men, when they have attempted the other side, have limited

themselves to satire and gossip. What rational woman, we ask, can be

convinced by the nonsense which is talked in ordinary society around

her,--as, that it is right to admit girls to common schools, and equally

right to exclude them from colleges,--that it is proper for a woman

to sing in public, but indelicate for her to speak in public,--that a

post-office box is an unexceptionable place to drop a bit of paper into,

but a ballot-box terribly dangerous? No cause in the world can keep

above water, sustained by such contradictions as these, too feeble and

slight to be dignified by the name of fallacies. Some persons profess to

think it impossible to reason with a woman, and they certainly show no

disposition to try the experiment.

But we must remember that all our American institutions are based on

consistency, or on nothing; all claim to be founded on the principles of

natural right, and when they quit those, they are lost. In all European

monarchies, it is the theory, that the mass of the people are children,

to be governed, not mature beings, to govern themselves. This is clearly

stated, and consistently applied. In the free states of this Union, we

have formally abandoned this theory for one half of the human race,

while for the other half it still flourishes in full force. The moment

the claims of woman are broached, the democrat becomes a monarchist.

What Americans commonly criticize in English statesmen, namely, that

they habitually evade all arguments based on natural right, and defend

every legal wrong on the ground that it works well in practice, is the

precise characteristic of our habitual view of woman. The perplexity

must be resolved somehow. We seldom meet a legislator who pretends to

deny that strict adherence to our own principles would place both sexes

in precisely equal positions before law and constitution, as well as in

school and society. But each has his special quibble to apply, showing

that in this case we must abandon all the general maxims to which we

have pledged ourselves, and hold only by precedent. Nay, he construes

even precedent with the most ingenious rigor; since the exclusion of

women from all direct contact with affairs can be made far more perfect

in a republic than is possible in a monarchy, where even sex is merged

in rank, and the female patrician may have far more power than the male

plebeian. But, as matters now stand among us, there is no aristocracy

but of sex: all men are born patrician, all women are legally plebeian;

all men are equal in having political power, and all women in having

none. This is a paradox so evident, and such an anomaly in human

progress, that it cannot last forever, without new discoveries in logic,

or else a deliberate return to M. Maréchal's theory concerning the

alphabet.

Meanwhile, as the newspapers say, we anxiously await further

developments. According to present appearances, the final adjustment

lies mainly in the hands of women themselves. Men can hardly be expected

to concede either rights or privileges more rapidly than they are

claimed, or to be truer to women than women are to each other. True, the

worst effect of a condition of inferiority is the weakness it leaves

behind it; even when we say, "Hands off!" the sufferer does not rise.

In such a case, there is but one counsel worth giving. More depends on

determination than even on ability. Will, not talent, governs the world.

From what pathway of eminence were women more traditionally excluded

than from the art of sculpture, in spite of _Non me Praxiteles fecit,

sed Anna Damer?_--yet Harriet Hosmer, in eight years, has trod its full

ascent. Who believed that a poetess could ever be more than an Annot

Lyle of the harp, to soothe with sweet melodies the leisure of her lord,

until in Elizabeth Barrett's hands the thing became a trumpet? Where

are gone the sneers with which army surgeons and parliamentary orators

opposed Mr. Sidney Herbert's first proposition to send Florence

Nightingale to the Crimea? In how many towns has the current of popular

prejuduce against female orators been reversed by one winning speech

from Lucy Stone! Where no logic can prevail, success silences. First

give woman, if you dare, the alphabet, then summon her to her career;

and though men, ignorant and prejudiced, may oppose its beginnings,

there is no danger but they will at last fling around her conquering

footsteps more lavish praises than ever greeted the opera's idol,--more

perfumed flowers than ever wooed, with intoxicating fragrance, the

fairest butterfly of the ball-room.

THE MORNING STREET.

I walk alone the Morning Street,

Filled with the silence strange and sweet:

All seems as lone, as still, as dead,

As if unnumbered years had fled,

Letting the noisy Babel be

Without a breath, a memory.

The light wind walks with me, alone,

Where the hot day like flame was blown;

Where the wheels roared and dust was beat,

The dew is in the Morning Street.

Where are the restless throngs that pour

Along this mighty corridor

While the noon flames? the hurrying crowd

Whose footsteps make the city loud?

The myriad faces? hearts that beat

No more in the deserted street?--

Those footsteps, in their dream-land maze,

Cross thresholds of forgotten days;

Those faces brighten from the years

In morning suns long set in tears;

Those hearts--far in the Past they beat--

Are singing in _their_ Morning Street.

A city 'gainst the world's gray Prime,

Lost in some desert, far from Time,

Where noiseless Ages, gliding through,

Have only sifted sands and dew,

Were not more lone to one who first

Upon its giant silence burst,

Than this strange quiet, where the tide

Of life, upheaved on either side,

Hangs trembling, ready soon to beat

With human waves the Morning Street.

Ay, soon the glowing morning flood

Pours through this charmèd solitude;

All silent now, this Memnon-stone

Will murmur to the rising sun;

The busy life this vein shall beat,--

The rush of wheels, the swarm of feet;

The Arachne-threads of Purpose stream

Unseen within the morning gleam;

The Life will move, the Death be plain;

The bridal throng, the funeral train,

Together in the crowd will meet,

And pass along the Morning Street.

* * * * *

IN A CELLAR

I.

It was the day of Madame de St. Cyr's dinner, an event I never missed;

for, the mistress of a mansion in the Faubourg St. Germain, there still

lingered about her the exquisite grace and good-breeding peculiar to the

old _régime_, that insensibly communicates itself to the guests till

they move in an atmosphere of ease that constitutes the charm of home.

One was always sure of meeting desirable and well-assorted people here,

and a _contre-temps_ was impossible. Moreover, the house was not at the

command of all; and Madame de St. Cyr, with the daring strength which,

when found in a woman at all, should, to be endurable, be combined with

a sweet but firm restraint, rode rough-shod over the _parvenus_ of the

Empire, and was resolute enough to insulate herself even among the old

_noblesse_, who, as all the world knows, insulate themselves from the

rest of France. There were rare qualities in this woman, and were I to

have selected one who with an even hand should carry a snuffy candle

through a magazine of powder, my choice would have devolved upon her;

and she would have done it.

I often looked, and not unsuccessfully, to discern what heritage her

daughter had in these little affairs. Indeed, to one like myself

Delphine presented the worthier study. She wanted the airy charm of

manner, the suavity and tenderness of her mother,--a deficiency easily

to be pardoned in one of such delicate and extraordinary beauty. And

perhaps her face was the truest index of her mind; not that it ever

transparently displayed a genuine emotion,--Delphine was too well-bred

for that,--but the outline of her features had a keen, regular

precision, as if cut in a gem. Her exquisite color seldom varied, her

eyes were like blue steel, she was statue-like and stony. But had one

paused there, pronouncing her hard and impassive, he had committed an

error. She had no great capability for passion, but she was not to be

deceived; one metallic flash of her eye would cut like a sword through

the whole mesh of entanglements with which you had surrounded her; and

frequently, when alone with her, you perceived cool recesses in her

nature, sparkling and pleasant, which jealously guarded themselves from

a nearer approach. She was infinitely _spirituelle_; compared to her,

Madame herself was heavy.

At the first I had seen that Delphine must be the wife of a diplomate.

What diplomate? For a time asking myself the question seriously, I

decided in the negative, which did not, however, prevent Delphine from

fulfilling her destiny, since there were others. She was, after all,

like a draught of rich old wine, all fire and sweetness. These things

were not generally seen in her; I was more favored than many; and I

looked at her with pitiless perspicacious eyes. Nevertheless, I had not

the least advantage; it was, in fact, between us, diamond cut diamond,

--which, oddly enough, brings me back to my story.

Some years previously, I had been sent on a special mission to the

government at Paris, and having finally executed it, I resigned the

post, and resolved to make my residence there, since it is the only

place on earth where one can live. Every morning I half expect to see

the country, beyond the city, white with an encampment of the nations,

who, having peacefully flocked there over night, wait till the Rue St.

Honoré shall run out and greet them. It surprises me, sometimes, that

those pretending to civilization are content to remain at a distance.

What experience have they of life,--not to mention gayety and pleasure,

but of the great purpose of life,--society? Man evidently is gregarious;

Fourier's fables are founded on fact; we are nothing without our

opposites, our fellows, our lights and shadows, colors, relations,

combinations, our _point d'appui_, and our angle of sight. An isolated

man is immensurable; he is also unpicturesque, unnatural, untrue. He is

no longer the lord of Nature, animal and vegetable,--but Nature is the

lord of him; the trees, skies, flowers, predominate, and he is in as bad

taste as green and blue, or as an oyster in a vase of roses. The race

swings naturally to clusters. It being admitted, then, that society is

our normal state, where is it to be obtained in such perfection as at

Paris? Show me the urbanity, the generosity in trifles, better than

sacrifice, the incuriousness and freedom, the grace, and wit, and honor,

that will equal such as I find here. Morality,--we were not speaking

of it,--the intrusion is unnecessary; must that word with Anglo-Saxon

pertinacity dog us round the world? A hollow mask, which Vice now and

then lifts for a breath of air, I grant you this state may be called;

but since I find the vice elsewhere, countenance my preference for the

accompanying mask. But even this is vanishing; such drawing-rooms as

Mme. de St. Cyr's are less and less frequent. Yet, though the delightful

spell of the last century daily dissipates itself, and we are not now

what we were twenty years ago, still Paris is, and will be till the end

of time, for a cosmopolitan, the pivot on which the world revolves.

It was, then, as I have said, the day of Mme. de St. Cyr's dinner.

Punctually at the hour, I presented myself,--for I have always esteemed

it the least courtesy which a guest can render, that he should not cool

his hostess's dinner.

The usual choice company waited. There was the Marquis of G., the

ambassador from home, Col. Leigh, an attaché of that embassy, the

Spanish and Belgian ministers,--all of whom, with myself, completed a

diplomatic circle. There were also wits and artists, but no ladies whose

beauty exceeded that of the St. Cyrs. With nearly all of this assemblage

I held certain relations, so that I was immediately at ease--G. was the

only one whom, perhaps, I would rather not have met, although we were

the best of friends. They awaited but one, the Baron Stahl. Meanwhile

Delphine stood coolly taking the measurement of the Marquis of G., while

her mother entertained one and another guest with a low-toned flattery,

gentle interest, or lively narration, as the case might demand.

In a country where a _coup d'état_ was as easily given as a box on the

ear, we all attentively watched for the arrival of one who had been sent

from a neighboring empire to negotiate a loan for the tottering throne

of this. Nor was expectation kept long on guard. In a moment, "His

Excellency, the Baron Stahl!" was announced.

The exaggeration of his low bow to Mme. de St. Cyr, the gleam askance of

his black eye, the absurd simplicity of his dress, did not particularly

please me. A low forehead, straight black brows, a beardless cheek with

a fine color which gave him a fictitiously youthful appearance, were the

most striking traits of his face; his person was not to be found fault

with; but he boldly evinced his admiration for Delphine, and with a

wicked eye.

As we were introduced, he assured me, in pure English, that he had

pleasure in making the acquaintance of a gentleman whose services were

so distinguished.

I, in turn, assured him of my pleasure in meeting a gentleman who

appreciated them.

I had arrived at the house of Mme. de St. Cyr with a load on my mind,

which for four weeks had weighed there; but before I thus spoke, it

was lifted and gone. I had seen the Baron Stahl before, although not

previously aware of it; and now, as he bowed, talked my native tongue so

smoothly, drew a glove over the handsome hand upon whose first finger

shone the only incongruity of his attire, a broad gold ring, holding a

gaudy red stone,--as he stood smiling and expectant before me, a sudden

chain of events flashed through my mind, an instantaneous heat, like

lightning, welded them into logic. A great problem was resolved. For a

second, the breath seemed snatched from my lips; the next, a lighter,

freer man never trod in diplomatic shoes.

I really beg your pardon,--but perhaps from long usage, it has become

impossible for me to tell a straight story. It is absolutely necessary

to inform you of events already transpired.

In the first place, then, I, at this time, possessed a valet, the pink

of valets, an Englishman,--and not the less valuable to me in a foreign

capital, that, notwithstanding his long residence, he was utterly

unable to speak one word of French intelligibly. Reading and writing

it readily, his thick tongue could master scarcely a syllable. The

adroitness and perfection with which he performed the duties of his

place were unsurpassable. To a certain extent I was obliged to admit him

into my confidence; I was not at all in his. In dexterity and dispatch

he equalled the advertisements. He never condescended to don my cast-off

apparel, but, disposing of it, always arrayed himself in plain

but gentlemanly garments. These do not complete the list of Hay's

capabilities. He speculated. Respectable tenements in London called

him landlord; in the funds certain sums lay subject to his order; to a

profitable farm in Hants he contemplated future retirement; and passing

upon the Bourse, I have received a grave bow, and have left him in

conversation with an eminent capitalist respecting consols, drafts,

exchange, and other erudite mysteries, where I yet find myself in the

A B C. Thus not only was my valet a free-born Briton, but a landed

proprietor. If the Rothschilds blacked your boots or shaved your chin,

your emotions might be akin to mine. When this man, who had an interest

in the India traders, brought the hot water into my dressing-room, of a

morning, the Antipodes were tributary to me; to what extent might any

little irascibility of mine drive a depression in the market! and I

knew, as he brushed my hat, whether stocks rose or fell. In one respect,

I was essentially like our Saxon ancestors,--my servant was a villain.

If I had been merely a civilian, in any purely private capacity, having

leisure to attend to personal concerns in the midst of the delicate

specialties intrusted to me from the cabinet at home, the possession of

so inestimable a valet might have bullied me beyond endurance. As it

was, I found it rather agreeable than otherwise. He was tacitly my

secretary of finance.

Several years ago, a diamond of wonderful size and beauty, having

wandered from the East, fell into certain imperial coffers among

our Continental neighbors; and at the same time some extraordinary

intelligence, essential to the existence, so to speak, of that

government, reached a person there who fixed as its price this diamond.

After a while he obtained it, but, judging that prudence lay in

departure, took it to England, where it was purchased for an enormous

sum by the Duke of ----, as he will remain an unknown quantity, let

us say X. There are probably not a dozen such diamonds in the

world,--certainly not three in England. It rejoiced in such flowery

appellatives as the Sea of Splendor, the Moon of Milk; and, of course,

those who had been scarcely better than jewed out of it were determined

to obtain it again at all hazards;--they were never famous for

scrupulosity. The Duke of X. was aware of this, and, for a time, the gem

had lain idle, its glory muffled in a casket; but finally, on some grand

occasion, a few months prior to the period of which I have spoken above,

it was determined to set it in the Duchess's coronet. Accordingly, one

day, it was given by her son, the Marquis of G., into the hands of their

solicitor, who should deliver it to her Grace's jeweller. It lay in a

small shagreen case, and, before the Marquis left, the solicitor placed

the case in a flat leathern box, where lay a chain of most singular

workmanship, the clasp of which was deranged. This chain was very broad,

of a style known as the brick-work, but every brick was a tiny gem, set

in a delicate filigree linked with the next, and the whole rainbowed

lustrousness moving at your will, like the scales of some gorgeous

Egyptian serpent:--the solicitor was to take this also to the jeweller.

Having laid the box in his private desk, Ulster, his confidential clerk,

locked it, while he bowed the Marquis down. Returning immediately, the

solicitor took the flat box and drove to the jeweller's. He found the

latter so crowded with customers, it being the fashionable hour, as to

be unable to attend to him; he, however, took the solicitor into his

inner room, a dark fire-proof place, and there quickly deposited the box

within a safe, which stood inside another, like a Japanese puzzle, and

the solicitor, seeing the doors double-locked and secured, departed; the

other promising to attend to the matter on the morrow.

Early the next morning, the jeweller entered his dark room, and

proceeded to unlock the safe. This being concluded, and the inner one

also thrown open, he found the box in a last and entirely, as he had

always believed, secret compartment. Anxious to see this wonder, this

Eye of Morning, and Heart of Day, he eagerly loosened the band and

unclosed the box. It was empty. There was no chain there; the diamond

was missing. The sweat streamed from his forehead, his clothes were

saturated, he believed himself the victim of a delusion. Calling an

assistant, every article and nook in the dark room was examined. At

last, in an extremity of despair, he sent for the solicitor, who arrived

in a breath. The jeweller's alarm hardly equalled that of the other.

In his sudden dismay, he at first forgot the circumstances and dates

relating to the affair; afterward was doubtful. The Marquis of G. was

summoned, the police called in, the jeweller given into custody. Every

breath the solicitor continued to draw only built up his ruin. He

swallowed laudanum, but, by making it an overdose, frustrated his own

design. He was assured, on his recovery, that no suspicion attached to

him. The jeweller now asseverated that the diamond had never been

given to him; but though this was strictly true, the jeweller had,

nevertheless, committed perjury. Of course, whoever had the stone would

not attempt to dispose of it at present, and, though communications were

opened with the general European police, there was very little to work

upon. But by means of this last step the former possessors became aware

of its loss, and I make no doubt had their agents abroad immediately.

Meanwhile, the case hung here, complicated and tantalizing, when one

morning I woke in London. No sooner had G. heard of my arrival than he

called, and, relating the affair, requested my assistance. I confess

myself to have been interested,--foolishly so, I thought afterward; but

we all have our weaknesses, and diamonds were mine. In company with the

Marquis, I waited upon the solicitor, who entered into the few details

minutely, calling frequently upon Ulster, a young fresh-looking man, for

corroboration. We then drove to the jeweller's new quarters, took

him, under charge of the officers, to his place of business, where he

nervously showed me every point that could bear upon the subject, and

ended by exclaiming, that he was ruined, and all for a stone he had

never seen. I sat quietly for a few moments. It stood, then, thus:--G.

had given the thing to the solicitor, seen it put into the box, seen the

box put into the desk; but while the confidential clerk, Ulster, locked

the desk, the solicitor saw the Marquis to the door,--returning, took

the box, without opening it again, to the jeweller, who, in the hurry,

shut it up in his safe, also without opening it. The case was perfectly

clear. These mysterious things are always so simple! You know now, as

well as I, who took the diamond.

I did not choose to volunteer, but assented, on being desired. The

police and I were old friends; they had so often assisted me, that I was

not afraid to pay them in kind, and accordingly agreed to take charge of

the case, still retaining their aid, should I require it. The jeweller

was now restored to his occupation, although still subjected to a rigid

surveillance, and I instituted inquiries into the recent movements of

the young man Ulster. The case seemed to me to have been very blindly

conducted. But, though all that was brought to light concerning him in

London was perfectly fair and aboveboard, it was discovered that not

long since he had visited Paris,--on the solicitor's business, of

course, but gaining thereby an opportunity to transact any little

affairs of his own. This was fortunate; for if any one could do anything

in Paris, it was myself.

It is not often that I act as a detective. But one homogeneous to every

situation could hardly play a pleasanter part for once. I have thought

that our great masters in theory and practice, Machiavel and Talleyrand,

were hardly more, on a large scale.

I was about to return to Paris, but resolved to call previously on the

solicitor again. He welcomed me warmly, although my suspicions had not

been imparted to him, and, with a more cheerful heart than had lately

been habitual to him, entered into an animated conversation respecting

the great case of Biter _v._ Bit, then absorbing so much of the public

attention, frequently addressing Ulster, whose remarks were always

pertinent, brief, and clear. As I sat actively discussing the topic,

feeling no more interest in it than in the end of that cigar I just cut

off, and noting exactly every look and motion of the unfortunate youth,

I recollect the curious sentiment that filled me regarding him. What

injury had he done me, that I should pursue him with punishment? Me? I

am, and every individual is, integral with the commonwealth. It was

the commonwealth he had injured. Yet, even then, why was I the one to

administer justice? Why not continue with my coffee in the morning, my

kings and cabinets and national chess at noon, my opera at night, and

let the poor devil go? Why, but that justice is brought home to every

member of society,--that naked duty requires no shirking of such

responsibility,--that, had I failed here, the crime might, with reason,

lie at my door and multiply, the criminal increase himself?

Very possibly you will not unite with me; but these little catechisms

are, once in a while, indispensable, to vindicate one's course to

one's-self.

This Ulster was a handsome youth;--the rogues have generally all

the good looks. There was nothing else remarkable about him but his

quickness; he was perpetually on the alert; by constant activity, the

rust was never allowed to collect on his faculties; his sharpness was

distressing,--he appeared subject to a tense strain. Now his quill

scratched over the paper unconcernedly, while he could join as easily in

his master's conversation; nothing seemed to preoccupy him, or he held

a mind open at every point. It is pitiful to remember him that morning,

sitting quiet, unconscious, and free, utterly in the hands of that

mighty Inquisition, the Metropolitan Police, with its countless arms,

its cells and myrmidons in the remotest corners of the Continent, at the

mercy of so merciless a monster, and momently closer involved, like some

poor prey round which a spider spins its bewildering web. It was also

curious to observe the sudden suspicion that darkened his face at some

innocent remark,--the quick shrinking and intrenched retirement, the

manifest sting and rancor, as I touched his wound with a swift flash

of my slender weapon and sheathed it again, and, after the thrust,

the espionage, and the relief at believing it accidental. He had many

threads to gather up and hold;--little electric warnings along them must

have been constantly shocking him. He did that part well enough; it was

a mistake, to begin with; he needed prudence. At that time I owed this

Ulster nothing; now, however, I owe him a grudge, for some of the most

harassing hours of my life were occasioned me by him. But I shall not

cherish enmity on that account. With so promising a beginning, he will

graduate and take his degree from the loftiest altitude in his line.

Hemp is a narcotic; let it bring me forgetfulness.

In Paris I found it not difficult to trace such a person, since he was

both foreign and unaccustomed. It was ascertained that he had posted

several letters. A person of his description had been seen to drop a

letter, the superscription of which had been read by the one who picked

it up for him. This superscription was the address of the very person

who was likely to be the agent of the former possessors of the diamond,

and had attracted attention. After all,--you know the Secret Force,--it

was not so impossible to imagine what this letter contained, despite

of its cipher. Such a person also had been met among the Jews, and at

certain shops whose reputation was not of the clearest. He had called

once or twice on Mme. de St. Cyr, on business relative to a vineyard

adjoining her château in the Gironde, which she had sold to a

wine-merchant of England. I found a zest in the affair, as I pursued it.

We were now fairly at sea, but before long I found we were likely to

remain there; in fact, nothing of consequence eventuated. I began to

regret having taken the affair from the hands in which I had found it,

and one day, it being a gala or some insatiable saint's day, I was

riding, perplexed with that and other matters, and paying small

attention to the passing crowd. I was vexed and mortified, and had fully

decided to throw up the whole,--on such hairs do things hang,--when,

suddenly turning a corner, my bridle-reins became entangled in the

snaffle of another rider. I loosened them abstractedly, and not till it

was necessary to bow to my strange antagonist, on parting, did I glance

up. The person before me was evidently not accustomed to play the dandy;

he wore his clothes ill, sat his horse worse, and was uneasy in the

saddle. The unmistakable air of the _gamin_ was apparent beneath the

superficies of the gentleman. Conspicuous on his costume, and wound like

an order of merit upon his breast, glittered a chain, _the_ chain,--each

tiny brick-like gem spiked with a hundred sparks, and building a fabric

of sturdy probabilities with the celerity of the genii in constructing

Aladdin's palace. There, a cable to haul up the treasure, was the

chain;--where was the diamond? I need not tell you how I followed this

young friend, with what assiduity I kept him in sight, up and down, all

day long, till, weary at last of his fine sport, as I certainly was of

mine, he left his steed in stall and fared on his way a-foot. Still

pursuing, now I threaded quay and square, street and alley, till he

disappeared in a small shop, in one of those dark crowded lanes leading

eastward from the Pont Neuf, in the city. It was the sign of a _marchand

des armures_, and, having provided myself with those persuasive

arguments, a _sergent-de-ville_ and a _gendarme_, I entered.

A place more characteristic it would be impossible to find. Here were

piled bows of every material, ash, and horn, and tougher fibres, with

slackened strings, and among them peered a rusty clarion and battle-axe,

while the quivers that should have accompanied lay in a distant corner,

their arrows serving to pin long, dusty, torn banners to the wall.

Opposite the entrance, an archer in bronze hung on tiptoe, and levelled

a steel bow, whose piercing _flèche_ seemed sparkling with impatience to

spring from his finger and flesh itself in the heart of the intruder.

The hauberk and halberd, lance and casque, arquebuse and sword, were

suspended in friendly congeries; and fragments of costly stuff swept

from ceiling to floor, crushed and soiled by the heaps of rusty

firelocks, cutlasses, and gauntlets thrown upon them. In one place, a

little antique bust was half hid in the folds of some pennon, still

dyed with battle-stains; in another, scattered treasures of Dresden

and Sèvres brought the drawing-room into the campaign; and all around

bivouacked rifles, whose polished barrels glittered full of death,--

pistols, variously mounted, for an insurgent at the barricades, or for

a lost millionnaire at the gaming-table,--foils, with buttoned

bluntness,--and rapiers, whose even edges were viewless, as if filed

into air. Destruction lay everywhere, at the command of the owner of

this place, and, had he possessed a particle of vivacity, it would have

been hazardous to bow beneath his doorway. It did not, I must say, look

like a place where I should find a diamond. As the owner came forward, I

determined on my plan of action.

"You have, Sir," I said, handing him a bit of paper, on which were

scrawled some numbers, "a diamond in your possession, of such and so

many carats, size, and value, belonging to the Duke of X., and left with

you by an Englishman, Mr. Arthur Ulster. You will deliver it to me, if

you please."

"Monsieur!" exclaimed the man, lifting his hands, and surveying me with

the widest eyes I ever saw. "A diamond! In my possession! So immense a

thing! It is impossible. I have not even seen one of the kind. It is a

mistake. Jacques Noailles, the vender of jewels _en gros_, second door

below, must be the man. One should perceive that my business is with

arms, not diamonds. I have it not; it would ruin me."

Here he paused for a reply, but, meeting none, resumed. "M. Arthur

Ulster!--I have heard of no such person. I never spoke with an

Englishman. Bah! I detest them! I have no dealings with them. I repeat,

I have not your jewel. Do you wish anything more of me?"

His vehemence only convinced me of the truth of my suspicions.

"These heroics are out of place," I answered. "I demand the article in

question."

"Monsieur doubts me?" he asked, with a rueful face,--"questions my

word, which is incontrovertible?" Here he clapped his hand upon a

_couteau-de-chasse_ lying near, but, appearing to think better of it,

drew himself up, and, with a shower of nods flung at me, added, "I deny

your accusation!" I had not accused him.

"You are at too much pains to convict yourself. I charge you with

nothing," I said. "But this diamond must be surrendered."

"Monsieur is mad!" he exclaimed, "mad! he dreams! Do I look like one who

possesses such a trophy? Does my shop resemble a mine? Look about!

See! All that is here would not bring a hundredth part of its price. I

beseech Monsieur to believe me; he has mistaken the number, or has been

misinformed."

"We waste words. I know this diamond is here, as well as a costly

chain"--

"On my soul, on my life, on my honor," he cried, clasping his hands and

turning up his eyes, "there is here nothing of the kind. I do not deal

in gems. A little silk, a few weapons, a curiosity, a nicknack, comprise

my stock. I have not the diamond. I do not know the thing. I am poor. I

am honest. Suspicion destroys me!"

"As you will find, should I be longer troubled by your denials."

He was inflexible, and, having exhausted every artifice of innocence,

wiped the tears from his eyes,--oh, these French! life is their

theatre,--and remained quiet. It was getting dark. There was no gas in

the place; but in the pause a distant street-lamp swung its light dimly

round.

"Unless one desires to purchase, allow me to say that it is my hour for

closing," he remarked, blandly, rubbing his black-bearded chin.

"My time is valuable," I returned. "It is late and dark. When your

shop-boy lights up"----

"Pardon,--we do not light."

"Permit me, then, to perform that office for you. In this blaze you may

perceive my companions, whom you have not appeared to recognize."

So saying, I scratched a match upon the floor, and, as the

_sergent-de-ville_ and the _gendarme_ advanced, threw the light of the

blue spirt of sulphurous flame upon them. In a moment more the match

went out, and we remained in the demi-twilight of the distant lantern.

The _marchand des armures_ stood petrified and aghast. Had he seen the

imps of Satan in that instant, it could have had no greater effect.

"You have seen them?" I asked. "I regret to inconvenience you; but

unless this diamond is produced at once, my friends will put their seal

on your goods, your property will be confiscated, yourself in a dungeon.

In other words, I allow you five minutes; at the close of that time you

will have chosen between restitution and ruin."

He remained apparently lost in thought. He was a big, stout man, and

with one blow of his powerful fist could easily have settled me. It was

the last thing in his mind. At length he lifted his head,--"Rosalie!"

he called.

At the word, a light foot pattered along a stone floor within, and in a

moment a little woman stood in an arch raised by two steps from our own

level. Carrying a candle, she descended and tripped toward him. She was

not pretty, but sprightly and keen, as the perpetual attrition of life

must needs make her, and wore the everlasting grisette costume, which

displays the neatest of ankles, and whose cap is more becoming than

wreaths of garden millinery. I am too minute, I see, but it is second

nature. The two commenced a vigorous whispering amid sundry gestures and

glances. Suddenly the woman turned, and, laying the prettiest of little

hands on my sleeve, said, with a winning smile,--

"Is it a crime of _lèse-majesté_?"

This was a new idea, but might be useful.

"Not yet," I said; "two minutes more, and I will not answer for the

consequence."

Other whispers ensued.

"Monsieur," said the man, leaning on one arm over the counter, and

looking up in my face, with the most engaging frankness,--"it is true

that I have such a diamond; but it is not mine. It is left with me to be

delivered to the Baron Stahl, who comes as an agent from his court for

its purchase."

"Yes,--I know."

"He was to have paid me half a million francs,--not half its worth,--in

trust for the person who left it, who is not M. Arthur Ulster, but Mme.

de St. Cyr."

Madame de St. Cyr! How under the sun----No,--it could not be possible.

The case stood as it stood before. The rogue was in deeper water than I

had thought; he had merely employed Mme. de St. Cyr. I ran this over in

my mind, while I said, "Yes."

"Now, Sir," I continued, "you will state the terms of this transaction."

"With pleasure. For my trouble I was myself to receive patronage and

five thousand francs. The Baron is to be here directly, on other and

public business. _Reine du ciel_, Monsieur! how shall I meet him?"

"He is powerless in Paris; your fear is idle."

"True. There were no other terms."

"Nor papers?"

"The lady thought it safest to be without them. She took merely my

receipt, which the Baron Stahl will bring to me from her before

receiving this."

"I will trouble you for it now."

He bowed and shuffled away. At a glance from me, the _gendarme_ slipped

to the rear of the building, where three others were stationed at the

two exits in that direction, to caution them of the critical moment, and

returned. Ten minutes passed,--the merchant did not appear. If, after

all, he had made off with it! There had been the click of a bolt, the

half-stifled rattle of arms, as if a door had been opened and rapidly

closed again, but nothing more.

"I will see what detains my friend," said Mademoiselle, the little

woman.

We suffered her to withdraw. In a moment more a quick expostulation was

to be heard.

"They are there, the _gendarmes_, my little one! I should have run,

but they caught me, the villains! and replaced me in the house. _Oh,

sacre!_"--and rolling this word between his teeth, he came down and laid

a little box on the counter. I opened it. There was within a large,

glittering, curiously-cut piece of glass. I threw it aside.

"The diamond!" I exclaimed.

"Monsieur had it," he replied, stooping to pick up the glass with every

appearance of surprise and care.

"Do you mean to say you endeavored to escape with that bawble? Produce

the diamond instantly, or you shall hang as high as Haman!" I roared.

Whether he knew the individual in question or not, the threat was

efficient; he trembled and hesitated, and finally drew the identical

shagreen case from his bosom.

"I but jested," he said. "Monsieur will witness that I relinquish it

with reluctance."

"I will witness that you receive stolen goods!" I cried, in wrath.

He placed it in my hands.

"Oh!" he groaned, from the bottom of his heart, hanging his head, and

laying both hands on the counter before him,--"it pains, it grieves me

to part with it!"

"And the chain," I said.

"Monsieur did not demand that!"

"I demand it now."

In a moment, the chain also was given me.

"And now will Monsieur do me a favor? Will he inform me by what means he

ascertained these facts?"

I glanced at the _garçon_, who had probably supplied himself with

his master's finery illicitly;--he was the means;--we have some

generosity;--I thought I should prefer doing him the favor, and

declined.

I unclasped the shagreen case; the _sergent-de-ville_ and the _gendarme_

stole up and looked over my shoulder; the _garçon_ drew near with round

eyes; the little woman peeped across; the merchant, with tears streaming

over his face, gazed as if it had been a loadstone; finally, I looked

myself. There it lay, the glowing, resplendent thing! flashing in

affluence of splendor, throbbing and palpitant with life, drawing all

the light from the little woman's candle, from the sparkling armor

around, from the steel barbs, and the distant lantern, into its bosom.

It was scarcely so large as I had expected to see it, but more brilliant

than anything I could conceive of. I do not believe there is another

such in the world. One saw clearly that the Oriental superstition of the

sex of stones was no fable; this was essentially the female of diamonds,

the queen herself, the principle of life, the rejoicing creative force.

It was not radiant, as the term literally taken implies; it seemed

rather to retain its wealth,--instead of emitting its glorious rays,

to curl them back like the fringe of a madrepore, and lie there with

redoubled quivering scintillations, a mass of white magnificence, not

prismatic, but a vast milky lustre. I closed the case; on reopening it,

I could scarcely believe that the beautiful sleepless eye would again

flash upon me. I did not comprehend how it could afford such perpetual

richness, such sheets of lustre.

At last we compelled ourselves to be satisfied. I left the shop,

dismissed my attendants, and, fresh from the contemplation of this

miracle, again trod the dirty, reeking streets, crossed the bridge, with

its lights, its warehouses midway, its living torrents who poured on

unconscious of the beauty within their reach. The thought of their

ignorance of the treasure, not a dozen yards distant, has often made

me question if we all are not equally unaware of other and greater

processes of life, of more perfect, sublimed, and, as it were, spiritual

crystallizations going on invisibly about us. But had these been told of

the thing clutched in the hand of a passer, how many of them would have

known where to turn? and we,--are we any better?

II.

For a few days I carried the diamond about my person, and did not

mention its recovery even to my valet, who knew that I sought it, but

communicated only with the Marquis of G., who replied, that he would be

in Paris on a certain day, when I could safely deliver it to him.

It was now generally rumored that the neighboring government was about

to send us the Baron Stahl, ambassador concerning arrangements for a

loan to maintain the sinking monarchy in supremacy at Paris, the usual

synecdoche for France.

The weather being fine, I proceeded to call on Mme. de St. Cyr. She

received me in her boudoir, and on my way thither I could not but

observe the perfect quiet and cloistered seclusion that pervaded the

whole house,--the house itself seeming only an adjunct of the still

and sunny garden, of which one caught a glimpse through the long open

hall-windows beyond. This boudoir did not differ from others to which I

have been admitted: the same delicate shades; all the dainty appliances

of Art for beauty; the lavish profusion of _bijouterie_; and the usual

statuettes of innocence, to indicate, perhaps, the presence of that

commodity which might not be guessed at otherwise; and burning in a

silver cup, a rich perfume loaded the air with voluptuous sweetness.

Through a half-open door an inner boudoir was to be seen, which must

have been Delphine's; it looked like her; the prevailing hue was a soft

purple, or gray; a _prie-dieu_, a book-shelf, and desk, of a dark West

Indian wood, were just visible. There was but one picture,--a sad-eyed,

beautiful Fate. It was the type of her nation. I think she worshipped

it--And how apt is misfortune! to degenerate into Fate!--not that the

girl had ever experienced the former, but, dissatisfied with life, and

seeing no outlet, she accepted it stoically and waited till it should be

over. She needed to be aroused;--the station of an _ambassadrice_, which

I desired for her, might kindle the spark. There were no flowers, no

perfumes, no busts, in this ascetic place. Delphine herself, in some

faint rosy gauze, her fair hair streaming round her, as she lay on a

white-draped couch, half-risen on one arm, while she read the morning's

_feuilleton_, was the most perfect statuary of which a room could

boast,--illumined, as I saw her, by the gay beams that entered at the

loftily-arched window, broken only by the flickering of the vine-leaves

that clustered the curiously-latticed panes without. She resembled in

kind a Nymph or Aphrodite just bursting from the sea. Madame de St. Cyr

received me with _empressement_, and, so doing, closed the door of this

shrine. We spoke of various things,--of the court, the theatre, the

weather, the world,--skating lightly round the slender edges of her

secret, till finally she invited me to lunch with her in the garden.

Here, on a rustic table, stood wine and a few delicacies,--while, by

extending a hand, we could grasp the hanging pears and nectarines, still

warm to the lip and luscious with sunshine, as we disputed possession

with the envious wasp who had established a priority of claim.

"It is to be hoped," I said, sipping the _Haut-Brion_, whose fine and

brittle smack contrasted rarely with the delicious juiciness of the

fruit, "that you have laid in a supply of this treasure that neither

moth nor rust doth corrupt, before parting with that little gem in the

Gironde."

"Ah? You know, then, that I have sold it?"

"Yes," I replied. "I have the pleasure of Mr. Ulster's acquaintance."

"He arranged the terms for me," she said, with restraint,--adding, "I

could almost wish now that it had not been."

This was probably true; for the sum which she hoped to receive from

Ulster for standing sponsor to his jewel was possibly equal to the price

of her vineyard.

"It was indispensable at the time, this sale; I thought best to hazard

it on one more season.--If, after such advantages, Delphine will not

marry, why--it remains to retire into the country and end our days with

the barbarians!" she continued, shrugging her shoulders; "I have a house

there."

"But you will not be obliged to throw us all into despair by such a step

now," I replied.

She looked quickly, as if to see how nearly I had approached her

citadel,--then, finding in my face no expression but a complimentary

one, "No," she said, "I hope that my affairs have brightened a little.

One never knows what is in store."

Before long I had assured myself that Mme. de St. Cyr was not a party

to the theft, but had merely been hired by Ulster, who, discovering the

state of her affairs, had not, therefore, revealed his own,--and

this without in the least implying any knowledge on my part of the

transaction. Ulster must have seen the necessity of leaving the business

in the hands of a competent person, and Mme. de St. Cyr's financial

talent was patent. There were few ladies in Paris who would have

rejected the opportunity. Of these things I felt a tolerable certainty.

"We throng with foreigners," said Madame, archly, as I reached this

point. "Diplomates, too. The Baron Stahl arrives in a day."

"I have heard," I responded. "You are acquainted?"

"Alas! no," she said. "I knew his father well, though he himself is not

young. Indeed, the families thought once of intermarriage. But nothing

has been said on the subject for many years. His Excellency, I hear,

will strengthen himself at home by an alliance with the young Countess,

the natural daughter of the Emperor."

"He surely will never be so imprudent as to rivet his chain by such a

link!"

"It is impossible to compute the dice in those despotic countries," she

rejoined,--which was pretty well, considering the freedom enjoyed by

France at that period.

"It may be," I suggested, "that the Baron hopes to open this delicate

subject with you himself, Madame."

"It is unlikely," she said, sighing. "And for Delphine, should I tell

her his Excellency preferred scarlet, she would infallibly wear blue.

Imagine her, Monsieur, in fine scarlet, with a scarf of gold gauze, and

rustling grasses in that unruly gold hair of hers! She would be divine!"

The maternal instinct as we have it here at Paris confounds me. I do

not comprehend it. Here was a mother who did not particularly love her

child, who would not be inconsolable at her loss, would not ruin her own

complexion by care of her during illness, would send her through fire

and water and every torture to secure or maintain a desirable rank, who

yet would entangle herself deeply in intrigue, would not hesitate to

tarnish her own reputation, and would, in fact, raise heaven and earth

to--endow this child with a brilliant match. And Mme. de St. Cyr seemed

to regard Delphine, still further, as a cool matter of Art.

These little confidences, moreover, are provoking. They put you yourself

so entirely out of the question.

"Mlle. de St. Cyr's beauty is peerless," I said, slightly chagrined, and

at a loss. "If hearts were trumps, instead of diamonds!"

"We are poor," resumed Madame, pathetically. "Delphine is not an

heiress. Delphine is proud. She will not stoop to charm. Her coquetry is

that of an Amazon. Her kisses are arrows. She is Medusa!" And Madame,

her mother, shivered.

Here, with her hair knotted up and secured by a tiny dagger, her gauzy

drapery gathered in her arm, Delphine floated down the green alley

toward us, as if in a rosy cloud. But this soft aspect never could have

been more widely contradicted than by the stony repose and cutting calm

of her beautiful face.

"The Marquis of G.," said her mother, "he also arrives ambassador. Has

he talent? Is he brilliant? Wealthy, of course,--but _gauche_?"

Therewith I sketched for them the Marquis and his surroundings.

"It is charming," said Madame. "Delphine, do you attend?"

"And why?" asked Delphine, half concealing a yawn with her dazzling

hand. "It is wearisome; it matters not to me."

"But he will not go to marry himself in France," said her mother. "Oh,

these English." she added, with a laugh, "yourself, Monsieur, being

proof of it, will not mingle blood, lest the Channel should still flow

between the little red globules! You will go? but to return shortly?

You will dine with me soon? _Au revoir!_" and she gave me her hand

graciously, while Delphine bowed as if I were already gone, threw

herself into a garden-chair, and commenced pouring the wine on a stone

for a little tame snake which came out and lapped it.

Such women as Mme. de St. Cyr have a species of magnetism about them.

It is difficult to retain one's self-respect before them,--for no

other reason than that one is, at the moment, absorbed into their

individuality, and thinks and acts with them. Delphine must have had

a strong will, and perpetual antagonism did not weaken it. As for me,

Madame had, doubtless, reasons of her own for tearing aside these

customary bands of reserve,--reasons which, if you do not perceive, I

shall not enumerate.

"Have you met with anything further in your search, Sir?" asked my

valet, next morning.

"Oh, yes, Hay," I returned, in a very good humor,--"with great success.

You have assisted me so much, that I am sure I owe it to you to say that

I have found the diamond."

"Indeed, Sir, you are very kind. I have been interested, but my

assistance is not worth mentioning. I thought likely it might be, you

appeared so quiet."--The cunning dog!--"How did you find it, Sir, may I

ask?"

I briefly related the leading facts, since he had been aware of the

progress of the case to that point,--without, however, mentioning Mme.

de St. Cyr's name.

"And Monsieur did not inform me!" a French valet would have cried.

"You were prudent not to mention it, Sir," said Hay. "These walls must

have better ears than ordinary; for a family has moved in on the first

floor recently, whose actions are extremely suspicious. But is this

precious affair to be seen?"

I took it from an inner pocket and displayed it, having discarded the

shagreen case as inconvenient.

"His Excellency must return as he came," said I.

Hay's eyes sparkled.

"And do you carry it there, Sir?" he asked, with surprised, as I

restored it to my waistcoat-pocket.

"I shall take it to the bank," I said. "I do not like the

responsibility."

"It is very unsafe," was the warning of this cautious fellow. "Why, Sir!

any of these swells, these pickpockets, might meet you, run against

you,--so!" said Hay, suiting the action to the word, "and, with the

little sharp knife concealed in just such a ring as this I wear, give a

light tap, and there's a slit in your vest, Sir, but no diamond!"--and

instantly resuming his former respectful deportment, Hay handed me my

gloves and stick, and smoothed my hat.

"Nonsense!" I replied, drawing on the gloves, "I should like to see the

man who could be too quick for me. Any news from India, Hay?"

"None of consequence, Sir. The indigo crop is said to have failed, which

advances the figure of that on hand, so that one or two fortunes will be

made to-day. Your hat, Sir?--your lunettes? Here they are, Sir."

"Good morning, Hay."

"Good morning, Sir."

I descended the stairs, buttoning my gloves, paused a moment at the door

to look about, and proceeded down the street, which was not more than

usually thronged. At the bank I paused to assure myself that the diamond

was safe. My fingers caught in a singular slit. I started. As Hay had

prophesied, there was a fine longitudinal cut in my waistcoat, but the

pocket was empty. My God! the thing was gone. I never can forget the

blank nihility of all existence that dreadful moment when I stood

fumbling for what was not. Calm as I sit here and tell of it, I vow to

you a shiver courses through me at the very thought. I had circumvented

Stahl only to destroy myself. The diamond was lost again. My mind flew

like lightning over every chance, and a thousand started up like steel

spikes to snatch the bolt. For a moment I was stunned, but, never being

very subject to despair, on my recovery, which was almost at once, took

every measure that could be devised. Who had touched me? Whom had I met?

Through what streets had I come? In ten minutes the Prefect had the

matter in hand. My injunctions were strict privacy. I sincerely hoped

the mishap would not reach England; and if the diamond were not

recovered before the Marquis of G. arrived,--why, there was the Seine.

It is all very well to talk,--yet suicide is so French an affair, that

an Englishman does not take to it naturally, and, except in November,

the Seine is too cold and damp for comfort, but during that month I

suppose it does not greatly differ in these respects from our own

atmosphere.

A preternatural activity now possessed me. I slept none, ate little,

worked immoderately. I spared no efforts, for everything was at stake.

In the midst of all G. arrived. Hay also exerted himself to the utmost;

I promised him a hundred pounds, if I found it. He never told me that

he said how it would be, never intruded the state of the market, never

resented my irritating conduct, but watched me with narrow yet kind

solicitude, and frequently offered valuable suggestions, which, however,

as everything else did, led to nothing. I did not call on G., but in

a week or so his card was brought up one morning to me. "Deny me," I

groaned. It yet wanted a week of the day on which I had promised to

deliver him the diamond. Meanwhile the Baron Stahl had reached Paris,

but he still remained in private,--few had seen him.

The police were forever on the wrong track. To-day they stopped the old

Comptesse du Quesne and her jewels, at the Barrière; to-morrow, with

their long needles, they riddled a package of lace destined for the

Duchess of X. herself; the Secret Service was doubled; and to crown

all, a splendid new star of the testy Prince de Ligne was examined and

proclaimed to be paste,--the Prince swearing vengeance, if he could

discover the cause,--while half Paris must have been under arrest. My

own hotel was ransacked thoroughly,--Hay begging that his traps might be

included,--but nothing resulted, and I expected nothing, for, of course,

I could swear that the stone was in my pocket when I stepped into the

street. I confess I never was nearer madness,--every word and gesture

stung me like asps,--I walked on burning coals. Enduring all this

torment, I must yet meet my daily comrades, eat ices at Tortoni's,

stroll on the Boulevards, call on my acquaintance, with the same

equanimity as before. I believe I was equal to it. Only by contrast with

that blessed time when Ulster and diamonds were unknown, could I imagine

my past happiness, my present wretchedness. Rather than suffer it again,

I would be stretched on the rack till every bone in my skin was broken.

I cursed Mr. Arthur Ulster every hour in the day; myself, as well; and

even now the word diamond sends a cold blast to my heart. I often met my

friend the _marchand des armures_. It was his turn to triumph; I fancied

there must be a hang-dog kind of air about me, as about every sharp man

who has been outwitted. It wanted finally but two days of that on which

I was to deliver the diamond.

One midnight, armed with a dark lantern and a cloak, I was traversing

the streets alone,--unsuccessful, as usual, just now solitary, and

almost in despair. As I turned a corner, two men were but scarcely

visible a step before me. It was a badly-lighted part of the town.

Unseen and noiseless I followed. They spoke in low tones,--almost

whispers; or rather, one spoke,--the other seemed to nod assent.

"On the day but one after to-morrow," I heard spoken in English. Great

Heavens! was it possible? had I arrived at a clue? That was the day of

days for me. "You have given it, you say, in this billet,--I wish to be

exact, you see," continued the voice,--"to prevent detection, you

gave it, ten minutes after it came into your hands, to the butler of

Madame----," (here the speaker stumbled on the rough pavement, and I

lost the name,) "who," he continued, "will put it in the----" (a second

stumble acted like a hiccough) "cellar."

"Wine-cellar," I thought; "and what then?"

"In the----." A third stumble was followed by a round German oath. How

easy it is for me now to fill up the little blanks which that unhappy

pavement caused!

"You share your receipts with this butler. On the day I obtain it," he

added, and I now perceived his foreign accent, "I hand you one hundred

thousand francs; afterward, monthly payments till you have received the

stipulated sum. But how will this butler know me, in season to prevent a

mistake? Hem!--he might give it to the other!"

My hearing had been trained to such a degree that I would have promised

to overhear any given dialogue of the spirits themselves, but the

whisper that answered him eluded me. I caught nothing but a faint

sibillation. "Your ring?" was the rejoinder. "He shall be instructed to

recognize it? Very well. It is too large,--no, that will do, it fits the

first finger. There is nothing more. I am under infinite obligations,

Sir; they shall be remembered. Adieu!"

The two parted; which should I pursue? In desperation I turned my

lantern upon one, and illumined a face fresh with color, whose black

eyes sparkled askance after the retreating figure, under straight black

brows. In a moment more he was lost in a false _cul-de-sac_, and I found

it impossible to trace the other.

I was scarcely better off than before; but it seemed to me that I had

obtained something, and that now it was wisest to work this vein. "The

butler of Madame----." There were hundreds of thousands of Madames in

town. I might call on all, and be as old as the Wandering Jew at the

last call. The cellar. Wine-cellar, of course,--that came by a natural

connection with butler,--but whose? There was one under my own abode;

certainly I would explore it. Meanwhile, let us see the entertainments

for Wednesday. The Prefect had a list of these. For some I found I had

cards; I determined to allot a fraction of time to as many as possible;

my friends in the Secret Service would divide the labor. Among others,

Madame de St. Cyr gave a dinner, and, as she had been in the affair,

I determined not to neglect her on this occasion, although having no

definite idea of what had been, or plan of what should be done. I

decided not to speak of this occurrence to Hay, since it might only

bring him off some trail that he had struck.

Having been provided with keys, early on the following evening I entered

the wine-cellar, and, concealed in an empty cask that would have held a

dozen of me, waited for something to turn up. Really, when I think of

myself, a diplomate, a courtier, a man-about-town, curled in a dusty,

musty wine-barrel, I am moved with vexation and laughter. Nothing,

however, turned up,--and at length I retired, baffled. The next night

came,--no news, no identification of my black-browed man, no success;

but I felt certain that something must transpire in that cellar. I don't

know why I had pitched upon that one in particular, but, at an earlier

hour than on the previous night, I again donned the cask. A long time

must have elapsed; dead silence filled the spacious vaults, except where

now and then some Sillery cracked the air with a quick explosion, or

some newer wine bubbled round the bung of its barrel with a faint

effervescence. I had no intention of leaving this place till morning,

but it suddenly appeared like the most woful waste of time. The master

of this tremendous affair should be abroad and active; who knew what his

keen eyes might detect, what loss his absence might occasion in this

nick of time? And here he was, shut up and locked in a wine-cellar!

I began to be very nervous; I had already, with aid, searched every

crevice of the cellar; and now I thought it would be some consolation

to discover the thief, if I never regained the diamond. A distant clock

tolled midnight. There was a faint noise,--a mouse?--no, it was too

prolonged;--nor did it sound like the fiz of Champagne;--a great iron

door was turning on its hinges; a man with a lantern was entering;

another followed, and another. They seated themselves. In a few moments,

appearing one by one and at intervals, some thirty people were in the

cellar. Were they all to share in the proceeds of the diamond? With what

jaundiced eyes we behold things! I myself saw all that was only through

the lens of this diamond, of which not one of these men had ever heard.

As the lantern threw its feeble glimmer on this group, and I surveyed

them through my loophole, I thought I had never seen so wild and savage

a picture, such enormous shadows, such bold outline, such a startling

flash on the face of their leader, such light retreating up the

threatening arches. More resolute brows, more determined words, more

unshrinking hearts, I had not met. In fact, I found myself in the centre

of a conspiracy, a society as vindictive as the Jacobins, as unknown and

terrible as the Marianne of to-day. I was thunderstruck, too, at the

countenances on which the light fell,--men the loyalest in estimation,

ministers and senators, millionnaires who had no reason for discontent,

dandies whose reason was supposed to be devoted to their tailors, poets

and artists of generous aspiration and suspected tendencies, and

one woman,--Delphine de St. Cyr. Their plans were brave, their

determination lofty, their conclave serious and fine; yet as slowly they

shut up their hopes and fears in the black masks, one man bent toward

the lantern to adjust his. When he lifted his face before concealing it,

I recognized him also. I had met him frequently at the Bureau of Police;

he was, I believe, Secretary of the Secret Service.

I had no sympathy with these people. I had liberty enough myself, I was

well enough satisfied with the world, I did not care to revolutionize

France; but my heart rebelled at the mockery, as this traitor and

spy, this creature of a system by which I gained my fame, showed his

revolting face and veiled it again. And Delphine, what had she to do

with them? One by one, as they entered, they withdrew, and I was left

alone again. But all this was not my diamond.

Another hour elapsed. Again the door opened, and remained ajar. Some one

entered, whom I could not see. There was a pause,--then a rustle,--the

door creaked ever so little. "Art thou there?" lisped a shrill

whisper,--a woman, as I could guess.

"My angel, it is I," was returned, a semitone lower. She approached, he

advanced, and the consequence was a salute resonant as the smack with

which a Dutch burgomaster may be supposed to set down his mug. I was

prepared for anything. Ye gods! if it should be Delphine! But the base

suspicion was birth-strangled as they spoke again. The conversation

which now ensued between these lovers under difficulties was tender and

affecting beyond expression. I had felt guilty enough when an unwilling

auditor of the conspirators,--since, though one employs spies, one

does not therefore act that part one's-self, but on emergencies,--an

unwillingness which would not, however, prevent my turning to advantage

the information gained; but here, to listen to this rehearsal of woes

and blisses, this _ah mon Fernand_, this aria in an area, growing

momently more fervent, was too much. I overturned the cask, scrambled

upon my feet, and fled from the cellar, leaving the astounded lovers to

follow, while, agreeably to my instincts, and regardless of the diamond,

I escaped the embarrassing predicament.

At length it grew to be noon of the appointed day. Nothing had

transpired; all our labor was idle. I felt, nevertheless, more buoyant

than usual,--whether because I was now to put my fate to the test, or

that today was the one of which my black-browed man had spoken, and I

therefore entertained a presentiment of good-fortune, I cannot say. But

when, in unexceptionable toilet, I stood on Mme. de St. Cyr's steps,

my heart sunk. G. was doubtless already within, and I thought of the

_marchand des armures'_ exclamation, "Queen of Heaven, Monsieur! how

shall I meet him!" I was plunged at once into the profoundest gloom.

Why had I undertaken the business at all? This interference, this

good-humor, this readiness to oblige,--it would ruin me yet! I forswore

it, as Falstaff forswore honor. Why needed I to meddle in the _mêlée?_

Why--But I was no catechumen. Questions were useless now. My emotions

are not chronicled on my face, I flatter myself; and with my usual

repose I saluted our hostess. Greeting G. without any allusion to

the diamond, the absence of which allusion he received as a point of

etiquette, I was conversing with Mrs. Leigh, when the Baron Stahl was

announced. I turned to look at his Excellency. A glance electrified me.

There was my dark-browed man of the midnight streets. It must, then,

have been concerning the diamond that I had heard him speak. His

countenance, his eager, glittering eye, told that today was as eventful

to him as to me. If he were here, I could well afford to be. As he

addressed me in English, my certainty was confirmed; and the instant

in which I observed the ring, gaudy and coarse, upon his finger, made

confirmation doubly sure. I own I was surprised that anything could

induce the Baron to wear such an ornament. Here he was actually risking

his reputation as a man of taste, as an exquisite, a leader of _haut

ton_, a gentleman, by the detestable vulgarity of this ring. But why do

I speak so of the trinket? Do I not owe it a thrill of as fine joy as I

ever knew? Faith! it was not unfamiliar to me. It had been a daily sight

for years. In meeting the Baron Stahl I had found the diamond.

The Baron Stahl was, then, the thief? Not at all. My valet, as of course

you have been all along aware, was the thief.

The Marquis of G. took down Mme. de St. Cyr; Stahl preceded me, with

Delphine. As we sat at table, G. was at the right, I at the left of our

hostess. Next G. sat Delphine; below her, the Baron; so that we were

nearly _vis-a-vis_. I was now as fully convinced that Mme. de St. Cyr's

cellar was the one, as the day before I had been that the other was;

I longed to reach it. Hay had given the stone to a butler--doubtless

this--the moment of its theft; but, not being aware of Mme. de St.

Cyr's previous share in the adventure, had probably not afforded her

another. And thus I concluded her to be ignorant of the game we were

about to play; and I imagined, with the interest that one carries into a

romance, the little preliminary scene between the Baron and Madame that

must have already taken place, being charmed by the cheerfulness with

which she endured the loss of the promised reward.

As the Baron entered the dining-room. I saw him withdraw his glove, and

move the jewelled hand across his hair while passing the solemn butler,

who gave it a quick recognition;--the next moment we were seated. It was

a dinner _à la Russe_; that is, only wines were on the table, clustered

around a central ornament,--a bunch of tall silver rushes and

flag-leaves, on whose airy tip danced _fleurs-de-lis_ of frosted silver,

a design of Delphine's,--the dishes being on side-tables, from which

the guests were served as they signified their choice of the variety on

their cards. Our number not being large, and the custom so informal,

rendered it pleasant.

I had just finished my oysters and was pouring out a glass of Chablis,

when another plate was set before the Baron.

"His Excellency has no salt," murmured the butler,--at the same time

placing one beside him. A glance, at entrance, had taught me that most

of the service was uniform; this dainty little _salière_ I had noticed

on the buffet, solitary, and unlike the others. What a fool had I been!

Those gaps in the Baron's remarks caused by the paving-stones, how

easily were they to be supplied!

"Madame?"

Madame de St. Cyr.

"The cellar?"

A salt-cellar.

How quick the flash that enlightened me while I surveyed the _salière!_

"It is exquisite! Am I never to sit at your table but some new device

charms me?" I exclaimed. "Is it your design, Mademoiselle?" I said,

turning to Delphine.

Delphine, who had been ice to all the Baron's advances, only curled her

lip. "_Des babioles!_" she said.

"Yes, indeed," cried Mme. de St. Cyr, extending her hand for it. "But

none the less her taste. Is it not a fairy thing? A _Cellini!_ Observe

this curve, these lines! but one man could have drawn them!"--and she

held it for our scrutiny. It was a tiny hand and arm of ivory, parting

the foam of a wave and holding a golden shell, in which the salt seemed

to have crusted itself as if in some secretest ocean-hollow. I looked at

the Baron a moment; his eyes were fastened upon the _salière_, and all

the color had forsaken his cheeks,--his face counted his years. The

diamond was in that little shell. But how to obtain it? I had no novice

to deal with; nothing but delicate _finesse_ would answer.

"Permit me to examine it," I said. She passed it to her left hand for me

to take. The butler made a step forward.

"Meanwhile, Madame," said the Baron, smiling, "I have no salt."

The instinct of hospitality prevailed;--she was about to return it.

Might I do an awkward thing? Unhesitatingly. Reversing my glass, I

gave my arm a wider sweep than necessary, and, as it met her hand with

violence, the _salière_ fell. Before it touched the floor I caught it

There was still a pinch of salt left,--nothing more.

"A thousand pardons!" I said, and restored it to the Baron.

His Excellency beheld it with dismay; it was rare to see him bend over

and scrutinize it with starting eyes.

"Do you find there what Count Arnaklos begs in the song," asked

Delphine,--"the secret of the sea, Monsieur?"

He handed it to the butler, observing, "I find here no"----

"Salt, Monsieur?" replied the man, who did not doubt but all had gone

right, and replenished it.

Had one told me in the morning that no intricate manoeuvres, but a

simple blunder, would effect this, I might have met him in the Bois de

Boulogne.

"We will not quarrel," said my neighbor, lightly, with reference to the

popular superstition.

"Rather propitiate the offended deities by a crumb tossed over the

shoulder," added I.

"Over the left?" asked the Baron, to intimate his knowledge of another

idiom, together with a reproof for my _gaucherie_.

"_À gauche,--quelquefois c'est justement à droit_," I replied.

"Salt in any pottage," said Madame, a little uneasily, "is like surprise

in an individual; it brings out the flavor of every ingredient, so my

cook tells me."

"It is a preventive of palsy," I remarked, as the slight trembling of my

adversary's finger caught my eye.

"And I have noticed that a taste for it is peculiar to those who trace

their blood to Galitzin," continued Madame.

"Let us, therefore, elect a deputation to those mines near Cracow," said

Delphine.

"To our cousins, the slaves there?" laughed her mother.

"I must vote to lay your bill on the table, Mademoiselle," I rejoined.

"But with a _boule blanche_, Monsieur?"

"As the salt has been laid on the floor," said the Baron.

Meanwhile, as this light skirmishing proceeded, my sleeve and Mme. de

St. Cyr's dress were slightly powdered, but I had not seen the diamond.

The Baron, bolder than I, looked under the table, but made no discovery.

I was on the point of dropping my napkin to accomplish a similar

movement, when my accommodating neighbor dropped hers. To restore it, I

stooped. There it lay, large and glowing, the Sea of Splendor, the Moon

of Milk, the Torment of my Life, on the carpet, within half an inch of a

lady's slipper. Mademoiselle de St. Cyr's foot had prevented the Baron

from seeing it; now it moved and unconsciously covered it. All was as

I wished. I hastily restored the napkin, and looked steadily at

Delphine,--so steadily, that she perceived some meaning, as she had

already suspected a game. By my sign she understood me, pressed her foot

upon the stone and drew it nearer. In France we do not remain at table

until unfit for a lady's society,--we rise with them. Delphine needed to

drop neither napkin nor handkerchief; she composedly stooped and picked

up the stone, so quickly that no one saw what it was.

"And the diamond?" said the Baron to the butler, rapidly, as he passed.

"It was in the _salière!_" whispered the astonished creature.

In the drawing-room I sought the Marquis.

"To-day I was to surrender you your property," I said; "it is here."

"Do you know," he replied, "I thought I must have been mistaken?"

"Any of our volatile friends here might have been," I resumed; "for us

it is impossible. Concerning this, when you return to France, I will

relate the incidents; at present, there are those who will not hesitate

to take life to obtain its possession. The _diligence_ leaves in twenty

minutes; and if I owned the diamond, it should not leave me behind.

Moreover, who knows what a day may bring forth? To-morrow there may be

an _émeute_. Let me restore the thing as you withdraw."

The Marquis, who is not, after all, the Lion of England, pausing a

moment to transmit my words from his ear to his brain, did not afterward

delay to make inquiries or adieux, but went to seek Mme. de St. Cyr

and wish her goodnight, on his departure from Paris. As I awaited his

return, which I knew would not be immediate, Delphine left the Baron and

joined me.

"You beckoned me?" she asked.

"No, I did not."

"Nevertheless, I come by your desire, I am sure."

"Mademoiselle," I said, "I am not in the custom of doing favors; I have

forsworn them. But before you return me my jewel, I risk my head and

render one last one, and to you."

"Do not, Monsieur, at such price," she responded, with a slight mocking

motion of her hand.

"Delphine! those resolves, last night, in the cellar, were daring; they

were noble, yet they were useless."

She had not started, but a slight tremor ran over her person and

vanished while I spoke.

"They will be allowed to proceed no farther,--the axe is sharpened; for

the last man who adjusted his mask was a spy,--was the Secretary of the

Secret Service."

Delphine could not have grown paler than was usual with her of late. She

flashed her eye upon me.

"He was, it may be, Monsieur himself," she said.

"I do not claim the honor of that post."

"But you were there, nevertheless,--a spy!"

"Hush, Delphine! It would be absurd to quarrel. I was there for the

recovery of this stone, having heard that it was in a cellar,--which,

stupidly enough, I had insisted should be a wine-cellar."

"It was, then"----

"In a salt-cellar,--a blunder which, as you do not speak English, you

cannot comprehend. I never mix with treason, and did not wish to assist

at your pastimes. I speak now, that you may escape."

"If Monsieur betrays his friends, the police, why should I expect a

kinder fate?"

"When I use the police, they are my servants, not my friends. I simply

warn you, that, before sunrise, you will be safer travelling than

sleeping,--safer next week in Vienna than in Paris."

"Thank you! And the intelligence is the price of the diamond? If I had

not chanced to pick it up, my throat," and she clasped it with her

fingers, "had been no slenderer than the others?"

"Delphine, will you remember, should you have occasion to do so in

Vienna, that it is just possible for an Englishman to have affections,

and sentiments, and, in fact, sensations? that, with him, friendship can

be inviolate, and to betray it an impossibility? And even were it

not, I, Mademoiselle, have not the pleasure to be classed by you as a

friend."

"You err. I esteem Monsieur highly."

I was impressed by her coolness.

"Let me see if you comprehend the matter," I demanded.

"Perfectly. The arrest will be used to-night, the guillotine to-morrow."

"You will take immediate measures for flight?"

"No,--I do not see that life has value. I shall be the debtor of him who

takes it."

"A large debt. Delphine, I exact a promise of you. I do not care to have

endangered myself for nothing. It is not worth while to make your mother

unhappy. Life is not yours to throw away. I appeal to your magnanimity."

"'Affections, sentiments, sensations!'" she quoted. "Your own danger

for the affection,--it is an affair of the heart! Mme. de St. Cyr's

unhappiness,--there is the sentiment. You are angry, Monsieur,--that

must be the sensation."

"Delphine, I am waiting."

"Ah, well. You have mentioned Vienna, and why? Liberals are countenanced

there?"

"Not in the least. But Madame l'Ambassadrice will be countenanced."

"I do not know her."

"We are not apt to know ourselves."

"Monsieur, how idle are these cross-purposes!" she said, folding her

fan.

"Delphine," I continued, taking the fan, "tell me frankly which of these

two men you prefer,--the Marquis or his Excellency."

"The Marquis? He is antiphlogistic,--he is ice. Why should I freeze

myself? I am frozen now,--I need fire!"

Her eyes burned as she spoke, and a faint red flushed her cheek.

"Mademoiselle, you demonstrate to me that life has yet a value to you."

"I find no fire," she said, as the flush fell away.

"The Baron?"

"I do not affect him."

"You will conquer your prejudice in Vienna."

"I do not comprehend you, Monsieur;--you speak in riddles, which I do

not like."

"I will speak plainer. But first let me ask you for the diamond."

"The diamond? It is yours? How am I certified of it? I find it on the

floor; you say it was in my mother's _salière_; it is her affair, not

mine. No, Monsieur, I do not see that the thing is yours."

Certainly there was nothing to be done but to relate the story, which I

did, carefully omitting the Baron's name. At its conclusion, she placed

the prize in my hand.

"Pardon, Monsieur," she said; "without doubt you should receive it. And

this agent of the government,--one could turn him like hot iron in this

vice,--who was he?"

"The Baron Stahl."

All this time G. had been waiting on thorns, and, leaving her now, I

approached him, displayed for an instant the treasure on my palm, and

slipped it into his. It was done. I bade farewell to this Eye of Morning

and Heart of Day, this thing that had caused me such pain and perplexity

and pleasure, with less envy and more joy than I thought myself capable

of. The relief and buoyancy that seized me, as his hand closed upon it,

I shall not attempt to portray. An abdicated king was not freer.

The Marquis departed, and I, wandering round the _salon_, was next

stranded upon the Baron. He was yet hardly sure of himself. We talked

indifferently for a few moments, and then I ventured on the great loan.

He was, as became him, not communicative, but scarcely thought it would

be arranged. I then spoke of Delphine.

"She is superb!" said the Baron, staring at her boldly.

She stood opposite, and, in her white attire on the background of the

blue curtain, appeared like an impersonation of Greek genius relieved

upon the blue of an Athenian heaven. Her severe and classic outline,

her pallor, her downcast lids, her absorbed look, only heightened the

resemblance. Her reverie seemed to end abruptly, the same red stained

her cheek again, her lips curved in a proud smile, she raised her

glowing eyes and observed us regarding her. At too great distance to

hear our words, she quietly repaid our glances in the strength of her

new decision, and then, turning, began to entertain those next her with

an unwonted spirit.

"She has needed," I replied to the Baron, "but one thing,--to be

aroused, to be kindled. See, it is done! I have thought that a life of

cabinets and policy might achieve this, for her talent is second not

even to her beauty."

"It is unhappy that both should be wasted," said the Baron. "She, of

course, will never marry."

"Why not?"

"For various reasons."

"One?"

"She is poor."

"Which will not signify to your Excellency. Another?"

"She is too beautiful. One would fall in love with her. And to love

one's own wife--it is ridiculous!"

"Who should know?" I asked.

"All the world would suspect and laugh."

"Let those laugh that win."

"No,--she would never do as a wife; but then as"----

"But then in France we do not insult hospitality!"

The Baron transferred his gaze to me for a moment, then tapped his

snuff-box, and approached the circle round Delphine.

It was odd that we, the arch enemies of the hour, could speak without

the intervention of seconds; but I hoped that the Baron's conversation

might be diverting,--the Baron hoped that mine might be didactic.

They were very gay with Delphine. He leaned on the back of a chair and

listened. One spoke of the new gallery of the Tuileries, and the five

pavilions,--a remark which led us to architecture.

"We all build our own houses," said Delphine, at last, "and then

complain that they cramp us here, and the wind blows in there, while

the fault is not in the order, but in us, who increase here and shrink

there--without reason."

"You speak in metaphors," said the Baron.

"Precisely. A truth is often more visible veiled than nude."

"We should soon exhaust the orders," I interposed; "for who builds like

his neighbor?"

"Slight variations, Monsieur! Though we take such pains to conceal the

style, it is not difficult to tell the order of architecture chosen by

the builders in this room. My mother, for instance,--you perceive that

her pavilion would be the florid Gothic."

"Mademoiselle's is the Doric," I said.

"Has been," she murmured, with a quick glance.

"And mine, Mademoiselle?" asked the Baron, indifferently.

"Ah, Monsieur," she returned, looking serenely upon him, "when one has

all the winning cards in hand and yet loses the stake, we allot him _un

pavilion chinois"_--which was the polite way of dubbing him Court Fool.

The Baron's eyes fell. Vexation and alarm were visible on his contracted

brow. He stood in meditation for some time. It must have been evident to

him that Delphine knew of the recent occurrences,--that here in Paris

she could denounce him as the agent of a felony, the participant of a

theft. What might prevent it? Plainly but one thing: no woman would

denounce her husband. He had scarcely contemplated this step on arrival.

The guests were again scattered in groups round the room. I examined

an engraving on an adjacent table. Delphine reclined as lazily in a

_fauteuil_ as if her life did not hang in the balance. The Baron drew

near.

"Mademoiselle," said he, "you allotted me just now a cap and bells.

If two should wear it?--if I should invite another into my _pavilion

chinois_?--if I should propose to complete an alliance, desired by my

father, with the ancient family of St. Cyr?--if, in short, Mademoiselle,

I should request you to become my wife?"

"Eh, bien, Monsieur,--and if you should?" I heard her coolly reply.

But it was no longer any business of mine. I rose and sought Mme. de St.

Cyr, who, I thought, was slightly uneasy, perceiving some mystery to be

afloat. After a few words, I retired.

Archimedes, as perhaps you have never heard, needed only a lever to move

the world. Such a lever I had put into the hands of Delphine, with

which she might move, not indeed the grand globe, with its multiplied

attractions, relations, and affinities, but the lesser world of

circumstances, of friends and enemies, the circle of hopes, fears,

ambitions. There is no woman, as I believe, but could have used it.

The next day was scarcely so quiet in the city as usual. The great loan

had not been negotiated. Both the Baron Stahl and the English minister

had left Paris,--and there was a _coup d'état_.

But the Baron did not travel alone. There had been a ceremony at

midnight in the Church of St. Sulpice, and her Excellency the Baroness

Stahl, _née_ de St. Cyr, accompanied him.

It is a good many years since. I have seen the diamond in the Duchess

of X.'s coronet, at the drawing-room, often,--but I have never seen

Delphine. The Marquis begged me to retain the chain, and I gave myself

the pleasure of presenting it, through her mother, to the Baroness

Stahl. I hear, that, whenever she desires to effect any cherished object

which the Baron opposes, she has only to wear this chain, and effect it.

It appears to possess a magical power, and its potent spell enslaves the

Baron as the lamp and ring of Eastern tales enslaved the Afrites.

The life she leads has aroused her. She is no longer the impassive

Silence; she has found her fire. I hear of her as the charm of a

brilliant court, as the soul of a nation of intrigue. Of her beauty one

does not speak, but her talent is called prodigious. What impels me

to ask the idle question, If it were well to save her life for this?

Undoubtedly she fills a station which, in that empire, must be the

summit of a woman's ambition. Delphine's Liberty was not a principle,

but a dissatisfaction. The Baroness Stahl is vehement, is Imperialist,

is successful. While she lives, it is on the top of the wave; when she

dies,--ah! what business has Death in such a world?

As I said, I have never seen Delphine since her marriage. The beautiful

statuesque girl occupies a niche into which the blazing and magnificent

_intrigante_ cannot crowd. I do not wish to be disillusioned. She has

read me a riddle,--Delphine is my Sphinx.

* * * * *

As for Mr. Hay,--I once said the Antipodes were tributary to me, not

thinking that I should ever become tributary to the Antipodes. But such

is the case; since, partly through my instrumentality, that enterprising

individual has been located in their vicinity, where diamonds are not to

be had for the asking, and the greatest rogue is not a Baron.

* * * * *

HAMLET AT THE BOSTON.

We sit before the row of evening lamps,

Each in his chair,

Forgetful of November dusks and damps,

And wintry air.

A little gulf of music intervenes,

A bridge of sighs,

Where still the cunning of the curtain screens

Art's paradise.

My thought transcends those viols' shrill delight,

The booming bass,

And towards the regions we shall view to-night

Makes hurried pace:

The painted castle, and the unneeded guard

That ready stand;

The harmless Ghost, that walks with helm unbarred

And beckoning hand;

And, beautiful as dreams of maidenhood,

That doubt defy,

Young Hamlet, with his forehead grief-subdued,

And visioning eye.

O fair dead world, that from thy grave awak'st

A little while,

And in our heart strange revolution mak'st

With thy brief smile!

O beauties vanished, fair lips magical,

Heroic braves!

O mighty hearts, that held the world in thrall!

Come from your graves!

The Poet sees you through a mist of tears,--

Such depths divide

Him, with the love and passion of his years,

From you, inside!

The Poet's heart attends your buskined feet,

Your lofty strains,

Till earth's rude touch dissolves that madness sweet,

And life remains:

Life that is something while the senses heed

The spirit's call,

Life that is nothing when our grosser need

Engulfs it all.

And thou, young hero of this mimic scene,

In whose high breast

A genius greater than thy life hath been

Strangely comprest!

Wear'st thou those glories draped about thy soul

Thou dost present?

And art thou by their feeling and control

Thus eloquent?

'Tis with no feigned power thou bind'st our sense,

No shallow art;

Sure, lavish Nature gave thee heritance

Of Hamlet's heart!

Thou dost control our fancies with a might

So wild, so fond,

We quarrel, passed thy circle of delight,

With things beyond;

Returning to the pillows rough with care,

And vulgar food,

Sad from the breath of that diviner air,

That loftier mood.

And there we leave thee, in thy misty tent

Watching alone;

While foes about thee gather imminent,

To us scarce known.

Oh, when the lights are quenched, the music hushed,

The plaudits still,

Heaven keep the fountain, whence the fair stream gushed,

From choking ill!

Let Shakspeare's soul, that wins the world from wrong,

For thee avail,

And not one holy maxim of his song

Before thee fail!

So, get thee to thy couch as unreproved

As heroes blest;

And all good angels, trusted in and loved,

Attend thy rest!

EL LLANERO.

De todos los Generales cual es el mejor?

Es mi General José con su Guardia de Honor!

I.

THE HATO.

It is only within a century that the world has become habituated to

behold the birth of nations, and already the spectacle has grown too

common to attract more than transitory notice. In the sluggish days that

preceded the revolutionary efforts of our fathers, a nationality was

fixed, seemingly immutable, the growth of scarcely numbered ages, the

daughter of immemorial Time. A people then could place its hand upon its

title-deeds, and, looking back through half a score of centuries, trace

its gradual development from nothingness to power. To-day, on the

contrary,--to use a somewhat daring metaphor,--nations have become

autochthonous; they have repudiated the feeble processes of conception

and tutelage; they spring, armed and full-grown, from the forehead of

their progenitors, or rise, in sudden ripeness, from the soil.

Thousands must now be living, the citizens of prosperous states, who

can recall the days when they had entered upon manhood and yet the name

itself of their nation had no existence. How many, indeed, are still

among us, to whom nations owe the impetus that gave them birth!

Prominent, at least, among those who can lay claim to such distinction,

there still stands one whose career it were well, perhaps, to study. We

will endeavor to profit by a glance at it.

With this intent let us transport ourselves in imagination to the Llanos

or Plains of Venezuela. It is a region similar in some respects, widely

dissimilar in others, to the more celebrated Pampas of the regions to

the south. The wonderful plain, covering more than two hundred thousand

square miles, and forming the basin of the gigantic Orinoco, is a study

in itself. The stranger who descends upon the vast savanna from the

mountains that line and defend the coast is impressed with the momentary

belief, when his eye for the first time sweeps over the level immensity,

that he is again approaching the sea. From the hilly country through

which he has toiled, he beholds at his feet a limitless and dusky plain,

smooth as an ocean in repose, but undulating, like it, in gigantic

sweeps and curves. The Llanos that he sees spread out before him thus

are one huge and exuberant pasture. Like the Pampas of Buenos Ayres,

they are the support of myriads of roaming cattle; but, unlike them,

they are intersected by numerous rivers, and suffer rather from excess

than from lack of moisture. The Orinoco sweeps, in turbid magnificence,

from west to east, traversing their entire breadth; and its countless

tributaries seam in every direction the immense plain thus divided, and

frequently by their unmanageable floods turn it for thousands of miles

into a lake.

The dwellers in this region have a character no less distinctive than

that of the Plains themselves. At long intervals, sometimes scores of

miles apart, their habitations are established; but their home is the

saddle. Innumerable herds of cattle and of horses turn to account the

pasturage of the rich savanna; and the true Llanero exists only as

guardian or proprietor of these savage hosts. He is as much at home in

this trackless expanse of rank vegetation as the mariner navigating

a familiar sea. There are no roads in the Llanos; but he can gallop

unerringly to any given point, be it hundreds of miles away. There are

no boundaries to the huge estates; but he knows when the cattle he is

set to protect are grazing upon their own territory or upon that of a

neighbor. He leads a life in which the extremes of solitariness and of

activity are combined. Separated from his nearest neighbor by a journey

of half a day, visited only rarely at his _hato_ or farm-house by

some casual traveller, or by the itinerant Galician peddler, whom he

contemptuously denominates the _merca-chifles_, the silent horseman

lives wrapt up in ignorance of all but the care of the roving beasts

that are intrusted to his vigilance.

Let us glance somewhat more nearly at the Llanero in his home. If we

are able to obtain an elevated view of the savanna,--let us say, in the

Llanos which constitute the Province of Barinas, and through which the

Apure rolls its rapid current to swell the volume of the Orinoco,--we

shall observe, at distant intervals upon the plain, irregular groups

of palm-trees surmounting the wavy level of the grass. These isolated

clumps or groves, called _matas_ in the provincial idiom, form the

landmarks of the Venezuelan Plains; and in the neighborhood of each we

shall find the _hato_ or dwelling of a Llanero. The building, we shall

find in every case, is a roughly-constructed hut, consisting of a floor

raised a couple of feet above the spongy soil, and covered with a steep

roof of palm-branches, with perhaps a thatch composed of the leaves

of the same invaluable tree. A rough partition of mud-plastered twigs

divides the Llanero's dwelling into unequal apartments; the lesser being

reserved for the use of the females of the household, while the larger,

furnished with half-a-dozen hides, the skin of a jaguar, and a couple of

benches or stools ingeniously manufactured from bamboo, is the general

reception-room, sleeping-apartment, and workshop for the _hatero_, when

the floods are out, or when he takes a fancy at other times to shelter

his head beneath a roof. A few rods from the dwelling is the _corral_ or

cattle-pen, a large oval inclosure, into which, at irregular intervals,

he drives his herds for purposes of branding or enumeration; and near

the _corral_ two or three impatient horses, shackled with a thong

confining the forelegs, are grazing.

The cattle-farms or _hatos_ of the Plains are owned, for the most part,

by the Creole residents of the cities which dot their outskirts, but are

inhabited only by the semibarbarous _hateros_, who attend to the

few requirements of the stock, and slaughter the annual supply. The

_hatero_, although a descendant, and proud that he is so, of the Spanish

settlers, has much intermixture of Indian and negro blood in his

veins. Few of the Llaneros, indeed, could show a pedigree in which the

Castilian blood was not sorely attenuated and diluted with that of

half-a-dozen Indian or negro progenitors. He is born on the Llanos, as

were his ancestors for many generations; and he has no conception of a

land in which cattle-plains are unknown, and where the carcass of an

animal is of more value than the hide. His ideas are restricted to

his occupation, and his religious notions limited to the traditional

instruction handed down from the days when his forefathers lived amid

civilized men, or to the casual teaching of some fervent missionary, who

devotes himself to the spiritual welfare of these lonely dwellers on the

Plains. Eight or ten persons at the utmost form a _hato_, and suffice

for all the requirements of thousands of cattle. The women are as much

accustomed to solitude as the men, and spend their time in domestic

occupations, or in cultivating the little patch of ground upon which

their supply of maize and cassava is grown. The occasion of their

marriage is perhaps the only one of their visit to a town,--perhaps

their only opportunity of seeing a printed book. Men and women alike are

a simple, healthy, ignorant race, borrowing manners, dress, and dialect

rather from the Indian than from the Spanish stock.

Such as he is, nevertheless, and for the purposes which his existence

subserves, the true Llanero is indeed well placed in his peculiar

region. A man of middle stature, usually of broad and powerful build,

short-necked, with square head and narrow forehead, and with eyes that

would be black, if it were not for the fire that flickers in them with a

carbuncle-like intensity. From the hips upward the Llanero is straight

and well-proportioned; but his constant equitation curves and bandies

his legs in a manner plainly visible whenever he attempts to walk. His

distinctive costume consists of the _calzones_, or cotton breeches,

reaching a little below the knee, a tunic or smock-frock of the same

material, confined about his waist with a thong of leather, into which

he thrusts his formidable _machete_ or cutlass, and the inevitable

_poncho_, that many-colored blanket which the entire Spanish-American

race has adopted at the hands of the vanquished Indians, and which he

uses as cloak, as pillow, as bed, and sometimes as saddle. Boots he has

none, nor shoes; but perhaps he may fasten strips of raw hide to

his feet by way of sandals,--and a piece of raw hide covers, in all

probability, his head. He cares little for ornament, since there are so

few about him to admire display; and all his pride is concentrated in

the steed that bears him, the lasso that he can throw with such unerring

aim, and the heavy lance that he uses in driving his ferocious cattle,

or as a death-dealing weapon when he is called upon to take part in some

partisan warfare.

Upon his _hato_, perhaps, there are between one and two hundred thousand

head of cattle and horses, guarded here and there by isolated posts of

a nature similar to his own. The animals, savage from their birth, roam

the plain in droves of many hundreds, each herd commanded by two or

three bulls or stallions, whose authority is no less despotic than that

of the colonel of a Russian regiment. They sweep from feeding-ground to

feeding-ground, galloping eight or ten abreast, headed by scouts, and

suffering no human being or strange animal to cross their path. As the

dusky squadron hurries, like an incarnate whirlwind, from one point to

another, every one prudently withdraws from their irresistible advance;

and instances have occurred in which large bodies of troops, marching

across the Plains, have been scattered and routed by an accidental

charge of some such wild-eyed regiment. At certain intervals, _la

hierra_, the branding, takes place; when drove after drove are

dexterously compelled within the walls of the _corral_, and there

marked with the initials or cipher of the proprietor. This is the great

festival of the _hatero_, and he invites to it all his neighbors for

scores of leagues around. The bellowing cattle, the plunging steeds, the

excitement of lassoing some bull more refractory than usual, the hissing

of the iron as it sears the brand-mark deep into the animal's hide, all

these are elements of exquisite enjoyment to the unsophisticated Rarey

of the Plains. His great delight, on such occasions, is to display his

skill in lassoing an untamed colt, or in performing the feat called to

_colear_ a bull. He selects from the suspicious herd some fine young

three-year old, grazing somewhat apart from the main body, and creeps

silently towards it. Suddenly the lasso flies in snaky coils over the

head of the beast, and is drawn with strangulating tightness about its

neck. At the first plunge, a brother _hatero_ lassoes the animal's hind

legs, and it is permitted to rear and kick as frantically as it can,

until it drops to the ground exhausted and strangled. The Llanero

immediately approaches the prostrate colt, and deliberately beats its

head with a heavy bludgeon until it becomes quite senseless. He then

places his saddle upon its back, adjusts a murderous bit in its clammy

mouth, and seats himself firmly in the saddle at the moment when the

animal recovers strength enough to rise. The fearful plunges, the wild

bounds, the vicious attempts at biting, which ensue, are all in vain; in

a couple of days he subsides into a mere high-spirited trotter, whom one

can ride with ease after once effecting a mount.

The pastime of "tailing" a bull is somewhat singular. Two or three

horsemen single out an animal upon which to practise it, and secure a

lasso about its horns. Another lasso, deftly thrown about its hind legs,

is fastened to a tree, and the strongest of the party then seizes the

bellowing beast by its tail, which he twists until his victim falls over

on its side and is dispatched. The greatest dexterity is required in

this manoeuvre by all practising it, as the slacking of either lasso

enables the bull to turn upon his caudal persecutor, who is certain to

be gored to death. This, indeed, not unfrequently happens. But a Llanero

cares little for death. He faces it daily in his lonely converse with

thousands of intractable beasts, in his bath in the river swarming with

alligators,--in the swamp teeming with serpents, against whose poison

there is no antidote, and whose bite will destroy the life of a man in a

single hour. Content with the wild excitement of his daily round of duty

and recreation, with his meal of dried beef and cassava-cake, washed

down, it is likely, with a gourdful of _guarapo_, a species of rum, in

comparison with which the New England beverage is innocent and weak, and

with the occasional recurrence of some such turbulent festival as that

of the branding, he cares nothing for the future, and bestows no thought

upon the past. The Llanero may be called a happy man.

II.

EL ARAUSENSE.

Two years more than half a century ago there lived a Creole trader of

some wealth in the little town of Araure, in the province of Barinas,

upon the outskirts of the Llanos. Don José had a stalwart son, aged

about sixteen, whom he had trained to active usefulness amid the

monotonous ease of the torrid little municipality. Young Jose Antonio

had received, it is true, only a scanty education, but he could sign

his name, could verify a calculation, and had a shrewd, quick head for

business. The doctors-of-law, tolerably numerous even in little Araure,

pronounced him born for a jurist, and he was a godsend to the litigious

natives of the Captain-Generalcy. The hide-and-tallow merchants nodded

knowingly, as he passed them in the street with a good-humored _Àdios_,

and predicted great fortunes for the lad as a future man-of-business.

The Cura thought it a pity that he should prefer the society of the

dusky beauties of Araure to the more hallowed enjoyments of preparation

for a priestly life. And all the while quite other destinies were held

in store by Fate. The remissness of a mercantile correspondent of his

father altered the current of his life, and mightily influenced, even to

the present day, the fortunes of his country.

A sum was owing to Don José by a trader of Capudare, and he intrusted

his son with the task of collecting the debt. One fine day, in the

spring of 1807, the lad accordingly set out, in high spirits at his

important mission, armed with a brace of pistols and a cutlass, and

mounted on a trusty mule. The money was duly collected, but, as young

José Antonio journeyed home with it, a rumor of his precious charge was

spread, and he was beset in a lonely by-path by four highwaymen. The

pistols flashed from José's holsters, and one of the _churriones_ fell

the next moment with a bullet in his brain. Instantly presenting the

second pistol, which was not loaded, he advanced upon the remaining

three, who fell back in consternation, and fled, panic-stricken, from

the boy. José Antonio was left alone with the highwayman's corpse. It

was no light thing in Venezuela to commit a homicide without testimony

of innocence, and young José hastened homewards with his treasure, in a

state of trepidation far greater than any the living highwaymen could

have inspired. Even in his parents' dwelling, he dreaded, every moment,

the arrival of an order for his arrest, and to appease his groundless

anxiety his father shortly suggested that he should take refuge upon the

Llanos,--the Sherwood of Venezuelan Robin Hoods. The youth was delighted

with the idea, and engaged himself as herdsman in the service of Don

Manuel Pulido, a wealthy proprietor, whom he served so well that he was

very quickly advanced to a position of confidence and command. In a few

months the slayer of the _churrion_ had learned to smile at his recent

apprehensions; but the wild life of the _hato_ had already thrown around

him its subtle fascination, and the sprightly youth of Araure had become

a naturalized son of the Plains. Soon few were able like young José to

break an untried steed; few wielded more dexterously the lasso, or could

drive with more unerring force the jagged lance into the side of a

galloping bull. Clad in _poncho_ and _calzones_, he scoured the vast

plain of La Calzada, acquiring, at the same time with manual dexterity

and physical hardihood, the affections, still more important, of the

wild Llaneros with whom only he associated. The lad of eighteen,

scarcely two years a denizen of the Plains, possessed all the influence

and authority of the hoariest Llanero; and now the predictions ran

that this daring José Antonio would one day be the most successful

cattle-farmer in Venezuela!

III.

EL TEMBLOR.

We must leave young José among his comrades of the _hato_ for a while,

and glance at the contemporaneous doings of anointed heads, whose

destinies were strangely interwoven with his own.

Far away across the Atlantic, in the shadow of the Pyrenees, events had

been developing themselves to the consummation that should overturn a

splendid throne, shake Europe to its foundations, and electrify Spanish

America with a sympathetic current of revolution, flashing from the

pines of Oregon to the deserts of Patagonia.

The mysterious treachery of Bayonne was consummated. Joseph, brother

of Napoleon, reigned on the throne of which King Charles had been

perfidiously despoiled. Ferdinand, heir to the crown of Spain and the

Indies, had scarcely heard himself proclaimed as the seventh monarch of

that name, when he had resigned his kingly functions to a Regency, and

hastened into the snare which already held his father a captive on the

soil of France. The astounding intelligence arrived in different parts

of South America during the year 1808. The effect was everywhere alike.

One moment of utter bewilderment, an instant's reeling under the shock

of surprise, and then a magnificent outburst of loyalty from the

simple-hearted Creole population! _El Rey_, the King,--that almost

mythical sovereign, who was ignorantly adored as the personification of

wisdom and beneficence, no matter how cruelly Viceroys might misgovern,

or Captains-General oppress,--was it possible to conceive him a captive,

the signer of his own humiliation, the renouncer of his immemorial

rights? And Ferdinand, the young monarch of whom so little was known

and so much expected,--he, too, a voluntary prisoner, while a Frenchman

reigned in Madrid? This was news, indeed, to bewilder nations who

had hitherto remained content in infantile tutelage, unconscious,

undesirous, of the rights of men! Addresses, fervent with loyalty, were

dispatched to Spain, embodying vows of eternal affection towards the

King, and of detestation of Joseph, the usurper. French residents in

Venezuela were publicly execrated by the excited Creoles; the French

flag was insulted, and the French messengers were glad to escape with

their lives from the hands of the infuriated Colonists. No Spanish

monarch ever had a firmer hold upon the Indies than Ferdinand VII. when

Spain was lost to him in July and August, 1808.

But soon there came that inevitable question, first in the catechism of

all human society: Whom shall we obey? The King, whose hand had weighed

not over lightly these many years, an abdicated prisoner at Bayonne;

Ferdinand yielding his authority into the hand of a nameless Regency,

and his capital to the brother of the Corsican Emperor; Spain overrun

by two hundred thousand foreign troops; messengers at hand from Joseph,

from the Regency, from the Junta of the Asturias, from the Junta of

Seville, each alike asserting its right to authority over the Colonies,

as legitimate possessors of jurisdiction in Spain itself! The accession

of Joseph, in fact, gave a momentary independence to Spanish America,

and the royal governors were thrown upon their own resources for the

maintenance of their power. The Colonies were for the first time called

upon to provide for their own defence,--solicited, not commanded, to

obey; and they proved their loyalty by dispatching enormous sums in

gold and silver to the Junta at Cadiz, as well as by their eagerness

to ascertain in whom actually reposed the lawful government of Spain.

Gradually, however, the consciousness of their own entity stole over the

Venezuelans and New Granadians, and they bethought them of establishing

an administrative Junta of their own, until better times should dawn on

Spain. Blindly imprudent, the Viceroy violently opposed the project,

and with such troops as remained in the Colonies the first Juntas were

dispersed or massacred. Squabbles ensued, until the citizens of Caracas

quietly deposed the chief Colonial authorities, and appointed a

_Junta Suprema_ to administer affairs in the name of Ferdinand VII.

Intelligence of this step, however, was received with great alarm by the

sapient Junta of Cadiz, and a proclamation was launched, on the 31st of

August, 1810, declaring the Province of Caracas in a state of rigorous

blockade. A war of manifestoes ensued, until the Provinces became

enlightened as to their own importance and strength, and published, on

the 5th of July, 1811, the Declaration of their Independence. Scarcely

was this done when the Spanish Cortes offered liberal terms of

accommodation, but they were rejected. The nation, that in 1808 thought

it sweet to be subject, declared itself, three years later, for

unqualified independence. The ardent revolutionist, General Miranda,

was placed in command of some hastily-levied forces, and took the field

against the Spanish commander, Don Domingo Monteverde, who had assumed a

hostile attitude immediately after the Declaration.

It is only necessary here to say, that, after some hard-fought and

honorable fields, Miranda and his fellow-officers were completely

successful. All the principal cities were in the hands of the Patriots

before 1812 began. Monteverde, in January of that year, was cooped up in

the remote province of Guiana, and Coro on the sea-coast was also held

by his troops; but elsewhere the new Republic seemed fully established.

Already the point of Constitution-making--the crystallization-point of

republics--had been reached. The ports of Venezuela were for the first

time opened to foreign trade. Her inhabitants were no longer restricted

from the enjoyment of the fruits of their own industry. A gigantic

system of taxation had been brushed, like a spider's web, away.

Two-thirds of the Captain-Generalcy, in a word, were free.

There was little fear among any of the inhabitants of Caracas, in March,

1812, that they would again fall under the dominion of Spain. The

Carnival had been celebrated with greater joyousness than in any year

before; the proverbial gayety of the town was doubled during the

concluding festival of Shrove Tuesday; and Lent had scarcely thrown as

deep a shade as usual over the devoutest inhabitants of the city. Lent

drew to a close, and there was every prospect that Passion Week would

be succeeded by a season of rejoicing over impending defeats of the

Royalist _Goths_ in Coro and Guiana; and Passion Week came. Holy

Thursday fell on the 26th of March.

The solemn festival was ushered in with the most imposing rites of the

Church. In the great cathedral, which dwarfed all other buildings in the

Plaza, there was high mass that day. The famous bell clanged out to all

Caracas remembrance of the agony of our Lord. A silent multitude was

prostrated all day long before the gorgeous altar. Prelates and priests

and acolytes stood, splendid in vestments of purple and white and

gold, solemnly celebrating upon the steps of the sanctuary the holiest

mysteries of the Roman Catholic communion. Above and around, gigantic

tapers flared from candlesticks of beaten gold; and every little while,

the glorious anthems floated forth in majestic cadence, eddying in waves

of harmony about the colonnade that stretched in dusky perspective from

the great door to the altar, soaring above the distant arches, and

swelling upwards in floods of melody, until the vast concavity of the

vaulted nave was filled with a sea of sound. But a sultry heaviness

weighed with the incense upon the air. Elder citizens glanced uneasily

at one another, and the thoughts of many wandered anxiously from the

sacred building. Outside, the streets were empty. All Caracas was

engaged in public worship; and the white dwellings that inclosed the

Plaza, with its converging avenues, looked silently down upon deserted

pavements, echoing only now and then to the careless tread of a party of

negroes, or to the clattering heel of some undevout trooper. The sun had

a glow as of molten copper; the atmosphere was dense; but not a cloud

occupied the heavens. Towards evening the churches and the cathedral

were again emptied, and the throng of worshippers, streaming out into

the streets, prepared to witness the great religious procession that was

to close the ceremonies of the holy day. Still the declining sun glowed

with unnatural intensity of hue; and the evening breeze swept over the

town in unusually fitful and stormy gusts. The air seemed to be laden

with mysterious melancholy, to sigh with a hidden presage of some awful

calamity to come.

Of a sudden it came. A shudder, a tremor, a quivering shock ran, for

hundreds of miles simultaneously, through Venezuela. A groan, swelling

thunderously and threateningly into a hollow roar, burst from the

tortured earth, and swallowed up in its convulsive rumbling the shrieks

of an entire nation suddenly inwrapt in the shadow and agony of death.

For a moment,--as if a supernatural hand were painfully lifting it from

its inmost core,--the earth rocked and heaved through all Venezuela; and

then, almost before the awful exclamation, _El temblor!_ had time to

burst from the lips of that stricken nation, it bounded from the bonds

that held it, and in a moment was quaking, heaving, sliding, surging,

rolling, in awful semblance to the sea. Great gulfs opened and closed

their jaws, swallowing up and again belching forth dwellings, churches,

human beings, overtaken by instantaneous destruction.

A flash and a roar passed through the earth, and a jagged chasm followed

in its track, creating others in its rapid clash and close. Whole

cities shivered, tottered, reeled, and fell in spreading heaps of

undistinguishable ruin. In one minute and fifteen seconds, twenty

thousand human beings perished in Venezuela; and then the Earthquake of

Caracas ceased.

It was after four o'clock in the afternoon when the first subterranean

shock was felt; and long before five the agonized earth was still. Long

before five, the stupefied survivors stood slowly recovering their

faculties of speech and motion. Long before five, a piteous wail

ascended to heaven from fathers and husbands and wives and mothers,

desolately mourning the dead in the streets of Caracas, La Guayra,

Mérida, San Felipe, and Valencia. In this manner the Holy Thursday of

1812 drew toward its close. But the physical disasters consequent upon

the great earthquake were of insignificant import as compared with its

moral effect. Colonist and Spaniard had shared alike in suffering and

death during those dreadful moments; but the superstitious population

readily accepted the interpretation which an eager priesthood placed

upon the event, and bowed in the belief that they had suffered

the infliction in punishment of their rebellion against the King.

Nine-tenths of the clergy and monastic brotherhood inwardly hated

and feared the Revolution, and their practised tongues drew terrible

auguries for rebellious Venezuela from the recent throes and upheaval of

the earth. Preachers solemnly proclaimed the fact, that this, without

doubt, was a catastrophe akin to the memorable convulsion which once had

swallowed up Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, for mutiny against the Lord; and

the proximate wrath of God could be appeased only by a retrogression

into his chosen paths. The people listened to the fathers, and obeyed

trembling. Miranda, who had struggled against and overcome the material

power of his enemies, was impotent when confronted by spiritual terrors;

and after a few languid combats, his troops deserted, leaving Monteverde

to triumph once more in the assertion of Spanish authority over every

province of Venezuela. His headquarters were established at Caracas,

and there, as well as elsewhere, his troops revelled in the perfidious

torture and execution of their capitulated foes. During nearly two

years, Monteverde reigned in Venezuela.

IV.

GUERRA Á LA MUERTE!

Yet, towards the close of 1813, the star of liberty glimmered once

more from the summits of the Western Cordillera. During and after the

memorable earthquake, the city of Puerto Cabello, at that time held by

the Patriots, was under the command of a young colonel in the Republican

service, who had devoted a portion of his immense patrimonial wealth

to the culture of his intellectual powers in European travel, (not,

however, without subsequently applying a large share to the necessities

of his country,) and whose name was Simon Bolívar. The treachery of an

officer delivered the citadel of Puerto Cabello into the hands of some

Spanish prisoners who were there confined, and in June, 1812, Colonel

Bolívar was compelled to evacuate the town with all his force. While

Monteverde lorded it over his country, he took refuge in the neighboring

islands, and afterwards in New Granada, where he conceived the daring

project which freed Venezuela, and has perpetuated, with his name, the

simple but expressive title: Liberator, _Libertador_.

It is not our purpose here to follow the intrepid partisan in his

descent, with six hundred New Granadian adherents, from the Andes, upon

the astounded Spaniards. We cannot follow him, nor the generals whom

he created, in their marvellous marches, and still more marvellous

triumphs, during many succeeding years. Suffice it to say, that he

fell like a thunderbolt from a sunny sky upon the confident Royalist

troops,--that he defeated and routed them time after time, broke, with

his terrible lancers, upon encampments which believed him a hundred

miles away, and drove the Royal commanders, with varying success, from

one point to another of Venezuela. His watchword was, _Guerra á la

muerte_, "War unto death!" Every battle-ground became a shamble, every

flight a butchery. The system was inaugurated by his antagonists, who

cruelly slew eight Patriot officers, and eight citizens of Barinas,

shortly after the commencement of hostilities, under circumstances of

peculiar barbarity. Thenceforward Bolívar's men took no prisoners.

In the mean time, Wellington had driven the French across the Pyrenees,

and Ferdinand the Adored ruled once more in Madrid. Even now, judicious

management might have secured again the allegiance of the Colonies; but

the first action of Ferdinand was to vituperate his American subjects

as rebels, whom he commanded to lay down their arms at once; and on

the 18th of February, 1815, there sailed from Cadiz a stately armament

intended to enforce this peremptory order. Sixty-five vessels composed

the fleet, bearing six regiments of infantry, one of dragoons, the

Queen's hussars, artillery, sappers and miners, engineers, and eighteen

pieces of cannon, besides incalculable quantities of arms and munitions

of war. The expedition numbered fifteen thousand men, and was commanded

in chief by the famous soldier, General Don Pablo Morillo, the guerilla

champion, the opposer of the French.

On the 4th of April, this redoubtable army effected a landing; and once

more, all but an insignificant fraction of Venezuela fell under the hand

of Spain. The flood of successful rebellion was rolled back from the

coast, and Bolívar, with his dauntless partisans, was soon confined to

the Llanos, which stretch away in level immensity from the marshy banks

of the Orinoco, the Apure, and their tributaries.

Our readers have already been introduced to these Llanos, and have

beheld their wild inhabitants amid the monotonous avocations of a time

of peace. Let us now approach them while the "blood-red blossom of war"

blazes up from their torrid vegetation. Let us descend upon them at

night, here, at no great distance from the banks of the cayman-haunted

Apure, and we shall gaze upon a different scene. All around us, the

plain extends in the same desolate immensity that we noticed when we

looked upon it from the _hato_; still, as before, we see it covered with

a dense wilderness of reedy grasses that overtop the tallest trooper

in Morillo's army; as before, we notice the scattered palm-islands,

breaking here and there the uniformity of level; and hosts of cattle and

wild horses are still roaming over the plain.

Near a _mata_, or grove of palm-trees, there is a sound of merry voices

to-night. Fires are crackling here and there; huge strips of fresh beef

are roasting on wooden spits; the long grass has been trodden flat in

a wide circumference, and three or four rudely-constructed huts of

palm-branches close the scene on one side. Five hundred men are

collected here,--the élite of the liberators of Venezuela. Gathered

about their camp-fires, these troopers, who have ridden a hundred miles

since morning, are enjoying rest, refreshment, and recreation. But the

word trooper must not conjure up a vision of belted horsemen, rigid in

uniform, with clanking sabres, and helmets of brass. Of a far different

stamp are the figures reclining before us. These are improvised

warriors, _hateros_, cattle-farmers, who, grasping their lances and

lassos, have eagerly exchanged the monotony of pastoral life for the

wild excitement of the charge upon Spanish squadrons, and the ferocious

slaughter of fellow-men. No two of this invincible band are clad

alike. Here is a sergeant, wearing an old and dilapidated blanket

poncho-fashion, with the remains of a palm-leaf hat sheltering his head,

and with limbs which a pair of ragged _calzones_ make only a pretence of

covering. Yet over his left shoulder is slung a gorgeous hussar jacket,

which he wears with the greater pride since it belonged last night to a

lieutenant in the Queen's regiment, whom he slew in cold blood after the

fight! Next to him leans a private, bare-legged and bare-headed, wearing

only an old piece of carpet about his waist, a flannel shirt, and the

uniform coat of a Spanish officer, from which he has cut the right

sleeve in order to secure greater freedom for his arm. A third has made

himself a suit which Robinson Crusoe might have envied. Helmet, jerkin,

breeches, sandals, all have been cut from the same raw bull's hide! His

neighbor, a new recruit, still wears the national dress of his order,

which has not yet been tattered and torn from him by long service; and

he is the envy of the motley troop. But the lack of uniformity in no

wise detracts from valor, nor does it diminish the gayety of these

terrible lancers as they lie idly grouped about the flickering fires.

Half-a-dozen circles are absorbed in as many games at cards; others

are swallowing greedily some improvised fantastic tale; and some are

singing, in wild, irregular cadence, the favorite songs of the Plains.

Their example soon becomes contagious, and group after group chimes in

with the uproarious chant. Listen! From the farthest extremity of the

encampment comes a querying solo:--

"De todos los Generales cual es el valiente?"

and from five hundred throats the response is thundered:--

"Mi General Paez con toda su gente!"

Again the solo demands:--

"De todos los Generales cual es el major?"

and the tumultuous answer is vociferated:--

"Es mi General José con su guardia de honor!"

And who may be the valiant General, the General with his guard of honor,

excelling all the rest? This, we learn, is the guard of honor; the

General is José Antonio Paez, little José Antonio who killed the

highwayman and betook himself to cattle farming on the Plains! Now,

however, he is the famous Llanero chieftain, favorite champion of

Venezuela, brother-in-arms of Bolívar, who allows him, alone of all

the military leaders, the privilege of an especial body-guard. Since

1810,--for five years,--he has been fighting constantly in his country's

service, and has won himself fame while our eyes have been turned in

other directions. Look! he is standing there, at the entrance to his

hut, while the chorus yet echoes among the palm-branches. Scarcely of

middle stature, certainly not more than five feet four in height,--but

broad-shouldered, muscular, with a constitution of iron, equal to

perpetual exertion, capable of every fatigue. His countenance is open

and prepossessing, his features rounded, forehead square, eyes piercing

and intelligent. Like his men, he wears a motley garb,--part Spanish

uniform, part costume of the Llanos; and he leans upon a lance,

decorated with a black bannerol, which has carried death already to

innumerable Loyalist hearts. Thus José Antonio Paez stands before us, on

the banks of the Apure, in the twenty-fifth year of his age.

He has perhaps been hitherto too much neglected by us, and we must look

backwards in order to take up the thread of his career. At the very

first outbreak of insurrection in 1810, Paez took service as a volunteer

in the hastily-levied militia of Barinas, and was quickly promoted to

the post of sergeant in a corps of lancers. His influence and example

attracted multitudes of Llanero horsemen to the Revolutionary ranks,

but the calamitous period of the earthquake put an end to his military

service, and he returned, in 1812, to his pastoral post. Soon, however,

came news of Bolívar fighting from the mountains of New Granada; and in

1813 Paez was once more in the saddle, with the commission, this time,

of captain in the Patriot service. The Spaniards soon learned to dread

the fiery lancer of Barinas. They were never safe from his sudden

onslaught; and Puy, the commandant of the Province, rejoiced loudly when

an unlucky defeat placed the indefatigable _guerrillero_ in his power.

Paez was condemned to be shot, and was actually led out, with

other prisoners, to the place of execution; but a concatenation of

extraordinary accidents saved his life, and he escaped once more to the

head of his command. It was not long before he was brought in immediate

contact with the now famous Bolívar, and he rapidly rose to independent

command. In 1815, he was second only to the Liberator. Thousands of grim

Llaneros acknowledged no chieftain beside _el Tio Pepe_,--Uncle Joe.

When Morillo landed, in 1815, with his overwhelming force, only the

Llaneros of Paez held out for the Republic; everywhere else in Venezuela

the banner of Spain waved in triumph, but on the Plains of the Apure

there was neither submission nor peace. Yet, after a while, as the

victorious legions of Morillo flooded, in successive waves from the

coast, the level region of his refuge, Paez was compelled to evacuate

the Plains, and leave them to the invader. With a few hundred of his

horsemen he established himself on the Plains of New Granada. Scarcely

had he grown familiar with his new centre of action when the troops of

Morillo were turned westward for the purpose of curbing the rebellious

spirits in the neighboring Vice-Royalty,--when, quicker than thought,

Paez was once more over the mountains, and recovered by a sudden swoop

the Llanos of Barinas. Thenceforward, this region remained the surest

foothold of the revolution in Venezuela. Encircled with Spanish troops,

it remained, nevertheless, a practical republic in itself, and the

vast basin of the Orinoco was the cradle of Venezuelan freedom. The

Provisional Government consisted of a mere council of generals, who, in

1816, created Paez General and Supreme Chief of the Republic. A vast

stride from the _hatero's_ hut that we saw him inhabiting in 1808!

Paez resigned this dignity in favor of Bolívar in the following year,

contenting himself with his great military command. Surrounded by the

body-guard we have seen, through all the years 1816, 1817, and 1818, now

in Venezuela, now in New Granada, in the Plains to-day, in the mountains

to-morrow, enduring every privation, braving odds apparently the most

overwhelming, fighting pitched battles at midnight, and triumphantly

effecting surprises in the open day, he maintained alive, in the midst

of general discouragement, the cause he had espoused. Bolívar, the

Liberator, was meanwhile endeavoring to make head against the Spaniards

elsewhere, and gathered a considerable force in the interior province of

Guiana. In 1818, the vanguard of the British legion--troops browned by

the sun of Spain, who had marched with Wellington from Lisbon to the

Pyrenees, and who gladly accepted the offers of the Patriots when

Waterloo had put an end to European strife--sailed up the Orinoco, and

effected a junction with the assembled Patriot forces.

At this time, not only the whole of New Granada, but the entire

sea-coast of Venezuela and every important city in the Republic were

possessed by Morillo. Yet the Royalist cause made no progress. Morillo's

dominion was like that famous Haarlem lake which occupied so large an

extent of the lands of Holland; it might be great and threatening, but

barriers insurmountable, though unpretending, forbade its expansion, and

perseverance gradually succeeded in curtailing its limits. Whatever the

hand of Morillo covered, he possessed; but his authority ceased outside

the range of his guns. His men were growing weary of the struggle; few

reinforcements came from Spain; and the troops suffered frightfully,

through their constant fatigues and hardships. The war had become

that most terrible of all wars,--a deliberate system of surprises and

skirmishes. Paez here, Bolívar there, Monágas, Piar, Urdaneta, and a

score of other chieftains, at every vulnerable point, harassed, without

ceasing, the common foe.

In 1819, Bolívar set out upon that marvellous expedition across the

Andes in which, by marching one thousand miles and fighting three

pitched battles in somewhat less than eleven weeks, he finally liberated New

Granada, and secured a vast amount of Spanish treasure and munitions of

war. During his absence, Paez was left to keep Morillo in check on the

east of the Cordillera. His plan of operations was, to be everywhere,

and to do everything with his lancers. Venezuela clung with terrible

tenacity to the idea of freedom; and the Republic was converted into two

great camps, perpetually shifting their boundaries, yet ever presenting

the same features. Trade and commerce were at an end; the only business

thought of was that of war unto death. Death, everywhere; death, at all

times; death, in every shape. By the sword and the lance, by famine,

by drowning, by fire, decimated by fever, worn out by fatigue, the

Spaniards perished. When their convoys failed or were intercepted, it

was impossible to obtain food; no foraging-party dared venture forth

from the fortified encampment; it was necessary that an entire division

should march out into the Llanos, and seek for the nearest herd of

cattle. It not unfrequently happened, in these expeditions, that

the very cattle were enlisted on the Patriot side. Herds of several

thousands of the savage beasts were sometimes driven headlong upon the

Spanish lines, throwing them into confusion, and trampling or goring

great numbers to death. Close in the rear of the resistless herd then

charged the lancers of Paez, with the terrible black bannerol fluttering

in the van. Before the scattered Royalists have time to rally, they are

attacked in every direction by their merciless foes,--and in another

minute the battle is over, and the men of the Plains are out of sight!

Sometimes, too, a detachment traversing the savanna would notice with

affright a column of thin smoke stealing up into the sky a mile to

windward; and almost before the bugle or the drum could summon them

to arms, the flames would be seething and crackling around them, and

roaring away, in an ocean of fire, across the savanna beyond. And then,

in the rear of the flames, dashed the bloodthirsty lancers, and the

blackened embers of the grass turned red with the richness of Spanish

veins! No venture was too arduous for the Llanero chieftain. He

accomplished at one time an exploit in which only the multiplicity of

witnesses who have testified to the achievement permits us to believe.

San Fernando, an important town on the Apure, was strongly fortified,

and was held by the Spaniards as a potent means of annoying the Patriots

in any attempts they might make to cross the river. In order further to

defend the passage, six large river-boats, each containing a piece of

artillery, were anchored at a short distance below the only ford. But

it became necessary that the Apure should be crossed, and Paez quietly

undertook to secure the passage. With a few of his lancers, he rode to

the river-bank, and there gave the command, _Al agua, muchachos!_ "To

the water, boys!" which he was accustomed to use when ordering his men

to bathe. His meaning was at once apprehended. The men, stripping off

their upper clothing, and holding their swords under their arms, plunged

into the stream, shouting loudly to keep off the alligators, and partly

rode, partly swam, nearly half a mile towards the gun-boats. Only the

heads of horses and men were visible above the water, and the crews

of the gun-boats, after a single discharge, which wounded none of the

extraordinary attacking party, threw themselves into the river and made

the best of their way to San Fernando, where they alleged that it was

useless to contest possession of their charge with incarnate devils,

to whom water was the same us dry land, and who butchered all their

prisoners. The gun-boats were navigated in triumph to the Patriot camp,

and did excellent service in ferrying the troops across the Apure.

V.

LIBERTAD.

By the year 1820 the Revolutionists had for the third time perceptibly

gained ground, and Morillo's force, spread like a fan at the inland base

of the sierra, was gradually yielding to the unceasing pressure;--in a

word, the Patriots were at length driving their enemies into the sea.

Towards the close of 1820, Morillo opened negotiations with their

chiefs, and a suspension of hostilities was commenced on the 26th of

November, when the Spanish general gladly quitted the scene of his

fruitless efforts, and retired to Spain with the title of Count of

Carthagena, leaving Generals Morales and La Torre in authority behind

him. The armistice was not prolonged. The Congress of Colombia, as the

united republics of Venezuela and New Granada were then termed, demanded

unqualified independence as the price of peace; and in June--the Battle

Month--of 1821, Bolívar and Paez took up arms once more. The Spanish

troops were concentrated at the base of the mountains, with Valencia and

Caracas in their rear. Before them, the road wound westward, through

tortuous passes, towards Tinaquilla and Barinas, at the former of which

places Bolívar with his forces was now halting. Six thousand men were

in arms on either side; but the troops of the Republic, though ragged,

ill-fed, and badly armed, were flushed with the consciousness of success

and the presentiment of triumph, while those of Spain were dispirited,

worn out, and malcontent.

It was plain to the meanest trooper, however, that Carabobo must be

held; and on intelligence of the Patriot advance, the position, of

amazing strength, was resolutely occupied. It seemed, indeed, that a

regiment could defend such a pass with ease against an army. In order

to debouch upon the Plain of Carabobo, the Patriots must penetrate a

defile, forming a narrow and tortuous pass, the road through which was

a mere seam at the base of a deep ravine. This narrow passage, through

which, of necessity, Bolívar's troops must march in straggling line,

terminated abruptly in a basin or valley shut in by hills, except

upon the northeast, where it opened upon the boundless expanse of the

contested plain. At the mouth of this gorge La Torre lay with all

his force. Despite the unfavorable condition of his men, with whom,

moreover, he was not popular, the odds seemed overwhelmingly in his

favor. He stood on the defensive, in one of the strongest of military

positions, and well provided with artillery, while his adversary was to

struggle through a narrow valley in the face of his opponents, before

a single man could be made available. The mouth of this valley was

blockaded by the Spanish infantry, who stretched in silent lines from

side to side in the evening of the 23d of June. On either flank, the

hills were occupied by corps of riflemen, and the artillery was posted

at their base. No force, it appeared, could enter the beleaguered valley

and live. Bolívar commenced his passage through the defile on the

morning of the 24th, and halted in dismay as he reached the outlet. It

was too apparent that such a conflict as lay before him could not be

braved. At this moment Paez learned that a narrow side-path existed,

permitting the passage of a single file, which led, by a _détour_, to

the plain. It was one of those curious accidents on which the fate of

battles seems to hang; and after some hesitation, Bolívar permitted Paez

to venture the passage. Heading the famous Battalion of Apure, he at

once wheeled to the left, and commenced the toilsome march. One by one

the veterans struggled through the pass, but they were discovered by La

Torre before they issued upon the plain.

Although taken entirely by surprise, the Spaniards had time for a

partial change of front, and before the veterans of Apure had assembled

at the mouth of the pass, a volley of musketry rang out from the Spanish

lines, and the gleaming of bayonets told of a wall of steel across the

path. The scanty force of Paez, however, dashed from the ravine, and,

forming hastily, rushed upon the enemy. Four Royalist battalions

converged upon them, and they were crushed. They fell back, flying in

disorder, and the Spaniards were on the point of securing the pass,

when a shout arose before them that made the stoutest quail. With

one ever-memorable cheer, a long hurrah, which spoke of well-known

unconquerable determination, the British legion, less than eight hundred

strong, with their Colonel, John Ferrier, at their head, appeared at the

mouth of the ravine. Forming instantaneously and in perfect silence,

but with the accuracy of a regiment on parade, they threw forward their

bayonets, and knelt down, sedately, calmly, immovably, to confront

destruction. The remaining troops of Bolívar were in their rear,

traversing slowly the defile; and until they reached its mouth, that

living wall of Anglo-Saxon valor neither stirred nor blenched. Volley

after volley enfiladed their ranks, and, after each discharge, the mass

of men was smaller. Still their cool and ceaseless firing rolled death

into the ranks of the enemy, until at length the troops whom they had

saved from destruction rallied once more. Then, what remained of the

legion, headed by the two or three officers whose lives had been

marvellously preserved, rushed fiercely forward like an avenging flame,

and swept before them the affrighted Spaniards, wildly scattering at

the onslaught which it was impossible to withstand. In another moment,

eighty or ninety of the lancers of Paez issued from the ravine, and,

hurling themselves upon the broken enemy, turned the defeat into an

utter rout. La Torre's troops, with the exception of one regiment, fled

in disgraceful confusion, or perished by hundreds under the lances

of the implacable pursuers; and on the evening of the 24th of June,

Bolívar, encamped upon the Plain of Carabobo, laid his hand upon the

shoulder of José Antonio Paez, thenceforward General-in-chief of the

Armies of the Republic of Colombia!

Carabobo decided the War of Independence throughout South America. It

snapped the chain which held Venezuela down, and the Spaniards, hemmed

in for two years longer at Puerto Cabello, which place they defended

with honorable pertinacity, were finally expelled from the free Republic

in November, 1823. The city was taken by storm on the 7th of that month,

and on the 9th the citadel surrendered. General Calzada, the commandant,

with all his officers, and four hundred men, was shortly afterwards

shipped for Spain.

Here the career of the Llanero closes. A new and still more brilliant

avenue to distinction opens before Paez. At this, however, we can

scarcely glance. Our business has been to study him in the saddle,

wielding lasso and sword and lance; nor have we left ourselves room

for adequate allusion to his subsequent life as President and private

citizen, deliverer of his country, and exile in these Northern States.

Yet the record could not be called complete, unless we passed briefly in

review the vicissitudes of the past thirty years.

After the taking of Puerto Cabello, Paez administered the affairs of

Venezuela as Provisional Chief of the State, and held that office under

the Congress of Colombia, until the two republics were dissevered in

1830, when he was elected first President of Venezuela. Only partially

disturbed by a military insurrection, headed by the turbulent General

José T. Monágas, which was soon suppressed, the administration of Paez

was such as surprised all lookers-on in America and Europe. He displayed

administrative talents of a high order, with all the firmness and

resolution of a soldier, yet with all the business capacity and peaceful

proclivities of a civilian.

Laying down the Presidential office in 1834, he was again called upon

to assume it four years later, and until the close of 1842 Venezuela

prospered under his direction. The foreign and domestic debt was

liquidated by the products of national industry, and three millions of

dollars were left in the treasury on the accession to the Presidency

of General Soublette, in 1843. Honors had rained on the _ci-devant_

impetuous horseman, whose shout had once so frequently been the prelude

to slaughter and devastation. William the Fourth of England presented

General Paez, in 1837, with a sword of honor; Louis Philippe of France

invested him, in 1843, with the Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honor; and

two years later, there arrived from Oscar of Sweden the Cross of the

Military Order of the Sword.

But in 1850, and thenceforward, until 1858, José Antonio Paez trod the

streets of New York as an exile from his native land.

General José T. Monágas was elected President of Venezuela in 1848, and

created dissatisfaction by his course of action. Paez placed himself

at the head of an insurrectionary movement against him, and, being

defeated, was imprisoned in the city of Valencia. General Monágas,

influenced, it is probable, by feelings of ancient friendship, and

remembering the pardon extended to himself on a former similar occasion,

contented himself with a decree of exile against the captive veteran,

and Paez embarked for St. Thomas on the 24th of May, 1850. He passed

from St. Thomas to the United States.

All, whose memories extend so far back as the year 1850, remember the

ovation received in New York by the exiled chief. New York grants an

ovation to every one; and Monágas would, doubtless, have been received

with the same demonstration, had the breath of adverse fortune blown him

hither, instead of his antagonist.

After the first effervescence produced by the dropping of a notability

into the caldron of New York, the Llanero general was permitted to enjoy

his placid domesticity without molestation; and in a pleasant street,

far up-town among the Twenties, he lived in the midst of us for eight

quiet years. A curious serenity of evening, for a life so turbulent and

incarnadined in its beginning! How many of the thousands who were

wont to pass the stout old soldier, with his seamed forehead and gray

moustache, as he enjoyed his quiet stroll down Broadway, thought of him

as the lad of Araure, the horseman of Barinas, terror of the Spaniard,

victor of Carabobo, and President of Venezuela? But though retired and

unpretending in his exile, Paez was not neglected in New York; and the

procession which followed him, but a few weeks since, to the steamer

destined to bear him back to his native land,--a procession saddened, it

is true, by the feeble condition to which an accident had temporarily

reduced the chieftain,--showed that his solid worth was recognized and

honored.

Not yet, however, is it time for the summing-up of his history. The

exile of 1850 has been solicited to return to his country, and the

ninth anniversary of banishment may find him occupying once more the

Presidential chair. General Monágas having been deposed in March, 1858,

repeated invitations were dispatched, by the Provisional Government, to

Paez, entreating his return; and, after much cautious hesitation, he

resolved, in the following September, to comply with the request.

Subsequent events belong rather to the chronology of the day than to the

page of history we have thrown open here. Our task is at an end; the

career of the Llanero has been unfolded; we have placed ourselves in the

presence of the comrade of Bolívar, and have witnessed the rise of the

Venezuelan Republic.

BULLS AND BEARS.

[Continued.]

CHAPTER XI.

SHOWING AT WHAT COST OUR HERO ESCAPED DROWNING.

The boat lay at the wharf, a pretty little craft of six or eight tons,

with a mainsail and jib. It was a delightful afternoon; a gentle

westerly wind swept over a placid sea, and the sky was as clear as the

mirror that reflected its exquisite blue. Greenleaf and Miss Sandford

took their seats amidships, leaving the stern for the boatman. The

ropes were cast off, and the sailor was about stepping aboard, when it

was discovered that the fishing-lines had been left behind. Old Tarry

was dispatched to bring them, and he rolled off as fast as his habitual

gait allowed him. When he was fairly up the hill, Miss Sandford said,--

"You know how to sail a boat, don't you?"

"Yes," said Greenleaf, "I have frequently been out alone; but I thought

I would not take the responsibility of a more precious freight."

"It would be delightful to have a sail by ourselves."

"Charming, truly! Our salt-water friend may be a very estimable person,

but we should be freer to talk in his absence."

"Suppose you try it. I will sit here, and you take his place."

Greenleaf hesitated; the proposal was a tempting one, but he had no

great confidence in his own skill.

"The sea is like a pond," continued his companion. "We can sail out a

short distance, and then return for our pilot, if we like."

Greenleaf allowed himself to be persuaded. He shoved off the boat,

hoisted sail, and they were soon lightly skimming the waters of the bay.

They rounded the rocky point and stood for the eastward. Their boatman

soon appeared on the shore and made frantic gestures to no purpose; they

looked back and rather enjoyed his discomfiture.

Never did the sea have such a fascination for Greenleaf. He held the

rudder and drew the sheets with a feeling of proud mastery, deeper and

more exciting than the horseman feels on the back of his steed. These

first emotions, however, gradually lost their intensity, and he resigned

himself to the measureless content which the gentle motion, the bland

air, and the sunny sky inspired.

What had been the character of Miss Sandford's regard for Greenleaf

hitherto would he a difficult question to answer; it is doubtful whether

she knew, herself. She had been pleased with his conversation and

manners, flattered by his graceful and not too obsequious attentions,

and proud of his success in his art. Living upon the pleasures of the

day, without a thought of the future, she had never seriously reflected

upon the consequences of her flirtation, supposing that, as in every

former case, there would come a time of _ennui_ and coolness. Besides,

she had felt the force of her prudent sister-in-law's suggestion, that a

man without an estate would never be able to supply the necessities of a

woman of fashion. With all her _quasi_ advances a degree of reserve

was mingled, and she persuaded herself that she should never become

entangled beyond the power of retreat. But Greenleaf was not an easy

conquest. She was aware of her influence over him, and employed all her

arts to win and secure his devotion; as long as the least indifference

on his part remained, she was unsatisfied. But in this protracted effort

she had drifted unconsciously from her own firm anchorage. Day by day

his society had grown more and more necessary to her, and her habitual

caution was more and more neglected. The conduct of Greenleaf, without

any design on his part, had been such as to draw her on irresistibly,

until their positions had become reversed; she was now fascinated beyond

self-control, and without a thought of the future, while he was merely

agreeable, but inwardly cool and self-possessed. Still at times the

strange thrills returned as the soft light of her eyes fell upon him,

and the intoxication he felt at his first meeting with her again drowned

his senses in delight.

They did not talk very freely that summer's day. The heart when full

rarely pours itself out in words. A look, a pressure of the hand, or (if

such improprieties are to be imagined) a kiss, expresses the emotions

far better than the most glowing speech. It was enough for Marcia,

steeped in delicious languor, to sway with the rocking boat, to feel the

soft wind dallying with her hair, and to look with unutterable fondness

at her companion.

As long as the ceremonies of society are observed, and people are kept

asunder a room's distance, so that only the mind acts, and the senses

are in repose, reserve may keep up its barrier. Words lose their

electricity in passing through a cool tract of air, and Reason shows all

things in her own clear white light. But establish a magnetic circle by

contact, let hand rest in quivering hand, while eye looks into melting

eye, and Reason may as well resign her sway. When the nerves tingle,

the heart bounds, and the breath quickens, estates, honors, family,

prudence, are of little worth. The Grundys, male and female, may go

hang; the joy of the present so transcends all memory, so eclipses hope

even, that all else is forgotten.

The boat careened somewhat, and Marcia changed her seat to the opposite

side, quite near to Greenleaf. His right hand held the tiller,--his

left, quite unconsciously, it would seem, fell into her open palm. The

subtile influence ran through every fibre. What he said he did not know,

only that he verged towards the momentous subject, and committed himself

so far that he must either come plainly to the point or apologize and

withdraw as best he might. _Could_ he withdraw, while, as he held her

soft hand, that lambent fire played along his nerves? He did not give up

the hand.

Poor little Alice! Her picture in his breast-pocket no longer weighed

upon his heart.

The breeze freshened, the boat rose and fell with easy motion over the

whitening waves. The sun all at once was obscured. They looked behind

them; a heavy black cloud was rising rapidly in the west. Greenleaf put

the boat about, and, as it met the shock of the sea, they were covered

with spray. To go back in the wind's eye was clearly impossible; they

must beat up, and, hauling as close to the wind as possible, they stood

towards Swampscot. For a mile or two they held this course, and then

tacked. But making very little headway in that direction, the bow was

turned northward again. In coming about they shipped so much water, that

Marcia, though by no means a coward, screamed out, "We are lost!"

She flung herself into the bottom of the boat and laid her head in

Greenleaf's lap like a frightened child. He soothed her and denied that

there was danger; he did not venture to tack again, however, for fear of

being swamped, but determined to run northwardly along the coast in the

hope of getting ashore on some sandy beach before the fury of the storm

should come. The boat now careened so far that her gunwale was under

water; he saw that he must take in the mainsail. With some difficulty he

persuaded Marcia to hold the tiller while he let go the halliards. The

mainsail came down with a run, and the boat kept on with the jib only,

though of course at a slower rate. They were still two or three miles

from shore, and the storm increased momently. They saw Lynn Beach

without hope of gaining it, the wind driving them northward. Neither

could Greenleaf run into the little bay of Swampscot. In spite of his

efforts the boat shot by Phillips's Point, and he must therefore run

upon the rocks beyond the Point or make for Marblehead harbor. But the

latter was an untried and dangerous course for an inexperienced boatman,

and, grim as the coast looked, he was obliged to trust to its tender

mercies for the chance of getting ashore. The rain now fell in blinding

torrents and a blackness as of night brooded over the sea. Greenleaf

was utterly bewildered, but held on to the tiller with his aching,

stiffening hand, and strove to inspire his companion with courage. The

boat was "down by the head," on account of the wind's drawing the jib,

and rolled and plunged furiously. Behind were threatening billows, and

before were ragged, precipitous rocks, around which the surges boiled

and eddied. Greenleaf quailed as he neared the awful coast; his heart

stood still as he thought of the peril to a helpless woman in clambering

up those cliffs, even if she were not drowned before reaching them.

Every flash of lightning seemed to disclose some new horror. If life is

measured by sensations, he lived years of torture in the few minutes

during which he waited for the shock of the bows against the granite

wall. Marcia, fortunately, had become insensible, though her sobbing,

panting breath showed the extremity of terror that had pursued her as

long as consciousness remained. Nearer and nearer they come; an oar's

length, a step; they touch now! No, a wave careens the boat, and she

lightly grazes by. Now opens a cleft, perhaps wide enough for her to

enter. With helm hard down the bow sweeps round, and they float into a

narrow basin with high, perpendicular walls, opening only towards the

sea. When within this little harbor, the boat lodged on a shelving rock

and heeled over as the wave retreated. Greenleaf and his companion, who

had now recovered from her swoon, kept their places as though hanging at

the eaves of a house. They were safe from the fury of the storm without,

but there was no prospect of an immediate deliverance. The rock rose

sheer above them thirty or forty feet, and they were shut up as in the

bottom of a well. The waves dallied about the narrow entrance, shooting

by, meeting, or returning on the sweep of an eddy; but at intervals they

gathered their force, and, tumbling over each other, rushed in, dashing

the spray to the top of the basin, and completely drenching the luckless

voyagers. This, however, was not so serious a matter as it would have

been if their clothes had not been wet before in the heavy rain. The

tide slowly rose, and the boat floated higher and higher against the

rock, as the shadows began to settle over the gulf.

In spite of the peril they had encountered, and their present discomfort

and perplexity, Greenleaf now experienced an indescribable pleasure.

Marcia was exhausted with fatigue and terror, and rested her head upon

his shoulder. Unconsciously, he used the cheering, caressing tones which

the circumstances naturally prompted. It was an occasion to draw out

what was most manly, most tender, most chivalric in him. The pride of

the woman was gone, her artifices forgotten. In that hour she had looked

beyond the factitious distinctions of society; she had found herself

face to face with her companion without disguise, as spirit looks

upon spirit, and she felt herself drawn to him by the loyalty which a

superior nature inevitably inspires.

A slight movement of the boat caused Greenleaf to turn his head. Just

behind him there was a shelf not three feet above the gunwale; beyond

that was a second step, and still farther a winding fissure. After

measuring the distances again with his eye, to be sure that he should

raise no illusive hope, he pointed out to Marcia the way of escape.

Their conversation had naturally taken an affectionate turn, and

Greenleaf's delicate courtesy and hardly ambiguous words had raised

a tumult in her bosom which could no longer be repressed. She flung

herself into his arms, and with tears exclaimed,--

"Dear George, you have saved my life! It is yours! Take me!"

The rush of emotion swept away the last barrier; he yielded to the

impulse; he clasped her fondly in his arms and gave his heart and soul

to her keeping. Carefully he assisted her up by the way he had found,

and when at last they reached the top of the cliff, both fell on their

knees in gratitude to Heaven for their preservation. Then new embraces

and protestations. Rain and salt spray, hunger and fatigue, were of

little moment in that hour.

Near the cliff stood a gentleman's villa, and to that they now hastened

to procure dry clothing before returning home. They found the welcome

hospitality they expected, and after rest and refreshment started to

walk to Swampscot, where they could obtain a carriage for Nahant. But

at the gate they met Easelmann and Mrs. Sandford, who, alarmed at their

long absence, had driven in a barouche along the coast in hope of

hearing some tidings of the boat.

The wanderers were overwhelmed with congratulations, mingled with

deserved reproofs for their rashness in venturing forth without their

pilot. On the way home, Greenleaf told the story which the reader

already knows, omitting only some few passages. Easelmann turned and

said, with a meaning emphasis,--

"I thought so. I thought what would happen. You aren't drowned, to be

sure; but some people _can't_ be drowned; better for them, if they

could!"

Greenleaf made no reply to the _brusque_ sarcasm, but drew Marcia closer

to his side. He could not talk after such an adventure, especially while

in contact with the woman for whom he had risked so much.

Poor little Alice!