"At the corner of the Rue Traversière I saw Just, Auguste, and
several other young men, whom I had seen in the morning receiving
cartridges. Upon my asking whether the attack was to be made,
_Just answered, Yes_. He felt for his pistols; my comrade got his
ready under his blouse. I seized mine under my shirt. Just called
to me, '_There, there, it is there you are to fire.' I fired. I
thought that all the others would do the same; but they made me
swallow the hook, and then left me to my fate, the rascals!_"
Poor DON LEON! So far the parallel is complete. The pistol was fired
against Spanish liberty; and the royal Just, finding the object missed,
sneaks off, and leaves his dupe for the executioner. There, however, the
similitude fails. LOUIS-PHILIPPE sleeps in safety--if, indeed, the ghosts
of his Spanish victims let him sleep at all; whilst for _Just_, the
carpenter, he is marked for the guillotine. Could Justice have her own, we
should see the King of the French at the bar of Spain; were the world
guided by abstract right, one fate would fall to the carpenter and the
King. History, however, will award his Majesty his just deserts. There is
a Newgate Calendar for Kings as well as for meaner culprits.
There are, it is said, at the present moment in France fifty thousand
communists; foolish, vicious men; many of them, doubtless, worthy of the
galleys; and many, for whom the wholesome discipline of the mad-house
would be at once the best remedy and punishment. Fifty thousand men
organised in societies, the object of which is--what young France would
denominate--philosophical plunder; a relief from the canker-eating chains
of matrimony; a total destruction of all objects of art; and the common
enjoyment of stolen goods. It is against this unholy confederacy that the
moral force of LOUIS-PHILIPPE'S Government is opposed. It is to put down
and destroy these bands of social brigands that the King of the French
burns his midnight oil; and then, having extirpated the robber and the
anarchist from France, his Majesty--for the advancement of political and
social freedom--would kidnap the baby-Queen of Spain and her sister, to
hold them as trump cards in the bloody game of revolution. That
LOUIS-PHILIPPE, the _Just_ of Spain, can consign his fellow-conspirator,
the _Just_ of Paris, to the scaffold, is a grave proof that there is no
honour among a certain set of enterprising men, whom the crude phraseology
of the world has denominated thieves.
It is to make the blood boil in our veins to read the account of the
execution of such men as LEON, ORA, and BORIA, the foolish martyrs to a
wicked cause. Never was a great social wrong dignified by higher courage.
Our admiration of the boldness with which these men have faced their fate
is mingled with the deepest regret that the prime conspirators are safe in
Paris; that one sits in derision of justice on fellow criminals--on men
whose crime may have some slight extenuation from ignorance, want, or
fancied cause of revenge; that the other, with the surpassing meekness of
Christianity, goes to mass in her carriage, distributes her alms to the
poor, and, with her soul dyed with the blood of the young, the chivalrous,
and the brave, makes mouths at Heaven in very mockery of prayer.
We once were sufficiently credulous to believe in the honesty of
LOUIS-PHILIPPE; we sympathised with him as a bold, able, high-principled
man fighting the fight of good government against a faction of
smoke-headed fools and scoundrel desperadoes. He has out-lived our good
opinion--the good opinion of the world. He is, after all, a lump of
crowned vulgarity. Pity it is that men, the trusting and the brave, are
made the puppets, the martyrs, of such regality!
As for Queen CHRISTINA, her path, if she have any touch of conscience,
must be dogged by the spectres of her dupes. She is the Madame LAFFARGE of
royalty; nay, worse--the incarnation of Mrs. BROWNRIGG. Indeed, what
JOHNSON applied to another less criminal person may be justly dealt upon
her:--"Sir, she is not a woman, she is a speaking cat!"