It was a Sabbath morning, and sweet the summer air,
And brightly shone the summer sun upon the day of prayer;
And silver-sweet the village bells o'er mount and valley toll'd,
And in the church of St Florent were gather'd young and old.
When rushing down the woodland hill, in fiery haste was seen,
With panting steed and bloody spur, a noble Angevin.
And bounding on the sacred floor, he gave his fearful cry,--
"Up, up for France! the time is come, for France to live or die.
"Your Queen is in the dungeon; your King is in his gore;
On Paris waves the flag of death, the fiery Tricolor;
Your nobles in their ancient halls are hunted down and slain,
In convent cells and holy shrines the blood is pour'd like rain.
The peasant's vine is rooted up, his cottage given to flame,
His son is to the scaffold sent, his daughter sent to shame;
With torch in hand, and hate in heart, the rebel host is nigh.
Up, up for France! the time is come, for France to live or die."
That livelong night the horn was heard, from Orleans to Anjou,
And pour'd from all their quiet fields our shepherds bold and true;
Along the pleasant banks of Loire shot up the beacon-fires,
And many a torch was blazing bright on Lucon's stately spires;
The midnight cloud was flush'd with flame that hung o'er Parthenaye,
The blaze that shone o'er proud Brissac was like the breaking day;
Till east and west, and north and south, the loyal beacons shone,
Like shooting-stars, from haughty Nantz to sea-begirt Olonne.
And through the night, on foot and horse, the sleepless summons flew,
And morning saw the Lily-flag wide waving o'er Poitou;
And many an ancient musketoon was taken from the wall,
And many a jovial hunter's steed was harness'd in the stall;
And many a noble's armoury gave up the sword and spear,
And many a bride, and many a babe, was left with kiss and tear;
And many a homely peasant bade "farewell" to his old "dame;"
As in the days, when France's king unfurl'd the Oriflame.
There, leading his bold marksmen, rode the eagle-eyed Lescure,
And dark Stofflet, who flies to fight as falcon to the lure;
And fearless as the lion roused, but gentle as the lamb,
Came, marching at his people's head, the brave and good Bonchamps.
Charette, where honour was the prize, the hero sure to win;
And there, with Henri Quatre's plume, the young Rochejaquelin.
And there, in peasant speech and garb--the terror of the foe,
A noble made by Heaven's own hand, the great Cathelineau.
We march'd by tens of thousands, we march'd through day and night,
The Lily standard in our front, like Israel's holy light.
Around us rush'd the rebels, as the wolf upon the sheep,
We burst upon their columns, as the lion roused from sleep;
We tore the bayonets from their hands, we slew them at their guns,
Their boasted horsemen flew like chaff before our forest-sons;
That eve we heap'd their baggage high their lines of dead between,
And in the centre blazed to heaven their blood-dyed Guillotine!
In vain they hid their heads in walls; we rush'd on stout Thouar,--
What cared we for its shot or shell, for battlement or bar?
We burst its gates; then, like the wind, we rush'd on Fontenaye--
We saw its flag at morning's light, 'twas ours by setting day.
We crush'd, like ripen'd grapes, Montreuil, we tore down old Vetier--
We charged them with our naked breasts, and took them with a cheer.
We'll hunt the robbers through the land, from Seine to sparkling Rhone.
Now, "Here's a health to all we love. Our King shall have his own."
This song had an interest for me, independent of the spirit of the
performer. It revived recollections of the noblest scene of popular
attachment and faithful fortitude since the days of chivalry. I heard in
it the names of all the great leaders of the Royalist army--names which
nothing but the deepest national ingratitude will ever suffer France to
forget; and it gave a glance at the succession of those gallant exploits
by which the heroic peasantry and gentlemen of Anjou and Poitou had
gained their imperishable distinction.
But the streets of a capital, itself almost in a state of siege, were
not the scene for indulging in romance by starlight; and one of the
patrols of soldiery, then going its rounds, suddenly ordered the group
to disperse. The Frenchman, unluckily, attempted to apologise for his
own appearance on the spot; and the attempt perplexed the matter still
more. The times were suspicious, and a foreigner, and of all foreigners
a Gaul, caught under cover of night singing songs of which the sergeant
could not comprehend a syllable, was a personage in every way formed for
the guard-house. The startled Frenchman's exclamations and wrath at
discovering this purpose, only made the sergeant more positive; and he
was marched off as a traitor convicted of guitar-playing and other
traitorous qualities.
I interposed, but my interposition was in vain. My person was unknown to
the man in authority; and I was evidently, from the frown of the
sergeant, regarded as little better than an accomplice. My only resource
was to follow the party to the guard-house, and see the officer of the
night. But he was absent; and half-laughing at the singular effect of
the report in the morning, that I had been arrested as the
fellow-conspirator of a French mendicant, I called for pen, ink, and
paper, to explain my position by a message to the next magistrate. But
this request only thickened the perplexity. As I approached the desk to
write, the prisoner bounded towards me with a wild outcry, flung his
arms round my neck, and plunging his hand into the deepest recesses of
his very wayworn costume, at length drew out a large letter, which he
held forth to me with a gesture of triumph. The sergeant looked graver
still; his responsibility was more heavily involved by the despatch,
which he intercepted on the spot, and proceeded to examine, at least so
far as the envelope was concerned. He and his guard pored over it in
succession. Still it was unintelligible. It was a mysterious affair
altogether. The Frenchman and I begged equally in vain to be allowed to
interpret. Impossible. At length the subaltern on duty was found; and on
his arrival I was released, with all due apologies, and carried off the
captive and his despatch together.
The letter was addressed to me, in French, and in a hand with which I
was unacquainted. To obtain any knowledge of its contents on my way
home, and from its bearer, was out of the question, until, with a
hundred circumlocutions, I had heard the full and entire hair-breadth
'scapes of Monsieur Hannibal Auguste Dindon. He had been the domestic of
Madame la Marechale de Tourville, and had attended her and the countess
to England in the emigration; in England he had seen me. On the
reduction of the Marechale's household he had returned to his own
country, and taken service with the Royalist army in the Vendee. There,
too, he had suffered that "fortune de la guerre", which is ill-luck with
every body but the elastic Frenchman. He had been taken prisoner, and
was on the point of being shot, when he saw the countess, a prisoner
also in the Republican hands, who interceded for his safety, and gave
him this letter, to be delivered to me if he should escape. After
following the march of the armies, a defeat scattered the Republican
division along with which they were carried; he procured a conveyance to
the coast of Britanny, and they embarked in one of the fishing vessels
for England. Again ill-luck came; a storm caught them in the Channel,
swept them the crew knew not where, and finally threw them on the
iron-bound shore of the west of Ireland. Clotilde was now actually in
the capital, on her way to England!
If ever there was wild joy in the heart of man, it was in mine at that
intelligence. It was a flash, bright, bewildering, overwhelming!
I longed to be alone, to hear no sound of the human tongue, to indulge
in the deep and silent delight of the overladen heart. But M. Hannibal
was not a personage to be disappointed of his share of interest; and, to
avoid throwing the honest prattler into absolute despair, I was forced
to listen to his adventures, until the blaze of the lamps in the
vice-royal residence, and the challenge of the sentries, reminded him,
and me too, that there were other things in the world than a
Frenchman's wanderings. The substance of his tale, however, was--that
his resources having fallen short on the road, and resolving not to
burden the finances of the countess, which he believed to be scarcely
less exhausted than his own, he had made use of his voice and guitar to
recruit his purse--a chance which he now designated as a miracle,
devised by the saint who presided over his birthday, to finish his
perils in all imaginable felicity.
Giving him into the care of my servants, I was at length alone. The
letter was in my hand. Yet still I dreaded to break the seal. What might
not be the painful sentiments and sorrowful remonstrances within that
seal? But Clotilde was living; was near me; was still the same
confiding, generous, and high-souled being.--Sorrow and terror were now
passed away. I opened the letter. It was a detail of her thoughts,
written in the moments which she could snatch from the insulting
surveillance round her; and was evidently intended less as a letter than
a legacy of her last feelings, written to relieve an overburdened heart,
with but slight hope of its ever reaching my hand. It was written on
various fragments of paper, and often blotted with tears. It began
abruptly. I shuddered at the misery which spoke in every word.
"I am, at this hour, in the lowest depth of wretchedness. I have but one
consolation, that no life can endure this agony long. After being
carried from garrison to garrison, with my eyes shocked and my feelings
tortured by the sights and sufferings of war, I am at last consigned to
the hands of the being whom on earth I most dread and abhor. Montrecour
has arrived to take the command of Saumur. I have not yet seen him; but
he has had the cruelty to announce that I am his prisoner, and shall be
his wife. But the wife of Montrecour I never will be; rather a thousand
times would I wed the grave!----
"This letter may never reach your hands, or, if it does, it may only be
when the great barrier is raised between us, and this heart shall be
dust. Marston, shall I then be remembered? Shall my faith, my feelings,
and my sufferings, ever come across your mind?--Let not Clotilde be
forgotten. I revered, honoured, loved you. I feel my heart beat, and my
cheek burn at the words--but I shall not recall them. On the verge of
the future world, I speak with the truth of a spirit, and oh, with the
sincerity of a woman!----
"From that eventful day when I first met your glance, I determined that
no power on earth should ever make me the wife of another. To me you
remained almost a total stranger. Yet the die was cast. I finally
resolved to abandon the world, to hide my unhappy head in a convent, and
there, in loneliness and silence, endure, for I never could hope to
extinguish, those struggles of heart which forced me to leave all the
charms of existence behind for ever.
"The loss of my beloved parent gave me the power of putting my
resolution into effect. I returned to France, though in the midst of its
distractions, and took refuge under the protection of my venerable
relative, the superior of the convent at Valenciennes. My narrative is
now brief, but most melancholy. On the evening of the day when I heard
your love--a day which I shall remember with pride and gratitude to the
closing hour of my existence--we were suffered to pass the gates, and
take the route for Italy. But, on the third day of our journey, we were
stopped by a division of the Republican forces on their march to the
Vendee. We were arrested as aristocrats, and moved from garrison to
garrison, until we reached the Republican headquarters at Saumur; where,
to my infinite terror, I found Montrecour governor of the fortress. He
was a traitor to his unhappy king. The republic had offered him higher
distinctions than he could hope to obtain from the emigrant princes, and
he had embraced the offer. Betrothed to him in my childhood, according
to the foolish and fatal custom of our country, I was still in some
degree pledged to him. But now no human bond shall ever unite me to one
whom I doubly disdain as a traitor. Still, I am in his power. What is
there now to save me? I am at this moment in a prison!
"I hear the sounds of music and dancing on every side. The town is
illuminated for a victory which is said to have been gained this morning
over the troops of Poitou, advancing to the Loire. The stars are
glittering through my casement with all the brilliancy of a summer sky;
the breath of the fields flows sweetly in; laughing crowds are passing
through the streets; and here am I, alone, friendless, broken-hearted,
and dreading the dawn.----
"I spent the livelong night on my knees. Tears and prayers were my sole
comfort during those melancholy hours. But time rolls on. Montrecour has
just sent to tell me that my choice must be made by noon--the altar or
the guillotine. An escort is now preparing to convey prisoners to
Nantes, where the horrible Revolutionary Tribunal holds a perpetual
sitting; and I must follow them, or be his bride!--Never! I have given
my answer, and gladly I welcome my fate. I have solemnly bade farewell
to this world.----
"No! My tyrant is not so merciful. He has this moment sent to 'command'
(that is the word)--to command my presence in the church; as he is about
to march against the enemy, and he must be master of my hand before he
takes the field. The troops are already preparing for the march. I hear
the drums beating. But one short hour is given me to prepare. Would I
were dead!
"There are times when the soul longs to quit her tenement; when the
brain sees visions; when the heart feels bursting; when a thousand
weapons seem ready for the hand, and a voice of temptation urges to acts
of woe.--Marston, Marston, where are you at this hour?"
The letter fell from my hands. I had the whole scene before my eyes. And
where was I, while the one to whom every affection of my nature was
indissolubly bound, this creature of beauty, fondness, and magnanimity,
was wasting her life in sorrow, in captivity, in the bitterness of the
broken heart? If I could not reproach myself with having increased her
calamities, yet had I assuaged them; had I flown to her rescue; had I
protected her against the cruelties of fortune; had I defied, sword in
hand, the heartless and arrogant villain who had brought her into such
hopeless peril? Those thoughts rushed through my brain in torture, and
it was some time before I could resume the reading of the blotted lines
upon my table. I dreaded their next announcement. I shrank from the pang
of certainty. The next sentence might announce to me that Clotilde had
been compelled by force to a detested marriage;--I dared not hazard the
knowledge.
Yet the recollection, that I was blameless in her trials, at length
calmed me. I felt, that to protect her had been wholly out of my power,
from the day when she left Valenciennes; and, while I honoured the
decision and loftiness of spirit which had led to that self-denying
step, I could lay nothing to my charge but the misfortune of being
unable to convince her mind of the wisdom of disdaining the opinion of
the world. I took up the letter again.
"Another day has passed, of terror and anguish unspeakable. Yet it has
closed in thanksgiving. I have been respited.--I was forced from my
chamber. I was forced to the altar. I was forced to endure the sight of
Montrecour at my side. A revolutionary priest stood prepared to perform
the hateful ceremony. I resisted, I protested, I wept in vain. The
chapel was thronged with revolutionary soldiers, who, regarding me as an
aristocrat, were probably incapable of feeling any sympathy with my
sufferings. I was hopeless. But, during the delay produced by my
determination to die rather than yield, I could see confusion growing
among the spectators. I heard the hurried trampling of cavalry through
the streets. Drums and trumpets began to sound in all quarters. The
tumult evidently increased. I could perceive even in the stony features
of Montrecour, his perplexity at being detained from showing himself at
the head of the troops; and with senses wound to their utmost pitch by
the anxiety of the moment, I thought that I could perceive the distant
shouts of an immense multitude advancing to the walls. Aide-de-camp
after aide-de-camp now came hurrying in--each with a fresh summons to
the general. He alternately threatened, insulted, and implored me. But
no measure or entreaty on earth could make me consent. At length I heard
a heavy fire of cannon, followed by the shattering of houses and the
outcries of the people. The batteries of the town soon returned the
fire, and all was uproar. Montrecour, gnashing his teeth, and with the
look and fury of a fiend, now rushed towards me, and bore me to the feet
of the priest. I felt the light leaving my eyes, and hoped that I was
dying. At that moment a cannon-shot struck the roof, and dashed down a
large portion of its fragments on the floor. The priest and his
attendants, thinking that the whole fabric was falling, made their
escape. Montrecour, with an exclamation full of the bitterness of his
soul, flung me from him, and swearing that my respite should be brief,
darted from the chapel, followed by the soldiers. What words ever
uttered by human lips can tell the gratitude with which I saw myself
left alone, and knelt before the altar covered with ruins!----
"I am now on my way once more, I know not whither. The battle continued
during the day; and the sights and sounds were almost too much for the
human senses to bear. At night the Royalists stormed the outworks of the
fortress; and, to prevent our release on the capitulation, the prisoners
were sent away in the darkness. As our carriage passed the gates, I saw
Montrecour borne in, wounded. The spirit of the insulter was in him
still. He ordered the soldiers to bring his litter near me, and in a
voice faint through pain, but bitter with baffled revenge, he
murmured--'Countess, you shall not have long to indulge in your
caprices. My hurts are trifling. You are still in my power.'
"What a hideous desolation is war! We have just passed through one of
the forest villages, which, but a few days since, must have been
loveliness itself.--Vineyards, gardens, a bright stream, a rustic chapel
on a hill--every thing shaped for the delight of the eye! But a
desperate skirmish had occurred there between the retreating Republicans
and their pursuers, and all that man could ruin was ruined. The cottages
were all in ashes, the gardens trampled, the vineyards cut down for the
fires of the bivouac, the chapel was even smouldering still, and the
river exhibited some frightful remnants of what were once human beings.
Not a living soul was to be seen. A dog was stretched upon the ground,
tearing up with his paws what was probably the grave of his master. At
the sight of the escort, he howled and showed his teeth, in evident fury
at their approach; a dragoon fired his pistol at him--fortunately missed
him; and the dog bounded into the thicket. But when I looked back, I saw
him creep out again, and stretch himself howling upon the grave.
"I write these lines at long intervals, in fear, and only when the
escort are sleeping on their horses' necks, or eating their hurried
meals upon the grass.
"Last night the Royalist army crossed the Loire; and the firing was
continued until morning. The heights all seemed crowned with flame. The
forest in which we had stopped for the night was set on fire in the
conflict, and a large body of the Royalist cavalry skirmished with the
retreating Republicans till morning. It was a night of indescribable
terror; but my personal fears were forgotten in the sorrow for my
honoured and aged companion. She often fainted in my arms; and in this
wilderness, where every cottage is deserted, and where all is flight and
consternation even among the soldiery, what is to become of her? I gazed
upon her feeble frame and sinking countenance, with the certainty that
in a few hours all would be over. How rejoicingly would I share the
quiet of her tomb!"
My eyes filled, and my heart heaved, at a reality of wretchedness so
deep, that I could scarcely conceive it to have passed away. The paper
fell from my hands. My mind was in the forest. I saw the pursuit. The
firing rang in my ears; and in the midst of this shock of flying and
fighting men, I saw Clotilde wiping the dews of death from the brow of
her helpless relative.
The illusion was almost strengthened at this moment, by the flashing of
a strong and sudden light across the ceiling of the chamber, and the
trampling of a body of troops by torchlight, entering the Castle gates.
A squadron of dragoons had arrived, escorting a carriage. Even my glance
at the buildings of the Castle-square could scarcely recall me to the
truth of the locality; until an aide-de-camp knocked at my door, with a
request from the viceroy that I should see him as soon as possible.
Safely locking up my precious record, I followed him.
There was a ball on that night in the Castle, and our way to the private
apartments of his excellency leading through the state saloon, the whole
brilliant display struck upon my eyes at once. By what strange love of
contrast is it, that the human mind is never more open to the dazzling
effects of beauty, splendour, and gaiety than when it has been wrapt in
the profoundest sorrow? Are the confines of joy and anguish so close? Is
there but a hair's-breadth intervention of some invisible nerve, some
slender web of imagination, between mirth and melancholy? The Irish are
a handsome race, and none more enjoy, or are more fitted by nature or
temper, for all the ornamental displays of society; a Castle ball was
always a glittering exhilaration of lustre and beauty. But I had seen
all this before. To-night they mingled with the tenderness which the
perusal of Clotilde's letter had shed over all my feelings. As the dance
moved before my eye, as the music echoed round me, as I glanced on the
walls, filled with the memories of all the gallant and the great, whose
names lived in the native history of hundreds of years, I imagined the
woman with whom I had now connected all my hopes of happiness, moving in
the midst of that charmed circle, brilliant in all the distinctions of
her birth, admired for her accomplished loveliness, and yet giving me
the whole tribute of a noble heart, grateful for the devotion of all its
thoughts to her happiness. I involuntarily paused, and, leaning against
one of the gilded pillars of that stately hall, gave unrestrained way to
this waking dream.
My conference with the viceroy was soon concluded. The prisoner had
commanded a body of insurgents, who, after some partial successes, had
been broken and dispersed. The leader, in his desperate attempts to
rally them, had been severely wounded, and taken on the field. From the
papers found on his person, an important clue to the principal
personages and objects of the revolt was promised; and I proceeded to
the place of temporary detention to examine the prisoner. What an utter
breaking up of the vision which had so lately absorbed all my faculties!
What a contrast; was now before me to the pomps and pleasures of the
fete! On a table, in the guard-house, lay a human form, scarcely visible
by the single dim light which flickered over it from the roof. Some of
the dragoons, covered with the marks of long travel, and weary, were
lounging on the benches, or gazing on the unhappy countenance which lay,
as if in sleep or death, before them. A sabre wound had covered his
forehead with gore, which, almost concealing all his features, rendered
him a hideous spectacle. Even the troopers, though sufficiently
indignant at the very name of rebel, either respected the singular
boldness of his defence, or stood silenced by the appalling nature of
the sight. All hope of obtaining any information from him was given up;
he was evidently insensible, and all that I could do was done, in
placing him in the care of the medical practitioner in attendance on the
Household, and ordering that he should have every accommodation
consistent with his safe-keeping for the time.
I returned to my chamber, and was again lost in the outpourings of a pen
which had all the candour of a dying confession. Clotilde was again
murmuring in my ear those solemn thoughts, which she believed that she
was writing only to be trampled in the mazes of a French forest. Her
last words were--
"Marston, Marston, we shall never meet again! In my days of
wretchedness, I have sometimes wept over the resolution by which I tore
myself away from you. But every calmer thought has strengthened me in
the consciousness, that I could give no higher proof of the honour, the
homage, the fond and fervent affection, of my soul. I dared not be a
burden on your tenderness, or an obstacle to your natural distinction.
What could I, helpless, houseless, fortuneless, be but a weight upon
that buoyancy and ambition of eminence which marks superior natures for
the superior honours of life. I relinquished the first object of my
heart, and in that act I still take a melancholy pride. I showed you of
what sacrifices I am capable for your sake. But what sacrifice is too
vast for the heart of woman? Farewell! you will never see me more.
"CLOTILDE DE TOURVILLE."
During that night I found it impossible to rest; I continued alternately
reading those fragments, walking up and down my chamber, and gazing on
the skies. The cavalry torches still illumined the Castle-square; the
blaze from the windows of the ball-room still poured its steady radiance
on the gardens; and the pure serenity of a rising moon shone over all.
Captivity, luxury, and the calm glory of the heavens, were at once
before me. Feverish with pain and pleasure, pressed with the anxieties
of state, and filled with solemn and spiritualized contemplation, I
continued gazing from my casement until the torches and the lights of
the fete had decayed, and the moonbeams had grown pale before the first
flush of dawn. The sounds of life now came upon the cool air, and I was
again in the world.
The eventful day was come--the day which I had longed for with such
ceaseless impatience through years of trial--the day of which, among
scenes the most disturbing, the most perilous, and the most glittering,
I had never lost sight for a moment--the day which I had followed with a
fond and fixed eye, as the pilgrim gazes on the remote horizon where
stands the shrine he loves--it was come at last; and yet, such are the
strange varieties and trembling sensibilities of human feelings, I now
felt awed, uncertain, and almost alarmed, at its arrival. Before its
close, I was to see the being in whom my existence was involved. When I
had met Clotilde last, her sentiments for me were as devoted as were
those expressed in her letter; yet she had repelled my declarations,
sacrificed my happiness to a high-toned enthusiasm, and rejected all the
supplications of an honourable heart, under the promptings of a spirit
too noble to be called pride, yet with all the effect of the haughtiest
disdain.
Still the hour advanced, and I sent a note by her attendant, soliciting
an interview. Her hotel was within a short distance; yet no answer came.
I grew more and more reluctant to approach her without her direct
permission. There are thousands who will not comprehend this
nervousness, but they are still ignorant of the power of real passion.
True affection is the most timid thing in the world. At length, unable
to endure this fever of the soul, I determined to make the trial at
once, enter her presence, make a final declaration of all my hopes and
fears, and hear my fate once for all.
I was on the point of leaving my chamber for the purpose, when a message
from the viceroy stopped me. The prisoner whom I had seen brought in
during the night was to be examined before the privy council, and my
presence was essential. Fate, or fortune, seemed always to thwart me,
and I followed the messenger. The prisoner was led into the council-room
just as I entered; and at the first glance I recognised him as the
unhappy being whom I had so strangely met in the North, and whose
romance of rebellion had so deeply excited my interest. His features,
which, in the night, disfigured with dust and blood, I had been unable
to distinguish, now exhibited their original aspect, that cast of
mingled melancholy and daring which marked him at once as conscious of
the perils of his career, and resolved to encounter them to the
uttermost. His tribunal was formed of the first men of the country, and
they treated him with the dignity of justice. His conduct was suitable
to this treatment--calm, decided, and with more the manner of a
philosopher delivering deliberate opinions on the theory of government,
than of a desperate contemner of authority, and the head of a stern and
fierce conspiracy against the settled state of things. He cast his deep
and powerful glance round the council-board; as if to measure the
capacities of the men with whom he had once prepared himself to contend
for national supremacy; but I could not discover that he had any
recollection of me. I knew him well; and if ever painter or sculptor had
desired to fix in canvass or marble the ideal grandeur of magnificent
conspiracy, there stood its model. He spoke without the slightest
appearance of alarm, and spoke long and ably, in explanation of his
views; for he disdained all justification of them. He acknowledged their
total failure, but still contended for their original probability of
success, and for their natural necessity as the restoratives of Ireland.
He was listened to with the forbearance alike arising from compassion
for the fate he had thus chosen, and respect for the singular talent
which he displayed in this crisis of his fate. Man honours fortitude in
all its shapes. The criminal was almost forgotten in the eloquent
enthusiast; and while, with his deep and touching voice, and eager but
most expressive gesture, he poured out his glowing dreams, revelled in
brilliant impossibilities, and created scenes of national regeneration,
as high-coloured as the glories of a tropical sunset; they suffered him
to take his full range, and develop the whole force of that vivid
imagination, whose flame alike lured him into the most dangerous paths
of political casualty, and blinded him to their palpable dangers. He
concluded by declaring a total contempt for life; pronouncing, that with
the loss of his political hopes it had lost its value, and making but
one request to the council, that, "since fortune had flung him into the
hands of their law, its vengeance might be done upon him with the least
possible delay."
He was now removed; and a feeling of regret and admiration followed his
removal. But his crime was undeniable, the disturbance of the public
mind was too serious to allow of any relaxation in the rigour of
justice; and I gave my unwilling signature to his final consignment to
the state prison.
I was now once again disengaged from the fetters of office; and,
resolved not to spend another day of suspense, I drove to the hotel. I
found it crowded with families which had fled from their houses in the
country in the first alarm of the insurrection; and in the midst of the
good-humoured but unmanageable tumults of a great household of Irish
strangers, was forced to make my own way at last. In passing along the
gallery, my eye was caught by a valise laid outside one of the parlours,
and corded, as for an immediate departure. It was marked with "La
Comtesse de Tourville." I knocked gently at the door. I was unanswered.
I touched it--it gave way, and I stood on the threshold. Before me, at a
table, sat a female figure writing, with her face turned from me, and
apparently so deeply engaged as not to have heard my entrance. But I
should have known her among a million. I pronounced her name. She
started up, in evident alarm at the intrusion. But in the next moment,
her pale countenance was flushed by nature's loveliest rose, and she
held forth her hand to me. All my fears vanished with that look and the
touch of that hand. All the language of earth would not have told me
half what they told at that moment. Of this I say no more. It was the
golden moment of my life; I make no attempt to describe our interview,
to describe the indescribable.
I returned to the Castle a new being. The burden which had weighed so
long upon my spirits was removed. The root of bitterness, which
continually sent up its noxious vegetation in the midst of the most
flattering hopes of my public existence, was now extirpated; I was
secure in the full confidence of one of the loveliest and the
noblest-hearted of human beings. And yet how narrowly had I escaped the
loss of all? Clotilde, hopeless of ever hearing of me more, had formed
the determination to leave Ireland on that day; and weary of
disappointed affections, and alienated from the world, to change her
name, abjure her rank, and take the veil in one of the Italian convents
connected with her family. I should thus have lost her for ever. She had
waited on this eventful day only for the return of her domestic. His
arrest on the night before had deranged her plans; and when he had
returned, his mixture of French verbiage and Irish raptures, his
guard-house terrors and his Castle feasting, formed a melange so
unintelligible, that she was compelled to believe him under the
influence of a spell--that spell which is supposed to inspire so much of
the wit and wisdom of one of the cleverest and most _bizarre_ regions of
a moonstruck world. Even my note only added to her perplexity. It was
given by Monsieur Hannibal with such a magniloquent description of the
palace in which he found me, and which he fully believed to be my
own--of the royal retinue surrounding my steps--of my staff of
glittering officers, and the battalions and brigades of my body-guard;
that while she smiled at his narrative, she was perfectly convinced of
his derangement. But all this had luckily produced delay; and the hour
came when her past anxieties were to be exchanged for the faith and
fondness of one who knew her infinite value, and was determined to
devote his life to embellishing and cheering every hour of her
existence.
We were married; and I had the delight and honour of introducing
Clotilde into a circle of rank and lustre equal to the highest of her
native country. The monarchy of France was long since in the tomb; its
nobility were wanderers over the face of the earth. The fortunes, the
hopes, the honours, all but the name of her distinguished family, had
gone down in the general wreck. But now was given to me the joyous duty
of replacing, by the purest and fondest of all rights, all that the
chances of the world had taken away. I thought her countenance lovelier
than ever. It exhibited some slight evidence of the deep and exhausting
trials which she had so long endured; it was pale, yet the paleness
reminded me of the exquisite hue of some of those fine sculptures which
the Italian chisel has given for the admiration of mankind. Its
expression, too, had assumed a loftier character than even when its
first glance struck my young imagination. It had shared something of the
elevation of a mind noble by nature, but rendered still loftier and more
intellectual by being thrown on its own resources. Yet all this was for
society. Her courtly air, inherited from an ancestry of princes; her
manners, which retained the piquant animation of her own country,
combined with the graver elegance of high life in ours; that
incomparable taste in dress, which seems the inheritance of French
beauty; and the sparkling happiness of language, scarcely less the gift
of her native soil, made her conspicuous from the first moment of her
introduction to the circle of the Castle.
But it was in our quiet and lonely hours that I saw the still more
captivating aspects of her nature; when neither the splendid Countess de
Tourville, nor the woman of brilliant conversation was before me, but an
innocent and loving girl--no Armida, no dazzling mistress of the spells
which intoxicate the heart by bewildering the mind; but a sweet and
guileless creature in the first bloom of being, full of nature, full of
simplicity, full of truth. How often, in those days of calm delight,
have I seen her fine eyes suddenly fill with tears of thankful joy, her
cheek glow with fond gratitude, her heart labour with the unutterable
language of secure and sacred love! What hours can be placed in
comparison with such hours of wedded confidence! It was then that I
first became acquainted with the nature of the female heart. I then
first knew the treasures which the spirit of woman may contain--the hope
against hope, the generous faith, the unfailing constancy, the deep
affection. How often, when glancing round our superb apartments, crowded
with all the glittering and costly equipment of almost royal life, she
would clasp my hand, and touchingly contrast them with the solitude of
the cell, or the anxieties of the life of trial "from which I alone had
rescued her!" How often, when we sat together, uninterrupted by the
world, at our sumptuous table, would she, half sportively and half in
melancholy, contrast it with the life of flight and fear which she had
so lately led, with the rude repast snatched in forests and swamps, in
the midst of civil war, with desolation round her and despair in
prospect, imprisoned, in the power of a tyrant, and, at every step,
approaching nearer to the place of a cruel death! Then a look would
thank me more than all the eloquence in the world. Then I saw her eyes
brighten, and her cheek bloom with new lustre and beauty unknown before,
until I could have almost fallen at her feet and worshipped. I felt the
whole supremacy of woman, with the whole homage of the heart of man.
A change in the British cabinet, by the death of one of its leading
members, now produced a change in the viceroyalty; and the charge of the
government, during the interregnum, necessarily devolved on the
secretary. I never felt business more irksome than at this juncture, and
I had, more than once, grave thoughts of casting aside the staff of
office in spite of all its gilding, withdrawing from the disturbances of
public life, and, with Clotilde at my side, finding some quiet corner of
England, or the earth, where we might sit under our own vine and our own
fig-tree, and forget revolutions and court-days for the rest of our
lives.
But against this my young and lovely partner protested, with all the
spirit of her ancestry; declaring that, though nothing would give her
more unfeigned delight than to quit courts and cities, and fashion and
fetes, for ever, if I quitted them along with her--she could not endure
the thought of my allowing "the talents which nature had given to me,
and the opportunities which had been so liberally offered by fortune,"
to perish useless to the world. I had no answer to offer but that I had
made her the arbitress of my fate, and she was welcome to do with me as
was her sovereign will. Accordingly I left her, looking like Hebe in her
bower, to plunge into a chaos of undecipherable papers, to be deafened
with a thousand impossible applications, to marshal lazy departments, to
reform antiquated abuses, and, after spending twelve hours a-day in the
dust and gloom of official duty, to spend nearly as many hours of the
night battling with arrogant and angry faction in the House of Commons.
But this toil, like most other toils, had its fruits; it gave me an
extraordinary increase of public influence, and that influence produced,
in the natural course of such things, an extraordinary crop of
adherents. If I could have drunk adulation, no man was in more imminent
hazard of mystifying his own brains. I began to be spoken of as one
equal to the highest affairs of the state, and to whom the viceroyalty
itself lay naturally open. But I still longed for a return to England.
Delighted as I was with the grace of the higher ranks, amused with the
perpetual whim and eccentricity of the lower, and feeling that general
attachment to Ireland which every man not disqualified by loss of
character must feel, my proper position was in that country where my
connexions, my companionships, and my habits, had been formed. A new
viceroy was announced; and I solicited my recall. But I had still one
remarkable duty to undergo.
The northern insurrection had sunk, and sunk with a rapidity still more
unexpected than the suddenness of its rise. The capture of its leader
was a blow at the heart, and it lost all power at the instant. In the
Castle all was self-congratulation, and the officials talked of the
revolt with as much scorn as if there existed no elements of discord in
the land. But I was not quite so easily inclined to regard all things
through the skirts of the rainbow which had succeeded the storm; however
unwilling to check the national exultation among a people who are as
fond of painting the world _couleur de rose_ as the French; laugh as
much, and enjoy their laugh much more--my communications with England
constantly warned ministers of the hazard of new insurrections, on a
broader, deeper, and more desolating scale. Even my brief tour of the
island had shown me, that there were materials of wilder inflammability
in the bosom of the south than in the north. The northern revolt was
like the burning of a house--the whole was before the eye, the danger
might be measured at a glance, the means of extinction might operate
upon it in their full power, and when the materials of the house were in
ashes, the conflagration died. But the southern insurrection was the
burning of a coalmine--a fire ravaging where human skill could scarcely
gain access, kindled among stores of combustion scarcely to be
calculated by human experience, growing fiercer the deeper it
descended, and at every new burst undermining the land, and threatening
to carry down into its gulfs all that was stately or venerable on the
surface of the soil.
I continued to represent that the north had revolted only on theories of
government, metaphysical reveries, pamphleteering abstractions--food too
thin to nurture the fierce firmness by which conspiracy is to be carried
forward into triumph; while the south pondered on real or fancied
injuries, which wounded the pride of every peasant within its
borders.--That the one took up arms for republicanism, the feeblest of
all temptations to national resistance; while the other brooded over a
sense of wrong, in visions of revenge for hereditary rights, and the
hopes of restoring the fallen supremacy of its religion--motives, in
every age, the most absorbing among the wild impulses of man. I
repeatedly warned the Irish cabinet against an outbreak, which, if it
succeeded, must convulse the empire; and which, even if it failed, must
cost the heaviest sacrifices to the country. My advice was answered by
professions of perfect security, and magnanimous declarations of the
wisdom of extinguishing peril by exhibiting the absence of fear! My part
was now done, and I was thenceforth to be only a spectator. But the
course of things was not to be controlled by the confidence of cabinets.
The sun went down, notwithstanding the government conviction that it
would shine through the whole twenty-four hours; the political night
came, as regularly as the night of nature, and with it came the march of
tens of thousands of political lunatics, as brave as lions, though as
incapable of discipline. My prediction was formidably fulfilled: the
firebrand and the pike ravaged the land; blood flowed in torrents; and
when the country returned to its senses, and the light of common sense
once more dawned, ministers and people alike had only the melancholy
office of burying the common offences in that great resting-place where
the faults of the past generation are marked by tombs, and where the
wisdom of the future is to be learned only from inscriptions recording
the frailty of all that lived before.
The conspiracy which it had fallen to my lot to extinguish had been
brief and local. The half-Scottish population among whom it broke out,
were among the most sharp-witted and well-informed subjects of the
empire; and they had no sooner made the discovery, that government was
awake, than they felt the folly of attempting to encounter the gigantic
strength of the monarchy, and postponed their republican dreams to a
"fitter season." The time now approached when the leader of the Northern
insurrection was to be brought to trial; and hostile as I was to the
effects of his enthusiasm, I took no trivial interest in the individual.
Still, to set him at liberty was palpably impossible; and my only
resource was, to give him such aid in this extremity of his career as
could be given by lightening the severities of his prison, and providing
him with the means of securing able counsel. I had now an opportunity of
seeing, for the first time, the genius of this singular people displayed
under a new and brilliant form--the eloquence of the bar.
In England the Bar holds a high rank; from its essential value to the
maintenance of public right in a country, where every possession,
property, and principle of man comes continually in the shape of a
question of right, and where the true supremacy is in the law. But in
Ireland, the spirit of the nation compensated for the deficiency of
power in the law; and the bar was, _par excellence_, the profession of
the gentleman. This gave it the highest tone of personal manners. But it
had another incentive, still more characteristic. The House of Commons
was in the closest connexion with the bar. It was scarcely more than a
higher bar. All the principal men of that House had either been educated
for the profession, or were actually practising barristers; and as the
distinctions of the senate were more dazzling, as well as more rapidly
attainable, than those of the law, the force of the profession was
thrown into parliamentary life. The result was, a reflected influence on
both; the learning of the bar invigorating the logic of the debates, the
eloquence of the debates enriching and elevating the eloquence of the
courts of law. At this period the Courts abounded with eloquent men, who
would have been distinguished at any tribunal on earth; but, while some
might exhibit keener argument, and others more profound learning, the
palm of forensic eloquence was universally conceded to one. Need I
pronounce the name of Curran? Take him for all in all, he was the most
extraordinary example of natural faculties that I have ever known. All
the chief orators of that proud day of oratory had owed much to study,
much to circumstances, and much to the stimulus of great topics, a great
cause, and a great theatre for their display. When Burke spoke, he had
the world for his hearers.--He stood balancing the fates of empires; his
voice reached to the bosom of all the cabinets of civilized nations; and
with the office of a prophet, he almost inevitably adopted the majestic
language, and seized the awful and magnificent views of the prophet.
This is no depreciation of the powers of that immortal mind; for what
can be a higher praise than that, with the largest sphere of duty before
him perhaps ever opened to man, he was found equal to the fullness of
his glorious task? Sheridan, too, was awakened to a consciousness of his
own powers by the national voice raised against Indian delinquencies. He
had a subject teeming with the loftiest materials of oratory--the
sufferings of princes, the mysteries of Oriental superstition, the wild
horrors of barbaric tyranny, the fall of thrones, once dazzling the eye
and the mind with all the splendours of Oriental empire; himself the
chosen pleader for India, in the presence of the assembled rank,
dignity, and authority of England. There can be no question of the
genius which showed itself competent to so illustrious a labour. But the
materials were boundless; the occasion was a summons to all the energies
of the human intellect; never was the draught of human praise, the spell
of that enchantress which holds the spirit of men in most undisputed
sway, presented to the lip in a more jewelled goblet.
But Curran spoke almost wholly deprived of those resistless stimulants;
his topics were comparatively trivial--the guilt of provincial
conspiracy, incurred by men chiefly in the humbler ranks of life, and in
all instances obscure. No great principles of national right were to
live or die upon the success of his pleading; no distressed nation held
him as its advocate; no impregnable barrier against oppression in Europe
or Asia was to be inscribed with his name. He was simply the advocate in
the narrow courts of a dependent kingdom--humiliated by the hopeless
effort to rescue a succession of unfortunate beings whose lives were in
the grasp of justice--compressed on every side by localities of time,
habit, and opinion; and thwarted alike by the clamour of prejudice and
the frowns of authority. Yet his speeches at the bar are matchless, to
this hour. His creative powers seemed to rejoice in the very emptiness
of the space which they were to fill with life, lustre, and beauty. Of
all the great speakers, his images arose from the simplest conceptions;
while they rapidly wrought themselves into magnitude and splendour. They
reminded me of the vapours rising from the morning field--thin, vague,
and colourless, but suddenly seized by the wind, swelling into volume,
and ascending till they caught the sunbeams, and shone with the purple
and gold of the summer cloud. This trial of the unfortunate rebel leader
gave him a signal opportunity for the exertion of his extraordinary
faculties. It had excited the deepest interest throughout the country.
Thousands had flocked from all parts of the land to be present at a
crisis which involved the national feelings in the highest degree; which
involved the personal safety of individuals, perhaps of a much superior
rank to the accused; and, above all, which seemed to fix the stamp of
public justice on the guilt or impunity of opinions long cherished by
the mind of Ireland. As the day of the trial approached, physiognomies
were seen in the streets, which showed that individuals were brought
together by the event who had never been seen in the metropolis before.
The stern, hard, but sagacious countenances of the north contrasted with
the broad, open, and bold features of the south; and those again
contrasted with the long, dark, and expressive visages of the west,
which still give indelible evidence of their Spanish origin. Many of
those men who now filled the busy thoroughfares of the capital, had come
from the remotest corners of Ireland, as if to stand their own trial.
The prisoner at the bar was their representative; his cause was their
cause; his judgment the decision of the tribunal on their principles;
his fate an anticipation of their own.
As I pressed on to the noble building where the trial was to take
place--one of the stateliest examples of architectural grace and dignity
in a city distinguished for the beauty of its public buildings--it was
impossible to avoid being struck with the general look of popular
restlessness. The precaution of government had called in a large
military force to protect the general tranquillity, and the patrols of
cavalry and the frequent passing of troops to their posts, created a
perpetual movement in the streets. The populace gathered in groups,
which, rapidly dissolving at the approach of the soldiery, as rapidly
assembled again, when they had passed by; street minstrels of the most
humble description were plying their trade with a remorseless exertion
of lungs; I heard the names of the Parliamentary leaders and the
government frequently transpiring in those rough specimens of the
popular taste; and from the alternate roars of fierce laughter and
bursts of wild indignation which arose from the groups, it was evident
that "men and measures" were not spared. The aspect of the multitude in
the vicinity of the Law Courts was still more disturbed. Rebellion has a
physiognomy of its own, and I had by this time learned to read it with
tolerable fidelity to nature. It always struck me as of a wholly
different character from that of the vice or the violence of the people.
It wears a thoughtful air; the lips seem to have a secret enclosed, the
eye is lowering, the step unsteady, the man exhibits a consciousness of
danger from the glance or tread of every passer-by. His visage is
sullen, stern, and meditative--I can scarcely allow this conception to
be a work of fancy, for I have never been deceived in my readings of
that most expressive of all betrayers of the inner man. And on this day,
I could have predicted the preparation for some general and reckless
rising against government, on the first opportunity when it should be
found slumbering on its post: and my prediction would have been true.
The court was crowded, and it was with no small difficulty that I was
enabled to reach the seat beside the judge, which had been provided for
me. The arraignment and preparatory routine of the trial gave time for
the court to subside into order; and the address of the principal
law-officer for the prosecution, though exciting the deepest anxiety,
was listened to in the most respectful silence. The case was strong, and
was ably dealt with by the attorney-general. The evidence was clear and
complete, and the hope of an acquittal seemed to be gradually abandoned
in the expressive gloom of the spectators. The prisoner at the bar, too,
seemed more dejected than I had presumed from his former intrepidity;
and the few glances which I could suffer myself to give to a being in
his calamitous condition, showed me a frequent writhing of the lip, a
clenching of the teeth, and a nervous contraction of the features, which
looked like despair. At length the counsel for the defence rose. It was
the first instance of my seeing the memorable Curran engaged in his
profession. I had met him from time to time in general society, and felt
the delight which all experienced in his unfailing spirits and brilliant
pleasantry. I had hitherto enjoyed him as the wit. I was now to be
dazzled, delighted, and overwhelmed by him as the orator.
Curran was the last man to be judged of by appearances. Nature had been
singularly unkind to his exterior, as if the more to astonish us by the
powers of the man within. His figure was undersized, his visage brown,
hard, and peasantlike, his gesture was a gesticulation, and his voice
was alternately feeble and shrill. His whole effect was to be derived
from means, with which that little meagre frame and sharp treble had
nothing to do. But he had a singularly vivid eye. It was of the deepest
black, and such was the intensity of its expression in his more
impassioned moments, that it was scarcely an exaggeration to say that it
shot fire. Still, a stranger would have regarded him chiefly as a
humorist, from the glances of sly sarcasm, and even of open ridicule
which he cast round the court during the pleadings of some of his
"learned brethren." But, in that court his true faculties were known;
and the moment of his rising, careless as was his attitude, and listless
the look which he gave as he turned from his brief to the jury, was the
signal for universal silence, and the fixing of every eye upon the great
pleader.
He began by sweeping away the heap of useless facts and forensic
prolixities with which his predecessors had encumbered the case; and
nothing could be more admirable than the dexterity with which he seized
on the most casual circumstances tending to clear the character of the
accused. But it was when he arrived at higher topics that he displayed
his genius.
"_Nunc in ovilia, mox in reluctantes dracones._" It was when, from
developing the ignorance and contradictions of the informer by whom the
charge of conspiracy was sustained, he rushed to the attack on the
general system of the Irish government, that I saw him in full vigour.
He denounced it as the source of all the tumults which had of late years
shaken the "isle from its propriety." "Here was the fount," said he,
"from which flowed the waters of bitterness, not the less bitter that I
can trace its wanderings through centuries of national desolation,
through fields of blood, through the graves of generations." After
giving the most daring outline of what he termed the evils of the local
sovereignty of Ireland, he surprised me into sudden acquiescence and
involuntary admiration, by a panegyric on the principles of British
government in the more favoured island--on "the majestic supremacy of
the law, extending over all things, sustaining all things, administering
life and health and purity to all; a moral atmosphere, and though
invisible, like the physical, yet irresistible in its strength,
penetrating through the whole national existence, and carrying on
undisturbed and perpetual, in the day and night of empire, all the great
processes of national animation and prosperity." Then, suddenly darting
away from this lofty and solemn view, he indulged in some wild story of
native humour, which convulsed the whole audience with laughter. Yet,
before the burst had subsided, he touched another string of that harp
which so magically responded to the master's hand. He described the long
career of calamity through which an individual born with a glowing
heart, brilliant faculties, and an aspiring spirit, must struggle, in a
country filled with the pride of independence, and yet for ages in the
condition of a province. Some part of his pathos in this sketch was
probably borrowed from his own early difficulties; and I heard, poured
out with the touching vehemence of painful reality, probably the very
meditations which had preyed upon the heart of the student in his
chamber, or darkened his melancholy walks in the cloisters of the
Temple. But he suddenly started on a new train of thought; and
reprobated with the loftiest rebuke, that state of the law which, while
it required two witnesses for the proof of treason in England, was
content with one in Ireland. This he branded with every name of
indignant vituperation, frequently adopted, according to his habit, from
the most familiar conceptions; yet, by their familiarity, striking the
mind with astonishing force. He called it "playing at pushpin with the
lives of men"--"the reading-made-easy of judicial murder"--"the 'rule of
three' of forensic assassination;--given, a villain, multiplied by a
false oath, the product, an execution!" He now revelled in the boldest
extravagances of imagery and language, expressions which, written, might
resemble the burlesque of a public jester, or the wildness of a
disturbed mind, but which were followed by the audience, whom he had
heated up to the point of passion, with all but acclamation. Still he
revelled on. His contrasts and comparisons continued to roll out upon
each other. Some noble, some grotesque, but all effective. After one
dazzling excursion into the native history, in which he contrasted the
aboriginal hospitality and rude magnificence of the old Irish chieftain,
the Tir-Owen or O'Nial, with the chilling halls of the modern absentee;
he suddenly changed his tone, and wandered away into a round of
fantastic, and almost frolicsome pleasantries, which shook even the
gravity of the bench. Then, suddenly checking himself, and drawing his
hand across his brow to wipe away a tear--for even the hard-headed
lawyer was not always on his guard against the feeling of the moment--he
upbraided himself, and the bystanders, for the weakness of being
attracted by any lighter conception, while the calamities of Ireland
were demanding all their sympathies. And even this he did in his
characteristic manner. "Alas!" said he, in a voice which seemed sinking
with a sense of misfortune, "why do _I_ jest? and why do _you_ smile?
Or, are we for ever to be the victims of our national propensity, to be
led away by trivialties? We tickle ourselves with straws, when we should
be arming for the great contests of national minds. We are ready to be
amused with the twang of the Jew's harp, when we should be yearning for
the blast of the trumpet. You remind me, and I remind myself, of the
scene at one of our country-wakes. It is the true portrait of our
fruitless mixture of levity and sorrow. We come to mourn, and we are
turned to merriment by the first jest. We sit under the roof of death,
yet we are as ready to laugh as ever. The corpse of Ireland is before
our eyes: we fling a few flowers over its shroud, and then we eat,
drink, and are merry. Must it be for ever pronounced--that we are a
frivolous and fickle race--that the Irishman remains a voluntary beggar,
with all the bounties of nature round him; unknown to fame, with genius
flashing from his eyes; humiliated, with all the armoury of law and
liberty open to his hands; and laughing, laughing on, when the only echo
is from the chambers of the grave?"
The orator dropped his head on his clasped hands as he spoke the words;
and there was an universal silence for a while. It was interrupted by a
groan of agony from the prisoner. All eyes were instantly turned to the
dock, and the spectacle there was startling. He seemed writhing under
intolerable torture. His hands clung eagerly to the front of the dock,
as if to sustain him; his lips were as colourless clay, but his features
and forehead were of the most feverish crimson. At first the general
impression was, that he had been overcome by a sense of his perilous
state; but it was soon evident that his pangs were more physical than
moral. Curran now flung his brief upon the table, and hurried to his
side. A few words passed between them, inaudible to the court; but they
had the unexpected effect of apparently restoring the sufferer to
complete tranquillity. He again stood erect; his brow, and it was a
noble one, resumed its marble smoothness; his features grew calm, and
his whole aspect returned to the stern and moveless melancholy of an
antique statue.
The advocate went back to his place, and commenced a singularly
dexterous attempt to avert the sentence, by an appeal to the national
feelings. "If," said he, "my client had been charged with any of those
crimes which effect their object by individual injury, I should disdain
to offer a defence, which could be accomplished only by confounding the
principles of right and wrong. But here is an instance in which the
noblest mind might err, in which the highest sagacity might be
perplexed, in which the most self-denying virtue might discover nothing
but a voluntary sacrifice." The problem before his client was "the
proudest that had ever occupied the mind of ancient or modern times. It
was, by what means a patriot might raise his country to the highest
possible elevation. What are the essentials for such a purpose?
Intrepidity, independence of heart, the steadiest perseverance, the
manliest fortitude; all the great qualities of the head and the heart.
Those are the tributes which he must bring to the altar of his country.
But the priest must be prepared himself to be the sacrifice. Is it the
hands of his countrymen that are to bind him to the horns of the altar?"
A sense of this hazardous line of observations, however, soon struck the
keen understanding of the great pleader; and he admitted in all its
fulness the necessity of respecting public tranquillity, of
relinquishing doubtful projects of good, and of studying the prosperity
of a nation, rather through the "microscope of experience" than by
"vague, though splendid, telescopic glances" at times and things beyond
our power. "The man," said he, "who discovers the cause of blight in an
ear of corn, is a greater benefactor to the world than the man who
discovers a new fixed star." From the glow on his countenance, and the
sudden brightness of his eye, I could see that he was about to throw
himself loose on some new current of rich and rapid illustration, when
he was suddenly stopped by a shriek from the dock; the prisoner had
fallen with his head over its front, and seemed gasping in the last
pangs. The drops of torture stood thick on his brow, his eye was glazed,
and his lips continued to quiver, without the power of utterance. The
advocate approached him; the dying man caught him by the hand; and, as
if the touch had restored his faculties at the instant, said, with a
faint smile, and in a low tone, yet so clear as to be audible to the
whole assembly, in the words of Pierre--"We have deceived the senate!"
In the utterance he fell back and died. To escape the ignominy of the
scaffold, the unhappy man, before he came into court, had swallowed
poison!
I speak of Curran, only as I see him through the lapse of years. Time
has had no other effect on my recollection, than raising my estimate of
his genius. I admit, too, that in judging of an extraordinary man, time
may exalt the image as well as confuse the likeness. The haze of years
may magnify all the nobler outlines, while it conceals all that would
enfeeble their dignity. To me, his eloquence now resembles those
midsummer night dreams, in which all is contrast, and all is magical.
Shapes, diminutive and grotesque for a moment, and then suddenly
expanding into majesty and beauty; solitudes startling the eye with
hopeless dreariness, and at a glance converted into the luxury of
landscape, and filled with bowers of perpetual spring. The power of his
contrasts still haunts me; Aladdin's palace, starting from the sands,
was not more sudden, fantastic, or glittering. Where all seemed barren,
and where a thousand other minds would have traversed the waste a
thousand times, and left it as wild and unpeopled as ever; no sooner had
he spoken the spell, than up sprang the brilliant fabric of fancy, the
field was bright with fairy pomp, and the air was filled with genii on
the wing.
Next morning, I was on my road to London.