‘I rushed to the window, I pushed back the blind with precipitation, and

looked round the sacristy: I was there, entirely alone. I looked into

the garden: it was deserted, and the midday wind was wandering among the

flowers. I took courage, I examined all the corners of the room; I

looked behind the praying-desk, which was very large, and I shook all

the sacerdotal vestments which were hanging on the walls; everything was

in its natural condition, and could give me no explanation of what had

just occurred. The sight of all the blood I had lost led me to fancy

that my brain had, probably, been weakened by the hæmorrhage, and that I

had been a prey to some delusion. I retired to my cell, and remained

shut up there until the next day.’

* * * * *

I don’t know whether the reader has been as much struck with the above

mysterious scene as the writer has; but the fancy of it strikes me as

very fine; and the natural _supernaturalness_ is kept up in the best

style. The shutter swaying to and fro, the fitful _light appearing_ over

the furniture of the room, and giving it an air of strange motion--the

awful shadow which passed through the body of the timid young

novice--are surely very finely painted. ‘I rushed to the shutter, and

flung it back: there was no one in the sacristy. I looked into the

garden: it was deserted, and the midday wind was roaming among the

flowers.’ The dreariness is wonderfully described: only the poor pale

boy looking eagerly out from the window of the sacristy, and the hot

midday wind walking in the solitary garden. How skilfully is each of

these little strokes dashed in, and how well do all together combine to

make a picture! But we must have a little more about Spiridion’s

wonderful visitant.

* * * * *

‘As I entered into the garden, I stepped a little on one side, to make

way for a person whom I saw before me. He was a young man of surprising

beauty, and attired in a foreign costume. Although dressed in the large

black robe which the superiors of our order wear, he had, underneath, a

short jacket of fine cloth, fastened round the waist by a leathern belt,

and a buckle of silver, after the manner of the old German students.

Like them, he wore, instead of the sandals of our monks, short tight

boots; and over the collar of his shirt, which fell on his shoulders,

and was as white as snow, hung, in rich golden curls, the most beautiful

hair I ever saw. He was tall, and his elegant posture seemed to reveal

to me that he was in the habit of commanding. With much respect, and yet

uncertain, I half saluted him. He did not return my salute; but he

smiled on me with so benevolent an air, and, at the same time, his eyes,

severe and blue, looked towards me with an expression of such

compassionate tenderness, that his features have never since then passed

away from my recollection. I stopped, hoping he would speak to me, and

persuading myself, from the majesty of his aspect, that he had the power

to protect me; but the monk, who was walking behind me, and who did not

seem to remark him in the least, forced him brutally to step aside from

the walk, and pushed me so rudely as almost to cause me to fall. Not

wishing to engage in a quarrel with this coarse monk, I moved away; but,

after having taken a few steps in the garden, I looked back, and saw the

unknown still gazing on me with looks of the tenderest solicitude. The

sun shone full upon him, and made his hair look radiant. He sighed and

lifted his fine eyes to heaven, as if to invoke its justice in my

favour, and to call it to bear witness to my misery; he turned slowly

towards the sanctuary, entered into the choir, and was lost, presently,

in the shade. I longed to return, in spite of the monk, to follow this

noble stranger, and to tell him my afflictions; but who was he that I

imagined he would listen to them, and cause them to cease? I felt, even

while his softness drew me towards him, that he still inspired me with a

kind of fear; for I saw in his physiognomy as much austerity as

sweetness.’

* * * * *

Who was he?--we shall see that. He was somebody very mysterious indeed:

but our author has taken care, after the manner of her sex, to make a

very pretty fellow of him, and to dress him in the most becoming

costumes possible.

* * * * *

The individual in tight boots and a rolling collar, with the copious

golden locks, and the solemn blue eyes, who had just gazed on Spiridion,

and inspired him with such a feeling of tender awe, is a much more

important personage than the reader might suppose at first sight. This

beautiful, mysterious, dandy ghost, whose costume, with a true woman’s

coquetry, Madame Dudevant has so rejoiced to describe--is her religious

type, a mystical representation of Faith struggling up towards Truth,

through superstition, doubt, fear, reason,--in tight inexpressibles,

with ‘a belt such as is worn by the old German students.’ You will

pardon me for treating such an awful person as this somewhat lightly;

but there is always, I think, such a dash of the ridiculous in the

French sublime, that the critic should try and do justice to both, or he

may fail in giving a fair account of either. This character of

Hebronius, the type of Mrs. Sand’s convictions--if convictions they may

be called--or, at least, the allegory under which her doubts are

represented, is, in parts, very finely drawn; contains many passages of

truth, very deep and touching, by the side of others so entirely absurd

and unreasonable, that the reader’s feelings are continually swaying

between admiration and something very like contempt--always in a kind of

wonder at the strange mixture before him. But let us hear Madame Sand:--

‘Peter Hebronius,’ says our author, ‘was not originally so named.

His real name was Samuel. He was a Jew, and born in a little

village in the neighbourhood of Innspruck. His family, which

possessed a considerable fortune, left him, in his early youth,

completely free to his own pursuits. From infancy he had shown that

these were serious. He loved to be alone; and passed his days, and

sometimes his nights, wandering among the mountains and valleys in

the neighbourhood of his birthplace. He would often sit by the

brink of torrents, listening to the voice of their waters, and

endeavouring to penetrate the meaning which Nature had hidden in

those sounds. As he advanced in years his inquiries became more

curious and more grave. It was necessary that he should receive a

solid education, and his parents sent him to study in the German

universities. Luther had been dead only a century, and his words

and his memory still lived in the enthusiasm of his disciples. The

new faith was strengthening the conquests it had made; the

Reformers were as ardent as in the first days, but their ardour was

more enlightened and more measured. Proselytism was still carried

on with zeal, and new converts were made every day. In listening to

the morality and to the dogmas which Lutheranism had taken from

Catholicism, Samuel was filled with admiration. His bold and

sincere spirit instantly compared the doctrines which were now

submitted to him, with those in the belief of which he had been

bred; and enlightened by the comparison, was not slow to

acknowledge the inferiority of Judaism. He said to himself, that a

religion made for a single people, to the exclusion of all

others--which only offered a barbarous justice for rule of

conduct--which neither rendered the present intelligible nor

satisfactory, and left the future uncertain--could not be that of

noble souls and lofty intellects; and that he could not be the God

of truth who had dictated, in the midst of thunder, his vacillating

will, and had called to the performance of his narrow wishes the

slaves of a vulgar terror. Always conversant with himself, Samuel,

who had spoken what he thought, now performed what he had spoken;

and, a year after his arrival in Germany, solemnly abjured Judaism,

and entered into the bosom of the Reformed Church. As he did not

wish to do things by halves, and desired as much as was in him to

put off the old man and lead a new life, he changed his name of

Samuel to that of Peter. Some time passed, during which he

strengthened and instructed himself in his new religion. Very soon

he arrived at the point of searching for objections to refute, and

adversaries to overthrow. Bold and enterprising, he went at once to

the strongest, and Bossuet was the first Catholic author that he

set himself to read. He commenced with a kind of disdain; believing

that the faith which he had just embraced contained the pure truth,

he despised all the attacks which could be made against it, and

laughed already at the irresistible arguments which he was to find

in the works of the Eagle of Meaux. But his mistrust and irony soon

gave place to wonder first, and then to admiration; he thought that

the cause pleaded by such an advocate must, at least, be

respectable; and, by a natural transition, came to think that great

geniuses would only devote themselves to that which was great. He

then studied Catholicism with the same ardour and impartiality

which he had bestowed on Lutheranism. He went into France to gain

instruction from the professors of the Mother Church as he had from

the doctors of the Reformed creed in Germany. He saw Arnauld,

Fénelon, that second Gregory of Nazianzen, and Bossuet himself.

Guided by these masters, whose virtues made him appreciate their

talents the more, he rapidly penetrated to the depth of the

mysteries of the Catholic doctrine and morality. He found, in this

religion, all that had for him constituted the grandeur and beauty

of Protestantism--the dogmas of the Unity and Eternity of God,

which the two religions had borrowed from Judaism; and, what seemed

the natural consequence of the last doctrine--a doctrine, however,

to which the Jews had not arrived--the doctrine of the immortality

of the soul; free-will in this life; in the next, recompense for

the good, and punishment for the evil. He found, more pure,

perhaps, and more elevated in Catholicism than in Protestantism,

that sublime morality which preaches equality to man, fraternity,

love, charity, renouncement of self, devotion to your neighbour;

Catholicism, in a word, seemed to possess that vast formula, and

that vigorous unity, which Lutheranism wanted. The latter had,

indeed, in its favour, the liberty of inquiry, which is also a want

of the human mind; and had proclaimed the authority of individual

reason: but it had so lost that which is the necessary basis and

vital condition of all revealed religion--the principle of

infallibility; because nothing can live except in virtue of the

laws that presided at its birth; and, in consequence, one

revelation cannot be continued and confirmed without another. Now,

infallibility is nothing but revelation continued by God, or the

Word, in the person of His vicars.

* * * * *

‘At last, after much reflection, Hebronius acknowledged himself entirely

and sincerely convinced, and received baptism from the hands of Bossuet.

He added the name of Spiridion to that of Peter, to signify that he had

been twice enlightened by the Spirit. Resolved thenceforward to

consecrate his life to the worship of the new God who had called him to

Him, and to the study of His doctrines, he passed into Italy, and, with

the aid of a large fortune, which one of his uncles, a Catholic like

himself, had left to him, he built this convent, where we now are.’

* * * * *

A friend of mine, who has just come from Italy, says that he has there

left Messrs. Sp----r, P----l, and W. Dr----d, who were the lights of

the great church in Newman Street, who were themselves apostles, and

declared and believed that every word of nonsense which fell from their

lips was a direct spiritual intervention. These gentlemen have become

Puseyites already, and are, my friend states, in the highway to

Catholicism. Madame Sand herself was a Catholic some time since: having

been converted to that faith along with M. N----, of the Academy of

Music; Mr. L----, the pianoforte player; and one or two other chosen

individuals, by the famous Abbé de la M----. Abbé de la M---- (so told

me, in the diligence, a priest, who read his breviary and gossiped

alternately very curiously and pleasantly) is himself an _âme perdue_:

the man spoke of his brother clergyman with actual horror; and it

certainly appears that the Abbé’s works of conversion have not

prospered; for Madame Sand, having brought her hero (and herself, as we

may presume) to the point of Catholicism, proceeds directly to dispose

of that as she has done of Judaism and Protestantism, and will not

leave, of the whole fabric of Christianity, a single stone standing.

I think the fate of our English Newman Street apostles, and of M. de la

M----, the mad priest, and his congregation of mad converts, should be a

warning to such of us as are inclined to dabble in religious

speculations; for in them, as in all others, our flighty brains soon

lose themselves, and we find our reason speedily lying prostrate at the

mercy of our passions; and I think that Madame Sand’s novel of

_Spiridion_ may do a vast deal of good, and bears a good moral with it;

though not such an one, perhaps, as our fair philosopher intended. For

anything he learned, Samuel-Peter-Spiridion-Hebronius might have

remained a Jew from the beginning to the end. Wherefore be in such a

hurry to set up new faiths? Wherefore, Madame Sand, try and be so

preternaturally wise? Wherefore be so eager to jump out of one religion

for the purpose of jumping into another? See what good this

philosophical friskiness has done you, and on what sort of ground you

are come at last. You are so wonderfully sagacious, that you flounder in

mud at every step; so amazingly clear-sighted, that your eyes cannot see

an inch before you, having put out, with that extinguishing genius of

yours, every one of the lights that are sufficient for the conduct of

common men. And for what? Let our friend Spiridion speak for himself.

After setting up his convent, and filling it with monks, who entertain

an immense respect for his wealth and genius, Father Hebronius,

unanimously elected prior, gives himself up to further studies, and

leaves his monks to themselves. Industrious and sober as they were,

originally, they grow quickly intemperate and idle; and Hebronius, who

does not appear among his flock until he has freed himself of the

Catholic religion, as he has of the Jewish and the Protestant, sees,

with dismay, the evil condition of his disciples, and regrets, too late,

the precipitancy by which he renounced, then and for ever, Christianity.

‘But as he had no new religion to adopt in its place, and as, grown

more prudent and calm, he did not wish to accuse himself

unnecessarily, once more, of inconstancy and apostasy, he still

maintained all the exterior forms of the worship which inwardly he

had abjured. But it was not enough for him to have quitted error,

it was necessary to discover truth. But Hebronius had well look

round to discover it; he could not find anything that resembled it.

Then commenced for him a series of sufferings, unknown and

terrible. Placed face to face with doubt, this sincere and

religious spirit was frightened at its own solitude; and as it had

no other desire nor aim on earth than truth, and nothing else here

below interested it, he lived absorbed in his own sad

contemplations, looking ceaselessly into the vague that surrounded

him like an ocean without bounds, and seeing the horizon retreat

and retreat as ever he wished to near it. Lost in this immense

uncertainty, he felt as if attacked by vertigo, and his thoughts

whirled within his brain. Then, fatigued with his vain toils and

hopeless endeavours, he would sink down depressed, unmanned,

life-wearied, only living in the sensation of that silent grief

which he felt and could not comprehend.’

It is a pity that this hapless Spiridion, so eager in his passage from

one creed to another, and so loud in his profession of the truth,

wherever he fancied that he had found it, had not waited a little,

before he avowed himself either Catholic or Protestant, and implicated

others in errors and follies which might, at least, have been confined

to his own bosom, and there have lain comparatively harmless. In what a

pretty state, for instance, will Messrs. Dr----d and P----l have left

their Newman Street congregation, who are still plunged in their old

superstitions, from which their spiritual pastors and masters have been

set free! In what a state, too, do Mrs. Sand and her brother and sister

philosophers, Templars, Saint-Simonians, Founierites, Lerouxites, or

whatever the sect may be, leave the unfortunate people who have listened

to their doctrines, and who have not the opportunity, or the fiery

versatility of belief, which carries their teachers from one creed to

another, leaving only exploded lies and useless recantations behind

them! I wish the State would make a law that one individual should not

be allowed to preach more than one doctrine in his life; or, at any

rate, should be soundly corrected for every change of creed. How many

charlatans would have been silenced,--how much conceit would have been

kept within bounds,--how many fools, who are dazzled by fine sentences,

and made drunk by declamation, would have remained quiet and sober, in

that quiet and sober way of faith which their fathers held before them!

However, the reader will be glad to learn that, after all his doubts and

sorrows, Spiridion does discover the truth (_the_ truth, what a wise

Spiridion!), and some discretion with it; for, having found among his

monks, who are dissolute, superstitious--and all hate him--one only

being, Fulgentius, who is loving, candid, and pious, he says to him:--

‘If you were like myself, if the first want of your nature were,

like mine, to know, I would, without hesitation, lay bare to you my

entire thoughts. I would make you drink the cup of truth, which I

myself have filled with so many tears, at the risk of intoxicating

you with the draught. But it is not so, alas! you are made to love

rather than to know, and your heart is stronger than your

intellect. You are attached to Catholicism--I believe so, at

least--by bonds of sentiment which you could not break without

pain, and which if you were to break, the truth which I could lay

bare to you in return would not repay you for what you had

sacrificed. Instead of exalting, it would crush you, very likely.

It is a food too strong for ordinary men, and which, when it does

not revivify, smothers. I will not, then, reveal to you this

doctrine, which is the triumph of my life, and the consolation of

my last days; because it might, perhaps, be for you only a cause of

mourning and despair.... Of all the works which my long studies

have produced, there is one alone which I have not given to the

flames; for it alone is complete. In that you will find me entire,

and there LIES THE TRUTH. And, as the sage has said you must not

bury your treasures in a well, I will not confide mine to the

brutal stupidity of these monks. But as this volume should only

pass into hands worthy to touch it, and be laid open for eyes that

are capable of comprehending its mysteries, I shall exact from the

reader one condition, which, at the same time, shall be a proof: I

shall carry it with me to the tomb, in order that he who one day

shall read it, may have courage enough to brave the vain terrors of

the grave, in searching for it amid the dust of my sepulchre. As

soon as I am dead, therefore, place this writing on my breast....

Ah! when the time comes for reading it, I think my withered heart

will spring up again, as the frozen grass at the return of the sun,

and that, from the midst of its infinite transformations, my spirit

will enter into immediate communication with thine!’

* * * * *

Does not the reader long to be at this precious manuscript, which

contains THE TRUTH; and ought he not to be very much obliged to Mrs.

Sand for being so good as to print it for him? We leave all the story

aside: how Fulgentius had not the spirit to read the manuscript, but

left the secret to Alexis; how Alexis, a stern, old, philosophical,

unbelieving monk as ever was, tried in vain to lift the gravestone, but

was taken with fever, and obliged to forgo the discovery; and how,

finally, Angel, his disciple, a youth amiable and innocent as his name,

was the destined person who brought the long-buried treasure to light.

Trembling and delighted, the pair read this tremendous MANUSCRIPT OF

SPIRIDION.

Will it be believed, that of all the dull, vague, windy documents that

mortal ever set eyes on, this is the dullest? If this be absolute truth,

_à quoi bon_ search for it, since we have long, long had the jewel in

our possession, or since, at least, it has been held up as such by every

sham philosopher who has had a mind to pass off his wares on the public?

Hear Spiridion:--

‘How much have I wept, how much have I suffered, how much have I

prayed, how much have I laboured, before I understood the cause and

the aim of my passage on this earth! After many incertitudes, after

much remorse, after many scruples, _I have comprehended that I was

a martyr_!--But why my martyrdom? said I; what crime did I commit

before I was born, thus to be condemned to labour and groaning,

from the hour when I first saw the day up to that when I am about

to enter into the night of the tomb?

‘At last, by dint of imploring God--by dint of inquiry into the

history of man, a ray of the truth has descended on my brow, and

the shadows of the past have melted from before my eyes. I have

lifted a corner of the curtain: I have seen enough to know that my

life, like that of the rest of the human race, has been a series of

necessary errors, yet, to speak more correctly, of incomplete

truths, conducting, more or less slowly and directly, to absolute

truth and ideal perfection. But when will they rise on the face of

the earth--when will they issue from the bosom of the

Divinity--those generations who shall salute the august countenance

of Truth, and proclaim the reign of the ideal on earth? I see well

how humanity marches, but I neither can see its cradle nor its

apotheosis. Man seems to me a transitory race, between the beast

and the angel; but I know not how many centuries have been

required, that he might pass from the _state of brute to the state

of man_, and _I cannot tell how many ages are necessary that he may

pass from the state of man to the state of angel_!

‘Yet I hope, and I feel within me, at the approach of death, that

which warns me that great destinies await humanity. In this life

all is over for me. Much have I striven to advance but little: I

have laboured without ceasing, and have done almost nothing. Yet,

after pains immeasurable, I die content, for I know that I have

done all I could, and am sure that the little I have done will not

be lost.

‘What, then, have I done? this wilt thou demand of me, man of a

future age, who will seek for truth in the testaments of the past.

Thou who wilt be no more Catholic--no more Christian, thou wilt ask

of the poor monk, lying in the dust, an account of his life and

death. Thou wouldst know wherefore were his vows, why his

austerities, his labours, his retreat, his prayers?

‘You who turn back to me, in order that I may guide you on your

road, and that you may arrive more quickly at the goal which it has

not been my lot to attain, pause, yet, for a moment, and look upon

the past history of humanity. You will see that its fate has been

ever to choose between the least of two evils, and ever to commit

great faults in order to avoid others still greater. You will see

... on one side, the heathen mythology, that debased the spirit in

its efforts to deify the flesh; the austere Christian principle,

that debased the flesh too much, in order to raise the worship of

the spirit. You will see, afterwards, how the religion of Christ

embodies itself in a Church, and raises itself a generous

democratic power against the tyranny of princes. Later still, you

will see how that power has attained its end, and passed beyond it.

You will see it, having chained and conquered princes, league

itself with them, in order to oppress the people, and seize on

temporal power. Schism, then, raises up against it the standard of

revolt, and preaches the bold and legitimate principle of liberty

of conscience: but, also, you will see how this liberty of

conscience brings religious anarchy in its train; or, worse still,

religious indifference and disgust. And if your soul, shattered in

the tempestuous changes which you behold humanity undergoing, would

strike out for itself a passage through the rocks, amidst which,

like a frail bark, lies tossing trembling truth, you will be

embarrassed to choose between the new philosophers--who, in

preaching tolerance, destroy religious and social unity--and the

last Christians, who, to preserve society, that is, religion and

philosophy, are obliged to brave the principle of toleration. Man

of truth! to whom I address, at once, my instruction and my

justification, at the time when you shall live, the science of

truth no doubt will have advanced a step. Think, then, of all your

fathers have suffered, as, bending beneath the weight of their

ignorance and uncertainty, they have traversed the desert across

which, with so much pain, they have conducted thee! And if the

pride of thy young learning shall make thee contemplate the petty

strifes in which our life has been consumed, pause and tremble as

you think of that which is still unknown to yourself, and of the

judgment that your descendants will pass on you. Think of this, and

learn to respect all those who, seeking their way in all sincerity,

have wandered from the path, frightened by the storm, and sorely

tried by the severe hand of the All-Powerful. Think of this, and

prostrate yourself; for all these, even the most mistaken among

them, are saints and martyrs.

‘Without their conquests and their defeats, thou wert in darkness

still. Yes, their failures, their errors even, have a right to your

respect; for man is weak.... Weep, then, for us obscure

travellers--unknown victims, who, by our mortal sufferings and

unheard-of labours, have prepared the way before you. Pity me, who,

having passionately loved justice, and perseveringly sought for

truth, only opened my eyes to shut them again for ever, and saw

that I had been in vain endeavouring to support a ruin, to take

refuge in a vault of which the foundations were worn away.’

* * * * *

The rest of the book of Spiridion is made up of a history of the rise,

progress, and (what our philosopher is pleased to call) decay of

Christianity--of an assertion, that the ‘doctrine of Christ is

incomplete;’ that ‘Christ may, nevertheless, take his place in the

Panthéon of divine men!’ and of a long, disgusting, absurd, and impious

vision, in which the Saviour, Moses, David, and Elijah are represented,

and in which Christ is made to say: ‘_We are all Messiahs_, when we wish

to bring the reign of truth upon earth; we are all Christs, when we

suffer for it!’

And this is the ultimatum, the supreme secret, the absolute truth! and

it has been published by Mrs. Sand, for so many napoleons per sheet, in

the _Revue des Deux Mondes_; and the Deux Mondes are to abide by it for

the future! After having attained it, are we a whit wiser? ‘Man is

between an angel and a beast: I don’t know how long it is since he was a

brute--I can’t say how long it will be before he is an angel.’ Think of

people living by their wits, and living by such a wit as this! Think of

the state of mental debauch and disease which must have been passed

through, ere such words could be written, and could be popular!

When a man leaves our dismal, smoky London atmosphere, and breathes,

instead of coal-smoke and yellow fog, this bright, clear French air, he

is quite intoxicated by it at first, and feels a glow in his blood, and

a joy in his spirits, which scarcely thrice in a year, and then only at

a distance from London, he can attain in England. Is the intoxication, I

wonder, permanent among the natives? and may we not account for the ten

thousand frantic freaks of these people by the peculiar influence of

French air and sun? The philosophers are from night to morning drunk,

the politicians are drunk, the literary men reel and stagger from one

absurdity to another, and bow shall we understand their vagaries? Let us

suppose, charitably, that Madame Sand had inhaled a more than ordinary

quantity of this laughing gas when she wrote for us this precious

manuscript of _Spiridion_. That great destinies are in prospect for the

human race we may fancy, without her ladyship’s word for it: but more

liberal than she, and having a little retrospective charity, as well as

that easy prospective benevolence which Mrs. Sand adopts, let us try and

think there is some hope for our fathers (who were nearer brutality than

ourselves, according to the Sandean creed), or else there is a very poor

chance for us, who, great philosophers as we are, are yet, alas! far

removed from that angelic consummation which all must wish for so

devoutly. She cannot say--is it not extraordinary?--how many centuries

have been necessary before man could pass from the brutal state to his

present condition, or how many ages will be required ere we may pass

from the state of man to the state of angel! What the deuce is the use

of chronology or philosophy?--We were beasts, and we can’t tell when our

tails dropped off: we shall be angels; but when our wings are to begin

to sprout, who knows? In the meantime, O man of genius, follow our

counsel: lead an easy life, don’t stick at trifles: never mind about

_duty_, it is only made for slaves; if the world reproach you, reproach

the world in return, you have a good loud tongue in your head; if your

straitlaced morals injure your mental respiration, fling off the

old-fashioned stays, and leave your free limbs to rise and fall as

Nature pleases; and when you have grown pretty sick of your liberty, and

yet unfit to return to restraint, curse the world, and scorn it, and be

miserable, like my Lord Byron and other philosophers of his kidney; or

else mount a step higher, and, with conceit still more monstrous, and

mental vision still more wretchedly debauched and weak, begin suddenly

to find yourself afflicted with a maudlin compassion for the human race,

and a desire to set them right after your own fashion. There is the

quarrelsome stage of drunkenness, when a man can as yet walk and speak,

when he can call names, and fling plates and wine-glasses at his

neighbour’s head with a pretty good aim; after this comes the pathetic

stage, when the patient becomes wondrous philanthropic, and weeps

wildly, as he lies in the gutter, and fancies he is at home in

bed--where he ought to be: but this is an allegory.

I don’t wish to carry this any further, or to say a word in defence of

the doctrine which Mrs. Dudevant has found ‘incomplete’;--here, at

least, is not the place for discussing its merits, any more than Mrs.

Sand’s book was the place for exposing, forsooth, its errors: our

business is only with the day and the new novels, and the clever or

silly people who write them. Oh! if they but knew their places, and

would keep to them, and drop their absurd philosophical jargon! Not all

the big words in the world can make Mrs. Sand talk like a philosopher:

when will she go back to her old trade, of which she was the very ablest

practitioner in France?

I should have been glad to give some extracts from the dramatic and

descriptive parts of the novel, that cannot, in point of style and

beauty, be praised too highly. One must suffice,--it is the descent of

Alexis to seek that unlucky manuscript, _Spiridion_.

‘It seemed to me,’ he begins, ‘that the descent was eternal; and

that I was burying myself in the depths of Erebus: at last, I

reached a level place, and I heard a mournful voice deliver these

words, as it were, to the secret centre of the earth--_He will

mount that ascent no more!_”--Immediately I heard arise towards me,

from the depth of invisible abysses, a myriad of formidable voices

united in a strange chant--_Let us destroy him! Let him be

destroyed! What does he here among the dead? Let him be delivered

back to torture! Let him be given again to life!_”

‘Then a feeble light began to pierce the darkness, and I perceived

that I stood on the lowest step of a staircase, vast as the foot of

a mountain. Behind me were thousands of steps of lurid iron; before

me, nothing but a void--an abyss, and ether; the blue gloom of

midnight beneath my feet, as above my head. I became delirious, and

quitting that staircase, which methought it was impossible for me

to reascend, I sprang forth into the void with an execration. But,

immediately, when I had uttered the curse, the void began to be

filled with forms and colours, and I presently perceived that I was

in a vast gallery, along which I advanced, trembling. There was

still darkness round me; but the hollows of the vaults gleamed with

a red light, and showed me the strange and hideous forms of their

building.... I did not distinguish the nearest objects; but those

towards which I advanced assumed an appearance more and more

ominous, and my terror increased with every step I took. The

enormous pillars which supported the vault, and the tracery thereof

itself, were figures of men, of supernatural stature, delivered to

tortures without a name. Some hung by their feet, and, locked in

the coils of monstrous serpents, clenched their teeth in the marble

of the pavement; others, fastened by their waists, were dragged

upwards, these by their feet, those by their heads, towards

capitals, where other figures stooped towards them, eager to

torment them. Other pillars, again, represented a struggling mass

of figures devouring one another; each of which only offered a

trunk severed to the knees or to the shoulders, the fierce heads

whereof retained life enough to seize and devour that which was

near them. There were some who, half hanging down, agonised

themselves by attempting, with their upper limbs, to flay the lower

moiety of their bodies, which drooped from the columns, or were

attached to the pedestals; and others, who, in their fight with

each other, were dragged along by morsels of flesh--grasping which,

they clung to each other with a countenance of unspeakable hate and

agony. Along, or rather in place of, the frieze, there were on

either side a range of unclean beings, wearing the human form, but

of a loathsome ugliness, busied in tearing human corpses to

pieces--in feasting upon their limbs and entrails. From the vault,

instead of bosses and pendants, hung the crushed and wounded forms

of children; as if, to escape these eaters of man’s flesh, they

would throw themselves downwards, and be dashed to pieces on the

pavement.... The silence and motionlessness of the whole added to

its awfulness. I became so faint with terror, that I stopped, and

would fain have returned. But at that moment I heard, from the

depths of the gloom through which I had passed, confused noises,

like those of a multitude on its march. And the sounds soon became

more distinct, and the clamour fiercer, and the steps came hurrying

on tumultuously--at every new burst nearer, more violent, more

threatening. I thought that I was pursued by this disorderly crowd;

and I strove to advance, hurrying into the midst of those dismal

sculptures. Then it seemed as if those figures began to heave--and

to sweat blood--and their beady eyes to move in their sockets. At

once I beheld that they were all looking upon me, that they were

all leaning towards me,--some with frightful derision, others with

furious aversion. Every arm was raised against me, and they made as

though they would crush me with the quivering limbs they had torn

one from the other.’

* * * * *

It is, indeed, a pity that the poor fellow gave himself the trouble to

go down into damp unwholesome graves, for the purpose of fetching up a

few trumpery sheets of manuscript; and if the public has been rather

tired with their contents, and is disposed to ask why Mrs. Sand’s

religious or irreligious notions are to be brought forward to people who

are quite satisfied with their own, we can only say that this lady is

the representative of a vast class of her countrymen, whom the wits and

philosophers of the eighteenth century have brought to this condition.

The leaves of the Diderot and Rousseau tree have produced this goodly

fruit: here it is, ripe, bursting, and ready to fall;--and how to fall?

Heaven send that it may drop easily, for all can see that the time is

come.

THE CASE OF PEYTEL

IN A LETTER TO EDWARD BRIEFLESS, ESQUIRE, OF PUMP COURT, TEMPLE

PARIS: _November_ 1839.

MY DEAR BRIEFLESS--Two months since, when the act of accusation first

appeared, containing the sum of the charges against Sebastian Peytel,

all Paris was in a fervour on the subject. The man’s trial speedily

followed, and kept for three days the public interest wound up to a

painful point. He was found guilty of double murder at the beginning of

September; and, since that time, what with Maroto’s disaffection and

Turkish news, we have had leisure to forget Monsieur Peytel, and to

occupy ourselves with τι νἑον. Perhaps Monsieur de Balzac

helped to smother what little sparks of interest might still have

remained for the murderous notary. Balzac put forward a letter in his

favour, so very long, so very dull, so very pompous, promising so much,

and performing so little, that the Parisian public gave up Peytel and

his case altogether; nor was it until to-day that some small feeling was

raised concerning him, when the newspapers brought the account how

Peytel’s head had been cut off at Bourg.

He had gone through the usual miserable ceremonies and delays which

attend what is called, in this country, the march of justice. He had

made his appeal to the Court of Cassation, which had taken time to

consider the verdict of the Provincial Court, and had confirmed it. He

had made his appeal for mercy; his poor sister coming up all the way

from Bourg (a sad journey, poor thing!) to have an interview with the

King, who had refused to see her. Last Monday morning, at nine o’clock,

an hour before Peytel’s breakfast, the Greffier of Assize Court, in

company with the Curé of Bourg, waited on him, and informed him that he

had only three hours to live. At twelve o’clock, Peytel’s head was off

his body; an executioner from Lyons had come over the night before, to

assist the professional throat-cutter of Bourg.

I am not going to entertain you with any sentimental lamentations for

this scoundrel’s fate, or to declare my belief in his innocence, as

Monsieur de Balzac has done. As far as moral conviction can go, the

man’s guilt is pretty clearly brought home to him. But any man who has

read the ‘Causes Célèbres,’ knows that men have been convicted and

executed upon evidence ten times more powerful than that which was

brought against Peytel. His own account of his horrible case may be

true; there is nothing adduced in the evidence which is strong enough to

overthrow it. It is a serious privilege, God knows, that society takes

upon itself, at any time, to deprive one of God’s creatures of

existence. But when the slightest doubt remains, what a tremendous risk

does it incur! In England, thank Heaven, the law is more wise and more

merciful: an English jury would never have taken a man’s blood upon such

testimony; an English judge and Crown advocate would never have acted as

these Frenchmen have done: the latter inflaming the public mind by

exaggerated appeals to their passions; the former seeking, in every way,

to draw confessions from the prisoner, to perplex and confound him, to

do away, by fierce cross-questioning and bitter remarks from the bench,

with any effect that his testimony might have on the jury. I don’t mean

to say that judges and lawyers have been more violent and inquisitorial

against the unhappy Peytel than against any one else; it is the fashion

of the country; a man is guilty until he proves himself to be innocent;

and to batter down his defence, if he have any, there are the lawyers,

with all their horrible ingenuity, and their captivating passionate

eloquence. It is hard thus to set the skilful and tried champions of the

law against men unused to this kind of combat; nay, give a man all the

legal aid that he can purchase or procure, still, by this plan, you take

him at a cruel unmanly disadvantage; he has to fight against the law,

clogged with the dreadful weight of his presupposed guilt. Thank God

that, in England, things are not managed so!

However, I am not about to entertain you with ignorant disquisitions

about the law. Peytel’s case may, nevertheless, interest you, for the

tale is a very stirring and mysterious one; and you may see how easy a

thing it is for a man’s life to be talked away in France, if ever he

should happen to fall under the suspicion of a crime. The French ‘acte

d’accusation’ begins in the following manner:--

‘Of all the events which in these latter times have afflicted the

department of the Ain, there is none which has caused a more

profound and lively sensation than the tragical death of the lady,

Félicité Alcazar, wife of Sebastian Benedict Peytel, notary, at

Belley. At the end of October 1838, Madame Peytel quitted that

town, with her husband, and their servant Louis Rey, in order to

pass a few days at Mâcon; at midnight, the inhabitants of Belley

were suddenly awakened by the arrival of Monsieur Peytel, by his

cries, and by the signs which he exhibited of the most lively

agitation: he implored the succours of all the physicians in the

town; knocked violently at their doors; rung at the bells of their

houses with a sort of frenzy, and announced that his wife,

stretched out, and dying, in his carriage, had just been shot, on

the Lyons road, by his domestic, whose life Peytel himself had

taken.

‘At this recital a number of persons assembled, and what a

spectacle was presented to their eyes!

‘A young woman lay at the bottom of a carriage, deprived of life;

her whole body was wet, and seemed as if it had just been plunged

into the water. She appeared to be severely wounded in the face;

and her garments, which were raised up, in spite of the cold and

rainy weather, left the upper part of her knees almost entirely

exposed. At the sight of this half-naked and inanimate body, all

the spectators were affected. People said that the first duty to

pay to a dying woman, was, to preserve her from the cold, to cover

her. A physician examined the body; he declared that all remedies

were useless; that Madame Peytel was dead and cold.

‘The entreaties of Peytel were redoubled; he demanded fresh

succours, and, giving no heed to the fatal assurance which had just

been given him, required that all the physicians in the place

should be sent for. A scene so strange and so melancholy; the

incoherent account given by Peytel of the murder of his wife; his

extraordinary movements; and the avowal which he continued to make,

that he had despatched the murderer, Rey, with strokes of his

hammer, excited the attention of Lieutenant Wolf, commandant of

gendarmes: that officer gave orders for the immediate arrest of

Peytel; but the latter threw himself into the arms of a friend, who

interceded for him, and begged the police not immediately to seize

upon his person.

‘The corpse of Madame Peytel was transported to her apartment; the

bleeding body of the domestic was likewise brought from the road,

where it lay; and Peytel, asked to explain the circumstance, did

so.’

* * * * *

Now, as there is little reason to tell the reader, when an English

counsel has to prosecute a prisoner, on the part of the Crown, for a

capital offence, he produces the articles of his accusation in the most

moderate terms, and especially warns the jury to give the accused person

the benefit of every possible doubt that the evidence may give, or may

leave. See how these things are managed in France, and how differently

the French counsel for the Crown sets about his work.

He first prepares his act of accusation, the opening of which we have

just read; it is published six days before the trial, so that an

unimpassioned, unprejudiced jury has ample time to study it, and to form

its opinions accordingly, and to go into court with a happy, just

prepossession against the prisoner.

Read the first part of the Peytel act of accusation; it is as turgid

and declamatory as a bad romance; and as inflated as a newspaper

document by an unlimited penny-a-liner:--‘The department of the Ain is

in a dreadful state of excitement; the inhabitants of Belley come

trooping from their beds,--and what a sight do they behold:--a young

woman at the bottom of a carriage, _toute ruisselante_, just out of a

river; her garments, in spite of the cold and rain, raised, so as to

leave the upper part of her knee entirely exposed, at which all the

beholders were affected, and cried, that the _first duty_ was to cover

her from the cold.’ This settles the case at once; the first duty of a

man is to cover the legs of the sufferer; the second to call for help.

The eloquent ‘Substitut du Procureur du Roi’ has prejudged the case, in

the course of a few sentences. He is putting his readers, among whom his

future jury is to be found, into a proper state of mind; he works on

them with pathetic description, just as a romance-writer would: the rain

pours in torrents: it is a dreary evening in November; the young

creature’s situation is neatly described; the distrust which entered

into the breast of the keen old officer of gendarmes strongly painted,

the suspicions which might, or might not, have been entertained by the

inhabitants, eloquently argued. How did the advocate know that the

people had such? did all the bystanders say aloud, ‘I suspect that this

is a case of murder by Monsieur Peytel, and that his story about the

domestic is all deception’? or did they go off to the mayor, and

register their suspicion? or was the advocate there to hear them? Not

he; but he paints you the whole scene as though it had existed, and

gives full accounts of suspicions as if they had been facts, positive,

patent, staring, that everybody could see and swear to.

Having thus primed his audience, and prepared them for the testimony of

the accused party, ‘Now,’ says he, with a fine show of justice, ‘let us

hear Monsieur Peytel;’ and that worthy’s narrative is given as

follows:--

‘He said that he had left Mâcon on the 31st October, at eleven

o’clock in the morning, in order to return to Belley, with his wife

and servant. The latter drove, or led, an open car; he himself was

driving his wife in a four-wheeled carriage, drawn by one horse:

they reached Bourg at five o’clock in the evening; left it at

seven, to sleep at Pont d’Ain, where they did not arrive before

midnight. During the journey, Peytel thought he remarked that Rey

had slackened his horse’s pace. When they alighted at the inn,

Peytel bade him deposit in his chamber 7500 francs, which he

carried with him; but the domestic refused to do so, saying that

the inn gates were secure, and there was no danger. Peytel was,

therefore, obliged to carry his money upstairs himself. The next

day, the 1st November, they set out on their journey again, at nine

o’clock in the morning; Louis did not come, according to custom, to

take his master’s orders. They arrived at Tenay about three,

stopped there a couple of hours to dine, and it was eight o’clock

when they reached the bourg of Rossillon, where they waited half an

hour to bait the horses.

‘As they left Rossillon, the weather became bad, and the rain began

to fall: Peytel told his domestic to get a covering for the

articles in the open chariot; but Rey refused to do so, adding, in

an ironical tone, that the weather was fine. For some days past,

Peytel had remarked that his servant was gloomy, and scarcely spoke

at all.

‘After they had gone about five hundred paces beyond the bridge of

Andert, that crosses the river Furans, and ascended to the least

steep part of the hill of Darde, Peytel cried out to his servant,

who was seated in the car, to come down from it, and finish the

ascent on foot.

‘At this moment a violent wind was blowing from the south, and the

rain was falling heavily: Peytel was seated back in the right

corner of the carriage, and his wife, who was close to him, was

asleep, with her head on his left shoulder. All of a sudden he

heard the report of a firearm (he had seen the light of it at some

paces’ distance), and Madame Peytel cried out, ‘My poor husband,

take your pistols;’ the horse was frightened, and began to trot.

Peytel immediately drew a pistol, and fired, from the interior of

the carriage, upon an individual whom he saw running by the side of

the road.

‘Not knowing, as yet, that his wife had been hit, he jumped out on

one side of the carriage, while Madame Peytel descended from the

other; and he fired a second pistol at his domestic, Louis Rey,

whom he had just recognised. Redoubling his pace, he came up with

Rey, and struck him, from behind, a blow with the hammer. Rey

turned at this, and raised up his arm to strike his master with the

pistol which he had just discharged at him; but Peytel, more quick

than he, gave the domestic a blow with the hammer, which felled him

to the ground (he fell his face forwards), and then Peytel,

bestriding the body, despatched him, although the brigand asked for

mercy.

‘He now began to think of his wife; and ran back, calling out her

name repeatedly, and seeking for her, in vain, on both sides of the

road. Arrived at the bridge of Andert, he recognised his wife,

stretched in a field, covered with water, which bordered the

Furans. This horrible discovery had so much the more astonished

him, because he had no idea until now, that his wife had been

wounded: he endeavoured to draw her from the water; and it was only

after considerable exertions that he was enabled to do so, and to

place her, with her face towards the ground, on the side of the

road. Supposing that, here, she would be sheltered from any further

danger, and believing, as yet, that she was only wounded, he

determined to ask for help at a lone house, situated on the road

towards Rossillon; and at this instant he perceived, without at all

being able to explain how, that his horse had followed him back to

the spot, having turned back of its own accord, from the road to

Belley.

‘The house at which he knocked was inhabited by two men, of the

name Thannet, father and son, who opened the door to him, and whom

he entreated to come to his aid, saying that his wife had just been

assassinated by his servant. The elder Thannet approached to, and

examined the body, and told Peytel that it was quite dead; he and

his son took up the corpse, and placed it in the bottom of the

carriage, which they all mounted themselves, and pursued their

route to Belley. In order to do so, they had to pass by Rey’s body,

on the road, which Peytel wished to crush under the wheels of his

carriage. It was to rob him of 7500 francs, said Peytel, that the

attack had been made.’

Our friend, the Procureur’s Substitut, has dropped, here, the eloquent

and pathetic style altogether, and only gives the unlucky prisoner’s

narrative in the baldest and most unimaginative style. How is a jury to

listen to such a fellow? they ought to condemn him, if but for making

such an uninteresting statement. Why not have helped poor Peytel with

some of those rhetorical graces which have been so plentifully bestowed

in the opening part of the act of accusation? He might have said:--

‘Monsieur Peytel is an eminent notary at Belley; he is a man

distinguished for his literary and scientific acquirements; he has

lived long in the best society of the capital; he had been but a

few months married to that young and unfortunate lady, whose loss

has plunged her bereaved husband into despair--almost into madness.

Some early differences had marked, it is true, the commencement of

their union; but these,--which, as can be proved by evidence, were

almost all the unhappy lady’s fault,--had happily ceased, to give

place to sentiments far more delightful and tender. Gentlemen,

Madame Peytel bore in her bosom a sweet pledge of future concord

between herself and her husband: in three brief months she was to

become a mother.

‘In the exercise of his honourable profession,--in which, to

succeed, a man must not only have high talents, but undoubted

probity,--and, gentlemen, Monsieur Peytel _did_ succeed--_did_

inspire respect and confidence, as you, his neighbours, well

know;--in the exercise, I say, of his high calling, Monsieur

Peytel, towards the end of October last, had occasion to make a

journey in the neighbourhood, and visit some of his many clients.

‘He travelled in his own carriage, his young wife beside him. Does

this look like want of affection, gentlemen? or is it not a mark of

love--of love and paternal care on his part towards the being with

whom his lot in life was linked,--the mother of his coming

child,--the young girl, who had everything to gain from the union

with a man of his attainments of intellect, his kind temper, his

great experience, and his high position? In this manner they

travelled, side by side, lovingly together. Monsieur Peytel was not

a lawyer merely; but a man of letters and varied learning; of the

noble and sublime science of geology he was, especially, an ardent

devotee.’

(Suppose, here, a short panegyric upon geology. Allude to the creation

of this mighty world, and then, naturally, to the Creator. Fancy the

conversations which Peytel, a religious man,[8] might have with his

young wife upon the subject.)

‘Monsieur Peytel had lately taken into his service a man named

Louis Rey. Rey was a foundling, and had passed many years in a

regiment--a school, gentleman, where much besides bravery, alas! is

taught; nay, where the spirit which familiarises one with notions

of battle and death, I fear, may familiarise one with ideas, too,

of murder. Rey, a dashing reckless fellow, from the army, had

lately entered Peytel’s service; was treated by him with the most

singular kindness; accompanied him (having charge of another

vehicle) upon the journey before alluded to; and _knew that his

master carried with him a considerable sum of money_; for a man

like Rey an enormous sum, 7500 francs. At midnight on the 1st of

November, as Madame Peytel and her husband were returning home, an

attack was made upon their carriage. Remember, gentlemen, the hour

at which the attack was made; remember the sum of money that was in

the carriage; and remember that the Savoy frontier _is within a

league of the spot_ where the desperate deed was done.’

Now, my dear Briefless, ought not Monsieur Procureur, in common justice

to Peytel, after he had so eloquently proclaimed, not the facts, but

the suspicions, which weighed against that worthy, to have given a

similar florid account of the prisoner’s case? Instead of this, you will

remark, that it is the advocate’s endeavour to make Peytel’s statements

as uninteresting in style as possible; and then he demolishes them in

the following way:--

‘Scarcely was Peytel’s statement known, but the common sense of the

public rose against it. Peytel had commenced his story upon the

bridge of Andert, over the cold body of his wife. On the 2nd

November he had developed it in detail, in the presence of the

physicians, in the presence of the assembled neighbours--of the

persons who, on the day previous only, were his friends. Finally,

he had completed it in his interrogatories, his conversations, his

writings, and letters to the magistrates; and everywhere these

words, repeated so often, were only received with a painful

incredulity. The fact was, that, besides the singular character

which Peytel’s appearance, attitude, and talk had worn ever since

the event, there was in his narrative an inexplicable enigma; its

contradictions and impossibilities were such, that calm persons

were revolted at it, and that even friendship itself refused to

believe it.’

Thus Mr. Attorney speaks, not for himself alone, but for the whole

French public; whose opinions, of course, he knows. Peytel’s statement

is discredited _everywhere_; the statement which he had made over the

cold body of his wife--the monster! It is not enough simply to prove

that the man committed the murder, but to make the jury violently angry

against him, and cause them to shudder in the jury-box, as he exposes

the horrid details of the crime.

‘Justice,’ goes on Mr. Substitute (who answers for the feelings of

everybody), ‘_disturbed by the preoccupations of public opinion_,

commenced, without delay, the most active researches. The bodies of

the victims were submitted to the investigations of men of art; the

wounds and projectiles were examined; the place where the event

took place explored with care. The morality of the authors of this

frightful scene became the object of rigorous examination; the

_exigences_ of the prisoner, the forms affected by him, his

calculated silence, and his answers, coldly insulting, were feeble

obstacles; and justice at length arrived, by its prudence, and by

the discoveries it made, to the most cruel point of certainty.’

You see that a man’s demeanour is here made a crime against him; and

that Mr. Substitute wishes to consider him guilty, because he has

actually the audacity to hold his tongue. Now follows a touching

description of the domestic, Louis Rey:--

‘Louis Rey, a child of the Hospital at Lyons, was confided, at a

very early age, to some honest country-people, with whom he stayed

until he entered the army. At their house, and during this long

period of time, his conduct, his intelligence, and the sweetness of

his manners, were such, that the family of his guardians became to

him as an adopted family; and that his departure caused them the

most sincere affliction. When Louis quitted the army, he returned

to his benefactors, and was received as a son. They found him just

as they had ever known him’ (I acknowledge that this pathos beats

my humble defence of Rey entirely), ‘except that he had learned to

read and write; and the certificates of his commanders proved him

to be a good and gallant soldier.

‘The necessity of creating some resources for himself obliged him

to quit his friends, and to enter the service of Monsieur de

Montrichard, a lieutenant of gendarmerie, from whom he received

fresh testimonials of regard. Louis, it is true, might have a

fondness for wine and a passion for women; but he had been a

soldier, and these faults were, according to the witnesses, amply

compensated for by his activity, his intelligence, and the

agreeable manner in which he performed his service. In the month of

July 1839, Rey quitted, voluntarily, the service of M. de

Montrichard; and Peytel, about this period, meeting him at Lyons,

did not hesitate to attach him to his service. Whatever may be the

prisoner’s present language, it is certain that, up to the day of

Louis’s death, he served Peytel with diligence and fidelity.

‘More than once his master and mistress spoke well of him.

_Everybody_ who has worked, or been at the house of Madame Peytel,

has spoken in praise of his character; and, indeed, it may be said,

that these testimonials were general.

‘On the very night of the 1st of November, and immediately after

the catastrophe, we remark how Peytel begins to make insinuations

against his servant; and how artfully, in order to render them more

sure, he disseminates them through the different parts of his

narrative. But, in the course of the proceeding, these charges have

met with a most complete denial. Thus we find the disobedient

servant who, at Pont d’Ain, refused to carry the money-chest to his

master’s room, under the pretext that the gates of the inn were

closed securely, occupied with tending the horses after their long

journey; meanwhile Peytel was standing by, and neither master nor

servant exchanged a word, and the witnesses who beheld them both

have borne testimony to the zeal and care of the domestic.

‘In like manner, we find that the servant, who was so remiss in the

morning as to neglect to go to his master for orders, was ready for

departure before seven o’clock, and had eagerly informed himself

whether Monsieur and Madame Peytel were awake; learning, from the

maid of the inn, that they had ordered nothing for their breakfast.

This man, who refused to carry with him a covering for the car,

was, on the contrary, ready to take off his own cloak, and with it

shelter articles of small value; this man, who had been for many

days so silent and gloomy, gave, on the contrary, many proofs of

his gaiety--almost of his indiscretion, speaking, at all the inns,

in terms of praise of his master and mistress. The waiter at the

inn at Dauphin says he was a tall young fellow, mild and

good-natured; “we talked for some time about horses, and such

things; he seemed to be perfectly natural, and not preoccupied at

all.” At Pont d’Ain, he talked of his being a foundling; of the

place where he had been brought up, and where he had served; and

finally, at Rossillon, an hour before his death, he conversed

familiarly with the master of the port, and spoke on indifferent

subjects.

‘All Peytel’s insinuations against his servant had no other end

than to show, in every point of Rey’s conduct, the behaviour of a

man who was premeditating attack. Of what, in fact, does he accuse

him? Of wishing to rob him of 7500 francs, and of having had

recourse to assassination in order to effect the robbery. But, for

a premeditated crime, consider what singular improvidence the

person showed who had determined on committing it; what folly and

what weakness there is in the execution of it.

‘How many insurmountable obstacles are there in the way of

committing and profiting by crime! On leaving Belley, Louis Rey,

according to Peytel’s statement, knowing that his master would

return with money, provided himself with a holster pistol, which

Madame Peytel had once before perceived among his effects. In

Peytel’s cabinet there were some balls; four of these were found in

Rey’s trunk, on the 6th of November. And, in order to commit the

crime, this domestic had brought away with him a pistol, and no

ammunition! for Peytel has informed us that Rey, an hour before his

departure from Mâcon, purchased six balls at a gunsmith’s. To gain

his point, the assassin must immolate his victims; for this, he has

only one pistol, knowing, perfectly well, that Peytel, in all his

travels, had two on his person; knowing that, at a late hour of the

night, his shot might fail of effect; and that, in this case, he

would be left to the mercy of his opponent.

‘The execution of the crime is, according to Peytel’s account,

still more singular. Louis does not get off the carriage until

Peytel tells him to descend. He does not think of taking his

master’s life until he is sure that the latter has his eyes open.

It is dark, and the pair are covered in one cloak; and Rey only

fires at them at six paces’ distance: he fires at hazard, without

disquieting himself as to the choice of his victim; and the

soldier, who was bold enough to undertake this double murder, has

not force nor courage to consummate it. He flies, carrying in his

hand a useless whip, with a heavy mantle on his shoulders, in spite

of the detonation of two pistols at his ears, and the rapid steps

of an angry master in pursuit, which ought to have set him upon

some better means of escape. And we find this man, full of youth

and vigour, lying with his face to the ground, in the midst of a

public road, falling without a struggle, or resistance, under the

blows of a hammer!

‘And suppose the murderer had succeeded in his criminal projects,

what fruit could he have drawn from them?--Leaving on the road the

two bleeding bodies; obliged to lead two carriages at a time, for

fear of discovery; not able to return himself, after all the pains

he had taken to speak, at every place at which they had stopped, of

the money which his master was carrying with him; too prudent to

appear alone at Belley; arrested at the frontier, by the excise

officers, who would present an impassable barrier to him till

morning,--what could he do, or hope to do? The examination of the

car has shown that Rey, at the moment of the crime, had neither

linen, nor clothes, nor effects of any kind. There was found in his

pockets, when the body was examined, no passport, nor certificate;

one of his pockets contained a ball, of large calibre, which he had

shown, in play, to a girl, at the inn at Mâcon, a little

horn-handled knife, a snuff-box, a little packet of gunpowder, and

a purse, containing only a halfpenny and some string. Here is all

the baggage, with which, after the execution of his homicidal plan,

Louis Rey intended to take refuge in a foreign country.[9] Beside

these absurd contradictions, there is another remarkable fact,

which must not be passed over; it is this:--the pistol found by Rey

is of an antique form, and the original owner of it has been found.

He is a curiosity-merchant at Lyons; and, though he cannot affirm

that Peytel was the person who bought this pistol of him, he

perfectly recognises Peytel as having been a frequent customer at

his shop!

‘No, we may fearlessly affirm that Louis Rey was not guilty of the

crime which Peytel lays to his charge. If, to those who knew him,

his mild and open disposition, his military career, modest and

without a stain, the touching regrets of his employers, are

sufficient proofs of his innocence--the calm and candid observer,

who considers how the crime was conceived, was executed, and what

consequences would have resulted from it, will likewise acquit him,

and free him of the odious imputation which Peytel endeavours to

cast upon his memory.

‘But justice has removed the veil with which an impious hand

endeavoured to cover itself. Already, on the night of the 1st of

November, suspicion was awakened by the extraordinary agitation of

Peytel; by those excessive attentions towards his wife, which came

so late; by that excessive and noisy grief, and by those calculated

bursts of sorrow, which are such as Nature does not exhibit. The

criminal, whom the public conscience had fixed upon; the man whose

frightful combinations have been laid bare, and whose falsehoods,

step by step, have been exposed, during the proceedings previous to

the trial; the murderer, at whose hands a heart-stricken family,

and society at large, demands an account of the blood of a

wife;--that murderer is Peytel!’

When, my dear Briefless, you are a judge (as I make no doubt you will

be, when you have left off the club all night, cigar-smoking of

mornings, and reading novels in bed), will you ever find it in your

heart to order a fellow-sinner’s head off upon such evidence as this?

Because a romantic Substitut du Procureur du Roi chooses to compose and

recite a little drama, and draw tears from juries, let us hope that

severe Rhadamanthine judges are not to be melted by such trumpery. One

wants but the description of the characters to render the piece

complete, as thus:--

PERSONNAGES. COSTUMES.

{ Habillement complet

SEBASTIEN } Meurtrier { de notaire perfide: figure

PEYTEL } { pâle, barbe noire, cheveux

{ noirs.

{ Soldat retiré, bon, }

{ brave, franc, jovial, aimant } Costume ordinaire; il

LOUIS REY{ le vin, les femmes, } porte sur ses épaules une

{ la gaîté, ses maîtres surtout;} couverture de cheval.

{ vrai Français, enfin. }

WOLFF Lieutenant de Gendarmerie.

FÉLICITÉ } Femme et victime de Peytel.

D'ALCAZAR }

Médecins, Villageois, Filles d’Auberge, Garçons d’Ecurie, etc. etc.

La scène se passe sur le pont d’Andert, entre Mâcon et Belley. Il est

minuit. La pluie tombe: les tonnerres grondent. Le ciel est couvert de

nuages, et sillonné d’éclairs.

All these personages are brought into play in the Procureur’s drama: the

villagers come in with their chorus; the old lieutenant of gendarmes

with his suspicions; Rey’s frankness and gaiety, the romantic

circumstances of his birth, his gallantry and fidelity, are all

introduced, in order to form a contrast with Peytel, and to call down

the jury’s indignation against the latter. But are these proofs? or

anything like proofs? And the suspicions, that are to serve instead of

proofs, what are they?

‘My servant, Louis Rey, was very sombre and reserved,’ says Peytel;

‘he refused to call me in the morning, to carry my money-chest to

my room, to cover the open car when it rained.’ The Prosecutor

disproves these by stating that Rey talked with the inn maids and

servants, asked if his master was up, and stood in the inn-yard,

grooming the horses, with his master by his side, neither speaking

to the other. Might he not have talked to the maids, and yet been

sombre when speaking to his master? Might he not have neglected to

call his master, and yet have asked whether he was awake? Might he

not have said that the inn gates were safe, out of hearing of the

ostler witness? Mr. Substitute’s answers to Peytel’s statements are

no answers at all. Every word Peytel said might be true, and yet

Louis Rey might not have committed the murder; or every word might

have been false, and yet Louis Rey might have committed the murder.

‘Then,’ says Mr. Substitute, ‘how many obstacles are there to the

commission of the crime! And these are:--

‘1. Rey provided himself with _one_ holster pistol, to kill two

people, knowing well that one of them had always a brace of pistols

about him.

‘2. He does not think of firing until his master’s eyes are open:

fires at six paces, not caring at whom he fires, and then runs

away.

‘3. He could not have intended to kill his master, because he had

no passport in his pocket, and no clothes; and because he must have

been detained at the frontier until morning; and because he would

have had to drive two carriages, in order to avoid suspicion.

‘4. And, a most singular circumstance, the very pistol which was

found by his side had been bought at the shop of a man at Lyons,

who perfectly recognised Peytel as one of his customers, though he

could not say he had sold that particular weapon to Peytel.’

Does it follow, from this, that Louis Rey is not the murderer--much

more, that Peytel is? Look at argument No. 1. Rey had no need to kill

two people: he wanted the money, and not the blood. Suppose he had

killed Peytel, would he not have mastered Madame Peytel easily?--a weak

woman, in an excessively delicate situation, incapable of much energy at

the best of times.

2. ‘He does not fire till he knows his master’s eyes are open.’ Why, on

a stormy night, does a man driving a carriage go to sleep? Was Rey to

wait until his master snored? ‘He fires at six paces, not caring whom he

hits;’--and might not this happen too? The night is not so dark but that

he can see his master, in _his usual place_, driving. He fires and

hits--whom? Madame Peytel, who had left her place, _and was wrapped up

with Peytel in his cloak_. She screams out, ‘Husband, take your

pistols.’ Rey knows that his master has a brace, thinks that he has hit

the wrong person, and, as Peytel fires on him, runs away. Peytel

follows, hammer in hand; as he comes up with the fugitive, he deals him

a blow on the back of the head, and Rey falls--his face to the ground.

Is there anything unnatural in this story?--anything so monstrously

unnatural, that is, that it might not be true?

3. These objections are absurd. Why need a man have change of linen? If

he had taken none for the journey, why should he want any for the

escape? Why need he drive two carriages?--He might have driven both into

the river, and Mrs. Peytel in one. Why is he to go to the douane, and

thrust himself into the very jaws of danger? Are there not a thousand

ways for a man to pass a frontier? Do smugglers, when they have to pass

from one country to another, choose exactly those spots where a police

is placed?

And, finally, the gunsmith of Lyons, who knows Peytel quite well, cannot

say that he sold the pistol to him; that is, he did not sell the pistol

to him; for you have only one man’s word, in this case (Peytel’s), to

the contrary; and the testimony, as far as it goes, is in his favour. I

say, my lud, and gentlemen of the jury, that these objections of my

learned friend, who is engaged for the Crown, are absurd, frivolous,

monstrous; that to suspect away the life of a man upon such suppositions

as these, is wicked, illegal, and inhuman; and, what is more, that Louis

Rey, if he wanted to commit the crime--if he wanted to possess himself

of a large sum of money--chose the best time and spot for so doing; and,

no doubt, would have succeeded, if Fate had not, in a wonderful manner,

caused Madame Peytel _to take her husband’s place_, and receive the ball

intended for him in her own head.

But whether these suspicions are absurd or not, hit or miss, it is the

advocate’s duty, as it appears, to urge them. He wants to make as

unfavourable an impression as possible with regard to Peytel’s

character; he, therefore, must, for contrast’s sake, give all sorts of

praise to his victim, and awaken every sympathy in the poor fellow’s

favour. Having done this, as far as lies in his power, having

exaggerated every circumstance that can be unfavourable to Peytel, and

given his own tale in the baldest manner possible--having declared that

Peytel is the murderer of his wife and servant, the Crown now proceeds

to back this assertion, by showing what interested motives he had, and

by relating, after its own fashion, the circumstances of his marriage.

They may be told briefly here. Peytel was of a good family of Mâcon, and

entitled, at his mother’s death, to a considerable property. He had been

educated as a notary, and had lately purchased a business, in that line,

at Belley, for which he had paid a large sum of money; part of the sum,

15,000 francs, for which he had given bills, was still due.

Near Belley, Peytel first met Félicité Alcazar, who was residing with

her brother-in-law, Monsieur de Montrichard; and, knowing that the young

lady’s fortune was considerable, he made an offer of marriage to the

brother-in-law, who thought the match advantageous, and communicated on

the subject with Félicité’s mother, Madame Alcazar, at Paris. After a

time Peytel went to Paris, to press his suit, and was accepted. There

seems to have been no affectation of love on his side; and some little

repugnance on the part of the lady, who yielded, however, to the wishes

of her parents, and was married. The parties began to quarrel on the

very day of the marriage, and continued their disputes almost to the

close of the unhappy connection. Félicité was half blind, passionate,

sarcastic, clumsy in her person and manners, and ill educated; Peytel, a

man of considerable intellect and pretensions, who had lived for some

time at Paris, where he had mingled with good literary society. The lady

was, in fact, as disagreeable a person as could well be, and the

evidence describes some scenes which took place between her and her

husband, showing how deeply she must have mortified and enraged him.

A charge very clearly made out against Peytel, is that of dishonesty: he

procured, from the notary of whom he bought his place, an acquittance in

full, whereas there were 15,000 francs owing, as we have seen. He also,

in the contract of marriage, which was to have resembled, in all

respects, that between Monsieur Broussais and another Demoiselle

Alcazar, caused an alteration to be made in his favour, which gave him

command over his wife’s funded property, without furnishing the

guarantees by which the other son-in-law was bound. And, almost

immediately after his marriage, Peytel sold out of the funds a sum of

50,000 francs, that belonged to his wife, and used it for his own

purposes.

About two months after his marriage, _Peytel pressed his wife to make

her will_. He had made his, he said, leaving everything to her, in case

of his death: after some parley, the poor thing consented.[10] This is a

cruel suspicion against him; and Mr. Substitute has no need to enlarge

upon it. As for the previous fact, the dishonest statement about the

15,000 francs, there is nothing murderous in that--nothing which a man

very eager to make a good marriage might not do. The same may be said of

the suppression, in Peytel’s marriage contract, of the clause to be

found in Broussais’s, placing restrictions upon the use of the wife’s

money. Mademoiselle d’Alcazar’s friends read the contract before they

signed it, and might have refused it, had they so pleased.

After some disputes, which took place between Peytel and his wife (there

were continual quarrels, and continual letters passing between them from

room to room), the latter was induced to write him a couple of

exaggerated letters, swearing ‘by the ashes of her father’ that she

would be an obedient wife to him, and entreating him to counsel and

direct her. These letters were seen by members of the lady’s family,

who, in the quarrels between the couple, always took the husband’s part.

They were found in Peytel’s cabinet, after he had been arrested for the

murder, and after he had had full access to all his papers, of which he

destroyed or left as many as he pleased. The accusation makes it a

matter of suspicion against Peytel, that he should have left these

letters of his wife’s in a conspicuous situation.

* * * * *

‘All these circumstances,’ says the accusation, ‘throw a frightful light

upon Peytel’s plans. The letters and will of Madame Peytel are in the

hands of her husband. Three months pass away, and this poor woman is

brought to her home, in the middle of the night, with two balls in her

head, stretched at the bottom of her carriage, by the side of a peasant!

‘What other than Sebastian Peytel could have committed this

murder?--whom could it profit?--who but himself had an odious chain to

break, and an inheritance to receive? Why speak of the servant’s

projected robbery? The pistols found by the side of Louis’s body, the

balls bought by him at Mâcon, and those discovered at Belley among his

effects, were only the result of a perfidious combination. The pistol,

indeed, which was found on the hill of Darde, on the night of the 1st of

November, could only have belonged to Peytel, and must have been thrown

by him, near the body of his domestic, with the paper which had before

enveloped it. Who had seen this pistol in the hands of Louis? Among all

the gendarmes, workwomen, domestics, employed by Peytel and his

brother-in-law, is there one single witness who had seen this weapon in

Louis’s possession? It is true that Madame Peytel did, on one occasion,

speak to M. de Montrichard of a pistol, which had nothing to do,

however, with that found near Louis Rey.’

* * * * *

Is this justice, or good reason? Just reverse the argument, and apply it

to Rey. ‘Who but Rey could have committed this murder?--who but Rey had

a large sum of money to seize upon?--a pistol is found by his side,

balls and powder in his pocket, other balls in his trunks at home. The

pistol found near his body could not, indeed, have belonged to Peytel:

did any man ever see it in his possession? The very gunsmith who sold

it, and who knew Peytel, would he not have known that he had sold him

this pistol? At his own house, Peytel has a collection of weapons of all

kinds; everybody has seen them--a man who makes such collections is

anxious to display them. Did any one ever see this weapon?--Not one. And

Madame Peytel did, in her lifetime, remark a pistol in the valet’s

possession. She was short-sighted, and could not particularise what kind

of pistol it was; but she spoke of it to her husband and her

brother-in-law.’ This is not satisfactory, if you please: but, at least,

it is as satisfactory as the other set of suppositions. It is the very

chain of argument which would have been brought against Louis Rey by

this very same compiler of the act of accusation, had Rey survived,

instead of Peytel, and had he, as most undoubtedly would have been the

case, been tried for the murder.

This argument was shortly put by Peytel’s counsel:--_‘If Peytel had been

killed by Rey in the struggle, would you not have found Rey guilty of

the murder of his master and mistress?_’ It is such a dreadful dilemma,

that I wonder how judges and lawyers could have dared to persecute

Peytel in the manner in which they did.

After the act of accusation, which lays down all the suppositions

against Peytel as facts, which will not admit the truth of one of the

prisoner’s allegations in his own defence, comes the trial. The judge is

quite as impartial as the preparer of the indictment, as will be seen by

the following specimens of his interrogatories:--

_Judge._ The act of accusation finds in your statement

contradictions, improbabilities, impossibilities. Thus your

domestic, who had determined to assassinate you, in order to rob

you, and who _must have calculated upon the consequence of a

failure_, had neither passport nor money upon him. This is very

unlikely; because he could not have gone far with only a single

halfpenny, which was all he had.

_Prisoner._ My servant was known, and often passed the frontier

without a passport.

_Judge._ _Your domestic had to assassinate two persons_, and had no

weapon but a single pistol. He had no dagger; and the only thing

found on him was a knife.

_Prisoner._ In the car there were several turner’s implements,

which he might have used.

_Judge._ But he had not those arms upon him, because you pursued

him immediately. He had, according to you, only this old pistol.

_Prisoner._ I have nothing to say.

_Judge._ Your domestic, instead of flying into woods, which skirt

the road, ran straight forward on the road itself: _this, again, is

very unlikely_.

_Prisoner._ This is a conjecture I could answer by another

conjecture; I can only reason on the facts.

_Judge._ How far did you pursue him?

_Prisoner._ I don’t know exactly.

_Judge._ You said ‘two hundred paces.’

No answer from the prisoner.

_Judge._ Your domestic was young, active, robust, and tall. He was

ahead of you. You were in a carriage, from which you had to

descend: you had to take your pistols from a cushion, and _then_

your hammer;--how are we to believe that you could have caught him,

if he ran? It is _impossible_.

_Prisoner._ I can’t explain it: I think that Rey had some defect in

one leg. I, for my part, run tolerably fast.

_Judge._ At what distance from him did you fire your first shot?

_Prisoner._ I can’t tell.

_Judge._ Perhaps he was not running when you fired.

_Prisoner._ I saw him running.

_Judge._ In what position was your wife?

_Prisoner._ She was leaning on my left arm, and the man was on the

right side of the carriage.

_Judge._ The shot must have been fired _à bout portant_, because it

burned the eyebrows and lashes entirely. The assassin must have

passed his pistol across your breast.

_Prisoner._ The shot was not fired so close; I am convinced of it:

professional gentlemen will prove it.

_Judge._ _That is what you pretend, because you understand

perfectly the consequences of admitting the fact._ Your wife was

hit with two balls--one striking downwards, to the right, by the

nose, the other going horizontally through the cheek, to the left.

_Prisoner._ The contrary will be shown by the witnesses called for

the purpose.

_Judge._ _It is a very unlucky combination for you_ that these

balls, which went, you say, from the same pistol, should have taken

two different directions.

_Prisoner._ I can’t dispute about the various combinations of

fire-arms--professional persons will be heard.

_Judge._ According to your statement, your wife said to you, ‘My

poor husband, take your pistols.’

_Prisoner._ She did.

_Judge._ In a manner quite distinct?

_Prisoner._ Yes.

_Judge_. So distinct that you did not fancy she was hit?

_Prisoner._ Yes; that is the fact.

_Judge._ _Here, again, is an impossibility_; and nothing is more

precise than the declaration of the medical men. They affirm that

your wife could not have spoken--their report is unanimous.

_Prisoner._ I can only oppose to it quite contrary opinions from

professional men, likewise: you must hear them.

_Judge._ What did your wife do next?

* * * * *

_Judge._ You deny the statements of the witnesses (they related to

Peytel’s demeanour and behaviour, which the judge wishes to show

were very unusual;--and what if they were?). Here, however, are

some mute witnesses, whose testimony you will not perhaps refuse.

Near Louis Rey’s body was found a horse-cloth, a pistol, and a

whip.... Your domestic must have had this cloth upon him when he

went to assassinate you: it was wet and heavy. An assassin

disencumbers himself of anything that is likely to impede him,

especially when he is going to struggle with a man as young as

himself.

_Prisoner._ My servant had, I believe, this covering on his body;

it might be useful to him to keep the priming of his pistol dry.

The president caused the cloth to be opened, and showed that there

was no hook, or tie, by which it could be held together; and that

Rey must have held it with one hand, and, in the other, his whip,

and the pistol with which he intended to commit the crime; which

was impossible.

_Prisoner._ These are only conjectures.

And what conjectures, my God! upon which to take away the life of a man.

Jeffreys, or Fouquier Tinville, could scarcely have dared to make such.

Such prejudice, such bitter persecution, such priming of the jury, such

monstrous assumptions and unreason--fancy them coming from an impartial

judge! The man is worse than the public accuser.

‘Rey,’ says the judge, ‘could not have committed the murder, _because he

had no money in his pocket, to fly, in case of failure_.’ And what is

the precise sum that his lordship thinks necessary for a gentleman to

have, before he makes such an attempt? Are the men who murder for money

usually in possession of a certain independence before they begin? How

much money was Rey,--a servant, who loved wine and women, had been

stopping at a score of inns on the road, and had, probably, an annual

income of four hundred francs,--how much money was Rey likely to have?

_‘Your servant had to assassinate two persons._’ This I have mentioned

before. Why had he to assassinate two persons,[11] when one was enough?

If he had killed Peytel, could he not have seized and gagged his wife

immediately?

_‘Your domestic ran straight forward, instead of taking to the woods, by

the side of the road: this is very unlikely._’ How does his worship

know? Can any judge, however enlightened, tell the exact road that a man

will take, who has just missed a _coup_ of murder, and is pursued by a

man who is firing pistols at him? And has a judge a right to instruct a

jury in this way, as to what they shall, or shall not, believe?

‘You have to run after an active man, who has the start of you; to jump

out of a carriage; to take your pistols; and _then_, your hammer. _This

is impossible._’ By heavens! does it not make a man’s blood boil, to

read such blundering, blood-seeking sophistry? This man, when it suits

him, shows that Rey would be slow in his motions; and, when it suits

him, declares that Rey ought to be quick; declares, _ex cathedrâ_, what

pace Rey should go, and what direction he should take; shows, in a

breath, that he must have run faster than Peytel; and then, that he

could not run fast, because the cloak clogged him; settles how he is to

be dressed when he commits a murder, and what money he is to have in his

pocket; gives these impossible suppositions to the jury, and tells them

that the previous statements are impossible; and, finally, informs them

of the precise manner in which Rey must have stood holding his

horse-cloth in one hand, his whip and pistol in the other, when he made

the supposed attempt at murder. Now, what is the size of a horse-cloth?

Is it as big as a pocket-handkerchief? Is there no possibility that it

might hang over one shoulder: that the whip should be held under that

very arm? Did you never see a carter so carry it, his hands in his

pockets all the while? Is it monstrous, abhorrent to nature, that a man

should fire a pistol from under a cloak on a rainy day?--that he should,

after firing the shot, be frightened, and run; run straight before him,

with the cloak on his shoulders, and the weapon in his hand? Peytel’s

story is possible, and very possible; it is almost probable. Allow that

Rey had the cloth on, and you allow that he must have been clogged in

his motions; that Peytel may have come up with him--felled him with a

blow of the hammer; the doctors say that he would have so fallen by one

blow--he would have fallen on his face, as he was found: the paper might

have been thrust into his breast, and tumbled out as he fell.

Circumstances far more impossible have occurred ere this; and men have

been hanged for them, who were as innocent of the crime laid to their

charge as the judge on the bench who convicted them.

In like manner, Peytel may not have committed the crime charged to him;

and Mr. Judge, with his arguments as to possibilities and

impossibilities,--Mr. Public Prosecutor, with his romantic narrative and

inflammatory harangues to the jury,--may have used all these powers to

bring to death an innocent man. From the animus with which the case has

been conducted from beginning to end, it was easy to see the result.

Here it is, in the words of the provincial paper:--

‘BOURG: _28th October 1839_.

‘The condemned Peytel has just undergone his punishment, which took

place four days before the anniversary of his crime. The terrible

drama of the bridge of Andert, which cost the life of two persons,

has just terminated on the scaffold. Mid-day had just sounded on

the clock of the Palais: the same clock tolled midnight when, on

the 30th of August, his sentence was pronounced.

‘Since the rejection of his appeal in Cassation, on which his

principal hopes were founded, Peytel spoke little of his petition

to the king. The notion of transportation was that which he seemed

to cherish most. However, he made several inquiries from the gaoler

of the prison, when he saw him at meal-times, with regard to the

place of execution, the usual hour, and other details on the

subject. From that period, the words “_Champ de Foire_” (the

fair-field, where the execution was to be held) were frequently

used by him in conversation.

‘Yesterday, the idea that the time had arrived seemed to be more

strongly than ever impressed upon him; especially after the

departure of the curé, who latterly has been with him every day.

The documents connected with the trial had arrived in the morning.

He was ignorant of this circumstance, but sought to discover from

his guardians what they tried to hide from him; and to find out

whether his petition was rejected, and when he was to die.

‘Yesterday, also, he had written to demand the presence of his

counsel, M. Margerand, in order that he might have some

conversation with him, and regulate his affairs, before he----; he

did not write down the word, but left in its place a few points of

the pen.

‘In the evening, whilst he was at supper, he begged earnestly to be

allowed a little wax-candle, to finish what he was writing:

otherwise, he said, _Time might fail_. This was a new, indirect

manner of repeating his ordinary question. As light, up to that

evening, had been refused him, it was thought best to deny him in

this, as in former instances; otherwise his suspicions might have

been confirmed. The keeper refused his demand.

‘This morning, Monday, at nine o’clock, the Greffier of the Assize

Court, in fulfilment of the painful duty which the law imposes upon

him, came to the prison, in company with the curé of Bourg, and

announced to the convict that his petition was rejected, and that

he had only three hours to live. He received this fatal news with a

great deal of calmness, and showed himself to be no more affected

than he had been on the trial. “I am ready; but I wish they had

given me four-and-twenty hours’ notice,”--were all the words he

used.

‘The Greffier now retired, leaving Peytel alone with the curé, who

did not thenceforth quit him. Peytel breakfasted at ten o’clock.

‘At eleven, a picquet of mounted gendarmerie and infantry took

their station upon the place before the prison, where a great

concourse of people had already assembled. An open car was at the

door. Before he went out, Peytel asked the gaoler for a

looking-glass; and having examined his face for a moment, said, “at

least, the inhabitants of Bourg will see that I have not grown

thin.”

‘As twelve o’clock sounded the prison gates opened, an aide

appeared, followed by Peytel leaning on the arm of the curate.

Peytel’s face was pale, he had a long black beard, a blue cap on

his head, and his greatcoat flung over his shoulders, and buttoned

at the neck.

‘He looked about at the place and the crowd; he asked if the

carriage would go at a trot; and on being told that that would be

difficult, he said he would prefer walking, and asked what the road

was. He immediately set out, walking at a firm and rapid pace. He

was not bound at all.

‘An immense crowd of people encumbered the two streets through

which he had to pass to the place of execution. He cast his eyes

alternately upon them and upon the guillotine, which was before

him.

‘Arrived at the foot of the scaffold, Peytel embraced the curé, and

bade him adieu. He then embraced him again; perhaps, for his mother

and sister. He then mounted the steps rapidly, and gave himself

into the hands of the executioner, who removed his coat and cap. He

asked how he was to place himself, and, on a sign being made, he

flung himself briskly on the plank, and stretched his neck. In

another moment he was no more.

‘The crowd, which had been quite silent, retired, profoundly moved

by the sight it had witnessed. As at all executions, there was a

very great number of women present.

‘Under the scaffold there had been, ever since the morning, a

coffin. The family had asked for his remains, and had them

immediately buried, privately: and thus the unfortunate man’s head

escaped the modellers in wax, several of whom had arrived to take

an impression of it.’

Down goes the axe; the poor wretch’s head rolls gasping into the basket;

the spectators go home, pondering; and Mr. Executioner and his aids

have, in half an hour, removed all traces of the august sacrifice, and

of the altar on which it had been performed. Say, Mr. Briefless, do you

think that any single person, meditating murder, would be deterred

therefrom by beholding this--nay, a thousand more executions? It is not

for moral improvement, as I take it, nor for opportunity to make

appropriate remarks upon the punishment of crime, that people make a

holiday of a killing-day, and leave their homes and occupations to flock

and witness the cutting off of a head. Do we crowd to see Mr. Macready

in the new tragedy, or Mademoiselle Elssler in her last new ballet and

flesh-coloured stockinet pantaloons, out of a pure love of abstract

poetry and beauty; or from a strong notion that we shall be excited, in

different ways, by the actor and the dancer? And so, as we go to have a

meal of fictitious terror at the tragedy, of something more questionable

in the ballet, we go for a glut of blood to the execution. The lust is

in every man’s nature, more or less. Did you ever witness a wrestling-or

boxing-match? The first clatter of the kick on the shins, or the first

drawing of blood, makes the stranger shudder a little; but soon the

blood is his chief enjoyment, and he thirsts for it with a fierce

delight. It is a fine grim pleasure that we have in seeing a man killed;

and I make no doubt that the organs of destructiveness must begin to

throb and swell as we witness the delightful savage spectacle.

Three or four years back, when Fieschi and Lacenaire were executed, I

made attempts to see the execution of both; but was disappointed in both

cases. In the first instance, the day for Fieschi’s death was,

purposely, kept secret; and he was, if I remember rightly, executed at

some remote quarter of the town. But it would have done a philanthropist

good to witness the scene which we saw on the morning when his execution

did _not_ take place.

It was carnival time, and the rumour had pretty generally been carried

abroad that he was to die on that morning. A friend, who accompanied me,

came many miles, through the mud and dark, in order to be in at the

death. We set out before light, floundering through the muddy Champs

Elysées; where, besides, were many other persons floundering, and all

bent upon the same errand. We passed by the Concert of Musard, then held

in the Rue St. Honoré; and round this, in the wet, a number of coaches

were collected. The ball was just up, and a crowd of people, in hideous

masquerade, drunk, tired, dirty, dressed in horrible old frippery, and

daubed with filthy rouge, were trooping out of the place: tipsy women

and men, shrieking, jabbering, gesticulating, as French will do; parties

swaggering, staggering forwards, arm in arm, reeling to and fro across

the street, and yelling songs in chorus: hundreds of these were bound

for the show, and we thought ourselves lucky in finding a vehicle to the

execution place, at the Barrière d’Enfer. As we crossed the river and

entered the Enfer Street, crowds of students, black workmen, and more

drunken devils from more carnival balls, were filling it; and on the

grand place there were thousands of these assembled, looking out for

Fieschi and his cortège. We waited and waited; but alas! no fun for us

that morning: no throat-cutting; no august spectacle of satisfied

justice; and the eager spectators were obliged to return, disappointed

of their expected breakfast of blood. It would have been a fine scene,

that execution, could it but have taken place in the midst of the mad

mountebanks and tipsy strumpets who had flocked so far to witness it,

wishing to wind up the delights of their carnival by a _bonne-bouche_ of

a murder.

The other attempt was equally unfortunate. We arrived too late on the

ground to be present at the execution of Lacenaire and his co-mate in

murder, Avril. But as we came to the ground (a gloomy round space,

within the barrier--three roads lead to it; and, outside, you see the

wine-shops and restaurateurs of the barrier looking gay and

inviting)--as we came to the ground, we only found, in the midst of it,

a little pool of ice, just partially tinged with red. Two or three idle

street-boys were dancing and stamping about this pool; and when I asked

one of them whether the execution had taken place, he began dancing more

madly than ever, and shrieked out with a loud fantastical theatrical

voice, ‘Venez tous, Messieurs et Dames, voyez ici le sang du monstre

Lacenaire, et de son compagnon le traître Avril,’ or words to that

effect; and straightway all the other gamins screamed out the words in

chorus, and took hands and danced round the little puddle.

O august Justice, your meal was followed by a pretty appropriate grace!

Was any man, who saw the show, deterred, or frightened, or moralised in

any way? He had gratified his appetite for blood, and this was all.

There is something singularly pleasing, both in the amusement of

execution-seeing, and in the results. You are not only delightfully

excited at the time, but most pleasingly relaxed afterwards; the mind,

which has been wound up painfully until now, becomes quite complacent

and easy. There is something agreeable in the misfortunes of others, as

the philosopher has told us. Remark what a good breakfast you eat after

an execution; how pleasant it is to cut jokes after it, and upon it.

This merry pleasant mood is brought on by the blood tonic.

But, for God’s sake, if we are to enjoy this, let us do so in

moderation; and let us, at least, be sure of a man’s guilt before we

murder him. To kill him, even with the full assurance that he is guilty,

is hazardous enough. Who gave you the right to do so?--you, who cry out

against suicides as impious and contrary to Christian law? What use is

there in killing him? You deter no one else from committing the crime by

so doing: you give us, to be sure, half an hour’s pleasant

entertainment; but it is a great question whether we derive much moral

profit from the sight. If you want to keep a murderer from further

inroads upon society, are there not plenty of hulks and prisons, God

wot; treadmills, galleys, and houses of correction? Above all, as in the

case of Sebastian Peytel and his family, there have been two deaths

already: was a third death absolutely necessary? and, taking the

fallibility of judges and lawyers into his heart, and remembering the

thousand instances of unmerited punishment that have been suffered upon

similar and stronger evidence before, can any man declare, positively

and upon his oath, that Peytel was guilty, and that this was not _the

third murder in the family_?

FRENCH DRAMAS AND MELODRAMAS

There are three kinds of drama in France, which you may subdivide as

much as you please.

There is the old classical drama, well-nigh dead, and full time too: old

tragedies, in which half a dozen characters appear, and spout sonorous

Alexandrines for half a dozen hours. The fair Rachel has been trying to

revive this _genre_, and to untomb Racine; but be not alarmed, Racine

will never come to life again, and cause audiences to weep as of yore.

Madame Rachel can only galvanise the corpse, not revivify it. Ancient

French tragedy, red-heeled, patched, and be-periwigged, lies in the

grave; and it is only the ghost of it that we see, which the fair Jewess

has raised. There are classical comedies in verse, too, wherein the

knavish valets, rakish heroes, stolid old guardians, and smart

free-spoken serving-women, discourse in Alexandrines as loud as the

Horaces or the Cid. An Englishman will seldom reconcile himself to the

_ronflement_ of the verses, and the painful recurrence of the rhymes;

for my part, I had rather go to Madame Saqui’s, or see Deburan dancing

on a rope: his lines are quite as natural and poetical.

Then there is the comedy of the day, of which Monsieur Scribe is the

father. Good heavens! with what a number of gay colonels, smart widows,

and silly husbands has that gentleman peopled the play-books! How that

unfortunate seventh commandment has been maltreated by him and his

disciples! You will see four pieces, at the Gymnase, of a night; and so

sure as you see them, four husbands shall be wickedly used. When is this

joke to cease? Mon Dieu! Play-writers have handled it for about two

thousand years, and the public, like a great baby, must have the tale

repeated to it over and over again.

Finally, there is the Drama, that great monster which has sprung into

life of late years; and which is said, but I don’t believe a word of it,

to have Shakespeare for a father. If Mr. Scribe’s plays may be said to

be so many ingenious examples how to break one commandment, the _drame_

is a grand and general chaos of them all; nay, several crimes are added,

not prohibited in the Decalogue, which was written before dramas were.

Of the drama, Victor Hugo and Dumas are the well-known and respectable

guardians. Every piece Victor Hugo has written, since _Hernani_, has

contained a monster--a delightful monster, saved by one virtue. There is

Triboulet, a foolish monster; Lucrèce Borgia, a maternal monster; Mary

Tudor, a religious monster; Monsieur Quasimodo, a hump-backed monster;

and others that might be named, whose monstrosities we are induced to

pardon--nay, admiringly to witness--because they are agreeably mingled

with some exquisite display of affection. And, as the great Hugo has one

monster to each play, the great Dumas has, ordinarily, half a dozen, to

whom murder is nothing; common intrigue, and simple breakage of the

before-mentioned commandment, nothing; but who live and move in a vast,

delightful complication of crime, that cannot be easily conceived in

England, much less described.

When I think over the number of crimes that I have seen Mademoiselle

Georges, for instance, commit, I am filled with wonder at her greatness,

and the greatness of the poets who have conceived these charming horrors

for her. I have seen her make love to, and murder, her sons, in the

_Tour de Nesle_. I have seen her poison a company of no less than nine

gentlemen, at Ferrara, with an affectionate son in the number; I have

seen her, as Madame de Brinvilliers, kill off numbers of respectable

relations, in the four first acts; and, at the last, be actually burned

at the stake, to which she comes shuddering, ghastly, barefooted, and in

a white sheet. Sweet excitement of tender sympathies! Such tragedies are

not so good as a real downright execution; but, in point of interest,

the next thing to it: with what a number of moral emotions do they fill

the breast; with what a hatred for vice, and yet a true pity and respect

for that grain of virtue that is to be found in us all: our bloody,

daughter-loving Brinvilliers; our warm-hearted, poisonous Lucretia

Borgia; above all, what a smart appetite for a cool supper afterwards,

at the Café Anglais, when the horrors of the play act as a piquant sauce

to the supper!

Or, to speak more seriously, and to come, at last, to the point. After

having seen most of the grand dramas which have been produced at Paris

for the last half-dozen years, and thinking over all that one has

seen,--the fictitious murders, rapes, adulteries, and other crimes, by

which one has been interested and excited,--a man may take leave to be

heartily ashamed of the manner in which he has spent his time; and of

the hideous kind of mental intoxication in which he has permitted

himself to indulge.

Nor are simple society outrages the only sort of crime in which the

spectator of Paris plays has permitted himself to indulge; he has

recreated himself with a deal of blasphemy besides, and has passed many

pleasant evenings in beholding religion defiled and ridiculed.

Allusion has been made, in a former paper, to a fashion that lately

obtained in France, and which went by the name of Catholic reaction; and

as, in this happy country, fashion is everything, we have had not merely

Catholic pictures and quasi-religious books, but a number of Catholic

plays have been produced, very edifying to the frequenters of the

theatres or the Boulevards, who have learned more about religion from

these performances than they have acquired, no doubt, in the whole of

their lives before. In the course of a very few years we have seen--_The

Wandering Jew_, _Belshazzar’s Feast_, _Nebuchadnezzar_, and the

_Massacre of the Innocents_, _Joseph and his Brethren_, _The Passage of

the Red Sea_, and _The Deluge_.

The great Dumas, like Madame Sand before mentioned, has brought a vast

quantity of religion before the footlights. There was his famous tragedy

of _Caligula_, which, be it spoken to the shame of the Paris critics,

was coldly received; nay, actually hissed, by them. And why? Because,

says Dumas, it contained a great deal too much piety for the rogues. The

public, he says, was much more religious, and understood him at once.

‘As for the critics,’ says he nobly, ‘let those who cried out against

the immorality of Antony and Marguerite de Bourgogne, reproach me for

_the chastity of Messalina_.’ (This dear creature is the heroine of the

play of _Caligula_.) ‘It matters little to me. These people have but

seen the form of my work: they have walked round the tent, but have not

seen the arch which it covered; they have examined the vases and candles

of the altar, but have not opened the tabernacle!

‘The public alone has, instinctively, comprehended that there was,

beneath this outward sign, an inward and mysterious grace: it followed

the action of the piece in all its serpentine windings; it listened for

four hours, with pious attention (_avec recueillement et religion_), to

the sound of this rolling river of thoughts, which may have appeared to

it new and bold, perhaps, but chaste and grave; and it retired, with

its head on its breast, like a man who had just perceived, in a dream,

the solution of a problem which he has long and vainly sought in his

waking hours.’

You see that not only Saint Sand is an apostle, in her way; but Saint

Dumas is another. We have people in England who write for bread, like

Dumas and Sand, and are paid so much for their line; but they don’t set

up for prophets. Mrs. Trollope has never declared that her novels are

inspired by Heaven; Mr. Buckstone has written a great number of farces,

and never talked about the altar and the tabernacle. Even Sir Edward

Bulwer (who, on a similar occasion, when the critics found fault with a

play of his, answered them by a pretty decent declaration of his own

merits) never ventured to say that he had received a divine mission, and

was uttering five-act revelations.

All things considered, the tragedy of _Caligula_ is a decent tragedy; as

decent as the decent characters of the hero and heroine can allow it to

be; it may be almost said, provokingly decent: but this, it must be

remembered, is the characteristic of the modern French school (nay, of

the English school too); and if the writer take the character of a

remarkable scoundrel, it is ten to one but he turns out an amiable

fellow, in whom we have all the warmest sympathy. Caligula is killed at

the end of the performance; Messalina is comparatively well-behaved: and

the sacred part of the performance, the tabernacle-characters apart from

the mere ‘vase’ and ‘candlestick’ personages, may be said to be depicted

in the person of a Christian convert, Stella, who has had the good

fortune to be converted by no less a person than Mary Magdalene, when

she, Stella, was staying on a visit to her aunt, near Narbonne.

‘_Stella (continuant_) Voilà

Que je vois s’avancer, sans pilote et sans rames,

Une barque portant deux hommes et deux femmes

Et, spectacle inouï qui me ravit encor,

Tous quatre avaient au front une auréole d’or

D’où partaient des rayons de si vive lumière

Que je fus obligée à baisser la paupière;

Et, lorsque je rouvris les yeux avec effroi,

Les voyageurs divins étaient auprès de moi.

Un jour de chacun d’eux et dans toute sa gloire

Je te raconterai la merveilleuse histoire,

Et tu l’adoreras, j’espère; en ce moment,

Ma mère, il te suffit de savoir seulement

Que tous quatre venaient du fond de la Syrie:

Un édit les avait bannis de leur patrie,

Et, se faisant bourreaux, des hommes irrités,

Sans avirons, sans eau, sans pain et garottés,

Sur une frêle barque échouée au rivage.

Les avaient à la mer poussés dans un orage.

Mais à peine l’esquif eut-il touché les flots,

Qu’au cantique, chanté par les saints matelots,

L’ouragan replia ses ailes frémissantes,

Que la mer aplanit ses vagues mugissantes,

Et qu’un soleil plus pur, reparaissant aux cieux,

Enveloppa l’esquif d’un cercle radieux!...

_Junia._ Mais c’était un prodige.

_Stella._ Un miracle, ma mère!

Leurs fers tombèrent seuls, l’eau cessa d’être amère,

Et deux fois chaque jour le bateau fut couvert

D’une manne pareille à celle du desert;

C’est ainsi que, poussés par une main céleste,

Je les vis aborder.

_Junia._ Oh! dis vîte le reste!

_Stella._ A l’aube, trois d’entre eux quittèrent la maison:

Marthe prit le chemin qui mène à Tarascon,

Lazare et Maximin celui de Massilie,

Et celle qui resta ... _c’était la plus jolie_ [how truly French!],

Nous faisant appeler vers le milieu du jour,

Demanda si les monts ou les bois d’alentour

Cachaient quelque retraite inconnue et profonde,

Qui la pût séparer à tout jamais du monde....

Aquila se souvint qu’il avait pénétré

Dans un antre sauvage et de tous ignoré,

Grotte creusée aux flancs de ces Alpes sublimes,

Où l’aigle fait son aire au-dessus des abîmes.

Il offrit cet asile, et dès le lendemain

Tous deux, pour l’y guider, nous étions en chemin.

Le soir du second jour nous touchâmes sa base:

Là, tombant à genoux dans une sainte extase,

Elle pria longtemps, puis vers l’antre inconnu,

Dénouant sa chaussure, elle marcha pied nu.

Nos prières, nos cris restèrent sans réponses:

Au milieu des cailloux, des épines, des ronces,

Nous la vîmes monter, un bâton à la main,

Et ce n’est qu’arrivée au terme du chemin,

Qu’enfin elle tomba sans force et sans haleine....

_Junia._ Comment la nommait-on, ma fille?

_Stella._ Madeline.’

Walking, says Stella, by the sea-shore,

‘A bark drew near, that had nor sail nor oar; two women and two men

the vessel bore: each of that crew, ‘twas wondrous to behold, wore

round his head a ring of blazing gold; from which such radiance

glittered all around, that I was fain to look towards the ground.

And when once more I raised my frightened eyne, before me stood the

travellers divine; their rank, the glorious lot that each befell,

at better season, mother, will I tell. Of this anon: the time will

come when thou shalt learn to worship as I worship now. Suffice it,

that from Syria’s land they came; an edict from their country

banished them. Fierce, angry men had seized upon the four, and

launched them in that vessel from the shore. They launched these

victims on the waters rude: nor rudder gave to steer, nor bread for

food. As the doomed vessel cleaves the stormy main, that pious crew

uplifts a sacred strain; the angry waves are silent as it sings;

the storm, awe-stricken, folds its quivering wings. A purer sun

appears the heavens to light, and wraps the little bark in radiance

bright.

_Junia._ Sure, ‘twas a prodigy.

_Stella._ A miracle. Spontaneous from their hands the fetters fell.

The salt sea-wave grew fresh; and, twice a day, manna (like that

which on the desert lay) covered the bark, and fed them on their

way. Thus, hither led, at Heaven’s divine behest, I saw them

land----

_Junia._ My daughter, tell the rest.

_Stella._ Three of the four our mansion left at dawn. One, Martha,

took the road to Tarascon; Lazarus and Maximin to Massily; but one

remained (the fairest of the three), who asked us if, i’ the woods

or mountains near, there chanced to be some cavern lone and drear;

where she might hide, for ever, from all men. It chanced, my cousin

knew of such a den; deep hidden in a mountain’s hoary breast, on

which the eagle builds his airy nest. And thither offered he the

saint to guide. Next day upon the journey forth we hied; and came,

at the second eve, with weary pace, unto the lonely mountain’s

rugged base. Here the worn traveller, falling on her knee, did pray

awhile in sacred ecstasy; and, drawing off her sandals from her

feet, marched, naked, towards that desolate retreat. No answer made

she to our cries or groans; but walking midst the prickles and rude

stones, a staff in hand, we saw her upwards toil; nor ever did she

pause, nor rest the while, save at the entry of that savage den.

Here, powerless and panting, fell she then.

_Junia._ What was her name, my daughter?

_Stella._ MAGDALEN.

Here the translator must pause--having no inclination to enter ‘the

tabernacle’ in company with such a spotless high-priest as Monsieur

Dumas.

Something ‘tabernacular’ may be found in Dumas’s famous piece of _Don

Juan de Marana_. The poet has laid the scene of his play in a vast

number of places: in heaven (where we have the Virgin Mary, and little

angels, in blue, swinging censers before her!)--on earth, under the

earth, and in a place still lower, but not mentionable to ears polite;

and the plot, as it appears from a _dialogue_ between a good and a bad

angel, with which the play commences, turns upon a contest between

these two worthies for the possession of the soul of a member of the

family of Marana.

Don Juan de Marana not only resembles his namesake, celebrated by Mozart

and Molière, in his peculiar successes among the ladies, but possesses

further qualities which render his character eminently fitting for stage

representation: he unites the virtues of Lovelace and Lacenaire; he

blasphemes upon all occasions; he murders, at the slightest provocation,

and without the most trifling remorse; he overcomes ladies of rigid

virtue, ladies of easy virtue, and ladies of no virtue at all; and the

poet, inspired by the contemplation of such a character, has depicted

his hero’s adventures and conversation with wonderful feeling and truth.

The first act of the play contains a half-dozen of murders and

intrigues; which would have sufficed humbler genius than M. Dumas’s, for

the completion of, at least, half a dozen tragedies. In the second act

our hero flogs his elder brother, and runs away with his sister-in-law;

in the third, he fights a duel with a rival, and kills him: whereupon

the mistress of his victim takes poison, and dies, in great agonies, on

the stage. In the fourth act, Don Juan, having entered a church for the

purpose of carrying off a nun, with whom he is in love, is seized by the

statue of one of the ladies whom he has previously victimised, and made

to behold the ghosts of all those unfortunate persons whose deaths he

has caused.

This is a most edifying spectacle. The ghosts rise solemnly, each in a

white sheet, preceded by a wax candle; and, having declared their names

and qualities, call, in chorus, for vengeance upon Don Juan, as thus:--

‘_Don Sandoval_ (_loquitur_). I am Don Sandoval d’Ojedo. I played

against Don Juan my fortune, the tomb of my fathers, and the heart

of my mistress; I lost all. I played against him my life, and I

lost it. Vengeance against the murderer! vengeance!--(_The candle

goes out._)’

_The candle goes out_, and an angel descends--a flaming sword in his

hand--and asks: ‘Is there no voice in favour of Don Juan?’ when lo! Don

Juan’s father (like one of those ingenious toys called

‘Jack-in-the-box’) jumps up from his coffin, and demands grace for his

son.

When Martha, the nun, returns, having prepared all things for her

elopement, she finds Don Juan fainting upon the ground.--‘I am no longer

your husband,’ says he, upon coming to himself; ‘I am no longer Don

Juan; I am Brother Juan the Trappist. Sister Martha, recollect that you

must die!’

This was a most cruel blow upon Sister Martha, who is no less a person

than an angel, an angel in disguise--the good spirit of the house of

Marana, who has gone to the length of losing her wings, and forfeiting

her place in heaven, in order to keep company with Don Juan on earth,

and, if possible, to convert him. Already, in her angelic character, she

had exhorted him to repentance, but in vain; for, while she stood at one

elbow, pouring not merely hints, but long sermons, into his ear, at the

other elbow stood a bad spirit, grinning and sneering at all her pious

counsels, and obtaining by far the greater share of the Don’s attention.

[Illustration]