CHAPTER I.

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XL. February, 1852. No. 2.

Contents

Fiction, Literature and Articles

Philadelphia Navy-Yard

The Physiology of Dandyism

The Death of the Stag

“Graham” to Jeremy Short

A Life of Vicissitudes (continued)

Mozart’s Don Giovanni

Anna Temple

Nature and Art

The Lost Deed (continued)

Letty Rawdon

Père-la-Chaise

First Ambition

Charlotte Corday

Review of New Books

Graham’s Small-Talk

Poetry and Music

Granny and I

Sonnet. To Julia

Flowers and Life

A Filial Tribute

Madeline

Moorish Memories

Autumn Rain

To Mary on Earth

To Adhemar

Ernestina

Ode on Idleness

Rain and Sunlight in October

Fragment from an Unpublished Poem

Snow

Joy and Sorrow

Stanzas

The Spirit of Beauty

The Star of Destiny

Rail-Road Song

Love’s Messenger

Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.

* * * * *

[Illustration: J. Hayter, W.H. Mote

SWEET SIXTEEN.

Graham’s Magazine 1852]

* * * * *

[Illustration: =IFE AT THE SEA-SIDE.]

* * * * *

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XL. PHILADELPHIA, FEBRUARY, 1852. No. 2.

* * * * *

PHILADELPHIA NAVY-YARD.

[Illustration: Philadelphia Navy-Yard.]

Our engraving presents a view of the Navy-Yard, taken from a point of

view below the city of Philadelphia. From this yard have come some of

the best sailing and steam-vessels that have ever been built for Uncle

Sam. The largest vessel that ever floated upon our waters, “The

Pennsylvania,” was built here. She is useless, and is most scandalously

given over—we believe, as a sort of “receiving ship,” and is rotting

ingloriously. She should have been sent to the “World’s Fair” by

Congress, filled with American products, and the Arts of Peace. But

Congress was _busy_—talking about the “dissolution of the

Union”—_Pshaw!_—and had no time for _national_ business.

We have no inclination to talk much about Navy-yards since we read the

following. We give you _the picture_, reader—but give us a cheaper

postage upon Newspapers and Books, and fewer Soldiers and Naval

Commanders.

“Victor Hugo estimates the annual cost of maintaining the standing

armies of Europe at five hundred millions of dollars. This outlay would,

in a very few years, pay off every national debt of Europe. In a few

years more it would, if wisely expended, so equalize the population of

the globe, by a great system of emigration, that every man might have a

fair opportunity to earn a competence by his labor. Mr. Upham, in his

‘Manual of Peace,’ thus classifies the causes of the wars of Europe

since the age of Constantine the Great—that is, since the Christian

religion became the prevailing one: wars of ambition, forty-four; of

plunder, twenty-two; of retaliation, twenty-four; of honor, eight; of

disputed territory, six; of disputed titles to crowns, _forty-one_; of

alliances, thirty; of jealousy, twenty-three; of commerce, _five_; civil

wars, fifty-five; of religion, twenty-eight: total, two hundred and

eighty-six. The national debt of England, caused by wars alone, is equal

to about one-ninth of the whole property of the United Kingdom. The cost

of maintaining the war establishments of Europe and the United States is

fifty-four per cent. of the whole revenue of the nations. Of the revenue

of the Austrian government, thirty-three per cent. is expended in

maintaining the army and navy; France, thirty-eight per cent.; Russia,

forty-four per cent.; Great Britain, seventy-four per cent.; _the United

States, eighty per cent_.” Uncle Sam should take a fresh look at his

figures.

* * * * *

GRANNY AND I.

BY ELIZA SPROAT.

[Illustration: an old woman sitting on a stool by a spinning wheel and

speaking to a lad eating an apple and sitting with a cat]

Days agone, days agone!

When my life was all at dawn,

Ye are sweet to muse upon

’Mid the world’s sad dinning.

I an aproned urchin trim,

And, within the cottage dim,

Crooning quaint an ancient hymn,

Granny at her spinning.

Spinning at her cottage-door,

Where upon the sanded floor,

Through the leaves, the light ran o’er,

All the summer weather.

Granny’s cheek was old and lean;

Mine was round and hard, I ween;

Very quaint it must have been

To see them close together.

Very old was granny’s hair,

Short and white, and none to spare;

Very old the lips so dear

That dropped my nightly blessing;

Very old the shrunken eyes,

Through her specs of goggle size,

Looking down their kind replies

On my rude caressing.

I could spell my primer o’er;

Granny knew but little more—

Bible readings all her lore,

Spinning all her glory.

Yet—how was it? now and then,

Something past the thoughts of men

Opened heaven to my ken

Through her teachings hoary.

Tones that age could ne’er destroy,

Struck her little wondering boy

With a majesty of joy;

And at times has striven

Something grand within her eyes,

As from out the cloud-heaped skies

Some strong angel vainly tries

To call to us from heaven.

Days agone! days agone!

When the world was all at dawn,

And the heaven round it drawn,

Smiled so near above us;

Then the sun shone real gold,

Then the flowers true stories told,

Then the stars were angels bold

Reaching down to love us.

Then a marvel, now a flower,

Seen in any common bower,

Fed with common earth and shower,

Common sunlight under.

Then an angel, now a star,

Small and bleak and very far;

Nothing left for folly’s mar,

Naught for happy wonder.

I have learned to smile at youth;

I have learned to question truth;

I can hear my brother’s truth

With a sage misgiving.

I have grown too wise to see

False delights in things that be;

Far too wise for childhood’s glee—

Nay—is learning living?

Days agone, days agone!

Bitter-sweet to muse upon,

Counting up the lost and won

In the coals at even.

Never more—never more!

Comes the witless bliss of yore;

Baby faith and baby lore—

God! is knowledge heaven?

* * * * *

SONNET. TO JULIA,

ON HER OWN EYES, AND HER SISTER LESBIA’S.

BY G. McC. M.

Night’s star-gemmed coronal is not more bright

Than are those flashing, joy-lit eyes of thine;

Me thinks I should not need the day-orb’s light,

When on my path such lovely planets shine.

Like veins of gold that sparkle in the mine,

Their glittering radiance dazzles the beholder;

And yet to me thy brilliant eyes seem colder

Than Arctic ice or snows. Far more benign

And beauteous are the windows of her soul

Whom I have loved—the long desired goal

Of my most cherished hopes. The paly moon

Sheds not a softer light on copse and stream

Than on my heart her lucid orbs. The moon

Of Summer is not warmer than her blue eye’s beam.

* * * * *

FLOWERS AND LIFE.

BY MARY HOWITT.

[Illustration: figure of a man and woman standing on a pedestle and

framed by flowers]

The autumn sun is shining,

Gray mists are on the hill;

A russet tint is on the leaves,

But flowers are blowing still!

Still bright, in wood and meadow;

On moorlands dry and brown;

By little streams; by rivers broad;

On every breezy down.

The little flowers are smiling,

With chilly dew-drops wet,

Are saying with a spirit-voice—

“We have not vanished yet!

“No, though the spring be over;

Though summer’s strength be gone;

Though autumn’s wealth be garnered,

And winter cometh on;

“Still we have not departed.

We linger to the last.

And even on early winter’s brow

A cheerful ray will cast!”

Go forth, then, youths and maidens,

Be joyful whilst ye may;

Go forth, then, child and mother,

And toiling men grown gray.

Go forth, though ye be humble,

And wan with toil and care;

There are no fields so barren

But some sweet flower is there!

Flowers spring up by the highway

Which busy feet have trod;

They rise up in the dreariest wood;

They gem the dullest sod.

They need no learned gardeners

To nurture them with care;

They only need the dews of earth,

The sunshine and the air.

And for earth’s lowly children;

For loving hearts and good,

They spring up all around us,

They will not be subdued.

Thank God! when forth from Eden

The weeping pair was driven,

That unto earth, though cursed with thorns,

The little flowers were given!

That Eve, when looking downward,

To face her God afraid,

Beheld the scented violet,

The primrose in the shade!

Thank God, that with the thistle

That sprang up in his toil,

The weary worker, Adam,

Saw roses gem the soil!

And still for anxious workers;

For hearts with anguish full,

Life, even on its dreariest paths,

Has flowers for them to cull!

* * * * *

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DANDYISM.

BY THOMPSON WESTCOTT.

[Illustration: as gentleman dressed in tophat and coat with other men

and boys looking at him]

Like auriferous deposits in common quartz, the readers of Graham, the

precious ore amidst duller literary encompassment, brighten the

continent from Canada even to California. A few rich veins are to be

found in large cities, but the valuable aggregate is scattered through

the more rural portion of the country, where the free air whistles by,

uncontaminated by the smoke of thousands of chimneys, and where night

reigns in sable supremacy, and is not turned into decrepit day by

blazing gas and brilliant illuminations. The great mass of Grahamites

are, therefore, but slightly versed in the etiquette of towns, and know

little of city follies and city pride.

In farm-houses midst pleasant valleys, in log-cabins which dot clearings

midst western prairies, even in the unsubstantial tents of seekers in El

Dorado, they turn to its pages for amusement, moral cultivation and

instruction. These demands have been often attended to, though perhaps a

trifle too gravely. The time has at length come, when the growing public

taste bids us prepare to have a little fun. Human folly is the best and

most natural subject for human ridicule. To laugh with the manes of the

Jolly old Grecian philosopher, is more agreeable than to snivel with the

lugubrious ghost of his weeping rival. We therefore must needs have a

hearty guffaw together, and as the most appropriate subject for mirth,

suppose we select that incarnation of vapid creation, but that idol of

self-esteem—a City Dandy.

The assertion made by the ancient sage Socrates, that “a dandy is like a

jackass, because he wears his Sunday-coat every day,” would scarcely fit

a modern exquisite, whose diurnal attire varies with each revolution of

the sun. The apothegm of Plato, that “a monkey owes his distinction to

his tail and a fop to his tailor,” is not thoroughly apt, because the

human ape owes something (generally a considerable sum) to his hatter

and boot-maker. The well-known assertion of Virgil, “_in squirtibus

nihil sed aquæ lactissimus_”—in squirts you will find nothing but milk

and water—has about it the usual license taken by poets, inasmuch as if

we examine _our_ squirts, they will be pronounced empty. Bacon’s

celebrated maxim in his Novum Organum, that “what are considered petty

matters are often of importance, but there is no importance in a _petit

maître_,” will probably be acquiesced in by common people, though those

implicated by the serious pun may think it uncommonly impudent. Newton’s

position taken in the _Principia_, that “in apples and men there is much

specific gravity, but mushrooms and dandies are of trifling lightness,”

may be disputed by the latter, who with some show might liken their

weight to that of “some pumpkins.” Euclid’s celebrated rule, “a plane

superficies is every where flat, _e.g._ a dandy who is plainly

superficial is a flat every where,” has long been a fixture in

geometrical lore, which may be doubted, though dangerous to dissent

from. We, therefore, seek in vain in the lessons of ancient science and

wisdom for competent authority to settle the question—“What is a

dandy?” _Hamlet_, who being the “glass of fashion and the mould of

form,” was of course a fop, did on one occasion confess that himself and

some other leaders of the ton at that time, yclept _Horatio_ and

_Marcellus_, were “fools of nature,” and horribly shook their

dispositions “with thoughts beyond the reaches of their souls.” His

candid admission that exquisites are natural fools—“rather weak in the

upper story,” and unable to stand the overpowering weight of grave

thought—has long been admired as a fine picture of the mental condition

of the dandies when something was “rotten in the state of Denmark.” But

even this idea of the immortal bard will scarcely assimilate to a proper

notion of our modern bucks, because the foppery natural to a Hamlet

would not be similar to that of a large City.

[Illustration: Ladies and gents looking at two dandies]

We therefore rummage the books with little success in search for

authorities upon this subject. We are constrained to a belief that

Linnæus has not classified the _genera_ or Buffon discriminated the

species. If exquisites, by reason of their sappiness, are vegetable, the

Swedish naturalist has passed over the variety—if they are animals, the

Frenchman has not given them a proper place among the _mammalia_. The

history, habits and peculiarities of these mandrakes, these “forked

radishes,” these nondescripts, who afflict the south side of Chestnut

street, Philadelphia, or the west side of Broadway, New York, has not

yet been written, but the subject has latterly assumed an importance

which can be no longer disregarded. If the comic dissector, with scalpel

in hand, were to desire the fop for a subject, he would have to wait

until he was defunct, but the dandy never dies; he is a living example

of the verity of the adage, true whenever made—“the fools are not all

dead yet”—and it is therefore impossible to imagine the time when there

will not be a dandy. We cannot consequently dissect. We may apply the

stethoscope to the chest of the exquisite; we may feel his weak pulse,

or examine his silly tongue. So may we make our diagnosis, and though we

cannot “minister to a mind diseased,” we may, at least, “hold the mirror

up to nature,” for the benefit of all gazers. Therefore, in pursuance of

the task, come we to our first great inquiry:

HOW ARE DANDIES MADE?

This is a grave question, for fops are like veal pies—in the opinion of

the waggish Weller—the crust may be rather respectable, but the making

up of the interior is “werry duberous.” Exquisites at this present

writing, are a conglomeration of lanky legs, hairy heads and creamy

countenances. Such are their natural peculiarities. But it is evident

that in considering this subject, the great topic of inquiry is, What is

a dandy sartorially? Here description will proclaim him to be a being

stuck into tight trowsers, ditto coat and vest, ditto boots, not so much

ditto overcoat, and crowned with a cylindrical structure of felt, which

is called a hat. Mentally the subject of dandyism offers little field

for remark, because the weakness which distinguishes the unfortunate

class of our fellow citizens now under consideration, is caused by

natural imbecility and want of common sense.

It is a topic of inquiry worthy of the most acute philosophical research

whether buckishness is a natural or acquired folly. Some who have argued

upon the matter have taken the ground, that all such vanities are the

consequence of the great fall, and that as the expulsion from Eden was

followed by the assumption of apparel, good Mother Eve was tempted and

overcome by the fascinations of dress. For support of this view of the

subject it may be urged, that with the fall came dress, with dress came

fashion, and with fashion came the Dandy. Others suggest that such an

argument as this, going back beyond the flood, is far-fetched, and they

profess to be able to assign a much better cause for dandyism. According

to these philosophers every fop has “a soft place in his head,” which

has been very beautifully described by the poet as

“The greenest spot

In Memory’s waste.”

They affirm that this weak portion of a skull otherwise thick, is the

chosen place of the “organ of dandyism,” and controls the habits of its

possessors. If this were so, we might pardon a failing which cannot be

remedied, but, with Combe in our hands, we in vain run over the head to

find this organ, which is certainly not a hand-organ. None of the

phrenological authorities—it is a striking fact—give the locality of

this bump.

No; “the milk of human kindness” which was “poured into Gall,” forbade

him from making known the situation of the protuberance, and Fowler

unfairly dodges the question.

Nothing is to be made out of this inquiry, and after considering the

matter with great gravity, we are driven to the conclusion that Dandyism

is like a bad cold, caught nobody knows how, or when, or where, or why.

Some may be afflicted because they have the pores of vanity open—others

who sit in the draught of affectation, may suddenly be seized by a

fashionable influenza—going suddenly from the warm room of common sense

into the cold air of ostentation, may give the “_grippe_” to some—but

with many it is chronic, having been acquired in childhood when their

dear mammas tricked them out in fantastic velvets and fine caps, with

feathers, making them juvenile dandies among the little boys of their

neighborhood.

But all this may be tiresome to the reader who desires to plunge at once

in the middle of the subject. We must really get on with this important

theme, and responding categorically to the inquiry, “how dandies are

made?” respond: by eight honest mechanics, to wit, the tailor, hatter,

boot-maker, linen-draper, haberdasher, glover, hosier and jeweler. Take

away the articles fabricated by these men, what is he but a helpless

mortal, a mere man and terribly unfashionable? We might once have added

to the list of dandy manufacturers the barber—but our modern exquisites

have so little to do with that artist that the claims of Figaro to the

distinction would be strongly controverted.

An inspection of a buck in this month of February, anno domini eighteen

hundred and fifty-two, will convey to the mind of the spectator ideas of

a pair of very thin legs, surmounted by a very short specimen of an

overcoat, with monstrous buttons and wide sleeves—a cravat with a bow

about six inches wide and three inches broad, with fringes at the

ends—a standing shirt collar, running up to a very sharp

point—something like a face, covered with hair over what, in

Christians, are the chin, cheek and upper-lip—and a hat thereon. Simile

fails in ability to convey any adequate notion of this figure. Two

pipes, bowl downward and stems upward, might give an idea of the lower

extremity of the dandy. We will carry out the nicotian metaphor by

placing on the upper portions of the stems a paper of “Mrs. Miller’s

best”—the short-cut, oozing from the top of the torn paper, will do

very well for the hair on the face—a tobacco-box placed on the whole,

will give some idea of a figure, which, if greatly magnified, would in

the outline much resemble a modern fop.

The clothing of an exquisite is a work of time and science. We can

imagine how much of the labor is done. But there are two subjects, in

the making of a fop, that have long been considered puzzles. One of

these questions is—how does he manage to tie those huge bows in his

cravat, which stand out just below his chin, giving him thereabout the

appearance of a cherubim, all head and wings? What a work of fixing must

there be before he gets the knot exactly right! What gazing into the

mirror—what pulling of ends—what twisting of folds—what tying and

untying! Every thing must be just so. There must be no wrinkles—all

must be smooth and “ship-shape,” or the dandy so remiss upon this

subject would be avoided forever by his associates. It has been asserted

that a smart exquisite is able to tie his cravat in half an hour, but

the general average of time is believed to be an hour and a half. There

is a melancholy instance on record, of a fop who once took three hours

to fix the bow of his cravat. The sad occurrence took place on what

should have been his wedding-day. He commenced the work at seven o’clock

in the morning and had “a nice knot” at ten. Unfortunately, the hour of

the wedding was fixed at nine. The anxious intended wailed impatiently

at the altar for her expected lord, for half an hour, and then

concluding that he meant to insult her, went away in a huff, so that the

unfortunate dandy, by being too particular as to tying a nice knot, lost

the opportunity of fastening a nicer knot, and worse still, a bride

“worth a hundred thousand.”

This inquiry into the time occupied at the cravat, though very

interesting, must yield in importance to another, to wit:—How do

dandies get into their boots?

In former years this puzzling topic could not have arisen. Loose

trowsers gave plenty of room to boots which were wide in the legs. There

was no difficulty in getting heels into them, and though there might

have been some screwing and stamping, it was certain that eventually the

articles would be drawn on the feet. Then, too, the tightness was only

in the foot part of the boot. It required considerable muscular exertion

to coax the five toes into the close prison designed for them, but by

pulling one moment, working the foot the next, and then screwing the

face into ugly contortions, considerable progress was usually effected.

The power of the human countenance over upper leather is one of those

extraordinary psychological facts which dabblers in animal magnetism

have failed in accounting for satisfactorily. Yet that it does exist, is

vouched for by all experience. Tight boots have always been susceptible

to this influence. History herself cannot point to an instance where a

new leathern foot-envelope was drawn on the walker with a countenance

“calm as a summer’s morning.” It is notorious that no boot of character

ever yielded until it saw, from the knitting of the eyebrows, the

puckering of lips, and the distortion of muscles, that the putter-on was

in absolute earnest. And how stubbornly the leather yields when it comes

under the influence—how it relaxes with stiff dissatisfaction, and at

last creeps over the part assigned, with an air of unwrinkled disgust.

The philosophy of this subject is strange, and should be investigated by

some modern Mesmer of sole and upper leather.

But really this is a digression, which the importance of the correlative

subject has drawn us into. “Let us return to our—mutton.” (We might

have said our _veal_, were it not that the idea of dandies’ legs and

calves are incongruous and unnatural.) It is an inflexible rule in the

making up of an exquisite, that there shall be no calves to his legs.

The mere osteological peculiarities of that part of the frame are to be

preserved, and the epidermis must clasp the attenuated limb, without

embracing a superfluity of muscle similar to that which we see in the

lower limbs of the statues of Hercules. Hence it follows that the heel

of a true dandy is expected to protrude an inch at least beyond what,

under happier circumstances, would be the calf of his leg. There is

really no difference between the formation of the lower pedalities of a

pure dandy, and those of a pure Ethiopian. In this anatomical fact lies

the great difficulty in the way of modern “squirts.” The heel

unfortunately requires a greater opening at the top of the boot than can

be filled up by the upper part of the leg when the article is upon the

foot. This is a very distressing difficulty. The pantaloons are expected

to hug the leg as tightly as possible, so that the thinness of the

“trotters” may be revealed in all their natural beauty. But an obstacle

exists in the shape of an inch or two of superfluous leather at the top

of the boot, which will have a tendency to give the limb an appearance

of greater circumference than nature or fashion permits. This trouble is

really of disgusting importance. How do the dandies manage, then, to

produce those thin legs, the slightness of which is so strikingly

graceful? The world has long wondered over this subject, and it was not

until lately that a true philosopher revealed the mystery. He asserts

that after fops get into boots and unmentionables, they turn up the

latter until they get a fair purchase on the leather inconveniencies.

Then, with broad bandages they swathe their legs and the upper part of

their boots quite carefully, until the superfluous leather is bound

tightly down, and there is a comparatively smooth surface all the way

down the limb. After having got his trowsers pulled down, the fop is

ready for a promenade upon Chestnut street, or a conquest in a

drawing-room. In the former exercise he gets along as well as can be

expected, being very careful in his mincing steps lest an unlucky rip

should damage the integrity of his apparel. In the latter situation he

is often put to great inconvenience. When sitting down, the

unwhisperables are, by the disposition of his body, drawn a considerable

distance above the ankle. To get them down again is a matter which no

thorough dandy can accomplish. If he were to bend to do it, the

consequence would be disastrous. He therefore takes his leave of the

ladies with pantaloons half-way up to the knee, and, stopping in the

entry, exclaims—“Wait-ah! wait-ah! hea-ah, fell-ah, assist me! Come

hea-ah and pull down my pants! Really, ah, they-ah have risen until they

are quite uncomfortable.”

Thus much for the present division of our task, from which we draw the

deduction that every exquisite has his troubles like plainer people. One

day he may be in agonies because his cravat is not decently tied. On

another he may be in torture because, notwithstanding all his efforts,

his legs seem thick. These and other ills are occasional misfortunes. It

is not considered by him that although these griefs come once in a

while, he is at all times in manners a puppy, and in mental strength

only a ninny.

* * * * *

A FILIAL TRIBUTE.

BY CORNELIA B. BROWNE.

We thank thee, Father, for thy kindly teaching;

It makes our “desert blossom as the rose,”

When a fond parent, exile over-reaching,

His arm of counsel round as gently throws.

Daily we’ll ponder, as a sacred pleasure,

These calm outpourings of a tender love:

Nightly our prayer shall be, this precious treasure

So to receive, as to be thine above.

Thou heedest, then, that three swift lustres, wending

O’er Time’s winged course, have made me soberer now;

That maidenhood with infancy is blending,

To cast a shade of thought upon my brow?

As the meek virgin merges in the woman,

Aid me to drink of waters more divine;

To purify the needful, earnest, human,

And lay soul-offerings on a holy shrine.

Upon this day, that sealed her blissful union,

Our mother bids us offer thanks to thee:

Permitted foretaste of that high communion,

Where all earth’s exiles are supremely free.

* * * * *

[Illustration: THE DEATH OF THE STAG.]

* * * * *

THE DEATH OF THE STAG;

OR THE TALBOTS IN TEVIOTDALE.

BY FRANK FORESTER.

[SEE ENGRAVING.]

The stag at eve had drunk his fill,

Where danced the moon on Monan’s rill,

And deep his midnight lair had made

In lone Glenartney’s hazel shade;

But when the sun his beacon red

Had kindled on Benvoirlich’s head,

The blood-hound’s deep resounding bay

Came swelling up the rocky way.

Lady of the Lake.

“Tayho! Tayho!”[1]

And straightway to the cry responded the long-drawn, mellow notes of the

huge French-horns which were in those days used by every yeoman pricker,

as the peculiar and time-honored instrument of the stag-hunt, the _mots_

of which were as familiar to every hunter’s ear, as so many spoken words

of his vernacular.

It was the gray dawn of a lovely summer morning in the latter part of

July, and although the moor-cocks were crowing sharp and shrill from

every rocky knoll or purple eminence of the wild moors, now waving far

and wide with the redolent luxuriance of their amethyst garniture, for

the heather was in its full flush of bloom, although the thrush and

black-bird were caroling in emulous joy, at the very top of their

voices, from every brake and thicket which feathered the wild banks of

the hill-burns, the sun had not lifted a portion of his disc above the

huge, round-topped fells which formed the horizon to the north and

westward of my scene. That scene was the slope of a long hill—

“A gentle hill,

Green and of mild declivity—the last,

As ’twere the cape of a long ridge of such,

Save that there was no sea to lave its base

But a most living landscape and the wave

Of woods and corn-fields, and the abodes of men

Scattered at intervals, and wreathing smoke

Arising from such rustic roofs.”

The hills above and somewhat farther off to the southward and eastward,

are clothed and crowned with oak woods of magnificence and size so

unusual, and kept with such marked evidences of care and culture that no

one could doubt, even if it were not proved by the gray turrets of an

old baronial manor and the spire of a tall clock-house shooting up high

over the tops of the forest giants, that they were the appendages and

ornaments of some one of those ancient homes of England, which, full of

the elegancies and graces of the present, remind us so pleasantly of the

ruder, though not less homely, hospitalities of the past.

The immediate summit of the slope I have mentioned is bare, yet

conspicuous for a single tree, the only one of its kind existing for

many miles in that district—a single white pine, tall enough for the

mast of some huge admiral, and as such visible, it is said, from points

in the four northern provinces of England, and the two southernmost of

Scotland—whence it is known far and wide, in many a border lay and

legend, as the one-tree hill on Reedswood.[2] Below the bare brow of

this inland promontory, for such indeed it is, which is covered with

beautiful, short, mossy grass, as firm and soft as the greensward of a

modern race-course, and used as one vast pasture of two hundred acres,

lies a vast tract of coppice, principally of oak and birch, but

interspersed with expanses of waving heather, where the soil is too

shallow to support a larger growth, and dotted here and there with bold,

gray crags which have cropped out above the surface, and amongst these,

few and far between, some glorious old, gnarled hawthorns, which may

well have furnished May-wreaths to the yellow-haired daughters of the

Saxon before the mailed-foot of the imperious Norman had dinted the

green turf of England. This coppice overspread the whole declivity and

base of the hill, until it melted into the broad, rich meadows, which,

with a few scattered woods of small size, and here and there a patch of

yellow wheat, or a fragrant bean-field, filled all the bottom of the

great strath or valley, down to the banks of a large stream, beyond

which the land rose steeply, first in rough moorland pastures, divided

by dry stone walls, then in round heathery swells, then in great,

broad-backed purple fells, and beyond all, faintly traceable in the blue

haze of distance, in the vast ridges of the Cheviots and the hills of

Tevydale. Along the base of the hill-side, parting it from the meadows,

ran a tall, oak park-paling, made of rudely split planks, not any where

less than five feet in height, through which access was given to the

valley by heavy gates of the same material, from two or three winding

wood-roads into the shadowy lanes of the lovely lower country.

Such was the scene, o’er which there arose before the sun, startling the

hill echoes far and near, and silencing the grouse-cocks on the moors,

and the song-birds in the brake and thicket by their tumultuous din, the

shouts and fanfares that told the hunt was up.

“Tayho! Tayho!”

Tarà-tarà-tara-tantara-râ-taratantara-tantara-rà-rà-râh. Which being

interpreted into verbal dog-talk is conceived to say—“Gone-away!

gone-away! gone-away! away! away! away!” and is immediately understood

as such not by the well-mounted sportsmen only, but by what Scott calls,

himself no unskilled woodsman, “the dauntless trackers of the deer,” who

rush full-mouthed to the cheery clangor, filling all earth and ether

with the musical discords of their sweet chidings.

The spot whence the first loud, manly shout “Tayho” resounded, was

almost within the shadow of the one tree, where, as from a station

commanding the whole view of the covert, which a powerful pack of the

famous Talbot blood-hounds, numbering not less than forty couple, were

in the act of drawing, a gay group was collected, gallantly appareled,

gallantly mounted, and all intent, like the noble steeds they bestrode,

eyes, ears and souls erect on the gallant sport of the day.

Those were the days of broad-leaved hats and floating plumes, of velvet

justaucorps, rich on the seams with embroideries of gold and silver, of

the martial jack-boot and the knightly spur on the heel, and the

knightly sword on the thigh, and thus were our bold foresters accoutred

for such a chase as is never heard tell of in these times of racing

hounds and flying thoroughbreds, when the life of a fox is counted by

the minutes he can live with a breast-high scent before the flyers, and

the value of a hunter by the seconds he can go in the first flight with

a dozen horseman’s stone upon its back.

Things then were otherwise, the fox was unkenneled, or the stag

unharbored at daybreak, and killed if the scent lay well, sooner or

later, before sunset—runs were reckoned by hours, hounds picked for

their staunchness not their fleetness, horses bought not for their speed

but for their stoutness, and the longest, steadiest last rider, not the

most daring or the foremost won the palm of the chase, were it brush or

antler, when the game fox was run into, or the gallant stag turned to

bay.

The gentlemen, who were gathered on the broad, bare brow of the one-tree

hill, were in all, twelve or thirteen in number, all at first sight men

of gentle blood and generous education, although as there ever is, ever

must be in every company, whether of men or of inferior animals, there

was one to whom every eye, even of the unknown stranger or the ignorant

peasant, would have naturally turned as evidently and undoubtedly the

superior of the party, both in birth and breeding; he mingled

nevertheless with the rest on the most perfect terms not of equality

only, but of intimate familiar intercourse and friendship. No terms of

ceremonial, no titles of rank or territorial influence, but simple

Christian names passed between those gay and joyous youths; nor was

there any thing in the habit of the wearers, or the mounting of the

riders, to indicate the slightest difference in their positions of

social well-being and well-doing. One youth, however, who answered to

the name of Gerald, and sometimes to the patrimonial Howard, was so far

the handsomer both in form and feature, the statelier in stature, the

gracefuller in gesture, the manlier in bearing, the firmer and easier of

seat and hand on his hunter, that any one would have been prompt to say

almost at a glance, there is the man of all this gentle and generous

group, whom, if war wakes its clangor in the land, if external perils

threaten its coasts, or internal troubles shake its state, foreign war

or domestic strife will alike find the foremost, whether in his seat

with the senate, or in his saddle on the field, wielding with equal

force and skill the stateman’s, scholar’s, soldier’s eye, tongue,

sword—all honored him, indeed, and he deserved that all should honor

him.

I have omitted, not forgotten or neglected, to mention as first and

fairest of that fair company, a bevy of half a dozen fair and graceful

girls—not like the gentlemen, all of one caste, but as was evident, not

so much from the difference of their grace and beauty—though in these

also there was a difference—as from the relative difference of position

which they maintained, four remaining somewhat in the rear of the other

two, and not mingling unless first addressed in the conversation, and

from some distinction in the costliness and material of their attire.

A mounted chamberlain, with four or five grooms, who stood still farther

aloof, in the rear of the ladies in waiting, and two or three glittering

pages standing a-foot among the latter, in full tide of gallantry and

flirtation, their coursers held by the grooms in attendance, made up the

party. From which must always be excepted the huntsman, the verdurer,

and eight or ten yeomen prickers, in laced green jerkins, with round

velvet caps, like those worn by the whippers-in of the present day, and

huge French-horns over their left shoulders, who were seen from time to

time appearing, disappearing, and reappearing in the glades and dingles

of the hill-side covert, and heard now rating the untimely and

fallacious challenge of some wayward and willful puppy, now cheering the

earnest and trusty whimper of some redoubted veteran of the pack, as he

half-opened on a scent of yester-even.

The hounds had been in the coppice above an hour, and two-thirds of its

length had already been drawn blank—the gentlemen were beginning to

exchange anxious and wistful glances, and two or three had already

consulted more than once or twice their ponderous, old-fashioned

repeaters—and now the elder, shorter and fairer of the two damsels,

giving the whip lightly to her chestnut palfry, cantered up to the side

of Gerald Howard, followed by her companion, whose dark redundance of

half-disheveled nut-brown tresses fell down from beneath a velvet cap,

with a long drooping plume, on each side of a face of the most exquisite

oval, with a high brow, long, jet-black eyelashes, showing in cold

relief against her pure, colorless cheeks, for her eyes were downcast,

and an expression of the highest intellect, which is ever found in woman

mingled with all a woman’s tenderness and softness. She was something

above the middle height, with a figure of rare slenderness and symmetry,

exquisitely rounded, and sat her horse at once most femininely and most

firmly, without the least indication of manliness in her seat or

demeanor, yet with a certain of-at-homeness in her position and posture,

that showed she could ride as well, perhaps as boldly, as the best man

among them.

“Ah! Gerald, Gerald,” said the elder girl, laughingly, as she tapped him

on the arm with the silver-butt of her riding-whip, “is this your faith

to fair ladies, and especially to this fairest Kate, that you deluded us

from our soft beds at this untimely hour, with promise to unharbor us a

stag of ten within so many minutes, all for the pleasure of our eyes,

and the delectation of our hearts, and here have we been sitting on this

lone hill-side two hours and upward, to the great craving of our

appetites and the faintness of our hearts, yearning—as the queen’s good

Puritans would have it—after creature comforts—out on you! out on you,

for a false knight, as I believe not, for my part, that there is one

horn or hoof from the east to the west on the hill-side—no, not from

the ‘throstle’s nest’ to the ‘thorny brae.’”

“Ah! sister mine, art so incredulous—but I will wager you or ere the

Talbots reach that great gray stone, with the birch boughs waving over

it like the plumes, as our bright Kate would say, of a dead warrior’s

helmet over his cold brow, we _will_ have a stag a-foot—ay, and a stag

of ten.” And instantly raising his voice to a quicker and clearer

note—“See now!” he cried, “see now!” as a superb, dark-colored animal,

not lower than a yearling colt at the forehand, leaped with a bound as

agile as if he was aided by wings, on the cope-stone of the dry stone

wall which bounded the hither side of the hill coppice, with vast,

branching antlers tossed as if in defiance, and a swan-like neck swollen

with pride and anger. He stood there an instant, self-poised,

self-balanced, “like the herald Mercury new lighted on a heaven-kissing

hill”—uttered a hoarse, belling cry, peculiar to the animal in his

season, and then sailing forth in a long, easy curve, alighted on the

springy turf, whose enameled surface he scarce dinted, and then swept up

the gentle slope almost toward the admiring group on the brow, but in a

diagonally curved line that would carry him in the long run to the

south-west of them, at the distance of perhaps a hundred yards.

“Tayho! Tayho!” burst in a clear and cheery shout from the excited lips

of Gerald Howard.

And instantly from every part of the hill-side from east to west, from

the throstle’s nest to the “thorny brae,” from ten well-blown

French-horns burst the wild call

Tarà-tarà—tara-tantara-ra—tara-tantara-tantara—ra—ra—rah—“Gone

away—gone away—gone away—away—away!” and the fierce rally of the

mighty Talbots broke into tongue at once through the whole breadth and

length of the oak coppice, as they came pouring up the hills, making the

heather bend and the coppice crash before them like those famed Spartan

hounds of Hercules and Cadmus,

“When in the woods of Crete they bayed the bear—

So flewed, so randed, and their heads were hung

With ears that sweep away the morning dew;

Crook-kneed and dew-lapped like Thessalian bulls;

Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells

Each under each”

As fifty separate spots they leaped the wall nearly abreast, but four

were it may be a spear’s length the leaders, and they laying their head

right at the noble quarry, which was still full in view, came straining

up the hill, making all ring around them with their deep-mouthed

thunder. The rest topped the wall one by one, in view too, and on a

breast-high scent at once came streaming up the rich grass slope on

converging lines, so that as they passed the attentive group to the

westward within a hundred yards, the pack had got all together within,

perhaps, another hundred yards of his haunches, running so that a large

carpet might have covered the whole forty couple, and raving with such a

din of harmonious discords, such shrill and savage trebles of the fierce

fleet bitch hounds, such a deep diapason of the old veteran dogs, such

sweet and attuned chidings of the whole, that not an ear but must have

listened with delight, not a heart but must have bounded with rapture at

the exulting sounds.

And ever and anon there rang up from the wildwood, the deep, mellow

blasts of the French-horns, blent with the jangled cries of the Talbots

into a strange and indescribable clangor and crepitation, at once most

peculiar and most entrancing.

At the same moment the sun burst into full view above the eastern hills,

and pouring down a great flood of golden lustre over the whole glowing

scene, kindled up every thing into light and life—tinging with ruddy

light the dappled sides of the noble beast as he swept by them now

within fifty yards—for he had circled round them wantoning and bounding

to and fro, perfectly unconcerned by the nearer presence of his

pursuers, and seemingly desirous to display the miracles of his speed

and beauty to the fair eyes that admired him—enlivening the dappled

hides of the many-colored glossy pack—burnishing the sleek and satin

coats of the noble coursers, till they glowed with almost metallic

splendor—flashing upon the rich laces, the bright buckles, and the

polished sword-hilts of the hunters, and gilding the bridle-bits and

brazen horns of the verdurers and yeomen prickers, until the whole

hill-side was glittering with a thousand gay hues and salient lights,

filling the mind with memories of faëry land and magic marvels.

Hitherto the little group on the brow of the one-tree hill had stood

motionless, while the gay, animated scene revolved around them, a

glittering circle wheeling around the stationary centre; but now, when

the servants of the chase, huntsman and verdurer, prickers, all streamed

up the long hill at their best pace, all wheeled around the tree and its

gay company, swelling the din with the flare and braying of their horns,

the gallant stag appeared to comprehend that a fresh band of enemies

were added to his first pursuers—for he half turned his head to gaze on

them, half paused for a moment to snuff the air, with nostrils

pridefully dilated, and flanks heaving, not with weariness as yet, but

with contempt and scorn, then with a toss of his antlers, and a loud

snort of indignation, set his head fair to the north-west, full for the

hills of Scotland, and went away at long sweeping bounds that seemed to

divide the green slope by leaps of eight yards each, soared back again

over the rough stone wall, and went crashing through the thickets

straight for the tall oak palings and the river, as if he were bound for

some distant well-known point, on a right line as the crow flies it.

And now for the gentlemen the chase was begun, and Gerald Howard led it,

like their leader as he was in all things, and the rest followed him

like men as they were, and brave ones—but to the ladies it was ended so

soon as they had breathed their palfries down the slope to the stone

wall and the wood-side at an easy canter; and they returned to the

hill-top, where they found viands and refreshments spread on the grass;

and long they lingered there watching the hunt recede, and the sounds of

the chase die away in the far distance. But it was long ere the sights

and sounds were lost all and wholly to their eyes and ears—for the

quarry still drove on, as straight as the crow flies, due northward—due

northward the chase followed.

They saw the gallant stag swoop over the oak-pales as if they were no

obstacle—they saw the yelping pack crash and climb after him; then they

saw Gerald Howard on his tall coal-black barb soar over it

unhindered—but all the rest turned right and left to gate or gap, or

ere they might follow him. The valley was crossed as by a whirlwind—the

river swam by hart, hound, and hunters, unhesitating and unheeding—and

far beyond up the green moorland pastures, over the stone walls, now

disappearing over the hill-tops into the misty hollows, now glinting up

again into light over some yet more distant stretch of purple heath, and

still the chiding of the hounds, and still the wild bursts of the

French-horns fell faintly on the ears, as the wind freshened from the

westward—but at length sound and sight failed them, and when silence

had sunk still and solitude reigned almost perfect over the late peopled

slope of thorny brae and the one-tree hill, the gay bevy of dames and

damsels returned homeward, something the more serious if not the sadder

for the parting, to await the gathering of their partners to the gay

evening meal.

Long they awaited—late it grew—the evening meal was over—the close of

night had come—the lights in bower and hall were kindled—the gates

were locked and barred—long ere the first of the belated foresters,

returned soiled and splashed, way-worn and weary, with the jaded and

harassed hounds, and horses almost dead from the exertion and exhaustion

of the day. At midnight, of the field all the men save one were

collected, though two or three came in on foot, and yet more on borrowed

horses—their own good steeds left in the morass or on the moorland, to

feed the kites and the hill-foxes—of the pack all save two mustered at

the kennel-gates in such plight as the toil they had borne permitted.

The man missing was Sir Gerald Howard, the master of the pack, the two

hounds were its two leaders, Hercules and Hard-heart, of whom no rider

had ever yet seen the speed slacken or the heart fail.

The old verdurer, who gave out the last, reported Gerald Howard going

well, when he saw him last, with the stag and two Talbots of all in full

view—and this many miles into Scotland within the pleasant vale of

Teviotdale, with the great Scottish hills grim and gray, towering up

before him, and the night closing fast on those dim solitudes.

It was late on the next day when Sir Gerald Howard was seen riding up

the road on the same steed he had backed so gallantly, still weary and

worn, though recruited—with the huge antlers at his saddle-bow, but no

brave Talbots at his heel.

He had ridden far into the darkness, still guided by the baying of the

staunch hounds; and when he could see to ride no longer, had obtained

timely succor and refreshment from a stout borderer of Teviot-side. At

daylight remounted a fresh horse, a garron of the country, to renew the

chase; but it was now soon ended. Scarce had he gone a mile on the

straight line they had run throughout ere he found Hard-heart stiff and

cold on the mountain heather, and not a hundred yards yet onward, ere

the great stag lay before him, not a hair of his hide injured, and

Hercules beside him, with his head upon his haunches, where he had

breathed his last, powerless to blood the brave quarry he had so nobly

conquered.

Sixty miles had they run on that summer’s day from point, they had died

together, and in their graves they were not confounded, for a double

tomb was scooped in the corrie or hollow of the mountain-side, wherein

they were found, and above it was piled a rough, gray column, whereon

may be seen rudely sculptured this true epitaph,

Hercules killed Hart O’Grease,

And Hart O’Grease killed Hercules.

For, reader mine, this is a real and true tale, and I, who tell it you,

have sat upon the stone, and tempered my cup of Ferintosh from the

little rill beside it, with the wild peak of the Maiden’s Pass before

me, the dark Cheviots at my right, the blue heights of the Great Moor

looming away almost immeasurably to the westward, and no companions near

me save the red grouse of the heather, and the curlew of the morass,

nothing to while away the time that my weary setters slept in the

noonday sun, save this old-time tradition.

-----

[1] “Tayho!” is the technical hunting halloa when a stag has broken

cover, as is “Talliho!” the corresponding cry for the fox. Both words

are corruptions from the French “_Taillis Hors!_” “Out of the thicket,”

French being used to a very late day as the especial language of the

chase.

[2] In Northumberland a few miles from the Scottish border.

* * * * *

“GRAHAM” TO JEREMY SHORT.

[Illustration: WINTER.]

“When icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,

And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail;

When blood is nipt—”

Winter is here—Jeremy! Desolate winter! and the white fields are

shivering in the sunlight—the old woods are solemn and sad—the voices

of the air are hushed, and a quiet, save the moan of the wind, tells us

that nature is passing through the dark valley, typical of death. We

know that she will burst the stern fetters, and rising from her sleep,

shall laugh again with infant glee in all her brooks; and spreading her

motherly arms over the earth, will shower with parental liberality her

treasures into our laps once more. Yet still we feel her silence—we are

sad because of her desolation.

Winter is here—Jeremy! The long nights have come—the long, dark winter

nights; and we draw the heavy curtains, and sit down in our warm

parlors, carelessly to ponder and to dream. The light has gone out of

the starry skies which bended over us in youth, and the dun clouds surge

up from the horizon, and grow heavier and blacker as we muse—the

Present is dreary! We turn back with memory, and over all the Past we

wander. We remember the snug cottage nestled in the hills—the crackling

faggots on the old hearth-stone—they have their young vivacity now, and

the whole picture of our youthful home in this beautiful cloud-land

rises gradually and expands before us. Faces all rosy with the light of

the Immortals appear and vanish—bright wings of angels flash and fade

to the view—and as the scene swells to our mental vision, the old

familiar tones of the old familiar lips ring out their silver syllables

again. We listen to the joyous laugh, as to the gushing of music, and

almost feel the presence of soft hands in ours. The glad, beaming face

of the young creature we first worshiped, with all the innocence of

love’s first delusion, sparkles with the radiant beauty of those happy

hours. The mother in that quiet chamber, with the dim lamp and the snowy

curtains gleaming out from the corner, where we knelt at her side and

uttered the evening prayer, lifts her white hands to our brow again, and

says, “God bless and keep thee, my boy!” God help us now—how have we

wandered since our souls felt that earnest benediction!

Winter is here! and the long, stormy nights have come, Jeremy—the

nights of dread and desolation to the poor. The roar of the tempest has

the voice of a demon out there! Do the moan and the howl, which sound so

fearfully now, stir in the heart a thought of the perishing ones, who,

in the midst of this splendid city, sit shivering, ragged, and starved?

The pale brow and the hollow eye of the consumptive mother, sitting

desolate amid her famishing ones, grow paler and sadder as the storm

rolls on! Does her low wail of agony reach the ears of angels to-night?

If not—God help her!

Scores of Christian churches stand grandly out in the storm, and bravely

defy the tempest. They are tenantless, now, of the rosy lips and bright

eyes which have looked appealingly to Heaven, and muttered prayers for

the poor. Are willing hands employed to-night in confirmation of the

Sunday’s sincerity? Or do cards, the piano, or the dance, lend a sorry

confirmation of the utter hollowness of words? Is all the wealth and

splendor of Gothic steeples and stained-glass—the majestic column—the

lordly porch, and the sweeping aisle, but the magnificence of

delusion?—mere monuments of the wickedness of man endeavoring to cheat

the Creator with tinsel—with show, not worth—with words, not deeds!

God help the homeless, Jeremy, where this is true! And help the

disciple, too, who prays, but never _thinks_! God bless the humble

Christian, who _labors_ and cares for THE POOR!

“Poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads, and unfed sides,

Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these?”

G. R. G.

* * * * *

A LIFE OF VICISSITUDES.

BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.

(_Continued from page 11._)

FIRST LOVE.

The poor little girl by my side made no struggle to quit me, no effort

to return to her mother, but ran along holding my hand, with perfect

docility and confidence, weeping bitterly, it is true, and never

uttering a word. It was a strange situation for a boy of twelve years of

age, and yet I felt a certain sort of pride in it—in the trust which

was reposed in me—in the right, and, as I fancied, the power of

protecting. I would have fought for that little girl to the death, if

any one had attempted to molest her; and although I had never at that

time heard of paladins and knights-errant, I was quite as valiant in my

own opinion as any one of them ever was. I was not very hard-hearted at

that time—youth seldom is—and I felt greatly moved by the poor child’s

grief.

After we had gone about a mile, at a very quick pace, I began to slacken

my speed, and to try and comfort my little companion. At first she

appeared inconsolable, but by trying hard, I at length made some

impression—won her mind away from the terrors and sorrows of her

situation, and got her to speak a word or two in reply to my question.

She told me that her name was Mariette, and that she had walked some way

that day—that her mother had rushed into the room where she was

playing, all covered with blood, as I had seen her just before—had

caught her up in her arms, and rushed out of a château where they lived,

by a back way, plunging at once into the wood. They had then walked a

long distance, she said, her mother sometimes carrying her, sometimes

letting her run by her side; and I could perceive that, delicately

nurtured and unaccustomed to hard exercise, the poor little thing was

already considerably tired. I was a strong, big boy, and so without more

ado, I took her up in my arms and carried her. After some way, I put her

down again, and she walked on refreshed, and then I carried her again,

and then we sat down upon a bank and rested; and I got her water from

the stream in the hollow of my hand, and tried to amuse her by telling

her stories. But I never was a good story-teller in all my life, and I

did not succeed very well. All this occupied time, however, and when we

arrived within half a mile of the town, light was fading fast. This

alarmed me; not that I had any fear of darkness, but it was good

Jeanette’s custom, in the gray of the evening to walk out through our

little garden in the tower, down the stair-case, the door of which lay

on the left-hand side, and lock the door below. I did not like to go in

by the great gates of the town, both because the distance was greater,

and because I thought some questions might be asked about Mariette; and

I resolved, at all events, to attempt our private entrance before I

yielded to necessity. I encouraged my little companion to hurry her

steps, by pointing out the town rising before us, and telling her that

if she made haste, she would in a few minutes be with Father Bonneville,

and he would be so good and kind to her she could not think. I told her,

also, of good Jeanette, and what a nice creature she was, and I

succeeded in engaging her attention and leading her on much faster than

before. We soon reached the foot of the hill, climbed the steep little

path which led to the door at the foot of the tower, and with great joy

and some surprise I found it open.

“Now come in, Mariette,” I said, “and don’t be afraid of the dark; for

this stair-case leads to our garden, and the garden to the house.”

She said she was not at all afraid of the dark; that her papa often made

her walk with him in the dark; and she followed me quite readily,

holding tight by my hand, however.

In the garden above we found good old Jeanette, with her snow-white cap,

and her mittens. I found that she had become anxious at my long absence,

and had abstained from locking the door lest I should determine to come

in that way. Her surprise to see my little companion, and the state of

grotesque agitation and bustle into which the sight threw her, I shall

never forget. My explanations soon banished surprise by other emotions.

I told all I knew of poor Mariette’s story as simply as I could, and the

good creature’s heart was instantly touched; the tears gathered in her

eyes, and taking the poor little girl in her arms, she said, “Come with

me, my child—come with me. Here we will make you a home where you will

be as happy as the day is long.”

“I can’t be happy without papa and mamma,” replied Mariette, bursting

into tears again, and Jeanette, weeping for company, carried her off

into the house, while I ran down the stairs to lock the door of the

tower. When I entered the house again, I found that Father Bonneville

was out visiting some sick people, and had been absent for several

hours. Mariette wanted no kind of tendence, however, that was not given

to her by good Jeanette. She put her pretty little feet in warm water;

she gave her a cup of the thin chocolate which usually formed the good

priest’s supper, and she endeavored, with far greater skill than mine,

to wile away her thoughts from all that was painful in memory, or her

new situation. Mariette soon began to prattle to her, and leaning her

head upon her shoulder, said she loved her very much; but then, after a

few minutes, the bright young eyes closed, the little head leaned

heavier, and Jeanette, moving her gently, carried her away to my small

room, and placed her gently in my bed, “to sleep it out,” as she said.

About half an hour after, good Father Bonneville returned, and his face

showed evident traces of sorrow and perplexity. But still my story was

to be told, and it seemed to perplex him still more.

“Do you know her name?” he asked.

“Mariette, Father,” I replied.

“But what more, besides Mariette?” he asked; and as I could give him no

information, he made me describe, as accurately as I could, the

appearance of the lady I had seen. I spoke of her bright and beautiful

eyes, and I described her as very pale; but the good priest inquired

whether she was tall.

“Oh yes,” I replied; “a good deal taller than Jeanette.”

The good priest smiled; for Jeanette was a good deal below the height of

the Medicean Venus, and she is no giantess.

“It must be Madame de Salins,” he murmured, after a moment’s

consideration. “Holy father, have mercy upon us! Killed Monsieur de

Salins, have they, before his poor wife’s eyes? A better young man did

not exist, nor one who has done more good, both by his acts and his

example.”

“Wouldn’t you know Mariette, if you saw her, Father?” I asked; and

Jeanette coming in from the room where the child was at the moment, led

the good Father away to see her. When he came back, he said no more for

some time, but sat thinking, with his head bent forward, and his eyes

half closed. Then he called Jeanette, and somewhat to my surprise, gave

very strict orders for concealing the fact of the little girl’s

residence in our house. My little room was to be assigned to her; a

large, wide, rather cheerful, long uninhabited room, up stairs, was to

receive a table, and a few chairs from somewhere else, and to be made a

sort of play-room for her, and I and Jeanette were to do the very best

we could to make the little prisoner happy, while her existence was to

be kept secret from every one but our three selves. At the same time he

laid the strongest injunctions upon me to abstain from even hinting to

any one the adventure I had met with in the wood, and never to call the

child Mariette de Salins, but merely Mariette, or Mariette Brun.

And now began a new sort of existence for me. Mariette became, as it

were, my property—at least I looked upon her almost as such. I had

carried her in the forest. I had led her along by the hand. I had

brought her there. She was my little foundling, and my feelings toward

her were as strange as ever came into the breast of a boy of thirteen.

There was something parental about them. I could almost have brought

myself to believe that I was her father; and yet I looked upon her very

much in the light of a toy, as grown-up parents will sometimes do in

regard to their children. I was with Mariette the greater part of every

day, playing with her, amusing her, devising all sorts of games to

entertain her. She soon became very fond of me, and quite familiar;

would sit by the hour with her arms round my neck, and would tell me

little anecdotes of her own home. A pleasant home it seemed to have been

till the last fearful events occurred, full of harmony, and peace, and

domestic joy. Continually she seemed to forget the present, in pictures

of brighter hours gone by, but from time to time—especially at first—a

torrent of painful memories would seem to burst upon her, and the end of

the little tale would be drowned in tears.

Two months passed over in this manner, and little Mariette seemed quite

reconciled to her situation. With the elasticity of childish hope, she

had recovered all her spirits, and no two young, happy, innocent things

were ever gayer than we were. Her state of imprisonment, too, was

somewhat relaxed; for, in our own town at least, a lull had come upon

the political storm, which, as every one knows, came up sobbing, as it

were, in fits and starts, like a south-westerly gale, till the full

hurricane blew and swept every thing before it. After some hesitation,

Father Bonneville permitted her to go out with me into the garden, and

there to play amongst the shrubs, now, alas! destitute of flowers, for

an hour or two before she went to bed. In the town she was never seen,

and with a sort of prescience, which was, perhaps, not extraordinary,

the good Father explained to me that it would be wiser to use, as little

as possible, the way out of the town by the garden and the tower. He

treated me with a degree of confidence and reliance on my intelligence

and discretion, which made me very proud. The agitated and terrible

state of the country, he said, and the anarchical tendencies which were

visible throughout society in France, had induced a number of the most

wealthy and influential people to seek a refuge in other lands. Those

who had got possession of power, he continued, were naturally anxious to

put a stop to this emigration, and a system of espionage, which was

well-nigh intolerable, had been established to check it. The advantage

we possessed of being able to go in and out of the town when we pleaded,

without passing the gales, might be lost to us by the imprudent use of

it; and although two or three other citizens, whose houses abutted upon

towers of the old wall, had the same facilities, he knew them to be

prudent and well-disposed men, who were not likely to call attention to

themselves by any incautious act.

Although the door below was unlocked and locked every morning and

evening, it may well be supposed that I adhered strictly to the good

Father’s directions, and always when I wanted to get out of the city

took the way round by the gates. This was not very often, indeed, for I

had now an object of interest and entertainment at home, which I had

never had before, and Mariette was all the world to me for the time.

Good Father Bonneville in speaking of her to me used to call her with a

quiet smile “Tu fille”—thy daughter—and pleasant was it for me to hear

him so name her. Certain it is, what between one thing and another—the

little vanity I had in her—the selfish feeling of property, so strong

in all children—the pleasant occupation which she gave to my thoughts,

and her own winning and endearing ways, (for she was full of every sort

of wild, engaging grace,) together with her real sweetness of

disposition, which had something more beautiful and charming in it than

I can describe—certain it is, I say—I learned before a month was over

to love nothing on all the earth like her. Nay more, amongst all the

passions and objects and pursuits of life I can recall nothing so

strong, so fervent, so deep, as that pure, calm, boyish love for little

Mariette de Salins. I could dwell upon it, even now, for ever, and from

my heart and soul I believed she returned that affection as warmly. Two

months and a fortnight had passed by: heavier clouds than ever were

beginning to gather on the political horizon: menaces of foreign

invasion to put down the disorderly spirit which had manifested itself

in the land, roused the indignation both of those whose passions refused

correction, and those who loved the independence of their country. The

very threat swept away one of the few safeguards of society which

remained in France. There was a great body of the people who disliked

the thought of anarchy; but a short period of anarchy seemed to them

preferable to the indefinite domination of foreign soldiers in the land,

and multitudes of these better men were now driven to act with or submit

to the anarchists.

I could see that Father Bonneville was very much alarmed, and in much

agitation and distress of mind. I twice saw him count over the money

which I had brought him from Madame de Salins, and looking up in my

face, he said, with a thoughtful air:

“I suppose I ought to send her away—the time is past—but I know not

really what to do—where could I put her in England?—who could I send

with her?—how could I let her mother know where she is to be found?

This is a small sum, too, to support her for any time in England. A

hundred and forty-seven louis! England is a dear country—a very dear

country, as I know. Every thing is thrice the price that it is here.”

Youth always argues from its wishes. They form the goal to which,

whatever turns the course may take, the race is always directed in the

end. Father Bonneville’s words were very painful to me, and I ventured

to strive to persuade him that it would be better to wait a little: that

Mariette was well where she was: that something might have occurred to

delay Madame de Salins.

The good Father shook his head, with a sigh, and he then took a little

drawer out of a cabinet, and counted some forty or fifty gold pieces

that were within. I could see, however, that there were, at least, three

little rolls of thin white paper diapered by the milling of the coin

within, and I knew by their similarity and size with the one which I had

myself received, that each must contain somewhere about a hundred louis.

To me this was Peru; but Father Bonneville, who knew better, sighed over

it, and put it back again.

One very stormy night the wind blew in sharp, fierce gusts against the

front windows, and the rain pattered hard. The streets were almost

deserted, and utterly unlighted, as they were in those times, they

offered no pleasant promenade on such a night as that. Suddenly the bell

rang, as I was sitting by Father Bonneville reading, when Mariette was

sound asleep up stairs, and Jeanette was working away in her kitchen.

“Who can that be?” said Father Bonneville, turning a little pale. “Stay,

Jeanette, stay for a moment;” and he put away one or two things that

were lying about, and locked the door of the little cabinet.

Now, it might seem a cruelty to keep any one waiting at the door even

for a minute or two in the pitiless pelting of the shower; but I forgot

to mention in describing the house, that it, and a neighboring house,

which bent away from the main into a side street, formed a very obtuse

angle, and that between the two there was a little arched entrance

overshadowing a flight of steps which led to the good Father’s door.

Thus, any visitor was as much sheltered from the rain on the outside, as

if he had been in the house itself.

Jeanette had, at length, permission to go to the door, and to tell the

truth, both Father Bonneville and I peeped out to see who was the

applicant who made so late a call.

“I wish to see Father Bonneville,” said a woman’s voice, marvelously

sweet and pleasant.

“Is your business very pressing, madam?” asked Jeanette, adding, “it is

late, and just the good Father’s time for going to bed.”

“Life and death!” said the visitor. “I _must_ see him, and see him

alone.”

“Well, madam, come in,” was the reply, and at the same moment Father

Bonneville said in a low tone, but it seemed to me with a happy air,

“Leave me, François. Go to bed, my son.”

I obeyed at once, and in moving across the passage to the kitchen for a

light, I crossed the visitor, nearly touching her. All I could see,

however, was that she was tall, dignified in carriage, dressed in deep

black, and wrapped up in a large mantle with a veil over her head.

I felt sure that it was Mariette’s mother, and hurrying away to my new

room, which was over the little archway sheltering the entrance, I shut

the door and gave myself up to a fit of despair. I fancied that she had

come to take my little pet away, to separate her from me forever, to

deprive me of my property, and I cannot describe in any degree what I

felt. The anguish of that moment was as great almost as I ever

experienced in life. All I did within the next ten minutes I cannot

tell, but one thing I know I did, which was to sit down and cry like a

great baby. I would have given worlds to have known what was passing;

but I did not listen though I might have done so easily from the top of

my little stairs. But good Father Bonneville had so early, so well, and

so strongly impressed upon my mind the duty of avoiding any meanness,

that eaves-dropping seemed to me in those days almost as great a crime

as murder. Indeed it was in somewhat of that shape that the good Father

placed it before my eyes. “What right,” he said, “has one man to rob

another of his secrets any more than of his money? They are both his

property, and if they are not given they are stolen.”

I was not very long kept in suspense, however, for by the time I had got

my little coat off, and was still sitting on the edge of the bed crying,

I heard the lady quit the good Father’s little study, and his voice

speaking as he escorted her toward the door. I knew that Mariette could

not have been awakened, dressed, and carried off in a quarter of an

hour, and I went to bed and slept with a heart relieved. It was only a

respite, however. Four days after that good Father Bonneville took an

opportunity when Mariette and I were at play of telling her that she was

that night to go away with her mamma, and take a long journey. He

advised her therefore not to tire herself, but to keep as quiet as

possible till the evening came, even if she could not lie down and take

a little rest during the day.

The poor child’s agitation was extreme. The idea of seeing her mother

evidently gave her great delight, but the thought of going away from a

house where she had been made so happy, and from a companion who loved

her so much, seemed not exactly to qualify her joy, but to tear her

between two emotions. Her face was, for an instant, all smiles and

radiant with satisfaction. The next instant, however, she burst into

tears, and snatching Father Bonneville’s hand she kissed it once or

twice. Then pointing to me, she said, “Cannot I take him with me?”

The good priest shook his head, and soon after left us to pass the time

till the hour of separation came as best we might. I do not think he

knew, and indeed it would be difficult to make any one comprehend, who

has left the period of early youth far behind him, what were the

feelings of Mariette and myself. I am very much inclined to believe from

my own remembrances, that the pangs of childhood are much more severe

than most grown persons will admit.

Day wore away; night came. Little Mariette was dressed and prepared, and

about nine o’clock the bell rang. In a moment after the poor child was

in her mother’s arms, and weeping with joy and agitation. Madame de

Salins hardly sat down, however, and there was a look of hurry and

anxiety as well as of grief in her face which told how much she had

suffered, and how much she expected still to encounter.

“I am somewhat late,” she said, speaking to Father Bonneville; “for

there were two men walking up and down before the house in which I have

been concealed, and I dared hardly venture out. Let us lose no time,

good Father. Who will show us the way?”

“Louis, my son, get the lantern,” said the good Father; and turning to

Madame de Salins he added, “He will show you the way.”

These words first seemed to call the attention of the lady to myself,

and advancing toward me she embraced me tenderly and with many thanks

for the charge I had taken of her little girl in a moment of danger and

of horror. I felt gratified, but I do not know that I altogether forgave

her for coming to carry off my little companion, and I was also

struggling with all my might not to show myself so unmanly as to shed

tears; so that I replied somewhat ungracefully I am afraid. I went away

for the lantern, however and by the direction of good Father Bonneville,

lighted Madame de Salins and Mariette through the garden, and down the

stair-case in the tower. I then proceeded to open the door for them,

almost hoping that the key might be rusted in the lock so as to prevent

their going. It turned easily enough, however, and when I opened the

door I was startled at seeing the figure of a man standing at the top of

the little path which led down to the foot of the hill. Madame de

Salins, however, accosted him at once by his name, and he told her that

Peter and Jerome were waiting down below. The parting moment was now

evidently come, and it seemed as bitter to poor little Mariette as

myself. She threw her arms around me. She held me tight. She kissed me

again and again, and her tears wetted my cheek. At length, however, she

was drawn away from me, and her mother holding her hand led her down the

hill while the man followed. I looked after them for a moment or two,

till they were nearly lost in the darkness. Then locked the door, and

turned sadly toward the house.

THE FLIGHT.

Oh, how dull and tedious was the passing of the next month to me. There

was a vacancy in all my thoughts which I cannot describe, a want of

object and of interest, which nothing seemed to supply. But the dullness

of the calm was soon to be succeeded by the agitation of the storm. The

populace, particularly of the suburb, was becoming more fierce and

unruly every hour. If at any previous period there had been such a thing

as tyranny in France—of which I knew, and had felt nothing—it must

have been the tyranny of one, far removed from the humble or even the

middle stations of life, and much less terrible than the tyranny of

many, which now came to the door of every house in the land. There was a

butcher living in the lower part of the town, the terror of his

neighbors, and an object of abhorrence to all good men. Fierce,

licentious, and unprincipled, his courage—the only good quality he

possessed—was the courage of a tiger. On more than one occasion in

former years good Father Bonneville had had to reprove him, and it would

seem he had not forgotten it.

One day, about a month after Mariette had left us, I had walked out into

the town during Father Bonneville’s absence from home, and was crossing

the square in front of the great church. On one side of the square was

the best inn in the place, and upon the steps of that inn were standing

several officers of a dragoon regiment which had lately been quartered

in the town. In the midst of the square, I saw a great crowd of people

moving to and fro, and apparently busy and agitated. There were muskets

amongst the crowd; for in those days the more ragged and

poverty-stricken a man was, the more certain was he of having some

weapon of offense in his hand; and amongst the rest, with a red

night-cap on his head, and his shirt sleeves tucked up to the elbow, I

could perceive the great stalwort figure of the butcher I have

mentioned. I saw also, however, other garments than those of the mere

populace. There was the black gown of a priest in the middle of the

crowd, and as I approached with a faint and fearful heart, I not only

saw that the mob were dragging along a priest by the arms, but also that

he was good Father Bonneville. I heard shouts too of “up with him! Hang

him up, hang him up! To the spout with him, to the spout!”

The officers I have mentioned were standing quietly looking on, laughing

and talking with two or three of the more respectable citizens. But at

the first impulse I ran toward them, caught the hand of one of the young

soldiers, who seemed to bear a high rank amongst the others, and whose

face was a kindly one, and with eager and terrified tones exclaimed—

“Oh, save him, sir, save him. They are going to kill the best man in all

the town.”

“Who are they going to hang, boy?” asked one of the citizens in a tone

of assumed indifference; for few persons ventured in those days to show

any sympathy with the victims of popular fury.

“Father Bonneville,” I answered, “Oh it is Father Bonneville—Save him,

save him—pray make haste!”

“He is, indeed, one of the best men in the world,” said the gentleman,

with a look of deep distress.

The young officer, however, without more ado, ran down the steps and

plunged into the crowd. One or two of his companions followed, I saw a

sudden pause in the mob, and heard a great outcry of voices; some

apparently in persuasion, others in mere brute clamor. A moment after,

however, while the parties seemed still disputing, a squadron of

dragoons came into the square, and their appearance, though they took no

part in what was going on, seemed to have a great effect upon the mob. A

number of the ragged ruffians dropped off every moment, some walking

away down the street, singing ribald songs, some coming up to the

soldiers, and speaking a word or two to them as if to show that they

were not afraid, but walking away in the end. At length, however, I had

the satisfaction to see the young officer emerge from the little crowd

that remained, holding Father Bonneville by the arm, while another of

the dragoon officers walked on the good priest’s other side. The only

one who followed them was the butcher, and he continued pursuing them

with execration and abuse till they reached the steps of the inn, in

which they lodged the good Father for the time. The young officer made

no reply to all the ribald language with which he was assailed, except

on the inn steps, where he turned, and said in a calm tone—

“It may be all very true, but proceed according to law. If he has

refused to take the oath required, he can and will be punished for it,

but you are not to be the judge, and shall not break the law while I am

in command of this town.”

Thus saying, without waiting for any answer, he walked into the inn, and

I ran after Father Bonneville. The good old man was somewhat out of

breath with the rough handling he had received, but I could not perceive

any traces of fear or great agitation either in his face or manner. As

soon as the young officer and I entered the back-room in which he had

taken refuge, he held out his hand kindly to me, but addressed his first

words to the other.

“I have to thank you much, my son,” he said. “I do believe if you had

been two minutes later those poor misguided people would have hanged

me.”

“I do believe they would,” replied the officer, with a smile; “but you

have to thank this good lad for my coming as soon as I did. I did not

perceive what they were about till he told me.”

“Thank you, Louis, thank you,” said Father Bonneville. “I have had a

narrow escape, my son. Although, God knows, I have never done these

people any harm, and have tried to do them good, yet they seemed

resolved to have my blood. Do you think it will be safe for me to go

now, sir? I have some sick people to attend upon.”

The young officer besought him however to stay till the town was more

completely quieted, and advised him even then to betake himself to his

own house, and remain concealed and quiet for a day or two.

I knew quite well that Father Bonneville would not follow this counsel

implicitly, and he did not. He got safely home two or three hours after,

and remained within till nightfall; but then he went out to visit the

sick persons he had named, and on the following morning was pursuing his

usual avocations as if nothing had happened. It was not long, however,

before he became convinced that such conduct could only lead to

martyrdom, without being of the slightest benefit to his flock. Death

would have been nothing in his eyes, if by it he could purchase good to

others, but that was not a period at which such sacrifices would be at

all available.

One day while he was out, a Sister of Charity came to the house, and

talked long and earnestly with good Jeanette in the kitchen. I was not

present at their conference, but when the Sister went away again I saw

that the old housekeeper was in a state of the utmost consternation and

grief. The expression of these passions took a curious form with her. It

seemed as if she could not be still for one moment. She bustled about

the kitchen, as if it were too small for her energies, took down and put

up again every pot, kettle, saucepan, and spit, at least a dozen times,

gazed into the frying-pan with an objectless look, and seemed only

anxious to spend the superfluous activity of her body upon something,

while her mind was equally busy with something else. When Father

Bonneville returned, however, she had a long conference with him, and he

seemed very thoughtful and anxious. At night the Sister of Charity again

returned, and this time she bore a letter with her. I only know what

took place between her and the good Father by the result; for as soon as

she was gone, he called me into his study, where Jeanette had been all

the time, and I at once saw that my good old friend and instructor had

made up his mind to some great and important step.

“My dear Louis,” he said, with a calm but very grave face, “we have

heard very evil news. A persecution is raging against the ministers of

religion, which must soon reach me if I remain here. They have already

commenced in a town not very far distant, a practice of tying priests

and nuns together, and drowning them in the river, adding, by the term

they apply to these massacres, impiety to murder. This good creature and

Sister Clara, who has just been here, both urge me strongly to fly. I

should have hesitated to take such a step, but I find that it is

necessary that you should be removed to another country as soon as

possible. I have no one to send with you, and I trust I am not biased

from my duty by any mere fears for my own life when I determine to

accompany you myself. I shall still be fulfilling at least one of the

tasks which I have undertaken to perform, and I sincerely believe it is

the one in which the remains of my life can be most serviceable.”

He then went on to explain to me that he had determined to pass the next

day in the town, and to make his escape at night. Disguise, he added

with a sigh, would be necessary. But good Jeanette undertook to procure

what was fitting for the occasion, and good Father Bonneville retired to

rest that night grave and sad, but, apparently, in no degree agitated.

On the following day, a few minutes before noon, a great mob passed up

the street, carrying a bloody human head upon a pole. They stopped

opposite to the good priest’s house, shouting for him to show himself,

and with a quiet and undismayed air he walked to an upper window, and

looked out. He was instantly assailed with a torrent of abuse, and I do

not feel at all sure that the mob would not have sacked the house and

put him to death, if it had not been so near the tiger’s feeding-time.

All the lower classes dined at twelve, and Father Bonneville retiring

from the window as soon as he had shown himself, the crowd marched on

again down the street with their bloody ensign at their head.

Nothing that I remember worthy of notice occurred during the rest of the

day, though Jeanette was in a good deal of bustle, and went in and out

more than once. Several persons came to see Father Bonneville, and

talked with him for some time; but the day passed heavily with me,

although I will acknowledge that I felt a good deal of that eager and

pleasant expectation with which youth always looks forward to change.

At length night fell; the outer door of the house was carefully locked;

Father Bonneville retired to his own sleeping-room; I assisted Jeanette

to bring down a pair of somewhat heavy saddle-bags, the one marked with

black paint L. L., the other J. C. Shortly after I heard a step upon the

stairs, and a gentleman entered the room, whom I did not at first

recognize—and could hardly, for some time, persuade myself that it was

Father Bonneville. Soutane and bands, and small black cap, and

cocked-hat were all gone, and he appeared in a straight-cut black coat,

with a small sword by his side. His thin, white hair, powdered and tied

behind, and a round hat, with a broad band and buckle, on his head. The

effect of this change in costume was to make him look very much smaller

than before. He had seemed a somewhat portly man in his robes, but now

he looked exceedingly lank and spare, and even his height seemed

diminished. He looked strange and ill at ease, but showed no indecision,

now that his mind was made up.

“I thought of burning my papers,” he said, speaking to Jeanette, “but I

don’t know, ma bonne, that they contain any thing unworthy of a good

Christian or a good citizen. I shall therefore leave them as they are,

to be examined by those who may take the trouble. You understand all,

Jeanette, that I have said, and what you are to do, and where I am to

hear from you.”

Jeanette comprehended every thing; but the feelings of the good

creature’s heart were at this time surging up against her understanding

with greater and greater force every minute. At length, when all was

ready for our departure, she fell upon her knees at good Father

Bonneville’s feet, weeping and kissing his hand, and begging his

blessing. The old man put his hand upon her head, and with an air of

solemn affection, called down the blessing of God upon her. Then

embracing her kindly, he said, “You have striven, I know, Jeanette, to

be as good a servant to God as to a mere mortal master. He deserves more

and better service than any of us can give, but he is contented with

less than any of us require, if it be rendered with a whole heart.

Farewell, my Jeanette—farewell for the present! We shall meet again

soon—I trust—I believe.”

The good Father took one of the saddle-bags, and I took the other;

Jeanette loading me, moreover, with a large paper parcel of which she

bade me take great care, hinting at the same time that it contained

sustenance for the good Father and myself which might be very needful to

us on our first night’s journey. She followed us in tears through the

garden in the tower, and down the stairs to the foot. There she hugged

and kissed me heartily, but she had no power to speak, and by this time,

all the pleasant fancies in regard to setting out to see new scenes, and

to find new enjoyments, which I had entertained for a moment or two, had

passed away, and nothing remained but sorrow and regret. We made our

way, not without difficulty, down the little path to the valley; for the

night was as black as crime, and then walked on along the road by the

stream, which, however, we were obliged to quit soon, in order to avoid

a party of men who had a sort of guard-house where the two roads met.

This was easily done, however. The river was not very full; for the air

was frosty, but dry, and neither snow nor rain had fallen for two or

three days. Some large stones served us as well as a bridge, and

crossing the meadows on the other side, we reached the high road from

the town toward Paris without going through the suburbs. About a quarter

of a mile farther upon this road, we found an elderly man standing with

two horses; and although I could hardly see his face, I recognized in

him an uncle of good Jeanette, who was accustomed every fortnight to

bring poultry to the house, and who, to say the truth, looked a good

deal younger than his niece. Few words passed between him and us; the

saddle-bags were arranged on the horses’ backs nearly in silence. Father

Bonneville mounted one, and the good farmer helped me to mount the

other. I had never been upon a horse’s back in my life before, and the

animal upon which I was perched, though somewhat less than that which

carried Father Bonneville, seemed to me a perfect elephant. I was

awkward enough, and uncomfortable enough, no doubt, at first, but I soon

got accustomed to my position, and took rather a pleasure in the ride

than not, till we had gone some eight or nine miles, when I began to

feel the usual inconveniences to which young horsemen are subject.

A good deal of apprehension was entertained both by my reverend

companion and myself, lest our flight should be discovered, and

immediate pursuit take place. But we found afterward that such fears

were quite vain, the minds of the people of the town, especially of the

anarchists, were turned by various events in a direction quite different

from Father Bonneville. They had their mayor to guillotine, and two or

three of the principal inhabitants to throw into prison, which occupied

them satisfactorily for several days. Father Bonneville’s absence was

never noticed by any but his own immediate parishioners, who wisely

forbore to talk about it till Jeanette, with a bold policy which did her

credit, judging that our escape had been safely effected, went up to the

municipality, and begged to know what she was to do, as her master had

gone away several days before, and had not returned.

In the meanwhile we rode on through that live-long night, neither

directing our course straight toward Paris, nor to the sea-side. When

morning dawned I was terribly tired and sleepy, and saw all sorts of

unreal things in the twilight—the mere effect, I suppose, of

exhaustion. Father Bonneville had talked to me from time to time, giving

me directions for my general conduct and demeanor toward himself. I

found that it was his intention to assume the name of Charlier, and that

I was to pass for his nephew, still retaining the name of Lacy, deprived

of its aristocratic prefix of dé. The name, however, soon got corrupted

by the people of the inns as we went along, and I passed as young

citoyen Lassi throughout the whole of the rest of our long journey.

At daylight, after the first night’s march, we halted on a piece of

uncultivated ground at the side of a wood, and suffering our horses to

crop the grass, of which they stood in some need, we seated ourselves on

a dry bank under the trees, and made free with the food which good

Jeanette had provided for us. After I had satisfied my keen appetite,

and drunk some wine out of a flask, I fell into a sound sleep before I

was at all aware what was coming upon me, nor did I wake till Father

Bonneville shook me gently by the arm, at about one o’clock in the day.

We then resumed our journey, having to take the first very dangerous

step after quitting the town, in entering the busy haunts of men, and

exposing ourselves to the eyes and inquiries of strangers.

A tall church-tower was soon seen rising before us, at a considerable

distance, and Father Bonneville took the opportunity of a peasant woman,

passing us on the road, to ascertain the name of the town to which the

church belonged. This gave him the key to his topography, which he had

lost during the night, and as the town was still full fifteen miles

distant, he determined to stop at any village he found a few miles ere

we reached it, in order to avoid the stricter examination which was

likely to be enforced in a city. Upon calculating as nearly as our

knowledge of the country enabled us to do, we found that we had made

five-and-thirty miles during the night, and ten or twelve miles more

would put what might be considered a sufficient distance for the time

between ourselves and our enemies. We jogged on quietly then,

encountering a good number of the peasantry who were returning from

market or fair. For a part of the way we rode by the side of an old man

who was journeying in the same direction with ourselves. He had a

shrewd, thoughtful, but quiet eye, and a bland, easy smile, which

perhaps might have made a man well versed in the world doubt his perfect

sincerity, notwithstanding his tall, broad forehead, and a certain

dignity of air that did not bespeak low cunning. He addressed good

Father Bonneville at once as “Monsieur L’abbé,” but looked at him

several times before he said more.

At first my old companion did not seem to notice the epithet he bestowed

upon him, but after a few more words had passed, he inquired somewhat

abruptly, “What made you call me ‘Abbé,’ citizen?”

“Your dress,” replied the countryman, “your manner, and your look. The

aristocrat is proud, because he has always commanded, and thinks he has

a right to command. The peasant is vain, because God has implanted in

every French breast the notion that each man is equal to his neighbor,

whether he be a fool or a wise man, a scholar or a dunce, a brave man or

a poltroon, a good man or a knave. But the teacher of religion has a

different look. He has been accustomed to guide and to exhort, and he

knows that it is not only his right but his duty so to do. There is,

therefore, in him a look of confidence and authority, very different

from the haughtiness of the one or the vanity of the other I have

mentioned.”

“You must have thought and studied more than might have been expected,”

said Father Bonneville, examining him closely.

“There is no reason why any man should not study, and still less why he

should not think,” replied the other. “I have done both, I acknowledge.

There are more sins committed in France every day than that.”

“And pray where do you live?” asked Father Bonneville.

“Come and see,” replied the stranger. “Your horses seem tired, and I

have still some nine miles to go, but we can ride slowly, and at this

next turn we shall quit the high road, which will be a convenience.”

Father Bonneville agreed to the proposal, and we rode on by the side of

our inviter in desultory conversation, pointed occasionally by

references to passing political events, but generally referring to

subjects altogether indifferent. I was dreadfully tired, I confess,

before we got to the end of our long, slow journey. At length after two

hours’ quiet ride, the stranger said, “We are coming to my home, where

you will be very welcome, and it is as well for you to stay there

to-night; for there is a grand fête of Liberty going on in most of the

villages round, and that lady, like most other pagan deities, is very

fond of human sacrifices. Now it does not much matter whether one is

crushed under the wheels of Juggernaut, or burned by Druids in a basket

of wicker-work, or made to pass through the fire like the children of

those obedient and docile Israelites of old, or have one’s head chopped

off on a little platform in a public square, before the image of a

monstrous woman, in a red night-cap, and with a spear in her hand. It

does not much matter, I say; but all are disagreeable, and all are to be

avoided by every reasonable means. You will therefore be better in my

home there, than in any inn in the neighborhood.”

“Where?” asked Father Bonneville, gazing on before him, in expectation

of seeing a farmer’s house.

“There,” replied the stranger, pointing to a magnificent château upon a

rising ground near. “You marvel, I see, and I can guess your

inquiry—how I have contrived to keep possession of my own, when the

universal war-cry through all France is, ‘War to the Castle, Peace to

the Cottage.’ I have not time for long explanation; but sufficient may

be told briefly. You see this coat of coarse gray cloth. It is the sign,

the key, of my whole life. I too was bred an ecclesiastic. The death of

three elder brothers put me in possession of that thing upon the hill. I

have unfrocked myself, but I retain my early habits, and respect my

voluntary vows. I remain in two or three little chambers, while very

often boors revel in the halls of my ancestors. But they have a shrewd

notion that if I were gone they would not have the means of revelry to

as great an extent as at present—that if my property was confiscated,

it would fall into the hands of worse men than myself; and so long as I,

the master of it, act but as the steward of it, they are well contented

to leave me alone in my office without bringing my head to the

guillotine, which would be of no use at all to any one, and without

seizing upon my lands, it would be a great embarrassment to themselves.

Moreover, I have once or twice threatened to resign all my possessions

into the hands of the Commune, and the very lowest of the people have

been those to beseech me the most earnestly to refrain, knowing very

well that they get a better part of the spoil now than they otherwise

would. Thus I have got a certain command over them, and I do what I like

without fear of any buzzing rumors, or public denunciations. The man who

denounced me would very soon find his way to the lantern, and as it is

unpleasant to occupy in darkness the place of a light, with a rope round

one’s neck, people abstain. There are a hundred people in yonder town

who could hang me to-morrow; but my death would be sure to hang a

hundred of themselves, and therefore I have the majority on my side. But

come, let us go in through the gates.”

We entered the château, leaving our horses in the care of a laboring man

in the court, who seemed not a bit less respectful to the master of the

house than the servant of any old noble in the ancient days. This was in

itself an anomaly in those times; for the vain desire of equality had

completely perverted men’s judgments, and they sought not alone to sweep

away the differences created by a long established social system, but

even those fundamental differences produced by the will of God. I

believe, in those days—amongst a great mass of the people at least—as

much jealous hatred was felt toward superior intellect as toward

superior wealth or superior station.

On passing the doors of the building we found some ten or twelve men

seated in the eating-room drinking and talking. The master of the house

passed through, nodded to them, called them citizens, and said, “Make

good cheer of it. There is more where that comes from.”

A cheerful, good-humored laugh was the reply, and he walked on up the

stairs, leading us to a little suite of apartments which he reserved for

himself, and where his privacy was respected even by the rude men who

surrounded him. There he left us, and went out to procure some

refreshment for us, part of which he brought in himself. The rest, with

a considerable quantity of plate, which he seemed to think in perfect

security, notwithstanding open doors and strange visitors, was brought

in by a servant of the old school, but not in livery. When the man was

gone we ate and drank and refreshed ourselves, and a conversation, not

only of interest but of importance, occurred between our entertainer and

Father Bonneville. The former seemed to comprehend our situation, or at

least as much of it as was necessary, without any explanation; and he

gave a great deal of very good and minute advice as to our conduct while

traveling through France. He advised the good Father, strongly, to put

on a brown coat, saying that the reputation of an abbé was worse than

that of a priest. He advised him also to give up the plan of traveling

on horseback, and betake himself to a _chaise de poste_.

“I don’t ask where you are going, or what you intend to do, but by

coming with post-horses, and lodging at the post-house, wherever they

entertain there, you gain favor with one class of the community whose

assistance is of great importance to travelers.”

Father Bonneville ventured to tell him that there were difficulties in

the way of posting, as we were not furnished with those papers which

were sometimes inquired for at post-houses.

“Oh, I will manage that very soon for you,” said our host. “The mayor

shall furnish you with the necessary passports.”

“But he knows nothing of us,” replied Father Bonneville.

“He knows me,” replied the other, with a significant nod of his head,

“he wont refuse me. It is rather a painful state of things when each

man’s life is in another man’s power. There are plenty to misuse the

advantage, and I have never seen why I should not employ it to better

purposes. The mayor will probably be guillotined in six months. He

calculates it will be longer, but I think he makes a mistake. However,

he knows I could have him guillotined in six days, and is therefore very

compliable.”

“And pray,” said Father Bonneville, with a somewhat rueful smile, “how

long do you contemplate keeping your own head where it is?”

“It is hardly worth consideration,” replied the other; “for I say of my

head, as a friend of mine said of his house which was likely to fall

about his ears, ‘It will last my time.’ In truth it is of very little

use to any but myself, or I dare say they would have taken it long ago.

The same worthlessness may or may not protect it for a month, a year, or

even till these evil times pass away; for you are not to suppose, my

good friend, that this state will last for ever. It is a mere irruption

of human vanity. We Frenchmen are the vainest people upon earth, the

whole nation is vain, and every individual is vain. This vanity makes

each man unwilling to see any other a bit higher, richer, or in any

respect better off than himself; but there are certain fundamental laws

of order which man may overturn for a time, but which always resume

their power. The wise rule in the end. Industry and talent raise

themselves in spite of resistance, forethought and care produce wealth,

and if you were to take every acre of land throughout France, and every

louis d’or, and divide them equally amongst the whole people, so that

there should not be the difference of a sous, before fifty years had

passed you would find the differences all restored, some men rich, other

men poor, some men ruling, other men obeying, some enjoying, others

laboring. Nay more, my belief is, that within the same time, you would

find rank, titles and distinctions restored also.”

Father Bonneville shook his head.

“I am very sure of it,” replied the other, in answer to the doubtful

shake. “There are many countries in which a pure democracy might

exist—perhaps in England—but certainly not in France. Our very blood

is feudal and chivalrous. History, which is the memory of nations, is

filled with nothing but feudal and chivalrous facts. We are too light,

too vain, too volatile to do without distinction for any length of time,

and we have not a sufficient spirit of organization in our character to

do without a king in some shape or other. I think it must be an absolute

shape; but take my word for it, France will never be forty years at any

one time without counts, barons and marquises, dukes, peers, stars and

ribbons. You might as well attempt to make us Quakers as real

republicans. A lion may perhaps be taught to dance like a monkey for an

hour or two, but take my word for it, in the end he will eat his

dancing-master; and you might as well attempt to change a lion’s nature

as a Frenchman’s. However, you shall have the passports to-morrow, or I

do not know the mayor. He is a very excellent person, but has an

over-strong regard for the integrity of his neck.”

“I wish I possessed your secret of living so much at ease amidst such

scenes, and exercising so much influence over such men,” said Father

Bonneville.

“Mystery, mystery!” said our host with a smile. “That is the whole

secret. No one knows what I am going to do next. No one knows why I am

going to do it. Whenever there is any great question agitated in regard

to which I am forced to take a part, I give a full and complete

explanation of my views, in terms which not a man who hears me can

comprehend. I use the language of the times, the cant words and pet

phrases of the multitude, and generally I go one little step before any

of the movements I see coming; for where millions of people are running

a race, as we are in France, the man who stops even to buckle his shoe

is certain to be knocked down and trampled to death. But now I will show

you your sleeping place. You will find the beds good. May you never have

worse.”

Our host was as good as his word in all respects. Before we woke in the

morning the passports had been procured, containing a very tolerable

description of Father Bonneville under the name of Citoyen Jerome

Charlier, and of myself under that of Louis Lassi. Our horses were sold

to no great disadvantage by the intervention of our entertainer, a

little post-chaise bought from the post-master himself, at about five

louis more than it was worth, and at about eleven o’clock in the day we

set out on the direct road for Paris, in a manner which suited me much

better, I confess, than that which we had previously pursued. I have

little doubt that the good Father, too, who had not ridden for twenty

years, was in the same predicament. I will only dwell upon our farther

journey toward the capital so far as to state that it passed easily, and

without interruption, which we attributed to the fact of having cut

across the country, in such a direction as to be now traveling upon a

line of high road totally different from that which led from Paris to

the place of our previous residence.

THE CAPITAL.

My remembrance of the journey to Paris, and the conversations which took

place upon the road, is more perfect than of any other of the events

which took place at that time. But it is, perhaps, in some degree a

factitious memory; for I have talked about it so frequently since, that

I hardly know which are the facts supplied by my own mind, which those

related to me by others. I recollect clearly and distinctly, however,

our entrance into Paris on a dark and stormy night, our detention at the

gates, and the examination of the carriage by lantern-light. I shall

not, I think, ever forget the impression produced upon my mind by the

long, tortuous streets of that great capital, with the dim lanterns

swinging on chains stretched across from house to house, the enormously

tall buildings on every side, and the multitude of people who thronged

the streets even at that hour, and in that weather. I thought the

journey through Paris would never have come to an end, but at length the

_chaise de poste_ drove into the court of a second-rate inn, in the Rue

des Victoires, not far from the hospital of the Quinze-vingts. Our

arrival created no sensation. No active porters, no ready waiters were

there to welcome or assist. The house rose dark and gloomy, on the four

sides of the court-yard, up to an amazing height in the sky, leaving us,

like Truth, in the bottom of a well, and as good Father Bonneville knew

not much more of the ways of Paris than I did myself, I do not know what

would have become of us if it had not been necessary to pay the

postillion. It was too dark in the court to see the money, and as he did

not choose to take it upon trust, he said he would go and fetch the

concierge and his lantern. Accordingly, he dug out of a den, at the side

of the port-cochere, a very curious, antiquated specimen of humanity,

with a broad belt over his shoulder, very much like one of those in

which the beadles of old French churches used to stick their useless

swords. He held the lantern while the money was counted out, and then

was kind enough, though somewhat slowly, to lead us up a very dark and

narrow stair-case to the first floor of the house, where the hotel in

reality began. I never discovered what was done with the ground floor;

for there were no shops in it, and it seemed to be left entirely to take

care of itself. The mistress of the house—she had a husband, but poor

little thing, he never presumed to interfere in any thing—was an

enormously tall, and tolerably portly woman, apparently of five or six

and thirty years of age, very fresh, good-looking and good-humored. She

was a Fleming by birth, and bore evident traces of her origin in her

fair hair, blue eyes, and brilliant complexion. She was enchanted to see

us, she assured us, would provide for our accommodation as no other

people had ever been provided for before, ordered some supper for us

immediately, and in the meanwhile, took us to see our rooms, which were

a story higher. There was a great, large, gloomy chamber, tesselated

with brick well waxed, a bed in an alcove, two small closets on each

side of the alcove, and a fire-place big enough to burn a forest. This

was for Father Bonneville. My own room was about the size of the alcove

and its two closets, and close by the side of the good Father’s chamber.

To my young eyes it looked more snug and comfortable than his. But we

were each contented it would seem. The bags were brought up, the

post-chaise put in the remise, and my little store of clothing being

placed in my room, I washed away the dust of travel, brushed the young,

unfrosted hair which then curled so thickly over my head, and feeling

somewhat solitary in the great world around me, found my way to the

chamber of my good preceptor, who was sitting with his feet, one upon

each andiron, contemplating with deep interest, as it seemed to me, the

blazing logs as they fizzed and crackled on the hearth. Poor man, his

thoughts, I fancy, were very far away, and he took no notice of me for a

minute or two, while I meditated on the intense smell of roasting coffee

and veal ragout which seemed to form the atmosphere of the house.

Father Bonneville had just wakened from his reverie, and was speaking a

word or two as the commencement of a conversation, when a waiter came in

to announce that our supper was ready, with as discreet and deferential

an air as if we had been two aristocrats living under the ancien regime.

“Go down with him, Louis,” said Father Bonneville, “and I will join you

directly.”

I followed the waiter down the stairs which I was now happy to find

lighted by a single lamp, and entered the _salle à manger_. How can I

describe the dinginess of that strange room? It was long and not very

large, with a good-sized table down the middle, and a fire-place with a

broad mantlepiece in one corner. Three windows, which were supposed to

give it light in the day time, but which, as they looked into the narrow

court, never caught one genuine, unadulterated ray of the sun, now

looked as black as ink upon the wall, although, sooth to say, that wall

itself was of a hue little less sombre. Who was the inventor of painting

panneling in oil, I really do not know, but I cannot imagine that any

hand but his own could have so decorated that wall, or that a brush of

any kind could ever have touched it afterward. I believe that there were

nymphs dancing, represented on the spaces between the windows, but they

certainly looked like Hottentots dancing in the dark. The furniture of

the room was very scanty, consisting of nothing but the long

dining-table, and chairs enough to fit it, but over the end of the table

nearest the fire-place, was spread a beautifully white damask cloth, on

which appeared two candlesticks, two napkins, a number of knives and

forks and plates, and no less than eight dishes, from which exhaled a

very savory odor, I mechanically walked up toward the fire, when

suddenly, to my horror and consternation, a voice addressed me from the

mantlepiece, exclaiming, “Petit coquin, petit coquin!” and the next

instant there was a whirr, and I felt something brush my cheek and fall

upon my shoulder. On examination, it proved to be a bird of a kind which

I had never seen before, and which, in this individual instance, I

probably should not have recognized, if I had seen a thousand of its

species. It was a cockatoo, which had thought fit to moult in the midst

of the winter, and had done it so completely, that though warmly enough

robed in a covering of fine down, not a feather was to be seen upon its

body, except the pen feathers of the wings, those of the tail, and a

long yellow crest on the head. I call it yellow, because that is the

color it ought to have been, but, to say sooth, its fondness for the

chimney-corner had so completely smoked my new friend, that the general

hue of its whole body was a dull but most decided gray.

It seemed an amiable and affectionate bird, however, although with its

yellowish crest, and unfeathered form, it looked very much like one of

those meagre dowagers whom we see at parties with dresses a great deal

too much cut down for the satisfaction of the beholders. It continued

repeating in a playful and endearing tone, “petit coquin, petit coquin!”

as if it imagined the epithet to imply the greatest tenderness. While

the words were yet in its beak, however, and before any regular

conversation had begun between us, the party was augmented by another

gentleman carrying in his hand a round hat with three broad bands, which

was generally one of the signs or symbols of a man well provided in

official situations.

He was a stout and self-important, but evidently a very keen personage.

He was one of those for whom trifles have much importance, not from any

peculiar capacity for dealing in details, but because a natural tendency

of the mind of man to attach a certain degree of magnitude to all he

observes himself had not been properly corrected in his youth. The bird

was still rhyming, “petit coquin, petit coquin,” and advancing at once

toward me with an air of jovial frankness, he caught me by the arm,

saying, “Ah, little rogue, the bird knows you, it seems. Now, you are

some young aristocrat, I will warrant.”

Now it so happened, that I made the exact answer which was required

under the circumstances. Let it be understood that I had received no

instructions whatever; that Father Bonneville had never even touched

upon the subject of politics in his own house; that while deploring

excesses, and excited and alarmed by the crimes, which he saw going on

every day around him, he had never even hinted an opinion upon any of

the great questions which agitated the public mind at the time. But in

my walks through the town and the country, I had been so much

accustomed, for the last twelve months or more, to hear the name of

aristocrat applied to any one who wore a better coat than his neighbor,

that I gradually learned to look upon that term as implying the basest,

meanest, and most pitiful of all things. My cheek flushed, my brow

contracted with an expression of anger which could not be assumed, and I

replied, sharply, “No, citizen, no! Neither I, or any one I know, are

aristocrats. You insult us by calling us so.”

My passion was ridiculous enough; for I had not the slightest idea in

the world what the word aristocrat meant. Nevertheless, it had its

effect, although that might have been lost for want of witnesses, had

not Madame Michaud entered the room at the moment, to see that

everything was properly provided for her honored guests.

“There, Monsieur Le Commissaire,” she said, “I think you have got your

answer. You do not expect to find aristocrats in my house, I suppose.”

“I have found one,” answered the commissary, nodding his head; “and he

will find soon that he is discovered. Shake hands, citizen, if you are

really and truly a lover of your country and the rights of man. But

mind, you don’t presume to touch my hand if you are only shamming a love

of freedom.”

I placed my hand in his boldly, and shook it warmly; for I had as little

idea of that in which true freedom consists as most of his patient

followers in the political career, who, with very rare exceptions, were

devout worshipers of words, with a very indefinite notion, indeed, of

things.

He was satisfied, it seemed, and sat down to take a cup of coffee and

drink a glass of liqueur with Madame Michaud—without paying for them.

Indeed, he seemed upon very amicable terms with the lady, and I strongly

suspect that it was good policy in all hostesses of Paris, not to refuse

any thing that commissaries of police might think fit to demand.

Shortly after, Father Bonneville made his appearance, and although he

answered all civil interrogatories, he played his part so discreetly,

that no suspicion seemed to be aroused.

The commissary quitted the room in jovial good-humor, and the rest of

the evening passed without any thing remarkable.

About this time, the images which memory presents in her long

looking-glass, are somewhat vague, and ill-defined—perhaps I have not

had the opportunity of refreshing my remembrance as to the minute

details, and many a scene stands out in strong relief from a picture

generally dark and obscure. Only one of those scenes will I notice here,

before I go on to matters more immediately affecting myself.

There was what is called a _table d’hôte_ at the inn where we stayed—a

great accommodation to travelers—which is now very common, though in

the time I speak of, it was more customary to lodge in what is called an

_hôtel garni_, and to obtain one’s food from without. One day, I know

not whether it was the second or third after our arrival, we were seated

at the dinner-table in the hall, when the same commissary of police I

have mentioned, entered the room, and slowly looked round the guests. I

could see many a changing countenance at the table—some rosy faces

which became white, and warm, glowing lips, which partook of on ashy

paleness. The commissioner, however, fixed his eyes upon one particular

gentleman, a man, perhaps, of fifty-seven or fifty-eight years of age,

who had been one of the lightest and gayest of the guests. He saw the

peculiar look of the officer, and probably understood its meaning

completely; but he staid to finish quietly the joke which hung upon his

lips, and then asked with the laugh still ringing around him—

“Mister commissary, is your business with me?”

The commissary slowly nodded his head, and our friend who was sitting

next to Father Bonneville on the right, instantly rose, saying with a

jocund smile—“I anticipated great things from the second course, but I

must resign it, and do so with the self denial of a hermit. Ladies and

gentlemen, there are three things greatly to be desired in life: a

pleasant hopeful youth; a warm and genial middle life; and a short,

unclouded, old age. The two first I have obtained, by the mercy of

God—or of the Gods—or of any God that you like, Monsieur

Commissaire—the third is very likely to be granted to me likewise. I

will therefore only drink one more glass to the good health of all here

present, before I drink another draught little less acceptable, and

infinitely more tranquilizing.”

Thus saying, he raised a glass of wine already filled, toward his lips,

bowed gracefully round the table, drank the wine, and walked out of the

room with the commissary of police.

The next day, at noon, we heard he had just been guillotined.

OLD ACQUAINTANCES RENEWED.

Why we lingered in Paris I never knew, or have forgotten. It is very

probable, there were difficulties in the way to the frontier, which good

Father Bonneville feared to encounter—or, perhaps, he was sensible of

the approach of severe illness, and feared to undertake the journey in

such a state of health. The fatigues of our flight had been too much for

the old man, and although he never appeared upon the way half as tired

as I was, yet, after our labors were over, while I rallied and became as

brisk and active as ever in four-and-twenty hours, he remained languid

and feeble, and unwilling to stir out of his room. He would not confine

me, however, to the hotel, but suffered me to visit various parts of

Paris, where objects worthy of attention were to be seen. I thus

acquired a tolerable knowledge of the principal leading thoroughfares of

the town, and could find my way from one part of the city to another,

with perfect ease.

For some time, I shut my eyes to the fact that my old friend and

protector was really ill; but when we had been in Paris about a

fortnight, the change which had taken place in his appearance, his pale

and haggard face, and the thinness of his always delicate and beautiful

hands, awoke me to a sense of his real state.

“I fear you are not well, my Father,” I said, as I sat by his side,

while he leaned back in his great chair, with his feet to the fire.

Father Bonneville shook his head mournfully, and I urged him to let me

go for a physician.

“I believe you must, Louis,” he answered; “for I do feel very ill, and I

would fain recover strength enough at all events, to place you, my son,

in safety before I die.”

“There is a physician lives close by,” I said, “I can run for him in a

minute.”

“No, no,” cried the good priest, “that will not do. There was a

physician here in Paris, whom I knew in days of old—a good and a

sincere man, who would not betray us, but on the contrary, would give us

aid and advice in other matters, besides those of mere health. Do you

know the Place Du Petit Chatelet, Louis?”

I replied, that I knew it well, and Father Bonneville wrote down the

name of a physician, and the number of his house, saying in the

desponding tone of sickness—

“Very likely he may be dead, and then I know not what we shall do.”

Without any loss of time, I sallied out into the streets of Paris, in

search of Dr. L——. It was a fine, clear, cold afternoon, with the snow

lying piled up at the sides of the streets, the fountains all frozen,

and the chains of the street-lamps covered with glittering frost. The

wind was keen and cutting, and few people, especially of the lower

orders, were in the street; for though _sans culottism_ may be a very

good thing, it is by no means warm, and the worthy rulers of the

destinies of France at that moment, had not great-coats enough amongst

them to render them indifferent to a north-east wind. I could thus

pursue my way rapidly, uninterrupted by the crowds which usually

thronged the streets of the French capital, and though doubtless I did

not take all the shortest ways, I soon reached the place I was seeking.

The houses were tall, dirty, well-smoked, and ever open doors round the

whole place, gave entrance to innumerable stair-cases which led up to

the dwellings of low advocates, notaries public, physicians, artists,

poor men of letters, and all that class who scrape a precarious

existence from the faults, the follies, the misfortunes, the miseries of

others. But now I had a very puzzling calculation to make. Father

Bonneville had written down, after the name of Dr. L——, number five,

Place du Petit Chatelet, but not a house was to be seen which had a

number on it, and I was obliged to guess at which corner the numeration

commenced. I was evidently wrong in my first essay, for no Doctor L——

could I find in the house which I fixed upon; and short and snappish

were the answers I got at the various doors where I applied.

That could not be number five, and so I turned to the other side of the

square, and began in the opposite direction. As I was counting the

houses from the corner, I saw a little girl coming from a street nearly

in face of me, with a basket in her hand, and poorly dressed. She turned

suddenly into one of the door-ways, and I sprang after her, running as

fast as possible and nearly overturning an old woman, who was roasting

chestnuts in a tin kettle—for which I had my benediction. Little cared

I, however; for my heart beat wildly, and the only thing I feared at

that moment, was, that I should lose sight of that little girl with the

basket; for I had taken it into my head at once that she was Mariette de

Salins. She had gone up the stairs, however, when I reached the door,

and without pausing for an instant I ran up after her, just in time to

see her enter an apartment on the second floor, the door of which was

closing as I approached. I knocked sharply, without a moment’s

consideration, when an elderly man, with thin and powdered white hair,

and a pleasant, though grave expression of countenance, presented

himself, asking who I wanted.

A moment’s consideration had shown me that it might be dangerous to

mention the name of Mariette; nor must it be supposed that such

discretion was at all marvelous in a boy of my age at that time; for

those were days of constant peril, when every act was to be thought of,

every word weighed, and the habit of caution and reserve was inculcated

as a duty upon even mere children. On the spur of the occasion, then, I

replied that I was seeking Dr. L——, still keeping my eyes fixed upon a

door which stood ajar heading into a room beyond.

“My name is Doctor L——,” replied the old man. “What is it you want

with me, my son? And why are you looking so earnestly in there?”

“I want you to come and see a gentleman who is sick,” I replied, “in the

Hotel de Clermont, close by the Quinze-vingts.”

“Is he very ill?” asked the doctor. “What is his name?”

But before I could answer either of his questions the inner door I have

mentioned was drawn back, the beautiful little face peeped out, and in a

moment after Mariette was in my arms.

“I thought it was you, dear Mariette,” I cried, kissing her tenderly,

while she seemed never tired of hugging me. “Where is your mother? How

is she?”

“Hush, hush!” said the old doctor, closing the outer door; “no questions

or answers of any kind here, except medical ones. Mariette knows well

that she must be silent, and answer no inquiries—and so,” he continued,

after having thus stopped all explanations between us, “I suppose I am

to conclude, my son, that this story of the sick man is a fiction, and

that your object was to catch your little playfellow here.”

“No indeed,” I replied, with some indignation, “I have not been taught

to speak falsehoods, sir. The gentleman I mentioned, does wish to see

you, and is very ill. His name you will know when you see him; for you

have met before—not that I mean to say I did not want to see Mariette,

and indeed you must let her tell me where I can find her; for it is a

long, long time since I have seen her.”

“That cannot be,” said the doctor, gravely; “she must learn to keep

counsel—are you of the same town, then?”

“Oh, she lived with me for a long time,” I replied; “and the gentleman

whom I want you to come and see is the same who was so kind to her

there.”

“I should like to see him very much,” said Mariette, looking down.

“Well, well, I will go to him,” said the doctor, gravely, “and if it be

proper that you two children should meet again, I will bring it about.

Now you, Mariette, go in and empty your basket as usual. You, my son, go

back to your friend, and say I will be with him in an hour.”

Thus saying, he led me gently by the arm to the door and put me out, and

I hastened back with all my intelligence to Father Bonneville, asking

him if it were not strange that I should find Mariette just at the house

of Doctor L——.

“Perhaps not,” replied the good priest, with a faint smile. “The doctor

is a native of our own province, and known to many of the good and the

wise there.”

He said no more upon the subject, and made no inquiries, but remained

somewhat listlessly in his chair gazing into the fire, till at length

came a gentle knock at the door, and the physician entered, dressed with

somewhat more care than he had been an hour before, with a

three-cornered hat on his head, and a gold-headed cane in his hand. He

approached Father Bonneville with an unconscious air, and without the

slightest sign of recognition, till the old priest held out his hand to

him, saying—“Ah, my friend, do you not remember me? You have not

changed so much as I have, it would seem.”

Doctor L—— started back; for the sweet, silvery tones of the voice

seemed to wake up memory, and he exclaimed—“Is it possible? my good

friend, Bonneville!—Nay, nay. You are too much changed for time to have

done it all. You must be really ill. Leave us, my young friend, I doubt

not we shall soon set all this to rights.”

I retreated into my little room where it was cold enough, for there was

no fire-place, and waited there shivering very tolerably for nearly an

hour, while Dr. L—— and the good priest remained in consultation. At

the end of that time Dr. L—— came and called me back, and when I

re-entered Father Bonneville’s room, held me by the arm at a little

distance from him, gazing very earnestly in my face, and seeming to

scrutinize every line.

“Yes,” he said at length, turning to my old friend; “yes, he is very

like him—Poor boy, what a fate!—Well, my young friend,” he said,

suddenly changing the subject. “We must get good Citizen Charlier here,

to his bed as soon as possible. He will be well soon, and would have

been well by this time if he had sent for me before. But we must try and

make up for lost time. I will not send him to the apothecary’s,” he

said, “for drugs, for we are never sure of them at those places—one man

acknowledged the other day that during twenty years he had never sold

one genuine ounce of rhubarb. I have two other visits to pay; but let

him come to my house in an hour and a half, and I will send what will do

you good. Perhaps I may see you again to-night.”

“Shall I find Mariette with you?” I asked, looking up in the doctor’s

face.

The good man shook his head, and then turning to Father Bonneville, said

with a smile—“I think these two children are in love with each other;

but little Mariette is so discreet that she would not even tell me who

he was or who you were. She has had bitter lessons of caution for one so

young—perhaps you may sometimes see her at my house, my son; but you

must imitate her discretion, and neither ask any questions, nor answer

them if put to you by strangers.”

“Oh, Louis is growing very discreet,” said Father Bonneville; “for we

have had warnings enough since we have been in this house to prevent us

from taking the bridle off our tongues for a moment—fare you well, my

good friend, I shall be glad to see you again to-night if you can

contrive to come; but yet I do not think it is needful for my health

that you should take such trouble.”

“We will see, we will see,” replied the doctor, and shaking him by the

hand he left the room.

The good Father, then, with my assistance, undressed and went to bed,

where, to say sooth, he would have been much better three or four days

before; and at the appointed hour I went for the medicines which had

been promised, but saw no one except an old female servant, who gave me

two bottles addressed to Citizen Charlier.

As I returned, I met a furious mob coming up the streets with a bloody

head upon a pike, and perhaps I was in some peril, though I was not

aware of it at the time. My dress, though very plain, was neat and

whole, and I was seized as I attempted to pass through the mob, by a

gaunt, fierce-looking man, with hardly one untattered piece of clothing

on his back. He called me a cursed little aristocrat, and made the man

who bore the head upon the pike, lower the bloody witness of their

inhuman deeds to make me kiss it. They brought it to the level of my

head, and thrust its dark, contorted features into my face. But I

stoutly refused to kiss it, saying I was not an aristocrat; and why

should I kiss a head that they told me had belonged to one.

“If you can make me out an aristocrat,” I exclaimed, “I will kiss it.”

“What have you got here in your hand?” cried the sans-culotte, snatching

the bottles from me.

“Only medicines for a sick man,” I replied.

He tore off the paper, however, opened one of the bottles and put it to

his mouth, then spat upon the ground with a blasphemous oath,

exclaiming—“He is only a garçon apothecaire. Let him pass, let him

pass! He will kill as many sacre aristocrats with his cursed drugs as we

can with the guillotine. Let the imp pass. His is a trade that should be

encouraged.”

Thus saying, he marched on, and his fierce and malignant companions

followed. I cannot say that I was in reality at all frightened. Every

thing had passed so quickly that I had not had time to become alarmed;

but I felt bewildered, and paused for a moment to gather my senses

together after the mob had passed into the Place du Petit Chatelet which

was close at hand. I was still standing there when I heard a voice

saying, “Louis, Louis.”

I looked round, but could see nobody, and the only place from which the

sound could proceed, appeared to be one of those open doors so common in

Paris at the time, with a dark passage beyond it.

“Louis, Louis,” said the voice again; “come in here, I want to speak to

you.”

It was not the tongue of Mariette certainly; for her sweet, child-like

tones I should have known any where; and I hesitated whether I should go

in or not. I resolved not to seem cowardly, however, and walked into the

passage. I could then see faintly, a tall, and as it appeared to me,

graceful figure move on before me, and I followed into a little room

quite at the back of the house, to which the light was admitted from a

little court behind. There the figure turned as I entered, and I beheld

Madame de Salins.

The room itself presented a painful picture of poverty. It could not

have been above ten feet square, and in one corner, without curtains, or

any shelter from the wind, was the bed of Madame de Salins herself, and

close by it a little bed for her daughter. The latter, indeed, was

fenced round with a shawl hung upon two chairs, which only left one in

the room vacant. A table, a broken looking-glass, a few cups and

glasses, with a coffee-pot standing by the fire, seemed to form all the

other furniture of the chamber. I had very little time to look round me;

for Madame de Salins at once began to inquire after the health of Father

Bonneville.

“I saw you from a front window,” she said, as soon as I had answered her

first questions, “and feared that those men would maltreat you; for they

have the hearts of tigers, and spare no one.”

A sudden fear seized me, lest Mariette should be even then coming from

the house of good Doctor L——, and encounter the ruffians whom I had

just escaped.

“Is Mariette at the Place du Chatelet?” I asked, eagerly. “Let me go and

see that no harm happens to her.”

“No, no,” replied Madame de Salins. “She is here with the old lady in

the front room, who lets us sometimes sit with her, as a relief from

this dark, dismal hole. You are a good, brave boy, however, Louis, and

for every kind and generous act you do, depend upon it you will have

your reward. Mariette, thank God, is quite safe, and she has learnt

whenever she sees a crowd to avoid it. But tell me more about Father

Bonneville. Does Doctor L—— think he is in danger?”

I was not able to give her any satisfactory answer, for I really did not

know what was the physician’s opinion of my good preceptor’s case.

“Tell him,” said Madame de Salins, “that I will come to see him if I can

do so secretly; but I am under surveillance, and all my movements, I

fear, will be watched till some new change takes place in this

ever-shifting government. I have several things to say to him, and could

wish to see him much.”

She spoke in an anxious and thoughtful tone, and doubtless had many

matters of deep and painful importance pressing upon her mind at the

moment. Boy-like, however, my attention was directed principally to the

more obvious inconveniencies which she suffered, and I said, “I am

afraid you must be very badly off here, madame.”

The lady smiled. “Badly enough, my dear boy,” she replied. “But yet we

might be very much worse—nay, we have been much worse in mind, if not

in body. But I will not keep you now. Tell Monsieur de Bonneville what I

have said, and add that if he has any thing to reply, he can communicate

it to me through Doctor L——.”

When I reached the inn, my first task was to give good Father Bonneville

the medicine prescribed for him, and then to tell him of my interview

with Madame de Salins. He seemed greatly interested, and repeated once

or twice, “Poor thing! poor thing! I hope she will be successful; but I

can’t help her—I can do nothing to help her. I know too little to give

her advice, and have no power to give her assistance.”

I did not press the subject upon him, nor make any inquiries, but sat

for a long time by his bed-side reading to him both in Latin and in

French. English was by this time quite forbidden between us, and we had

no English books.

In the evening, toward nine o’clock, Doctor L—— came again, and felt

his patient’s pulse with a cheerful air.

“The good woman of the house,” he said, “waylaid me on the stairs, to

ask if you were likely to die, my good friend, and to suggest that in

that case it would be as well to send you to the hospital. I have spared

you that journey, however, by assuring her that in a week or ten days

you will be well enough to go to the opera, if by that time they have

left any singers with their heads on. They guillotined poor Benoit this

morning. I ventured to suggest that they would not get such another

tenor in a hurry; and so they made him sing before they put him into the

cart, to try, I suppose, how they liked it. Whether he sang too well or

too ill to please them, I don’t know, but they drove him off to the

guillotine, while I was seeing another prisoner.”

Father Bonneville gave a shudder; but sickness is always more or less

selfish, and though naturally one of the most unselfish men in the

world, his thoughts speedily reverted to himself. “I trust,” he said,

“that there will be no necessity for sending me to the hospital. Did you

quite satisfy the good woman?”

“Quite,” replied Doctor L——. “I told her that I would be answerable

for your not giving occasion to a funeral from her house, which is what

all these good aubergiste fear. I told her, moreover, that when your

daughter and your granddaughter arrived from the country, you would very

speedily rally.”

“My daughter,” said Father Bonneville, with a faint smile. “I have no

daughter but spiritual daughters, my friend.”

“Perhaps we may find you one for the occasion,” said Doctor L——,

laughing. “But I will tell you more about it to-morrow; for although you

must be, of course, consulted whether you will have a child or not, yet

in this case, out of the ordinary course of nature, the child must first

be asked whether she likes to be born. In short, I have a scheme in my

head, my good friend; but it requires maturing, and the pivot upon which

it all turns is your rapid recovery. So take care of yourself; cast care

from your mind for the present, and you will speedily be both well and

strong again.”

Thus saying, he left him, and for two or three days no event of any

importance occurred, except the gradual improvement of Father

Bonneville, under the kind and zealous treatment of the good physician.

A PERIOD OF CHANGES.

At the period I speak of there were changes in Paris every day. True,

one horror was only succeeded by another, and one fierce tyranny but

made place for a tyranny more fierce and barbarous. The condemnation of

the king, and his death, which followed shortly after, occupied for a

time all thoughts, and filled many a bosom which had previously felt the

strongest, nay, even the wildest aspirations for liberty, with gloom,

and doubt, and dread. The moment, however, the head of the good king

fell upon the scaffold the death-struggle began between the Mountain and

the Gironde, and in the many heaves and throes of the contending

factions, many persons found opportunity to escape from perils which had

previously surrounded them. Although a mere boy at the time, I was quite

familiar with the daily history of these events; for they were in every

body’s mouth, and I might even greatly swell this little memoir, by

narrating minutely the various scenes, some terrible, some ludicrous,

which I myself beheld. The most terrible was the death of the king, of

which, jammed in by the multitude, without a possibility of escape, I

was myself present, and within a few yards of the instrument of death.

But it is my object to pass as lightly as possible over these young

recollections, though many of them were too deeply graven on memory ever

to be effaced. I shall never forget, as long as I live, the face of a

tall, gaunt man, who was close to me at the moment when the king

attempted to speak to the people, and the drums were ordered to beat, to

drown the voice of the royal martyr. Rage and indignation and shame were

written in every line, and I heard him mutter between his teeth, “Oh,

were there but an hundred men in Paris true to France and to

themselves!”

My own belief is, that a very few acting at that moment in concert, and

fearless of their own safety, might not only have saved the effusion of

the king’s blood, but might have given a different direction to the

revolution, and saved the lives of thousands. However that might be, I

went away from the scene with horror, and shut myself up for the rest of

the day with good Father Bonneville, who was now able to rise. The

physician saw him twice during the day, and once I was sent out of the

room for a short time. Doctor L—— spoke jokingly more than once in my

presence, of the good priest’s daughter and granddaughter, and though I

did not see the point of the jest, I imagined it was one way he had of

amusing himself.

Father Bonneville, however, seemed to me to humor him strangely,

answering him in the same strain, and inquiring when he thought his

daughter would arrive.

“I really cannot tell,” replied the physician. “But, of course, you will

have a letter from her before she comes.”

Three days afterward a letter was brought from the post-office, and

Father Bonneville examined the seal with a smile. It had not been

considered inviolable, that was clear; for either at the post-office or

in the hotel, they had thought fit to open the letter without even

taking the decent precaution of resealing it again. The contents of the

epistle I saw, and they certainly puzzled me a good deal when first

Father Bonneville gave the paper into my hand.

The letter began, “My dear Father,” and went on in the usual strain of a

child writing to a parent, telling him how much grieved she was to hear

that he had been sick in Paris, expressing fears that he had

over-fatigued himself in seeking for news of her dear husband, and

informing him that she would soon be in Paris herself, with her little

girl, to pursue the inquiry. The letter throughout was filled with a

great number of the cant expressions of republicanism, then common, and

it ended with declaring that if the writer’s dear husband was dead, she

could console herself with the thought that he had died in defense of

his country, though she could not bear the idea that he might be

lingering ill of his wounds without any affectionate hands to tend him.

The letter was addressed to “Citizen Jerome Charlier,” was dated from a

provincial town in Poitou, and was signed “Clarisse Bonfin.”

Father Bonneville smiled as he marked the expression of my face in

reading the letter; and when I had done, he asked me if I knew who these

relations of his were. I replied in the negative, and he answered,

nodding his head, “Some whom you know very well; but you must remember,

Louis, you are only to know them as my daughter and granddaughter, and

as your own aunt and cousin. Call the lady ‘Aunt Clarisse,’ or ‘Aunt

Bonfin,’ and the little girl, ‘Mariette Bonfin.’”

The last words threw a ray of light upon the whole affair—and I was

delighted. There is nothing, I believe, that children love so much as a

little mystery, especially boys of thirteen or fourteen; but I had the

additional satisfaction of having to play a part in the drama—a task

always charming to a child brought up in France. I acted my character

rather well, I flatter myself; and when Father Bonneville, well knowing

that the letter had been read before it reached him, sent me to talk to

our good hostess about rooms for our expected relations, I gave the

buxom dame quite enough of Aunt Bonfin and Cousin Mariette, and

described them both so accurately, that she could have no doubt of my

personal acquaintance with these supposed connections. She thought it

best, however, to deal with Citizen Charlier himself in regard to the

apartments to be engaged, and visited him in his room for that purpose.

The old gentleman was very taciturn, and seemed to think it a part of

his character to drive a hard bargain.

“His daughter,” he said, “was not rich: she had a great deal of

hard-work and traveling before her to find out what had become of her

husband, who had been wounded if not killed at Jenappes, and she could

not afford to throw her money away in inns.” There was a good deal of

skirmishing on these points, and a good deal of laughter and jest upon

the part of our hostess, who seemed as well contented, and as

comfortable as if there were no such thing as a guillotine in the world,

though her table d’hôte rather suffered from time to time, in

consequence of her guests being deprived of the organs of mastication

amongst others. The whole, however, was settled at length, and two days

afterward, I was informed that Madame Bonfin had arrived with her

daughter in a little post-chaise.

The good priest was not yet well enough to quit his room, but I ran down

the dingy stair-case into the court-yard, and as I expected, found

Madame de Salins and Mariette just getting out of a dirty little

vehicle, with a wooden apron, which bore the name of a cabriolet. Madame

de Salins embraced me kindly, and I did not forget to call her Aunt

Clarisse, while Mariette literally sprang into my arms, and I thought

would have smothered me with caresses. If there had been any doubts

previously in the minds of the people of the inn, they were all

dissipated by the tenderness of this meeting, and Madame de Salins and

her daughter followed me up stairs to the room of good Father

Bonneville. One of the waiters accompanied us, but there the meeting was

conducted as naturally as it had been below, and the words, “my

daughter” and “my father,” passed habitually between the good priest and

the high-born lady without any pause or hesitation.

Her own apartments were next shown to Madame de Salins, and her baggage

was brought up from below, when I remarked that every thing had been

carefully marked with the initials C. B., to signify Clarisse Bonfin.

Oh what actors every body in Paris became at that period! Some were so

by nature; for very nearly one half of the world is always acting a

part. Others did it because it was the tone of the day; and these formed

the heroic or tragic band, who did every thing with Roman dignity and

firmness, and carried the farce of representation into the very last act

of the tragedy. Others were driven to act parts which did not belong to

them, by the perils or necessities of their situation; and amongst

these, was Madame de Salins, who, dressed somewhat in the _mode

paysanne_, was out frequently, went boldly to police offices, and to

military authorities, inquiring diligently after her husband, John

Bonfin, and demanded intelligence regarding the state and condition of a

man who had never existed. A change in the direction of civic affairs,

and the decapitation of two or three gentlemen, who had watched her

diligently while in her lodging near the Place du Petit Chatelet, had

now set her comparatively free, and she used her powers of persuasion,

and her liberty, so well, that she obtained letters of recommendation to

the medical officers of the armies of Dumouriez and Kellerman, with a

satisfactory pass for herself, and her father, with two children. Upon

what pretence she made her traveling party so large, I do not know; but

she certainly carried her point. She was out more than once at night,

too, and I remarked that Mariette was now sent daily to the house of

Doctor L——, to bring the bottles of medicine which were still required

by Father Bonneville—a task, which I always previously fulfilled.

As the distance was considerable, and the way somewhat intricate, I was

permitted to accompany and guide my little companion, as far as the

street leading into the Place du Chatelet, but was directed to go no

farther, and wait there for her return. I had learned by this time to

ask no questions, but I could not help thinking that Mariette often

stayed a long time.

I do not know that I was of a very observing disposition, or inclined to

be particularly censorious, but one thing I remarked which surprised me

a good deal, and I recollect, quite well, that it gave me uncomfortable

feelings. In my first interview with Madame de Salins, she had appeared

overwhelmed with grief and terror, her clothes stained with her

husband’s blood, and a look of wild, almost frantic horror in her face,

which was never to be forgotten. Now, however, she had not only

completely recovered her composure, but was generally cheerful, and

sometimes even gay. Clouds of anxiety, indeed, would occasionally float

over her beautiful brow, and she would fall into deep fits of thought;

but it often seemed to me very strange that she should have so soon and

so completely forgotten the husband, for whom she had seemed to mourn so

sincerely. Indeed, there is nothing which so shocks—I might say, so

terrifies, the earnest heart of youth, as to perceive how transient are

those feelings of which to them life is made up, in the bosoms of

persons older, of more experience, and more world-hardened than

themselves. I loved Mariette, however, and Mariette loved me, and that

was a feeling which I then fondly fancied could never decay or alter.

At length, one day, Father Bonneville declared himself strong enough to

go out, and as there was a slight lull at the time in the political

storm, we went to see—that is he and I—some places of public interest.

I recollect an elderly gentleman coming up and joining in conversation

with us, in a very mild and placable tone. The good Father was very much

upon his guard, however, and in answer to some questions, said he had

been very ill since he had come to Paris, and had enjoyed no opportunity

of seeing the sights of the capital till the time of his stay was nearly

expired. Whether the old gentleman considered us as very stupid or not I

do not know, but he soon left us, and we found afterward that he was one

of those worthy public denunciators, who at that time brought so many

heads under the axe of the guillotine. He lived to a good old age, and I

saw him afterward in London, playing at cards with great devotion, and

furnished with a handsome diamond snuff-box.

This little incident, which I have only mentioned as characteristic of

the times, had no result that I know of upon our fate. Three days

afterward, the two post-chaises were got in order, horses were brought

from the post-house, and to my infinite satisfaction we all rolled away

together out of that grim city of Paris, which will ever remain

associated in my mind with memories of blood and crime. It was a fine

day—one of those days in February which come as if to bid us prepare

for summer, long ere summer is near, and which I think are more

beautiful and striking in France, than in any other country I know. The

sunshine lay softly upon the face of the country, and on the top of a

tall, bare tree, near the post-house, where we first stopped to change

horses, a thrush was pouring forth its evening song, and making the air

thrill with melody. I got out of our own little post-chaise to call

Mariette’s attention to the bird, but when I looked into their

cabriolet, to my surprise I saw that Madame de Salins was weeping

bitterly. The post-master approached and looked in likewise; but she had

great presence of mind, and instantly beckoning the man up, she asked

him some questions regarding the movements of the armies, and whether he

could give her any news of Citizen Bonfin, who commanded a company in

Davoust’s volunteers. The man, who seemed to compassionate her greatly,

replied that he could not, and asked if she had any apprehensions

regarding him. She answered that the last she had heard of her husband,

was, that he had been very severely wounded, but that careful nursing

might yet save his life. The good post-master was not a Parisian, nor a

litterateur, and so without affecting atheism, he prayed God to bless

her endeavors, and we rolled on upon our way.

We went on for two or three hours after dark, and lodged as we found it

expedient, at a post-house some little distance from Clermont. There,

however, our landlord, the post-master, proposed a change in our

arrangements, which was a very agreeable one to me. He laughed at four

persons of one family traveling in two post-chaises, assured us that it

would be much more convenient for us to go in a larger vehicle, having

one to dispose of which would exactly suit us, and that we should save a

good deal of money by the number of post-horses. His arguments seemed

quite conclusive both to Father Bonneville and Madame de Salins,

although he demanded two hundred livres, and our two carriages, for the

one he intended to supply, which was not worth two hundred livres in

itself. I was surprised at their acquiescence; for I did not believe

they had much money to spare; but I rather imagine that they were afraid

to oppose any thing he thought fit to suggest, and that if he had known

their exact situation, he might have taxed them still more largely. By

one contrivance or another, however, the papers of the family had been

put into such good order, that no suspicion seems to have been excited

any where. Perhaps, indeed, we were too insignificant to attract much

attention, and at the end of a four days’ journey, we found ourselves

rapidly approaching the frontiers of France, somewhat to the right of

our then victorious army. This was, perhaps, the most dangerous point of

our whole expedition, and at a spot where two hours more would have

placed us in security beyond the limits of France, we paused for the

night, in order to consider carefully the next step, lest we should lose

the fruit of all our exertions at the very moment that it seemed within

our grasp.

A BOY’S MANŒUVRE.

It was decided to drive right toward the frontier, beyond which the

advance of the French army has already been considerable. All the

country, almost to the banks of the Rhine was virtually in the hands of

France; but no general system of administration had been thought of. The

people were foreign, monarchical and anti-Gallican, and were ready

enough to give every assistance to fugitives from a system which they

hated and condemned.

This decision was taken, like all desperate ones, upon the calculation,

right or wrong, of the chances. I was in the room when all points were

discussed between Father Bonneville and Madame de Salins. Mariette lay

sleeping in a corner of her mother’s bed, looking like a cherub; but I,

more anxious perhaps, and more alive to the real perils of our situation

than any one of my age could have been, not disciplined by the scenes

which I had gone through during the last two months, was still up, and

listening eagerly for every word. The order was given for the

post-horses to be put to, the next morning, and as was necessary, the

route was stated.

The post-master showed some little hesitation, saying that the road we

proposed to go was directly that to the head-quarters of the army, and

that we were none of us military people.

“But I am the wife of a soldier,” replied Madame de Salins, at once, and

with a tone of dignity, “and these letters are for the surgeons-general

of that army, to whom I must deliver them.”

She laid her hand upon the packet of letters which she possessed, as she

spoke, and the post-master replied in a more deferential tone—“Very

well, citoyenne, I dare say it is all right, and I can send you to the

frontier; but whether you can get horses beyond or not, I can’t tell.

Mind, I am not responsible beyond the frontier.”

The next morning at the hour appointed the horses were put to the

carriage. They were three in number—we had previously had four—and

they were harnessed, as was very common then in France, and is now,

abreast. The postillion, instead of getting into his great jack-boots,

as I had always previously seen, got upon the front seat of the

carriage, gathered up the reins, and with the crack of a long whip set

out toward the frontier. He was a sullen-looking, dull, uncommunicative

person of that peculiar race found in the neighborhood of Liege, and

called Walloons; and I, who was sitting with my shoulder close to his,

though with my back toward him, and with nothing to intercept our

communication—for the carriage was open in front—endeavored in vain to

make him speak a word or two, addressing him frequently but obtaining no

reply.

At first I supposed that he could speak no French, and at last gave up

the undertaking. But I soon found that he could speak French enough when

it suited his purpose.

We drove along for about seven miles without meeting a single human

being, and seeing very few cultivated fields; for as frontier districts

generally are, the land was left nearly untended, nobody caring much to

plant harvests that they were never sure of reaping.

We at length came to a rude stone pillar, upon as bleak and desolate a

spot as I ever remember to have seen. The ground was elevated, but

sloped gently down to the neighboring country both before and behind us.

At least three miles of desolate marsh, which retained its moisture,

heaven knows how, swept around us on every side, and the only object

which denoted human habitation was the outline of a village, with some

trees, seen at the distance of some four or five miles on the plain

which lay a little below us in advance. When we reached the rude sort of

obelisk I have mentioned, the driver drew in his reins, and the horses

stopped to breathe, as I supposed, after climbing the hill: but the next

moment the man got down from the front seat, and approaching the side at

which Father Bonneville sat, demanded his drink-money.

“I will give it you when we reach the next post-house,” said Father

Bonneville.

“This is the only post-house I shall take you to,” replied the man

sullenly, but in very good French, “I am not bound to go an inch beyond

the line.”

The good priest remonstrated mildly, but the postillion answered with

great insolence, threatening to take out the horses and leave us there.

Father Bonneville answered without the slightest heat, that he must do

so if he pleased; that we were at his mercy; but that he was bound, if

possible to take us to the next post-house.

Seeing that this menace had produced no effect upon the quiet and gentle

spirit of the good old man, the postillion now determined to try another

manœuvre, and grumbled forth that he knew very well we were aristocrats,

seeking to fly from the country, and that therefore, like a good

citizen, he should turn his horses round, drive us back, and denounce us

at the municipality.

I had listened anxiously to the conversation, with a heart beating with

the fear of being stopped, and indignation at the man’s conduct. At

length a sudden thought struck me—what suggested it I do not know—nor

how it arose, nor whether indeed thought had any thing to do with it,

though I have called it a thought. It was more an impulse—an

instinct—a sudden determination taken without reason, which made me

clamber with the activity of a monkey over the back of the seat on which

I was sitting, and snatch up the reins and the whip which the postillion

had laid down upon the foot-board. I was determined to be out of France

at all events, whoever staid behind; and I cut the horses on either

flank without waiting to give notice or ask permission. I had once or

twice driven a cart, loaded with flour, from the mill by the banks of

the stream, up to Father Bonneville’s house and back again. I had not

the slightest fear in the world; Father Bonneville cried, “Stop, stop!”

but I drove on.

Madame de Salins gave a timid cry of surprise and fear, but I drove on.

The postillion ran shouting and blaspheming after the carriage and tried

to catch the reins; but I gave him a tremendous cut over the face with

the whip, and drove on.

I know not what possessed me; but I seemed as if I was suddenly set

free—free from the oppressive shackles of everlasting fear, and

forethought and anxiety. The frontier of France was behind me. I was in

a land where there were no guillotines—no spies, as I thought—no

denouncers—no sans-culottes with bloody heads upon their pikes. I was

free—to act, and to think, and to speak, and to come, and to go, as I

liked. The cold, leaden, heavy spell of terror which had hung upon me

was broke the moment I passed that frontier line, and the first use I

made of my disenchantment was to drive the horses down that hill like a

madman. Father Bonneville held tight on by the side of the carriage.

Madame de Salins caught up Mariette, and clasped her tightly in her

arms; but still I drove on without trepidation or pause; not that I

disregarded the commands of my good preceptor: not that I was insensible

to the alarm of Madame de Salins; but a spirit was upon me that I could

not resist. I had no fear, and therefore I saw not why they should have

any. The course I was pursuing seemed to my young notions to offer the

only chance of safety, and therefore I thought they ought to rejoice as

well as myself; and on I went, making the dry dust of a March day fly up

into clouds along our course, and leaving the unhappy postillion,

cursing and swearing, far, far behind us.

Happily for me, the horses were docile, and had been long accustomed to

run between the two post-houses. If they had had a will of their own,

and that will had been contrary to mine, I am very much afraid the

majority of heads and legs would have carried the question; but they

comprehended the object of which I aimed, and though unaccustomed to the

hand that drove them, yielded readily to its direction—which was

lucky—for about half-way down the hill there was an enormous stone in

the middle of the road, which would have inevitably sent us rolling down

into the middle of the valley if either of the off wheels had come in

contact with it. The third horse puzzled me a little; but it did not

matter. They had but one way to go, and we got to the bottom of the hill

without accident.

“Stop them, stop them, Louis,” cried Father Bonneville, when all danger

was in reality passed.

“I cannot just yet, Father,” I replied, tugging a little at the reins,

“but they will go slower in a moment themselves;” and for nearly a mile

we went on at a full gallop. Then the good beasts fell easily into a

canter, with the exception of one, who shook his head and tugged at the

rein when I attempted to bring him in, but soon yielded to the influence

of example, and was reduced to a trot as speedily as the other two.

When our pace was brought to a speed of about eight miles an hour, I

looked round joyously into the carriage, saying—“We have left that

rogue far behind.”

“Louis, Louis, you should not have done this!” exclaimed Father

Bonneville, shaking his head.

But Madame do Salins put her hand on his arm, saying, “He has saved us,

Father. Do not—do not check such decision and presence of mind.

Remember he is to be a man, and such qualities will be needful to him.”

I was very proud of her praise: got the horses easily into a quiet,

ordinary pace, and drove directly into the village which we had seen

from above, and where, as I had expected, the post-house was to be

found.

The horses stopped of their own accord at the door, and we soon had two

or three people round us. Thanks to Father Bonneville’s peculiar skill

in acquiring languages, the people who seemed good and kindly disposed,

were soon made acquainted with as much of our story as was necessary to

tell. They entered into our cause warmly; but the post-master—or rather

the post-mistress’s son—a little in awe of the French army, some thirty

or forty miles distant, strongly advised that we should proceed without

delay, lest our French postillion should come up, and embarrass the

authorities by demanding our apprehension.

The advice was very palatable to us all; the French horses were

unharnessed in a few minutes; four fresh ones—somewhat fat and slow,

indeed—were attached to the carriage; and Father Bonneville

conscientiously deposited with the post-master the “_pour boire_,” or

drink-money, for our abandoned postillion, with a couple of livres

additional for the long walk he had to take.

It mattered little now whether we went fast or slow; for we were in a

hospitable country, and amongst friendly people, and ere nightfall we

were many miles beyond pursuit.

[_To be continued._

* * * * *

MADELINE.

A LEGEND OF THE MOHAWK.[3]

BY MRS. MARY O. HORSFORD.

Where the waters of the Mohawk

Through a quiet valley glide,

From the brown church to her dwelling

She that morning passed a bride;

In the mild light of October

Beautiful the forest stood,

As the Temple on Mount Zion

When God filled its solitude.

Very quietly the red leaves

On the languid zephyr’s breath,

Fluttered to the mossy hillocks

Where their sisters slept in death:

And the white mist of the autumn

Hung o’er mountain-top and dale,

Soft and filmy as the foldings

Of the passing bridal veil.

From the field of Saratoga,

At the last night’s eventide,

Rode the groom—a gallant soldier

Flushed with victory and pride;

Seeking as a priceless guerdon

From the dark-eyed Madeline

Leave to lead her to the altar

When the morrow’s sun should shine.

All the children of the village,

Decked with garlands white and red,

All the young men and the maidens

Had been up to see her wed;

And the aged people, seated

In the doorways, ’neath the vine,

Thought of their own youth, and blessed her

As she left the house divine.

Pale she was, but very lovely,

With a brow so calm and fair,

When she passed the benediction

Seemed still falling on the air.

Strangers whispered they had never

Seen who could with her compare,

And the maidens looked with envy

On her wealth of raven hair.

In the glen beside the river,

In the shadow of the wood,

With wide open doors for welcome,

Gambrel-roofed the cottage stood,

Where the festal board was waiting,

For the bridal guests prepared,

Laden with a feast, the humblest

In the little village shared.

Every hour was winged with gladness,

Whilst the sun went down the west,

Till the chiming of the church bell

Told to all the hour for rest:

Then the merry guests departed—

Some a camp’s rude couch to bide;

Some to bright homes—each invoking

Blessings on the gentle bride.

Tranquilly the morning sunbeam

Over field and hamlet stole,

Wove a glory round each red leaf,

And effaced the frost-king’s scroll.

Eyes responded to its greeting

As a lake’s still waters shine,

Young hearts bounded—and a gay group

Sought the home of Madeline.

Bird-like voices ’neath the casement

Chanted through the fragrant air

A sweet orison for wakening—

Half thanksgiving and half prayer.

But no white hand raised the curtain

From the vine-clad panes before;

No light form with buoyant footstep

Hastened to fling wide the door.

All was silent in the dwelling—

All so silent a chill fear

Of some unseen ill crept slowly

Through the gay group waiting near.

Moments seemed as hours in passing,

Till the mild-eyed man drew nigh,

Who had blessed the blushing orphan

Ere the yester sun was high.

He, with glance of dark foreboding,

Passed the threshold of the door;

Paused not where a crimson torrent

Curdled on the oaken floor:

But sought out the bridal-chamber—

God in Heaven! could it be

Madeline who knelt before him

In that trance of agony?

Cold, inanimate beside her,

By the ruthless Cow-boys slain

In the night-time whilst defenseless,

He—the brave—she loved was lain.

O’er her snowy dress were scattered

Stains of deep and fearful dye,

And the soul’s glance beamed no longer

From her tearless, vacant eye.

Round her slight form hung the tresses

Braided oft with pride and care,

Silvered by that night of madness

With its anguish and despair.

She lived on to see the roses

Of another summer wane,

But the light of reason never

Shone in her sweet eyes again.

Once, where blue and sparkling waters

Through a verdant forest run,

And the green boughs kiss the current,

Wandered I at set of sun.

Twilight, as a silver shadow,

O’er the softened landscape lay,

When amid a rambling village

Paused I in my wandering way:

Plain and gray the church before me

In the quiet grave-yard stood,

And the woodman’s axe resounded

Faintly from the neighboring wood.

Through the low, half-open wicket,

Slightly worn, a pathway led—

Silently I paced its windings,

Till I stood among the dead.

Passing by the grave memorials

Of departed worth and fame,

Long I paused before a record

That no pomp of words could claim.

Simple was the slab, and lowly,

Shaded by a jessamine,

And the single name recorded,

Plainly writ, was “Madeline.”

But beneath it, through the clusters

Of the jessamine, I read

“Spes,” engraved in bolder letters—

This was all the marble said.

-----

[3] A detail of the incident related in the poem may be found among the

records of the Revolutionary War.

* * * * *

MOORISH MEMORIES.

(SUGGESTED BY A TILE FROM THE ALHAMBRA—THE GIFT OF THOMAS H. HYATT, ESQ.,

LATE CONSUL-GENERAL TO THE BARBARY STATES.)

BY WILLIAM H. C. HOSMER.

An hour of precious romance I owe, my friend, to thee,

And on the wings of Fancy my spirit crossed the sea;

The same transporting magic did to thy gift belong

That sparkled in Aladdin’s Lamp, old theme of Eastern song!

An Andalusian summer clad earth in brightest guise—

Gave dark green to the foliage, deep azure to the skies,

And sternly mountain-barriers up reared their crests of snow,

While palace-spire and minaret flashed at their feet below.

Approached by winding avenues, Grenada lay in sight—

Gay pleasure-grounds and gardens basked in the dazzling light;

To groves of palm and cypress flocked birds of plumage rare,

And happy genii were afloat upon enchanted air.

Throned on a height, commanding the Darro’s vale of flowers,

I saw the red Alhambra’s tall battlements and towers;

Oh! would that mine were language to paint its pictured walls,

Its colonnades and court-yards, its galleries and halls.

Methought the dreams of childhood were realized at last,

And magic hands uplifted a pall that hid the past,

While looking on its panels with colored stones inlaid,

And alabaster vases on which the sunbeam played.

In gem-embroidered kaftan, and grave with cares of state,

Dispensing equal justice, a king was at the gate—

The hajib[4] was in waiting to hear his high command,

And in the foreground gathered proud nobles of the land.

Luxurious rooms I entered through quaintly carven doors,

And trod on fretted pavements and tessellated floors;

And in secluded chambers, for beauty’s use designed,

On gorgeous silken cushions voluptuous forms reclined.

To win their smiles full often had gallant cavaliers

Met with a shock, like thunder, at the Tournament of Spears,

And all had won the homage by Love and Valor paid,

When, under moon-lit balconies awoke the serenade.

Xarifa, rose of sunset—Zoroyda, star of dawn!

Ye never can be numbered with things of beauty gone:

Poetical embalmment bestows a glorious light,

That frights away the minions of darkness, dust and blight.

Umbrageous courts I traversed, where lime and orange grew,

And fig and date their shadows on beds of roses threw,

Then bathed in perfumed waters, and listened to the sound

Of singing founts diffusing a grateful coolness round.

While silvery Xenil wandered through blooming bower and plain,

Back came once more the splendor of Moorish rule in Spain;

I heard the stormy clarion, the atabal’s deep roll,

And felt the joy of battle awake within my soul.

Elvira’s gates unfolded, and, grim with many a scar,

A host of Moorish horsemen rode fiercely forth to war;

The standard of the Prophet above them was unrolled,

And dallied with the lifting wind its green and golden fold.

Gemmed saddle-cloth and armor were blinding to the gaze,

And burnished lance and scimetar flashed back the sunbeam’s blaze,

While prancing in the van, as if their nostrils scented gore,

The milk-white steeds of Yemen, king, sheick and emir bore.

When fled that martial pageant, like vapor on the gale,

Woke on the banks of Darro a startling voice of wail,

And tones so full of sweetness and wild, despairing wo,

Were never heard by listening ear from mortal lips to flow.

LAMENT FOR GRENADA.

Alas for thee, Grenada!

Thy Crescent waned away

When traitors leagued to shatter

Thy mace of royal sway.

Unworthy of the mother

That warmed them into life,

They heard the Gothic trumpet,

And armed not for the strife.

Look round! an earthly paradise

Is changed into a tomb,

A blight is on thy loveliness,

And mildew on thy bloom;

Where streamed the Moorish pennon

Triumphantly of old,

Decay and mournful silence

Divided empire hold.

Alas for thee, Grenada!

Thy chiefs are shadows now,

And ashes have been sprinkled

Upon thy crownless brow:

Thy glory is departed,

Thy day of pomp is o’er,

And “Allah illah Allah!”

Is a battle-cry no more.

Castilian valor vainly

To cloud thy glory strove

Ere Treachery within thy walls

His cunning web-work wove;

By bloody parricidal hands

Inflicted was the blow

That brought thee, gem of cities!

In all thy grandeur low.

-----

[4] Prime Minister.

* * * * *

MOZART’S DON GIOVANNI.

BY JOHN S. DWIGHT.

This masterpiece of Mozart must always stand as the highest type of

musical drama. Yet most persons who go to this famous opera for the

first time, and look over the libretto, are disappointed in a worse

sense than the travelers who complain of the first unimposing view of

Niagara. It seems to them a waste of so much fine music, to couple it

with the mere story of a desperate rake, (a young cavalier _estremamente

licenzioso_, as he is set down in the list of characters,) who, after

running a most extravagant career, is brought to judgment in a marvelous

way; namely, by his inviting in jest the statue of an old man whom he

had murdered, the father of the noble lady he had sought to ruin, to sup

with him; and by being surprised in the midst of his feast by the statue

in good earnest, with the whole _posse comitatûs_ of the nether world

rising to claim him! We are at a loss at first to account for the charm

of so vulgar and grotesque a tissue of absurdities. Yet there is a

meaning in it that concerns us all.

Don Juan is one of the permanent, traditional types of character; and

Mozart’s music sympathetically, instinctively, rather than with any

conscious philosophical purpose, brings out the essence of it. The gay

gallant, magnetic disturber of every woman’s peace that comes within his

sphere, is not intended for that vulgar sensualist, that swaggering

street-rake, which caricatures the part in most performances we may have

seen. The true conception of Mozart’s Don Juan is that of a gentleman,

to say the least, and more than that, a man of genius; a being,

naturally full of glorious passion, large sympathies, and irrepressible

energies; noble in mind, in person, and in fortune; a large, imposing,

generous, fascinating creature. Dramatically he is made a little more

than human, yet in a purely human direction. He is such as we all are,

“only more so,” to borrow an expressive vulgarism. Remarkably is he such

as Mozart himself was. He is a sort of ideal impersonation of two

qualities, or springs of character, raised as it were to the highest

power, projected into supernatural dimensions—which is only the poet’s

and musician’s way of truly recognizing the element of infinity in every

passion of the human soul, since not one ever finds its perfect

satisfaction. Mozart in his own life knew them too well, these two

springs or sources of excitement! They are: (1.) the genial temperament,

the exquisite zest of pleasure, the sensibility to every charm and

harmony of sense, amounting to enthusiasm, and content with nothing

short of ecstasy; that appetite for outward beauty, which lends such a

voluptuous, Titian coloring to his music. And (2.) as the crowning

enthusiasm of the young, fresh soul, as the highest mortal foretaste of

celestial bliss, the sentiment of sexual love—that sentiment which is

the key-note of every opera. In Mozart, music appears as the peculiar

native language of these passions, these experiences. His music is all

fond sensibility, pure tranquillity of rapture, and most luxurious

harmony of soul and sense; and therefore in him we have the finest

development of the dramatic element in music. The two together make the

genuine Giovanni creed—the creed of Mozart and of Music—the natural

creed and religion of joy. This free and perfect luxury of passion and

fruition, Mozart imagines raised (as we have said) to the highest power,

in the hero of the old tradition. His Don Juan is a grand believer in

the passions and in pleasure; he is the splendid champion and Titan of

that side of the problem of life, a superb vindicator of the senses. He

stands before us in the glorious recklessness of self-assertion and

protests against the soul-and-passion-starving conventionality, the

one-sided, frigid spiritualism of an artificial, priest-ridden,

Mammon-worshiping society; opposing to those meshes of restraint his own

intense consciousness of _being_, (with a blind instinct that it is

good, divine at bottom, and only needing to appear in its own natural

language of a Mozart’s music to prove this;) strong in the faith,

against the world, that Joy, Joy is the true condition and true sign of

life; but blindly seeking to realize this in the ecstatic lawlessness of

love, which necessarily involves sooner or later a proportional reaction

of the outraged Law and Wisdom of the Universe.

Excessive love of pleasure, helped by a rare magnetism of character, and

provoked by the suppressive moralism of the times, have engendered in

him a reckless, roving, insatiable appetite, which each intrigue excites

and disappoints, until the very passion in which so many souls are first

taught the feeling of the Infinite, becomes a fiend in his breast and

drives him to a devilish love of power that exults over woman’s ruin, or

rather, that does not mind how many hearts and homes fall victims to his

unqualified assertion of the everywhere rejected and _snubbed_ faith in

Passion. The buoyant impulse, generous and good in the first instance,

goes on thus undoubtingly, defying bounds, till it becomes pure

willfulness, and the first flush of youth and nobleness is hardening to

Satanic features. The beauty and the loveliness of woman have lost to

him now all their sacredness; they are mere fuel to the boundless

ambition of a passion which knows no delight beyond the brief excitement

of intrigue and sensual indulgence. He becomes the impersonation and

supernatural genius of one of the holiest springs of human sentiment

_perverted_, because _denied_; and he roams the earth a beautiful,

terrible, resistless, fallen angel, and victim after victim are quaffed

up by his hot breath of all-devouring passion. And so he perseveres

until Hell claims its own in the awful consummation of the supper scene.

Art could not choose a theme more fraught with meaning and with

interest. It is still the old theme and under-current of Opera: the Body

and the Soul;[5] the Liberty of passion, unmeet for its own guidance, in

conflict with the Law, intensely narrowed down by social custom from

God’s great law of universal harmony.

The character of Don Juan, thus conceived, this splendid embodiment of

the free, perfect, unmisgiving luxury of sense and passion, would be no

character at all, but only an absurdity, an impossibility in the spoken

drama. There is no prose about it; nothing literal and sober; take away

the exaltation, the rhythmical nature of it, and it falls entirely to

the ground. Only Music could conceive and treat it; Music, which is the

language of the ideal, innermost, _potential_ life, and not of the

actual life. But music equally does justice to both sides of the fact.

In this triumphant career of passion, inasmuch as it is among men and

laws and sympathies and social customs, a fearful retribution is

foreshadowed. But not in _him_, not in this Titan of the senses, this

projected imagination of unlimited enjoyment and communion. It is

through the music that the shuddering presentiment continually creeps.

Through music, which in acknowledging the error, in laying bare the

fatal discord, at the same time symbolizes its resolution. Through

music, in whose vocabulary sin and suffering and punishment are never

final; in whose vivid coloring the great doom itself is but a vista into

endless depths of harmony and peace and unexclusive bliss beyond.

The splendid sinner’s end is rather melodramatic in the opera; and yet

there is a poetic and a moral truth in it; and the spectre of the

_Commendatore_ is a creation fully up to Shakspeare. No man ever

literally came to that; but many have come to dread it. Beings, as we

are, so full of energies and of exhaustless passional promptings to all

sorts of union and acquaintance with the rest of being; urged, just in

proportion to the quantity of life in us, to seek most intimate

relationship all round, materially and spiritually, we dread the mad

excess of our own pent up forces. Surrounded by set formulas; denied

free channels corresponding to our innate tendencies and callings;

plagued by traditions, and chafed by some social discipline, in which

the soul sees nothing it can understand, except it be the holy principle

of Order in the abstract, do we not often start to see what radicalism

lurks in every genuine spring of life or passion, in everything

spontaneous and lovable? Who, more than the pleasure-loving,

sympathy-seeking, generous, child-like, glorious, imaginative,

sensitive, ecstatic, sad Mozart, would be apt to shudder in dreams, in

the night solitudes of his over-worked, and feverish and wakeful brain,

before the colossal shadow of what possibly _he_ might become through

excess of the very qualities that made him diviner than common mortals?

This allegory can certainly be traced through “Don Giovanni.” The old

governor or commander, whom he kills, personates the Law. The cold,

relentless marble statue, that stalks with thundering foot-fall into the

middle of his solitary orgies alter him, is the stern embodiment of

custom and convention, which he defies to the end, and boldly grasps the

proffered stony hand, from an impulse stronger than his terrors.

It is an old Middle-Age Catholic story. Under many forms it had been

dramatized and poetized as a warning to sinners, before Da Ponte[6]

found it so much to the purpose of Mozart, when he wanted to do his best

in an opera composed expressly for his dear and own peculiar public at

Prague. Coarse as the story seems, perhaps the conflict between good and

evil in the human soul was never represented in a better type. It was

for Mozart’s music to show that. That in adopting it for music he had

any metaphysical idea at all about it, there is no need of supposing.

His instinct found in it fine sphere for all his many moods of passion

and of music. Here he could display all his universality of musical

culture, and his Shaksperian universality of mind. Genius _does_ its

work first; the theory of it is what an appreciating, philosophical

observer must detect in it when done. “They builded better than they

knew.” Love, if it was the ruling sentiment of Mozart’s nature, was for

that very reason his chief danger. If it was almost his religion and

taught his soul its own infinite capacity, so also seemed the danger

therefrom infinite, raising presentiments and visions of some

supernatural abyss of ruin, yawning to receive the gay superstructure of

man’s volatile enjoyments here in time. Life, power, love, pleasure,

crime, futurity and judgment—and a faith left beyond _that!_—what

dream more natural, what circle of keys more obvious to modulation, to a

soul, whose strings are all attuned to love and melody, whose genius is

a powerful demon waiting on its will, and whose present destiny is cast

here in a world so false and out of tune that, to so strong a nature,

there seems no alternative besides wild excess upon the one hand, or a

barren sublimity of self-denial on the other.

In this old legend the worldly and the supernatural pass most naturally

into one another. Don Juan, gifted with all the physical and

intellectual attributes of power, urged by aspirations blind but

uncontainable, full of the feeling of _life_, and resolved to LIVE, if

possible, so fully as to fill all with himself and never own a limit,

(and this is only a perversion of the true desire to live in harmony

_with_ all,) finds the tempting shadow of this satisfaction in the love

of woman, and the poor bird flutters charmed and trembling toward his

fascinating glance. Imagine now the elegant, full-blooded, rich,

accomplished and seductive gallant on his restless rout of pleasures and

intrigues. At his side his faithful knave, droll Leporello,

expostulating with his master very piously sometimes, yet bound to him

by potent magnetism, both of metal and of character (for passion like

Giovanni’s _will_ be served.) Leporello is the foil and shadow to his

master, and adds to the zest of his life-long intoxication by the

blending of the comic with this exquisite wild fever of the blood.

Throughout the whole he plays the part of contrast and brings all back

to reality and earth again, lest the history should take too serious

possession of us. He is the make-weight of common sense tossed into the

lighter scale. He justifies its original title of “Don Giovanni, _un

drama giocoso_;” for this opera is tragedy and comedy and what you

please, the same heterogeneous yet harmonious compound that life itself

is. He on the one side gives a dash of charlatanry to Don Juan, just as

on the other side he borders on the supernatural. Mark the poetic

balance and completeness here: this passion-life of Don Juan has its

outward and its inward comment: on the one side Leporello, on the other

the supernatural statue and the bodily influx of hell. On the one side

it is comic, grotesque and absurd; on the other, it is fearful. Seen in

one light he is a charlatan, a splendid joke; seen in the other, he is

an unfolding demon and a type of doom; while in his life he is but the

free development of human passion in human circumstances. Man always

walks between these two mirrors! One shows his shadow, as of destiny,

projected, ever-widening, into the Infinite, where it grows vague and

fearful. The other takes him in the act, and literally pins down all his

high strivings and pretensions to such mere matter of fact, that he

becomes ridiculous.

* * * * *

We come now to the Opera itself, which we can only examine very briefly

and unequally, touching here and there. Were we to set about it

thoroughly, our article would soon overflow all magazine bounds, since

there is not a scene, an air, a bit of recitative, from the beginning to

the end, that would not challenge our most critical appreciation.

And first the Overture, composed, they say, in the single night before

the first public performance of the opera in Prague; his wife keeping

him awake to his work by punch and anecdotes and fairy tales, that made

him laugh till the tears ran down his cheeks; and only ready for the

orchestra (which had not its equal in all Europe) to play at sight

without rehearsal. He may have _written_ it that night, that is to say,

have copied it out of his head. It was his habit of composition; his

musical conceptions shaped themselves whole in his brain, and were

carried about there for days until the convenient time to put them upon

paper; and it is not possible that his brain that time could have been

without an overture, since there the opera existed as a perfect whole,

and in that glowing and creative mood, the instrumental theme and

preface to the same must have floated before him as naturally as the

anticipation of his audience. Moreover, the first movement of it, the

Andante, is essentially the same music with the grand and awful finale

of the opera, and is properly put first in the overture (whose office it

is to prepare the hearer’s mind) as the grand end and moral of the

piece. Accordingly it opens with three stern, startling crashes on the

chord of D minor, the sub-bass dividing the measure into equal halves,

but the upper parts syncopated; then a pause, and then the same repeated

in the Dommant—like the announcement of a power not to be trifled with.

Then a series of wild modulations, full of terror, enhanced by the

unearthly brass and low reed tones, surging through chromatic intervals,

which make the blood creep, and presently overtopped by a pleading

melody of the first violins, while a low, feeble whimper of the second

violins is heard all the time like the moaning of the wind about an old

house. Then alternate sharp calls and low, tremulous pauses; the ground

quakes; the din becomes more fearful; the melody begins to traverse up

and down all kinds of scales, through intervals continually shifting,

and expressive of all manner of uncertainty, like the quick and

fruitless runs in all directions of a beast surrounded by the hunters.

It is like the breaking up of the familiar foundations of things, that

unsettling of the musical Scale!—All this is brief, for it is but a

synopsis and foreshadowing of the last scene in the opera. The string

instruments then dash off, in the major of the key, into a wild,

reckless kind of Allegro, than which there could not be a better musical

correspondence of the general subject, that is, of the restless,

mischievous career of one outraging all the social instincts and defying

all pursuit. This spends itself at leisure, softening at the close

toward the genial F natural, the key of nature and the senses, where the

overture is merged into the dramatic introduction.

The curtain rises. Scene, a garden in Spain. Time, just before daybreak.

Leporello, cloaked, with a lantern, paces watchfully to and fro before a

noble villa, and sings with heavy bass of his drudgeries and dangers in

the service of his graceless master; kindling half seriously at the

thought how fine a thing it would be to play the gallant and the

gentleman himself. The light and exquisite accompaniment of the

instruments meanwhile is like the softness of a summer night, and seems

to count the moments of pleasure. The dreams of the valet are soon

disturbed. Don Juan, his face hid by his mantle, rushes from the house,

struggling from the grasp of Donna Anna, who, pale and disheveled,

clings to him convulsively, and seeks to detain and to discover the

bold, mysterious man, who has dared thus to invade her privacy and her

honor. Her hurried and accusing melody, in these snatches of recitative,

is full of a dignity and a pure and lofty fire that characterize alike

her person and the whole music of her port. With drawn sword in one

hand, and a torch in the other, her old father, the Commendatore

(commander of a religious order) rushes out and challenges the bravo,

who deals him a death-thrust. The startlingly vivid orchestral picture,

which accompanies and as it were guides these sword thrusts, is followed

by a slow, mournful trio of bass voices, in which are gloomily

contrasted the scornful triumph of Don Juan, the dying wail and warning

of the old man, and the comic terror of Leporello. Nothing could be more

thrillingly impressive; that music could mean nothing else but death

stalking suddenly into the very midst of life! Then comes the passionate

outpouring of the daughter’s grief, and that inimitable scene of the

most musical as well as most dramatic dialogue in the whole range of the

lyric drama. It is the perfection of recitative. What exquisite

tenderness and sincerity of sorrow in that violin figure which

accompanies her inquiry for her father, (_padre mio_,) when she first

recovers from her swoon! How sweet and comforting that fall of the

seventh, where Ottavio tells her: _Hai sposo e padre in me_ (Thou hast

husband and father in me!) And how fiery and grand the passage where she

inspires the tame lover with that sublimely solemn oath of revenge, and

the hot, scouring blast of their swift and wonderful duett which follows

it. In all this there is no delicate touch of feeling, no spiritual

token of great passion and great purpose, possible to voice or

instruments, omitted; no note omissible or of slight significance. Here

is an opening of most pregnant import. One scene of moderate length has

impressed us, as by the power of fate, to the seeing through of the

profoundest drama of life. Here we have witnessed, as it were, the first

reaction of the eternal Law, the first hint of destiny in this splendid

libertine’s thus far irresistible career. Already is this almost

superhuman pleasure-hunt of genius past its climax, and the dread note

of retribution is already sounded.

The next scene introduces us to one of the personified reproaches of Don

Juan’s better nature. As the Don and his man are plotting new

adventures, a lady passes, in hat and feathers, with excited air, and,

as they retreat into the shade to note her, she pours out her most

musical complaint against the traitor who has played falsely with her

heart. The introductory symphony or ritornel, in E flat major, by its

bold and animated strain indicates the high-spirited and passionate

nature now before us, whose song of ever constant though wronged love,

to words that would fain threaten terrible revenge, commences the

Terzetto, mainly solo, to which the mocking by-play of the Don and

Leporello, accompanied by a mocking figure of the instruments, supplies

the other two parts. As he steps up to offer consolation to the lady, he

recognizes his own simple, loving, poor deserted mistress, Donna Elvira,

and while the same mocking instrumental figure leaves the song hanging

in the air, as it were, without any cadence or any close, he slips away

and leaves the task of explanation to the disconcerted servant. There is

an ardent, passionate yearning in this as in all of Elvira’s melodies,

which climb high and are perhaps the most difficult in the opera. The

character is seldom conceived truly by the actress. Interpreted by its

music, its intention is distinct enough. Elvira is no half-crazed,

foolish thing; but one of the highest moral elements in the _personnel_

of the opera; next in dignity, at least, to Donna Anna. However she may

appear in the libretto and in the common usage of the stage, Mozart in

his music makes her the soul of ardent and devoted love and constancy,

still fondly hoping in the deeper, better self of the man who has

trifled with her; like a sweet, genuine ray of sun shine, always

indicating to Don Juan a chance of escape from the dark labyrinthine

fatality of crime in which he goes on involving himself; always offering

him true love for false.

Let her not listen then (like the silly girl we commonly see upon the

stage, half-magnetized out of a weak sorrow into a weaker involuntary

yielding to the ludicrous) to the exquisitely comic appeal of Leporello,

when the vain-glorious fellow unrolls his tremendous list of his

master’s conquests among the fair sex, enumerating the countries, ranks,

styles of beauty, etc. The melody of this “Catalogue Song” is altogether

surpassing. It is the perfection of _buffo_, as we have before had the

perfection of serious recitative. After naming the numbers for Italy,

Germany, etc., when it comes to the climax (Elvira’s own land): _Ma in

Espagna mille e trè_, [But in Spain one thousand and three,] it is

ludicrously grave; the orchestra meanwhile has chopped the measure into

short units, alternate instruments just touching different points of

height and depth, till they seem at last to count it all up on the

fingers, first downward in the tripping _pizzicato_ scale of the

violins, then upward in gruff confirmation in the basses. In the slow

time, where it comes to the specification of the different qualities of

beauty, the _grande maëstosa_, the _piccina_, etc., the melody is one of

the most beautiful and pathetic that could be imagined. One wonders how

Mozart could have expended such a wealth of melody upon so light a

theme; it seems as lavish a disproportion of means to end, as when we

read of travelers roasting their eggs in the cinders of Vesuvius. But

such was the musical fullness and integrity of Mozart; the genial vein,

once opened, _would_ run only pure gold; and his melodies and harmonies

are not merely proportioned to the specialities of the subject, but are

at every moment moulded in the style and spirit of the whole work.

Besides, the comedy consists here in the contrast of a pathetic melody

with a grotesque thought. Moreover the whole thing is truer in the fact,

that not only Leporello’s, but Don Juan’s own melodies, as indeed the

very nature of music, seem mournfully to rebuke the desperado. In the

most comic and most bacchanalian strains, the music saddens with a

certain vague presentiment of the fearful _dénouement_ of the drama.

The Don’s next adventure is the meeting of a gay group of peasants at a

wedding festival, where he attempts to seduce away the pretty bride,

Zerlina, whose naïve and delicious songs, right out of a simple, good,

loving heart, a little coquettish withal, are among the purest gems of

the piece, and have mingled their melody with the civilized world’s

conceptions of truth and nature and the charm of innocence. Those of our

readers who have enjoyed with us the privilege of hearing and seeing a

worthy, indeed a perfect personation of Zerlina, by that refined and

charming artist, Signora Bosio, will need no words to give them a just

conception of the character, and of its music, which is as individual as

that of Anna or Elvira. Suffice it to say, that the simplicity, the

tenderness and the coquetry of this pretty peasant, have the natural

refinement of a superior nature. Mozart must have been in love with the

part. The rustic chorus opening this scene, in which the bridal pair

lead off, is one of perfect simplicity, (Allegro, 6—8 time,) and yet

inimitable beauty. The Duett, _La ci darem la mano_, in which Don Juan

overcomes the hesitation of the dazzled, spell-bound girl, breathes the

undoubted warmth of passion; few simple souls could be proof against

such an eloquent confession. Indeed the _sincerity_ of all this music is

a great part of its charm; it has never the slightest symptom of any

striving for effect, and yet it is consummate art; it flows directly out

of the characters and situations and the dramatic tendency of the whole.

The poor girl is rescued this time by the entrance of an experienced

guardian angel, who sees through the case at once. It is Donna Elvira,

who, just as she is tripping away with the fascinator to the gay,

consenting tune of _Andiam_, (let us go,) snatches the bird from his

hands. Her song of warning to the simple one, _Ah! fuggi ’l traditor_,

is a strangely elaborate Handelian aria, so different in style from the

rest of the opera that it is never performed. As if all things conspired

to confound the traitor, Donna Anna and her lover also enter, (Zerlina

having withdrawn,) and here ensues that wonderful Quartette, _Non ti

fidar_, in which each voice-part is a character, a melody of a distinct

genius, and all wrought into a perfect unity. Elvira warns Anna and

Ottavio against confiding in this generous-looking Don, whose aid they

have unwittingly bespoken in their search for the murderer of the first

scene (namely himself;) Don Juan declares that she is crazy, and not to

be minded; the others are divided between pity for her and respect for

such a gentleman; and all these strands are twisted into one of the

finest concerted pieces in all opera. It is one of those peculiar

triumphs of opera which make it so much more dramatic than the spoken

drama; for here you have four characters expressing themselves at once,

with entire unity of effect, yet with the distinctest individuality. The

music makes you instantly clairvoyant to the whole of them; you do not

have to wait for one after the other to speak; there is a sort of

song-transparency of all at once; the common chord of all their

individualities is struck. Especially is this achieved in the concerted

pieces, the quartettes, trios, and so forth, of Mozart, which are beyond

comparison with most of those in the Italian opera of the day, since the

harmony in them is not the mere coloring of one thought, but the

interweaving of so many distinct individualities.

Zerlina is saved, but by arrangement with her protectors agrees to go up

to the Don’s palace, whither Leporello has conducted the whole wedding

party, and even coaxed along the jealous bridegroom. A scene ensues

between Donna Anna and her lover. The orchestra, in a few startling and

almost discordant shrieks, indicates the intense excitement of her mind,

for, as Don Juan took his leave, she recognized the look and voice of

one whom she had too much cause to remember; and in impassioned bursts

of hurried recitative, alternating with the said spasmodic bits of

instrumentation, she exclaims, _Quegli è il carnefice del mio padre_,

(this man is my father’s murderer,) and in the same grandly lyric style,

rising higher and higher, she tells Ottavio the story of her outrage.

Having reached the climax, this magnificent recitative becomes melody,

and completes itself in the sublime Aria, _Or tu sai_, “Now thou knowest

who attempted my honor,” etc. There can be nothing greater, more

Minerva-like in dignity and high expression of the soul of justice

outraged, and at the same time full of all feminine tenderness and

beauty, in the whole range of opera or drama. And it is Music, it is

Mozart that has done it all. We have here the character of Donna Anna in

its most sublime expression; a character that transcends mere personal

relations, that bears a certain mystical relationship with the higher

power beginning to be felt in the development of this human history. In

this song she rises, as it were, to the dignity of an impersonation of

the moral principle in the play, and this high sentiment of hers is like

a foretaste of the coming fate and supernatural grandeur, which are to

form the never to be forgotten finale of the piece. Elvira is entirely

in the sphere of the personal; she _loves_ Don Juan to the last, and

like the simple good humanity that still appeals to him though still

rejected. But Anna is superhuman and divine; she reveals the

interworking of the Infinite in all these finite human affairs; to

Heaven, rather than to Ottavio, is her appeal; and from beyond this life

she looks to see the vindicator of her cause appear. The loftiness of

the music just considered, and the stately trumpet-tones of the

orchestra, which always herald the entrance of Donna Anna and her party,

connect her unmistakably with the marvelous elements of the drama; she

is Feeling prophesying Justice; she is Faith in the form of woman; and

the singer who could perfectly present Donna Anna would be worthy to

sing Handel’s song, “I know that my Redeemer liveth.”

From one extreme we pass to its opposite. In strongest possible contrast

with the high moral passion of this last, is what now follows. We have a

song embodying the very frenzied acme of Don Juan’s zest of sensual

pleasure. He directs Leporello about the feast, and trolls off, like one

possessed, his famous champagne song, _Finch’an del vino_, whose

rapidity and glorious _abandon_ are too much for almost all the

baritones; those, in whose dragging utterance it does not become

commonplace, are apt to give it with a swaggering glibness, and a

coarseness that has nothing of the fine champagne enthusiasm about it.

In this song and that last of Donna Anna’s the two electric poles, as it

were, of the whole play, have met. And now for the pretty episode of

peasant life again; the inimitably sweet, insinuating, loving song in

which repentant little Zerlina seems to invite chastisement from her

offended, jealous lover, _Batti, batti, O bell’ Masetto_, (beat me, beat

me, dear Masetto!). With what soft tendrils of melody, enhanced by the

delicious instrumentation, she steals around his senses and his heart!

And to what unaffected rapture (to say nothing of a little coquettish

triumph) the strain changes when he forgives her, as she knew he would!

This seems a very simple song, but it is the perfection of art. O that

Mozart could go into ecstasies with his own pet Zerlina, hearing Bosio

sing this!

We have now reached the musical Finale of the first act, though there is

much shifting of scenes and characters before the last grand _ensemble_,

which is the ball in the Don’s palace. But these only suspend, to

wonderfully enhance, the final stroke. We can only enumerate the

delicious series of ever new and characteristic musical ideas

preliminary to the feast: (1.) Masetto urging Zerlina to hide

herself—how full of the bustle of approaching splendors is the music

during this little hurried duett! (2.) The Don’s voice stimulating the

peasants to the coming mirth, with their responsive chorus. (3.) Then

his discovery of the shy bird and half reclaimal of her love, with his

blank surprise (so perfectly depicted in the sudden modulation of the

music) as he leads her off only to meet the watchful bridegroom:

_Masetto si, Masetto_! (during all which the light twittering phrases of

the accompaniment make the whole atmosphere instinct with joys

expected.) (4.) Then, as the instruments suddenly change to a cautious,

half-hushed, tip-toe melody, unflagging in its speed, yet in the minor

mood, (for these have no festivity in their hearts that now come) the

entrance of Donna Elvira, Donna Anna, and Don Ottavio, in black dominos,

and masked to the outward eye, though each betrayed by a distinctive

style of melody. (5.) Then the sounding (from within the house) of that

stately _minuett_, a strain which everybody knows and loves, and still

as fresh as when first written, here introduced as a mere foretaste of

itself, and of the ball, and made the musical ground-work of lordly

courtesy and hospitality to the salutations of Don Juan and Leporello,

who appear above at the window, and invite the maskers in. (6.) The

surpassing Trio, in which the three, lingering on the threshold, invoke

Heaven’s protection to innocence ensnared. Can any other opera show such

an exuberance of musical ideas in the same space? And it is all _en

passant_, all incidental to what follows, to what now bursts instantly

upon the view as the back scene is withdrawn, and you see all the crowd

and splendor of the ball-room, and are transported by the indescribably

rich Finale, that ever climbing, widening _crescendo_ and accumulation

of all musical effects, till the climax is reached in a general storm

and inundation of harmony. The simple, gay, continuous six-eight melody,

to which the whole brilliant spectacle moves at first, is the very soul

of festivity. Suddenly there is a full chord in C from the whole

orchestra, with trumpets, and a stately, march-like strain, preluding

the entrance of the three in masks, with the lordly welcome of the

Amphytrion. He will have no time lost, however, for into this one high

hour he has concentrated all the delights and harmonies of sense—short,

bright and strong be the blood-quickening chorus, _Viva la liberta!_ and

now let the dance go on. And now are crowded into a brief but most

capacious moment, the reintroduction of the Minuett in a bolder key than

before, to whose grave, deliberate measure the more elegant company

begins to move in antique, solemn steps; then presently, commingling

with the Minuett, but not disturbing it, two other tunes, to other

rhythms, namely, a rustic contra-dance, and a most rapid waltz,

inspiring the heels of the peasants; the droll attempts of Leporello to

make Masetto dance, while his master has bespoken the arm and ear of the

pretty bride, to win whom he has planned this whole array; the indignant

observation of this game by Donna Anna, with difficulty moderated until

due time by her companions; the piercing shriek of the music as Don Juan

whirls Zerlina away out of the dance; the cry for aid; the general rush

to the door whence the sounds proceed, and when it is broken in, the

grotesque brief diversion of the Don dragging Leporello by the ear, and

trying to fasten his own crime on him; the incredulous and accusing

phrase, in which the voices of the trio, now unmasked, confront him

successively in _Canon_ style; and the out-bursting of the general

tempest of wrath upon the exposed deceiver, heightened, too, by the

sweeping wind and hissing lightnings of an actual physical storm that is

supposed to be passing without. The strength of the accusing chorus is

splendidly terrific, and like the rush of a whirlwind, where all the

voices in unison swiftly traverse up and down several times the first

five notes of the scale. But he of the dauntless will and the magnetic

eye, with one sword awes back and penetrates the maddened mob, escaping

with a loud laugh of defiance.

Our very slight and hasty sketch has already grown to considerable

length, and yet we have examined only one act of the three, into which

“Don Giovani” is usually divided in the performance. One act was enough

to show (if _that_ were all our object) how this opera wells up as from

an exhaustless fountain of musical ideas, all of which are of the

inspired, enduring quality; we have listened to materials enough already

for some twenty of the fashionable operas of our day. We must glance

more hastily at the remainder.

Act II. opens with one of those half humorous, half serious

conversations between the Don and Leporello, which ever and anon relieve

the story. The servant, stung by the ungrateful and outrageous conduct

of his master in the ball-room explosion, announces his determination to

quit him; but they are too essential to each other, and the Don soon

coaxes, laughs, and bribes him out of that notion. This duett is in real

Italian _parlando_ style, a syllable to every note, quick and brief as

it is comically expressive; for this enemy of woman’s peace has new

business on hand; the unlucky night is not too far gone to try one more

adventure. So here follows the summer warmth and beauty of the serenade

scene under Donna Elvira’s window, who sits above there, pouring out her

nightingale complainings under the stars, in a melody of ravishing

sweetness and tenderness, forming the upper part of a _Terzetto_, in

which the _sotto voce_ dialogue of the Don and his man below grotesquely

blends. He changes garments with Leporello, and lending his own voice,

while Leporello gesticulates, in strains of feigned repentance and

returning love, entices the too easily persuaded lady down into the arms

of his counterfeit, while he takes up his guitar to serenade, not

Elvira, but Elvira’s maid, now that the field is clear, in that most

graceful little serenading air, which seems so easy and so off-hand,

with its light _arpeggio_ accompaniment by violins alone: _Deh vieni

alla finestra_. But the fortunate stars of our all-seducing hero seem

this night to have forsaken him; again his business is balked. Mirth and

melody, fun and sentiment are strangely mingled in this scene, and,

indeed, in this whole act. The serenade gets finished; the tree, as it

were, is climbed; but before the fruit can be gathered, the game is

interrupted by Masetto and the peasants armed, hot from the ball-room

scene, in search of the splendid scoundrel. Masetto gets the worst of

it; and here we have one of the world’s three or four very choicest and

purest gems of melody, Zerlina’s exquisitely tender and comforting song

to her poor, bruised, and beaten bridegroom, _Vedrai carino_; so

beautifully simple, in the homely key of C natural; so innocently

voluptuous; so full of blissful love; so like the balsam (_un certo

balsamo_) of which she hints with fond and arch significance! And as she

makes him place his hand upon her heart at the words, _sentilo battere_,

(feel it beat,) you seem to hear its glad and honest beating in the

music. We cannot forbear inserting here the following interpretation of

this song, which we have read since our analysis of the opera was made.

It is from the pen of an intelligent Russian gentleman, who has written

in French and German an admirable Life of Mozart, with a critical

examination of his works. We translate from the German copy:

“_Vedrai Carino_ is, like so many pieces of our opera, super-dramatic

music. When we hear it, we forget the text, we forget the person. There

is no longer any Zerlina or Masetto. Something infinite, absolute, and

verily divine announces itself to the soul. Is it perhaps nothing but

love, represented under one of the countless modifications by which it

is distinguished in each individual, according to the laws of his

nature, and the peculiar vicissitudes of his fortune? No; the soul feels

rather a direct effluence of the principle itself, from which all youth,

all love, all joy, and every vital reproduction flows. The genius of the

Spring’s metamorphoses, he namely, whom the old theosophists called

Eros, who disembroiled chaos, who fructified germs and married hearts;

this genius speaks to us in this music, as he has so often spoken in the

murmurings of the brook that has escaped its icy prison, in the rustling

of the young leaves, in the melodious songs of the nightingale, in the

balmy odors which pervade the eloquent and inspiring stillness of a May

night. Mozart had listened to and firmly held this ground-accord of this

universal harmony; he arranged it for a soprano voice with orchestral

accompaniment, and made of it the nuptial air of a young bride. Zerlina

sings, surrounded by the shadows of the marriage night, while just about

to cross the threshold, at which virginity pauses with prayer and

trembling, expecting the confirmation of the holy title of wife. In this

place the Aria becomes a genuine _scena_ of love, the source of life and

of eternal rejuvenescence for all nature—of love, the spring-time of

souls, and the most unstinted revelation of the all-goodness of the

Creator. It is a marriage-song for all that loves, conceived in the same

spirit with the ‘Ode to Joy’ by Schiller, allowing for the difference of

tone and style between a Dithyrambic and an Eclogue. The theme, the

image of the purest bliss, betrays none the less that inexplicable and

seldom justified exaltation, which, in the fairest poetic hours of our

existence, leads us to that unknown good whereof all other goods of

earth are only shadows and foretastes. A rhythm without marked accent; a

harmony without dissonances; a modulation which rests in the Tonic, and

forgets itself, as if held fast there by a magic spell; a melody which

cannot separate itself from its ineffaceable _motiv_; this tranquil

rapture, this soft ecstasy, fill out the first half of the air. After

the pause, hosts of nightingales begin to sing in chorus in the

orchestra, while the voice, with exquisite monotony, murmurs, _Sentilo

battere, toccami quà_. Then the same words are again uttered with the

expression of passion; the heart of the young woman beats stronger and

stronger; the sighs of the orchestra are redoubled, and the last vocal

phrase, which bears the impress of chaste devotion, shows us the wife as

she sinks softly upon the bosom of her husband. Mozart seems to have

anticipated the desire of the ear, in that he lets the orchestra repeat

the whole _motiv_ and the enchanting final phrases once again. He knew

that the piece would be found too short, as it actually is the case.”

Good-night, then, to this happy couple, whom we leave, to trace the

sequel of the comic vein just opened in that ‘Sartor’-ian exchange of

personality between the master and the servant; but also at the same to

receive still more distinct and solemn intimations (all the more

significant for this very contrast of the comic) of the supernatural

reaction that is preparing soon to burst upon the head of the

magnificent libertine and outlaw. The Sextette which now follows is

altogether unique and unrivaled among concerted pieces in opera. The

music of this Sextette covers such an ever-shifting variety of action,

and so much of a _scene_, that one may hear it once without thinking of

its wealth and admirable structure as music. Yet for every point in all

this action, and for all shades of relation between the persons, as well

as for each separate personality, there is a correspondence in the

music. The scene has changed to a _bujo loco_, or dark place, (the

libretto says, a porch to Donna Anna’s palace.) First appear the

counterfeit Giovanni and Elvira, who is too happy to walk with him to

the end of the world, if need be; while he, (Leporello,) tired of

imitating his master’s voice, is groping about to find an exit. In an

Andante melody, in the same key, and of a kindred character with that by

which we first knew her (_Ah! chi mi dice mai_,) she utters her fear of

being left alone in this bujo loco. Just as her companion finds the

door, the groping, cautious music brightens into the bold key and

trumpet-style which always heralds Anna and Ottavio, who enter amid

blaze of torches. Sweet is the consoling appeal of the _tenore_ to his

grief-stricken Anna, whose response, less fiery and commanding, but not

less sublimely spiritual than her last great solo, even hints of death

as the only solution of life’s riddle for her. Meanwhile the first two,

who have lurked unnoticed, are just making good their exit, when Zerlina

and Masetto appear, who thinks that now he has the _briccone_ at his

mercy; the bluster of Masetto, the surprise of Anna and Ottavio at the

sight of the supposed Giovanni, the grotesque, crouching plea of the

valet, the intercession of still deceived Elvira for “her husband,” then

their recognition of _her_, then a new brandishing of Masetto’s club,

and then the ass throwing off the lion’s skin, and begging mercy, all

are made thrice expressive by the music, which varies instinctively each

moment, and yet ceases not to weave the unitary complex whole. At last

all the six voices join in a swift and wind-like Allegro, in which

Anna’s voice takes the highest and most florid part, Zerlina’s the

second, Elvira’s the third, and so on, and in which there is now and

then a wild Æolian-harp-like passage of harmony, which seems the

fore-feeling of the higher powers which henceforth are to take part in

the drama.

But first we have the masterpiece and model of all tenor solos. In it

Ottavio commends his _Il mio tesoro_ to the care of these friends, and

in it he proves himself the truest, tenderest, most devoted and most

religious of lovers, if Heaven _has_ reserved it to a stronger force

than his to crush the mighty sinner against whom he has taken such an

oath of vengeance. But the opera could not rob itself of the statue, and

its last scene, and its whole sublimity, to make him a hero, when it was

enough that he should know how to _love_ a Donna Anna.

Passing over a duett between Leporello and Zerlina, rarely sung, in fact

an after-thought of the composer, which he is said to have added to

conciliate the lower taste of a Viennese manager or audience; and

passing over (for we must be brief) a truly transcendent solo for

Elvira: _Mi tradi quell’ alma ingrata_, in whose fluid, ever-modulating

melody her musing, sad soul seems dissolved in reverie, we come to the

marvelous church-yard scene. Here glimmers the white equestrian statue

of the murdered commander in the back-ground; and here the Don and

Leporello seek a rendezvous after their new discomfiture, to re-exchange

hats and mantles, and so forth. Their loud levity is suddenly hushed by

a voice of warning from the statue, accompanied in strange chords by the

unearthly tones of the trombones (which instruments, instead of being

lavished in Verdi fashion, upon all the strong passages, have been

entirely kept back till now for this supernatural “beginning of the

end,”) mingled with the low reed tones. _Di rider finirai_, etc. (“Thou

shalt cease to laugh before dawn!”) A short old choral strain, in which

the voice ends, spectral-like, upon the Dominant of the key (A minor),

struck with the major Third. This is a church cadence; it belongs to

eternity, which knows no Minor, no such type of “earthly un-rest.” It

freezes to the heart of Don Giovanni, who starts dismayed, but only for

a moment; and soon the marble lips break silence once more to rebuke his

mockery. So far it has been introductory recitative; but now the

orchestra is all life and melody again, for the luscious music of the

duett in which Giovanni compels the trembling servant at the sword’s

point to salute the statue and invite him to sup with him. There is no

more exquisite fairy-work in the whole opera than the instrumentation of

this scene. It were hard to tell whether the impression left by it

partakes most of the comic, of the supernaturally terrible, or of the

beautiful. All these elements are grotesquely blended in it, yet without

seeming incongruity. The beauty of the music harmonizes and idealizes

the action; it lends its singular fascination to the marvelous; it makes

the terror doubly real, by expressing the vague charm which every terror

has after all to the soul, glad (even in its terror) of the excitement

of something altogether strange and infinite. Mozart knew better than to

freeze the blood up here entirely, with unearthly tones of horror,

except during those brief utterances of the marble rider; that he

reserved for the end, of which this is but the beginning. He has

lavished all the luxury of melodic invention upon the instrumentation of

this duett; the music in the main still gushes warm and genial and

human, and hence you feel the supernatural all the more inwardly and

powerfully, when shudders of strange awe cross occasionally its placid,

sparkling flow. _O statua gentillissima_—cheerily and bravely the

beautiful strain sets out, in the rich key of E major; but as the knave

shrinks back in terror, crying _padron! mirate!_ etc., the deprecating

expression of his voice dropping through the interval of a Seventh, with

the instruments accompanying in unison, is alike droll and marvelous.

Still the cheerful melody goes on, in spite of ghosts, until the statue

nods acceptance, when the unearthly modulation and _tremolo_ of the

music, falling with sudden emphasis upon Leporello’s _Ah! — —h! che

scena!_ (Ah! what a sight!), gives the whole scene for the time the

superstitious coloring of his soul. But when he comes to tell his master

how the spectre nodded, and when his master repeats the strain and

gesture with him, the fear has become subordinate to the charm of

adventure, and the music takes the gay and reckless tone of Giovanni.

Life shall be all a feast, is _his_ creed, ghosts and miracles to the

contrary; and festally the bright strain dies away, softer and softer,

as they depart, to the tune of _Andiamo via di qua_ (let us quit this

place), to which the servant’s voice chimes in as second very heartily.

Here the curtain usually falls, closing a second Act, although the

composer covers the homeward flight of the pair, fatigued and hungry

with that night’s adventures and discomfitures, and the preparation of

the supper, by a beautiful and elaborate recitative and aria of Donna

Anna, addressed to her devoted Ottavio, whose urgent plea for the

consummation of their union she tenderly puts off, as with a

presentiment that her love is to know no earthly consummation, and that

her life is already too much of the other world. This song: _Non mi

dir_, bloomed one of the heavenliest and purest in the wreath of Jenny

Lind.

Act Third is the grand Finale, with its tremendous music, its

apparition, its supernatural vindication of the Law, and the splendid

sinner’s doom. Remember, day has not dawned yet since that other Finale,

to the First Act; their supper that time was stormily broken off, and

they have had little rest in the mean time. But they have got home at

last, and _Gia la mensa è preparata_: now the supper is prepared; a

smart and animated strain of full orchestra in the bold key of D. The

Don has shut himself in by himself with all the harmonies of sense and

appetite; it is the pure feast of egoism; there are no guests, but his

own appetites and riotous imaginations, for whom all things are

provided; and little thinks he of the guest whom he _has_ invited! Droll

Leporello, now all appetite, is in attendance, devouring furtive morsels

of the rich dishes, and uncorking the champagne, (a situation commonly

too tempting to our buffo, who makes the fun excessively and

disgustingly broad,) and making broad allusions to the _barbaro

appetito_ of his master. There is a band of wind instruments, too, from

whom all the while proceed the most enlivening appeals to composite

enjoyment, in a succession of rare morsels of melody from well-known

operas of the time, for which both master and man show an appreciating

ear. The last of these is the famous _Non piu andrai_, from Mozart’s own

“Nozze di Figaro,” to which Leporello may well exclaim: “That I know too

well.” Through all this the Titian-like, voluptuous quality of Mozart

comes out afresh. It is the music of pure, unalloyed sensuous enjoyment;

not a shadow of aught serious or sentimental comes over its harmony,

until once more his better nature makes one final appeal, entreating him

to repentance, in the person of poor, constant Donna Elvira, who

suddenly rushes in and kneels at his feet. But the Don laughs at her

simple lecture, and preaches up to her his bacchanalian gospel.

Here mark a fine point in the action, a fine touch of poetic truth,

worthy of Mozart’s genius. It is _she_, his better nature, as we have

said, his own rejected truer self, who loves him better than he loves

himself; it is she, Elvira, who, as she leaves the stage, is the first

to meet the fearful apparition and by her shriek give warning. That

shriek, thrown into the music, has suddenly changed its smooth,

sparkling surface into fierce boiling eddies, and stirred up the whole

sea of harmony from its profoundest depths. The musicians on the stage

have vanished. No time now for their toy melodies! Every chord now

cleaves the dark veil of the supernatural, like lightnings in the

blackest night; the syncopated rhythm tells of vague and wonderful

forebodings. _Che grido è questo?_ (What noise is this?) And Leporello

is sent out to see. Wilder and heavier grows the music, as he returns

white and speechless, and only able in his half-wittedness of terror to

imitate with his feet the heavy _ta, ta_, the approaching foot-fall of

the man of marble, who has descended from his charger in the grave-yard.

It requires the master’s hardihood to open the door for him, and amid

those solemn and terrific crashes of the orchestra, with which the

overture commenced, the strange guest stalks into the middle of the

scene.

With hard, ponderous, marble tones, like blows, falling whole octaves,

the statue announces himself as good as his word in accepting Giovanni’s

invitation. The amazed unbeliever, trembling and yet summoning up his

whole pride of will, which never yet forsook him, would fain prove as

good as _his_ word, too, and orders Leporello, who has crawled away

under the table, to get ready another supper. But “not on mortal food

feeds” this guest from the other world; “graver concerns” have led him

here; and the instruments are again traversing those _unsettled_ scales,

whose wonderful effect we noticed in the overture. _Parla, parla_: rings

out the rich, fresh baritone of the dauntless Amphytrion, as much as to

say: “talk on, old fellow! I listen; you are a ghost, but I am a

substance; I believe in myself, say what you will.” All very brave! but

listen to the orchestra (as you cannot _help_ listening) if you would

know how nevertheless it goes with him in the inner workings of his

soul, in those mysterious depths of consciousness which hitherto he has

so wilfully refrained from sounding. That heavy, muffled tread of the

sub-bass in triplets, making the ground quake, means more than the

“tertian ague” of poor Leporello there, with head thrust out cautiously

from under the table, and voice, automaton-like, moving in unison with

the _basso profondo_ of the orchestra. A pause is filled with a

monotonous beat of the basses, when the crashing diminished-seventh

chords begin anew, and louder than before, while the spectre again opens

its marble jaws to tender the Don an invitation in its turn, which he,

stout-hearted to the last, in spite of Leporello’s trembling, grotesque

warnings, accepts. The statue asks his hand in pledge; he boldly gives

it, starts as if an infinite pang and sense of death shot from the cold,

stony hand through all the marrow of his bones; with an infinite

audacity of will he refuses to repent; the spectre sinks through the

ground; he is a doomed one; the flames of hell burst in on every side,

with visions of the damned; a chorus of spectres: _vieni!_ (come!) is

heard amid the infernal whirl and tempest of the music; he wrestles with

the demons and drops dead, the whole phantasmagoria vanishing, just as

the other characters of the piece come in search of the reprobate, who

listen to Leporello’a chattering story, dispose of their several

destinies after the approved fashion of dramatic conclusions, and wind

up with chanting a solemn canon over the _Dissoluto punito_, to the

words: “Such is the end of the evil-doer!”

It is usual, however, to terminate the performance with the fall of

Giovanni. The parts which follow, although admirable as music, are

plainly superfluous to the action, as a poetic and artistic whole, and

must have been added by Mozart out of mere conformity to old dramatic

usage, which assembles and disposes of all the surviving characters of a

piece in the last scene.

There is great room for melodramatic nonsense and _diablerie_ in this

judgement scene, in which the theatres have used full license. But if

the orchestra be complete and efficient, there is no possibility of

travestying or perverting the sublime and terrible intention of the

music, which from the moment that the statue enters is enough to freeze

one’s blood, and preoccupies all avenues of sense or consciousness with

supernatural and infinite suggestions. And yet does Music’s sweet and

faithful prophecy of reconciliation, like the “still, small voice” out

of the inmost heart of things, still reach us somehow through it all!

* * * * *

The reader, who has followed us through this review of “Don Giovanni,”

clinging always to the musical thread of interpretation, will find

himself as little able as ourselves to sympathize with the regret, so

frequently expressed, that Mozart should have prostituted his genius in

this composition, by the false marriage of so much divine music with an

unworthy subject. We believe the marriage was a true one. He did not

merely cater to a low, licentious taste, in the selection of this story.

Never was a choice made more heartily. Or, if he did not himself

_choose_ the plot, yet he _fell in_ most heartily, and as it were, by a

providential correspondence with the invention of Da Ponte—as heartily

as he afterward fell in with the terrific images of the old Latin hymn,

when he composed his own “Requiem,” in writing a Requiem to order for

another. In these two works the life and genius of Mozart found their

highest expression. “Don Juan” and the “Requiem,” in all their contrast,

are alike true to the very texture and temper of the man. “Don Juan,”

written in the hey-day of his genial faculties, in his hour and scene of

greatest outward success, in the city of Prague, where he was understood

and loved as nowhere else, surrounded by devoted friends, and with an

orchestra and troup of singers worthy to be his interpreters, represents

his sunny side, his keen sensibility to all refined delights of sense

and soul, and his great faith in joy, in ecstasy, in all material and

sensual harmonies. The “Requiem” bears to “Don Juan,” as a whole, the

same relation that the last scene of that opera bears to the preceding

parts; it expresses the religious awe and mystery of his soul, his

singular presentiment of death, his constant feeling of the Infinite.

The opera, in its last scene, rises to a sphere of music kindred with

the “Requiem;” there vibrated the same deep chords of his nature. It was

the very subject of all others for him to pour the whole warm life-tide

of his soul and music into, and thus lift up and animate a poor old

literal fiction, that somehow strangely kept its hold upon the popular

mind, with all its weight of grotesqueness, extravagance, vulgarity and

tom-foolery, into a vivid drama of the whole impetuous, bewildered,

punished, yet far-hoping and indomitable experiment of human life.

Here are the two elements which seem in contradiction. Here, on the one

side, is this bold, generous passion-life, with its innate gospel of

joy, and transport, and glorious liberty; how well could Mozart

understand it, and how eloquently preach it in that safe, universal

dialect of Music, which utters only the heart-truth, and not the vulgar

perversion of any sentiment! Here, on the other hand, is the stern

Morality of being, frowning in conflict with the blind indulgence of the

first. The first is false by its excess, by losing Order out of sight;

while Order, sacred principle, in its common administration between men,

in its turn is false, through its blind method of suppression and

restraint, blaspheming and ignoring the divine springs of passion, which

it should accept and regulate. The music is the heavenly and prophetic

mediator that resolves the strife.

Hence the music of “Don Giovanni” presents two sides, two parts in

strongest contrast. Love, joy, excitement, freedom, the complete life of

the senses, are the theme of the first part, represented in the keen and

restless alternation of the Don’s intrigues and pleasures—a downright,

unmistrusting, beautiful assertion of the natural man—and you have it

all summed up to one text and climax, in the first Finale, in the brief

champagne sparkle and stormy transport of the little chorus, _Viva la_

Liberta! As the burden of that part is Liberty, so the burden of the

last part, the counter-text and focus, is Order, the violated Law; and

as the central figure here stalks in the supernatural statue, stony and

implacable. It is the whole story of life, the one ever-repeated,

although ever-varied drama of dramas; and it is set forth here, both

sides of it, most earnestly in this sincere and hearty music, which in

its own exhaustless beauty hints the reconciliation of the two

principles, and to the last is true to the divine good of the senses and

the passions, and to the presentiment of a pure and perfect state, when

these shall be, not dreaded, not suppressed, but regulated, harmonized,

made rhythmical and safe, and more than ever lifesome, and spontaneous

by Law as broad and deep and divine us themselves.

Do we defy the moral of the matter, when we feel a certain thrill of

admiration as Don Juan boldly takes the statue’s hand, still strong in

his life-creed, however he may have missed the heavenly method in its

carrying out, and somehow inspired with the conviction that this

judicial consummation is not, after all, the end of it; but that the

soul’s capacity for joy and harmony is of that god-like and _asbestos_

quality that no hells can consume it?

-----

[5] It is a curious fact that the first opera of which we read, and

which was produced at Rome in the year 1600, bore the title of:

_Rappresentazione del Animo e del Corpo_.

[6] “Don Giovanni” was composed in 1787. The Abbé Da Ponte, who wrote

the book, and who enjoyed at Vienna the same distinction with Metastasio

as a writer of musical poetry, died in New York, in December 1838, at

the age of 90 years, in a state of extreme destitution. For thirty years

he had sought a living in that city by teaching the Italian language.

* * * * *

AUTUMN RAIN.

BY MRS. E. C. KINNEY.

How I love the Autumn rain!

Pattering at my window-pane,

With a liquid, lulling tone,

As I sit all day alone—

Thinking o’er and o’er again

Only how I love the rain!

How I love the Autumn rain!

When it brings a thoughtful train—

When in meditative mood

I enjoy my solitude,

While the full and active brain

Works as busy as the rain.

How I love the Autumn rain

When, without a care or pain,

I can dream, and dream all day,

Or with loitering Fancy stray—

Weaving some capacious strain

Musical as Autumn rain.

How I love the Autumn rain!

When gray twilight comes again:

When the flickering hearth-flumes dance,

While the shadows dart askance—

Seeming goblins to the brain,

In the dreamy Autumn rain.

How I love the Autumn rain!

Pattering at my window-pane,

When upon my bed reposing—

Half in waking, half in dozing,

Then a dulcet music-strain

Seems the pleasant Autumn rain.

How I love the Autumn rain!

Though it come, and come again,

Never does it weary me

With its dull monotony;

Never on my ear in vain

Falls the pattering Autumn rain.

* * * * *

TO MARY ON EARTH.

BY A. J. REQUIER.

I’m thinking of thee, Mary,

And twilight shadows fall

With mournful stillness o’er the scene

And deepen on the wall;

But with the dim, departing light,

Breaks faintly, from afar,

Upon the bosom of the night,

A solitary star!

I’m thinking of thee, Mary,

For like that twilight scene,

The dusk and dew were on my heart,

To darken what was green;

The dusk and dew were falling fast

Upon its faded dreams,

When, through the gloom, thy young love cast

The fervor of its beams.

I’m thinking of thee, Mary,

For in this lonely hour

A thought of other times will come,

Of parted friends will lower;

And early images arise,

With freshness flushed in pain,

Of tender forms and tearful eyes

I may not see again.

I’m thinking of thee, Mary,

For when such moments dwell

Upon my spirits with the weight

Of a departing knell,

A thought of thee breaks through the night

Of memories that mar,

With the lone glory of that bright,

That solitary star!

Oh, Mary, Mary, Mary dear!

If in my bosom shine

One hope, one dream, one single wish,

That single wish is thine;

And if to see and feel and hear

But thee, in heart and brain,

Be love, I love thee, Mary dear,

And cannot love again!

* * * * *

TO ADHEMAR.

BY E. ANNA LEWIS.

’Tis just one year ago, beloved, to-day,

Since, my pale hand between thy hands compressed,

I laid my burning brow upon thy breast,

And bade the flood-gate of my heart give way—

Then shut it down upon its streams for aye.

We sought to speak, yet neither said farewell;

Fate rung her larum through my spirit’s cell

Until the chill of death upon me lay.

I never could relive that hour again:

Through every artery shot an icy pang,

As if an adder pierced me with its fang,

And dashed the roseate fount of life with bane.

My eyes were open, yet I could not see—

I breathed, yet I was dead. All things were dead to me.

* * * * *

ANNA TEMPLE.

A TALE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

BY JANE GAY.

CHAPTER I.

Death makes no conquest of this conqueror,

For now he lives in fame, though not in life.

King Richard III.

The Lord Protector was seated beneath a royal canopy in the lofty

parliament-chamber of England. At his left stood Thurloe, his secretary,

on his right was seated a part of the bold Puritan band who had dared

affix their signatures to the death-warrant of Charles Stuart. There was

Bradshaw, the intrepid judge who wrote his name first on that fatal

paper; there was Ireton—the fiery-hearted Ireton—who had come up in

defense of Protestantism fierce and raging “as a lion from the swelling

of Jordan;” Goffe, and Whalley, and Dixwell, too, were there, whose

ashes repose in our own quiet “City of Elms,” and many others of that

fearless band of regicides that three years after were fleeing from home

and country, to escape the block or gibbet. Ambassadors from every

nation were there—princes and courtiers, officers of the army, judges,

petitioners, all helped to make up the illustrious Protectorate Assembly

of 1655.

Seated side by side, and discoursing in low tones of the projected

treaty, were Sir Matthew Hale and Milton, the world-renowned bard; and

in a listening posture near them, was the accomplished Lambert. No

purple robe or kingly crown distinguished the chief of this august body,

but nature had stamped a seal on him that could not be mistaken, for

Oliver Cromwell bore in the parliament-hall the look and bearing of a

man born to command, while at the same time the most unconquerable

determination and the highest-wrought enthusiasm were traced on every

lineament of his face. But to our story.

A gentleman, in the splendid dress that distinguished the court of Louis

Fourteenth, approached the Lord Protector, and bending low, presented a

paper to his highness. It was Bordeaux, the French ambassador, and the

treaty so long in contemplation between the two nations, was this day to

receive the seal of the Protectorate. The hand of Cromwell was already

on the paper, when some confusion near the door arrested his attention,

and a frown was gathering on his brow, when his piercing eye detected a

youth with foreign air and aspect boldly striving to make his way

through the guards that were stationed near the entrance of the hall.

“Silence, guards!” shouted the deep, nasal voice of the Protectorate,

“stay not the boy; let him approach our presence if he have petition to

offer.”

The guards gave way, and a slender but graceful-looking youth of some

fourteen years came forward, and, knelt at the feet of the sovereign.

Every eye was fastened upon him, and a deep silence came over the throng

as he knelt there with clasped hands, his dark, earnest eyes fixed on

the stern-looking, shaggy-browed Puritan in mute supplication—for no

word fell from the boy’s lips. A heavy mass of raven curls were gathered

back from the snowy forehead of the strange youth, and fell in singular

beauty over his shoulders, and his simple peasant garb, had forced the

idea of some wandering minstrel-boy, but for the deep and earnest

pleading of the eyes, which told of excitement and anguish too deep for

the utterance of the lips.

The silent but impassioned pleading of the poor youth touched the

susceptible heart of Cromwell, and he laid his hand kindly and

caressingly on the locks of the fair stranger, and said, in his gentlest

accents,

“Whence come you, my son, and how can the Protectorate aid you? Be

calm,” added he, noticing a nervous tremor on his countenance, “you have

nothing to fear here—speak your errand plainly.”

“I am come from the valley of Piedmont, my noble lord,” replied the

youth, “and the snow was red with the blood of the poor Vaudois;” and a

cold shudder passed over his pale face.

“Hell and furies!” shouted Cromwell, in momentary wrath; “Are the cursed

heretics on their track again?” Then bursting into tears, he added, in a

subdued tone, “Poor martyred saints of the Most High, ye shall wear a

glorious crown, in spite of your persecutors, and your blood shall not

redden the Alpine snows in vain! If there is might in human arm, your

enemies shall be humbled, and know that the Lord of Hosts will avenge

his elect.”

Then taking up the paper on which the sovereign seal was not yet fixed,

he delivered it to the French ambassador, saying somewhat haughtily,

“Take it back to your monarch, and tell him that Oliver Cromwell, Lord

Protector of England, rejects the treaty, until the King of France, and

his prime minister, shall pledge their assistance in succoring the

persecuted Protestants of Piedmont! Until such pledge shall be given,

our negotiations are ended.”

Bordeaux reddened with resentment as he folded the rejected paper. “The

war is then inevitable,” he muttered. “Shall I say, sire, that you

refuse the treaty?”

“Say I will wage war with all Europe but this persecution of Christians

shall cease!”

“But the King of France can do nothing, my lord,” persisted Bordeaux.

“The Duke of Savoy may make laws for his subjects as independently as

your highness; and no foreign force can be brought to bear upon them in

those mountain wilds.”

Cromwell stamped his foot with impatience. “My word has gone forth, and

‘the ships of England shall sail over the Alps,’ sooner than another

hair of their heads shall perish! Tell _both your masters_ that this is

my decree.”

The Frenchman was indignant at this speech of the Lord Protector, for

although every Frenchman understood that Mazarin, the prime minister,

was the real monarch, they could not endure to have it thus thrown in

their teeth, and he angrily asked permission to retire, which was

readily granted; and the parliament was soon after adjourned.

That same evening young Francois Waldo—for that was the name of the

Vaudois youth—sat in the palace of Whitehall, with the Protector and

his family; and though but a simple peasant-boy, he looked with a calm

indifference upon the courtly splendor that surrounded him; for he had

been bred amid the wild magnificence of the snow-capped Alps, and they

pictured to his youthful imagination the “everlasting hills,” of which

he had early been taught to sing, as he sat with the pious shepherds

tending their flocks in the evening starlight.

It was a sad story he told of his poor, persecuted people, how, in the

very heart of winter, six stout Catholic regiments had broken in upon

their quiet homes, to overpower and destroy; how the innocent children

had been dashed from the icy pinnacles—the fathers and mothers

beheaded—their villages burned to the ground—and those who fled for

safely to the mountain-caverns, were hunted like wild beasts by the

Pope’s minions; and Cromwell—the lion warrior and the dauntless

regicide—the unflinching patriot, and the powerful sovereign, clasped

the poor fugitive to his heart, and loudly bewailed the fate of these

martyred Christians.

“Had you parents, and were they victims of this terrible slaughter?”

weepingly inquired Mary Cromwell, one of the Protector’s daughters.

“Yes, lady—parents; and a sweet little blue-eyed sister, like the

little girl by your side;” and he pointed to a beautiful child that had

been listening with a sorrowful face, and eyes brimfull, to his sad

recital. “We called her our mountain violet; but in one night I was left

alone—for they burned our cottage, and slew both parents and child. I

was away, but came next morning and sat awhile by the mouldering embers

of my home, and then rose up determined to seek the shores of Christian

England, and plead for succor. I hid myself among the rocks and cliffs

by day, and at night wandered, hungry and alone, until I reached the

sea-coast, lest I should fall into the hands of the soldiers, and none

escape to carry aid to my suffering nation.”

“You are a brave, blessed boy, and you shall not go hungry any more,”

said little Anna Temple, forgetting her childish timidity; and going up

close to him, she gazed earnestly and lovingly in his face. “Stay here,

and we will _all_ love you, because you have no sister—wont we, Mary?”

said the child, in the warmth and innocency of her heart.

“Yes, darling,” replied she, “and he shall go to school, if he wishes,

with you and Robert, and Eugene.”

The heart of Francois Waldo was nigh to bursting, as the gentle accents

of the child fell on his ear—so like the tones of his own Christine,

which had so often gladdened him in their happy home—and he bowed his

head and wept for the first time since his bereavement; and every member

of that lordly household wept in sympathy.

Months went by, and the Vaudois youth was still an inmate of the

Protector’s family—a calm, intellectual, devoted student, destined as a

preacher of that faith for which his kindred had suffered martyrdom. He

went not back to his native valley, for here he might better fit himself

for the work of the glorious mission he felt desirous of fulfilling; and

Cromwell had been true to his word—the arm of oppression had been

unnerved, and peace and plenty secured to the faithful survivors.

Anna Temple was the only earthly being that withdrew his thoughts for a

moment from the prosecution of his great and holy purpose; but when her

soft blue eyes pleaded, as they often did, with her lips, for an hour’s

relaxation and amusement in the park or garden, he would sometimes

unbind the mental chain for a little space, and go forth with spirit

unfettered and free. Then he would talk to the fair child of his lost

home—of the icy palaces of the Alps, pure as spirit-haunts—of the

wild-flowers springing from their rocky beds, and of the holy starlight

of the mountains, until the enthusiastic creature would regard Francois

as a being of purer mould, more spiritual and good, than any other

person with whom she held companionship.

And thus years passed; Francois still saw in the beautiful Anna Temple,

or fancied he saw, the image of his lost Christine; and the young girl

read in the large, soul-earnest eyes of the Vaudois student, the first

mysterious leaf of womanhood—and they were both happy.

Meantime a shadow was darkening the sky of England—a storm-cloud,

destined to shake from its foundation her political fabric, and place

another Stuart on the throne. Cromwell, the Protector—the hero of the

seventeenth century, was summoned to repose! Bravely had he borne his

armor on the great battle-ground of life, and his valiant heart had not

fainted in the heat of the conflict. The humble plebian had dared boldly

to take up arms against his country’s foes in defiance of his king; and

subsequently, at the same country’s call, and in defense of her

liberties, with the Book of God in his hand, and a psalm on his lips, to

affix his signature to the death-warrant of the sovereign traitor. Ever,

where duty called, was he found foremost in the ranks of the faithful,

battling for the right; and when in the maturity of manhood the sun of

glory brightened his gray hairs with the splendor of royalty, he turned

coldly away from the crown of a king, preferring the simple title of

Protector of the Commonwealth. His sword was still girded against the

Lord’s enemies, when a voice from above summoned him from earthly glory

to heavenly rest; and on the third of September, one thousand six

hundred and fifty-eight, Oliver Cromwell stood girded for his last

conflict.

Historians have recorded _that_ as a fearful night when the Lord

Protector lay struggling with the final enemy. Wildly wailed the wind

around that earthly palace; but the eye of the dying was on the eternal

mansion, and so amid the fury of the elements, the great spirit of

Cromwell achieved its final victory.

A loud wail burst from the whole army of Puritans, for well they knew

there was none powerful like him to cope with their adversaries. The

master-spirits among their opponents would not reverence his son,

because the father had held them in check; and the inefficient Richard

Cromwell had nothing to claim for himself. He beheld the country rent by

faction, and having no power to quell insubordination, and, moreover,

fearing the result to himself, he quietly resigned his Protectorate, and

all that had been gained to England by Cromwell’s life, was lost in his

death. Whither would now flee the fifty-nine judges who had decreed

Charles Stuart to the scaffold, or where the friends of the Protector

find safety?