HARPER'S
NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
VOLUME V.
JUNE TO NOVEMBER, 1852.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
329 & 331 PEARL STREET,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
MDCCCLII.
ADVERTISEMENT.
HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE closes its Fifth Semi-annual Volume with
a circulation of more than One Hundred Thousand copies. The Publishers
have spared neither labor nor expense to render it the most attractive
Magazine of General Literature ever offered to the public; and they
confidently present this Volume as evidence that their efforts to add
to the value and interest of the work have kept pace with the increase
of its circulation.
Special arrangements have been made, and will continue to be made,
to render the next Volume still more worthy of public favor than its
predecessor has been. The abundant facilities at the command of the
Publishers insure an unlimited field for the choice and selection
of material, while the ample space within the pages of the Magazine
enables the Editors to present matter suited to every variety of taste
and mood of the reading community. The Pictorial Illustrations will
maintain the attractive and varied character by which they have been
heretofore distinguished, while their number will be still farther
increased.
In the general conduct and scope of the Magazine no change is
contemplated. Each Number will contain as hitherto:
_First._--ORIGINAL ARTICLES by popular American authors, illustrated,
whenever the subject demands, by wood-cuts executed in the best style
of the art.
_Second._--SELECTIONS from the current literature of the day, whether
in the form of articles from foreign periodicals or extracts from new
books of special interest. This department will include such serial
tales by the leading authors of the time, as may be deemed of peculiar
interest; but these will not be suffered to interfere with a due degree
of variety in the contents of the Magazine.
_Third._--A MONTHLY RECORD, presenting an impartial condensed and
classified history of the current events of the times.
_Fourth._--An EDITOR'S TABLE, devoted to the careful and elaborate
discussion of the higher questions of principles and ethics.
_Fifth._--An EDITOR'S EASY CHAIR and DRAWER, containing literary
and general gossip, the chat of town and country, anecdotes and
reminiscences, wit and humor, sentiment and pathos, and whatever, in
general, belongs to an agreeable and entertaining miscellany.
_Sixth._--CRITICAL NOTICES of all the leading books of the day. These
will present a fair and candid estimate of the character and value of
the works continually brought before the public.
_Seventh._--LITERARY INTELLIGENCE, concerning books, authors, art, and
whatever is of special interest to cultivated readers.
_Eighth._--PICTORIAL COMICALITIES, in which wit and humor will be
addressed to the eye; and affectations, follies, and vice, chastised
and corrected. The most scrupulous care will be exercised that in this
department humor shall not pass into vulgarity, or satire degenerate
into abuse.
_Ninth._--THE FASHIONS appropriate for the season, with notices of
whatever novelties in material or design may make their appearance.
The Publishers here renew the expression of their thanks to the Press
and the Public in general, for the favor which has been accorded to the
New Monthly Magazine, and solicit such continuance of that favor as the
merits of the successive Numbers may deserve.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME V.
All Baggage at the Risk of the Owner 334
A Duel in 1830 399
A Dull Town 179
Animal Mechanics 524
A Possible Event 786
A Primitive People 111
Armory at Springfield. By JACOB ABBOTT. 145
Auld Robin Gray--a Ballad 1
A Terribly Strange Bed 202
Bleak House. By CHARLES DICKENS. 7, 229, 358, 505, 638, 791
British Museum and Zoological Gardens By FREDRIKA BREMER 201
Celebrated French Clockmaker 86
Church of the Cup of Cold Water 34
COMICALITIES, ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
Smoking at a Railway Station, 141. The Childish Teetotal
Movement; Deference to the Sex, 142. Illustration of Humbug;
Rules for Health; Finance for Young Ladies, 281. Maine-Law
Petitioners, 282. Anti-Maine-Law Petitioners, 283. Matrimony
Made Easy, 284. Favorite Investments; An Agreeable Partner,
285. Delicacy; The Dog-Days; The American Crusaders; Poetical
Cookery-Book, 286. Mr. Bull's Ideas on the Musquito Question;
Starvation for the Delicate, 427. Young New York Hard-up; A
Victim of the Tender Passion, 428. A Striking Expression; Scene
in a Fashionable Ladies' Groggery, 429. Rather a Bad Look-out;
The Attentive Husband in August, 430. A Great Nuisance, 569.
Tea-Room before Tea, 570. Tea-Room after Tea, 571. A Midsummer
Night's Dream; Blow like sweet Roses, 572. New Illustrations
to Shakspeare, 573. A Superfluous Question; Children must be
paid for, 574. New Illustrations to Byron, 717. The Dog and
his Enemies; Scenes from a Dog's Life in Dog-Days, 718. Some
Punkins; Advice to the Poor Gratis, 861. A Natural Consequence;
Proper Prudence, 862.
Courage of a Man of Principle 765
Curiosity in Natural History 113
Dark Chapter from the Diary of a Law Clerk 688
Daughter of the Bardi 112
Down in a Silver Mine 772
Drops of Water 75
Drooping Buds. By CHARLES DICKENS 66
EDITOR'S DRAWER.
Legal Examinations; Anecdotes of Beau Brummell, 131. The
Disgusted Wife to her Husband; The extempore Hair-cutter, 132.
Sonnet on a Youth who died of eating Fruit-pie; Mussulman
Scruples; Letter from Algeria, 133. Steam in Palestine; The
Puzzled Chinaman; Hints on Popping the Question, 134. A new
Family of Plants; Lamartine as Conservative; As Traveler;
An Irish Joke; Doubling prohibited, 135. An original Crest;
Mr. Caw; The Scotch Blacksmith, 136. Bustles in Africa;
Skeleton for Poets; Wives in China; A Persian Fable; Gents and
Gentlemen; The Ugly Man, 271. The Queen's Dog; "Unused as I
am to Public Speaking;" The Sold Troop-Horse; Philosophical
Explanation; Differences in Childhood, 272. Execution of
Montrose; Rothschild; Hot Soup at Railway Stations, 273. A
"Sonnick," by Thackeray; What is Pleasure? Working Clothes;
Legal Maxims; The Mazurka; Miss Trephina and Miss Trephosa;
Spanish Self-Glorification; The Two Hogarths; Dionysius the
Tyrant; The Pope in a Dilemma; Anecdotes of Horne Tooke;
Orthography of English Names; E Pluribus Unum; The Statue
of Pasquin, 274. A Matter-of-Fact Man, 416. Gambling, a new
Species of it; Country Quietude; Mons. le General Court de
Boston, 417. A Needle-Eye for a Camel to go through; A Levy;
Squaring the Account; For Bachelors; Old Proverbs excepted to,
418. Model Presentation Verses; Modern Dictionary; Governor
Chittenden and the Thief; The Puzzled Publican; How do you
like the Doctor? 419. How to prevent Riches from flying;
Anecdote of Louis Philippe; Tongues _vs._ Tongs; Spilling
Water in the Street, 420. An Epigram; Sydney Smith's Son;
Hint to Shoppers, Borrowing Books; Head and Bonnets; Allen,
Internal and External Costumer; Hair changing Color; An
Epitaph, 421. About that "Tea-Room" and the Amateur Alderman,
557. A bad Head better than none; Patent Hen Persuader;
Difference between a Bull and a Bully; How to grow Rich; Taking
things Coolly, a Triad of Instances; Beautiful Superstition;
The Ruling Passion, 558. Humanity of Nelson; An accurate
Receipt; Firing Dutch Cheeses; Getting slewed; An unwelcome
Shower-Bath; Nautical Technicalities, 559. A Gem from Lydgate;
Examination in Anatomy; Becoming "Dark;" Betting to Win;
An inordinate Petition, 560. Try Again; Newport Notions;
Putting one's Foot in; A Story of a Hog; Catachresis, 561.
The Poetry of Ballooning; A Maniac's Voyage to the Moon, 706.
About Umbrellas; "Sucker" Office-seeker; Remedy for a Broken
Leg, 707. How to double your Wealth; The Biter bit--a Tale
of the Mustard-pot; The Lord and the Lackey; A Squint at a
Crooked Leg; The Miseries of Pic-nicking, 708. A Frenchman's
Experience in Ladies' Schools; Carlyle on Stars; Twisting; A
Belle, 709. Lays of the Cavaliers; Pursuit of Knowledge under
Difficulties; Partition of Turkey; A Second-hand President;
The Lazy Man; Odd Names, 710. Prevention better than Cure; The
Lady and the Doctor; Inscription; Epitaph; Gipsies; Hogg, 711.
An Artist's Gratitude; Pilgrimage to the Tomb of Juliet at
Verona, 712. A Lover's Letter; What's the Matter; A Professor
posed; Doctoring; Thanksgiving, 848. How to be Happy; the
Sheriff and the Peddler; Thoughts by a Tailor, 849. About
Matrimony; Negro Banking; Being Busted; Coughing Concert, 850.
Mr. Benton; A Poser; Voyage of Life; Gulliver; Johnson and
Smith on the Scotch, 851. A great Pity; First Glimpse in the
Glass; Desirable Ignorance; Witchcraft; A Simile, 852. Anecdote
of Whitfield; Hotel Scenes; Hint to the Married; Grace before
Meat; For Bachelors, 853. Doubly Mistaken; a Steamboat Race,
854.
EDITOR'S EASY CHAIR.
Still more about the Weather; Spring Floods, 126. Rapid
Changes; Niagara in Winter; Spring again; New Park; Kossuth;
Jenny Lind Goldschmidt, 127. Summer Traveling; Western Scenery;
Autograph Lottery, and Dumas's Sequel, 128. An Old Gentleman's
Letter--The Bride of Landeck, 129, 269, 414, 554, 702, 844. A
July Chair, 265. Parks; Imaginary Rambles; A Duo and a Triad of
Verses; Leafy June; The Washington Monument Intermittent Fever;
Political Conventions; Ole Bull, 266. The Maine Law at Watering
Places; Home-made Wines; Pleasuring to the Rocky Mountains; New
Lake in Minnesota; Summer Contentments, 267. Authors becoming
Millionaires; Dying for Love, 268. Provincials in Paris, 411.
Americans Abroad; The Grand Tour in Six Weeks; M. de Broglie's
Description of Washington, 412. A little Mule will grow; The
Town at Midsummer, 413. Fruits and Flowers; Poor Generals;
Alboni, with a Hint to Musical Critics; Monkeys at the Opera
House, 414. The Tender Passion in French Courts of Justice,
552. Summer at Saratoga; Saratoga out of Season, and a Glance
at the Good Time coming, 553. Back to Town, 842. The Opera and
Concerts; Alboni, Sontag, and Paul Jullien; The new Hotels, and
what will come of them, 843. Relief for Broadway; Our World's
Fair; Our own Political Position; Letter from the Editor, 844.
EDITOR'S TABLE.
On Education, 123. A Nation's Birthday, 262. Moral Influences
of the Theatre, 406. The Ideal of the Statesman, 548. The
Sabbath, 699. Morality of Steamboat Accidents, 836.
Edward Drysdale 77
Exaggeration 780
Fashions for June 145
Fashions for July 287
Fashions for August 431
Fashions for September 575
Fashions for October 719
Fashions for November 863
Fragments from a Young Wife's Diary 627
Franconia Mountains. By WM. MACLEOD 4
From Gold to Gray 115
Gambler's End 770
Garden of Flowers 781
Gossip about Great Men 667
Habits of Distinguished Authors 174
Henry Clay--Personal Anecdotes, etc. 393
Hunting Adventures in Le Morvan 466
Infidel Rebuked 464
Insect Wings 470
John Randolph of Roanoke 531
Last of the Fairies 810
Leaf from a Traveler's Note-Book.
By MAUNSEL B. FIELD 329
Life and Death of Paganini 659
Life in Paris 748
Life of Blake, the Great Admiral 197
LITERARY NOTICES.
ORIGINAL NOTICES.
Life and Correspondence of Niebuhr; Weber's Romance of Natural
History; Ivar, or, the Skjuts-Boy; Queechy; The Daltons;
Brace's Hungary in 1851; James's Pequinillo; English Synonyms,
137. Sargent's Standard Speaker; Spring's Glory of Christ;
Anthon's Manual of Grecian Antiquities; Works of President
Olin; Mountford's Thorpe; Life of Burns; Fancies of a Whimsical
Man; Alice Carey's Lyra; McMullen's Hand-Book of Wines, 138.
Stuart's Naval Dry Docks; Hervey's Principles of Courtesy;
Harrison's Laws of the Latin Language; Fasquelle's New French
Method; The Two Families; Owen's Greek Reader; Lamartine's
Restoration, 277. Clifton; Fourth Volume of Cosmos; Dollars
and Cents; Trench's Study of Words; Life and Correspondence of
Jeffrey, 278. Clarke's Eleven Weeks in Europe; Waverley Novels,
279. Curtis's Lotus-Eating; Strong's Harmony of the Gospels;
Fox and Hoyt's Quadrennial Register; Abbott's Mother at Home;
Waverley Novels; Herbert's Knights of England, France, and
Scotland, 422. Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Woodbury's
Shorter German Course; Todd's Summer Gleanings; Hildreth's
United States; Halleck's Poems; Elliott's Mysteries, 423. Life
of Dr. Chalmers, 4th vol., 564. Meyer's Universum; Niebuhr's
Lectures on Ancient History; Atlantic and Transatlantic;
Sketches Afloat and Ashore; Butler's Analogy; The Napoleon
Dynasty, 565. Waverley Novels; Shaw's Outlines of English
Literature, with a Sketch of American Literature; Personal
Adventures of "Our Own Correspondent" in Italy; St. Helena and
the Cape of Good Hope; Haydock's Catholic Family Bible; The New
Rhetorical Reader, 566. Parisian Sights and French Principles;
The Discarded Daughter; The Mormons, or Latter-Day Saints;
Tusculan Questions, Anthon's edition; Sargent's Life of Henry
Clay, 713. Stray Meditations; Anna Hammer; Mrs. Judson's Olio
of Domestic Verses; Life and Works of Burns, Vol. IV.; The
Master Builder; Bartlett's Natural Philosophy; Upjohn's Rural
Architecture; The Dodd Family Abroad; The Old Engagement;
Single Blessedness; Lydia, A Woman's Book; De Bow's Industrial
Resources of the Southern and Western States, 714. Goodrich's
Select British Eloquence; Buckingham's Personal Memoirs, 856.
Guizot's Corneille and his Times; Chasles's Anglo-American
Literature; Philosophers and Actresses; Hawthorne's Life of
Pierce; Tuckerman's Sicily; Champlin's and Kuehner's Greek
Grammars; James's Life of Vicissitudes; Mrs. Hale's New Book
of Cookery, 857. Docharty's Algebra; Oehlschlaeger's German
Dictionary; The School for Fathers; March's Webster and his
Contemporaries; New Editions of Dickens; Morse's Geography;
Anthon's Cornelius Nepos, 858.
FOREIGN NOTICES AND INTELLIGENCE.
Life of Kirby; Longman's Announcements; Life of Lord Langdale;
Wellington's Executor; Memoir of Dr. Pye Smith; Mary Howitt's
New Juvenile Magazine; Niebuhr's Lectures; Oersted's Soul of
Nature; Forthcoming Works by Tennyson, Thackeray, and Author of
the Bachelor of Albany, 139. Ronge; Resignation of Professor
Wilson; Demand for old Books in America; Criticisms on the
Howadji; Leigh Hunt's Illness; Lady Morgan on a Monument
to Moore; Emerson in French; Forgeries of Talleyrand's
Letters, 140. Caudle Lectures; Anthon's Anabasis; Ik. Marvel;
Resignation of Prof. Wilson; Candidates for his Chair, 279.
Milton's Agreement for Paradise Lost; Cassagnac's OEuvres
Litteraires; Fleury's Portraits Politiques et Révolutionnaires;
Grimm's German Dictionary; MS. of Rempen; Leipzig Easter
Catalogue, 280. Church Historians of England; Macdougall's
Papers; Sermons by the Author of Alton Locke; Translation of
Plato's Republic; Life of Moir; Life of Chalmers; Monument to
Mackintosh; Literary Fund Anniversary; Notice of Sterling,
424. Queechy; The English Press on Curtis's Books; Authorship
of the "Imitation of Christ," 425. The Germans on Margaret
Fuller; Wagner's Scientific Expedition to America; Amulet of
Byron; Prof. Lichtenstein; Medal to Swedenborg; Swedish Books;
St. Hilaire's Resignation; St. Beauve's Causeries du Lundi;
Dramatic Literature in France, 426. Signor Volpe's Lectures on
the Italian Poets; Miss Lothrop's Dollars and Cents; Proposed
Foreign Members of the Council of the Royal Society; Jared
Sparks and Lord Mahon. Prof. Grimm on the English Language,
566. James Russell Lowell and American Literature; Lamartine's
Constituent Assembly; Works by the Countess D'Orsay and Marquis
de Foudres, 567. New Literary Society in France; New Editions
of Buffon and Cuvier, Thiers's New Works; New Italian Books;
Printing in England, Germany, and France; Oehlenschlager's
and Temminck's Successors; Browning and Hawthorne in Germany;
German Juvenile Literature; Edinburgh Review on Niebuhr's
Life and Letters, 568. Literary Pensions, 714. Cyclopæedia
Biographica; Stiles's Austria; Webster's Dictionary, Guizot's
Republic in England, Relic of Burns; Translation of Gorgey's
Memoirs, Chalmers's Correspondence; Macaulay's new Volume
Gervinus's South American Republics: Lamartine's Sixth Volume
of the Restoration; Resigning French Professors; European
Litterateurs, 715. Saint Theresa's Works; George Sand;
Buffon; New Edition of Luther's Works; German Publications,
716. Retrospective Review; Webster's Dictionary; Coleridge's
Dramatic Works; Sonnet by Hartley Coleridge; Julian Fane;
Lord Mahon and Mr. Sparks, 860. Professor Ferrier; Lang's New
South Wales; Deacon's Annette; Merle D'Aubigne's new Volume;
Statues to St. Pierre and Delavigne; New Members of the British
Association, 860.
OBITUARIES.
John Young; B. B. Edwards; Solomon Van Rensselaer; James A.
Meriwether; Bishop Heading, 118. Dr. Pfaff, 280. Henry Clay,
402. M. Burnouf, 568. Marshal Excelmans, 698. Tony Johannot;
Count D'Orsay; Gen. Gourgeaud; Dr. Wulfsberg, 716. Bishop
Chase; Vanderlyn the Painter; Dr. McGuire, 835. The Duke of
Wellington, 836. Herbert Mayo; Dr. Macgillivray; Napoleon
Landais; M. Dize; Dr. Stieffel; Pompeo Litta, 860.
Little French Beggars 537
Little Wood Gatherers 529
Memoirs of the Holy Land. By JACOB ABBOTT 289, 433, 577, 721
Memory and its Caprices 634
Midnight Mass in the Reign of Terror 340
Miser's Life and Death 222
Monsters of Faith 657
MONTHLY RECORD OF CURRENT EVENTS.
UNITED STATES.
Congressional Caucuses, 116. _Congressional Doings_:
Miscellaneous, 116, 255, 403, 543, 692; Intervention, 116;
Collins Steamers, 116, 255, 543; Resolutions on the Compromise,
117; Japanese Expedition, 117; Free Land Bill, 255; Debate
on the Fisheries, 544, 692; New Postage Law, 692; Isthmus of
Tehuantepec, 694; Adjournment, 692. Adjournment of New York
Legislature, 117. Whig Convention in Virginia, 117. Election in
Connecticut, 117. Election in Rhode Island, 117. Mr. Webster
on the Compromise, 117. Gen. Scott nominated by Whigs in N.
Y. Legislature, 118. Whigs in North Carolina, 118. Floods at
the West, 118. Steamboat Disasters, 118. Letter from Mr. Clay
respecting Kossuth, 118. Kossuth, 118, 257, 403. _California_:
Miscellaneous, 119, 257, 403, 546, 695; Governor's Message
respecting Chinese, 257; Chinamen, 403; Affray in Court, 545.
Correspondence with Hulsemann, 255. Democratic Convention
at Baltimore, and Nomination of Pierce and King, 256. Mr.
Webster in Boston, 256, 544. New York Canal Law pronounced
unconstitutional, 256. State Convention in South Carolina,
256. Maine Law in Massachusetts, 257. Anniversary Week, 257.
Presbyterian General Assemblies, 256. Arrival of Meagher, 257.
Whig Convention at Baltimore, and Nomination of Scott and
Graham, 402. Agricultural Convention, 403. Art-Union a Lottery,
403. Arrival of Alboni, 403. Indian and Mexican Disturbances in
Texas, 403. New Mexico, 404. Utah, 404, 545. Oregon, 696. Mr.
Webster on the Fishery Question, 543. Lundy Lane Celebration,
544. Native American Nominations, 544. Case of Messrs.
Stephens, Toombs, and others, 544. Case of Thomas Kaine, 544.
Destruction of Life on board the Steamer Henry Clay, 544.
Guano Question, 693. New Constitution for Louisiana, 695. Loss
of Life on board the Steamer Atlantic, 695; and on board the
Reindeer, 645. Free Democratic Convention at Pittsburgh, and
Nomination of Hale and Julian, 695. Agricultural Convention
of Southern States, 695. Floods in the Northwest, 696.
Nominations in New York, 833. Liberty Party Nominations, 833.
Webster Meeting in Boston, 833. Nominations in Massachusetts,
833. Mr. Hale's Acceptance, 833. Women's Rights Convention,
833. Elections in Vermont and Maine, 833. Southern Rights
Nominations, 833. Odd Fellow's Meeting, 833. General Scott, at
the West, 833. Dinner to Mr. Baring, 834. Mr. Graham's Letter,
834. Mr. Benton on the Tehuantepec Question, 834. Consul Rice,
834. Minister to England, 834. Anti-Rent Outrage, 834. The
India-Rubber Case, 834. Billy Bowlegs, 835. Concerts, 835.
Episcopal Bishop of New York, 835. Methodist Book Concern, 835.
The Fisheries, 835. Canadian Intelligence, 835.
SOUTHERN AMERICA.
MEXICO: Miscellaneous, 120, 257, 404, 545, 697, 836. Rejection
of the Tehuantepec Treaty, 120, 257. Remonstrances of European
Powers, 120. Laws respecting Foreigners, 120. Difficulties at
Acapulco, 120, 404, 545. President's Address, 404. Tehuantepec
Question, 836.--SOUTH AMERICA: Affairs in Buenos Ayres, 257,
405, 696, 836. Executions in Chili, 257, 405. Yellow Fever in
Brazil, 257, 836. Expedition of Flores, 258, 696, 836. Message
of the President of Ecuador, 258. New Ministry in Peru, 546.
Argentine Republic, 696, 836. Affairs in Brazil, 696. Military
Preparations in Peru, 836.--CUBA: New Conspiracies, 696.
Hostile Proceedings, 836.--SOUTH SEAS: Miscellaneous, 119, 257.
American Products free of Duty, 119. Eruption of Mauna Loa,
119. Revolt in Society Islands, 257, 546. Capture of American
Vessel at the Galapagos, 546.
GREAT BRITAIN.
Miscellaneous, 120, 260, 405. Undecided Course of the
Ministers, 120. Protection, 120. Loss of the Birkenhead,
120. The Crystal Palace, 120, 260, 697. Rumors of Sir John
Franklin's Vessels, 121. Gold in Australia, 121. Meeting of
Parliament, 258. Parliamentary Proceedings: Debate on India,
258; on Duties on Paper and Advertisements, 258; on the Militia
Bill, 258, 405, 546; on Disfranchisement, 258; Tenant Right
Bill, 259; Case of Mr. Murray, 259; The Chancellor's Budget,
259; Proposed Criminal Convention with France, 405; English
Missionaries in Austria, 546; Chancery Reform, 546; Debate on
Course of Ministry, 546; Prorogation, and Queen's Speech, 546.
Royal Academy Dinner, 259. Dispute among Booksellers, 259.
Starvation of Missionaries in Patagonia, 260. Petition for
Pardon of Irish Exiles, 260. Mr. Disraeli and Lord Derby on
Protection, 405. Lord John Russell to his Constituents, 405.
Case of Mr. Mather, 405. Irish Exhibition, 406. Proclamation
against Catholic Ceremonies, 406. Elections for New Parliament,
547, 697. Royal Agricultural Society Dinner, 547. Riot at
Stockport, 547. Emigration to Australia, 547, 697. Mazzini,
547. The Fishery Question, 697. Kossuth in England, 697. The
Fisheries in the Colonies, 835. Canadian Politics, 836. Death
of the Duke of Wellington, with a Sketch of his Life, 837.
Report of the Society for the Advancement of Knowledge, 837.
The Guano Question, 838.
FRANCE.
Meeting of the Legislative Bodies, and President's Speech, 121.
The Budget, 121. Taking the Oaths, 121. Organization of the
National Guard, 122. Reconstitution of the University, 122.
Orleans Estates, 122, 261, 548. The Swiss Refugee Question,
122. The May Fêtes, 260. Charge by General Changarnier against
the President, 260. Counter-charges against Changarnier by
M. Cassagnac, 260. Refusal of Lamoriciere and Arago to take
the Oaths, 261. Letter from the Count de Chambord, 261. Views
of the Three Powers on the Empire, 261, 406, 698. Sale of
Marshal Soult's Pictures, 262. Difficulties of the Press, 406.
Message of the President, 547. Discussion on the Budget, 547.
Executions, 548. Opening of the Strasbourg Railway, 697. Change
in the Ministry, 697. Odilon Barrot abandons Public Life, 697.
Recall of Exiles, 697. Indifference at Elections, 697. Fête of
Napoleon's Birthday, 698. Anniversary of the Capture of the
Bastille, 838. Petitions for the Establishment of the Empire,
838. President's Speech at Lyons, 838. French Press on the Duke
of Wellington, 838.
SOUTHERN AND CENTRAL EUROPE.
AUSTRIA: Death of Schwarzenberg, and Formation of New Ministry,
122. Batthyani's Estates, 122. New Restraints on the Press,
406. Return of the Emperor from Hungary, 698. Deficit in the
Revenue, 698. The Crown of St. Stephen, 838.--PRUSSIA: Famine
in Silesia, 122. Debate on abolishing the Constitution, 262.
Settlement of the Danish Succession, 262. The Zollverein,
838. The Cholera, 838.--NETHERLANDS: Railroad Amalgamation,
698. Speech of King of Holland, 837.--Affairs in Switzerland,
698.--SPAIN: Dismissal of Concha, 122. Postal Convention
with Austria, 838--ITALY: Abolition of the Constitution in
Tuscany 262. Arrests in Venice and Mantua, 698. Funeral of
Mazzini's Mother, 698. Restrictions on Petitions in Piedmont,
698. Closing of Protestant School in Naples, 698. Envoy from
England, 838. Conspiracy, 838. Eruption of Etna, 838.--GREECE:
Case of Dr. King, 122, 698, 838.--TURKEY: Reinstatement of
Reshid Pacha, 122. Settlement of the Egyptian Question, 262,
838. New Discoveries in Nineveh, 698.
My Brother Tom 526
My Little French Friend 227
My Novel; or Varieties in English Life.
By SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON, 36, 179, 377, 494, 669, 813
Napoleon Bonaparte. By J. S. C. ABBOTT, 11, 162, 304, 609
Notes from the Barbary States 451
Number Nineteen in our Street 663
Ocean Life. By J. S. C. ABBOTT 61
Ostriches--How they are Hunted 177
Palaces of France. By J. S. C. ABBOTT, 304, 596, 739
Panther Hunt 481
Personal Habits and Appearance of Robespierre 345
Philosophy of Laughter 253
Posthumous Portrait 775
Prison Scene in the Reign of Terror 82
Record of a Madness not Insanity 212
Reminiscence of a Bow-street Officer 483
Results of an Accident.--The Gum Secret 225
Satisfaction of a Gentleman 783
Short Chapter on Rats 686
Soldier's First Battle 632
Stories about Beasts and Birds 219
Swept away by an Avalanche 788
Tale of Mid Air 218
The Ant or Emmet 540
The Counter-Stroke 248
The Ghost Raiser 106
The Incendiary 352
The Last Revel 69
The Little Gray Gossip 185
The Mourner and the Comforter 187
The Salamander 763
The Three Sisters 473
The Two Sisters 347
Three Visitors of Saint Pierre 108
Too Exclusive Attention to Business 504
Ventriloquism 351
What the Sunbeam Does 210
Who Murdered Downie 625
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
1. Auld Robin Gray.--The Courtship 1
2. Death of Auld Robin Gray 3
3. Franconia Notch 4
4. Profile Mountain 5
5. The Old Man of the Mountain 6
6. Eagle Cliff 7
7. Eastern Front of Profile Mountain 8
8. The Basin 9
9. The Flume 10
10. View on the Pemigewasset 11
11. Map of Marengo 13
12. Drawing a Gun over Great St. Bernard 15
13. Napoleon Ascending the Alps 17
14. Passing the Fort of Bard 18
15. Napoleon planning a Campaign 24
16. Map of Hohenlinden 26
17. Death at Hohenlinden 27
18. The Infernal Machine 29
19. Starting of an Ocean Steamer 61
20. The Visit at the Brickmaker's 93
21. In Re Guppy:--Extraordinary Proceedings 101
22. Smoking at a Railway Station 141
23. The Childish Teetotal Movement 142
24. Deference to the Sex 142
25. Costumes for June 143
26. Full Dress for Evening 144
27. Caps 144
28. The Armory at Springfield 145
29. The Middle Water Shops 147
30. The Welding Room 148
31. Straightening the Barrels 150
32. Grinding the Barrels 155
33. Exterior of the Proving House 154
31. Interior of the Proving House 155
35. Testing the Bayonets 155
36. The Blacksmith's Shop 156
37. Assembling the Musket 158
38. The New Arsenal 159
39. Quarters of the Commanding Officer 160
40. Mr. Guppy's Desolation 243
41. The Family Portraits at Mr. Badger's 246
42. Illustration of Humbug 281
43. Maine-Law Petitioners 282
44. Anti-Maine-Law Petitioners 283
45. Articles on Hand at Matrimonial Office 284
46. Favorite Investments 285
47. An Agreeable Partner 285
48. Delicacy 286
49. The Dog-Days 286
50. Costumes for July 287
51. Bonnet 288
52. Carriage Costume 288
53. Cap 288
54. Sleeve 288
55. View of Mount Carmel 289
56. Map of Mount Carmel 289
57. Map of Mount Carmel and Bay of Acre 291
58. Defense of Acre 292
59. Horseman of Acre 293
60. The Ascent of the Mountain 295
61. The Discovery of Glass 296
62. Elijah and the Gardener 297
63. The Hermits of Mount Carmel 300
64. The Elijah of the Basilians 301
65. The Authorized Elijah 302
66. The Serpent 302
67. The Panther 303
68. Napoleon's Reception at the Tuileries 310
69. Malmaison 311
70. Election for Consul for Life 312
71. Napoleon and the British Embassador 314
72. Review at Lyons 317
73. Sea Combat 318
74. The Louvre 321
75. Inner Court of the Louvre 322
76. The Tuileries 325
77. Grand Avenue of the Tuileries 327
78. The Dancing Room 362
79. Consecrated Ground 376
80. Mr. Bull's Ideas on the Musquito Question 427
81. Young New York Hard Up 428
82. A Victim of the Tender Passion 428
83. A Striking Expression 429
84. Scene in a Fashionable Ladies' Groggery 429
85. Rather a bad Look-out 430
86. The Attentive Husband in August 430
87. Costumes for August 431
88. Bonnet of Taffeta and Blond 432
89. Bonnet of Tulle and Taffeta 432
90. Bonnet of Tulle, Blond, and Taffeta 432
91. Source of the Jordan 433
92. Map of the Jordan 434
93. The Grapes of Eshcol 436
94. The Return of the Spies 437
95. The Crossing of Jordan 438
96. En Rogel 440
97. The Well 440
98. The Landing at Haifa 443
99. The Caravan 444
100. The Cascades 446
101. The Encampment 447
102. The Bowl 450
103. Portrait of the Bey of Tunis 451
104. Moorish Costumes 454
105. Military Costume at Tunis 454
106. The Bazaar 456
107. Barber's Shop 458
108. Moorish School 459
109. The Bastinado 462
110. Japanese Portraits 489
111. Caddy's Flowers 510
112. The Little Church in the Park 515
113. A Great Nuisance 569
114. Tea Room--Before Tea 570
115. Tea Room--After Tea 571
116. A Midsummer Night's Dream 572
117. Blow like sweet Roses 572
118. All Places yield to him 573
119. Speak to him, Ladies 573
120. A Superfluous Question 574
121. Costumes for September 575
122. Walking Dress 576
123. Home Costume 576
124. Departure of Lot from Sodom 579
125. The Plain 580
126. The Valley of Arabah 581
127. Map of the Dead Sea 582
128. Caves of Engedi 583
129. The Descent 584
130. The Cavern of Usdum 586
131. The Ford 588
132. Turahbeh 591
133. The Leveling Party 594
134. Death of Costigan 595
135. Plan of Versailles 597
136. Louis XIV 598
137. Old Chateau of Versailles 599
138. Court Entrance at Versailles 600
139. Death of Louis XIV 601
140. Louis XIV. hunting 603
141. Madame Maintenon 604
142. Cascades of Versailles 606
143. Fountain of Fame 607
144. Fountain of the Star 609
145. Fountain of the Pyramid 608
146. Parterre of Versailles 608
147. The Grand Trianon 609
148. Scene in the Louvre 610
149. Arrest of Cadoudal 612
150. Arrest of the Duke D'Enghien 614
151. Napoleon's Hut at Boulogne 616
152. Execution of the Duke D'Enghien 618
153. Madame Polignac interceding for her Husband 620
154. Mr. Guppy's Entertainment 640
155. The Smallweed Family 645
156. Throne of the Mighty 717
157. But in thy Lineaments I trace 717
158. The Dog and his Enemies 718
159. Four Scenes in a Dog's Life 718
160. Costumes for October 719
161. Girl's Toilet 720
162. Cap 720
163. The Cedars of Lebanon 721
164. Evergreens in the Forest 724
165. Evergreens in the Field 724
166. The Workmen in the Mountains 725
167. The Caravans 725
168. Map of Sources of Jordan 726
169. The Two Strangers 727
170. The Abduction of the Idols 728
171. The Terebinth at Banias 730
172. The Ruins 732
173. Hasbeiyah 732
174. Commerce of the Druses 733
175. Fakardin a Fugitive 734
176. The Presents 735
177. Ruins of Baalbec 736
178. Preparations for a Journey 737
179. Visiting the Cedars 738
180. Palace of St. Germain 749
181. Convent of St. Jacques 740
182. St. Germain from the Terrace 741
183. Interior of St. Denis 741
184. Christening of the Dauphin 742
185. Church of St. Denis 743
186. Palace of St. Cloud 744
187. Palace of Fontainebleau 745
188. Court-Yard of Fontainebleau 746
189. Paris from Nôtre Dame 749
190. Shopping in Paris 750
191. Marriage by the Magistrate 750
192. Marriage by the Priest 751
193. Through the Rain 752
194. Business before Pleasure 752
195. The Bow Audacious 754
196. Bows, Natural and Stiff 754
197. Bows, Proud and Sad 754
198. Bows, Gallant, and not Uncommon 754
199. Bows, Unquiet and Miserable 754
200. Bows, Good-Natured and Insulting 755
201. Bows, Benevolent and Cold 755
202. Bows, Humiliating and Humble 755
203. Church of the Madeleine 756
204. On the Boulevards 757
205. Cafés on the Boulevards 757
206. Maison du Grand Balcon 758
207. Boulevard Montmartre 758
208. Boulevard du Temple 758
209. Hebrew Quarter 759
210. The Column of July 759
211. The Quay of the Louvre 761
212. Floating Wash-Houses 761
213. Aristocratic Bathing-House 761
214. Baths for Four Sous 761
215. A Comfortable Bath 762
216. Swimming School 762
217. Hair-dressing and Corn-cutting 763
218. Bathing Costume For Ladies 763
219. In the Bath 763
220. Ready for the Bath 763
221. A Model of Parental Deportment 795
222. Improving a Tough Subject 807
223. Some Punkins 861
224. Advice to the Poor Gratis 861
225. A Natural Consequence 862
226. Proper Prudence 862
227. Costume for November (Equestrian) 863
228. Walking Toilet 864
229. Cap 864
HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
NO. XXV.--JUNE, 1852.--VOL. V.
[Illustration]
AULD ROBIN GRAY.
When the sheep are in the fauld, when the cows come hame,
When a' the weary warld to quiet rest are gane;
The woes of my heart fa' in showers frae my ee,
Unken'd by my gudeman, who soundly sleeps by me.
Young Jamie loo'd me weel, and sought me for his bride;
But saving ae crown piece, he'd naething else beside,
To make the crown a pound, my Jamie gaed to sea;
And the crown and the pound, O they were baith for me!
Before he had been gane a twelvemonth and a day,
My father brak his arm, our cow was stown away;
My mother she fell sick--my Jamie was at sea--
And Auld Robin Gray, oh! he came a-courting me.
My father cou'dna work--my mother cou'dna spin;
I toil'd day and night, but their bread I cou'dna win;
Auld Rob maintain'd them baith, and, wi' tears in his ee,
Said, "Jenny, oh! for their sakes, will you marry me?"
My heart it said na, and I looked for Jamie back;
But hard blew the winds, and his ship was a wrack:
His ship it was a wrack! Why didna Jamie dee?
Or, wherefore am I spar'd to cry out, Woe is me!
My father argued sair--my mother didna speak,
But she look'd in my face till my heart was like to break;
They gied him my hand, but my heart was in the sea;
And so Auld Robin Gray, he was gudeman to me.
I hadna been his wife, a week but only four,
When mournfu' as I sat on the stane at my door,
I saw my Jamie's ghaist--I cou'dna think it he,
Till he said, "I'm come hame, my love, to marry thee!"
O sair, sair did we greet, and mickle say of a';
Ae kiss we took, nae mair--I bad him gang awa.
I wish that I were dead, but I'm no like to dee;
For O, I am but young to cry out, Woe is me!
I gang like a ghaist, and I carena much to spin,
I darena think o' Jamie, for that wad be a sin.
But I will do my best a gude wife aye to be,
For Auld Robin Gray, oh! he is sae kind to me,
THE CONTINUATION.
The wintry days grew lang, my tears they were a' spent;
May be it was despair I fancied was content.
They said my cheek was wan; I cou'dna look to see--
For, oh! the wee bit glass, my Jamie gaed it me.
My father he was sad, my mother dull and wae;
But that which griev'd me maist, it was Auld Robin Gray;
Though ne'er a word he said, his cheek said mair than a',
It wasted like a brae o'er which the torrents fa'.
He gaed into his bed--nae physic wad he take;
And oft he moan'd and said, "It's better for her sake."
At length he look'd upon me, and call'd me his "ain dear,"
And beckon'd round the neighbors, as if his hour drew near.
"I've wrong'd her sair," he said, "but ken't the truth o'er late;
It's grief for that alone that hastens now my date;
But a' is for the best, since death will shortly free
A young and faithful heart that was ill matched wi' me.
"I loo'd, and sought to win her for mony a lang day;
I had her parents' favor, but still she said me nay;
I knew na Jamie's luve; and oh! it's sair to tell--
To force her to be mine, I steal'd her cow mysel!
"O what cared I for Crummie! I thought of naught but thee,
I thought it was the cow stood 'twixt my luve and me.
While she maintain'd ye a' was you not heard to say,
That you would never marry wi' Auld Robin Gray?
"But sickness in the house, and hunger at the door,
My bairn gied me her hand, although her heart was sore.
I saw her heart was sore--why did I take her hand?
That was a sinfu' deed! to blast a bonnie land.
"It was na very lang ere a' did come to light;
For Jamie he came back, and Jenny's cheek grew white.
My spouse's cheek grew white, but true she was to me;
Jenny! I saw it a'--and oh, I'm glad to dee!
"Is Jamie come?" he said, and Jamie by us stood--
"Ye loo each other weel--oh, let me do some good!
I gie you a', young man--my houses, cattle, kine,
And the dear wife hersel, that ne'er should hae been mine."
We kiss'd his clay-cold hands--a smile came o'er his face;
"He's pardon'd," Jamie said, "before the throne o' grace.
Oh, Jenny! see that smile--forgi'en I'm sure is he,
Wha could withstand temptation when hoping to win thee?"
The days at first were dowie; but what was sad and sair,
While tears were in my ee, I kent mysel nae mair;
For, oh! my heart was light as ony bird that flew,
And, wae as a' thing was, it had a kindly hue.
But sweeter shines the sun than e'er he shone before,
For now I'm Jamie's wife, and what need I say more?
We hae a wee bit bairn--the auld folks by the fire--
And Jamie, oh! he loo's me up to my heart's desire.
[Illustration]
THE SUMMER TOURIST.--SCENERY OF THE FRANCONIA MOUNTAINS, N.H.
BY WILLIAM M'LEOD.
The approach of summer will turn the thoughts and steps of thousands
toward those sections of our wide country whose picturesque beauty
makes them ample amends for comparative sterility of soil and poverty
of population. New Hampshire, with due allowance for the exaggerations
of patriotism, may well be styled the Switzerland of America; and,
although they are inferior in magnificent sublimity to the regal
Alps, few tourists through the Northern States would leave the White
Mountains unvisited.
Though it forms part of this great chain, the inhabitants of the
Franconia range, jealously claim for their hills a separate name,
character, and interest, having no connection with the more eminent
firm of Washington, Adams, and Co. Like the latter, the Franconians
boast a chief to their clan--_Mount Lafayette_, a "_Notch_," and other
important features of a distinct and complete establishment, which
combine to make it no mean rival to the great _Patriot Group_. We
propose, with pen and pencil, to make a brief excursion through these
picturesque localities.
These remarkable scenes are chiefly comprised within the extraordinary
defile, or "_notch_," formed by the Franconia Mountains for a
distance of five miles. The northern and southern approaches to this
singular pass, have their peculiar advantages. Coming from the south,
the tourist, from a very great distance, sees the outlines of its
grander features rising far above the beautiful valley he follows;
but, perhaps, this long and constantly visible approach, interesting
as it is, begets a familiarity that weakens the impression of their
sublimity when he finally confronts their more palpable magnificence.
Not so with the approach from the north, where the views being more
abrupt, shifting, and at times wholly concealed, their effect is the
more startling upon the traveler, brought suddenly before them. Thus,
in approaching the Franconia Notch from Bethlehem, we shall find the
slow ascent of the dull steep hill eastward of that village, to be an
excellent preparative for the superb prospect that bursts upon our
vision, on reaching its top. Across the Franconia Valley lying beneath
us, we see the lofty summits, forming the "Notch," "swell from the
vale," and receding in peaks of picturesque irregularity--
"like giants stand
To sentinel enchanted land!"
There is no general view in the White Mountains equal to this distant
prospect of the Franconia Notch, in respect to picturesque majesty
of outline and massive breadth. Descending into the valley, our road
suddenly turns eastward, and as we begin the opposite slow ascent to
the _Notch_, the view before us assumes a finely-grouped concentrated
character--losing that _diffuseness_ so destructive of picturesqueness
and point in the American landscape generally. This scene is attempted
in the accompanying sketch, showing Mount Lafayette filling the centre
of the view, the irregular peaks of the _Notch_ on the right, while
below, the eye is cheered with the snug farm-house by the road-side,
and other rural accessories charmingly arranged for the artist's
purpose.
[Illustration: FRANCONIA NOTCH.]
Keeping the grander points of this fine prospect before us as
we continue our ascent, every step reveals more distinctly the
volcano-like crest and seamed bosom of Lafayette, than which not
Washington himself, though five hundred feet taller, presents a form
of more august character. Lafayette is not only distinguished over
his fellows by his height, but also by the rocky bareness of his
peaked summit, that descends with converging rows of ravines and
hemlock-topped cliffs into an immense verdant basin presented toward
us. In fine weather, the dry rocks of these ravines shine like bars
of silver, and after heavy rains they glisten with the torrents
disappearing into the vast shadowy basin below.
No tourist that has made this ascent to the _Notch_ during the
dog-days, can forget the grateful change of the hot, treeless road,
for the shady coolness of the wooded avenue he enters at the top,
and through whose green twilight his now recruited steeds drag him
merrily for two miles to the _Lafayette House_ at the entrance of the
Notch. Just before reaching the hotel, we see through the fine birchen
groves, skirting our avenue, _Echo Lake_, a small sheet of water of
great depth and transparency, the mountainous sides of which clothed
with an unbroken forest of dreary hemlock, deprive it of all beauty of
_setting_, or of interest aside from its marvelously distinct echoes.
The Franconia _Notch_ hardly deserves more than the name of a
_pass_--even for its narrowest point near the Lafayette House,
where it is about a quarter of a mile in width. It has no such
_jaws_--projecting _tusks_, and other palpable signs of violent
disrupture, as make the expressive title of "_Notch_" so fitly applied
to its great rival in the White Mountains. Still its features are
distinctive, and grandly _unique_, and though not so sublimely rugged
as those of its rival, they are infinitely more picturesque, and this
peculiar difference of character extends to all the scenery lying
within the two rival regions. But the wonder and pride of the Franconia
Notch is the "_Old Man_" of the Profile Mountain, that forms its
western wall, and which, ascending on the north side with a gradual
wooded slope, to a height of two thousand feet, abruptly terminates in
a perpendicular rocky precipice, five hundred feet high, which in a
bare "granite front" extends along the eastern face of the mountain for
two miles. An exquisite sheet of water, in size and purity similar to
Echo Lake, lies between the mountain and our road, from which through a
clearing, we have an admirable view of the mountain, rising wave-like
from its lake--its rich rolling groves, overtopped by a pinnacle of
rock, like the comb of a breaking billow, and in the fantastic outlines
of that granite crest, juts out as perfect an outline of an _old man's
head_, as human hand itself could execute!
[Illustration: PROFILE MOUNTAIN.]
Every tourist through the White Mountains knows the propensity of the
natives to increase the interest of their region, by pointing out all
sorts of fancied zoological likenesses in their rocks and mountains--so
that before he sees the "_Old Man_," he will be apt to rank him, in
advance, with the facial pretensions he has already seen. But, no!
this time the artist has made a hit, and the likeness is admirable.
There is nothing vague, imperfect, or disproportioned about him. You
are not forced to _imagine_ a brow to the nose, or go in search of a
chin to support the mouth. They are all there!--a bent, heavy brow, not
stern, but earnest--a straight, sharp nose--lips thin and with the very
weakness of extreme senility in their pinched-up lines--and a chin,
long and massive, thrown forward with a certain air of obstinacy, that
completes the character of the likeness!
The mass of rock forming this extraordinary profile is said to be
eighty feet in height; is fifteen hundred feet above the lake, and
about half a mile from a spectator in the road--from which point it
appears to be at the top of the mountain though it is really five
hundred feet below the summit. The "Old Man" does not change his
countenance under the closest scrutiny of the spy-glass, constantly
leveled at him by the starers "beneath his notice." Under such
inspection the likeness loses none of its human character, though
the cheeks of the veteran appear woefully cut-up and scarred. But
it seems rude to peer thus impertinently into the wrinkles and
"crow's-feet" of his grim visage that has faced, perhaps, centuries
of sun and tempest. Nor is it advisable to take your first look at
him when the sun lights up the chasms of his granite cheek, and the
cavernous mystery of his bent brow. Go to him when in the solemn
light of evening the mountain heaves up from the darkening lake its
vast wave of luxuriant foliage--sit on one of those rocks by the
road-side, and look, if you can, without awe, at the Granite Face hung
against the luminous sky--human in its lineaments--supernatural in
size and position--weird-like in its shadowy mystery, but its sharp
outline wearing an expression of mortal sadness that gives it the
most fascinating interest! If this singular profile has existed long
enough, it must have been an object of veneration to the aborigines.
Mr. Oakes, in his _White Mountain Scenery_, says it was first publicly
made known to the whites only as far back as forty years ago. It is
curious to observe the odd changes of the profile, as we advance or
recede along the road. Now it resembles an old woman--now it flattens
like a negro's face, and now its nose presents an "eagle-beak," like
the Duke of Wellington's! A peculiar feature of beauty in the Profile
Mountain is the rare luxuriance of its forest of birch and beech, with
an occasional hemlock rising spire-like from its groves. The "Old Man"
has a remarkable echo, with which (after a becoming deliberate pause)
he will _retort_ every appeal, grave, quizzical, and sentimental that
may be shouted up to him by the gay idlers on the lake side.
[Illustration: THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN.]
On the opposite side of the Notch, and immediately overhanging the
hotel, a tremendous cliff is separated from the crest of the mountain
by a huge chasm, and with its numerous jagged and splintered rocks,
seems every moment about to topple down. This is the famous _Eagle
Cliff_--so called from a pair of eagles having made their habitation
a few seasons since on its topmost crag; and a prouder eyry for that
majestic bird can not be imagined. It is this noble cliff, with its
adjacent craggy peaks, that furnishes that picturesque irregularity
of outline we have already described as peculiar to the Franconia
Notch, and which is visible for such a great distance to the traveler
coming either from the north or south. The latter approach, however,
furnishes the finest view of Eagle Cliff. When within a mile of it, its
stupendous crags fill up the centre of the view above the road before
us, and the luxuriant birches on either side form a graceful framework,
whose light airy boughs contrast finely with the massive riven cliff
they inclose. In the evening, when the sun's rays are withdrawn from
the valley below, and the rosy light falls alone on its rocky crags,
vividly relieved by the broad shadows of its chasm, Eagle Cliff
forms indeed a worthy _pendant_ to the "Old Man" over the way. The
accompanying sketch is taken from this point in the road, to the left
of which is seen a portion of the exquisite lake "sweetly slumbering"
between these magnificent mountains.
But the glories of the Notch are not fully seen, unless the tourist
visit it when that unrivaled colorist, Jack Frost, has lavished upon
its foliage the hues of his gorgeous pallet--their tempered brilliancy
glowing through the voluptuous haze of autumn! What a singular contrast
the opposite sides of the Notch then present! Eagle Cliff allows no
motley-dressed dandies to vegetate upon his stern crags--exclusively
a mass of granite and sombre evergreens; and the hemlock-covered
eastern wall into which he extends, has its funereal vestments only
here and there _slashed_ with stripes of bright yellow birches that
mark the mountain torrents and land-slides. But Frost, the artist,
has a fairer field for his brush on the opposite side, where the rich
rolling groves of the Profile Mountain present a bravely variegated
mantle descending from the very neck of the "Old Man," who, with grim
visage, unmoved by so rare "a coat of many colors," seems as indisposed
as ever to bend down that obstinate chin and take a look at himself
and his finery in the lake lying like a mirror at his feet! And even
after the glory of the leaf has passed, it is well worth a trip to see
these peaks in their cloudy costume, when the wind howls through the
defile with a force shaking the hemlock "moored in the rifted rock,"
but not silencing the muffled roar of the unseen mountain torrents. Nor
as one of the attractions of a late season must be omitted the chance
of seeing Lafayette peering with whitened head over his clansmen's
shoulders, while perhaps the defile reposes in groves of bright and
brilliant foliage. But in spite of splendid foliage, and fresh,
bracing weather, but few tourists visit the Franconia Notch when in
its heightened glory. The artist, the wood-cutter, and the _partridge_
have it chiefly to themselves, and so "mine host" of the Lafayette
House shuts up his best rooms, brings from one lake his oars, from the
other his swivel, and that other echo-waking instrument--the long _tin
horn_, now "hangs silent on the wall," until the hot weather of next
summer brings the crowds of travelers who know not _when_ to travel.
This scant attendance of tourists during the finest season of the
year may be attributed to a false impression that because this Notch
is confessedly one of the coldest spots in America in winter, it must
be disagreeably cold during the early autumn. This is a mistake; the
weather there being quite as mild till the close of October as it is in
the open lower country.
[Illustration: EAGLE CLIFF.]
Proceeding southwardly through the Notch, we find its precipitous walls
gradually recede and break up into gently-sloping summits, which, at
the distance of five miles, terminate the defile, and debouch into a
wide valley, whose great descent proves the great elevation of the
defile we are now threading. For two miles we keep in view the Profile
Mountain, whose eastern front resembles the Hudson River _Palisades_
on a gigantic scale. Nothing can be more imposing than the front it
presents--half of it a sheer precipice of bare granite, seamed, ribbed,
and riven in every fantastic shape, resting on a sloping mass of broken
rock, amid which flourish sturdy rows of evergreens, in spite of the
showers of granite from the crumbling crags above--and which foretell
the destruction that will inevitably overtake the lineaments of the
"Old Man" long before "mighty oceans cease to roar." The annexed
sketch will convey some idea of this stupendous front of the Profile
Mountain, and also of the best general view of the Notch. which
last, unfortunately, does not from any point present its features in
sufficient concentration to do justice to their magnitude in detail.
We are now separated from the Profile Mountain by the _Pemigewasset_--a
beautiful brook flowing from the lake at the feet of the "Old Man,"
whose tripping Indian name, though of unknown meaning, in sound, well
describes its course of cascades, with which it follows us through
the whole length of the defile--now dancing along our path, and now
plunging again into the "listening woods," where it "singeth a quiet
tune." Four miles from the Notch, it suddenly rushes out to the
very edge of our road, and after foaming over several rocky ledges,
collects its torn waters, and in a solid jet piercing a narrow fissure
of granite, flings itself over into a deep pool, whose extraordinary
shape and structure have constituted it the most charming curiosity of
these mountains, under the name of _The Basin_. This singular pool is
about twenty feet wide, and is inclosed in a circular basin of granite,
one half of which rising to a height of fifteen feet, projects over
the imprisoned waters. Undoubtedly the way in which the solid jet of
the cascade strikes the side of the basin, giving a strong whirling
motion to the pool, has gradually excavated the rock in its present
regular, mason-like shape. Graceful birches bend over and embower
this exquisite pool, that never fails to elicit bursts of delight
from visitors first gazing upon its transparent water of the most
brilliant emerald, shading off into an intense blue-black, where the
cascade strikes its surface. Its greatest depth is about fifteen feet
ordinarily, but nearly all the bed of the pool is distinctly visible
through its indescribable emerald purity, although its surface is
constantly agitated with tiny wavelets. Nature never fashioned such a
darling nook as this exquisite Basin, in which Diana might have bathed,
and issued purer from its transparent tide! The water escapes from the
pool by another narrow fissure in the lower part of its granite rim,
a projecting mass of which is said, by the ingenious Mr. Oakes, to
resemble the half-immersed "_leg of some Hydropathic Titan_!" There
are not wanting those who carry the fancied resemblance still further.
At present the delicate beauty and graceful contour of the Basin are
impaired and obscured somewhat by a clumsy foot-bridge flung across its
curved margin, which, it is to be hoped, the next freshet will sweep
away; and in anticipation of such wished-for fate to the unsightly and
unnecessary structure, it is omitted in the annexed sketch.
[Illustration: EASTERN FRONT OF PROFILE MOUNTAIN.]
A mile below the Basin, and five miles from the Notch, we come to
the termination of the defile of the Franconia Mountains. At this
point the _Flume House_, kept by Mr. Taft, offers the most admirable
accommodations to those who wish to linger in this noble region.
From the hotel the tourist can enjoy a magnificent review of the
majestic summits he has just passed--the Profile Mountain filling
the left of the view with one broad rounded mass, while the right is
broken up with a series of pointed peaks, whereof Mount Lafayette and
Eagle Cliff are duly prominent. This view of the Notch often assumes
strange characteristics. Frequently in stormy weather, when the
clouds elsewhere are, flying swiftly, "like cars for gods to travel
by," the masses of vapor caught in the "Notch" seem too entangled to
escape--nay, seem to lose their very motion between those peaks, while
their brethren overhead are scudding past. And often, when the Notch
is completely enshrouded in motionless cloudy gloom, we may see the
landscape and the heavens north and south of the Notch, reposing in
cloudless calm--the "bridal of the earth and sky!" By stepping to the
south piazza of Mr. Taft's hotel, the tourist meets a prospect wholly
unlike the stern grandeur he has left. He looks down upon the valley
into which the defile debouches, and sees its gently sloping hills and
glimmering meadows receding in airy perspective, and melting in a strip
of tenderest azure at a distance of forty miles. The effect of this
beautiful vista upon eyes long fatigued with frowning crags and shadowy
ravines is inexpressibly cheering.
[Illustration: THE BASIN.]
Within easy distance of the Flume House we find the three remaining
curiosities of the Franconia Mountains. These are the _Pool_, the
_Cascade_, and the _Flume_. The first of these is formed by another and
heavier cascade on the Pemigewasset, and is but an enlarged idea of the
_Basin_, with considerable grandeur, but with none of the fantastic
picturesque loveliness of the latter. The _Pool_ is very wonderful,
but it does not win our affection as does the _Basin_, whose exquisite
beauties sink with peculiar interest into the traveler's heart that
will, long after his return to the grave duties of town, be haunted
with the music of its cascade, be illumined with the emerald flash
of its crystal waters, and be linked with the memory of the pleasant
chance-acquaintances made within the influence of its bewitching
loveliness. Will those whose eyes have been gladdened by this choice
work of nature, deem our eulogy aught but well-merited enthusiasm?
Crossing the Pemigewasset, and following up one of its little mountain
tributaries, we come to the foot of a steep slope some two hundred feet
in height, the smooth granite face of which has been washed bare to
a width of forty feet by the violent freshets of spring. At ordinary
times, merely a thin rivulet slides noiselessly over the slope,
here and there leaving little pools whirling round in the shallow
basins scooped out of the smooth granite. This is the _Cascade_--only
deserving the name when a freshet occurs, and then its heavy volume of
water is said to be fearfully sublime, bringing down ice and gigantic
trees which, catching in the margin of the smooth bed, are often flung
up on end by the force of the current, and momentarily standing erect,
then plunge headlong and broken down the terrible declivity. When the
stream is low nothing can be gentler than this singular granite slope,
fringed with trees. Those ascending to the _Flume_, will be glad to
rest awhile on a rustic bench near the top of the slope, and refresh
themselves with a draught from the cool stream _sliding_ noiselessly
past.
Above the Cascade, the stream is almost hidden among vast rocks and
fallen trees of a ravine, becoming deeper, larger, and damper with
every step. Crossing and recrossing its numerous little waterfalls by
means of rustic bridges, decayed logs, and rocks dripping and hung with
the richest moss, we suddenly emerge from the dense wood, and stand in
front of a stupendous narrow ravine which, from its fancied resemblance
to the _flume_ of a mill, has acquired its well-known name.
The _Flume_ is about two hundred yards in extent, its greatest height
is sixty or seventy feet, and has a general width of about twenty feet.
Its smooth sides have been excavated with the most singular evenness,
and its bed is littered up with rocky rubbish, over which brawls
the mountain brook that leaps into sight at the further end of this
remarkable corridor. At that end we find the most wonderful feature of
the _Flume_, for there it suddenly contracts to a width of not more
than ten feet, and in its jaws holds suspended over the cascade a huge
rock twelve feet in height, and which, being undoubtedly a _boulder_,
has rolled from above into the chasm, and there been held by its slight
excess of breadth--not more than _two inches_ at the utmost.
[Illustration: THE FLUME.]
There being neither trees, nor shrubs, nor herbage of any sort, save
the luxuriant mosses nourished by the eternal moisture, to break the
long vista of the Flume, it presents a very novel appearance to the
visitor issuing from the dense wood below, and catching a sudden and
complete view of its steep, dripping walls, and rocky bed, terminating
with the suspended boulder and the Cascade flashing underneath; while
the tall hemlocks above the cliffs, shut out all save a small patch
of blue sky. Ordinarily the stream is very low, and visitors can not
only pick their way over rocks and logs to the foot of the Cascade,
but can clamber over the granite ledges and pass under the suspended
boulder that looks as if at any moment it might slip through upon
them. This feat of passing under the rock is always a very _damp_
one, though during the season, troops of damsels may be seen bravely
accomplishing it, scornful of the rock above and the wet below--and
doing it too without the confident freedom of the _Bloomer dress_! As
the Flume is little penetrated by the sun's rays, the eternal moisture
of its depths makes it advisable for those disposed to linger in them,
to take abundant extra clothing; fur during the warmest summer-day,
when an artist issues from its damp walls after a long siege of its
curiosities with canvas and colors, he looks as if he were rehearsing
the favorite circus-feat of throwing off multitudinous jackets and
vests! By following up the ravine beyond the suspended rock, the
visitor can ascend the cliffs overhanging the Flume; and if he or she
have nerve enough, a large hemlock fallen across the chasm affords
spacious footing whence a fine bird's-eye view of the ravine may be
enjoyed. In winter and in spring the Flume is said to present a scene
of fearful interest--now bearded with icicles, and anon, from melting
snows, filled with a torrent of ice and fallen timber crashing in
thunder through its jaws, to be launched more freely over the broad
slope of the Cascade below. Until very recently this extraordinary
ravine was wholly unknown, and it is to be regretted that we have no
authentic chronicle of the gradual cutting of the Flume by the action
of its stream; and also when and by what changes the suspended boulder
has been caught in its present singular position.
[Illustration: VIEW ON THE PEMIGEWASSET.]
We can not recross the Pemigewasset, on our return from the last great
_lion_ of the Franconia Mountains, without another notice of that
exquisite mountain-stream. Though from its being so _over-fished_,
it now holds out few inducements to enthusiasts in trouting, yet the
prospect of having even "a glorious nibble," should tempt the angler
to explore its beauties--its picturesque cascades, and deep, slumbrous
pools above and below the bridge leading to the Flume. The accompanying
sketch shows one of these numerous fairy nooks, overlooked by _Mount
Liberty_--the fine peak directly opposite the Flume House.
This sketch of the attractions of the great Franconia Notch must not be
closed without mention of the view from Mount Lafayette, considered by
many far more interesting than that from Mount Washington; for, though
less extensive than the latter, it embraces a far more picturesque and
beautiful region lying distinctly under the eye. Hitherto this noble
panorama has not been generally enjoyed, owing to the difficulty of
its only mode of ascent--on foot. The coming season, however, will
supply tourists with two bridle-roads, from the Lafayette House and
the Flume House, at both of which well-kept hotels, every convenience
in the way of horses and vehicles can always be had for the purpose
of visiting the various curiosities scattered along this romantic
defile. Throughout the five miles of the Franconia pass, there
is not, excepting these two hotels at either end, a single human
dwelling. The growing season is too short here to allow any thing to
be raised on the patches of easy soil dotting the defile, that would,
therefore, present, were it not for the public houses and the passing
stage-coaches loaded with tourists, a scene of primeval nature and
solitude. Would that its stupendous scenery were linked with mighty
incident, and that its rare loveliness were clothed with the sacred
vestment of traditionary lore! But alas! its magnificent grandeur
and picturesque beauty, so fitted to figure in Indian romance or the
settler's legend is sadly deficient in the hallowing charm of historic
or poetic association!
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.[1]
BY JOHN S. C. ABBOTT.
MARENGO.
[1] Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852,
by Harper and Brothers, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of
the Southern District of New York.
Napoleon, finding his proffers of peace rejected by England with
contumely and scorn, and declined by Austria, now prepared, with his
wonted energy, to repel the assaults of the allies. As he sat in his
cabinet at the Tuileries, the thunders of their unrelenting onset
came rolling in upon his ear from all the frontiers of France. The
hostile fleets of England swept the channel, utterly annihilating the
commerce of the Republic, landing regiments of armed emigrants upon her
coasts, furnishing money and munitions of war to rouse the partisans
of the Bourbons to civil conflict, and throwing balls and shells
into every unprotected town. On the northern frontier, Marshal Kray,
came thundering down, through the Black Forest, to the banks of the
Rhine, with a mighty host of 150,000 men, like locust legions, to pour
into all the northern provinces of France. Artillery of the heaviest
calibre and a magnificent array of cavalry accompanied this apparently
invincible army. In Italy, Melas, another Austrian marshal, with
140,000 men, aided by the whole force of the British navy, was rushing
upon the eastern and southern borders of the Republic. The French
troops, disheartened by defeat, had fled before their foes over the
Alps, or were eating their horses and their boots in the cities where
they were besieged. From almost every promontory on the coast of the
Republic, washed by the Channel, or the Mediterranean, the eye could
discern English frigates, black and threatening, holding all France in
a state of blockade.
One always finds a certain pleasure in doing that which he can do well.
Napoleon was fully conscious of his military genius. He had, in behalf
of bleeding humanity, implored peace in vain. He now, with alacrity and
with joy, roused himself to inflict blows that should be felt upon his
multitudinous enemies. With such tremendous energy did he do this, that
he received from his antagonists the most complimentary sobriquet of
the _one hundred thousand men_. Wherever Napoleon made his appearance
in the field, his presence alone was considered equivalent to that
force.
The following proclamation rang like a trumpet charge over the hills
and valleys of France. "Frenchmen! You have been anxious for peace.
Your government has desired it with still greater ardor. Its first
efforts, its most constant wishes, have been for its attainment. The
English ministry has exposed the secret of its iniquitous policy.
It wishes to dismember France, to destroy its commerce, and either
to erase it from the map of Europe, or to degrade it to a secondary
power. England is willing to embroil all the nations of the Continent
in hostility with each other, that she may enrich herself with their
spoils, and gain possession of the trade of the world. For the
attainment of this object she scatters her gold, becomes prodigal of
her promises, and multiplies her intrigues."
At this call all the martial spirit of France rushed to arms. Napoleon,
supremely devoted to the welfare of the State, seemed to forget
even his own glory in the intensity of his desire to make France
victorious over her foes. With the most magnanimous superiority to
all feelings of jealousy, he raised an army of 150,000 men, the very
élite of the troops of France, the veterans of a hundred battles,
and placed them in the hands of Moreau, the only man in France who
could be called his rival. Napoleon also presented to Moreau the
plan of a campaign, in accordance with his own energy, boldness, and
genius. Its accomplishment would have added surpassing brilliance
to the reputation of Moreau. But the cautious general was afraid to
adopt it, and presented another, perhaps as safe, but one which would
produce no dazzling impression upon the imaginations of men. "Your
plan," said one, a friend of Moreau, to the First Consul, "is grander,
more decisive, even more sure. But it is not adapted to the slow
and cautious genius of the man who is to execute it. You have your
method of making war, which is superior to all others. Moreau has his
own, inferior certainly, but still excellent. Leave him to himself.
If you impose your ideas upon him, you will wound his self-love, and
disconcert him."
Napoleon, profoundly versed in the knowledge of the human heart,
promptly replied. "You are right, Moreau is not capable of grasping the
plan which I have conceived. Let him follow his own course. The plan
which he does not understand and dare not execute, I myself will carry
out, on another part of the theatre of war. What he fears to attempt on
the Rhine, I will accomplish on the Alps. The day may come when he will
regret the glory which he yields to me." These were proud and prophetic
words. Moreau was moderately victorious upon the Rhine, driving back
the invaders. The sun of Napoleon soon rose, over the field of Marengo,
in a blaze of effulgence, which paled Moreau's twinkling star into
utter obscurity. But we know not where, upon the page of history, to
find an act of more lofty generosity than this surrender of the noblest
army of the Republic to one, who considered himself, and who was deemed
by others, a rival--and thus to throw open to him the theatre of war
where apparently the richest laurels were to be won. And we know not
where to look for a deed more proudly expressive of self-confidence. "I
will give Moreau," said he by this act, "one hundred and fifty thousand
of the most brave and highly disciplined soldiers of France, the
victors of a hundred battles. I myself will take sixty thousand men,
new recruits and the fragments of regiments which remain, and with them
I will march to encounter an equally powerful enemy on a more difficult
field of warfare."
Marshal Melas had spread his vast host of one hundred and forty
thousand Austrians through all the strongholds of Italy, and was
pressing, with tremendous energy and self-confidence upon the frontiers
of France. Napoleon, instead of marching with his inexperienced troops,
two-thirds of whom had never seen a shot fired in earnest, to meet the
heads of the triumphant columns of Melas, resolved to climb the rugged
and apparently inaccessible fastnesses of the Alps, and, descending
from the clouds over pathless precipices, to fall with the sweep of
the avalanche, upon their rear. It was necessary to assemble this army
at some favorable point;--to gather in vast magazines its munitions
of war. It was necessary that this should be done in secret, lest the
Austrians, climbing to the summits of the Alps, and defending the
gorges through which the troops of Napoleon would be compelled to wind
their difficult and tortuous way, might render the passage utterly
impossible. English and Austrian spies were prompt to communicate to
the hostile powers every movement of the First Consul. Napoleon fixed
upon Dijon and its vicinity as the rendezvous of his troops. He,
however, adroitly and completely deceived his foes by ostentatiously
announcing the very plan he intended to carry into operation. Of
course, the allies thought that this was a foolish attempt to draw
their attention from the real point of attack. The more they ridiculed
the imaginary army at Dijon, the more loudly did Napoleon reiterate
his commands for battalions and magazines to be collected there.
The spies who visited Dijon, reported that but a few regiments were
assembled in that place, and that the announcement was clearly a very
weak pretense to deceive. The print shops of London and Vienna were
filled with caricatures of the army of the First Consul of Dijon. The
English especially made themselves very merry with Napoleon's grand
army to scale the Alps. It was believed that the energies of the
Republic were utterly exhausted in raising the force which was given
to Moreau. One of the caricatures represented the army as consisting
of a boy, dressed in his father's clothes, shouldering a musket, which
he could with difficulty lift, and eating a piece of gingerbread, and
an old man with one arm and a wooden leg. The artillery consisted of
a rusty blunderbuss. This derision was just what Napoleon desired.
Though dwelling in the shadow of that mysterious melancholy, which ever
enveloped his spirit, he must have enjoyed in the deep recesses of his
soul, the majestic movements of his plans.
[Illustration: Campaign of MARENGO]
On the eastern frontiers of France there surge up, from luxuriant
meadows and vine-clad fields and hill sides, the majestic ranges of
the Alps, piercing the clouds and soaring with glittering pinnacles,
into the region of perpetual ice and snow. Vast spurs of the mountains
extend on each side, opening gloomy gorges and frightful defiles,
through which foaming torrents rush impetuously, walled in by almost
precipitous cliffs, whose summits, crowned with melancholy firs, are
inaccessible to the foot of man. The principal pass over this enormous
ridge was that of the Great St. Bernard. The traveler, accompanied by
a guide, and mounted on a mule, slowly and painfully ascended a steep
and rugged path, now crossing a narrow bridge, spanning a fathomless
abyss, again creeping along the edge of a precipice, where the eagle
soared and screamed over the fir tops in the abyss below, and where
a perpendicular wall rose to giddy heights in the clouds above. The
path at times was so narrow, that it seemed that the mountain goat
could with difficulty find a foothold for its slender hoof. A false
step, or a slip upon the icy rocks would precipitate the traveler, a
mangled corpse, a thousand feet upon the fragments of granite in the
gulf beneath. As higher and higher he climbed these wild and rugged and
cloud-enveloped paths, borne by the unerring instinct of the faithful
mule, his steps were often arrested by the roar of the avalanche,
and he gazed appalled upon its resistless rush, as rocks, and trees,
and earth, and snow, and ice, swept by him with awful and resistless
desolation, far down into the dimly discerned torrents which rushed
beneath his feet. At God's bidding the avalanche fell. No precaution
could save the traveler who was in its path. He was instantly borne
to destruction, and buried where no voice but the archangel's trump
could ever reach his ear. Terrific storms of wind and snow often swept
through those bleak altitudes, blinding and smothering the traveler.
Hundreds of bodies, like pillars of ice, embalmed in snow, are now
sepulchred in those drifts, there to sleep till the fires of the last
conflagration shall have consumed their winding sheet. Having toiled
two days through such scenes of desolation and peril, the adventurous
traveler stands upon the summit of the pass, eight thousand feet above
the level of the sea, two thousand feet higher than the crest of Mount
Washington, our own mountain monarch. This summit, over which the path
winds, consists of a small level plain, surrounded by mountains of snow
of still higher elevation.
The scene here presented is inexpressibly gloomy and appalling. Nature
in these wild regions assumes her most severe and sombre aspect. As one
emerges from the precipitous and craggy ascent, upon this Valley of
Desolation, as it is emphatically called, the Convent of St. Bernard
presents itself to the view. This cheerless abode, the highest spot of
inhabited ground in Europe, has been tenanted, for more than a thousand
years, by a succession of joyless and self-denying monks, who, in that
frigid retreat of granite and ice, endeavor to serve their Maker, by
rescuing bewildered travelers from the destruction with which they are
ever threatened to be overwhelmed by the storms, which battle against
them. In the middle of this ice-bound valley, lies a lake, clear, dark,
and cold, whose depths, even in midsummer, reflect the eternal glaciers
which soar sublimely around. The descent to the plains of Italy is
even more precipitous and dangerous than the ascent from the green
pastures of France. No vegetation adorns these dismal and storm-swept
cliffs of granite and of ice. Even the pinion of the eagle fails in
its rarified air, and the chamois ventures not to climb its steep and
slippery crags. No human beings are ever to be seen on these bleak
summits, except the few shivering travelers, who tarry for an hour to
receive the hospitality of the convent, and the hooded monks, wrapped
in thick and coarse garments, with their staves and their dogs, groping
through the storms of sleet and snow. Even the wood which burns with
frugal faintness on their hearths, is borne, in painful burdens, up the
mountain sides, upon the shoulders of the monks.
Such was the barrier which Napoleon intended to surmount, that he might
fall upon the rear of the Austrians, who were battering down the walls
of Genoa, where Massena was besieged, and who were thundering, flushed
with victory, at the very gates of Nice. Over this wild mountain pass,
where the mule could with difficulty tread, and where no wheel had
ever rolled, or by any possibility could roll, Napoleon contemplated
transporting an army of sixty thousand men, with ponderous artillery
and tons of cannon balls, and baggage, and all the bulky munitions of
war. England and Austria laughed the idea to scorn. The achievement
of such an enterprise was apparently impossible. Napoleon, however,
was as skillful in the arrangement of the minutest details, as in the
conception of the grandest combinations. Though he resolved to take
the mass of his army, forty thousand strong, across the pass of the
Great St. Bernard, yet to distract the attention of the Austrians,
he arranged also to send small divisions across the passes of Saint
Gothard, Little St. Bernard, and Mount Cenis. He would thus accumulate
suddenly, and to the utter amazement of the enemy, a body of sixty-five
thousand men upon the plains of Italy. This force, descending, like an
apparition from the clouds, in the rear of the Austrian army, headed by
Napoleon, and cutting off all communication with Austria, might indeed
strike a panic into the hearts of the assailants of France.
The troops were collected in various places in the vicinity of Dijon,
ready at a moment's warning to assemble at the point of rendezvous, and
with a rush to enter the defile. Immense magazines of wheat, biscuit,
and oats had been noiselessly collected in different places. Large sums
of specie had been forwarded, to hire the services of every peasant,
with his mule, who inhabited the valleys among the mountains. Mechanic
shops, as by magic, suddenly rose along the path, well supplied with
skillful artisans, to repair all damages, to dismount the artillery,
to divide the gun-carriages and the baggage-wagons into fragments,
that they might be transported, on the backs of men and mules, over
the steep and rugged way. For the ammunition a vast number of small
boxes were prepared, which could easily be packed upon the mules. A
second company of mechanics, with camp forges, had been provided to
cross the mountain with the first division, and rear their shops upon
the plain on the other side, to mend the broken harness, to reconstruct
the carriages, and remount the pieces. On each side of the mountain a
hospital was established and supplied with every comfort for the sick
and the wounded. The foresight of Napoleon extended even to sending,
at the very last moment, to the convent upon the summit, an immense
quantity of bread, cheese, and wine. Each soldier, to his surprise,
was to find, as he arrived at the summit, exhausted with Herculean
toil, a generous slice of bread and cheese with a refreshing cup of
wine, presented to him by the monks. All these minute details Napoleon
arranged, while at the same time he was doing the work of a dozen
energetic men, in re-organizing the whole structure of society in
France. If toil pays for greatness, Napoleon purchased the renown which
he attained. And yet his body and his mind were so constituted that
this sleepless activity was to him a pleasure.
The appointed hour at last arrived. On the 7th of May, 1800, Napoleon
entered his carriage at the Tuileries, saying, "Good-by, my dear
Josephine! I must go to Italy. I shall not forget you, and I will not
be absent long." At a word, the whole majestic array was in motion.
Like a meteor he swept over France. He arrived at the foot of the
mountains. The troops and all the paraphernalia of war were on the
spot at the designated hour. Napoleon immediately appointed a very
careful inspection. Every foot soldier and every horseman passed before
his scrutinizing eye. If a shoe was ragged, or a jacket torn, or a
musket injured, the defect was immediately repaired. His glowing words
inspired the troops with the ardor which was burning in his own bosom.
The genius of the First Consul was infused into the mighty host. Each
man exerted himself to the utmost. The eye of their chief was every
where, and his cheering voice roused the army to almost superhuman
exertions. Two skillful engineers had been sent to explore the path,
and to do what could be done in the removal of obstructions. They
returned with an appalling recital of the apparently insurmountable
difficulties of the way. "Is it _possible_," inquired Napoleon, "to
cross the pass?" "Perhaps," was the hesitating reply, "it is within
the limits of _possibility_." "Forward, then," was the energetic
response. Each man was required to carry, besides his arms, food for
several days and a large quantity of cartridges. As the sinuosities
of the precipitous path could only be trod in single file, the heavy
wheels were taken from the carriages, and each, slung upon a pole, was
borne by two men. The task for the foot soldiers was far less than
for the horsemen. The latter clambered up on foot, dragging their
horses after them. The descent was very dangerous. The dragoon, in
the steep and narrow path, was compelled to walk before his horse.
At the least stumble he was exposed to being plunged headlong into
the abysses yawning before him. In this way many horses and several
riders perished. To transport the heavy cannon and howitzers pine
logs were split in the centre, the parts hollowed out, and the guns
sunk into the grooves. A long string of mules, in single file, were
attached to the ponderous machines of war, to drag them up the slippery
ascent. The mules soon began to fail, and then the men, with hearty
good-will, brought their own shoulders into the harness--a hundred men
to a single gun. Napoleon offered the peasants two hundred dollars
for the transportation of a twelve-pounder over the pass. The love of
gain was not strong enough to lure them to such tremendous exertions.
But Napoleon's fascination over the hearts of his soldiers was a more
powerful impulse. With shouts of encouragement they toiled at the
cables, successive bands of a hundred men relieving each other every
half hour. High on those craggy steeps, gleaming through the mist,
the glittering bands of armed men, like phantoms appeared. The eagle
wheeled and screamed beneath their feet. The mountain goat, affrighted
by the unwonted spectacle, bounded away, and paused in bold relief upon
the cliff to gaze upon the martial array which so suddenly had peopled
the solitude.
[Illustration: DRAWING A GUN OVER GREAT ST. BERNARD.]
When they approached any spot of very especial difficulty the trumpets
sounded the charge, which re-echoed, with sublime reverberations, from
pinnacle to pinnacle of rock and ice. Animated by these bugle notes,
the soldiers strained every nerve as if rushing upon the foe. Napoleon
offered to these bands the same reward which he had promised to the
peasants. But to a man, they refused the gold. They had imbibed the
spirit of their chief, his enthusiasm, and his proud superiority to all
mercenary motives. "We are not toiling for money," said they, "but for
your approval, and to share your glory."
Napoleon with his wonderful tact had introduced a slight change into
the artillery service, which was productive of immense moral results.
The gun carriages had heretofore been driven by mere wagoners, who,
being considered not as soldiers, but as servants, and sharing not in
the glory of victory, were uninfluenced by any sentiment of honor.
At the first approach of danger, they were ready to cut their traces
and gallop from the field, leaving their cannon in the hands of the
enemy. Napoleon said, "The cannoneer who brings his piece into action,
performs as valuable a service as the cannoneer who works it. He
runs the same danger, and requires the same moral stimulus, which is
the sense of honor." He therefore converted the artillery drivers
into soldiers, and clothed them in the uniform of their respective
regiments. They constituted twelve thousand horsemen who were animated
with as much pride in carrying their pieces into action, and in
bringing them off with rapidity and safety, as the gunners felt in
loading, directing, and discharging them. It was now the great glory
of these men to take care of their guns. They loved, tenderly, the
merciless monsters. They lavished caresses and terms of endearment
upon the glittering, polished, death-dealing brass. The heart of man
is a strange enigma. Even when most degraded it needs something to
love. These blood-stained soldiers, brutalized by vice, amidst all the
horrors of battle, lovingly fondled the murderous machines of war,
responding to the appeal "call me pet names, dearest." The unrelenting
gun was the stern cannoneer's lady love. He kissed it with unwashed,
mustached lip. In rude and rough devotion he was ready to die rather
than abandon the only object of his idolatrous homage. Consistently
he baptized the life-devouring monster with blood. Affectionately he
named it Mary, Emma, Lizzie. In crossing the Alps, dark night came on
as some cannoneers were floundering through drifts of snow, toiling at
their gun. They would not leave the gun alone in the cold storm to seek
for themselves a dry bivouac; but, like brothers guarding a sister,
they threw themselves, for the night, upon the bleak and frozen snow,
by its side. It was the genius of Napoleon which thus penetrated these
mysterious depths of the human soul, and called to his aid those mighty
energies. "It is nothing but imagination," said one once to Napoleon.
"_Nothing but imagination!_" he rejoined. "_Imagination rules the
world._"
When they arrived at the summit each soldier found, to his surprise and
joy, the abundant comforts which Napoleon's kind care had provided. One
would have anticipated there a scene of terrible confusion. To feed
an army of forty thousand hungry men is not a light undertaking. Yet
every thing was so carefully arranged, and the influence of Napoleon
so boundless, that not a soldier left the ranks. Each man received his
slice of bread and cheese, and quaffed his cup of wine, and passed on.
It was a point of honor for no one to stop. Whatever obstructions were
in the way were to be at all hazards surmounted, that the long file,
extending nearly twenty miles, might not be thrown into confusion. The
descent was more perilous than the ascent. But fortune seemed to smile.
The sky was clear, the weather delightful, and in four days the whole
army was reassembled on the plains of Italy.
Napoleon had sent Berthier forward to receive the division, and to
superintend all necessary repairs, while he himself remained to press
forward the mighty host. He was the last man to cross the mountains.
Seated upon a mule, with a young peasant for his guide, slowly and
thoughtfully he ascended those silent solitudes. He was dressed in
the gray great coat which he always wore. Art has pictured him as
bounding up the cliff, proudly mounted on a prancing charger. But truth
presents him in an attitude more simple and more sublime. Even the
young peasant who acted as his guide was entirely unconscious of the
distinguished rank of the plain traveler whose steps he was conducting.
Much of the way Napoleon was silent, abstracted in thoughts. And yet
he found time for human sympathy. He drew from his young and artless
guide the secrets of his heart. The young peasant was sincere and
virtuous. He loved a fair maid among the mountains. She loved him. It
was his heart's great desire to have her for his own. He was poor and
had neither house nor land to support a family. Napoleon struggling
with all his energies against combined England and Austria, and with
all the cares of an army, on the march to meet one hundred and twenty
thousand foes, crowding his mind, with pensive sympathy won the
confidence of his companion and elicited this artless recital of love
and desire. As Napoleon dismissed his guide, with an ample reward, he
drew from his pocket a pencil and upon a loose piece of paper wrote
a few lines, which he requested the young man to give, on his return,
to the Administrator of the Army, upon the other side. When the guide
returned, and presented the note, he found, to his unbounded surprise
and delight, that he had conducted Napoleon over the mountains; and
that Napoleon had given him a field and a house. He was thus enabled
to be married, and to realize all the dreams of his modest ambition.
Generous impulses must have been instinctive in a heart, which in an
hour so fraught with mighty events, could turn from the toils of empire
and of war, to find refreshment in sympathizing with a peasant's love.
This young man but recently died, having passed his quiet life in the
enjoyment of the field and the cottage which had been given him by the
ruler of the world.
[Illustration: NAPOLEON ASCENDING THE ALPS.]
The army now pressed forward, with great alacrity, along the banks of
the Aosta. They were threading a beautiful valley, rich in verdure and
blooming beneath the sun of early spring. Cottages, vineyards, and
orchards, in full bloom, embellished their path, while upon each side
of them rose, in majestic swell, the fir-clad sides of the mountains.
The Austrians pressing against the frontiers of France, had no
conception of the storm which had so suddenly gathered, and which was,
with resistless sweep, approaching their rear. The French soldiers,
elated with the Herculean achievement they had accomplished, and full
of confidence in their leader, pressed gayly on. But the valley before
them began to grow more and more narrow. The mountains, on either
side, rose more precipitous and craggy. The Aosta, crowded into a
narrow channel, rushed foaming over the rocks, leaving barely room
for a road along the side of the mountain. Suddenly the march of the
whole army was arrested by a fort, built upon an inaccessible rock,
which rose pyramidally from the bed of the stream. Bristling cannon,
skillfully arranged on well-constructed bastions, swept the pass, and
rendered further advance apparently impossible. Rapidly the tidings of
this unexpected obstruction spread from the van to the rear. Napoleon
immediately hastened to the front ranks. Climbing the mountain opposite
the fort, by a goat path, he threw himself down upon the ground, when
a few bushes concealed his person from the shot of the enemy, and with
his telescope long and carefully examined the fort and the surrounding
crags. He perceived one elevated spot, far above the fort, where a
cannon might by possibility be drawn. From that position its shot could
be plunged upon the unprotected bastions below. Upon the face of the
opposite cliff, far beyond the reach of cannon-balls, he discerned a
narrow shelf in the rock by which he thought it possible that a man
could pass. The march was immediately commenced, in single file, along
this giddy ridge. And even the horses, inured to the terrors of the
Great St. Bernard, were led by their riders upon the narrow path, which
a horse's hoof had never trod before, and probably will never tread
again. The Austrians, in the fort, had the mortification of seeing
thirty-five thousand soldiers, with numerous horses, defile along this
airy line, as if adhering to the side of the rock. But neither bullet
nor ball could harm them.
[Illustration: PASSING THE FORT OF BARD.]
Napoleon ascended this mountain ridge, and upon its summit, quite
exhausted with days and nights of sleeplessness and toil, laid himself
down, in the shadow of the rock, and fell asleep. The long line filed
carefully and silently by, each soldier hushing his comrade, that the
repose of their beloved chieftain might not be disturbed. It was an
interesting spectacle, to witness the tender affection, beaming from
the countenances of these bronzed and war-worn veterans, as every foot
trod softly, and each eye, in passing, was riveted upon the slender
form, and upon the pale and wasted cheek of the sleeping Napoleon.
The artillery could by no possibility be thus transported; and an army
without artillery is a soldier without weapons. The Austrian commander
wrote to Melas, that he had seen an army of thirty-five thousand men
and four thousand horse creeping by the fort, along the face of Mount
Albaredo. He assured the commander-in-chief, however, that not one
single piece of artillery had passed or could pass beneath the guns of
his fortress. When he was writing this letter, already had one half of
the cannon and ammunition of the army been conveyed by the fort, and
were safely and rapidly proceeding on their way down the valley. In
the darkness of the night trusty men, with great caution and silence,
strewed hay and straw upon the road. The wheels of the lumbering
carriages were carefully bound with cloths and wisps of straw, and,
with axles well oiled, were drawn by the hands of these picked men,
beneath the very walls of the fortress, and within half pistol-shot
of its guns. In two nights the artillery and the baggage-trains were
thus passed along, and in a few days the fort itself was compelled to
surrender.
Melas, the Austrian commander, now awoke in consternation to a sense
of his peril. Napoleon--the dreaded Napoleon--had, as by a miracle,
crossed the Alps. He had cut off all his supplies, and was shutting
the Austrians up from any possibility of retreat. Bewildered by the
magnitude of his peril, he no longer thought of forcing his march upon
Paris. The invasion of France was abandoned. His whole energies were
directed to opening for himself a passage back to Austria. The most
cruel perplexities agitated him. From the very pinnacle of victory, he
was in danger of descending to the deepest abyss of defeat. It was also
with Napoleon an hour of intense solicitude. He had but sixty thousand
men, two-thirds of whom were new soldiers, who had never seen a shot
fired in earnest, with whom he was to arrest the march of a desperate
army of one hundred and twenty thousand veterans, abundantly provided
with all the most efficient machinery of war. There were many paths by
which Melas might escape, at leagues' distance from each other. It was
necessary for Napoleon to divide his little band that he might guard
them all. He was liable at any moment to have a division of his army
attacked by an overwhelming force, and cut to pieces before it could
receive any reinforcements. He ate not, he slept not, he rested not.
Day and night, and night and day, he was on horseback, pale, pensive,
apparently in feeble health, and interesting every beholder with his
grave and melancholy beauty. His scouts were out in every direction.
He studied all the possible movements and combinations of his foes.
Rapidly he overran Lombardy, and entered Milan in triumph. Melas
anxiously concentrated his forces, to break through the net with which
he was entangled. He did every thing in his power to deceive Napoleon,
by various feints, that the point of his contemplated attack might not
be known. Napoleon, in the following clarion tones, appealed to the
enthusiasm of his troops:
"Soldiers! when we began our march, one department of France was in the
hands of the enemy. Consternation pervaded the south of the Republic.
You advanced. Already the French territory is delivered. Joy and hope
in our country have succeeded to consternation and fear. The enemy,
terror-struck, seeks only to regain his frontiers. You have taken his
hospitals, his magazines, his reserve parks. The first act of the
campaign is finished. Millions of men address you in strains of praise.
But shall we allow our audacious enemies to violate with impunity the
territory of the Republic? Will you permit the army to escape which
has carried terror into your families? You will not. March, then, to
meet him. Tear from his brows the laurels he has won. Teach the world
that a malediction attends those who violate the territory of the
Great People. The result of our efforts will be unclouded glory, and a
durable peace!"
The very day Napoleon left Paris, Desaix arrived in France from Egypt.
Frank, sincere, upright, and punctiliously honorable, he was one of the
few whom Napoleon truly loved. Desaix regarded Napoleon as infinitely
his superior, and looked up to him with a species of adoration; he
loved him with a fervor of feeling which amounted almost to a passion.
Napoleon, touched, by the affection of a heart so noble, requited it
with the most confiding friendship. Desaix, upon his arrival in Paris,
found letters for him there from the First Consul. As he read the
confidential lines, he was struck with the melancholy air with which
they were pervaded. "Alas!" said he, "Napoleon has gained every thing,
and yet he is unhappy. I must hasten to meet him." Without delay he
crossed the Alps, and arrived at the head-quarters of Napoleon but a
few days before the battle of Marengo. They passed the whole night
together, talking over the events of Egypt and the prospects of France.
Napoleon felt greatly strengthened by the arrival of his noble friend,
and immediately assigned to him the command of a division of the army.
"Desaix," said he, "is my sheet anchor."
"You have had a long interview with Desaix," said Bourrienne to
Napoleon the next morning. "Yes!" he replied; "but I had my reasons. As
soon as I return to Paris I shall make him Minister of War. He shall
always be my lieutenant. I would make him a prince if I could. He is of
the heroic mould of antiquity!"
Napoleon was fully aware that a decisive battle would soon take place.
Melas was rapidly, from all points, concentrating his army. The
following laconic and characteristic order was issued by the First
Consul to Lannes and Murat: "Gather your forces at the river Stradella.
On the 8th or 9th at the latest, you will have on your hands fifteen
or eighteen thousand Austrians. Meet them, and cut them to pieces. It
will be so many enemies less upon our hands on the day of the decisive
battle we are to expect with the entire army of Melas." The prediction
was true. An Austrian force advanced, eighteen thousand strong. Lannes
met them upon the field of Montebello. They were strongly posted, with
batteries ranged upon the hill sides, which swept the whole plain.
It was of the utmost moment that this body should be prevented from
combining with the other vast forces of the Austrians. Lannes had but
eight thousand men. Could he sustain the unequal conflict for a few
hours, Victor, who was some miles in the rear, could come up with a
reserve of four thousand men. The French soldiers, fully conscious
of the odds against which they were to contend, and of the carnage
into the midst of which they were plunging, with shouts of enthusiasm
rushed upon their foes. Instantaneously a storm of grape-shot from
all the batteries swept through his ranks. Said Lannes, "_I could
hear the bones crash in my division, like glass in a hail-storm._"
For nine long hours, from eleven in the morning till eight at night,
the horrid carnage continued. Again and again the mangled, bleeding,
wasted columns were rallied to the charge. At last, when three
thousand Frenchmen were strewn dead upon the ground, the Austrians
broke and fled, leaving also three thousand mutilated corpses and six
thousand prisoners behind them. Napoleon, hastening to the aid of his
lieutenant, arrived upon the field just in time to see the battle
won. He rode up to Lannes. The intrepid soldier stood in the midst of
mounds of the dead--his sword dripping with blood in his exhausted
hand--his face blackened with powder and smoke--and his uniform soiled
and tattered by the long and terrific strife. Napoleon silently, but
proudly smiled upon the heroic general, and forgot not his reward. From
this battle Lannes received the title of Duke of Montebello, a title by
which his family is distinguished to the present day.
This was the opening of the campaign. It inspired the French with
enthusiasm. It nerved the Austrians to despair. Melas now determined
to make a desperate effort to break through the toils. Napoleon, with
intense solicitude, was watching every movement of his foe, knowing not
upon what point the onset would fall. Before daybreak in the morning
of the 14th of June, Melas, having accumulated forty thousand men,
including seven thousand cavalry and two hundred pieces of cannon, made
an impetuous assault upon the French, but twenty thousand in number,
drawn up upon the plain of Marengo. Desaix, with a reserve of six
thousand men, was at such a distance, nearly thirty miles from Marengo,
that he could not possibly be recalled before the close of the day. The
danger was frightful that the French would be entirely cut to pieces,
before any succor could arrive. But the quick ear of Desaix caught the
sound of the heavy cannonade as it came booming over the plain, like
distant thunder. He sprung from his couch and listened. The heavy and
uninterrupted roar, proclaimed a pitched battle, and he was alarmed for
his beloved chief. Immediately he roused his troops, and they started
upon the rush to succor their comrades. Napoleon dispatched courier
after courier to hurry the division along, while his troops stood firm
through terrific hours, as their ranks were plowed by the murderous
discharges of their foes. At last the destruction was too awful for
mortal men to endure. Many divisions of the army broke and fled,
crying, "_All is lost--save himself who can._" A scene of frightful
disorder ensued. The whole plain was covered with fugitives, swept like
an inundation before the multitudinous Austrians. Napoleon still held
a few squares together, who slowly and sullenly retreated, while two
hundred pieces of artillery, closely pressing them, poured incessant
death into their ranks. Every foot of ground was left encumbered with
the dead. It was now three o'clock in the afternoon. Melas, exhausted
with toil, and assured that he had gained a complete victory, left
Gen. Zach to finish the work. He retired to his head-quarters, and
immediately dispatched couriers all over Europe to announce the
great victory of Marengo. Said an Austrian veteran, who had before
encountered Napoleon at Arcola and Rivoli, "Melas is too sanguine.
Depend upon it, our day's work is not yet done. Napoleon will yet be
upon us with his reserve."
Just then the anxious eye of the First Consul espied the solid columns
of Desaix entering the plain. Desaix, plunging his spurs into his
horse, outstripped all the rest, and galloped into the presence of
Napoleon. As he cast a glance over the wild confusion and devastation
of the field, he exclaimed hurriedly, "I see that the battle is lost.
I suppose I can do no more for you than to secure your retreat." "By
no means," Napoleon replied, with apparently as much composure as if
he had been sitting by his own fireside, "the battle, I trust, is
gained. Charge with your column. The disordered troops will rally
in your rear." Like a rock, Desaix, with his solid phalanx of ten
thousand men, met the on-rolling billow of Austrian victory. At the
same time Napoleon dispatched an order to Kellerman, with his cavalry,
to charge the triumphant column of the Austrians in flank. It was
the work of a moment, and the whole aspect of the field was changed.
Napoleon rode along the lines of those on the retreat, exclaiming,
"My friends, we have retreated far enough. It is now our turn to
advance. Recollect that I am in the habit of sleeping on the field
of battle." The fugitives, reanimated by the arrival of the reserve,
immediately rallied in their rear. The double charge in front and
flank was instantly made. The Austrians were checked and staggered. A
perfect tornado of bullets from Desaix's division swept their ranks.
They poured an answering volley into the bosoms of the French. A bullet
pierced the breast of Desaix, and he fell and almost immediately
expired. His last words were, "Tell the First Consul that my only
regret in dying is, to have perished before having done enough to
live in the recollection of posterity." The soldiers, who devotedly
loved him, saw his fall, and rushed more madly on to avenge his death.
The swollen tide of uproar, confusion, and dismay now turned, and
rolled in surging billows in the opposite direction. Hardly one moment
elapsed before the Austrians, flushed with victory, found themselves
overwhelmed by defeat. In the midst of this terrific scene, an aid
rode up to Napoleon and said, "Desaix is dead." But a moment before
they were conversing side by side. Napoleon pressed his forehead
convulsively with his hand, and exclaimed, mournfully, "Why is it not
permitted me to weep! Victory at such a price is dear."
The French now made the welkin ring with shouts of victory.
Indescribable dismay filled the Austrian ranks as wildly they rushed
before their unrelenting pursuers. Their rout was utter and hopeless.
When the sun went down over this field of blood, after twelve hours
of the most frightful carnage, a scene was presented horrid enough to
appall the heart of a demon. More than twenty thousand human bodies
were strewn upon the ground, the dying and the dead, weltering in
gore, and in every conceivable form of disfiguration. Horses, with
limbs torn from their bodies, were struggling in convulsive agonies.
Fragments of guns and swords, and of military wagons of every kind
were strewed around in wild ruin. Frequent piercing cries, which agony
extorted from the lacerated victims of war, rose above the general
moanings of anguish, which, like wailings of the storm, fell heavily
upon the ear. The shades of night were now descending upon this awful
scene of misery. The multitude of the wounded was so great, that
notwithstanding the utmost exertions of the surgeons, hour after hour
of the long night lingered away, while thousands of the wounded and the
dying bit the dust in their agony.
If war has its chivalry and its pageantry, it has also revolting
hideousness and demoniac woe. The young, the noble, the sanguine were
writhing there in agony. Bullets respect not beauty. They tear out
the eye, and shatter the jaw, and rend the cheek, and transform the
human face divine into an aspect upon which one can not gaze but with
horror. From the field of Marengo many a young man returned to his home
so mutilated as no longer to be recognized by friends, and passed a
weary life in repulsive deformity. Mercy abandons the arena of battle.
The frantic war-horse with iron hoof tramples upon the mangled face,
the throbbing and inflamed wounds, the splintered bones, and heeds not
the shriek of torture. Crushed into the bloody mire by the ponderous
wheels of heavy artillery, the victim of barbaric war thinks of mother,
and father, and sister, and home, and shrieks, and moans, and dies;
his body is stripped by the vagabonds who follow the camp; his naked,
mangled corpse is covered with a few shovels-full of earth, and left as
food for vultures and for dogs, and he is forgotten forever--and it is
called _glory_. He who loves war, for the sake of its excitements, its
pageantry, and its fancied glory, is the most eminent of all the dupes
of folly and of sin. He who loathes war, with inexpressible loathing,
who will do every thing in his power to avert the dire and horrible
calamity, but who will, nevertheless, in the last extremity, with a
determined spirit, encounter all its perils, from love of country and
of home, who is willing to sacrifice himself and all that is dear to
him in life, to promote the well-being of his fellow-man, will ever
receive the homage of the world, and we also fully believe that he will
receive the approval of God. Washington abhorred war in all its forms,
yet he braved all its perils.
For the carnage of the field of Marengo, Napoleon can not be held
responsible. Upon England and Austria must rest all the guilt of that
awful tragedy. Napoleon had done every thing he could do to stop
the effusion of blood. He had sacrificed the instincts of pride,
in pleading with a haughty foe for peace. His plea was unavailing.
Three hundred thousand men were marching upon France to force upon
her a detested king. It was not the duty of France to submit to such
dictation. Drawing the sword in self-defense, Napoleon fought and
conquered. "Te Deum laudamus."
It is not possible but that Napoleon must have been elated by so
resplendent a victory. He knew that Marengo would be classed as the
most brilliant of his achievements. The blow had fallen with such
terrible severity that the haughty allies were thoroughly humbled.
Melas was now at his mercy. Napoleon could dictate peace upon his
own terms. Yet he rode over the field of his victory with a saddened
spirit, and gazed mournfully upon the ruin and the wretchedness around
him. As he was slowly and thoughtfully passing along, through the heaps
of the dead with which the ground was encumbered, he met a number of
carts, heavily laden with the wounded, torn by balls, and bullets, and
fragments of shells, into most hideous spectacles of deformity. As the
heavy wheels lumbered over the rough ground, grating the splintered
bones, and bruising and opening afresh the inflamed wounds, shrieks
of torture were extorted from the victims. Napoleon stopped his horse
and uncovered his head, as the melancholy procession of misfortune and
woe passed along. Turning to a companion, he said, "We can not but
regret not being wounded like these unhappy men, that we might share
their sufferings." A more touching expression of sympathy never has
been recorded. He who says that this was hypocrisy is a stranger to
the generous impulses of a noble heart. This instinctive outburst of
emotion never could have been instigated by policy.
Napoleon had fearlessly exposed himself to every peril during this
conflict. His clothes were repeatedly pierced by bullets. Balls struck
between the legs of his horse, covering him with earth. A cannon-ball
took away a piece of the boot from his left leg and a portion of the
skin, leaving a scar which was never obliterated.
Before Napoleon marched for Italy, he had made every effort in his
power for the attainment of peace. Now, with magnanimity above all
praise, without waiting for the first advance from his conquered foes,
he wrote again imploring peace. Upon the field of Marengo, having
scattered all his enemies like chaff before him, with the smoke of the
conflict still darkening the air, and the groans of the dying swelling
upon his ear, laying aside all the formalities of state, with heartfelt
feeling and earnestness he wrote to the Emperor of Austria. This
extraordinary epistle was thus commenced:
"Sire! It is on the field of battle, amid the sufferings of a multitude
of wounded, and surrounded by fifteen thousand corpses, that I beseech
your majesty to listen to the voice of humanity, and not to suffer two
brave nations to cut each others' throats for interests not their own.
It is my part to press this upon your majesty, being upon the very
theatre of war. Your majesty's heart can not feel it so keenly as does
mine."
The letter was long and most eloquent. "For what are you fighting?"
said Napoleon. "For religion? Then make war on the Russians and the
English, who are the enemies of your faith. Do you wish to guard
against revolutionary principles? It is this very war which has
extended them over half the Continent, by extending the conquests of
France. The continuance of the war can not fail to diffuse them still
further. Is it for the balance of Europe? The English threaten that
balance far more than does France, for they have become the masters
and the tyrants of commerce, and are beyond the reach of resistance.
Is it to secure the interests of the house of Austria! Let us then
execute the treaty of Campo Formio, which secures to your majesty large
indemnities in compensation for the provinces lost in the Netherlands,
and secures them to you where you most wish to obtain them, that is, in
Italy. Your majesty may send negotiators whither you will, and we will
add to the treaty of Campo Formio stipulations calculated to assure
you of the continued existence of the secondary states, all of which
the French Republic is accused of having shaken. Upon these conditions
peace is made, if you will. Let us make the armistice general for all
the armies, and enter into negotiations instantly."
A courier was immediately dispatched to Vienna, to convey this letter
to the Emperor. In the evening, Bourrienne hastened to congratulate
Napoleon upon his extraordinary victory. "What a glorious day!" said
Bourrienne. "Yes!" replied Napoleon, mournfully; "very glorious--could
I this evening but have embraced Desaix upon the field of battle."
On the same day, and at nearly the same hour in which the fatal bullet
pierced the breast of Desaix, an assassin in Egypt plunged a dagger
into the bosom of Kleber. The spirits of these illustrious men, these
blood-stained warriors, thus unexpectedly met in the spirit-land. There
they wander now. How impenetrable the veil which shuts their destiny
from our view. The soul longs for clearer vision of that far-distant
world, peopled by the innumerable host of the mighty dead. There
Napoleon now dwells. Does he retain his intellectual supremacy? Do his
generals gather around him with love and homage? Has his pensive spirit
sunk down into gloom and despair, or has it soared into cloudless
regions of purity and peace? The mystery of death! Death alone can
solve it. Christianity, with its lofty revealings, sheds but dim
twilight upon the world of departed spirits. At St. Helena Napoleon
said, "Of all the generals I ever had under my command Desaix and
Kleber possessed the greatest talent. In particular Desaix, as Kleber
loved glory only as the means of acquiring wealth and pleasure. Desaix
loved glory for itself, and despised every other consideration. To
him riches and pleasure were of no value, nor did he ever give them
a moment's thought. He was a little black-looking man, about an inch
shorter than myself, always badly dressed, sometimes even ragged, and
despising alike comfort and convenience. Enveloped in a cloak, Desaix
would throw himself under a gun and sleep as contentedly as if reposing
in a palace. Luxury had for him no charms. Frank and honest in all his
proceedings, he was denominated by the Arabs Sultan the Just. Nature
intended him to figure as a consummate general. Kleber and Desaix were
irreparable losses to France."
It is impossible to describe the dismay, which pervaded the camp of
the Austrians after this terrible defeat. They were entirely cut off
from all retreat, and were at the mercy of Napoleon. A council of
war was held by the Austrian officers during the night, and it was
unanimously resolved that capitulation was unavoidable. Early the next
morning a flag of truce was sent to the head-quarters of Napoleon. The
Austrians offered to abandon Italy, if the generosity of the victor
would grant them the boon of not being made prisoners of war. Napoleon
met the envoy with great courtesy, and, according to his custom, stated
promptly and irrevocably the conditions upon which he was willing to
treat. The terms were generous. "The Austrian armies," said he, "may
unmolested return to their homes; but all of Italy must be abandoned."
Melas, who was eighty years of age, hoped to modify the terms, and
again sent the negotiator to suggest some alterations. "Monsieur!"
said Napoleon, "my conditions are irrevocable. I did not begin to make
war yesterday. Your position is as perfectly comprehended by me as by
yourselves. You are encumbered with dead, sick, and wounded, destitute
of provisions, deprived of the élite of your army, surrounded on every
side, I might exact every thing. But I respect the white hairs of
your general, and the valor of your soldiers. I ask nothing but what
is rigorously justified by the present position of affairs. Take what
steps you may, you will have no other terms." The conditions were
immediately signed, and a suspension of arms was agreed upon, until an
answer could be received from Vienna.
Napoleon left Paris for this campaign on the 7th of May. The battle of
Marengo was fought on the 14th of June. Thus in five weeks Napoleon had
scaled the barrier of the Alps: with sixty thousand soldiers, most of
them undisciplined recruits, he had utterly discomfited an army of one
hundred and twenty thousand men, and regained the whole of Italy. The
achievement amazed the civilized world. The bosom of every Frenchman
throbbed with gratitude and pride. One wild shout of enthusiasm
ascended from united France. Napoleon had laid the foundation of
his throne deep in the heart of the French nation, and _there_ that
foundation still remains unshaken.
Napoleon now entered Milan in triumph. He remained there ten days,
busy apparently every hour, by day and by night, in re-organizing the
political condition of Italy. The serious and religious tendencies of
his mind are developed by the following note, which four days after the
battle of Marengo, he wrote to the Consuls in Paris: "To-day, whatever
our atheists may say to it, I go in great state to the _Te Deum_, which
is to be chanted in the Cathedral of Milan."[2]
[2] The _Te Deum_, is an anthem of praise, sung in church as on
occasion of thanksgiving. It is so called from the first words "Te Deum
laudamus," _Thee God we praise_.
An unworthy spirit of detraction has vainly sought to wrest from
Napoleon the honor of this victory, and to attribute it all to the
flank charge made by Kellerman. Such attempts deserve no detailed
reply. Napoleon had secretly and suddenly called into being an army,
and by its apparently miraculous creation had astounded Europe. He had
effectually deceived the vigilance of his enemies, so as to leave them
entirely in the dark respecting his point of attack. He had conveyed
that army, with all its stores, over the pathless crags of the Great
St. Bernard. Like an avalanche he had descended from the mountains
upon the plains of startled Italy. He had surrounded the Austrian
hosts, though they were double his numbers, with a net through which
they could not break. In a decisive battle he had scattered their
ranks before him, like chaff by the whirlwind. He was nobly seconded
by those generals whom his genius had chosen and created. It is indeed
true, that without his generals and his soldiers he could not have
gained the victory. Massena contributed to the result by his matchless
defense of Genoa; Moreau, by holding in abeyance the army of the Rhine;
Lannes, by his iron firmness on the plain of Montebello; Desaix, by
the promptness with which he rushed to the rescue, as soon as his ear
caught the far-off thunders of the cannon of Marengo; and Kellerman,
by his admirable flank charge of cavalry. But it was the genius of
Napoleon which planned the mighty combination, which roused and
directed the enthusiasm of the generals, which inspired the soldiers
with fearlessness and nerved them for the strife, and which, through
these efficient agencies, secured the astounding results.
Napoleon established his triumphant army, now increased to eighty
thousand men, in the rich valley of the Po. He assigned to the heroic
Massena the command of this triumphant host, and ordering all the forts
and citadels which blocked the approaches from France to be blown up,
set out, on the 24th of June, for his return to Paris. In recrossing
the Alps, by the pass of Mt. Cenis, he met the carriage of Madame
Kellerman, who was going to Italy to join her husband. Napoleon ordered
his carriage to be stopped, and alighting, greeted the lady with great
courtesy, and congratulated her upon the gallant conduct of her husband
at Marengo. As he was riding along one day, Bourrienne spoke of the
world-wide renown which the First Consul had attained.
"Yes," Napoleon thoughtfully replied. "A few more events like this
campaign, and my name may perhaps go down to posterity."
"I think," Bourrienne rejoined, "that you have already done enough to
secure a long and lasting fame."
"Done enough!" Napoleon replied. "You are very good! It is true that in
less than two years I have conquered Cairo, Paris, Milan. But were I to
die to-morrow, half a page of general history would be all that would
be devoted to my exploits."
Napoleon's return to Paris, through the provinces of France, was a
scene of constant triumph. The joy of the people amounted almost to
frenzy. Bonfires, illuminations, the pealing of bells, and the thunders
of artillery accompanied him all the way. Long lines of young maidens,
selected for their grace and beauty, formed avenues of loveliness
and smiles through which he was to pass, and carpeted his path with
flowers. He arrived in Paris at midnight the 2d of July, having been
absent but eight weeks.
The enthusiasm of the Parisians was unbounded and inexhaustible. Day
after day, and night after night, the festivities continued. The Palace
of the Tuileries was ever thronged with a crowd, eager to catch a
glimpse of the preserver of France. All the public bodies waited upon
him with congratulations. Bells rung, cannon thundered, bonfires and
illuminations blazed, rockets and fire-works, in meteoric splendor
filled the air, bands of music poured forth their exuberant strains,
and united Paris, thronging the garden of the Tuileries and flooding
back into the Elysian Fields, rent the heavens with deafening shouts of
exultation. As Napoleon stood at the window of his palace, witnessing
this spectacle of a nation's gratitude, he said, "The sound of these
acclamations is as sweet to me, as the voice of Josephine. How happy I
am to be beloved by such a people." Preparations were immediately made
for a brilliant and imposing solemnity in commemoration of the victory.
"Let no triumphal arch be raised to me," said Napoleon. "I wish for no
triumphal arch but the public satisfaction."
It is not strange that enthusiasm and gratitude should have glowed in
the ardent bosoms of the French. In four months Napoleon had raised
France from an abyss of ruin to the highest pinnacle of prosperity
and renown. For anarchy he had substituted law, for bankruptcy a
well-replenished treasury, for ignominious defeat resplendent victory,
for universal discontent as universal satisfaction. The invaders were
driven from France, the hostile alliance broken, and the blessings of
peace were now promised to the war-harassed nation.
During this campaign there was presented a very interesting
illustration of Napoleon's wonderful power of anticipating the progress
of coming events. Bourrienne, one day, just before the commencement
of the campaign, entered the cabinet at the Tuileries, and found an
immense map of Italy, unrolled upon the carpet, and Napoleon stretched
upon it. With pins, whose heads were tipped with rod and black
sealing-wax, to represent the French and Austrian forces. Napoleon
was studying all the possible combinations and evolutions of the two
hostile armies. Bourrienne, in silence, but with deep interest, watched
the progress of this pin campaign. Napoleon, having arranged the
pins with red heads, where he intended to conduct the French troops,
and with the black pins designating the point which he supposed the
Austrians would occupy, looked up to his secretary, and said:
"Do you think that I shall beat Melas?"
"Why, how can I tell? Bourrienne answered.
"Why, you simpleton," said Napoleon, playfully; "just look here. Melas
is at Alexandria, where he has his head-quarters. He will remain
there until Genoa surrenders. He has in Alexandria his magazines,
his hospitals, his artillery, his reserves. Passing the Alps here,"
sticking a pin into the Great St. Bernard, "I fall upon Melas in his
rear; I cut off his communications with Austria. I meet him here in the
valley of the Bormida." So saying, he stuck a red pin into the plain of
Marengo.
Bourrienne regarded this manoeuvring of pins as mere pastime. His
countenance expressed his perfect incredulity. Napoleon, perceiving
this, addressed to him some of his usual apostrophes, in which he was
accustomed playfully to indulge in moments of relaxation, such as, You
ninny, You goose; and rolled up the map. Ten weeks passed away, and
Bourrienne found himself upon the banks of the Bormida, writing, at
Napoleon's dictation, an account of the battle of Marengo. Astonished
to find Napoleon's anticipations thus minutely fulfilled, he frankly
avowed his admiration of the military sagacity thus displayed. Napoleon
himself smiled at the justice of his foresight.
[Illustration: NAPOLEON PLANNING A CAMPAIGN.]
Two days before the news of the battle of Marengo arrived in Vienna,
England effected a new treaty with Austria, for the more vigorous
prosecution of the war. By this convention it was provided that England
should loan Austria ten millions of dollars, to bear no interest during
the continuance of the conflict. And the Austrian cabinet bound itself
not to make peace with France, without the consent of the Court of St.
James. The Emperor of Austria was now sadly embarrassed. His sense of
honor would not allow him to violate his pledge to the King of England,
and to make peace. On the other hand, he trembled at the thought of
seeing the armies of the invincible Napoleon again marching upon his
capital. He, therefore, resolved to temporize, and, in order to gain
time, sent an embassador to Paris. The plenipotentiary presented to
Napoleon a letter, in which the Emperor stated, "You will give credit
to every thing which Count Julien shall say on my part. I will ratify
whatever he shall do." Napoleon, prompt in action, and uninformed of
the new treaty between Ferdinand and George III., immediately caused
the preliminaries of peace to be drawn up, which were signed by the
French and Austrian ministers. The cabinet in Vienna, angry with their
embassador for not protracting the discussion, refused to ratify the
treaty, recalled Count Julien, sent him into exile, informed the First
Consul of the treaty which bound Austria not to make peace without the
concurrence of Great Britain, assured France of the readiness of the
English Cabinet to enter into negotiations, and urged the immediate
opening of a Congress at Luneville to which plenipotentiaries should
be sent from each of the three great contending powers. Napoleon
was highly indignant in view of this duplicity and perfidy. Yet,
controlling his anger, he consented to treat with England, and with
that view proposed a _naval armistice_, with the mistress of the
seas. To this proposition England peremptorily refused to accede,
as it would enable France to throw supplies into Egypt and Malta,
which island England was besieging. The naval armistice would have
been undeniably for the interests of France. But the continental
armistice was as undeniably adverse to her interests, enabling Austria
to recover from her defeats, and to strengthen her armies. Napoleon,
fully convinced that England, in her inaccessible position, did not
wish for peace, and that her only object, in endeavoring to obtain
admittance to the Congress, was that she might throw obstacles in
the way of reconciliation with Austria, offered to renounce all
armistice with England, and to treat with her separately. This England
also refused. It was now September. Two months had passed in these
vexatious and sterile negotiations. Napoleon had taken every step in
his power to secure peace. He sincerely desired it. He had already
won all the laurels he could wish to win on the field of battle. The
reconstruction of society in France, and the consolidation of his
power, demanded all his energies. The consolidation of his power! That
was just what the government of England dreaded. The consolidation
of democratic power in France was dangerous to king and to noble.
William Pitt, the soul of the aristocratic government of England,
determined still to prosecute the war. France could not harm England.
But England, with her invincible fleet, could sweep the commerce of
France from the seas. Fox and his coadjutors with great eloquence and
energy opposed the war. Their efforts were, however, unavailing. The
_people_ of England, notwithstanding all the efforts of the government
to defame the character of the First Consul, still cherished the
conviction that, after all, Napoleon was their friend. Napoleon, in
subsequent years, while reviewing these scenes of his early conflicts,
with characteristic eloquence and magnanimity, gave utterance to the
following sentiments which, it is as certain as destiny, that the
verdict of the world will yet confirm.
"Pitt was the master of European policy. He held in his hands the moral
fate of nations. But he made an ill use of his power. He kindled the
fire of discord throughout the universe; and his name, like that of
Erostratus, will be inscribed in history, amidst flames, lamentations,
and tears. Twenty-five years of universal conflagration; the numerous
coalitions that added fuel to the flame; the revolution and devastation
of Europe; the bloodshed of nations; the frightful debt of England,
by which all these horrors were maintained; the pestilential system
of loans, by which the people of Europe are oppressed; the general
discontent that now prevails--all must be attributed to Pitt. Posterity
will brand him as a scourge. The man so lauded in his own time, will
hereafter be regarded as the genius of evil. Not that I consider him
to have been willfully atrocious, or doubt his having entertained the
conviction that he was acting right. But St. Bartholomew had also
its conscientious advocates. The Pope and cardinals celebrated it by
a _Te Deum_; and we have no reason to doubt their having done so in
perfect sincerity. Such is the weakness of human reason and judgment!
But that for which posterity will, above all, execrate the memory of
Pitt, is the hateful school, which he has left behind him; its insolent
Machiavellianism, its profound immorality, its cold egotism, and its
utter disregard of justice and human happiness. Whether it be the
effect of admiration and gratitude, or the result of mere instinct and
sympathy, Pitt is, and will continue to be, the idol of the European
aristocracy. There was, indeed, a touch of the Sylla in his character.
His system has kept the popular cause in check, and brought about
the triumph of the patricians. As for Fox, one must not look for his
model among the ancients. He is himself a model, and his principles
will sooner or later rule the world. The death of Fox was one of the
fatalities of my career. Had his life been prolonged, affairs would
have taken a totally different turn. The cause of the people would have
triumphed, and we should have established a new order of things in
Europe."
Austria really desired peace. The march of Napoleon's armies upon
Vienna was an evil more to be dreaded than even the consolidation of
Napoleon's power in France. But Austria was, by loans and treaties,
so entangled with England, that she could make no peace without
the consent of the Court of St. James. Napoleon found that he was
but trifled with. Interminable difficulties were thrown in the way
of negotiation. Austria was taking advantage of the cessation of
hostilities, merely to recruit her defeated armies, that, as soon as
the approaching winter had passed away, she might fall, with renovated
energies, upon France. The month of November had now arrived, and the
mountains, whitened with snow, were swept by the bleak winds of winter.
The period of the armistice had expired. Austria applied for its
prolongation. Napoleon was no longer thus to be duped. He consented,
however, to a continued suspension of hostilities, on condition that
the treaty of peace were signed within forty-eight hours. Austria,
believing that no sane man would march an army into Germany in the
dead of winter, and that she should have abundant time to prepare for
a spring campaign, refused. The armies of France were immediately on
the move. The Emperor of Austria had improved every moment of this
transient interval of peace, in recruiting his forces. In person
he had visited the army to inspire his troops with enthusiasm. The
command of the imperial forces was intrusted to his second brother,
the Archduke John. Napoleon moved with his accustomed vigor. The
political necessities of Paris and of France rendered it impossible
for him to leave the metropolis. He ordered one powerful army, under
General Brune, to attack the Austrians in Italy, on the banks of the
Mincio, and to press firmly toward Vienna. In the performance of this
operation, General Macdonald, in the dead of winter, effected his
heroic passage over the Alps, by the pass of the Splugen. Victory
followed their standards.
Moreau, with his magnificent army, commenced a winter campaign on the
Rhine. Between the rivers Iser and Inn there is an enormous forest,
many leagues in extent, of sombre firs and pines. It is a dreary
and almost uninhabited wilderness, of wild ravines, and tangled
under-brush. Two great roads have been cut through the forest, and
sundry woodmen's paths penetrate it at different points. In the centre
there is a little hamlet, of a few miserable huts, called Hohenlinden.
In this forest, on the night of the 3d of December, 1800, Moreau,
with sixty thousand men, encountered the Archduke John with seventy
thousand Austrian troops. The clocks upon the towers of Munich had but
just tolled the hour of midnight when both armies were in motion, each
hoping to surprise the other. A dismal wintry storm was howling over
the tree tops, and the smothering snow, falling rapidly, obliterated
all traces of a path, and rendered it almost impossible to drag through
the drifts the ponderous artillery. Both parties, in the dark and
tempestuous night, became entangled in the forest, and the heads of
their columns in various places met. An awful scene of confusion,
conflict, and carnage then ensued. Imagination can not compass the
terrible sublimity of that spectacle. The dark midnight, the howlings
of the wintry storm, the driving sheets of snow, the incessant roar
of artillery and of musketry from one hundred and thirty thousand
combatants, the lightning flashes of the guns, the crash of the
falling trees as the heavy cannon-balls swept through the forest, the
floundering of innumerable horsemen bewildered in the pathless snow,
the shout of onset, the shriek of death, and the burst of martial music
from a thousand bands--all combined to present a scene of horror and of
demoniac energy, which probably even this lost world never presented
before. The darkness of the black forest was so intense, and the snow
fell in flakes so thick and fast and blinding, that the combatants
could with difficulty see each other. They often judged of the foe
only by his position, and fired at the flashes gleaming through the
gloom. At times, hostile divisions became intermingled in inextricable
confusion, and hand to hand, bayonet crossing bayonet, and sword
clashing against sword, they fought with the ferocity of demons; for
though the officers of an army may be influenced by the most elevated
sentiments of dignity and of honor, the mass of the common soldiers
have ever been the most miserable, worthless, and degraded of mankind.
As the advancing and retreating hosts wavered to and fro, the wounded,
by thousands, were left on hill-sides and in dark ravines, with the
drifting snow, crimsoned with blood, their only blanket; there in
solitude and agony to moan and freeze and die. What death-scenes the
eye of God must have witnessed that night, in the solitudes of that
dark, tempest-tossed, and blood-stained forest! At last the morning
dawned through the unbroken clouds, and the battle raged with renovated
fury. Nearly twenty thousand mutilated bodies of the dead and wounded
were left upon the field, with gory locks frozen to their icy pillows,
and covered with mounds of snow. At last the French were victorious at
every point. The Austrians, having lost twenty-five thousand men in
killed, wounded, and prisoners, one hundred pieces of artillery, and an
immense number of wagons, fled in dismay. This terrific conflict has
been immortalized by the noble epic of Campbell, which is now familiar
wherever the English language is known.
[Illustration: CAMPAIGN of HOHENLINDEN]
"On Linden, when the sun was low,
All bloodless lay the untrodden snow,
And dark as winter was the flow
Of Iser, rolling rapidly.
"But Linden saw another sight,
When the drums beat at dead of night,
Commanding fires of death to light
The darkness of her scenery." &c.
[Illustration: DEATH AT HOHENLINDEN]
The retreating Austrians rushed down the valley of the Danube. Moreau
followed thundering at their heels, plunging balls and shells into
their retreating ranks. The victorious French were within thirty miles
of Vienna, and the capital was in a state of indescribable dismay. The
Emperor again sent imploring an armistice. The application was promptly
acceded to, for Napoleon was contending only for peace. Yet with
unexampled magnanimity, notwithstanding these astonishing victories,
Napoleon made no essential alterations in his terms. Austria was at his
feet. His conquering armies were almost in sight of the steeples of
Vienna. There was no power which the Emperor could present to obstruct
their resistless march. He might have exacted any terms of humiliation.
But still he adhered to the first terms which he had proposed. Moreau
was urged by some of his officers to press on to Vienna. "We had better
halt," he replied, "and be content with peace. It is for that alone
that we are fighting." The Emperor of Austria was thus compelled to
treat without the concurrence of England. The insurmountable obstacle
in the way of peace was thus removed. At Luneville, Joseph Bonaparte
appeared as the embassador of Napoleon, and Count Cobenzl as the
plenipotentiary of Austria. The terms of the treaty were soon settled,
and France was again at peace with all the world, England alone
excepted. By this treaty the Rhine was acknowledged as the boundary
of France. The Adige limited the possessions of Austria in Italy; and
Napoleon made it an essential article that every Italian imprisoned
in the dungeons of Austria for political offenses, should immediately
be liberated. There was to be no interference by either with the new
republics which had sprung up in Italy. They were to be permitted to
choose whatever form of government they preferred. In reference to this
treaty, Sir Walter Scott makes the candid admission that "the treaty of
Luneville was not much more advantageous to France than that of Campo
Formio. The moderation of the First Consul indicated at once his desire
for peace upon the Continent, and considerable respect for the bravery
and strength of Austria." And Alison, in cautious but significant
phrase, remarks, "These conditions did not differ materially from
those offered by Napoleon before the renewal of the war; _a remarkable
circumstance_, when it is remembered how vast an addition the victories
of Marengo, Hohenlinden, and the Mincio, had since made to the
preponderance of the French armies."
It was, indeed, "a remarkable circumstance," that Napoleon should have
manifested such unparalleled moderation, under circumstances of such
aggravated indignity. In Napoleon's first Italian campaign he was
contending solely for peace. At last he attained it, in the treaty of
Campo Formio, on terms equally honorable to Austria and to France. On
his return from Egypt, he found the armies of Austria, three hundred
thousand strong, in alliance with England, invading the territories
of the Republic. He implored peace, in the name of bleeding humanity,
upon the fair basis of the treaty of Campo Formio. His foes regarded
his supplication as the imploring cry of weakness, and treated it
with scorn. With new vigor they poured their tempests of balls and
shells upon France. Napoleon scaled the Alps, and dispersed his foes
at Marengo, like autumn leaves before the gale. Amid the smoke and
the blood and the groans of the field of his victory, he again wrote
imploring peace; and he wrote in terms dictated by the honest and
gushing sympathies of a humane man, and not in the cold and stately
forms of the diplomatist. Crushed as his foes were, he rose not in his
demands, but nobly said, "I am still willing to make peace upon the
fair basis of the treaty of Campo Formio." His treacherous foes, to
gain time to recruit their armies, that they might fall upon him with
renovated vigor, agreed to an armistice. They then threw all possible
embarrassments in the way of negotiation, and prolonged the armistice
till the winds of winter were sweeping fiercely over the snow-covered
hills of Austria. They thought that it was then too late for Napoleon
to make any movements until spring, and that they had a long winter
before them, in which to prepare for another campaign. They refused
peace. Through storms and freezing gales and drifting snows the armies
of Napoleon marched painfully to Hohenlinden. The hosts of Austria were
again routed, and were swept away, as the drifted snow flies before
the gale. Ten thousand Frenchmen lie cold in death, the terrible price
of the victory. The Emperor of Austria, in his palaces, heard the
thunderings of Napoleon's approaching artillery. He implored peace. "It
is all that I desire," said Napoleon; "I am not fighting for ambition
or for conquest. I am still ready to make peace upon the fair basis of
the treaty of Campo Formio."
While all the Continent was now at peace with France, England alone,
with indomitable resolution, continued the war, without allies, and
without any apparent or avowed object. France, comparatively powerless
upon the seas, could strike no blows which would be felt by the distant
islanders. "On every point," says Sir Walter Scott, "the English
squadrons annihilated the commerce of France, crippled her revenues,
and blockaded her forts." The treaty of Luneville was signed the 9th
of February, 1801. Napoleon, lamenting the continued hostility of
England, in announcing this peace to the people of France, remarked,
"Why is not this treaty the treaty of a general peace? This was the
wish of France. This has been the constant object of the efforts of
her government. But its desires are fruitless. All Europe knows that
the British minister has endeavored to frustrate the negotiations at
Luneville. In vain was it declared to him that France was ready to
enter into a separate negotiation. This declaration only produced a
refusal under the pretext that England could not abandon her ally.
Since then, when that ally consented to treat without England, that
government sought other means to delay a peace so necessary to the
world. It raises pretensions contrary to the dignity and rights of all
nations. The whole commerce of Asia, and of immense colonies, does
not satisfy its ambition. All the seas must submit to the exclusive
sovereignty of England." As William Pitt received the tidings of this
discomfiture of his allies, in despairing despondency, he exclaimed,
"Fold up the map of Europe. It need not again be opened for twenty
years."
While these great affairs were in progress, Napoleon, in Paris, was
consecrating his energies with almost miraculous power, in developing
all the resources of the majestic empire under his control. He
possessed the power of abstraction to a degree which has probably
never been equaled. He could concentrate all his attention for any
length of time upon one subject, and then, laying that aside entirely,
without expending any energies in unavailing anxiety, could turn to
another, with all the freshness and the vigor of an unpreoccupied mind.
Incessant mental labor was the luxury of his life. "Occupation," said
he, "is my element. I am born and made for it. I have found the limits
beyond which I could not use my legs. I have seen the extent to which
I could use my eyes. But I have never known any bounds to my capacity
for application."
The universality of Napoleon's genius was now most conspicuous. The
revenues of the nation were replenished, and all the taxes arranged to
the satisfaction of the people. The Bank of France was reorganized, and
new energy infused into its operations. Several millions of dollars
were expended in constructing and perfecting five magnificent roads
radiating from Paris to the frontiers of the empire. Robbers, the
vagabonds of disbanded armies, infested the roads, rendering traveling
dangerous in the extreme. "Be patient," said Napoleon. "Give me a
month or two. I must first conquer peace abroad. I will then do speedy
and complete justice upon these highwaymen." A very important canal,
connecting Belgium with France, had been commenced some years before.
The engineers could not agree respecting the best direction of the
cutting through the highlands which separated the valley of the Oise
from that of the Somme. He visited the spot in person: decided the
question promptly, and decided it wisely, and the canal was pressed to
its completion. He immediately caused three new bridges to be thrown
across the Seine at Paris. He commenced the magnificent road of the
Simplon, crossing the rugged Alps with a broad and smooth highway,
which for ages will remain a durable monument of the genius and energy
of Napoleon. In gratitude for the favors he had received from the monks
of the Great St. Bernard, he founded two similar establishments for the
aid of travelers, one on Mount Cenis, the other on the Simplon, and
both auxiliary to the convent on the Great St. Bernard. Concurrently
with these majestic undertakings, he commenced the compilation of the
civil code of France. The ablest lawyers of Europe were summoned to
this enterprise, and the whole work was discussed section by section in
the Council of State, over which Napoleon presided. The lawyers were
amazed to find that the First Consul was as perfectly familiar with all
the details of legal and political science, as he was with military
strategy.
Bourrienne mentions, that one day, a letter was received from an
emigrant, General Durosel, who had taken refuge in the island of
Jersey. The following is an extract from the letter:
"You can not have forgotten, general, that when your late father
was obliged to take your brothers from the college of Autun, he was
unprovided with money, and asked of me one hundred and twenty-five
dollars, which I lent him with pleasure. After his return, he had not
an opportunity of paying me, and when I left Ajaccio, your mother
offered to dispose of some plate, in order to pay the debt. To this I
objected, and told her that I would wait until she could pay me at her
convenience. Previous to the Revolution, I believe that it was not in
her power to fulfill her wish of discharging the debt. I am sorry to be
obliged to trouble you about such a trifle. But such is my unfortunate
situation, that even this trifle is of some importance to me. At the
age of eighty-six, general, after having served my country for sixty
years, I am compelled to take refuge here, and to subsist on a scanty
allowance, granted by the English government to French emigrants. I say
_emigrants_, for I am obliged to be one against my will."
Upon hearing this letter read, Napoleon immediately and warmly said,
"Bourrienne, this is sacred. Do not lose a moment. Send the old man
ten times the sum. Write to General Durosel, that he shall immediately
be erased from the list of emigrants. What mischief those brigands
of the Convention have done. I can never repair it all." Napoleon
uttered these words with a degree of emotion which he had rarely before
evinced. In the evening he inquired, with much interest of Bourrienne,
if he had executed his orders.
Many attempts were made at this time to assassinate the First Consul.
Though France, with the most unparalleled unanimity surrounded him with
admiration, gratitude, and homage, there were violent men in the two
extremes of society, among the Jacobins and the inexorable Royalists,
who regarded him as in their way. Napoleon's escape from the explosion
of the infernal machine, got up by the Royalists, was almost miraculous.
[Illustration: THE INFERNAL MACHINE.]
On the evening of the 24th of December, Napoleon was going to the
Opera, to hear Haydn's Oratorio of the Creation, which was to be
performed for the first time. Intensely occupied by business, he was
reluctant to go; but to gratify Josephine, yielded to her urgent
request. It was necessary for his carriage to pass through a narrow
street. A cart, apparently by accident overturned, obstructed the
passage. A barrel suspended beneath the cart, contained as deadly a
machine as could be constructed with gunpowder and all the missiles of
death. The coachman succeeded in forcing his way by the cart. He had
barely passed when an explosion took place, which was heard all over
Paris, and which seemed to shake the city to its foundations. Eight
persons were instantly killed, and more than sixty were wounded, of
whom about twenty subsequently died. The houses for a long distance,
on each side of the street, were fearfully shattered, and many of them
were nearly blown to pieces. The carriage rocked as upon the billows of
the sea, and the windows were shattered to fragments. Napoleon had been
in too many scenes of terror to be alarmed by any noise or destruction
which gunpowder could produce. "Ha!" said he, with perfect composure;
"we are blown up." One of his companions in the carriage, greatly
terrified, thrust his head through the demolished window, and called
loudly to the driver to stop. "No, no!" said Napoleon; "drive on."
When the First Consul entered the Opera House, he appeared perfectly
calm and unmoved. The greatest consternation, however, prevailed in
all parts of the house, for the explosion had been heard, and the
most fearful apprehensions were felt for the safety of the idolized
Napoleon. As soon as he appeared, thunders of applause, which shook the
very walls of the theatre, gave affecting testimony of the attachment
of the people to his person. In a few moments, Josephine, who had come
in her private carriage, entered the box. Napoleon turned to her with
perfect tranquillity, and said, "The rascals tried to blow me up. Where
is the book of the Oratorio?"
Napoleon soon left the Opera, and returned to the Tuileries. He found a
vast crowd assembled there, attracted by affection for his person, and
anxiety for his safety. The atrocity of this attempt excited universal
horror, and only increased the already almost boundless popularity
of the First Consul. Deputations and addresses were immediately
poured in upon him from Paris and from all the departments of France,
congratulating him upon his escape. It was at first thought that this
conspiracy was the work of the Jacobins. There were in Paris more than
a hundred of the leaders of this execrable party, who had obtained
a sanguinary notoriety during the reign of terror. They were active
members of a Jacobin Club, a violent and vulgar gathering continually
plotting the overthrow of the government, and the assassination of
the First Consul. They were thoroughly detested by the people, and
the community was glad to avail itself of any plausible pretext for
banishing them from France. Without sufficient evidence that they were
actually guilty of this particular outrage, in the strong excitement
and indignation of the moment a decree was passed by the legislative
bodies, sending one hundred and sixty of these blood-stained culprits
into exile. The wish was earnestly expressed that Napoleon would
promptly punish them by his own dictatorial power. Napoleon had,
in fact, acquired such unbounded popularity, and the nation was so
thoroughly impressed with a sense of his justice, and his wisdom, that
whatever he said was done. He, however, insisted that the business
should be conducted by the constituted tribunals and under the regular
forms of law. "The responsibility of this measure," said Napoleon,
"must rest with the legislative body. The consuls are irresponsible.
But the ministers are not. Any one of them who should sign an arbitrary
decree, might hereafter be called to account. Not a single individual
must be compromised. The consuls themselves know not what may happen.
As for me, while I live, I am not afraid that any one will dare to
call me to account for my actions. But I may be killed, and then I can
not answer for the safety of my two colleagues. It would be your turn
to govern," said he, smiling, and turning to Cambaceres; "_and you
are not as yet very firm in the stirrups_. It will be better to have
a law for the present, as well as for the future." It was finally,
after much deliberation, decided that the Council of State should
draw up a declaration of the reasons for the act. The First Consul
was to sign the decree, and the Senate was to declare whether it was
or was not constitutional. Thus cautiously did Napoleon proceed under
circumstances so exciting. The law, however, was unjust and tyrannical.
Guilty as these men were of other crimes, by which they had forfeited
all sympathy, it subsequently appeared that they were not guilty of
this crime. Napoleon was evidently embarrassed by this uncertainty
of their guilt, and was not willing that they should be denounced as
contrivers of the infernal machine. "We _believe_," said he, "that they
are guilty. But we do not _know_ it. They must be transported for the
crimes which they have committed, the massacres and the conspiracies
already proved against them." The decree was passed. But Napoleon,
strong in popularity, became so convinced of the powerlessness and
insignificance of these Jacobins, that the decree was never enforced
against them. They remained in France. But they were conscious that
the eye of the police was upon them. "It is not my own person," said
Napoleon, "that I seek to avenge. My fortune which has preserved me
so often on the field of battle, will continue to preserve me. I
think not of myself. I think of social order which it is my mission
to re-establish, and of the national honor, which it is my duty to
purge from an abominable stain." To the innumerable addresses of
congratulation and attachment which this occurrence elicited Napoleon
replied, "I have been touched by the proofs of affection which the
people of Paris have shown me on this occasion. I deserve them. For
the only aim of my thoughts, and of my actions, is to augment the
prosperity and the glory of France. While those banditti confined
themselves to direct attacks upon me, I could leave to the laws the
task of punishing them. But since they have endangered the population
of the capital by a crime, unexampled in history, the punishment must
be equally speedy and terrible."
It was soon proved, much to the surprise of Napoleon, that the
atrocious act was perpetrated by the partisans of the Bourbons. Many of
the most prominent of the Loyalists were implicated in this horrible
conspiracy. Napoleon felt that he deserved their gratitude. He had
interposed to save them from the fury of the Jacobins. Against the
remonstrances of his friends, he had passed a decree which restored
one hundred and fifty thousand of these wandering emigrants to France.
He had done every thing in his power to enable them to regain their
confiscated estates. He had been in all respects their friend and
benefactor, and he would not believe, until the proof was indisputable,
that they could thus requite him. The wily Fouché, however, dragged the
whole matter into light. The prominent conspirators were arrested and
shot. The following letter, written on this occasion by Josephine, to
the Minister of Police, strikingly illustrates the benevolence of her
heart, and exhibits in a very honorable light the character of Napoleon.
"While I yet tremble at the frightful event which has just occurred,
I am distressed through fear of the punishment to be inflicted on the
guilty, who belong, it is said, to families with whom I once lived in
habits of intercourse. I shall be solicited by mothers, sisters, and
disconsolate wives, and my heart will be broken through my inability to
obtain all the mercy for which I would plead. I know that the clemency
of the First Consul is great--his attachment to me extreme. The chief
of the government has not been alone exposed; and it is that which will
render him severe, inflexible. I conjure you, therefore, to do all in
your power to prevent inquiries being pushed too far. Do not detect all
those persons who have been accomplices in this odious transaction. Let
not France, so long overwhelmed in consternation, by public executions,
groan anew, beneath such inflictions. When the ringleaders of this
nefarious attempt shall have been secured, let severity give place to
pity for inferior agents, seduced, as they may have been, by dangerous
falsehoods or exaggerated opinions. As a woman, a wife, and a mother, I
must feel the heartrendings of those who will apply to me. Act, citizen
minister, in such a way that the number of these may be lessened."
It seems almost miraculous that Napoleon should have escaped the
innumerable conspiracies which at this time were formed against him.
The partisans of the Bourbons thought that if Napoleon could be
removed, the Bourbons might regain their throne. It was his resistless
genius alone, which enabled France to triumph over combined Europe.
His death would leave France without a leader. The armies of the
allies could then, with bloody strides, march to Paris, and place
the hated Bourbons on the throne. France knew this, and adored its
preserver. Monarchical Europe knew this, and hence all the energies
of its combined kings were centred upon Napoleon. More than thirty
of these conspiracies were detected by the police. London was the
hot-house where they were engendered. Air-guns were aimed at Napoleon.
Assassins dogged him with their poniards. A bomb-shell was invented,
weighing about fifteen pounds, which was to be thrown in at his
carriage-window, and which exploding by its own concussion, would hurl
death on every side. The conspirators were perfectly reckless of the
lives of others, if they could only destroy the life of Napoleon. The
agents of the infernal-machine had the barbarity to get a young girl
fifteen years of age to hold the horse who drew the machine. This was
to disarm suspicion. The poor child was blown into such fragments, that
no part of her body, excepting her feet, could afterward be found. At
last Napoleon became aroused, and declared that he would "teach those
Bourbons that he was not a man to be shot at like a dog."
One day at St. Helena, as he was putting on his flannel waistcoat, he
observed Las Casas looking at him very steadfastly.
"Well! what is _your Excellency_ thinking of?" said Napoleon, with a
smile.
"Sire," Las Casas replied, "in a pamphlet which I lately read, I found
it stated that your majesty was shielded by a coat-of-mail, for the
security of your person. I was thinking that I could bear positive
evidence that at St. Helena at least, all precautions for personal
safety have been laid aside."
"This," said Napoleon, "is one of the thousand absurdities which have
been published respecting me. But the story you have just mentioned
is the more ridiculous, since every individual about me well knows
how careless I am with regard to self-preservation. Accustomed from
the age of eighteen to be exposed to the cannon-ball, and knowing the
inutility of precautions, I abandoned myself to my fate. When I came
to the head of affairs, I might still have fancied myself surrounded
by the dangers of the field of battle; and I might have regarded the
conspiracies which were formed against me as so many bomb-shells. But
I followed my old course. I trusted to my lucky star, and left all
precautions to the police. I was perhaps the only sovereign in Europe
who dispensed with a body-guard. Every one could freely approach me,
without having, as it were, to pass through military barracks. Maria
Louisa was much astonished to see me so poorly guarded, and she often
remarked that her father was surrounded by bayonets. For my part, I had
no better defense at the Tuileries than I have here. I do not even know
where to find my sword," said he, looking around the room; "do you see
it? I have, to be sure, incurred great dangers. Upward of thirty plots
were formed against me. These have been proved by authentic testimony,
without mentioning many which never came to light. Some sovereigns
invent conspiracies against themselves; for my part, I made it a rule
carefully to conceal them whenever I could. The crisis most serious to
me was during the interval from the battle of Marengo, to the attempt
of George Cadoudal and the affair of the Duke D'Enghien."
Napoleon now, with his accustomed vigor, took hold of the robbers
and made short work with them. The insurgent armies of La Vendee,
numbering more than one hundred thousand men, and filled with
adventurers and desperadoes of every kind, were disbanded when their
chiefs yielded homage to Napoleon. Many of these men, accustomed to
banditti warfare, took to the highways. The roads were so infested by
them, that traveling became exceedingly perilous, and it was necessary
that every stage-coach which left Paris should be accompanied by a
guard of armed soldiers. To remedy a state of society thus convulsed
to its very centre, special tribunals were organized, consisting of
eight judges. They were to take cognizance of all such crimes as
conspiracies, robberies, and acts of violence of any kind. The armed
bands of Napoleon swept over France like a whirlwind. The robbers were
seized, tried, and shot without delay. Order was at once restored. The
people thought not of the dangerous power they were placing in the
hands of the First Consul. They asked only for a commander, who was
able and willing to quell the tumult of the times. Such a commander
they found in Napoleon. They were more than willing to confer upon him
all the power he could desire. "You know what is best for us;" said the
people to Napoleon. "Direct us what to do, and we will do it." It was
thus that absolute power came voluntarily into his hands. Under the
circumstances it was so natural that it can excite no suspicion. He was
called First Consul. But he already swayed a sceptre more mighty than
that of the Cæsars. But sixteen months had now elapsed since Napoleon
landed at Frejus. In that time he had attained the throne of France. He
had caused order and prosperity to emerge from the chaos of revolution.
By his magnanimity he had disarmed Russia, by his armies had humbled
Austria, and had compelled continental Europe to accept an honorable
peace. He merited the gratitude of his countrymen, and he received
it in overflowing measure. Through all these incidents, so eventful
and so full of difficulty, it is not easy to point to a single act of
Napoleon, which indicates a malicious or an ungenerous spirit.
"I fear nothing," said Napoleon at St. Helena, "for my renown.
Posterity will do me justice. It will compare the good which I have
done with the faults which I have committed. If I had succeeded I
should have died with the reputation of being the greatest man who
ever existed. From being nothing I became, by my own exertions, the
most powerful monarch of the universe, without committing any crime.
My ambition was great, but it _rested_ on the opinion of the masses. I
have always thought that sovereignty resides in the people. The empire,
as I had organized it, was but a great republic. Called to the throne
by the voice of the people, my maxim has always been, _a career open to
talent without distinction of birth_. It is for this system of equality
that the European oligarchy detests me. And yet in England talent and
great services raise a man to the highest rank. England should have
understood me."
"The French Revolution," said Napoleon, "was a general movement of the
mass of the nation against the privileged classes. The nobles were
exempt from the burdens of the state, and yet exclusively occupied
all the posts of honor and emolument. The revolution destroyed these
exclusive privileges, and established equality of rights. All the
avenues to wealth and greatness were equally open to every citizen,
according to his talents. The French nation established the imperial
throne, and placed me upon it. The throne of France was granted before
to Hugh Capet, by a few bishops and nobles. The imperial throne was
given to me, by the desire of the people."
Joseph Bonaparte was of very essential service to Napoleon in the
diplomatic intercourse of the times. Lucien also was employed in
various ways, and the whole family were taken under the protection of
the First Consul. At St. Helena Napoleon uttered the following graphic
and truthful eulogium upon his brothers and sisters: "What family,
in similar circumstances, would have acted better? Every one is not
qualified to be a statesman. That requires a combination of powers
which does not often fall to the lot of any one. In this respect all my
brothers were singularly situated; they possessed at once too much and
too little talent. They felt themselves too strong to resign themselves
blindly to a guiding counselor, and yet too weak to be left entirely to
themselves. But take them all in all I have certainly good reason to be
proud of my family. Joseph would have been an honor to society in any
country, and Lucien would have been an honor to any assembly. Jerome,
as he advanced in life, would have developed every qualification
requisite in a sovereign. Louis would have been distinguished in any
rank or condition of life. My sister Eliza was endowed with masculine
powers of mind; she must have proved herself a philosopher in her
adverse fortune. Caroline possessed great talents and capacity.
Pauline, perhaps the most beautiful woman of her age, has been, and
will continue to the end of her life, the most amiable creature in
the world. As to my mother, she deserves all kinds of veneration. How
seldom is so numerous a family entitled to so much praise. Add to this,
that, setting aside the jarring of political opinions, we sincerely
loved each other. For my part, I never ceased to cherish fraternal
affection for them all. And I am convinced that in their hearts they
felt the same sentiments toward me, and that, in case of need, they
would have given me every proof of it."
The proud old nobility, whom Napoleon had restored to France, and upon
many of whom he had conferred their confiscated estates, manifested
no gratitude toward their benefactor. They were sighing for the
re-enthronement of the Bourbons, and for the return of the good old
times, when all the offices of emolument and honor were reserved for
them and for their children, and the _people_ were but their hewers of
wood and drawers of water. In the morning, as beggars, they would crowd
the audience-chamber of the First Consul with their petitions. In the
evening they disdained to honor his levees with their presence. They
spoke contemptuously of Josephine, of her kindness and her desire to
conciliate all parties. They condemned every thing that Napoleon did.
He, however, paid no heed to their murmurings. He would not condescend
even to punish them by neglect. In that most lofty pride which induced
him to say that, in his administration he _wished to imitate the
clemency of God_, he endeavored to consult for the interests of all,
both the evil and the unthankful. His fame was to consist, not in
revenging himself upon his enemies, but in aggrandizing France.
At this time Napoleon's establishment at the Tuileries rather resembled
that of a very rich gentleman, than the court of a monarch. Junot,
one of his aids, was married to Mademoiselle Permon, the young lady
whose name will be remembered in connection with the anecdote of "Puss
in Boots." Her mother was one of the most haughty of the ancient
nobility, who affected to look upon Napoleon with contempt as not of
royal blood. The evening after her marriage Madame Junot was to be
presented to Josephine. After the Opera she drove to the Tuileries. It
was near eleven o'clock. As Josephine had appointed the hour, she was
expected. Eugene, hearing the wheels of the carriage, descended to the
court-yard, presented his arm to Madame Junot, and they entered the
large saloon together. It was a magnificent apartment, magnificently
furnished. Two chandeliers, surrounded with gauze to soften the glare,
shed a subdued and grateful light over the room. Josephine was seated
before a tapestry-frame working upon embroidery. Near her sat Hortense,
sylph-like in figure, and surpassingly gentle and graceful in her
manners. Napoleon was standing near Josephine, with his hands clasped
behind him, engaged in conversation with his wife and her lovely
daughter. Upon the entrance of Madame Junot Josephine immediately
arose, took her two hands, and, affectionately kissing her, said,
"I have too long been Junot's friend, not to entertain the same
sentiments for his wife; particularly for the one he has chosen."
"Oh, Josephine!" said Napoleon, "that is running on very fast. How do
you know that this little pickle is worth loving. Well, Mademoiselle
Loulou (you see that I do not forget the names of my old friends), have
you not a word for me?" Saying this, he gently took her hand and drew
her toward him.
The young bride was much embarrassed, and yet she struggled to retain
her pride of birth. "General!" she replied, smiling, "it is not for me
to speak first."
"Very well parried," said Napoleon, playfully, "the mother's spirit!
And how is Madame Permon?"
"Very ill, general! For two years her health has caused us great
uneasiness."
"Indeed," said Napoleon, "so bad as that? I am sorry to hear it; very
sorry. Make my regards to her. It is a wrong head, a proud spirit, but
she has a generous heart and a noble soul. I hope that we shall often
see you, Madame Junot. My intention is to draw around me a numerous
family, consisting of my generals and their young wives. They will be
friends of my wife and of Hortense, as their husbands are my friends.
But you must not expect to meet here your acquaintances of the ancient
nobility. I do not like them. They are my enemies, and prove it by
defaming me."
This was but the morning twilight of that imperial splendor which
afterward dazzled the most powerful potentates of Europe. Hortense,
who subsequently became the wife of Louis Bonaparte, and the mother
of Louis Napoleon, who, at the moment of this present writing, is at
the head of the government of France, was then seventeen years of
age. "She was," says Madame Junot, "fresh as a rose. Though her fair
complexion was not relieved by much color, she had enough to produce
that freshness and bloom which was her chief beauty. A profusion of
light hair played in silken locks around her soft and penetrating blue
eyes. The delicate roundness of her figure, slender as a palm-tree, was
set off by the elegant carriage of her head. But that which formed the
chief attraction of Hortense was the grace and suavity of her manners,
which united the creole nonchalance with the vivacity of France. She
was gay, gentle, and amiable. She had wit, which, without the smallest
ill-temper, had just malice enough to be amusing. A polished and
well-conducted education had improved her natural talents. She drew
excellently, sang harmoniously, and performed admirably in comedy. In
1800, she was a charming young girl. She afterward became one of the
most amiable princesses in Europe. I have seen many, both in their own
courts and in Paris, but I have never known one who had any pretensions
to equal talents. She was beloved by every one. Her brother loved her
tenderly. The First Consul looked upon her as his child."
Napoleon has been accused of an improper affection for Hortense. The
world has been filled with the slander. Says Bourrienne, "Napoleon
never cherished for her any feeling but a real paternal tenderness. He
loved her after his marriage with her mother, as he would have loved
his own child. At least for three years I was a witness to all their
most private actions, and I declare I never saw any thing that could
furnish the least ground for suspicion, nor the slightest trace of
a culpable intimacy. This calumny must be classed among those which
malice delights to take in the character of men who become celebrated,
calumnies which are adopted lightly and without reflection. Napoleon
is no more. Let his memory be accompanied only by that, be it good or
bad, which really took place. Let not this reproach be made a charge
against him by the impartial historian. I must say, in conclusion, on
this delicate subject, that his principles were rigid in an extreme
degree, and that any fault of the nature charged, neither entered his
mind, nor was in accordance with his morals or his taste."
At St. Helena Napoleon was one day looking over a book containing an
account of his amours. He smiled as he glanced his eye over the pages,
saying, "I do not even know the names of most of the females who are
mentioned here. This is all very foolish. Every body knows that I had
no _time_ for such dissipation."
THE CHURCH OF THE CUP OF COLD WATER.
One beautiful evening, in the year 1815, the parish priest of San
Pietro, a village a few miles distant from Sevilla, returned much
fatigued to his little cottage, where he found his aged housekeeper,
the Señora Margarita, watching for him. Notwithstanding that one is
well accustomed to the sight of poverty in Spain, it was impossible
to help being struck by the utter destitution which appeared in the
house of the good priest; the more so, as every imaginable contrivance
had been resorted to, to hide the nakedness of the walls, and the
shabbiness of the furniture. Margarita had prepared for her master's
supper a rather small dish of _olla-podriga_, which consisted, to say
the truth, of the remains of the dinner, seasoned and disguised with
great skill, and with the addition of some sauce, and a _name_. As she
placed the savory dish upon the table, the priest said: "We should
thank God for this good supper, Margarita; this olla-podriga makes
one's mouth water. My friend, you ought to be grateful for finding so
good a supper at the house of your host!" At the word host, Margarita
raised her eyes, and saw a stranger, who had followed her master. Her
countenance changed, and she looked annoyed. She glanced indignantly
first at the unknown, and then at the priest, who, looking down, said
in a low voice, and with the timidity of a child: "What is enough for
two, is always enough for three; and surely you would not wish that I
should allow a Christian to die of hunger? He has not tasted food for
two days."
"A Christian! He is more like a brigand!" and Margarita left the room,
murmuring loudly enough to be heard.
Meanwhile, the unwelcome guest had remained standing at the door.
He was a man of great height, half-dressed in rags, and covered
with mud; while his black hair, piercing eyes, and carbine, gave
him an appearance which, though hardly prepossessing, was certainly
interesting. "Must I go?" said he.
The priest replied with an emphatic gesture: "Those whom I bring under
my roof are never driven forth, and are never unwelcome. Put down your
carbine. Let us say grace, and go to table."
"I never leave my carbine, for, as the Castilian proverb says, 'Two
friends are one.' My carbine is my best friend; and I always keep it
beside me. Although you allow me to come into your house, and do not
oblige me to leave it until I wish to do so, there are others who
would think nothing of hauling me out, and, perhaps, with my feet
foremost. Come--to your good health, mine host, and let us to supper."
The priest possessed an extremely good appetite, but the voracity of
the stranger soon obliged him to give up, for, not contented with
eating, or rather devouring, nearly the whole of the olla-podriga,
the guest finished a large loaf of bread, without leaving a crumb.
While he ate, he kept continually looking round with an expression of
inquietude: he started at the slightest sound; and once, when a violent
gust of wind made the door bang, he sprang to his feet, and seized his
carbine, with an air which showed that, if necessary, he would sell his
life dearly. Discovering the cause of the alarm, he reseated himself at
table, and finished his repast.
"Now," said he, "I have one thing more to ask. I have been wounded, and
for eight days my wound has not been dressed. Give me a few old rags,
and you shall be no longer burdened with my presence."
"I am in no haste for you to go," replied the priest, whose guest,
notwithstanding his constant watchfulness, had conversed very
entertainingly. "I know something of surgery, and will dress your
wound."
So saying, he took from a cupboard a case containing every thing
necessary, and proceeded to do as he had said. The stranger had bled
profusely, a ball having passed through his thigh; and to have traveled
in this condition, and while suffering, too, from want of food, showed
a strength which seemed hardly human.
"You can not possibly continue your journey to-day," said the host.
"You must pass the night here. A little rest will get up your strength,
diminish the inflammation of your wound, and--"
"I must go to-day, and immediately," interrupted the stranger. "There
are some who wait for me," he added with a sigh--"and there are some,
too, who follow me." And the momentary look of softness passed from
his features between the clauses of the sentence, and gave place to an
expression almost of ferocity. "Now, is it finished? That is well. See,
I can walk as firmly as though I had never been wounded. Give me some
bread; pay yourself for your hospitality with this piece of gold, and
adieu."
The priest put back the gold with displeasure. "I am not an innkeeper,"
said he; "and I do not sell my hospitality."
"As you will, but pardon me; and now, farewell, my kind host."
So saying, he took the bread, which Margarita, at her master's command,
very unwillingly gave him, and soon his tall figure disappeared among
the thick foliage of a wood which surrounded the house, or rather the
cabin. An hour had scarcely passed, when musket-shots were heard close
by, and the unknown reappeared, deadly pale, and bleeding from a deep
wound near the heart.
"Take these," said he, giving some pieces of gold to his late host;
"they are for my children--near the stream--in the valley."
He fell, and the next moment several police-officers rushed into the
house. They hastily secured the unfortunate man, who attempted no
resistance. The priest entreated to be allowed to dress his wound,
which they permitted; but when this was done, they insisted on carrying
him away immediately. They would not even procure a carriage; and when
they were told of the danger of removing a man so severely wounded,
they merely said: "What does it matter? If he recovers, it will only be
to receive sentence of death. He is the famous brigand, José!"
José thanked the intercessor with a look. He then asked for a little
water, and when the priest brought it to him, he said, in a faint
voice: "Remember!" The reply was merely a sign of intelligence. When
they were gone, notwithstanding all Margarita could say as to the
danger of going out at night, the priest crossed the wood, descended
into the valley, and soon found, beside the body of a woman, who had
doubtless been killed by a stray ball of the police, an infant, and a
little boy of about four years old, who was trying in vain to awaken
his mother. Imagine Margarita's amazement when the priest returned with
two children in his arms.
"May all good saints defend us! What have you done, señor? We have
barely enough to live upon, and you bring two children! I suppose I
must beg from door to door, for you and for them. And, for mercy's
sake, who are these children? The sons of that brigand, gipsy, thief,
murderer, perhaps! I am sure they have never been baptized!" At this
moment the infant began to cry. "And pray, Señor Clérigo, how do you
mean to feed that child? You know very well that we have no means of
paying a nurse. We must spoon-feed it, and nice nights that will give
me! It can not be more than six months old, poor little creature,"
she added, as her master placed it in her arms. "Fortunately, I have
a little milk here;" and forgetting her anger, she busied herself in
putting some milk on the fire, and then sat down beside it to warm the
infant, who seemed half-frozen. Her master watched her in silence, and
when at last he saw her kiss its little cheek, he turned away with a
quiet smile.
When at length the little one had been hushed into a gentle slumber,
and when Margarita, with the assistance of her master's cloak, and some
of her own clothes, had made a bed for the elder boy, and placed him in
it, the good man told her how the children had been committed to his
care, and the promise he had made, though not in words, to protect them.
"That is very right and good, no doubt," said Margarita; "I only want
to know how we are all to live? The priest opened his Bible, and read
aloud:
"Whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of
cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he
shall in no wise lose his reward."
"Amen!" said Margarita.
Twelve years passed by. The parish priest of San Pietro, who was now
more than seventy years old, was sitting in the sunshine at his door.
Near him, a boy of about twelve years old was reading aloud from the
Bible, looking occasionally toward a tall, fine-looking young man, who
was hard at work in a garden close by. Margarita, who was now become
blind, sat and listened. Suddenly, the sound of wheels was heard, and
the boy exclaimed: "Oh! the beautiful carriage!" A splendid carriage
approached rapidly, and stopped before the door. A richly-dressed
servant approached, and asked for a cup of water for his master.
"Carlos," said the priest to the younger boy, "go, bring water to the
gentleman; and add some wine, if he will accept it. Go quickly!" At
this moment the carriage-door opened, and a gentleman, apparently about
fifty years old, alighted.
"Are these your nephews?" said he to the priest.
"They are more than that, señor; they are my children--the children of
my adoption."
"How is that?"
"I will tell you, señor; for I am old and poor, and know but little of
the world, and am in much need of advice; for I know not what to do
with these two children." He related the story we have just told. "And
now, señor, what do you advise me to do?"
"Apply to one of the nobles of the court, who must assign you a pension
of four thousand ducats."
"I asked you for advice, señor, and not for jest."
"And then, your church must be rebuilt. We will call it the Church
of the Cup of Cold Water. Here is the plan. See, this is to be the
vicarage; and here, divided by this paling--"
"What does this mean? What would you say? And, surely, I remember that
voice, that face--"
"I am Don José della Ribeira; and twelve years ago, I was the brigand
José. I escaped from prison; and--for the revolution made great
changes--am now powerful. My children--"
He clasped them in his arms. And when at length he had embraced them a
hundred times, with tears, and smiles, and broken sentences; and when
all had in some degree recovered their composure, he took the hand of
the priest and said: "Well, father, will you not accept the Church
of the Cup of Cold Water?" The old man, deeply affected, turned to
Margarita, and repeated:
"Whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of
cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he
shall in no wise lose his reward."
"Amen!" replied the aged woman, her voice tremulous from emotion.
A short time afterward, Don José della Ribeira and his
two sons were present at the consecration of the church of
San-Pietro-del-Vaso-di-Aqua-Fria, one of the prettiest churches in the
neighborhood of Sevilla.
MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.[3]
CHAPTER XIX.--CONTINUED.
[3] Continued from the May Number.
"Bother," said Dick! "What do women know about politics. I wish you'd
mind the child--it is crumpling up and playing almighty smash with that
flim-flam book, which cost me a one pound one."
Mrs. Avenel submissively bowed her head, and removed the Annual from
the hands of the young destructive; the destructive set up a squall,
as destructives generally do when they don't have their own way. Dick
clapped his hands to his ears. "Whe-e-ew, I can't stand this; come and
take a walk, Leslie; I want stretching!" He stretched himself as he
spoke, first half way up to the ceiling, and then fairly out of the
room.
Randal with his May Fair manner, turned toward Mrs. Avenel as if to
apologize for her husband and himself.
"Poor Richard?" said she, "he is in one of his humors--all men have
them. Come and see me again soon. When does Almack's open!"
"Nay, I ought to ask you that question, you who know every thing that
goes on in our set," said the young serpent. Any tree planted in "our
set," if it had been but a crab-tree, would have tempted Mr. Avenel's
Eve to a jump at its boughs.
"_Are_ you coming, there?" cried Dick from the foot of the stairs.
CHAPTER XX.
"I have just been at our friend Levy's," said Randal when he and
Dick were outside the street door. "He, like you, is full of
politics--pleasant man--for the business he is said to do."
"Well," said Dick slowly, "I suppose he _is_ pleasant, but make the
best of it--and still--"
"Still what, my dear Avenel?" (Randal here for the first time discarded
the formal Mister.)
MR. AVENEL.--"Still the thing itself is not pleasant."
RANDAL (with his soft hollow laugh).--"You mean borrowing money upon
more than five per cent?"
"Oh, curse the per centage. I agree with Bentham on the Usury Laws--no
shackles in trade for me, whether in money or any thing else. That's
not it. But when one owes a fellow money even at two per cent, and 'tis
not convenient to pay him, why, somehow or other, it makes one feel
small; it takes the British Liberty out of a man!"
"I should have thought you more likely to lend money than to borrow it."
"Well, I guess you are right there, as a general rule. But I tell you
what it is, sir; there is too great a mania for competition getting up
in this rotten old country of ours. I am as liberal as most men. I like
competition to a certain extent, but there is too much of it, sir--too
much of it!"
Randal looked sad and convinced. But if Leonard had heard Dick Avenel,
what would have been his amaze! Dick Avenel rail against competition!
Think there could be too much of it? Of course, "heaven and earth are
coming together," said the spider when the housemaid's broom invaded
its cobweb. Dick was all for sweeping away other cobwebs; but he
certainly thought heaven and earth coming together when he saw a great
Turk's-head besom poked up at his own.
Mr. Avenel in his genius for speculation and improvement, had
established a factory at Screwstown, the first which had ever eclipsed
the church spire with its Titanic chimney. It succeeded well at
first. Mr. Avenel transferred to this speculation nearly all his
capital. "Nothing," quoth he, "paid such an interest. Manchester was
getting worn out--time to show what Screwstown could do. Nothing like
competition." But by-and-by a still greater capitalist than Dick
Avenel, finding out that Screwstown was at the mouth of a coal mine,
and that Dick's profits were great, erected a still uglier edifice,
with a still taller chimney. And having been brought up to the
business, and making his residence in the town, while Dick employed a
foreman and flourished in London, this infamous competitor so managed,
first to share, and then gradually to sequester, the profits which Dick
had hitherto monopolized, that no wonder Mr. Avenel thought competition
should have its limits. "The tongue touches where the tooth aches,"
as Dr. Riccabocca would tell us. By little and little our juvenile
Talleyrand (I beg the elder great man's pardon) wormed out from Dick
this grievance, and in the grievance discovered the origin of Dick's
connection with the money-lender.
"But Levy," said Avenel, candidly, "is a decentish chap in his
way--friendly too. Mrs. A. finds him useful; brings some of your young
highflyers to her _soirées_. To be sure, they don't dance--stand all
in a row at the door, like mutes at a funeral. Not but what they have
been uncommon civil to me lately--Spendquick particularly. By-the-by,
I dine with him to-morrow. The aristocracy are behindhand--not smart,
sir--not up to the march; but when a man knows how to take 'em, they
beat the New Yorkers in good manners. I'll say that for them. I have no
prejudice."
"I never saw a man with less; no prejudice even against Levy."
"No, not a bit of it! Every one says he's a Jew; he says he's not. I
don't care a button what he is. His money is English--that's enough
for any man of a liberal turn of mind. His charges, too, are moderate.
To be sure, he knows I shall pay them; only what I don't like in him
is a sort of way he has of _mon-chering_ and my-good-fellowing one,
to do things quite out of the natural way of that sort of business.
He knows I have got parliament influence. I could return a couple of
members for Screwstown, and one, or perhaps two, for Lansmere, where
I have of late been cooking up an interest; and he dictates to--no,
not _dictates_--but tries to _humbug_ me into putting in his own men.
However, in one respect we are likely to agree. He says you want to
come into Parliament. You seem a smart young fellow; but you must
throw over that stiff red tapist of yours, and go with Public Opinion,
and--Myself."
"You are very kind, Avenel; perhaps when we come to compare opinions we
may find that we agree entirely. Still, in Egerton's present position,
delicacy to him--however, we'll not discuss that now. But you really
think I might come in for Lansmere--against the L'Estrange interest,
too, which must be strong there?"
"It _was_ very strong, but I've smashed it, I calculate."
"Would a contest there cost very much?"
"Well, I guess you must come down with the ready. But, as you say,
time enough to discuss that when you have squared your account with
'delicacy;' come to me then, and we'll go into it."
Randal, having now squeezed his orange dry, had no desire to waste his
time in brushing up the rind with his coat-sleeve, so he unhooked his
arm from Avenel, and looking at his watch, discovered he should be just
in time for an appointment of the most urgent business--hailed a cab,
and drove off.
Dick looked hipped and disconsolate at being left alone; he yawned
very loud, to the astonishment of three prim old maiden Belgravians
who were passing that way; and then his mind began to turn toward his
factory at Screwstown, which had led to his connection with the Baron;
and he thought over a letter he had received from his foreman that
morning, informing him that it was rumored at Screwstown that Mr. Dyce,
his rival, was about to have new machinery, on an improved principle;
and that Mr. Dyce had already gone up to town, it was supposed with
the intention of concluding a purchase for a patent discovery to be
applied to the new machinery, and which that gentleman had publicly
declared in the corn-market, "would shut up Mr. Avenel's factory before
the year was out." As this menacing epistle recurred to him, Dick felt
his desire to yawn incontinently checked. His brow grew very dark;
and he walked with restless strides, on and on, till he found himself
in the Strand. He then got into an omnibus, and proceeded to the
city, wherein he spent the rest of the day, looking over machines and
foundries, and trying in vain to find out what diabolical invention the
over-competition of Mr. Dyce had got hold of. "If," said Dick Avenel
to himself, as he returned fretfully homeward--"if a man like me, who
has done so much for British industry and go-ahead principles, is to
be catawampously champed up by a mercenary selfish cormorant of a
capitalist like that interloping blockhead in drab breeches, Tom Dyce,
all I can say is, that the sooner this cursed old country goes to the
dogs the better pleased I shall be. I wash my hands of it."
CHAPTER XXI.
Randal's mind was made up. All he had learned in regard to Levy had
confirmed his resolves or dissipated his scruples. He had started from
the improbability that Peschiera would offer, and the still greater
improbability that Peschiera would pay him ten thousand pounds for
such information or aid as he could bestow in furthering the Count's
object. But when Levy took such proposals entirely on himself, the
main question to Randal became this--could it be Levy's interest to
make so considerable a sacrifice? Had the Baron implied only friendly
sentiments as his motives, Randal would have felt sure he was to be
taken in; but the usurer's frank assurance that it would answer to him
in the long run to concede to Randal terms so advantageous, altered the
case, and led our young philosopher to look at the affair with calm
contemplative eyes. Was it sufficiently obvious that Levy counted on
an adequate return? Might he calculate on reaping help by the bushel
if he sowed it by the handful? The result of Randal's cogitations was,
that the Baron might fairly deem himself no wasteful sower. In the
first place, it was clear that Levy, not without reasonable ground,
believed that he could soon replace, with exceeding good interest, any
sum he might advance to Randal, out of the wealth which Randal's prompt
information might bestow on Levy's client, the Count; and, secondly,
Randal's self-esteem was immense, and could he but succeed in securing
a pecuniary independence on the instant, to free him from the slow
drudgery of the bar, or from a precarious reliance on Audley Egerton,
as a politician out of power--his convictions of rapid triumphs in
public life were as strong as if whispered by an angel, or promised
by a fiend. On such triumphs, with all the social position they would
secure, Levy might well calculate for repayment, through a thousand
indirect channels. Randal's sagacity detected that, through all the
good-natured or liberal actions ascribed to the usurer, Levy had
steadily pursued his own interests--he saw that Levy meant to get him
into his power, and use his abilities as instruments for digging new
mines, in which Baron Levy would claim the right of large royalties.
But at that thought Randal's pale lip curled disdainfully; he confided
too much in his own powers not to think that he could elude the grasp
of the usurer, whenever it suited him to do so. Thus, on a survey, all
conscience hushed itself--his mind rushed buoyantly on to anticipations
of the future. He saw the hereditary estates regained--no matter how
mortgaged--for the moment still his own--legally his own--yielding
for the present what would suffice for competence to one of a few
wants, and freeing his name from that title of Adventurer, which is so
prodigally given in rich old countries to those who have no estates but
their brains. He thought of Violante but as the civilized trader thinks
of a trifling coin, of a glass bead, which he exchanges with some
barbarian for gold dust; he thought of Frank Hazeldean, married to the
foreign woman of beggared means, and repute that had known the breath
of scandal--married, and living on post-obit installments of the Casino
property; he thought of the poor Squire's resentment; his avarice swept
from the lands annexed to Rood on to the broad fields of Hazeldean;
he thought of Avenel, of Lansmere, of Parliament; with one hand he
grasped fortune, with the next power. "And yet I entered on life with
no patrimony--(save a ruined hall and a barren waste)--no patrimony but
knowledge. I have but turned knowledge from books to men; for books
may give fame after death, but men give us power in life." And all
the while he thus ruminated, his act was speeding his purpose. Though
it was but in a miserable hack-cab that he erected airy scaffoldings
round airy castles, still the miserable hack-cab was flying fast, to
secure the first foot of solid ground whereon to transfer the mental
plan of the architect to foundations of positive slime and clay. The
cab stopped at the door of Lord Lansmere's house. Randal had suspected
Violante to be there; he resolved to ascertain. Randal descended from
his vehicle and rang the bell. The lodge-keeper opened the great wooden
gates.
"I have called to see the young lady staying here--the foreign young
lady."
Lady Lansmere had been too confident as to the security of her roof to
condescend to give any orders to her servants with regard to her guest,
and the lodge-keeper answered directly--
"At home, I believe, sir. I rather think she is in the garden with my
lady."
"I see," said Randal. And he did see the form of Violante at a
distance. "But since she is walking, I will not disturb her at present.
I will call another day."
The lodge-keeper bowed respectfully, Randal jumped into his cab--"To
Curzon-street--quick!"
CHAPTER XXII.
Harley had made one notable oversight in that appeal to Beatrice's
better and gentler nature, which he intrusted to the advocacy of
Leonard--a scheme in itself very characteristic of Harley's romantic
temper, and either wise or foolish, according as his indulgent theory
of human idiosyncracies in general, and of those peculiar to Beatrice
di Negra in especial, was the dream of an enthusiast, or the inductive
conclusion of a sound philosopher.
Harley had warned Leonard not to fall in love with the Italian--he had
forgotten to warn the Italian not to fall in love with Leonard; nor
had he ever anticipated the probability of that event. This is not
to be very much wondered at; for if there be any thing on which the
most sensible men are dull-eyed, where those eyes are not lightened by
jealousy, it is as to the probabilities of another male creature being
beloved. All, the least vain of the whiskered gender, think it prudent
to guard themselves against being too irresistible to the fair sex; and
each says of his friend, "Good fellow enough, but the last man for
_that_ woman to fall in love with!"
But certainly there appeared on the surface more than ordinary cause
for Harley's blindness in the special instance of Leonard.
Whatever Beatrice's better qualities, she was generally esteemed
worldly and ambitious. She was pinched in circumstances--she was
luxurious and extravagant; how was it likely that she could distinguish
any aspirant, of the humble birth and fortunes of the young peasant
author? As a coquette she might try to win his admiration and attract
his fancy; but her own heart would surely be guarded in the triple
mail of pride, poverty, and the conventional opinions of the world in
which she lived. Had Harley thought it possible that Madame di Negra
could stoop below her station, and love, not wisely, but too well,
he would rather have thought that the object would be some brilliant
adventurer of fashion--some one who could turn against herself all
the arts of deliberate fascination, and all the experience bestowed
by frequent conquest. One so simple as Leonard--so young and so new!
Harley L'Estrange would have smiled at himself if the idea of that
image subjugating the ambitious woman to the disinterested love of a
village maid, had once crossed his mind. Nevertheless, so it was, and
precisely from those causes which would have seemed to Harley to forbid
the weakness.
It _was_ that fresh, pure heart--it was that simple, earnest
sweetness--it was that contrast in look, in tone, in sentiment, and
in reasonings, to all that had jaded and disgusted her in the circle
of her admirers--it was all this that captivated Beatrice at the
first interview with Leonard. Here was what she had confessed to the
skeptical Randal she had dreamed and sighed for. Her earliest youth had
passed into abhorrent marriage, without the soft, innocent crisis of
human life--virgin love. Many a wooer might have touched her vanity,
pleased her fancy, excited her ambition--her heart had never been
awakened: it woke now. The world, and the years that the world had
wasted, seemed to fleet away as a cloud. She was as if restored to the
blush and the sigh of youth--the youth of the Italian maid. As in the
restoration of our golden age is the spell of poetry with us all, so,
such was the spell of the poet himself on her.
Oh, how exquisite was that brief episode in the life of the woman
palled with the "hack sights and sounds" of worldly life! How strangely
happy were those hours, when, lured on by her silent sympathy, the
young scholar spoke of his early struggles between circumstance and
impulse, musing amidst the flowers, and hearkening to the fountain: or
of his wanderings in the desolate, lamp-lit streets, while the vision
of Chatterton's glittering eyes shone dread through the friendless
shadows. And as he spoke, whether of his hopes or his fears, her
looks dwelt fondly on the young face, that varied between pride and
sadness--pride ever so gentle, and sadness ever so nobly touching.
She was never weary of gazing on that brow, with its quiet power: but
her lids dropped before those eyes, with their serene, unfathomable
passion. She felt, as they haunted her, what a deep and holy thing
love in such souls must be. Leonard never spoke to her of Helen--that
reserve every reader can comprehend. To natures like his, first love is
a mystery; to confide it is to profane. But he fulfilled his commission
of interesting her in the exile and his daughter. And his description
of them brought tears to her eyes. She inly resolved not to aid
Peschiera in his designs on Violante. She forgot for the moment that
her own fortune was to depend on the success of those designs. Levy had
arranged so that she was not reminded of her poverty by creditors--she
knew not how. She knew nothing of business. She gave herself up to
the delight of the present hour, and to vague prospects of a future,
associated with that young image--with that face of a guardian angel
that she saw before her, fairest in the moments of absence: for in
those moments came the life of fairy land, when we shut our eyes on the
world, and see through the haze of golden reverie. Dangerous, indeed,
to Leonard would have been the soft society of Beatrice di Negra, had
his heart not been wholly devoted to one object, and had not his ideal
of woman been from that object one sole and indivisible reflection.
But Beatrice guessed not this barrier between herself and him. Amidst
the shadows that he conjured up from his past life, she beheld no
rival form. She saw him lonely in the world as she was herself.
And in his lowly birth, his youth, in the freedom from presumption
which characterized him in all things (save that confidence in his
intellectual destinies which is the essential attribute of genius), she
but grew the bolder by the belief that, even if he loved her, he would
not dare to hazard the avowal.
And thus, one day, yielding as she had been ever wont to yield, to
the impulse of her quick Italian heart--how she never remembered--in
what words she could never recall--she spoke--she owned her love--she
pleaded, with tears and blushes, for love in return. All that passed
was to her as a dream--a dream from which she woke with a fierce sense
of agony, of humiliation--woke as the "woman scorned." No matter how
gratefully, how tenderly, Leonard had replied--the reply was refusal.
For the first time she learned she had a rival; that all he could give
of love was long since, from his boyhood, given to another. For the
first time in her life that ardent nature knew jealousy, its torturing
stings, its thirst for vengeance, its tempest of loving hate. But, to
outward appearance, silent and cold she stood as marble. Words that
sought to soothe fell on her ear unheeded: they were drowned by the
storm within. Pride was the first feeling that dominated the warring
elements that raged in her soul. She tore her hand from that which
clasped hers with so loyal a respect. She could have spurned the form
that knelt, not for love, but for pardon, at her feet. She pointed to
the door with the gesture of an insulted queen. She knew no more till
she was alone. Then came that rapid flash of conjecture peculiar to
the storms of jealousy; that which seems to single from all nature the
one object to dread and to destroy; the conjecture so often false, yet
received at once by our convictions as the revelation of instinctive
truth. He to whom she had humbled herself loved another; whom but
Violante?--whom else, young and beautiful, had he named in the record
of his life? None! And he had sought to interest her, Beatrice di
Negra, in the object of his love--hinted at dangers, which Beatrice
knew too well--implied trust in Beatrice's will to protect. Blind fool
that she had been! This, then, was the reason why he had come, day
after day, to Beatrice's house; this was the charm that had drawn him
thither; this--she pressed her hands to her burning temples, as if to
stop the torture of thought. Suddenly a voice was heard below, the door
opened, and Randal Leslie entered.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Punctually at eight o'clock that evening, Baron Levy welcomed the
new ally he had secured. The pair dined _en tête-à-tête_, discussing
general matters till the servants left them to their wine. Then said
the Baron, rising and stirring the fire--then said the Baron, briefly
and significantly--
"Well!"
"As regards the property you spoke of," answered Randal, "I am willing
to purchase it on the terms you name. The only point that perplexes me
is how to account to Audley Egerton, to my parents, to the world, for
the power of purchasing it."
"True," said the Baron, without even a smile at the ingenious and truly
Greek manner in which Randal had contrived to denote his meaning, and
conceal the ugliness of it--"true, we must think of that. If we could
manage to conceal the real name of the purchaser for a year or so--it
might be easy--you may be supposed to have speculated in the Funds;
or Egerton may die, and people may believe that he had secured to you
something handsome from the ruins of his fortune."
"Little chance of Egerton's dying."
"Humph!" said the Baron. "However, this is a mere detail, reserved for
consideration. You can now tell us where the young lady is?"
"Certainly. I could not this morning--I can now. I will go with you
to the Count. Meanwhile, I have seen Madame di Negra: she will accept
Frank Hazeldean if he will but offer himself at once."
"Will he not?"
"No! I have been to him. He is overjoyed at my representations, but
considers it his duty to ask the consent of his parents. Of course
they will not give it; and if there be delay, she will retract. She is
under the influence of passions, on the duration of which there is no
reliance."
"What passions? Love?"
"Love; but not for Hazeldean. The passions that bring her to accept his
hand are pique and jealousy. She believes, in a word, that one, who
seems to have gained the mastery over her affections with a strange
suddenness, is but blind to her charms, because dazzled by Violante's.
She is prepared to aid in all that can give her rival to Peschiera; and
yet, such is the inconsistency of woman" (added the young philosopher,
with a shrug of the shoulders), "that she is also prepared to lose all
chance of securing him she loves, by bestowing herself on another!"
"Woman, indeed, all over!" said the Baron, tapping the snuff-box (Louis
Quinze), and regaling his nostrils with a scornful pinch. "But who is
the man whom the fair Beatrice has thus honored? Superb creature! I had
some idea of her myself when I bought up her debts; but it might have
embarrassed me, on more general plans, as regards the Count. All for
the best. Who's the man? Not Lord L'Estrange?"
"I do not think it is he; but I have not yet ascertained. I have told
you all I know. I found her in a state so excited, so unlike herself,
that I had no little difficulty in soothing her into confidence so far.
I could not venture more."
"And she will accept Frank?"
"Had he offered to-day she would have accepted him!"
"It may be a great help to your fortunes, _mon cher_, if Frank
Hazeldean marry this lady without his father's consent. Perhaps he may
be disinherited. You are next of kin."
"How do you know that?" asked Randal, sullenly.
"It is my business to know all about the chances and connections of any
one with whom I do money matters. I do money matters with young Mr.
Hazeldean; so I know that the Hazeldean property is not entailed; and,
as the Squire's half-brother has no Hazeldean blood in him, you have
excellent expectations."
"Did Frank tell you I was next of kin?"
"I rather think so; but I am sure _you_ did."
"I--when?"
"When you told me how important it was to you that Frank should marry
Madame di Negra. _Peste! mon cher_, do you think I am a blockhead?"
"Well, Baron, Frank is of age, and can marry to please himself. You
implied to me that you could help him in this."
"I will try. See that he call at Madame di Negra's to-morrow, at two
precisely."
"I would rather keep clear of all apparent interference in this matter.
Will you not arrange that he call on her?"
"I will. Any more wine? No;--then let us go to the Count's."
CHAPTER XXIV.
The next morning Frank Hazeldean was sitting over his solitary
breakfast-table. It was long past noon. The young man had risen early,
it is true, to attend his military duties, but he had contracted the
habit of breakfasting late. One's appetite does not come early when one
lives in London, and never goes to bed before daybreak.
There was nothing very luxurious or effeminate about Frank's rooms,
though they were in a very dear street, and he paid a monstrous high
price for them. Still, to a practiced eye, they betrayed an inmate
who can get through his money and make very little show for it. The
walls were covered with colored prints of racers and steeplechases,
interspersed with the portraits of opera-dancers--all smirk and
caper. Then there was a semicircular recess, covered with red cloth,
and fitted up for smoking, as you might perceive by sundry stands
full of Turkish pipes in cherry-stick and jessamine, with amber
mouth-pieces; while a great serpent hookah, from which Frank could no
more have smoked than he could have smoked out of the head of a boa
constrictor, coiled itself up on the floor; over the chimney-piece
was a collection of Moorish arms. What use on earth, ataghan and
scimitar, and damasquined pistols, that would not carry straight three
yards, could be to an officer in his Majesty's Guards, is more than I
can conjecture, or even Frank satisfactorily explain. I have strong
suspicions that this valuable arsenal passed to Frank in part-payment
of a bill to be discounted. At all events, if so, it was an improvement
on the bear that he had sold to the hairdresser. No books were to be
seen any where, except a Court Guide, a Racing Calendar, an Army List,
the Sporting Magazine complete (whole bound in scarlet morocco, at
about a guinea per volume), and a small book, as small as an Elzevir,
on the chimney-piece, by the side of a cigar-case. That small book had
cost Frank more than all the rest put together; it was his Own Book,
his book _par excellence_; book made up by himself--his BETTING-BOOK!
On a centre-table were deposited Frank's well-brushed hat--a satin-wood
box, containing kid-gloves of various delicate tints, from primrose to
lilac--a tray full of cards and three-cornered notes--an opera-glass,
and an ivory subscription ticket to his opera stall.
In one corner was an ingenious receptacle for canes, sticks, and
whips--I should not like, in these bad times, to have paid the bill
for them,--and, mounting guard by that receptacle, stood a pair of
boots as bright as Baron Levy's--"the force of brightness could no
further go." Frank was in his dressing-gown--very good taste--quite
Oriental--guaranteed to be true India cashmere, and charged as
such. Nothing could be more neat, though perfectly simple, than the
appurtenances of his breakfast-table;--silver tea-pot, ewer and
basin--all fitting into his dressing-box--(for the which may Storr
and Mortimer be now praised, and some day paid!) Frank looked very
handsome--rather tired, and exceedingly bored. He had been trying to
read the _Morning Post_, but the effort had proved too much for him.
Poor dear Frank Hazeldean! true type of many a poor dear fellow who
has long since gone to the dogs. And if, in this road to ruin, there
had been the least thing to do the traveler any credit by the way!
One feels a respect for the ruin of a man like Audley Egerton. He is
ruined _en roi_! From the wrecks of his fortune he can look down and
see stately monuments built from the stones of that dismantled edifice.
In every institution which attests the humanity of England, was a
record of the princely bounty of the public man. In those objects of
party for which the proverbial sinews of war are necessary--in those
rewards for service, which private liberality can confer--the hand of
Egerton had been opened as with the heart of a king. Many a rising
member of Parliament, in those days when talent was brought forward
through the aid of wealth and rank, owed his career to the seat which
Audley Egerton's large subscription had secured to him; many an obscure
supporter in letters and the press looked back to the day when he had
been freed from the jail by the gratitude of the patron. The city he
represented was embellished at his cost; through the shire that held
his mortgaged lands, which he had rarely ever visited, his gold had
flowed as a Pactolus; all that could animate its public spirit, or
increase its civilization claimed kindred with his munificence, and
never had a claim disallowed. Even in his grand careless household,
with its large retinue and superb hospitality, there was something
worthy of a representative of that time-honored portion of our true
nobility--the untitled gentlemen of the land. The great commoner
had, indeed, "something to show" for the money he had disdained and
squandered. But for Frank Hazeldean's mode of getting rid of the
dross, when gone, what would be left to tell the tale? Paltry prints
in a bachelor's lodging; a collection of canes and cherry sticks;
half-a-dozen letters in ill-spelt French from a _figurante_; some
long-legged horses, fit for nothing but to lose a race; that damnable
Betting-Book; and--_sic transit gloria_--down sweeps some hawk of a
Levy, on the wings of an I O U, and not a feather is left of the pigeon!
Yet Frank Hazeldean has stuff in him--a good heart, and strict honor.
Fool though he seem, there is sound sterling sense in some odd corner
of his brains, if one could but get at it. All he wants to save him
from perdition is, to do what he has never yet done--viz., pause and
think. But, to be sure that same operation of thinking is not so easy
for folks unaccustomed to it, as people who think--think!
"I can't bear this," said Frank, suddenly, and springing to his feet.
"This woman, I can not get her out of my head. I ought to go down to
the governor's; but then if he gets into a passion and refuses his
consent, where am I? And he will too, I fear. I wish I could make
out what Randal advises. He seems to recommend that I should marry
Beatrice at once, and trust to my mother's influence to make all right
afterward. But when I ask, '_Is_ that your advice?' he backs out of
it. Well I suppose he is right there. I can understand that he is
unwilling, good fellow, to recommend any thing that my father would
disapprove. But still--"
Here Frank stopped in his soliloquy, and did make his first desperate
effort to--think!
Now, O dear reader, I assume, of course, that thou art one of the class
to which thought is familiar; and, perhaps, thou hast smiled in disdain
or incredulity at that remark on the difficulty of thinking which
preceded Frank Hazeldean's discourse to himself. But art thou quite
sure that when thou hast tried to _think_ thou hast always succeeded!
Hast thou not often been duped by that pale visionary simulacrum of
thought which goes by the name of _reverie_? Honest old Montaigne
confessed that he did not understand that process of sitting down to
think, on which some folks express themselves so glibly. He could not
think unless he had a pen in his hand, and a sheet of paper before
him; and so, by a manual operation, seized and connected the links of
ratiocination. Very often has it happened to myself, when I have said
to Thought, peremptorily, "Bestir thyself--a serious matter is before
thee--ponder it well--think of it," that that same Thought has behaved
in the most refractory, rebellious manner conceivable--and instead of
concentrating its rays into a single stream of light, has broken into
all the desultory tints of the rainbow, coloring senseless clouds,
and running off into the seventh heaven--so that after sitting a good
hour by the clock, with brows as knit as if I was intent on squaring
the circle, I have suddenly discovered that I might as well have gone
comfortably to sleep--I have been doing nothing but dream--and the most
nonsensical dreams! So when Frank Hazeldean, as he stopped at that
meditative "But still"--and leaning his arm on the chimney-piece and
resting his face on his hand, felt himself at the grave crisis of life,
and fancied he was going "to think on it," there only rose before him a
succession of shadowy pictures. Randal Leslie, with an unsatisfactory
countenance, from which he could extract nothing:--the Squire, looking
as black as thunder in his study at Hazeldean:--his mother trying to
plead for him, and getting herself properly scolded for her pains;--and
then off went that Will-o'-the-wisp which pretended to call itself
Thought, and began playing round the pale charming face of Beatrice di
Negra in the drawing-room at Curzon-street, and repeating, with small
elfin voice, Randal Leslie's assurance of the preceding day, "as to her
affection for you, Frank, there is no doubt of _that_; she only begins
to think you are trifling with her." And then there was a rapturous
vision of a young gentleman on his knee, and the fair pale face bathed
in blushes, and a clergyman standing by the altar, and a carriage and
four with white favors at the church-door; and of a honeymoon which
would have astonished as to honey all the bees of Hymettus. And in the
midst of these phantasmagoria, which composed what Frank fondly styled
"making up his mind," there came a single man's elegant rat-tat-tat at
the street-door.
"One never _has_ a moment for _thinking_," cried Frank, as he called
out to his valet, "Not at home."
But it was too late. Lord Spendquick was in the hall, and presently
within the room. How d'ye do's were exchanged and hands shaken.
LORD SPENDQUICK.--"I have a note for you, Hazeldean."
FRANK (lazily).--"From whom?"
LORD SPENDQUICK.--"Levy. Just come from him--never saw him in such a
fidget. He was going into the city--I suppose to see X. Y. Dashed off
this note for you--and would have sent it by a servant, but I said I
would bring it."
FRANK (looking fearfully at the note).--"I hope he does not want his
money yet. _Private and confidential_--that looks bad."
SPENDQUICK.--"Devilish bad indeed."
Frank opens the note and reads half aloud, "Dear Hazeldean."
SPENDQUICK (interrupting.)--"Good sign! He always 'Spendquicks' me
when he lends me money; and 'tis 'My dear Lord' when he wants it back.
Capital sign!"
Frank reads on, but to himself, and with a changing countenance:
"DEAR HAZELDEAN--I am very sorry to tell you that, in consequence
of the sudden failure of a house at Paris, with which I had large
dealings, I am pressed, on a sudden, for all the ready money I can get.
I don't want to inconvenience you; but do try and see if you can take
up those bills of yours which I hold, and which, as you know, have been
due some little time. I had hit on a way of arranging your affairs; but
when I hinted at it, you seemed to dislike the idea; and Leslie has
since told me that you have strong objections to giving any security
on your prospective property. So no more of that, my dear fellow. I am
called out in haste to try what I can do for a very charming client
of mine, who is in great pecuniary distress, though she has for her
brother a foreign Count, as rich as Croesus. There is an execution in
her house. I am going down to the tradesman who put it in, but have
no hope of softening him; and I fear there will be others before the
day is out. Another reason for wanting money, if you can help me, _mon
cher_! An execution in the house of one of the most brilliant women in
London--an execution in Curzon-street, May Fair! It will be all over
the town, if I can't stop it.--Yours in haste. LEVY.
"P.S.--Don't let what I have said vex you too much. I should not
trouble you if Spendquick and Borrowell would pay me something. Perhaps
you can get them to do so."
* * * * *
Struck by Frank's silence and paleness, Lord Spendquick here, in
the kindest way possible, laid his hand on the young Guardsman's
shoulder, and looked over the note with that freedom which gentlemen
in difficulties take with each other's private and confidential
correspondence. His eye fell on the postscript. "Oh, damn it," cried
Spendquick, "but that's too bad--employing you to get me to pay him!
Such horrid treachery. Make yourself easy, my dear Frank; I could never
suspect you of any thing so unhandsome. I could as soon suspect myself
of--paying him--"
"Curzon-street! Count!" muttered Frank, as if waking from a dream.
"It must be so." To thrust on his boots--change his dressing-robe
for a frock-coat--catch at his hat, gloves, and cane--break from
Spendquick--descend the stairs--a flight at a leap--gain the
street--throw himself into a cabriolet; all this was done before his
astounded visitor could even recover breath enough to ask, "What's the
matter?"
Left thus alone, Lord Spendquick shook his head--shook it twice, as
if fully to convince himself that there was nothing in it; and then
re-arranging his hat before the looking-glass, and drawing on his
gloves deliberately, he walked down stairs, and strolled into White's,
but with a bewildered and absent air. Standing at the celebrated
bow-window for some moments in musing silence, Lord Spendquick at last
thus addressed an exceedingly cynical, skeptical old _roué_:
"Pray, do you think there is any truth in the stories about people in
former times selling themselves to the devil?"
"Ugh," answered the _roué_, much too wise ever to be surprised. "Have
you any personal interest in the question?"
"I--no; but a friend of mine has just received a letter from Levy, and
he flew out of the room in the most extra-or-di-na-ry manner--just as
people did in those days when their time was up! And Levy, you know,
is--"
"Not quite so great a fool as the other dark gentleman to whom you
would compare him; for Levy never made such bad bargains for himself.
Time up! No doubt it is. I should not like to be in your friend's
shoes."
"Shoes!" said Spendquick, with a sort of shudder: "you never saw a
neater fellow, nor one, to do him justice, who takes more time in
dressing than he does in general. And, talking of shoes--he rushed out
with the right boot on the left foot, and the left boot on the right.
Very mysterious." And a third time Lord Spendquick shook his head--and
a third time that head seemed to him wondrous empty.
CHAPTER XXV.
But Frank had arrived in Curzon-street--leapt from the
cabriolet--knocked at the door, which was opened by a strange-looking
man in a buff waistcoat and corduroy smalls. Frank gave a glance at
this personage--pushed him aside--and rushed up-stairs. He burst into
the drawing-room--no Beatrice was there. A thin elderly man, with
a manuscript book in his hands, appeared engaged in examining the
furniture and making an inventory, with the aid of Madame di Negra's
upper servant. The thin man stared at Frank, and touched the hat which
was on his head. The servant, who was a foreigner, approached Frank,
and said, in broken English, that his lady did not receive--that
she was unwell, and kept her room. Frank thrust a sovereign into
the servant's hand, and begged him to tell Madame di Negra that Mr.
Hazeldean entreated the honor of an interview. As soon as the servant
vanished on this errand, Frank seized the thin man by the arm: "What is
this? an execution?"
"Yes, sir."
"For what sum?"
"Fifteen hundred and forty-seven pounds. We are the first in
possession."
"There are others, then?"
"Or else, sir, we should never have taken this step. Most painful to
our feelings, sir; but these foreigners are here to-day, and gone
to-morrow. And--"
The servant re-entered. Madame di Negra would see Mr. Hazeldean. Would
he walk up-stairs? Frank hastened to obey this summons.
Madame di Negra was in a small room which was fitted up as a boudoir.
Her eyes showed the traces of recent tears, but her face was composed,
and even rigid, in its haughty though mournful expression. Frank,
however, did not pause to notice her countenance--to hear her dignified
salutation. All his timidity was gone. He saw but the woman whom he
loved, in distress and humiliation. As the door closed on him, he flung
himself at her feet. He caught at her hand--the skirt of her robe.
"Oh! Madame di Negra!--Beatrice!" he exclaimed, tears in his eyes, and
his voice half-broken by generous emotion; "forgive me--forgive me;
don't see in me a mere acquaintance. By accident I learned, or, rather,
guessed--this--this strange insult to which you are so unworthily
exposed. I am here. Think of me--but as a friend--the truest friend. O!
Beatrice"--and he bent his head over the hand he held--"I never dared
say so before--it seems presuming to say it now--but I can not help it.
I love you--I love you with my whole heart and soul--to serve you--if
only but to serve you!--I ask nothing else." And a sob went from his
warm, young, foolish heart.
The Italian was deeply moved. Nor was her nature that of the mere
sordid adventuress. So much love, and so much confidence! She was not
prepared to betray the one, and entrap the other.
"Rise--rise," she said, softly; "I thank you gratefully. But do not
suppose that I--"
"Hush--hush!--you must not refuse me. Hush!--don't let your pride
speak."
"No--it is not my pride. You exaggerate what is occurring here. You
forget that I have a brother. I have sent for him. He is the only one
I can apply to. Ah! that is his knock! But I shall never, never forget
that I have found one generous, noble heart in this hollow world."
Frank would have replied, but he heard the Count's voice on the stairs,
and had only time to rise and withdraw to the window, trying hard to
repress his agitation and compose his countenance. Count di Peschiera
entered--entered as a very personation of the beauty and magnificence
of careless, luxurious, pampered, egotistical wealth. His surtout,
trimmed with the costliest sables, flung back from his splendid chest.
Amidst the folds of the glossy satin that enveloped his throat gleamed
a turquoise, of such value as a jeweler might have kept for fifty
years before he could find a customer rich and frivolous enough to buy
it. The very head of his cane was a masterpiece of art, and the man
himself, so elegant despite his strength, and so fresh despite his
years! It is astonishing how well men wear when they think of no one
but themselves!
"Pr-rr!" said the Count, not observing Frank behind the draperies of
the window; "P-rr--. It seems to me that you must have passed a very
unpleasant quarter of an hour. And now--_Dieu me damne--quoi faire_!"
Beatrice pointed to the window, and felt as if she could have sunk
into the earth for shame. But as the Count spoke in French, and Frank
did not very readily comprehend that language, the words escaped him,
though his ear was shocked by a certain satirical levity of tone.
Frank came forward. The Count held out his hand, and, with a rapid
change of voice and manner, said, "One whom my sister admits at such a
moment must be a friend to me."
"Mr. Hazeldean," said Beatrice, with meaning, "would indeed have nobly
pressed on me the offer of an aid which I need no more, since you, my
brother, are here."
"Certainly," said the Count, with his superb air of _grand seigneur_;
"I will go down and clear your house of this impertinent _canaille_.
But I thought your affairs were with Baron Levy. He should be here."
"I expect him every moment. Adieu! Mr. Hazeldean." Beatrice extended
her hand to her young lover with a frankness which was not without a
certain pathetic and cordial dignity. Restrained from farther words by
the Count's presence, Frank bowed over the fair hand in silence, and
retired. He was on the stairs, when he was joined by Peschiera.
"Mr. Hazeldean," said the latter, in a low tone, "will you come into
the drawing-room?"
Frank obeyed. The man employed in his examination of the furniture was
still at his task; but at a short whisper from the Count he withdrew.
"My dear sir," said Peschiera, "I am so unacquainted with your English
laws, and your mode of settling embarrassments of this degrading
nature, and you have evidently showed so kind a sympathy in my sister's
distress, that I venture to ask you to stay here, and aid me in
consulting with Baron Levy."
Frank was just expressing his unfeigned pleasure to be of the slightest
use, when Levy's knock resounded at the street-door, and in another
moment the Baron entered.
"Ouf!" said Levy, wiping his brows, and sinking into a chair, as if he
had been engaged in toils the most exhausting--"Ouf! this is a very sad
business--very; and nothing, my dear Count, nothing but ready money can
save us here."
"You know my affairs, Levy," replied Peschiera, mournfully shaking his
head, "and that though in a few months, or it may be weeks, I could
discharge with ease my sister's debts, whatever their amount, yet at
this moment, and in a strange land, I have not the power to do so. The
money I brought with me is nearly exhausted. Can you not advance the
requisite sum?"
"Impossible!--Mr. Hazeldean is aware of the distress under which I
labor myself."
"In that case," said the Count, "all we can do to-day is to remove my
sister, and let the execution proceed. Meanwhile, I will go among my
friends, and see what I can borrow from them."
"Alas!" said Levy, rising and looking out of the window--"alas! we can
not remove the Marchesa--the worst is to come. Look!--you see those
three men; they have a writ against her person; the moment she sets her
foot out of these doors she will be arrested."[4]
[4] At that date the law of _mesne process_ existed still.
"Arrested!" exclaimed Peschiera and Frank in a breath.
"I have done my best to prevent this disgrace, but in vain," said the
Baron, looking very wretched. "You see, these English tradespeople
fancy they have no hold upon foreigners. But we can get bail; she must
not go to prison--"
"Prison!" echoed Frank. He hastened to Levy and drew him aside. The
Count seemed paralyzed by shame and grief. Throwing himself back on the
sofa, he covered his face with his hands.
"My sister!" groaned the Count--"daughter to a Peschiera, widow to di
Negra!" There was something affecting in the proud woe of this grand
patrician.
"What is the sum?" whispered Frank, anxious that the poor Count
should not overhear him: and indeed the Count seemed too stunned and
overwhelmed to hear any thing less loud than a clap of thunder.
"We may settle all liabilities for £500. Nothing to Peschiera, who is
enormously rich. _Entre nous_, I doubt his assurance that he is without
ready money. It may be so, but--"
"£500! How can I raise such a sum!"
"You, my dear Hazeldean? What are you talking about? To be sure, you
could raise twice as much with a stroke of your pen, and throw your own
debts into the bargain. But--to be so generous to an acquaintance!"
"Acquaintance--Madame di Negra!--the height of my ambition is to claim
her as my wife!"
"And these debts don't startle you?"
"If a man loves," answered Frank, simply, "he feels it most when the
woman he loves is in affliction. And," he added, after a pause,
"though these debts are faults, kindness at this moment may give me
the power to cure forever both her faults and my own. I can raise this
money by a stroke of the pen! How?"
"On the Casino property."
Frank drew back.
"No other way?"
"Of course not. But I know your scruples; let us see if they can be
conciliated. You would marry Madame di Negra; she will have £20,000
on her wedding-day. Why not arrange that, out of this sum, your
anticipative charge on the Casino property be paid at once? Thus, in
truth, it will be but for a few weeks that the charge will exist. The
bond will remain locked in my desk--it can never come to your father's
knowledge, nor wound his feelings. And when, you marry (if you will but
be prudent in the meanwhile), you will not owe a debt in the world."
Here the Count suddenly started up.
"Mr. Hazeldean, I asked you to stay and aid us by your counsel; I see
now that counsel is unavailing. This blow on our house must fall! I
thank you, Sir--I thank you. Farewell. Levy, come with me to my poor
sister, and prepare her for the worst."
"Count," said Frank, "hear me. My acquaintance with you is but slight,
but I have long known and--and esteemed your sister. Baron Levy has
suggested a mode in which I can have the honor and the happiness of
removing this temporary but painful embarrassment. I can advance the
money."
"No--no!" exclaimed Peschiera. "How can you suppose that I will hear of
such a proposition? Your youth and benevolence mislead and blind you.
Impossible, sir--impossible! Why, even if I had no pride, no delicacy
of my own, my sister's fair fame--"
"Would suffer indeed," interrupted Levy, "if she were under such
obligation to any one but her affianced husband. Nor, whatever my
regard for you, Count, could I suffer my client, Mr. Hazeldean, to make
this advance upon any less valid security than that of the fortune to
which Madame di Negra is entitled."
"Ha!--is this indeed so? You are a suitor for my sister's hand, Mr.
Hazeldean?"
"But not at this moment--not to owe her hand to the compulsion of
gratitude," answered gentleman Frank.
"Gratitude! And you do not know her heart, then? Do not know--" the
Count interrupted himself, and went on after a pause. "Mr. Hazeldean, I
need not say, that we rank among the first houses in Europe. My pride
led me formerly into the error, of disposing of my sister's hand to
one whom she did not love--merely because in rank he was her equal.
I will not again commit such an error, nor would Beatrice again obey
me if I sought to constrain her. Where she marries, there she will
love. If, indeed, she accept you, as I believe she will, it will be
from affection solely. If she does, I can not scruple to accept this
loan--a loan from a brother-in-law--loan to me, and not charged against
her fortune! _That_, sir (turning to Levy, with his grand air), you
will take care to arrange. If she do not accept you, Mr. Hazeldean, the
loan, I repeat it, is not to be thought of. Pardon me, if I leave you.
This, one way or other, must be decided at once." The Count inclined
his head with much stateliness, and then quitted the room. His step was
heard ascending the stairs.
"If," said Levy, in the tone of a mere man of business--"if the Count
pay the debts, and the lady's fortune be only charged with your
own--after all it will not be a bad marriage in the world's eye, nor
ought it to be in a father's. Trust me, we shall get Mr. Hazeldean's
consent, and cheerfully too."
Frank did not listen; he could only listen to his love, to his heart
beating loud with hope and with fear.
Levy sate down before the table, and drew up a long list of figures
in a very neat hand--a list of figures on _two_ accounts, which the
_post-obit_ on the Casino was destined to efface.
After a lapse of time, which to Frank seemed interminable, the Count
reappeared. He took Frank aside, with a gesture to Levy, who rose, and
retired into the drawing-room.
"My dear young friend," said Peschiera, "as I suspected, my sister's
heart is wholly yours. Stop; hear me out. But unluckily, I informed
her of your generous proposal. It was most unguarded, most ill-judged
in me, and that has well-nigh spoiled all; she has so much pride and
spirit; so great a fear that you may think yourself betrayed into an
imprudence you may hereafter regret, that I am sure she will tell you
she does not love you, she can not accept you, and so forth. Lovers
like you are not easily deceived. Don't go by her words; but you shall
see her yourself and judge. Come."
Followed mechanically by Frank, the Count ascended the stairs and threw
open the door of Beatrice's room. The Marchesa's back was turned; but
Frank could see that she was weeping.
"I have brought my friend to plead for himself," said the Count in
French; "and take my advice, sister, and do not throw away all prospect
of real and solid happiness for a vain scruple. _Heed me!_" He retired
and left Frank alone with Beatrice.
Then the Marchesa, as if by a violent effort, so sudden was her
movement, and so wild her look, turned her face to her wooer, and came
up to him, where he stood.
"Oh!" she said, clasping her hands, "is this true? You would save
me from disgrace, from a prison--and what can I give you in return?
My love! No, no. I will not deceive you. Young, fair, noble, as you
are, I do not love you as you should be loved. Go; leave this house;
you do not know my brother. Go, go--while I have still strength,
still virtue enough to reject whatever may protect me from him!
whatever--may--Oh--go, go."
"You do not love me," said Frank. "Well, I don't wonder at it; you are
so brilliant, so superior to me. I will abandon hope--I will leave you
as you command me. But at least I will not part with my privilege to
serve you. As for the rest--shame on me if I could be mean enough to
boast of love, and enforce a suit, at such a moment."
Frank turned his face and stole away softly. He did not arrest his
steps at the drawing-room, he went into the parlor, wrote a brief line
to Levy charging him quietly to dismiss the execution, and to come to
Frank's rooms with the necessary deeds; and, above all, to say nothing
to the Count. Then he went out of the house and walked back to his
lodgings.
That evening Levy came to him, and accounts were gone into, and papers
signed; and the next morning Madame di Negra was free from debt; and
there was a great claim on the reversion of the Casino estates; and
at the noon of that next day Randal was closeted with Beatrice; and
before the night, came a note from Madame di Negra, hurried, blurred
with tears, summoning Frank to Curzon-street. And when he entered the
Marchesa's drawing-room, Peschiera was seated beside his sister; and
rising at Frank's entrance, said, "My dear brother-in-law!" and placed
Frank's hand in Beatrice's.
"You accept me--you accept me--and of your own free will and choice?"
And Beatrice answered, "Bear with me a little, and I will try to repay
you with all my--all my--" She stopped short, and sobbed aloud.
"I never thought her capable of such acute feeling, such strong
attachment," whispered the Count.
Frank heard, and his face was radiant. By degrees Madame di Negra
recovered composure, and she listened with what her young lover
deemed a tender interest, but what, in fact, was mournful and humbled
resignation, to his joyous talk of the future. To him the hours passed
by, brief and bright, like a flash of sunlight. And his dreams, when he
retired to rest, were so golden! But when he awoke the next morning, he
said to himself, "What--what will they say at the Hall?"
At that same hour, Beatrice, burying her face on her pillow, turned
from the loathsome day, and could have prayed for death. At that same
hour, Giulio Franzini Count di Peschiera, dismissing some gaunt,
haggard Italians, with whom he had been in close conference, sallied
forth to reconnoitre the house that contained Violante. At that same
hour, Baron Levy was seated before his desk, casting up a deadly array
of figures, headed "Account with the Right Hon. Audley Egerton, M.P.,
_Dr._ and _Cr._"--title-deeds strewed around him, and Frank Hazeldean's
post-obit peeping out fresh from the elder parchments. At that same
hour, Audley Egerton had just concluded a letter from the chairman of
his committee in the city he represented, which letter informed him he
had not a chance of being re-elected. And the lines of his face were
as composed as usual, and his foot rested as firm on the grim iron box;
but his hand was pressed to his heart, and his eye was on the clock;
and his voice muttered--"Dr. F---- should be here!" And at that hour
Harley L'Estrange, who the previous night had charmed courtly crowds
with his gay humor, was pacing to and fro the room in his hotel with
restless strides and many a heavy sigh;--and Leonard was standing by
the fountain in his garden, and watching the wintry sunbeams that
sparkled athwart the spray;--and Violante was leaning on Helen's
shoulder, and trying archly, yet innocently, to lead Helen to talk of
Leonard;--and Helen was gazing steadfastly on the floor and answering
but by monosyllables;--and Randal Leslie was walking down to his office
for the last time, and reading, as he passed across the Green Park, a
letter from _home_, from his sister; and then, suddenly crumpling the
letter in his thin, pale hand, he looked up, beheld in the distance the
spires of the great national Abbey; and recalling the words of our hero
Nelson, he muttered--"Victory _and_ Westminster, but _not_ the Abbey!"
And Randal Leslie felt that, within the last few days, he had made a
vast stride in his ambition;--his grasp on the old Leslie lands--Frank
Hazeldean betrothed, and possibly disinherited--and Dick Avenel, in the
back-ground, opening, against the hated Lansmere interest, that same
seat in Parliament which had first welcomed into public life Randal's
rained patron.
"But some must laugh, and some must weep;
Thus runs the world away!"
BOOK XI.--INITIAL CHAPTER.
It is not an uncommon crotchet among benevolent men to maintain
that wickedness is necessarily a sort of insanity, and that nobody
would make a violent start out of the straight path unless stung
to such disorder by a bee in his bonnet. Certainly, when some very
clever, well-educated person, like our friend, Randal Leslie, acts
upon the fallacious principle that "roguery is the best policy," it
is curious to see how many points he has in common with the insane:
what over-cunning--what irritable restlessness--what suspicious
belief that the rest of the world are in a conspiracy against him,
which it requires all his wit to baffle and turn to his own proper
aggrandizement and profit. Perhaps some of my readers may have thought
that I have represented Randal as unnaturally far-fetched in his
schemes, too wire-drawn and subtle in his speculations; yet that is
commonly the case with very refining intellects, when they choose to
play the knave; it helps to disguise from themselves the ugliness of
their ambition, just as the philosopher delights in the ingenuity of
some metaphysical process, which ends in what plain men call "atheism,"
who would be infinitely shocked and offended if he were entitled an
atheist. As I have somewhere said or implied before, it is difficult
for us dull folks to conceive the glee which a wily brain takes in the
exercise of its own ingenuity.
Having premised thus much on behalf of the "Natural" in Randal Leslie's
character, I must here fly off to say a word or two on the agency in
human life exercised by a passion rarely seen without a mask in our
debonair and civilized age--I mean Hate.
In the good old days of our forefathers, when plain speaking and hard
blows were in fashion--when a man had his heart at the tip of his
tongue, and four feet of sharp iron dangling at his side, Hate played
an honest, open part in the theatre of the world. In fact, when we read
history, it seems to have "starred it" on the stage. But now, where
is Hate?--who ever sees its face? Is it that smiling, good-tempered
creature, that presses you by the hand so cordially? or that dignified
figure of state that calls you its "right honorable friend?" Is it
that bowing, grateful dependent?--is it that soft-eyed Amaryllis? Ask
not, guess not; you will only know it to be Hate when the poison is in
your cup, or the poniard in your breast. In the Gothic age, grim Humor
painted "the Dance of Death;" in our polished century, some sardonic
wit should give us "the Masquerade of Hate."
Certainly, the counter-passion betrays itself with ease to our gaze.
Love is rarely a hypocrite. But Hate--how detect, how guard against
it? It lurks where you least suspect it; it is created by causes that
you can the least foresee; and Civilization multiplies its varieties,
while it favors its disguise: for Civilization increases the number
of contending interests, and Refinement renders more susceptible to
the least irritation the cuticle of Self-Love. But Hate comes covertly
forth from some self-interest we have crossed, or some self-love we
have wounded; and, dullards that we are, how seldom we are aware of our
offense! You may be hated by a man you have never seen in your life;
you may be hated as often by one you have loaded with benefits; you
may so walk as not to tread on a worm; but you must sit fast on your
easy-chair till you are carried out to your bier, if you would be sure
not to tread on some snake of a foe. But, then, what harm does the
Hate do us? Very often the harm is as unseen by the world as the hate
is unrecognized by us. It may come on us, unawares, in some solitary
by-way of our life; strike us in our unsuspecting privacy; thwart us
in some blessed hope we have never told to another: for the moment the
world sees that it is Hate that strikes us, its worst power of mischief
is gone.
We have a great many names for the same passion--Envy, Jealousy, Spite,
Prejudice, Rivalry; but they are so many synonyms for the one old
heathen demon. When the death-giving shaft of Apollo sent the plague to
some unhappy Achæan, it did not much matter to the victim whether the
god were called Helios or Smintheus.
No man you ever met in the world seemed more raised above the malice
of Hate than Audley Egerton: even in the hot war of politics he had
scarcely a personal foe; and in private life he kept himself so aloof
and apart from others that he was little known, save by the benefits
the waste of his wealth conferred. That the hate of any one could reach
the austere statesman on his high pinnacle of esteem,--you would dare
smiled at the idea! But Hate is now, as it ever has been, an actual
Power amidst "the Varieties of Life;" and, in spite of bars to the
door, and policemen in the street, no one can be said to sleep in
safety while there wakes the eye of a single foe.
CHAPTER II.
The glory of Bond-street is no more. The title of Bond-street lounger
has faded from our lips. In vain the crowd of equipages and the
blaze of shops: the renown of Bond-street was in its pavement--its
pedestrians. Art thou old enough, O reader! to remember the Bond-street
Lounger and his incomparable generation? For my part, I can just
recall the decline of the grand era. It was on its wane when, in the
ambition of boyhood, I first began to muse upon high neck-cloths and
Wellington boots. But the ancient _habitués_--the _magni nominis
umbræ_--contemporaries of Brummell in his zenith--boon companions of
George IV. in his regency--still haunted the spot. From four to six
in the hot month of June, they sauntered stately to and fro, looking
somewhat mournful even then--foreboding the extinction of their race.
The Bond-street Lounger was rarely seen alone: he was a social animal,
and walked arm-in-arm with his fellow-man. He did not seem born for
the cares of these ruder times; not made was he for an age in which
Finsbury returns members to Parliament. He loved his small talk;
and never since then has talk been so pleasingly small. Your true
Bond-street Lounger had a very dissipated look. His youth had been
spent with heroes who loved their bottle. He himself had perhaps supped
with Sheridan. He was by nature a spendthrift: you saw it in the roll
of his walk. Men who make money rarely saunter; men who save money
rarely swagger. But saunter and swagger both united to stamp PRODIGAL
on the Bond-street Lounger. And so familiar as he was with his own
set, and so amusingly supercilious with the vulgar residue of mortals
whose faces were strange to Bond-street. But He is gone. The world,
though sadder for his loss, still strives to do its best without him;
and our young men, nowadays, attend to model cottages, and incline to
Tractarianism--I mean those young men who are quiet and harmless, as
a Bond-street Lounger was of old--_redeunt Saturnia regna_. Still the
place, to an unreflecting eye, has its brilliancy and bustle. But it
is a thoroughfare, not a lounge. And adown the thoroughfare, somewhat
before the hour when the throng is thickest, passed two gentlemen of
an appearance exceedingly out of keeping with the place. Yet both
had the air of men pretending to aristocracy--an old-world air of
respectability and stake in the country, and Church-and-Stateism.
The burlier of the two was even rather a beau in his way. He had
first learned to dress, indeed, when Bond-street was at its acmé, and
Brummell in his pride. He still retained in his garb the fashion of his
youth; only what then had spoken of the town, now betrayed the life
of the country. His neckcloth ample and high, and of snowy whiteness,
set off to comely advantage a face smooth-shaven, and of clear, florid
hues; his coat of royal blue, with buttons in which you might have seen
yourself _veluti in speculum_, was, rather jauntily, buttoned across
a waist that spoke of lusty middle age, free from the ambition, the
avarice, and the anxieties that fret Londoners into thread-papers; his
small-clothes of grayish drab, loose at the thigh and tight at the
knee, were made by Brummell's own breeches-maker, and the gaiters to
match (thrust half-way down the calf) had a manly dandyism that would
have done honor to the beau-ideal of a county member. The profession
of this gentleman's companion was unmistakable--the shovel-hat, the
clerical cut of the coat, the neckcloth without collar, that seemed
made for its accessory--the band, and something very decorous, yet very
mild, in the whole mien of this personage, all spoke of one who was
every inch the gentleman and the parson.
"No," said the portlier of these two persons--"no, I can't say I like
Frank's looks at all. There's certainly something on his mind. However,
I suppose it will be all out this evening."
"He dines with you at your hotel, Squire? Well, you must be kind to
him. We can't put old heads upon young shoulders."
"I don't object to his head being young," returned the Squire; "but I
wish he had a little of Randal Leslie's good sense in it. I see how
it will end: I must take him back into the country; and if he wants
occupation, why, he shall keep the hounds, and I'll put him into
Brooksby farm."
"As for the hounds," replied the Parson, "hounds necessitate horses;
and I think more mischief comes to a young man of spirit, from the
stables, than from any other place in the world. They ought to be
exposed from the pulpit, those stables!" added Mr. Dale, thoughtfully;
"see what they entailed upon Nimrod! But agriculture is a healthful and
noble pursuit, honored by sacred nations, and cherished by the greatest
men in classical times. For instance, the Athenians were--"
"Bother the Athenians!" cried the Squire, irreverently; "you need not
go so far back for an example. It is enough for a Hazeldean that his
father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather all farmed
before him; and a devilish deal better, I take it, than any of those
musty old Athenians--no offense to them. But I'll tell you one thing,
Parson--a man, to farm well, and live in the country, should have a
wife; it is half the battle."
"As to a battle, a man who is married is pretty sure of half, though
not always the better half, of it," answered the Parson, who seemed
peculiarly facetious that day. "Ah, Squire, I wish I could think
Mrs. Hazeldean right in her conjecture!--you would have the prettiest
daughter-in-law in the three kingdoms. And I think, if I could have a
good talk with the young lady apart from her father, we could remove
the only objection I know to the marriage. Those Popish errors--"
"Ah, very true!" cried the Squire; "that Pope sticks hard in my
gizzard. I could excuse her being a foreigner, and not having, I
suppose, a shilling in her pocket--bless her handsome face!--but to be
worshiping images in her room instead of going to the parish church,
that will never do. But you think you could talk her out of the Pope,
and into the family pew?"
"Why, I could have talked her father out of the Pope, only, when he had
not a word to say for himself, he bolted out of the window. Youth is
more ingenuous in confessing its errors."
"I own," said the Squire, "that both Harry and I had a favorite notion
of ours, till this Italian girl got into our heads. Do you know we
both took a great fancy to Randal's little sister--pretty, blushing,
English-faced girl as ever you saw. And it went to Harry's good heart
to see her so neglected by that silly, fidgety mother of hers, her
hair hanging about her ears; and I thought it would be a fine way to
bring Randal and Frank more together, and enable me to do something
for Randal himself--a good boy, with Hazeldean blood in his veins.
But Violante is so handsome, that I don't wonder at the boy's choice;
and then it is our fault--we let them see so much of each other, as
children. However, I should be very angry if Rickeybockey had been
playing sly, and running away from the Casino in order to give Frank an
opportunity to carry on a clandestine intercourse with his daughter."
"I don't think that would be like Riccabocca; more like him to run
away in order to deprive Frank of the best of all occasions to court
Violante, if he so desired; for where could he see more of her than at
the Casino?"
SQUIRE.--"That's well put. Considering he was only a foreign doctor,
and, for aught we know, went about in a caravan, he is a gentlemanlike
fellow, that Rickeybockey. I speak of people as I find them. But what
is your notion about Frank? I see you don't think he is in love with
Violante, after all. Out with it, man; speak plain."
PARSON.--"Since you so urge me, I own I do not think him in love with
her; neither does my Carry, who is uncommonly shrewd in such matters."
SQUIRE.--"Your Carry, indeed!--as if she were half as shrewd as my
Harry. Carry--nonsense!"
PARSON (reddening).--"I don't want to make invidious remarks; but, Mr.
Hazeldean, when you sneer at my Carry, I should not be a man if I did
not say that--"
SQUIRE (interrupting).--"She was a good little woman enough; but to
compare her to my Harry!"
PARSON.--"I don't compare her to your Harry; I don't compare her to any
woman in England, sir. But you are losing your temper, Mr. Hazeldean!"
SQUIRE.--"I!"
PARSON.--"And people are staring at you, Mr. Hazeldean. For decency's
sake, compose yourself, and change the subject. We are just at the
Albany. I hope that we shall not find poor Captain Higginbotham as ill
as he represents himself in his letter. Ah! is it possible? No, it can
not be. Look--look!"
SQUIRE.--"Where--what--where? Don't pinch so hard. Bless me, do you see
a ghost?"
PARSON.--"There--the gentleman in black!"
SQUIRE.--"Gentleman in black! What!--in broad daylight! Nonsense!"
Here the Parson made a spring forward, and, catching the arm of the
person in question, who himself had stopped, and was gazing intently on
the pair, exclaimed--
"Sir, pardon me; but is not your name Fairfield? Ah, it is Leonard--it
is--my dear, dear boy! What joy! So altered, so improved, but still
the same honest face. Squire, come here--your old friend, Leonard
Fairfield."
"And he wanted to persuade me," said the Squire, shaking Leonard
heartily by the hand, "that you were the gentleman in black; but,
indeed, he has been in strange humors and tantrums all the morning.
Well, Master Lenny; why, you are grown quite a gentleman! The world
thrives with you--eh! I suppose you are head-gardener to some grandee."
"Not that, sir," said Leonard, smiling. "But the world has thriven with
me at last, though not without some rough usage at starting. Ah, Mr.
Dale, you can little guess how often I have thought of you and your
discourse on Knowledge; and, what is more, how I have lived to feel the
truth of your words, and to bless the lesson."
PARSON (much touched and flattered).--"I expected nothing less of you,
Leonard; you were always a lad of great sense, and sound judgment. So
you have thought of my little discourse on Knowledge, have you?"
SQUIRE.--"Hang knowledge! I have reason to hate the word. It burned
down three ricks of mine; the finest ricks you ever set eyes on, Mr.
Fairfield."
PARSON.--"That was not knowledge, Squire, that was ignorance."
SQUIRE.--"Ignorance! The deuce it was. I'll just appeal to you,
Mr. Fairfield. We have been having sad riots in the shire, and the
ring-leader was just such another lad as you were!"
LEONARD.--"I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Hazeldean. In what
respect?"
SQUIRE.--"Why, he was a village genius, and always reading some cursed
little tract or other; and got mighty discontented with King, Lords,
and Commons, I suppose, and went about talking of the wrongs of the
poor, and the crimes of the rich, till, by Jove, sir, the whole mob
rose one day with pitchforks and sickles, and smash went Farmer
Smart's thrashing-machines; and on the same night my ricks were on
fire. We caught the rogues, and they were all tried; but the poor
deluded laborers were let off with a short imprisonment. The village
genius, thank heaven, is sent packing to Botany Bay."
LEONARD.--"But did his books teach him to burn ricks, and smash
machines?"
PARSON.--"No; he said quite the contrary, and declared that he had no
hand in those misdoings."
SQUIRE.--"But he was proved to have excited, with his wild talk, the
boobies who had! 'Gad, sir, there was a hypocritical Quaker once,
who said to his enemy, 'I can't shed thy blood, friend, but I will
hold thy head under water till thou art drowned.' And so there is a
set of demagogical fellows, who keep calling out, 'Farmer This is an
oppressor, and Squire That is a vampire! But no violence! Don't smash
their machines, don't burn their ricks! Moral force, and a curse on all
tyrants!' Well, and if poor Hodge thinks moral force is all my eye, and
that the recommendation is to be read backward, in the devil's way of
reading the Lord's Prayer, I should like to know which of the two ought
to go to Botany Bay--Hodge who comes out like a man, if he thinks he is
wronged, or t'other sneaking chap, who makes use of his knowledge to
keep himself out of the scrape?"
PARSON.--"It may be very true; but when I saw that poor fellow at the
bar, with his intelligent face, and heard his bold, clear defense,
and thought of all his hard struggles for knowledge, and how they had
ended, because he forgot that knowledge is like fire, and must not be
thrown among flax--why, I could have given my right hand to save him.
And, oh, Squire, do you remember his poor mother's shriek of despair
when he was sentenced to transportation for life--I hear it now! And
what, Leonard--what do you think had mislead him? At the bottom of all
the mischief was a Tinker's bag. You can not forget Sprott?"
LEONARD.--"Tinker's bag!--Sprott!"
SQUIRE.--"That rascal, sir, was the hardest fellow to nab you could
possibly conceive; as full of quips and quirks as an Old Bailey lawyer.
But we managed to bring it home to him. Lord! his bag was choke-full
of tracts against every man who had a good coat on his back; and as
if that was not enough, cheek by jowl with the tracts were lucifers,
contrived on a new principle, for teaching my ricks the theory of
spontaneous combustion. The laborers bought the lucifers--"
PARSON.--"And the poor village genius bought the tracts."
SQUIRE.--"All headed with a motto--'To teach the working-classes that
knowledge is power.' So that I was right in saying that knowledge had
burnt my ricks; knowledge inflamed the village genius, the village
genius inflamed fellows more ignorant than himself, and they inflamed
my stack-yard. However, lucifers, tracts, village genius, and Sprott,
are all off to Botany Bay; and the shire has gone on much the better
for it. So no more of your knowledge for me, begging your pardon, Mr.
Fairfield. Such uncommonly fine ricks as mine were, too! I declare,
Parson, you are looking as if you felt pity for Sprott; and I saw you,
indeed, whispering to him as he was taken out of court."
PARSON (looking sheepish).--"Indeed, Squire, I was only asking him what
had become of his donkey--an unoffending creature."
SQUIRE.--"Unoffending! Upset me amidst a thistle-bed in my own village
green. I remember it. Well, what did he say _had_ become of the donkey?"
PARSON.--"He said but one word; but that showed all the vindictiveness
of his disposition. He said it with a horrid wink, that made my
blood run cold. 'What's become of your poor donkey?' said I, and he
answered--"
SQUIRE.--"Go on. He answered--"
PARSON.--"'Sausages.'"
SQUIRE.--"Sausages! Like enough; and sold to the poor; and that's what
the poor will come to if they listen to such revolutionizing villains.
Sausages! Donkey sausages!--(spitting)--'Tis as bad as eating one
another; perfect cannibalism."
Leonard, who had been thrown into grave thought by the history of
Sprott and the village genius, now pressing the Parson's hand, asked
permission to wait on him before Mr. Dale quitted London; and was about
to withdraw, when the Parson, gently detaining him, said, "No; don't
leave me yet, Leonard--I have so much to ask you, and to talk about.
I shall be at leisure shortly. We are just now going to call on a
relation of the Squire's, whom you must recollect, I am sure--Captain
Higginbotham--Barnabas Higginbotham. He is very poorly."
"And I am sure he would take it kind in you to call, too," said the
Squire, with great good-nature.
LEONARD.--"Nay, sir, would not that be a great liberty?"
SQUIRE.--"Liberty! To ask a poor sick gentleman how he is? Nonsense.
And I say, sir, perhaps, as no doubt you have been living in town, and
know more of new-fangled notions than I do--perhaps you can tell us
whether or not it is all humbug, that new way of doctoring people?"
"What new way, sir? There are so many."
"Are there? Folks in London _do_ look uncommonly sickly. But my
poor cousin (he was never a Solomon) has got hold, he says, of a
homely--homely--what's the word, Parson?"
PARSON.--"Homoeopathist."
SQUIRE.--"That's it. You see the Captain went to live with one Sharpe
Currie, a relation who had a great deal of money, and very little
liver;--made the one, and left much of the other in Ingee, you
understand. The Captain had _expectations_ of the money. Very natural,
I dare say; but, Lord, sir! what do you think has happened? Sharpe
Currie has done him! Would not die, sir; got back his liver, and the
Captain has lost his own. Strangest thing you ever heard. And then the
ungrateful old Nabob has dismissed the Captain, saying, 'He can't bear
to have invalids about him;' and is going to marry, and I have no doubt
will have children by the dozen!"
PARSON.--"It was in Germany, at one of the Spas, that Mr. Currie
recovered; and as he had the selfish inhumanity to make the Captain
go through a course of waters simultaneously with himself, it has
so chanced that the same waters that cured Mr. Currie's liver have
destroyed Captain Higginbotham's. An English homoeopathic physician,
then staying at the Spa, has attended the Captain hither, and declares
that he will restore him by infinitesimal doses of the same chemical
properties that were found in the waters which diseased him. Can there
be any thing in such a theory?"
LEONARD.--"I once knew a very able, though eccentric homoeopathist,
and I am inclined to believe there may be something in the system. My
friend went to Germany: it may possibly be the same person who attends
the Captain. May I ask his name?"
SQUIRE.--"Cousin Barnabas does not mention it. You may ask it of
himself, for here we are at his chambers. I say, Parson (whispering
slily), if a small dose of what hurt the Captain is to cure him, don't
you think the proper thing would be a--legacy? Ha! ha!"
PARSON (trying to laugh).--"Hush, Squire. Poor human nature! We must be
merciful to its infirmities. Come in, Leonard."
Leonard, interested in his doubt whether he might thus chance again
upon Dr. Morgan, obeyed the invitation, and with his two companions
followed the woman--who "did for the Captain and his rooms"--across the
small lobby, into the presence of the sufferer.