Chapter 4 (3)

All this was a knife in the heart of the French of both parties! The partisans of Cournet wanted to seize the opportunity of ruining Barthélemy in the opinion of the court, and, without directly mentioning him, indicated him as the murderer of Cournet.

Some of Barthélemy’s friends and he himself sought to cover Cournet and company with shame and ignominy through a strange fact which had been discovered during the course of the police investigation. The pistols had been procured from a gunmaker, and after the duel they were sent back to him. One pistol was found to be loaded. At the trial the gunmaker appeared with the pistol and gave evidence that a little rag had been put in under the bullet and gunpowder, so that it would not have gone off.

What had happened at the duel was this: Cournet fired at Barthélemy and did not hit him. The cap of Barthélemy’s pistol snapped in the usual way, but no shot followed. He was given another cap, but the same thing happened. Then Barthélemy flung down his pistol and offered Cournet to fight with rapiers. Cournet refused. It was decided to fire again, but Barthélemy asked for another pistol, to which Cournet at once agreed. The pistol was given him, a shot rang out and Cournet fell dead.

So the pistol that was taken to the gunmaker’s loaded was the very one which had been in Barthélemy’s hands. How had the rag got into it? The pistols had been procured by a friend of Cournet’s, Pardigan,[65] a man who had once been on the staff of the _Voix du Peuple_ and had been terribly disfigured in the June Days.

If it could have been proved that the rag had been put in intentionally, that is, that Barthélemy’s enemies were taking him to be murdered, they would have been covered with ignominy and ruined for ever and ever. For this agreeable result Barthélemy would willingly have accepted ten years’ penal servitude or deportation.

On investigation it appeared that the rag taken out of the pistol really had belonged to Pardigan. It had been torn off the duster with which he used to rub his patent-leather boots. Pardigan said that he had been cleaning the barrel by putting a rag on the end of a pencil, and that possibly as it was turned round on it a bit was torn off, but Barthélemy’s friends asked why was the rag of a regular oval shape, why was it not crumpled up or tattered?...

Barthélemy’s enemies for their part had prepared a perfect legion of witnesses _à décharge_ for the benefit of Baronée and his comrades; their policy was that the attorney on Baronée’s side should question them about the antecedents of Cournet and the others. They would sing their praises, but would say nothing about Barthélemy and his seconds. Such unanimous silence on the part of fellow-countrymen and co-religionists must, so they thought, highly recommend the one side in the eyes of Campbell and the public, and discredit the other. Calling witnesses costs money; moreover, Barthélemy had not a whole legion of friends to whom he could give the order to say one thing or another.

Cournet’s friends had succeeded in being eloquently silent already at the police investigation.

Baronée, one of the arrested witnesses, was asked whether he knew who had killed Cournet, or whom he suspected. Baronée replied that no threat, no punishment could prevail upon him to say who had deprived Cournet of life, although the dead man had been his best friend.

‘If I should have to languish in chains for ten years in a noisome dungeon, even then I would not tell it.’

The solicitor cut him short with the cool observation: ‘Well, you have a perfect right to refuse to answer, but you prove from your words that you know the guilty party.’

And with all that they wanted to delude—whom?—Lord Campbell? I should like to append his portrait, to show the full measure of the absurdity of the attempt. Lord Campbell, who had grown old and wrinkled, sitting in his judicial armchair, reading in an indifferent voice with a Scotch accent the most terrible _évidence_, and unravelling the most complex cases with convincing clearness—was to be deluded by a handful of Parisian _clubistes_!... Lord Campbell, who never raises his voice, never loses his temper, never smiles, goes no further at the most absurd or critical moments than blowing his nose.... Lord Campbell with the face of a peevish old woman, in which if you look intently you can clearly discern the celebrated metamorphosis that so unpleasantly surprised Little Red Riding Hood; you see that it is not grandmamma, but a wolf in a wig, a woman’s dressing-gown and a fur-trimmed cape.

But his lordship paid them back with interest.

After long discussions concerning the rag and after Pardigan’s evidence, Baronée’s counsel began to call witnesses.

First, an old refugee who had been a comrade of Barbès and Blanqui stood up. To begin with, he took the Bible with a certain air of repugnance, then made a gesture, as though to say, well, come what may—took the oath and craned his neck forward.

‘Have you long been acquainted with Cournet?’ one of the lawyers asked him.

‘_Citoyen_,’ said the refugee in French, ‘from the days of my youth, devoted to a single cause, I have given my life to the holy cause of freedom and equality ...’ and was going on in the same strain.

But the lawyer stopped him, and turning to the interpreter, observed: ‘The witness has apparently not understood the question. Translate it into French.’

After him followed another. When five or six Frenchmen with beards that would go into a wineglass, bald foreheads, enormous moustaches and hair cropped _à la Nicolas_ or falling on their shoulders, and wearing red neckties, had been called, one after another, to repeat variations on the following theme: ‘Cournet was a man whose merits surpassed his virtues, though his virtues were equalled by his merits. He was the ornament of the refugee community, the honour of his party, his wife is inconsolable, and his friends are only consoled by the fact that the lives of such men as Baronée and his comrades have been spared.’

‘And do you know Barthélemy?’

‘Yes. He is a French refugee.... I have seen him, but I know nothing about him.’ With this the witness made a smacking sound with his lips _à la française_.

‘Witness So-and-so ...’ said the lawyer.

‘Allow me,’ observed Grandmamma Campbell in a voice of soft sympathy, ‘do not trouble them further. The number of witnesses testifying to the virtues of the deceased Cournet and the accused Baronée seems to us unnecessary and prejudicial, we do not regard either the one or the other as a man of such bad character that his honesty and decent behaviour need be proved with such persistence. Moreover, Cournet is dead, and we have no occasion to inquire anything about him. We are called upon to judge nothing but the manner of his murder; everything relating to that crime is of importance for us, but there is no necessity for us to hear incidents in the past life of the accused, whom we equally accept as very respectable gentlemen. For my part I have no suspicions in regard to Monsieur Baronée.’

‘But why have you such sly and laughing eyes, Grandmamma?’

‘Because I cannot laugh at you with my lips, dear grandchildren, on account of my rank, and so I laugh with my eyes.’

Of course, after that the witnesses with their hair on their shoulders, and those with their hair standing up in a shock, in military uniform, or with a _cache-nez_ of all the seven colours of the rainbow, were dismissed unheard.

Then the case made rapid progress.

One of the lawyers for the defence, putting it to the jury that the accused, as foreigners entirely unacquainted with English law, were entitled to every indulgence, added: ‘You will hardly believe, gentlemen of the jury, that Monsieur Baronée knew so little of England, that in answer to the question, Do you know who killed Cournet? he answered that if he were to be kept in chains for ten years in a prison dungeon, even then he would not tell the name. You see that Monsieur Baronée has still the most mediaeval ideas about England, since he could imagine that for refusing to answer he could be put into chains and thrown for ten years into prison. I trust,’ he added, not restraining his laughter, ‘that the unfortunate event through which M. Baronée has been for some months deprived of his liberty has convinced him that prisons in England have somewhat improved since the Middle Ages and are scarcely inferior to the prisons in some other countries. Let us show the accused that our courts of justice, too, are humane and just,’ etc., etc.

The jury, one half of whom were foreigners, found the accused guilty.

Then Campbell turned to the prisoners in the dock, reminded them of the severity of the English law, reminded them that a foreigner when he steps upon English soil enjoys all the rights of an Englishman and must therefore bear an equal responsibility before the law. Then he passed to the difference of national manners and said, finally, that he would not consider it just to punish them with the utmost severity of the law, and therefore condemned them to _two months’_ imprisonment.

The public, the common people, the lawyers and all of us were satisfied; a sharp sentence had been expected, and no one had dared to dream of less than three or four years as the minimum.

Who were not satisfied?

The condemned men.

I went up to Barthélemy, he pressed my hand gloomily and said: ‘That Pardigan has got off clear, and Baronée ...’ he shrugged his shoulders.

As I was going out of the court I met the lawyer of my acquaintance. He was standing with Baronée.

‘I would rather have been sent to prison for a year than mixed up with that scoundrel Barthélemy.’

The case was over by about ten o’clock in the evening. When we reached the railway-station we found crowds of Frenchmen and Englishmen on the platform, loudly and noisily discussing the case. The majority of the French were pleased with the sentence, though they felt that it was not a victory for the other side of the Channel.

In the train the French struck up the Marseillaise.

‘Gentlemen,’ I said, ‘justice before everything. On this occasion let us sing Rule Britannia!’ And Rule Britannia we sang!

II

BARTHÉLEMY

Two years had passed. Once more Barthélemy stood before Lord Campbell, and this time the stern old man, putting on his black cap, pronounced a different sentence on him.

In 1854 Barthélemy withdrew himself more than ever from every one; for ever busy with something, he showed himself very little—he was preparing something in secret; the people who lived with him knew no more than the rest. I saw him from time to time; he always showed me great sympathy and confidence, but did not say anything special.

All of a sudden there was rumour of a double murder: Barthélemy had killed an obscure Englishman,[66] a small tradesman, and then the policeman who tried to arrest him. There was no kind of explanation, no key to the mystery. Barthélemy stood mute before his judges, remained mute in Newgate. From the very first he admitted the murder of the policeman: for this he could be sentenced to the death penalty, and so he stopped short at that admission—defending, so to speak, _his right_ to be hanged for the last murder without reference to the first.

This was what we found out by degrees. Barthélemy was intending to go to Holland. Dressed for the journey with a passport _visa-ed_ in one pocket and a revolver in the other, accompanied by the woman with whom he lived, Barthélemy went at ten o’clock in the evening to an Englishman, a maker of soda-water. When he knocked a maid-servant opened the door to him; the man himself invited them into the parlour and after that went with Barthélemy into his own room.

The maid heard the conversation growing louder and passing into abuse; then her master opened the door and thrust Barthélemy out; then Barthélemy took the pistol out of his pocket and fired at him. The man fell dead. Barthélemy rushed away; the terrified Frenchwoman disappeared before he did and was luckier. A policeman who had heard the shot stopped Barthélemy in the street; the latter threatened him with his pistol, but the policeman did not let him go. Barthélemy fired.... This time it is more than probable that he did not mean to kill the man, but only to frighten him; but trying to pull away one arm and pressing the pistol with the other hand at such close quarters, he wounded him mortally. Barthélemy set off running, but by then the police had seen him, and he was caught.

Barthélemy’s enemies, not concealing their delight, declared that this was simply an act of robbery, that Barthélemy had meant to rob the Englishman. But the tradesman was not at all rich. It is hard to suppose that any man, not utterly mad, would go to commit an act of open robbery in one of the most populous quarters of London, to a house where he was known, at ten o’clock in the evening, accompanied by a woman: and all that to steal a paltry hundred pounds. (That was about what was found in the murdered man’s chest.)

Some months previously Barthélemy had opened a workshop for making stained glass with patterns and arabesques, and had printed them by a special process. He had to pay sixty pounds for the patent and wanted fifteen pounds to make up that sum; he borrowed the money from me and repaid it very punctually. It was clear that there was something more in it than simple theft. Barthélemy’s ruling idea, his passion, his monomania remained. That he was going to Holland only in order to make his way to Paris was a fact known by many.

Barely three or four men stopped to ponder before this bloody affair; the others were all panic-stricken and turned against Barthélemy. To be hanged in England is not respectable; to have any connection with a man condemned for murder is ‘shocking’; his nearest friends drew back in horror.

I was then living in Twickenham. When I came home one evening two refugees were awaiting me: ‘We have come to you,’ they said, ‘to assure you that we have not had the faintest share in Barthélemy’s terrible crime;—we had work in common, one has to work with all sorts of men. Now it will be said ... it will be thought....’

‘But have you really come all the way from London to Twickenham to tell me that?’ I asked.

‘Your opinion is of very great value to us.’

‘Upon my word, gentlemen! Why, I was a friend of Barthélemy’s myself—and worse than you, because I had no work with him; but I am not denying him now. I know nothing about the case, the verdict and the sentence I leave to Lord Campbell, while I weep to think that powers so young and so rich, that a talent that has been so trained by the bitter conflict and hard environment in which he lived—that in the flower of his age he should lose his life at the hand of a hangman.’

The English were impressed by his behaviour in prison: steady, composed, melancholy without despair, firm without _jactance_, he knew that all was over for him, and listened to his sentence with the same immovable composure with which he had once stood under a shower of bullets on the barricades.

He wrote to his father and the girl he loved. I have read the letter to his father: not a high-flown sentence, the utmost simplicity; he tries gently to comfort the old man, as though he were not speaking of himself.

The Catholic priest who _ex officio_ visited him in his prison, an intelligent and kind-hearted man, took the greatest interest in him and even petitioned Palmerston for a commutation of the sentence, but Palmerston refused. The priest’s conversations with Barthélemy were gentle and full of humane feeling on both sides. Barthélemy wrote to him, ‘I am very grateful to you for your kind words, for your consolations. If I could have been turned into a believer, you only could have converted me; but what is to be done? I have no faith!’ After his death the priest wrote to a lady of my acquaintance: ‘What a man that unhappy Barthélemy was! Had he lived longer, his heart might have been opened to grace. I pray for his soul!’

I dwell on this story partly because _The Times_ related with malicious spite Barthélemy’s mockery at the sheriff.

A few hours before he was hanged, one of the sheriffs, learning that Barthélemy had refused spiritual ministrations, thought it his duty to turn him into the path of salvation, and began plying him with the pietistic twaddle printed in English halfpenny tracts and given away freely at the street corners. Barthélemy was bored by the exhortations of the sheriff; the apostle in the gold chain observed this and, assuming a solemn air, said to him: ‘Only think, young man, that in a few hours you will be answering not me but God.’

‘And what do you think?’ Barthélemy asked. ‘Does God speak French? If He doesn’t I shan’t be able to answer Him.’

The sheriff turned pale with indignation, and his pallor and indignation passed through the sighs and smiles of all the sheriffs, mayors and aldermen seated in the court, until it reached the immense sheets of _The Times_.

But no proselytising sheriff prevented Barthélemy from dying in that grave and nervously exalted spirit which he sought and which it is so natural to seek in the last hours of life. The sentence was read. Barthélemy observed to one of his friends that if he was to die he would have preferred to go out quietly, without witnesses, in prison, rather than to be strangled by the hangman in a public place before crowds of people.—‘Nothing is easier; to-morrow, next day, I will bring you strychnine.’ As though one was not enough, two undertook to do it. By that time he was guarded as a condemned criminal, that is, very strictly; nevertheless, a few days later his friends obtained strychnine and passed it in to him concealed in his linen. They waited to make sure that he had found it. They were satisfied of this, too....

Afraid of being held responsible, one of them, upon whom suspicion might have fallen, wanted to leave England for a time. He asked me for the loan of a few pounds for the journey; I agreed to give it him. Could anything be simpler? But I mention this insignificant incident to show how every secret plot of the French is discovered, how through their love of a fine _mise en scène_ numbers of outsiders are compromised in every affair in which they have a hand.

On Sunday evening there were several people, Italian and other refugees, at my house as usual. There were ladies of the party on that day. We sat down to dinner very late, at eight o’clock. At nine o’clock a man I knew pretty well came in. He used often to come and see me, and so there was nothing striking about his dropping in; but he so distinctly expressed all over his face, ‘I am saying nothing,’ that my visitors looked at each other.

‘Won’t you have something to eat or a glass of wine?’ I asked.

‘No,’ said the visitor, sinking into a chair as though weighed down by the burden of his secret.

After dinner, before every one, he called me away into another room and, after telling me that Barthélemy had received the poison (a fact which I knew already), asked me for the money for the man who was leaving England.

‘With the greatest pleasure; I will bring it you at once,’ I said.

‘No. I am staying the night in Twickenham. I shall see you to-morrow morning. I need not tell you—beg you—that no human being....’

I smiled.

When I went back into the dining-room a young girl said inquiringly: ‘I suppose he had something to tell you about Barthélemy...?’

At eight o’clock next morning François came in and said that a Frenchman whom he had never seen before insisted upon seeing me.

This was the very friend of Barthélemy who wanted to get away ‘unnoticed.’ I flung on my overcoat and went out into the garden, where he was waiting for me. There I met a sickly-looking, fearfully thin, black-haired Frenchman (I afterwards learned that he had spent years in Belle-Île, and afterwards had been literally dying of hunger in London). He was wearing a shabby overcoat, which nobody would have noticed; but the travelling cap, the immense scarf wrapped round his neck would have attracted attention in Moscow, in Paris or in Naples.

‘What has happened?’

‘Has So-and-so been to you?’

‘He is here now.’

‘Did he speak of the money?’

‘That is all settled, the money is ready.’

‘I am really very grateful.’

‘When are you going?’

‘To-day or to-morrow.’

Towards the end of our conversation our common acquaintance joined us. When the would-be traveller had gone: ‘Tell me, please, why did he come?’ I asked, left alone with my friend.

‘For the money.’

‘But you could have given it him.’

‘That is true, but he wanted to make your acquaintance; he asked me whether you would like it. What could I say?’

‘Very much, of course; only I don’t know whether he has chosen a good moment.’

‘Why, has he hindered you?’

‘No; but I hope the police won’t hinder his getting away.’

Fortunately this did not occur. While he was on his way his comrade began to have doubts of the poison they had procured; after pondering a little, he gave the remains to his dog. The day passed, the dog was still alive; another passed, still alive. Panic-stricken, he rushed off to Newgate, obtained an interview with Barthélemy through a grating and, seizing a favourable moment, whispered to him, ‘Have you got it?’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘Well, you see, I have great doubts. You had better not take it. I have tried it on my dog, it had no effect!’

Barthélemy’s head sank—then, raising it with his eyes full of tears, he said: ‘What are you doing to me!’

‘We will get something else.’

‘No need,’ answered Barthélemy. ‘If it is inevitable, so be it.’

And from that moment he began to prepare for death, thought no more of poison and wrote some memoir, which was not given after his death to the friend to whom he had bequeathed it (the one who was hurrying away).

On Saturday, the 19th of January, we learnt that the priest had visited Palmerston, and his petition had been refused.

A painful Sunday followed that day. A small group of visitors dispersed gloomily in the evening. I was left alone. I went to bed, fell asleep and at once woke up. And so in seven, then six, then five hours he, full of strength, youth and passion, in perfect health, would be led out and killed—killed without pity, without anger or satisfaction, and, what is more, with a sort of pharisaical compassion.... Seven o’clock began striking in the church tower. _Now_ the procession was moving and Calcraft was on the spot: would his iron nerves serve poor Barthélemy now? My teeth were chattering.

At eleven o’clock in the morning D. came in.

‘Is it over?’ I asked.

‘It is over.’

‘Were you there?’

‘Yes.’

_The Times_ told me the rest.

Opposite the article in _The Times_ Abbé Roux had printed: ‘The Murderer Barthélemy.’

When all was in readiness—so _The Times_ tells the story—he asked for the letter of the girl to whom he used to write, and I believe a lock of her hair, or some such souvenir; he held them tight in his hand when the hangman went up to him ... and there crushed in his stiffened fingers they were found by the men who went to take his body from the gibbet. ‘Human justice,’ so says _The Times_, ‘was satisfied.’ I suppose so—but it would not have seemed too little for the devil’s!

At this point I should stop. But in my story, just as in life itself, beside the giant’s footprints let the hoofprints of asses and swine remain too.

When Barthélemy was arrested he had not enough money to pay a solicitor: besides, he did not want to employ one. An unknown lawyer, called Hering, offered to defend him, obviously as a means of advertising himself. His defence was feeble; but it must not be forgotten that his task was exceptionally difficult; Barthélemy kept silent and did not want Hering to speak about the principal charge. Anyway, Hering did a great deal, wasted time, bustled about. When the day of execution was fixed, Hering came to the prison to say good-bye; Barthélemy was touched, he thanked him and among other things said to him: ‘I have nothing, I cannot repay your trouble with anything but my gratitude. I should have liked to leave you something, at least for a keepsake, but I have nothing I could offer you. Perhaps my overcoat?’

‘I shall be very grateful to you, I meant to ask you for it.’

‘With the greatest pleasure,’ said Barthélemy, ‘but it is a wretched thing.’

‘Oh, I am not going to wear it; I will tell you frankly, I have already disposed of it, and very well too.’

‘Disposed of it?’ repeated Barthélemy in astonishment.

‘Yes, to Madame Tussaud for her special gallery.’

Barthélemy shuddered.

When he was being taken to be hanged, he suddenly thought of this and said to the sheriff: ‘Oh, I was quite forgetting to ask you, on no account let my overcoat be given to Hering.’[67]

III

NOT GUILTY

‘Dr. Simon Bernard was arrested yesterday at his own lodging, in connection with the Orsini affair....’

One has to have lived some years in England to understand how surprising such news is ... how at first one cannot believe it ... what _Continental_ emotions it stirs in one’s heart!

The public suffers in England, and fairly frequently, from periodical panics, and in such times of fluster woe to anything that comes in its way. Panic is, as a rule, unsparing and merciless, but it has the advantage of being quickly over. Panic is not vindictive, it seeks to be forgotten as quickly as possible.

It must not be assumed that the cowardly feeling of cautious and uneasy self-preservation is innate in the English character. It is the effect of growing fat and rich and of all thoughts and passions being set on acquiring wealth. Timidity has been instilled into the English by the capitalists and petty-bourgeois; they give a nervous instability to their official world, which in a country of representative institutions is continually adapting itself to the character, the votes and the money of the possessing classes. They are the dominant element, and they lose their heads at every unexpected incident and, having no need to stand on ceremony, they show themselves in all their helpless, clumsy cowardice, undisguised by the tawdry and faded _foulard_ of French rhetoric. One must know how to wait for Capital to recover itself and to be reassured on the score of profits, then all will go on its accustomed way again.

By the arrest of Bernard, they thought to escape from the wrath of Caesar for Orsini’s having prepared his bombs on English soil. Pusillanimous concessions commonly cause irritation, and, instead of saying thank you, the menacing notes grew still more menacing, the warlike articles in the French newspapers smelt more strongly than ever of gunpowder. The capitalists turned pale and dizzy, they already saw in their mind’s eye screw-steamers, red trousers, red bullets, a red glow in the sky, the Bank turned into _Mabille_, with the historical inscription: _Ici l’on danse_. What were they to do? They were ready not only to give up and demolish Dr. Simon Bernard, but possibly to undermine and demolish Mount St. Bernard, if only the damnable vision of red trousers and black beards could be dissipated, if only the wrath of their ally could be changed to mercy.

The finest meteorological instrument in England, Palmerston, who indicated with the greatest fidelity the temperature of the middle classes, translated ‘Very alarming’ into the Conspiracy Bill. By this Bill, if it had become law, every embassy with a little vigilance and zeal might have thrown any enemy of their respective governments into prison, and in certain cases have shipped them off home.

But fortunately the temperature of the island is not alike in all classes, and we shall soon see the great wisdom of the English distribution of wealth, which releases a considerable proportion of the people from all anxiety about capital. If every man in England were a capitalist, the Conspiracy Bill would have been passed, and Simon Bernard would have been hanged or sent to Cayenne. On hearing of the Conspiracy Bill and the overwhelming probability of its passing, the old Anglo-Saxon feeling of independence was stirred; men felt sorry to lose their ancient right of asylum, of which all sorts of people had taken advantage, from the Huguenots to the Catholics of 1793, from Voltaire and Paoli[68] to Charles X. and Louis-Philippe. The Englishman has no special love for foreigners, still less for refugees, whom he regards as guilty of poverty, a vice he never forgives—but he clings to his right of asylum; he will not permit it to be touched with impunity, any more than his right of public meeting and of the freedom of the press.

When he proposed the Conspiracy Bill, Palmerston reckoned, and very confidently, on the depression of the British spirits; he was thinking of one class which is very powerful, but forgot the other, which is very numerous.

A few days before the Bill came before the House, London was covered with placards; a committee formed for the purpose of opposing the new law was calling a meeting for the following Sunday in Hyde Park, at which it would propose an address to the Queen. This address demanded that Palmerston and his associates should be declared traitors to their country and should be brought up for trial, and petitioned the Queen, should the Bill be passed, to exercise her prerogative and refuse to ratify it. The number of people expected in the Park was so great that the committee announced that it was impossible to make speeches, and arranged to present the parts of the address to the people by telegraphic signs. There were rumours that young working men from all parts of England were arriving for Saturday, that the railways would bring tens of thousands of men violently opposed to the Bill. A meeting of two hundred thousand men might be reckoned on. What could the police do with them? To use troops against a lawful and unarmed meeting assembled in order to send a petition to the Queen was impossible; moreover, in order to do so, the Mutiny Bill was essential. And the meeting would have had to be prevented. On Friday, Milner Gibson made his speech against Palmerston’s Bill. Palmerston was so convinced of his triumph, that he waited smiling for the division. Influenced by the prospect of the meeting, a proportion of his own followers voted against him, and when a majority of more than thirty votes in support of Milner Gibson was announced, Palmerston thought that the teller had made a mistake, questioned him, stood up to speak, said nothing, but in a dazed way uttered a few incoherent words, accompanying them with a forced smile, and then sank into his chair to the din of hostile applause.

The meeting was made impossible, there was no longer any reason to travel from Manchester, Bristol, Newcastle-on-Tyne.... The Conspiracy Bill had fallen, and with it Palmerston and his colleagues.

The classically bombastic and frigidly conservative Ministry of Derby, with the Jewish melodies of Disraeli and the diplomatic subtleties of the days of Castlereagh, replaced them.

On Sunday between three and four o’clock I went to call on Mrs. Milner Gibson. I wanted to congratulate her. She lived near Hyde Park. The placards had been removed, and men were walking with printed proclamations hanging before and behind them, announcing that there would be no meeting on account of the defeat of the Bill and the fall of the Ministry. Nevertheless, since two hundred thousand visitors had been invited, it could hardly be expected that the Park would be empty. Everywhere there were dense throngs of people, orators mounted on chairs or tables were delivering speeches, and the crowds were more excited than usual. A few policemen sauntered about with maidenly bashfulness, noisy groups of street boys sang at the top of their voices, ‘Pop goes the weasel!’ Suddenly some one pointing to the meagre figure of a Frenchman with moustaches, in a shabby hat, shouted: ‘A French spy!’ Instantly the boys rushed after him. The frightened ‘spy’ tried in vain to make off and, thrown down on the ground, progressed no longer on his feet, but was dragged triumphantly by the hair to the shout of ‘French spy! Into the Serpentine with him!’ The boys dragged him to the water, dipped him in (it was February), pulled him out and laid him on the bank, laughing and whistling. The drenched and shivering Frenchman floundered on the sand, shouting _in the Park_: ‘Cabman! Cabman!’

So was repeated, fifty years afterwards in Hyde Park, the famous scene of Turgenev’s ‘We are drowning a Frenchman!’[69]

This prologue _à la Priestnitz_[70] to Bernard’s trial showed how widely spread was the general indignation. The English people really were angry, and saved their country from the slur with which the ‘conglomerated mediocrity,’ to use J. S. Mill’s expression, would certainly have disgraced it.

England is great and endurable _only_ with the fullest preservation of its rights and liberties, which are not harmonised into one, nor freed from the trappings of mediaevalism and the broadcloth of puritanism, but yet give free play to the Englishman’s proud independence and unwavering confidence in the basis of law.

What the English people instinctively understood was as little grasped by Derby as by Palmerston. Derby’s anxiety was to reassure the capitalists and to make every possible concession to the irate ally; he wanted to show the French that even without the Conspiracy Bill he could do wonders. In his excessive zeal he made two mistakes.

Palmerston’s Ministry had demanded the conviction of Bernard on a charge of _misdemeanour_, namely for bad behaviour, for rascally conduct, in short for a misdeed which did not involve a greater punishment than three years’ imprisonment. And so neither the jury nor the lawyers nor the public would have taken any particular interest in the case, and it would probably have gone against Bernard. Derby insisted on trying Bernard for _felony_, that is, for serious crime, which entitles the judge in case the prisoner is found guilty to sentence him to be hanged.[71] This could not be allowed to pass; moreover, to increase the gravity of the charge while the accused is on his trial is utterly opposed to the sense of justice of the English.

Palmerston, in one of his acutest panics after Orsini’s attempt, had pitched on a harmless little book by a man called Adams, discussing the question when tyrannicide is permissible and when it is not, and brought the publisher of it, Truelove, to trial.

All the independent press looked with indignation at this Continental proceeding. The prosecution of the pamphlet was utterly senseless. There are no tyrants in England, and no one in France would hear about a pamphlet written in English; besides, worse things are published in England every day!

Derby, accustomed to the turf and horse-racing, wanted to overtake and if possible outstrip Palmerston. Felix Pyat had, in the name of the revolutionary commune, written a manifesto justifying Orsini; no one was willing to publish it; the Polish refugee, Tchorszewski, put the name of his bookshop on Pyat’s pamphlet. Derby ordered the copies to be seized, Tchorszewski to be brought up for trial.

Every drop of Anglo-Saxon blood that was still full of iron and untainted by gold was fired by this new insult; all the organs of Scotland, Ireland, and of course England (except two or three _kept_ journals), looked upon these efforts as a criminal attempt upon the freedom of the press, and asked whether the Government was in its senses, or had gone out of its mind.

It was in this atmosphere so favourable to the Government prosecution that the trial of Bernard, this judicial Waterloo of England, as we said at the time in the _Bell_, began in the Old Bailey.

I watched Bernard’s trial from beginning to end. I was at all the sittings in the Old Bailey (only, once I was two hours late) and I do not regret it. The first trial of Barthélemy and the trial of Bernard showed me clearly how far more mature in the sphere of law England is than France.

The French Government and the English Ministry took immense pains to secure Bernard’s conviction; the trial cost the two Governments as much as thirty thousand pounds sterling, _i.e._ 750,000 francs. A regular mob of French spies stayed in London, travelled to Paris and back again to say one word; to be in readiness in case of need, families were sent for, doctors of medicine, jockeys, governors of prisons, women, children ... and all this crew stayed in expensive hotels, receiving £1 (25 francs) a day for their keep. Caesar was terrified, the Carthaginians were terrified. And the scowling, slow-moving Englishmen saw it all, and, while the case was being got up, the French spies in the Haymarket and Coventry Street were pursued by boys, hissed and pelted with mud; more than once the English police had to protect them.

Edwin James based his defence on this hatred for political spies and for their unceremonious invasion of London. His treatment of the English spies surpassed all imagination. I do not know how Scotland Yard or the French Government could have compensated them for the torture that Edwin James made them endure.

An individual called Rogers bore witness that at a club in Leicester Square Bernard had said this and that about the coming end of Napoleon.

‘Were you there?’ asked E. James.

‘Yes.’

‘So you are interested in politics?’

‘No.’

‘What leads you to go to political clubs, then?’

‘The duties of the service.’

‘I don’t understand; what sort of service?’

‘I serve under Sir Richard Maine.’[72]

‘Oh ... well, are you given instructions?’

‘Yes.’

‘What are they?’

‘I am told to listen to what is said, and to report it to my superiors.’

‘And you get a salary for that?’

‘Yes.’

‘In that case you are a spy. You might have told me that before.’

The Queen’s Counsel, Fitzroy Kelly, turning to Lord Campbell, one of the four judges summoned to judge Bernard, asked him to protect the witness from the lawyer’s impertinent hints. Campbell with his invariable dispassionateness advised James not to insult the witness. James protested that he had no intention of insulting him; ‘The word spy,’ he said, ‘is a plain English word, and is the word that describes his duty.’ Campbell assured him that it would be better to use another word. The lawyer looked up some dictionary and read the definition of the word spy: ‘Spy—a person employed by the police for the purpose of listening,’ etc.—‘and Rogers has just told us that he is employed for pay by Sir Richard Maine (here by a motion of the head he indicated Sir Richard Maine himself) to listen at clubs and report what takes place there.’ And so he begged his Lordship to excuse him, but he could find no other name, and then, turning to the wretched creature upon whom all eyes were fixed, and who was mopping his perspiring brow for the second time, he asked: ‘Spy Rogers, possibly you have received pay from the French Government, too?’

The tortured Rogers was roused to fury and replied that he had never served any despotic government. Edwin James, addressing the public, said, amid Homeric laughter, ‘Our spy Rogers is for representative government.’

Cross-examining the police agent who had seized Bernard’s papers, he asked him by whom he had been accompanied? (The maid had testified that he had not been alone.)

‘My uncle.’

‘And what is your uncle’s calling in life?’

‘He is an omnibus conductor.’

‘What did he go with you for?’

‘He asked me to take him with me, as he had never seen a man arrested or papers seized before.’

‘Your uncle is of an inquiring turn of mind. And by the way, you found a letter from Orsini at Dr. Bernard’s; that letter was in Italian, but you had it translated; it was not your uncle, I suppose, translated it?’

‘No, the letter was translated by Ubicini.’[73]

‘An Englishman?’

‘Yes, an Englishman.’

‘I have never happened to hear that English surname. Is Mr. Ubicini a literary man, then?’

‘He translates as part of his duties.’

‘So your friend, perhaps, like the spy Rogers, serves under Sir Richard Maine’ (again a nod in the direction of Sir Richard).

‘Just so.’

‘You should have told me that before.’

He did not go so far with the French spies, though they caught it from him, too.

What I liked more than anything was that, having called into the witness-box some French or Belgian tavern-keeper to put a very unimportant question to him, he suddenly stopped, and turning to Lord Campbell said: ‘The question I wish to put to the witness is of such a nature that it may embarrass him to answer it in the presence of the French agents. I ask you to send them out of the court for the time.’

‘Usher, show the French agents out of the court,’ said Campbell, and the usher, wearing a silk mantle and carrying a staff in his hand, led a dozen spies with little beards and wonderful moustaches, wearing little gold chains and signet rings, across the crowded court. Such a procession, accompanied by scarcely suppressed laughter, must have been an ordeal in itself.

The details of the case are well known. I will not describe it.

When the witnesses had been cross-examined and the prosecutor and the defending counsel had delivered their speeches, Campbell coldly summed up the case, reading through the whole of the evidence.

Campbell was summing up for two hours.

‘How can his chest and lungs stand it?’ I said to a policeman.

The policeman looked at me with a feeling of pride and, offering me his snuff-box, observed: ‘That is nothing for him! When Palmer was tried, he was summing up for six hours and a half and was none the worse—he is a man!’

Englishmen have marvellously powerful constitutions. How they store up such a reserve of strength and how it lasts so long a period is a problem. We in Russia have no conception of such activity and such work, especially in our three upper ‘grades.’ Campbell, for instance, had reached the Old Bailey precisely at ten o’clock; he was presiding over the case without a break till two. At two the judges went out for a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes and then remained in court till five or half-past. Campbell wrote down the whole of the evidence with his own hand. In the evening of the same day he appeared in the House of Lords and delivered long speeches in the correct style with unnecessary Latin quotations, pronounced in such a way that Horace himself would not have understood his own lines.

Gladstone, having a year and a half to spare between his first appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer and his second, wrote commentaries on Homer. And the ever-youthful Palmerston gallops about on horseback, turns up at soirées and dinner-parties, everywhere polite, everywhere talkative and inexhaustible, displays his learning at examinations and prize-givings, and his liberalism, patriotic pride and generous sympathies in after-dinner speeches, looks after his own ministry, and to some extent all the others, as well as controlling Parliament!

This toughness and habit of intense work is the secret of the English constitution, education and climate. The Englishman studies little, slowly and late; from his earliest years he drinks port and sherry, overeats himself and builds up a constitution of iron; though he practises no school gymnastics of the German Turner-Uebungen style, he gallops over hedges and ditches, drives every sort of horse, rows in every kind of boat and can make any one see rainbow-stars with his fists. At the same time, life is set in a definite rut and passes regularly from a certain sort of birth by certain avenues to a certain sort of funeral; passions trouble it little. An Englishman loses his fortune with less fuss than a Frenchman gains his; he shoots himself more simply than a Frenchman travels to Geneva or Brussels.

‘_Vous voyez, vous mangez votre veau froid chaudement_,’ an old Englishman said, wishing to explain to a Frenchman the difference between the English character and the French. ‘_Et nous mangeons notre bœuf chaud froidement._’ That is why they last out till they are eighty....

Before I go back to the trial I must explain why the policeman offered me his snuff-box. On the first day of the trial I was sitting on the reporters’ bench; when Bernard was led into the dock he looked round the court, which was packed to overflowing—not one face he knew; he dropped his eyes, glanced near at hand and, meeting mine, gave me a slight nod, as though asking whether I cared to recognise our acquaintance or not; I got up and greeted him like a friend. This was at the very beginning, that is, in one of those moments of absolute stillness, in which every rustle is heard, every movement noticed. Saunders, one of the heads of the detective police, whispered to one of his men and bade him keep an eye on me, that is, he very simply pointed to me with his finger, and from that minute the detective was continually beside me. I cannot express my gratitude for this official care. If I went away for a quarter of an hour, while the judges were having lunch, to get a glass of ale at a tavern, and could not find a seat on my return, the detective nodded to me and indicated where to sit. If another policeman stopped me in the doorway, my man made a sign to him, and the policeman let me in. On one occasion, I put my hat down in the window, forgot about it, and by the crush of the crowd was completely cut off from it. When I grasped the situation, there was no possibility of getting to it; I stood up to see if I could creep through anywhere, but my detective reassured me: ‘I expect you are looking for your hat; I have taken care of it.’

After that, it is easy to understand why his comrade regaled me with some reddish Scotch Cavendish.

My agreeable acquaintance with the detective served me well later on also. One day, after buying some books at Trübner’s, I got into an omnibus and forgot them there; as I was walking off, I recollected them, but the omnibus had driven away. I set off to the City to inquire at the omnibus station; my detective turned up and greeted me. ‘Delighted to see you,’ I said; ‘perhaps you can tell me how I can get back my books.’

‘What was the name of the omnibus?’

‘So-and-so.’

‘At what time was it?’

‘Just now.’

‘That is easy, then; come along,’ and a quarter of an hour later the books were in my hands.

Fitzroy Kelly delivered his speech for the prosecution, dry, _cassant_, with a mixture of venom in it. Campbell summed up the evidence, and the jury retired.

I went up to the lawyer’s bench and asked a solicitor of my acquaintance how he thought things were going.

‘Not well,’ he said; ‘I am almost certain the jury will give a verdict against him.’

‘That is bad. And is it possible he will be...?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ the solicitor interrupted me, ‘but he will be deported. It will all depend on the judges.’

There was a terrible noise, laughter, conversation, coughing in the court. An alderman took off his gold chain and showed it to some ladies; the solid chain passed from hand to hand. ‘Surely somebody will steal it,’ I thought. Two hours later a bell rang, Campbell came in again and then Pollock, a thin, decrepit old man, who had once been Queen Charlotte’s lawyer, and two other judges. The usher announced to them that the jury were agreed. ‘Bring in the jury,’ said Campbell.

A deathly stillness reigned. I looked round; people’s faces changed, looked paler, graver, eyes glowed, ladies shuddered. In this stillness, in the presence of this crowd, the accustomed ritual of questions, of taking the oath, was extraordinarily impressive. With his arms folded, Bernard stood calmly, a little paler than usual (his deportment throughout the trial had been excellent).

In a quiet but distinct voice Campbell asked: ‘Are the jury agreed, have they chosen one of their number as foreman, and who is he?’

They had chosen as foreman a city tailor of no great wealth.

When he had taken the oath and Campbell, rising to his feet, told him that the court was awaiting the verdict of the jury, I held my breath, my heart stood still.

‘... Before God and the prisoner in the dock, we declare that Dr. Simon Bernard, accused of being an accomplice in the attempt of the 12th of January to assassinate Napoleon, and of murder’—he raised his voice and added loudly—‘Not guilty!’

A few seconds of silence, then a sigh of relief seemed to run through the crowd and was followed by frantic shouts, a thunder of applause, an outburst of joy ... ladies waved their handkerchiefs, lawyers jumped on to their benches, men with flushed faces and tears streaming down their cheeks shouted frantically ‘Hurray, hurray!’ Two minutes passed, the judges, displeased at this lack of respect, told the ushers to restore silence; two or three pitiful figures waved their staves and moved their lips, but the noise did not cease nor grow less. Campbell went out, and his colleagues went out, no one paid attention to that, the shouting and hubbub continued. The jury were triumphant.

I went up to the dock, congratulated Bernard and would have pressed his hand, but, though he stretched down and I stretched up, I could not reach his hand. All at once two lawyers, strangers to me, wearing their gowns and wigs, said to me, ‘Stay—wait a minute,’ and before I could answer, they seized me and shoved me up so that I could reach his hand.

As soon as the shouts began to subside, it was as though a sea were beating upon the walls and bursting with a hollow splash in at all the doors and windows of the building; this was the shouting on the stairs and in the outer hall. It retreated and approached again, spread wider and wider and melted at last into a roar: it was the voice of the people.

Campbell came in and announced that Bernard was acquitted by the court on this charge, then he went out again with his ‘brother judges’; I, too, went out. It was one of those rare moments when a man looks at the crowd with love, when he feels at ease with his fellows.... Many of England’s sins will be forgiven her for that verdict and the delight with which it was received.

I went out, the street was crowded with people.

A coal-heaver came out of a side-street, looked at the crowd and asked: ‘Is it all over?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s the verdict?’

‘Not guilty.’

The coalman laid down the reins, took off his leather cap with its huge flap at the back, threw it up in the air and began shouting in a terrific voice, ‘Hurray, hurray!’ and the crowd began shouting ‘Hurray!’ again.

At that moment, the jurymen came out of the doors of the Old Bailey, escorted by the police. The crowd greeted them by taking off their hats and uttering endless shouts of approval. The police had no need to clear a way for them. The people parted of their own accord—the jurymen went to a tavern in Fleet Street, the crowd following them; as fresh crowds came up, they shouted ‘Hurray!’ to them and flung their hats in the air.

This was between five and six. At seven o’clock, in Manchester, Newcastle, Liverpool and other towns, the workmen rushed about the streets with torches announcing Bernard’s acquittal. The news was telegraphed to them by their friends; crowds had been waiting at the telegraph offices since four o’clock.

So England celebrated a fresh triumph of her freedom!