Chapter XXXII: Dublin at last 565 (6)

In order to give these doctrines, such as they are, a chance of finding favour with his countrymen, Prince Louis has the advantage of being able to refer to a former great professor of them--his uncle Napoleon. His attempt is at once pious and prudent; it exalts the memory of the uncle, and furthers the interests of the nephew, who attempts to show what Napoleon’s ideas really were; what good had already resulted from the practice of them; how cruelly they had been thwarted by foreign wars and difficulties; and what vast benefits _would_ have resulted from them; ay, and (it is reasonable to conclude) might still, if the French nation would be wise enough to pitch upon a governor that would continue the interrupted scheme. It is, however, to be borne in mind that the Emperor Napoleon had certain arguments in favour of his opinions for the time being, which his nephew has not employed. On the 13th Vendémiaire, when General Bonaparte believed in the excellence of a Directory, it may be remembered that he aided his opinions by forty pieces of artillery, and by Colonel Murat at the head of his dragoons. There was no resisting such a philosopher; the Directory was established forthwith, and the sacred cause of the minority triumphed. In like manner, when the General was convinced of the weakness of the Directory, and saw fully the necessity of establishing a Consulate, what were his arguments? Moreau, Lannes, Murat, Berthier, Leclerc, Lefebvre--gentle apostles of the truth!--marched to St. Cloud, and there, with fixed bayonets, caused it to prevail. Error vanished in an instant. At once five hundred of its high priests tumbled out of windows, and lo! three Consuls appeared to guide the destinies of France! How much more expeditious, reasonable, and clinching was this argument of the 18th Brumaire, than any one that can be found in any pamphlet! A fig for your duodecimos and octavos! Talk about points, there are none like those at the end of a bayonet; and the most powerful of styles is a good rattling ‘article’ from a nine-pounder.

At least this is our interpretation of the manner in which were always propagated the _Idées Napoléoniennes_. Not such, however, is Prince Louis’s belief; and, if you wish to go along with him in opinion, you will discover that a more liberal, peaceable, prudent Prince never existed: you will read that ‘the mission of Napoleon’ was to be the ‘_testamentary executor of the Revolution_;’ and the Prince should have added, the legatee; or, more justly still, as well as the _executor_, he should be called the _executioner_, and then his title would be complete. In Vendémiaire, the military Tartuffe, he threw aside the Revolution’s natural heirs, and made her, as it were, _alter her will_; on the 18th of Brumaire he strangled her, and on the 19th seized on her property, and kept it until force deprived him of it. Illustrations, to be sure, are no arguments, but the example is the Prince’s, not ours.

In the Prince’s eyes, then, his uncle is a god; of all monarchs the most wise, upright, and merciful. Thirty years ago the opinion had millions of supporters; while millions again were ready to avouch the exact contrary. It is curious to think of the former difference of opinion concerning Napoleon; and in reading his nephew’s rapturous encomiums of him, one goes back to the days when we ourselves were as loud and mad in his dispraise. Who does not remember his own personal hatred and horror, twenty-five years ago, for the man whom we used to call the ‘bloody Corsican upstart and assassin’? What stories did we not believe of him?--what murders, rapes, robberies, not lay to his charge?--we, who were living within a few miles of his territory, and might, by books and newspapers, be made as well acquainted with his merits or demerits as any of his own countrymen.

Then was the age when the _Idées Napoléoniennes_ might have passed through many editions; for while we were thus outrageously bitter, our neighbours were as extravagantly attached to him by a strange infatuation--adored him like a god, whom we chose to consider as a fiend; and vowed that, under his government, their nation had attained its highest pitch of grandeur and glory. In revenge there existed in England (as is proved by a thousand authentic documents) a monster so hideous, a tyrant so ruthless and bloody, that the world’s history cannot show his parallel. This ruffian’s name was, during the early part of the French Revolution, Pittetcobourg. Pittetcobourg’s emissaries were in every corner of France; Pittetcobourg’s gold chinked in the pockets of every traitor in Europe; it menaced the life of the godlike Robespierre; it drove into cellars and fits of delirium even the gentle philanthropist Marat; it fourteen times caused the dagger to be lifted against the bosom of the First Consul, Emperor, and King,--that first, great, glorious, irresistible, cowardly, contemptible, bloody hero and fiend, Bonaparte, before mentioned.

On our side of the Channel we have had leisure, long since, to reconsider our verdict against Napoleon; though, to be sure, we have not changed our opinion about Pittetcobourg. After five-and-thirty years all parties bear witness to his honesty, and speak with affectionate reverence of his patriotism, his genius, and his private virtue. In France, however, or, at least, among certain parties in France, there has been no such modification of opinion. With the Republicans, Pittetcobourg is Pittetcobourg still,--crafty, bloody, seeking whom he may devour; and _perfide Albion_ more perfidious than ever. This hatred is the point of union between the Republic and the Empire; it has been fostered ever since, and must be continued by Prince Louis, if he would hope to conciliate both parties.

With regard to the Emperor, then, Prince Louis erects to his memory as fine a monument as his wits can raise. One need not say that the imperial apologist’s opinion should be received with the utmost caution; for a man who has such a hero for an uncle may naturally be proud of and partial to him; and when this nephew of the great man would be his heir, likewise, and, bearing his name, step also into his imperial shoes, one may reasonably look for much affectionate panegyric. ‘The Empire was the best of empires,’ cries the Prince; and possibly it was; undoubtedly, the Prince thinks it was; but he is the very last person who would convince a man with a proper suspicious impartiality. One remembers a certain consultation of politicians which is recorded in the Spelling-book; and the opinion of that patriotic sage who averred that, for a real blameless constitution, an impenetrable shield for liberty, and cheap defence of nations, there was nothing like leather.

Let us examine some of the Prince’s article. If we may be allowed humbly to express an opinion, his leather is not only quite insufficient for those vast public purposes for which he destines it, but is, moreover, and in itself, very _bad leather_. The hides are poor, small, unsound slips of skin; or, to drop this cobbling metaphor, the style is not particularly brilliant, the facts not very startling, and, as for the conclusions, one may differ with almost every one of them. Here is an extract from his first chapter, ‘On Governments in General:’--

‘I speak it with regret, I can see but two Governments, at this
day, which fulfil the mission that Providence has confided to them;
they are the two colossi at the end of the world; one at the
extremity of the old world, the other at the extremity of the new.
Whilst our old European centre is as a volcano, consuming itself in
its crater, the two nations of the East and the West march, without
hesitation, towards perfection; the one under the will of a single
individual, the other under liberty.

‘Providence has confided to the United States of North America the
task of peopling and civilising that immense territory which
stretches from the Atlantic to the South Sea, and from the North
Pole to the Equator. The Government, which is only a simple
administration, has only hitherto been called upon to put in
practice the old adage, _Laissez faire, laissez passer_, in order
to favour that irresistible instinct which pushes the people of
America to the west.

‘In Russia it is to the imperial dynasty that is owing all the vast
progress which, in a century and a-half, has rescued that empire
from barbarism. The imperial power must contend against all the
ancient prejudices of our old Europe: it must centralise, as far as
possible, all the powers of the State in the hands of one person,
in order to destroy the abuses which the feudal and communal
franchises have served to perpetuate. The last alone can hope to
receive from it the improvements which it expects.

‘But thou, France of Henry IV., of Louis XIV., of Carnot, of
Napoleon--thou, who wert always for the west of Europe the source
of progress, who possessest in thyself the two great pillars of
empire, the genius for the arts of peace, and the genius of
war--hast thou no further passion to fulfil? Wilt thou never cease
to waste thy force and energies in intestine struggles? No; such
cannot be thy destiny: the day will soon come, when, to govern
thee, it will be necessary to understand that thy part is to place
in all treaties thy sword of Brennus on the side of civilisation.’

These are the conclusions of the Prince’s remarks upon Governments in general; and it must be supposed that the reader is very little wiser at the end than at the beginning. But two Governments in the world fulfil their mission: the one Government, which is no Government; the other, which is a despotism. The duty of France is _in all treaties_ to place her sword of Brennus in the scale of civilisation. Without quarrelling with the somewhat confused language of the latter proposition, may we ask what, in Heaven’s name, is the meaning of all the three? What is this _épée de Brennus_? and how is France to use it? Where is the great source of political truth, from which, flowing pure, we trace American republicanism in one stream, Russian despotism in another? Vastly prosperous is the great republic, if you will: if dollars and cents constitute happiness, there is plenty for all: but can any one, who has read of the American doings in the late frontier troubles, and the daily disputes on the slave question, praise the _Government_ of the States?--a Government which dares not punish homicide or arson performed before its very eyes, and which the pirates of Texas and the pirates of Canada can brave at their will? There is no Government, but a prosperous anarchy; as the Prince’s other favourite Government is a prosperous slavery. What, then, is to be the _épée de Brennus_ Government? Is it to be a mixture of the two? ‘Society,’ writes the Prince axiomatically, ‘contains in itself two principles--the one of progress and immortality, the other of disease and disorganisation.’ No doubt; and as the one tends towards liberty, so the other is only to be cured by order: and then, with a singular felicity, Prince Louis picks us out a couple of Governments, in one of which the common regulating power is as notoriously too weak, as it is in the other too strong, and talks in rapturous terms of the manner in which they fulfil their ‘providential mission’!

From these considerations on things in general, the Prince conducts us to Napoleon in particular, and enters largely into a discussion of the merits of the imperial system. Our author speaks of the Emperor’s advent in the following grandiose way:--

‘Napoleon, on arriving at the public stage, saw that his part was
to be the _testamentary executor_ of the Revolution. The
destructive fire of parties was extinct; and when the Revolution,
dying, but not vanquished, delegated to Napoleon the accomplishment
of her last will, she said to him, “Establish upon solid bases the
principal result of my efforts. Unite divided Frenchmen. Defeat
feudal Europe that is leagued against me. Cicatrise my wounds.
Enlighten the nations. Execute that in width, which I have had to
perform in depth. Be for Europe what I have been for France. And,
even if you must water the tree of civilisation with your blood--if
you must see your projects misunderstood, and your sons without a
country, wandering over the face of the earth, never abandon the
sacred cause of the French people. Ensure its triumph by all the
means which genius can discover and humanity approve.”

‘This grand mission Napoleon performed to the end. His task was
difficult. He had to place upon new principles a society still
boiling with hatred and revenge; and to use, for building up, the
same instruments which had been employed for pulling down.

‘The common lot of every new truth that arises, is to wound rather
than to convince--rather than to gain proselytes, to awaken fear.
For, oppressed as it long has been, it rushes forward with
additional force; having to encounter obstacles, it is compelled to
combat them, and overthrow them; until, at length, comprehended and
adopted by the generality, it becomes the basis of new social
order.

‘Liberty will follow the same march as the Christian religion.
Armed with death from the ancient society of Rome, it for a long
while excited the hatred and fear of the people. At last, by force
of martyrdoms and persecutions, the religion of Christ penetrated
into the conscience and the soul; it soon had kings and armies at
its orders, and Constantine and Charlemagne bore it triumphant
throughout Europe. Religion then laid down her arms of war. It laid
open to all the principles of peace and order which it contained;
it became the prop of Government, as it was the organising element
of society. Thus will it be with liberty. In 1793 it frightened
people and sovereigns alike; thus, having clothed itself in a
milder garb, _it insinuated itself everywhere in the train of our
battalions_. In 1815 all parties adopted its flag, and armed
themselves with its moral force--covered themselves with its
colours. The adoption was not sincere, and liberty was soon obliged
to reassume its warlike accoutrements. With the contest their fears
returned. Let us hope that they will soon cease, and that liberty
will soon resume her peaceful standards, to quit them no more.

‘The Emperor Napoleon contributed more than any one else towards
accelerating the reign of liberty, by saving the moral influence of
the Revolution, and diminishing the fears which it imposed. Without
the Consulate and the Empire, the Revolution would have been only a
grand drama, leaving grand revolutions but no traces: the
Revolution would have been drowned in the counter-revolution. The
contrary, however, was the case. Napoleon rooted the Revolution in
France, and introduced, throughout Europe, the principal benefits
of the crisis of 1789. To use his own words, “He purified the
Revolution,” he confirmed kings, and ennobled people. He purified
the Revolution in separating the truths which it contained from the
passions that, during its delirium, disfigured it. He ennobled the
people in giving them the consciousness of their force, and those
institutions which raise men in their own eyes. The Emperor may be
considered as the Messiah of the new ideas; for--and we must
confess it--in the moments immediately succeeding a social
revolution, it is not so essential to put rigidly into practice all
the propositions resulting from the new theory, but to become
master of the regenerative genius, to identify one’s self with the
sentiments of the people, and boldly to direct them towards the
desired point. To accomplish such a task _your fibre should respond
to that of the people_, as the Emperor said; you should feel like
it, your interests should be so intimately raised with its own,
that you should vanquish or fall together.’

Let us take breath after these big phrases,--grand round figures of speech,--which, when put together, amount, like certain other combinations of round figures, to exactly 0. We shall not stop to argue the merits and demerits of Prince Louis’s notable comparison between the Christian religion and the Imperial-revolutionary system. There are many blunders in the above extract as we read it; blundering metaphors, blundering arguments, and blundering assertions; but this is surely the grandest blunder of all; and one wonders at the blindness of the legislator and historian who can advance such a parallel. And what are we to say of the legacy of the dying Revolution to Napoleon? Revolutions do not die, and, on their deathbeds, making fine speeches, hand over their property to young officers of artillery. We have all read the history of his rise. The constitution of the year III. was carried. Old men of the Montagne, disguised royalists, Paris sections, _Pittetcobourg_, above all, with his money-bags, thought that here was a fine opportunity for a revolt, and opposed the new constitution in arms: the new constitution had knowledge of a young officer, who would not hesitate to defend its cause, and who effectually beat the majority. The tale may be found in every account of the Revolution, and the rest of his story need not be told. We know every step that he took: we know how, by doses of cannon-balls promptly administered, he cured the fever of the sections--that fever which another camp-physician (Menou) declined to prescribe for; we know how he abolished the Directory; and how the Consulship came; and then the Empire; and then the disgrace, exile, and lonely death. Has not all this been written by historians in all tongues?--by memoir-writing pages, chamberlains, marshals, lackeys, secretaries, contemporaries, and ladies-of-honour? Not a word of miracle is there in all this narration; not a word of celestial missions, or political Messiahs. From Napoleon’s rise to his fall, the bayonet marches alongside of him: now he points it at the tails of the ‘five hundred,’--now he charges with it across the bloody Arcola--now he flies before it over the fatal plain of Waterloo.

Unwilling, however, as he may be to grant that there are any spots in the character of his hero’s government, the Prince is, nevertheless, obliged to allow that such existed; that the Emperor’s manner of rule was a little more abrupt and dictatorial than might possibly be agreeable. For this the Prince has always an answer ready--it is the same poor one that Napoleon uttered a million of times to his companions in exile--the excuse of necessity. He _would_ have been very liberal, but that the people were not fit for it; or that the cursed war prevented him--or any other reason why. His first duty, however, says his apologist, was to form a general union of Frenchmen, and he set about his plan in this wise:--

‘Let us not forget, that all which Napoleon undertook, in order to
create a general fusion, he performed without renouncing the
principles of the Revolution. He recalled the _émigrés_, without
touching upon the law by which their goods had been confiscated and
sold as public property. He re-established the Catholic religion at
the same time that he proclaimed the liberty of conscience, and
endowed equally the ministers of all sects. He caused himself to be
consecrated by the Sovereign Pontiff, without conceding to the
Pope’s demand any of the liberties of the Gallican Church. He
married a daughter of the Emperor of Austria, without abandoning
any of the rights of France to the conquests she had made. He
re-established noble titles, without attaching to them any
privileges or prerogatives, and these titles were conferred on all
ranks, on all services, on all professions. Under the Empire all
idea of caste was destroyed; no man ever thought of vaunting his
pedigree--no man ever was asked how he was born, but what he had
done.

‘The first quality of a people which aspires to liberal government
is respect to the law. Now, a law has no other power than lies in
the interest which each citizen has to defend or to contravene it.
In order to make a people respect the law, it was necessary that it
should be executed in the interest of all, and should consecrate
the principle of equality in all its extension. It was necessary to
restore the _prestige_ with which the Government had been formerly
invested, and to make the principles of the Revolution take root in
the public manners. At the commencement of a new society, it is the
legislator who makes or corrects the manners; later, it is the
manners which make the law, or preserve it, from age to age
intact.’

Some of these fusions are amusing. No man in the Empire was asked how he was born, but what he had done; and, accordingly, as a man’s actions were sufficient to illustrate him, the Emperor took care to make a host of new title-bearers, princes, dukes, barons, and what not, whose rank has descended to their children. He married a princess of Austria; but, for all that, did not abandon his conquests--perhaps not actually; but he abandoned his allies, and, eventually, his whole kingdom. Who does not recollect his answer to the Poles, at the commencement of the Russian campaign? But for Napoleon’s imperial father-in-law, Poland would have been a kingdom, and his race, perhaps, imperial still. Why was he to fetch this princess out of Austria to make heirs for his throne? Why did not the man of the people marry a girl of the people? Why must he have a Pope to crown him--half a dozen kings for brothers, and a bevy of aides-de-camp dressed out like so many mountebanks from Astley’s, with dukes’ coronets, and grand blue velvet marshals’ batons? We have repeatedly his words for it. He wanted to create an aristocracy--another acknowledgment on his part of the Republican dilemma--another apology for the Revolutionary blunder. To keep the Republic within bounds, a despotism is necessary; to rally round the despotism, an aristocracy must be created; and for what have we been labouring all this while? for what have bastiles been battered down, and kings’ heads hurled, as a gage of battle, in the face of armed Europe? To have a Duke of Otranto instead of a Duke de la Trémoille, and Emperor Stork in place of King Log. Oh, lame conclusion! Is the blessed Revolution which is prophesied for us in England only to end in establishing a Prince Fergus O’Connor, or a Cardinal Wade, or a Duke of Daniel Whittle Harvey? Great as those patriots are, we love them better under their simple family names, and scorn titles and coronets.

At present, in France, the delicate matter of titles seems to be better arranged, any gentleman, since the Revolution, being free to adopt any one he may fix upon; and it appears that the Crown no longer confers any patents of nobility, but contents itself with saying, as in the case of M. de Pontois, the other day, ‘_Le Roi trouve convenable_ that you take the title of,’ etc.

To execute the legacy of the Revolution, then; to fulfil his providential mission; to keep his place,--in other words, for the simplest are always the best,--to keep his place, and to keep his Government in decent order, the Emperor was obliged to establish a military despotism, to re-establish honours and titles; it was necessary, as the Prince confesses, to restore the old _prestige_ of the Government, in order to make the people respect it; and he adds--a truth which one hardly would expect from him,--‘At the commencement of a new society, it is the legislator who makes and corrects the manners; later, it is the manners which preserve the laws.’ Of course, and here is the great risk that all revolutionising people run; they must tend to despotism; ‘they must personify themselves in a man,’ is the Prince’s phrase: and, according as is his temperament or disposition--according as he is a Cromwell, a Washington, or a Napoleon--the Revolution becomes tyranny or freedom, prospers or falls.

Somewhere in the St. Helena memorials, Napoleon reports a message of his to the Pope. ‘Tell the Pope,’ he says to an archbishop, ‘to remember that I have six hundred thousand armed Frenchmen, _qui marcheront avec moi, pour moi, et comme moi_.’ And this is the legacy of the Revolution, the advancement of freedom! A hundred volumes of imperial special pleading will not avail against such a speech as this--one so insolent, and at the same time so humiliating, which gives unwittingly the whole of the Emperor’s progress, strength, and weakness. The six hundred thousand armed Frenchmen were used up, and the whole fabric falls; the six hundred thousand are reduced to sixty thousand, and straightway all the rest of the fine imperial scheme vanishes: the miserable senate, so crawling and abject but now, becomes, of a sudden, endowed with a wondrous independence; the miserable sham nobles, sham Empress, sham kings, dukes, princes, chamberlains, pack up their plumes and embroideries, pounce upon what money and plate they can lay their hands on, and when the Allies appear before Paris, when for courage and manliness there is yet hope, when with fierce marches hastening to the relief of his capital, bursting through ranks upon ranks of the enemy, and crushing or scattering them from the path of his swift and victorious despair, the Emperor at last is at home,--where are the great dignitaries and the lieutenant-generals of the Empire? Where is Maria Louisa, the Empress Eagle, with her little callow King of Rome? Is she going to defend her nest and her eaglet? Not she. Empress-queen, lieutenant-general, and court dignitaries are off on the wings of all the winds--_profligati sunt_, they are away with the money-bags, and Louis Stanislaus Xavier rolls into the palace of his fathers.

With regard to Napoleon’s excellences as an administrator, a legislator, a constructor of public works, and a skilful financier, his nephew speaks with much diffuse praise, and few persons, we suppose, will be disposed to contradict him. Whether the Emperor composed his famous code, or borrowed it, is of little importance; but he established it, and made the law equal for every man in France except one. His vast public works and vaster wars were carried on without new loans or exorbitant taxes; it was only the blood and liberty of the people that were taxed, and we shall want a better advocate than Prince Louis to show us that these were not most unnecessarily and lavishly thrown away. As for the former and material improvements, it is not necessary to confess here that a despotic energy can effect such far more readily than a Government of which the strength is diffused in many conflicting parties. No doubt, if we could create a despotical governing machine, a steam autocrat,--passionless, untiring, and supreme,--we should advance farther, and live more at ease, than under any other form of government. Ministers might enjoy their pensions and follow their own devices; Lord John might compose histories or tragedies at his leisure, and Lord Palmerston, instead of racking his brains to write leading articles for Cupid, might crown his locks with flowers, and sing ἑρωτα μοὑνον, his natural Anacreontics. But, alas! not so: if the despotic Government has its good side, Prince Louis Napoleon must acknowledge that it has its bad, and it is for this that the civilised world is compelled to substitute for it something more orderly and less capricious. Good as the Imperial Government might have been, it must be recollected, too, that, since its first fall, both the Emperor and his admirer and would-be successor have had their chance of re-establishing it. ‘Flying from steeple to steeple,’ the eagles of the former did actually, and according to promise, perch for a while on the towers of Notre-Dame. We know the event: if the fate of war declared against the Emperor, the country declared against him too; and, with old Lafayette for a mouthpiece, the representatives of the nation did, in a neat speech, pronounce themselves in permanence, but spoke no more of the Emperor than if he had never been. Thereupon the Emperor proclaimed his son the Emperor Napoleon II. ‘L’Empereur est mort, vive l’Empereur!’ shouted Prince Lucien. Psha! not a soul echoed the words: the play was played, and as for old Lafayette and his ‘permanent’ representatives, a corporal with a hammer nailed up the door of their spouting-club, and once more Louis Stanislaus Xavier rolled back to the bosom of his people.

In like manner Napoleon III. returned from exile, and made his appearance on the frontier. His eagle appeared at Strasburg, and from Strasburg advanced to the capital; but it arrived at Paris with a keeper, and in a postchaise; whence, by the orders of the sovereign, it was removed to the American shores, and there magnanimously let loose. Who knows, however, how soon it may be on the wing again, and what a flight it will take?

THE STORY OF MARY ANCEL

‘Go, my nephew,’ said old Father Jacob to me, ‘and complete thy studies at Strasburg: Heaven surely hath ordained thee for the ministry in these times of trouble, and my excellent friend Schneider will work out the divine intention.’

Schneider was an old college friend of Uncle Jacob’s, was a Benedictine monk, and a man famous for his learning; as for me, I was at that time my uncle’s chorister, clerk, and sacristan; I swept the church, chanted the prayers with my shrill treble, and swung the great copper incense-pot on Sundays and feasts; and I toiled over the Fathers for the other days of the week.

The old gentleman said that my progress was prodigious, and, without vanity, I believe he was right, for I then verily considered that praying was my vocation, and not fighting, as I have found since.

You would hardly conceive (said the Major, swearing a great oath) how devout and how learned I was in those days; I talked Latin faster than my own beautiful _patois_ of Alsatian French; I could utterly overthrow, in argument, every Protestant (heretics we called them) parson in the neighbourhood, and there was a confounded sprinkling of these unbelievers in our part of the country. I prayed half a dozen times a day; I fasted thrice in a week; and, as for penance, I used to scourge my little sides, till they had no more feeling than a peg-top: such was the godly life I led at my Uncle Jacob’s in the village of Steinbach.

Our family had long dwelt in this place, and a large farm and a pleasant house were then in the possession of another uncle--Uncle Edward. He was the youngest of the three sons of my grandfather; but Jacob, the elder, had shown a decided vocation for the Church, from, I believe, the age of three, and now was by no means tired of it at sixty. My father, who was to have inherited the paternal property, was, as I hear, a terrible scamp and scapegrace, quarrelled with his family, and disappeared altogether, living and dying at Paris; so far we knew through my mother, who came, poor woman, with me, a child of six months, on her bosom, was refused all shelter by my grandfather, but was housed and kindly cared for by my good Uncle Jacob.

Here she lived for about seven years, and the old gentleman, when she died, wept over her grave a great deal more than I did, who was then too young to mind anything but toys or sweetmeats.

During this time my grandfather was likewise carried off: he left, as I said, the property to his son Edward, with a small proviso in his will that something should be done for me, his grandson.

Edward was himself a widower, with one daughter, Mary, about three years older than I, and certainly she was the dearest little treasure with which Providence ever blessed a miserly father; by the time she was fifteen, five farmers, three lawyers, twelve Protestant parsons, and a lieutenant of Dragoons had made her offers: it must not be denied that she was an heiress as well as a beauty, which, perhaps, had something to do with the love of these gentlemen. However, Mary declared that she intended to live single, turned away her lovers one after another, and devoted herself to the care of her father.

Uncle Jacob was as fond of her as he was of any saint or martyr. As for me, at the mature age of twelve I had made a kind of divinity of her, and when we sang ‘Ave Maria’ on Sundays I could not refrain from turning to her, where she knelt, blushing and praying and looking like an angel, as she was. Besides her beauty, Mary had a thousand good qualities; she could play better on the harpsichord, she could dance more lightly, she could make better pickles and puddings, than any girl in Alsace; there was not a want or a fancy of the old hunks, her father, or a wish of mine or my uncle’s, that she would not gratify if she could; as for herself, the sweet soul had neither wants nor wishes except to see us happy.

I could talk to you for a year of all the pretty kindnesses that she would do for me; how, when she found me of early mornings among my books, her presence ‘would cast a light upon the day;’ how she used to smooth and fold my little surplice, and embroider me caps and gowns for high feast-days; how she used to bring flowers for the altar, and who could deck it so well as she? But sentiment does not come glibly from under a grizzled moustache, so I will drop it, if you please.

Amongst other favours she showed me, Mary used to be particularly fond of kissing me: it was a thing I did not so much value in those days; but I found that the more I grew alive to the extent of the benefit, the less she would condescend to confer it on me; till, at last, when I was about fourteen, she discontinued it altogether, of her own wish at least; only sometimes I used to be rude, and take what she had now become so mighty unwilling to give.

I was engaged in a contest of this sort one day with Mary, when, just as I was about to carry off a kiss from her cheek, I was saluted with a staggering slap on my own, which was bestowed by Uncle Edward, and sent me reeling some yards down the garden.

The old gentleman, whose tongue was generally as close as his purse, now poured forth a flood of eloquence which quite astonished me. I did not think that so much was to be said on any subject as he managed to utter on one, and that was abuse of me; he stamped, he swore, he screamed; and then, from complimenting me, he turned to Mary, and saluted her in a manner equally forcible and significant: she, who was very much frightened at the commencement of the scene, grew very angry at the coarse words he used, and the wicked motives he imputed to her.

‘The child is but fourteen,’ she said; ‘he is your own nephew, and a candidate for holy orders:--Father, it is a shame that you should thus speak of me, your daughter, or of one of his holy profession.’

I did not particularly admire this speech myself, but it had an effect on my uncle, and was the cause of the words with which this history commences. The old gentleman persuaded his brother that I must be sent to Strasburg, and there kept until my studies for the Church were concluded. I was furnished with a letter to my uncle’s old college chum, Professor Schneider, who was to instruct me in theology and Greek.

I was not sorry to see Strasburg, of the wonders of which I had heard so much; but felt very loth as the time drew near when I must quit my pretty cousin and my good old uncle. Mary and I managed, however, a parting walk, in which a number of tender things were said on both sides. I am told that you Englishmen consider it cowardly to cry; as for me, I wept and roared incessantly: when Mary squeezed me, for the last time, the tears came out of me as if I had been neither more nor less than a great wet sponge. My cousin’s eyes were stoically dry; her ladyship had a part to play, and it would have been wrong for her to be in love with a young chit of fourteen--so she carried herself with perfect coolness, as if there was nothing the matter. I should not have known that she cared for me, had it not been for a letter which she wrote me a month afterwards--_then_, nobody was by, and the consequence was that the letter was half washed away with her weeping: if she had used a watering-pot the thing could not have been better done.

Well, I arrived at Strasburg--a dismal, old-fashioned, rickety town in those days--and straightway presented myself and letter at Schneider’s door; over it was written--

‘COMITÉ DE SALUT PUBLIC.’

Would you believe it? I was so ignorant a young fellow, that I had no idea of the meaning of the words: however, I entered the citizen’s room without fear, and sat down in his antechamber until I could be admitted to see him.

Here I found very few indications of his reverence’s profession; the walls were hung round with portraits of Robespierre, Marat, and the like; a great bust of Mirabeau, mutilated, with the word _Tratîre_ underneath; lists and Republican proclamations, tobacco-pipes, and firearms. At a deal table, stained with grease and wine, sat a gentleman with a huge pigtail dangling down to that part of his person which immediately succeeds his back, and a red nightcap containing a tricolour cockade as large as a pancake. He was smoking a short pipe, reading a little book, and sobbing as if his heart would break. Every now and then he would make brief remarks upon the personages or the incidents of his book, by which I could judge that he was a man of the very keenest sensibilities--‘Ah, brigand!’ ‘Oh, malheureuse!’ ‘Oh, Charlotte, Charlotte!’ The work which this gentleman was perusing is called _The Sorrows of Werther_; it was all the rage in those days, and my friend was only following the fashion. I asked him if I could see Father Schneider. He turned towards me a hideous pimpled face, which I dream of now at forty years’ distance.

‘Father who?’ said he. ‘Do you imagine that Citizen Schneider has not thrown off the absurd mummery of priesthood? If you were a little older you would go to prison for calling him Father Schneider--many a man has died for less!’ And he pointed to a picture of a guillotine, which was hanging in the room.

I was in amazement.

‘What is he? Is he not a teacher of Greek, an abbé, a monk, until monasteries were abolished, the learned editor of the songs of Anacreon?’

‘He _was_ all this,’ replied my grim friend; ‘he is now a Member of the Committee of Public Safety, and would think no more of ordering your head off than of drinking this tumbler of beer.’

He swallowed, himself, the frothy liquid, and then proceeded to give me the history of the man to whom my uncle had sent me for instruction.

Schneider was born in 1756: was a student at Würzburg, and afterwards entered a convent, where he remained nine years. He here became distinguished for his learning and his talents as a preacher, and became chaplain to Duke Charles of Würtemberg. The doctrines of the Illuminati began about this time to spread in Germany, and Schneider speedily joined the sect. He had been a professor of Greek at Cologne; and being compelled, on account of his irregularity, to give up his chair, he came to Strasburg at the commencement of the French Revolution, and acted for some time a principal part as a revolutionary agent at Strasburg.

[‘Heaven knows what would have happened to me had I continued long under his tuition!’ said the Captain.’ I owe the preservation of my morals entirely to my entering the army. A man, sir, who is a soldier, has very little time to be wicked; except in the case of a siege and the sack of a town, when a little licence can offend nobody.’]

By the time that my friend had concluded Schneider’s biography, we had grown tolerably intimate, and I imparted to him (with that experience so remarkable in youth) my whole history--my course of studies, my pleasant country life, the names and qualities of my dear relations, and my occupations in the vestry before religion was abolished by order of the Republic. In the course of my speech I recurred so often to the name of my cousin Mary, that the gentleman could not fail to perceive what a tender place she had in my heart.

Then we reverted to _The Sorrows of Werther_, and discussed the merits of that sublime performance. Although I had before felt some misgivings about my new acquaintance, my heart now quite yearned towards him. He talked about love and sentiment in a manner which made me recollect that I was in love myself; and you know that when a man is in that condition, his taste is not very refined, any maudlin trash of prose or verse appearing sublime to him, provided it correspond, in some degree, with his own situation.

‘Candid youth!’ cried my unknown, ‘I love to hear thy innocent story, and look on thy guileless face. There is, alas! so much of the contrary in this world, so much terror and crime and blood, that we who mingle with it are only too glad to forget it. Would that we could shake off our cares as men, and be boys, as thou art, again!’

Here my friend began to weep once more, and fondly shook my hand. I blessed my stars that I had, at the very outset of my career, met with one who was so likely to aid me. What a slanderous world it is! thought I; the people in our village call these Republicans wicked and bloody-minded; a lamb could not be more tender than this sentimental bottle-nosed gentleman! The worthy man then gave me to understand that he held a place under Government. I was busy in endeavouring to discover what his situation might be, when the door of the next apartment opened, and Schneider made his appearance.

At first he did not notice me, but he advanced to my new acquaintance, and gave him, to my astonishment, something very like a blow.

‘You drunken, talking fool,’ he said, ‘you are always after your time. Fourteen people are cooling their heels yonder, waiting until you have finished your beer and your sentiment!’

My friend slunk, muttering, out of the room.

‘That fellow,’ said Schneider, turning to me, ‘is our public executioner: a capital hand, too, if he would but keep decent time; but the brute is always drunk, and blubbering over _The Sorrows of Werther!_’

* * * * *

I know not whether it was his old friendship for my uncle, or my proper merits, which won the heart of this the sternest ruffian of Robespierre’s crew; but certain it is, that he became strangely attached to me, and kept me constantly about his person. As for the priesthood and the Greek, they were of course very soon out of the question. The Austrians were on our frontier; every day brought us accounts of battles won; and the youth of Strasburg, and of all France, indeed, were bursting with military ardour. As for me, I shared the general mania, and speedily mounted a cockade as large as that of my friend the executioner.

The occupations of this worthy were unremitting. St. Just, who had come down from Paris to preside over our town, executed the laws and the aristocrats with terrible punctuality; and Schneider used to make country excursions in search of offenders, with this fellow, as a provost-marshal, at his back. In the meantime, having entered my sixteenth year, and being a proper lad of my age, I had joined a regiment of cavalry, and was scampering now after the Austrians who menaced us, and now threatening the _émigrés_, who were banded at Coblentz. My love for my dear cousin increased as my whiskers grew; and when I was scarcely seventeen, I thought myself man enough to marry her, and to cut the throat of any one who should venture to say me nay.

I need not tell you that during my absence at Strasburg, great changes had occurred in our little village, and somewhat of the revolutionary rage had penetrated even to that quiet and distant place. The hideous ‘Fête of the Supreme Being’ had been celebrated at Paris; the practice of our ancient religion was forbidden; its professors were most of them in concealment, or in exile, or had expiated on the scaffold their crime of Christianity. In our poor village my uncle’s church was closed, and he, himself, an inmate in my brother’s house, only owing his safety to his great popularity among his former flock and the influence of Edward Ancel.

The latter had taken in the Revolution a somewhat prominent part; that is, he had engaged in many contracts for the army, attended the clubs regularly, corresponded with the authorities of his department, and was loud in his denunciations of the aristocrats in his neighbourhood. But owing, perhaps, to the German origin of the peasantry, and their quiet and rustic lives, the revolutionary fury which prevailed in the cities had hardly reached the country people. The occasional visit of a commissary from Paris or Strasburg served to keep the flame alive, and to remind the rural swains of the existence of a Republic in France.

Now and then, when I could gain a week’s leave of absence, I returned to the village, and was received with tolerable politeness by my uncle, and with a warmer feeling by his daughter.

I won’t describe to you the progress of our love, or the wrath of my Uncle Edward when he discovered that it still continued. He swore and he stormed; he locked Mary into her chamber, and vowed that he would withdraw the allowance he made me, if ever I ventured near her. His daughter, he said, should never marry a hopeless, penniless subaltern; and Mary declared she would not marry without his consent. What had I to do?--to despair and to leave her. As for my poor Uncle Jacob, he had no counsel to give me, and, indeed, no spirit left: his little church was turned into a stable, his surplice torn off his shoulders, and he was only too lucky in keeping _his head_ on them. A bright thought struck him: suppose you were to ask the advice of my old friend Schneider regarding this marriage? he has ever been your friend, and may help you now as before.

(Here the Captain paused a little.) You may fancy (continued he) that it was droll advice of a reverend gentleman like Uncle Jacob to counsel me in this manner, and to bid me make friends with such a murderous cut-throat as Schneider; but we thought nothing of it in those days; guillotining was as common as dancing, and a man was only thought the better patriot the more severe he might be. I departed forthwith to Strasburg, and requested the vote and interest of the Citizen President of the Committee of Public Safety.

He heard me with a great deal of attention. I described to him most minutely the circumstances, expatiated upon the charms of my dear Mary, and painted her to him from head to foot. Her golden hair and her bright blushing cheeks, her slim waist and her tripping tiny feet; and furthermore, I added that she possessed a fortune which ought, by rights, to be mine, but for the miserly old father. ‘Curse him for an aristocrat!’ concluded I, in my wrath.

As I had been discoursing about Mary’s charms, Schneider listened with much complacency and attention: when I spoke about her fortune, his interest redoubled; and when I called her father an aristocrat, the worthy ex-Jesuit gave a grin of satisfaction, which was really quite terrible. Oh, fool that I was to trust him so far!

* * * * *

The very same evening an officer waited upon me with the following note from St. Just:--

‘STRASBURG: _Fifth year of the Republic one and ‘indivisible, 11 Ventôse._

‘The citizen Pierre Ancel is to leave Strasburg within two hours, and to carry the enclosed despatches to the President of the Committee of Public Safety at Paris. The necessary leave of absence from his military duties has been provided. Instant punishment will follow the slightest delay on the road.

‘Salut et Fraternité.’

There was no choice but obedience, and off I sped on my weary way to the capital.

As I was riding out of the Paris gate I met an equipage which I knew to be that of Schneider. The ruffian smiled at me as I passed, and wished me a _bon voyage_. Behind his chariot came a curious machine, or cart; a great basket, three stout poles, and several planks, all painted red, were lying in this vehicle, on the top of which was seated my friend with the big cockade. It was the _portable guillotine_ which Schneider always carried with him on his travels. The _bourreau_ was reading _The Sorrows of Werther_, and looked as sentimental as usual.

I will not speak of my voyage, in order to relate to you Schneider’s. My story had awakened the wretch’s curiosity and avarice, and he was determined that such a prize as I had shown my cousin to be should fall into no hands but his own. No sooner, in fact, had I quitted his room than he procured the order for my absence, and was on the way to Steinbach as I met him.

The journey is not a very long one; and on the next day my Uncle Jacob was surprised by receiving a message that the Citizen Schneider was in the village, and was coming to greet his old friend. Old Jacob was in an ecstasy, for he longed to see his college acquaintance, and he hoped also that Schneider had come into that part of the country upon the marriage-business of your humble servant. Of course Mary was summoned to give her best dinner, and wear her best frock; and her father made ready to receive the new State dignitary.

Schneider’s carriage speedily rolled into the courtyard, and Schneider’s _cart_ followed, as a matter of course. The ex-priest only entered the house; his companion remaining with the horses to dine in private. Here was a most touching meeting between him and Jacob. They talked over their old college pranks and successes; they capped Greek verses, and quoted ancient epigrams upon their tutors, who had been dead since the Seven Years’ War. Mary declared it was quite touching to listen to the merry friendly talk of these two old gentlemen.

After the conversation had continued for a time in this strain, Schneider drew up all of a sudden, and said, quietly, that he had come on particular and unpleasant business--hinting about troublesome times, spies, evil reports, and so forth. Then he called Uncle Edward aside, and had with him a long and earnest conversation; so Jacob went out and talked with Schneider’s _friend_: they speedily became very intimate, for the ruffian detailed all the circumstances of his interview with me. When he returned into the house, some time after this pleasing colloquy, he found the tone of the society strangely altered. Edward Ancel, pale as a sheet, trembling, and crying for mercy; poor Mary weeping; and Schneider pacing energetically about the apartment, raging about the rights of man, the punishment of traitors, and the one and indivisible Republic.

‘Jacob,’ he said as my uncle entered the room, ‘I was willing, for the sake of our old friendship, to forget the crimes of your brother. He is a known and dangerous aristocrat; he holds communications with the enemy on the frontier; he is a possessor of great and ill-gotten wealth, of which he has plundered the Republic. Do you know,’ said he, turning to Edward Ancel, ‘where the least of these crimes, or the mere suspicion of them, would lead you?’

Poor Edward sate trembling in his chair, and answered not a word. He knew full well how quickly, in this dreadful time, punishment followed suspicion; and though guiltless of all treason with the enemy, perhaps he was aware that, in certain contracts with the Government, he had taken to himself a more than patriotic share of profit.