* ay; .H-* ! L,t '*** [BRARY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA PRESENTED BY GERALD HOWLAND M i H // A FETE ON THE LAKE OF GENEVA. HALE-HOURS WITH THE BEST FRENCH AUTHORS. SHORT PASSAGES FROM SOME OF THE MOST CELEBRATED PROSE WRITERS TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH. WITH THIRTY ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD, FROM DESIGNS BY EMILE BA YARD. NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND CO., 445, BROADWAY, 1867. H3 CONTENTS, FIRST PART. EARLY WRITERS, TO THE END OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. JOINVILLE. PAfi SAINT LOUIS AND THE SARACENS ... % ... . . FROISSART. PHILIP D'ARTEVILLE . PHILIPPE DE COMMINES. THE IMPRISONMENT OF LOUIS XI. AT PERONNE 2O DESPERRIERS. THE STORY OF BLONDEAU, THE COBBLER . : . . . .-'-.. 26 LE LOYAL SERVITEUR. HOW THE CHEVALIER SANS PEUR LEFT HIS HOME . . /' ." / 28 RABELAIS. THE WISDOM OF FOOLS >'.-.. . . ... . -. -\ ". ' 31 BLAISE DE MONTLUC THE ASSAULT OF RABASTEINS . . . .> .- /.- . . 33 PASQUIER. THE DEATH OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS . . .- . . . . 37 MONTAIGNE. OF THE INSTITUTION AND EDUCATION OF CHILDREN. . ' . . 41 b vi CONTENTS. SECOND PART. WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. MALHERBE. PAGE THE ASSASSINATION OF HENRY IV. 46 SULLY. QUEEN ELIZABETH AND SULLY 50 THE BATTLE OF IVRY 55 ST. FRANCOIS DE SALES. I ON PASTIMES AND RECREATIONS . . 62 BALLS AND PASTIMES LAWFUL, BUT DANGEROUS 64 BALZAC. ON RETIREMENT 66 MAROLLES. THE COUNTRY UNDER HENRY IV 69 LENET. THE FLIGHT OF THE PRINCESS OF CONDE AND HER SON TO MONTROND . J\ GUY PATIN. THE KING OF THE MARKETS 79 THE RETURN OF THE QUEEN, ANNE OF AUSTRIA, TO PARIS . . So MADEMOISELLE SCUDERY. A FETE ON THE LAKE OF GENEVA 83 LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. MAXIMS 85 PAUL SCARRON. INTRODUCTION TO THE " COMIC ROMANCE" . 87 CARDINAL DE RETZ. RICHELIEU AND MAZARIN 8q CONTENTS. vii PAGE CALUMNY . . . , ......... 92 MADAME DE SEVIGNE. TO MADAME DE GRIGNAN ... . . . , . . . 98 TO M. DE COULANGES . . . . . . . . . IOI, IO2 TO THE COUNT DE GRIGNAN . . , , . .... 103 BOSSUET. THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS . . ' . . . .. . ... 104 FLECHIER. A PANEGYRIC ON SAINT LOUIS ... . . . , 108 BOILEAU. THE PRESIDENT DE LAMOIGNON . . , . . , ... 114 LA BRUYERE. CHARACTERS . . . . . . . . , Il6 BAYLE. HOW THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA HAS GREATLY WEAKENED ITSELF BY RELIGIOUS PERSECUTIONS . , . . . ' . . . . I2O FE'NELON. INSTRUCTION OF WOMEN IN THEIR DUTIES . . ,. - . . .122 REGNARD. TRAVELS IN LAPLAND . .; ... . . . , . ..126 TRAVELS IN SWEDEN .... . . . . .. . . 129 THIRD PART. WRITERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. LESAGE. GIL BLAS TO THE READER . . . . ' . . ; . . 133 THE COUNT AND HIS MONKEY .... .134 THE INDIANS OF GUATEMALA . . . . . . . . -135 viii CONTENTS. SAINT-SIMON. 'AGE LAST MOMENTS OF LOUIS XIV ......... '37 MONTESQUIEU. TWO CAUSES OF THE DOWNFALL OF ROME ...... H* VOLTAIRE. JEANNOT AND COLIN .......... H^ BUFFON. THE FIRST MAN ........... '53 ROUSSEAU. REMEMBRANCES OF THE ISLE OF ST. PIERRE ..... 15^ THE MARQUIS DE MIRABEAU. THE YOUTH OF COUNT MIRABEAU ........ l6l EARTH ELE MY. THE TRIAL AND DEATH OF SOCRATES ....... 163 SAINT LAMBERT. THE ABENAKI ............ I/O MARMONTEL. VOLTAIRE AND ROUSSEAU ......... \J2 BEAUMARCHAIS. ADVENTURE WITH ROBBERS ......... 177 PRINCE DE LIGNE. TO THE MARCHIONESS OF C ' . ....... 1 82 REMEMBRANCES ........... 184 SAINT PIERRE. THE PILGRIMAGE TO THE BLACK RIVER . . . . . .185 BERTRAND DE MOLEVILLE. A LOUIS XVI. AT THE HOTEL DE VILLE ....... Ii CONTENTS. ix MADAME ROLAND. PAGE MADAME ROLAND'S EDUCATION . . ..... . 196 THE FIRST ARREST OF MADAME ROLAND . . -V . . . 197 HOCHE. LETTERS OF GENERAL HOCHE . 2O2 FOURTH PART. WRITERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. MADAME DE STAEL. THE FETE OF INTERLAKEN . . - 206 CHATEAUBRIAND. A NIGHT AMONG THE SAVAGES OF. AMERICA . - . . . . 211 FOURIER. THE MONUMENTS OF ANCIENT EGYPT ' . 217 SISMONDI. THE SIEGE OF MONS AND THE DEATH OF LOUVOIS .... 22O BARANTE. LAST HOURS OF LOUIS XVI. . 227 GUIZOT. LITERATURE IN GAUL, FROM THE SIXTH TO THE EIGHTH CENTURY . 233 LAMARTINE. NADIR-SHAH . . . . .- . . . ...'... . 237 AUGUSTIN THIERRY. HAROLD IN NORMANDY . . . . . . % . . . . 240 COUSIN. MADAME DE SABLE AT PORT ROYAL . . . . . . . 244 THIERS. THE BURNING OF MOSCOW . . . . . . . . _, 248 x CONTENTS. MICHELET. PAGE THE FEAST OF REASON 255 VINET. RACINE "260 VIGNY. CARDINAL RICHELIEU 263 VITET. EUSTACHE LE SUEUR 269 MERY. THE ARREST OF ANDRE CHEMER 271 THE PONT DU CARD 273 MERIMEE. THE STORMING OF THE REDOUBT 275 SAINTE-BEUVE. LA HARPE 280 GEORGE SAND. EARLY READINGS 282 KARR. TO DR. MARCHESSAUX 284 VICTOR HUGO. PARIS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 2QO THE FIELD OF WATERLOO 292 SPRINGTIME IN THE CHANNEL ISLANDS 294 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE QUEEN MARGARET AT DAMIETTA . . . " '. 4 THE COBBLER AND THE MONKEY ."-.-. 26 THE YOUNG CHEVALIER BAYARD . 28 THE FOOL'S DECISION 3 2 THE ASSAULT ON RABASTEINS . . . . . 34 THE LAST MOMENTS OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS 3& THE ASSASSINATION OF HENRY IV. ............ 48 COUNTRY SCENE IN THE TIME OF HENRY IV. . . 7 THE DUKE OF BEAUFORT AND THE MARKET WOMEN ....... 80 A FETE ON THE LAKE OF GENEVA . 84 SCARRON .' ...._..". 88 BOILEAU AND THE PRESIDENT DE LAMOIGNON . . . . H4 THE SCHOLAR OF SALAMANCA . . . . . . . " . . . . . . 134 JEANNOT AND COLIN . . . . . . . . . . ". . . ... 150 ROUSSEAU IN THE ISLAND OF ST. PIERRE l6o MIRABEAU AT VERSAILLES l6 2 xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PACK THE ABENAKI . ' ' 7 THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH ! 8 4 PAUL AND VIRGINIA J 88 GIRLHOOD OF MADAME ROLAND ...'.... 1 96 GENERAL HOCHE 204 MONUMENTS OF ANCIENT EGYPT 2l8 FAMINE IN AN EASTERN CITY 238 NAPOLEON AT THE BURNING OF MOSCOW 252 LE SUEUR AND NICHOLAS POUSSIN 2/O ANDRE CHENIER 272 THE PONT DU GARD 274 STORMING THE REDOUBT 278 LA HARPE: MEDITATION ON THOMAS A KEMPIS 280 EARLY READINGS 282 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. i ^ FIRST PART. EARLY WRITERS, TO THE END OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. JOINVILLE. SIRE JEAN DE JOINVILLE, the celebrated French historian, was born in 1224, and was descended in a direct line from Godefroy de Bouillon. Several of his ancestors also distinguished themselves in the Crusades. He was educated in the court of Thibaut IV, King of Navarre and Count of Champagne, who was both a poet and a musician, and there he acquired the power of giving graceful and lively expression to his thoughts. In 1245, King Louis proclaimed a crusade against the Saracens, and Joinville determined to lead a band of his followers to the Holy Land. He remained with the crusaders for six years, and became the devoted servant and friend of the king. He returned to France in 1254, and though he spent much of his time at court, devoted himself chiefly to the management of his estates, and to the erection and improvement of churches. He died in 1319, at the age of ninety-five, having witnessed the reigns of no less than six kings, those of Louis VIII, Louis IX, Philippe le Hardi, Philippe le Bel, Louis le Hutin, and Philippe VI, surnamed the Long. He wrote the Life of St. Louis, at the request of Jeanne of Navarre, the wife of Philippe le Bel. SAINT LOUIS AND THE SARACENS. IT may be well that I should now speak of the river that flows through Egypt, and comes from the terrestrial paradise ; and I recall these things to your memory, that you may be able to understand some circumstances which have to do with my subject. This river is different from all other rivers, for the more streams a river receives, the greater number of little streams and brooks does it discharge ; and this river sends out none, but flows in one channel into Egypt, and there divides and spreads over the country. About the time of St. Remy's day, the seven rivers overflow the country, and cover the plains ; and when the waters retire, the labourers go out to work on their land with B 2 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. ploughs, without wheels : then they sow wheat, barley, rice, and cummin, which succeed so well, that one could not wish for better crops. Nobody can tell the cause of this overflow, except that it is the will of God ; and, were it not to take place, nothing could grow, for the great heat of the sun burns up everything, as it never rains in that country. The river is always disturbed, for the country people go there to drink ; towards evening they take some of the water, and grate four almonds or beans into it, and on the morrow it is perfectly fit to drink. Before the river enters Egypt, men, used to the work, cast their nets into the stream in the evening, and when morning comes, they find in them many spices, which they sell by weight in that country, namely, ginger, rhubarb, lign-aloes, and cinnamon ; and they say that these things come from the terrestrial paradise, and that the wind blows them down from the trees there, as it does the dry wood in the forests of this land ; and whatever the river brings down, the merchants sell there by weight. The water of the river is of such a nature, that when we put some of it into a kind of white earthen pot that is made in that country, and hung it to the cords of our tents, it became in the heat of the day as cold as at the spring. In the country they say that the sultan has tried many times to discover the source of the river, and has sent out men for that purpose, who took with them a kind of bread called biscuit, because it was twice baked, and lived on this bread till they returned to the sultan. They reported that they had followed the course of the river, and had come to a large hill of sharp rocks, that it was impossible to climb, and over these rocks fell the river. There appeared to be many trees on the top of the hill, and they said they had found marvellous wild beasts of many kinds, lions, elephants, serpents which came and looked at them on the bank of the stream as they went up. Now to return to our original subject. When the river enters Egypt, it spreads out its branches as I said before. One of its branches goes to Damietta, another to Alexandria, the third to Tennis, and the fourth to Rexi. To this branch that flows by Rexi, the King of France marched with all his host, and encamped between the Damietta branch and that of Rexi, and all the army of the sultan encamped on the other side opposite our army, to prevent our passage. One night they brought out an engine, that they called La Perriere, which they had not yet used, and while we were guarding the chas- chateils* by night, .they put Greek fire into the sling of the engine. * A kind of moveable shed, under cover of which soldiers attacked a fortification. JOINVILLE. 3 When Sir Walter de Curel, the good knight who was with me, saw this, he cried out, " Gentlemen, we are in greater peril than ever, for if they set fire to our chas-chateils, we shall be burnt and destroyed ; and if we leave the posts we have been appointed to keep we shall be dis- graced. None but God can deliver us from this peril. 'I counsel and advise you, whenever they throw the fire at us, cast yourselves on your hands and knees, and pray God to guard you in this danger." As soon therefore as they threw the first shower, we threw ourselves on our hands and knees as he said, and it fell between our two chas- chateils, into the place in front of us, which the army had made to stop up the river. In appearance the Greek fire was like a tun of verjuice, and the tail of fire which issued from it was of the length of a long spear ; it made such a noise as it came, that it sounded like the thunder of heaven ; it seemed a very dragon flying through the air ; so bright was its light, that we could see the army as clearly as in broad daylight. Thrice this night did they throw the Greek fire from La Perriere, and four times from cross-bows. Each time that our good king, St. Louis, heard these explosions, he threw himself on his bed, and, with outstretched hands and bitter tears, cried to God, " Good Lord God, preserve thou me and all this people ; " and I truly believe that his prayers served us well in our need. I will now relate to you how the king was taken prisoner, as he described it to me himself. He had left his own battalion, and, with Sir Geoffrey de Sergines, had joined that of Sir Gautier de Chasteillon, who commanded the rear ; and the King told me that he was mounted on a small courser, with a housing of silk, and said that of all his men-at-arms there only remained with him Sir Geoffrey de Sergines, who led him to Casel, the place where he was taken prisoner. In like manner, said the king, did Sir Geoffrey de Sergines defend him from the Saracens, as a faithful servant defends the cup of his master from flies, for every time the Saracens approached him, he took his sword, which he had placed on his saddle-bow, and drove them away from the king's person ; and thus he led the king to Casel, where, having dismounted at a house, he laid him, almost lifeless, in the lap of a citizen's wife from Paris, fearing that he would not live to the evening. Shortly after arrived Sir Philip de Montfort, and told the king that he had seen the admiral, with whom he had treated for a truce ; that if it were his good pleasure he would return to him, and conclude it in the way the Saracens wished. The king entreated him to do so, for he earnestly wished it. 4 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. He went to the Saracen, who had removed his turban from his head, and his ring from his finger, as tokens that he would keep the peace. Just at this moment a great calamity happened to our people, for a sergeant, a traitor named Marcel, began to cry to our men, " Sir knights, the king orders you to surrender ; be not the cause of the king's death." They all thought that the king had commanded them to do so, and yielded up their swords to the Saracens. The admiral, seeing the Saracens leading away our men, told Sir Philip that it was not expedient that he should grant a truce, for he saw they were taken prisoners. Now it happened that all our people were taken prisoners, and Sir Philip was not, because he was an ambassador. But there is a very bad custom in pagan countries, that when the king sends ambassadors to the sultan, or the sultan to the king, and the king or the sultan dies before the ambassadors' return, they are made slaves and prisoners by either side, whether they are sent by the Christians or Saracens. The council of the sultan tried the king in the same way they had tried us, to see if he would promise to deliver to them any of the castles belonging to the Knights Templars, or to the Hospital of Rhodes, or any of the castles belonging to the barons of the land ; but it pleased God that the king answered them as we had done, and they threatened him, and told him if he would not do so, they would put him in the bernicles, which is the greatest torture any one can suffer. The bernicles are formed of two pieces of wood bent, indented at the ends, and fit one into the other, and are fastened with strong straps of leather at the top, and when they want to put a person in them, they lay him on his side, placing his legs among the pegs inside ; and then they make a man sit on the planks, and thus not half a foot of the bones remain unbroken ; and to make it as bad as they can, at the end of three days, when the legs are swollen, they replace them in the bernicles, and break them again. To all these threats the king replied that he was their prisoner, and that they could do what they would with him. When they saw that they could not conquer the king by threats, they returned to him, and asked him how much money he would give the sultan, and if he would also surrender Damietta. And the king answered, that if the sultan would take a reasonable sum of money, he would write to the queen to pay for their deliverance. And they said, How is it that you cannot say that you will do these things ? And the king answered, that he did not know that the queen would do it, for that she was his wife. Then the council went and spoke to the sultan, and brought back word QUEEN MARGARET AT DAMIETTA. JOINVILLE. 5 to the king, that if the queen would pay a million bezants of gold, equal to about five hundred thousand pounds, he would set the king free. And the king made them swear that the sultan would give them their liberty, if the queen did so. They went to speak to the sultan, and on their return gave the king an oath that they would set him free on these terms. And now they had sworn, the king promised cheerfully that he would willingly pay five hundred thousand pounds for the ransom of his men, and would give Damietta for his own; for no ransom could be paid for a man of his rank. You have had related the great persecutions and miseries that the good king St Louis and we all suffered and endured in Egypt. You should know also that the good lady, the queen, did not escape without her share, and very bitter it was to her heart, as you shall soon hear. Three days before the birth of her child, the news reached her that her good husband, the king, had been taken prisoner. This news affected her so much, both in mind and body, that incessantly in her sleep the room seemed filled with Saracens, ready to slay her, and she kept crying out constantly, " Help, help," when there was not a soul near her. She made a knight watch at the foot of her bed all night without sleeping. This knight was very old, not less than eighty or more, and every time she screamed, be held her hands and said, "Madam, do not be thus alarmed ; I am with you, do not be afraid." Before the birth of her child, the good lady ordered every one to leave her chamber, except this ancient knight, and threw herself on her knees before him, and requested that he would grant her one favour. The knight promised it with an oath. The queen then said, " Sir knight, I request, on the oath you have sworn, that should the Saracens storm this town and take it, you will cut off my head before they seize me." The knight replied that he would do so very willingly, and that he had before thought of it, in case such an event should happen. In this same town of Damietta the queen shortly after gave birth to a son, who was named John, and surnamed Tristan, because he had been born in misery and poverty. On the very day of his birth it was told the queen that the Pisans, the Genoese, and all the poorer people in the town, were aboyt to fly and leave the king. The queen sent for them, and thus spoke : " Gentlemen, I beg of you, for the love of God, that you will not think of quitting this town ; for you well know that my lord the king, and all who are with him, will be ruined. At least, if such be your intention, have pity on this wretched person who lies here, and wait until she be recovered." They all answered, that it was impossible, 6 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. and that they should die of hunger in that town. She replied that they should never die of hunger, for that she would buy up all the provision that could be found in the place, and retain it henceforward in the name of the king. This she was obliged to do, and all the food that could be found was bought up. And in the little time before her recovery, it cost her three hundred and sixty pounds and more to feed these people. Notwithstanding, the good lady was forced to rise before she was perfectly well, and set out for the town of Acre, for Damietta was to be delivered to the Turks and Saracens. FROISSART. JEAN FROISSART was born at Valenciennes in 1337, and died at Chimay, in 1410. His Chronique de France, d* Angleterre, d'Ecosse et d'Espagne is a brilliant though somewhat superficial picture of the fourteenth century. He was not a man of deep research, but was endowed with a powerful memory, and a lively disposition, which made him delight in relating strange incidents and deeds of war. Thus he was well fitted to become the amusing chronicler, though not the strictly accurate historian, of his times. He was an ecclesiastic by profession, but spent a considerable part of his life in travelling about to collect materials for his great work, and visited successively the countries of France, Italy, Spain, Holland, England, and Scotland. An English translation was published by Lord Berners, in the sixteenth century, at the command of Henry VIII, from which the following extract is for the most part taken. PHILIP D'ARTEVILLE. WHEN Peter du Bois saw that the town of Ghent was daily im- poverished, both in their captains and men, and he saw well that the rich men began to grow Weary, and were inclined to leave the war, wherefore he feared greatly : then he remembered there was a man, of whom no great notice was taken in the town of Ghent ; he was a wise man, but his wisdom was not known, nor was he taken any heed of till that day ; he was called Philip d'Arteville, son to Jaques d'Arteville, who in his time, seven years together, had the governance of all the country of Flanders ; and Peter du Bois had heard John Lyon, his. master, artd many other old men of Ghent, often say that the country of Flanders was never more loved, honoured, and feared, than it was in the time of Jaques d'Arteville. Peter du Bois well remembered these words withiri himself, and saw that Jaques d'Arteville had a son called Philip, a very good and gracious man ; and the Queen of England, while she resided at Ghent, during the siege of Tournay, was his godmother, and so for the love of her, he was named Philip. Then Peter du Bois, in an evening, came to this Philip, who resided in his mother's hous-e, and lived honestly on their rents ; and Peter du Bois began to reason with him, and to open the matter for which he had come to him, and said thus : " Philip, if you will take good heed to my words, and believe my counsel, I will make you the greatest man. in 8 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. all the country of Flanders." " How can that be, sir ? " said Philip. " I will show you," said Peter : " you shall have the governing and administration of all them in the town of Ghent ; for we have now great need of a chief commander of high name and renown ; and so by this means, your father, Jaques d'Arteville, shall rise again in this town, by the remembrance of you ; for every man says, that since his days the country of Flanders hath not been so loved, honoured, or feared, as it was while he lived: and if you please, I can easily ^set you in his stead ; and when you are in that authority, then you shall be governed by my counsel, till you fully understand every case, which you will soon learn." Then Philip who was at man's estate, and naturally desired to be advanced, honoured, and to have more than he had answered, " Peter du Bois, you offer me a great thing, and I believe you ; and if I were in the state that you speak of, I swear to you by my faith, that I would do nothing without your counsel." Then Peter said, " How say you ? Can you bear yourself high, and be cruel among the commons, and especially in such things as we shall have to do ? A man is worth nothing unless he be feared, and sometimes re- nowned for cruelty ; thus must the Flemings be governed ; a man must set no more store by the lives of men, nor have more pity, than of the lives of swallows or larks, which are taken in season to eat." " By my faith," said Philip, " all this I can do well." " That is well said," quoth Peter, "and I will soon raise you above all others," and then he took leave of him and departed. Next day Peter du Bois came into a place where there were assembled more than four thousand of his sect, and others, to hear some tidings, and to know how they should be governed, and who should be chief captain of Ghent. So there among them were named many persons of Ghent, and Peter du Bois stood still and heard them fully, and then he said openly : " Sirs, I believe well all you have said ; you speak from the interest you take in the welfare of this town ; and also those you have named are very fit and deserving to have part of the governing of Ghent J.but, sirs, I know one, who, if he will accept the command, is fully competent, and of a good name." Then Peter was desired to tell his name, and he said, " Sirs, it is Philip d'Arteville, who was christened at St. Peter's, in this town of Ghent, and by the noble Queen of England called Philip, at the time Jaques d'Arteville, father to this Philip, was before Tournay with the King of England : which Jaques d'Arteville, father to this Philip, governed the town of Ghent and the country of Flanders so well, that, as I have heard, it was never ruled so well since, FROfSSART. 9 as the old men say ; for when Flanders was in great danger, he by his wisdom recovered it. Sirs, be assured we ought to love the offspring of so valiant a man better than any other." And as soon as Peter du Bois had said those words, every one was so anxious to have Philip d'Arteville, that they all said, as with one voice, " Let us have him, we will have none other ; send for him." " Nay, not so," quoth Peter du Bois, " let him not be sent for ; it were better we went to him, we know not as yet how he will conduct himself; let him first be examined." So with these words of Peter du Bois, all they that were there, and many who followed them, came to the house where Philip d'Arteville was, who knew their intention before they came. There were the Lord of Harsell, Peter du Bois, Peter le Nuit, and ten or twelve of the chief aldermen of the crafts ; and there they told Philip d'Arteville that the good town of Ghent was in great danger, unless they had a captain who could manage all its affairs ; wherefore they all chose him as their chief captain, for the great renown of his name and for the love of his good father. Thus Philip was made chief captain of all Ghent, and at first he was in great favour, for he spoke kindly to all with whom he had to do, and dealt so wisely that every man loved him. The sage men and wise councillors of Hainault, of Braban f , and of Liege, appointed a day of council to be holden at Harlebeck, near Courtray, at which place they met accordingly. And they of Ghent sent thither twelve of the most notable men of the town ; and there they declared that the inhabitants of Ghent, except such riotous and unruly people as desired nothing but disturbance and contention, were desirous of having rest and peace, whatsoever should be the con- sequence. And the matters were there so well debated, that the inhabitants of Ghent returned to their town, upon receiving certain articles of peace. And all such of the people of Ghent as were desirous of having rest and peace, assembled at the houses of two rich men of Ghent, who had been engaged in this treaty, the one named Sir Guisebert Gent, and the other Sir Simon Bette. The next morning, about the hour of nine, the mayor and aldermen, and rich men of the town, came into the market-place, and entered the hall ; and thither also came those who had been at the treaty of Harlebeck. Then there came Peter du Bois and Philip d'Arteville, and such other of their sect, well accompanied. Then there rose up two of the most notable men of the company, Guisebert Gent and Simon Bette, and one of them said : " Lords of Ghent, we have been at the parliament at Harlebeck, and have had much fatigue and trouble, as had likewise C io HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. the good men of Brabant, Liege, and of Hainault, to make accord and agreement between our lord the Earl of Flanders and us of Ghent Finally at their requests, and by the help of my lady of Brabant, who sent thither her counsel, and the Duke Aubert his, so that by their means the good town of Ghent has obtained a peace and agreement with our lord the earl, in this manner, that 200 men of ours, such as he shall send us their names in writing within fifteen days, we must send into the earl's prison at Lisle, to surrender them clearly to his mercy and pleasure. He is so free and generous, that there is no doubt he will have mercy on them." With those words Peter du Bois stepped forward, and said : " Guisebert Gent, how durst you be so bold as to make such an agreement, as to send 200 of our men of Ghent into the town of our enemy, in great disgrace and shame to all the town of Ghent ? it were better that the city should be razed to the foundations, than they of Ghent should come under such disgrace, as to make war and end it so shamefully. We that have heard you may well know that you will be none of the 200 prisoners, and neither will Simon Bette ; ye have chosen for yourselves, and now we will decide for ourselves." On this Philip d'Arteville laid hold of these traitors, that would betray and dishonour the town of Ghent. Thereupon Peter du Bois drew forth his dagger, and coming close up to Guisebert Gent, struck him in the belly, so that he fell down dead. And Philip d'Arteville drew out his dagger, and struck Simon Bette, and slew him in like manner, and then they cried, " Treason, treason." And they that were slain had numerous friends, for they were men of great lineage, and the richest men of the town ; but they fled out of the town to save themselves, so that there were no more slain but these two. All this winter the earl and they of Flanders so oppressed them of Ghent that they could have nothing come to them by land or water. The sage men said it could not last long, but that they must shortly die by famine, for all their barns were empty, and the people could get no bread for money. Every day increased the complaints, weepings, and cries made to Philip d'Arteville, their chief commander, who pitied them much, and made many good orders, for which he was greatly praised ; for he caused the storehouses of the abbeys to be opened, and those of the rich men, and set a reasonable price on the corn, whereby the town was greatly comforted. For all the summons the Earl of Flanders made, yet the Duchess of Brabant, the Duke Aubert, and the Bishop of Liege prevailed on him to appoint a day when their councils should meet to treat for a peace ; FROISSART. ii though the earl was unwilling, yet at the desire of these lords he agreed to call a council for that purpose, in the city of Tournay, the week after Easter, in the year of our Lord, 1382, and to be there himself. And they of Ghent sent thither twelve notable persons, of whom Philip d'Arteville was chief. When they of Liege, of Hainault, and of Brabant, had been in Tournay for three days after the day appointed, and saw that the earl came .not, nor was coming, they had great astonishment, and then took counsel together, and determined to send to Brussels to him, and so they did ; and they sent to him Sir Lambert of Perney, and the Lord Compelant of Brabant, Sir William Herman, of Hainault, and six burgesses of the three countries. And when the earl saw these three knights he made them good cheer, and said he was willing to send hastily to Tournay a final answer, by some of his council. And in six days after, the Lord of Raseflez, the Lord of Gountris, Sir John Vilame, and the Provost of Harlebeck, came to Tournay from the earl, and they made an excuse for his not coming ; and then they declared the earl's full intent respecting the peace ; saying that they of Ghent could have no peace with the earl, unless all the men in Ghent, between the ages of fifteen and sixty, came out of the town of Ghent in their shirts, bare-headed, with halters about their necks, and so meet the earl between Bruges and Ghent, and the earl to do with them as he pleased, either to let them live, or to put them all to death. And so then they of Ghent took leave of the councils of these three countries, and shewed well that they could not agree to this, and so returned to Ghent through Brabant. You may well know and believe that when the day was come which was appointed by Philip d'Arteville to report publicly the effect of the council holden at Tournay, all the people drew together to the market- place, on a Wednesday in the morning; and about the hour of nine Philip d'Arteville, Peter du Bois, and the other captains came thither, and entered into the common hall. Then Philip leaned out at a window, and began to speak and said : " O all ye good people, the earl requireth that every man in the town of Ghent, except prelates of churches and religious men, such as are above the age of fifteen, and under the age of sixty, that they all, in their shirts, bare-headed and bare-footed, with halters about their necks, issue out of the town of Ghent, and proceed twelve miles thence into the plain of Burlesquans, and there they shall meet the Earl of Flanders, accompanied by such as it shall please him ; and so when he sees us in that state, holding up our hands and crying for mercy, 12 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. then he shall have compassion on us, if it please him ; but, sirs, I apprehend, according to the relation of his council, that the greatest part of the people who shall appear there that day will, by a shameful infliction of justice, suffer death. Now, sirs, consider whether you choose to procure peace by this means, or not." ' When Philip d'Arteville had thus spoken, men, women, and children began to weep and to wring their hands, for love of their fathers, brethren, husbands, and neighbours. And after the tumult was over, Philip d'Arteville began again to speak, and said " Peace, sirs, peace," and immediately every one was still. Then he began to speak, and said " Sirs, of three things we must, of necessity, do one. The first is, that we inclose ourselves in this town, and stop up all our gates, and then offer up our prayers to God, and let us enter into the churches and minsters, and there die of famine, repentant of our sins, like martyrs ; or, secondly, let us. all, men, women, and children, go with halters about our necks in our shirts, and cry for mercy to my lord, the Earl of Flanders ; I think his heart will not be so obdurate, but that he will relent, and take mercy of his people ; or, thirdly, let us choose out of this town five or six thousand of the most able and expert men, and go hastily and assail the earl at Bruges, and fight with him. And in this battle, if God will aid us, then shall we be accounted the most honourable people that have reigned since the days of the Romans. Now, sirs, consider which of these three ways you will take, for one of them you must needs take." Then such as were next him and heard him best, said " Ah, sir, we all trust in you for advice ; and, sir, we will follow your counsel." " By my faith," quoth Philip, " then I counsel you, let us go forth with an army against the earl." Thus these 5,000 departed from Ghent, and lodged seven miles from Bruges, and there rested, and chose a piece of ground, abiding for their enemies ; and before them was a great standing pool, wherewith they fortified themselves on the. one part, and on the other with their carriages. And when it came to the Saturday, in the morning, the weather was fair and clear, and a holiday called in Bruges, for that day it was their custom to have a procession. Then tidings came to them, that they of Ghent had come thither. It was amazing to see the great murmurings in Bruges then, so that at last it came to the knowledge of the earl and his company ; and the earl was much surprised, and said, " Now is the time come to have an end of this war." And so then his knights and squires came to him, FRO IS S ART. 13 And he received them graciously, and said to them " We shall go and fight with yonder unhappy people of Ghent. It appears they had rather die by the sword than by famine." And so then they of Bruges began to fire at them. Then they of Ghent discharged at once 300 guns, and wheeling about the piece of water, caused the sun to be in the eyes of their enemies, which grieved them much, and then fell in among them, crying, " Ghent ! " On seeing this, they of Bruges, in a dastardly manner, gave back, abandoned their arms, and fled. Then they of Ghent, seeing their ene- mies were defeated, kept close together, and beat down on both sides and before them, and advanced, crying " Ghent ! " saying also, " Follow, follow ! Our enemies are defeated, and let us enter Bruges with them. God hath regarded us this evening with pity." And as they said, so they did, for they pursued them of Bruges sharply ; and as they over- took them they slew them, and tarried not, but kept up the pursuit, in which many were slain and beaten down, for they of Bruges made no stand. When Philip d'Arteville and the captains of Ghent saw that they were lords of Bruges, and all was at their command, then they made procla- mation, that every man, on pain of death, should draw to his lodging, and not plunder or make any disturbance unless they were commanded. Then Philip d'Arteville and Peter du Bois remembered, that when they departed from Ghent, they left no victuals nor other necessaries in the town ; therefore they sent a certain number of men to Damme and to Sluys to take possession thereof, and of the victuals in them. And when they came to Damme, the people opened the gates to them, and all that was in the town was put into their hands, and everything at their command. Then they took out of the cellars the good wines of Poictou, of Gascony, of Rochelle, and other countries, five or six thousand tuns, and it was conveyed, by land and by water, to Ghent. And then they proceeded to Sluys, which town was immediately opened to them and put under their obeisance ; and there they found great quantity of corn and meal in the shops and cellars of foreign merchants : so all was bought and paid for, and conveyed to Ghent by land and by water. In the same season, while these captains were at Bruges, beating down gates and walls, and filling of dykes, they sent to Ypres, to Courtray, to Bergues, to Cassel, to Poperinguert, to Bergarac, and to all the towns and castles on the sea-coast of Flanders, that they should be all under the obeisance of them, and send them the keys of their towns and castles, submitting themselves to their obeisance and service : and 14 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. so they all obeyed, none durst say against it, but all came to Bruges, putting themselves under the obeisance of Philip d'Arteville and Peter du Bois ; for these two named and wrote themselves sovereign captains of all the others ; and, especially, Philip d'Arteville was he that busied himself most with the charge of all Flanders. And as long as he abode in Bruges he kept the estate of a prince, for every day he had minstrels playing at the door of his lodgings while he was at dinner and supper, and was served in vessels of silver, as if he had been the Earl of Flanders ; and well he might then keep that estate, for he had all the earl's vessels, gold and silver, and all the jewels found in his house at Bruges : there was nothing saved. For the space of fifteen days there were carriages continually going and coming from Bruges to Ghent with the plunder which they had taken in the course of that expedition. And Philip d'Arteville departed with 4,000 men, and went to Ypres, and there all manner of people came out to meet him, and received him honourably, as though he had been their own natural lord, and had then first come to his land ; and there they all put themselves under his obeisance, and there he made new mayors and aldermen, and made new laws : and to him came thither them of Cassel, of Bergues, of Bergarac, and of Poperinguen ; they submitted themselves to his obeisance, and swore to him faith and truth, and to hold of him as of their lord the Earl of Flanders. And when he had thus done, and taken assurance of them, and had tarried at Ypres the space of eight days, then he departed and came to Courtray, where he was also received with great joy, and there he tarried three days. And then he sent messengers and letters to Oudenard, commanding them to come to him and be under his obeisance, saying that they were backward, and did not as others did ; wherefore he sent them word, that those of Ghent would certainly lay siege to them, and not depart till they had taken the town and slain all them within. When these tidings and message came to Oudenard, sent from Philip d'Arteville, then the three knights answered hotly, and said, that they but little regarded the menacing of a son of a trier of honey, nor that the heritage of the earl their lord should be so soon given to him, nor to any such, saying that they would defend it and die in the quarrel. When Philip d'Arteville heard his messenger report that the garrison of Oudenard disregarded him, he swore he would do nothing else till he had taken that town and destroyed it, whatever expense it might be, so much was he displeased : he thought he was strong enough to do this, as all Flanders was inclined to him. Philip d'Arteville, notwithstanding his good fortune in having defeated FROISSART. 15 the earl and them of Bruges, was by no means an expert general, either in assaulting or besieging, for he had not been brought up therein in his youth ; he had been more accustomed to angle with a rod and line in the river Scheldt ; which well appeared during his siege of Oudenard, for he could not take the town. He presumptuously thought that the sight of him would have made them of Oudenard surrender ; but they were not so disposed, for they conducted themselves like valiant men, and often made skirmishes at the barriers, and slew and hurt many of the Flemings, and then returned to their town without any damage. Philip d'Arte'ville, while at siege before Oudenard, was well aware that the French king was coming against him with an army ; then he said to his men " Sirs, why does this young restless king enter Flanders ? he is a year too young yet to assail. I shall cause the passes to be so kept that it shall not be in his power to pass the river Lis this year." Now, let us leave Philip d'Arteville; and return to the young King Charles of France, who was at Arras, having great will and desire to enter Flanders, to abate the pride of the Flemings ; and daily there repaired to him men of war from all parts, arid on the third day of November he departed, and went to Seclin^ and there rested. And there the Chief Constable of France, and the marshals of France, of Burgundy, and of Flanders were in council respecting the manner in which they should proceed, for it was the general opinion in the army that it was impossible to enter into Flanders, the passages were so well defended ; and also it rained so hard every day that people could scarcely go abroad ; and some of the wise rrien of France said that it was a great folly to undertake such an expedition in that season of the year ; and also they said that the river Lis was too difficult to pass. Then the marshals demanded from whence the river came, and they were told it came from Aymer and St. Omers. " We'll," quoth the Constable, " as it has a source, we shall pass it well enough ; let us call out the army, and take the way to St. Omefs, and there we shall pass the fiver with ease, and so enter into Flanders, and go along the country ; and the Flemings are so hasty, that they will come and fight with us, either before Ypres, or in some other place ; " and so to' this purpose all the marshals agreed. News, we know, will spread quickly abroad. The same Tuesday word came to Philip d'Arteville, while he lay at the siege of Oudenard, that the French had passed the river Lis by barks on the Monday ; and that 6,000 of his men were killed at Comines, amongst whom, it 1 6 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. was reported, was Peter du Bois. This intelligence greatly alarmed Philip, and he began to wonder, and demanded of the Lord of Harsels how they had better act. He answered, " Go to Ghent, and muster all the men you can get in the town, and then return here, and with all your army go towards Courtray ; and when the king learns what a large army you have, he will be advised before he comes much farther into the country." Now let us relate how the French king proceeded. When he heard that the passage of Comines was conquered, and the bridge repaired, he departed from the Abbey of Marquettes, and rode forth towards Comines, in good order, every man in his degree ; and the king came the same Tuesday to Comines, and he and his uncles lodged in the town, and the van of the army dislodged and went and lodged on the Mount of Ypres. Now let us return to Philip d'Arteville, and show how he persevered, He had a great desire to fight with the king, and that he showed plainly, for he went to Ghent and there he ordained that every man who was able to bear arms, except a sufficient number who should be left to guard the town, should follow him. Every man obeyed him, for he led them to believe that by the grace of God they should defeat the Frenchmen, and should still be lords of Ghent and of many other countries . . . and so he raised among them a body of 30,000 men, with whom he lodged one night before Oudenard, and on the following day he departed and went before Courtray, when he had in his company 50,000 men in armour. On the Wednesday night (the day preceding the battle) Philip d'Arteville, with all his army, came and lodged in a strong position between a dyke and a grove of wood, with a strong hedge, so that no man could easily come at them : and this was between the hill and Rosebeque, where the king lay. Thus, when the Flemings were at rest in their lodgings (howbeit they knew well their enemies were on the hill, not more than a league from them), Philip d'Arteville had brought a damsel with him out of Ghent ; and as Philip lay and slept on a couch by the side of a little fire of coals in a pavilion, this said damsel, about midnight, went out of the pavilion to take the air, and to see what time it appeared to be, for she could not sleep. She looked towards Rosebeque, and saw in the sky smoke and fire (it was the reflection of the fires the Frenchmen made under hedges and bushes) ; this damsel hearkened, and thought she heard much noise between the two armies, and the French crying FROISSART. 17 "Mountjoy !" " St. Denys!" and other cries ; and this, she thought, was on Mount Dorre, between them and Rosebeque. Of this thing she was much afraid, and so entered the pavilion and suddenly awaked Philip, and said " Sir, rise and arm yourself quickly, for I have heard a great noise on the Mount Dorre ; I believe it is the French coming to attack you." With those words he rose and cast on a gown, took his axe in his hand, and issued out of the pavilion to see what it was ; and he heard the same noise the damsel had told him ; and it seemed to him that there was a great tournament on the said hill : then he immediately entered his pavilion, and caused his trumpet to be blown, when every man rose and armed himself. They of. the watch went immediately to Philip d'Arteville, to know why he stirred up the host, seeing there was no cause, for that they had sent to the enemies' host and there was no stirring. "What, then," said Philip, " was that noise on Mount Dorre ? " " Sir," said they, " we heard the same, and sent to know what it was, but they that went said that when they went they heard nor saw nothing ; therefore, sir, we did not rouse the army, for we should have been blamed if we had done so without a cause." And when those of the watch had told Philip this, he appeased himself and all the host ; but yet he was astonished at this phenomenon. Some said it was fiends of hell, who played there where the battle was to be the next day, for joy of the great prey they were likely to have there. Ever after this Philip d'Arteville and the Flemings feared a surprise ; so they armed themselves leisurely, made great fires, and ate meat and drank, whereof they had sufficient. And an hour before day, Philip said " Sirs, we had better take the field, and set the army in order, so that, if the French come on us at daybreak, we may be ready to receive them." They all agreed to this, and so issued out of their lodgings and came unto a heath without the wood ; and before was a large new-made dyke, and behind them abundance of bushes. The same morning there arose a great mist, so that one could not see an acre of land distant, whereof the great lords were very much displeased, but they could not help it. And after mass, the king, and the constables, and other great lords, went to counsel and to determine what they should do ; and there it was ordained that Sir Oliver of Clisson, Constable of France, Sir John of Vien, Admiral of France, and Sir William of Poictiers, bastard of Langres, should observe the demeanour of the Flemings, as near -as they could, and then return and make report to the king and his uncles of the truth of everything. D 1 8 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH A UTHORS. The same morning, in the great mist, the Flemings rose and drew together, in the same strong place they had fortified, and so they stood together, all in a body, till it was eight o'clock, and could hear nothing of the Frenchmen. Then the captains with great pride said to each other, " What do we here, thus standing still on our feet, to take cold ? We tarry here for no purpose ; the Frenchmen will never seek us here : let us, at least, go to the Mount Dorre, and take advantage of the hill." So then, to escape from the dyke that was before them, they went about the little wood that was behind them, and took the open fields ; and as they came about this wood, the aforesaid three knights observed them very leisurely, and rode by. the side of their army within a bowshot of them ; and when they were passed on the left side, then they rode again on their right side, so that they had a good view of all their army. So these three aforesaid knights returned to the king and to his army. The Lord Clisson spoke first: inclining his body towards the king, and taking off his hat, he said, ' Sir, I wish you joy ; yonder people are all yours, our varlets might beat them." " Constable," quoth the king, " God grant it ; let us go forward then, in the name of God and St. Denys." And so then the three knights departed from the king, and went into the van, where their places were. Then immediately the royal standard was displayed, that Sir Peter of Villers did bear, and some say, as they have found written, that it was never before displayed against Christians. Thus the battle began, which was at first very desperate, for the Flemings attacked boldly, thrusting with their spears and shoulders, Jike wild boars, and they kept so close that they could not be separated. But the van and the rear pressed forward, and enclosed and pressed on the Flemings, in this manner. On these two wings the men of arms attacked fiercely, with their strong spears well headed with fine steel, wherewith they pierced the Flemings' coats of mail, into the hard bones, so that they were glad to retire from the strokes. So these men of arms pressed so close upon the Flemings that they could not defend them- selves, so that there were many who lost their strength and breath, and fell upon each other, and were pressed to death without striking any stroke ; and there was Philip d'Arteviile wounded and beaten down amongst his men of Ghent ; and when his page, with his horse, saw that his master .was defeated, he departed, and left his master, for he could not render him any assistance, and so rode to Courtray, on the way to Ghent. Thus the Flemings were defeated on the Mount Dorre, their pride abated, and Philip d'Arteviile slain. Then the king said to them that were about him, " Sirs, I wish to see FROISSART. 19 Philip d'Arteville, whether he be alive or dead." They answered that they would do their best to gratify him. And then it was proclaimed through the host, that whoever could find Philip d'Arteville should have 100 francs for his labour. Then many went among the dead bodies, who were most all stripped of their clothes ; at last there was such search made, that he was found and known by a varlet who had served him long before, and he recognised him by many tokens ; so he was brought before the king's pavilion, and the king and all the lords beheld him for some time, and the body was examined, to see what wounds he had, but they could see none that appeared to be mortal ; but it was judged that he fell in a little dyke, and many of them of Ghent upon him, and was so pressed to death. When they had looked enough at the body, it was taken from thence and hanged upon a tree. Thus ended Philip d'Arteville. PHILIPPE DE COMMINES. PHILIPPE DE COMMINES was born in 1445, and during his earlier life was attached to the service of Charles the Bold, of Burgundy, upon whom he exercised some influence in favour of Louis XI, at the time when that king was held prisoner by Charles at Peronne. This service was not forgotten by Louis, who after a time induced Commines to leave Burgundy, and accept the office of Chamberlain, at his Court. Here he became his devoted servant, and his instrument in the execution of many of his designs. After the death of Louis, Cdmmines attached himself to the party of the Duke of Orleans, in whose cause he suffered confiscation and imprisonment. His services were not, however, recognised by the duke on his accession to the throne as Louis XII, and Commines, retiring to the country, devoted his later years to the composition of his Memoirs, unquestionably the first authority for the history of his times. His writings are characterised by great ability and acuteness of observation, but his standard of morality is such as might be expected in a servant of Louis XL THE IMPRISONMENT OF LOUIS XL AT PERONNE, THUS the winter passed away, and the king was constantly en- deavouring to make the Duke of Burgundy consent to allow him to act according to his own pleasure in Brittany, offering him certain things as a recompense. This consent he would riot give, to the great displeasure of the king, whose anger was still more increased when he thought of what had happened to his allies, the Liegeois ; and at last, as soon as summer was come, his patience being exhausted, he, or his army for him, entered Brittany, and took two little castles, one called Chantosse, and the other Anceny. These news Were immediately carried to the Duke of Burgundy, who, being strongly pressed and solicited by the dukes of Normandy and Brittany, raised an army with all diligence and wrote to the king, begging him to abandon the enterprise, for they were all included in the treaty and were his allies ; but, not being pleased with the king's answer, he took the field with a considerable force near the town of Perorine. The king was at Compigne, but his army in Brittany. So the duke remained there for three or four days, during which time came an ambassador from the king, Cardinal Balue, who stayed but a short time, and made certain overtures to the duke, PHILIPPE DE COMMINES. 21 telling him that the Bretons might make their peace very well without him, for it was always the king's way to try and separate them. The cardinal was honourably entertained and sent back with this answer, that the duke had neither taken the field, nor made war to annoy the king, but only to succour his allies ; and so they parted with fair words on both sides. Immediately after the departure of the said cardinal came a herald, called Bretaigne, to the duke, bringing letters from the dukes of Normandy and Brittany, saying that they had made peace with the king and had given up all alliances, and particularly his ; and that for his share the Duke of Normandy was to receive sixty thousand livres a year, and was to relinquish that part of Normandy which had been lately given to him. This did not please my Lord Charles of France too well, but he was obliged to dissemble. Very much astonished was the Duke of Burgundy at these news, seeing that he had taken the field on purpose to help the said dukes ; and the herald was in great danger, for having passed through the king's quarters the duke feared that the king had forged them ; yet he had received similar letters from other places. The king now thought that he had succeeded in his design, and that he should easily manage to persuade the said duke to abandon the before-mentioned dukes, Secret messengers began to pass to and fro between them, and at last the king gave the Duke of Burgundy six score thousand crowns of gold for the expenses he had incurred in raising the army, half of which was paid before he left the camp. The duke sent to the king a gentleman of his bedchamber, called Jean Vobrisset, a man whom he admitted to his confidence. The king took it very kindly, and expressed his wish to have a meeting with the duke, hoping to gain him over to his will on all points, seeing how badly he had been treated by the two dukes, and considering also the great sum of money he had paid him ; and he gave some intimation of this to the duke by the said Vobrisset, with whom he sent Cardinal Balue, and the Lord Tanneguy du Chastel, Governor of Roussillon, who repre- sented to him the great desire the king had to see him. They found the duke at Peronne, but he said he had no great desire for the meeting, for the Liegeois showed symptoms of rebellion again, being instigated by the two ambassadors whom the king had sent to them (to beg them to do so) before the truce made for a few days between the king, the duke, and all their allies. To which Balue and others of his company replied that the Liegeois dared not, seeing that the Duke of Burgundy had ruined them last year, and had thrown down their walls ; and that 22 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. if they had any such intention, they would give it up when they heard of this league. So it was concluded that the king should come to Peronne (for such was his pleasure), and the duke wrote a letter with his own hand, giving ample security for his going and coming. So the ambassadors set out to go to the king, who was at Noyon ; but to make all sure at Liege, the duke sent the bishop thither, upon whose account these tumults had happened, and with him, the Lord of Hymbercourt, his lieutenant in that country, with a considerable body of forces. You have heard how it was agreed that the king should come to Peronne. So he went, and took no guard with him, wishing to place himself entirely under the guardianship and security of the duke ; and he desired that the duke's archers, under the command of the Lord des Cordes, who was then in the duke's service, might meet and conduct him in ; and so it was done, very few of his own train accompanying him. The king, when he came to Peronne, had quite forgotten that he had sent two messengers to Liege to stir up the people against the duke ; and nevertheless these two ambassadors had acted with so much diligence, that they had collected a considerable number of men, and the Liegeois came secretly to take the town of Tongres, where were the Bishop of Liege and the Lord of Hymbercourt, with a force of 2,000 men and more ; and they took the said bishop and Hymbercourt ; but few men were killed, and rione were taken prisoners but these two and some of the bishop's servants. The rest fled, and left all they had behind them, as men escaping for their lives. After this the Liegeois took the road to Liege, which is not far from Tongres. On the road to Liege the Lord of Hymbercourt made an agreement for his ransom with one Monsieur Guillaume de Ville, surnamed "Le Sauvage" by the French ; which knight, fearing the people might kill him, suffered him to escape, but was killed himself not long after. The people were greatly rejoiced at the taking of their bishop ; they detested several canons whom they had seized that day, and, as their first treat, killed five or six of them. Among others there was one called Monsieur Robert, an intimate friend of the bishop, whom I have seen several times attending his master, armed from head to foot according to the custom of the bishops in Germany. This Robert they killed in the bishop's presence, and cut him into several pieces, which they threw at one another's heads by way of diversion. Before they had reached the end of the seven or eight leagues which they had to go, they killed about sixteen persons, canons or men of wealth, almost all being the PHILIPPE DE COMMINES. 23. bishop's servants. Having finished this work, they released some of the Burgundians, for they had heard that a treaty of peace had been made, and had been constrained to say that they fought only against the bishop, whom they led as a prisoner to their city. Those who fled, as I said before, gave the alarm to the whole country through which they passed, and the news soon reached the duke. Some said that all of them had been killed, others affirmed the contrary (for in things of this kind a messenger seldom comes alone) ; but others arrived who had seen the clothes of the canons, and believed the bishop and the Lord of Hymbercourt to have been of the number, and that all the rest were dead ; and declared that they had seen the ambassadors of the king among the Liegeois, and gave their very names. And all this was told to the duke, who gave credit to it at once, and fell into a violent rage, saying that the king had come thither to deceive him ; and ordered the gates of the town and castle to be closed immediately, and gave out by way of pretext that it was done, that a casket containing valuable jewels and money which was lost might be found. The king was not altogether easy when he saw himself shut up in this castle (which was small) and many guards posted at the doors, and found that he was near a large tower where a Count de Vermandoys had caused one of his prede- cessors, a king of France, to be put to death. At that time I was still with the duke and served him as chamberlain, and slept in his room when I liked, for such was the custom of that house. The duke, when he saw the gates were shut, ordered the men to leave the room, and told us who remained that the king had come there to betray him, and that he had tried to prevent his coming with all his power, and that it was done contrary to his wishes ; and he went on to relate the news from Liege, and how the king had done it all through his ambassadors, and how all the men had been killed. He was terribly angry with the king, and uttered great threats against him ; and I really believe that, if at that time he had had with him those who were disposed to foment his wrath, or to counsel him to do violence to the king, he would have done it, and at least would have cast him into the great tower. During the time he was speaking, there was no one present but myself and two valets, one named Charles de Visin, a native of Dijon, an honest man and highly thought of by his master. We said not a word to increase his anger, but tried to soften him as much as we could. Soon after he said the same things to several other people, and his words being repeated in the town, reached the king's ear, who was greatly alarmed ; and so was every one, foreseeing a great deal of 24 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. mischief; and considering the number of points to be taken into account in order to reconcile so great princes when a difference has occurred between them, and the error of which they had both been guilty, in not giving notice to their servants, who were employed at a distance in their affairs, and which must needs produce some extraordinary event. The gates being shut and guarded by those appointed to keep them, remained so for two or three days, and yet the Duke of Burgundy did not see the king, and would allow only a few of the king's servants to enter the castle, and those only by the wicket ; yet none of them were exactly forbidden, and none of the duke's were allowed to speak to him or come into his room ; or, at least, none that had any authority with their master. The first day there was great murmuring and consternation in the town. The second day the duke had calmed down a little. He held a council which lasted the greater part of the day and part of the night. The king applied to all whom he thought could help him, making them large promises, and ordering 15,000 crowns to be distributed; but the person who was appointed to do this acquitted himself very ill, and kept back part of the money, as the king learned afterwards. The king was much afraid of those who had formerly served him, who, as I said before, had come with the Burgundian army, and had declared them- selves for his brother, the Duke of Normandy. In the council mentioned above several opinions prevailed. The greater part approved, and advised that the safe conduct that the duke had given to the king should be observed if he would grant the peace in the form in which it had been drawn up. Others wished to keep him as he was, without any ceremony. Some said that they should send with all speed for my Lord of Normandy, and that a very advantageous peace for all the French princes should be made ; and it seemed well to those who made this proposal that it should be settled that the king be kept under restraint and strongly guarded, because a great prince should never, or with great caution, be set free after such an affront. This was so nearly agreed upon, that I saw a man booted and ready to set out with several letters addressed to the Duke of Normandy, then in Brittany, and waiting only for the duke's letter ; and yet this advice was not followed, after all. The king caused overtures to be made, and offered to give as hostages the Duke of Bourbon and the cardinal, his brother, the constable, and several others ; and said that after the peace was concluded he would return to Compiegne, and that he would oblige the Liegeois to make reparation, or would declare himself against them. PHILIPPE DE COMMINES. 25 That night, which was the third, the duke did not take off his clothes, He only lay down two or three times on his bed, and then started up again and walked about, as his custom was when anything troubled him. I went to bed that night in his room, and walked up and down with him several times. The next morning he was more angry than ever, utter- ing threats and being quite ready to do some great thing ; but at last he came down to this, that if the king would swear to the peace and would go with him to Liege, to help him to avenge himself and his kinsman, he would be satisfied; and he set off at once for the king's room to carry this message to him. The king had some friend or other who had given him notice, and assured him that no harm would happen if he granted these two points ; but if he refused, he would incur the greatest possible danger. When the duke came into his presence his voice trembled, so much was he moved, and so ready to be angry again. He made a low reverence with his body, but his gesture and words were sharp, demand- ing of the king if he would keep the treaty of peace which had been written and agreed to, and if he would swear to it; and the king answered that he would. Then the duke asked him if he would come to Liege, to help to revenge the treachery which the Liegeois had practised at his instigation and by means of that interview ; and also he reminded him of the nearness of relationship between the king and the Bishop of Liege, for he was of the house of Bourbon. To these words the king replied, that when peace had been sworn (which he desired), he would go with him to Liege, and lead there an army, large or small, as might seem good to the duke. These words pleased the duke greatly, and the treaty of peace was brought out immediately, and the true cross that Saint Charlemagne had carried was taken out of the king's chest, and peace was sworn ; and the bells of the town began to ring, and the people rejoiced greatly. DESPERRIERS. BONAVENTURE DESPERRIERS was born at Array-le-Duc, towards the end of the fifteenth century, and died about 1544. He was born of a good family, and was appointed page to Margaret of Navarre, the sister of Francis I. A man of pleasure, and with little respect for religion, he indulged without scruple in attacks on revelation. He published his sentiments in an allegorical work, called Cymballum Mundi, which was condemned, on account of its doctrine, by the Sorbonne. Nouvelles Recreations et Joyeux Devis was another of his works. THE STORY OF BLONDEAU, THE COBBLER, WHO WAS NEVER MELANCHOLY BUT TWICE IN HIS LIFE, AND WHAT HE DID FOR IT. " AT Paris on the Seine three boats there be ; " but there was also a cobbler called Blondeau, who lodged near the Croix du Tiroir; there he earned his living merrily by mending shoes. He loved good wine above all things, and willingly taught those who went there to do so too ; for, if there was any in all that quarter, it was thought necessary that he should taste it ; and he was very well content to take a little more if it proved good. All day long he sang and made the neighbourhood lively. He was never seen vexed in his life but twice : once, when he had found in an old wall a pot containing a great quantity of old coins, some of silver, some of alloy, of which he did not know the value. Then he began to grow thoughtful. He left off singing, and could think of nothing but the tin pot. He said to himself, " This sort of money is not used now ; I shall not be able to buy any bread or wine with it. If I show it to the silversmiths, they will betray me, or they will want to get their share, and will not give me half its value." Sometimes he was afraid he had not hidden the pot securely enough, and that somebody would rob him of it. He would leave his shed at all hours of the day to go and change its place. He was in the greatest possible trouble about it; but, in the end, he came to a better mind, saying to himself, " How now ? I do nothing but think of this pot. Everybody knows well, by my manner, that there's something singular in my condition. Bah ! bad luck to the THE COBBLER AND THE MONKEY.' DESPERRIERS. 2? pot ! it brings me misfortune." The end of it was, that he proceeded to take it quietly, and threw it into the river, and so drowned all his melancholy along with the pot. At another time, he was much annoyed by a gentleman who lived just opposite his little shop or rather, his shop was opposite the gentleman. The said gentleman had a monkey, who played a thousand tricks on poor Blondeau, for he watched him from a high window, when he was cutting his leather, and noticed how he did it ; and directly Blondeau went out to dinner, or anywhere on business, -down would come the monkey, and go into Blondeau's shop, and take his knife, and cut up his leather, as he had seen Blondeau do ; and this he was in the habit of doing every time Blondeau was out of the way : so that, for a time, the poor man could not leave his shop, even for his meals, with- out putting away his leather ; and if sometimes he forgot to lock it up, the monkey never forgot to cut it to bits, a proceeding that annoyed him greatly ; and yet he was afraid to hurt the monkey for fear of his master. When, however, he grew thoroughly tired of this, he considered how he could pay him out. After having noticed particularly the way in which the monkey imitated exactly everything he saw done, for if Blondeau sharpened his knife, the monkey sharpened it too ; if he waxed his thread, so too did the monkey ; if he sewed some new soles, the monkey set about moving his elbows as he had seen him do, Blondeau one day sharpened his knife and made it cut like a razor, and then, when he saw the monkey watching, he began to put his knife to his throat, and move it backwards and forwards, as if he wished to kill himself; and when he had done this long enough to make the monkey notice it, he left his shop and went to get his dinner. The monkey was not slow in coming down, for he wished to try this new pastime, which he had never seen before. He took the knife, and put it immediately to his throat, moving it backwards and forwards. But he put it too near, and not being very careful as he rubbed it against the skin, he cut his throat with this well-sharpened knife, and died of the wound within an hour. Thus did Blondeau punish the monkey without danger to himself. LE LOYAL SERVITEUR. THE author of the Chronicle of Bayard is only known under the name of Le Loyal Serviteur. It is supposed by some that he was secretary to the Chevalier Sans Peur. His work was printed in 1527, three years after the death of Bayard. HOW THE CHEVALIER SANS PEUR LEFT HIS HOME. MASS having been heard, it was agreed to wash one's hands and sit down to table, where, first of all, every one enjoyed the excellent cheer; and the good knight served wisely and bountifully, as every one said. Dinner done and grace said, the good old Lord of Bayard thus began his speech to the company: "My lord, and my lords: the occasion where- fore I have sent for you it is time now to declare, for you are all my relations and friends ; and already you see that I am so oppressed by old age, that it is hardly possible that I should live two years. God has given me four sons, of each of whom I have inquired what path they mean to follow ; and among others my son Pierre has told me that he wishes to follow the profession of arms, by. which he has given me singular pleasure, for in every respect he perfectly resembles my late lord and father your relation ; and if in conditions he intends also fully to resemble him, it is impossible that he should not become, in the course of his life, a great man of wealth, of which I believe that each one of you, as my good relatives and friends, will be very glad. It is necessary, as a beginning, to place him in the house of some prince or lord, in order that he may learn to behave himself properly ; and when he is a little older, he shall learn the art of war. I pray you', as earnestly as possible, give me advice, each in your turn, as to the place where I can best lodge him." " Then," said one of the most venerable knights, " he should be sent to the King of France." Another said that he would do very well in the house of Bourbon ; and thus there was not one that did not give his opinion. But the Bishop of Grenoble spake, and said, " My brother, you know that we are in close fellowship with the Duke Charles of Savoy, and he reckons us of the number of his good servants. I believe that he will receive him willingly as one of his pages. He is at Chambery, near here. If it seem good to you and to this company, I will take him to him to-morrow morning, after I have made him ready and THE YOUNG CHEVALIER BAYARD. LE LOYAL SERVITEUR. 29 provided him with a good little horse which I got back three or four days ago from the Lord Du Riage." So the proposal of the Bishop of Grenoble was approved of by all the company, and also by the said Lord of Bayard, who delivered his son to him, saying, " Take him, my lord ; I pray God, that if you are able to bestow such a good gift upon him, he may do you honour by his life." Then immediately sent the said bishop to the town, to fetch his tailor, whom he ordered to bring velvet, satin, and other things necessary for the attire of a good knight. He came, and worked all night, so that everything was ready on the morrow. And after having break- fasted, he (the Chevalier Sans Peur) mounted his horse, and presented himself to all the company in the back-court of the castle, just as if they had intended to present him at that instant to the Duke of Savoy. When the horse felt the little weight he had to carry, and; added to this, the child pricked him with his spurs, he began to plunge two or three times, and the people feared that he might throw the child. But, instead of crying out for help, as one would have thought, when he felt the horse moving so violently under him, with a brave heart, and bold as a lion, he touched him with his spurs three or four times, and let him run into the said court ; in this way he calmed the horse, as if he had been thirty years old. It is not necessary to ask if the good old man was pleased ; and smiling with pleasure, he asked his son, if he was not frightened, for he had not left school a year. He replied, with a confident look : " My lord, I hope, with the help of God, before the end of six years, to lead on another into more dangerous places, for here I am among friends, and then I may be among the enemies of the master whom I shall serve." " Now then," said the good Bishop of Grenoble, who was ready to set out, " my nephew, my dear boy, do not dismount, but take leave of the company." Then the young child, with a joyful countenance, addressed his father, saying, " My lord, I pray God that He may grant you long life and happiness, and me His grace, that you may hear good tidings of me before He takes you from this world." " My dear boy," said the father, " I beseech Him to grant it." And then he gave him his blessing. And after that, he took leave of all the knights there, one after another, who were greatly pleased with his noble bearing. The poor lady his mother was in a tower of the castle, weeping softly, for, however glad she was to think what her son was in the way to become, her mother's love taught her to weep. However, when they came to tell her, "Madam, if you want to come and see your son, 30 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. he is on horseback, and ready to set out ; " the good lady went out behind the tower, and sent for her son to come to her, to whom she spoke these words : " Pierre, my boy, you are going into the service of a noble prince. As far as a mother may command her child, I command you three things, as strictly as I can ; and if you do them, be sure that you will live triumphantly in this world. The first is, that above all things you love, serve, and obey God, without offending Him at all, if it is possible, for it is He who has made us, He who preserves us, He who will save us, and without Him we cannot do a single good work in this world. Every morning and evening commend yourself to Him, and He will help you. The second is, that you be gentle and courteous to all men, laying aside all pride. Be humble, and ready to help everybody ; be not a slanderer or liar, be sober and temperate ; avoid envy, for it is an ugly vice ; be neither a flatterer nor talebearer, for such manner of people seldom attain great perfection ; be upright in word and deed, keep your promises, help the poor widows and orphans, and God will reward you. The third is, that with the good things God will give you, you be charitable to the needy, for to give for His honour impoverishes no man ; and believe me, my child, such alms as you will be able to give, will profit you greatly in body and soul. Attend to all this that I recommend you. I believe certainly that your father and I shall not live long. God grant us this mercy at least, that while we do live, we may always have good tidings of you!" Then the good knight, young as he was, answered : " Mother, for your good instruction, I thank you as humbly as I can, and hope so to follow it, that, through the mercy of Him to whose care you commend me, you may be content; and now, after recommending myself very humbly to your good favour, I take leave of you." Then the good lady drew from her sleeve a little purse, in which there were not more than six crowns in gold and one in change, which she gave her son ; and she called one of the servants of the Bishop of Grenoble, her brother, to whom she gave a little trunk containing some linen for her son's use, begging him that, when he was presented to my Lord of Savoy, he would ask the servant of the squire under whose charge he would be, to take a little care of him till he was somewhat older, and she gave him two crowns to give him. By this time the Bishop of Grenoble had taken leave of the company, and now called his nephew, who, finding himself on his beautiful horse, thought he was in Paradise. So they set out on the road which led straight to Chambery, where the Duke of Savoy was then. RABELAIS. FRANCOIS RABELAIS was born at Chinon in 1495. At his father's desire he joined the order of the Grey Friars, in the monastery of Fontenay le Comte, where, it has been said, the monks made a more strict vow of ignorance than of religion. Here, however, two sentiments became deeply rooted in the mind of Rabelais, love of letters, and hatred of monks. He set himself diligently to the study of the Greek and Latin authors, and thus awakened the violent hatred and persecution of the monks. He left their order, and devoted himself to the study and practice of medicine. It is said that he wrote the tales of Gargantua and Pantagruel to amuse his patients. He also published a Latin version of the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, besides other works. Sir William Temple says of him, " Rabelais seems to have been the father of ridicule, a man of excellent and universal learning, as well as wit ; and though he had too much game given him for satire in that age, by the customs of courts and convents, of processes and of wars, of schools and of camps, of romances and legends, yet he must be confessed to have kept up his vein of ridicule by saying many things so smutty and profane, that a pious man could not have afforded, though he had never so much coin about him." THE WISDOM OF FOOLS. I HAVE often heard it said as a common proverb, that a wise man may be taught by a fool. If you are not perfectly satisfied with the replies of the wise man, take counsel of a fool ; it may be that, by so doing, you will get an answer more to your mind. At Paris, in the house of the Petit-Chastelet, before the cookshop of one of the roast-meat sellers, a certain hungry porter was eating his bread in the steam of the roast meat, and found it, so seasoned, extremely savoury. The cook took no notice. At last, when all the bread was devoured, the cook seized him by the collar, and wanted him to pay for the smell of the meat. The porter said that he had sustained no loss at all, that he had taken nothing of his, and that he owed him nothing. As for the smell in question, it had been steaming out into the street, and in this way was wasted ; such a thing as selling the smell of roast meat in the street had never been heard of in Paris. The cook replied that the smell of his meat was not meant to feed porters, and 32 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. swore, that if he did not pay, he would take away his truck. The porter seized his cudgel, and prepared 'to defend himself. The altercation became serious. The idle people of Paris ran together from all parts to witness the dispute. Thither, apropos, came Seigni Joan, the fool, a citizen of Paris. Seeing him, the cook said to the porter, " Shall we refer our difference to the noble Seigni Joan ? " "Agreed," replied the porter. Then Seigni Joan having heard the cause of their quarrel, commanded the porter to take a piece of money from his belt. The porter put a Philippus in his hand. Seigni Joan took it and put it on his left shoulder, as if to try its weight ; then made it ring on the palm of his left hand, as if to hear if it was good ; then placed it close to his right eye, as if to see if it was properly stamped. While all this was done, the idle people waited in profound silence, the master in steady expectation, and the porter in despair. At last he made it ring on the counter several times. Then with presidential majesty, holding his bauble in his hand as if it were a sceptre, and muffling his head in a hood of martin skins, each side of which resembled an ape's face, with ears of paper plaited in points, first coughing two or three times, he said in a loud voice, " The court decides that the porter who has eaten his bread in the fumes of the roast meat, has paid the cook according to law, with the sound of his money. The said court ordains that each retire to his own house without costs." And this sentence of the Parisian fool appeared so equitable, in fact so admirable to the above-named doctors, that they doubted, if the matter had been brought before the Parliament of the said place, even before the Areopagites, to be decided, if it would have been settled more legally. So, consider, if you will take counsel from a fool. THE FOOL'S DECISION. BLAISE DE MONTLUC. BLAISE DE MONTLUC, Marshal of France, was born in 1501, and died in 1577. He was deeply versed in the science of war, and his Commentaries, or memoirs of his military life, written at the age of seventy-five, were called by Henry IV. "the soldier's breviary." He fought in many battles, and in many lands, but he considered the defence of Sienna his crowning exploit. His whole career was a brilliant one, though tarnished by deeds of cruelty, which he relates with a frankness and unconcern shocking to modern feelings. The wound which he received at Rabasteins left his face so hideously disfigured, that for the rest of his life he wore a mask. The following passage is from a translation by Charles Cotton, published in 1674. THE ASSAULT OF RABASTEINS. OUR order being set down, I went and placed myself at the gate of the town near unto the breach, where I had all the gentlemen with me, of which there might be six or seven score, and still more came up to us ; for M. de la Chapelle Lauzieres, who came from Quercy, brought a great troop of gentlemen along with him. I shall here relate one thing of my presage, which is perfectly true, that it was impossible for all the friends I had to dispossess me of an opinion I had, that I should in this assault be killed or wounded by a shot in some part of my head ; and out of that conceit was once half in a mind not to go to the assault, knowing very well that my death would at this time be of evil consequence. I have no familiar spirit, but few misfortunes have befallen me in the whole course of my life, that my mind has not first presaged. I still endeavoured to put it out of my fancy, resigning all things to the good- will of Him, who disposes of us as seems best to His own wisdom. As soon as two of the clock, the hour prefixed for the assault, was come, I caused eight or ten bottles of wine that Madame de Panjas had sent me, to be brought out, which I gave the gentlemen, saying, " Let us drink, comrades : for it must now soon be seen which of us has been nursed with the best milk. God grant, that another day we may drink together ; but if our last hour be come, we cannot frustrate the decrees F 34 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. of Fate." So soon as they had all drunk and encouraged one another, I made them a short remonstrance in these words, saying " Friends and companions, we are now ready to fall on to the assault, and every one is to show the best he can do. The men who are in this place, are of those who, with the Count of Montgomery, destroyed your churches, and ruined your houses ; you must make them disgorge what they have swallowed of your estates. If we carry the place and put them all to the sword, you will have a good bargain of the rest of Beam. Believe me, they will never dare to stand against you. Go on then, and I will immediately follow." Which being said, I caused the assault to be sounded, and the two captains immediately fell on ; where some of their soldiers and ensigns did not behave themselves very well. Seeing then that those were not very likely to enter, M. de Sainctorens marched up with four ensigns more, and brought them up to the breach, which did no better than the former, for they stopped four or five paces short of the counterscarp, by which means our cannon was nothing hindered from playing into the breach, which made those within duck down behind it. I then presently perceived that somebody else, and other kind of men than the foot, must put their hands to the work ; which made me presently forget the conceit I had of being killed or wounded, and said to the gentlemen these words : " Comrades, nobody knows how to fight but the nobles, and we are to expect no victory but by our own hands ; let us go then, I will lead you the way, and let you see that a good horse is never resty. Follow boldly, and go on without fear, for we cannot wish for a more honourable death ; we defer the time too long, let us fall on." I then took M. de Goas by the hand, to whom I said, " M. de Goas, I will that you and I fight together. I pray, therefore, let us not part ; and if I be killed or wounded, never take notice of me, but leave me there, and push forward, that the victory however may remain to the king ; " and so we went on as cheerfully as ever I saw men go on to an assault in my life, and looking twice behind me, saw that the gentlemen almost touched one another, they came up so close. There was a great plain of a hundred and fifty paces, or more, all open, over which we were to march to come up to the breach, which, as we passed over, the .enemy fired with great fury upon us all the way, and I had six gentlemen shot close by me. There were two little chambers about a pike height or more from the ground, which chambers the enemy so defended both above and below, that not a man of ours could put up his head without being seen ; however, our people began to assault them with a great shower of stones which they poured in THE ASSAULT ON RABASTEINS. BLAISE DE MONTLUC. 35 upon them, and they also shot at us, but ours, throwing downwards, had the advantage of this kind of fight. Now, I had caused three or four ladders to be brought to the edge of the grass ; and as I turned about to cause two of them to be brought to me, a harquebuse-shot clapped into my face from the corner of a barricade joining to the tower. In an instant, I was covered with blood, for it gushed out of my mouth, nose, and eyes ; whereupon, M. de Goas would have caught me in his arms, thinking I would fall, but I said " Let me alone, I shall not fall, follow your point." Then almost all the soldiers and gentlemen began to lose courage and to retire, which made me cry out to them, though I could scarcely speak, by reason of the torrent of blood that pasht out at my mouth and nose, " Whither will you go, gentlemen, whither will you go, will ye be terrified for me. Do not flinch, nor forsake the fight, for I have no hurt, and let every one return to his place." In the meantime, hiding the blood in the best manner I could, to M. de Goas I said : " M. de Goas, take care, I beseech you, that the soldiers be not discouraged for me, and renew the assault." I could no longer stay there, for I began to faint, and therefore said to the gentlemen, " I will go get myself dressed, but if you love me, let no one follow, but avenge me : " which having said, I took a gentleman by the hand, I cannot tell his name, for I could scarce see him, and returned by the same way I came, where by the way I found a little horse of a soldier's, upon which, by the gentleman's assistance, I mounted as well as I could, and after that manner was conducted to my lodging ; where I found a chirurgeon of M. de Goas, called Master Simon, who dressed me, and with his fingers (so wide were the orifices of the wound) pulled out the bones from my two cheeks, and cut away a great deal of flesh from my face, which was all bruised and torn. M. de Madaillan, my lieutenant, who had marched on the one hand of me when I went to the assault as M. de Goas did on the other, came to see if I was dead, and said to me, " Sir, cheer up your spirits, and rejoice, we have entered the Castle, and the soldiers are laying about them, who put all to the sword, and assure yourself we will avenge your wound." I then said to him : " Praised be God that I see the victory ours before I die. I now care not for death. I beseech you return back, and, as you have ever been my friend, so now do me that act of friendship, not to suffer so much as one man to escape with life." Do not think, you who shall read this book, that I caused this slaughter to be made so much out of revenge for the wound I had received, as to strike terror into the country, that they might not dare 36 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. to make head against our army ; and in my opinion all soldiers, in the beginning of a conquest, ought to proceed in that manner, with such as are so impudent as to abide cannon. He must bar his ears to all capitulation and composition, if he do not see great difficulties in his enterprise, and that his enemy have put him to great difficulties in making a breach. And as severity (call it cruelty, if you please) is requisite in case of a resolute opposition, so on the other side mercy is very commendable, and fit, if you see that they in good time surrender to your discretion. PASQUIER. ETIENNE PASQUIER was born in 1529 at Paris, where he died in 1615. He wrote Moitophile, the Collogues d' Amour, and La Jeunesse de Pasquier, but his most famous work was Les Recherches de la France. He was a barrister, and held the office of Advocate-General for some time. THE DEATH OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS. As if she were going to her wedding, she put on the attire she was accustomed to wear when, by the queen's permission, she received any nobles of distinction, or as she was wont to adorn herself on solemn feast days; and she ordered them to bring her a handkerchief em- broidered with gold, to bind her eyes. Having arranged some trifling matters alone, she summoned all her servants, officers, and maidens, and caused her will to be read before them, praying them to be content, though she was very grieved that she had so little to bestow upon them ; still she hoped that, for her sake, they would find friends after her death. This done, she turned her thoughts to God, knelt down in her oratory and made her orisons and prayers. But not being able to kneel long on account of bodily weakness, her physician prayed her to take a little bread and wine to support her. This she did, thanking him for this last repast, and immediately returned to her prayers. While thus engaged, some one knocked at the door, and begged her to come out. " Let them have a little patience," said she ; " I shall soon satisfy them." They were not long in returning to the charge, so long seemed to them the little portion of life left her. " Open the door," she said ; " it is now time that I should quit this earthly prison." Then the provost, com- monly called a sheriff, entered and found her still on her knees. She rose and took in her hand a little cross with an ivory crucifix, from the altar : she kissed it, and gave it to one of her servants to carry before her. Her physician, Bourgoigne, gave her his arm to lead her forth ; but was seized with remorse at the thought of leading her forth to place her in the hands of her enemies ; so he entreated her, with tears in his eyes, 38 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. that it might please iier to dispense with this last service. This request she willingly granted, and two of Paulet's servants came forward to support her, She descended as well as she could, entered the hall, and found her steward at the lower end of it, in tears. " This is another unhoped-for act of courtesy," she said, "that I receive from my enemies." Then she talked for a little time to this poor man, who could not utter a word, bidding him go to the king, her son, and to serve him, as she was sure he would, with the same fidelity that he had served her. In conclusion, she said that she had never desired anything so much, during her imprisonment, as the peace of the kingdoms of England and Scotland, and that in time they might be united ; that this was the general import of all her prayers to God. With these words, she was silent, and the poor gentleman bearing her train conducted her to the scaffold, having mounted which, she sat down on a low seat covered with black cloth ; but when the sentence and commission had been read, she stood up and, in the presence of the earls and of two or three hundred people who were in the room, with bold and steady voice, she called to account those who had tried her. " My Lords, I am a queen by birth, and am not subject to your laws, the Queen Dowager of France, and the presumptive heir of England ; whom, after being detained nineteen years a prisoner, con- trary to all human and divine right, by her with whom I had taken refuge, as the anchor of my safety, without having any jurisdiction over me, and without hearing my defence, they have condemned to death for having intended to make an attempt on her life. For this cause I will give an account of my actions. And when I shall have so done, tell me, I pray you, if I have not reason for so doing. I will follow the order of time, and begin with my imprisonment. By what right did you detain me prisoner ? Was it as your subject ? Not a man among you dares say so. Was I a prisoner of war ? Truly, when have I ever made my people take up arms against you ? When have I not shown respect to you during my prosperity ? I would say to your queen, as to her whose heir I was, Grant that I had taken up arms, and by a disaster of war I had fallen into your hands, what would follow from this capture ? Taking things at their worst, I ought to have been set free on a ransom, which you would never allow. I was neither your subject nor your prisoner of war ; why then did you choose to condemn me to perpetual imprisonment ? If I had committed any crime, was I bound to give an account of it to you ? And in any case, whatever fault there might have been, for which I was answerable THE LAST MOMENTS OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. PASQU1ER. 39 only to God, certainly an imprisonment of nineteen years was more than sufficient to expiate the sin against God by a long repentance, and to merit pardon from man, who should consider the rank that I have held ; and that a single day in my prison has been more painful to me than the criminal death which I am now to suffer. And not having satisfied your cruelty with this prison, you have pursued me to the death, which you esteem my shame, and I my glory ; if, in the pitiful condition to which I am reduced, so much vanity ought to lodge in my soul. And since, of all my grandeur, nothing remains to me but my speech, I shall oblige you, in spite of yourselves, to hear me. I have conspired, say you, against your queen. I have told you, most solemnly, that that is not true. But I wished to conspire. In the first place, where will you find that this word conspiracy can be used between sovereign and sovereign ? It is only used of a subject, when he forms a faction against his prince. What more have you accused me of, except that, in self-defence, I have intended to attack you ? You wanted, not only to keep me captive, but also, by a barbarous cruelty, to render captive in me and to imprison a natural instinct of liberty, that is common to all other animals. I have several times made supplication to your queen for the deliverance of my person. To all my prayers she has turned a deaf ear. And truly, I do not think that you have had any other information against me, except the strong presumption that it was utterly impossible that the desire of vengeance should not have entered my head, for the lawless wrong that has been done me. What if, when in perfect liberty, I had openly contrived some enterprise against your kingdom, and that in this I had failed and had even fallen into your hands, could you have gone to law with me, or put me to death ? Was my condition made worse by having, through your perfidy, been cast into your prisons ? But I have repeated the same offence, say you, since the decision given against me. Some letters of mine, intercepted since, have hastened my death contrary to the will of your queen. Oh, astonishing impudence ! Can it enter the head of man, that I, who was guarded and watched more strictly than before, from whom they had taken away pen, ink, and paper ; had watched night and day, surrounded by the most faithful creatures of the queen, that I should have had means to write, or in any way plot against her again ? All this is a game played expressly to give occasion for the cruelty that you intend to commit on an innocent princess. My death, then, has been eagerly sought, not in the ordinary way of justice, whatever states may have been assembled for that purpose, but so as to show that you reckon 40 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. my death really necessary for the State. For this miserable and dam- nable proposition is imprinted on the minds of the greatest, that in such matters everything should be allowed, by which we think to profit, how- ever unjust it may be. Now you have what you desire ; you sacrifice my innocence at the footstool of Almighty God, whom I entreat of His mercy to repay to my dear son the wrong that has been done me by you, whom I also pardon as freely as I pray my Creator to pardon my sins." She could not restrain the course of her natural grief, and so the Earl of Kent interrupted her, telling her that it was not the time to call the past to remembrance, and that she ought to look only at the life to come. Therefore he presented to her at the foot of the scaffold, the Dean of Peterborough, to counsel and console her ; but she turned her face away instantly, praying those gentlemen, that, during the little portion of life that remained to her, they would not unduly trouble her against her conscience, which was to her an impregnable rampart against all their snares. And then clasping her hands and raising her eyes to heaven, she repeated several prayers to God, some in French, and some in Latin. At length she ordered one of her maidens (it was between nine and ten in the morning) to bind her eyes with the handkerchief that she had set apart expressly for that purpose. This being done, she knelt down, resting her arms on the block, thinking that she would be executed with a French sword ; but the executioner, assisted by his satellites, made her place her head on the block, and beheaded her with an axe. The same day, Henry Talbot, son of the Earl of Shrewsbury, was sent to carry news to the queen of all that had taken place, who arrived the next day at Richmond, where she was. The news was not long kept secret. For at three o'clock in the afternoon, all the bells of London began to ring, and bonfires were lighted in all the streets, and public banquets given in token of rejoicing. MONTAIGNE. MICHEL EYQUEM DE MONTAIGNE, the celebrated essayist, was born at the Castle of Montaigne, in Perigord, in 1533. To please his father, he studied law, and became a magistrate ; but being dissatisfied with the state of French law at that time, and objecting strongly to the use of torture, he resigned his office. In 1571, Charles IX. created him Knight of the Order of St. Michael, and at a later period gave him an appointment at Court, and employed him on more than one occasion in important business. He died in 1592. His Essays are the most widely known of his writings. He also published a translation of Seboude's Natural Philosophy, and an edition of the works of his friend La Boetie. [The following passage is taken from John Ftorio's translation of the Essays, published in 1603.] OF THE INSTITUTION AND EDUCATION OF CHILDREN. To the Lady Diana of Foix, Countess of Gurson. MADAM, Learning joined with true knowledge is an especial and graceful ornament, and an implement of wonderful use and consequence, namely, in persons raised to that degree of fortune wherein you are. And, in good truth, Learning hath not her own true form, nor can she make show of her beauteous lineaments, if she fall into the hands of base and vile persons. For, as famous Torquato Tasso sayeth : Philosophy being a rich and noble queen, and knowing her own worth, graciously smileth upon, and lovingly embraceth princes and noble men, if they become suitors to her, admitting them as her minions, and gently affording them all the favours she can ; whereas, upon the contrary, if she be wooed and sued unto by clowns, mechanical fellows, and such base kind of people, she holds herself disparaged and disgraced, as holding no proportion with them. So, noble Lady, forasmuch as I cannot persuade myself, that you will either forget or neglect this point, concerning the institution of yours, especially having tasted the sweetness thereof, and being descended of so noble and learned a race for we yet possess the learned compositions of the ancient and noble Earls of Foix, from whose heroic loins your husband and you take your offspring : and Francis, Lord of Cardale, your G 42 HALF HO URS WITH FRENCH A UTH ORS. worthy uncle, doth daily bring forth such fruits thereof, as the know- ledge of the matchless quality of your house shall hereafter extend itself to many ages ; I will therefore make you acquainted with one conceit of mine, which, contrary to the common use, I hold, and that is all I am able to afford you concerning that matter. The charge of the tutor which you shall appoint your son, in the choice of whom consisteth the whole substance of his education, and bringing up, on which are many branches depending, which (forasmuch as I can add nothing of any moment to it) I will not touch at all ; and for that point, wherein I presume to advise him, he may so far give credit unto it, as he shall see just cause. To a gentleman born of noble parentage, and heir of a house, that aimeth at true learning and in it would be disciplined, not so much for gain or commodity to himself (because so abject an end is far unworthy the grace and favour of the Muses, and besides, hath a regard or dependency of others), nor for external show and ornament, but to adorn and enrich his inward mind, desiring rather to shape and institute an able and sufficient man, than a bare learned man. My desire is, therefore, that the parents and overseers of such a gentleman be very circumspect, and careful in choosing his director, whom I would rather commend for having a well- composed and temperate brain, than a full-stuffed head, yet both will do well. And I would rather prefer wisdom, judgment, civil customs, modest behaviour, than bare and mere literal learning ; and that in his charge he hold a new course. Some never cease brawling in their scholars' ears (as if they were still pouring in a tonell) to follow their book, yet is their charge nothing else, but to repeat what hath been told them before. I would have a tutor to correct this part, and that at first entrance, according to the capacity of the wit he hath in hand, he should begin to make show of it, making him to have a smack of all things, and how to choose and distinguish them, without help of others, sometimes opening him the way, other times allowing him to open it by himself. I would not have him to invent and speak alone, but suffer his disciple to speak when his turn cometh. Socrates, and after him, Arcesilaus, made their scholars speak first, and then would speak themselves. " Obest plerumque iis qui discere volunt, auctoritas eorum, qui docent." " Most commonly the authority of them that teach, hinders them that would learn." It is therefore meet, that he make him first trot on before him, whereby he may the better judge of his pace, and so guess how long he will hold out, that, accordingly, he may fit his strength : for want of which MONTAIGNE. 43 proportion we often mar all. And to know how to make a good choice, and how far forth one may proceed (still keeping a due measure), is one of the hardest labours I know. It is a sign of a noble, and effect of an undaunted spirit to know how to second, and how far he shall condescend to his childish proceedings, and how to guide them. As for myself, I can better, and with more strength, walk up than down a hill. Those which, according to pur common fashion, undertake with one self-same lesson, and like manner of education, to direct many spirits of diverse forms and different humours, it is no marvel if, among a multitude of children, they scarce meet with two or three that reap any good fruit by their discipline, or that come to any perfection. I would not only have him to demand an account of the words contained in his lesson, but of the sense and substance thereof, and judge of the profit he hath made of it, not by the testimony of his memory, but by the witness of his life. For if, by his own discourse, he embrace the opinions of Xenophon, or of Plato, they shall be no longer theirs, but his. Truth and reason are common to all, and are no more proper unto him that spake them heretofore, than unto him that shall speak them hereafter. And it is no more according to Plato's opinion than to mine, since both he and I understand and see alike. The bees do here and there suck this, and cull that flower, but afterward they produce the honey which is peculiarly their own ; then is it no more thyme or marjoram. So of pieces borrowed of others, he may lawfully alter, transform, and confound them, to shape out of them a perfect piece of work, altogether his own ; always provided his judgment, his travail, study, and institution, tend to nothing but to frame the same perfect. Let him hardly conceal, where or whence he hath had any help, and make no show of anything but of that which he hath himself made. Pirates and borrowers make a show of their purchases and buildings, but not of that which they have taken from others : you see not the secret fees or bribes lawyers take of their clients, but you shall manifestly discover the alliances they make, the honours they get for their children, and the goodly houses they build. No man makes open show of his receipts, but every one of his gettings. The good that comes of study (or at least should come), is to prove better, wiser, and honester. Moreover, we see it received, as a common opinion of the wiser sort, that it agreeth not with reason, that a child be always nuzzled, cock- ered, and dandled, and brought up in his parent's lap or sight ; forso- much as their natural kindness, or, as I may call it, tender fondness, causeth often, even the wisest, to prove so idle, so over-nice, and so base- 44 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. minded. For parents are not capable, .neither can they find in their hearts to see them checked, corrected, or chastised, nor endure to see them brought up so meanly, and so far from daintiness, and many times so dangerously, as they must needs be. And it would grieve them to, see their children come home from those exercises that a gentleman must needs acquaint himself with, sometimes all wet and bemired, other times sweaty and full of dust, and to drink, being either extreme hot or exceeding cold ; and it would trouble them to see him ride a rough, untamed horse, or with his weapon furiously encounter a skilful fencer, or to handle and shoot off a harquebuse ; against which there is no remedy, if he will make him prove a sufficient, complete, or honest man : he must not be spared in his youth ; and it will often come to pass that he will have to shock the rules of physic. " Vitamque sub dio et trepidis agat in rebus." " Lead he his life in open air, And in affairs full of despair." It is not sufficient to make his mind strong, his muscles must also be strengthened : the mind is overborne if it be not seconded ; and it is too much for her alone to discharge two offices. I would have the exterior demeanour, or decency, and the disposition of hjs person, to be fashioned together with his mind : for it is not a mind, it is not a body, we erect, but it is a man, and we must not make two parts of him. And as Plato saith, they must not be erected one without another, but equally be directed, no otherwise than a couple of horses matched to draw in one self-same team. And to hear him, doth he not seem to employ more time and care in the exercises of his body$ and to think that the mind is together with the same exercised, and not the contrary ? As for other matters, this institution ought to be directed by a sweet severe mildness. Not as some do who, in lieu of gently bidding children to the banquet of letters, present them with nothing but horror and cruelty. Let me have this violence and compulsion removed ; there is nothing that, in me seeming, doth more bastardize and dizzy a well-born and gentle nature. If you would have him stand in awe of shame and punishment, do not so much inure him to it ; accustom him patiently to endure sweat and cold, the sharpness of the wind and heat of the sun, and how to despise all hazards. Remove from him all niceness and quaintness in clothing, in lying, in eating, and in drinking ; fashion him to all things, that he prove not a fair and puling boy, but a lusty and vigorous boy. When I MONTAIGNE. 45 was a child, being a man, and now I am old, I have ever judged and believed the same. But amongst other things, I could never away with this kind of discipline used in most of our colleges. It had peradventure been less hurtful, if they had somewhat inclined to mildness or gentle entreaties. It is a very prison of captivated youth, and proves dissolute in punishing it before it be so. Come upon them when they are going to their lesson, and you hear nothing but whipping and brawling, both of children tormented and masters besotted with anger and chasing. How wide are they which go about to allure a child's mind to go to his book, being yet but tender and fearful, with a stern frowning countenance and with hands full of rods ! Oh, wicked and pernicious manner of teaching ! which Quintilian hath very well noted: that this imperious kind of authority namely, this way of punishing children draws many dan- gerous inconveniences with it. How much more decent were it, to see their school-houses and forms strewed with green boughs and flowers than with bloody birchen twigs ? If it lay in me, I would do as the philosopher Speusippus did, who caused the pictures of gladness and joy, of Flora and the Graces, to be set up round about his school-house. Where their profit lieth, there should also be their recreation. Those meats ought to be sugared over that are healthful to children's stomachs, and those made bitter that are hurtful for them. SECOND PART. WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. MALHERBE. FRANCOIS MALHERBE was descended, as he loved to boast, from a family of noble extraction. He was born in 1555, at Caen, and was sent to school at Paris. In 1576 he took service under Henry of Angouleme, Governor of Provence, and remained with him for some years, but in 1586 he lost his protector by death, and returned to his native town. At this time he had already made himself known by the publication of his Bouquet de Fleurs de Seneque, These poems were written during the first years of the reign of Henry III, when he seems to have been deeply saddened by the misery caused by the civil wars. This volume was followed by the Larmes de Saint Pierre, and other poems. His fame had now reached the ears of the king, Henry IV, and Malherbe, having been presented to him, was desired to take up his abode at Paris, and to remain near the court. Here he was soon recognised as the first poet and prose writer of his time, and assumed the position of leader and reformer in the literary world. It was about 1606 that he began to write the series of Letters to M. de Peiresc, from which the following extract is taken. On the occasion of the king's assassination, he composed some of his best and most touching verses, and was rewarded by a liberal pension from the queen. He died at Paris in 1628. THE ASSASSINATION OF HENRY IV. Paris, Wednesday, May lyt/i, 1610. ON Thursday evening, on returning from the queen's coronation, a man named La Brosse, who had been physician to M. de Soissons, told M. de Vendome that he might warn the king that he would be exposed to a great danger next day ; that if he escaped he would go on for five-and-twenty years more. This warning was given to the MALHERBE. 47 king by M. de Vendome, but he only laughed at it, and thought it was like an infinite number of others that he had received on the same subject. His reply was, " He is a fool, and you are another." The next morning, whether he thought of this warning or not, he prayed most earnestly, and even had his missal brought to him in bed ; then he went to the Tuileries as he was used to do, and heard mass at the Feuillants. After dinner he was in the queen's cabinet for some time, and played a thousand jokes with Madame de Guise and Madame de la Chastre. Madame de Guise went out to see about some law business, and he, a little time after, to go to the arsenal. He considered for a long time if he should go out, and several times said to the queen, " My dear, shall I go or not,? " He even went out two or three times, and then all at once returned and said to the queen, " My dear, shall I still go ? " and still hesitated whether to go or stay. At last he determined to go, and having kissed the queen several times, bade her farewell ; and among other things, they noticed that he said to her, " I shall only go there and back, and shall be here again in less than an hour." When he reached the bottom of the staircase, where his carriage was waiting for him, M. de Praslin, the captain of his guards, intended to follow him. He said, " Go away, I do not want anybody, go to your business." So, having only a few gentlemen and lackeys around him, he entered his carriage, took the left-hand place on the back seat, and made M. d'Espernon take the right ; at his side, by the door, were M. de Montbazon and M. de la Force ; by the door on M. d'Espernon's side, M. le Marechal de Lavardin and M. de Crequi; in front, M. le Marquis de Mirebeau and the principal equerry. When he reached the Croix du Tiroir, they asked him where he wished to go, and he gave the order to drive towards Saint Innocent. Having arrived at the Rue de la Ferronnerie at the end of the Rue Saint Honor6, to get to that of Saint Denys, before the Salamandre, they met a cart, and this obliged the king's carriage to pass nearer the ironmongers' shops on the Saint Innocent side, and even to go rather more slowly, without stopping however, whatever one, who was in a hurry to print a description of it, may have written to this effect. There it was that an abominable assassin, who had stationed himself up against the next shop, that of the Crowned Heart pierced by an arrow, threw himself on the king, and struck two blows with a knife, one after another. One stroke, between the armpit and breast, went upwards, and glided off without doing any harm; the other entered between the fifth and sixth ribs, and going downwards, divided one of the great arteries. The king unfortunately, 48 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. and as if to offer every opportunity to this monster, had his left hand on the shoulder of M. de Montbazon, and with the other was leaning on M. d'Espernon, whom he was speaking to. He uttered some little exclamation and moved once or twice. M. de Montbazon having asked him, "What is it, sire?" he answered, "Nothing, nothing," twice, but the last time he spoke so low that they could not hear him. These are the only words he uttered after he was wounded. The carriage turned directly towards the Louvre. They gave him some wine when he came to the foot of the staircase where he had entered the carriage, namely, that which led to the queen's apartment. Probably some one had run on to carry the news. The Sieur de Cerisy, lieutenant of M. de Pras- lin's company, having raised his head, he opened his eyes a little, then closed them immediately, and never opened them again. He was carried upstairs by M. de Montbazon, Count de Curson en Quercy, and placed on the bed in his cabinet, and about two he was laid on the bed in his room, where he was left all the next day and Sunday, and every one went and sprinkled him with holy water. I need not describe the grief of the queen ; that may be imagined. As for the people of Paris, I think they never shed so many tears as they did on that occasion. The rascal is a native of Angouleme, named Francois de Ravaillac, about thirty-five years of age, with a red beard and black hair ; he is extremely determined, and till now, except this morning, has said nothing. They do not say what he has said. People speak so differ- ently of him, that I hardly know what to say. M. d'Aix has seen him, to whom he replied in such a way that they say he did not think it well to make him talk too much. He was seized with certain papers upon him, full of crosses and unknown characters. M. de Vitri, who had him in charge at first, says that he Jiad one such, at the top of which was written, " Verses that prevent the pains of torture being felt." He says that he could not have ventured any other day than Friday, but that he thought the opportunity too good to be lost. He says that for a very long time he had determined to do it, and had changed his mind several times, but that the idea had always returned to him. According to what he says, he has several times confessed that he intended to commit murder, although he never told his confessors that it was the king, forasmuch as he knew that, in a matter of high treason, they would disclose it. He has named among his confessors a Jesuit named Father d'Aubigny. He was a monk of the order of St. Bernard for three years, but having had some vision, which he revealed to the monks, they expelled him from their monastery. THE ASSASSINATION OF HENRY IV. MALHERBE. 49 Preparations are being made for the king's funeral. I think the effigy will be laid in state next Friday. This ceremony will be per- formed at the Tuileries, to prevent the crowd from coming to the Louvre ; and besides, it is better that it should not take place where the new king is. For the present, the body of the king is laid upon a leaden bier, in the room between the cabinets and the gallery, on a bed covered with a cloth of gold, with a cross of white satin ; two archers in white coats, one on one side and the other on the other, are at the bed's head ; and at the foot two heralds with their coats of arms, which are the same as they bore at the coronation. On the right side of the bed is an altar, at which mass is said every day, and on both sides of the bed there are always some monks praying. The king, Henry III, will be buried four or five days before ; * it was proposed that they should both be buried at the same time, but the queen would not have it. I believe, when it is all over, the king will make his entry. All the arches that had been put up remain, only the pictures have been taken out of them. I am tired of writing, but nevertheless I will tell you that M. de Guise has protested to the queen that he will no longer allow M. de Vendome to take precedence of him, and that he only allowed it before out of respect to the king. This also reminds me of one of the points in the harangue made by the first president when the queen was made regent, namely, that the age and experience of the late king, the good that he had done to France in extricating her from much misery, had been the reason why they had passed many acts in Parliament opposed to the good of the people ; but in future, if such acts were presented to them, they prayed the king and queen to excuse them if they treated them in a different manner. M. de Sully has been advised to resign his offices I he says he wishes to do so ; his friends urge him, and it is believed that he will, although the queen has confirmed him in them. * The body of Henry III had been kept unburied by Henry IV, in consequence of a prophecy to the effect that his own funeral would follow that of his predecessor within a few days. SULLY. MAXIMILIAN DE BETHUNE, Duke of Sully, the famous minister of Henry IV, was the son of the Baron de Rosny, whose family belonged to a younger branch of the house of Flanders. He was educated in the doctrines of the Reformed faith, and at an early age went to Paris in the train of the Queen of Navarre, when she repaired to that town in 1572, to be present at the marriage of her son with the sister of Charles IX. He narrowly escaped death on the terrible day of St. Bartholomew, and attended the King of Navarre in his escape from the French court. From that time he served him in the double capacity of soldier and statesman as the circumstances of the king required. After Henry's accession to the throne of France he continued in his service, and held the office of Minister of Finance during the last twelve years of his reign. After the assassination of Henry IV. he quitted public life and spent the remainder of his days in ease and tranquillity. He died at the Castle of Villebon, in 1641, at the age of eighty-two. The Mimoires of Sully rank among the most interesting and authentic books of French history, and contain an account of the events that occurred jn France between 1570 1610. The following passages are taken from the translations by Mrs. Lennox, published in 1756. QUEEN ELIZABETH AND SULLY. THE Queen of England hearing the king was at Calais, thought it a favourable opportunity to satisfy her impatience of seeing and embracing her best friend. Henry was not less desirous of this interview, that he might confer Vith the queen upon the affairs of Europe in general, as well as on their own in particular, especially those which had been hinted to him by the English and the Dutch ambassadors when he was at Nantz. Elizabeth first wrote him a letter equally polite and full of offers of service ; she afterwards made the usual compliments, and re- peated those assurances by the Lord Edmondes,* whom she despatched to Calais, till she herself could arrive at Dover, from whence she sent M. de Stafford, Lord Sidney,t with other letters. Henry, resolving not to be outdone in complaisance, answered these advances in a manner that showed at once his respect for Elizabeth, * He means Sir Thomas Edmondes. f The, person here styled " Stafford, Lord Sidney," was _Sir Robert Sidney, the younger brother of the illustrious Sir Philip. SULLY. 51 and his esteem and admiration of her character. This intercourse con- tinued a long time, to the great mortification of the Spaniards, whose jealousy was strongly excited by the proximity and close correspond- ence of the two sovereigns. Of all the letters written by them on this occasion, I possess only one of those which Elizabeth wrote to the king ; this, because it was the occasion of the voyage I made to this princess, I have kept in my hands ; it was as follows : " My very dear and well-beloved Brother, I had always considered the conditions of sovereigns to be the most happy, and that they were the least subject to meet with obstacles in the way of their just and legitimate desires ; but our residence in two places so near each other makes me begin to think, that those of high as well as of middle rank often meet with thorns and difficulties, since, from certain causes and considerations, rather to satisfy others than ourselves, we are both prevented from crossing the sea ; for I had promised myself the happiness of embracing you, as being your very loyal sister and faithful ally, and you my very dear brother whom I love and honour above everything in this world, whose incomparable virtues (to tell you my real sentiments) I admire, and particularly your valour in arms, and politeness and gallantry amongst the fair sex. I have something of consequence to communicate to you, which I can neither write nor confide to any of your ministers, nor my own at present, so that, in expectation of a more convenient opportunity, I shall return to London in a few days. That God may continue to you, my very dear and well- beloved brother, His holy favours and blessing, is the prayer of your most affectionate sister and loyal ally, " ELIZABETH." When the king received this letter, he read it over two or three times with great satisfaction, and took particular notice of the latter part of it ; but being at a loss how to interpret it, he sent Secretary Feret for me, and as soon as I went to him, he said to me, " I have just received a letter from my good sister, the Queen of England, whom you esteem so highly, more full of cajoleries than ever; pray see if, from your knowledge of her character, you can comprehend better than me what she means by the conclusion of this letter." Having read it over several times, but being obliged to confess I could not comprehend it, " Well, my friend," said his Majesty, " I will not conceal from you, that I am very anxious to know what this princess has in view by these expressions ; for, in my opinion, she has not employed them without 52 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. very particular reasons. T have, therefore, thought of an expedient by which, perhaps, we may come to a knowledge of her meaning, without doing anything that can give offence to either party : this is, for you to set out to-morrow morning for Dover, as if by your own inclination, and on your arrival there to make a show of not wishing to stop, but of passing on to London, for the purpose of seeing the country ; so that, should you meet with any person of your acquaintance, the queen may be informed that you are in Dover, to watch what she will do ; and should she send for you, it is probable you may discover some part of her sentiments in the course of your conversation together." I accordingly embarked early next morning, in a small boat with very few attendants, without mentioning my journey to any one, and reached Dover about ten o'clock, where I saw a great number of people, some embarking, others landing, and many walking upon the beach ; six or seven of the latter advanced towards me, one of whom was Lord Sidney, who, having five or six days before seen me at Calais, immediately recognised me, and ran to embrace me ; with him were Cobham, Raleigh, and Griffin, and they were soon after joined by the Earls of Devonshire and Pembroke, who, after mutual civilities and compliments, asked me if I were come to see the queen on the part of my master. I told them I was not, and even assured them that the king knew nothing of my voyage ; I likewise entreated them not to mention it to the queen, for not having had any intention of paying my respects to her I had no letter to present, my design being only to make a short tour incognito to London. These gentlemen replied smiling, that I had taken a useless precaution, for that probably the guard-ship had already given a signal of my arrival, and that I might quickly expect to see a messenger from the queen, who would not suffer me to pass in this manner, she having but three days ago spoken of me publicly and in very obliging terms. I affected to be extremely concerned at this unlucky accident, but to hope nevertheless, that I might still pass undiscovered, provided that these gentlemen would be secret as to the place where I was to lodge ; from whence, I assured them, I would immediately depart as soon as I had taken a little refreshment. Saying this I left them abruptly, and had but just entered my apartment, and spoken a few words to one of my secretaries, when I heard some one behind me tell me that he arrested me as a prisoner to the queen. This was the captain of her Majesty's guards, whom I embraced, and answered smiling, that I should esteem such imprison- SULL Y. 53 ment a great honour. He had orders to conduct me directly to the queen ; I therefore followed him. As soon as Elizabeth perceived me, she exclaimed, " Well, Monsieur de Rosny, and do you thus break our fences, and pass on without coming to see me ? I am greatly surprised at it, for I thought you bore me more affection than any of my own servants, and I am persuaded that I have given you no cause to change those sentiments." I replied that her Majesty had always so highly honoured me, and testified so much good-will towards me, that I loved and honoured her for her excellent virtues, and would always serve her most humbly, not merely from my own inclination, but also from knowing that, in doing so, I was rendering an acceptable service to my king. After many more expressions of this sort, the queen replied, " Well, Monsieur de Rosny, to give you a proof that I believe all you have told me of the good-will of the king, my brother, and of your own, I will speak with you on the subject of the last letter I wrote to him, though perhaps you have seen it, for Stafford and Edmondes tell me, that the king conceals few of his secrets from you." On telling her I was not ignorant of the letter, she immediately answered that she was glad! of it, and also that I had crossed the sea, because she had no difficulty to tell me freely what she had hinted at in the conclusion of her letter. She then drew me aside, and conversed with me a long time on the greater part of the events which had happened since the peace of Vervins (too long to be repeated here), and concluded with asking if her good brother the king's affairs were now in a better state than in 1598, and if he were in a condition to begin, in good earnest, the great design which she had proposed from that time ? To this I replied, that although, since that period, the king had had many weighty affairs to settle, as well in relation to the war in Savoy, as to several plots in the heart of the kingdom, which were not yet entirely destroyed, all which had occasioned very heavy expenses, yet I had nevertheless so managed the revenue, and other departments of the state, that a numerous artillery had been provided, as well as abundance of stores and provisions and even of money ; but thaf all this, however, was not sufficient to advise him to bear alone the burden of an open war against the whole house of Austria, who was so powerful, that it would be in vain to attack her partially ; that it even appeared to me, that the assistance of England and the States only was by no means sufficient for the commencement of so great a work, but that it was absolutely necessary to endeavour to. form a coalition of all the other kings, princes, republics, and people who dreaded the tyranny of that house, or would profit by its. "54 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. humiliation. The queen here told me she was very happy she had heard my sentiments on this subject, and the more so as she believed that I had not said so much without knowing something of the intentions of the king her brother, with which in this case hers would perfectly agree, by only adding certain conditions which she considered as absolutely necessary to prevent misunderstanding and distrust among the coalesced Powers ; these in her opinion would be, to proportion so well the desires of each that none might be entertained either prejudicial or disagreeable to any of the rest, which would inevitably happen if the more powerful wished to take the greatest share of the conquests and the distribution of them ; and that, above all things, it was necessary that neither her brother, the King of France, nor the King of Scotland, who would certainly inherit her crown, nor those of Denmark and Sweden, who might become very powerful both by land and sea, nor herself, consequently, should pretend to claim any portion of the seventeen provinces of the Low Countries, nor any place in their neighbourhood. " For, to conceal nothing from you," continued the queen, " if my brother the King of France should think of making himself proprietor, or even only feudal Lord of the United Provinces, I should never consent to it, but entertain a most violent jealousy of him ; nor should I blame him, if, giving him the same occasion, he should have the same fears of me ; and so of all the other States and dignities of which the ambitious house of Austria may be deprived." These were not the only reflections made by the Queen of England ; she said many other things, which appeared to me so wise and sensible, that I was filled with astonishment and admiration. The queen observing my eyes attentively fixed on her without speaking, imagined she had expressed herself so confusedly in some- thing she had said, that I was unable to comprehend her meaning. But when I ingenuously confessed to her the true cause of my silence and surprise, she then, without scruple, entered into the most minute parts of the design. But as I shall have ample occasion to treat of this in relating the great schemes which were prevented by the untimely death of Henry IV, I shall not trouble the reader with useless repetitions ; but in this place just show the five principal points to which her Majesty reduced so extensive a scheme, as from the sequel of these Memoirs this will appear to have been. The first was, to restore Germany to its ancient liberty, in respect to the election of its emperors, and the nomination of a King of the Romans. The second, to render the United Provinces SULLY. 55 absolutely independent of Spain ; and to form them into a republic, by annexing to them, if necessary, some provinces dismembered from Germany. The third, to do the same in regard to Switzerland, by incorporating with it some of the adjacent provinces, particularly Alsace and Franche Comte. The fourth, to divide all Christendom into a certain number of Powers, as equal as might be. The fifth, to reduce all the various religions in it under those three which should appear to be most numerous and considerable in Europe. Our conference was very long ; I cannot bestow praises upon the Queen of England that would be equal to the merit which I discovered in her in this short time, both as to the qualities of the heart and the understanding. I gave an exact relation of everything that passed between us to the king, who very highly approved of all she had said to me. Their majesties corresponded by letters during the rest of the time they stayed at Dover and Calais. All preliminaries were agreed on ; measures were taken even on the grand object of the design, but with such secrecy, that the whole of this affair remained to the death of the king, and even much longer, among the number of those on which only various and uncertain conjectures are formed. THE BATTLE OF IVRY. WHAT gave the victory to the weaker party (in the battle of Ivry), was the valour of the Marshal d'Aumont, who prevented the entire defeat of the light horse ; the great difference between the enemy's manner of using their artillery and ours ; and, above all, the uncommon abilities of the king (which were never so perfectly known as in the day of battle), in the disposition of his troops, rallying them, their discipline, and their prompt and entire obedience. It is certain the Duke of Mayenne and the Count of Egrrtont, who were at the head of the Spaniards, imagined that if the king Ventured to wait for them, the victory would be theirs ; and that if he yielded or gave ground before them as they expected, they depended upon nothing less than forcing him out of whatever place he should retreat to, and thus finish the war by a single blow. With such dispositions, what must be the consequence ? I say nothing of the generals, who alone are worth many thousand men. The stronger party never makes use 56 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. of those precautions that are necessary against an enemy of equal strength ; and the weaker never forms a resolution to defend itself against a more numerous army, without determining likewise to supply, by valour and address, the deficiency of numbers. Danger, which inspires a courage animated by glory and difficulties, reduces both sides to a kind of equality. The king's squadron in which I was had the attacks of the Count of Egmont to sustain, who fell upon us with his own squadron, and another of a thousand or twelve hundred German horse. It is true, the Germans, who professed the same religion as our soldiers, fired their pieces in the air; but the Count of Egmont behaved like a man who was resolved to conquer. He charged us with such fury, that, notwith- standing the desertion of the Germans, after a terrible fire, and an encounter which lasted a full quarter of an hour, in which the ground was covered with dead bodies, the left of our squadron fled, and the right was broken and gave ground. At the first onset my horse was wounded by a musket-shot, which passed through his nostrils, and struck his shoulder, and soon after a thrust of a spear carried away a large piece of the skin of his belly, and part of the thick of my leg. I received another wound in my hand ; a pistol shot gave me a third, more considerable ; the ball entered my hip, and came out near my groin. While I was in this condition, I was relieved by the kindness of my equerry, who brought me another horse, upon which I mounted, though with great difficulty. At a second charge, this horse was likewise slain, and in the same moment I received a pistol-shot in the thigh, and a cut with a sword on the head. I fell to the earth, and with my senses lost all the remaining part of the action, which, from the advantage the Count of Egmont had already gained, boded no good to us. All I know is, that a long time after, recovering my senses, I saw neither enemies, nor any of my domestics near me, whom terror and the disorder had dispersed ; another presage which appeared to me no less unfavourable. I retired without a head-piece, and almost without armour, for mine had been battered to pieces. In this condition I saw a trooper of the enemy's running towards me, with an intention to take away my life. By good fortune, I found myself near a pear tree, to which I crept, and with that little motion I was still able to exert, made such good use of the branches, which were extremely low, that I evaded all my adversary's attempts and kept him at a distance, till, being weary with turning round the tree, he at last quitted me. Feuquieres had not the like good fortune : he was killed that moment SULLY. 57 before my eyes. Just then La Rocheforet (who has since become one of my attendants) passing by, I asked him for a little nag which he was leading, and paid him for it on the spot, thirty crowns ; for it was always my opinion that on such occasions it is proper to carry a little money about one. Thus mounted, I was going to learn news of the battle, when I saw seven of the enemy approach, one of whom carried the white standard belonging to the Duke of Mayenne. I thought it impossible to escape this new danger, and upon their crying out " Qui vive ? " I told my name, as being ready to surrender myself a prisoner ; but how was I astonished when, instead of attacking me, I found four of these persons entreating me to receive them as prisoners, and to save their lives ; and while they ranged themselves about me, appear rejoiced at the meeting ! I granted their request ; and it seemed so surprising to me that four men unhurt, and well armed, should surrender themselves to a single man, disarmed, covered with his own blood, mounted upon a little paltry nag, and scarce able to support himself, that I was tempted to take all I saw for an illusion. But I was soon convinced of the truth of it. My prisoners (since they would be so) made themselves known to be Messieurs de Chataigneraie, de Sigogne, de Chanteloup, and d'Anfreville. They told me that the Duke of Mayenne had lost the battle ; that the king was that instant in pursuit of the vanquished, which had obliged them to surrender for fear of falling into worse hands, their horses not being in a condition to carry them out of danger : at the same time Sigogne, in token of surrender, presented me with the white standard. The three others, who were the Duke of Nemours, the Chevalier d'Aumale, and Tremont, not seeming inclined to surrender, I endeavoured to persuade them to do so, but in vain. After recommending their companions to me^ seeing a body of the king's troops advance, they rode away, and showed me that their horses were still vigorous enough to bear them from their enemies. I advanced with my prisoners towards a battalion of Swiss, and meeting one of the king's chief pages, I gave him the standard, as I was not able to carry it any longer on account of my wounds. I now saw more plainly the marks of our victory : the field was full of the fugitive leaguers and Spaniards, and the victorious army of the king pursuing and scattering the remains of the larger bodies, which had dispersed, and were again drawing together. The Swiss soldiers of the two armies meeting, bullied each other, with their pikes lowered, without striking a blow or making any other motion. I 58 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. The white standard embroidered with black flowers de luce, was known by every one to be that of the Guises, which they bore in memory and through horror of the assassination of Blois, and drew great numbers to it as a prey equally rich and honourable. The black velvet coats of my prisoners, which were covered with silver crosses, glittered from afar in the field. The first who flew to seize them, were Messieurs de Cambrai, de 1'Archant, du Rollet, de CreVecceur, de Palcheux, and de Brasseuse, who were joined by the Count de Torigny. I advanced towards them, and, supposing they would not know my face, disfigured by blood and dust, I named myself. The Count de Torigny no sooner knew La Chataigneraie, who was his relation, than, judging that, in the condition he saw me, I should not be able to preserve my prisoners from insult, he entreated me to give Chataigneraie to his care, for whom, he said, he would be answerable. I readily granted his request, yet it was with regret that I saw him go away. What Torigny did through a principle of friendship had a fatal consequence for the unhappy Chataigneraie : some moments after he was known by three men belonging to d'O's company, who had been guard to Henry III, who, levelling their pieces at him, shot him dead, crying out, "'Sdeath! thou traitor to thy king, whom thou didst murder, and triumphed in the deed." This I learned from the Count de Torigny himself, when I inquired of him respecting my prisoner, whose ransom, many persons said, he was bound to pay me, and even advised me to demand it of him ; but I did not choose to do this, as well from Chataigneraie having been my particular friend, as from the affliction I knew Torigny felt at his unhappy fate. I soon saw myself surrounded by many persons, amongst whom there w r as not one that did not envy my good fortune. D'Andelot came after the rest, and, passing through the crowd, perceived Sigogne, and the page who carried the standard. He was preparing to seize it, believing his good fortune had preserved this prize for him, when a report that the enemy had rallied obliged him to depart abruptly. I had not time to undeceive him ; for after he had bid the page keep the standard for him, he suddenly disappeared. The news was found to be false, and had no other foundation than the arrival of two hundred soldiers from Picardy, which Messieurs de Mouy and de la Boissiere had brought to the Duke of Mayenne. Being now disengaged from the crowd, and finding myself in need of help, especially for the wound in my hip, by which I lost a great deal of blood, I advanced with my prize to the head of Vignole's regiment, SULL Y. 59 which had behaved bravely in the battle. Here, fearing- no further surprise, I asked for a surgeon to bind up my wound, and desired some wine to prevent fainting, which I found coming upon me. My strength being a little renewed, I got to Anet, the keeper of which gave me an apartment, where I caused the first dressing to be put on my wounds, in the presence of the Marshal Biron, who spent a few moments there after my arrival, and took some refreshment in my chamber ; he was conducting the corps de reserve, which he commanded, to the king, who, without stopping after his victory, had passed the river Eure, in pursuit of the enemy, and, as I was told, took the road at last to Rosny, where he lay the same night. After the Marshal Biron was gone, d'Andelot arrived at Anet, full of resentment against me for taking away his prize, for so he thought it. He entered my chamber attended by five or six armed men, and, with an air equally fierce and insulting, demanded an explanation, or rather, sought to do himself justice; for, perceiving the white standard, which with that belonging to my company had been placed at the head of my bed, he would have taken possession of it by force, without attending to what I said. I changed my tone immediately, and high words passed between us. In the condition in which I was, I could do no more. But he, speaking with fury and making use of threats, the noise drew fifteen or twenty of my troopers into the chamber, at the sight of whom d'Andelot, restraining his rage, went out, commanding Sigogne to follow him, which he refused, and endeavoured, but in vain, to make him comprehend the injustice of his pretensions. The next morning I was carried by water to Passy, intending to go to Rosny, to finish my cure. On my arrival at Passy I learned that part of the soldiers of my train, and my valets, with all my baggage, had retired thither, not knowing what was become of me, and intimidated by a report which was spread, that the king had lost the battle. Being apprehensive of the reproaches I might make them, they kept them- selves concealed. I caused them to be sought for, but they were so ashamed of their cowardice, that the following night they fled away on foot, leaving in a stable four of their own horses, which, after all search had been made for their owners, but in vain, I ordered to be sold, and distributed the money among such of their wounded companions as were least able to pay for medical aid. As I was not in a condition to mount a horse, I ordered a kind of litter, composed of the branches of trees, with the bark on, fastened 60 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. together by the hoops of some casks, to be made for me in haste, as I learnt that Mantes (to the government of which I had a claim) had capitulated, and travelled by Beurons, to avoid the ascents and declivities of Rougevoie and Chatillon. Maignan, who was a youth of a lively imagination, thought proper to give this journey the air of a little triumph : two of the grooms of my stable were at the head of this train, each leading two of my finest horses; they were followed by two of my pages, one of whom rode my horse which was first wounded in the battle, as already mentioned, and which, running about the field v of battle, was fortunately known by three of my arquebusiers. This page carried my cuirass and the Duke of Mayenne's standard ; the other bore my bracelets and my helmet, so bruised that it was no longer of any use. My equerry, the contriver of this diverting scene, marched next, with his head bound up, and his arm in a scarf; he was followed by Moreines, my valet de chambre, dressed in my coat of orange-coloured velvet, spangled with silver, and mounted upon my English nag, holding in his hand, as a trophy, a bundle of the shivers of my pistols, the broken pieces of my swords, and the tattered remains of my plume of feathers. The litter on which I lay came next, covered only with a cloth, upon which they had hung the black velvet coats of my prisoners, with their plumes, and pieces of their pistols and swords at the four corners. The prisoners themselves followed my litter, and preceded the rest of my domestics ; after whom, ranged in order, came my own company of soldiers, and the march was closed with James and Badet's two companies of arque- busiers. They had suffered so much in the battle, that there was not one of them who had not his head bound up, and his arm in a scarf ; and some of these brave soldiers were even obliged to be carried by their companions. When we came near Beurons, we perceived all the plain covered with horses and dogs, and presently the king himself, who, after a slight repast, had returned from Rosny to Mantes, and was hunting there in my chase. This little ovation seemed to please him ; he thought it very happily disposed, and smiled at the vanity of Maignan, who had the honour of being known to the king, ever since his father, who was a very brave man, had made himself remarkable at the taking of Eause. The king approached my litter, and in the sight of his whole train disdained not to give me such proofs of tenderness and concern, as (if I may be allowed the expression) one friend would do to another. I could not express my gratitude by throwing myself at his feet, but SULLY. 61 I assured him, and with truth, that I would gladly suffer a thousand times more for his service. He inquired, with an obliging solicitude, whether all my wounds were of such a nature that I might hope to be cured without mutilating any part of my body, which he thought almost impossible, knowing that I had been thrown down senseless, and trampled under the horses' feet. When he was convinced that I had nothing to fear, he cast himself on my neck, and turning to the princes and noblemen who followed him, he said aloud, that he honoured me with the title of a true and honest knight, a title which, he said, he thought superior to that of a knight-companion of his orders. Being apprehensive that I should hurt myself by speaking too much, he put an end to this agreeable conversation, with his usual protestation, that I should share in whatever good fortune Heaven should send him ; and concluded by saying, " Farewell, my friend, take care of yourself, and, depend upon it, you have a good master ; " and without suffering me to reply, galloped off to pursue the chase about Mantes. ST. FRANgOIS DE SALES. SAINT FRANCOIS DE SALES was born at the castle of Sales, in the diocese of Geneva, in 1 567. He studied theology, philosophy, and Hebrew, at the college of the Jesuits, and then proceeded to Padua, to study law. He was appointed advocate to the Senate of Chambe'ry, but when the dignity of senator was offered him he refused it, and in 1593 gave up the profession of the law and took orders. He soon became known as an eloquent and persuasive preacher, and was sent forth as a missionary to the Zwinglians and Calvinists, to try and win them back to the Church of Rome. In 1602 he was made Bishop, of Geneva. He set himself diligently to work to improve the condition of his diocese, and refused the honours that were offered him by Henry IV. and Louis XIII, that he might devote himself entirely to his episcopal duties. He established the Order of the Visitation, and wrote many religious books. The two that are the best known are the TraM de V Amour de Dieu and the Introduction a la Vic Divote. He died at Lyons in 1622. The following extracts are taken from the Introduction. ON PASTIMES AND RECREATIONS. IT is necessary, sometimes, to relax our mind and also our body by some kind of recreation. St. John the Evangelist, says Cassian, was found one day by a hunter, holding a partridge on his wrist, which he amused himself by caressing. The hunter asked him why, being a man of such worth, he passed his time in things so low and contemptible. St. John said to him, " Why do you not carry your bow always strung ?" " For fear," replied the hunter, " that being always stretched, it should lose the power of being bent when it is wanted." " Do not be astonished, then," replied the apostle, " if I sometimes relax a little of the fixedness and application of my mind, to take a little recreation, in order that I may afterwards give myself with greater energy to contemplation." It is doubtless a mistake to be so harsh, wild, and savage, that one will neither take care of oneself, nor permit others any kind of recreation. To take the air, to walk, to converse with pleasant and amiable familiarity, to play on the lute, or any other instrument to sing, to hunt these are such innocent amusements that, to use them well, one has need only of common prudence, which gives to everything order, time, place, and measure. ST. FRANCOIS DE SALES. 63 The games which serve to renew the powers and industry of the body and mind as the games of raquets, ball, pell-mell, running at the ring, chess, and tables are recreations in themselves good and per- missible. It is only necessary to guard against excess, whether as to the time which one spends on them, or in the price which they cost us ; for if one spends too much time on them, it is no longer recreation, but occupation : one neither strengthens the mind nor body ; on the contrary, one weakens and exhausts them. Having played for five or six hours at chess, on going out one is quite spent, and weary in mind. To play for a long time at raquets, is not to recreate the body, but to exhaust it ; and if the prize, that is to say what one plays for, is too high, the affection of the players becomes weakened ; and besides that, it is unjust to put a high prize on talents and industry of so little importance and so little use, as are talents for games. But above all, take care, Philotheus, not to fix your attention on all these things ; because, however innocent a recreation may be, it is an error to set your heart and affections on it. I do not say that one ought not to take pleasure in playing while one plays ; for otherwise one would not refresh oneself by it ; but I say, that one ought not to set one's affections on it, as an object of desire, or solace, or anxiety. Games of dominoes, of cards, and such like, in which the gain depends chiefly on hazard, are not, like dancing, only dangerous recreations, but they are simply and naturally bad and blameable ; that is why they are forbidden as well by the civil as ecclesiastical laws. But what is the great harm in them, do you say to me ? The gain is not made in these games according to right, but according to the luck which often falls on those who have deserved nothing for talents or industry. But we have agreed to that, you will say to me ? That is sufficient to show that he who gains, does no wrong to the other ; but it does not follow that the agreement was not wrong, and the game also ; for the gain which ought to be the prize of industry, is made the prize of a luck which deserves no reward, since it in no way depends upon ourselves. Besides that, these games bear the name of recreations, and are made for that, and nevertheless they are violent occupations. For is it not like business, to keep the mind bound and stretched by a constant attention, and agitated by perpetual anxieties, fears, and apprehensions ? Can there be attention more sad, more gloomy, and melancholy than that of gamesters ? That is why one must' not speak over the 64 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH A UTHORS. game, one must not laugh, one must not cough, or they are exceedingly angry. Lastly, there is no joy in gaming unless one gains; and this joy is it not unrighteous, since it cannot be, but by the loss and grief of a companion ? This rejoicing is certainly infamous. For these three reasons gaming is forbidden. The great king, St. Louis, knowing that the Count of Anjou, his brother, and Messire Gautier de Nemours were gambling, got up, ill as he was, and went all tottering to their room, and there took the cards, the dominoes, and some of the money, and threw them out of window into the sea, blaming them severely. BALLS AND PASTIMES LAWFUL, BUT DANGEROUS. DANCES and balls are things indifferent in their nature, but, according to the ordinary way in which this exercise is managed, it greatly disposes people and inclines them to the side of evil, and, in consequence, is full of danger and peril. They are held at night ; and in the darkness and obscurity, it is easy to introduce many dark and vicious circumstances into an amusement that is very capable of evil. They make people sit up very late, and then the mornings of the following days are lost, and, in consequence, the means of serving God in the same. In a word, it is always folly to change day into night, light into darkness, good works into wanton actions. Everybody goes to the ball full of vanity and envy, and vanity has so great a tendency to bad passions, and to hurtful and improper affections, that dances easily produce everything of that kind. I talk of dances to you, Philotheus, as the doctors talk of mushrooms and toadstools ; the best are not worth anything, they say, and I say that the best balls are worth very little ; if, however, you must eat mushrooms, take care they are well prepared. If it happen that you cannot well excuse yourself, and are obliged to go to a ball, take care that you are well prepared for your dance. But how -must it be done ? With modesty, dignity, and good resolves. Eat little of them and eat seldom (say the doctors of mushrooms) ; for, however well prepared they may be, any quantity may act as poison. Dance little and dance seldom, Philotheus ; for if you do otherwise, you put yourself in danger of getting to like it. Mushrooms, according to Pliny, being spongy and porous, as they ST. FRANCOIS DE SALES. 65 are, easily attract all the poison around them ; so that, when near serpents, they imbibe their venom : balls, dances, and such dark assemblies, attract generally the vices and sins that prevail in a place ; the quarrels, envyings, the follies, the foolish loves. And as these exercises open the pores of the body in those who use them, so they open the pores of the heart. By means of which, if some serpent comes to whisper in the ear some wanton word some foolish, coaxing word or that some basilisk comes and casts immodest looks and glances of love, hearts are very easily possessed with them, and poisoned. O Philotheus, these silly recreations are generally dangerous ; they destroy the spirit of devotion, weaken the strength, chill the love, and awaken in the soul a thousand kin>ds of evil affections : that is why they must be used with great prudence. But, especially, they say that, after mushrooms, you must drink precious wine. And I say that, after dances, you need holy and good thoughts, to counteract the dangerous impressions that the vain pleasure you have received may have given to your mind. But what thoughts ? 1. While you were at the ball, many souls were burning in the fire of hell, for sins committed at the dance, or because of dancing. 2. Many devout men were at the same hour before God, singing His praises, and contemplating His glory. Oh, how much more happily their time has been employed than yours ! 3. While you have been dancing, many people have died in great agony ; thousands and thousands of men and women have been suf- fering great pain in their beds, in hospitals, and streets. Alas ! they have had no rest : will you not have pity on them ? And do you not think that one day you will be groaning as they are, whilst others will be dancing as you have been doing ? 4. Our Lord, the saints, and angels have seen you at the ball : ah ! how they have pitied you, seeing your heart amused with so great a folly, and caring for such trifling. 5. Alas! while you were there, time has been passing, Death ap- proaching ; see how she mocks you, and how she calls you to her dance, at which the groans of your neighbours will serve for a violin, and in which you will make but one turn from life to death. This dance is the true pastime for mortals ; since by it we pass, in a moment, from time into an eternity, either of blessedness or woe. I mention these few considerations, but God will teach you many more, if you fear Him. K BALZAC. JEAN LOUIS GUEZ DE BALZAC was born at Angouleme in 1594. His father was a knight, in the service of the Duke of Epernon, and the promise of the protection of this powerful nobleman seemed to open to Balzac the prospect of a brilliant future. At the age of sixteen he was sent to Holland to complete his education under the learned Baudius, but, during the greater part of his sojourn in that country, he seems to have studied pleasure rather than books. While there, however, he published his first work, a declamation in favour of independence and reform, entitled Discours politique tfun Gentilhomme frangais. In 1618 he returned to France, and in the following year took part in the chivalrous enterprise that delivered Marie de Me'dicis from her prison at Loches. Two years after he went to Rome, and remained there long enough to write the greater number of the letters that were afterwards published and made his name so famous. He was one of the first members of the French Academy. He wrote Le Prince, PAristipe, le Socrate chritien, and Dissertations Morales et Chritiennes, besides several volumes of Letters, The following passage is taken from the Dissertations. ON RETIREMENT. HE does me too much honour, the excellent man and noble lord of whom you speak, to put my company among the number of his desires, and to wish that Balzac were nearer Orleans. If it were, I should be a great gainer. I should draw from the society that you propose to me, on his part, not only advice and example, but also strength and courage. In the place where I am, reverend father, I am reduced to feed on my own juices. I have no converse but with our old friends, the classics. It is true, they are very good company ; but they are always the same, and only say this year what they said last. To make my studies lively, I should want a very lively library ; and con- versation fails me here as leisure fails me elsewhere. I think I have written this before, and there is no harm in repeating it to-day. Solitude is certainly a fine thing ; but there is pleasure in having some one who can answer, from time to time, that it is a good thing. You guess very well the design of my preface. ,You see what I am coming to ; my mind BALZAC. 67 seeks you, reverend father ; my solitude has need of you. Not feeling myself worthy of the advantages that this excellent man, and altogether great lord, offers me, I have not cared to accept them. It is enough that he speaks good of me ; it would be too much if he did good to me ; and the wealth at his disposal not being of any use to me, I look to you only for what I want. In truth, in conscience, the voyage to St- Mesmin is the sweetest of my hopes. I sigh after the possession of that lodging on the river, the plan of which you have sent me, and which you may build for me. But let us understand each other well, I pray you. I give you warning, that while I am between the Loire and the Loiret, I shall call myself, if you please, in that country, neither Balzac, nor Narcissus, nor Aminto. I shall neither take nor receive any other nom de guerre that might make me known. My intention is not to give reputation to my retreat ; that would be to wish to be hidden with frlat. I shall not hide myself in order that I may be sought after. While with you, I must be a secret between you and me, and an enigma for the rest of the world. Do you remember this article of our treaty, for it is essential. I willingly renounce the reputation that the world gives, for the rest that the world disturbs. " Oblitus vivorum, obli- viscendus et illis." That is to say, in common language, that being of those who are dead to the world, I wish to be dead out and out, and that visits and letters, couriers and the newspapers, should not come to resuscitate me. The ambassador Justinian has spoken to you, in former times, of that enchanted castle, where the poet Bernia, and the cook, Master Peter, were such good company for each other. He has told you about their exercises and their occupations. He has not forgotten the description of that admirable bed, twelve yards broad, in which the poet bathed, as in the open sea. This castle was one day noticed with envy by the greatest courtier of France, and it had been shown to him and to me by the Marquis de Frangipane. There, as you know, the calendar was not received : they recognised neither work-days nor festivals ; they had neither beginning nor end of weeks ; no bell nor clock was heard ; the valets had express orders never to bring good or bad news. As for the bells, it would not be very easy to impose silence on them, since their sound has its use in the Church, and forms part of the external worship of religion. Besides, to tell you the truth, I do not get on badly with them ; for when men are asleep, and nobody awake but me and the stars, they serve as company for me, as well as my lamp and portfolio. Let us allow your 68 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. bells to ring then as much as they like, and do not let us spoil your belfry by a change that would be noticed, and might be suspected of heresy. Really, if you wish to please me, you will put under a ban every- thing that calls itself an account, gazette, an ordinary, or an extra- ordinary, &c. I esteem M. Renaudot greatly, and I made a eulogy on him a long time ago ; but, since Plato has chased Homer from his republic, after having crowned him with flowers and watered him with perfumes, M. Renaudot ought not to think it too bad if, for considera- tions that are favourable to our repose, and are not disadvantageous to his eloquence, we shut our doors upon him, with every kind of civility I mean, after having said of him that he is the most eloquent historian of all modern writers, that France owes to him in part her great reputation ; that if she lost him, she would have much trouble in filling his place. You have written some admirable things on this subject. Our friend from Poitou would say, that the god Mercury, or the goddess Pytho, had dictated them to you. As for me, I will only say, that if your discourses are more eloquent than mine, my words come no less from the heart than yours do. I am persuaded of all the dogmas of your doctrine ; my soul is full of your maxims ; and, consequently, you ought not to believe that, when I preach after you, I do not declaim about the contempt of the world, the vanity of earthly things, on the excellent text, " Hide your life." When I have any people and any auditors about me, I cry with all my might, " Let us leave the towns, let us go and live in the country ; not only to make sure of rest, but also to make sure of our salvation. Let us seek Jesus Christ in the way that He himself has directed us. He did not say that He was the gold of the palace and the purple of the court ; He said that He was the flower of the field and the lily of the valley. Happy are those who gather that divine flower in the fields of Saint Mesmin, who make bouquets and garlands of it, who crown themselves with Jesus Christ, whom the Litanies of His Name call the crown of all the saints." MAROLLES. MICHEL DE MAROLLES was born at Marolles in Touraine, in 1600, and died at Paris in 1681. His father was captain of the Swiss body-guard and a determined Leaguer ; but he was early destined for the Church, and the Abbey of Baugerais was obtained for him before he had completed his ninth year. He studied at Paris, where, in course of time, the extent of his learning and the amiability of his character caused his friendship to be sought by many of the most learned men of that period. He was a most prolific writer, but the greater number of his works have fallen into oblivion. His Mimoires contain many curious and interesting facts about his contemporaries, and are still worthy of being read. He obtained the Abbey of Villeloin in 1626 with a rich endowment. THE COUNTRY UNDER HENRY IV. I RECALL with singular pleasure the beauty of the country at that time ; it seems to me that it was more fertile then than it has ever been since ; that the meadows were more verdant then than they are now, and that our trees had more fruit There was nothing so sweet as to hear the warbling of the birds, the lowing of the oxen, and the songs of the shepherds. The cattle were led safely to the fields, and the labourers ploughed the fields to cast in the corn that the tax-gatherer and soldiers had not ravaged. They had their pieces of furniture and their needful food, and slept in their beds. When the time of harvest came, it was pleasant to see the numbers of reapers bending down side by side, laying bare the fields, and in return heaping up the bundles of corn which afterwards the strongest among them tied up, whilst others loaded carts with the sheaves, and the children who were guarding the flocks at a little distance gleaned the ears that a pretended forgetfulness had left to please them. The strong village girls reaped as well as the boys ; and the work of all was interrupted from time to time by a rustic repast under the shade of a service-tree or a pear-tree, the branches of which, loaded with fruit, hung down within their reach. When, about six o'clock in the evening, the heat of the sun's rays began to grow less, we were 70 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. taken out to walk in the harvest fields, and very often my mother came there herself, having always my sisters and some of my aunts with her. They all went to sit down in some pretty spot, whence they liked to watch the reaping, whilst we children, having no need of rest, went to join the reapers, and, taking their sickles, tried even to cut the wheat as they did. After the harvest, the peasants fixed a day to meet together, and have a little feast, the oison de metire (a provincial expression) ; to this they invited not only their friends, but even their masters, who delighted them extremely if they took the trouble to go. When the good people gave a wedding feast to their children, it was a pleasure to notice the preparations, for, besides the fine clothes of the bride, which were no less than a red gown and a head-dress of embroidery of tinsel and glass pearls, the relatives would be dressed in their well-plaited blue gowns which they had taken from their chests, perfumed with lavender, dried roses, and rosemary ; I say men as well as women, for so they called the full cloak that they put on their shoulders, having a high straight collar, like that of the cloak worn by some orders of monks ; and the peasant women, their hair well dressed, appeared in their bodices of two colours. The wedding favours were not forgotten ; each would wear one in his belt, or on the top of his sleeve. There would be a concert of bag-pipes, flutes, and hautboys, and after a sumptuous banquet the rustic dance would last till the evening. No one complained of excessive imposts ; every one paid the tax with cheerfulness, and I never remember having heard it said then that sol- diers, in passing through a parish, had been guilty of pillaging, much less had laid entire provinces waste, as has been seen only too often since, thanks to the violence of the enemy. Such was the end of the reign of the good Henry IV. the end of much good, and the beginning of an infinite number of evils, when an enraged fury took away the life of this great prince. COUNTRY SCENE IN THE TIME OF HENRY IV. LENET. PIERRE LENET, the French historian and diplomatist, was born at Dijon, and became Attorney-general to the Parliament of that place in 1641. For many years his amily had been devoted to the house of Conde* ; and when the war of the Fronde broke out and the Prince of Conde declared for the Queen and Mazarin, Lenet followed in his steps, and held an important office at Paris during the siege of that city. He withdrew from public life, however, when the rupture between his patron and Mazarin took place, as he did not wish to join any of the factions formed against the royal authority ; but when he heard that the Prince of Conde", his brother the Prince of Conti, and the Duke of Longueville had been arrested, he went to Paris, and finding the prince's party there utterly discouraged, repaired to Chantilly in time to manage the flight of the Princess of Cond and her son to Montrond. From thence they went to Bordeaux, which, after considerable resistance and in spite of all his efforts, submitted to the royal army in 1653. Lenet represented the Prince of Cond at the Conference of the Pyrenees, and defended the interests of his patron with much ability. After the peace, he returned to Paris, and was received at Court and sent on an embassy to Switzerland. He died in 1671. He wrote the Memoires contenant VHistoire des Guerres civiles des Annies 1649 et suivantes,principalement celles de Guienne. These Memoirs are diffuse and badly arranged, but they are valuable documents for the historian, as the writings of a man who was an eye- witness of all the events that he described. THE FLIGHT OF THE PRINCESS OF CONDE AND HER SON TO MONTROND. ON Monday, April the nth, 1650, the princess dowager received notice from different places that six companies of the Swiss guard had set out with two others of light horse belonging to the regiment of Mespas, which had left Soissons to come and occupy the passages of the river Oise, Le Presy, Creil, Pont-Sainte-Maxence, and also the posts of Senlis and Luzarches. Each one reasoned in his way about this march ; some said that the affection Mespas had shown to the Prince of Conde had caused him to be distrusted, and obliged the Cardinal Mazarin to send him to Anjou, and that they sent the Swiss towards the frontier, on the movement of a corps of the Spanish army 72 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. which was appearing in Artois, and was threatening Arras with a surprise. The others thought, and with reason, that these troops, which were crossing each other, and coming into the same country from different sides, could not be for any other purpose than to invest Chantilly, or to hinder the communication that the princesses could have with the Duchess of Longueville and the Viscount of Turenne ; or to deprive them of the means of giving and receiving news from Paris, whence they obtained the advice of their servants and friends about their mode of proceedings. At last, after having heard both sides speak, the princess dowager sent to discover the truth of this warning on the very spot ; which having been confirmed to her about mid-day, she assembled, after dinner, in the room of the Duchess of Chatillon, all those in whom she had any confidence, to decide, according to their advice, upon measures that she would put into execution when and how she judged proper. Opinions were divided on the reason of the prompt arrival of these troops, but all agreed in saying that there was no longer any safety in that place for the princesses, and less still for the Duke of Enghien, who was the only one who might one day avenge the unjust detention of the prince, his father, on those who had recommended that measure to the queen ; that they might even from that time make him the head of a party, to render the warlike prepara- tions of Turenne more plausible, and to put him at the head of those who might form it in the kingdom in order to give a more specious name, and even to do away with the jealousy that might arise, between the great lords who would join it, about the command ; and that the sooner they could make him cross into Berri the better. I supported this opinion strongly, with the knowledge I had of what was projected between the Dukes of Bouillon and La Rochefoucauld ; and I thought that the young prince and the princesses could not be better than at Montrond, which is a strong place, and could be only taken by a long siege ; which we did not apprehend at a season so near the opening of the campaign. Montrond, which is situated in the heart of the kingdom, has always seemed to me the best adapted to influence the movements of Poitou and Guienne ; and when I was talking about it, the young princess interrupted me, and said that she had neither the age nor experience necessary to give an opinion ; that she would like in everything to defer to the opinion of her mother-in-law ; that she would beg her very humbly not to separate her from her son, whatever might happen ; that she would follow him joyfully everywhere, to whatever LENET. 73 danger he might be exposed, and that she would risk anything for the service of the prince, her husband. The princess dowager praised her very much for her zeal, thanking her for it, and told her, with tears in her eyes, that they would put into execution, at the right time and place, all that had just been proposed about the journey to Montrond ; and as they both had only one and the same design of saving, in the person of "the young prince, all that remained of the ruins of their house, and the relics of their wreck, so both would share the same fate ; that both would try to shelter themselves from the oppression of their persecutor, and to educate their son in the fear of God, and in the service of the king. Soon after, about five o'clock in the evening, Blanchefort, a gentleman of virtue and known fidelity, came to assure the princess dowager that the Marquis of Montespan, who has since had himself called the Duke of Bellegarde, had assured him that he was quite disposed to pass into Guienne to serve the princes, and had confirmed all that the Archbishop of Sens, brother of this marquis, had said to me several times at Paris. Blanchefort added, that some days before he had seen a gentleman courier of the king's pass through Sens to go to Dijon ; that he did not know his name, and that he had just met him on the high road through the forest, and had told him that he was coming to see the princesses, without choosing to explain to him the cause of his journey ; that this made him rather suspicious, and the more so as he had found troops at Luzarches. This new warning revived the suspicions that we had had all day ; and when the dowager princess informed the Duchess of Chatillon and myself what Blanchefort had told her, we neither of us doubted that this man was the bearer of some order from the king to remove, put under guard, or arrest the princesses and the duke. And when at the same instant Dalmas came to tell her that this unknown gentleman, who was a king's courier, was named Du Vouldy, and had letters from his Majesty for both the princesses, we advised the dowager to throw herself on her bed, to feign illness, and to say to this envoy whatever she thought was likely to retard the execution of the order" that he brought her. I went quickly to the apartment of the young princess, who was in bed with a bad feverish cold. I made her get up quickly, and put in her place Mademoiselle Gerbier, a young English girl, and one of her maids of honour, as I shall tell more at length, and took her into the room of the princess, her mother-in-law; where, being hidden behind the bed with the Duchess of Chatillon, Du Vouldy having been introduced, we heard her, after having read the letter of which he was the L 74 HALF HO URS WITH FRENCH A UTHORS. bearer, tell him that she was neither young enough nor well enough to set out so hastily on such a journey as that which the king, or he who persecuted her under the name of his Majesty, ordered her to make ; that she would write to my lord the Duke of Orleans, who was at Paris, to obtain a little time to get equipped : and that, as for himself, he might go and give to the princess, her daughter-in-law, the letter with which he was charged, might walk about or rest himself; in a word, do whatever he liked best. He passed then to the room of the young princess; he was admitted and introduced to Mademoiselle Gerbier, who had taken her mistress's place, as I have just said, and imitated her so perfectly, that her tone, her manner of speaking, the reproaches and the complaints that she made against the queen and cardinal, and her feigned tears, deceived Du Vouldy very well, not only on that day, but for all the rest of the week, so that, as some report was going about at Paris of the flight of the princess, he wrote every day to Paris, and to the cardinal in Burgundy, that he could answer for the contrary, and that he saw her at every hour of the day. They took him afterwards to pay his respects to the Duke of Enghien, whom he asked to see, or rather I should say to the gardener's son, a boy seven years old, of the same age as the duke, whom I had ordered to wear the duke's dress from the moment Blanchefort arrived ; and as Du Vouldy found this little boy with his governess and the women, and all those who were appointed to wait on the duke, he did not doubt that it was he. They conducted him then to the fine walks of Chantilly, and then to his room ; they kept him entertained while the princesses took counsel with the ladies of Chatillon, de Tourville, de Bourgnen, with the Lords Dalliez, Abbe Roquette, Girard, La Roussiere, de Tury, Dalmas, Vialard, and myself. They began by putting the king's letters into my hand. I read them twice ; their substance was, that his Majesty, judging their sojourn at Chantilly prejudicial to his affairs, had resolved that they should go into the province of Berri with the Duke of Enghien and the children of the Duke de Longueville, the care and management of whom his Majesty left to the princess dowager; that Sieur Du Vouldy would conduct them by the road he had appointed, with orders not to leave them. As I saw that all the company were pre- pared with long speeches, I interrupted the second speaker, and said that the circumstances which had preceded and accompanied this despatch made me believe that the design of the Cardinal Mazarin was not only to seize the persons of the duke and the princesses, but also LENET. 75 the fortress of Montrond, which was regarded with jealousy on account of its situation on the confines of Berri, Bourbonois, Nivernois, La Marche, Limousin, and Poitou, as being a place suited to keep all the provinces in check, by exacting large contributions, by means of which the tallage and gabel might be lost to the king, and enough money obtained to support any party that might be formed, and also suited to command the passages into Burgundy and into Guienne, a province in which the disposition of men's minds and diverse interest threatened great storms ; and that by having the princes and princesses escorted by the troops that surrounded Chantilly, they might make themselves masters with greater facility of that important place, well fortified by art and nature, and furnished for the most part with every- thing necessary for its preservation ; that there they might preserve the remnant of that oppressed house, and that thus I could see nothing to be done in such a conjuncture, but to rescue with all speed the persons of the Duke of Enghien and the princess, his mother, which had been proposed a few hours before. The princess dowager interrupted me, and asked me in a harsh tone, whither I was going to lead them. "To Montrond, Madam," I replied : "and I undertake to conduct them there in all safety, if it pleases Messieurs de Tury and de La Roussiere, who know the country, to be of the party." For which duty they offered themselves with a very good grace. The princess replied with anger, that I wanted to have them all taken prisoners. " We are so now, Madam," I replied ; " and if they stop us on the way, nothing worse can happen to us than has happened." Everybody applauded what I said; and the princess having ordered me to continue my discourse, I added, that if we did not execute this design under shelter of the night, we should lose the opportunity, and might never have another ; that my lady the princess, her mother, not being, as she had expressed very strongly to Du Vouldy a little time before, of a constitution to perform the journey the king had ordered her to make, much less would she be fit for one so precipitate and unforeseen as the one that I proposed ; that she should entertain Du Vouldy all the next day to give time for the enterprise ; that it was greatly to be desired that all the house should have but one common lot, as she had said that same day, and that it might be possible not tp separate her daughter- in-law and her grandson from her ; but that no man of good sense could advise them to expose a princess of 'her age and of such importance to her house, to the accidents of such an unforeseen march, for that in trying to save everybody, they might ruin everybody ; and that at least, 76 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. if she did not remain to do her part while her daughter-in-law and her servants did theirs, she would run the risk of seeing all her house make shipwreck in the vessel she wished to guide. Then I made her remember that in the plan I had persuaded her to consent to of going to Montrond in the proper time and place, she knew very well that it was resolved that she should, before undertaking this journey, hurry to Paris to present to pafliament the petition that I had drawn up ; that after our flight she might execute this same design ; and that with the assistance of the friends of her house, and the compassion that this redoubled persecution would excite, she might move the people, and the parliament even, not to allow the declaration of 1648, which had been obtained with so much difficulty, to be violated any more. I added, that there were a number of negotiations connected with the court, the parliament, and the provinces, among the people and with the Frondeurs, from which we could hope for no result if this princess did not remain to conduct them. At last, she suddenly allowed herself to be persuaded, made up her mind to do what was proposed, and told us that she would willingly expose herself not only to be confined in her own house, or to be carried off with violence by the men-at-arms who surrounded her, but even to the rigours of the strictest imprisonment, to contribute in any way to the liberty of her children ; that she would determine, with the help of God and her friends, on what she should do for the safety of her house. I doubted, however, very much, knowing her disposition, if she would do it. However, each one followed his own idea ; and after having given his opinion as to the way of executing it, some advised to take the mother and son by different roads, others were opinion that it should be on horseback, others in a carrriage, some through one country and others through another. It was at last resolved to set out all together for Montrond. The princess had prepared a chest, rilled with a gold service, to fasten behind the carriage ; but those who managed the equipage thought they had a more precious treasure to save, and that it would not do to risk losing this through the weight of that. She gave us some jewels of little value, and to me a watch that she drew from her side, where she wore it, saying to me, in a very obliging way, that she begged me to remember her, and that she confided to me, in the person of the young duke, what was dearest to her on earth. The young princess gave all her jewels into the care of the Lady of Jourville, and those of the Marshal de Brez, her father, who had died a short time LENET. 77 before, in the castle of Saumur ; and after the ladies had embraced each other, and shed many tears at parting after the young prince had received all the flattering words, blessings, and caresses that his tender age, the sad journey he was going to make, his gentle temper, and the agreeable way in which they had dressed him up like a girl, drew upon him, and when all those who were present had embraced those who were going with exceeding tears and lamentations, the journey was begun and continued in this manner. We sent a carriage and two horses, with harness for four other horses in it, to the entrance of the forest, and four horses we had sent out as if they were being taken to water ; and they passed on towards the carriage. The princess and the duke, with the ladies de Tourville, de Gouville, and de Changrand, came out by the gardens, and went on foot to the appointed place. Bourdelot, now Abbe du Masse, a cele- brated physician, to whom, on account of his knowledge and good qualities, the prince had entrusted the care of his son's early studies, followed him everywhere in this journey. La Roussiere went also with Fleury and Vialard to the place where the carriage was. The latter carried the young prince in his arms to save him, in case of an attack in the forest. The ladies got into the carriage. Girard, Chapizeaux, and I, in order not to raise suspicion by too great an escort, took the road to the right that I have spoken of, with all the valets. We set out about eleven o'clock in the evening, and reached Paris, by the Saint Denis' gate, at the same time as the princess at that of St. Martin ; and we all met again, at four o'clock in the morning, at the Saint Victor gate. We sent to get a set of the princess's horses at the Hotel de Conde, which joined us at Juvisy, and served us for relays. We walked always two and two, in sight of one another, at the necessary distance to observe the carriage. We lodged at different hotels, as if we did not know each other. Madame de Tourville called herself Madame de la Valise, and all that were in the carriage seemed to be her family. We arrived, at four o'clock in the evening, at Augerville la Riviere, the house of the President Perrault, who was a prisoner with the princes. I thought I should find his horses there, and then pass on ten leagues further ; but I found they had been sold, contrary to the orders that I had given at the time that I first conceived the idea of taking the princesses from Chantilly to Montrond. We were then constrained to spend a night there, and set out a~ain the next day, the I3th of the month. We went to Choisy-aux-Loges, a house belonging to Bellegarde, of whom we have spcken, and he was not there. I went to see his wife, 78 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. whom I would not allow to receive the princess at her house, in order not to injure her husband ; but we agreed that she should go and pay her respects to her at a hermitage on the road, where she offered everything, and even to follow her. She gave her a relay of horses, which helped us much. We crossed the Loire at Sully ; and as the princess crossed in a little boat, it was necessary to wait some time till the carriage and horses were got across. The people collected together on the bank, at the sight of such a great equipage. We all sat down on the rocks there, as if we were all equal ; and in order to remove all suspicion of the princess's rank, she even sat on my knee. When all at once, a valet of the Duke of Sully calling me by name, I could not help turning my head ; and having told him that he took me for another person, he said that he knew me very well, and wished to say a word to me ; and having drawn me aside, told me that he knew the princess very well, although she wore a mask, and was dressed in a common gown. He named all the suite to me, and added, that he saw very well we were making our escape ; that he offered me, on behalf of his master, who was a very humble servant of the prince and of all his house, a retreat in his castle, and 18,000 francs that he had received from his lands. I told the princess about it directly, who thanked him warmly, and drew from her finger a ring, which she gave him, without accepting any of his offers. I had, however, rather a wish to take some money, of which we had great need, for all our finances were reduced to about 500 pistoles that the princess had, and 20,000 francs that I had partly borrqwed, and partly obtained by selling some plate. This day we got as far as Argent, in Berri, belonging to the Sieur de Clermont, an old servant of the prince, and father-in-law to Mautour, Governor of Mont- rond. This knight, who gave the princess and all her suite a good reception, sent his carriage horses four leagues for relays, to a castle in sight of Bourges, belonging to the Sieur de Rhodes, where she dined, changed horses, and sent the horses back to Madame de Bellegarde, with a letter of thanks ; then went on and reached Montrond that same day, the I4th of the month, about midnight. , GUY PATIN. GUY PATIN was born in 1602, at La Place, a little hamlet not far from Beauvais. It was his parents' wish that he should go to the bar, or enter the Church, but he resolved to follow out the preference that the nature of his mind led him to give to the study of medicine ; and as his father's circumstances did not allow him to afford his son much assistance during the years in which he was preparing for his chosen profession, he sought and obtained work in a printer's office. In 1627, he received the degree of doctor, and in the following year married a lady whose fortune made him independent, and set him free to continue his studies without interruption. In 1654, he was made professor at the College of France. He soon began to be considered one of the first physicians of the capital, and his fame spread, not only throughout France, but into foreign lands. It is not, however, so much for his acquirements as a physician that he is now celebrated, as for his Letters, which he never intended should be published. These Letters furnish a picture of the history of medicine for fifty-six years, and give the reader some insight into the state of literature and society during that period. He died in 1672. " Guy Patin," says Vigneul Marvelle, " was satirical rom head to foot. His great memory supplied him with subjects to talk about, and he talked much. He was bold, rash, and inconsiderate, but simple and naif in his expressions." THE KING OF THE MARKETS. THEY talk of nothing here but the Duke of Beaufort, to whom the Parisians, and especially all the women, are extremely devoted. When he was playing at tennis fouf days ago in a tennis-court of the Marais du Temple, the greater number of the market women went in groups to watch him play, and to wish him success. As they made a noise in coming in, and the people of the house complained of it, he was obliged to leave the game, and come himself to the door to put an end to the affray, which he was not able to do without allowing these women to enter in small parties, a few at a time, to see him play ; and perceiving that one of these women looked at him kindly, he said to her, " Well, my good woman, you wanted to come in : what pleasure can you have in seeing me play and lose my money ? " She answered immediately, " Lord Beaufort, play boldly ; you shall not be in want of money. Here am I and my gossip ; we have brought two hundred 8o HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. crowns, and, if more is wanted, I am ready to go back and fetch as much again."- All the other women began to cry out, too, that they had money at his service, for which he thanked them. He was visited that day by more than two thousand women. Two days after, passing near Saint Eustache, a group of women began to call out to him, " Sir, do not consent to a marriage with Mazarin's niece, whatever M. de Vendome may do or say. If he abandon you, you shall want for nothing; we will give you every year a pension of 60,000 livres in the market." He has said plainly, that if they persecuted him at court he would go for safety and lodge in the middle of the markets, where more than 20,000 men would guard him. This assemblage has caused more amusement than fear ; but something much worse occurred. This prince, thirty-two years old, being over- heated, drank some wine and beer, and suffered, great pain in his back, and while it lasted, he vomited several times. As soon as this was known in Paris, the people thought he had been poisoned by order of Mazarin. His house was filled immediately with an immense number of men and women : even his father, M. de Vendome, who was sitting by, thought there was poison in the case ; and upon the doctors assuring him there was not, warned them that they ought to look more closely into it; that this poison was Italian, and that the Italians were finer poisoners than the French. But at last he was cured, and the Italians were cleared from suspicion. THE RETURN OF THE QUEEN, ANNE OF AUSTRIA, TO PARIS. AT last the queen has returned to Paris, and rr : brought back the king, at the instigation of the two princes of L blood, who have obliged her to do so*, although she did not at P!. approve of it, and Mazarin still less. The king arrived here on Wee nesday y the 1 8th of this month, in a large carriage that was very full. There were with him, among others,- the Duke of Anjou, the Duke of Orleans, the Prince of Conde, and Mazarin, who was so ashamed that he hid himself, and you could hardly see him. There were also the meen, the Duchess of Orleans, Mademoiselle and the Princess Dowager of Conde, and, some say, Marshal Villeroi. Several of the town companies went before him, and he made his entrance by the Rue St. Denis, went all along the street as far as Les Innocents, then entered the Rue de la THE DUKE OF BEAUFORT AND THE A5ARKET WOMEN. GUY PA TIN. 8 1 Ferronnerie (where the late King Henry IV. was killed), and passing all down the Rue St. Honore, entered the Palais Cardinal; and all this journey was made amid the loudest acclamations of the people, and the greatest rejoicing possible. I, who am speaking to you, and who naturally hate ceremonies and great assemblies, noticing the great noise there was in the town, and that every one took part in the rejoicings, went too, and saw the greatest number of all sorts of people that I ever beheld. The queen said in the evening, at the supper in the Palais Cardinal, that she could never have thought that the people of Paris had loved the king so much. That same evening, the Duke of Beaufort went to salute the king and queen, whom he had not seen since he left the wood of Vincennes ; but he did not see Mazarin. Nevertheless, by the agreement that M. de Vendome, his father, had made" for him with the queen, he has agreed and promised that he will go and see Mazarin when the queen chooses to command him. On the next day, Thursday, August iQth, all the orders and companies of the town came to salute and compliment the queen on her return, and for having brought the king back to Paris. The coadjutor (who had made his peace a month before, and had travelled to Compiegne expressly for that purpose) delivered an address to her in the name of the clergy ; the first president for the parliament ; M. de Nicolai, first president of the chamber of accounts, for his company ; M. Amelot, first president of the courts of excise, for his ; the civic lieutenant, for the Chatelet ; the provost of the merchants and sheriffs, for the town-hall. The speech of this last has been much praised ; but has been especially noticed and greatly admired by all who heard it. M. de Nicolai made a very good speech to the queen, about her regency, and the laws of good government ; he showed her how, at all times, the troubles of kings have only been in consequence of the bad counsels that ignorant and interested advisers have given them. The same man that heard all the speeches, said that Mazarin was only present at some of them, and that he is very sad, pale, and thin. Whatever he may be, it is a certain thing that it was quite in spite of him that the king and queen have returned to Paris, and that he would have hindered it if he could. He is the object of public hatred, and is in the way to become as miserable as the Marquis of Ancre could ever have been. Three days before his arrival, he tried again all he could at Compiegne to hinder the return, and had gained over the queen ; but the two princes overthrew all his designs, and he was only M 82 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. too happy to have a place in the king's carriage, in quo uno he was safe. Varia de illo circttmferentur de quibus dies diem docebit. They say the princes only keep him in order to devour him shortly, and that they bear with him, as God bears with sin, only in order to punish him. Whatever it may be, the gallows are waiting for the poor wretch, and he believes he will not escape ; sooner or later it will happen to him. I would rather be the poor master of arts that I am yes, even if con- demned to bread and water, provided I might be in my study, than be Mazarin, and the" author of as many evils as this unhappy minister. PARIS, August 2Qth, 1649. I wrote to you on the 2Oth of August, to tell you about the king's return to this town ; about which there was, and still is, great rejoicing. I will tell you that, since his arrival, the king has been on horseback through the Rue de Saint Honore and Saint Antoine, to the Jesuits, on St. Louis's day, accompanied by several nobles of the court, all on horseback, and, among others, the princes of Conde" and Conti, Chevreuse and d' Elbeuf. There was more shouting and rejoicing at the king showing himself thus than I can describe. The queen begins to go to mass again on Saturday at Notre Dame, taking the king in her carriage, to make the people continue their rejoicings. The cardinal, Mazarin, is here hidden in the king and queen's house, shut up as usual in the cabinet, and less in danger of being surprised or seized by the great number of enemies that he has, both at court and elsewhere, than he would be at Fontainebleau ; where he would be obliged to go out for a walk or to hunt sometimes, for company and amusement, when he would be always compelled to trust himself to the fidelity of the courtiers, which is a bad security, so long as the king is here. A general peace is not talked of any more, but only with Aix and Bordeaux, where the poor people suffer greatly, and get no help, through the tyranny of the governors of these two provinces, which yet Mazarin does not put a stop to ; and this makes me doubt the worth and sincerity of his intentions, and it is what he ought to do in order to make himself liked ; since he neither has nor will have, for a long time, the means of making himself feared, as he has been able to do hitherto. PARIS, September $d, 1649. MADEMOISELLE SCUDERY. MADELEINE DE SCUDERY was born at Havre, in the year 1607. As soon as her education was finished, she went to Paris, where her acquaintance was sought by many illustrious persons and distinguished writers. The Marchioness of Rambouillet admitted her to a circle whose decisions on matters of taste were regarded, for a long time, as sovereign decrees. The lengthy novels of Gomberville were then in fashion, and, in the hope of repairing her shattered fortune, Mademoiselle Scude'ry began to write her many-volumed romances ; and, though neither the matter nor manner of these novels possesses much attraction for the modern reader, they were greatly admired at the time when they first appeared, and obtained for their author the title of "The Tenth Muse." She died at the age of ninety-four, in 1701. She wrote Cyrus, Ibrahim, Clilie, Conversations de Morale, and other works. A FETE ON THE LAKE OF GENEVA. PICTURE to yourself a lake of such vast extent that it seems almost a little sea, but a peaceful sea which has neither waves nor motion, and where the wind only forms the little curling ripples which never threaten shipwreck : and then imagine that you see a grand and beautiful landscape by the Tigre (the Rhone), which, coming im- petuously to throw itself into this lake, crosses it as I have already said, preserving at the same time all its natural pride, so that, in the middle of this peaceful and sleeping water, you see this gushing and leaping river, whose waves, rolling one over another precipitately, issue from the lake into a meadow near the spot where the town of Alfine (Geneva) is built The colour even of these two waters is so different that it is plain they do not mix. But what renders this object more beautiful is, that at the two points where the river enters and leaves the lake two magnificent pavilions have been built, in order that the wonderful passage of this river may be seen more conveniently that so beautiful an object may be viewed more agreeably. But to return to where I was : I shall tell you that when the company arrived at the border of the lake, on the side of Alfine, they found thirty little barks painted and gilded, with magnificent awnings to shelter the ladies from the sun, and carpets and cushions to sit upon. So that, as each boat could hold seven or eight persons besides those who managed it, there 84 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. would be in each a large number enough to prevent ennui. When these thirty little barks were filled, and this pretty, pleasant, and agreeable fleet had begun to row over this beautiful lake, which had hardly any motion but that raised by the oars, it formed the most agreeable sight in the world. But besides these thirty little barks intended for the guests, there were others in which there were only musicians, who with a half-rural and half- maritime melody banished silence from this peaceful lake, mingling their voices with the pleasant murmur that the oars made as they struck the water, and with the sound of a little fresh wind, that tempered the heat and fluttered the awning. Besides these there were others intended for fishing in the river, and others, too, intended for fishing in the lake, in order that it might be really seen that the fish that are caught in the one are not caught in the other, although the river goes through the lake. In fact, we noticed this wonder without being able to question it ; for our little fleet going sometimes on the lake, and sometimes on the Tigre, we saw nets full of different fish drawn in, more than twenty times, without ever finding one of the lake fish in the nets they had cast into the river, or those of the river fish in the nets they had thrown into the lake ; although it was done at such a very little distance that it was almost incredible that the thing could be as we saw it. But what was very pleasant was, that we could be as we wished, sometimes in the calm, and sometimes in the storm ; for when we sailed about on the lake the motion was so imperceptible, that it was rather gliding than sailing, but, when we passed from the lake into the current of the river, we felt the same tossing agitation as if we had been on the sea, so nobody remained there so long as on the lake, where sailing was safer and pleasanter. However, there was no one who had not the curiosity to go on both, and who did not wish to try the calmness of the one, and the agitation of the other. But at last, after all the boats had passed and repassed one another, so that they had crossed one another's paths in hundreds of ways, and had talked from bark to bark, they began to row towards the magnificent pavilion which has been built at the spot where the Tigre throws itself into the lake of Arethuse. LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. FRANCOIS VI, Duke of La Rochefoucauld and Prince de Marsillac, was born in 1613, and died in 1680. In 1632, his father, having been concerned in the revolt of Gaston d'Orleans, was banished to Blois, and, as he was himself suspected of forming designs against Richelieu, he was included in his father's disgrace. He took an active part in the war of the Fronde, and in many of the plots and intrigues of that time. During the latter part of his life he enjoyed the favour of Louis XIV. He wrote Mimoires sur les Brigues a la Mart de Louis XIII, Les Guerres de Paris et de Guyenne, et la Guerre des Princes, and Les Reflexions, ou Sentences et Maximes morales. MAXIMS. WE cannot answer for our courage when we have never been in danger. Self-love is cleverer than the cleverest of men. We all have strength enough to bear another's ills. Greater virtues are needed to bear good fortune than bad. If we had no faults, we should not take so much pleasure in noticing the faults of other people. Whatever discoveries we may have made in the regions of self-love, there still remain many unknown lands. Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and evils to come, but present evils triumph over philosophy. Interest, which blinds some, gives light to others. One is never so happy nor so unhappy as one imagines. Everybody complains of his memory, nobody of his judgment. Great names lower instead of elevate those who know not how to sustain them. 86 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH A UTHORS. There is nothing men give so liberally as their advice. It is easier to be wise for other people than for oneself. As it is the characteristic of great minds to say much in few words, so, on the contrary, little minds have the gift of speaking much and saying little. If we do not flatter ourselves, the flattery of others will not hurt us. The defects of the soul are like wounds in the body : however much care we may take to cure them, the scar always shows, and they are in danger of opening again at any moment. Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue. True eloquence consists in saying all that is needed, and nothing more. Affected simplicity is a delicate imposture. Few people know how to be old. There's no fool like the old fool. A man whom nobody pleases is much more unhappy than one who pleases nobody. We easily forget our faults when they are known only to ourselves. PAUL SCARRON. PAUL SCARRON was descended from a noble family ; but left his home in early life in consequence of disputes with his step-mother, who seems to have endeavoured to get the greater share of the property settled on her own children. He travelled about France and Italy, and gave himself up so madly to the pursuit of pleasure, that he utterly ruined his health, and became, as he says himself, " an epitome of human misery." After his father's death, he became entangled in a lawsuit about the inheritance with his step-mother, who gained the cause, and he was reduced to the necessity of writing for a livelihood. It was little trouble to him to compose verses and witty tales, and his burlesque comedies very soon made him popular ; his house became the resort of men of wit, who were diverted by his bon-mots. He obtained an introduction to the Queen, Anne of Austria, and asked permission to be appointed " her sick man (malade) in right of office." This novel request was granted, and a pension was attached to the place. In 1652, he became acquainted with Mademoiselle d'Aubigny, aftenvards Madame de Maintenon, and finally wife to Louis XIV, who was at this time in circumstances of great poverty and distress. Scarron pitied her ; and although at this time he was such a cripple that it is said the only movements he could make were with his hands, tongue, and eyes, offered to marry her or to pay her dower if she liked to become a nun. She chose the former lot, and became his wife. * ' s Scarron died in 1660. He wrote LEcolier de Salamangue, L'Encide travestie, and Le Roman comique. INTRODUCTION TO THE "COMIC ROMANCE." READER, you who have never seen me, and who perhaps trouble yourself very little about me for there is not much to be gained by seeing a person made like me know that I should not be anxious that you should see me, if I had not learned that some facetious wits make themselves merry at the expense of my misfortunes, and depict me as quite different from what I am. Some say that I am a cripple in a bowl ; others, that I have no thighs, and that I am put on the table in a box, where I chatter like a winking magpie ; and others, that my hat is fastened to a cord that's attached to a pulley, and that I raise and lower it to salute those who come to see me. I think I ought in conscience to prevent them from telling any more lies .... without pretending to make a present to the public (for as to their ladyships, 88 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. the Nine Muses, I have never hoped that my head would be the original for a medal). I would have had myself well painted, if any painter had dared to undertake it. In default of the painting, I intend to tell you as nearly as I can what sort of a fellow I am. I have left thirty years behind me. If I get to forty, I shall add many pains to those I have already suffered for eight or nine years. I have had a good figure, though short. My illness has shortened it by a good foot. My head is rather large for my height. I have a pretty full face for my very meagre body ; hair enough not to need a wig ; I have many white ones in spite of the proverb ; pretty good sight, though my eyes are rather large : they are blue ; one is more deeply set than the other, on the side that I bend my head. I have a nose of tolerably good shape. My teeth, which used to be squares of pearl, are of the colour of wood, and will soon be the colour of slate. I have lost one and a half on the left side, and two and a half on the right, and two are a little chipped. My legs and my thighs formed at first an obtuse angle, and then a right angle, and at last an acute angle. My thighs and my body made another ; and my head bending down on my chest, I am pretty much like a Z. My arms are shortened as well as my legs, and my fingers as well as my arms. In fact, I am an epitome of human misery. That's pretty nearly how I look. Since I am in such a fair way, I will tell you something of my temper. Besides, this introduction is written just to make the book bigger, at the request of the bookseller, who is afraid he will not get back the expenses of printing, but for that it would be of no use, just like a good many others. But it is no new thing to commit folly out of good nature, besides those that one does on one's own account. I have always been rather passionate, rather fond of good things, and rather idle. I often call my valet a fool, and soon after, Sir. I hate nobody ; God send they may treat me the same. I am very comfortable when I have any money, and should be still more comfortable if I had my health. I enjoy myself very well in company. I am very well content when I am alone. I bear my troubles pretty patiently. But it seems to me that my introduction is long enough, and that it is time to make an end. SCARRON. CARDINAL DE RETZ. JEAN FRANCOIS PAUL DE GONDI, Cardinal de Retz, was born in Montmirail in 1614, and in 1643 was appointed coadjutor to his uncle, the Archbishop of Paris. For this position he was utterly unfitted, being a man of unscrupulous character, and of a turbulent and intriguing disposition. He took a conspicuous part in the wars of the Fronde, but at length made his peace with Mazarin, by whose influence he was created a cardinal. Continuing, however, to cabal against the government, he was imprisoned first at Vincennes and afterwards at Nantes. From the latter place he contrived to escape ; and, after wandering through Italy, Holland, Flanders, and England, he returned to France in 1661. Becoming again reconciled to the Court, he was appointed to the Abbey of St. Denis, where he spent the last years of his life in quietness. The following passage is taken from his Memoirs. He wrote also a History of the Conspiracy of Count Fiesco. RICHELIEU AND MAZARIN. CARDINAL DE RICHELIEU was of good birth. In his youth he showed signs of future merit. He distinguished himself at the Sorbonne, and it was early remafked that he possessed strength and vivacity of mind. He generally chose his side very well. He was a man of his word, when any great interest did not force him to be otherwise ; and, in that case, he never forgot anything by which he might preserve the appearance of good faith. He was not liberal, but he gave more than he promised, and he seasoned his gifts admirably. He loved glory much more than is consistent with morality, but it must be admitted that he did not abuse the licence which he gave to his excessive ambition, beyond the proportion of his own merit. He had neither mind nor heart above danger, nor yet did they sink beneath it ; and it may be said, that he prevented more danger by his wisdom than he surmounted by his firmness. He was a good friend -he even wished to be loved by the public ; but, although he had good manners, a pleasing exterior, and other quali- ties likely to produce that effect, he never had that indescribable some- thing which is more necessary than anything else. He eclipsed by his N 90 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. power and royal pomp the personal majesty of the king ; but he per- formed all the functions of royalty with so much dignity, that it was only those who were above the vulgar that could see what was good and what evil in this case. He distinguished more judiciously than the mere man of the world between bad and worse, between good and better ; which is a great quality in a minister. He became too easily impatient about the little things which were steps to great things; but this defect, which arises from elevation of mind, is always united to a clearness of understanding which makes up for it. He had enough religion for this world. He did right either from inclination or from good sense, except when his interest led him to do wrong ; and then he knew perfectly that he was doing wrong, even while he did it. He only considered the good of the state for his own lifetime ; and yet no minister ever took more pains to have it believed that he was ruling for the future. Lastly, it must be confessed that all his vices were those which can only be brought into use by means of great virtues. You can easily imagine, that a man who had such great qualities, and so much appearance, too, of those which he did not possess, easily preserved for himself in the world that sort of respect which separates contempt from hatred, and which, in a state that has no longer any laws, makes up for the want of them at least, for a time. The character of Cardinal Mazarin was just the reverse. His birth was low, and his childhood one of shame. On leaving the Coliseum, he learnt to cheat, by which he earned a beating from a goldsmith of Rome, named Moreto. He became a captain of infantry at Velteline ; and Bagni, who was his general, has told me, that he passed, in the war, which only lasted three months, for nothing better than a sharper. He gained the office of nuncio extraordinary in France through the favour of Cardinal Antonio Barberini, which office was never gained at that time by fair means. He pleased Chavigni by his licentious Italian stories, and through Chavigni he pleased Richelieu, who made him Cardinal in the same spirit as that which impelled Augustus to leave the succession to the empire to Tiberius. The purple did not hinder him from remaining a servant under Richelieu. The queen having chosen him for want of another, it is true, let people say what they will he appeared, at first, as the original of Trivelino principe. Fortune having dazzled him and every one else, he set himself up, and was set up by others, for a Richelieu, but he gained by it only the impudence of imitation. He procured to himself by shame all that the latter had CARDINAL DE RETZ. 91 procured by honour. He laughed at religion. He promised everything, because he never meant to keep his word. He was neither gentle nor cruel, because he remembered neither benefits nor injuries. He loved himself too much, which is natural to cowardly souls : he feared himself too little, which is the character of those who do not care about their reputation. He foresaw evil well enough, because he was often fright- ened ; but he did not as readily supply a remedy, because he was not so prudent as fearful. He possessed wit, insinuation, gaiety, and good manners, but his base heart appeared through everything, and to that degree, that these qualities seemed in adversity quite ridiculous ; and even in prosperity did not quite lose an appearance of imposture. He carried the tricks of a sharper into the ministry, which he alone has ever done, and these tricks made the ministry, even when it was happy and prosperous, to appear unbecoming, and caused contempt to step in, which is the most dangerous malady of a state, and the contagion of which spreads most easily and quickly from the head to the members. PASCAL. BLAISE PASCAL, one of the greatest writers of the seventeenth century, was born at Clermont Ferrand in 1623, and from his very infancy showed remarkable capacity. His father having forbidden him to study mathematics till he knew Latin and Greek, was astonished one day to find that his son, then only twelve years old, had discovered many of the propositions of Euclid for himself, though he had never seen the book and was unacquainted with mathematical terms. At the age of sixteen he wrote a Traite des Coniques, which astonished Descartes himself ; but it was never printed. He continued these studies till the age of twenty-three, when he determined to renounce them that he might devote himself entirely to the service of God. He spent the latter years of his life in the retirement of Port Royal, and during this period wrote his Pensees and Lettres Provinciates. These famous letters contain a satirical exposure of the system of the Jesuits, as exhibited in their controversy with the Jansenists, whose cause Pascal had espoused. During nearly the whole of his life he suffered from almost constant illness ; and from the age of eighteen never passed a day without pain. He died in 1662, at the age of thirty-nine. His two treatises on L'Equilibre des Liqueurs and on La Pesanteur de la Masse de l\4ir were printed after his death. The following passage is taken from the Lettres Provinciates. CALUMNY. I WILL not only show that your writings are full of calumnies, I will do more. One may say many false things, believing them to be true, but the character of a liar presupposes the intention of lying. I will make it clear then, fathers, that your intention is to lie and calumniate, and that it is knowingly and with design that you charge your enemies with crimes of which you know them to be innocent, because you think you can do it without falling from a state of grace. And although you know, as well as I do, this point of your morality, I will not omit speaking of it to you, in order that none may have any doubt about it when they see that I address myself to you, in order to bring the charge home to your very selves, while you cannot have the assurance to deny PASCAL. 93 it, without, by that very denial, confirming the charge inac I bring against you ; for it is a doctrine so common in your schools, that you have maintained it not only in your books, but also in your public theses (the greatest audacity) ; as, among others, in your theses of Louvain, of the year 1645, in these terms : " It is only a venial sin to calumniate and charge with false crimes, in order to ruin the credit of those who speak evil of us." " Quidni non nisi veniale sit detrahentis auctoritatem magnam, tibi noxiam, falso crimine elidere." And this doctrine is so common among you, that whoever dares attack it, you treat as ignorant and rash. This has recently been proved by Father Quiroga, a German Capuchin, when he opposed it ; for your Father Dicastillus took it up at once, and he speaks of this dispute in these terms, De Just. I, 2, tr. 2, dispute 12, n. 404 :- "A certain grave monk, barefooted and cowled cucullattis gymnopoda whom I do not name had the boldness to cry down this opinion among women and ignorant people, and to say that it was pernicious and scandalous, contrary to the peace of states and of society, and, in fact, not only contrary to all orthodox doctors, but to all who are orthodox ; but I have maintained, and I still maintain, that calumny, when employed against a calumniator, although it may be a lie, is not a mortal sin, neither is it contrary to justice or charity; and to prove it, I furnished him with our fathers, en masse, and with whole universities composed of them, whom I have consulted ; and among others, the reverend Father Jean Gans, confessor to the Emperor ; the reverend Father Daniel Bastele, confessor to the Archduke Leopold ; Father Henry, who was the preceptor of these two princes; all the public and ordinary professors of the University of Vienna (all composed of Jesuits) ; all the professors of the University of Gratz (all Jesuits) ; all the professors of the University of Prague (of which the masters are Jesuits) ; of all of whom I have in my hand the approbation of my opinion, written and signed with their own hands ; besides which, I have also on my side the Father de Pennalossa, a Jesuit and preacher to the Emperor and to the King of Spain ; Father Pillicerolli, a Jesuit ; and many others, who judged this opinion probable before our dispute." You see clearly, fathers, that there are few opinions which you have taken so much trouble to establish, as there are few of which you stand in so much need. And this is the reason why you have so thoroughly authorized it, that your casuists make use of it as an indubitable principle. O abominable theology ! a theology so corrupt that, if according to 94 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. its maxims, it were not probable and safe in conscience to calumniate without crime, in order to preserve one's honour, there would be hardly one of its decisions that is sure ! How probable it seems, fathers, that those who hold the principle should sometimes put it into practice ! The corrupt inclination of men leads to it with so much impetuosity, that it is incredible that when the obstacle of conscience is taken away it will not spread itself with all its natural vehemence. Do you wish for an example of it ? Caramuel shall give it. " This maxim," says he, " of Father Dicastillus having been taught by the Countess of Germany to the daughters of the Empress, the belief that they would only sin venially by making use of calumny gave rise to so much in a few days, and to so many slanders and false reports, that it set all the Court in a blaze and in alarm; so that they were obliged to call for a good Capuchin friar of exemplary life, named Father Quiroga (it was about this that Father Dicastillus quarrelled so much), who declared that this maxim was very pernicious, especially among women, and he took particular care to get the Empress to abolish the use of it altogether." One ought not to be surprised at the bad effects that this doctrine caused. It would be marvellous, indeed, if it did not produce that licence. Self- love persuades us easily enough that we are attacked unjustly, and y6u particularly, fathers, whom vanity blinds in such a way that you would have it believed in all your writings, that to injure the honour of your Society is to injure that of the Church. And thus, fathers, it would seem strange if you did not put this maxim into practice, for we can no longer say as those do, who do not know you : How could these good fathers wish to calumniate their enemies, since they could only do it by the loss of their salvation ? But we must rather say : How could these good fathers be willing to lose the advantage of crying down their enemies, since they can do it without risking their salvation ? Let no one then be astonished to see Jesuits calumniators, since they are so with a safe conscience ; and nothing can prevent their being so, since from the credit which they have in the world they can calumniate without fearing the justice of men, and, according to that which they have put forth on cases of conscience, they have established maxims to enable them to do it without fearing the justice of God. This, fathers, is the source whence so many black impostures spring. This it is that has made your Father Brisacier circulate so many, until at last he has brought down upon himself the censure of the late Arch- bishop of Paris. ... It was on this same principle that your Father Crasset, preached so many impostures in Orleans, that the Bishop PASCAL. 95 of Orleans was obliged to interdict him as a public impostor, by his injunction of the gth of last September, in which he declares, "that he forbids brother John Crasset, a priest of the Society of Jesus, to preach in his diocese, and forbids his people to listen to him, on pain of being held guilty of mortal disobedience ; since he has learnt that the said John Crasset had delivered a sermon from the pulpit full of falsehoods and calumnies against the ecclesiastics of that town, stating maliciously that they maintain these heretical and impious propositions that the commandments of God are impossible ; that no one ever resists inward grace ; that Jesus Christ did not die for all men ; and other like propositions, which have been condemned by Innocent X." This, fathers, is your usual imposture, and the first with which you reproach those whom you wish to cry down. And, although it may be as impossible for you to prove that this is so, as for Father Crasset to prove his point about the ecclesiastics of Orleans, your conscience nevertheless rests at ease ; " because you believe that this manner of calumniating those who attack you is so certainly allowed," that you do not fear to declare it publicly, and in face of the whole town. The quarrel that you had with M. Puys, cure of St. Nisier at Lyons, is a signal proof of this ; and as this story is a good illustration of your spirit, I will relate the principal circumstances of it. You know, fathers, that in 1649, M. Puys translated into French an excellent book by another Capuchin father, " about the duty of Christians to their parish, and against those who dissuade them from it," without making use of any invective, and without designating any monk or any particular order. Your fathers, however, took it to themselves, and, without any respect for an old pastor, a judge in the Primacy of France, and honoured by the whole town, your Father Alby put forth a furious book against him, which you yourselves sold in your own church on the day of the Assumption, in which he accused him of several things, and, among others, of having made himself scandalous by his gallantries ; of being suspected of impiety, of being a heretic, excommunicated, and in fact only fit for the flames. M. Puys replied to the charge, and Father Alby sustained his first accusations by a second book. Is it not true, then, that you are either calumniators, or else that you believed all that of the good priest ; and thus it behoved you to clear him of these errors before you could judge him worthy of your friendship? Listen then to what passed in the reconciliation that was made in the presence of a large number of the principal persons in the town. . . . M. Puys did nothing but declare "that what he had written was not 96 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. addressed to the Jesuit fathers, that he had spoken in general terms against those who draw away the faithful from their own parishes, without having thought of attacking the Society, and that on the contrary he honoured and loved it." By these words alone he cleared himself of his apostasy, of his scandals, and of his excommunication, without retracting and without absolution, and Father Alby then said to him these precise words : " Sir, the belief which I had, that you were attacking the Society to which I have the honour to belong, made me take up my pen to reply, and I believed that the way I have made use of it was allowable. But knowing your intention better, I rise to declare to you, that there is now nothing which can hinder me from considering you a man of talent, highly enlightened, of profound and orthodox doctrines, and of irreproachable morals. This is a declaration that I most joyfully make, and I beg these gentlemen to remember it." They have remembered it, fathers, and they were more scandalised by the reconciliation than by the quarrel, for who could help admiring this speech of Father Alby ? He did not say he came to retract, because he had discovered a change in the manners and doctrine of M. Puys, but merely, " because, knowing that his intention was not to attack your Society, there was no longer anything to prevent him from reckoning him orthodox." He did not really then think he was a heretic. And nevertheless, after having accused him against his own conscience, he does not declare that he was wrong, but, on the contrary, dares to say, that he believed that the manner that he has made use of was allowable. What are you thinking of, fathers, to testify thus publicly that you only measure the faith and virtue of men by the feelings which they may have for your Society ? How is it that you do not apprehend being counted, from your own confession, as impostors and calumniators ? What ! fathers, is the same man " pious or impious, irreproachable or excommunicated, a worthy pastor of the Church, or fit for the flames, orthodox or heretical," merely according to whether you believe he honours your Society or attacks it, without any change taking place in the man himself? This is an amusing kind of heresy, fathers ; and so, when one sees in your writings so many orthodox persons called heretics, it only means " that you believe them to be attacking you." It is good to understand this strange language, according to which, without doubt, I am a great heretic. It is in this sense that you give me the name so often. You cut me off from the Church only because you think my letters do you harm, and there is, therefore, no way PASCAL. 97 for me to become orthodox, except by my approving the excesses of your morality, which I could not do without giving up all feeling of piety, or else by persuading you that I only seek your true good ; and you must have returned considerably from your errors before you could see that. Thus I find myself strangely involved in heresy : since the purity of my faith being useless to get me out of this kind of error, I only become orthodox either by betraying my conscience or reforming yours. Therefore I shall always remain a wicked man and an impostor ; and, however faithful I may have been in quoting passages from your authors, you will cry out everywhere, " That he must be an instrument of the devil to impute to you things of which there is no trace or vestige in your books ; " and you will in that be doing nothing but what is quite conformable to your maxim and to your ordinary practice, so extensive is the privilege which you possess for lying. o MADAME DE SEVIGNE. MARIE DE RABUTIN-CHANTAL, daughter of the Baron de Chantal, was born at Paris in 1626. Having been left an orphan at an early age, she was brought up with great care by her uncle, the Abbe" de Coulanges. At the age of eighteen she married the Marquis de Se'vigne', who was killed in a duel, and from the time of his death Madame de SeVigne" devoted herself entirely to the education of her two children. In 1669 her daughter, having married the Count de Grignan, Governor of Provence, was obliged to leave her mother, and it is to her that the greater number of Madame de Se'vigne' 's admirable Letters are addressed. She died in 1696. TO MADAME DE GRIGNAN. Paris, Wednesday, Nov. 22d, 1679. You will be much surprised and much vexed, my dear child. M. de Pomponne is disgraced : on Saturday evening, as he was returning from Pomponne, he received the order to give up his office. The king had settled that he should have seven hundred thousand francs, and that the pension of twenty thousand francs that he had as minister should be continued to him. His Majesty wished to show by this arrangement that he was satisfied about his fidelity. It was M. Colbert who paid him this compliment, assuring him that he was " in despair at being obliged," &c. M. de Pomponne asked if he could not have the honour of speaking with the king, and learning from his mouth the fault that had drawn down this thunder-clap. He was told that he could not ; so he wrote to the king to express his great grief, and his ignorance of anything that could have contributed to his disgrace : he spoke pf his numerous family, and begged him to consider his eight children. He ordered horses to be put to his carriage at once ; he returned to Paris, where he arrived at midnight. M. de Pomponne was not one of those ministers on whom a disgrace falls very seasonably, to teach them what they have almost all forgotten, that they are human : fortune had only employed his virtues for the happiness of others ; he was MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 99 loved, for this reason above all, that he was infinitely honoured. We had been to Pomponne, as I told you, on Friday M. de Chaulnes, Caumartin, and I: we saw him and the ladies, who received us very gaily. We chatted all the evening, we played at chess ; oh ! what a check-mate was preparing for him at Saint Germain ! He went from there the next morning because a courier was waiting for him : so that M. Colbert, who thought he should find him on Saturday evening as usual, learning that he had gone straight to Saint Germain, retraced his steps, and thought he should over-ride his horses. As for us, we did not set out from Pomponne till after dinner ; we left the ladies there, Madame de Vins having charged me with a thousand messages for you. It was necessary, then, to tell them these sad news : this was done by one of M. de Pomponne's valets, who went into Madame de Vins's room at nine o'clock on Sunday : this was such an extraordinary thing for him to do, and he looked so excessively altered, that Madame de Vins absolutely thought that he was going to tell her that M. de Pomponne was dead, so that, when she knew he was only disgraced, she began to breathe again; but she was very sensible of her trouble when she recovered herself: she went to tell her sister. They set out at once, leaving all their little boys in tears ; and, overwhelmed with grief, they arrived at Paris at two o'clock in the afternoon. You can picture to yourself their interview with M. de Pomponne, and what they fe.lt at meeting again in circumstances so different from what they had expected the evening before. As for me, I learned these news through the Abbe" de Grignan : I confess it went to my very heart. I went to their door in the evening ; they do not appear in public at all. I went in ; I found them all three. M. de Pomponne embraced me, without being able to say a word ; the ladies could not restrain their tears, nor I mine : my dear, you would not have restrained yours ; it was a grievous spectacle : the fact that we had just separated at Pomponne in such a different way increased our sadness. Indeed, I cannot describe to you our condition. Poor Madame de Vins, whom I had left so flourishing, was not to be recognised ; I say not to be recognised, a fortnight's fever could not have changed her so much : she talks about you, and tells me she is sure you will feel for her in her grief, and for the condition of M. de Pomponne. I assured her you would. We talked of the blow she felt from this disgrace-; it is terrible in her life and home, and her husband's fortune. She feels all this very bitterly. M. de Pomponne was not a favourite, but he was in a condition to obtain certain ordinary things, which make nevertheless the ioo HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. fortune of other people : there are many degrees below the favour that others attain, that make the fortune of private people. It is a very nice thing, too, to find oneself naturally settled at court. Oh, what a change ! what retrenching, what economy in that house ! Eight children, and not to have had time to obtain the least favour ! They owe thirty thousand pounds ; see what they will have left. They are going to reduce their expenses sadly at Paris and Pompbnne. It is said that so many journeys, and sometimes couriers who attended them, even the one from Bavaria that came on Friday, and whom the king waited for impatiently, have helped to draw on this misfortune. But you will easily understand in this the ways of Providence, when you learn that it is the President Colbert who has his place : as he is in Bavaria, his brother holds it for him, and to surprise him has put on the letter as if by mistake, " To Monsieur, Monsieur Colbert, Minister and Secretary of State." I have offered my sympathy to the afflicted family ; there was nothing better to be done. Reflect a little on all the power of this family, both at home and abroad ; and you will see it far exceeds that of the other house where the wedding is going on. My poor child, I have given you details and circumstances enough, but it seems to me that, on such occasions as these, they are not unpleasant : it seems to me that you always want some one to talk to you ; I have only talked too much. When your courier comes, I shall have nowhere to send him ; it is still one of my griefs that henceforth I shall be entirely useless to you : it is true that I was so already through Madame de Vins : but that was joking. So, my child, this is what has happened ; this is the way of the world. M. de Pomponne is better qualified than any man to sustain this misfortune with courage and resignation, and much Christian feeling. Besides, those who have used prosperity as he has done have no need of pity in times of adversity. Still I must, dearest child, say a word or two about your own little letter ; it gave me great comfort : I see the little one is quite recovered, and about your own health, dear child, you tell me wonders : you assure me that I should be very well pleased if I saw you. You are quite right. Oh, what a charming sight it would be to see you taking care of your health, resting yourself, recovering your strength ! That is a pleasure you have never given me. You see that this care is not useless, its success is visible; and when I torment myself here with trying to inspire you with the same attention, you know very well that I am right. MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 101 TO M. DE COULANGES. Paris, Monday, I5th December, 1670. I am going to announce to you the most astonishing, the most surprising, the most marvellous, the most miraculous, the most triumphant, the most astounding, the most unexampled, the most unique, the most extraordinary, the most incredible, the most unex- pected, the most great, the most small, the most rare, the most common, the most celebrated, the most secret till to-day, the most brilliant, the most enviable thing in the world ; in short, a thing for which one only finds one precedent in past history, and that precedent does not apply ; a thing we could not believe at Paris, and how will it be possible to believe it at Lyons ? a thing that made everybody cry, " Mercy ! " a thing which overjoys Madame de Rohan and Madame de Hauterive : a thing, in short, which is to happen on Sunday, when those who see it will fancy something the matter with their eyes a thing which is to take place on Sunday, and perhaps will not have taken place on Monday. I cannot bring myself to tell it. Guess ! I will give you three trials. Do you give it up ? Very well ! then I must tell you. M. de Lauzun marries on Sunday, at the Louvre guess who ? I will give you four trials, I will give you ten, I will give you a hundred. I hear Madame de Coulanges say : " What a difficult thing to guess ! Why, it is Madame de Valliere." Not at all, Madame. " Then it is Made- moiselle de Retz." Not at all ; you are extremely provincial. " Really, how silly we are," say you ; "it is Mademoiselle Colbert." Still less. "Of course, it is Mademoiselle de Crequi." You are out again. So I have to tell you after all : he marries ... on Sunday ... at the Louvre . . . with the king's permission . . . Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle de . . . Mademoiselle . . . Guess ! Why ! he marries Mademoiselle upon my word, upon my word, upon my sacred word MADEMOISELLE, the great Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle, the daughter of Monsieur that is dead, Mademoiselle, grand-daughter of Henri IV, Mademoiselle d'Eu, Mademoiselle de Dombes, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, Mademoiselle d'Orleans, Mademoiselle, cousin to the king, Mademoiselle, intended for the throne ; Mademoiselle, the only match in France worthy of Monsieur. Here is a fine topic for conversation. If you cry out, if you go out of your senses, if you charge us with lying, if you say it is false, 102 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. that we are laughing at you, that it is a fine hoax, that it is a very dull invention ; if, in short, you call us names, we shall say you are quite right, we have done the same as you. Farewell, the letters that arrive by this post will let you know whether we tell the truth or not. TO M. DE COULANGES. Paris, Friday, December iQth, 1670. What is called falling from the clouds is what happened yesterday evening at the Tuileries ; but I must take up matters a little further back. I left you at the joy, the transports, the ravishments of the princess and her fortunate lover. It was on Monday then that the thing was announced, as I told you. Tuesday was passed in talking, in astonishment, in compliments ; Wednesday, Mademoiselle made a present to M. de Lauzun, with the view of conferring upon him the titles, names, and ornaments proper to be named in the marriage contract, which was drawn the same day. She gave him then, as a first instalment, four duchies : the first is the county of Eu, which is the first peerage of France, and confers the highest rank ; the duchy of Montpensier, of which he carried the name all yesterday ; the duchy of St. Fargeau, the duchy of Chatellerault : all these reckoned at twenty- two millions. Then the contract was drawn, in which he took the name of Montpensier. On Thursday morning, which was yesterday, Made- moiselle hoped the king would sign the contract, as he had said ; but about 7 o'clock in the evening, the queen, Monsieur, and a number of greybeards made his Majesty understand that the affair would damage his reputation; so that, after sending for Mademoiselle and M. de Lauzun, the king announced to them, before the prince, that he absolutely forbade them to dream of the marriage. M. de Lauzun received the command with all the respect, all the submission, all the firmness, and all the despair which so great a fall demanded. As for Mademoiselle, giving way to her feelings, she burst into tears, cries, violent anguish, extravagant complaints, and all day she has kept her bed, and swallowed nothing but broth. What a fine dream ! What a fine subject for a romance, or a tragedy ; but, above all, what a fine subject to discuss and talk about eternally, which is what we do day and night, evening and morning, without end or intermission, and we hope you will do the same ! E fra tanto vi bacio le mani. MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 103 TO THE COUNT DE GRIGNAN, Paris, July 3ist, 1675. I address myself to you, my dear Count, to tell you of one of the most lamentable losses which could happen in France, the death of M. de Turenne, at which I am sure you will be as much concerned and afflicted as we are here. The news arrived at Versailles on Monday; the king was distressed by it, as one must needs be by the death of the . greatest captain and the best man in the world ; all the court was in tears, and M. de Condour was on the point of fainting. Everything was ready for a trip to Fontainebleau, but it was all broken off. Never has a man been so sincerely regretted ; all the quarter where he resided, all Paris, and all the people were in trouble and emotion ; people were talking and gathering in groups to deplore the hero. I send you a very good narrative of what he did some days before his death. It was after three months of strategy, quite miraculous, which military men are never tired of admiring, that the last day of his glory and his life arrived. He had the pleasure of seeing the enemy's army decamp before him, and on the 27th, which was Saturday, he ascended a rising ground to observe their march ; his design was to take them in the rear, and at noon he wrote a despatch to the king to say that, having this plan, he had sent to tell Brissac to have the prayers of forty hours performed. He announced the death of the young D'Hocquincourt, and that he would send a courier to acquaint the king with the result of this enterprise ; he sealed his letter and sent it at 2 o'clock. Then he ascended the little hill with eight or ten persons ; from a distance came an unfortunate cannon-shot, fired at hazard, which struck him in the middle of the body, and you can conceive the cries and tears of the army. The courier started at once ; he arrived on Monday, as I told you; so that within the interval of an hour the king had a letter from M. de Turenne and the news of his death. There has arrived since a member of M. de Turenne's staff, who says that the armies are pretty close, to each other ; that M. de Lorges commands in his uncle's place, and that nothing can be comparable to the violent affliction of the whole army. BOSSUET. JACQUES BENIGNE BOSSUET was the son of a magistrate at Dijon, and from his infancy was destined for the Church by his parents. He was made successively Bishop of Condom, preceptor to the Dauphin, the son of Louis XIV, member of the French Academy, Bishop of Meaux, and Councillor of State. He vehemently opposed the doctrines of the Reformed Church, and carried on controversies with the Jansenists, the Quietists, and the Ultramontanes. His principal works are the Orations funebres, and his Discours sur rHistoire Universelle. He wrote besides an Exposition de la Doctrine Catholique, the Histoire des Variations des Eglises Protestantes, Elevations sur les Mysteres, and Meditations sur VEvangile. The power and eloquence of his style place him in the first rank among the writers of France, and gained for him the title of "The Eagle of Meaux." THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. THE Egyptians were the first among whom the laws of government were known. These grave and serious people perceived at once the true end of politics, viz. to make life comfortable, and people happy. The unvarying temperature of the country produced strong and stedfast minds. As virtue is the basis of all society, they carefully cultivated it. Their principal virtue was gratitude. The praise that has been bestowed upon them of being the most grateful of all men, shows that they were also the most sociable. Kind actions are the bond of public and private peace. He who acknowledges favours loves to do them, and, by banishing ingratitude, the pleasure of doing good remains so pure, that it is impossible to be insensible to it any longer. Their laws were simple, equitable, and calculated to bind the citizens together. He who being able to save a man that was attacked, and did not do it, was punished with death as rigorously as an assassin. If he could not help the unhappy man, he was obliged at least to denounce the author of the violence, and there were fixed penalties for those who failed in this duty. Thus the citizens were protected from one another, and the whole body of the state was united against the wicked. No one was allowed to be useless to the state ; the law assigned to each his employment, and it was handed down from father to son. No EOSSUET, 105 one could have two, or change his profession ; but then all professions were honoured. It was necessary that there should be some more important employments and persons, as it is necessary that there should be eyes in the body ; their brightness does not cause the feet to be despised, nor the lower parts. So among the Egyptians, the priests and the soldiers had marks of particular honour ; but all trades, down to the lowest, were held in esteem, and one could not without crime despise citizens whose works, whatever they might be, contributed to the public good. By this means all the arts were brought to perfection ; the honour that supported them mingled with them everywhere ; men improved on the old models, and on the works in which they had been exclusively engaged from their childhood. But there was one occupation common to all, the study of the laws and of wisdom. Ignorance of the religion and politics of the country was not excused in any rank. For the rest, each profession had a certain quarter assigned to it. This caused no inconvenience in a country the size of which was not large ; under such a good arrangement, idle people did not know where to hide themselves. Added to such good laws, what was still better, was that everybody was brought up to keep them. A new custom was a prodigy in Egypt ; everything was always done in the same way ; and the exactness with which little things were observed preserved the greater. The judicial administration served to keep up this spirit. Thirty judges were chosen from the chief towns to compose the tribunal that judged the whole kingdom. People were accustomed to see in these offices none but the most upright and grave men of the land. The prince assigned them certain revenues, in order that, freed from domestic cares, they might give all their time to promoting the observance of the laws. They gained nothing by lawsuits, for it was not thought right then to make a trade of justice. To avoid mistakes, all matters were transacted in writing in this assembly. The false eloquence that dazzles the mind and moves the passions was feared ; the truth could not be expressed in too dry a manner. The president of the senate wore a necklace of gold and precious stones, from which hung a figure without eyes, called Truth. When he put it on, it was the signal to begin the sitting. He turned it to the person that gained the cause, and this was the form of pronouncing sentence. One of the finest devices of the Egyptians to preserve their ancient maxims, was to clothe them in certain ceremonies which impressed them on the mind. These ceremonies were thoughtfully observed, and the P 106 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. grave temper of the Egyptians did not permit them to become mere forms. Those who had no lawsuits, and whose life was free from blame, could avoid the examination of this severe tribunal. But there was in Egypt one kind of very strange judgment, quite extraordinary, which no one could escape. When a man dies, it is a comfort to him to leave his name in esteem among men, and, of all earthly wealth, this is the only thing that death cannot take from us. But it was not allowed in Egypt to praise all the dead indiscriminately : this honour must be obtained by a public sentence. Directly a man was dead they brought him to trial. The public accuser was heard. If he proved that the conduct of the dead man had been bad, his memory was condemned, and he was deprived of burial. The people admired the power of the laws which lasted even after death, and each one, touched by the example, feared to dishonour his memory or his family. But if the dead man was not convicted of any crime, they buried him honourably, delivered a panegyric on him, but without saying anything about the circumstances of his birth. All the Egyptians were noble, and besides, they cared for no praises but those earned by merit. Every one knows how carefully the Egyptians preserved the dead bodies : their mummies may still be seen. Thus their gratitude to their parents was never ending ; children, seeing the bodies of their ancestors, remembered their virtues acknowledged by the public, and were stirred up to love the laws that they had bequeathed to them. To hinder borrowing, from which laziness, fraud, and chicanery arise, the decree of the King Asychis did not allow any one to borrow except on condition of pledging his father's body to the lender. It was thought an impious and shameful action not to redeem without delay so precious a pledge ;~ and he who died without having acquitted himself of this duty, was deprived of burial. The Egyptians had an inventive genius, but they turned it to useful things. Their Mercuries have filled Egypt with marvellous inventions, and have left hardly anything unknown that renders life quiet and com- fortable. I cannot allow to the Egyptians the glory that they have given to their Osiris, of having invented husbandry, for it is found at all times, in the neighbouring countries of the earth, wherever the human race has spread itself, and one cannot doubt that it was known from the beginning of the world. But if the Egyptians did not invent agriculture, nor the other arts that we read of before the Deluge, they brought them to such perfection, and took such great pains in establishing them among nations where barbarism had caused them to be forgotten, that BOS SUET. 107 their glory is no less great than if they had been the inventors of them. There are even very important arts, the invention of which cannot be disputed with them. As their country was flat, and their sky always pure and cloudless, they were the first to observe the course of the stars ; they were also the first to regulate the year. These observations drew them naturally into arithmetic ; and it , is true, as Plato says, that the sun and the moon have taught men the science of numbers ; that is to say, regular reckoning has been begun with that of the days, months, and years; the Egyptians were the first who listened to these wonderful masters. The planets and other stars were not less known to them, and they discovered that great year which brings back the whole heavens to its first point. To know their own lands, which were covered every year by the overflowing of the Nile, they were obliged to have recourse to surveying, which soon taught them geometry ; they were great observers of nature, which, in so calm an atmosphere, and beneath so burning a sun, was vigorous and fertile among them. This it is, also, that made them invent or improve medicine. Thus all the sciences were held in high honour among them. The inventors of useful things received during their life, or after their death, the worthy rewards of their labours. It is this that has hallowed the books of their two Mercuries, and has caused them to be looked upon as divine books. Libraries were seen in Egypt earlier than in any other country. One thing that was impressed most strongly on the minds of the Egyptians, was esteem and love for. their native country. She was, they said, the abode of the gods ; they had reigned there for thousands and thousands of years. It was the mother of men and animals, which the land of Egypt watered by the Nile had brought forth while the rest of Egypt was barren. The priests who composed the history of Egypt during the immense series of centuries, which they filled with nothing but fables of genealogies of their gods, did so to impress on the minds of the people the antiquity and nobility of their country. As to the rest, their true history was included within reasonable limits, but they thought it a fine thing to lose oneself in an infinite abyss of time, that seemed to bring one near to eternity. However, the love of their country had many solid foundations. Egypt was really the most beautiful country of the whole world ; the most fruitful by nature, the best cultivated by art, and the most adorned by the care and magnificence of her kings. FLECHIER. ESPRIT FLECHIER was born at Pernes, in the county of Avignon, in 1632, and was educated for the Church. He belonged to a poor family ; and when he went to Paris had neither money nor friends. He obtained, however, a situation as tutor in a family of some importance, and thus became acquainted with many persons of distinction. His great talents soon became known, and he was invited to join the literary circle at the Hotel de Rambouillet. From that time he began to be con- sidered one of the greatest preachers of the age, and his Funeral Orations are reckoned only inferior to those of Bossuet. He was appointed Bishop of Lavaur, and afterwards of Nimes. He died at Montpellier in 1710. A PANEGYRIC ON SAINT LOUIS. ROYALTY, according to St. Paul, is not simply a dignity which raises a man above his fellows ; it is also a ministry of religion to God, of justice to the people, of love to the miserable, severity to the wicked, gentleness to the good. Such were the principles on which St. Louis founded the glory and the holiness of his reign. He felt the weight of his crown from the first moment that he wore it ; he recognised the difficulty of his work, and, like Solomon, he prayed for wisdom to aid him. The first truths which he learned were, what he owed to God as a man, what he owed to his people as a king. His first thoughts were, to make his kingdom happy> and to make himself holy ; his first actions were actions of clemency and justice ; and when he began to reign, he sacrificed his repose, and jeopardied his own life to put an end to the civil wars. Shall I sketch out to you the sad picture of a minority and a troubled regency ? Shall I represent to you that fatal division which jealousy and the desire of command excited in the first years of his reign ? Princes appeared in arms under the common pretext of the public good ; the English had penetrated to the very centre of France ; the authority of the king was violated, good subjects oppressed ; and this flourishing kingdom ready to fall a prey to enemies both foreign and domestic. Sirs, what desolation ! Louis, without consulting flesh and blood, without excusing himself on the score of youth, fearing neither the hardships of the seasons, nor the dangers of war, set out on the campaign, implored the help of the God of armies, went to meet and fight his enemies : I am wrong, went to comfort his subjects, and to FLECHIER. log restore them peace by gaining a battle. It was then that, assisted by Heaven, and moved more by the justice of his cause than by his own interests in spite of the terror of foreign lands and foreign troops he showed that true piety is not contrary to true valour, and that the most difficult victories are only the first attempts of those whom God himself trains to war. It was then that he was seen to make up, by his own courage, for the inequality of numbers ; to sustain, alone, the whole weight of the army ; to defend the bridge of Jaillebourg with a firmness more wonderful than that of which ancient Rome has so boasted ; and to perform actions which might be called rash, were it not that the Spirit of God sometimes elevates above the rules of common virtue and prudence those great minds which He has destined to combat the pride and the rebellion of men. It was neither the desire to conquer, nor the desire of revenge, which kindled this youthful courage ; it was the desire of peace and of public safety. Besides, the end of the rebellion was the repentance, not the ruin, of the rebels. He did not beat down those proud heads, he con- tented himself with having humbled them ; he granted them his friend- ship as soon as he had restored them to order ; and it might be skid, that God had prepared these wars for him, and placed arms in his hands, in order to give him the glory of conquering and the pleasure of pardoning. Never was peace signed in better faith. Having preserved to them life, he did not make it miserable by eternal coldness and distrust; he looked upon them as friends acquired, not as enemies reconciled ; and, employ- ing them in his pious expeditions, he only demanded, as satisfaction for rebellion against their own country, that they should go with him to fight for the faith and for religion. When God had granted him such happy success in his first war, St. Louis applied himself entirely to regulate his dominions. One of the most noble and most essential functions of the sovereign is to render justice to his people. The prophet-king prayed to God for nothing so earnestly as for His judgment. Solomon asked only for docility of heart, and a just discernment to know good and evil, and to judge his people by this knowledge ; and St. Louis made it one of the principal occupations of his reign. He listened to the differences of his people, he examined them himself by his own equity. The entrance of the Louvre was free to all who sought his protection. Around him were seen no frightful ranks of guards, like a hedge, to terrify the timid and repulse the importunate. It was not necessary to gain by presents, or to soften by prayers, self-interested or inexorable ushers; there was 1 10 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH A UTHORS. no barrier between the king and his subjects which the least among them could not penetrate. None ever awaited his fate without those proud gates, which are half-opened from time to time to exclude, not to receive, those who present themselves. There needed no other recom- mendation, no other influence, than that of justice ; and it was title enough to an introduction to the prince, that one was in want of his protection. How I delight to fancy this good king, as history represents him, in the wood of Vincennes, under those trees which time has respected, stopping in the midst of his innocent pleasures to listen to the complaints and to receive the requests of his subjects. Great and small, rich and poor, all alike could reach him in the pleasantest time of his walk. There was no difference between his leisure hours and his hours of business ; his tribunal followed him wherever he went. Under a dai's of foliage, on a throne of grass, just as on the gilded marble of his palace and on his bed of justice ; without solicitation, without favour, without regard to rank or fortune, he gave his judgments without delay, and his oracles with authority, equity, and tenderness ; a king, a judge, and a father, all in one. St. Louis never shrank from work, and, however weary he might be from the multiplicity of his duties, it was always relaxation to him to benefit his subjects. But although he thought he owed somewhat to every one, and would often say with the apostle, " I am a debtor to all men," yet he thought himself specially bound to care for the poor. Though he had established judges of recognised probity and of irre- proachable reputation, he reserved to himself the judgment of the poor as his favourite function. He knew that Justice is not so well veiled but that she can get a glimpse of those who seek her ; that he who has no credit may easily be without succour, and that a poor man's solicitation is almost always importunate. Experience shows this only too clearly, however good may be their plea, one grows tired of hearing them. If they are not harshly repulsed, they are spoken to haughtily and proudly ; and even when justice is done them, it is generally with a bad grace. Louis wished to prevent this corruption, or to provide against this danger, by taking upon himself this part of justice, and gave them twice a week long and easy audiences, in which, as the splendour of royalty was tempered by an air of goodness and of Christian simplicity, he removed from them the fear which majesty impresses, and which poverty and timidity cause. It was then that, as a common father, he sustained the weak against the powerful, and punished injustice, by FLECHIER. 1 1 1 what authority soever supported. It was then that he made clear, by the light of his own spirit, that which malice or calumny had tried to perplex. It was then that he dissipated, by a look, the clouds which gathered in that lower part of the kingdom. It was then that he pro- nounced decrees of mercy, and, entering into judgment between himself and his people, retrenched his own rights, and renounced his own interests, and gave those grand examples of equity and disinterestedness that his successors make it their glory to follow. It was in order to satisfy this paternal love that he preserved peace with his neighbours, and that he maintained it among his subjects. He had learned those great maxims, that kings ought to love peace by inclination, and to make war from necessity ; that their true greatness does not consist in putting armies on foot ; and that public tranquillity maintained is worth more than those victories which generally cost so much blood and so many tears. It was in the same spirit that he con- tented himself with the revenue of his royal domain, and with certain almost voluntary tributes. He never made use of the goods or money of the poor. To be a good courtier, it was not necessary to study means of filling the treasury of the prince. He did not consider it necessary to make his subjects wretched in order to make them obedient. Though there has never been perhaps a prince more noble or more magnificent, did he not know how to regulate his expenses so as to do honour to his own dignity without being a burden to any one ? When he made a progress through the provinces, did he not leave behind him just and faithful men, to examine into, and liberally to repair, the damage sometimes caused by the tumultuous march of a large and numerous court, both to the public and to private individuals ? Thus his road was marked by the traces of his bounty and his justice. He traversed the country, not like a torrent which ravages, but like a slow and peaceful river, which carries riches and abundance everywhere. On the point of setting out for the Crusade, did he not publish abroad that he was ready to satisfy, before his departure, those who had aught to complain of in his justice ? And what did he carefully recommend to his successors, but love and piety toward the people ? But let us see the depths of this pious and compassionate heart on one sorrowful occasion in his reign. God, to punish the sins of his people, or to exercise the charity of the king, permitted both pestilence and famine to desolate this great kingdom. This double calamity spread everywhere. The earth did not produce her fruits, the air was full of unhealthy influences, life was failing in some, death overtook 112 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. others ; the elements seemed to be in league against men, who found themselves reduced to the sad necessity of perishing either by the anger of heaven, or by the sterility of the earth. Then it was that this holy king displayed all his charity. He spread abroad, with a liberal hand, those treasures which he had so carefully amassed. He regarded him- self as the father of a family, responsible for the life and salvation of his children. He sent to some the help needful for life, to others the consolations for death. He was sick with the sick. In spite of the seasons, he caused abundance by his care. Not only did he charge himself with the comfort of the public misery, he even wished to take the penitence upon himself. He wept in secret ; he offered himself up to God ; he afflicted himself. How many times did he in sackcloth offer to God the sacrifice which is most pleasing to Him, of a humble and contrite heart ? How many times, emaciated by fasts and abstinence, in public processions, did he present to God and to men the great and rare spectacle of a king innocent and penitent at the same time ? How many times, regarding himself as the subject of Divine vengeance, just and holy as he was, did he say, as a royal sinner in a similar position : " Behold, I have sinned ; turn Thy anger upon me, O Lord God." You see, sirs, the tender heart which God had given him for his people. Princes take pride in ambitious titles, and in names taken from their estates, or from their victories. St. Louis renounced all these earthly honours, and desired no other title than that of Louis de Paissy, which was the place of his baptism. But thoroughly to know his humility, let us see him in those happy times of unexpected prosperity, in which the heart generally dilates, and is taken up with its own happiness. Recall to your memory the design which he conceived of going to fight the infidels, and to carry the cross of Christ to its original place. The fleet reached Damietta. At the sight of that superb town, and of the 20,000 barbarians who defended it, the courage of the Crusaders was excited. Louis, at their head, burning with impatience, the sword in one hand, the shield in the other, and leaping from his vessel, reached the shore through the waves and a hail of arrows which fell on him from the bank. The enemy was astonished ; the Christians gained the land, the crosses were planted on the walls ; all yielded ; and in a day he made himself master of the place, and opened the road to others. What do you think was his robe of victory next day ? Did he go in a chariot of triumph to receive the praises and the acclamations of an army rendered victorious by the example of his valour ? Did he gather FLECHIER. 113 the spoils of his enemy to make of them trophies to his own glory ? Sirs, learn to know a new kind of triumph. He entered in the posture of a penitent, and not with the pride of a conqueror. The songs which were sung were not in honour of him who had conquered, but of Him who had made him to conquer. He desired that Religion should reap the fruits of a war which he had undertaken for her. As for himself, he humbled himself, he confounded himself, and he only contributed to his triumph by the sacrifice which he made of his grandeur and of his glory. St. Louis was often, in good faith, the arbiter of the differences of his neighbours, and, by his disinterested friendship, took from them .every cause or pretext for breaking the peace. The wise men of the world often showed him, but in vain, that dexterity consisted, not in uniting them, but in dividing them, and profiting by their divisions; that he must let them employ against each other the forces which they might turn against him ; that, if it was honest to prevent their destroying each other, it was advantageous to let them weaken each other. He rejected this policy; he sacrificed all his interests to his charity; and, as he was the love and delight of his ^people, he made himself the admira- tion of foreigners. But what was his moderation when Rome, provoked with the Empire, proposed to place him on the emperor's throne by a right which did not seem to him legitimate ? With what wise pride did he reply, that it belongs to God alone to dispose of sceptres and crowns ; that the perfection of a king consists in governing his own states well, and not in taking possession of those of others ; and that as temporal power ought not to touch the altar, so spiritual power ought not to touch the throne ! Thus he always regarded the emperor as a brother ; he submitted his ambition to his justice, and he showed his grandeur of soul in refusing a crown, however brilliant it might be, however sacred the hand which offered it. BOILEAU. NICOLAS BOILEAU DESPREAUX was born at Crosne, near Paris, in 1636, and, after having tried the study of theology and law, determined to devote himself entirely to letters. He achieved a great reputation as a satirist and reformer of taste, and holds high rank among French poets. His principal works are the Satires, Epitres, L'ArtPoetique, and the Lutrin. He died in 1711. The following passage is taken from his preface to the Lutrin. THE PRESIDENT DE LAMOIGNON. I SHALL not say how I was pledged to work at this little trifle, in consequence of a kind of challenge that the late first president, De Lamoignon, gave me in fun ; he it is that I have described there under the name of Ariosto. This particular, in my opinion, is not very necessary. But I think I should do myself great wrong, if I lost this opportunity of telling those who are ignorant of it that, during his life, this great personage honoured me with his friendship. I first knew him at the time that my Satires were making the greatest noise in the world, and the access that he kindly gave me to his noble house furnished me with a good defence against those who wished, at that time, to accuse me of debauchery and immorality. He was a man of astonishing learning, and a passionate admirer of all the good works of antiquity, and it was this that enabled him to tolerate my writings more easily when he thought he perceived a slight touch of the ancients. His piety was as sincere as it was at the same time very cheerful, and had nothing repulsive about it. He was not at all alarmed at the name of Satires, which these works bore, when he saw that really only verses and authors were attacked. He even praised me several times for having, so to speak, purged that kind of poetry from the impurity that had been almost affected till then. I had, therefore, the good fortune of not being disagreeable to him. He invited me to share all his pleasures and amusements, that is to say, his reading and his walks. He honoured me sometimes with his greatest confidence, and let me see into the very bottom of his soul. BOILEAU AND THE PRESIDENT DE LAMOIGNON. BOILEAU. 115 And what did I not see there ! What a surprising treasure of probity and justice ! What inexhaustible depths of piety and zeal ! Although his goodness shed forth very great light without, it was quite another thing within him ; and it was easy to see that he took care to temper its rays, that it might not hurt the eyes of a century so corrupt as ours. I was truly enamoured with so many admirable qualities ; and, if he treated me with great good-will, I was devoted to him. The attentions that I paid him had nothing to do with any motive of mercenary interest, and I thought much more of gaining profit from his con- versation than from his name. He died at the time when this friendship was at its height, and I still mourn for him daily. Why are men, so worthy of living, removed from the world so soon ; while the miserable, and people of no importance, reach an extreme old age ? I will not enlarge further on so sad a subject ; for I am sure that, if I continue to speak about it, I shall not be able to prevent myself from moistening with tears the preface to a work of mere pleasantry. LA BRUYERE. WE know hardly anything of the life of JEAN DE BRUYERE. He was born near Dourdan, in Normandy, in 1644, and was appointed by Bossuet to teach history to the grandson of the great Condd, and he spent all his life at the Hotel de Conde" and at Versailles. He also became a member of the French Academy. His volume of Caracteres gives him rank among the first writers of his time. He died in 1696. CHARACTERS. RUFFIN is beginning to grow grey ; but he is healthy, and his fresh complexion and lively eye promise him still some twenty years of life : he is gay, jovial, familiar, indifferent ; he laughs with all his heart, and he laughs all alone, without any reason ; he is pleased with himself, his family, his little fortune ; he says he is happy. He loses his only son, a very hopeful young man, and who might have been one day the honour of his family ; he surrenders to others the trouble of lamenting for him, saying, " My son is dead ; it will kill his mother : " and he is comforted. He has no passions, he has neither friends or foes, he dislikes nobody, everybody pleases him ; everything suits him : he speaks to any one whom he sees for the -first time with the same freedom and confidence as he does to those whom he calls his old friends, and he soon imparts to him his puns and his little stories. You may come up to him, and you may leave him without his paying any attention to the fact, and the same story that he has begun to tell to one person he will finish to the person who takes his place. N is less weakened by age than by illness, for he is not more than sixty-eight ; but he has gout, and nephritic colic, his face is thin, his complexion is greenish and betokens decay. He has his land marled, and he reckons that for fifteen years he will be obliged to manure it : he plants a young wood that, in less than twenty years, he hopes will LA BRUYERE. 117 give him pleasant shade. He has a freestone house built in - Street, made firm at the corners with iron bands, and of which he affirms, coughing, in a faint weak voice, that we shall never see the end. He walks every day about his workshops, leaning . on the arm of a valet, who helps him along : he shows his friends what he has done, and tells them what he intends to do. It is not for his children that he builds, for he has none, nor for his heirs, vile persons that they are, quarrelling among themselves and with him ; it is for himself, and he will die to- morrow. MENALQUE comes down stairs, opens the door to go out, and shuts it again, for he perceives that he is in his night-cap. On ex- amining himself closer, he finds that he has only half shaved, that his sword hangs on his right side, and his stockings are turned down over his heels. If he walks abroad, he feels all at once a violent blow on his chest or face ; he does not guess what it can be, till, arousing himself and opening his eyes, he finds himself before the shaft of a cart, or behind a carpenter's long plank, that a workman is carrying on his shoulders. He has been seen to knock his forehead against that of a blind man ; he gets entangled in his legs, they both tumble down, one on one side, and the other on the other ; and several times he has happened to find himself face to face with a prince, and just in his way ; he recollects himself with difficulty, and has only time to squeeze close against a wall to make room for him. He enters a room and passes under a lustre, on which his wig is caught and remains hanging ; all the courtiers look and laugh. Menalque looks too, and laughs louder than any. He looks all round the assembly to see who is showing his ears, and wants a wig. If he goes into the town, after having proceeded some little distance, he thinks he has gone wrong, and is vexed ; he asks the passers-by where he is, and they tell him precisely the name of his own street; then he enters his house, but comes out again in a hurry, thinking he has made a mistake. He writes a long letter, and thinks he has sanded it several times, but always throws the sand into the inkstand. This is not all; he writes a second letter, and, after having sealed them, he makes a mistake in the addresses. A duke receives one of these two letters, and on opening it reads these words : " M. Olivier; do not fail, as soon as you receive this, to send me my supply of hay." 1 1 8 HALF HO URS WITH FRENCH A UTHORS. His farmer receives the other ; he opens it, and gets it read : they find, " My lord, I have received, with blind submission, the orders that it has pleased your highness," &c. He meets a young widow by chance he speaks to her of her late husband, and asks how he died : at these words the woman's grief is renewed ; she weeps and sobs, and does not forget to go over all the details of her husband's illness from the time that he was quite well just before his fever till his last moments. " Madam," asks Menalque, who had apparently listened with emotion, " is that all that is the matter with you ? " He is never really with those with whom_he seems to be. He calls his lackey very gravely, "Sir," and his friend "La Verdure:" he says "Your Reverence" to a prince of the blood, and (< Your Highness" to a" Jesuit He finds himself with a magistrate ; this gentleman, grave by character, venerable from age and dignity, questions him on an event, and asks him if it is so. Menalque answers, "Yes, Miss," Once he was returning from the country ; his own footmen undertook to rob him, and suc- ceeded ; they got down from his carriage, put the end of a torch to his throat, and demanded his purse, and he gave it up to them. Arrived at home, he related his adventure to a friend, who did not fail to question him about all the circumstances ; he said to them, " Ask my people ; they were there." ARRIAS has read everything and seen everything, and he intends every one to know it ; he is a universal genius, and he gives himself out as such ; he would rather tell a falsehood than be silent, or appear ignorant of anything. A nobleman from a northern court is mentioned at table ; he begins to speak, and interrupt those who are to tell what they know about him. He discusses this distant country as if it were his native land ; he discourses about the manners of the court, about the women of the country, of its laws and customs; he tells little anecdotes about it, and laughs till he is ready to burst. Some one ventures to contradict him, and clearly proves that what he says is not true. Arrias does not trouble himself about that ; on the contrary, he fires up at the interruption. "I advance nothing," he says; " I relate nothing that I do not know on good authority ; I heard this from Se"thon, the French ambassador at this court, who returned to Paris some days ago, whom I know well, whom I have asked a great many questions, and who has hidden nothing from me." He resumes his narrative with greater confidence than he began it, till one of the LA BRUYERE, 119 company says to him, "It is S6thon himself to whom you are speaking, and who has just arrived from his embassy." " WOULD you like to see my prints ? " adds Democedus ; and then he brings them out and shows them to you. You come upon one which is neither black, nor clean, nor well drawn, and less fit to be kept in a cabinet than to adorn the Petit Pont, or the Rue Neuve, on a festival day. He grants that it is badly engraved, and still worse drawn ; but he assures you that it is by an Italian whose works are scarce, that very few impressions of it have been taken, and that this is the only copy in France, that he bought it at a high price, and that he Would not exchange it for anything. " A great trouble has come upon me,'* continues he, " which will oblige me to give up prints for the rest of my days ; I have all the engravings of Calot, except one, which is not, in truth, one of his best works, on the contrary it is one of his most insignificant, but it would complete Calot for me. I have laboured twenty years to procure this print, and at last I despair of success; it is very hard." BAYLE. PIERRE BAYLE, the philosopher and critic, was the son of a Protestant minister, and was born in the year 1647. At an early age he showed a remarkable love for reading and inquiry. Plutarch's Lives and Montaigne's Essays were his favourite books, and had perhaps the greatest influence on his subsequent career. His greatest ambition was to obtain quiet and leisure for study, but, as it was necessary to earn a livelihood, he became a tutor in a private family. In 1675 he was appointed to the chair of philosophy in the Protestant Academy at Sedan, which he occupied till the academy was suppressed by Louis XIV. The latter years of his life he spent at Rotterdam, where he died in 1706. His great work was the Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, famous for the erudition and ability displayed in it, but with little pretensions to style or method, and pervaded by its author's unhappy scepticism. The following passages are taken from his Pensees Diverses. HOW THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA HAS GREATLY WEAKENED ITSELF BY RELIGIOUS PERSECUTIONS. IF it is true, as they say, that the height to which this house has arisen is the due reward of the marvellous piety of the Emperor Randolph, who one day met a priest on foot carrying the holy sacrament, and made him get on his horse, and then, with much devotion, followed him walking, we must say that his descendants have not had the same success in the invincible eagerness they have shown in exterminating heresies by fire and sword. And we need not be astonished at it ; the action of Randolph was that of a soul really animated by zeal ; but persecutions, galleys and gallows, and in general all the violent actions they have committed in behalf of the good religion, are only a criminal transport that God does not care to bless. " Fallit te incautum pietas tua," might be said to anybody who is seized with a zeal so monstrous, and so likely to confirm in Atheism those who laugh at religion in general, with their " Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum." I should not speak so freely, if I did not remember having heard you condemn those who counsel princes to employ bad means for the extirpation of heresies. Whatever it may be, if the house of Austria has been recompensed for her zeal against false religions, it BAYLE. 121 has not been in temporal blessings, for it has cost her the brightest gem in her crowns : I do not mean to say, the countries she has lost on this occasion that would be a small thing ; I mean that repute, that glory, that formidable name that she possessed for some time. She is so weak that she makes to all Europe a greater amends in the way of honour than one would have wished, for all the pride that made her so trouble- some formerly ; and it is to the victories of France that Europe owes principally the satisfaction of having been avenged, and of seeing the pride of Spain trodden under foot : " calco Platonis fastum " you know the rest : and you will not deny, that the unmeasured ambition of Austria, joined to her zeal for establishing by any means the cruelty and slavery of the Inquisition ; her power, added to the deliberate style of her policy, made it easy, when a comet appeared in the year 1618, to foresee a long and bloody war between the princes of Europe. K FENELON. FRANCOIS DE SALIGNAC DE LA MOTHE FENELON was born at the castle of Fe'ne'lon, in Quercy, in 1651. In 1689 he was appointed preceptor to the Duke of Burgundy, the grandson of Louis XIV, and five years later he was made Arch- bishop of Cambray. His principal works are the Aventures de Telemaque, the Traite de VExistence de Dieit, the Traite de f Education des F tiles, the Dialogues des Marts , and some fables. The following passage is taken from the Traite de V Education des Filles. INSTRUCTION OF WOMEN IN THEIR DUTIES. LET us notice now in detail the things that a woman ought to know. What are her employments ? She is charged with the education of her children of the boys up to a certain age, and of the girls till they marry ; with the management of servants, of their morals and work ; with the details of the expenditure ; with the means of doing everything economically and honourably ; generally, even, with managing farms and receiving rents. The knowledge of women, like that of men, ought to be limited to that learning appropriate to their occupations; the difference of their employments ought to affect their studies. It is necessary, then, to limit the instruction of women to the subjects we have just mentioned. But an inquisitive woman will think that this is to set too narrow limits to her curiosity : she deceives herself; it is that she does not know the importance and extent of the things I propose to teach her. What discernment is necessary to know the dispositions and genius of each of her children, to discover the way of treating them the most suited to find out their dispositions, their inclinations, their talent to check their rising passions, to make them believe good maxims, and to cure their errors ! What prudence ought she not to have to acquire and preserve authority over them, without losing their love and confidence ! But has she not need to observe and to know thoroughly the people she puts about them ? Doubtless she has. The mother of a family, then, has need to be fully instructed in religion, and to have a mature mind ; one earnest and experienced in the art of governing. Can we question FENELON. 123 whether women may be charged with all these cares, since they fall naturally on them even during the lifetime of their husbands, who are engaged away from home ? They concern them still more closely if they become widows. I do not explain here all that a woman ought to know to educate her children, because this little paper will make them feel quite enough the extent of knowledge that it will be necessary they should have. Add to this power of ruling economy. The greater number of women neglect it as a low employment, which only suits peasants or farmers ; or, at most, an hotel master, or some housekeeper ; especially women brought up in luxury, abundance, and idleness: they think there is little difference between rural life and that of the savages of Canada. If you speak to them of the sale of corn, of the cultivation of land, of different kinds of revenue, of collecting rents, and other seignorial rights of the best way of farming them, or appointing receivers they think you want to reduce them to occupations unworthy of them. It is only, however, through ignorance that this science of economy is despised. The ancient Greeks and Romans, so clever and so polished, were instructed in it very carefully : the greatest minds among them have written, from their own experience, books that we have still, and in which they have noticed even the smallest detail in agriculture. We know that their conquerors did not disdain to labour and to return to the plough after gaining a great victory. This is so different from our ways that we can hardly believe it, little reason as there is in history to doubt it But is it not natural that people should only dream of defending or increasing their country, in order to cultivate it peaceably ? What is the use of victory, if not to gather the fruits of peace ? The strength and happiness of a state consist, not in having many lands badly cultivated, but in drawing from the land that it possesses all that is necessary to feed a numerous people easily. Doubtless a much more elevated and extensive genius is necessary to learn all the arts connected with economy, and to be in a condition to manage well a whole family, which is a little republic, than to play, to talk about the fashions, and to practise the little conceits of conversa- tion. It is a very contemptible kind of mind that can only talk well. One sees, on every side, women whose conversation is full of solid maxims, and who, for want of having been made to apply early, are very frivolous in their conduct. But take care of the opposite fault : women run a risk of being extreme in everything. It is a good thing to accustom them from their 124 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. infancy to manage something ; to cast accounts, to see the way to strike a bargain for everything that is to be bought, and to know how every- thing must be made to be of good service. But take care that economy does not run into avarice in them ; show them in detail all the absurdi- ties of this passion ; then say to them, " Mind, avarice gains little, and brings much shame. A sensible mind ought only to try, in a frugal and laborious life, to avoid the shame and injustice connected with a wasteful and ruinous conduct." We must only retrench in superfluous expenses, that we may be in a condition to meet more liberally those that decorum, or friendship, or charity inspire. Do not fail to represent the gross error of those women who know how to husband a candle, while they let themselves be deceived by a steward in the general management of their affairs. Act in the same way about neatness as about economy. Accustom the girls not to bear anything dirty or disarranged ; let them notice the least disorder in a house. Make them even notice that nothing contributes more to economy and cleanliness than to keep every- thing in its place. This rule seems very unimportant. Nevertheless, it will go far if it is carefully observed. Do you want anything ? You do not lose a minute in looking for it ; there is neither trouble, nor dispute, nor worry, when you want it ; you put your hand on it at once; and, when you have done with it, you put it back at once into the place you took it from. Good order forms one of the greatest parts of neat- ness ; it is that whiqh strikes the eye most, just to see this exact arrangement. Besides, the place that is given to each thing being that which suits it best, not only for gracefulness and to please the eye, but also for its preservation, it is worn out less there than elsewhere ; it is not in general spoilt there by any accident ; it is even kept nicely ; for, for example, a cup will neither be dusty, nor in danger of being broken, when it is put in its place immediately after it has been used. The spirit of exactness that tends to arranging, leads also to cleaning. Add to these advantages that of banishing, by habit, from the servants, the disposition to laziness and muddling. Besides, it does much to render their service prompt and easy, and to remove from oneself the temptation of getting often impatient at the delays caused by things being out of order and a trouble to find. But at the same time avoid an excess of politeness and neatness. Neatness, in moderation, is a virtue ; but when it is carried to excess, it shows littleness of mind. Good taste rejects excessive nicety ; it treats little things as little things, and is not hurt by them. Ridicule, then, before the children, the trifles of which certain FENELON. 125 women are so passionately fond, and which lead them insensibly into such imprudent expenses. Accustom them to a neatness that is simple and easy to put into practice ; show them the best way of doing things, but show them still more how to do without them. Tell them what littleness of mind, and what meanness, there is in grumbling about badly seasoned soup, about a badly folded curtain, or a chair that is too high or too low. It is, doubtless, better to be willingly unpolished than to be over nice about such unimportant things. This false nicety, if it is not repressed in women who have some wit, is more dangerous in company than anything else. The greater number of people seem insipid and tiresome to them ; the least want of politeness appears monstrous tp them. They are always mocking or being disgusted. They must be made to under- stand early that there is nothing so injudicious as to judge superficially of a person by his manners, instead of thoroughly examining the depth of his mind, his opinions, and his useful qualities. Make them see, by different experiences, how much a countryman, with rough, or, if you like, ridiculous manners, with his tiresome compliments, if he is sincere and has a well regulated mind, is more estimable than a courtier who, under an accomplished politeness, conceals an ungrateful heart, is unjust, and capable of all sorts of dissimulation and baseness. Add that there is always some weakness in minds that have a great inclination to ennui and disgust. There are no people whose conversation is so poor, that we cannot draw something good from it : although we ought to choose better if we are free to choose, we have something to console us when we are reduced to it, since we can make them talk about what they know, and men of wit can also get some instruction from people less educated. REGNARD. JEAN FRANQOIS REGNARD, the celebrated comic poet, was born in 1655, and died in 1709. His father was a rich merchant of Paris, and afforded his son every opportunity of gaining a good education ; but his inclination was towards the lighter branches of literature, and he began to write verses at an early age. On leaving college, he entered the academy ; but before he had finished his course there, his father died, and left him a considerable fortune. He then determined to spend some time in travelling, and visited Italy, Flanders, Holland, and Sweden. At Stockholm he was introduced to the king, by whose advice he made a journey into Lapland ; he afterwards travelled through Poland, Turkey, Hungary, and Germany. At last he returned to France, and settled at Paris, where his house soon became the resort of the most distinguished men then living in the capital. After some time, he bought the estate of Grillon, near Dourdan, and it was while living there that he wrote the greater number of his poems and travels. As a writer of comic poetry, he is considered by some as second only to Moliere. TRAVELS IN LAPLAND. AT the end of two hours we arrived opposite his cabin, which was still very distant ; and having landed and taken with us some tobacco and a bottle of brandy, we followed our Lapp, who led us all the night through the wood. This man, who did not know exactly where his father-in-law lived, as he had removed lately, was as puzzled as we were. Sometimes he bent his ear to the ground to listen for any noise ; some- times he examined the traces of the animals which we met with, to discover whether the reindeer which had passed that way were wild or tame ; sometimes he climbed, like a cat, to the tops of the fir-trees to see if he could discover any smoke ; and continually shouted with all the strength of his terrific voice, which echoed through the woods. At last after having turned many times, we heard a dog bark ; never had any voice seemed to us so charming as that of this dog, which came to comfort us in the desert. We turned towards the side where we had heard the noise, and, after having walked for some time, we met a great troop of reindeer, and gradually we approached the cabin of our Lapp, who only reached it in the same way that we did. REGNARD. 127 This cabin was in the middle of the woods, built like all the others, and covered with its " valdemar." It was surrounded with moss enough to feed about eighty animals that he had. These reindeer form the entire wealth of these people. There are some among them who have from a thousand to twelve hundred. The occupation of the women is to take care of them, and at certain hours they tie them up and milk them. They count them twice every day, and if one has strayed away, the Lapp seeks it in the woods until he finds it. They may be seen running for a long time after these strayed animals, and even following their traces in the snow for three weeks. The women, as I have said, have the special care of the reindeer and their fawns; they watch over them constantly, and guard them day and night from the wolves and wild animals. The surest means of protecting them from the wolves is to tie them to a tree, and this animal, which is extremely suspicious and appre- hensive of being taken, fears that there may be a trick, and that near the animal there may be some snare into which he may fall. The wolves of this country are extremely strong, and all grey; they are nearly all white in winter, and are the most mortal enemies of the reindeer, which defend themselves with their forefeet when they cannot do so by flight. There is also a greyish-brown animal, about the height of a dog, which the Swedes call "jaert," and the Latins "gulo," which also carries on a bloody war with the reindeer. This beast climbs the highest trees, that it may see and not be seen, and surprises its enemy. When he sees a reindeer, whether wild or tame, passing under the tree where he is, he springs on his back, and, placing his hind-paws on the neck and fore-paws towards the tail, he stretches and stiffens himself with so much violence as to tear the back of the reindeer ; and forcing his muzzle, which is extremely pointed, into the animal, he drinks his blood. The skin of the "jaert" is very fine and beautiful; it is even compared to sable. There are also birds which wage a cruel war on the reindeer ; above all, the eagle is extremely fond of the flesh of this animal. There are numbers of eagles in this country, and of a size so astonishing, that they carry off in their talons the fawns of reindeer from two to three months old, and bear them to their nests in the tops of the highest trees. This peculiarity appeared to me at first, as I think it will seem to you, difficult to believe ; but it is nevertheless so true, that this is the reason of the watch kept over the young fawns. All the Lapps told me the same thing, and the Frenchman who was our interpreter in Lapland assured me that he had seen several such instances, and that one day, having followed an eagle which had carried the fawn of one of the reindeer to 128 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. its nest, he cut the tree down at the roots, and found that half the beast had already been used for food for the little ones. He took the eaglets and did with them what they had done with his fawn : that is to say, sir, he ate them. All the harness of the reindeer is also made by the women. The breast leather is ornamented with a quantity of figures, made with worsted? from which hang little pieces of serge of all kinds of colours, which make a kind of fringe. The bell is in the middle, and there is nothing which gives vigour to the animal and pleases it more than the noise which it makes with this bell in running. As I have begun to tell you about the employments of women in this country, it will give me an opportunity of speaking to you of the work of the men. I must tell you first, speaking in general, that all the inhabitants of this country are naturally cowardly and lazy, and it is only hunger and want which drive them from their cabin and force them to work. I should have said that this common vice might have been produced by the climate, which is so severe that one would not willingly expose oneself to the air, if I had not found them as lazy in the summer as in the winter. But, in fact, as they are always obliged to seek their livelihood, hunting and fishing form their almost constant occupation. They hunt in the winter, and fish in the summer, and make all the utensils necessary for both these employments them- selves. They use for their boats fir wood, which they fasten together with the reindeer thread, and make them so light that a single man can carry one on his shoulders. They have need of many of these boats, because of the currents which they often encounter, and, as they cannot ascend them, they have some others in several places on either side. They leave them on the banks, after having drawn them ashore, and put three or four large stones inside, for fear the wind should carry them away. It is they who make the nets and the cords to fasten them. These nets are made of hemp, which they buy of merchants. They rub them often with a certain red paste, which they make from the scales of fish dried in the air, in order to make them stronger and less likely to rot. The cords they make from the bark of the birch-tree, or from the roots of the fir-tree. They are extremely strong when they are in the water. The men employ themselves also in making sledges of all kinds, some to carry themselves, which they call pomes, and others for baggage. The latter are called racdakeres, and are shut up like chests. They make also bows and arrows. The bows are formed of two pieces of wood placed one above the other. That below is dried fir wood, and the other is REGNARD. 129 birch. These pieces of wood are glued together, and covered all along with the thin bark of the birch-tree, so that one cannot see what it encloses. Their arrows are different : some are only of wood, very thick at the end, and they are used to kill (or rather, to knock down) the minevers, the ermines, the martens, and other animals whose skins they wish to preserve. There are others, tipped with reindeer bones, made in the shape of harpoons, and large at the end : this arrow is thick and heavy. These are used against birds, and do not fall from the wound when they have once struck ; by their weight, too, they hinder the bird from flying away, and thus carrying with it the arrow and the hope of the hunter. The third kind are pointed like lancets, and are used against large animals, as bears and wild reindeer; and all these arrows are carried in a little quiver made of birch bark, which the hunter wears at his belt. As for the rest, the Lapps are extremely clever in using the bow, and they make their children practise, as other warlike nations in olden times obliged them to do, for they will not give them anything to eat until they have hit a given mark, or brought down some object from the tops of the highest fir-trees. All the utensils which are used in the household are made by the men ; the spoons of reindeer bone, ornamented with figures, into which they put a certain black composition. They make the fastenings of bags out of reindeer-bone, little baskets of bark and rushes, and those boards which they use to run on the snow, and with which they pursue and catch the fleetest animal. TRAVELS IN SWEDEN. THE mine of Kopparberg is the most curious place in Sweden, and furnishes all the wealth of the country. Although there are many mines, this one has always been the most highly valued ; and they do not remember when it was opened : it is four days' journey from Stock- holm. The smoke which ascends from all sides points out where the town is, long before it is reached ; and this makes it seem more like the workshop of Vulcan than the dwelling of men. On all sides one sees nothing but ovens, fires, coal, sulphur, and miners, who complete to perfection this horrible picture. But let us descend into the abyss, in order the better to conceive the horror of it. They led us first to a room, where we changed our clothes, and took, each of us, a spiked S 130 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. stick, to support ourselves in the most dangerous places. From thence we entered the mine by a mouth of frightful length and depth, which prevented one from seeing the people who worked at the bottom ; some of whom were carrying up the stones ; others undermining the earth ; some blasting the rock by fire prepared for that purpose : in short, all had their different employments. We descended into this abyss by a number of steps which led to it, and we then began to understand that we had as yet done nothing, and that it was only a preparation for greater labours. In fact, our guides then lit their pine-wood torches, the light of which hardly pierced the thick darkness which reigned in these subterranean places, and only gave light enough to enable one to distinguish the frightful objects which presented themselves to one's sight. The smell of sulphur stifles you, the smoke blinds you, the heat kills you ; add to that the noise of the hammers which resounds through these caverns ; the sight of these spectres, as naked as one's hand, and as black as demons and you will confess, with me, that there is nothing which gives a stronger idea of hell than this living picture, painted in the blackest and most sombre colours that one can imagine. We descended more than two leagues underground by these fright- ful roads, sometimes on shaking ladders, sometimes on light planks, and always in continual apprehension. We saw on our way a number of pumps and curious machines for drawing up water, but we could not examine them because of the extreme fatigue which we felt; we only saw a number of unfortunate beings who worked these pumps. We went right to the bottom with a great deal of trouble ; but when we wished to reascend, superasque evadere ad auras, it was with incom- parable trouble that we reached the first height, where we were obliged to throw ourselves on the ground, in order to regain our breath, which the sulphur had stifled. We arrived, with the help of some men who held us up by our arms, at the mouth of the mine. There we began to breathe with as much pleasure as a soul escaped from purgatory ; and we began to regain our strength in some degree, when a pitiable object presented itself before us. They were carrying up a poor unhappy creature who had just been crushed by a stone falling on him. This happens every day; and the smallest stones, falling from an extra- ordinary height, produce the same effect as the largest. There are always seven or eight hundred men who work in this abyss ; they receive eight pence a day ; and there are nearly as many overseers, who carry an axe in their hands in sign of authority. I do not know whether we ought to have more compassion for the fate of these unfortunates, or for REGNARD. 131 the blindness of men who, to maintain their ease and to satiate their avarice, tear the bowels of the earth, confound the elements, and upset all nature. In reality, can there be anything more inhuman than to expose so many people to such extreme peril ? Pliny says, that the Romans, who wanted men more than gold, would not permit the mines which they had discovered in Italy to be opened, in order that the lives of the people might not be exposed to danger; and the unfortunate beings who had deserved death could not be more severely punished than by being allowed to live, and forced every day to dig their own tombs. In this mine there is found native sulphur, blue and green vitriol, and octahedrons ; the latter are stones naturally cut into a pyramidical form on both sides. From Kopparberg we came to a silver mine, which is to be seen at Sahlberg, a little town two days' journey from Stockholm, the aspect of which is one of the pleasantest in these parts. We went the next day to the mine, which is a quarter of a mile distant from it. This mine has three large mouths, from which one cannot see the bottom. The half of a cask, fastened to a rope, serves instead of a staircase to descend into this depth ; it ascends and descends by a rather curious machine, which the water turns on both sides. The greatness of the danger is easily to be conceived, when one finds oneself thus descending, having only one foot in the cask, and knowing that one's life depends on the strength or weakness of the rope. An attendant, as black as a demon, holding in his hand a torch of pitch and resin, descends with you, and dolefully sings a song, the mournful tune of which seems exactly made for this infernal descent. When we were about the middle, we were seized with a great chill, which, added to the torrents which fell on us from all sides, roused us from the heavy drowsiness in which we seemed to be while descending into these subterraneous regions. At last we arrived, after half an hour's journey, at the bottom of this first gulf: there our fears began to subside ; we no longer saw anything frightful ; on the contrary, everything shone in these deep regions. We descended still very deep under ground, on extremely long ladders, to reach a room which is in the centre of the cavern, supported by several pillars of the precious metal with which everything is overlaid. Four spacious gal- leries join there, and the light of the fires which burn on all sides, and which are reflected on the silver of the archways, and on a clear stream which flows at the side, does not serve so much to give light to the workmen, as to render this dwelling as magnificent as that of Plutus, 132 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. which is said to be in the centre of the earth, where the god of riches has displayed all his treasures. One sees constantly in these galleries men of all nations, who seek with so much trouble for that which gives pleasure to other men. Some drag the carts, others roll the stones, and others divide rock from rock. It is a town under another town ; there are houses, inns, stables, and horses there, and, what is still more charming, is a mill, which turns constantly, at the bottom of this gulf, and which serves to throw up the water which is in the mine. The same machine carries one up again to go and see the different processes by which the silver is made. The first stones which are drawn up from the mine they call stuf ; they dry them in an oven, which burns slowly, and which separates the antimony, arsenic, and sulphur from the stone, lead and silver, which stick together. This first process is followed by another, and these dried stones are thrown into holes, to be there ground and reduced to dust, by means of a number of great hammers worked by the water : this mud is diluted by a stream flowing incessantly over a great var- nished cloth, which, carrying away everything earthy and coarse, retains the lead and the silver at the bottom, from whence they are drawn out to be thrown, for the third time, into the furnaces which separate the silver from the lead, which rises in a scum. THIRD PART. LESAGE. X ALAIN RENE LESAGE was born at Sarzeau, a small town in Lower Brittany, in 1668. He was sent to the college of the Jesuits at Vannes, where he displayed con- siderable talent, and then proceeded to study law and philosophy at Paris. He began life as a lawyer, but was induced by his friends to abandon that profession and devote himself entirely to letters. He wrote a number of romances and plays, which furnish us with a faithful representation of the dissolute manners and corrupt principles which prevailed during the latter part of the reign of Louis XIV, and during the Regency. His most famous works are " Turcaret," and the well known tale of " Gil Bias." He died in 1747, at the age of seventy-nine. GIL BLAS TO THE READER. BEFORE hearing the history of my life, listen, dear reader, to a story that I am going to tell you. Two schoolboys were going from Pennafiel to Salamanca together. Being tired and thirsty, they stopped at the side of a spring that they found on their way. While they were resting there, after having quenched their thirst, by chance they noticed near them some words written on a stone close to the ground, a little rubbed out by time and by the feet of the flocks brought to the spring to drink. They threw some water over the stone to wash it, and they read these Cas- tilian words : " Aquf estd encerrada el alma del licenciado Pedro Garcias" " Here is confined the soul of the licentiate Peter Garcias." The youngest of these two schoolboys, a lively, giddy boy, had not finished reading the inscription, when he said, laughing with all his 134 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. might: "What a good joke! Here is confined the soul a soul im- prisoned ; I should like to know what queer fellow could have composed such a ridiculous epitaph." So saying, he got up to go away. His companion, being more thoughtful, said to himself, "There's some mystery here ; I shall stay and try to make it out." Then letting the other one go, and without losing any time, he began to dig all round the stone with his knife. He did this so well that he raised it up. He found beneath it a leathern purse, which he opened. There were two hundred ducats in it, with a card on which these words were written in Latin : " Be thou mine heir, who hast had wit enough to discover the sense of the inscription, and make a better use than I have done of my money." The boy, charmed with the discovery, replaced the stone as it was before, and went on his way to Salamanca with the soul of the licentiate. Whoever you may be, dear reader, you will resemble one or other of these schoolboys. If you read my adventures without taking heed to the moral instructions they contain, you will reap no fruit from this work ; but, if you read it with attention, you will find, according to the precept of Horace, the useful mixed with the agreeable. THE COUNT AND HIS MONKEY. AT the end of that time, the quiet which pervaded the hotel was strangely disturbed by an accident, which, though it will appear quite a trifle to the reader, became nevertheless a very serious thing for the servants, and, above all, for me. Cupid, the monkey I have spoken of, his master's particular pet, wishing to jump one day from one window to another, managed it so badly, that he fell into the court, and dislocated his leg. The count no sooner heard of the accident, than he began to cry like a woman, and in the violence of his grief, blaming all his attendants without distinction, he was not far from clearing the house of them altogether. However, he contented himself with cursing our negligence, and apostrophizing us without sparing reproaches. He sent immediately to summon the surgeons who were the most celebrated in Madrid for fractures and dislocations of the bones. They examined the leg of the patient, set it, and bandaged it up. But, although they THE SCHOLAR OF SALAMANCA. LESAGE. 135 assured him that it was nothing, that did not prevent my master from keeping one of them to stay with the animal until it was perfectly cured. It would be wrong for me to pass over- in silence the troubles and anxiety that the Sicilian noble had during this time. Can you believe it, that during the day he did not leave his dear Cupid? He was present when they bathed him, and in the night he got up two or three times to see him. What was more tiresome was, that all the servants, and myself especially, were obliged to be always on foot, to run wher- ever they thought it convenient to send us on the service of the monkey. In a word, we had no peace in the hotel until the troublesome animal, feeling nothing more of his fall, resumed his usual pranks and .somersaults. After this, shall we refuse to credit the account of Suetonius, when he says that Caligula was so fond of his horse, that he gave him a house richly furnished, with officers to wait upon him, and that he even wished to make him consul ? My patron was not less enchanted with his monkey ; he would willingly have made him a corregidor. THE INDIANS OF GUATEMALA. THE Indians living on the borders of Guatemala are a mild and amiable people. They desire nothing better than to live in peace. They would love even the Spaniards themselves, if the latter would treat them with a little more humanity. We must, however, except a race of negro slaves who live on the indigo plantations. They are ferocious and auda- cious men. Although they have no arms but small spears, they have the boldness to provoke a wild bull in a rage, or assemble in the rivers among the crocodiles, which they do not leave till they have killed them. Such slaves make their masters tremble. As for the Indians of Petapa, I assure you they are the best in America: as refined as the others are coarse, they form among themselves an agreeable society, pervaded by a spirit of concord and brotherly love. But what is more worthy of admira- tion, is their good faith and integrity. I will give you an example of it. A noble and rich Indian of Petapa died, and left a considerable inherit- ance to his two sons and his daughter. The elder of the two brothers undertook to divide it into three equal portions. When he had done this, he said to his younger brother and sister, " Choose." " You are the eldest," replied they ; " it is your place to choose." " No," replied he ; " as I divided it, it is fair that you should take what you like." The younger I 3 6 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. brother and the sister then chose their portions, and the third was the share of the eldest. There was in the lot of the latter a strong box, at the bottom of which a secret drawer had been made, in which there chanced to be a thousand pieces of gold. The elder brother, having discovered it, invited his brother and sister to a feast, at the end of which he served up to them in a dish all the pieces, saying, " Here is what was hidden, without my knowing it, in a chest belonging to my share ; we must divide it : justice demands that it should be so." I lived in perfect agreement with these Indians, who loved me, Spaniard though I was. I shared in their recreations every day. I con- versed freely, and played at cards with their women, of whom they are not jealous, and who, for the most part, are so lively, that it is a pleasure to hear them talk proconchi. Moreover, the academicians of Petapa con- sult them not unfrequently ; and when, in their counsels, the gentlemen differ in opinion as to a word, they say, " We must consult the women about it," which proves that the Academy is very gallant. SAINT-SIMON. LOUIS DE ROUVROY, Due de Saint-Simon, was born in 1675. His mother was the niece of Chateauneuf, Keeper of the Seals, and at his baptism Louis XIV. and Maria Theresa of Austria stood sponsors to him. After having finished his studies, he entered the army, and fought in the battle of Fleurus, and at the siege of Namur. After the peace of 1697 he left the army, and resided chiefly at court. He was appointed a member of the council of regency during the minority of Louis XV, and in 1721 was sent as ambassador extraordinary to the court of Spain, to negotiate a marriage between the Infanta and Louis XV. After the death of the Duke of Orleans, he retired to his estate of La Ferte", and occupied himself in revising his Memoir es. He died in 1755, at the age of eighty. He possessed a remarkable power of delineating character, and, though his Memoires abound in idle gossip, yet they give a lively, and, in general, an accurate picture of the court of Louis XIV. LAST MOMENTS OF LOUIS XIV. ON Wednesday, August 28th, the king paid a compliment to Madame de Maintenon, which pleased her but little, and to which she did not answer a word. He told her that what comforted him in leaving her was the hope that, from the age she had attained, they would soon meet again. Towards seven o'clock in the morning he ordered that Father Tellier should be called, and while he was talking to him of God, he saw in the mirror over his mantelshelf two of the pages of his bedchamber, who were seated at the foot of his bed, weeping. He said to them, " Why do you weep ? Did you think me immortal ? As for me, I have never thought myself so, and, at my age, you ought to have been prepared to lose me." A kind of Provengal peasant, a very rough fellow, heard of the king's danger as he was on his way from Marseilles to Paris, and came this morning to Versailles with a remedy which, he said, would cure gangrene. The king was so ill, and the physicians were so completely at their wits' end, that they consented to it without difficulty, in the presence of Madame de Maintenon and the Due de Maine. Fagon wished to say something; this peasant, who was named Le Brun, treated him so T 138 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. brutally that Fagon, who was accustomed to illtreat other people, and to be treated by them with the greatest awe, was quite abashed. They then gave the king ten drops of this elixir in some wine of Alicante, at eleven o'clock in the morning. Some time afterwards he felt stronger, but his pulse falling again, they gave him another dose at the end of four hours, telling him that it was to call him back to life. He replied, as he took the glass in which it was, "Life or death, whichever God pleases." Madame de Maintenon went out of the king's room with her hood down, and was conducted by Marshal Villeroy towards her own apart- ments, which she did not enter ; when at the bottom of the grand stair- case she raised her veil. She embraced the marshal with very dry eyes, saying to him, " Good-bye, Marshal," and got into a royal carriage that she always used, in which Madame de Quailus was waiting for her alone, and went to Saint Cyr, followed by her own carriage, in which were her women. That evening the Due de Maine made great fun at his house of the adventure of Fagon with Le Brun. The medicine of Le Brun was continued as he wished, and he always saw the king take it. When they proposed to the king to take some soup, he replied that they must not speak to him as they would to any other man : that it was not soup he wanted, but a confessor, and he ordered him to be called. One day, when he was recovering from a state of unconsciousness, he asked for a general absolution of all his sins from Father Tellier, who asked him if he suffered much. "Ah, no," replied the king; "I should like to suffer much more, for the expiation of my sins." On Thursday, the 2Qth, the day and night preceding which had been so bad, the absence of the attendants, who had no longer any work to do beyond what they had already done, left the entrance of the room much more free to the great officers who had always been excluded from it. There had been no mass the evening before, and no one thought of having it any more. The Duke of Charost, captain of the guard, who had also slipped into the room, justly considered this wrong, and made one of the privileged valets ask the king if he would not be glad to hear it. The king said he wished it ; upon which they went in quest of the people and necessary things, and continued to have it the following days. The morning of Thursday he seemed stronger, and some symptoms of im- provement appeared, which continually increased, and the rumour of which spread in all directions. The king even ate two small biscuits in some wine of Alicante, with a kind of appetite. I went that day, two hours after mid-day, to the house of the Duke SAINT-SIMON. 139 of Orleans, where only eight days ago the rooms were so crowded at all hours, that, without exaggeration, a pin could not have fallen to the ground. I did not find any one whatever. When he saw me he began to laugh, and told me that I was the first man whom he had yet seen that day in his house, which, till the evening, was quite deserted. Such is the world. Very late in the evening the case was not so encouraging as it had been in the day, during which the king had said to the priest of Versailles, who had taken advantage of the opportunity to come in, that there was no question about his life, as, from what he was told, everybody was praying for it, but for his salvation it was very necessary to pray. He chanced that day, in giving his orders, to call the Dauphin, the young king. He saw a movement among those around him. "Why?" he asked, " that does not give me any pain." At eight o'clock in the evening he took the elixir of the man from Provence. His head appeared con- fused ; he said himself that he felt very ill. Towards eleven o'clock in the evening his leg was examined. The gangrene was all over the foot, and in the knee, and the thigh was much swollen. He fainted during this examination. He perceived, with pain, the absence of Madame de Maintenon, who did not intend to return. He asked for her several times in the day : they could not hide from him that she was gone. He sent to Saint Cyr to fetch her, and she came back in the evening. On Friday, the 3Oth of August, the day was as sad as the night had been : a heavy lethargy, and, at intervals, his head confused. From time to time he took a little jelly and some pure water, not being able to bear wine. In his room there were only the servants that were really wanted, Madame de Maintenon, and now and then Father Tellier, whom Bloin or Marechal had sent to summon. There were also very few in the anterooms ; no one but M. de Maine. The king turned easily to thoughts of religion, whenever Madame de Maintenon or Father Tellier found moments when his head was less confused, but they were few and short. About six o'clock in the evening Madame de Maintenon went to her room, gave what furniture she had there to her servant, and departed for Saint Cyr, never to return. Saturday, the 3 1st of August, the day and night were terrible. There were only a few short moments of consciousness. The gangrene had reached the knee and the thigh. They gave him the medicine of the lata Abbe Aignan, which the Duchess of Maine had sent to propose, which was an excellent cure for small-pox. The physicians consented to every- thing, because they had no hope. About eleven o'clock in the evening 140 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. they thought him so ill that they read the prayer for the dying. The ceremony recalled him to himself. He repeated the prayer in such a strong voice, that it was heard above those of a great number of ecclesi- astics, and of all those who had entered. At the end of the prayer he recognised the Cardinal de Rohan, and said to him, " These are the last favours of the Church." He was the last man to whom he spoke. He repeated several times, " Nunc et in hora mortis ; " then he said, " Oh, my God, be not far from me ; make haste to help me." These were his last words. All the night he was insensible, and in one long agony, which terminated at a quarter past eight on Sunday morning, September 1st, 1715, three days before he completed his seventy-seventh year, in the seventy-second year of his reign. MONTESQUIEU. CHARLES DE SECONDAT, Baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu, was born at the Castle of Brede, near Bordeaux, in 1689. As soon as he left college he began to study law, and in 1714 was appointed counsel to the parliament of Bordeaux. Two years later he succeeded his uncle as president. Montesquieu, however, had but little taste for the active duties of his profession, and was more of a philosopher than a practical lawyer. Among his earlier writings are his Dissertation sur la Politique des Romains dans la Religion, his Eloge du Due de la Force, and his Vie du Marechal de Berwick ; but the work which brought him into reputation was the Lettres persanes, published in 1 721. He was now elected a member of the French Academy, and, having a great wish to study the governments of other countries, he went first to Vienna, afterwards visited Hungary, Italy, Switzerland, and Holland, and then spent two years in England, where he was treated with great distinction by Queen Caroline, and made a member of the Royal Society of London. After his return to France he wrote Les Causes de la Grandeur et de la Decadence des Romains, from which an extract is given below ; and in 1 748 appeared the greatest of all his works, L? Esprit des Lois, on which he had spent nearly twenty years. Its success was such, that in a year and a half it passed through twenty-two editions. Montesquieu died at Paris in 1755. TWO CAUSES OF THE DOWNFALL OF ROME. WHEN the dominion of Rome was confined to Italy, the Republic could easily hold its ground. Every soldier was also a citizen ; every consul levied an army; and other citizens went to war under him who succeeded. The number of troops not being excessive, care was taken to receive into the army only men who had sufficient wealth to make them feel an interest in the preservation of the town. Lastly, the senate watched closely the conduct of the generals, and prevented their indulging a thought of doing anything contrary to their duty. But when the legions passed beyond the Alps and the sea, the soldiers, whom it was necessary to leave for several campaigns in the countries which they were subjugating, lost little by little the spirit of citizens ; and the generals, who disposed of armies and kingdoms, felt their own strength, and would no longer obey. I 4 2 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS, The soldiers began then to acknowledge only their general to found on him all their hopes, and to think less of the city. They were no longer soldiers of the Republic, but of Sulla, Marius, Pompey, or Caesar. Rome could no longer tell whether he who was at the head of an army in a province was her general or her enemy. Whilst the people of Rome were only corrupted by their tribunes, to whom they could only grant their own power, the senate could easily defend itself, because it acted with constancy, whilst the populace passed incessantly from the extreme of wrath to the extreme of weakness. But when the people could give to their favourites a formidable authority abroad, all the wisdom of the senate became useless, and the Republic was ruined. The reason why free states are less lasting than others is, that the misfortunes which happen to them, and the successes which they enjoy, almost always cause them to lose their liberty; whereas the successes and misfortunes of a state where the people are in subjection alike confirm their servitude. A wise republic ought to risk nothing which exposes it to good or bad fortune ; the only good to which it ought to aspire is the perpetuity of its state. If the greatness of the empire ruined the Republic, the greatness of the city ruined it no less. Rome had subdued all the world with the help of the people of Italy, to whom she had given at various times different privileges. The greater part of these people had not at first cared about the right of Roman citizenship, and some preferred to retain their own customs. But when this right was that of universal sovereignty when a man was nobody in the world if he were not a Roman citizen, and when with this title he was everybody, the people of Italy resolved to perish or to become Romans. Not being able to attain their end by their solicitations and prayers, they had recourse to arms. They revolted on all that coast which looks toward the Ionian sea : the other allies were ready to follow them, Rome, obliged to fight against those who were, so to speak, the hands with which she enchained the universe, was ruined ; she was about to be confined within her own walls ; she granted this much-desired right to the allies who had not as yet ceased to be faithful, and, little by little, she granted it to all. Henceforth Rome was no longer the same city, the people of which had had only one and the same spirit the same love of liberty, the same hatred of tyranny, where jealousy of the power of the senate and of the prerogatives of the great, always mingled with respect, was only a love MONTESQUIEU. 143 of equality. The people of Italy having become its citizens, each town brought to it its own peculiar talents, its own peculiar interests, and its dependence on some great protector. The mutilated city formed no longer a whole ; and as people were only citizens of it by a kind of fiction, as they had no longer the same magistrates, the same walls, the same gods, the same temples, the same sepulchres, they no longer viewed Rome with the same eyes, they had no longer the same love for their country, and Roman sentiments no longer existed. Ambitious men caused whole towns and nations to come to Rome to disturb the elections, or to get the votes given to themselves. Their assemblies were really conspiracies ; a troop of seditious men was called Comitia ; the authority of the people, their laws, they themselves, became chimeras ; and the anarchy was such that one could no longer tell whether the people had made an ordinance, or whether they had not. Historians only speak of the divisions which ruined Rome, but one cannot see that these divisions were necessary, that they had always been, or that they would always be. It was merely the size of the Republic which did the harm, and which changed popular tumults into civil wars. Rome necessarily had divisions ; and her warriors, so proud, so terrible beyond the walls, could not be very moderate within. To require in a free state men bold in war and timid in peace is to desire impossible things ; and, as a general rule, whenever one sees everything tranquil in a state which calls itself a republic, one may be assured that liberty is not there. That which is called union in the body politic is a very equivocal thing ; the true union is a union of harmony, which causes all the parts, however opposed they may appear to us, to concur in the general good of society, as some discords in music tend to a complete harmony. There may be union in a state where there only seems trouble that is to say, a harmony whence results happiness, which alone is true peace. It is like some parts of this universe, eternally bound together by the action of some and the reaction of others. But in the harmony of Asiatic despotism that is to say, of every government which is not limited there is always a real division. The labourer, the soldier, the merchant, the magistrate, the noble, are only united because some oppress the others without resistance ; and if one does see union, it is not that of united citizens, but that of dead bodies buried near one another. It is true that the laws of Rome became powerless to govern the Republic ; but it is a thing which has been always seen, that good laws 144 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. which have made a little republic great, become a burden to it when it has increased, because they were such that their natural effect was to form a great people, and not to govern them. There is a great difference between good laws and suitable laws those which make a people become masters of others, and those which maintain its power when once acquired. >*^ There is at present in the world a republic which scarcely any one knows, and which, in secret and in silence, increases in strength each day. It is certain that, if it ever arrive at the state of greatness for which its wisdom destines it, it will necessarily change its laws ; and this will not be the work of a legislator, but that of corruption itself. Rome was made to grow great, and its laws were admirably suited for that purpose. Thus, under whatever government she may have been under the power of the kings, under the aristocracy, or under the rule of the people she never ceased to undertake enterprises which demanded skilful management, and succeeded in them. We do not find her become wiser than all the other states of the earth at once, but gradually. She bore a little, a middling, a great fortune with the same superiority, and had no prosperity by which she did not profit, and no misfortunes of which she did not make use. She lost her liberty because she finished her work too soon. VOLTAIRE. S MARIE AROUET DE VOLTAIRE was born at Paris in 1694. The celebrated Ninon de 1'Enclos, to whom he was introduced in his fourteenth year, and the Jesuit professors of the College of Louis le Grand, where he received his education,- were equally struck with his keen and bold intelligence, 'and foretold, though with very different feelings, the tenor of his future career. Entering life under the Regency, he at once distinguished himself among the esprits forts of the day by the keen edge of his satire, and the boldness with which he denounced the hypocritical intolerance of that corrupt age. Thrown into the Bastille, he there completed his QLdipe, a tragedy abounding in reflections on priestcraft and superstition. This piece, which was performed with immense success on his liberation,'is remarkable as being at once the earliest triumph of his pen, and the first blow struck in his long war against the clergy. Some years later, after undergoing a second confinement in the Bastille, he was ordered to quit Paris. The apostle of Epicurean deism, for such he had now become, chose to leave France altogether, and retired to England. This hegira forms an epoch in his life. Now he witnessed the working of free institutions ; was introduced to the poetry of Shakespeare and Milton, the physical discoveries of Newton, the philosophy of Locke ; and made acquaintance with the English free- thinkers, a school of doubters far more learned and sober than the libertine esprits forts of the Continent. Recalled to France, he returned full of new ideas, which he proceeded to develop in a work entitled Lettres Philosophiques sur les Anglais. This book raised a loud outcry by its attacks on religion. The Parliament of Paris condemned it to be burned, and proceedings were taken against its author. These, however, were stopped by the influence of the minister, Fleury, and the philosopher was suffered to retire unmolested to a chateau in Lorraine, where for a time he gave himself up to the study of natural science, in the society of Madame du Chatelet, an accomplished lady, to whom he had become attached. Fortunately for himself, he had given no fresh offence to the Government. He admired the religious rather than the civil freedom of England, and did not include in his mission the part of a political reformer. By flattering Louis XV, his mistresses, and his ministers, he gradually gained court favour, was pensioned, and became Gentleman of the Bed- chamber, Historiographer Royal, and Member of the Academy. Meanwhile, the production of a series of tragedies, and other works, served the double purpose of enhancing his literary fame, and of furnishing him with the means of propagating his doctrines. In 1750, he visited Berlin, on the invitation of Frederick the Great, but, at the end of three years, quarrelling with his new patron, he quitted Prussia, and after an interval of wandering settled at Ferney, in the Pays de Gex, where he passed the remaining twenty years of his life. In 1778, he was persuaded to leave his retreat, but died almost immediately on his arrival at Paris. The collected works of Voltaire U 146 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. fill seventy volumes. His most famous tragedies are Brutus, Zaire, Alzire, Mahomet, Tancred, and Merope. In narrative poetry, he produced two works, which form a curious contrast : his Henriade is but a frigid epic, though it has for its hero a sovereign after Voltaire's own heart, the tolerant author of the Edict of Nantes ; while in the infamous Pucelle all the resources of wit and genius are employed to pollute the story of the Maid of Orleans. Besides plays and poems, Voltaire wrote romances, of which the best known are CandideandiZadig. His prose works include innumerable letters, witty pamphlets, philosophical treatises, and several excellent histories. It is sufficient to name his Philosophical Dictionary, his Histories of Charles XII. and Peter the Great, and his Age of Louis XIV. JEANNOT AND COLIN. SEVERAL persons worthy of credit have seen Jeannot' and Colin at school in the town of Issoire, in Auvergne, a town famous throughout the universe for its college and its kettles. Jeannot was the son of a renowned dealer in mules, and Colin owed his birth to a brave labourer of the neighbourhood, who cultivated the land with four mules, and who, after having paid tallage and tax, duties and gabels, did not find himself mightily rich at the end of the year. Jeannot and Colin were very good-looking for inhabitants of Auvergne ; and were very fond of each other. Their time for study was nearly ended when a tailor brought a velvet coat of three colours for Jeannot, with a Lyons vest in very good taste. The whole was accompanied by a letter to Monsieur de la Jeannotiere. Colin admired the coat, and was not jealous ; but Jeannot assumed an air of superiority which grieved Colin. From that moment Jeannot studied no more, looked at himself in the glass, and despised everybody. Some time after a footman arrived post haste, and brought a second letter to the Marquis de la Jeannotiere ; it was an order from his father to send his son to Paris. Jeannot got into the chaise, extending his hand to Colin with a very noble smile of patronage. Colin felt his nothingness, and wept. Jeannot set out in all the splendour of his glory. Readers who like to get information ought to know that M. Jeannot, the father, had acquired immense wealth in business pretty rapidly. You ask, how do people make these great fortunes ? Is it that they are lucky ? . . . . From the moment you get into the current of the water you have only to let yourself go ; you make an immense fortune without any VOLTAIRE. 147 trouble. The beggars on the beach, who see you sailing along with full sails, open their astonished eyes ; they do not know how you could have succeeded ; they envy you ignorantly, and write pamphlets against you which you do not read. Thus it happened to Jeannot the father, who soon became M. de la Jeannotiere, and who, having bought a marquisate at the end of six months, took the marquis, his son, away from school to introduce him to the beau monde of Paris. Colin, always loving, wrote a letter of compliment to his old com- panion. The little marquis made him no answer. Colin was ill with grief about it. The father and mother at once engaged a tutor for the young marquis. This tutor, who was a man with a fine air, and who knew nothing, could teach his pupil nothing. The gentleman wished his son to learn Latin ; the lady did not. They referred the matter to an author, who was celebrated at that time as the writer of some charming works. He was asked to dinner. The master of the house began by saying at once, " Sir, as you know Latin, and as you are a man at court " " Me, sir ! Latin ! I don't know a word," replied the man of letters, " and I have done very well. It is clear that one speaks one's own language much better when one does not divide one's attention between it and foreign languages. Look at all our ladies, they have more agreeable wit than men ; their letters are written with a hundred times more grace. They have this superiority over us only because they do not know Latin." " Ah, well, was I not right ? " said the lady. " I want my son to be a man of spirit, that he may get on in the world, and you see very well that if he knew Latin he would be ruined. Do they act comedy and opera in Latin, if you please ? Does one plead in Latin in a lawsuit ? " The gentleman, dazzled by these reasons, passed sentence of con- demnation, and it was decided that the young marquis should not lose his time in making the acquaintance of Cicero, Horace, and Virgil. " But what shall he learn, then ? for still he must know something. Should they teach him a little geography ? " " What would be the use of that ? " answered the tutor. " When the marquis goes about his lands, will not the postilions know the roads ? Of course they will not lead him astray. One has no need of a quadrant to travel, and one can go from Paris to Auvergne very comfortably without wanting to know in what latitude you are." 148 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. " You are right," replied the father ; " but I have heard speak of a fine science, that is called, I think, astronomy." " What a pity ! " answered the tutor. " We are not guided by the stars in this world, and is it necessary that the marquis should kill himself by making calculations about an eclipse, when he can find it settled to a nicety in the almanac, which tells him, besides the move- able feasts, the age of the moon and that of all the princesses of Europe ? " Madame was quite of the tutor's opinion ; the little marquis was in ecstasies ; the father was undecided. " What should my son be taught, then ? " said he. " To be agreeable," replied the friend whom they consulted ; " and if he knows how to please, he will know everything. It is an art that he will learn from his lady mother without any trouble to either of them." At this speech the lady embraced the charming ignoramus, and said, " One can see, sir, that you are the most learned man in the world ; my son will owe all his education to you ; I do not imagine, however, that it would do him any harm to know a little history." " Ah, madam, what is the good of it ? " he replied. " Surely the only useful and agreeable history is that of the present day. All ancient histories, as one of our clever men said, are only unacknow- ledged fables ; and as to the modern ones, they are a chaos that cannot be cleared up. What does it matter to your son that Charle- magne may have instituted the twelve peers of France, and that his successor stammered ?" " Nothing could have been better said," cried the tutor. " The minds of children are stifled under a mass of useless knowledge ; but of all the sciences, the most absurd, in my opinion, and that which is most sure to suppress every kind of genius, is that of geometry. That ridiculous science has for its object surfaces, lines, and points, which do not exist in nature. A hundred thousand curved lines are made to pass in your mind between a circle and a straight line which touches it, although in reality a straw cannot pass. Geometry, in truth, is nothing but a bad joke." The gentleman and lady did not well understand what the tutor meant to say, but they were quite of his opinion. " A gentleman like the marquis," continued he, " ought not to spoil his brains over these vain trifles. If some day he wants a grand geometrician to take a plan of his lands, he can have them surveyed for money. If he wishes to make the antiquity of his nobility clear, which VOLTAIRE. 149 goes back to the most remote times, he will send for a Benedictine. It is the same with all the arts. A young lord in good circumstances is neither a painter, a musician, an architect, nor a sculptor, but he makes all these arts flourish by encouraging them by his magnificence. It is better undoubtedly to patronize than to practise them. It is enough that the marquis should have taste ; it is for the artist to work for him ; and this is why it is perfectly right to say that people of quality (I mean those who are very rich) know everything without learning, because really, in the long run, they know what to think of everything that they order and pay for." The amiable ignoramus then began to speak, and said, " You have very well remarked, madam, that the great object of man is to succeed in society. In good faith, is it with the help of the sciences that this success is obtained ? Does one ever think of talking about geometry in good company ? Do we ever ask a man of fashion what star rises with the sun to-day ? Do we inquire at supper if Clodion the long-haired crossed the Rhine ? " " No, certainly," cried the marchioness, whose charms had sometimes gained admittance for her into the great world, " and my son ought not to stifle his genius by the study of all this rubbish ; but now what shall we teach him ? for it is well that a young lord should be able to shine on occasion, as my husband says. I remember hearing an abbe say that the most agreeable of the sciences was a thing the name of which I have forgotten, but it begins with a B." " With a B, madam ? Would not that be botany ? " " No, it was not botany that he spoke to me about ; it began, I tell you, with a B, and ended with on." " Ah, I understand, madam ; it is blazon, or heraldry ; that is, in truth, a very deep science, but it has gone out of fashion, since the habit of painting one's arms on the carriage doors has been given up ; it was the most useful thing in the world in a civilized state. Besides, this study would be infinite ; there is not a barber now who has not his coat of arms, and you know that everything that gets common becomes unfashionable." At last, after having thoroughly examined the strong and the weak sides/of the sciences, it was decided that the marquis should learn to dance. Nature, who does everything, had given him one talent, which soon developed itself with prodigious success : it was that of singing ballads agreeably. The graces of youth, added to this superlative gift, caused him to be looked upon as a most hopeful young man, Then the ISO HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. marchioness thought herself the mother of a wit, and gave suppers to the wits of Paris. The young man's head was soon turned. He acquired the art of speaking without knowing what he was talking about, and became perfect in the habit of being fit for nothing. When his father saw him so eloquent, he greatly regretted that he had not made him learn Latin, for he would have bought him a great post in the law. The mother, who had more noble sentiments, took upon herself to solicit a regiment for her son. A young widow of quality, their neighbour, who had only a moderate fortune, determined to place the great wealth of M. and Madame de la Jeannotiere in security by appropriating it herself, and by marrying the young marquis. She enticed him to her house. Sometimes she bestowed praises upon him, and sometimes counsels ; she became his father's and mother's best friend. An old neighbour suggested the marriage. The parents, dazzled by the splendour of this alliance, accepted the proposal with pleasure. They gave their only son to their intimate friend. The young marquis was going to marry a woman whom he adored and by whom he was loved ; the friends of the house con- gratulated him. The marriage contract was going to be drawn up while they worked at the wedding clothes and ,at the epithalamium. He was one morning at the feet of the charming bride, whom love, esteem, and friendship were on the point of giving him ; they were settling how they should lead a delightful life, when one of his mother's footmen came in, looking quite scared. " Here's some very different news for you," said he ; " the sheriff's officers are stripping the house of my master and mistress ; everything is seized by the creditors ; they talk of arrest, and I am going to be quick and get my wages." " Let us see," said the marquis, " what it all is, what has happened." " Yes," said the widow, " go and punish those rogues ; go quickly." He ran there ; he reached the house ; his father was already thrown into prison. All the servants had fled ; each one had gone his own way, carrying with them all they could. His mother was alone, without help, without comfort, bathed in tears : there only remained to her the remembrance of her fortune, of her beauty, of her faults, and of her extravagance. After the son had wept with his mother for a long time, he said to her at last, " Do not let us despair. That young widow loves me desperately ; she is even more generous than rich. I can answer for her. I will fly to her, and bring her to you." Then he returned to his betrothed. JEANNOT AND COLIN. VOLTAIRE. 151 " What ! is that you, M. de la Jeannotiere ? What do you want here ? Do you thus abandon your mother ? Go to the poor woman, and tell that I still wish her well. I am in want of a lady's maid, and I will give her the preference." The marquis, stupified and enraged, went to find his old tutor, poured his griefs into his bosom, and asked him for advice. The latter proposed that he should become a tutor like himself. " Alas ! I know nothing ; you have taught me nothing, and you are the first cause of my misfortune," and he sobbed as he spoke to him thus. " Write some novels," said a wit who was there ; " that is an ex- cellent resource in Paris." The marquis was ready to faint. He was treated much the same by his friends, and in half a day he learned to know the world better than in all the rest of his life. While he was plunged in this depth of despair, he saw a chaise of an antique fashion coming up, a kind of covered cart, fitted up with leather curtains, followed by four enormous wagons, all loaded. There was a young man in the chaise, in coarse clothes, with a round fresh face full of kindness and gaiety. His little wife, dark and, in a rough way, pleasing enough, was jolting by his side. The carriage did not go at the rate of a dandy's curricle. The traveller had plenty of time to contemplate the motionless marquis, buried in his grief. " Eh ! " he cried, " I do believe that's Jeannot there." At this name the marquis raised his eyes, the chaise stopped. " It is Jeannot himself, it is." The little fat man made but one spring, and ran to embrace his old comrade. Jeannot recognised Colin ; shame and tears covered his face. " You've given me up," said Colin, " but you make a fine lord. I shall always like you." Jeannot, touched and confused, told him part of his story with many sighs. " Come to the inn where I am staying and tell me the rest," said Colin ; " say ' How do you do ? ' to my little wife, and let us go and have dinner together." They went all three on foot, followed by the baggage. " What's all this luggage then ? Does it belong to you ? " " Yes, it's all mine and my wife's. We are coming from the country. I am at the head of a good factory of tinned iron and copper. I have married the daughter of a rich dealer in necessary utensils, great and small. We work hard, God blesses us, we have not changed our condition ; we will help our friend Jeannot. Don't be marquis any more. All the grandeurs of this world are not worth one good friend. You will go back into the country with me. I will teach you my rp HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. trade, it's not very difficult ; I will give you a share, and we will live merrily in the corner of the earth where we were born." Jeannot, in a state of distraction, felt himself divided between grief and joy, love and shame, and said to himself in a low voice, " All my fine friends have betrayed me, and Colin alone, whom I have despised, comes to my help." What a lesson ! The kindness in Colin's heart developed in the heart of Jeannot the germ of a good disposition which the world had not yet stifled. He felt that he could not abandon his father and mother. " We will take care of your mother," said Cblin ; " and as to the good man your father, who is in prison, I understand a little about business. His creditors, seeing he has nothing left, will come to terms for a trifle. I will manage all that" Colin managed so well that he got the father out of prison. Jeannot returned to his native place with his parents, who took up their first calling again. He married a sister of Colin, who, being of the same temper as her brother, made him very happy ; and Jeannot, the father, and Jeannette, the mother, and Jeannot, the son, saw that happiness does not consist in vanity. BUFFON. GEORGE Louis LE CLERC, Comte de Buffon, the celebrated naturalist, was born at Montbard, in the department of Cote d'Or, in 1707. He was the son of Benjamin Le Clerc, a counsellor of the Parliament of Dijon, and inherited a considerable fortune from his mother. He received a careful education, and his school career was brilliant. Having made the acquaintance of a young English nobleman, the Duke of Kingston, who was travelling with his tutor, he obtained his father's leave to accompany him on his tour, and visited various parts of France, Switzerland, and Italy. During eighteen months of travel he acquired a strong taste for the study of nature, and from that time determined to devote himself to science. His first publication consisted of some remarkable papers on the cultivation of trees, the result of observations among the woods on his estate ; he also wrote a pamphlet on the laws of attraction, and made many experiments on light. In 1739 he was elected a member of the Academic des Sciences ; in the same year he was appointed superintendent of the king's garden, and from that time devoted himself to the investigations which have made his name famous. After ten years of study and preparation, he published the first three volumes of his Natural History, which were followed in course of time by twelve others. The History of Birds, the History of Minerals, and the Epochs of Nature appeared subsequently. He also wrote a Dissertation sur le Style. Buffon died at Paris in 1 788. Condorcet says of the Natural History, " The success of this work was a revolutionary epoch in the minds of men ; no one could read it without wishing to cast a glance, at least, on nature, and natural history became almost a common acquirement ; it was an amusement or occupation for all classes of society." THE FIRST MAN. I WILL imagine, then, a man, such as one would believe the first man to have been, at the moment of his creation : that is to say, a man whose body and organs are perfectly formed, but who wakes up quite new to himself and to everything around him. What would be his first movements, his first sensations, his first impressions ? If this man were to give us an account of his first thoughts, what would he have to tell us ? What would the story be ? I must make him speak himself, in x 154 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. order that the facts may be more apparent This philosophical account, which will be short, will not be a useless digression. " I remember that moment, so full both of joy and pain, when I felt, for the first time, my singular existence. I did not know what I was, where I was, or whence I came. I opened my eyes, when an increase of feeling, the light, the canopy of heaven, the green earth, the crystal waters, all engaged my attention, animated me, and gave me an indescribable feeling of pleasure. I thought at first that all these objects were in me, and formed part of myself. " I was strengthened in this new idea, when I turned my eyes towards the sun ; its light hurt me. I involuntarily closed my eyes, and I experienced a passing sorrow. In that moment of darkness I thought I had lost almost all my being. Troubled, seized with astonishment, I was thinking about this great change, when all at once I heard sounds the song of the birds, the murmur of the winds, formed a concert, the sweet impression of which touched my heart. I listened for a long time, and soon persuaded myself that this harmony was part of myself. " Attentive, occupied altogether with this new kind of existence, I had already forgotten the light, that part of my being which I had first discovered, when I opened my eyes again. What joy to find myself in possession of so many brilliant objects ! My pleasure surpassed all that I had felt at first, and suspended, for a time, the charming effect of sound. " I fixed my eyes on a thousand different objects ; I soon discovered that I could lose objects and find them again, and that I had the power of destroying and reproducing at my will this beautiful part of myself; and although it seemed to me immense in size on account of the numerous effects of light and the variety of colour, I thought I could distinguish that all was contained in a portion of my being. " I began to see without emotion and to hear without pain, when a light wind, whose freshness I felt, wafted to me sweet smells, which made my heart rejoice, and gave me a feeling of love for myself. " Agitated by all these sensations, stimulated by the pleasures of such a delightful and great existence, I raised myself all at once, and felt myself carried onward by an unknown power. I only took one step ; the novelty of my situation rendered me motionless, my surprise was extreme. I thought that my existence was departing ; the move- ment I had made confused everything ; I thought everything was in disorder. " I raised my hand to my head, I touched my forehead and my eyes, BUFFON. 155 I examined my body ; my hand appeared to me then the principal organ of my existence ; what I felt in this limb was so distinct and complete, my enjoyment of it seemed so perfect compared to the pleasure which light and sound had given me, that I gave myself up entirely to the solid part of my existence, and felt that my ideas assumed depth and reality. " Every part of myself that I touched seemed to give feeling for feeling, and every touch produced a double idea. " I was not long in discovering that this sense of feeling was spread through all the parts of my being ; I soon recognised the limits of my existence, which had at first seemed immense in extent. " I had cast my eyes on my body ; I considered it of an enormous size, so great, that all the objects which met my eyes seemed in com- parison nothing but points of light. " I examined myself for a long time. I looked at myself with pleasure. I watched my hand, and observed its movements. I had the strangest ideas about it. I thought that the movement of my hand was only a kind of flying existence, a succession of similar things ; I put it close to my eyes, it then seemed larger than all the rest of my body, and hid from my sight an infinite number of objects. " I began to suspect that there was some illusion in this sensation which came through my eyes. I had seen distinctly that my hand was only a small part of my body, and I could not understand how it could be increased to such a degree as to appear of an immeasurable size ; I resolved then only to trust my touch, which had not yet deceived me, and to be on my guard against all other ways of feeling and being. This precaution was useful to me. - I began to move again, and walked with my head erect and raised toward the sky. I knocked myself slightly against a palm-tree ; seized with fright, I touched this strange bo,dy, for so I thought it, because it did not return feeling for feeling ; I turned away with a kind of horror, and perceived for the first time that there was something outside me. " More agitated by this discovery than I had been by all the others, I had some trouble to reassure myself, and, after having meditated over this event, I concluded that I should judge of external objects as I had judged of the parts of my body, and that I could only be sure of their existence by touching them. Thereupon I tried to touch everything I saw. I wanted to touch the sun. I stretched out my arms to enclose the horizon, and I felt nothing but the empty air. " At each experiment that I tried, I passed from one surprise to 156 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. another, for everything seemed equally near me, and it was only after numberless attempts that I learned to use my eyes to guide my hand ; and as it gave me quite different ideas from the impressions produced by my sight, my senses being no longer in unison, my conclusions only became more imperfect, and the whole of my being was still nothing but a confused existence. " Deeply occupied with myself, with what I was, with what I might be, the contradictions which I had discovered humbled me ; the more I reflected, the more doubts presented themselves ; tired of uncertainties, wearied with the emotions of my mind, my knees bent under me, and I found myself in a posture of repose. This state of tranquillity gave fresh power to my senses. I was seated under the shadow of a beautiful tree : bunches of bright red fruit hung within reach of my hand ; I touched them gently, and they dropped from the branch as the fig falls when it is ripe. " I had seized upon one of these fruits. I thought I had obtained a victory, and I gloried in being able to hold in my hand another whole being ; its weight, although small, appeared to me an animated resistance, which I was pleased to have vanquished. " I had looked at this fruit. ; I had considered its shape and colour ; a delicious smell made me draw it nearer ; it was close to my lips ; I drew in long draughts of perfume, and quaffed the pleasure of the sense of smell. I was filled with this embalmed air; my mouth opened to exhale it, it opened again to draw it in. I felt that I possessed an internal sense of smell, finer, more delicate still than the first ; lastly, I tasted it. " What a flavour, what a new sensation ! Until then I had only had pleasure ; taste gave me a sense of luxury. The intimate nature of the enjoyment produced the idea of possession ; I thought that the sub- stance of this fruit had become mine, and that I had the power of transforming creatures. " Flattered by this idea of power, stimulated by the pleasure I had felt, I gathered a second and third fruit, and I did not weary of using my hand to satisfy my taste. But an agreeable languor by degrees took possession of all my senses, made my limbs feel heavy, and suspended the activity of my mind. I judged of its inaction by the feebleness of my thoughts; my dull senses rounded every object, and presented to me nothing but weak and badly-defined representations. At that moment my eyes, which had become useless, closed, and my head, no longer supported by the muscles, sank down to find rest upon the grass. " All was effaced, everything disappeared, the course of my thoughts BUFFON. 157 was interrupted ; I lost the sense of my existence. The sleep was deep, but I do not know if it lasted long, having still no idea of time, and not being able to measure it ; my awakening was only a second birth, and I felt only that I had ceased to be. "The annihilation which I had just experienced gave me some feeling of fear, and made me feel that I should not always exist. " I had another anxiety ; I did not know if I had not left behind in my sleep some part of myself. I tried my senses. I sought to recognise myself. But while I examined my body to make sure that the whole of my existence remained, what was my surprise to see at my side a form like mine ! I took her for another myself; far from having lost anything while I had ceased to be, I thought I had been doubled. " I touched this new being ; what a shock ! It was not myself, but it was more than myself, better than myself. I thought that my existence was going to change places, and pass altogether into this second half of myself. " I felt her come to life under my hand ; I saw her deriving thought from my eyes ; hers made a new source of life flow in my veins ; I would have willingly given her all my being. This lively desire completed my existence ; I felt a sixth sense born. " At that moment, the orb of day extinguished its light at the end of its course ; I hardly perceived that I had lost the sense of sight. I lived too intensely to fear ceasing to be, and it was nothing that the darkness around me reminded me of my first sleep." ROUSSEAU. JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU, one of the most celebrated writers of the eighteenth century, was born at Geneva in 1712. From his father, who was a watchmaker by trade, and a man of some information, he early derived a taste for literature. Being compelled to leave his native city in consequence of certain youthful misdemeanours, he wandered from place to place, supported partly by the assistance of various persons whose notice he attracted, and partly by the exercise of his talent for musiq. In 1750 he wrote a discourse on a subject proposed by the Academy of Dijon " The Influence of the Revival of Arts and Sciences on the Refinement of Manners." This essay was the beginning of his literary career, and brought him into considerable reputation. It was followed by a Discourse on the Causes of Inequality among Mankind, and in 1761 by the Nouvelle Helo'ise, a work of unquestionable genius, but of the most immoral tendency. In the following year appeared his romance of Emile, in which the educational systems of the day were discussed, and a more natural and humane method eloquently advocated. In this work, while professing to eulogize Christianity, he attacks its character as a supernatural revelation without reserve. The book made a great sensation, and was condemned by the Parliament. Proceed- ings having been taken against the author, Rousseau was compelled to leave Paris and did not return till the year 1765. Shortly afterwards he came to England on a visit to David Hume, with whom, however, he soon quarrelled, and returning to France, lived at Ermenonville in quiet seclusion till the year 1778, when a fit of apoplexy, or, as some say, his own act, terminated his unhappy life. It is impossible in this brief notice to dwell upon his strange character, his morbid sensibility, his insane vanity, his shameless depravity, the singular genius and extensive influence of his writings. In early life he became a convert to Romanism, but subsequently professed to return to the Protestantism in which he had been brought up. He was much under the control of his wife, a mean and vulgar woman, by whose influence he was much secluded from society, and confirmed in his eccentric and vicious habits. Several of his works were published posthumously ; among them are his Confessions, and his Reveries of a Solidary Wanderer. The following passage is taken from the latter. REMEMBRANCES OF THE ISLE OF ST. PIERRE. I UNDERTOOK to compile the " Flora petrinsularis," and to describe all the plants in the island, without omitting a single one, with sufficient detail to occupy me for the rest of my days. They say that a German ROUSSEAU. 159 has written a book on a bit of lemon-peel. I would have made one on each blade of the meadows, on each moss of the woods, on each lichen which covered the rocks in short, I did not intend to leave a blade of grass, not a vegetable atom, that was not fully described. In conse- quence of this fine project, every morning after breakfast, which we had all together, I went, with a magnifying-glass in my hand and my " Systema Naturae " under my arm, to visit one part of the island, which I had divided for this purpose into little squares, intending to go over them, one after another, every season. Nothing is more singular than the delight, the ecstasy that I expe- rienced at each observation that I made on vegetable structure and organization. . . . The distinction of generic characters, of which I had not the least idea before, enchanted me, as I verified them among the common kinds while I was waiting till rarer ones offered themselves. The two long forked stamens of the self-heal, the elastic ones of the nettle and the wallwort, the bursting of the fruit of the balsam and of the capsule of the box-tree a thousand little sports of fructification that I noticed for the first time, filled me with joy, and I went about asking people if they had seen the horns of the self-heal, as La Fontaine asked if they had read Habakkuk. At the end of two or three hours I returned loaded with an ample harvest a store of provision for the afternoon at home in case of rain. The exercise that I had taken in the morning, and the good humour that is inseparable from it, made the repose of dinner very agreeable to me ; but when it lasted too long, and the fine weather looked inviting, I could not wait, and while the rest were still at table, I slipped away, and went off and got into a boat by myself, which I steered into the middle of the lake when the water was calm ; and there, stretched at full length in the boat, looking up to the sky, I would let myself go and drift about slowly, sometimes for hours, plunged in a thousand confused but delicious memories : and this, to my taste, was a hundred times preferable to all that I had thought the most agreeable in what are called the pleasures of life. Often warned by the setting of the sun that it was time to retreat, I found myself so far from the isle that I was forced to work with all my might to get in before night closed. At other times, instead of wandering about the middle of the lake, I pleased myself by coasting along the verdant banks of the island, the limpid waters and fresh shades of which often tempted me to bathe. But one of my most frequent voyages was to go from the great to the little island, to get out and to spend the afternoon there, sometimes in very circumscribed walks in the midst of ,6o HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. osiers, brambles, buckwheat, shrubs of all kinds, and sometimes esta- blishing myself on the top of a little sandy hill, covered with grass, thyme, flowers, even with sainfoin and clover, that had been probably sown there some time or other, and afforded very good cover for rabbits, which might multiply there in peace, without fearing anything and without injuring anything. I imparted this idea to the receiver, who sent to Neufchatel for some male and female rabbits, and we went in great state his wife, one of his sisters, and I to establish them in the little isle, which they began to people before my departure, and where they will have prospered without doubt, if they have been able to sustain the severity of the winters. The foundation of this little colony was a feast-day. The pilot of the Argonauts was not more proud than I was, leading in triumph the company and the rabbits from the large island to the little one ; and I noticed proudly that the wife of the receiver, who was excessively afraid of the water, and was always ill on it, embarked under my guidance with confidence, and showed no fear at all while we were crossing. When the lake was too rough for sailing, I spent my afternoon in going through the island, botanizing on the right and left, seating myself sometimes in the most pleasant and solitary places to dream at my ease, sometimes on terraces and little hills, that I might get a splendid and charming view of the lake and its banks, crowned on one side by near mountains, and on the other spread out into rich and fertile plains, over which the eye ranged to the distant blue mountains which shut it in. When evening drew on I came down from the hills of the island, and went and sat down very willingly on the strand at the edge of the lake, in some hidden nook. There the noise of the waves and the motion of the waters, fixing my senses and chasing all other agitation from my soul, plunged it in a delicious reverie, in which the night often surprised me without my perceiving it. After supper, when the evening was fine, we went out all together again to take a little turn on the terrace and breathe the cool air of the lake. We rested in the tent, we laughed, we chatted, we sang some old song, which was quite as good as the modern stuff; and, lastly, we went to bed, pleased with our day, and only wishing to have one like it on the morrow. ROUSSEAU IN THE ISLAND OF ST. PIERRE. THE MARQUIS DE MIRABEAU. VICTOR RIQUETTI, Marquis de Mirabeau, one of the sect of the economists, was born at Perthuis, in 1715. He lived chiefly at Paris, and published various political works, which gained him considerable celebrity, and one of which, the Theorie de rimpot, procured him a short imprisonment in the Bastille. From his admirers he received the sobriquet of " L'Ami des Hommes," the title of one of his best-known works. He was a man of violent passions and vicious habits, engaged in interminable quarrels with his family, and jealous of his son, the more famous Comte de Mirabeau, by whose superior ability his own fame was eclipsed. The following passages are taken from various Letters addressed chiefly to his brother, the Bailli de Mirabeau. His works are very numerous, and form more than twenty volumes, principally on questions of political economy. He died in 1789. THE YOUTH OF COUNT MIRABEAU. February, 1771. Yesterday morning I took him to see the Chevalier de Viom^nil, the Marquis de Lambert, and Sigrais. We used to think him rough, and so he really was ; but now I am only afraid of his becom- ing too ready to take the complexion of those with whom he lives, and therefore I shall keep him pretty much with you and me. Happily his commission does not involve any military service. I have already presented him to Marshal de Broglie, according to his wish. He will be presented to every one at Versailles. Our good friend Laqueille, told him that he ought to be presented at the Prince of Conde's, since all the young nobles of the army go there ; bene sit, but in that case he will be introduced to everybody. Here he is, then, in the thick of his presentations, and nobody knows how he will get through them. Be sure that he will clear me of the suspicion of intending to make a philosopher of him, more especially as he is as affable as I was the reverse. March, 1771. Your nephew has made a favourable impression at Versailles ; he goes to-day to the Duke of Orleans', the Prince of Conde's, thence to dinners, suppers, and to the other princes', &c. Society has changed since our time ; people seek each other's company ; they meet together ; he is well fitted for it, his behaviour being respectful and not obsequious, easy and not familiar. He has been invited to hunts, Y 1 62 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. carriage drives, suppers, &c. I shall let him run this course, costly at first, but a fashionable necessity, which is quite a trouble to some wise people, but this queer fellow will carry all before him. Your nephew is three days a week at Versailles ; he usurps nothing and attains everything, gains entrance everywhere. And really, as he is a man who must be doing something, it is better he bestir himself there than here. Everybody is related to him the Guemenees, the Carignans, the Noailles, and I do not know how many others are intimate with him ; he astonishes even those who have grown old in flirtation at Versailles. They all think him as mad as a young dog. Madame de Durfort says that he would take down the dignity of every court in existence, or that ever will exist ; but they find out that he has more wit than all of them, which does not show much tact on his part I do not at all intend that he should live there and follow with the rest the trade of pilfering the king, dabbling in the mire of intrigue, skating on the ice of favour ; but even for my own purposes, he must see what is going on there ; and as for the rest, when they ask me how I, who never wished to have any- thing to do with Versailles, let him go there so young, I reply that he is made of different stuff from me, a wild bird born between four turrets ; that he will only play the fool there in what calls itself good company ; that as long as I saw him to be gauche I left him out of sight, but that as soon as I find him to be adroit, I give him his rights. For the rest, since for five hundred years they have always put up with Mirabeaus, who have never been like other people, they will put up with one more who, I promise them, will not disgrace the name. May, 1771. Providence has mocked me by making me the pro- genitor of a youngster, who was at first, and for a long time, a bird of prey, and who now turns himself into a tame duck of the poultry-yard, that dabbles and chatters, screams and swims after flies. This animal has constituted himself a contriver of feasts. This very day he has led me to high mass through a discharge of musketry to hear a Te Deum, then to see fireworks and illuminations ; and now, while I am writing, all the parish is eating in the court without forks. Note that these are not coarse peasants, nor paupers, and my parish is the only one of its kind in the country. Just now, though I do not say so, I feel this joke a little too strong, but it shows a good disposition. So I entreat you to be so good on your part as to take this young rattlebrain under your protection, whom I do not spoil, but who gets spoiled somehow, never- theless, and takes advantage of my easiness. MIRABEAU AT VERSAILLES. BARTHELEMY, JEAN JACQUES BARTHELEMY was born at Cassis, near Aubagne, in Provence, in 1716. He was a great linguist and archseologist, and for many years held the office of Keeper of the Royal Medals. At the time of the Revolution, being then eighty years of age, he was deprived of this appointment and thrown into prison. On his release, after a very brief imprisonment, he obtained from Pare", Minister of the Interior, the post of Librarian, which he retained till his death, in 1795. Le Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grece, was the work which made his reputation ; and it is still greatly admired on account of its style, though it cannot be wholly relied on as a work of history. The following passage is taken from this book. THE TRIAL AND DEATH OF SOCRATES. SINCE the representation of the Clouds four-and-twenty years had passed away. It appeared that the time of his persecution had gone by, when suddenly he learned that a young man had just presented to the second of the Archons, an indictment drawn up in these terms : Meletus, son of Meletus, of the town of Pithos, brings a criminal accu- sation against Socrates, son of Sophroniscus, of the town of Alopece. Socrates is guilty of crime for not worshipping our gods, but introducing among us new divinities under the name of genii. Socrates is guilty of corrupting the youth of Athens. The penalty, death. Meletus was a dull, frigid poet; he composed tragedies, the re- membrance of which will only be perpetuated by the jokes of Aris- tophanes. Two more powerful accusers, Anytus and Lycon, used him as the instrument of their hate. This latter was one of those public orators who, in the assembly of the senate and people, discuss the interests of the country, and influence the opinion of the multitude, just as the multitude influence everything. It was he who directed the proceedings. Considerable riches and signal services rendered to the state placed Anytus among the citizens who had the greatest credit. He filled successively the first dignities of the republic. A zealous partisan of liberty, persecuted by the Thirty Tyrants, he was one of those who contributed most to their expulsion and to the re-establishment of liberty. 164 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. Anytus had lived for a long time on good terms with Socrates. He even begged him once to give some instruction to his son, whom he had entrusted with the details of a manufacture from which he drew a great revenue. But Socrates, having represented to him that these mechanical employments neither suited the dignity of the father nor the inclinations of the son, Anytus, hurt at this advice, forbad the young man to have any further intercourse with his master. To these personal grievances were joined others which irritated Anytus, and which were common to him and the greater part of the nation. These must be unfolded, in order that the chief cause of the accusation against Socrates may be made clear. There have always existed two factions among the Athenians, the partisans of the aristocracy and those of the democracy. The first, almost always kept under, were content in happy times with murmuring in secret ; during the misfortunes of the state, and especially towards the end of the Peloponnesian war, they made some attempts to destroy the excessive power of the people. After the taking of Athens, the Lacedaemonians confided its government to thirty magistrates, the greater part taken from this class. Critias, one of the disciples of Socrates, was at their head. In the space of eight months they per- petrated more cruelties than the people had exercised during many centuries. The oligarchy was destroyed, the ancient form of govern- ment re-established ; and, to prevent all dissension henceforth, an almost universal amnesty was proclaimed, and it was ordered that the past should be forgotten. This was published and confirmed with an oath three years before the death of Socrates. The people gave the oath, but remembered with terror that they had been stripped of their authority ; that they might lose it again at any moment ; that they were in dependence on that Lacedaemon which was so desirous of establishing oligarchy everywhere ; that the principal citizens of Athens kept up communications with her, and were animated by the same sentiments. And what would this cruel faction do in other circumstances, since, in the midst of the ruins of the republic, so much blood was needed to satiate their fury ? The flatterers of the people redoubled their alarms by representing to them that some violent men were expressing themselves every day with a revolting temerity against the nature of popular government ; that Socrates, the most dangerous of all, because he was the most enlightened, did not cease to infect the youth of Athens by maxims opposed to the established constitution ; that he had been heard to say BARTHELEMY. 165 more than once that any one must be mad to trust the employments and the conduct of the state to magistrates chosen by a blind fate from among the greatest number of the citizens ; that, obedient to his lessons, Alcibiades, besides the evils he had heaped on the republic, had in the last place conspired against her liberty ; that, at the same time, Critias and Theramenes, two others of his disciples, had not blushed to place themselves at the head of the thirty tyrants ; that, in short, it was necessary to repress a licence of which the consequences, difficult to be foreseen, would be impossible to avoid. During the first proceedings Socrates kept himself quiet. His disciples in terror hastened to appease the storm. The celebrated Lysias made a touching speech on his behalf, and one calculated to move the judges. Socrates acknowledged in it the talents of the orator, but not the vigorous language of innocence. One of his friends, Hermo- genes, prayed him one day to work at his defence. " I have been busy about it ever since I was born," replied Socrates. " Let my whole life be examined ; that is my apology." Such was his disposition when he was summoned to appear before the tribunal of the Heliasts, to which the archon-basileus had referred the matter, and which on this occasion was composed of about five hundred judges. Meletus and the other accusers had concerted their attacks at leisure. In their speeches, supported by all the prestige of eloquence, they had gathered together many circumstances likely to prejudice the judges. I will relate some of their allegations, and the replies they occasioned. The first offence of Socrates : He did not acknowledge the divinities of Athens, although, according to the law of Draco, each citizen was obliged to honour them. The answer was easy : Socrates often offered sacrifices before his house ; he often offered them during feasts, on the public altars ; every- body had seen him, and Meletus himself, if he had deigned to pay any attention to it. But, as the accused had rebelled against the super- stitious practices that had been introduced into religion, and as he could not endure the hatred and all the shameful passions that had been attributed to the gods, it was easy to blacken him in the eyes of those by whom an enlightened piety is always regarded with suspicion. Meletus added that, under the name of Genii, Socrates pretended to introduce among the Athenians foreign divinities, and that such an audacity deserved to be punished according to the laws. On this point the orator allowed himself to jest about that spirit of whose secret inspiration the philosopher professed himself conscious. 166 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH A UTHORS. " This voice," replied Socrates, " is not that of a new divinity ; it is that of the gods whom we adore. You all agree that they predict the future, and that they can teach us about it. It is explained to some by the mouth of the Pythia ; to others, by different signs ; to me, by an interpreter whose oracles are preferable to the indications that can be drawn from the flight of birds ; for my disciples will testify that I have never predicted anything that has not happened." The second crime of Socrates: He corrupted the youth of Athens. The question was not about the morals of the accused, but about his doctrine ; it was said that his disciples would only learn by his example to break the ties of blood and friendship. This reproach, founded simply on some expressions, maliciously interpreted, only served to betray the bad faith of the accuser. But Meletus gained an advantage again, when he insinuated that Socrates was the enemy of the people ; he spoke of the connexions that this philosopher had with Alcibiades and Critias. It was answered that they showed some virtue while under his guidance ; that their master had at all times condemned the excesses of the first, and that, during the tyranny of the second, he was the only one who dared oppose his will. Several of the friends of Socrates took up his defence boldly ; others wrote in his favour, and Meletus would have yielded if Anytus and Lycon had not come to his help. It is remembered that the first dared to represent to the judges, either that they should not have had the accused brought before their tribunal, or that they ought to put him to death, seeing that if he was acquitted their children would become only the more attached to his doctrines* Socrates defended himself, that he might obey the law, but it was with the firmness of innocence, and the dignity of virtue. The judges of Socrates were for the most part taken from the people, without learning and without principle ; some considered his firmness an insult ; others were offended at the praises that he bestowed on himself. A sentence that declared him attainted and convicted was passed. His enemies only carried it by a few voices ; they might have had still fewer, and have been punished themselves, if he had made the least effort to move his judges. According to the law of Athens, a second sentence was necessary to fix the punishment. Meletus, in his accusation, proposed death. Socrates might choose between a fine, banishment, or perpetual imprisonment. He answered and said that he should avow himself guilty, if he imposed any punishment on himself; but that having rendered great services to BARTHELEMY. 167 the republic, he merited being fed at the Prytaneum at the public cost At these words eighty of his judges, who had at first voted in his favour, gave in their adhesion to the opinion of the accuser, and sentence of death was pronounced ; it was decided that the accused should end his days by poison. Socrates received the sentence with the tranquillity of a man, who during his whole life had been learning how to die. When he left the palace to go to the prison, no change in his countenance or walk was perceptible. He said to his disciples, who were weeping at his side : " Ah, why do you only weep to-day ? Do you not know that when granting me life, nature condemned me to lose it." " What makes me desperate," cried the young Apollodorus, in the wildness of his grief, " is that you die innocent." " Would you prefer," replied Socrates, " that I should die guilty ? " He saw Anytus pass, and said to his friends, " See how proud he is of his triumph ; he does not know that victory always remains with the virtuous man." The day after his sentence, the priest of Apollo placed a crown on the poop of the vessel that carried the offerings of the Athenians every year to Delos. Between that ceremony and the return of the vessel, the law forbad sentences of death to be executed. Socrates passed thirty days in prison, surrounded by his disciples, who came constantly to console themselves by receiving his looks and words, and who constantly thought that they were receiving them for the last time. One day, on awakening, he perceived Crito seated near his bed : he was one of those whom he loved most "You are here earlier than usual," he said ; " it is not quite light yet" " Yes," answered Crito, ' the day has hardly begun to dawn." Socrates : " I wonder the keeper of the prison should have allowed you to enter." Crito : " He knows me ; I made him a little present" Socrates : " Is it long since you came ? " Crito : " Some time." Socrates : " Why did you not awaken me?" Crito: "You were enjoying so peaceful a sleep, I took care not to disturb it ; I have always admired the calmness of your soul : I was still more struck with it then." Socrates : " It would be a shame that a man of my age should make himself uneasy at the approach of death. But what makes you come so soon?" "Heavy news, not for you, but for me and for your friends, the most cruel and the most frightful news ! " Socrates : " Has the vessel come ? " Crito : " It was seen yesterday at Sunium ; it will arrive to-day without doubt, and to-morrow will be the day of your death." Socrates : 4( In good time, since such is the will of the gods." If* 168 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. Then Crito represented to him, that not being able to endure the idea of losing him, he and some friends had taken the resolution of getting him out of prison ; that the measures had been concerted for the following night ; that a small sum would be sufficient to corrupt their guards and impose silence on their accusers ; that an honourable retreat and a quiet life would be procured for him in Thessaly ; that he could not refuse their prayers without betraying himself, without be- traying his children, whom he would leave in want, without betraying his friends, who would be for ever reproached for not having sacrificed all their goods to save his life. "Oh my dear Crito," replied Socrates, "your zeal is not in con- formity to the principles that I have always professed to follow, and which the most rigorous torments will never force me to abandon." Two days after this conversation, the eleven magistrates who superintended the executions, went early to the prison to release him from his chains, and to announce to him the hour of death. Several of his disciples then entered ; they were about seventy in number. They found Xantippe, his wife, with him, with the youngest of her children in her arms. As soon as she perceived them she cried out in a voice broken with sobs : " Ah, here are your friends, and it is for the last time ! " Socrates having begged Crito to have her taken home, they led her from the place, uttering sorrowful cries and tearing her face. Never did he show himself to his disciples with so much patience and courage ; they could not look at him without being oppressed with grief, or listen to him without being filled with pleasure. In his last conversation he told them that no one ought to attempt his own life, because being placed on earth, as at a post, we ought not to quit it without the 'permission of the gods; that as for himself, resigned to their will, he sighed after a moment that would put him in possession of a happiness that he had tried ^to merit by his conduct. Passing from that to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, he established it by a host of proofs that justified his hopes. "And if even," he said, "these hopes have no foundation, notwithstanding the sacrifices they require, they have not hindered me from being the happiest of men ; they drive far from me the bitterness of death, and shed a pure and delicious joy over my last moments. " Have you no directions to give us about your children and your affairs ? " asked Crito. " I repeat the advice I have often given you," replied Socrates, " that of making yourself rich in virtue. If you follow it, I have no need of your promises ; if you neglect it, BARTHELEMY. 169 they will be useless to my family." He went afterwards into a little room to bathe : Crito followed ; his other friends talked together about the conversation they had just heard, and the state to which his death would reduce them ; they looked upon themselves already as orphans deprived of the best of fathers, and wept, less for him than for them- selves. They brought his three children to him ; two were still very young ; he gave some orders to the women that had brought them, and after having sent them away, he came to rejoin his friends. One moment after the keeper of the prison entered. " Socrates," he said, " I do not expect the curses with which I am loaded by those to whom I come to give notice that it is time to take the poison. As I have never seen any one here with so much strength and gentleness as you have, I am sure you are not angry with me, and that you do not attribute your misfortune to me ; you know the authors only too well. Farewell ; endeavour to submit to necessity." " Farewell," answered Socrates ; " I will follow your advice; " and turning to his friends, " How kind that man is ! " he said ; " while I have been here he has been to talk with me sometimes See how he weeps ! . . . . Crito, I must obey him : let the poison be brought if it is ready, and if not, let it be mixed at once." Crito wished to point out that the sun was not yet set ; that others had had the liberty of prolonging their lives for some hours. " They have had their reasons, and I have mine for acting differently," said Socrates. Crito gave the orders, and when they were executed, a servant brought the fatal cup. Socrates having asked what he was to do : " Walk about after you have taken the potion," answered the man " and lie down on your back when your legs begin to grow heavy." Then, without changing countenance, and with a steady hand, he took the cup, and after having addressed his prayers to the gods, put it to his lips. He continued to walk about ; as soon as he felt a heaviness in his legs he lay down on his bed, and wrapped himself up in his cloak. The servant pointed out the gradual progress of the poison to those present.. Already the death chill had frozen his feet and legs ; it had nearly penetrated to the heart, when Socrates, raising his mantle, said to Crito, " We owe a cock to yEsculapius ; do not forget to pay this vow." " It shall be done," answered Crito ; " but have you no other order to give?" He did not answer; a moment after he made a little move- ment ; the servant having uncovered his face, received his last look, and Crito closed his eyes. z SAINT LAMBERT. JEAN FRANCOIS DE SAINT LAMBERT was born at Nancy, in 1716. After having received his education at the Jesuits' College at Pont a Mousson, he entered the army, and served for some time in the Lorraine Guards. After the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, he attached himself to the gay court which Stanislaus, the ex -king of Poland, held in Lorraine, where his verses began to gain him some reputation. On the death of Stanislaus he obtained a colonelcy in the French army, and served in the Hanover campaigns of 1756-7 ; after which he abandoned the military profession, and devoted himself to literary pursuits. He died at Paris in 1803. His principal poem, Les Saisvns, was published in 1769, and gained him admission to the Academy, of which he became a member in the following year. It is, however, but little read in the present day, and his reputation rests mainly on his minor poems. He published also La Catichisme universe!, (Euvres philosophiques, and some short tales, of which the Abenaki is one. THE ABENAKI. DURING the late wars in America, a troop of wild Abenakis defeated an English detachment. The conquered could not escape from enemies more nimble than they in running, and mad to pursue them ; they were treated with a barbarity of which there are few examples, even in those countries. A young English officer, pressed by two savages, who ap- proached him with their axes raised, had no hope of escaping death. He only dreamed of selling his life dearly. At the same time an old savage armed with a bow came up, and prepared to pierce him through with an arrow, but, after having taken aim, he suddenly lowered his bow, and ran and threw himself between the young officer and the two savages who were going to murder him. The latter retired respectfully. The old man took the Englishman by the hand, removed all his apprehensions by his kind manner, and led him to his cabin, where he continued to treat him with unfailing kindness. He made more of a companion than a slave of him ; he taught him the language of the Abenakis, and t the rude arts in use among those people. They lived very well contented with one another. One thing only caused the young Englishman uneasiness ; sometimes the old man would fix his eyes on him, and, after having gazed on him, shed tears. However, at the return of spring the savages took up arms again, and went forth to fight. The old man, who was still strong enough to bear the fatigues of war, set out with them, accompanied by his prisoner. THE ABENAKI. SAINT LAMBERT. I7I The Abenakis made a march of more than two hundred leagues through the forests ; at last they arrived at a plain where they discovered an English camp. The old man pointed it out to the young man, observing his countenance at the same time. " There are your brethren," he said, " there they are, waiting to fight with us. Listen. I have saved your life, I have taught you how to make a boat, a bow and arrows, to surprise the elk in the forest, to handle the hatchet, and to scalp your enemy. What were you when I brought you to my cabin ? Your hands were those of a child ; they were of no use to get yourself food, or to defend yourself, your soul was in darkness, you knew nothing ; you owe me everything. Would you be so ungrate- ful as to rejoin your brethren, and raise the battle-axe against us ? " The Englishman protested that he would rather die a thousand times than shed the blood of an Abenaki. The savage bent his head, and covered his face with his hands, and, after having remained for some time in this attitude, he looked at the young Englishman, and said, in a tone of tenderness and grief, " Have you a father ?" " He was living," said the young man, " when I left my native country." " Oh, how unhappy he is ! " cried the savage ; and, after a moment's silence, he added, " Do you know that I have been a father ? I am one no longer. I have seen my son fall in battle ; he was at my side ; I saw him die like a man ; he was covered with wounds, my son, when he fell. But I have avenged him ! Yes, I have avenged him ! " He pronounced these words with energy. His whole body trembled. He was almost stifled by the groans that he would not allow to escape. His eyes were wild, his tears flowed not. He became gradually calm, and, turning towards the east, where the sun was about to rise, he said to the young Englishman, " Do you see that beautiful sky, brilliant with light ? Do you like to look at it ? " " Yes," said the Englishman, " I do like to look at that beautiful sky." " Ah, well ! I care about it no longer," said the savage, shedding a torrent of tears. The next minute he showed the youth a mangrove tree in blossom. " Do you see that fine tree ? " said he. " Do you like to look at it ? " " Yes, I like to look at it." " I do not any longer," replied the savage hastily ; and he added im- mediately, " Go, go to your country, that your father may yet have pleasure in seeing the sun rise, and the flowers of spring." MARMONTEL. JEAN FRANCOIS MARMONTEL was the child of poor parents, and was born in 1723, at the little town of Bort, in Limousin. His parents sent him at the age of eighteen to Paris, where he obtained a situation as private tutor ; but after a time became one of the editors of Le Mercure, and was subsequently appointed to the office of Histori- ographer of France. He was a friend of Voltaire, and was employed by D'Alembert and Diderot to write articles on poetry and literature in the Encyclopedic. His principal works are Bilisaire, Les Incas, Elements de Litterature, and Memotres, from the last of which the following piece is taken. He died at Abloville, near Gaillon, in 1799. VOLTAIRE AND ROUSSEAU. MY wife, in order to keep the nurse with her, and to provide pure air for her baby, wished to have a house in the country; and a friend of M. Morellet lent us his at Saint-Brice. Our family and some of our friends used to come and see us on holidays. The Abbe Maury was of this number, and it was worth hearing how he boasted of having foretold our happiness. We also sometimes met our neighbours, the Rector of Saint-Brice, the good Latour and his worthy wife, who was fond of mine. We frequently took solitary walks, and these walks generally ended in that wood of chestnut trees at Montmorency which Rousseau has rendered famous. " It was here," I used to say to my wife, " that he thought out that romance of Htto'ise into which he threw so much power and eloquence in order to paint vice with the colours and tints of honesty and virtue." My wife had a weakness for Rousseau ; she was infinitely pleased with him for having persuaded women to nurse their own children, and for having taken pains to render the early period of life happy. " We must forgive something in him," she said, " who has taught us to be mothers." But I, who had seen both in the conduct and the writings of MARMONTEL. 173 Rousseau nothing but a perpetual contrast of fine language and vile morality I, who had seen him proclaiming himself the apostle and martyr of truth, and yet incessantly trifling with it by clever sophistry ; relieving himself of the weight of gratitude by calumny ; making use, in his fierce humour and dark visions, of the falsest colours to blacken his friends ; defaming those men of letters whom he ought most to have praised, that he might make himself famous and degrade all others I showed my wife, even by the good that Rousseau had done, all the evil that he might have abstained from doing, if, instead of employing his talent to serve his passions, to colour his hatred, his vengeance, his cruel ingratitude, to give specious appearances to his calumnies, he had laboured with himself to subdue his pride, his irascible temper, his dark distrust, his wretched animosity, and to become once more what nature had made him innocently sensible, just, sincere, and good. My wife listened sadly. One day she said to. me : " My love, I am sorry to hear you often speak evil of Rousseau. People will accuse you of being excited against him by personal dislike, and perhaps rather by envy." " As for anything personal in my aversion," I said to her, " it would be very unjust ; for he has never offended me, nor done me any harm. It might more possibly be envy, for I admire his writings suffi- ciently to be envious of him, and I should accuse myself of being so, if I found myself defaming him ; but, on the contrary, in speaking to you of the infirmities of his mind, I feel the same bitter sadness as you do when you hear me." " Why then," she answered, " do you treat him so severely in your writings, in your conversation ? Why insist upon his vices ? Is there nothing wicked in thus troubling the ashes of the dead ? " " Yes," I answered, " the ashes of those who have left no example, no pernicious remembrance to the living ; but the well- seasoned poisons in the writings of an eloquent sophist and a seducing corrupter, the dark impressions which he has made upon other minds by his specious calumnies, all the contagion which a wondrous talent has left behind, ought all this to be allowed to pass under cover of the respect we owe to the dead, and thus be perpetuated from age to age ? Certainly I should oppose to it, either as preservative or as antidote, all the means in my power ; and were it but to wash from the memory of my friends the stains with which he has defiled them, I would leave, if I could, to the proselytes and enthusiasts who adhere to him the sole choice of thinking Rousseau either wicked or mad. They will accuse me of being envious, but many illustrious men to whom I have rendered the purest and most just homage will bear 174 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. witness that envy has not obscured either justice or truth in my writings. I spared Rousseau while he lived, because he had need of me, and I would not injure him. He is no more : I owe no indulgence to the reputation of a man who showed none to others, and who, in his memoirs, abused those who loved him most." With regard to Heloise, my wife agreed with me in the danger of reading it j and what I had said of it in my Essai sur les Romans needed no apology. But had I myself judged severely enough the art with which Rousseau has made the crimes of Saint-Preux and of Julie so interesting the one seducing his pupil, the other abusing the good faith, the probity of Wolmar ? No, I confess it ; and my principles in my new position savoured of the influence which our personal interests have on our opinions and sentiments. Living in a world, the morality of which is corrupt, it is difficult not to contract at least an indulgence for certain fashionable vices. Public opinion, example, the seductions of vanity, and especially the attractions of pleasure, impair the rectitude of genuine feeling in young minds ; the light air and tone with which old libertines turn into joke the scruples of virtue, and ridicule the rules of delicate honesty, accustom one to attach small importance to them. It was especially of those softnesses of conscience that my new condition cured me. So I blamed Rousseau, but while I blamed him, I regretted that such sad passions, dark pride and vainglory, had spoiled the source of so fine a disposition. If I had had a passion for renown, two great examples would have cured me, those of Voltaire and Rousseau ; very different examples, opposite in many respects, but alike in this point, that the same thirst for praise and celebrity had been the torment of their lives. Voltaire, whose death I had just witnessed, had sought for glory by all the roads open to genius, and had earned it by immense labour and by startling success ; but in all these roads he had met envy and all the furies by which she is accompanied. Never did a man of letters suffer so much violence without any other crime than that of great talents and zeal in display- ing them. People thought themselves his rivals because they appeared as his enemies ; those whom he trod under foot as he passed, insulted him from the mud. His whole life was a struggle, and he was inde- fatigable in it. The combat was not always worthy of him ; he had more insects to crush than serpents to stifle. But he never either scorned or provoked the offence ; the vilest of his aggressors were branded by his hand ; ridicule was the weapon of his vengeance, and he MARMONTEL. 175 wielded it in cruel and formidable play. But the best wealth, repose, was unknown to him. It is true that envy seemed weary of pursuing him, and spared him at least on the edge of the grave. In the journey he was allowed to make to Paris after a long exile, he enjoyed his renown and the enthusiasm of the whole people, grateful for the plea- sure which he had given them. The last weak effort which he made to please them, Irhie, met with the same applause as Zaire ; and this representation at which he was crowned was his most splendid triumph. But at what a moment did this consolation reach him, the price of so much watching ? Next day I saw him in bed : " Well," I said, " are you satisfied with your glory now ? " " Ah, my friend," he cried, " you talk to me of glory, and I am in agony, and I am dying in frightful tortures." So died one of the most illustrious men of letters, and one of the most amiable men in society. He was sensitive to injury, but to friendship likewise. That with which he honoured me in my youth, continued unchanged up to his death ; and the last token of it which he accorded me, was the kind and graceful reception he gave my wife when I presented her to him. His house was never clear of the crowds who came to see him, and we witnessed the fatigue it cost him to answer every one suitably. This constant attention exhausted his strength, and to his real friends it was a painful spectacle. But we attended his suppers, and there we enjoyed the last flashes of the mind so soon to be extinguished. Rousseau was as wretched as he, and from the same passion ; but the ambition of Voltaire had a foundation of modesty : you can see it in his letters ; instead of which, that of Rousseau was made up of pride ; this is proved by his writings. I have seen him in the society of the most estimable, select, and noted men of letters ; it was not enough for him : their celebrity threw him into the shade ; he thought them jealous of his. Their kindness was suspicious to him. He began by suspecting them, and ended by maligning them. He had many friends in spite of himself; these friends did him good : their kindness was irksome to him. He received their favours, but accused them of wishing to humble him, to dishonour him, to defame him ; and the most odious calumnies were the reward of their kindness. He was never spoken of in society without a lively interest. Criticism itself was very gentle with him, and always tempered with praises. In the most quiet repose he would always either think or call himself i/6 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. ~~ persecuted. It was his weakness to imagine, in the most fortuitous circumstances, in the most ordinary meetings, some intention to injure him, as if all the envious eyes in the world were fixed upon him. If the Duke of Choiseul had brought about the conquest of Corsica, it was in order to rob him of the glory of being its legislator. If the same duke went to supper at Montmorency with the Duchess of Luxembourg, it was to usurp the place which he was accustomed to occupy at her table. According to him, Hume had been envious of the reception which the Prince of Conti had given him. He never pardoned Grimm his having taken precedence of him at Madame D'Epinay's, and his memoirs relate the revenge which he took for this offence. Thus both to Voltaire and to him life was a constant agitation, though in different ways. For the one it had often the sharpest pains, but with very real enjoyments ; for the other it brought waves of bitterness, with hardly any mixture of joy or sweetness. Assuredly, at no price would I have desired the condition of Rousseau ; he could not endure it himself, and having poisoned all his days, I do not wonder that he voluntarily shortened their sad length. As for Voltaire, I confess that his glory seems to me too dearly bought by all the troubles it cost him, and I say once more, " Less /clat and more repose." Restrained in my ambition, first by the necessity of measuring my flight by the weakness of my wings, and then again by the love of that quiet of mind and soul which accompanies peaceful labour, and which I believe to be the lot of humble mediocrity, I should have been content with this humble position. Thus renouncing early all presumptuous attempts, I had, so to say, made a capitulation with envy, and had restricted myself to that kind of writing, the success of which may be easily pardoned. I was not spared ; I found that little things still stir up an envious malignity in little minds. BEAUMARCHAIS. PIERRE AUGUSTIN CARON DE BEAUMARCHAIS was born at Paris in 1732. He was the son of a clockmaker, and was brought up to his father's business ; but from an early age showed considerable taste for both literature and music. Being employed to give lessons on the guitar to the daughters of Louis XV, he made the acquaintance of the banker Duverney, whom he met at their concerts, and by whom he was patronized and placed in business. On the death of Duverney, he became involved in a series of lawsuits, originating in a claim made by him against his patron's representatives. During the progress of these causes he published a series of Factums or Memoirs, ridiculing the administration of justice, and full of wit, sarcasm, and raillery. He made a considerable fortune by supplying arms and ammunition to the American colonies during their war with England, and lived in great style and expense until the outbreak of the Revolution, when his property was confiscated, and he himself proscribed. He passed some time in exile, but returned to France after the Reign of Terror, and died at Paris in 1799. He is chiefly celebrated for his comedies, the most famous of which are the Barber of Seville, and the Marriage of Figaro. The following piece is taken from one of his Letters. ADVENTURE WITH ROBBERS. In a boat on the Danube, near Ratisbon, August 1 5th, 1774. BEFORE entering into the matter with you, my friend, I ought to warn you that, being in a six-oared boat on a river which hurries me along, the shake of each stroke of the oar gives my body, and especially my arm, a compound movement, which disturbs my pen, and will give my writing in a moment the uncertain character which you will find in it for I have made the rowing cease that I might write this preamble, in order that the difference between it and that which follows may convince you that the badness of my writing arises from an external cause, and not from any internal disorder caused by my sufferings. This settled, try to read me, and pay attention. My situation recalls to my mind the state in which a philosopher, whose genius both you and I admire, once found himself in the same place. Descartes relates that, descending the Danube in a bark, and A A 178 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. reading quietly, seated on the prow, he heard the sailors, who did not suppose he understood German, distinctly plan to assassinate him. He put on a bold face, he says, looked to see if his arms were in a good state, in a word, looked so courageous, that these people, all whose movements he followed, did not dare to execute their evil design. I who do not possess in such a high degfee as he did the perfection of philosophy, but who pique myself also on method and courage in my actions, find myself in a boat on the Danube, absolutely not being able to bear the movement of my post-chaise, because they dared to execute on me yesterday what they did not dare a century ago to do to him. Yesterday, then, at thfee o'clock in the afternoon, near Neuschtat, some five leagues from Nuremberg, passing in a chaise, with a single postilion and my English servant, through a forest of fir-trees, I got down for a moment, and my chaise went on slowly, as it had often done when I had got out. After a short time I began to try and overtake it, when a man on horseback, stopping my way, jumped down and came in front of me. He said some German words that I did not understand, but as he had a long knife or poniard in his hand I judged that he wished for my purse or my life. I felt in my front pocket, and this made him think that I had heard him, and that he was already master of my gold. He was alone ; instead of my purse I drew out my pistol, which I presented at him without speaking, raising my stick with the other hand to parry a blow if he tried to strike me ; then drawing back against a great fir-tree, and going behind it slowly, I placed the tree between him and me. There, not being any longer afraid of him, I looked to see if my pistol was primed. This confident behaviour had positively stopped him short. I had already gained a second and a third fir-tree backward, always going behind them as I reached them ) my stick held up in one hand and my pistol in the other, pointed at him. I was performing a pretty safe manoeuvre, which would soon lead me out into the road, when a man's voice made me turn my head ; it was a great rascal in a blue waistcoat without sleeves, carrying his coat on his arm, who was running towards me behind. The increasing danger made me collect all my wits quickly ; I considered that, the danger being greater of allowing myself to be seized behind, I must get before the tree again and get rid of the man with the dagger, and then go immediately after the other brigand. All this was considered and executed like lightning. Running, then, to within my arm's length of the first robber, I fired at him with my pistol, which unfortunately did SEA UMARCHAIS. \ 79 not go off. I was lost : the man, feeling his advantage, came up to me. I kept him off, however, with my stick, retreating to my tree and feeling for my other pistol in my left pocket, when the second robber, having come up to me behind, in spite of my having my back against a fir-tree, seized me by the shoulder, and threw me down backwards ; the first then struck me with his long knife with all his might in the middle of my chest. It was all over with me ; but, to give you an idea of the combination of incidents to which, my friend, I owe the joy of being able to write to you again, you must know that I wear on my chest an oval box of gold, pretty large and very flat, in the shape of a lozenge, - hung round my neck by a little chain of gold : a box that I had had made in London, and containing a paper so precious to me that I never travel without it. In passing through Frankfort I had had a pad of silk fixed to this box, because, when I was very hot, if the metal touched the skin suddenly it hurt me a little. Now by accident, or rather by a good fortune that never abandons me in the midst of the greatest evils, the blow of the dagger aimed violently at my chest had fallen on this box, which is pretty large, at the moment that, dragged from the side of the tree by the violence of the second robber, which made me lose my footing, I fell backwards. All this combined caused the knife, instead of cutting open my heart, to slip on the metal, cutting the cushion of it, bursting the box, and cutting deep furrows in it ; then scratching the upper part of my chest slightly, it pierced my chin underneath, and came out at the lower part of my right cheek. If I had lost my senses in that extreme peril, it is certain, my friend, that I should have also lost my life. " I am not dead," I said, springing up again with all my might ; and seeing that the man who had struck me was the only one armed, I sprang on him like a tiger, at all risks, and seizing his wrist, tried to snatch his long knife from him, which he drew back violently, cutting the whole palm of my left hand to the bone, in the thick part of the thumb. But the effort that he made in drawing back his arm, added to that which I made myself on him in front, knocked him over in his turn ; a great kick with my boot, directed against his wrist, made him drop the dagger, which I picked up, springing on him with both knees on his chest. The second bandit, more cowardly still than the first, seeing me ready to kill his comrade, instead of helping him, sprang on the horse that was grazing ten paces off, and fled as fast as possible. The villain that I held under me, and whom I was blinding with the blood that streamed from my face, seeing l8o HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. himself abandoned, made an effort that turned him over just when I was going to strike him, and raising himself up on his two knees, with clasped hands, cried to me lamentably, " Monsier ! mon omi !" and many German words, by which I comprehended that he was begging for his life. *' Infamous scoundrel ! " I said, and my first impulse still remaining, I was going to kill him. A second contrary but very rapid feeling made me think that to cut the throat of a man on his knees, with clasped hands, was a kind of assassination, a cowardly action, unworthy of a man of honour. However, that he might remember it well, I intended, at least, to wound him severely ; he threw himself on the ground, crying out, " Mein Gott ! " Try to follow my mind through all these impulses, that were as rapid as they were opposite to one another, my friend, and you will perhaps be able to imagine how, from the greatest danger from which I had ever saved myself, I became, in the twinkling of an eye, bold enough to hope to tie this man's hands behind his back, and to lead him thus bound to my chaise : all this was but as a flash of lightning. My resolution taken, with one blow I quickly cut his strong chamois belt behind with his knife, which I held in my right hand, an act that his lying flat on the ground made very easy. But as I did it with as much violence as speed, I hurt his back very much : this made him utter a great cry as he raised himself from his knees, clasping his hands again. Jn spite of the excessive pain that I felt in my face, and especially in my left hand, I am convinced that I should have dragged him away, for he made no resistance ; when having pulled out my handkerchief, and thrown thirty feet off the knife, which was in my way, for I had my second pistol in my left hand, I was getting ready to bind him. But this hope did not last long. I saw in the distance the other robber, accom- panied by some rascals of his own species. I was obliged to think of my own safety again. I confess I felt then the fault I had committed in throwing away the knife ; I should have killed the man without scruple, at that moment, and he would have been one enemy less. But not wishing to empty my second pistol, the only means of offence that remained to me against those who attacked me, for my stick was at most defensive, in the fury that seized me afresh, I violently struck the mouth of the kneeling man with the end of my pistol, and knocked in his jaw and broke several of the front teeth, which made him bleed like a bull ; he thought he was killed, and fell down. At that instant, the postilion, uneasy at my delay, and thinking I had lost my way, came into the wood to seek me. He had sounded the little horn that the BEAUMARCHAIS. 181 German postilions all carry slung across their shoulder ; this noise, and the sight of him, stopped the course of the villains, and gave me time to retreat, holding my stick up and my pistol in front, without having been robbed. When they saw me on the road, they dispersed, and my lackey saw, as well as the postilion, the rogue in the blue waistcoat, with his coat on his arm, passing close to them and my chajse, and crossing the road quickly ; it was he who knocked me down ; perhaps he hoped to examine my carriage since he had missed my pockets. I went at once to Nuremberg, where I learned that a few days before these same robbers, in the same place, had stopped the post-cart, and had robbed different travellers of 40,000 florins. This accident has made so much noise in the country, that probably some of the newspapers will mention it. But as they apparently will only give an abridgment of the affair, I take advantage of the leisure of a quiet passage on a very beautiful river, whose winding course, changing at each moment the aspect of the shores, rejoices my eyes and calms my ideas enough to enable me to give you these details. If they are rather disconnected, you will be indulgent, when you think that I am stifled in breathing, and that I am in pain all over, without counting the shootings of my wounds, which would not allow me to bear any longer the shaking of the chaise ; and this has made me gain the Danube by the shortest road. PRINCE DE LIGNE. CHARLES JOSEPH, Prince de Ligne, was born at Brussels in 1735. He was descended from Mary Stuart, and reckoned among his ancestors two who had served as Field Marshals in the Austrian army ; and, while still very young, he determined to become a distinguished general. He made his first campaign in 1757, and had attained the rank of major-general at the time that Joseph II. was crowned King of the Romans. That prince admitted him into his favour and confidence, and allowed him the honour of being present at the interview which he held with Frederick II. in 1770. In the following year he was made lieutenant-general, and colonel of a regi- ment of infantry, and added greatly to his military reputation during the War of the Succession. After the proclamation of peace he visited Italy, Switzerland, and France. He was sent to announce the victory of Moxen to Louis XV, and in 1782 was entrusted with an embassy to the Empress Catherine, who gave him the title of Field Marshal. In 1789 he greatly distinguished himself in the taking of Belgrade. The death of Joseph put an end to his military career, for Leopold dismissed nearly all of those whom his predecessor had favoured. After the suppression of the Revolt in the Netherlands, the Prince de Ligne went to preside over the States of Hainault, but, during the French invasion, he lost nearly all his property. He died at Vienna in 1814. His works have been collected and published under the title of Melanges militaires, litteraires, sentimentaires. TO THE MARCHIONESS OF C . I HAVE quitted meditation and entered upon an active life. I have found in so doing new objects of admiration. But, Madam, before telling you about them, let me say a word to you about fidelity. Do not be alarmed at that word, it has nothing to do with you or with me : it concerns a barbarous Tartar to whose care I have been confided, in spite of the bad character and the savage appearance of these people ; he would perhaps have robbed me or thrashed me if he had met me, but, as I had trusted myself to him, he would have sacrificed his life to defend me. I have escaped from him for a minute to go and cut on a rock, thirty paces from the sea, a name dear to my heart ; he looked for me everywhere, and, believing me to have been killed, he was ready to set fire to the neighbouring village while waiting PRINCE DE LIGNE. 183 to know for certain what had become of me. When I returned under the guidance of my constable, I thought my eyes were deceiving me, when I saw a house in the middle of the desert, which is odoriferous indeed, but flat and green as a billiard-table. I might well have thought myself still more deceived on finding it white, clean, surrounded with a cultivated plot of ground, half of which was an orchard, and the other half a kitchen garden, which was crossed by the purest and most rapid of brooks ; but I was still more surprised to see two celestial figures dressed in white go out of it, who invited me to seat myself at a table covered with flowers, on^ which there was butter and cream. It reminded me of the breakfasts in English novels. They were the daughters of a rich farmer whom the Russian minister in London had sent to Prince Potemkin, to make experiments in agriculture in Taurida. I return to wonderful and marvellous things. We found the ports, armies, and fleets in the most brilliant state. Cherson and Sebastopol surpass all description. Every day is marked by some great event; sometimes a multitude of Cossacks from the banks of the Tanais manoeuvre around us after their fashion ; sometimes the Tartars of the Crimea, who deserted their Khan Selim Gheray because he wished to divide them into regiments, form themselves into a body to meet the Empress. We have been crossing for several days immense tracts of desert, from whence her Majesty has driven out the Zaporogue, Budjack and Nogay Tartars, who, ten years ago, threatened or ravaged the empire. These places were ornamented with magnificent tents for breakfasts, luncheons, suppers, dinners, and sleepmg-places, and these encampments, decorated with Asiatic pomp, presented a most military spectacle. These same deserts will soon be transformed into fields, woods, and villages ; they are already inhabited by several regiments, and they will soon become the property of peasants, who will establish themselves there on account of the fertility of the soil. The Empress has left in every government town presents to the value of a hundred thousand roubles. Every day she stayed was marked by a gift of diamonds, by balls, by fireworks, and illuminations for ten leagues round. At first forests on fire appeared on the mountains, then burning bushes, drawing nearer, became immense flaming piles. One more little remark on the countries we pass through. The subjects of this empire, whom people so often kindly compassionate, would not care for your States-General ; they would entreat philosophers not to enlighten them, and the great nobles not to allow hunting on their lands. As for the rest, they are only slaves so far as to prevent 184 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. their doing harm either to themselves or others ; but they are free to enrich themselves, which they often do, as one may see from the magni- ficence of the different costumes in the provinces. The Empress, who is not afraid of appearing to be governed, gives to those whom she employs all possible authority and confidence. It is only to those who do wrong that she does not grant authority. She justifies her magnificence by saying that to give away money brings her in a great deal) and that her duty is to reward and encourage. She j ustifies herself for having made a great number of offices in the provinces because by that means money is circulated, fortunes are made, and gentlemen are obliged to live on their own lands, instead -of at St. Petersburg and Moscow. If she has built two hun.dfed And thirty-seven towns of stone, it is, she says, because villages of wood, which are so often burnt, cost so much. If she has made a superb fleet in the Black Sea, it is because Peter I. was so fond of navigation. She has always some modest excuse for all the great things she has done. REMEMBRANCES. REMEMBRANCES : they call them sweet and tender ; but 1, whatever shape they take, pronounce them hard and bitter. The image of the innocent pleasures of infancy recalls a time which draws us closer to that when we shall be no more. War, love, the successes of past years, the places where we have met with them, ah ! you poison our present. What a difference ! we say, how time has passed ! I was victorious, beloved, young ! We find, ourselves so far, so far from those rich moments that have fled so quickly, and that a song we heard then, a tree at the foot of which we were seated, brings back with floods of tears. I was there, we say, the evening of that famous battle. Here my hand was pressed. Thence I set out for delightful winter quarters. I had a good opinion of men. The court, the town, men of business had not deceived me. My soldiers (a set of men with more purity of feeling than the men of the world) adored me. The peasants blessed me. My trees grew ; what I loved was still in the world, existed for me ! Oh memory, memory ! you came back at times to the Duke of Marlborough in his second childishness, playing with his pages ; and one day when one of his portraits before which he passed brought you back to him, he watered with tears the hands with which he covered his face. THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH. SAINT PIERRE. JACQUES HENRI BERNARDIN DE SAINT PIERRE was born at Havre in 1737, and early displayed that strong disposition to rebel against authority which was his bane through life. In order to gratify his wish to travel, his parents sent him to sea, but the discipline of a sailor's life was intolerable to him, and he was sent back to France. He completed his studies at Rouen, and obtained a commission in the corps of engineers at Diisseldorf ; but as he offended all his officers, and made himself dis- agreeable to his companions, he was deprived of it, and compelled to seek another appointment. After failing in one or two attempts, he determined to leave his native land. He visited Holland, and then proceeded to St. Petersburg, where he was presented by the Master of the Ordnance to the Empress Catherine ; but still his morose and rebellious spirit stood in his way, and he lost all the opportunities of advancement that were afforded to him at the Russian court, and was on the point of returning to France, when General Dubosquet sent him to Finland to examine the military positions there, and to establish a system of defence. After an absence of six years he returned to France, and then obtained a commission to go as engineer to the Isle of France. On his return he published his Voyage a tile de France; this work was followed by the Etudes de la Nature, the success of which surpassed all his expectations. His fame was now established, and in 1792 Louis XVI. appointed him superintendent of the Jardin des Plantes. He died in 1814. The following passage is taken from Paul and Virginia. He also published La Chaumiere indienne, the Voeux d'un Solitaire, the Harmonies de la Nature, and other works. THE PILGRIMAGE TO THE BLACK RIVER. ONE Sunday, at sunrise, their mothers having gone to early mass at the church of Pamplemousses, a runaway slave presented herself under the banana-trees which surrounded their dwelling. She was as thin as a skeleton, and for clothing had only a strip of coarse cloth round her waist. She threw herself at the feet of Virginia, who was preparing breakfast for the family, and said to her : " Young lady, pity a poor fugitive slave ; I have been wandering in these mountains for a month, half-dead with hunger, and often pursued by the hunters and their dogs. I am running away from my master, who is a rich settler on the Black River. He has treated me as you see." At the same time she showed B B 1 86 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. her body furrowed with deep scars from the blows of a whip which she had received. She added : " I was going to drown myself, but knowing that you lived here, I said, As there are still some good whites in the country, I need not die yet." Deeply touched, Virginia answered : " Do not be uneasy, unhappy creature ! eat, eat ;" and she gave her all the breakfast which she had prepared. The slave in a few moments devoured the whole. Virginia, when she saw she had had enough, said to her : " Poor creature ! I should like to go and ask your master to pardon you. When he sees you, he will be touched with pity. Will you lead me to him ?" "Angel of God," answered the negress, " I will follow you wherever you wish." Virginia called her brother, and begged him to accompany her. The runaway slave led them along paths into the middle of woods, across high mountains, which they climbed with difficulty, and wide rivers which they forded. At last, towards the middle of the day, they arrived at the foot of a mountain, on the borders of the Black River. They per- ceived there a well-built house, considerable plantations, and a great number of slaves occupied with all sorts of work. Their master was walking among them with a pipe in his mouth and a cane in his hand. He was a tall, sharp-looking man, olive-coloured, with sunken eyes, and black eyebrows meeting each other. Virginia, much agitated, holding Paul by the arm, approached the settler, who did not take much notice of these two poorly-dressed children ; but, when he had remarked Virginia's elegant form, her beautiful fair head under a blue hood, and when he heard the sweet tone of her voice, which trembled as well as her whole body, as she begged his mercy, he took his pipe from his mouth, and, raising his stick to heaven, he swore, with a frightful oath, that he pardoned his slave, not for love of God, but for love of her. Virginia made a sign immediately to the slave to advance towards her master ; then she ran away, and Paul ran after her. They climbed together the back side of the little mountain where they had descended, and, arrived at the top, they sat down under a tree, overwhelmed with fatigue, hunger, and thirst. They had walked fast- ing more than five leagues since sunrise. Paul said to Virginia : " Sister, it is more than twelve o'clock ; you are hungry and thirsty, we shall not find any dinner here ; let us descend the mountain again, and go and ask the slave's master for something to eat," " Oh ! no," replied Virginia, "he frightens me too much. Do you remember what mamma says sometimes : ' The bread of the wicked fills the mouth with gravel ? ' ' " What shall we do then ? " said Paul ; " these trees bear only bad SAINT PIERRE. 187 fruits. There is not even a tamarind or a citron here to refresh you." " God will have pity on us," replied Virginia ; " He hears the voice of the little birds who cry unto Him for food." Hardly had she said these words, when they heard the noise of a stream falling from a neigh- bouring rock. They ran thither, and, after quenching their thirst with its clearer than crystal waters, they gathered and ate a little cress which was growing on its banks. As they looked around to see if they could find any more solid food, Virginia perceived a young palm-tree among the trees of the forest The cabbage which the top of this tree contains in the middle of its leaves, is very good to eat ; but, although its trunk is not thicker than a man's leg, it is more than sixty feet high. In truth the wood of this tree is nothing but a mass of filaments ; but its sap^ wood is so tough that it turns the edge of the best hatchets, and Paul had not even a knife. The idea occurred to him to set fire to the foot of the palm. Another puzzle : he had no tinder-box, and besides, in this island, so covered with rocks, I do not think a single flint could be found. Necessity leads to industry, and often the most useful inventions have been owing to men in the most miserable plight. Paul determined to light the fire after the fashion of the blacks. With the corner of a stone he made a little hole in a very dry branch, which he made fast under his feet ; then, with the sharp edge of this stone, he made a point to another piece of branch, as dry, but of a different kind of wood. He then placed this bit of pointed wood in the little hole of the branch which was under his feet, and turning it rapidly in his hands, as you turn a mill where you intend to froth chocolate, in a few moments he saw smoke and sparks commg out at the point of contact. He gathered some dry shrubs together and a few more branches, and set fire to the foot of the palm-tree, which fell very soon with a great crash. The fire was of use to him again in stripping the cabbage of its covering of long woody and prickly leaves. Virginia and he ate part of this cabbage raw, and the rest cooked in the ashes, and thought them equally good. After dinner they found themselves in a great dilemma, for they had no guide to show them the way home. Paul, who was never at a loss, said to Virginia : " Our house is towards the sun at mid-day ; we must cross over that mountain, which you see below with its three peaks, as we did this morning. Come, let us set off, dear." They then descended the hill of the Black River, on the north side, and arrived, after an hour's walk, on the banks of a wide river which barred their road. That great part of the island, all covered with forests, is so little known, even now, that several of its rivers and mountains have not been named yet. 1 88 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. The river, on the bank of which they were, flowed bubbling on over a bed of rocks. The noise of its waters frightened Virginia ; she dared not put her feet into it'to ford it. Then Paul took Virginia on his back, and thus loaded crossed over the slippery rocks of the river, in spite of the tumult of its waters. " Do not be afraid," he said ; " I am quite strong enough for. you. If the settler at the Black River had refused to pardon his slave for you, I should have fought with him." " What ? " said Virginia, " with that man, so big and so wicked ? What have I exposed you to ! Qh, how difficult it is to do right ! It is only easy to do wrong." When Paul reached the shore, he wished to continue his road, carry- ing his sister. . . . But soon his strength failed, and he was obliged to put her down and rest by her side. Then Virginia said to him : " Brother, it is getting dark ; you have some strength left, and I have not ; leave me here and return to our house alone to tell our mothers not to fidget." " Oh ! no," said Paul, " I will not leave you ; if night comes upon us in these woods, I will light a fire, and will knock down some palms, you shall eat the cabbage, and with its leaves I will make a hut to shelter you." However, Virginia, having rested a little, gathered on the trunk of an old tree, hanging over the brink of the river, some long leaves of hart's- tongue which hung from its trunk. She made a kind of boot of them, and put them on her feet, which the stones in the road had made bleed ; for in "her haste to be useful she had forgotten to put on her shoes. Feeling herself relieved by the freshness' of these leaves, she broke off a branch of bamboo, and began to walk, leaning on this reed with one hand, and with the other on her brother. They walked slowly through the woods in this way ; but the height of the trees and the thickness of their foliage made them soon lose sight of the mountain by which they guided themselves, and even of the sun, which was already near setting. At the end of some time, without perceiving it, they left the beaten road in which they had walked till then; and found themselves in a labyrinth of trees, -creepers, and rocks which had no outlet. Paul made Virginia sit down, and, quite at his wits' end, began to run hither and thither to look for a way out of this thick wood, but he tired himself in vain. He climbed a high tree that he might discover at least the mountain ; but he perceived nothing around him but the tops of trees, some of which were lighted up by the last rays of the setting sun. Nevertheless the shadow of the mountains already covered the forests in the valleys ; the wind went PAUL AND VIRGINIA. SAINT PIERRE. 189 down, as it does at sunset ; a deep silence reigned in these solitudes, and nothing was heard but the noise of deer, who came to seek their sleeping-places in these lonely spots. Then Paul, in the hope that some hunter might hear him, cried out as loud as he could, " Come, come to the help of Virginia !" But only the echoes of the forest answered him, and repeated several times, "Virginia, Virginia !" Paul then came down from the tree, overwhelmed with fatigue and trouble ; he sought some means of passing the night in this place, but there was neither stream, nor palm-tree, nor even any branches of dry wood to light a fire with ; he felt then, by experience, all the weakness of his resources, and began to cry. Virginia said to him : " Do not cry, brother, if you do not wish to make me, too, sorry ; it is I who am the cause of all your troubles, and of our mothers'. We ought not to do anything, not even good, without consulting our parents. Oh ! I have been very imprudent." And she began to shed tears. However, she said to Paul : " Let us pray to God, brother ; He will have pity on us." Hardly had they finished their prayer, when they heard a dog bark. " It is," said Paul, " some hunter's dog, who comes in the evening to lie in wait for the deer, and to kill them." Soon after, the barking of the dog was redoubled. " It seems to me," said Virginia, " that it is Fidele, our house dog. Yes, I know his voice ; can we be so near home, and at the foot of our mountain ? " In fact, a moment after, Fidele was at their feet, barking, yelling, whining, and overwhelming them with caresses. Before they could recover from their surprise, they saw Domingo running towards them. On the arrival of this good black, who was weeping for joy, they began to cry too, and could not say a word to him. When Domingo recovered himself, he said, " Oh, my young master and mistress, your mothers are so anxious. They were so astonished when they did not find you on returning from church, to which I had been too. Marie, who was working in one corner of the house, could not tell us where you were gone. I went up and down the house, not knowing myself where to look for you. At last I took your old clothes one after another ; I made Fidele smell them, and immediately, as if the poor animal had understood me, he set himself to search out your footsteps. He led me, wagging his tail all the time, to the Black River. It was there that I learned from a settler that you had brought him a runaway negress, and that he had granted you her pardon. But what a pardon ! He showed her to me, fastened with a chain on her foot to a block of wood, and with a three-hooked iron collar round her neck. From 190 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS*. there, Fidele, tracking all the time, led me to the little Black River Mountain, where he stopped again, barking with all his might ; it was on the edge of a spring near a felled palm-tree and a still smoking fire ; at last he led me here. We are at the foot of the mountain, and there are still four good leagues between us and home. Let us be going ; eat, and get some strength." He at once gave them a cake, some fruits, and a large calabash full of a liquor composed of water, wine, the juice of the citron, sugar, and nutmeg, which their mothers had prepared to strengthen and refresh them. Virginia sighed at the remembrance of the poor slave and the anxiety of their mothers. She repeated several times : " Oh, how difficult it is to do right ! " Whilst Paul and she were refreshing themselves, Domingo lighted a fire, and after having looked among the rocks for a crooked kind of wood which is called bois de ronde, and which, when quite green, burns with a great blaze, he made a torch of it, which he lighted, for it was already dark. But he experienced a much greater perplexity when it came to starting. Paul and Virginia could not walk at all ; their feet were swollen and quite red. Domingo could not decide whether he should go very far from there to seek help, or pass the night in that place with them. " Where is the time," said he, " when I carried you both at once in my arms ? But now you are big and I am old." While he was in this perplexity, a number of runaway blacks were seen twenty paces off. The leader of this troop, approaching Paul and Virginia, said to them, " Good little whites, do not be afraid ; we saw you pass this morning with a negress from the Black River ; you were going to ask her bad master to pardon her ; out of gratitude we will carry you home on our shoulders." Then he gave a sign, and four pf the strongest runaway blacks, immediately made a litter with the branches of trees and creepers, and placed Paul and Virginia in it, put them on their shoulders, and Domingo walking before them with his torch, they set out amid the joyful shouts of the whole band, who loaded them with blessings. Virginia, much touched, said to Paul : " Oh, my brother ! God never leaves a kindness unrewarded." BERTRAND DE MOLEVILLE. ANTOINE FRANCOIS, MARQUIS DE BERTRAND DE MOLEVILLE, was born at Toulouse in 1744, and died at Paris in 1818. He was Master of Requests under the minister Maupeou, and was afterwards made Governor of the province of Bretagne, and as such was charged with the perilous commission of dissolving the parliament of Rennes. In 1791 he was appointed Minister of Naval Affairs, but, being accused of having caused the loss of Saint Domingo, he resigned his office. He was entrusted by Louis XVI. with the management of his secret police, and was charged to keep a watch on the proceedings of the revolutionary party. In the performance of these duties, he drew upon himself the vengeance of the Republicans, and was compelled to escape to England, where he spent many years in exile, but returned to France after the Restoration. He wrote U Histoire de la Revolution Fran$aise, from which the following extract is taken ; EHistoire d'Angleferre, depuis la premiere Invasion des Remains jusqu^a la Paix de 1763 ; and Memoires particuliers po ur servir a PHistoire de la 3n du Regne de Louis XVI. LOUIS XVI. AT THE HOTEL DE VILLEv THE joy of the Parisians was still mixed with some uneasiness, and the most absurd suspicions ; they were, for all that, full of confidence in the intentions and promises of the king ; but the troops who, as they had been told, were to be sent away, were still in the environs of Paris, and they imagined that the ministers had only deferred their departure that they might employ them against the capital. It was useless to tell them that it was impossible to make 30,000 men march at once, before the necessary measures had been taken to secure provisions for them on the different roads ; the best reasons were powerless against fear, and fear was always the sentiment that ruled them ; it was kept up by the disorder that still prevailed among the patrols, whose number, confusion, and hasty movements sanctioned the most alarming impostures. From time to time, too, they surprised false patrols, composed of that kind of ruffians who haunt all great towns, and whose object is always robbery : they were disarmed, and taken to the Hotel de Ville. People fortified and barricaded their houses more than on the preceding days. The tocsin incessantly called everybody to arms 192 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. who could manage to get any ; they were seen running to their appointed place, to the Hdtel de Ville, with as much ardour as if the siege or the blockade, which was supposed to be the intention of the ministers, had already commenced. The electors having in vain exhausted every means of calming this fermentation, imagined that the presence of some members of the National Assembly might produce this effect, and sent a deputation there to beg that they would send a certain number as soon as possible. This deputation had already set out, when they learned that the king had announced to the Assembly the retirement of the new ministers, the recall of Necker, and his majesty's intention of coming to Paris next day. But, as this news was not officially announced, people were less disposed to believe it than to look on it as a snare laid for the Parisians by a treacherous ministry, to put them off their guard. Con- sequently all the posts were strengthened, and the streets more illuminated than they had ever been. The deputation from the Assembly, commissioned to inform the capital of the king's intentions, did not arrive at the Hotel de Ville till two o'clock, and the news was sent immediately into all the districts, and before seven o'clock in the morning, more than a hundred thousand men were under arms to go before his majesty. On Friday, July i/th, the king set out from Versailles, at nine o'clock in the morning. His guard was only composed of the bourgeois militia of Versailles. The National Assembly went to meet his majesty before the hall, : and the deputation appointed to accompany him pre- pared to follow. A very considerable number of the members of the Assembly, only consulting their zeal and fidelity, came to increase still more the cortege, and weakened a little the lively alarm with which the queen and the royal family were tormented. This alarm was, doubtless, very natural ; no one could think without shuddering of the dangers the king ran, carried by his confidence and love for his people into the midst of a mad multitude, stained with so many crimes, and already accustomed to blood : even its joy was so ferocious ! The most fatal catastrophe depended only on a paid rascal, or a fanatic, only a moment "was needed. Alas! the fatal destiny of Louis XVI. did but postpone that moment, to render it still more disastrous. The bourgeois militia of Paris, who had come to wait for the king at Sevres, relieved that of Versailles, which nevertheless continued to accompany his majesty. BERTRAND DE MOLEVILLE. 193 The Horse-guards led the way ; they were followed by the French guards, preceded by the cannons and the flag of the Bastille ; the mem- bers of the Assembly, filing off two and two, and forming a double column, followed, and after them the infantry of the bourgeois militia. A numerous detachment of volunteer cavalry preceded M. de la Fayette, who, as commander, was on horseback in the middle of the cortege, with a naked sword in his hand. The Paris guards, the band of the town-guard, the fishwomen, clothed in white, adorned with ribbons of the colours of the national cockade, and carrying in their hands flowers and branches of laurel, took part in this escort up to the king's carriage, in which were the Dukes of Villequier and Villeroi, the , Marshal de Beauveau, and the Count d'Estaing. It was surrounded by some yeomen of the guard, without uniforms, unarmed, and mixed up in the crowd. The king was received at the barrier of the Conference by the municipal body. M. Bailly, as mayor, performing the functions of provost, presented the keys of the town to his majesty in a silver bason, and addressed this speech to him : "Sire, I bring your majesty the keys of your good town of Paris; they are the same that were presented to Henry IV.: he had recon- quered his people ; here, it is the people who have reconquered their king. Your majesty comes to rejoice in the peace that you have re-established in your capital ; you come to rejoice in the love of your faithful subjects : it is for their happiness that your majesty has assembled around you the representatives of the nation, and that, with them, you are about to occupy yourself in laying the foundations of liberty and public prosperity. What a memorable day is this, when your majesty has come to preside in person in the midst of this united family, when you have been led back to your palace by the whole National Assembly, guarded by the representatives of the nation, thronged by an immense multitude ! " Sire, neither your people, nor your majesty, will ever forget this great day : it is the grandest of the monarchy : it is the epoch of an august and eternal alliance between the monarch and the people. I have seen this grand day ; and, as if all happiness were made for me, the first duty of the office to which the vote of my fellow-citizens has appointed me is to bear to you the expression of their respect and love." The king, after having heard this speech, continued his way towards the Hotel de Ville, between a triple line of armed men, shouting at the full pitch of their voices, " Vive la Nation ! " and mixing incessantly C C 194 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. with these stupid acclamations that ferocious cry which one cannot repeat without horror, j' Ne criez pas Vive le Roi." Such was the first homage that the good Parisians, that the good town of Paris offered to Louis XVI. in acknowledgment of his good- ness, of his trust, and of all his sacrifices ; such were the expressions of their respect, of their love, and the generosity with which this people who had conquered their king used its victory. The sadness that so revolting a reception produced in the heart of this unhappy monarch was depicted on his countenance in so touching a manner, that no one could look at him without emotion. At the moment that the king reached the height of the Champs Elysees, three or four shots were fired at once ; it has never been known where they came from : this is certain, however, that an unfortunate woman who was in the crowd, and in the same direction as his majesty's carriage, was struck, and fell dead on the spot. All the journalists have attested this fact ; some have considered it an artifice of the enemies of the public interests to excite a tumult, and to occasion some accident ; others have attributed it to the awkwardness and inexperience of so many men who were handling _fire-arms for the first time. The king noticed near the Pont Neuf several cannons, the mouth and touch-hole of which were adorned with great bunches of flowers and scrolls. These words were written on them : " Your presence has disarmed us ; at the sight of you, flowers spring up on the murderous thunderbolts with which your enemies and ours have forced us to arm ourselves." It was twenty minutes past four when the king arrived at the Place de Greve, and descended to the foot of that flight of steps that had been stained by so many assassinations on the preceding days. Thousands of pikes and naked swords crossed each other at the same instant over his august head, and it was beneath this iron archway that his majesty was conducted to the great hall of the Hotel de Ville, where a throne was prepared for him. The sitting being ended, the king showed himself on one of the balconies of the Hotel de Ville, to satisfy the wish and extreme impatience that an immense crowd assembled in the Place de Greve, at all the windows, and even on the roofs of the houses, had to see him ; then the universal cry of " Vive le Roi ! " echoed from all sides. The enthusiasm was at its height, when the insurrectionary cockade was seen in his majesty's hat. Whether they regarded it as a sign of BERTRAND DE MOLEVILLE. 195 approbation, or as a sign of pardon for all the crimes with which it was stained, the cries of " Vive le Roi ! " increased to greater vehemence ; the sound of drums and the firing of cannon mingled with these acclamations, and soon spread through the town the joy that was breaking forth in such a noisy way in the Place de Greve. The departure of Louis XVI. presented a very different spectacle from that of his entry ; the Parisians, beside themselves with gratitude and love, were not contented with surrounding the king's carriage ; they climbed up in crowds behind, on the coachman's seat, on the steps, and even on the top. Still some cries of "Vive la Nation, et la Liberte ! " were heard. But the cries of " Vive notre Roi, notre Ami, notre Pere!" were a thousand times more numerous. The armed citizens reversed their arms in sign of peace ; the king smiled with favour at their transports, and with his own hand, and amid the great applause of the people, reversed the gun of one of the men who formed the line, and who, having his eyes fixed on the carriage, had not noticed the way in which his comrades were carrying their arms. At the barrier, the king found the same cortege that had accompanied him to Paris, and on arriving at Sevres, saw all his guards running down from the mountain, where they had been waiting for his return, to take their usual place around his person. Several among them started off first to go to announce the king's arrival to the royal family, who had endured the greatest anxiety during the prolonged absence of his majesty. The queen, especially, was in a state of grief and despair ; it would be as difficult to describe her heartrending anguish, as to paint the transports of joy that followed when her majesty heard the king's carriage enter the royal court : she ran to him, holding the dauphin in her arms, and threw herself, breathless and almost unconscious, into those of her august husband, who was no less deeply moved. The scene that followed was perhaps still more touching. What more interesting picture to feeling minds could there be than that which this delightful moment presented, when Louis XVI, given back to his disconsolate family, surrounded by the beings most dear to him, let one of his children caress one of his hands, while, with the other, he dried the tears of the queen, and Madame Elizabeth, and sweetened the bitterness of them by mingling his own with theirs ? His replies to all their questions, and the particulars that he related to them of his journey, filled their agitated hearts with joy and happiness, but, above all, with hope. MADAME ROLAND. MANON JEANNE ROLAND was the daughter of an engraver of no note, named Phlipon, and was born at Paris in 1754. She received a careful education, and was a remarkably energetic and precocious child. In 1780 she married M. Roland, then inspector-general of the factories at Amiens, over whom during the rest of her life she exercised an unbounded influence. In the early years of her married life she travelled with her husband in Italy, Switzerland, and England. On their return to France, M. Roland was transferred to Lyons, and, being sent to Paris in 1791 on municipal business, became in the following year a member of the popular administration sum- moned in the last days of Louis XVI. When the Revolution broke out, she and her husband took an active lead in the party of the Girondins, and were involved in its fall. Madame Roland was beheaded on the I5th of November, 1793, and her husband, who had escaped from Paris, committed suicide on receiving the news. During her imprisonment, which lasted more than four months, she composed her Memoires, a work of great interest, though unpleasantly tinged with the vanity which was a pro- minent part of her character. MADAME ROLAND'S EDUCATION. LIVELY, without being noisy, and naturally self-collected, I asked for nothing but to be busy, and I readily seized the ideas that were presented to me. This talent was turned to profit so well, that I never remember having learned to read ; I have heard it said that it was a thing done at four years old, and that the trouble of teaching me was, so to speak, at an end then, because after that time all that was neces- sary was to keep me well supplied with books. Whatever kind these might be which they gave me, or that I could get possession of, they absorbed my attention completely, and nothing but flowers could divert me. Under the quiet shelter of my father's roof, I was happy with flowers and books ; within the narrow confines of a prison, in the midst of chains imposed by a most revolting tyranny, I forget the injustice of men, their follies and my ills, with books and flowers. More than one contrast might have been noticed in my education. The little personage who appeared at church on Sundays, or on the promenade, in a costume that one might have thought came out of a GIRLHOOD OF MADAME ROLAND. MADAME ROLAND. 197 carriage, and whose appearance was matched by her deportment and way of speaking, would go very properly, too in the week in a cotton frock to market with her mother ; she even went alone a few steps from the door, to buy some parsley or a salad that the servant had forgot- ten. It must be owned that this did not please me much, but I never showed it ; and I had the art of acquitting myself of my commission in such a way as to derive some pleasure from it I bore myself with such politeness, mixed with a certain dignity, that the fruitwomen, or any other person of that kind, thought it a pleasure to serve me first, and the earlier comers were quite contented. I always received some com- pliment on my way, and I was only more civil for it. The child who would read grave books, could explain the circles of the heavenly sphere very well, handled the pen and pencil, and, at eight years old, was the best dancer in an assembly of young persons, older than she was, gathered together for a little family fete, this child was often called into the kitchen to make an omelet, to pick herbs, or to skim the soup. This mixture of grave studies, agreeable exercise, and domestic duties regulated, tempered by a mother's wisdom, has made me fit for anything, has seemed to anticipate the vicissitudes of misfortune, and has helped me to bear them. I am never at a loss. I can make a soup as dexterously as Philopcemen cut wood ; but no one would think, to look at me, that this was at all a proper occupation for me. THE FIRST ARREST OF MADAME ROLAND. I WAS hardly seated, when I heard a knock at the door ; it was about midnight ; a numerous deputation from the Commune presented themselves, and asked for Roland. " He is not at home/' " But," said the personage, who wore an officer's collar, " where can he be when will he come back ? You ought to know his habits, and be able to guess when he will come back." " I do not know," I answered, " if your orders authorize you to ask me such questions, but I know that nothing can oblige me to answer them. Roland left his house while I was at the Convention ; he could not tell me his secrets, and I have nothing more to say." The party retired very much dissatisfied ; I noticed that they left a sentinel at my door, and a guard at the door of the house. I presumed that there was nothing more I could do but collect all my strength to IQ8 HALF HO URS WITH FRENCH A UTHORS, sustain whatever might happen. I was overcome with fatigue. I made them give me some supper. I finished my note, and gave it to my faithful servant, and went to bed. I slept soundly for an hour, when my servant entered my room to tell me that some members of the Section begged me to go into the study. " I understand what that means," I answered. " Go, my child ; I will not keep them waiting." I jumped out of bed ; I dressed myself; my servant came, and was astonished that I took the trouble to put on anything but a dressing- gown. " One must be decent to go out," I observed. The poor girl looked at me with eyes that were full of tears. I passed into the apartment. "We are come, Citoyenne, to put you under arrest, and to seal your things." " Where is your authority ? " " Here it is," said a man, drawing from his pocket an order from the Revolutionary Committee, without any reason for arrest, to conduct me to the Abbaye. " Like Roland, I can tell you that I do not acknowledge these com- mittees, that I do not submit to these orders, and that you will only take me from here by violence." " Here is another order," a little man, with a disagreeable face, hastened to say, in a conceited tone ; and he read me one from the Commune, which ordered the arrest of Roland and his wife, without mentioning the cause: I considered, while he was reading, whether I should carry my resistance as far as possible, or if I should act with resignation. I might avail myself of .the law that forbids arrests by night; and, if they insisted on the law that authorizes the municipality to seize suspected persons, answer, that the municipality itself was illegal, having been suppressed and recreated by an arbitrary power. But this power the citizens of Paris had, in a manner, sanctioned ; and the law is no longer anything but a name used to insult the most thoroughly acknowleged rights ; and force reigns, and if I oblige them to exert it, these brutes know no bounds ; resistance is useless, and might endanger me. " How do you mean to proceed, gentlemen ? " " We have sent for a justice of the peace from the Section, and you see a detachment of his armed force." The justice of peace arrived ; they put seals on everything on the windows, on the linen cupboards ; one man wanted to have them put on MADAME ROLAND. 199 the pianoforte ; they remarked to him that it Was an instrument. He drew a foot rule from his pocket ; he measured its dimensions as if he would fix its destination. I asked to be allowed to take out some things composing my daughter's wardrobe, and I made a little packet of night- things for myself. Nevertheless, fifty a hundred people went in and out continually ; filled the two rooms, surrounded everything, and might have concealed ill-intentioned persons who intended to take up or put down anything. The air was loaded with pestilential exhalations ; I was obliged to go near the window of the anteroom to breathe. The officer did not dare to command this crowd to retire ; he only ventured a gentle entreaty now and then, which only increased it. Seated at my desk, I wrote to tell a friend of my situation, and to commend my daughter to her care. As I was folding the letter, " Madam," cried M. Nicaud (the bearer of the order of the Commune), " you must read your letter and name the person that you have written to." " I consent to read it, if that is enough for you ! " " It would be better to say to whom you have written." " I shall not do so ; to be called my friend just now is not such an agreeable thing that I should wish to name those in whom I trust ; " and I tore up my letter. As I turned my back, they picked up the bits to place them under seal. I could have laughed at this stupid persistence ; there was no address. At last, at seven o'clock in the morning, I left my daughter and all my servants, after having exhorted them to be calm and patient. I felt that their tears honoured me more than oppression could terrify me. "You have people there who love you," said one of these commissioners. " I have never had any others about me," I replied, and went down. I found two rows of armed men, reaching from the bottom of the stair- case to a carriage which stopped on the other side of the street, and a crowd of curious people. I went on gravely and slowly, noticing this cowardly or deluded mob. The armed force followed the carriage in two lines ; the unhappy people who are deceived, and whose throats are cut in the persons of their best friends, attracted by the sight, stopped in my way, and some women cried out, " To the guillotine ! " " Would you like the curtains drawn ? " said the commissioners, obligingly. " No, sirs ; innocence, however oppressed it may be, never assumes the appearance of guilt. I fear nobody's looks ; I do not wish to with- draw myself from them, whoever they may be." 200 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. " You have more spirit than many men ; you are waiting calmly for justice." "Justice ! If there were such a thing as justice, I should not be in your power at this very time. Should an iniquitous proceeding lead me to the scaffold, I should mount it as firmly and quietly as I am now going to prison. I groan for my country. I regret the mistakes which made me think her fit for liberty and happiness ; but I value life : I fear nothing but crime ; I despise injustice and death." These poor commissioners did not understand much of this lan- guage, and probably thought it very aristocratic. We arrived at the Abbaye, that theatre of the bloody scenes the repetition of which the Jacobins have advocated, for some time, with so much fervour. Five or six camp-beds, occupied by as many men, in a dark room, were the first objects that attracted my notice. After we had passed the grating, they got up and began to move, and my guides made me mount a narrow and dirty staircase. We reached the keeper's room, a kind of little drawing-room, pretty clean, where he offered me a couch. " Where is my room ? " I asked his wife, a fat person, with a kind face. " Madam, I did not expect you ; I have nothing ready, but you can stay here while you are waiting." The commissioners entered the next room, had their orders entered, and gave their verbal instructions. I learnt afterwards that they were very strict, and that they had them renewed several times afterwards, but without daring to put them on paper. The keeper knew his trade too well to fulfil to the very letter what was not obligatory : he is an honest, active, obliging man, who mingles with the exercise of his functions all that justice and moderation could desire. " What would you like for your breakfast ? " " Some tea." The commissioners withdrew, telling me, that if Roland were not guilty he would not have absented himself. " It is exceedingly strange that they can suspect such a man ; one who has rendered such great services to liberty. It is extremely odious to see a minister calumniated and persecuted with such rancour, whose conduct is so open, whose accounts are so clear, that he ought not to have been obliged to save himself from the extreme excesses of envy. Just as Aristides, severe as Cato : these are the virtues that have made him enemies. Their rage knows no bounds ; let it practise all its cruelty MADAME ROLAND. 201 on me; I brave it and I sacrifice myself; he, he ought to preserve himself for his country, to which he can still render great services." An embarrassed bow was the answer of these gentlemen. They went away. I breakfasted while the bedroom that I was to have was hastily prepared. "You will be able, madam, to remain here all day; and if I cannot get a place ready for you this evening for there are a great many people here a bed will be put up in the drawing-room." The wife of the keeper, who spoke to me thus, added some kind remarks on the regret she always felt when she saw people of her own sex come in ; " for," she added, " they do not all look so calm as madam does." I thanked her, smiling ; she shut me in. " Here I am, then, in prison," I said to myself. The agitation in which I had passed the preceding evening made me feel extremely tired ; I longed to have a room. That very night I obtained one, and took possession of it at ten o'clock. When I found myself between four tolerably dirty walls, in the middle of which was a common bedstead without curtains ; when I perceived a double-grated window ; and when I was struck with that smell that a person accus- tomed to a very clean room always finds in those that are not, I was very sensible that it was a prison I was going to inhabit, and that it was not a place where I must expect anything agreeable. However, the space was pretty large, and there was a chimney ; the counterpane was tolerable ; they gave me a pillow ; and by considering these things, without making any comparison, I came to the conclusion that I was not badly off. I went to bed, quite resolved to remain there as long as I was comfortable. DD HOCHE. LAZARE HOCHE, the celebrated French general, was the son of a working man, and was born at Montreuil, a suburb of Versailles, in 1768. First a printer's boy, then a chorister at Saint Germain, then a groom in the stables of Versailles, he entered the arrny at sixteen years of age, and, when the Revolution broke out, had risen to the rank of sergeant. The energy of his character, and the ardour with which he pursued his military studies, marked him out for rapid promotion, and at the battle of Neerwinde, in 1793, he acted as aide-de-camp to General Le Veneur. Shortly after he was arrested on a charge of incivisme ; but the plan of a campaign which he had drawn up and sent to the Committee of Public Safety, attracted the attention of Carnot, and procured him his liberation and the rank of Brigadier-General. The defence of Dunkerque, and the defeat of the Prussians at Wissembourg, were the commencement of his short but victorious career, interrupted only by the intrigues of the revolutionary chiefs, and closed in 1797 by his sudden death, not without suspicion of poison, at the early age of twenty-nine. A memoir of his life, with a large selection from his correspondence, was published by Rousselin in 1798. The following passage, containing two of his modest, soldier-like letters, is taken from an Essay by M. Bergounioux, published in 1852. GENERAL HOCHE. LIKE Saint Just and Lebas, the committee, in presence of the dangers to which the army was still exposed, were forced, in spite of themselves, to accept the nomination of Hoche as an act irrevocably settled for a few days at least ; but, like those two representatives, they promised themselves to punish Hoche, if Hoche failed, and doubtless to punish him still, if his success answered the expectations of Lacoste and Baudot. Whichever it might be, Hoche turned to profit the sole power with which he found himself invested, without having asked it. In one day the face of everything was changed ; he showed that he understood the duties, the rights, and the resources of an undivided authority. It must be said that the confidence and transports of the soldiers redoubled when this appointment was made known. The army of the Rhine shared the enthusiasm of the arm)' of the Moselle, and Pichegru could HOCHE. 203 see that his lieutenants approved the decision, which, from being Roche's equal, made him his subordinate. But if this enthusiasm, if these unanimous acclamations were the happy presages of victory, these signs of popularity gave Hoche an authority that the Government, jealous of his power, could not witness without terror. Besides, being very young and inexperienced at that time, Hoche yielded perhaps to some impulse of very lawful pride, and did not dream of getting pardon for the great- ness of the mission that he had to fulfil, by professions of a studied modesty. At that time a general might incur the responsibility of a reverse, but was never allowed to take to himself the honour of success. His glory must always be blended with that of the army. No head could be raised above the humblest without being condemned to fall on the scaffold. Entirely absorbed in the dangers that threatened the frontier, Hoche was far from thinking at that time of the dangers that threatened himself. My intention is not to enter here' into the details of the plan that he executed ; it will be* found entire in the history of the revolutionary campaigns. I take Hoche a few hours before the battle that was to decide the success of the campaign, give us the lines of Wissembourg, or confirm the possession of them to the Prussians. Warned that the enemies were about to attack him, he intended to be beforehand with them. People have greatly praised the verses of the Great Frederick, addressed to the Marquis of Argens, composed on the eve of the battle of Rosbach, and in which occurs the determination nobly expressed, moreover, not to survive a defeat. I prefer this simple letter of General Hoche, written from the bivouac at Wissembourg to General Le Veneur. " Once more, those sounds of exultation that in old times we heard bursting forth in the presence of the enemy, are heard. Discouragement and terror have fled far from us ; I am surrounded by none but brave men, who will march against the enemy without taking one step back- wards. Around the fires that are lighted all along the line, I have discovered in every group that security and audacity which are the harbingers of victory. Not a murmur about this cold and boisterous wind ; not a longing word for those tents that I have been one of the first to do away with. There are few who pique themselves on imitating the conqueror of Rocroy, and whom it will be necessary to awake for the battle ; but the air is icy, and I prefer leading them against the enemy in a bad temper produced by want of sleep, than when rested by a sleep, which is always fatal to energy in this temperature. This being 204 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. acknowledged by the greater number, I have been greeted on every side with this cry : ' Landau shall be free ! ' Yes, General, Landau shall be free ; but it is not enough now to stop the enemy, we must drive him away before us ; the question is no longer about defending our territory, we must invade his. The days of grief and shame are over. With soldiers so well prepared, an authority unfettered now, with thj support of the representatives, I ought to conquer or die. This is alternative that I have accepted. So, my General, if this letter is only the too presumptuous announcement of a success that I think positively certain, it will bring you my last adieus. I am on the eve of the greatest or the last of my days, and I wish to assure you that if I shall never see you again, I have always cherished the remembrance of your kind- ness in the very bottom of my heart, and that General Hoche has preserved, undiminished, the respectful attachment that your old aide- de-camp had vowed to you." The anticipations of Hoche were not disappointed. At dawn the army got under arms in order, and trembling with impatience, but obeying the rein that guided them. They began to move with the shouts of " Landau or death ! " " The French burnt little powder ; they had but one game, that of the bayonet. You have ordered us to distribute rewards to those who performed brilliant actions, but when an army of 40,000 men fights for six hours, attacking without intermis- sion, which is he that has deserved most ? which shall have the least ? Happy uncertainty that invites us to reward them all." * Happy uncer- tainty indeed ! Nevertheless, under the command of Hoche were then fighting both Lefebvre and Desaix, Andrdossy and Championnet, Moreau and he who has since been made Duke of Dalmatia ; and not one of them is named ! What grandeur and what glory in this forgetfulness of the army and its commander-in-chief ! We must listen to Heche's account of this affair given to his friend Privat, who had asked him for particulars. "At last arrived the representatives of the people, Lacoste and Baudot, who obliged me to take the command of the two armies. I cared little about it, but the voice of my country triumphed. I accepted it on the 3d, at mid-day. There was no time to be lost ; the enemy, in full force, were to attack on the 6th at ten o'clock. During the evening and night [it was the same night that he wrote the letter to General Le Veneur that has just been given], I despatched orders to assemble the next day, the 6th, at least 35,000 men from the two armies * Report of Lacoste and Baudot to the Convention. GENERAL HOCHE. HOCHE. 205 on the plain in front of the lines of Wissembourg. I do not know, my dear Privat, at what hour they set out, but the next day each arrived at the appointed hour, and on the spot indicated, in presence of the enemy. No hesitation. From the first moment the army advanced, continually the enemy drew back as far as the camp of Gastelberg, a considerable height on which seven batteries were placed. A great mistake, they made, my dear Privat ; for they were shut in at once, being placed as in the centre of two-thirds of a circle, a form that I had made the army take. Between them and us, an enclosure of hollows, thick hedges, and deep ditches. This was to be climbed, exposed to a hot fire. To the charge, friends ! and off we go. Their cannons, their equipages are ours ; to-morrow Lauterbourg and more cannon ; everywhere magazines of arms and fodder, and Landau is free, and we are before Worms." Does not this style recall that well known saying of Hoche, " Reflection should prepare, thunder execute" ? Here it seems that it is thunder that is writing. You have noticed the magnanimous simplicity of these words : " I do not know at what hour they started, but each arrived at the appointed hour, and on the spot indicated." I shall not give here the whole of the report that Hoche wrote from Landau to the Committee, but I must quote the conclusion word for word. " I shall await the orders of the Committee. I shall proceed further, if it is wished, slowly it is true, on account of the distance from our magazines, and the difficulty of the roads. I shall halt, if I am ordered to do so, and put the troops into cantonments. .... One request remains for me to make to the Committee : now that the end is attained, I wish to be only charged with the command of the army of the Moselle. The two together are a too heavy burden for a head of twenty-six." FOURTH PART. WRITERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. MADAME DE STAEL. ANNE LOUISE GERMAINE, Baroness de Stael, was the daughter of Necker, Minister of Finance to Louis XVI, and was born at Paris in 1766. Her education was carefully superintended by her mother, and she gave early evidence of possessing unusual force of intellect. In 1786 she married the Baron de Stael Holstein. Swedish Ambassador at Paris ; whose diplomatic character enabled her to remain there during the first years of the Revolution, and to interest herself on behalf of the royal family. After the Reign of Terror had subsided, she returned to France, which she had quitted for a time ; and her salon, which was frequented by the leading men in politics and literature, became a centre of intrigues against the rising power of Buonaparte. She speedily received an order to quit Paris, and spent some time in travelling through Switzerland and Italy. In 1807 she published her novel of Corinne, the materials of which she had collected during her rambles. Her work on Germany, from which the following extract is taken, was printed in 1810, but the whole impression was seized by the Emperor's order, and Madame de Stael herself expelled from France. She then took up her abode in Geneva, but subsequently visited Russia and England. Her Dix A nnbes d'Exil gives an account of these years of wandering. After Napoleon's abdication she returned to France, and died there in 1817. Her Considerations sur la Revolution Franqaise was published after her death. THE FETE OF INTERLAKEN. WE must attribute to the German character a great part of the virtues of German Switzerland. Nevertheless, there is more public spirit in Switzerland than in Germany ; more patriotism, more energy, more agreement in opinions and sentiments ; but at the same time, the; MADAME DE STAEL. 207 smallness of the states and the poverty of the country do not call forth genius in any way ; there are much fewer learned men and thinkers there than in the north of Germany, where the very laxity of political bonds gives wing to all the noble musings, to all the bold systems which are not subject to the nature of things. The Swiss are not a poetical nation, and people are astonished, with reason, that the glorious aspect of their country has not more inflamed their imagination. Yet a religious and free people are always susceptible of a kind of enthusiasm, and the material occupations of life cannot entirely stifle it. If this could have been questioned, any one would have been convinced of it by the shepherds' fete, which was celebrated last year in the midst of the lakes, in memory of the founder of Berne. This town of Berne deserves more than ever the respect and interest of travellers; it seems that since its last troubles all its virtues have revived with new vigour, and that while it has lost its own treasures, it has redoubled its gifts to the unfortunate. Its charitable establishments are, perhaps, the best looked after in Europe ; the hospital is the finest, the only magnificent building in the town. Over the door is written this inscription, " Christo in Pauperibus " " to Christ in the poor." There Is nothing more worthy of admiration. Has not the Christian religion told us that it was for those who suffer that Christ came down upon earth ? and which of us, in some period of his life, is not poor in happi- ness, in hopes ; one of those unhappy ones, in short, that we ought to comfort in the name of God ? Everything in the town and canton of Berne bears the impress of a calm, grave order, of a worthy and paternal government. To go to the feast, it was necessary to embark on one of these lakes in which the beauties of nature are reflected, and which seem placed at the foot of the Alps in order to multiply their delightful views. Stormy weather deprived us of a distinct view of the mountains, but, blended with the clouds, they were only more formidable. The storm increased, and although a feeling of terror seized my soul, I loved that thunder of heaven which confounds the pride of men. We rested for a little time jn a kind of grotto, before we ventured to cross that part of the lake of Thun which is surrounded with inaccessible rocks. It was in such a place that' William Tell braved the abyss, and clung to the cliffs to escape from his tyrants. We then perceived in the distance that moun- tain which bears the name of the Jungfrau, because no traveller has ever been able to climb to its summit. It is not so high as Mont Blanc, and yet it inspires more awe, because it is known to be inaccessible. 2o8 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. We arrived at Unterseen, and the noise of the Aar, which falls in cascades round this little town, disposed our minds to dreamy im- pressions. The strangers, in great numbers, were lodged in the peasants' houses, which were very clean, but rustic. It was curious enough to see young Parisians suddenly transported into the valleys of Switzerland, walking in the street of Unterseen ; they heard nothing but the sound of torrents ; they saw nothing but mountains, and they tried if they could tire themselves enough in these solitary places to return with more pleasure to the world again. People have talked much of an air played by the Alpine horns, and which makes so lively an impression on the Swiss, that when they hear it, they leave their regiments to return to their native land. You may conceive the effect that this air may produce when the mountain echo repeats it ; but it ought to sound in the distance ; near, it does not produce a very agreeable sensation. If it were sung by Italian voices the imagination would be perfectly intoxicated with it, but perhaps this pleasure would give rise to ideas foreign to the simplicity of the country. One would be wishing for the arts, poetry, and love, while it was necessary to be content with repose and rural life. On the evening that preceded the fete, fires were lighted on the mountains ; it was thus that formerly the liberators of Switzerland gave the signal of their holy conspiracy. These fires, placed on the summits, looked like the moon when she rises behind the mountains and shows herself at once fiery and peaceable. One might have said that new stars came to be present at the most touching spectacle that our world could yet offer. One of these flaming signals seemed placed in the sky, whence it lighted up the ruins of the castle of Unspunnen, formerly the possession of Berthold, the founder of Berne, in memory of whom the fete was given. Deep shadows surrounded this luminous point, and the mountains, which during the night resemble great phantoms, appeared like the gigantic shade of the dead whom we were going to celebrate. On the day of the feast the weather was mild, but cloudy ; it was necessary that nature should respond to the softening of all hearts. The enclosure chosen for the games was surrounded with hills dotted with trees, and the mountains behind these hills reach as far as you can see. All the spectators, to the number of almost six thousand, were seated on the slope of the hills, and the varied colours of the dresses in the distance looked like flowers scattered over the meadow. Never could a more pleasant scene usher in a feast ; but when you looked up, the hanging rocks, like fate, seemed to threaten human beings in the middle of their pleasure. MADAME DE STAEL. 209 When the crowd of spectators had met, the festal procession was heard coming from a distance, a solemn procession indeed, since it was consecrated to the commemoration of the past. Agreeable music accompanied it ; the magistrates appeared at the head of the peasants. The young peasant women were dressed in the old and picturesque costume of each canton. The halberds and banners of each valley were carried in front of the procession by white-haired men, dressed exactly as people were five centuries ago, at the time of the conspiracy of Rutli. Deep emotion took possession of the soul at seeing these peaceful standards under the guardianship of old men. The past was represented by these men, who seemed so aged to us, but so young in the presence of centuries. At last the games began, and the men of the valley and the moun- taineers showed very remarkable agility and bodily strength, in raising enormous weights, and in wrestling with each other. In old times this strength made nations more warlike ; now that tactics and artillery decide the fate of armies, one sees nothing in these exercises beyond rural games. The land is better cultivated by such robust men, but war is only made by the help of discipline and numbers ; and the movements even of the soul have less power on human destiny, since individuals have disappeared in the masses, and the human race seems guided, like inanimate nature, by mechanical laws. After the games were ended and the good bailiff of the place had distributed the prizes to the victors, the people dined under tents, and sang verses in honour of the peaceful happiness of Switzerland. During the repast, wooden cups were passed round, on which William Tell and the three founders of Helvetic liberty were carved. People drank with ecstasy to peace, order, and independence, and the patriotism of happi- ness expressed itself with a cordiality that touched every heart. " The meadows are as flowery as of old, the mountains as verdant ; when all nature smiles, shall the heart of man alone be a desert ? " * No, doubtless, it was not ; it opened itself confidently in the midst of this beautiful country, in the presence of these estimable men, who were all animated by the purest sentiments. A poor country of a very limited extent, without luxury, glory, or power, is cherished by its inhabitants as a friend who hides his virtues in the shade, and conse- crates them all to the happiness of those who love him. During the * These words are the burden of a song composed for this fete by Madame Har- mes, known in Germany by her writings under the name of Madame de Berlepsch. E E 210 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. five 'centuries that the prosperity of Switzerland has lasted, one reckons rather wise generations than great men. There is no room for exception when the whole is so happy. It might be said that the ancestors of this nation still reign in the midst of her; she always respects them, imitates and repeats them. Simplicity of manners and attachment to ancient customs, wisdom and uniformity in the way of living, unite us with the past, and make the future present to us. A history that is always the same, seems one single moment, the duration of which is several centuries. Life flows on in these valleys like the rivers that run through them ; there are new waves, but they follow the same course : may it never be interrupted ! may the same feast be often celebrated at the foot of these same mountains ! The stranger admires them as a wonder, the Helvetian cherishes them as an asylum where magistrates and fathers take care alike of citizens and children. CHATEAUBRIAND. FRANgoiS-AuGUSTE, Viscount of Chateaubriand, was born at Saint Malo, in 1768. When the Revolution broke out he determined to leave France for a time, and started for America, with the intention of trying to discover the North-west passage ; but when he had spent some time in the United States, and had paid a visit to General Wash- ington, news reached him of the flight of Louis XVI. to Varennes, and lie thought himself bound in honour to return to France to fight for his king. He was severely wounded at the siege of Thionville, and after encountering great dangers in France, took refuge in England. He remained in this country for eight years, earning a scanty subsistence by teaching French and making translations. After the Restoration he was appointed one of the Ministers of State by Louis XVI 1 1, and at a later period was sent as ambassador, first to Berlin and then to London, but retired from office after the Revolution of 1830, refusing to acknowledge Louis Philippe. He died at Paris in 1848. His great works are Le Genie dii Christianising, Atala, Les Martyrs, Les Natchez, and the Itiniraire de Paris a Jerusalem. The following passage is taken from his Essai historique sur les Revolutions. A NIGHT AMONG THE SAVAGES OF AMERICA. IT is a natural instinct of the unhappy, to seek to recall visions of happiness by the remembrance of their past pleasures. When I feel tired of my life, when I feel my heart dried up by intercourse with other men, I involuntarily turn my head away, and heave a sigh of regret over the past. It is in the midst of the immense forests of America that I have tasted to the full these enchanting meditations, these secret and ineffable delights of a mind rejoicing in itself. People boast of loving liberty, and hardly any one has a true idea of it. When, in my journeys among the Indian tribes of Canada, I left European dwellings, and found myself, for the first time, alone in the midst of an ocean of forests, having, so to speak, all nature prostrate at my feet, a strange change took place within me. In the kind of delirium which seized me, I followed no road ; I went from tree to tree, now to the right, now to the left, saying to myself, " Here there are no more roads to follow, no more towns, no more narrow houses, no more presidents, republics, or kings above all, no more laws, and no more men." Men ! Yes, 212 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. some good savages, who cared nothing for me, nor I for them ; who, like me, wandered freely wherever their fancy led them, eating when they felt inclined, sleeping when and where they pleased. And, in order to see if I were really established in my original rights, I gave myself up to a thousand acts of eccentricity, which enraged the tall Dutchman who was my guide, and who, in his heart, thought I was mad. Escaped from the tyrannous yoke of society, I understood then the charms of that independence of nature, which far surpasses all the pleasures of which civilized man can form any idea. I understood why not one savage has become a European, and why many Europeans have become savages : why the sublime " Discourse on the Inequality of Rank " is so little understood by the most part of our philosophers. It is incredible how small and diminished the nations and their most boasted institutions appeared in my eyes ; it seemed to me as if I saw the kingdoms of the earth through an inverted spy-glass ; or rather, that being myself grown and elevated, I looked down on the rest of my degenerate race with the eye of a giant. You who wish to write about men, go into the deserts, become for a moment the child of nature, and then and then only take up the pen. Among the innumerable enjoyments of this journey, one, especially, made a vivid impression on my mind. I was going then to see the famous cataract of Niagara, and I had taken my way through the Indian tribes who inhabit the deserts to the west of the American plantations. My guides were the sun, a pocket compass, and the Dutchman of whom I have spoken : the latter understood perfectly five dialects of the Huron language. Our train consisted of two horses, which we let loose in the forests at night, after fastening a bell to their necks. I was at first a little afraid of losing them, but my guide reassured me by pointing out that by a wonderful instinct, these good animals never wandered out of sight of our fire. One evening when, as we calculated that we were only about eight or nine leagues from the cataract, we were preparing to dismount before sunset, in order to build our hut and light our watch-fire after the Indian fashion, we perceived in the wood the fires of some savages, who were encamped a little lower down, on the shores of the same stream as we were. We went to them. The Dutchman, having by my orders asked their permission for us to pass the night with them, which was CHA TEA UBRIAND. 2 1 3 granted immediately, we set to work with our hosts. After having cut down some branches, planted some stakes, torn off some bark to cover our palace, and performed some other public offices, each of us attended to his own affairs. I brought my saddle, which served me well for a pillow all through my travels ; the guide rubbed down the horses ; and as to his night accommodation, since he was not so particular as I am, he generally made use of the dry trunk of a tree. Work being done, we seated ourselves in a circle, with our legs crossed like tailors, around the immense fire, to roast our heads of maize, and to prepare supper. I had still a flask of brandy, which served to enliven our savages not a little. They found out that they had some bear hams, and we began a royal feast. The family consisted of two women, with infants at their breasts, and three warriors ; two of them might be from forty to forty-five years of age, although they appeared much older, and the third was a young man. The conversation soon became general, that is to say, on my side it consisted of broken words and many gestures : an expressive lan- guage, which these nations understand remarkably well, and that I had learned among them. The young man alone preserved an obstinate silence ; he kept his eyes constantly fixed on me. In spite of the black, red, and blue stripes, cut ears, and the pearl hanging from his nose, with which he was disfigured, it was easy to see the nobility and sensibility which animated his countenance. How well I knew he was inclined not to love me. It seemed to me as if he were reading in his heart the history of all the wrongs which Europeans have inflicted on his native country. The two children, quite naked, were asleep at our feet before the fire; the women took them quietly into their arms and put them to bed among the skins, with a mother's tenderness so delightful to witness in these so-called savages : the conversation died away by degrees, and each fell asleep in the place where he was. I alone could not close my eyes, hearing on all sides the deep breathing of my hosts. I raised my head, and supporting myself on my elbow, watched by the red light of the expiring fire the Indians stretched around me, and plunged in sleep. I confess that I could hardly refrain from tears. Brave youth, how your peaceful sleep affects me ! You, who seemed so sensible of the woes of your native land, you were too great, too high-minded to mistrust the foreigner! Europeans, what a lesson for you ! These same savages whom we have pursued with fire and sword, to whom our avarice would not 214 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS, leave a spadeful of earth to cover their corpses in all this world, formerly their vast patrimony these same savages, receiving their enemy into their hospitable hut, sharing with him their miserable meal, and their couch undisturbed by remorse, sleeping close to him the calm sleep of the innocent. These virtues are as much above the virtues of conventional life, as the soul of the man in his natural state is above that of the man in society. It was moonlight. Feverish with thinking, I got up and seated myself at a little distance on a root which ran along the edge of the streamlet ; it was one of those American nights which the pencil of man can never represent, and the remembrance of which I have a hundred times recalled with delight. The moon was at the highest point of the heavens ; here and there at wide, clear intervals twinkled a thousand stars. Sometimes the moon rested on a group of clouds, which looked like the summit of high mountains crowned with snow : little by little these clouds grew longer, and rolled out into transparent and waving zones of white satin, or transformed themselves into light flakes of froth, into innumerable wandering flocks in the blue plains of the firmament. Another time, the arch of heaven seemed changed into a shore on which one could discover horizontal rows, parallel lines such as are made by the regular ebb and flow of the sea ; a gust of wind tore this veil again, and every- where appeared in the sky great banks of dazzingly white down, so soft to the eye that one seemed to feel their softness and elasticity. The scene on the earth was not less delightful : the silvery and velvety light of the moon floated silently over the top of the forests, and at intervals went down among the trees, casting rays of light even through the deepest shadows. The narrow brook which flowed at my feet, burying itself from time to time among the thickets of oak, willow, and sugar trees, and reappearing a little further off in the glades, all spark- ling with the constellations of the night, seemed like a ribbon of azure silk spotted with diamond stars, and striped with black bands. On the other side of the river, in a wide, natural meadow, the moonlight rested quietly on the pastures, where it was spread out like a sheet. Some birch-trees scattered here and there over the savannahs, sometimes blending, according to the caprice of the winds, with the background, seemed to surround themselves with a pale gauze sometimes rising up again from their chalky foundations, hidden in the darkness, formed as it were islands of floating shadows on an immoveable sea of light Near, all was silence and repose, except the falling of the CHA TEA UBRIAND. 2 1 5 leaves, the rough passing of a sudden wind, the rare and interrupted whooping of the grey owl ; but in the distance at intervals, one heard the solemn rolling of the cataract of Niagara, which in the calm of the night echoed from desert to desert, and died away in solitary forests. The grandeur, the astonishing melancholy of this picture cannot be expressed in human language : the most beautiful nights in Europe can give no idea of it. In the midst of our cultivated fields, the imagination vainly seeks to expand itself everywhere it meets with the dwellings of man ; but, in these desert countries, the soul delights in penetrating and losing itself in these eternal forests ; it loves to wander by the light of the moon on the borders of immense lakes, to hover over .the roaring gulf of terrible cataracts, to fall with the mass of waters, and, so to speak, mix and blend itself with a sublime and savage nature. These enjoyments are too keen ; such is our weakness, that exquisite pleasures become griefs, as if nature feared that we should forget that we are men. Absorbed in my existence, or rather drawn quite out of myself, having neither feeling nor distinct thought, but an indescribable I know not what, which was like that happiness which they say we shall enjoy in the other life, I was all at once recalled to this. I felt unwell, and perceived that I must not linger. I returned to our encampment, where, lying down by the savages, I soon fell into a deep sleep. The next day, when I awoke, I found the party already prepared for departure. My guide had saddled the horses, the warriors were armed, and the women were busy collecting the baggage, consisting of skins, maize, and smoked bear. I got up, and taking from my portmanteau a little powder and some balls, some tobacco, and a box of coarse rouge, I distributed these presents among our hosts, who seemed well satisfied with my generosity. We then separated, not without marks of affectionate regret, touching our foreheads and chests, after the custom of these uncivilized men, which seemed to me worth much more than our ceremonies. We all of us parted with full hearts, even the young Indian, who received cordially the hand which I held out to him. Our friends took the road to the north, guiding themselves by the mosses, and we to the west, by my compass. The warriors set out in front, giving the order to march ; the women walked behind, loaded with the baggage and the children, who, hanging in the furs on their mothers' shoulders, turned round, smiling, to watch us. I followed their gentle, motherly walk for a long time with my eyes, until the whole troop had slowly disappeared among the trees of the forest. 216 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH A UTHORS. Kind savages, who have showed me hospitality, whom I shall doubtless never see again, I may be allowed to pay you here a tribute of gratitude. May you long enjoy your precious independence, in your beautiful solitudes, where my wishes for your happiness do not cease to follow you ! Inseparable friends ! in what corner of your immense deserts do you dwell now ? Are you always together, always happy ? Do you talk sometimes of the stranger of the forest ? Do you picture to yourselves the place where he lives ? Do you form wishes for his happiness on the banks of your solitary rivers ? Generous family ! his lot is much changed since the night that he passed with you ; but at least it is a consolation for him, if, while he lives across the sea, persecuted by men of his country, his name, at the other side of the world, in the depths of some unknown solitude, is still pronounced with emotion by some poor Indians. FOURIER. JEAN BAPTISTE JOSEPH, Baron Fourier, was born at Auxerre, in 1768. He was educated at the military school, and early devoted himself to the study of mathematics His firsjt professorship was at Auxerre, but he subsequently received an appointment in the Ecole Centrale des Travaux Publics, now known as the Ecole Polytechnique ; and as one of the savants who were chosen to accompany Napoleon to Egypt, he rendered such important services to the Emperor that on his retiirn to France he was made a baron, prefect of Grenoble, and member of the Legion of Honour. He died at Paris, in 1830. He was secretary of the Institut d'Egypte, and of the Acaddmie des Sciences, and member of the Academic Franfaise. His principal works are La Theorie analytique de la Chaleur, and the historical preface to the Description de PEgypte^ published by order of Napoleon I. THE MONUMENTS OF ANCIENT EGYPT. EGYPT, who aspired to render her institutions immortal, and who bears the indelible impress of all the arts, will long oppose the severe and even excessive gravity of the most ancient models to the mobility and inconstancy natural to the human mind. In fact, the people the most anxious to produce durable works inhabited the country thejmost suited in the world to preserve them. These monuments were constructed several centuries before the foundation of the cities of Greece. They saw the grandeur of Tyre, Carthage, and Athens rise and fall. They bore already the name of the Egyptian antiquities in the time of Plato, and our successors will still admire them at a time when in all other parts of the globe there will remain no vestige of the buildings which now exist. But the long continuance of these monuments is not only due to the properties of the climate ; it results, above all, from the efforts of those who raised them : for the ruins of the Roman buildings on the banks of the Nile can hardly be discovered. The early Egyptians only acknowledged as beautiful and truly worthy of attention that which is durable and hallowed by the sentiment of F F 21 8 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. public utility. The object" of their great works was at first to render their territory more salubrious, more fertile, and more extensive. They succeeded in drying up marshes and lakes, in reclaiming entire provinces of the Libyan desert, in compensating for the inequality of the inun- dations by a happy foresight, and by marvellous deeds of art. They founded their towns on immense embankments : turning aside at their will the course of the river, or dividing it into numerous channels, they saw rising from the midst of the waters, and created, so to speak, them- selves, those beautiful plains of the Delta, which were soon to become so rich. The uniformity of the climate, the invariable order of the physical phenomena, concurred in impressing on these people that pro- found character of gravity and constancy which distinguishes their institutions. Not content with adorning the banks of the Nile with so many immortal monuments, they undertook prodigious works in the interior of the rocks which bounded their territory ; and this subterranean Egypt equalled in magnificence that which they inhabited, and which had been enriched by all the arts. They considered as in some sort eternal whatever belonged to their religion and government ; they were strengthened in this opinion by the continual sight of the great public monuments, which remained always the same, and which did not appear subject to the action of time. Their legislators had judged that this moral impression would contribute to the stability of their empire. It was for this reason that the people engraved on their temples and tombs the pictures of their gods and kings, their astronomical observations, their sacred precepts, the representation of their worship, and that of civil society. These sculptures are the most ancient traces that man has left on the earth ; they belong to that ancient Asiatic civilization which preceded all the historical times of Greece ; they give us a glimpse of the spirit and manners of nations at that period. One cannot admire the works of Egypt, nor recall the periods of her glory, without thinking of the miseries that the loss of her laws, learning, and independence has caused her. We shall appreciate her institutions better ; we shall regard them as a moral source of prosperity, which was no less necessary to this country than the river which waters it ; we shall compare, above all, the miserable condition into which she has fallen, with the opulence that a wiser administration would procure for her in a few years. Thus the study of Egypt, so fruitful in great remembrances, warns us still that the development of intellect and industry is connected with the maintenance of public order ; it makes us know better the value of MONUMENTS OF ANCIENT EGYPT. FOURIER. 219 laws, and of a steady and enlightened government ; it suggests to us new reasons for loving them. This study can only inspire just and elevated ideas, turn us away from seeking after vain ornaments, and lead us back to unity and simplicity of purpose. It will make us see that solid and durable objects have a majesty which is peculiar to them, and that, if the ingenious elegance of form contributes to perfection, the idea of the truly beautiful necessarily includes those of stability and grandeur. It will show this principle in all its light, and ought to have a useful influence on the taste and works of the century. SISMONDI. JEAN CHARLES LEONARD SIMONDE DE SISMONDI was born at Geneva in 1773. His father, a Protestant minister, and a man of good fortune, having, through his con- fidence in the ability of his countryman Necker, invested a large part of his property in the French funds, sustained heavy losses by the Revolution. With his wife and his son, who previously had been placed in a house of business, he visited England in 1793, and remained a year and a half. Here the future historian acquired the English language, and a strong taste for English institutions. He then returned to Geneva, and afterwards lived for some time at Pescia, in Tuscany, where, during the stormy years that followed, he was thrice thrown into prison. In 1797 he returned to Geneva, and being undisturbed during the remainder of -his life, devoted himself to the study of history and political economy. He died at Geneva in 1842. His principal works are UHistoire des Republiques Italiennes, UHistoire des Franqais, UHistoire de la Chute de V Empire Remain, and De la Richesse Commercials. The following passage is taken from DHistoire des Franqais. THE SIEGE OF MONS AND THE DEATH OF LOUVOIS. FRANCE felt secure at the conclusion of the campaign which had just terminated that she had still two great generals Luxembourg, who was approaching the end of his career, and Catinat, who was beginning his. Louis XIV. kept them both at the head of the same armies for the campaign of 1691 ; but he was desirous to share in person the glory of Luxembourg. This monarch was already fifty-three years old, and in this new war he had seemed to wish to resign to his son the command of the army. But on the 2ist of March, 1691, he arrived at the head- quarters of Marshal Luxembourg, before Mons, with his brother, the Duke of Orleans, his son, the dauphin, and his nephew, the Duke of Chartres. The Marquis of Boufiflers and the Marquis of Villars had invested this chief city of Hainault on the I5th of the same month. The royal army was nearly 100,000 strong, and 20,000 pioneers had been ordered to work in the trenches. All these troops, starting from different points, had converged with so much precision and promptitude, that the enemy had not guessed the SISMONDI. 221 intentions of the king. It was for this perfect harmony in all the measures which he took that Louvois was so remarkable. The artillery, the ammunition, the ferry-boats, the provisions, everything had arrived at the given time at the place where the king would require them. The attack was to be made under the eyes of William III, who had arrived in Holland on the 3Oth of January, and who soon saw himself surrounded at the Hague by a great number of German princes, among whom were the Electors of Brandenburg and Bavaria, the Land- grave of Hesse, the Dukes of Brunswick and Luneburg, all the princes of Nassau, and the Marquis of Castanage, governor of the Low Countries, with twenty-five ambassadors or envoys, and the principal allied generals. Their assembly formed in a manner the states-general of the league of Augsburg. William represented to them with energy the necessity of taking measures in concert for the common defence ; he promised to spare neither his credit, his forces, nor his person, in order to save Europe from the slavery with which France threatened her. The allies engaged to send 222,000 men into the field ; the emperor, the King of Spain, and the King of England, each promised to furnish 20,000 soldiers. But while they were still forming these projects, they learned with as much surprise as terror that Mons was invested. With great difficulty they assembled between 35,000 and 40,000 men, with whom William III. advanced as far as Halle, in order to encourage the garrison ; but he was not strong enough to venture upon a general action, and he had the grief of seeing the town fall without being able to succour it. This siege, which was directed by Vauban with that superiority of talent in which he has never been equalled, was signalized by acts of heroic valour, but often also of rash courage. The king and the princes braved the fire in trenches, and the young nobles, who pressed around them, strove to win their notice by risking their lives. The king's household, the musketeers, the gendarmerie persisted in carrying fascines not only when running, but when marching slowly in broad daylight within range of the place ; so they lost many men. On the other hand, they constantly employed the most cruel means to reduce the place. It was the Elector of Brandenburg who, in the war against the Swedes before the peace of Nimeguen, had first begun to set fire to towns, instead of making breaches in their fortifications. Louis had adopted this practice, and no sovereign made more use of these fire- balls. One cannot without repugnance see him assisting in person at this odious sight, and posting himself on the borders of the marshes of Mons to contemplate this unfortunate town, where the fire broke out 222 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH A UTHORS. in ten places at once under a shower of bombs and red hot balls. Its commander, the Prince de Bergues, was obliged to capitulate on the 7th of April, after fifteen days' righting in the open trenches. The outer works had been carried by assault ; the citizens rose against the garrison. Bergues went out with 4,500 soldiers and 280 officers. The king left the army as soon as Mons had surrendered ; on the I4th of April he rejoined Madame de Maintenon and the other ladies at Com- piegne. Grave affairs recalled him to Versailles : Pope Alexander VIII. had died on the 2d of February ; and three days before his death he had condemned the four propositions which Bossuet, in 1682, had induced the clergy of France to adopt. At the moment when all Europe had united against the king, it was of consequence to him that he should not have to count among his enemies the head of the Church. All the French cardinals were sent in haste to Rome, in order to support the interests of France, in concert with the Due de Chaulnes, his ambassador. It was not till the I2th of July that their suffrages were united in favour of Cardinal Antonio Pignatelli, who took the name of Innocent XII. After the taking of Mons, and the departure of the king, Marshal Luxembourg gave his troops some rest ; Louvois had obliged him to furnish several detachments, which had weakened him so much that he contented himself with watching the army of King William without dreaming of attacking it. He took up his quarters on the side of Ninove ; Villars gives us to understand that he chose the position more as an epicurean than a general. " The army," he says, " was well encamped, grain and forage in abundance, all his troops in barracks, the general in a position to have the best cheer in the world, fowls from Campine, veal from Gand, oysters from England, nothing was wanting." But he narrowly escaped a surprise. The allies having advanced on the side of Ath, he was obliged to retire suddenly towards L'Escaut. He took his revenge two days after ; he charged them with part of his cavalry when, on the retreat, they were busy crossing the little stream of Cattoire. This was the battle of Leuze, glorious for the royal troops, since eighteen squadrons vanquished nearly fifty of the enemy. The losses were, however, pretty equal ; and the glory was the only advantage reaped by the victor. Marshal Boufflers, who had been detached from the army of Villars with 15,000 men, began on the 4th of June to bombard Liege; he burned all the merchants' quarter of this unfortunate town, and thus destroyed immense riches, but he could not make himself master of it SISMONDL 223 On the Rhine the campaign presented nothing of interest Marshal de Lorges defended the passage of that river ; the Duke of Saxony, who commanded the Imperialists, wished to cross it in order to levy contri- butions in Alsace. At the beginning of July he actually carried his army over to the left bank of the river, but he was soon forced to retire without having gained his end. The French, who in their turn made a stand on the right bank of the river, were not more fortunate. The campaign in Piedmont was rendered especially famous by the quarrel of Catinat and Feuquieres ; the former was one of the cleverest generals that France had in the field ; the latter was superior in tactics : but only in theory, in his reflections on the art of war, and in his criticisms of the operations of other generals, for in action he was never successful. Catinat had taken Vegliana, then Carmagnola ; at last, according to the order of Louvois, he charged Feuquieres and Bullonde, in the month of June, to invest Coni. The great theorician, Feuquieres, experienced again some new checks at this siege, and owing to his own fault ; then Bullonde, a creature of Louvois, allowed himself to be frightened by a letter which Prince Eugene had purposely allowed to fall into his hands, in which he announced to the commander of the place that he was approaching with 1 1,000 men ; the two generals made a precipitate retreat, in which they lost many men. Bullonde was then arrested by order of Louvois, and sent prisoner to Pignerol. This arrest was the last act of Louvois' administration, and the grief which he felt at the reverse at Coni was considered by some persons as the cause of his death, or as the secret of the decline of his health. No man had before possessed, in an equal measure with Louvois, the genius which belongs to a minister of war. It was he who had restored disci- pline and obedience in the army, order in the supply of provisions, honesty among the purveyors, regularity in the payment of the wages, and in the execution of all the bargains. He knew, by a rigorous system of espionage, the manners, opinions, and talents, as well as the actions of all the officers of the army. He had clearly present to his mind all the details of the geography and topography of France and the countries into which his armies penetrated. Therefore, during his long ministry, we must attribute to him at least, as much as to the generals all the successes of the war. It was he who suppressed the pillaging of the troops in France on their marches and cantonments, who lodged them in barracks, to the great relief of the citizens and peasants, who made the body of engineers so formidable by its skill, and the troops of the king's household by the emulation with which 224 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. they inspired all the others. But the more one is constrained to admire the powers of his intellect, the more one must detest the perverseness of his heart. Without principles, without pity, without love for France, he had dragged the king continually into new wars, solely for his own aggrandisement; he wished for universal wars in order that he might be the more necessary. It is stated that Madame de Maintenon showed the king two memorandums, the notes of which he had written with his own hand, on the means of obliging the Duke of Savoy and the Swiss to declare themselves against France, in order that the armies on the two frontiers might live in the enemy's country. Louvois sported with the misery of other nations as much as with that of the French ; it was always he who proposed bombardments, burnings, massacres, and who made the king turn a deaf ear to the voice of humanity and pity. For some time he had been jealous of Madame de Maintenon, who often secretly opposed his views, and made the king reject the counsels which he had given. Naturally haughty, proud of the favour which he had formerly possessed, and of the great services which all alone he could still render, he bore -all contradictions impatiently. His rudeness had made the king conceive a dislike to him, which almost grew into repugnance. Louis, who imagined he could do everything by himself, and who boasted of having made Lo'uvois, was scandalized that this minister should seem to think he knew as much as he did. At the siege of Mons, Louvois took it into his head to remove twice a sentinel whom the king had himself placed. Louis was very much provoked, but he contented himself with saying, " Do you not admire Louvois ? He thinks he understands war better than I do." Louis was also well persuaded that he understood architecture better than his superintendent of buildings. He kept his temper at the moment of contradiction, but resentment was brooding in the depth of his heart. Louvois feared everything, and he had everything to fear. " He was," says St. Simon, " so utterly ruined when he died, that he was to have been arrested the next day, and sent to the Bastille. What the sequel might have been his death has hidden in obscurity. The fact of this resolution is certain : the king himself told it to Chamillart, who told it to me." On the 1 5th of July, Avhen the news had already been received of the repulse before Coni, there was a new dispute in the apartments of Madame de Maintenon^ Louvois was so ill-treated by the king, that he threw down his papers in a passion, saying that he was in such a bad temper that he could bear it no longer. Madame de Maintenon SISMONDL 225 soothed the king, and told the minister to come and work as usual the next day, without thinking of what had passed. Accordingly he went at three o'clock to Madame de Maintenon's ; the king, who received him coldly, soon perceived that his minister was on the point of fainting, and sent him home again. Although Louvois could hardly stand, he was able to walk to his own house ; but his malady suddenly increased, and he died after vomiting some medicine which they had just given him, asking for his son Barbezieux, who was not in time to see him, though he ran to his room. The suddenness of the illness and death of Louvois caused it to be universally believed that he had been poisoned ; it was known that he was a great water-drinker, and that he always had a pitcher on his mantelpiece, from which he had drunk just before going to work with the king ; that a little while before a man had entered the room to clean it, and remained there some minutes alone. This man was arrested and thrown into prison, but he had hardly been there four days when he was set at liberty by order of the king. The proceedings which had been commenced were thrown into the fire, and all further inquiry was forbidden. The body of Louvois was opened ; the doctors and surgeons were unanimous in declaring that they discovered traces of poison, but their science was then very uncertain. It became dangerous to speak on the subject, and the family of Louvois stifled all these reports in a way which left no doubt that very decided orders had been given to them. Not only did the people of that time credit with marvellous facility the report of poisoning in all cases of sudden death, but we cannot be mistaken about the person against whom their suspicions were raised, even though they did not confess it. It is due to the memory of Louis XIV. to say that these suspicions were not in their eyes what they would be in ours. They regarded the king as the absolute master of the life and substance of his subjects; they looked upon tribunals as only acting according to the authority which he had delegated them ; they did not consider him in any way obliged to make use of them if the interest of the State had otherwise ordained. It is probable that Louis XIV. himself would not have thought he was committing a crime if he had given orders to make away secretly with one of his subjects, any more than when he caused them to be thrown into prison without trial by his Icttres de cachet. It was more from inclination than principle that he was incapable of it. In the use G G 226 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. of poison there is a cowardice which is inconsistent with everything that we know of his character. Some accused the enemies of France, among others the Duke of Savoy ; others thought that private enemies of the minister had taken advantage of his disgrace to get rid of him ; General Grimoard imagines he committed suicide, which was scarcely in accord with the manners of that time. Voltaire, disgusted at the suspicions of poison so wantonly spread abroad, denies once and for ever all idea of poison, and declares that Louvois died because he had continued to work while taking the waters of Balaruc, in spite of the advice of his physician. Madame de Genlis, who however alters the text of Dangeau, enumerates seven members of Louvois's family who died of apoplexy, and supposed that this was the disease to which he succumbed. In our opinion this is the most probable conjecture. The Abbd de Choisy relates that when they congratulated the king on the great things he had done : " It is true," he replied, " that this year has been a happy one for me ; I have got rid of three men whom I could not tolerate, MM. De Louvois, Seignelay, and La Feuillade." Madame, who is lively, said to him, "But how, sir, how did you get rid of them ? " His Majesty cast down his eyes, and looked at his plate. A few hours after the death of Louvois, as the king was walking on the terrace, an officer from the King of England came to condole with him on the loss he had sustained. " Sir," replied the king, with an air and tone more than easy, " my compliments and thanks to the King and Queen of England, and tell them from me that my affairs and theirs will go on none the worse for it." On returning from his walk the king sent to fetch Chamlay, the first assistant, the confidential clerk of Louvois, and the only man, in fact, who could replace him. He wished to give him the office of secretary of state and minister of war. Chamlay thanked him, and refused perseveringly. He told the king that he owed too much to Louvois, to his friendship and his confidence, to deck himself with his spoils to the prejudice of his son, who had the reversion of them. He spoke with all his might in favour of the third son of Louvois,> Barbezieux, who for six years had been working with his father, and who was now twenty-four. He offered to work under him in whatever way they liked, in order to communicate to him every- thing that he had learned by experience ; in short, he obtained his nomination. BARANTE. AMABLE GUILLAUME PROSPER BRUGIERE, Baron de Barante, was born at Riom, in Auvergne, in 1782 ; and in 1802 was placed in the office of the Minister of the Interior. In 1806 he was appointed Auditor to the Council of State, and in 1813 Prefect of Nantes. After the second return of Louis XVIII. he became a Councillor of State, and Secretary to the Minister of the Interior. Under Louis Philippe he was sent as ambassador to the court of Turin, and subsequently to the court of St. Peters- burg. At the Revolution of 1848 he retired from public life. In the intervals of official business M. de Barante has published various works, among which may be mentioned UHistoire des Dues de Bonrgogne, Melanges Littiraires, and LHistoire de la Con- vention Nationale. LAST HOURS OF LOUIS XVI, THEY came to announce to him that the queen and his family were coming down. The king went hastily into the dining-room. His com- posure was so perfect that, seeing they had put a bottle of iced water on the table, he said, " The queen does not drink it ; it d.oes not agree with her ; bring another bottle." About eight o'clock, the door opened ; the queen held her son by the hand; Madame Royale and Madame Elizabeth followed her; all of them rushed into the arms of the king. For some minutes, the silence was only interrupted by sobs. The king sat down with the queen on his left hand, Madame Elizabeth on his right, Madame Royale before him. The young prince was at the king's knees. Every moment they got up to embrace him. This melancholy conversation was constantly interrupted by bursts of tears. Such a story can have no other historian than the only witness who has survived for a long succession of miseries. "We found my father much changed ; he wept over us from grief, but not from fear of death ; he described his trial to my mother, excusing the ruffians who were causing his death. He repeated that they had wished to have recourse to the primary assemblies ; but that had not been his advice, because it would cause disturbance in the State. He then gave some 228 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. religious admonitions to my brother : recommended him especially to pardon those who had caused his death, and gave him his blessing as well as to me. My mother earnestly wished that we might be permitted to pass the night with my father. He refused, telling her that he needed quiet ; she asked him at least to let her come the next day, and he consented." At a quarter-past ten, the king rose. The queen, the children, and Madame Elizabeth advanced towards the door, uttering disconsolate moans. " Yes," said the king, "I will see you to-morrow at eight o'clock." "You promise," said they all together. "Yes." "Why not at seven?" said the queen. " Well, yes, at seven," he replied ; " farewell ! " He pronounced this larewell in such a touching tone that the sobs increased. Madame Royale fainted at the king's feet. He pressed them again to his heart, and tore himself from their embraces. " Farewell ! farewell ! " he said, as he returned to his room. "Ah, Monsieur, what an interview," said he, as he met the Abbe Edgeworth again: " Why must I love so much, and be so tenderly loved ? But it is over ; let us forget all the rest, and think only of the one matter of salvation." It was late in the night, when the king and Abbe Edgeworth sepa- rated. The confessor went into the cabinet, and the king went to bed. " You will wake me at five o'clock to-morrow," he said to Clery ; then he fell asleep. He was awakened by the noise which Clery made in lighting the fire. " Is it five o'clock ? " said he : " I have slept ; I needed it, my day yesterday tired me. Where is M. de Firmont ?" " On my bed." "And you, where did you pass the night?" "On this chair." "I am sorry for that," and he held out his hand to him. He dressed himself in the dressing-room, while they were preparing an altar to celebrate mass ; he listened to it kneeling. He received the communion, and then remained some time in prayer. A moment after, Abb6 Edgeworth, who had left the room, returned, and found him in the dressing-room near the stove, having some difficulty in warming himself. " Nature suffers," said he ; then he added, " My God, how happy I am in having preserved my religion. What should I be now without it ? With it death seems sweet to me. Yes, there is an incor- ruptible Judge on high, who will grant me the justice that men refuse me here below." The day began to dawn ; they heard the drums beat to call the men to arms in the streets around the Temple. " It is doubtless the National Guard assembling," said the king. Soon he distinguished the feet BARANTE. 229 of horses in the court. " They are coming near," he said, with the same composure. The Abbe Edgeworth entreated him to spare the queen the anguish of a last farewell. " You are right, it would be her deathblow ; I will deprive myself of this consolation ; she will hope some moments longer." The commissioners entered the room. The king requested that they would give C16ry some scissors to cut off his hair. They refused. One of the municipal authorities had proposed that Clery should accompany Louis in order to undress him on the scaffold. " The executioner is good enough for him," replied another commissioner. The king insisted upon it. " All that was very well when you were king, but you are so no longer." " See how these men treat me," said he to the Abb Edge- worth ; " but I must learn to bear everything." At nine o'clock, the doors were opened with a great noise ; Santerre entered, followed by a numerous train. The king was in the dressing- room with his confessor. He went out. " You come for me ?" ." Yes," replied Santerre. " I am engaged ; wait for me ; I shall be with you in a minute." He pronounced these words simply, but with a tone of royal authority, and returned to the Abbe Edgeworth. He knelt down. " All is finished, sir ; give me your blessing, and pray God to support me to the end." He then returned to the room, holding a paper in his hand. It was his will. " I beg you," he said to one of the municipal authorities, " to deliver this paper to the queen to my wife," he said, correcting himself. This man was a priest, named Roux, so violent and gross in his revolutionary ardour, that he was often disowned by the Jacobins and the Montagnards ; it was he whom the Commune had commissioned to preside at the execution. " That is not my business," replied he. " I am here to conduct you to the scaffold." The king delivered his will to another member of the municipality. " You can read it ; there are some arrangements which I wished to make known to the Commune. Gentlemen," said he, addressing all the commissioners, " I should wish Clery to stay with my son, who is accustomed to his attendance. I hope that the municipality will grant my request." He pressed Clery's hand, and turning to Santerre, said, " Let us go." On the staircase he met his jailor, with whom two days before he had had a rather sharp altercation. " I was a little too hot the day before yesterday ; do not bear a grudge against me for it." He crossed the first court on foot, turning round sometimes to look 230 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS . at the tower, as if to say farewell to those dearest to him in the world. A carriage was waiting for him in the second court. He got into it with the confessor ; two gendarmes placed themselves on the seat in front. Measures had been taken to prevent all attempts at a rescue : a great display of armed men secured quiet. The Commune had ordered all the National Guard to meet in their sections ; the absent were considered conspirators. Silence and stillness were commanded in all the streets where the procession passed. The public markets were not to be held that day. Cannons were pointed before the streets which joined the Boulevards ; others were fastened and drawn with a great noise behind the carriage. The day was foggy, dark, and cold ; a gloomy silence reigned as the carriage passed along. The shops Were closed ; nobody appeared at the windows. The king had taken the breviary from Abb6 Edgeworth, and was reading the prayers for the dying. Just as the carriage passed the St. Denis gate, some young men crossed the road of the boulevard, crying, " Those who wish to save the king, follow us ! " Nobody followed them ; the soldiers charged on them ; they escaped by the cross-roads. Their attempt was unobserved. Contemporary witnesses say nothing about it. It is attested by the documents of the revolutionary tribunal, which a year after condemned a young man named Devaux for this act. The drive lasted an hour; at ten minutes past ten the carriage stopped on the Place Louis XV, which was then called the Place de la Revolution. The scaffold had been placed near to the entrance to the Champs Elysees, in the middle of a wide open space, surrounded by rows of troops and cannons. The executioner came to open the door. " Gen- tlemen," said the king in a firm voice, pointing to the Abbe Edgeworth before he got out, " I commend this gentleman to you. Take care that after my death he receives no insult ; I charge you to watch over him." " Yes, yes, we will take care of him, let us alone," replied thev brutally. When the king had got out of the carriage, the executioners surrounded him, and wished to take off his coat; he pushed them away, and un- dressed himself; he unfastened his collar, and turned back his shirt. They wished to tie his hands. " What do you mean to do ? " he said vehemently. " To tie your hands," they said. " I will not consent to it," replied the king. The executioners seemed determined to use violence. He looked at his con- BAR ANTE. 231 fessor as if to consult him. " Sire,", said the Abbe Edgeworth to him, "it will be one more resemblance to the divine Saviour !" He raised his eyes to heaven with a look of bitter grief. " Nothing but His example would induce me to submit to this insult. Do what you will," said he to the executioners ; " I will drink the cup to the dregs." The steps to the scaffold were difficult to ascend ; he leaned on the arm of M. Edgeworth, crossed the scaffold with a firm step, and asked if the drums were going to beat all the time. Just as they were about to bind him to the fatal plank, he advanced, and looked with an air of authority on the drummers below him. They stopped for a moment, .and he cried in, a loud voice, "People, I die innocent." Santerre, who was looking on near at hand, immediately commanded the drums not to stop. Then turning towards the men who surrounded him on the scaffold, the king said, " Gentlemen, I am innocent of the crimes with which they charge me, and I pray God that my blood may not be visited on France." The report which the executioner gave to his superiors corresponds with the account of the confessor. It terminates thus : " To speak the truth, he bore all this with a calmness and firmness which astonished us all. I am convinced that he derived this firmness from the principles of religion, of which no one appeared more persuaded than he." The crowd which filled that vast place remained silent. At a sitting of the Jacobins the evening before, Robespierre had recommended that from each section some safe men should be sent to be present at the execution, and to preserve order and tranquillity. When the king's head fell, these men, who formed the front ranks around the scaffold, cried out, "Vive la Republique ! " The second ranks repeated it more feebly; the further off the spectators were, the more feeble became the acclamations, and the voices became hesitating, so that towards the middle of the Place, and in the Rue Royale, this thronging crowd was mute and terrified ; every one returned to his home slowly, and as if overwhelmed with a melancholy terror. Meanwhile the executioner had held up the head of the king, and showed it to the eager Jacobins, some of whom dipped their handkerchiefs in the blood of the tyrant, others consecrated in the same way the point of their pike or sword ; they were rejoicing in their triumph. The members of the Convention had assembled in great numbers at nine o'clock in the morning waiting for this news ; they were troubled 232 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. by the liveliest apprehension ; they had just heard that Lepelletier de Saint Fargeau had been stabbed the night before in a cafe of the Palais Royal in revenge for his vote of death. Several of them had been threatened or insulted ; they exaggerated the feeling of grief and indig- nation that had been manifested by some few isolated persons more enlightened and more imprudent than the generality of honest men ; they were afraid that the execution of their sentence would not be accomplished without disorder. It was therefore a real satisfaction to them when an assistant of Santerre soon after entered the hall of the Committee of Legislation, where they were assembled, to announce to them that all was over, and that the public tranquillity had not been disturbed. Thus reassured, they testified great satisfaction, and many of them cried, "Vive la Republique !" GUIZOT. FRANCOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT, the celebrated statesman and historian, was born at Nimes in 1787. His father, who was a barrister of considerable reputa- tion, was guillotined in 1794, and his mother retiring with her son to Geneva, devoted herself to the care of his education, and remained there until 1805. He then came to Paris, where he sedulously pursued his studies, and where he was introduced to Mdlle. de Meulari, a lady of considerable literary talent, whom he married in 1812. His earlier works were Le Dictionnaire des Synonymes; a new edition, with notes, of Gibbon's Decline and Fall; and Les Annales de T Education. The learning displayed in these works gained for him the professorship of Modern History in the Facultd des Lettres, which he held until 1823. In 1814 M. Guizot was appointed Secretary to the Minister of the Interior, and then commenced the political career which was ter- minated by the Revolution of 1848. His principal works are UHistoire generals de la Civilisation en Et(rope; UHistoire de la Civilisation en France; UHistoire de la Revolution d "Angleterre ; and Memoires pour servir a VHistoire de mon Temps. The following passage is taken from Hazlitt's translation of UHistoire de la Civi- lisation en France. LITERATURE IN GAUL, FROM THE SIXTH TO THE EIGHTH CENTURY. IN studying the state of Gaul at the fourth and fifth centuries, we found two literatures, the one sacred, the other profane. The distinction was marked in persons and in things ; the laity and the ecclesiastics studied, meditated, wrote ; and they studied, they wrote, they meditated, upon lay subjects, and upon religious subjects. Sacred literature domi- nated more and more, but it was not alone, profane literature still existed. From the sixth to the eighth century there is no longer any profane literature ; sacred literature stands alone ; priests only study or write ; and they only study, they only write, save some rare exceptions, upon religious subjects. The general character of the epoch is the concen- tration of intellectual development in the religious sphere. The fact is evident, whether we regard the state of the schools which still existed, or the works which have come down to us. H H 2 3 4 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. The fourth and fifth centuries, you will remember, were in no want of civil schools, of civil professors, instituted by the temporal power, and teaching the profane sciences. All those great schools of Gaul, the organization and names of which I have mentioned to you, were of this description. I have even pointed out to you, that as yet there were no ecclesiastical schools, and that religious doctrines, which daily became more powerful over minds, were not regularly taught, had no legal and official organ. Towards the end of the sixth century every- thing is changed : there are no longer civil schools ; ecclesiastical schools alone subsist. Those great municipal schools of Treves, of Poictiers, of Vienne, of Bordeaux, &c., have disappeared ; and in their place have arisen schools called cathedral or episcopal schools, because each epis- copal see had its own. The cathedral school was not always alone ; we find in certain dioceses other schools, of an uncertain nature and origin, wrecks, perhaps, of some ancient civil school, which, in becoming meta- morphosed, had perpetuated itself. In the diocese of Rheims, for example, there existed the school of Mouzon, some distance from the chief place of the diocese, and in high credit, although Rheims had a cathedral school. The clergy began also, about the same epoch, to create other schools in the country, also ecclesiastical, destined to form young readers who should one day become priests. In 529, the Council of Vaison strongly recommended' 1 the propagation of country schools ; they were, indeed, multiplied very irregularly, numerous in some dioceses, scarcely any in others. Finally, there were schools in the great monasteries : the intellectual exercises were of two kinds ; some of the most distin- guished monks gave direct instruction to the members of the congre- gation, and to the young people who were being brought up at the monastery ; it was, moreover, the custom, in a large number of monas- teries, that after the lectures, at which the monks were bound to attend, they should have conferences among themselves upon whatever had been made the subject of the lecture ; and these conferences became a powerful means of intellectual development and instruction. Even in nunneries study was not neglected ; that which Saint Cesaire founded at Aries contained, at the commencement of the sixth century, two hundred nuns, for the most part occupied in copying books, some- times religious books, sometimes, probably, even the works of the ancients. The metamorphosis of civil schools 'into ecclesiastical schools was complete. Let us see what was taught in them. We shall often find in them the names of sciences formerly professed in the civil schools GUIZOT. 235 rhetoric, logic, grammar, geometry, astrology, &c; but these were evidently no longer taught except in their relations to theology. - This is the foundation of the instruction : all was turned into commentary of the Scriptures, historical, philosophical, allegorical, moral commentary. They desired only to form priests ; all studies, whatsoever their nature, were directed towards this result. Sometimes they went even further: they rejected the profane sciences themselves, whatever might be the use made of them. At the end of the sixth century, Saint Dizier, Bishop of Vienne, taught grammar in his cathedral school. Saint Gregory the Great sharply blamed him for it. " It is not fit," he writes to him, " that a mouth sacred to the praises .of God, should be opened for those of Jupiter." I do not know exactly what the praises of God or of Jupiter had to do with grammar ; but what is evident, is the crying down of the profane studies, although cultivated by the priests. The same fact is visible, and far more plainly, in the written litera- ture. No more philosophical meditations, no more learned jurisprudence, no more literary criticism ; save some chronicles, some occasional poems, of which I shall speak at a later period, we have nothing belonging to this time except religious works. Intellectual activity appears only under this form, displays itself only in this direction. A still more important revolution, and less perceived, is manifested : not only did literature become entirely religious, but, religious, it ceased to be literary ; there was no longer any literature, properly so called. In the finest times of Greece and Rome, and in Gaul, up to the fall of the Roman empire, people studied, they wrote, for the mere pleasure of studying, of knowing, in order to procure for themselves and for others intellectual enjoyment. The influence of letters over society, over real life, was only indirect ; it was not the immediate end of the writers ; in a word, science and literature were essentially disinterested, devoted to the research for the true and the beautiful, satisfied with finding them, with enjoying them, and pretending to nothing more. At the epoch which now occupies us it was otherwise; people no longer studied in order to know ; they no longer wrote for the sake of writing. Writings and studies took a practical character and aim. Who- ever abandoned himself thereto, aspired to immediate action upon men, to regulate their actions, to govern their life, to convert those who did not believe, to reform those who believed and did not practise. Science and eloquence were means of action, of government. There is no longer a disinterested literature, no longer any true literature. The purely 236 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. speculative character of philosophy, of poetry, of letters, of the arts, has vanished ; it is no longer the beautiful that men seek ; when they meet with it, it no longer serves merely for enjoyment ; positive application, influence over men, authority, is now the end, the triumphs of all works of mind, of all intellectual development. It is from not having taken proper heed to this characteristic of the epoch upon which we are occupied that, in my opinion, a false idea has been formed of it. We find there scarcely any works, no literature, properly so called, no disinterested intellectual activity distinct from positive life. It has been thence concluded, and you have surely heard it said, you may everywhere read, that this was a time of apathy and moral sterility, a time abandoned to the disorderly struggle of material forces, in which intellect was without development and without power. It was not so. Doubtless nothing remains belonging to this age, either of philosophy, poetry, or literature, properly speaking ; but it does not follow that there was no intellectual activity. It was in an eminent degree otherwise ; only it was not produced under the same forms as at other epochs ; it did not lead to the same results. It was an activity entirely of application, of circumstance, which did not address itself to the future, which had no design to bequeath literary monuments to it, calculated to charm or to instruct ; the present, its wants, its destinies, contemporaneous interests, and life, that was the circle to which it con- fined itself, wherein the literature of this epoch spent itself. It produced few books, and yet it was fertile and powerful over minds. One is therefore highly astonished when, after having heard it said, and having oneself thought, that this time was sterile and without intel- lectual activity, we find in it, upon looking nearer, a world, as it were, of writings ; not very considerable, it is true, and often little remarkable, but which, from their number and the ardour which reigns in them, attest a rare movement of mind and fertility. They are sermons, instructions, exhortations, homilies, and conferences upon religious matters. Never has any political revolution, never has the liberty of the press, produced more pamphlets. Three-fourths, nay, perhaps ninety-nine in a hundred, of these little works have been lost : destined to act at the very moment, almost all improvised, rarely collected by their authors or by others, they have not come down to us ; and yet an immense number remains to us ; they form a true and rich literature. LAMARTINE. ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE, one of the most celebrated writers of the present century, was born at Macon in 1792. His first volume, Meditations Poetiques, for which he had some difficulty in finding a publisher, appeared in 1820, and had a great and immediate success. In the same year, M. de Lamartine was appointed Secretary of Legation at Naples, where he- married an English lady of good fortune, and issued several other volumes of poems. In 1824 he was transferred to Florence, and returning to Paris after five years of service there, was elected a member of the Academy, and published his Harmonies Poetiques et Religieuses. In 1832, M. de Lamartine, who had retired from the diplomatic service on the fall of the Bourbons, set off on his travels in the East, which he described in his Voyage en Orient, published three years later. He was returned to the Chamber of Deputies in 1834, and took a prominent part in political affairs during the reign of Louis Philippe. At the Revolution of 1 848 he was nominated a member of the Provisional Government ; but practically retired from public life when the dictatorship fell into the hands of General Cavaignac, though he continued a member of the Assembly, and for two or three years edited the Pays. M. de Lamartine's works are very numerous. Among them may be named, DHistoire des Girondins, L'Histoire de la Revolution de 1848, Les Confidences, UHistoirede la Restaiiration,'Scs\&IJHistoire de Turquie, from which the following passage is taken. NADIR-SHAH. THE nation, assembled at his call in the immense and fertile plain of Ardebil, capable of containing and feeding a multitude as numerous as the hordes of Timour, was invited to choose a king worthy of holding the sceptre and the sword. " All the chiefs of your great tribes are before you," said Nadir- Shah to the representatives of Persia ; "choose freely the most worthy among you to rule over you ; it is enough for me to have delivered my country from the Afghans, the Turks, and the Russians." Three times they awarded the crown to him ; three times he feigned, like Caesar, to put it aside. He accepted it at last, but on condition that Persia should abjure the schism of Ali, which had, he said, brought evil on the country ; and should form, under the Imam Djafar al Sadik, 238 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. a new sect in Islamism, a sect which would unite them again in a com- mon orthodoxy with the Mussulmans, the followers of Omar, for the union and power of the faith. He informed the Ottoman Porte and the Mahommedan sovereigns of India, by means of proclamations and ambassadors, of this religious revolution in Persia, which gained him the good-will of the populations beforehand, whose conquest he was meditating. Some have attributed this national conversion to the piety of Nadir, others to his ambition ; these two incentives were blended in him. Religion, the soul of the men of the East, is at the bottom of everything, even of crime, in those lands of enthusiasm and adoration. Hardly crowned, he took the road towards the Indies, the same as that formerly pursued by Timour, but in an opposite direction. He built, near Candahar, the town of Nadirabad, or town of Nadir, after the example of Alexander, who marked his halting-places by capitals. Mohammed-Shah, a prince rendered effemi- nate by his rank, was reigning at that time at Delhi. It was an Indian saying, that he was never without a glass in his hand, or a favourite in his arms. Conquered and captive in his capital, Mohammed- Shah received pardon from the conqueror, and the sceptre, on condition of ceding to Nadir the most populous provinces, and the fabulous treasures of the empire. A massacre of a hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants of Delhi, who had risen against Nadir while he occupied the town, confirmed oy terror the subjection of India. His return to Persia, with an army loaded with two billions of spoils, and followed by a million of slaves, recalls the triumphs of Sapor, of Timour, and of Akbar. Innumerable elephants accompanied the conqueror, and carried to Ispahan the wonderful treasures of India. The golden throne of the Mongols, called the peacock, because it re- presented the form of that bird, the tail of which was sparkling with precious stones, was displayed by Nadir before the populations of Tartary, whom he intended to dazzle and intimidate on his return. He returned by Khelat to Persia, and rested three months at Mesched, which he made the new capital of the kingdom. As he was marching against the Lesghis, an unsubdued colony of Afghans, an assassin, hidden behind the trees of the forest, killed his horse, and wounded his hand. His son, Riza-Kouli, who was riding at his side, dashed into the forest to punish the Afghan ; he could not overtake him. The suspicious Nadir saw in this attempt at assassination, and in the affected zeal of Riza-Kouli, the intention of a parricide : the glory and popularity of this young hero eclipsed his father. Without FAMINE IN AN EASTERN CITY. LAMARTINE. 239 pity, he caused his eyes to be put out. " It is not my eyes that you have burnt," said the young prince ; " it is those of Persia." Remorse made him mad, and in his madness he thirsted for blood. Each halt of his army left a train of corpses put to death at his order. His own lieutenants conspired at last against him, to save their lives. Whilst he slept, four of his officers, among whom was the captain of his guards, Saleh-beg, entered his tent under pretext of having urgent news to give to the Shah. Awakened at the sound of their voices, Nadir, who was lying down armed, sprang up, defended himself like a lion against the four assassins, stretched two of them at his feet, and only sank at last beneath the dagger of Saleh-beg. His great projects of conquests in the north, of navigating the Caspian sea, and of fusing all the systems of India, Persia, and Turkey into one universal religion, purified and founded on the general laws of morality, perished with him. Timour had had the same thought, too elevated for his time. After the example of Timour, Nadir had the gospels translated, as moral codes only, rejecting the miracles as fables. Christians were treated by him with as much favour as Mussulmans; his reason aspired to found a system of natural theology; but the sword which destroys temples, does not found ideas. Before his alienation of mind, caused by remorse for the torture of his son, Nadir did not give himself out for a supernatural being, nor for the founder of an empire, but for a blind minister of fate. There fell one day into his camp an arrow, to which a writing was attached with these words : "If thou art a king, protect and make happy thy people : if thou art a prophet, show us the way of salvation: if thou art a god, have pity in thy mercy on those whom thou hast created." He made vain researches to discover the author of the writing, and caused copies of this paper, with the following reply, to be distributed through the camp : "I am neither a king who ought to protect his subjects, nor a prophet who ought to show the way of salvation, nor a god who ought to do acts of mercy ; I am he whom the Almighty has sent in His anger to punish a guilty world." I I AUGUSTIN THIERRY. JACQUES NICOLAS AUGUSTIN THIERRY, the celebrated historian, was born at Blois in 1795, and received his education first at the college of his native town, and afterwards at the Ecole Normale. His first occupation was that of a master in the small college of Compiegne, but, coming to Paris during the invasion of 1814, he attached himself to Saint Simon, and for three years acted as his secretary. He then devoted himself to historical studies, which he pursued with such ardour that his health failed, and he suffered during the remainder of his life from premature old age. His principal works are Lettres sur VHistoire de France, Essai sur VHistoire du Tiers Etat, and LHistoire de la Conquete de P Angleterre. The following passage is taken from Hazlitt's translation of the last-named work. During M. Guizot's administration, he entrusted to Augustin Thierry a great national work the collection of materials for a History of the Third Estate. The historian died at Paris in 1856. HAROLD IN NORMANDY. FOR two years internal peace had reigned in England without inter- ruption. The animosity of King Edward to the sons of Godwin dis- appeared from want of aliment, and from the habit of constantly being with them. Harold, the new chief of this popular family, fully rendered to the king that respect and deferential submission of which he was so tenacious. Some ancient histories tell us that Edward loved and treated him as his own son, but, at all events, he did not feel towards him that aversion mingled with fear with which Godwin had ever inspired him ; and he had now no longer any pretext for retaining, as guarantees against the son, the two hostages whom he had received from the father. It will be remembered that these hostages had been confided by the suspicious Edward to the care of the Duke of Normandy. They had for more than ten years been far from their country, in a sort of captivity. Towards the end of the year 1065, Harold, their brother and their uncle, deeming the moment favourable for obtaining their deliverance, asked permission of the king to go and demand them in his name, and bring them out of exile. Without showing any repugnance to release the hostages, Edward appeared greatly alarmed at the project which Harold had formed of going in person to Normandy. " I will not compel you to stay," said he ; " but if you go, it will be without my AUGUSTIN THIERRY. 241 consent; for your journey will certainly bring some evil upon yourself and upon your country. I know Duke William and his crafty mind ; he hates you, and will grant you nothing unless he gain greatly by it ; the only way safely to obtain the hostages from him were to send some one else." The brave and confiding Saxon did not adopt this advice ; he departed on his journey, as on a party of pleasure, surrounded by gay companions, with his falcon on his wrist, and his hounds running before him. He sailed from one of the ports of Sussex. Contrary winds drove his two vessels from their track towards the mouth of the Somme, upon the territory of Guy, Count de Ponthieu. It was the custom of . this maritime district, as of many others in the Middle Ages, that every stranger thrown on the coast by tempest, instead of being humanely succoured, was imprisoned and put to ransom. Harold and his com- panions were subjected to this rigorous law: after being despoiled of all their more valuable property, they were thrown by the lord of the territory into his fortress of Belrain, now Beaurain, near Montreuil. To 'escape the wearisomeness of a protracted captivity, the Saxon declared himself the bearer of a message from the King of England to the Duke of Normandy, and sent to require William to obtain his release, that he might come to him. William did not hesitate, and demanded from his neighbour, the Count de Ponthieu, the liberty of the captive, at first menacingly, and with no mention of ransom. The Count de Ponthieu was deaf to the threats, and only yielded to the offer of a large sum of money and a fine estate upon the river Eaume. Harold proceeded to Rouen, and the bastard of Normandy had the satisfaction of having in his power the son of the greatest enemy of the Normans, one of the chiefs of the national league which had banished from England the friends and relations of William, the upholders of his pretensions to the English crown. Duke William received the Saxon chief with great honours, and an appearance of frank cordiality ; he told him that the two hostages were free on his request alone, that he could immediately return with them ; but that as a courteous guest he ought not to depart so abruptly, but at least remain some days to see the towns and festivals of the country. He and William had but one tent and one table, riding side by side, enlivening the way with friendly conversation, which one day the duke turned upon his yo'uthful friendship with King Edward. " Edward and I," said he to the Saxon, " lived under the same roof, like two brothers ; he promised me, if ever he became King of England, to make I i 242 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. me heir to his kingdom. Harold, if thou wouldst aid me in realizing this promise, be sure that, if I obtain the kingdom, whatever thou askest thou shalt have." Harold, taken by surprise at the excess of this unexpected confidence, could not help answering it by some vague words of com- pliance, whereupon William continued : " Since thou consentest to serve me, thou must engage to fortify Dover Castle, to dig a well there of fresh water, and deliver it up, when the time comes, to my people ; thou must also give thy sister in marriage to one of my barons, and thyself marry my daughter Adeliza ; moreover, on thy departure, thou must leave me, as guarantee for thy promise, one of the two hostages thou reclaimest, and I will restore him to thee in England when I come there as king." Harold felt at these words all the peril in which he himself stood, and in which he had unconsciously involved his two young relations. To escape from the more pressing embarrassment he acquiesced in word to all the demands of the Norman; and he who had twice taken up arms to drive foreigners from his country, promised to deliver to a foreigner the principal fortress of that country, with no intention, indeed, of fulfilling this unworthy engagement, thinking to purchase by a falsehood his safety and his repose. William did not pursue the conversation further, but he did not long leave the Saxon at rest on this point. On arriving at the Castle of Bayeux, Duke William held his court, and thither convoked the great council of the high barons of Nor- mandy. According to the old histories, on the eve of the day fixed for the assembly William collected from the churches of the town and neighbourhood all the relics they possessed. Bones taken from their shrines, and the entire bodies of saints, were laid, by his order, in a large tub or trough, which was placed, covered with rich cloth of gold, in the council hall. When the duke was seated on his throne of cere- mony, crowned with a worked circlet, holding in his hand a drawn sword, and surrounded by a crowd of Norman lords, amongst whom was the Saxon, two small reliquaries were brought, and placed upon the golden cloth which covered and concealed the larger box of relics. William then said : " Harold, I require thee, before this noble assembly, to confirm, by oath, the promises thou hast made to me ; namely, to aid me to obtain the kingdom of England after the death of King Edward, to marry my daughter Adeliza, and to send thy sister, that I may wed her to one of my people." The Englishman, thus a second time taken by surprise, and not venturing to deny his own words, approached the two reliquaries, extended his hand over them, and swore to execute, as far as lay in his power, his agreement with the duke, if he lived and AUGUSTIN THIERRY. 243 God aided him. All the assembly repeated, "God aid him!" Then William made a sign ; the cloth of gold was raised, and the bones and sacred bodies revealed which filled the box to the brim, and upon which the son of Godwin had sworn, without suspecting their presence. It is said that at this sight he shuddered and changed countenance, terrified at having made so formidable an oath. Shortly afterwards Harold departed, taking his nephew with him, but, much against his inclination, leaving his younger brother Ulfnoth in the hands of the Duke of Normandy. William accompanied him to the seaside, and made him fresh presents, delighted at having surprised the man the most capable of impeding his projects into a solemn promise, backed by a terrible oath, .to serve and aid him. When Harold, on his return home, presented himself to King Edward, and recounted all that had passed between himself and Duke William, the king became pensive, and said : " Did I not warn thee that I knew this William, and that thy journey would bring great evils upon thyself and upon thy nation ? Heaven grant that these, evils happen not in my time ! " These words and this mournful expression would seem to prove that Edward had really, in the days of his youth and heedlessness, made the rash promise to a foreigner of a royalty that did not belong him. COUSIN. VICTOR COUSIN was born at Paris in 1792, and was educated at the Lycde Char- lemagne, and the Ecole Normale. At twenty years of age he was appointed teacher of ancient literature in the Ecole Normale. In 1815 he became one of the professors of the Sorbonne, where he lectured for six years, his course being then suspended by the government of the day. He took advantage of this leisure to travel in Germany, but being suspected of liberalism was closely watched by the police, and underwent a short imprisonment at Berlin in 1824. He shortly after returned to France, and in 1828 resumed his labours at the Sorbonne. After the Revolution of 1830 he was made a member of the Council of Public Instruction, and a peer of France. He afterwards held the office of Minister of Public Instruction under the premiership of M. Thiers. Among M. Cousin's works, which are very numerous, maybe named his Manuel de VHistoire de la Philosophic, Cours de Philosophic Morale', and Etudes sur les Femmes illustres du XVH e Siecle, from which last the following passage is taken. MADAME DE SABLE AT PORT ROYAL. PASS through the Faubourg Saint Jacques, along a very narrow street which bears the unpleasant name of Rue de la Bourbe, thence to the new street called the Val-de-Grace, and stop before a building of very modest appearance, which is now called the Hospice de la Maternite. There was Port Royal. Enter the court ; facing you was the church, the choir of which alone remains ; to the right, and round the church, extended the monastery ; behind, vast gardens were spread out between the Rue d'Enfer and the Rue Saint Jacques, as far as the street which has since been named the Rue de Cassini ; to the left, at a very short distance from the church, is a group of houses, half-ancient and half- modern. It was on this side that Madame de Sable" added new buildings, separate from the monastery, and yet at the same time contained within its enclosure. Her rooms were close to the choir of the church, and the parlour of the nuns was not two paces off. Her. establishment, greatly reduced, consisted of her physician and man of business, Dr. Valant, Mademoiselle de Chalais, her old companion, whom she treated as a COUSIN, 245 friend, an excellent cook, a few servants, and for some time she had a coachman and a carriage. She could receive a numerous company without at all disturbing the order of the convent. Her dearest friends were in her immediate neighbourhood, and almost at her door. She had carried off from the Place Royale and brought to her quarter the Countess de Maure, who could not pass a moment without seeing her, or writing to her. Near her were the Carmelites, where she had more than one friend : the beautiful Lancry de Bains, once maid-of-honour to Queen Marie de Medicis, now the great and pious prioress, Marie Madeleine ; Sister Martha, formerly the charming Mademoiselle de Vegean, the only person who ever inspired Conde* with a genuine attachment, and who met him so often at the Louvre and Chantilly ; Mademoiselle d'Epernon, who had fled to a convent to escape the crown of Poland ; above all, the amiable, clever, and prudent Mademoiselle de Bellefond, so well known under the name of La Mere Agnes. She had not far to go to pay her respects to Queen Anne, in her frequent retreats in the Val-de-Grace, or to Mademoiselle at the Luxembourg. One may say, then, that Madame de Sable", although retired to the farther end of the Faubourg Saint Jacques, had still all her friends around her. Sometimes the spirit of the place in which she lived took hold of her, and she buried herself in a solitude, on which she allowed no one to intrude. She disappeared from the world so completely, that the Abbe" of La Victoire, annoyed at not having been admitted, spoke of her one day as the late Marchioness of Sable*. She seems to have behaved in the same way to La Rochefoucauld himself ; for he writes to her : " I can contrive no new devices to gain access to you ; I am denied admis- sion day after day." She even avoided Madame de la Fayette ; and we find among Valant's papers a scrap of an unpublished letter, half of which has been spared by time and autograph collectors, in which Madame de la Fayette complains rather bitterly of not having been admitted. "I feel exceedingly grieved about it," she says, "and find myself to be even more attached to you than I thought, for certainly there are very few people who would cause me any annoyance by refusing to see me. I do not tell you this to make you change your resolution, but to make you a little ashamed of having ever taken it, by making you see that I deserved to be a little distinguished from other people, for the affection which I bear to you, and not in the manner that you have thought fit to distinguish me." If Madame de Longueville was not absolutely included in the general disgrace, she was at least a little neglected. She says, gently and gracefully, " If people could leave 246 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. you alone there, you would be very glad, for you never invite any one. I hope, however, that this only comes from a taste for solitude, and a fear of enticing some one into your desert ; for though I claim to be an exception to the rule that you adopt, I should be better satisfied with this reason than with any other." It is certain, though rather strange, that Madame de Sable" kept up at Port Royal the delicate cookery, the extraordinary care of her health, and the multiplicity of medical appliances, which Mademoiselle makes such pleasant fun of in the Princesse de Paphlagonie. We will say nothing of the first point, for that, indeed, is nothing but an excess in delicacy which is intelligible, and a sort of fidelity to the character of a prfcieuse. As a prtcieuse must not do anything in the ordinary way, she could not, of course, dine like other people. We have quoted a passage of Madame de Motteville, in which Madame de Sable" is described in her early youth, at the H6tel de Rambouillet, maintaining that woman is born to adorn the world and to receive the adoration of men. A woman worthy of the name ought always to seem superior to material wants, and to preserve even in the commonest details of life a kind of distinction and refinement. Eating is a very necessary operation, but the sight of it is not particularly agreeable. Madame de Sable" wished it to be managed with the most singular delicacy. According to her, it was wrong for a lady to sit down to table with her lover on their first acquaintance. The slightest grimace, she said, might spoil all. One ought to leave heavy repasts to the lower classes, and to appear just to take a little nourishment simply to support oneself, or even to amuse oneself, as we take refreshments and ices. Few dishes, but those ex- quisite and dressed after a certain fashion. Money could not do it, it required a peculiar art. Madame de Sable" was a mistress of this art. She had carried her aristocratic and literary esprit, her bon ton and good taste, even into the kitchen. Her dinners, without any display of opulence, were famous and admired. She taught her friends to cultivate a taste for good things, and founded a school of gourmands. La Rouche- foucauld was one of her best pupils. He was continually asking for instructions : " You cannot do me a greater charity," he says, " than to allow the bearer of this letter to enter into the mysteries of your marmalade and of your true sweetmeats ; and I beg you most humbly to do for him all you can." But, when we consider, it was not Madame de Sable's table, still less the medical learning which she had brought to Port Royal, which drew around her so many people of the greatest merit and the highest rank : COUSIN. 247 it was her pleasant and equable demeanour ; her inexhaustible good nature, already ready to render services, or give advice ; her kindly good sense, fine taste, and happy art of displaying to advantage the talents of others, skill in carrying on lively conversation, and finding elegant employments. Thus by degrees she gathered round her a choice society which quickly took a distinguished place in the fashion- able world of that day, and was not soon broken up. If we were to give a name to this society, we would call it the "worldly society of Port Royal ; " for Port Royal and its friends were the nucleus of it, and from thence it drew its most distinguishing characteristic : seriousness reigned in it ; but the agreeable was not shut out. TRIERS. Louis ADOLPHE THIERS was born in 1797 at Marseilles, where his father was a working locksmith. He studied law at Aix, under M. Arnaud, and in course of time made his appearance at the bar ; but, finding that he was not likely to meet with any great success, he turned his attention to literature. In 1823 appeared the first volume of his History of the French Revolution, which was finished in 1832. After the Revolution of 1830 he held various minor official posts, till at last he was made Under- secretary of State in Lafitte's administration. In 1832 he was appointed Minister of the Interior, and in 1836, and again in 1840, he held the office of President of the Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs. After the Revolution of 1848, his talents and caution secured him a position in the National Assembly, but he was banished after the coup d'itat of December 185 r. He then spent some time in Switzerland, but was at last allowed to return to Paris. In 1863 he was appointed Deputy for the Department^ of the Seine by the Liberal Opposition. He has written, besides his History of the French Revolution, a History of the Consulate and Empire, from which the following passage is taken. THE BURNING OF MOSCOW. AT last, having reached the summit of a hill, the army suddenly discovered below them, and at no great distance, an immense city shining with a thousand colours, surmounted by a host of gilded domes, resplendent with light; a singular mixture of woods, lakes, cottages, palaces, churches, bell towers, a town both Gothic and Byzantine, realizing all that the Eastern stories relate of the marvels of Asia. While the monasteries, flanked with towers, formed the girdle of this great city, in the centre, raised on an eminence, was a strong citadel ; a kind of capitol, whence were seen at the same time the temples of the deity and the palaces of the emperors, where above embattled walls rose majestic domes, bearing the emblem that represents the whole history of Russia and her ambition, the cross over the reversed crescent. This citadel was the Kremlin, the ancient abode of the czars. The imagination, and the idea of glory, being both excited by this magical spectacle, the soldiers raised one shout of " Moscow ! Moscow ! " Those who had remained at the foot of the hill hastened to reach the top ; for a moment all ranks mingled, and everybody wished to con- THIERS. 249 template the great capital, towards which we had made such an adventurous march. One could not have enough of this dazzling spectacle, calculated to awaken so many different feelings. Napoleon arrived in his turn, and struck with what he saw, he who, like the oldest soldiers in the army, had successively visited Cairo, Memphis, the Jordan, Milan, Vienna, Berlin, and Madrid could not help experiencing deep emotion. Arrived at this summit of his glory, from which he was to descend with such a rapid step towards the abyss, he experienced a sort of intoxication ; forgot all the reproaches that his good sense, the only conscience of conquerors, had addressed to him for two months ; and for a moment believed still that his enterprise was a great and marvellous one, that to have dared to march from Paris to Smolensk, from Smolensk to Moscow, was a great and happy rashness, justified by the event. Certain of his glory, he still believed in his good fortune, and his lieutenants, as amazed as he, remembering no more their frequent discontents during this campaign, gave vent to those victorious demon- strations in which they had not indulged at the termination of the bloody day of Borodino. This moment of satisfaction, lively and short, was one of the most deeply felt in his life. Alas ! it was to be the last! Murat received the injunction to march quickly, to avoid all disorder. General Durosnel was sent forward to hold communication with the authorities, and lead them to the conqueror's feet, who desired to receive their homage and calm their fears. M. Denni^e was charged to go and prepare food and lodging for the army. Murat, galloping at the head of the light cavalry, arrived, at length, across the faubourg of Drogomilow, at the bridge of the Moskowa. There he found a Russian rear-guard, who were retreating, and inquired if there was no officer there who knew French. A young Russian, who spoke our language correctly, presented himself immediately before this king, whom hostile nations knew so well, and asked what he wanted. Murat having expressed a wish to know which was the commander of this rear-guard, the young Russian pointed out an officer with white hair, clothed in a bivouac cloak of long fur. Murat, with his accustomed grace, held out his hand to the old officer, who took it eagerly. Thus national hatred was silenced before valour. Murat asked the commander of the enemy's rear-guard if they knew him. " Yes," replied the latter, " we have seen enough of you under fire to know you." Murat seeming struck with the long fur mantle, which looked as if it would be very K K 2so HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. comfortable for a bivouac, the old officer unfastened it from his shoulders to make him a present of it. Murat receiving it with as much courtesy as it was offered, took a beautiful watch and presented it to the enemy's officer, who received this present in the same way as his had been accepted. After these acts of courtesy, the Russian rear-guard filed off rapidly to give ground to our vanguard. The King of Naples, followed by his staff and a detachment of cavalry, went down into the streets of Moscow, traversed alternately the poorest and the richest quarters, rows of wooden houses crowded together, and a succession of splendid palaces rising from amidst vast gardens : he found everywhere the most profound silence. It seemed as if they were penetrating into a dead city, whose inhabitants had suddenly disappeared. The first sight of it, surprising as it was, did not remind us of our entry into Berlin or Vienna. Nevertheless, the first feeling of terror experienced by the inhabitants might explain this solitude. Suddenly some distracted individuals appeared : they were some French people, belonging to the foreign families settled at Moscow, and asked us in the name of Heaven to save them from the robbers who had become masters of the town. They were well received, but we tried in vain to remove their fears ; we were conducted to the Kremlin, and had hardly arrived in sight of these old walls, than we were exposed to a discharge of shot. It came from bandits let loose on Moscow by the ferocious patriotism of the Count of Rostopchin. These wretched beings had invaded the sacred citadel, had seized the guns in the arsenal, and were firing on the French who came to disturb them after their few hours' reign of anarchy. Several were sabred, and the Kremlin was relieved of their presence. But on making inquiry, we learned that the whole population had fled, except a small number of strangers, or of Russians, acquainted with the ways of the French, and not fearing their presence. This news vexed the leaders of our vanguard, who were flattering them- selves that they would see a whole population coming before them, whom they would take pleasure in comforting, and filling with surprise and gratitude. They made haste to restore some order to the different quarters of the town, and to pursue the thieves, who thought they should much longer enjoy the prey that the Count of Rostopchin had given up to them. The next morning, September 15, Napoleon made' his entry into Moscow, at the head of his invincible legions, but he crossed a deserted town, and for the first time his soldiers, on entering a capital, found none but themselves to be witnesses of their glory. The impression that they THIERS. 251 experienced was sad. Napoleon, arrived at the Kremlin, hastened to mount the high tower of the great Ivan, and to contemplate from that height his magnificent conquest, across which the Moskowa was slowly pursuing its winding course. Thousands of black birds, ravens and crows, as numerous here as the pigeons at Venice, flying around the tops of the palaces and churches, gave a singular aspect to this great city, which contrasted strangely with the brightness of its brilliant colours. A mournful silence, disturbed only by the tramp of the cavalry, had taken the place of life in this city, which till the evening before had been one of the most busy in the world. In spite of the sadness of this solitude, Napoleon, on finding Moscow abandoned like the other Russian towns, thought himself happy nevertheless in not finding it burned up, and did not despair of softening little by little the hatred which the presence of his flags had inspired since Witebsk. The army hoped then to enjoy Moscow, to find peace there, and, in any case, good winter cantonments if the war was prolonged. However, on the morrow after the day on which the entry had been made, columns of flame arose from a very large building, which contained the spirits that the government sold on its own account to the people of the capital. People ran there, without astonishment or terror, for they attributed the cause of this partial fire to the nature of the materials contained in this building, or to some imprudence committed by our soldiers. In fact, the fire was mastered, and we had time to reassure ourselves. But all at once, the fire burst out at almost the same instant with extreme violence in a collection of buildings that was called the Bazaar. This Bazaar, situated to the north-east of the Kremlin, comprised the richest shops, those in which were sold the beautiful stuffs of India and Persia, the rarities of Europe, the colonial commodities, sugar, coffee, tea, and, lastly, precious wines. In a few minutes the fire had spread through the bazaar, and the soldiers of the guard ran in crowds, and made the greatest efforts to arrest its progress. Unhappily they could not succeed, and soon the immense riches of this establishment fell a prey to the flames. Eager to dispute with the fire the possession of these, riches belonging to no one at this time, and to secure them for themselves, our soldiers, not having been able to save them, tried to drag out some fragments. They might be seen coming out of the bazaar, carrying furs, silks, wines of great value, without any one dreaming of reproaching them for so doing, for they wronged no one but the fire, the sole master of 252 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. these treasures. One might regret it on the score of discipline, but could not cast a reproach on their honour on that account. Besides, those who remained of the people set them an example, and took their large share of these spoils of the commerce of Moscow. Yet it was only one large building an extremely rich one, it is true that was attacked by the fire, and there was no fear for the town itself. These first disasters, of little consequence so far, were attributed to a very natural and very ordinary accident, which might be more easily explained still, in the bustle of evacuating the town. During the night of the I5th of September, the scene suddenly changed. As if every misfortune was to fall at once on the old Moscovite capital, the equinoctial wind arose all at once with the double violence natural to the season and to level countries where nothing stops the storm. This wind, blowing at first from the east, carried the fire westward, along the streets situated between the roads from Tver and Smolensk, and which are known as the richest and most beautiful in Moscow, those of Tverskaia, Nikitskaia, and Povorskaia. In a few hours the fire, having spread fiercely among the wooden buildings, communicated itself from one to another with frightful rapidity. Shooting forth in long tongues of flame, it was seen invading other quarters situated to the west. Rockets were noticed in the air, and soon wretches were seized carrying combustibles at the end of long poles. They were taken up ; they were questioned with threats of death, and they revealed the frightful secret, the order given by the Count of Rostopchin to set fire to the city of Moscow, as if it had been the smallest village on the road from Smolensk. This news spread consternation through the army in an instant. To doubt was no longer possible, after the arrests made, and the depositions collected from different parts of the town. Napoleon ordered that in each quarter the corps fixed there should form military commissions, to try, shoot, and hang on gibbets the incendiaries taken in the act. He ordered likewise, that they should employ all the troops there were in the town to extinguish the fire. They ran to the pumps, but there were none to be found. This last circumstance would have left no doubt, if there had remained any, of the frightful design that delivered Moscow to the flames. In addition to the fact that the means for extinguishing the fire were wanting, the wind, which every moment increased in fury, would have defied the efforts of the whole army. With the violence of the equinox, from the east it passed to the north-west, and the stream of NAPOLEON AT THE BURNING OF MOSCOW. THIERS. 253 fire changing its direction immediately, went to spread its ravages where the hand of incendiaries had not yet been able to carry it. This immense column of fire, beaten down by the wind on the roofs of build- ings, surrounding them as soon as it touched them, increased every instant the conquests it made, spread the flames with frightful roaring, interrupted by terrible explosions, and hurled burning beams into the distance, which spread the scourge where it was not, or fell like bombs into the middle of the streets. After having blown for some hours from the north-west, the wind, changing its direction again, and blowing from the south-west, carried the fire into new quarters, as if nature took a cruel pleasure in shaking out by turns ruin and death of every kind over this unhappy city, or rather on our army, which was only guilty, alas ! of heroism, at least if Providence did not intend to visit on it the lawless designs of which it had been the unwilling instrument ! Under this new impulse, given from the south-west, the Kremlin, till then spared, was suddenly endangered. Fiery sparks fell into the midst of the ammunition of the artillery spread on the ground, and threatened to set it on fire. More than four hundred waggons of ammunition wefe in the court of the Kremlin, and the arsenal contained some hundred thousand pounds of powder. A disaster was imminent, and Napoleon, with his guard and the palace of the Czars, might be blown into the air. The officers who were with him, the soldiers of the artillery, knowing that his death would be theirs, surrounded him, and pressed him with earnest entreaties to come away from the burning crater. The danger was most threatening ; the old artillerymen of the guard, although used to cannonades like those of Borodino, almost lost their presence of mind. General Lariboisiere approaching Napoleon, pointed out to him the anxiety of which he wa's the cause, and, with the authority of his age and devotion, told him that it was a duty to let them save themselves alone, without increasing their perplexity by the uneasiness that his presence excited. Besides, several officers sent to the neighbouring quarters reported that the fire, rapidly increasing, hardly allowed one to cross the streets or breathe, and that they must leave at once if they did not wish to be buried under the ruins of this ill-fated town. Napoleon, followed by some of his lieutenants, went out of that Kremlin which the Russian army had not been able to prevent him from entering, but from which the fire expelled him after four-and-twenty hours of possession, descended to the quay of the Moskowa, found his horses ready there, and had much difficulty in crossing the town, which towards the north-west, whither he directed his course, was already in flames. 254 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. The wind, which constantly increased in violence, sometimes caused columns of fire to bend to the ground, and drove before it torrents of sparks, smoke, and stifling cinders. The horrible appearance of the sky answered to the no less horrible spectacle of the earth. The terrified army went out of Moscow. The divisions of Prince Eugene and Marshal Ney, which had entered the evening before, turned back again on the roads of Zwenigorod and Saint Petersburg ; those of Marshal Davoust returned by the road of Smolensk, and, except the guard left around the Kremlin to dispute its possession with the flames, our troops retired in haste, struck with horror before this fire, which, after darting up towards the sky, seemed to bend down again over them as if it wished to devour them. A small number of the inhabitants who had remained in Moscow, and had hidden at first in their houses without daring to come out, now escaped from them, carrying away what was most dear to them women their children, men their infirm parents, saving, if they could, their clothes, uttering sad groans, and often stopped by the robbers that Rostopchin had let loose upon us, and who made merry in the midst of the conflagration like the spirit of evil in the midst of chaos. MICHELET. JULES MICHELET was born at Paris in 1798. At the age of twenty-three he obtained a professorship in the College Charlemagne ; and after the Revolution of 1830 an appointment in the Archives du Royaume. In 1838 he was nominated to the Chair of History and Moral Philosophy in the Colldge de France ; and elected a Member of the Academic des Sciences in the same year. In 1851, having refused to take the oath of allegiance to the Emperor, he was deprived of both his appointments. His principal works are L'Histoire de la Re-volution, UHistoire Romaine, Mimoires de Luther, and LHistoire de France. THE FEAST OF REASON. THE time for striking great blows seemed come. The Convention received marvellous consignments of saints, shrines, ecclesiastical spoils, forwarded to them by Fouche, Dumont, B6, Rulh, &c. The Convention had voted the destruction of the tombs of Saint Denis. The ashes of kings had been mingled with those of the obscure dead. Cruel insult to the latter to be placed side by side with Charles IX, to receive near them the rottenness of Louis XV, or the infamous Henry III.! The Convention had thought it very good that old Rulh, an ardent and rigid patriot (humane at bottom, and compromised by his humanity) ; should have broken the vial, called the Sainte Ampoule, with his own hand. It can be believed after this that they would order or accept the abolition of the ancient worship. The obstacle was a personal one. What was to be done with the constitutional Church ? For, having taken an oath of fidelity to the Republic, it preserved no less all its anti-republican dogmas. Intolerant, persecuting like other priests, they starved the married priests to death in '95 and '96. Even in '93 they were persecuting ; they removed the unhappy men from their profession, deprived them of food. On the I5th of July, on the 1st of September, on the i/th again, the Convention echoed with dolorous 256 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. complaints from married priests that their lords, the republican bishops, wished to hinder them from being men. The Assembly, in a bad temper, reduced the bishops to an income of 6,000 francs, and threatened the persecutors with transportation. A more tolerant party in the constitutional Church was that of the philosophic priests ; such was Gobel, Bishop of Paris ; such, Thomas Lindet ; such I have known M. Daunou. Moralists above everything, and of reputable lives, they accepted Christianity as a vehicle of morality. They themselves, however, honest and loyal, suffered from the double position, and only desired to leave it. Daunou quitted it early, and of his own accord. The others fell into the error of waiting for the pressure of events. (jobel had Anacharsis Clootz and Chaumette with him every evening. Both showed him that his philosophic Christianity was quite powerless, useless ; they urged him to leave this deserted altar, and resign the functions of the Catholic ministry. He yielded on the evening of the 6th, and his clergy followed his example. It was agreed that the next day they should give in their resignations in a body into the hands of the Assembly. The fact was made known at the same moment to the Committees of Public Safety and Security. Violent was their irritation against these audacious inno- vations, against the bold initiative of the Commune, against the secret encouragement that it met with from the Mountain. A device was got up to destroy all the effect of the scene that was being prepared. The sitting was opened by the letter of a married priest who coarsely abjured, said that he and his brethren were only cheats, then asked for a pension for himself, his wife, and children a letter cleverly arranged to cast discredit beforehand upon the resignation of Gobel, to show that the suppression of the clergy would only increase the public burdens. Gobel, with his clergy, introduced by the Convention, spoke to the purpose, abjured no doctrine, and resigned his functions. His example was followed by several priests and bishops of the Convention, especially by the brother of Lindet, who spoke [with much nobleness and gravity. " To destroy is not everything," said he ; " it is necessary to rebuild. Prevent the murmur, that the weariness of solitude, the uniformity of labour, the cessation of assemblies will give rise to in the country districts. I demand a speedy report on the national holidays." Chaumette prayed the Assembly to give the Feast of Reason a place in the calendar. MIC HE LET. 257 It was in the name of Reason that two representatives of the people, one a Catholic bishop and the other a Protestant minister, met at the tribune, gave in their resignation together, and shook hands. They did not abjure (whatever the Journal of the Mountain^ edited at the time by one of Robespierre's men, may say). At this moment, which was not without solemnity in the agitation of the Assembly, Amar, with the soft voice that was usual with him, began to speak, in the name of the Committee of Public Safety. He asked that the doors of the hall might be shut. No one objected. It was decreed. All hearts shrank. They knew, since October 3d, what this sinister preliminary would lead to ; human victims were needed. Amar then read a letter addressed from Rouen to a member little known in the Assembly ; it contained the news that Rouen was going en masse to the help of La Vendee. The reverse was true ; the Committees knew perfectly that the Normans were on their march against La Vendee. The invention appeared such a miserable one, that the Assembly, taking courage, asked with one voice whose was the signature to such a letter- Amar confessed that it was anonymous. " What ! " said Basire, " does our liberty depend on an anonymous letter ? If that is enough to arrest a representative, the counter-revolution is ready!" Amar descended from the tribune, and went and hid himself. They had reserved for the last act, Gregory, Bishop of Blois. He came at last in the very nick of time for the Committees, sick with this fall. Absent till the last moment of the sitting, he came at their prayer, I have no doubt. Their policy, sadly unmasked by the attempt of Amar to intimidate the Assembly, had great need of help. They put forward the Gallican. Gregory, courageous himself, sanguine, choleric, strong besides in feeling himself the defender of the Government, was chiefly valiant against the Mountain. " I hold my authority neither from you, nor from the people. I am a bishop, I remain a bishop." The Mountain uttered furious cries. But from that time the Gallicans could brave them, sheltered as they were under the protection of the Committees and Robespierre. The irritation was extreme against the outrageous act of the Com- mittees. It even spread to the Jacobins. The agent of Robespierre was attacked there one Laveaux, manager of the Journal de la Montague, who had just written a religious article for him. The Jacobins took away from him the management of the paper, and they named Anacharsis Clootz President of the Society. The very evening of the great sitting, Clootz had been to the L L 258 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. Committees to try Robespierre. He found him exasperated, but restrain- ing himself. Robespierre, without going into the matter or causing his approaching denunciation to be felt, only said these few words : " You wish to gain us Catholic Belgium, and you set it against us ! " Whilst Clootz was speaking to Robespierre, Chaumette, returning to the Commune, then sitting in general council, made the bold request that the Feast of Reason, which was to have been held in the circus of the Palais- Royal, should be held in the very Church of Notre Dame, in the very place of the suppressed worship, and on its altar. He thus assumed an aggressive attitude against the Committees. They resolved to reply by striking terror into the Convention. Inti- midated, it would be of use itself as a weapon to crush the Commune- They had in hand a serious business, to make the Mountain tremble, to make each one anxious for himself. There was not a Montagnard who had not saved some proscribed persons. The most terrible in speech were often the most humane. There was a proof that one of the stanchest, one of those who carried the mask of the terror best, was hiding in his house a young female emigrant. This woman, wild with terror, had fled into the lion's den, had taken shelter with the Committee of General Security, in the house of Osselin, who was a member of it. Did he love her, or was he seized, as the firmest are sometimes, with a violent fit of pity ? We do not know. She was discovered in Paris. He saved her, hid her in his uncle's house, the curate of a village in the woods of Versailles. Osselin, full of his danger, in order to remove suspicion, became an implacable terrorist in the Convention. In September he did not wish that the accused Perrin should be heard. In October he carried the decree which decapitated the Gironde. In November he had Soules arrested, the friend of Chalier, manager of police, for having released suspected persons without due consideration. And the same day, November Qth, the Committee of Public Security came to the Convention, and tore off Osselin's mask: this terrible puritan had hidden Madame Charry. The whole Convention cast down their eyes, and trembled. Many others felt themselves guilty. The event immediately caused a reaction in the Commune. On the occasion of a request from Henriot's section that the Girondist electors might be prosecuted, who had formerly given their votes for another captain instead of Henriot, Chaumette expressed himself boldly. He stood up with a very unexpected freedom against this universal system of impeachments. "Those who denounce," he said, "only wish most MIC HE LET. 259 frequently to draw attention away from themselves and turn the danger on others. The impeached is arrested ; the false accuser ought to be arrested as much." It was beneath this banner of moderation and justice that the new religion was inaugurated next day, November loth. Gossec had com- posed the tunes, Chenier the words. They had, after some sort of fashion, built in two days in the very narrow choir of Notre Dame, a temple of philosophy, which was adorned with effigies of the wise men, the fathers of the Revolution. This temple was on a mountain ; on a rock burned the torch of truth. The magistrates were seated under the pillars. No weapons, no soldiers. Two rows of young girls, mere children, were all the ornament of the feast ; they were dressed in white, crowned with oak, and not, as it has been said, with roses. What should the symbol, the figure of Reason be ? On the /th, some still wished to have a statue. It was objected that a fixed representation might recall the Virgin and create another idolatry. A moving representation, animated and living, which, being changed each feast, could not become an object of superstition, was preferred. The founders of the new worship, who never dreamt of degrading it, recom- mended expressly in their newspapers, to those who wished to have the feast in other towns, to choose persons whose character renders beauty re- spectable to fill so august a part, whose strictness of morals and demeanour might repel licence, and fill Jiearts with pure and honourable feelings. This was followed to the letter. They were in general the young ladies of respected families, who, either of their own will or by constraint, represented Reason. I have known one in her old age, who had never been beautiful except'in figure and height ; she was a grave woman and of irreproachable life. Reason was represented at Saint Sulpice by the wife of one of the first magistrates of Paris ; at Notre Dame by a famous artist, loved and respected, Mademoiselle Maillard. Reason, clothed in white with an azure mantle, came out of the Temple of Philosophy, and placed herself on a seat of simple grass. The young girls sang a hymn to her ; she crossed to the foot of the Moun- tain, casting a gentle look, a gentle smile on the assembly. She re- enters, and they sing again ... They wait . < . That is all. Chaste ceremony, sad, dry, wearisome. VI NET. ALEXANDRE RODOLPHE VINET was born at Ouchy, near Lausanne, in 1797. His father, who held office in the Swiss Government, educated him with a view to his becoming a pastor of the Reformed Church. His literary tastes were early developed, and at the age of twenty he was appointed Professor of French Literature in the University of Bale. In 1819 he was ordained, and in 1837, after having laboured at Bale for twenty years, he was nominated to the chair of Practical Theology at Lausanne. Here he took a leading part in the controversies that then agitated the Reformed Church ; from which in the end he seceded, resigning at the same time his professorship. His health, which had always been delicate, gave way under the excite- ment of these debates, and he died in 1847, at the age of fifty. Among his works, which are numerous and highly esteemed, may be mentioned LHistoire de la Litterature Franqaise au XVIII e Silcle ; Revue des principaux Prosateurs et Poetes Franqais ; Theologie Pastorale et Homiletique ; L? Education, la Famille et la Socilte ; Chrestomathie Franqaise, a collection of passages from French authors ; and Les Ppttes du Siecle de Louis XIV, from which the following passage is taken. RACINE. BORN in 1639, of a respectable family, Racine belongs entirely to the best period of the age of Louis XIV. Brought up, like Eliakim, beneath the shadow of the sanctuary, he was sent to Port Royal ; he grew up there under a training, kind in reality, but austere in forms and practices, and in which affection laboured incessantly to veil itself. We know that learning was united to piety there. The young Racine became early acquainted with antiquity, and this literary tradi- tion was, perhaps, the part of his instruction that he preserved best. Witty and worldly by the natural inclination of his character, his sup- posed vocation for the ecclesiastical profession soon disappeared, either on account of the nature of his abilities, or in consequence of a lawsuit that he had to undergo in reference to a living. He was early inflamed by ambition ; he tried to secure interest at court ; his nature VI NET. 261 was a little like that which his friend Boileau has depicted in these lines : " Se pousse auprds des grands, s'intrigue, se manage, Centre les coups du sort cherche a se maintenir, Et loin dans le present regarde 1'avenir." * We must add to this an irritable self-love and a caustic spirit. His conduct was not always noble and generous ; prosperity had puffed him up ; floating on a quiet sea, he forgot the shore which had sheltered him. He considered himself involved in the violent reproofs hurled by his old master Nicole against the writers of novels and tragedies, and he wrote a letter against him and the whole of Port Royal, in which animosity was much more manifest than wit. It was followed by a second, which Boileau, they say, prevented him from publishing. This is how Louis Racine expresses himself concerning these writings of his father : " The public neither expected them from a young man busy with tragedies, nor from a pupil of Port Royal. The vivacity of the poet, who con- sidered that his talent, the dearest thing he had, had been insulted, made him forget what he owed to his first masters, and induced him to enter, without reflection, on a quarrel which did not concern him." I do not take pleasure in lowering the character of men of talent, to whom, with all the rest of the world, I am indebted for so much enjoy- ment ; I feel myself impelled, rather, like everybody else, to make one single whole of their character and genius, and to suppose that every part of them has been in harmony. It is not my fault if the man and the writer are, generally, two beings, so different sometimes, even, so opposite ; and if the saying of Buffon cannot be taken in an absolute sense : " Style is the man himself." But, in short, talent is talent, and nothing else ; and there is not always more connection between; character and talent than between delicacy of mind and delicacy of ear. The foundation of talent is imagination, which is not, if I understand aright, anything else than sensibility of mind ; just as sensibility, perhaps, is nothing else than the imagination of the heart. Without pausing over these distinctions, I will willingly grant that sensibility is the source of talent, and that a person has talent I mean literary talent in proportion to his sensibility ; but I deny that sensibility is the same thing as moral principle, and that a man is more moral in proportion to his sensibility. Of two men, one of whom has much sensibility, and the other very little, it is frequently the second * L'Art Poetique, Chant III. 262 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. who is the best ; but the first is the nearest to talent. The sensibility that forms talent is a sympathy with all human sentiments, and the man of talent might have for his motto, " Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto." " Nihil," do you see that is to say, evil as well as good ; both laid hold of by the same lively, secret intelligence. Shall I conclude that Shakspeare was a rogue because he could identify himself so well with Lady Macbeth, with lago ? Certainly not. The man of talent will then be, in turns, all that it is possible to be. This power of sympathy, or, if you like, of intelligence, has some- thing terrifying. It is frightful to think that everything can be imitated. The heart sometimes imitates talent, and it is a beautiful phenomenon ; but how much more often, and with how much more success, does talent imitate the heart ! I find myself sometimes doubting if the exercise of this faculty is not one of the greatest dangers ; if talent is a benefit or a temptation ; if the profession of the poet, who lives less among things than among ideas of things who has to do with ap- pearances is not one of the most demoralizing, and if the heart does not lose that with which the imagination fills itself. To be sensible to everything, is to be indifferent to everything. " I am a light thing," said the poet, speaking of himself. Those who escape this danger, those who even, a rare thing, become great as men while they become great as poets, are monuments of the divine protection ; but I remark, with alarm, that some of the greatest among poets have been hardly men. Is this to say that nothing but talent is required in art and poetry ? Certainly not. VIGNY. COUNT ALFRED DE VIGNY, the son of a cavalry officer, who had distinguished himself in the Seven Years' War, was born at Loches, in Touraine, in 1797. entered the army at a very early age, and passed some years in military service. In 1822 he published a volume of poems ; two years after appeared his poem of Eloa, and in 1826 his historical romance of Cinq-Mars, which brought him at once into reputa- \^\ tion. Among his other works are Reflexions sur la Verite dans I'Art, La Marichale d'Ancre, and the tragedy of Chatterton. M. de Vigny was elected a Member of the Academy in 1846, and holds a high place among the writers of the romantic school. He died in 1863. CARDINAL RICHELIEU. SEE the Mediterranean, which, not far off, stretches its blue waves over sandy shores. Penetrate into this city of Narbonne, somewhat ^ resembling Athens ; but to find him who reigns there follow that dark uneven street, mount the steps of the old archbishop's palace, and let us enter the first and largest of the halls. It was very long, but lighted by rows of high-arched windows, of which the upper line alone had preserved the blue, yellow, and red panes, which spread a faint and mysterious light into the apartment. A very large round table filled the whole width of it on the side of the fire- place ; around this table, covered with a spotted cloth, and loaded with papers and portfolios, eight secretaries were seated, bending down to their writing, and busy in copying letters that were handed to them from a smaller table. Other men standing were arranging papers in the shelves of a bookcase, which the books bound in black did not quite fill, _ and they stepped cautiously on the carpet with which the room was\AA furnished. In spite of the number of persons assembled, one might have heard the buzzing of a fly. The only noise which arose was that of the pens which ran rapidly over the paper, and a harsh voice which dictated, stopping every now and then to cough. It came from an immense 264 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. chair with great arms placed beside the fire, which was burning in spite of the heat of the season and of the country. It was one of those arm- chairs that are still seen in some old houses, and which seem made to send one to sleep while reading, whatever the book may be, so carefully is every part stuffed ; a cushion of feathers sustains the back ; if the head droops, it finds its cheeks supported by pillows covered with silk, and the cushion of the seat extends so far beyond the elbows that one cannot help thinking that our forefathers' careful upholsterers intended to pre- vent the book making any noise, and waking them when it fell. But to leave this digression, and speak of the man who was sitting there, and was not asleep. He had a broad forehead, and a few very white hairs, large and soft eyes, pale and thin face, to which a small and pointed white beard gave that air of refinement that one notices in all the portraits of the time of Louis XIII. A mouth almost without lips, and we must confess that Lavater considers this sign to indicate wickedness with the utmost certainty ; a pinched up mouth, so to say, was fringed by two small grey moustaches an-d by a " royale" an orna- ment then in fashion, and in form very like a comma. This old man had on his head a red skull cap, and was wrapped in a very large dressing gown, and wore stockings of purple silk, and was no less a person than Armand Duplessis, Cardinal de Richelieu. He had very near him, around the smaller table before mentioned, four youths from fifteen to twenty years of age. They were pages, or, according to the expression of the time, domestics, which then meant friends of the house. This custom was a relic of feudal patronage lingering in our manners. The younger sons of the highest families received wages from great lords, and were devoted to them in all cir- cumstances, ready to challenge the first comer at the slightest hint from their patron. The pages of whom we are speaking were writing letters of which the Cardinal had given them the substance, and after a glance from their master, passed them on to the secretaries, who made fair copies. The old Duke, on his side, was writing on his knee private notes on small pieces of paper, which he slipped into almost all the packets before closing them with his own hand. He had been writing for some moments, when he observed, in a look- ing glass placed in front of him, the youngest of his pages tracing in- terruptedly certain lines on a sheet of a smaller size than the official paper ; he was hurriedly writing a few words, then slipping it hastily under the large sheet which, to his great annoyance, he was desired to fill ; but, placed behind the Cardinal, he was in hopes that the difficulty VIGNY. 265 which he had in turning would prevent him from noticing the little manoeuvre, which he seemed to manage with considerable skill. Sud- denly Richelieu, addressing him drily, said, " Come here, M. Olivier." These two words were like a clap of thunder to the poor boy, who seemed to be not more than sixteen years old. He rose, however, very quickly, and came and stood before the minister, his arms hanging down and his head drooping. The other pages and secretaries stirred no more than soldiers, when one of them falls struck by a ball, they were so much accustomed to summonses of this sort. This one, however, was of a more lively kind than usual. " What are you writing there ?" " Monseigneur, what your eminence dictated to me." "What?" ' " Monseigneur, the letter to Don Juan of Braganza." " No equivocation, sir ; you are doing something else." " Monseigneur," then said the page, with tears in his eyes ; " it was a letter to a lady, one of my cousins." " Let us see it." Then he trembled all over, and was obliged to lean against 'the chimney-piece, saying, in a low voice, " It is impossible." " Viscount Olivier d'Entraigues," said the minister, without showing the slightest emotion, " you are no longer in my service." And the page left the room ; he knew that no answer was to be made ; he slipped his letter into his pocket, and, opening the folding-door just wide enough to pass through, he glided out like a bird that escapes from its cage. The minister went on with the notes, which he was writing on his knee. The secretaries worked on with redoubled ardour and silence, when the door opening suddenly on both sides, there appeared standing between the two leaves a Capuchin, who, bowing with his arms crossed upon his breast, seemed to expect alms, or an order to withdraw. He had a sun-burnt complexion, deeply scarred with small-pox ; eyes soft enough, but a little asquint, and covered always with the eyebrows, which met in the middle of his forehead ; a mouth the smile of which was sly, malevolent, and sinister ; a beard straight and red at the end, and the costume of the order of St. Francis in all its horror, with sandals and bare feet which seemed very unworthy to wipe themselves on a carpet. Such as he was, this person seemed to make a great sensation in the room, for without finishing the phrase, the line, or the word which he had begun, each writer rose and went out by the door, where he still M M 266 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. stood ; some saluting him as they passed, others turning their heads aside, the young pages holding their noses, but not till they were behind him, for they seemed secretly to stand in fear of him. When everybody had gone out, he came in at last, making a profound reverence, because the door was still open ; but as soon as it was shut, he seated himself without ceremony at the side of the Cardinal, who, having recognised him by the disturbance, made him a dry and silent bow, looking at him fixedly, as if expecting news, and not able to help frowning, as if at the sight "of a spider, or some other disagreeable creature. The Cardinal had not been able to resist this sign of annoyance, because he felt himself obliged by the presence of his agent to enter again into those deep and vexatious discussions from which he had been resting for some days, in a country where the pure air was favourable to him, and the quiet had a little relieved the pains of his malady ; it had passed into a slow fever, but its intermissions were long enough to let him forget, while he was free from it, that it was sure to return. Giving then a little repose to his hitherto untiring imagination, he was waiting without impatience, perhaps for the first time in his life, the return of the couriers whom he had sent in all directions, like the rays of a sun which alone gave life and movement to France. The visit which he was then receiving was unexpected, and the sight of one of those men whom he steeped in crime, according to his own expression, made all the habitual anxieties of his life more pressing, without altogether dissipating the cloud of melancholy which had recently shaded his thoughts. The commencement of his conversation was tinged with the gloomy colour of his recent reveries, but he soon emerged stronger and more lively than ever, when his vigorous mind came back of necessity to the realities of life. His confidant, seeing that he must be the first to break the silence, said , somewhat abruptly, " Well, Monseigneur, what are you thinking about ? " " Alas ! Joseph, what ought we all to be thinking about, if not of our future happiness in a better life than this ? I have been thinking for some days past that human interests have too much diverted my atten- tion from this one sole thought, and I repent of having employed some moments of leisure on profane works, such as my tragedies of Europe and Mirame, in spite of the glory which I have already derived from them among our beaux esprits, glory which will increase in the future." Father Joseph, full of things which he had to say, was at first surprised at this commencement ; but he was too well acquainted with VIGNY. 267 his master to let it be seen, and well knowing how to lead him back to other ideas, took up his without hesitation. " Their merit is however very great," said he, with an air of regret, " and France will sigh to think that these immortal works have not been followed by similar productions." " Yes, my dear Joseph, it is in vain that such men as Boisrobert, Claveret, Colletet, Corneille, and, above all, the celebrated Mairet, have proclaimed these tragedies the finest of all that times present or past have seen produced ; I reproach myself with them, I swear to you, as a real mortal sin, and I employ myself only in my hours of repose with my MctJiod of Controversies, and my book on Christian Perfection. I consider that I am fifty-six years old, and am afflicted with a malady that rarely reprieves its victims." " These are calculations that your enemies make as carefully as your Eminence," said the father, whom this conversation began to put out of temper, and who wished to put a stop to it as soon as possible. The Cardinal's face grew red. " I know it," he said, " I know it well, I know all their villany, and I am prepared for it all ; but what news is there ? " " The king has ideas that he never had before." " Indeed, and that do not come from me ! That is well," said the minister, ironically. " He has spoken of recalling the Queen-mother," said the Capuchin, in a low voice, " of recalling her from Cologne." " Marie de Medicis ! " cried the Cardinal, striking both his hands on the arms of his chair. " No, as I live, she shall not re-enter the land of France, whence I have driven her foot by foot. England did not dare to shelter her, exiled by me ! Holland feared to sink beneath her ! and my kingdom would receive her back ? No, no ; such an idea could not have come from himself. To recall my enemy, recall his mother. What treachery ! No, he would never have dared to think of it." Then, after having pondered an instant, he went on, with a piercing and angry look at Father Joseph, " But in what terms did he express this desire ? tell me the exact words." " He said publicly and in the presence of Monsieur, ' I know well that to be a good son is one of the first duties of a Christian, and I will no longer stifle the murmurs of my conscience.' " " Christian ! conscience ! these are not his expressions : it is Father Caussin, his confessor, who has betrayed me," cried the Cardinal. "Traitorous Jesuit, I pardoned you your intrigue. with La Fayette, but 268 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. I will not overlook these secret suggestions. I will send this confessor about his business ; Joseph, it is clear he is the enemy of the State ; but I also have been negligent for several days past. I have not hastened the arrival of young D'Effiat as I should have done : he is sure to succeed ; a good-looking, witty fellow, they say ; what a blunder I have made ! I deserve to get into trouble myself. To leave near the king this fox of a Jesuit, without having given him my secret instructions, without having taken a hostage, a pledge of his fidelity to my orders ; how could I have been so careless ! Joseph, take a pen and write down quickly this for the new confessor, whom we will choose with more care. I am thinking of Father Sirmond." Father Joseph seated himself at the large table ready to write, and the Cardinal dictated to him these novel maxims, which, not long after, he had the courage to place in the king's hands, who received them, respected them, and learned them by heart, as if they had been ordi- nances of the Church. They have come down to us as a frightful monument of the empire that a man rnay seize by dint of patience, intrigue, and audacity : I. A prince ought to have a first minister, and this minister, three qualities : 1. That he should have no other attachment than to his prince. 2. That he should be prudent and faithful. 3. That he should be an ecclesiastic. II. A prince ought to be entirely attached to his minister. III. Ought never to change his minister. IV. Ought to tell him everything. V. Ought to give him free access to his person. VI. Ought to give him sovereign authority over his people, VII. Great honours and great wealth. VIII. A prince has no more precious treasure than his minister. IX. A prince ought not to believe anything that may be said against his minister, nor take pleasure in hearing him slandered. X. A prince ought to communicate to his minister everything that may be said against him, even when he has been made to promise that he will keep the secret. XL A prince ought to prefer not only the good of the State, but also his minister to all his relatives. Such were the commands of the supreme ruler of France, less astonishing than the frightful naivett which made him bequeath his orders to posterity, as if we also were bound to believe in him. VITET. Louis VITET was born at Paris in 1802. At the age of twenty-four he published anonymously Les Barricades, an historical study thrown into a dramatic form. This was followed by two other compositions of the same kind, Les Etats de Blots and La Mort de Henri III. These three works were printed in 1844, under the general title La Ligne. M. Vitet, who is a learned archaeologist and an eminent critic, was elected a member of the Academic des Inscriptions in 1839, and a member of the Academic Frangaise in 1845. Among other works he has published an Etude stir Eustache Le Sueur, from which the following passage is taken. EUSTACHE LE SUEUR. LE SUEUR was perhaps the only one of Vouet's pupils who refused to fire up for his master, and to take part in the system of disparagement and sarcasm that was formed against Poussin, from the day of his arrival at Paris. What he respected in the great artist was not the royal favour, it was the earnest character of his works, the nobility of his ideas, the boldness and novelty of his style. Poussin learned by chance that this young man was breaking lances on his behalf ; he wished to know him, and was so charmed with his candour, with the elevation of his sentiments, with the distinguished character of his mind, that he received him with affectionate kindness, and promised him his advice and friendship. From that day, Le Sueur never quitted the steps of his new master ; he fed on his fruitful and powerful words ; as he listened to him, he felt his doubts vanish, his presentiments and his dreams realized and made clear. Poussin's freedom of mind, his downright and sturdy attacks on the quackery of the trade, his firm opinions about everything, developed in his young friend a native independence and pride, that long restraint had only repressed. Le Sueur felt himself living again ; he took possession of himself; his nature burst the bonds of his education. It was almost always on the ancient art that they were accustomed 270 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. to talk. Le Sueur penetrated with delight into this world, so perfectly new to him. Without ceasing, he turned over, he devoured, the books of sketches after the antique that Poussin had brought back, and his memory was filled with notions and remembrances, that even in the midst of the ruins of Rome, nobody then had any idea of obtaining. For more than a year he was thus able to become impregnated by the lessons of Poussin, and, better still, by his works. He helped him in his labours ; he saw him paint first a great picture of the Last Supper for the high altar of the church of Saint Germain en Laye; then for the house of the Jesuit novices at Paris, that admirable picture of the young girl recalled to life by the miracle of St. Francois Xavier. His practical teaching set him free from many hackneyed ways, and revealed many secrets to him. He not only saw Poussin paint, but he painted before him ; it was under his inspiration, and almost in his presence, that he executed his diploma picture, for the ancient Academy of Saint Luke. This picture, of a grave and noble character, represented St. Paul laying his hands on the sick people. The composition of it has been preserved to us by the engraving. It seems written under the dictation of Poussin. LE SUEUR AND NICHOLAS POUSSIN. MERY. JOSEPH MERY was born near Marseilles in 1798, and devoted himself to literary pursuits from an early age. In 1820 he started a daily newspaper at Marseilles, which he called Le Phoceen, and in which he wrote political articles of such bitterness that he was involved in constant prosecutions. He also commenced another journal called La Mediterranee, and the two were subsequently united under the name of Le Sima- .phore. In 1824 he. came to Paris, and continuing his attacks on the Government, pub- lished in the following year two satirical Epitres, which made a great sensation. After the Revolution of 1830, in which he took part both with sword and pen, he gave up politics, and devoted himself to writing romances and comedies. Among his works, which are very numerous, may be mentioned, La Floride, Heva, La Guerre du Nizam, and Andre Chenier. THE ARREST OF ANDRE CHENIER. ON arriving, the friend found the friend no more. Doubt even was impossible ; Andre Chenier understood that the poet of the Months, that the editor of the Jotirnal de Paris, that his accomplice in innocence, was already thrown into the depths of one of those dungeons whence no one issued but to die. Therefore it was not to clear up a doubt, but to weep with another friend over a grievous reality, that he went off to Passy, to M. de Pastoret ; and never did inspiration better second the fatal destiny of a man. The house of M. de Pastoret was suffering a domiciliary visitation at that moment, under the direction of the citizen Guenot. This intelligent commissioner had orders to arrest, as he went, all suspicious persons. So willed it Fouquier-Tuiville and Collot d'Herbois, those enemies of everybody and of themselves those two dictators seated on the throne of the executioner, and ruling Robespierre himself. Collot d'Herbois had constituted himself purveyor to the guillotine, and he would grant to nobody the right of joining him in this work. It is easily understood : this man had old wrongs to revenge, and numerous crimes against his person to punish : having never discovered his enemies, he discovered the secret of exterminating them all by 272 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. exterminating everybody. Collot d'Herbois had been hissed at the theatre for a long time, at first as a bad author, afterwards as a bad actor, they say. This long and double series of public affronts was fixed in his memory, and the snakes of the dramatic furies unceasingly rent with their hissing, the ears of this Orestes of the Terror ; for him, all men were suspected, and above all, suspected of having hissed him from the pit of some theatre before '89. History has never given sufficient weight to the secret causes that impel certain political men to long insatiably for vengeance. In passing, we have explained the character of Collot d'Herbois, that tyrant of Robespierre and the Convention. The citizen Guenot, the spy of Collot d'Herbois, saw a young man arrive suddenly at M. de Pastoret's house, with a nervous complexion, a resolute air, a flaming eye, and he recognised immediately an incon- testable enemy of the actor, Collot d'Herbois. " Your name ? " he said. " What do you want to do with it ? " asked Chenier, instead of answering. " Answer, or I arrest you." " Well," said Chenier, " out of respect to myself, I will tell you my name ; for I am not in the habit of hiding it, as it is an honourable one ; I am Andre Chenier." " The journalist?" " Yes." " The writer ? " " Yes." " The enemy of liberty ? " " No ; it is false." " Have you not written the supplement of No. 13 ? " " Yes ; I do not retract it." " Have you not written against Collot d'Herbois and Fouquier- Tuiville?" " Not enough." " I arrest you in the name of the Revolutionary Tribunal. You are suspected." " I fear nothing ; I am innocent." " The Revolutionary Tribunal and the citizen Collot d'Herbois ac- knowledge no one innocent among all those who are suspected." Guenot wrote an order, sent it to an agent ; two armed men who were not soldiers, to the honour of the republican uniform, seized the illustrious poet violently ; they made him get into a little carriage, and ANDRE CHENIER. M&RY. 273 he was conducted to the Luxembourg prison. The jailor of the prison received the order, murmuring, like an innkeeper who is overdone with people, and gave back the paper, saying that it was not right. The agent insisted, sounded out the name of citizen Gudnot three times ; but the jailor, who had his pride too, and the conviction of his civic importance, shut the door of his jail and bolted it noisily, without appearing to care for the orders of citizen Guenot. During this scene, Andre* Chenier remained perfectly unmoved From the Luxembourg, the carriage went towards the prison of Saint Lazare. Here there was no difficulty. The jailor did not know how to read, but at the names of Guenot and Collot d'Herbois, who largely supplied him with means of subsistence, he made a respectful bow, and opened to the poet the frightful entrance to a dungeon. Andre found then, in the depth of his soul, those boundless resources which great men possess in the deepest misfortunes. He had left hope on the threshold of the dungeon, but his courage followed him through the gloomy gratings, and simple courage took the place of lost hope. THE PONT DU CARD. IN visiting ancient cities, one meets with ancient monuments ; it is in the order of things ; one expects to see them there. The Romans, those great politicians, built amphitheatres to amuse the conquered nations these nations exchanged their liberty for the games of the circus, and they thought that they gained by this traffic. One sees also temples in these same towns: the Romans built them everywhere. It is then without astonishment, that one finds in the midst of our modern streets, and among our little pasteboard edifices, these magnificent venerable ruins, the immortal works of a dead people. But there, before the Pont du Gard, one is struck dumb with astonishment ; you are walking in a desert where nothing reminds you of man ; cultivation has disappeared ; there are ravines, heaths, blocks of rock, clusters of rushes, oaks, massed together, a stream which flows by a melancholy strand, wild mountains, a silence like that of Thebes, and in the midst of this landscape springs up the most magnificent object that civilization has created for the glory of the fine arts. The apparent futility of the end even enhances the prodigy of the means ; it is simply to give an additional supply of water to a town, where water abounds N N 274 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. already. Well ! to provide a conduit through the air for a tiny stream; the Romans have taken a mountain, they have melted it down with the sweat of their brows ; they have fashioned it into three rows of arches, with a kind of architecture, which is a mixture of incomparable grace with majestic solidity. What bridge was used as a model for this bridge ? None ; it was a creation. Rome imitated the Greeks in orna- mental work ; but when she gave herself the trouble to create, she impressed on her work a special character, like the impress of eternity. Just this she did with the Pont du Card. Not knowing where to copy, she invented ; without a plan previously submitted to the aediles, without hesitation. Had she time to hesitate ? Her painstaking genius impro- vised marvels ; in going about her provinces, there was not a mountain from which she did not demand the half of its stone to improve a high road, to bestow on herself triumphal arches, to build for herself resting- places. And with what heartiness did the noble sons of Rome set them- selves to the work ! A poet has revealed to us in three words the whole secret of that obstinate constancy of the Roman legionaries, of their matchless ardour in the heat of the work yard : " Vincit amor Patriae." Each soldier sacrificed to Rome that contingent of glory which a work completed brought to him ; it was a universal self-denial, a modest patriotism concentrated in that single word Rome. They brought each his block of stone to the monument, thinking of the honour which would be reflected on the Capitoline city; they enjoyed the admiration that the wonderful building excited among the conquered nations. The construction of a colossal edifice was as profitable to Rome as the magic of a victory ; there was not one of her soldiers who did not bethink himself in his toil of that cry of amazement that the future age would utter before the works of Rome; and this remote praise sweetened their labours, and the numbers of the legions were not engraved on the slabs they quarried ; it was Rome that was the doer of it all. The Pont du Gard has no signature ; tell us the name of the architect ? It was Rome that built it. THE PONT DU GARD. MfiRIMEE. PROSPER MERIMEE was born at Paris in 1803. From his father, who was an artist, he inherited property which placed him in independent circumstances. In 1825 he published a volume of plays, under an assumed name, and in the guise of a trans- lation from an imaginary Spanish dramatist, whom he called Clara Gazul. La Guzla, an imitation of the poetry of the Slavonic races, was similarly brought out under the pseudonym of Hyacinthe Maglanowich. These were followed by La Jacquerie and La Famille de Carvajal ; and by Matteo Falcone, and L Enlwement de la Redoute, two short tales published in the Revue de Paris, After the Revolution of 1830, M. Me"rime"e became a member of the government ; and in 1834 was appointed Inspector- General of Historic Monuments. In this capacity he visited the south of France, Auvergne, and Corsica ; and produced, besides his best-known work, the romance of Colomba, several volumes on archaeological subjects, as results of his travels. THE STORMING OF THE REDOUBT, ONE of my military friends, who died of fever in Greece some years ago, gave me an account one day of the first affair in which he had been engaged. I was so struck, that I wrote it down from memory as soon as I had leisure. Here it is : I rejoined the regiment on the evening of the 4th of September. I found the colonel in bivouac. He received me at first roughly enough ; but when he had read the letter of recommendation from General B , he changed his tone, and addressed some kind words to me. He presented me to my captain, who returned at that instant from reconnoitring. This captain, whom I did not have much time to know, was a tall dark man, with a hard, repulsive physiognomy. He had been a common soldier, and had gained his epaulets and his cross on the field of battle. His voice, which was hoarse and weak, contrasted strangely with his almost gigantic stature. They told me that this odd voice was owing to a ball which had pierced him through and through at the battle of Jena. Learning that I came from the school of Fontainebleau, he made a grimace, and said, " My lieutenant died yesterday." ... I under- 276 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. stood that he meant to say, " You ought to take his place, and you are not capable of it." A sharp word came to my lips, but I restrained myself. The moon rose behind the redoubt of Cheverino, situated within two cannon-shot of our bivouac. It was large and red, as it usually is when it rises. But this evening it appeared to me of an extraordinary size. For an instant the redoubt stood out in shadow on the shining disk of the moon. It resembled the cone of a volcano at the moment of eruption. An old soldier, near whom I was standing, remarked the colour of the moon. " It's very red," said he ; "that's a sign that we shall have to pay dear to get it, this famous redoubt ! " I have always been supersti- tious, and this augury, at that moment especially, affected me. I lay down, but I could not sleep. I got up and walked for some time, looking at the immense line of fires which covered the heights beyond the village of Cheverino. When I thought that the fresh and keen night air had cooled my blood enough, I returned to the fire ; I wrapped myself carefully in my cloak, and shut my eyes, hoping not to open them before day. But sleep would not come. Insensibly my thoughts assumed a gloomy colouring. I said to myself that I had not a friend among the 100,000 men that covered the plain. If I were wounded I should be in a hospital, treated without consideration by ignorant surgeons. All I had heard of surgical operations came into my mind. My heart beat violently, and mechanically I placed my handkerchief and pocket-book on my chest, as a kind of cuirass. Fatigue overwhelmed me, and I dozed every minute, and every minute some sinister thought reproduced itself with renewed force, and woke me with a start. However, fatigue got the best of it, and when the reveil sounded I was fast asleep. We drew up in order of battle, the muster was called, then we piled arms, and every- thing announced that we were going to spend a quiet day. About three o'clock an aide-de-camp arrived, bringing an order. We were commanded to take our arms again ; our sharpshooters spread themselves over the plain ; we followed them slowly, and at the end of twenty minutes we saw all the advanced guard of the Russians fall back and enter the redoubt. A battery of artillery came and established itself on our right, and another on our left, but both much in advance of us. They began a very lively fire on the enemy, who replied ener- getically, and soon the redoubt of Cheverino disappeared under thick clouds of smoke. MERIMEE. 277 Our regiment was almost sheltered from the fire of the Russians by a bend in the ground. Their bullets, rare moreover among us (for they fired, in preference, on our gunners), passed over our heads, or at most sent a little earth and small stones down upon us. Directly the order to march forward had been given us, my captain looked at me so fixedly, that I was forced to pass my hand over my young moustache with as easy an air as possible. As to the rest, I was not afraid, and the only fear I had was, that they should fancy I was frightened. These harmless bullets contributed besides to keep up my heroic calmness. My self-love told me that I was running into great danger, for at last. I was under the fire of a battery. I was highly gratified at being so much at my ease, and I thought of the pleasure of relating the taking of the redoubt of Cheverino in Madame B 's drawing-room in the Rue de Provence. The colonel passed before our company. He addressed me : " Well ! you will see some sharp work, for a beginning." I smiled with a perfectly martial air, and brushed the sleeve of my coat, on which a bullet, falling thirty paces off, had sent a little dust. It seems that the Russians perceived the bad success of their bullets, for they began to use shells instead, which could reach us more easily in the hollow where we were posted. A rather considerable explosion carried off my shako, and killed a man near me. " I congratulate you," said the captain, as I came back from picking up my shako ; " you are quit for the day." I knew this military super- stition, that the axiom non bis in idem finds its application as much on a field of battle as in a court of justice. I put on my shako proudly. " That's an unceremonious way of saluting people," said I, as gaily as I could. This bad joke, under the circumstances, seemed excellent. " I congratulate you," answered the captain ; " you will have nothing more, and this evening you will command a company ; for I know the oven is getting hot for me. Every time I have been wounded, the officer next to me has received some spent ball ; and," he added in a lower and almost bashful tone, " their names always began with P." I tried to be strong-minded ; many people would have done as I did ; many people would have been as much struck as I was by these pro- phetic words. Conscript that I was, I felt that I could not confide my feelings to any one, and that I ought to appear always coldly intrepid. At the end of half an hour the Russian fire diminished sensibly ; then we left our covert, and marched on the redoubt. Our regiment was composed of three battalions. The second was ordered to turn the 278 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. flank of the redoubt on the side of the gorge ; the two others were to assault it. I was in the third battalion. Coming out from behind the kind of breastwork that had protected us, we were received with several discharges of musket-shot, which did little mischief in our ranks. The whistling of the balls surprised me : I often turned my head, and thus drew some jokes upon myself from my comrades, who were more used to the noise. On the whole, I said to myself, a battle is not such a terrible thing. We advanced at a running pace, preceded by sharpshooters. All at once the Russians uttered three hurrahs, three distinct hurrahs, then remained silent, and did not fire. " I don't like this silence," said my captain ; " that augurs nothing good for us." I found that our men were rather too noisy, and I could not help drawing a comparison, in my own mind, -between their tumultuous clamours and the imposing silence of the enemy. We quickly reached the foot of the redoubt : the palisades had been broken down, and the earth torn up by our bullets. The soldiers threw themselves on these new ruins, with cries of " Vive 1'Empereur ! " louder than could have been expected from men who had already shouted so much. I looked up, and I never shall forget the sight I saw. The greater part of the smoke had risen, and remained suspended like a canopy twenty feet above the redoubt. Through a bluish vapour you saw the Russian grenadiers (behind their half-destroyed breastwork), their arms raised, motionless as statues. I think I can still see each soldier, with his left eye looking at us, and his right hidden by his raised musket. In an embrasure, a few feet from us, near a cannon, was a man holding a match. I shuddered, and thought that my last hour was come. " Now the dance is going to begin," cried my captain. " Good night." These were the last words I ever heard him utter. A rolling of drums was heard in the redoubt. I saw all the guns lowered. I shut my eyes, and I heard a frightful crash, followed by cries and groans. I opened my eyes, surprised to find myself still in the world. The redoubt was anew enveloped in smoke. I was surrounded by wounded and dead. My captain was stretched at my feet ; his head had been smashed by a bullet, and I was covered with his blood and brains. Of all my company there only remained standing six men and myself. To this carnage succeeded a moment of stupor. The colonel, STORMING THE REDOUBT. MERIMEE. 279 putting his hat on the end of his sword, was the first to climb the breastwork, shouting " Vive 1'Empereur ! " He was followed immediately by all the survivors. I have hardly any farther clear remembrance of what followed. We entered the redoubt, I do not know how. We fought hand to hand, in the midst of a smoke so thick that we could not see one another. I believe I struck, for my sword was all bloody. At last I heard the cry of victory, and the smoke clearing off, I perceived that the ground of the redoubt was quite hidden by dead bodies and blood. The cannon, particularly, were buried under a heap of corpses. About two hundred men in French uniforms were grouped without any order ; some were loading their guns, others wiping their bayonets. Eleven Russian prisoners were with them. The colonel was lying bleeding on a broken cannon near the gorge. A few soldiers pressed round him: I approached. "Where is the oldest captain ? " he asked a sergeant. The sergeant shrugged his shoulders in a very expressive manner. " And the oldest lieutenant ? " " This gentleman who came yesterday," said the sergeant in a perfectly calm tone. The colonel smiled bitterly. " Come, sir," he said to me, " you command in chief ; have the gorge of the redoubt quickly fortified with these waggons, for the enemy is in force ; but General C will support you." " Colonel," I said, " you are badly wounded ? " K Done for, my good fellow, but the redoubt is taken." SAINTE-BEUVE, CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE was born at Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1804. He was educated for the medical profession, but commenced at an early age those contributions to the Globe, the Revue de Parts, the Revue des Deux Mondes, the National, the Moniteur, the Constitutionnel, and other newspapers and periodicals, which have gained him so high a reputation as a critic and essayist. M. Sainte-Beuve also enjoys a considerable estimation as a poet. Amongst his works are, UHistoire de Port Royal, Etude sur Virgile, Poesies Completes, Pensees d'Ao&t ; and many of his newspaper articles have been republished under the titles of Portraits and Causeries de Lundi, LA HARPE. DUCLOS has ended his history of Louis XI. by saying : " Consider- ing everything, he was a king." Gaillard, remembering this expression, has tried to apply it to La Harpe, and he says that, " Putting everything together, he was a man." Certainly, taking everything into account, and especially in relation to his contemporaries, he was somebody, this M. de La Harpe, and I think I have made this pretty evident in my first critique. However, several of the essential qualities of a manly character moderation, judgment, a power of stopping at the right time, of re- tracing his steps wisely, of remembering the past were wanting in him, and his. last eleven or twelve years show that impossibility of ripening which is the character of some lively organizations. Voltaire, among all the praises that he lavished on his disciple, has let drop a terrible saying, in which he fathoms La Harpe, going to the very bottom of the man himself, " He is an oven that is always hot, and cooks nothing." The fact is, that with La Harpe there was at all times an expenditure of heat perfectly unproductive, and out of proportion with the result. At first, he let himself be carried away by the Revolution ; nothing was more simple, or even more legitimate and excusable, for the be- ginning. But La Harpe did not stop at the great days, or what might pass for such: his enthusiasm lived on to the loth of August, to the 2d of September, to the 2ist of January. A series of extracts have been made from his articles in the Mercure, from which it is evident that LA HARPE : MEDITATION ON THOMAS A KEMPIS. SAINTE-BEUVE. 281 till 1793, and even to the beginning of 1794, he came up to all that could then be desired of him in extravagant declamation. He did not cease to denounce in terms worthy of the old and fiery Raynal, " the super- stition which," he would say, " transforms man into a beast ;" the fanati- cism which "makes a wild beast of him ;" the despotism that "makes him a beast of burden? But once thrown into prison, detained at the Luxembourg, La Harpe, with that excessive self-love which one re- cognises in him, was more astonished than any other would have been at being impeached ; the idea of death appeared to him ; his imagina- tion pictured it ; he became the prey of a great tumult ; and, in this overthrow of his whole being, he felt a change take place within him he received the thunderclap, that which is called the touch of mercy, which subdued him, and turned him round. " I was in my prison, alone in a little room, and deeply sad. For some days I had been reading the Psalms, the Gospels, and some good books. Their effect had been rapid, though gradual. Already I was returning to the faith ; I saw a new light, but it terrified and alarmed me by show- ing me an abyss, that of forty years' wandering. I saw all the evil and no remedy. There was nothing about me that offered me the help of religion. On one side, my life was put before my eyes, so that I saw it in the light of divine truth ; and, on the other, death the death I was expecting every day, such a death as one then received. The priest no longer appeared on the scaffold to comfort him who was going to die : he only mounted it to die himself. Full of these afflicting thoughts, my heart was subdued and made supplication to God, whom I had just found again, and whom I hardly knew as yet. I said to Him, 'What must I do ? What will become of me ?' I had the ' Imitation ' on my table, and I had been told that, in this excellent book, I should often find the answer to my thoughts. I opened it at hazard, and in so doing my eye fell on these words : ' Here I am, my son ! I come to thee, because thou hast called upon me.' I read no more ; the sudden im- pression that I experienced is beyond all expression, and it is no more possible for me to describe than to forget it. I fell on my face on the ground, bathed in tears, choked with sobs, uttering cries and broken words. My heart was comforted and enlarged, and at the same time it felt ready to break. Assailed by a crowd of ideas and feelings, I wept for some time without retaining any remembrance of my situation, except that beyqnd all comparison it was the most powerful and delicious that my heart ever felt. ' Here am I, my son,' did not cease to echo in my soul, and to shake powerfully all my faculties." o o GEORGE SAND. MADAME ARMANDINE LUCILE AURORE DUDEVANT, better known under the Horn de plume of George Sand, is the daughter of the Marquis Maurice Dupin de Franceuil, and was born at Paris in 1804. She was brought up by her grandmother, the Comtesse de Horn, a woman distinguished rather for wit than judgment, and whose religion was comprised in the philosophy of Rousseau. She was sent at the age of fifteen to the Convent of the Dames Anglaises, at Paris, for the purpose of receiving religious instruction, and was induced to embrace the Roman Catholic faith. After the death of her grandmother she married the Baron Dudevant. She has published a large number of novels and plays, among others La Petite Martprat> Andr6, and Le Marquis de Villemer. EARLY READINGS I Ak one of those to whom the making acquaintance with a book may become a real moral event. The few good books which have made d, deep impression upon me in the course of my life have developed the few good qualities that I possess. A book has always been to me a friend, an adviser, a calm and eloquent comforter, whose resources I would not exhaust too quickly, and kept for the right occasions. Oh, who is there among us who does not 'recall with tenderness the first books that he devoured or tasted ? The dusty leather binding which you find on the shelves of an old cupboard, has it never brought back to you the sweet scenes of your early years ? Have you not seemed to see before you the wide meadow bathed in the ruddy light of evening, where you read it for the first time, the old beech and the hedge which shaded you, the bank which served you for couch and table, while the thrush was singing an evening song to his fellows, and the pipe of the cowherd died away in the distance. Oh, how soon night fell on the enchanting volume ! how unkindly the twilight made the letters waver on the fading page ! It is over ; the lambs bleat, the sheep have returned to the fold, the cricket takes possession of the plain. The forms of the trees are lost in the gathering darkness, as were just now the letters on EARLY READINGS. GEORGE SAND. 283 the book. It is time to go ; the road is stony, the path is narrow and slippery, the hill is steep, the perspiration stands upon your forehead, but you must quicken your steps ; you will be too late, supper will be begun. It is in vain that the old servant who loves you will have put back the clock as much as possible ; you will have the humiliation of coming in last, and the grandmother, inexorable on the subject of etiquette, even here far away in the country, will give you in a sweet sad voice, a little reproof, very gentle, very tender, which will touch you more than a severe punishment. But, when she asks you at night what you have been doing all day, and you confess, blushing, that you forgot the time while reading in a meadow, and are desired to show F the book ; with some hesitation, and no little fear of seeing it confiscated before you have finished it, you will draw tremblingly from your pocket, what ? Estelle et Ntmorin, or Robinson Crusoe! Oh! then the grand- mother smiles. Take courage, you shall have your treasure back ; but do not forget your supper in future. Happy days ! oh, my shady valley ! oh, Corinne ! oh, Bernardin de St. Pierre ! oh, the Iliad ! oh, Millevoye ! oh, Atala ! oh, the willows of the river! oh, my departed youth! oh, my old dog who did not forget supper-time, and who answered at the distant sound of the bell by a doleful howl of appetite and regret 1 KARR. JEAN BAPTISTE KARR was born at Paris in 1808. In 1839 he became editor of the satirical journal Le Figaro, and in the same year founded Les Guepes, a monthly journal which met with great success. After the Revolution of 1848, for a short time he took part in public affairs, and wrote some bitter pamphlets against Prince Louis Napoleon, but he soon became disgusted with political life, and retiring to Nice, devoted himself to the cultivation of flowers. He still writes occasionally in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and other periodicals. He is well known as the author of a large number of popular novels ; we may mention Une Heure trop Tard ; Vendredi Soir ; Voyage autour de mon Jardin; Promenades kors de mon Jardin. The following extract is from Les Fleurs. TO DR. MARCHESSAUX. I KNOW a little old man who is always neatly dressed in a black coat, with very white ruffles, and a shirt-frill plaited in the most perfect way. Never have I heard him complain ; never have I caught him desiring anything. There is only one. thing in the world which seems to me to demand respect more than misfortune ; it is happiness, on account of its rarity, and, above all, its perishableness. I do not think I have ever thoughtlessly meddled with the hap- piness of another, however small it may be, however strange it may appear to me. Sometimes it happens that I do not understand it, or even think that, if I should try it, it would not suit me, but that has never been a reason why I should treat it lightly or with disdain. It is so often a brilliant bubble, that in the presence of happiness of whatever description, I hold my breath respectfully. I liked very much to meet my little old man, because he seemed perfectly happy ; but I had never thought of asking him about it : when one day I found on his face the first cloud I had seen there since chance had brought us in contact. I was more curious this time, and I wanted to know what thorn he had found amongst the roses of his life. He seemed only waiting for KARR. 285 an opportunity of speaking of what had so sadly engaged his thoughts, and said to me ; " I have just been visiting an old friend, and I have seen some things which grieve me." " Is he ill ? " I inquired. " Not at all," he replied, " Has he then lost a lawsuit, or a large sum of money ? " " Still less : he has come in for a fortune, and this fortune has thrown him into the deepest misery. It is the sight of this misery which has gnawed into my heart." Having once entered on the subject, he told me the whole story. Here it is " I have known him for a long time," he said ; " I had often noticed him at ' la Petite Provence/ in the Tuileries. From having looked at each other, we proceeded to bow. One day, I had asked him what time it was, because my watch had stopped ; the next day, in return for the courtesy with which he had answered me, I offered him a pinch of snuff. Some time after that we concluded by having a little chat, and finally we told each other everything. " Since then, we have talked together for ten years. Our mode of life was so similar, that we could vegetate admirably in the same soil and the same atmosphere. He was a widower, and I a bachelor. I have upwards of eleven hundred francs income : he had then twelve hundred ; but as he lived near the Tuileries, where the apartments are dear, this expense absorbed the surplus, and made our fortunes equal. " You have never met with two men so rich and happy as we were. When it was fine, he received me at the Tuileries. The Tuileries was his garden. Never was there a property more complete and more free from care. " What is having a garden, if the Tuileries did not belong to my friend ? " Every morning he found his paths well rolled, and even watered, if the heat occasioned too much dust. He walked up and down under the thick shade of chestnut-trees, or rested on a white marble seat. " Numerous gardeners kept in good order immense beds of flowers, and constantly replaced those which were faded, and had cast their seed to the wind when their season of bloom and perfume was over, by others belonging to the following season. He breathed the spring perfume of the lilacs, and the airy and mysterious odour of the lime-- 286 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. trees. He had, at last, made acquaintance with the gardeners, and he was not without influence in the arrangement of the flower-beds. For myself, I had the Luxembourg ; our position was the same in the two gardens. I often gave him the seeds of the flower-which he liked in my garden, in exchange for those which I admired in his. The gardener who gave me them for him always willingly accepted those which I received from my friend. " At the Luxembourg the swans in the water knew me. I thought less of the familiarity which existed between my friend and the swans of the Tuileries, because their affection is commoner, and one can, without injustice, accuse them of treating everybody with equal distinction. I repeat it, our gardens were altogether ours. The only difference that can be discovered between us and the people who pretend to have gardens, and to be more truly proprietors of them, is, that we had each one of the richest and most beautiful gardens in Europe, and we had nothing to pay for gardeners, improvements, or repairs. " ' My friend,' said he, on leaving me in the evening, after a walk in my garden, 'your crocuses are beautiful and varied ; but I invite you to come and see my double peach blossoms, and in a fortnight my lilacs. You will find me at the foot of my statue of the " Carrying away of Orithyia.' " Another time, it was I who invited him to come and walk on my terrace at the Luxembourg, where there are such fine service trees, and such old hawthorns with pink blossoms. " Sometimes, however, we had disputes. He was, I must say, rather too proud of the beautiful ladies who came to drive in his garden ; he even took it into his head one day to be proud, because, from time to time, he saw the king on the balcony of the castle. I proved to him, as clear as day, that my plants were the most carefully cultivated, that his flower-beds were full of the most vulgar flowers. I mentioned, to prove the superiority of my garden, the collection of roses, which is unquestionably the finest in Europe. It is true that he had at the Tuileries more statues and more precious bronzes ; but in a garden, I think much more of the trees and the flowers than of bronze and marble. When it rained, we went to see his museum of antiquities on the Place du Louvre ; or, in the time of the Exhibition, to the galleries, where the modern painters submitted the products of their labour to his inspection. " Sometimes it was I who invited him to come and visit my galleries at the Luxembourg, and this, again, occasioned some little disputes on the respective value of our museums, or only because he regulated his KARR. 287 watch by his dial at his palace of the Tuileries, which he pretended was infallible ; while I often wished to set it right by my sun-dial at my palace of the Luxembourg. " But it was seldom that these discussions became bitter. Besides, if our little manias of proprietorship sometimes exasperated us against each other, we had also many undivided possessions in common, on account of which we were liable to no such differences of opinion ; our menagerie, our museum, and our greenhouses 4 in the Jardin des Plantes, for example. " I will not talk to you about our friendships with some of the animals in our menagerie, of the interest we felt in the precarious health of the .giraffe and of a black bear. We were highly delighted when they made us our famous monkey palace, and this was not without some influence in adding to our good opinion of the minister who then presided in the council. " When they made so much noise about the paulownia impetialis, which, like too clever children, turned out to be nothing but a catdlpa, we had known it for a long time, and had seen it growing in our Jardin des Plantes, while nobody in Europe knew of its existence. We may be pardoned if we were a little too proud of our paulownia, which, after all, is a tree of an admirable growth while it is young, and preserves in its old age the honour of being still like one of the finest trees in the open field. " We had lived like this for ten years, when one day my friend did not come to a rendezvous that I had appointed in my path to the observa- tory. It was the first time that one of us had missed a meeting, except once, five years before, when I let him wait for me at his Petite Provence, because I had nearly given myself a sprain on my staircase. I could only attribute his absence to an accident of this kind, or, perhaps, worse, and I went to his house. I found him quite well, but strangely affected. He had that morning received a letter which informed him that his cousin had just died two leagues from Paris, and had left him an income of rather more than 3,000 livres. " He wept as he embraced me, and assured me that his fortune could never make him indifferent to his friends ; that I should always find him . the same, &c. Nevertheless, it was necessary that he should set out immediately to take possession. It is four months ago, and I had no news of him. I began already to think of him with a kind of bitterness, and the newspaper-seller at the Tuileries having asked news of him, I replied sharply, ' I do not know he has made his fortune I see nothing 288 of him now ; ' when the day before yesterday I received a letter from him. " Here it is. " ' MY DEAR OLD FRIEND, " ' I flatter myself that you have not attributed my silence to indifference or forgetfulness still less to the increase of my fortune. Many different cares have occupied all my leisure since our last inter- view. First, I have decided to stay here in my house. I must have some repairs and alterations made. " ' As I do not think you have conceived a bad opinion of me, so I like to think of you as I knew you. If it would be foolish on my part to be unmindful of you because I have become rich, it would be but little better if you neglected me in future for the same reason ; it would spoil my happiness, and you would not wish it. ." ' I expect you then to-morrow to breakfast with me. " ' YOUR FRIEND.' " Man is a miserable creature. I felt a little envious, and I tried to find some disagreeable phrase in my old friend's letter, some sign of vanity, at which I might be angry. I found nothing, and set out this morning. " My friend lives in a dirty, little, ill-built country town. His house, which they readily pointed out to me, is small, white, with green blinds. You go in by a narrow gate, which was far from making such an impression upon me as the iron bars of his garden at the Tuileries. I had from the first a presentiment that my friend was ruined, while he fancied he was making his fortune. " No one could have received me better, but everything that I saw, added to his kind reception, was not long in changing the envy with which I had started into a feeling of pity. " I shall never forget the pride with which he took me round a garden which could easily have been contained in one of the flower-beds at the Tuileries. Some sticks here and there, some broomsticks which he called trees, and which stood in need of shade themselves, instead of giving any. In the middle of the garden a great cask buried in the ground, was called the fountain. It was half full of green and stagnant Water, because they only bring it every other day, and the cask leaks a little. "You can never imagine what joy he felt at having changed the great KARR. 289 marble fountains at the Tuileries for this cask, without considering that the said cask gives him all manner of trouble when the sun dries it and loosens the hoops, while formerly they cleaned and mended his marble fountains without his disturbing himself in the least about it. " What secret joy is there then in the sense of possession ! With my friend, to have this garden with its broomsticks, was to have the great chestnuts of the Tuileries no longer. To possess the square surrounded with walls white enough to blind one, was to be exiled from all the rest of the earth, from all the beautiful country, from all the lovely landscapes. "In the house, he showed me two or three bad pictures, with which he had ornamented his drawing-room. It was necessary for him to inherit and become rich, that he might be condemned to see nothing but these frightful daubs. When he was poor, he looked at the most beautiful paintings of all countries and all masters, accumulated in our museums. " I came back sad, and I wished to see again his old garden, which he is so pleased to have left. A great terror has seized me in consequence ; it is that I may, in my turn, by chance become rich, that I may become a proprietor, may lose my beautiful garden of the Luxembourg, may be forced to live in a square surrounded by walls, and, what is still worse, may be happy and proud of it. " I have thought over all my relations, and especially those who are rich, and, among the latter, those whose heir I am. "There is only one who makes me anxious ; he went to America twenty years ago, and since then, nothing has been heard of him. If the bell rings at home, I shall tremble lest I should hear that he has died a millionaire, and that I am his heir. I have seen a letter that we received two months after his departure, nearly twenty years ago. This letter tells us that several vessels had perished, crew and cargo, in a gale of wind. The vessel which bore my uncle was of the number, but as the long boat has not been seen since, they think that part of the crew at least tried to save themselves. " Provided that my uncle be not saved ! " P P VICTOR HUGO. MARIE VICTOR, VISCOUNT HUGO, was born at Besancon in 1802, his father being then a colonel in the French army. In 1822 appeared the first volume of his Odes and Ballads, which was followed by several dramatic pieces. He soon attacked the so- called classical style of French dramatic poetry, and thus awakened the wrath of the French Academy, which laid a complaint against his attempted innovations before the King, Charles X., but received the answer " that in matters of art he was no more than a private person." In 1841 he became a member of the Academy. M. Hugo was created a peer of France by Louis Philippe, and in 1849 was chosen President of the Peace Congress. Since 1852, he has lived as an exile in Jersey and Guernsey, whence he has issued his Napoleon le Petit and Les Chatimens. He has also published, during his residence there, his Contemplations, and Les Mistrables, a work that has been translated into most of the European languages. Among his earlier works may be named Hernani, Marion Delorme, and Ruy Bias. The following passages are from Notre Dame, Les Miserables, and M. Hugo's last published work, Les Travailleurs de la Mer. PARIS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. ADMIRABLE as Paris seems to you at present, rear again the Paris of the fifteenth century, reconstruct it in thought ; watch the day break through this wonderful range of spires, towers, and belfries; stretch through the midst of the immense city, rent by the point of the islands, bent under the arches of the bridges, the Seine with its broad, green, and yellow pools, more changing than a serpent's skin ; outline clearly on a blue horizon the Gothic profile of this old Paris, make the forms of it float on the winter's mist which clings to its innumerable chimneys, drown it in profound darkness, and look at the strange play of shadows and lights in this dark labyrinth of buildings ; throw a ray of moonlight which may give it a vague outline, and bring out from the mists the great heads of the towers ; or take again the black silhouette, bring out of the shade again, the thousand sharp angles of the spires and gables and make it project, more jagged than the jaw-bone of a shark, on the copper-coloured sky at sunset And then compare. And if you wish to receive an impression of the old town that the modern can give no longer, you climb, on a high feast day, at the dawn of Easter or Whitsunday, to some high point whence you may command the whole capital, and attend at the waking of the chimes. See, at a signal from the heavens for it is the sun that gives it the VICTOR HUGO. 291 thousand churches startle at once. There are first stray tinklings, pass- ing from one church to another, as when musicians give warning that they are about to begin. Then, on a sudden, see for at certain moments it seems as if the ear also had sight see, arise at the same moment from each belfry, as it were a column of sound, as it were a cloud of harmony. At first, the vibration of each bell rises straight, pure, and, so to speak, isolated from the others, in the glowing sky of morning ; then, little by little, growing louder, they melt, they mingle, they are lost, one in another, they blend in glorious union. It is now but one mass of sonorous vibration, which issues without ceasing from in- numerable belfries, which floats, undulates, bounds, thunders over the town, and prolongs far beyond the horizon, the deafening circle of its pulsations. Nevertheless, this sea of harmony is not a chaos. Vast and profound as it is, it has not lost its transparency ; you see each cluster of notes which issues from the bells, circling apart ; you can follow the dialogue, now deep and now shrill, of the treble and the bass : you see the octaves leaping from one belfry to another ; you see them spring, winged, light, and thrilling from the silver bell ; falling, broken and lame, from the bell of wood : you admire in the midst of them the rich scale which the seven bells of Saint Eustache run ceaselessly up and down, and across them fly clear and rapid notes, which make three or four luminous zigzags and vanish like lightning. Yonder is Saint Martin's abbey, a sharp and broken songstress, here the stern and ill-omened voice of the Bastille, on the other side the great tower of the Louvre with its deep bass. The royal chime of the palace flings in- cessantly on all sides, glittering trills, on which fall, at regular intervals, the heavy strokes from the belfry of Notre Dame, which makes them sparkle like the anvil under the hammer. At intervals you see pass sounds of every form, which come from the triple peal of Saint Germain des Pres. Then again, from time to time, this mass of lofty sounds opens and makes way for the strains of the Ave Maria, which shine and glitter like a diadem of stars. Lowest of all, you distinguish confusedly the chanting within the churches, issuing from every pore in their vaulted roofs. Truly it is a concert worth listening to. Commonly, when the murmur of Paris arises by day, the city is speaking ; at night the city is breathing ; now, the city is singing. Listen, then, to this full chorus of bells ; blend with it the hum of half a million of men, the eternal murmur of the stream, the countless whisperings of the winds, the deep and distant quartette of the four forests stationed on the hills of the horizon, like mighty organs ; tone down, as with a half tint, whatever 292 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS . may be too harsh or jarring in the central chime and say if you know anything in the world more rich, more joyous, more dazzling than this tumult of the bells, than this fiery flood of music, than these ten thousand brazen voices sounding at once in organ-pipes of stone three hundred feet in height ; than this city, which is one vast orchestra ; than this symphony, which thunders like a tempest. THE FIELD OF WATERLOO. ON the 1 8th of June, 1815, there was a full moon. Its brightness favoured Blucher's fierce pursuit, betrayed the course of the fugitives, delivered up the deplorable throng to the infuriated Prussian cavalry, and looked on at the massacre. Catastrophes are sometimes marked by these tragic graces of the night. After the last cannon-shot had been fired, the plain of Mont Saint Jean was deserted. The English occupied the French encampment ; it is the customary token of victory, to sleep on the bed of the vanquished. They made their bivouac beyond Rossomme. The Prussians, let loose upon the flying rout, pushed forward. Wellington went to the village of Waterloo to write his dispatch to Lord Bathurst. If ever the sic vos non vobis has been applicable, it surely was to this village of Waterloo. Waterloo had no T part in the action, which never reached within half a league of it. Mont Saint Jean was cannonaded, Hougomont was burnt, Papelotte was burnt, Placenoit was burnt, La Haye Sainte was taken by storm, La Belle Alliance saw the meeting of the two conquerors ; these names are scarcely known, and Waterloo, which took no share in the battle, has all the honour of it. We are not of the number of those who flatter war ; when occasion serves we speak the truth about it. War has terrible beauties which we have not concealed ; it has also, we admit, some ugly aspects. One of the most astonishing is the rapid despoiling of the dead after a victory. The dawn which follows a battle always breaks upon naked corpses. Who does this? Who thus stains ,the triumph? Whose is the hideous stealthy hand that slides into the pocket of victory ? Who are the robbers that strike their blow behind the back of glory ? Certain philosophers, Voltaire among others, affirm that it is precisely those who have won the glory. The very same, say they; there is no change. Those who are up pillage those who are down. The hero of the day is the vampire of the night. After all, one has a sort of right to rifle a VICTOR HUGO. 293 corpse that one has made. For ourselves, we have no such belief. For the same hand to gather a dead man's laurels and to steal his shoes seems to us impossible. Certain it is, however, that commonly after the victors come the thieves. But let us put the soldier, especially the soldier of our day, out of the question. Every army has a following ; and it is here that the blame rests. Birds of the night, half brigand and half valet, every species of ves- pertilio engendered by the twilight that we call war, fellows who wear uniforms but do not fight ; pretended invalids, truculent cripples, un- licensed dram-sellers, driving along, sometimes with their wives, on little carts, and stealing what they sell ; beggars offering themselves as guides to the officers ; cadgers, marauders ; armies on the march formerly we are not speaking of the present time drew all these after them, and so universally that they were commonly called camp-followers. No army, and no nation was responsible for these creatures ; they spoke Italian and followed the Germans ; they spoke French and followed the English. It was by one of these wretches, a Spanish camp-follower who spoke French, that the Marquis of Fervacques, deceived by his Picard dialect, and taking him for one of our own men, was treacherously killed and plundered on the very field of battle, in the night which followed the victory of Cerisoles. Marauding led to thieving. The detestable maxim, " Live upon the enemy's country," produced this leprosy, which nothing but a stern discipline could cure. There are some reputations that are deceptive ; one does not always know why some generals, great ones too, have been so popular. Turenne was adored by his soldiers because he permitted pillage; to tolerate wrong doing is a piece of good nature. Turenne was so good-natured that he let the Palatinate be ravaged with fire and sword. More or less marauding was to be found in an army, according as the general was less or more severe. Hoche and Marceau had no camp-followers ; Wel- lington, we willingly render him this justice, had but few. Nevertheless, on the night of the i8th of June, the pillagers were busy. Wellington showed them no mercy ; orders were given for the summary execution of any one taken in the act. But rapine is tenacious. The pillagers went on stealing at one corner of the battle- field, while they were being shot at the other. The night was still. Not a cloud in the sky. What matters it that the earth is red ? the moon remains white. Such is the indifference of the heavens. In the fields, branches of trees broken by the musketry, but not fallen, and held on by the bark, swung gently in the night air. 294 HALF HOURS WITH FRENCH AUTHORS. A breeze, one might almost call it a breath, stirred the bushes. There were shivers among the grasses that seemed like the parting of souls. Indistinctly in the distance were heard, coming and going, the sentinels and patrols of the English camp. Hougomont and La Haye Sainte were burning still, sending up, one at the west, and the other at the east, two great flames ; to which were joined, like a necklace of rubies, unclasped, having a carbuncle at each end, the line of the English camp-fires, stretched in an immense semi- circle on the hills of the horizon. SPRINGTIME IN THE CHANNEL ISLANDS. THE day was beautiful ; more beautiful than any that had yet been seen that year. It was one of those spring days when May suddenly pours forth all its beauty, and when Nature seems to have no thought but to rejoice and be happy. Amidst the many murmurs from forest and village, from the sea and the air, a sound of cooing could be dis- tinguished. The first butterflies of the year were resting on the early roses. Everything in nature seemed new the grass, the mosses, the leaves, the perfumes, the rays of light. The sun shone as if it had never shone before. The pebbles seemed bathed in coolness. Birds but lately fledged sang out their deep notes from the trees, or fluttered among the boughs in their attempts to use their new-found wings. There was a chattering all together of goldfinches, pewits, tomtits, woodpeckers, bullfinches, and thrushes. The blossoms of lilacs, May lilies, daphnes, and melilots, mingled their various hues in the thickets. A beautiful kind of water-weed, peculiar to Guernsey, covered the pools with an emerald green; where the kingfishers and the water-wagtails, which make such graceful little nests, came down to bathe their wings. Through every opening in the branches appeared the deep blue sky. A few lazy clouds followed each other in the azure depths. The ear seemed to catch the sound of kisses sent from invisible lips. Every old wall had its tuft of wallflowers. The plum-trees and laburnums were in blossom ; their white and yellow masses gleamed through the interlacing boughs. Spring showered all her gold and silver on the woods. The new shoots and leaves were green and fresh. Calls of welcome were in the air; the approaching Summer opened her hospitable doors for birds coming from afar. It was the time of the arrival of the swallows. The clusters of furze-bushes bor- VICTOR HUGO. 295 dered the steep sides of hollow roads in anticipation of the clusters of the hawthorn. The pretty and the beautiful reigned side by side ; the magnificent and the graceful, the great and the little, had each their place. No note in the great concert of nature was lost. Green microscopic beauties took their place in the vast universal plan, in which all seemed distinguishable as in limpid water. Every- where a divine fulness, a mysterious sense of expansion, suggested the unseen effort of the sap in movement. Glittering things glit- tered more than ever ; loving natures became more tender. There was a hymn in the flowers, and a radiance in the sounds of the air. The wide diffused harmony of nature burst forth on every side- All things which felt the dawn of life invited others to put forth shoots. A movement coming from below, and also from above, stirred vaguely all hearts susceptible to the scattered and subterranean influence of germination. The flower shadowed forth the fruit ; young maidens dreamed of love. It was Nature's universal bridal. It was fine, bright, and warm ; through the hedges in the meadows children were seen laughing and playing at their games. The fruit-trees filled the orchards with their heaps of white and pink blossom. In the fields were prim- roses, cowslips, milfoil, daffodils, daisies, speedwell, jacinths, and violets. Blue borage and yellow irises swarmed with those beautiful little pink stars which flower always in groups, and are hence called " companions." Creatures with golden scales glided between the stones. The flowering houseleek covered the thatched roofs with purple patches. Women were plaiting hives in the open air, and the bees were abroad, mingling their humming with the murmurs from the sea. FINIS. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. *-;- . ,:* te