It was somewhere about this time that a French army entered Belgium, and besieged and took the citadel of Antwerp, and during this campaign my elder brothers first had the honour of leading our soldiers under fire. Antwerp once taken, the French Government, content with having given a proof of activity to Europe, and shown everybody what our legions could do, at once recalled the army, and my father went to review it in the cantonments on the frontier where it lay. I made this journey with him. The troops were splendid, full of zeal and confidence. I was shown one infantry brigade, which at the time of mobilization had done marches of sixty to seventy kilometres, so as to reach the given point at the hour fixed upon. It was an interesting journey, though a very trying one. Every day there was an entry into some town, and a partial review, in Siberian cold. And every evening there was a banquet, and every night a ball. The chief review was held at Valenciennes. The troops looked magnificent, drawn up on the snow, and, though it was so terribly cold, a brilliant sun lighted up the splendid military scene. It was enlivened by a little incident. The commandant of the fortress of Valenciennes was an old colonel, who had re-engaged in 1830, after having dabbled somewhat in conspiracy, under the Restoration. His name was M. de la Huberdiere, and he had had himself a hat made exactly like Napoleon's, and wore it just after the same fashion.

During the march past, either from sheer keenness or because he wanted to attract attention to himself, he edged himself gradually in front of the staff, on the side where the troops advanced, till at last he was abreast of the King, so that the troops appeared to be marching past him. This provoked one of my father's aides-de-camp, Heymes, who went up to him, and said, saluting, "It seems to me, Colonel, you would be better placed still if you were on the King's horse!" The shriek of laughter which greeted this remark may be imagined.

This same Heymes, one of the few survivors of General Leclerc's expedition to St. Domingo, had, on leaving that charnel-house, become aide-de-camp to Marshal Ney. He it was who, during the famous retreat from Russia, was sent to ask the general who was blowing up the Beresina bridges to suspend the work of destruction, so as to allow of the passage of the column with the wounded, who must otherwise be doomed to death. It was worth seeing the expression of his face, severe enough already, when he repeated the answer the general in question gave him, with the most southern of accents, "What, my dear fellow! The wounded! The Emperor has decided to sacrifice them!"

The worthy Heymes did my father a great service a short time after the review which has led me to mention him. It was at the moment of the insurrection in June 1832. We were at St. Cloud. It was well known that the agitators of every description intended to make a demonstration on the occasion of General Lamarque's funeral, but the demonstration was not expected to be of any importance. However, at about five in the evening, we beheld Heymes, in plain clothes, gallop into the courtyard, on a dragoon's charger, covered with foam. He had just come from the demonstration, and had witnessed that ordinary prologue to revolutions, pillage and massacre—pillage of gunsmiths' shops, and massacre of the officers of the 6th Dragoons, shot down with pistols, without any provocation whatever, at the head of their squadrons in line.

"You must come to Paris, Sire," he said, as he dismounted. My father did not wait for him to say it twice, and an hour later he was at the Tuileries, thence giving the impulse which nipped the revolutionary attempt in the bud. The next morning he was on horseback amidst the troops and the National Guard, which hemmed the rioters into the ward of St. Merri. An incident occurred there which was highly characteristic of that Parisian population, in whom a generous chord will always thrill, even in its maddest moments. The King, with my brother Nemours and his staff, had gone down the Rue des Arcis, at the end of which lively firing was heard. The troops who were massed in the street greeted the sovereign with cheers, and he, going forward, reached a square in which the fighting was actually going on. The cheering ran from one to another, the soldiers who were engaged ceasing their fire to join in. This change in the music struck the insurgents also at last. They stopped firing too, and were to be seen appearing at the windows, rifle in hand, taking off their caps to the plucky King, whom they would not have hesitated to shoot at a minute before.

I need not say that as soon as the King and his escort disappeared down a side street the fight began again, merrier than ever, and the 42nd Regiment of the line carried the monastery of St. Merri. An historic regiment that 42nd! After having fought against the "White" insurrection in the Vendee and the republican insurrection at the St. Merri monastery, caused the breakdown of Prince Napoleon's Boulogne adventure, occupied the Chamber of Deputies on the 2nd of December, and heroically lost its whole strength twice over in the siege of Paris, it has had the good fortune of being almost the only one of our regiments to keep its arms and its colours amidst all our mishaps.

There was no further interruption to the course of my studies, except a journey of the King's to Normandy, on which I accompanied him. The official object of this journey was to hold a review, at Cherbourg, of the squadron which had operated, in concert with an English one, in the North Sea, during the arrangement of the Belgian question. But its chief end was to go through the Departments in Normandy and enter into relations with the honest folk who populated them.

The trip was fruitful in incident. The first happened at Bernay, the native town of the virtuous Dupont de l'Eure, one of those virtuous individuals who would virtuously have your head cut off sooner than drop the smallest iota of their vulgar and utopian ideas. The prefect, M. Passy, had warned the King that amongst the addresses that would be read to him on his arrival there would be one which would give him a lecture. Thus warned, we arrived, and having mounted a platform in the open air, with a verdant dome above it, the reception and the addresses began. There was nothing very particular at first; at last a "President de Tribunal" advanced, and the way he made his bow with his prim look, and the curiosity which stretched every neck, told me at once that the King was to get the promised lecture. It came, indeed, very studied, and very impertinent too. Everybody listened in silence. It was all about courtiers, the danger of listening to flatterers, and so forth. As it ended, the heads of the president and his friends all came up with a "Take that, my fine fellow" look.

Then the King replied with the utmost politeness, thanking M. le President for the advice he had been good enough to give him. "Flatterers and courtiers," he said, "have indeed done much mischief, and, sad to say, the race is not yet extinct, for nowadays there are courtiers who are far more dangerous than the flatterers of princes and of kings—those courtiers and flatterers of the people, who to buy a vain and contemptible popularity suggest to them dreams which are unrealizable and which bring them to misfortune," &c. On this head my father bestowed a well-directed hiding on the president, which was constantly interrupted by a running fire of applause, so that the worthy gentleman ended by not knowing which way to look. Amongst other eminently French qualities, my father possessed the gift of repartee to the highest degree. He always knew how to use it, though with a politeness and good nature which softened whatever might be too sharp about its sting. This time the blow went home. Our journey, thus begun, was continued amid constantly increasing cordiality and success. It was a somewhat tiring manner of life. We went by short stages, from one reception to another. Everywhere the National Guard and the troops were under arms. When they were in considerable numbers, we mounted horses, either lent or requisitioned beforehand. In the evening, wherever we slept, there would be a great banquet, and generally a ball as well. It was the duty of us young folk to lead the dancing—a pleasant task enough, if we could have chosen our partners among the pretty women whom I was beginning to notice, in spite of my being only fourteen, and of whom there were many, especially at Grandville and St. Lo. But our partners were given to us officially, and were chosen from the families of the authorities. We exerted ourselves to be pleasant in spite of that. I do not know whether I was succeeding too much or too little at a ball one night, but I saw the husband's head suddenly appear between my partner and myself, with the observation, "Well, my wife's not bad- looking, is she?" and he smacked his lips like a man who has eaten a good thing.

Falaise was the culminating point in our journey as far as incidents went. We were to make a halt there, and, as fifteen battalions of the National Guard were collected, the aide-de-camp, who did duty as quartermaster too, had seen to getting suitable mounts for the King, for us, and for Marshals Soult and Gerard, who accompanied us. The famous fair at Guibray, near Falaise, was just over, and a circus which had come to enliven it was still there. The circus horses were laid hands on, and when we arrived we were agreeably surprised to find fine white horses awaiting us instead of the ordinary nags and troop-horses we generally had to ride. So we got into the saddle, and the review began. Just as the King reached the right flank of the line, the band began to play, and then an unforeseen event occurred Our proud coursers, thinking that they were at a performance, set each of them to do his own particular duty. The King, Marshal Soult, and two others of our party were riding the horses who did that trick called the "Grand-Ecart," in which all four horses draw together at the same moment. When their riders pulled at their bridles, the four horses, feeling themselves reined up, instantly fell into the usual circus canter. Another horse kept wheeling round and round, and confusion became general, nobody guessing what had happened until the aide-de-camp smote his brow, and stopped the band.

The trouble did not end there. The National Guard was in proud possession of one gun, which it had horsed somehow or other. A jolt broke the axle-tree, just as it was going past. Then there was a half- squadron of cavalry mounted on stallions or geldings. But the trumpeter was on a mare, which fact brought difficulty on poor Rosinante during the march past. In the evening there was a great ball in a huge temporary shed, with tiers of seats all round it. All of a sudden half the tiers collapsed, like cards, and all the ladies were to be seen, though almost unhurt, on their backs with their legs in the air, amidst a most awful dust! I must confess we ungallantly seized the opportunity of the confusion to go off to our beds. The King, too, did the same, thus escaping from the persecutions of the Polish refugees, interned at Falaise, who had come to the ball in lancer uniforms worthy of the merry-andrews at the opera balls, to pester him with their petitions.



CHAPTER III

1834-1836

My technical education recommenced more vigorously than ever when this journey was over. It had been decided that before being definitely placed on the Navy List I must pass my public examination as a first- class pupil at Brest. So I was prepared accordingly, and received those successive doses of instruction which the English designate by the characteristic word "cramming," for which the only French equivalent I can find is "gaver." My mathematical teacher held a class for a limited number of youths in a house in the Rue Git-le-Coeur, and thither I went, to gain the habit of speaking the language of algebra in public. In contrast to my memories of school lessons, I have the pleasantest recollections of those I received in that den—for den it was! This, perhaps, is on account of the good fellows I met there, and who have been my friends ever since, and also owing to the charm our kindly instructor wielded over us all. I do not believe there is a single one of his pupils, from the illustrious Marshal Canrobert down through my contemporaries, Excelmans, Bonie, Morny, Daumesnil, the Greffulhe brothers, Friant, Baudin, Valbezen, and many more, to the younger generation that came after me, who does not cherish the most grateful and affectionate feelings for the worthy Guerard. When we were close on the time for my examination, he had me questioned several times over by the official examiners of the Ecole Polytechnique and others, so as to accustom me to the surprises of public examinations. I thus passed through the hands of Baron Reynaud, and of Messieurs Bourdon, Delille, and Lefebure de Fourcy. This last inspired me with downright terror, on account of his reputation for methodical brutality. One of my class- mates had reported to me that well-known colloquy between him and a candidate who got confused, at he stood chalk in hand before the black board, and who heard M. Lefebure de Fourcy's voice saying calmly, "Waiter, just bring a bundle of hay for this pupil's breakfast." To which the indignant pupil promptly added, "Waiter, bring two: the examiner will breakfast with me." At length, crammed to the muzzle with nautical and astronomical calculations, and all the other sciences the official programme demanded, I started for Brest, kept up even as I drove along, in the highest state of preparation. There were a few interludes during the journey. Certain spots in Brittany were still, early in that year 1834, disturbed by the consequences of the rising in 1831, and my passage was the signal in several places for what we call, in parliamentary language, "mouvements en sens divers," conflicting emotions. Sometimes I saw white handkerchiefs waving or twisted round hats, doing duty for cockades. At other points the tricolour demonstrations took a quaint form. I remember at one place where we changed horses my carriage drew up between two rows of National Guards, who were keeping back a considerable crowd of people. At the carriage door appeared the Mayor with his scarf round his waist, saluting me with this remark: "Sir, this place is but a hole, but it is a hole in which hearts devoted to your august family are throbbing;" while at the other the village priest and his clergy, all in surplice and alb, struck up

Soldats du drapeau tricolore D'Orieans toi qui la's Porte,

and so right through the Parisian to a brass accompaniment.

My examination was held in the great hall of the Prefecture of the Navy at Brest, before a board of officers, engineers, and professors. It was a public one; but what alarmed me most at its outset was the presence of all the pupils of the Naval School, who riled the tiers of seats on one side of the hall. Luckily the sight of some old chums amongst them cheered me up, and as the examination went pretty well I soon saw on their youthful faces, just as actors, they say, read their coming success on their audience at the theatre, that my cause was won, and that I was accepted, not only by the scientific big-wigs but by the universal suffrages of my contemporaries. Yet I was rejoiced when the sitting was over!

Some days later, at L'Orient, I joined the Sirene frigate, Commander d'Oysonville, as midshipman, and started on an ocean voyage. This cruise was uneventful, except for a few little incidents such as always occur in a sailor's life.

Thus, being in the maintop one day, when topsails were being reefed in a strong breeze, a rope chanced to break, twisted round my legs, and carried me into mid air, head downwards. If the sinewy arms of the captain of the maintop and one of the top men had not caught me as I passed, I should have fallen into the sea or on the deck, and either alternative would have been disagreeable. Later on, at the end of the cruise, we re-entered Brest in a south-westerly squall, under circumstances which made a very useful impression on me.

We had bad weather for some days, no reliable observations had been taken, and we were very doubtful as to the frigate's position. Driving as we were at a great rate, before the gale, we were reckoning on the occasional partial lightening of the fog to catch sight of and recognize some point of land or rock, according to which we might steer our course amongst the reefs which swarm at the entrance of Brest harbour. We had to be ready to change our course and go about at any moment. Everybody was on deck, straining his eyes to try and see something, cool, and steady in nerve, as a well-disciplined body of men is in face of any danger. But one man was not present, our commanding officer, whose prompt judgment and word of command alone could bring us from perilous uncertainty into safety. Our commander was below, in his cabin, and there he persisted in staying, in spite of the indirect efforts made by the officer of the watch, the second in command, and the navigating officer to get him out of it. It was incomprehensible, and at the same time very alarming. Commander d'Oysonville, who was churchwarden of St. Roch when he died, was a kind and very honourable man, but nobody could possibly have been less of a sailor. He was a first-class organizer, and he carried his theories to the extremist possible limit. He had one, amongst others, that the captain of a ship ought to command her from his cabin, so as never to appear before his crew except on the most solemn occasions, and it was for the sake of being true to this principle that he refused to show himself in the circumstances I speak of. His obstinacy very nearly cost us dear, for on the earnestly longed-for break in the fog suddenly taking place a point of land was seen. We thought we recognized the Island of Molenes: the commander was hurriedly informed, and he sent an order to change our course. A lightening at another point in the horizon showed us some rocks. "The Pierres Vertes ahead!" sang out a coasting pilot specially shipped for the voyage, who was looking out from his perch on the foreyards, and the navigating officer tore off again to warn the commanding officer. During all these comings and goings the curtain of fog came down again, and we went driving on towards the reefs at the rate of twelve knots an hour. It could not be allowed to go on! With or without leave the second officer took the command, and put an end to an impossible situation. Our worthy commander only appeared just as we were dropping anchor in the roadstead, when all uncertainty was over, and I seem yet to see the looks that greeted his tardy appearance. Everybody's anxiety had been increased by knowing how he had lost the ship Le Superbe, seventy-four guns, off the Island of Paros, some years before, and under very peculiar circumstances. For my own part, I learnt on this occasion what everything has confirmed me in since—the danger of uncertain and divided authority either at sea or elsewhere.

When I got back to Paris, having finished the technical portion of my education, I went on with a course of history, with my sisters, especially my sister Mary, I applied myself with the utmost fervour to my drawing. I worked with her daily, under the direction of Ary Scheffer, and I recollect our grief one morning on finding the Jeanne d'Arc she was modelling in wax for Versailles, melted by an overheated stove, had collapsed the whole length of its framework, to such an extent as to become the merest cripple. By dint of lowering the temperature, and the use of a screw-jack applied in a peculiar manner, and vigorously turned by Ary Scheffer and myself, Jeanne d'Arc rose up again upon her framework, and the damage was soon made good.

About that time too, influenced by the genius of Victor Hugo, my sister Clementine and I were seized with a perfect passion for old Paris, that delightful Paris of ancient story. We had Sauval's thick volumes, we had searched all the old books for traces of the ancient legends, and we used to spend our afternoons going to see the sites and hunt for the remains of the places we had read about, There is not a church or a monument of which we did not know every detail, nor an alley or a corner in the quarters of the Halles, the Hotel de Ville, the Arsenal, the Temple, and the Pantheon that we had not carefully explored with the most fervent interest. What joy it was to us one day when we were trying to trace the Hotel St. Paul, the old palace of our kings, to come upon a course of masonry which had undoubtedly belonged to it!

Although I was on shore, I was still devoted to my profession. I used to see almost all the naval officers who passed through Paris, and tried to push forward those whom the general body of the profession singled out as being likely commanding officers. These matters of promotion, as well as any others that affected naval interests, brought me into daily touch with the ministers, and my relations with M Theirs date from that time. Yet, oddly enough, it was riding on horseback that brought us together! During the King's stays at Camping and Fontainebleau, and his country trips to Versailles, St. Cloud, and Raunchy, when he used to invite foreign visitors and his ministers, and great personages in general, to join in his excursions, M. Thiers was as much bored as I was at having to go in the carriages and chars a bancs which drove in a long line one behind the other. We much preferred accompanying them on horseback, and nothing delighted the little minister more than to let his mount tear along full gallop with a loose rein. He had a very firm seat, and was very plucky, especially on a horse of ours called "Le Vendome," which in his southern accent he pronounced "Le Vanndomme." I remember one day, at Fontaineblean, as he was galloping along beside me on that same "Vanndomme," we passed by a young fagot-gatherer, bending under her load. She straightened herself at the noise; it was very hot, her jacket had come unbuttoned, and showed a bare white very well furnished bust. She smiled to M. Thiers, who pulled his horse up short, turned back to thrust a handful of small change into the young woman's palm, and started off again full tear, as if he had had an electric shock, jumping the fallen trees with a resolution and energy which I had never known him show before.

On another occasion he proved himself a less brilliant horseman. The statue of Napoleon, that statue which is put up and taken down in every Revolution, was to be ceremoniously replaced on the top of its column. The troops and the National Guard were under arms, with their bands and drums, headed by a splendid drum-major, massed at the foot of the column. We arrived in state by the Rue Castiglione, so that the column surmounted by the statue, covered by a veil that was to drop at a given signal, faced us just as we came out upon the square M. Thiers, in full uniform, with his minister's hat and feathers, and again riding "Vanndomme," struck in his spurs, left the procession at full gallop, and passed before my father, shouting at the very top of his falsetto voice, "I take your Majesty's pleasure" the words being accompanied by a wave of his hat which ill-natured people might have said was copied from General Rapp's gesture in Gerard's picture of the Battle of Austerlitz at the Louvre. On this signal the drums beat, the bands played, the statue was unveiled—but M. Thiers had lost control of "Vanndomme," who, wild with enthusiasm, bolted head down, overthrowing drums and drum- major, while the little minister clung to his back like a monkey in a circus. It was a comical sight! But far from laughable under this same ministry of M. Thiers were the perpetual attempts upon my father's life. The speculators in revolution, who had been encouraged by their easy success in 1830, grew discouraged after several like essays at risings had been severely put down. They then fell back on assassination. The most serious attempt was Fieschi's, on July 28, 1835. Together with my two eldest brothers I was to accompany the King to a review of the National Guard and the regular army, drawn up on the Boulevards. All of us who were to take part in the procession, princes, marshals, generals, and aides-de-camp, were assembled in the drawing-room at the Tuileries, next to the Throne Room, when the Minister of the Interior, M. Thiers, burst in like a whirlwind, and, beckoning to my two brothers and me, led us into the embrasure of a window. "My dear princes," said he, looking at us over his spectacles, "it is more than likely there will be an attempt on the life of the King, your father, to-day. We have been warned from several quarters. They say there will be an infernal machine somewhere near the Ambigu Theatre. It is very vague, but there must be something at the bottom of it all. We have had all the houses near the Ambigu searched this morning to no purpose. Should the King be warned? Should the review be put off?"

We answered unanimously that the King must be warned but that, brave as he was well known to be, he would never consent to having the review put off. So it turned out.

"Look well after your father," repeated M. Thiers, and we mounted our horses. The review went on well enough, except that we all remarked the presence of a large number of insolent-looking individuals, with red carnations in their button-holes—the members, evidently, of the secret societies, who had not been warned of what was going to happen, but to be ready for anything that might happen We had not been able to take any precautions, beyond dividing the care of watching over the King's person between my brothers and myself and the aides-de-camp on duty One of us with an aide-de-camp, was to take it in turn to keep just behind his horse, with our eye on the troops and the crowd, so as to interpose if we noticed any suspicious gesture. My turn had come to take the post of watcher, with General Heymes, aide-de-camp in waiting, on my right. On my left I had Lieutenant-Colonel Rieussec, commanding the legion of the National Guard before which we were passing. Close to the Ambigu, not the present theatre—the neighbourhood of which had been searched—but a former Ambigu, which had been shut up, opposite the Jardin Turc cafe, we heard a sort of platoon firing like the discharge of a mitrailleuse, and raising my eyes at the noise I saw smoke coming from a window which was half closed by an outside shutter.

I had no time to notice more, and at the moment I did not perceive that my left-hand neighbour, Colonel Rieussec, was killed, that Heymes' clothes were riddled with bullets and his nose carried away, nor that my own horse was wounded. All I saw was my father holding his left arm, and saying to me over his shoulder, "I'm hit!" And so he was: one bullet had grazed his forehead, another spent one had given him the blow of which he complained, and a third had passed through his horse's neck. But that we only knew afterwards, and it was only afterwards too that we learnt the instrument of the crime had been an infernal machine. Our first thought was that the firing would go on, so I struck spurs into my horse, and seizing my father's by the bridle, while my two brothers struck it behind with their swords, we led him swiftly through the scene of immense confusion that ensued—horses riderless, or bearing wounded men, swaying in their seats, broken ranks, and people in blouses,, who rushed upon the King, to touch him or his horse, with frantic shouts of "Long live the King!" As we retired, I just saw the taking by assault of the house whence the discharge had come. The young aides-de-camp had dismounted, leaving their horses loose, and with the Municipal Guards and the police they scaled the house and the one next door (the Cafe Barfetti), climbing on to the verandah and smashing in the windows. Then the review began again. We had ascertained the King was not wounded, nor we ourselves, but we were not aware as yet either of the great number or of the names of the victims. Hereupon M. Thiers appeared beside us, with his white kerseymere trousers covered with blood. All he said to us was, "The poor Marshal!"

"Whom do you mean?"

"Mortier! He fell dead across me, crying out, 'Oh, my God!'"

We reckoned ourselves up as we went along. Forty-two dead or wounded: dead—Marshal Mortier, General Lachasse de Verigny, Colonels Raffet and Rieussec, Captain Willatte, aide-de-camp to the Minister of War, seven others, and two women; wounded—Generals Heymes, Comte de Colbert, Pelet, Blin, and many more. The Due de Broglie was hit full in the chest by a bullet that flattened out on his star of the Legion of Honour.

It was not far from the scene of the crime to the farthest end of the line of troops, so the procession soon retraced its steps. The roadway where the blow had been struck was nothing but a pool of blood. The wounded and almost all the dead had been carried away, and I only saw one corpse, flat on its face in the mud, among the dead horses, but all the blood about frightened our horses so that we had hard work to get on.

On the square of the Chateau d'Eau a huge and furious crowd surging round the station house, which was protected by numerous Municipal Guards, showed us the assassin, or one of them, had been arrested. The review was concluded, and my father's self-control was sorely tried by the unanimity and fervour of the acclamations of which he was the object from all sides, from soldiers and civilians alike. It is unnecessary to add that we did not see any more red carnations.

The march past was to take place in the Place Vendome, and the chancellor's offices were full of ladies of the official world, gathered round my mother. We dismounted for a moment to go and speak to them, and here again a moving scene took place. We had been able to send on an aide-de-camp to assure my mother and aunt and my sisters that we were safe and sound, but our messenger had not had time to learn the names of all the victims. So when we mounted the stairs of the chancellor's offices, some of us all bespattered with blood, all these women, their brilliant dresses contrasting sadly with their terrified eyes, rushed upon us to see whether those they loved were amongst us. Some of them were never to see their dear ones again!

Shortly after this bloody episode in our national history I joined the Didon frigate, Captain de Parseval, as enseigne de vaisseau. My new commanding officer, who had joined the navy at a very early age, had served as a midshipman on board Villeneuve's vessel, the Bucentaure, at Trafalgar. He was in command of the mizzentop, and saw Nelson's ship, the Victory, pass slowly astern of the Bucentaure—so close that her yards caught the other's ensign—while the fifty guns of the British ship poured their fire one after the other into the stern of the French one, sweeping her gun-deck from end to end, and laying low four hundred of her crew. After this commencement of his career, Commander de Parseval had spent his whole life in fighting and adventure. He had been in three shipwrecks, one specially terrible one on the Isle de Sable, near the coast of Nova Scotia, in which (he was a lieutenant at the time) he swam ashore to get help and save the crew of his frigate. He died with the rank of admiral, after having had the chief command of the Baltic Fleet during the Crimean War. He was a charming fellow, slight and smart-looking, very carefully dressed, as resolute in command as he was formal as to politeness, a consummate seaman, managing his ship in first-rate style. I sailed a great deal with him, and learned much from him, and from the very first I felt a personal affection for him, which was never belied, and which he reciprocated. An extra bond of sympathy existed between us—when I was just becoming deaf, he was deaf already.

We made a cruise for drill, on the Didon, doing a deal of navigation in all sorts of weathers, and I performed the duties of captain of the watch—my first attempt at command, my first trial in a responsible position.

The winter season of 1836 found me back in Paris, where I began my classes again, and gave myself up in particular to my passion for the fine arts. This taste of mine was the cause of a terrible blowing up I got from my father. The jury of the Salon of 1836 refused a picture of Marilhat's—I think it was his first. Some of the artists who had seen the young painter's work thought this decision unjust. They grumbled, and their grumbling got as far as the newspapers. I was curious enough to go and see the picture at Durand-Ruel's. It was a view of Rome by twilight, seen between great umbrella pines, I thought it a splendid picture, and spurred somewhat, I confess, by a spirit of contradiction, I was seized with an eager desire to acquire it. But I had not a halfpenny of my own, there was my difficulty! To overcome it, I laid siege to my aunt Adelaide, who doted on her brother's children as if they had been her own, and who never (and well the rogues knew it!) could resist their wheedling. I succeeded, as I had hoped, and Marilhat's picture became my property. But certain of the jury went and complained to the King, and I was greeted with, "Oho! so you are going to set yourself up in opposition! I've trouble enough already with those artists! It's the Civil List (that means it's me) that takes them in at the Louvre. I can't be the only judge as to what is accepted and what isn't. I have to have a jury, the Institute is good enough to undertake the job—all its members are dying of fright, and I shield them under my own responsibility, just as I do my ministers, although it's contrary to the letter of the law—and it's you, one of my own sons, who comes and sets an example of insubordination! Much obliged to you, sir!"

My picture was inspected all the same I need hardly say the grand- parents pronounced it frightful, a regular daub. I hung my head under this double-barrelled censure, and drooped my ears like a whipped spaniel, but I stuck to my opinion, and likewise to my Marilhat. I think it was shortly after this little adventure that I added another "daub" to my "gallery." One morning as I was busy modelling (for I dabbled in sculpture too) in my sister Marie's studio, Ary Scheffer came in, and began telling me about an unknown artist he had met, quite young, a man of undoubted talent, who was in a terribly poverty-stricken condition. Six hundred francs would take him out of his difficulties, and he would give two small pictures, pendants, which he had just finished, in exchange.

"What do they represent?" I inquired.

"They are both landscapes, connected with episodes in Walter Scott's novels. One represents the charge of Claverhouse in the Covenanters, and the other the Army of Charles the Bold crossing the Alps. Come!" added Scheffer, turning to me. "Be good-natured. If you have six hundred francs, give them to me!"

I chanced to have the money, and gave it him. "What's your protege's name?" asked I

"Theodore Rousseau." Fancy that great artist selling his pictures in pairs, as furniture, in fact—for bread!

In 1836, too, on February 28, I was present at the first performance of Les Huguenots, an opera which enchanted me. The action, the music, the stage setting, the interpretation, made an ensemble that was unique, a work of art that defied comparison. Nothing on the stage to my mind, has ever surpassed the duet in the fourth act as created and sung by Nourrit and Mlle. Falcon. Inspired by the musical and dramatic situation, these two artists were completely carried away, and their emotion was as infectious as it was apparent. Mlle. Falcon had a way of interrupting her singing, to speak the words, "Raoul, ils te tueront!" with an expression into which her whole soul was thrown, which was the very embodiment of passion. Ah! Passion indeed! Passion it is that thrills in every page of that admirable book of Merimee's, La Chronique de Charles IX., which has given birth in succession to those two masterpieces, Le Pre aux Clercs and Les Huguenots. And what indeed would life be without passion? If Fieschi's crime marked the year 1835 with a crimson letter, 1836 was the year of Alibaud's attempt. The history of my father's reign is nothing but an innumerable succession of such attempts, some of which came to the birth, while others, again, miscarried. Alibaud, as my readers are aware, fired point-blank at the King with a walking-stick gun, which he steadied on the door of the carriage, as it passed slowly through the Tuileries archway, and missed him, except that his whiskers were singed by the wad. Neither my father's courage nor that of my mother and aunt, who were with him, failed them for a moment. I saw them get out of the carriage at Neuilly, without for an instant suspecting the risk they had run.

But the time soon came for me to go to sea again, and I was ordered to join the frigate Iphigenie, of which my old captain, M. de Parseval, had taken command, as full lieutenant, and we started for the Levant station. The recollection of a very extraordinary accident which occurred during this cruise remains with me. We were in the Archipelago, off the Island of Andros. I had just come off the first night watch, at midnight, and had got into bed, when I heard somebody say our consort, a twenty-gun brig, the Ducouedic, Commander Bruat, was making signals of distress, I got back on deck without delay. The brig's lights had disappeared. Nothing could be seen of her. It was blowing great guns, with a heavy sea. We continued in a state of great anxiety till morning. At last, by the first rays of daylight, we saw our consort dismasted. She signalled to us for a tow, which was quite impracticable in the state of the sea. All we could do was to stand by her, while she tried to get to Syra. with her foresail, the only one left her. This she succeeded in doing. But the extraordinary thing is that what dismasted her was the contrary action of a tremendous roll, and a heavy squall, which came just at midnight, when the whole crew was mustered on deck, to change the watch, and that the mainmast with all its spars and gear and the maintopmast as well, fell on to the deck without hurting anybody.

Except for this one accident, all the interest of this fresh cruise of mine lay on the side of the picturesque. Greece with her mythological, poetic, and historical memories, and the great severe outlines of her landscapes, struck me with admiration. But this was quickly overshadowed by the impression made upon me by my first glimpse of Asia—the Mussulman East, which Lamartine's Voyage and Decamps' pictures had made me long so eagerly to know. My joy, therefore, may be conceived, when I saw, as I landed at Smyrna, the living image of Decamps' masterpiece, La Patrouille de Smyrne, now at Rotterdam, passing by me—the very same police officer trotting along on his hunched-up Turcoman horse, surrounded by his policemen, regular bandits, running beside him, covered with brilliant rags and glistening weapons. This worthy police agent, whose name was Hadgy-Bey (which we promptly turned into "Quat'Gibets"), very soon became our ally. I did his likeness. He was all smiles whenever we met, and he winked at all our young midshipmen's pranks One they played was rather too strong, and roused the fury of the Turks. Smyrna was at that time the most Eastern of Eastern towns, full of tortuous bazaars, and narrow alleys winding in and out, in which circulation, difficult enough at all times, sometimes became impossible for hours, when long strings of camels, fastened together with ropes, were going along them. Nothing could have been more vexatious than these blocks, which man and beast alike seemed to take pleasure in prolonging, whenever the Giaours seemed annoyed by them.

What, think you, did our middies do? A great many of them together (for we had a very strong naval squadron at Smyrna just then) hired donkeys, tied them together with long cords, mounted them, each rider with a long pipe in his mouth and affecting a quiet Eastern gravity of demeanour, and off they started.

This farandole, which was quite a kilometre long, went round and round the bazaars all day, up and down and in and out, stopping all the traffic, as if a real caravan was passing' through. At first the "true believers" were puzzled, but when they realized they were being laughed at they grew furious, and rushed off to get "Quat'Gibets," who held his fat sides and roared with laughter when they told him what was amiss. Our midshipmen gave him a regular ovation. We were avenged on camels and camel men alike. The neighbourhood of Smyrna was delightful, and brigandage quite unknown. Civilization had not yet taught that refinement of the art, as practised nowadays, whereby people are carried off and called upon to get themselves ransomed, on pain of having their noses or ears, or finally their heads, cut off. It was quite safe to go anywhere, to canter far along the road to Magnesia, or to stop and take coffee beside some cool spring in the shadow of the huge plane-trees, and watch the whole East pass by—caravans from Diarbekir, half-wild Turcoman tribes, bashi-bazouks from the four corners of Asia, all of them worthy subjects for an artist's pencil, and I never stopped drawing them. Coming back to the town, which had been cooled by the sea-breeze, the "Imbat," we used to spend our evenings in the Levantine or Armenian society of the place, amongst grandfathers who were still faithful to their old costume, wrapped in kaftans, and charming young ladies, with Tacticos on their heads, and their beautiful figures, which no stays had ever tortured, draped in half-oriental costumes. Native music, soft and plaintive, sounded, as we would watch Mademoiselles Peiser, Athanaso, Fonton, Tricon, &c., dance the Romaika. Nothing exists, nowadays, of what was so seductive then. The Orient has kept its sunshine and its colouring, but that horrible cosmopolitanism has invaded everything. Everywhere there are stays! and stays steal charm away!

We were young and gay at the time I speak of, and passionate too! Two of my brother lieutenants fought a duel, much more serious than those pin- prick encounters which are now the fashion. They fought with pistols, on the very marine promenade where they had been joking with young ladies the evening before. Just as the seconds gave the signal to fire, the sun rose on the horizon. Its first ray glinted on a breast button on the uniform of one principal: the other man's bullet, as though drawn by some fatal attraction, struck the button, and killed our unhappy comrade dead. A midshipman carried off a charming Greek lady, who was discovered in his cabin after his ship had got out to sea. And many another strange incident occurred! On leaving Smyrna, the Iphigenie cruised all about the Archipelago, and along the Anatolian, Caramanian, and Syrian coasts. Whenever I was not on duty my pencil was in my fingers, for I had the most enchanting and picturesque of models under my hand. From Tripoli in Syria I climbed to the top of Mount Lebanon, whence I saw an immense panorama, with the ruins of Baalbec and the Desert. We picnicked with the patriarch of the Lebanon and his monks, under the world-famed cedars, and Bruat had a perfect duel of jokes there with a witty ship's surgeon named Camescasse, who was one of our party. I remember a funny saying of this same Camescasse, about a brother medico of his who retired into Brittany, where his practice was specially among the local aristocracy. He always called him "The Avenger of the People."

At Eden, the chief town of the Maronites, the old shiek Boutrouss-Karam received me with the greatest honours, and I was half drowned with sprinklings of rose-water, the smell of which I detest. Apart from my presence, there was a great fete going on at Eden for the marriage of Boutrouss-Karam's daughter, and the whole Maronitenation had hurried to it in their best clothes. Such handsome types, such costumes, such turbans! I was one of the bride's witnesses: she and I had each to keep a bracelet balanced on our heads during the whole of the ceremony. The bride shook, and her bracelet fell down. After the ceremony she received me unveiled. She was a fine tall dark girl, but not a pretty woman. From Jaffa I journeyed to Jerusalem, and travelled all through the Holy Land, with a feeling of deep emotion, which was only disturbed by one vexatious incident. On the day I was to go to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a great crowd had got there before me, and a quarrel, which degenerated into a general melee, forthwith arose between Greeks, Jews, and Armenians. It was only by dint of hard knocks that the Turkish police made way for me to enter the Holy Place, and to crown the scandal, just as I knelt in deep devotion, before the altar, the organ began to play the Marseillaise. There was yet another episode during my stay at Jerusalem. The Governor of the Province waited upon me to say he had Mehemet Ali's orders to place himself at the disposal of the son of the King of France, and to do whatever he desired. I caught the ball on the hop, and replied he was just in time, for I had just been going to ask his leave to enter the Mosque of Omar, which stands on the site of the ancient Temple of Solomon. It should be added that this fine mosque, which is next in holiness in Mussulman eyes to that at Mecca, and which is now open to all the world, had at that date never been seen except by the famous traveller Ali Bey.

Governor Hassan Bey tugged his beard when he heard my request, and seemed very much put out indeed. After a moment's silence he made up his mind, and said, "Come to-morrow: I'll take you there myself." The next day I kept my appointment, bringing Bruat and two or three officers who were making the same trip with me. We entered the mosque, which is really very beautiful, and went all over it. The Imaums and Softas, the priests and students, had cast horrified glances upon us from the moment of our entry. Suddenly one of them began to intone in a falsetto voice a sort of Litany, to which the crowd replied in chorus. Soon the Litany turned into angry shouts, and the crowd, led by an old Negro Imaum, in a yellow robe, who seemed to have worked himself into a perfect paroxysm of fury, rushed at us with threatening gestures. This was by no means reassuring, but Hassan Bey was equal to the emergency. Seizing me by the arm, he put me behind him, with Bruat and the other gentlemen grouped round me. Then he ordered a dozen Kavasses he had brought with him to charge, which they did, laying out heavily with their sticks. Not content with that, he had the most turbulent of the Softas seized, thrown down at his feet, and beaten without mercy. The blows hailed down on the poor wretch as if they had been beating a carpet. This determined attitude cowed the crowd, which fell back to the far end of the mosque, grumbling. "We will go now," said the Bey. Once we were outside, he shut us up in a neighbouring mosque, which was empty, begging us to wait there for him. Soon we heard a great noise and yelling outside. Presently Hassan Bey reappeared smiling, and let us out. The crowd had disappeared, and a battalion of Egyptian infantry had taken its place. Advised by the Bey, we left Jerusalem a day after this scuffle, with much regret on my part. The sight of all the spots which are glorified by the splendid stories of our religious history had impressed me deeply. My imagination had conjured up the very pictures in Royaumont's illustrated Bible, out of which I had learnt both the Old and the New Testament. And just as I was about to start, when I opened the window of the room I occupied in the Latin convent, I saw just in front of me the picture in that same Bible which represents David, with hands uplifted in admiration, as he gazes at Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. I was the David, and Bathsheba was a woman, looking really magnificent in her eastern robes, who was sitting on the terrace facing me. Only she was not combing out her hair like the woman in the Bible picture: she was hunting it for vermin!

I returned from Jerusalem by the Dead Sea, Nazareth, and Acre.

As we were riding along one night, to escape the heat, not far from Nazareth, we met a troop of horsemen headed by an individual in Egyptian dress, who announced himself as Ibrahim Aga, sent by Soliman Pasha to meet me. Just as I was calling up the dragoman to translate what I had to say to him, Ibrahim Aga said to me in a drawling voice, "Don't give yourself that trouble, it isn't the least necessary. I am the Marquis de Beaufort, captain on the staff." He was in fact one of the very many French officers, who were detached to the Egyptian army then lying in cantonments in Syria, after its victories over the Turks at Homs and Konieh. I had seen and greatly admired these troops all over Syria and at Acre. I was soon to see Soliman Pasha—in other words, Colonel Selves, a Frenchman, who had organized them, and under the energetic and iron-willed son of Mehemet Ali, Ibrahim Pasha, had led them to victory. I beheld a little man, whom long residence in Egypt had quite orientalized in appearance but who had preserved all the vivacity of his Gallic wit. The Iphigenie returned to France by Malta, where I made the acquaintance of Lord Brudenell, since celebrated under the name of Lord Cardigan, for his famous Balaclava charge and of Major Rose, a charming fellow, who later became the Sir Hugh Rose of the Crimean War, and after that Field-Marshal Lord Strathnairn of the Indian Mutiny. At that moment Major Rose commanded the 42nd Highlanders, the famous "Black Watch," a splendid regiment, especially so then, when it consisted of nothing but veterans of Herculean build. It furnished the Guard of Honour that received me at the Palace of the Grand Masters when I went to pay my respects to the governor, and the salute of that splendid body of men in full-dress uniform and feathered bonnets, with their colours lowered to the ground, their band playing God save the Queen, and their bagpipes shrieking under the arches of the palace, was a most striking sight. That was the first time I heard the bagpipes of the Highland regiments. I have often heard them since, and they always remind me of that wonderfully dramatic incident in the great Indian Mutiny, the relief of Lucknow. In Lucknow, the capital of the kingdom of Oude, a handful of British soldiers, with the women and children who had escaped the massacre, had taken refuge in a huge and strongly built place called the Residency. Isolated in the heart of India, besieged for months on end, without any outside news, starving, decimated by sickness and the enemy's fire, women and soldiers alike, with true British pluck, and having lost all hope of succour, had no thought but to sell their lives as dearly as possible. All at once the noise of the daily cannonade and the rifle fire seem to be doubled, and unaccustomed shouts are heard, like the national "hurrah." The cheering seems to get nearer, but the Sepoys have so often cheered derisively! Suddenly another sound strikes on the ear of the besieged. The bagpipes! The bagpipes! And soon they make out the famous Highland march, The Campbells are coming! Reinforcements they were, collected from all quarters, English and Scotch, soldiers and sailors too, commanded by old Lord Clyde of Balaclava fame. By main force they carried the works the mutineers, tenfold their strength, had thrown up round Lucknow, bringing unhoped- for succour from the mother country, nay, bringing actual salvation with them. A wonderful moment!

I got back to Paris to hear the news of the failure of the first expedition against Constantine, and the brilliant part my brother Nemours had played in that terrible business. I never doubted that signal revenge would soon be taken for the check, and I was in despair that my being a sailor stood in the way of my asking to be allowed to have a share in it.

Meanwhile, I was present at a fresh attempt on my father's life. A man of the name of Meunier fired a pistol at him the day the Chamber of Deputies was opened. Some movement in the crowd shook the would-be assassin's arm, but the bullet came into the carriage, smashing the front window, and my brothers and I were all cut with the broken glass. I remember a very characteristic remark by one of the Deputies on this occasion. After the King had departed, as the Members of the Chamber were talking over the attempt, one of them said, "Ought we to congratulate the King?"

"Certainly," was the reply; "we always do it."

Shortly afterwards an emulator of Fieschi invented a perfected machine which should have mowed us all down at the earliest opportunity, but he was discovered, and destroyed himself, just as he was going to be arrested, carrying the secret of his accomplices with him.

Amidst political agitation and ministerial ambitions, with which I troubled myself but very little, the marriage of my eldest brother, the Duc d'Orleans, and its attendant festivities, took place. The wedding was at Fontainebleau; there was a great fete at the Hotel de Ville in Paris, and the formal inauguration of the Museum at Versailles.

The marriage was settled without my brother and Princess Helene ever having seen each other. Impatient to know her, and anxious to be the first to greet her on French soil, my brother went to meet her at Nancy, where she was to arrive with her mother and a lady in waiting. He rushed forward, saw three ladies, caught his fiancees hand and carried it to his lips. Not at all! It was the lady-in-waiting's. This momentary hitch was soon forgotten, and when the Princess entered the Cour du Cheval- Blanc at Fontainebleau, in her state coach and eight, amidst the roar of cannon and the beating of drums, we all went down the great staircase to receive her, with the King at our head, just like the great lords going down the staircase at Chenonceaux in the second act of the Huguenots. It was Champs-Elysees, and through the Gardens to the Tuileries, we on horseback and the Princesses in the state carriages, with the Orleans state liveries, surrounded by an immense multitude of people, all the women in brilliant spring toilettes, and in the loveliest weather, was a splendid sight too. Then there was a very fine ball at the Hotel de Ville—rather clouded, though, by a prediction coming from all quarters, that it would be the occasion of another attempt on my father.

Old Prince Talleyrand, who was almost dying, begged my eldest brother to go and see him, so that he might add his warning to all the others. Raising himself to a sitting posture, and with death in his face, he said: "It won't be a knife or a pistol, it will be a hail of paving- stones thrown from the roofs, which will crush you all!" We were grateful for the warning, and we were glad it did not come to pass. Nothing happened, either in the street or at the ball, where we were surrounded by an army of chosen 'guests,' and from which we were driven back at a great pace, escorted by squadrons of cuirassiers, who glittered in the torchlight. But the crowning point of the fetes was the inauguration of the Versailles Museum, that museum and dedicated by my father "To all the Glories of France!" Others besides himself have given the sadness of irony to that inscription! Every revolution must be paid for with a price!

On the occasion of this inauguration the King gave a dinner to twelve hundred people in the galleries of the Palace. Each of us had to preside over a table, and I should have found mine a somewhat tiresome task, if among my guests I had not met some very clever men, whose conversation amused me much. Such were Alphonse Karr, Leon Gozlan, Nestor Roqueplan, &c.

After dinner there was a theatrical performance—the Misanthrope, given for the first time with Louis XIV. dresses, acted by Perrier, Provost, Samson, Firmin, Menjaud, Monrose, and Regnier, with Mmes. Mars, Plessy, and Mante; and then one act of Robert le Diable, with Duprez, Levasseur, and Mile. Falcon—and the ballet.

After the performance there was a general promenade in the galleries, which were lighted up brilliantly. I lay claim to two good ideas, which came to me during the evening. The first was to plague the King and the ministers to such an extent, after the act out of Robert le Diable, that Meyerbeer, whom I fetched, was then and there nominated an officer of the Legion of Honour, a commonplace distinction enough nowadays, but which at that time was very exceptional. The second was to ask the King, also, if he would graciously permit the artists who had taken part in the performance to join the guests in the promenade in the galleries. Of this permission I was myself the bearer, and I naturally extended it to the corps de ballet. When all these young ladies in their morning dress, and many of them bandbox in hand, appeared walking about amongst the gaily bedizened folk, some of the fine ladies turned up their noses. But the medley was a charming one, nevertheless.



CHAPTER IV

1837-1838

After the wedding festivities I went back to sea, a lieutenant still, on board the Hercule, 100 guns—Captain Casy. Captain, petty officers, crew, all hands in fact save a few officers, were Provencal. Before a week was out I caught myself talking with their accent!

We were bound for South America Gibraltar was our first port, and our reception by the governor, Sir Alexander Woodford, Lady Woodford, and their charming children was of the kindest. I have a recollection of it which I treasure all the more in that later in the day I had to do with another governor with whom I had no cause at all to be satisfied. From Gibraltar we went to Tangier, the Moorish town I was to bombard some years afterwards, but where on this occasion I fought with wild boars only under the guidance of that first-class sportsman, Mr. Drummond Hay. The beauty of the eyes and colouring and the originality of the costume of the Jewish girls at Tangier delighted me, but not to the extent of chasing a certain melancholy from my heart, which had clung about it ever since the beginning of my cruise, through the long night watches, and even amidst the amusements of our stays in port. I was thinking of HER! There always is a HER when one is only twenty! After Tangier the ship stopped at Santa Cruz in Teneriffe, to take in water, and during this operation I organized a scientific expedition to the famous Peak of Teneriffe, which is nearly twelve thousand feet high, and from which my professor M. Pouillet had asked me to take some scientific observations. My brother officer, Rigaud de Genouilly, one of the ship's lieutenants, accompanied me. After two days climbing and bivouacking for one night at a great height, we were only about five or six hundred feet or so from the summit, when we were caught up by a messenger bringing us the captain's orders to get back as fast as we could. A despatch boat had just anchored at Santa Cruz bringing news that in consequence of some foreign complication a French squadron had been ordered to Tunis, and would probably go on to the East. The Hercule was to join it immediately. We tore down the mountain, rejoicing in the thought that we were most likely going to do some firing, and after a passage of twenty days, spent in all sorts of fighting drill, we cast anchor in the Bay of Tunis, only to have a bucket of cold water thrown over our heads. The complications on which we had built a whole structure of danger and glory had passed away. The squadron we were to have joined had departed, and orders awaited us to resume our interrupted cruise, and bear away for South America. One piece of news was we were told was that the expedition which was to go and avenge our last year's defeat at Constantine was fitting out at Bona, and that my brother Nemours commanded one of the brigades. Now my big ship was to revictual at Algiers, and I besought the captain, who had a free hand, to touch at Bona and give me a chance of seeing my brother. The passage from Tunis to Bona was delayed by calms, and when we got in, I found to my great regret that the expedition had started, but that a small column was being formed which was to join it, starting on the following morning. At this news I rushed to my captain, and calling all the resources of persuasion and every wile of diplomacy to my aid, I strove to convince him that there would be time for me, during his revictualling, whereat I should be practically useless, to make a rush to the expeditionary force and get back again, and that if the King, my father, knew I had happened to be where I was, he would be much displeased at my turning my back on an enterprise which was to avenge our national honour. There were no telegraph wires in those days, and I contrived to get the desired permission. Twenty-four hours later I turned soldier for the nonce, and started off, mounted and accoutred and full of fresh dreams of glory, destined once more to disappointment—a disappointment shared by various engineer and artillery officers and three Prussians, Messieurs von Willisen, [Footnote: H. de Willisen, aide-de-camp to the Prince of Prussia, who afterwards became the Emperor William, was in chief command of the Holstein army.] von Noville, and Oelrichs, who had arrived too late to start with the expeditionary force, and, like myself, were endeavouring to rejoin it. What shall I say about the march of the column to which I was attached upon Constantine? It lasted over twelve days of fearful weather, during which no discomfort was spared us. Torrents of rain, rivers in flood, snowfalls, men dying of cold, stragglers whose shouts for help only brought us to them to find them lying headless on the ground, and last of all, a terrible outbreak of cholera, which one of the regiments in the column brought with it from France. And we had the mental agony to boot of being kept ever so long at the foot of a mountain, the Raz el Akbah, which was so sodden that no gun nor vehicle could get up it, even with triple teams, and listening to the firing of the attacking batteries before Constantine without being able to get there.

One day, during this delay, the chief medical officer, by way of consolation, greeted us with these words at breakfast: "Bad news, gentlemen; we have just discovered that the cesspools of the hospital (a miserable hut) have burst, and for the last twenty-four hours they have been leaking into the spring where we get our drinking water."

"Hang it all, doctor, you really might have kept that to yourself," we all cried in a breath!

Amid all this suffering and discomfort, physical and moral, the courage, spirits, good humour and downright gaiety of the soldiers never failed for a single moment. I had never seen them before under such trying circumstances, and I thought them quite admirable, and their officers too,—the very embodiment of devotion. One day, the rear guard detachment had dropped some way behind the main column, and found itself stopped by an impetuous torrent, which was swelling visibly under a deluge of rain. The first men who tried to cross were carried off their feet, thrown down, and only pulled out with great difficulty. Without a moment's hesitation all the officers plunged into the water, though it was up to their arm-pits, and holding on to each other's arms they formed a sort of animated dam, above which they made their men cross over, and it was all done in the simplest way. Frenchmen of all classes, soldiers, sailors, what-not, a splendid race they are, when the spirit of obedience and discipline inspires them with a sense of duty! At last we came in sight of Constantine, and shortly after of a body of cavalry, the Third Chasseurs d'Afrique, sent out to meet us. From an officer detached in advance we learnt the place had been taken by assault three days previously, and that the Comte de Damremont, general in command, had been cut in two by a round shot, while he was talking to my brother Nemours. Very soon, galloping up to the Coudiat-Ati, I was in the arms of that good brother, who had behaved so brilliantly during the whole campaign. He was in the act of inspecting his brave little army, and we finished the inspection together. Then he scanned me from top to toe, and the smart soldier spoke instead of the brother "You can't go about like that, haven't you anything else to put on?"

"I'm afraid I haven't," I sadly replied, with a humiliated glance at my short jacket, my trousers turned up with a bit of gutta percha, and my straw hat covered with waxed cloth, none of which had been improved by camping out in the mud. The only soldier-like things about me were my sword and my lieutenant's epaulettes. But they manufactured me a cap, a naval lieutenant, Fabre Lamaurelle, who had come up with me, lent me his coat, and so I became presentable.

The sight of the breach excited me greatly, and my first care was to mount it. If my readers will call up the appearance of the buildings pulled down when a new street is opened in Paris, they will get some idea of the picture the top of the breach presented. It was a chaos of ruins, caused by cannon shot and explosions, without any apparent way out. The ground was like the moraine of a glacier, scattered over with caps, epaulettes, and human remains. A soldier of the 2nd Light Infantry was standing sentry beside a big stone.

"What are you doing there?"

"Do you see that bit of a blue cloak down that hole? The colonel is underneath that stone, and the bayonets sticking out of the rubbish belong to the men he was leading. The explosion buried them all alive!"

A terrible trial that explosion was for assaulting columns scattered through a labyrinth of ruins, and barricaded lanes, and fired at from all sides by an invisible foe.

But nothing dismayed our brave fellows for an instant. I was told that at the moment of the catastrophe, when the staff, which was following the progress of the fight with anxious ears, for there was no seeing anything, saw the cloud caused by the explosion shrouding the neighbourhood of the breach, and hundreds of wounded and burnt and maimed men coming down it, they thought the assault had been repulsed and that the game was up.

Lamoriciere, commanding the first attacking column, was carried back blinded, and to everybody's astonishment the commanding officer of the 2nd column, Colonel Combes, was seen returning also. He advanced, sword in hand, to the General commanding, over whose face an expression first of wonder and then of anger spread, at the sight of a commanding officer quitting his post. Nothing daunted, the colonel informed him, in a few curt sentences, of the state of the fight, and of his own confidence in its success, ending with these words: "It will be another glorious day for France and for those who live to see the end of it." He saluted, tottered—he was dead! No sign of his had betrayed that he was mortally wounded.

As I listened to the tale I asked General Vallee,—"But what would you have done, General, if the assault had been repulsed?"

"We should have begun again." As he said it he pressed his lips together with that fearfully stern expression which, with his short stature, had earned him the nickname in the army of "Little Louis XI.," and an officer behind me who wad heard my question and the answer, added in an undertone, "And he had taken all his precautions."

"What do you mean?"

"When he was told, the night before the assault, that the ammunition was giving out, he ordered one round to be kept in reserve for the battery that played upon the breach—"

"Well?"

"Don't you understand? He meant to fire on the attacking column if it gave any sign of wavering. He did it once in Spain at the siege of Tarragona."

There was another scene of war at the opposite end of the town from the breach at the Kasbah. During the assault all the non-combatant Mussulman population had taken refuge there, crowding and cramming it up to the very edge of the ramparts that crowned the precipices of the Rummel, and either from sheer terror or by dint of the pressure of the crowd, a cascade of human beings fell from the ramparts on to the rocks and terraces of the precipice. Heaps of corpses, men, women and children, but especially women, were caught here and there, and on one of the heaps an old white-bearded Arab was turning over the dead, one by one, seeking doubtless for some one who was dear to him.

Having no official position in the army, and as I could not well rest on laurels I had not won, I spent my time sketching. I began, of course, with the breach, and installed myself, for that purpose, beside a human head severed from the trunk, which lay on the ground alongside of a dead horse in the torn open belly of which a dog had made its lair. While I was drawing, I heard a bugle sounding a march and soon I saw the bugler coming out. Upon the breach; behind him marched a sub-lieutenant, sword in hand, and then in place of men, a string of donkeys, led by about a dozen Zouave irregulars. Puzzled, I went up to the bugler and, stopping him, I asked what he was blowing for. "Why," he replied rocking from one foot to another with his bugle on his hip, "this is the volunteer company from Bougie going back to headquarters."

"What?"

"Those are the rifles on the donkeys, there—everybody killed in the assault; there is nobody left but us." He began blowing again. The donkeys passed on and I bared my head to them.

Confident in the impregnability of his town, the Bey of Constantine had left his harem there and the ladies of it were shut up in the palace, which had been turned into head-quarters, and where I was living with Nemours. As may be imagined, this harem gave me subjects for many sketches, which disappeared, unluckily for me, in the sacking of the Tuileries on February 24th, 1848. In one of the courtyards, planted with orange-trees and roses, and surrounded by the elegant Moorish balconies of the Bey's Palace, there was a little door, which had been confided to the care of the vivandiere of the 47th Regiment and of a sergeant major of spahis, of the name of Bel-Kassem. It was the door into the harem and gave access to several courts, surrounded by galleries, both on the ground floor and first story, on which opened spacious rooms carpeted with divans and cushions and with shelves all round piled with quantities of things, knick-knacks, and, above all, stuffs, especially silken ones. The women—there were over two hundred of them—spent their lives night and day alike, squatting or lying on the cushions in these apartments. They were divided into two categories. The negresses, who formed the great majority, occupied two court-yards, and these courts exhaled a fetid odour which poisoned the whole of the Bey's palace, whenever the wind blew from that quarter. The white and sallow- complexioned women all lived together, they all wore Arab dress, with more or fewer trinkets, and there were some pretty women among them. Two were Greeks and there was one really beautiful Moorish woman, called Ayescha. I did her likeness, and that of the chief eunuch as well. He was a negro, growing grey, with a deceitful hypocritical eye all muffled up in very fine haiks which showed nothing but the tip of his nose, and legs which were entirely guiltless of calf. That sitting would have been a good subject for a picture—I drawing, the ladies of the harem hanging over me watching me work, and the negro standing and swearing as he stood, while Ayescha went to and fro lavishing the quaintest caresses on him, to keep him in good temper.

One evening, General Vallee had an entertainment got up for him in the harem. There were great illuminations, singing, music with tambourine accompaniment and the danse du ventre. Amongst those present was General de Caraman, who commanded the artillery. He was seized with cholera just as he was going away, and was dead by six o'clock the next morning. Such is life! Several adventures arose out of the fact of the harem's presence. One fine night, when everybody was asleep, two of the officers of infantry irregulars on guard took it into their heads to knock at the door, and were filled with delighted surprise on hearing the gentle voice of the good-natured cantiniere reply, "Is that you? Well upon my word," and the door opened. But within less than two minutes the frightful uproar caused by two hundred women shrieking at once roused the whole of head-quarters, and our two officers tore full pace back to the guardroom and got the men under arms. This scare, and it may be some others too, added to the pestiferous smell from the negresses' quarters, made the authorities resolve to get rid of all this human cattle and distribute it amongst the most well-to-do of the Mussulman population. I went to look on at their departure, which was presided over by a major on the staff, assisted by a detachment of irregulars. The women had been warned the evening before, and leave had been given for each to take away as much as she herself could carry. So they had spent the whole night rolling as many precious stuffs round their waists as they could support the weight of, and we found ourselves face to face with human balloons, like monstrous gourds. They could hardly walk, even when held up by the soldiers, and getting through the doorways was more difficult still. Some of them, hauled at in front and pushed from behind, shot through like the cork of a champagne bottle. Others, who could not squeeze through at all, were made over to the soldiers to be reduced to the necessary size, the whole thing accompanied by a chorus of shouts and objurgations of every kind. But to pass from the harem to graver subjects. On October 18th, I was present at the military funeral of the Comte Damremont. It was a moving sight. Some few hundred yards from the spot where he had been killed, just at the foot of the breach, a cenotaph had been built of sand-bags, on which the coffin, with his General's cloak, and his sword and white feathered hat laid on it, had been placed. The weather had gone into mourning too, for the occasion. It was a very gloomy day. The whole Arab population was looking on, squatting on the walls. On the top of the breach were planted the colours of the 47th Regiment. Below it the Zouaves' drums rolled a funeral march, while the officers did obeisance for the last time to the remains of their former general. And what officers they were too! How many future men of mark there were in that assemblage, which, not to mention its chiefs, numbered Captains Niel, Canrobert, MacMahon, St. Arnault, Le Boeuf, Ladmirault, Morris, Leflo, and many another in its ranks!

The army left Constantine in two detachments. I returned with the second, which escorted the general in command, who had fallen sick, and an enormous convoy of fever patients and cripples of all sorts. It was a dreary journey back, for the column was decimated by cholera, and the road was strewed with corpses. Every minute soldiers were to be seen dropping their muskets and writhing in the most awful convulsions. My brother, who commanded the rear-guard, spent his whole time having the poor wretches picked up and tied into mule litters. They were thence drafted into the ambulance wagons, which were crowded already, and there they died like flies. As soon as a man died, the other occupants of the wagon united their efforts and heaved him overboard. When the convoy started every morning a row of corpses marked the spot the wagons had been on during the night. A detachment of engineers covered them over with a little soil, but we had hardly moved off before the Arabs swooped down from all directions and uncovered and stripped them.

I was ill myself by the time the columns got to Bona—fever had me in its grip, but thanks to severe physicking I was almost my own man again by the time I rejoined my ship at Algiers. She went to sea almost at once. I had a relapse at Senegal, but the ocean passage completely cured me, and I was quite in smooth water by the time we reached the South American coast. Rio de Janeiro was our first port. I need not enlarge on the magnificent view presented by the Bay of Rio, which has been so frequently described by travellers. It was during this stay in harbour that I first saw the young princess who was later to become the Princess de Joinville, the devoted companion of my whole life. During this stay, too, I made an expedition to Minas, the gold mine country, a long journey on mule-back, through the magnificent monotony of the virgin forest. One of the mines I went to see, called Gongo-Soco, was worked by the labour of four hundred slaves, and owned by an English company who made an enormous profit out of it. I went down it, and, under the guidance of some Cornish miners, I had a try with a pick and succeeded in getting out several nuggets as thick as my little finger. As the vein was principally manganese, we were black all over when we came out of the mine, but a body of negresses came at once to wash us. Another expedition I made into the "camp" initiated me into a sort of sport which was new to me—hunting wild horses with a lasso. After having admired the extraordinary skill of the camperos in doing this, I tried it myself, and that not altogether unsuccessfully—it is a fascinating occupation.

To finish up our stay at Rio, we gave the emperor and his family, and the whole of society both foreign and Brazilian, a ball on board our ship. Towards the end of the evening, I turned a young lion I had been given in Senegal loose in the ball-room, and his appearance somewhat disturbed the figures of the cotillon.

From Rio the Hercule called in succession at Guiana, Martinique and Guadaloupe. The low shores of Guiana are clothed with mangrove swamps, the trees of which seemed scarlet, so covered were they with red ibises! Nothing more gay-looking can be imagined than the Cayenne River, and the pretty town standing on its banks—the wooden houses all separated from each other by gardens in which the tropical vegetation displays an unexampled luxuriance and variety. Flowers of every hue, set among huge calabash trees, gigantic palms of every kind, such as the traveller's palm with its immense fan-shaped leaves, bread-fruit trees, and many more, charm the eye with a wealth of colour which must be seen before it can be realized. Though the Cayenne River may be charming, the other arms of the Guiana delta, great rivers, hedged in by thick dark forest walls, are far gloomier to the sight. But those magnificent forests, peopled with creatures of all sorts, and especially with an infinite number of birds, of the most varied and dazzling plumage, have the irresistible attraction that hangs about life in the wilds.

I went up several of these rivers, such as the Aprouague and the Mana River, and visited the carbets, or villages, of several Indian tribes, the Norags, and the Galibis, which last were still quite savage at the time of which I write, armed with bows and arrows, and obtaining a light by rubbing two bits of stick together—a thing I actually saw them do. Men and women alike were red-skinned, tartar-eyed, their smooth hair dyed with "rocou," a sort of madder, and with a small strip of cotton passed between the legs as their only garment. The women were particularly frightful. Almost all of them had huge stomachs, which they held up with their hands just like a monkey's pouch, and all wore a kind of tight bracelet above and below their knees and ankles, which caused the intervening parts to swell, and gave their legs the appearance of skewers with Dutch cheeses on them. Apart from the savages, the general impression of Guiana remaining with me is that of a great hot-house, in which everything was as improbably huge as in one of Gustave Dore's illustrations—where I came across apricots as big as my head, and caimans ten yards long. As regards the inhabitants, I recollect Creoles, enervated by the climate, who were as kindly as they were intelligent; pale-faced women, languorous and seductive, with soft low murmuring voices; and lastly, just as I passed through, a negro drum-major of the National Guard, with a great big busby and a plume that was a dream!

My recollection of Martinique and Guadaloupe bring them back to me as lovely green islands of volcanic outline. The former especially struck me as being exceedingly picturesque, its hills covered with pleasant- looking habitations with the peaks of the Carbet veiled in the dark clouds brought by the trade winds, for background. I had to review the troops on the Savana, the promenade of Fort Royal, but I confess I took more interest in the costume of the beautiful quadroons, or quarterbred mulatto women, than in the review itself. This costume is worth describing. A brilliant-coloured bandanna, knotted round the head in the most fanciful manner, no stays of course, nothing but an embroidered chemise, showing a magnificent outline, and a bright-coloured skirt, yellow or rose-coloured, trained at the back, but gathered up on one side, to show a beautiful bare leg. When I add that these women often have a creamy white complexion which many a European would envy, the proud exclamation of the old householder, dragged I know not why before a court of justice, will be appreciated. To the Judge's question "What is your profession?" he replied "My profession! I keep up the supply of Mulattos!" "Je fais des mulatres!" It was in the days of the greatest prosperity of our beautiful Antilles that the old boaster spoke. When I arrived, this was already on the wane, and it really was tiresome not to be allowed to talk about anything but sugar and emancipation by the Creoles.

Nowadays what we call progress has done its work, and these colonies, which used to be an element of national wealth, employing a whole navy of merchantmen, and which served as nursery for the sailors of our warships, are now no more than machines for electing Radical Deputies, and thus increasing the number of agents of the national destruction.

At Martinique, we joined the flag of the admiral in command of the station. I have served under many admirals, one more eccentric than the other. One of the first, an excellent seaman, had one passion only, music—and his instrument was the double bass. He spent his time performing solos on this cumbrous instrument, which he would then put away in a small apartment known in the old-fashioned navy as la bouteille. Sometimes the sea-water came through the port, and flooded everything. When the admiral fetched his double bass out, and began his tunes, he would notice from the sound that the body was full of water, and then every sort of dodge would be resorted to, to get the liquid poured out by the sound holes. The poor admiral! There is a story that his double bass was victim one day of the spite of certain seamen, who marked their displeasure by pouring something less clean than sea-water into the big fiddle. This same gallant admiral having gone ashore once upon a time, at St. Louis in Senegal, and finding the bar there continued so impassable that he could not rejoin his ship, sent her round to Goree, and went there himself overland slung under a camel's belly, and armed with an umbrella,—which proved his complete ignorance of the miracles of the Prophet Mohammed.

My commanding officer at the time of which I write was another oddity. Imagine a thin little man, as hot as pepper, adorned with a hooked nose and chin, one as huge as the other. A real old-fashioned gentleman, always tightly buttoned up in the most irreproachably correct of garments, and with all the exquisite and formal politeness of the old school. Everybody was fond of the good old fellow, who heightened the oddity of his appearance on board his own ship by wearing a huge straw hat like the bell-crowned hat Eugene Sue puts on the head of M. Pipelet in the Mysteres de Paris, and a song had been composed about him, which we used to sing together and the chorus of which began "Bon! bon! de la Bretonniere! Bon Bon!"—la Bretonniere being his name. This same officer saved Admiral Magon's ship after Trafalgar, and later on he commanded the Breslaw at Navarino and showed the most consummate bravery there. His flagship was the Didon, which ship, having run aground several times, had earned the nickname of "Dido the touching" (la touchante Didon). Poor old Didon! I had sailed with her before and the sight of her gave me the same feeling of grateful recollection that stirs within a man who meets an old love. After a short cruise with the whole squadron the admiral led the way to the British island of Jamaica.

*******

We had hardly cast anchor before he sent to ask the British Governor when he would receive him, and, the appointment duly made, he sent for me to go with him. An aide-de-camp received us at the landing-stage, silently pointed to the governor's carriage, which awaited us, and disappeared. The carriage in question was a phaeton with room for two people in it, and a little seat behind for the groom, who was standing at the horses' heads with true British correctness. Says the admiral to me, "Are we to go in that?"

"Yes, sir."

"But," and he took two steps to the rear, "there isn't any coachman."

"You are to drive yourself, sir."

With a half turn to the right he replied, "I! Impossible! I've never been able to get a horse to go in my life. Do you know how to drive?"

"A little, sir."

"Then take the reins, sir!"

Into the carriage then we got, to the great satisfaction of the groom, who had guessed rather than understood the misgivings of the French admiral in the cocked hat. At first, things went pretty well. The groom showed me the way to Spanish Town, saying "left" or "right" as the case might be, when, presently we came to a great market crowded with negresses with blue cotton stuffs twisted round their haunches, all screaming at the top of their voices. The horses in our phaeton took fright at the noise, their alarm communicated itself to the negresses, who ran away, upsetting everything. I lost command of the horses, which swerved to one side, knocking over the heaps of gourds and water melons and bananas. There was a terrible scene of confusion. The admiral clung on with both hands, never stopping shouting "Oh the devil! the devil! the devil!" However we got through without any serious accident. On the return journey, conscious of my own incapacity, I offered to give up my place as whip to the admiral, but he refused with a most determined "No, no, no; oh NO!"

At the time of my visit, Jamaica was still celebrated for its rum, and my father had charged me not to forget to bring him a barrel, a commission I did not fail to execute. But a lamentable accident happened in connection with that same barrel. It was brought back to France and duly placed in the cellars at Neuilly, and had been forgotten for ever so long, when one fine day the King, recollecting it, ordered some of the contents to be handed round at the end of dinner. All the guests smacked their lips before-hand; but disappointment awaited them, and the first taste was followed by a general grimace of horror. It was simply beastly. Enquiries were set on foot and here is their result! A distinguished mental specialist, who had been ordered to take a sea voyage for the benefit of his health, which had broken down, had got leave from the Minister for Naval Affairs to sail on board the Hercule. Deeply interested as he was in his own special subject, he had occupied himself during all our stays in port in collecting brains, both human and animal, which he immediately labelled and shut up in a barrel of alcohol, which was exactly like my barrel of rum. The two barrels had got mixed and my father and his guests had been drinking rum flavoured with brains!

Our squadron dispersed on leaving Jamaica. The admiral, I think, was to go to San Domingo, we ourselves to Havana. One of our ships, a beautiful despatch boat, the Fabert, bore us company the first day. In the evening, the weather being calm, her commander, a lieutenant, M. de Pardeillan, came on board us to dine. Little did we think, as we accompanied him to the head of the companion, that we were bidding him an eternal farewell. The ship, the crew, and their young captain all disappeared, and have never been heard of again. The sea swallowed them all up, and the sea has kept the secret.

As we entered Havana, I was struck by the sight of a whole fleet of strange-looking ships which lay at anchor under the Morro citadel. They were long boats, built for speed, with immense sloping spars, like racing yachts. They were not warships, though they were heavily armed. They were slavers, for the negro trade was still in full swing in Cuba. The demand for black labour being constantly on the increase, the slavers went to fetch it from Africa, and brought it back at all risks, in spite of the British cruisers. But this importation of black cattle, which had been humane and kindly enough while it was free, had grown frightfully barbarous since the successful landing of each cargo had been exposed to every chance imaginable. The trade, nevertheless, fed the extraordinary prosperity of the fair Spanish colony, Queen of the Antilles, and especially that of her capital town, the Havana. The stir in the port itself was prodigious, and how shall I describe the animated appearance of the streets, the splendid houses, and the innumerable churches that met my gaze, and the evidence of luxury betrayed everywhere, and by everything 1 saw?

In the days of his wandering exile, my father had sojourned at Havana, and my first care was to seek out the friends he had left behind him there. Thanks to them, I soon found myself at home, in the Montalvo, Penalver, Arminteros, Arastegui, O'Reilly and de Arcos families, whose charming companionship formed the chief delight of my own stay. My cousinship with the Queen of Spain caused me to be received with great honour, also, by the authorities, especially by the Captain General, Espeieta. A review was arranged for me on the Paseo Tacon, and of that same review I have an undying recollection. Let my readers imagine a line formed by the Espana, Barcelona and Habana regiments, the artillery, and a lancer regiment, splendid troops all of them, under the command of General Count de Mirasol, with his baton slung at his buttonhole. And, facing this line, another of the most exquisitely charming aspect. All the volantes in Havana drawn up in battle array! The said volantes, peculiar to the place, are gigs without hoods or aprons, perched on two huge wheels, and each drawn by one horse in silver-mounted trappings, ridden by a calassero or negro postilion in flaming livery, laced on every seam. In each volante two ladies lounged, in evening dress, low-necked, bare-headed, and armed with fans. Every pretty woman in Havana was there, talking to the occupiers of the next carriage, looking on and being looked at, and all under a lovely tropical sunset, which lighted up the sea, whence a soft refreshing breeze was blowing, on one side, and on the other a forest of cocoa palms with the fortress of Principe rising above them. The ensemble of the picture and its details were alike charming, and to us sailors, just off the sea, it was heightened by contrast. These Havana ladies add all the charm of Spaniards to a mingling of Creole indifference with the confidence of well-born women. Their eyes and complexions are magnificent, their wrists and ankles exquisitely delicate, and their feet! I never saw anything like them—the feet of a Chinese woman, only natural, not produced by torture, I brought away a precious souvenir from Havana, in the shape of a shoe which I knew to be genuine, but which never met with anything but incredulity till the sacking of the Tuileries in 1884 bereft me of it altogether.

I remember yet a beautiful excursion in the interior of the island, partly by rail, partly by volante, along splendid avenues of palmettos, and thick shady mango trees, to the country house belonging to Dona Matilda de Casa Calvo, Marquise de Arcos, where I spent two days in the pleasantest of company, and where Lord Clarence Paget, who was of the party, astonished us by his talent as a singer. Our delightful stay in port was brought to a close by a ball given to me by the town of Havana at the Societad Philarmonica. I had just been dancing that pretty dance, a sort of slow valse, which is called the Habanera, and I was walking with my partner, a beautiful Spanish Mexican, with tiny feet, under the arcades which ran round the patio, when she pulled a straw-covered cigarette out of her pocket and lighted it. "Don't you smoke?" she enquired.

"No, Mademoiselle."

"Oh, but yes, I'm sure you will smoke," and she took her cigarette from her pretty lips and gave it to me to smoke, which I did without hesitation. That sudden conversion has been a durable one. But I have often regretted that I could not begin it all over again!