The quarantine came to an end at last, I was given leave, and once more, with joy, beheld my family, and Paris too. I had spent the greater part of my existence for the past four years at sea, and I confess I thirsted somewhat for Paris, dear unrivalled Paris! I got there in the heart of the winter of 1839, and left it in the first days of June of the same year. What recollections have I of those four months of repose? In vain I tax my memory, I can find nothing, or hardly anything at all. As far as exterior events go, none but the most infinitesimally small—the eternal wearying struggle between ministers in esse and in posse, which left the bulk of the public exceedingly indifferent. If the situation from the external point of view had grown more serious, at all events it did not inspire anxiety. The strength of the monarchical principle still made itself felt, in spite of the hitch in 1830. People reckoned on the King, on his wisdom and farsighted patriotism, to ward off the dangers, present and future, with which the ambition of the permanent and persevering governments around us threaten us, but of which our short- sighted democracy takes so little account. The King was indeed shortly to justify this confidence by saving France from a war with a European coalition, about the Eastern question—a war into which we were being led by the imprudence of M. Thiers and the bragging of our press and which could have ended in nothing but disaster.

The governmental machine worked meanwhile, as a whole, with tolerable smoothness. The House of Peers, the members of which were permanent, and therefore strangers to electoral compromise, discussed with weight and authority laws which were really progressive, respecting as they did the interests and liberties of all concerned; while the Chamber of Deputies, consisting of unpaid members, voted with much more care for the public weal than is possible in an assembly of men enslaved by their election committees, and perpetually haunted by the nightmare of re-election. An independent magistracy, according to President Seguier's fine expression, gave sentences, not services, "rendait des arrets, et non pas des services" while the administration, which was almost as permanent as the magistracy, had time to do good work and did it. In short, except for the criminal classes, and those incorrigible revolutionists who ask perpetually for the impossible, everybody felt that his security, his liberty, and his faith, were well protected, and, as I heard said on all sides when I came back from my voyages, people felt they were well governed. It is true that if I opened the newspapers I generally read to the contrary in them—but if there were some few serious organs of public opinion among these journals, edited by courageous and talented men, who did their best to serve their country by their writings, whatever their opinions might be, how many more had editors who were mere slander-mongers, and columns all the more eagerly read, the more calumnious they were, and the more they pandered to every envious and subversive passion. Such men were the spokesmen of that increasingly numerous class of speculators, who relinquish any useful career to seek fortune in the chances of politics. According to them, oppression and corruption had grown intolerable, and would never cease until power passed into their own immaculate hands. They alone possessed the secret for turning France into a terrestrial Paradise, by applying in all SINCERITY the great and high-sounding principles, liberty, equality and fraternity. This SINCERITY of application, which has been so frequently announced, dallies somewhat in its coming, especially as regards equality, which to so many people merely means, "That which I have not nobody else shall have." The word equality is seductive truly, and in every self-respecting community equality before the law must be utterly absolute for all men. But so long as science discovers no means for making all men equally intelligent and all women equally beautiful, I shall continue to look upon universal and blind equality as the most absurd and the most dangerous of chimeras. These reflections did not occur to me at the period I speak of. I was far too careless in the year 1840 to bother my head about the conundrums set by our office-seekers, "place-hunters" as the Americans call them. While they were amusing themselves with the fancies, envious, irreligious, unhealthy, and above all self-interested, which they posed as deducing from the principles of 1789, a far more terrible revolution than the French one—for it was to strike the poor as well as the rich—was shortly to burst upon us; the revolution brought about by the use of steam and electricity and rapidity of communication. Few people in those days foresaw the complete subversion of all the conditions of labour and food supply and life itself, which was to overtake all the peoples gathered together in old- established communities on worn-out soil, a subversion which is only in its beginning as yet, and the remedy for which we cannot discover.

One of the first results of the use of steam was to make it essential for all nations having war fleets to transform their arsenals and their naval stores. It was absolutely necessary to be able to oppose an enemy, whose means of attack could overcome wind and tide, with defensive means of equal power. That was as clear as A B C. This transformation interested me keenly—for the future of the arm of the service to which I had fervently devoted my whole life, and which I desired to see become once more a redoubtable weapon of our country's power, was bound up with it. But, to carry it through, we had to war with routine, with the obstinacy bred of old habit, and with the narrow ideas which were taught in the naval schools. It was a continuous daily struggle in which I bore an assiduous part.

Apart from this naval question, my time was spent between my home life, my worship for the fine arts, and the theatre, and also in boar-hunting, of which I grew passionately fond; and what makes this curious is that before I tried it I scorned the idea to such an extent that my brothers tied me up and took me by force the first time. Every incident of the hunt, the attack, the pursuit, all the unforeseen occurrences of the chase, leading you nobody knows whither, so that you even lose yourself in the dark sometimes in strange places, has still all the charm of struggle and action to me. And what a pleasant party of sportsmen we used to be, during our visits to Compiegne, to Chantilly, and above all to Fontainebleau! My brothers and I, the two Greffuhles, Caumont, Morny, Valewski, Edgard Ney, La Rochette, Casimir Perier, d'Albufera, Wagram, the de l'Aigles; foreigners too, Bedmar, d'Ossuna—and officers—and some ladies,—amongst these the beautiful Duchess of Somerset, who always hunted in a mask, and was invariably escorted by the charming Prince Labanoff. There were painters too amongst the most assiduous sportsmen—Jadin and Decamps. Decamps, of whom I was a fanatical admirer, was just in his best period—so too were Delacroix and M. Ingres; and all that pleiad of great artists, young then and in the full flush of their powers—Leopold Robert, Horace Vernet, Delaroche, my own master Ary Scheffer, Flandrin, and the landscape painters Marilhat and Corot—this last, in his first manner, dry and rectilinear, like that of Poussin. Nobody nowadays has any idea of the eager discussions aroused by the opening of the Salon and the superior merit of such a picture or statue. Nobody was indifferent: everybody was either for or against; each man either attacked the artist or lauded him to the skies. Works of art bring more money now, according as they are produced by this man or that, but they are less discussed. Which is the best inspiration for an artist, money or passion?

The theatres too, the Vaudeville, Varietes, Francais, the Opera, were delightful. At the Vaudeville, which had migrated after the fire in the Rue de Chartres to the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, Arnal, the inimitable, quaintest and cleverest of comic actors, was playing. At the Varietes they were acting the Saltimbanques, a play every line of which has passed into proverbs, which all my generation have been repeating for the last forty years. A woman of genius, Mademoiselle Rachel, had brought back its long forgotten glory to the Theatre Francais. For my part I never saw anything so absolutely perfect on the stage. With hardly any gesture, simply by the play of her countenance, her expressive glance, and the intonation of her voice, she expressed all the passions with an intensity that affected all her audience. She had a genius for dress and drapery. In her peplum she might have been taken for an antique statue, and she knew how to endue herself with the most incomparable womanly charm in all her parts, even the most savage ones. If she had committed murder you would have loved the murderess, and, strangely enough, this extraordinary woman was never witty except with her pen.

As for the Opera, the production of the great composers who had made its glory some years before had ceased. Of that trio of wonderful artists, Nourrit, Levasseur, and Mdlle. Falcon, only one, Levasseur, remained. The art of music was taking a rest. To make amends for this, the opera shone in ballet, fairy-like performances in which pantomime and trap- doors played as important a part as the actual dancing. Nothing could have been more enchanting than the Diable Boiteux with its many and various tableaux and its dresses, and Fanny Elsler dancing the "cachucha," or the Sylphide or the Revolte du Serail with Taglioni. I saw my brother Nemours in great danger during a performance of this last-named ballet. At a certain point the dancers, representing the revoltees, armed themselves with bows and shot a cloud of arrows into the wings. Now in the heat of action one of these arrows, launched with extraordinary vigour but uncertain aim by a charming young lady, one of the principal dancers, Mcllle. Duvernay, stuck in the column which separated the Royal Box in the old Le Pelletier house from that of the Marquis du Hallay, only a few inches from my brother's head. There was an exclamation from all parts of the house, great confusion on the stage and many comments made. But "all's well that ends well." That happy time of youth and carelessness and hunting and theatre-going was not to last long. Two of my brothers started for Africa—Chartres (as we always called our eldest brother the Due d'Orleans) was to take over the command of a division in the column which, under the orders of Marshal Vallee, was to check the rising prestige of Abd el Kader for ever at the Mouzaia Pass. My younger brother Aumale, was to have the opportunity during this expedition of breaking his first lance right brilliantly. I saw them depart with envy, and to add to my annoyance I shortly fell ill of a violent attack of measles. One day, as I lay in high fever, I saw my father appear followed by M. de Remusat, then Minister of the Interior. This unusual visit filled me with astonishment, and my surprise increased when my father said, "Joinville, you are to go out to St. Helena and bring back Napoleon's coffin." If I had not been in bed already I should have fallen down flat, and at the first blush I felt nowise flattered when I compared the warlike campaign my brothers were on with the undertaker's job I was being sent to perform in the other hemisphere. But I served my country and I had no right to discuss my orders. And there were two sides to the question, besides. Above Napoleon, the enemy of my house, the murderer of the Duc d'Enghien, who at his fall had left that dangerous game of chance wherein the ignorant herd is so often the dupe of the political croupier—universal suffrage- -as his legacy to ruined and dismembered France,—there was the matchless warrior whose genius, even in defeat, had shed immortal glory on our arms. To fetch his ashes from a foreign land was in a manner to wave the flag of vanquished France aloft once more—that at least was what we hoped for—and this view of the case reconciled me to my mission. As soon as I was on my legs again I started for Toulon, provided with full orders and instructions, both royal and ministerial, and re-took command of the Belle-Poule, a command I was to hold in many seas, during three consecutive years. I felt some regret at leaving Paris, but the delight at being back amongst the faithful and worthy fellows who made up my crew, my second family, soon made me forget what I had left behind me. Presently a certain number of passengers came on board. They formed what was called the St Helena Mission. Almost all of them had been comrades of Napoleon in his greatness and in his misfortunes. There were Generals Bertrand and Gourgaud, M. de las Cazes, &c., &c. During the long passages of the voyage, the conversation of these gentlemen, who had been present at so many events and followed the Emperor through so many adventures, was most deeply interesting. Every day there was a running fire of anecdote and traits of character, much closer to the truth doubtless than many a leisurely prepared history. I have often regretted we had no shorthand writer with us.

During the first days of our voyage we touched at Cadiz to get our last despatches before starting across the ocean. I was as glad as ever to see the white walls of Cadiz again, and I made a pilgrimage to the Cortadura, to the Trocadero (this in memory of the brilliant exploits of the Royal Guard in 1823), and also to the battle-field of Chiclana, which witnessed a terrible struggle between ourselves and the English in February 1811, some of the actors in which I had known. Coming back from Chiclana after a somewhat cheery luncheon, Arthur Bertrand, the general's son, well known at that time in the gay world of Paris, gave us a specimen of the maddest equestrian prowess. He galloped at full speed across the Alameda at Chiclana, which was paved with slippery flags, standing upright on his English saddle. There is a providence that watches over madmen!

A characteristic incident occurred on leaving Cadiz. In case of delicate negotiations with the English authorities at St. Helena, and also in order to draw up the protocol for the surrender of the body, a young diplomat, the Comte Philippe de Rohan Chabot,[Footnote: This gentleman died in London as French Ambassador, under the title of Comte de Jarna] had been associated with me.

We had hardly got out of the port of Cadiz, and cut our last communications with France, when I saw him approach me, looking very much embarrassed. He offered me a paper to read, saying it was only on account of his orders he had not communicated it to me before. I cast my eye over the signature at the foot of the paper and saw the name of M. Thiers, President of the Council. By these secret instructions, which were not to be imparted to me till we got to sea, M. Thiers informed M. de Chabot that he, Chabot, was his direct agent and that he invested him with superior authority to mine for as long as the mission should last. Such was the strange missive, aimed not only at the captain in command of the ship, but also, with an evident intention to wound, at the King's son—an application in a very small way of that maxim so dear to M. Thiers, "the King reigns but he does not govern." Stranger still was the care he took to keep it secret until, being cut off from France, I was no longer in a position to make any observation on the contradiction between these fresh instructions and the precise orders I had received previously. Friends from childhood as we were, Philippe and I, no idea of conflict between us was admissible. I made no complaint to any one and treated M. Thiers' behaviour to me with contempt, but from that day the sympathetic and almost affectionate relations I had previously lived in with that statesman came to an end—they were replaced by a sense of deep distrust and a scanty esteem for his character.

The Belle-Poule put in at Teneriffe to take in provisions and water, and I took advantage of this stoppage to finish the ascent of the famous Peak which I had had to break off in 1837. The last cone, all of crumbly pumice stone, and at a very acute angle, is tolerably tiring. On the summit is a small plateau, the soft soil of which is covered with flowers of sulphur and creviced with smoke holes from which scalding steam keeps escaping. Having got up in two days, we descended rapidly to the smiling little town of Orotava, built amidst the most lovely vegetation in a sort of ravine opening out on the sea. The female population of Orotava has a well-deserved reputation for beauty, and we were very kindly met by an invitation to make sure of the fact by being present at an afternoon dance, a sort of "garden party" got up in our honour—a great temptation truly, but a great perplexity as well! People coming back off a mountain climb, including two waterless bivouacs and a pull through the smoke and ashes of a volcano, are not in ball trim, either as to costume or to cleanliness. After a hasty council of war, it was decided that we should draw lots for the names of three of our party, who were to wash themselves, and to whom each of the non-chosen should furnish the least damaged articles of his own clothing, so as to put them in proper condition to go to the ball and keep up the honour of our flag before the belles of Orotava. We retired into a wood to proceed to draw lots and embellish the elect Fate did not favour me. I did not go to the ball, but my boots did, and our comrades came back full of admiration of all they had seen.

From Teneriffe our passage was a slow one. We had calms, storms, even gales, and then a fresh delay in port at Bahia in Brazil. I had been advised on leaving Paris to arrange the progress of the mission so as to make the return of the ashes of the Emperor to Europe coincide with the opening of the Chambers in the end of December. Indeed I believe the chief importance of the return of the ashes of Napoleon, in M. Thiers' mind, lay in this coincidence. It was the tom-tom by beating which he hoped to drown all those reports and inklings of ministerial changes which always sprout at such moments in the parliamentary soil. But it was somewhat difficult to time our arrival to a given moment, with a sailing ship, and after such a long voyage. Originally I was to have called at the Cape before going to St. Helena. I thought it better to replace our stoppage at the Cape by one at Bahia, so as to shorten the journey and save time. Very uninteresting our stay at Bahia was, save for the following picturesque incident.

I had chartered a small steamer on which I used to go on sporting expeditions with some of the officers. They were somewhat in the nature of voyages of discovery up the rivers which fall into Bahia Bay. During one of these excursions we had got some considerable distance up the Cachoeira without seeing a sign of any inhabitants, and leaving our boat at anchor, we had landed and spent our day in slaying toucans, parrokeets of all colours, and all the strange birds and beasts peopling the virgin forest, when at sunset we fell upon a cleared path, which led us to a wide glade and then to a village, the existence of which had been hitherto quite unsuspected by us. We entered it and found it deserted, the doors of all the houses shut. We went towards a very large square in the middle of the "Pueblo"—it was deserted too. We entered a fine church, the door of which stood open—not a soul within it, though the smell of the incense at some recently performed religious ceremony still hung in the air. In the middle of the square stood a kiosk, evidently intended for concerts; the instruments of an orchestra were still there, lying on the chairs before the desks, as if the music had only been broken off a few minutes previously. This suddenly deserted village rather puzzled us. But in the hope of bringing the population back to life, and with a certain spice too of mischief, we laid down our guns, and seizing on the big drum, and the abandoned trombones and clarionets, we raised a most alarming noise. It was mere waste of time, nobody came. The evening was falling, it was time to get back on board our steamer, and we quietly retook our way towards her. Night—a moonlight night it was—had completely closed in, when we got to the mangrove creek, where we had left the small boat which was to bring us back on board. We were crowding into the little craft, half aground on the mud, when a great clamour rose from the forest, and we saw weapons glint through the foliage on all sides. In the twinkling of an eye, before we had time to get over our surprise, a crowd of people armed with guns, swords, and pikes, rushed up at top speed, yelling loudly, and surrounded us, some remaining on shore and others throwing themselves into the water. We were instantly carried off, disarmed, separated, soundly thrashed, and dragged into the forest. Anybody who has looked at the picture of the savages attacking Captain Cook, in the history of his voyage, will have an exact idea of the scene. It was not otherwise than picturesque in the moonlight, and under that tropical vegetation; and it really was an attack by savages too, most of them negroes, and the rest mulattoes. Very luckily for us, our surprise and our unloaded guns, and the way we were crowded into the boat, prevented our making any resistance, otherwise we should certainly have been massacred, surrounded as we were by 200 armed men. Each of us had his own little experience in the scuffle. I, for my part, jumped into the water, knocking up the pikes of two negroes, who looked as if they were going to spit me, with my gun, and hurriedly caught a man—with a civilian's hat on his head, a sash over his shoulder, and a big sword in his hand, who seemed to me to be the leader of the band—round the waist. I gave him to understand, in a few words, in bad Portuguese, that I commmanded the French warships anchored at Bahia, and that if harm came to any of us, he and his fellows would live to repent it. But before I could finish my speech the angry crowd fell on me, carried me off, and dragged me to a mound, against which, as I seemed to understand, they meant to back me and shoot me. Indeed five or six negroes stationed in front of me hastily loaded their guns. The situation was far from pleasant, for those who know the negro race know what they are capable of when swayed by the paroxysms of excitement into which they work themselves, whether from drunkenness, or rage, or fear. Fouchard, whom two or three men were holding a few steps off from me, seeing what was happening, threw off his captors by a superhuman effort and sprang to my side. We clung fast to each other, and this caused a fresh struggle and a respite of a minute's duration, during which the man in the sash, who had quickly understood this was becoming a bad business for himself, charged at the head of the most reasonable of his mulattoes. We were captured and recaptured several times, but victory at last rested with the man in the scarf, and an explanation became possible. It appears there had been an election, with considerable disturbances—blessed be elections in all places and countries!—in the village, on the preceding day. The inhabitants, in their over- excitement, had been struck first with surprise, and afterwards with terror on hearing us firing at the parrokeets. Their terror reached its height when seven or eight white-skinned men, oddly armed and accoutred, were seen to enter the village. The whole population fled into the woods. Then noting from afar how small our number was, and more especially observing our retreat, valour took the place of fright, and arming itself, it rushed to the enemy's pursuit! We were set at liberty of course, and apologies were duly made; but that did not mend the blows received, especially by one of the lieutenants of the Belle-Poule, Penhoat, who had been half murdered. We boarded our steamer, and found the English engineer in charge of her completely drunk. When we told him our story he rushed below to his engine-room, and fetched out a huge pistol that must have dated from Cromwell's time; and we had all the trouble in the world to prevent him from going on shore alone to take signal vengeance on "those damned niggers."

Leaving Bahia, we had to go a long way down the Southern Atlantic before we got a favourable wind. We reached St. Helena at last—a great black rock, a jagged volcanic island resembling Martinique, minus its splendid vegetation—a scrap of Scotland set in mid-ocean, and swept incessantly by the Trade wind, which blows with wearisome continuance and gathers a thick and permanent cloud-clap above the isle. It looked gloomy from the sea, and the impression on arrival there was gloomy too. James Town, the capital, is simply a wretched village, stretching along a narrow valley, shut in by dreary-looking rocks crowned by forts, to which you climb by staircases counting six hundred steps. The country around Plantation House, the Governor's residence, the valley of the Tomb, the Tomb itself with the legendary willows, and Longwood, the prison house, all are equally gloomy, and equally calculated to kill the great genius banished thither, by inches.

The business which had brought me was quickly settled between myself and the Governor, General Middlemore. The orders of the British Government were clear and precise, and the local authorities showed great goodwill in carrying them out. They undertook the exclusive care of the exhumation and transport of the remains over British territory, and it was all done with the utmost propriety. The only request I made and obtained was, that the coffin should be opened before it was handed over to us, so as to be sure that we were taking neither a hotbed of infection nor an imaginary corpse on board. The Governor himself being ill I saw but little of him. He commissioned the officer in command of the troops, Colonel Trelawny, of the Royal Artillery, to represent him. He was a pleasant man, but decidedly eccentric. His great mania was the study of genealogy, and he never failed to explain when we met that he was my cousin, and that we were both related to the late Sultan Mahmoud on the female side!

When all was ready the exhumation took place, and very imposing it was. Everybody felt impressed when the coffin was seen coming slowly down the mountain side, to the firing of cannon, escorted by British infantry with arms reversed, the band playing, to the dull rolling accompaniment of the drums, that splendid funeral march which English people call The Dead March in Saul, but which is really no other than the ancient Catholic chant of Adeste Fideles. General Middlemore, dropping with fatigue, formally handed over the body to me; and the coffin was lowered into the long-boat of the Belle-Poule, which then started for the ship. The scene at that moment was very fine. It was a striking moment A magnificent sunset had been succeeded by a twilight of the deepest calm. The British authorities and the troops stood motionless on the beach, while our ship's guns fired a royal salute. I stood in the stern of my long-boat, over which floated a magnificent Tricolour flag worked by the ladies of St Helena. Beside me were the generals and superior officers, M. de Chabot and M de las Gazes. The pick of my topmen, all in white, with crape on their arms, and bareheaded like ourselves, rowed the boat in silence, and with the most admirable precision We advanced with majestic slowness, escorted by the boats bearing the staff. It was very touching, and a deep national sentiment seemed to hover over the whole scene.

Two days later we set sail for France, which was reached after a passage of forty-one days. During the passage, feeling anxious at having had no news from Europe for four months, I spoke several ships, and amongst others, south of the line, I spoke a Dutch man-o'-war on her way to Java, which gave us details of the coalition apparently directed against Mehemet Ali, the Egyptian Viceroy, but aimed, in reality, at France. Not knowing what might result from the performances of the allied naval forces on the Syrian coast, we on board the frigate and her consort, the Favorite, determined to take all usual precautions in case of war; and each of us made ready, after his own fashion, for his eventual departure to another world. There was, in most cases, a great destroying of souvenirs, papers, and compromising correspondence. General Gourgaud attracted our attention by the trembling care with which he re-read a perfect mountain of notes in a feminine hand, which he burnt one by one in a basin, gathering up the ashes and preserving them in a bottle—not a bad way of keeping tender memories quite safe from any inquisitiveness But all these warlike preparations were thrown away. When the Belle Poule cast anchor at Cherbourg on November 3Oth, the storm had passed by. My mission closed at Cherbourg, but I found orders there to tranship the coffin on to a steamboat, and then take it round to Paris by the Seine, my crew and that of the corvette Favorite to form the escort. I will not tell the story of this conveying of the body. At St Helena things had on the whole been done by the British army on the one part and our naval forces on the other, with all the chivalrous seriousness and dignity which always attend international relations when confided to those who wear the sword. In France the conveyance of the remains of Napoleon took on quite another character. It was first and foremost a show, in which, as always happens in our country, many people desired to play a part which was inappropriate and sometimes ridiculous. I had often to interfere to get things put to rights again. At La Bouille, for instance, which we reached at nightfall, to meet the river flotilla to which we were to be transferred, I was shown, as the vessel which was to receive the coffin and the staff of the escort, a frightful-looking boat on which a sort of hideous dais had been built, with all the frippery and plumes of the Pompes Funebres, an official catafalque worthy of Carpentras or of Brives-la-Gaillarde. I immediately gave orders for this masterpiece of bad taste to be destroyed, a coat of black paint given to the boat, and everything cleared forward, so as to place the coffin there well in sight, and covered with a violet velvet pall. My men at once fell to work at this transformation, when a gentleman in evening dress advanced, and in a tone of great authority, forbade my sailors to touch anything. "I got my orders from M. Cave (the Director of the Beaux Arts) and from the Minister. All the decoration was designed by me, and carried out under my direction, I hold to it, and I forbid anybody to touch it," he said. "But, my good sir," I replied, "my orders have been given, and will be carried out." My gentleman became so violent that I desired him to leave the vessel instantly. "But surely you are not going to put me ashore at this hour (it was almost dark) in the open fields? I don't know where I am; I don't see any houses." "That's nothing to me, you have been insolent, so it is your own fault. Put this gentleman ashore." Four sailors advanced, but he gave in, and nobody ever heard of him again. By the following morning the transformation was complete, and the coffin moving unsheltered up the course of the river, as though to take possession of the stream, was much more striking than all the tinsel and canopies imaginable. The whole voyage up to Courbevoie, the point of arrival, was a mere classic reproduction of the usual official journey—flags, authorities girt with tricolour sashes, clergy pronouncing blessings, shaking with terror all the time, horses, gendarmes, curious crowds of holiday makers, the only thing lacking being the speeches. From Courbevoie the body was taken in procession through the Champs Elysees to the Invalides, with the usual ceremonial, which I had already witnessed in the cases of Charles X. and the Duchesse d'Orleans, but with one extra point, the cold, and it was terrible.

At the Invalides four-and-twenty non-commissioned officers advanced to carry the coffin into the church; but in spite of the most desperate efforts the veterans could not succeed in lifting it, and I had to make my sailors carry it. The King received the body at the entrance to the nave, and there rather a comical scene took place. It appears that a little speech, which I was to have delivered when I met my father, and also the answer he was to give me, had been drawn up in Council, only the authorities had omitted to inform me concerning it. So when I arrived I simply saluted with my sword, and then stood aside. I saw indeed that this silent salute, followed by retreat, had thrown something out; but my father, after a moment's hesitation, improvised some appropriate sentence, and the matter was afterwards arranged in the Moniteur. The Church of the Invalides was full to overflowing, the Chamber of Peers and the Chamber of Deputies being seated in the choir. The success of the day fell to my brave sailors. Everybody was curious to see them. Their athletic forms, easy gait, and kindly sunburnt faces at once won over the general public, especially the feminine portion of it; and then they were something new to that sight-loving Parisian population, to whom so many have been given since then, that for want of a better the only thing offered them at the present moment is Dinah Salifou and the danse du ventre. What a fall here too, compared vith the past! During the triumphal passage of the Emperor's ashes down the Champs Elysees between two ranks of soldiers and National Guards, who kept back an immense multitude, I had constantly amid the various shouts caught one of "Down with traitors," which, at first, I did not understand. I had been so far away. But it was explained to me that this demonstration was aimed at my father and his ministers, guilty as they were of having refused to launch France into a general war about the Eastern question. I fancy my father troubled his head little about these would-be-wise demonstrators, worthy forerunners of the Boulevard braggarts who, at a later date, in 1870, so appositely shouted "a Berlin." He had other matters to preoccupy him. The ease with which all the Governments in Europe had leagued themselves together, to inflict a moral check on France, under cover of the Pasha of Egypt, betrayed the latent hostility of all those powers to our own country. Let us say it outright. In the eyes of the European monarchies, the Government of July, by virtue of its origin, and however wise and courageous the policy of the King, my father, might have been, had always remained a revolutionary, and therefore a hostile government Nothing else was possible; and so at bottom it always will be, as long as we continue to run in the rut along which we have been floundering for the last hundred years. Look at any country in Europe, no matter which, and see against whom the established Government carries on the domestic struggle. Against Nihilists in Russia, Socialists in Germany, anarchists and unquiet spirits of all kind everywhere, imitations of those of our own country, and by them encouraged to press on the same course of demand, and spoliation, and licence. And hence the necessary consequence, that sovereigns and organized societies, whose first desire is to exist, and neither to be overthrown nor despoiled, are always ready to make common cause against that hotbed of bad example, Revolutionary France. The events of 1840 showed this with the utmost clearness; and in face of that demonstration the path of duty lay clear. It was to lose no time in taking, without boastfulness, but also without weakness, all the necessary measures against the danger which was constantly threatening, although for the moment it was warded off. Among these measures was one my father passionately desired, and which he snatched from the Chambers by sheer tenacity—the fortification of Paris. This tenacity was necessary, for the struggle was long, bitter, and inexplicable While it lasted the heroes of the cafes greeted my father in the streets and at reviews with insulting shouts. The cry, "Down with the Bastille," had succeeded that of "Down with traitors," and all the fainthearted section would have knuckled down. All the energy of the King, of my brother the Due d'Orleans—as eager as himself on the question—and of the ministers, was needed to bring them back into fighting line. The aid too of those patriots of all shades—and thank God there still are some such!—who put national independence and honour above party questions, had to be invoked. And so Paris was fortified Who dares nowadays to say, that this was not a convincing proof of the King's foresight as a ruler? Who dares to say, that if hesitation, and desultoriness, and incapacity, and evil chance, had not clung to the command of our armies in 1870, the German invasion might not have been broken up upon those ramparts?

The winter of 1841 was also spent in raising our battalions of Chasseurs-a-pied, the personal work of my eldest brother. I used often to go and keep him company in the camp at St. Omer, while he was employing all his great powers in organizing this force. When it was done he gave a splendid fite, to which he invited the officers of the English garrisons on the opposite coast, deputing me to receive them. A few days later the population of Paris was surprised and delighted by the sight of these ten splendid battalions, in their simple but elegant uniform, pressing through the streets with swinging step, filling the courtyard of the Tuileries, and forming up in the space of a few minutes to be inspected by the King. These fine troops, with their strong esprit de corps, have since then earned glory by many exploits in all quarters of the globe. The number of battalions has been raised from ten to thirty. The organization, given them at the outset by a vigorous hand, has remained intact. Their uniform even is unchanged, having escaped the prevalent mania for bringing everything down to the same level of ugliness. The only thing gone is the original name, Chasseurs d'Orleans; but what matters the name when the service remains!

My memories of the winter of 1841 are full of recollections concerning our national defence. Mingled with them, however, are some others of a less austere nature Masked balls were the rage that year. They were given in all directions. I was only three-and-twenty, and thought them all delightful Just at that moment Chicard—the famous Chicard—shared the sceptre of the opera-balls with Musard, the chief of the orchestra. A quiet-living worthy tradesman on weekdays, on important occasions an officer in the National Guard, Monsieur L "le grand Chicard," dressed in the most eccentric of costumes, led indescribable farandoles to the sound of broken chairs and pistol shots, accompanied by Musard's orchestra, at these entertainments. There were balls in the Opera House, at the Renaissance, the Salle Ventadour, the Varietes—these last the prettiest and the most fashionable and amusing. Not an evening coat in the whole ball-room, everybody, men and women alike, in costume, and everybody acquainted with everybody else. And what gaiety and go there was about it all' You asked your partner in the upper-boxes to dance with you, from the floor of the house, and she, to lose no time, came down outside the balustrades, faithfully passed down by friendly hands. When the quadrille was over you met jolly comrades everywhere, with their partners astride on their shoulders, shaking hands as it were two stories at a time. But there is an end to all things. My two brothers— Nemours and Aumale—went off to fight in Africa under General Bugeaud; and, in the month of May, I myself was sent out to the Newfoundland station.



CHAPTER VIII

1841-1842

I left Cherbourg for Newfoundland on May 19th, 1841. It had been arranged that I was to go by the North Sea, to put into the Texel, and to go to the Hague to pay my respects in person to the King of the Netherlands. Almost as soon as I had disembarked at the Helder, I went on board the royal yacht, which was to take me to Alkmaar by the Noord Holland Canal. This yacht, commanded by a very pleasant fellow, a naval lieutenant, M. Dedel, was really charming. She had been built in the seventeenth century, and had been used by Admirals Van Ruyter and Van Tromp when they went to take up their commands. She was covered all over with gilt carvings, the deckhouse in the stern especially, and looked as if she had started freshly painted out of one of Backhuysen's pictures. Once on board her, a legion of horses towed her along, full trot, and I went to bed. When I awoke, I found the yacht moored beside the quay at Alkmaar, the city of cheeses, whence a carriage took me to Haarlem and Amsterdam, along the Haarlem Zee, which has been drained dry since then, and transformed into splendid meadow land, as the Zuider Zee will some day be. At Amsterdam I rushed to the museum, where I was received by M. Apostol, the director, who had known the Scheffers' father intimately at Rotterdam. Oh that museum! Oh those prints! But M. de Bois-le-Comte, the French Minister, was pitiless. He tore me away from all those masterpieces, and forced me to follow the millround of the programme he had laid out for me. He dragged me off to Zaandam (Saardam in French). This pretty Japanese-looking village, in the midst of a wide polder, surrounded by over five hundred windmills, looking like a row of gigantic sharpshooters, is a resort of pilgrims, and the holy spot is the hut of Peter the Great. The wretched wooden house, shut up in a sort of casemate, was the property of the Queen, sister of the Emperor Nicholas, and the shanty was never mentioned by her or to her but in the most feeling manner. Flectamus genua! Leva...ate! Amongst other inscriptions there, I found the names of two French actors, Dormeuil and Monval, which recall anything but pious memories to my mind.

From Zaandam I went to the palace, to Van Ruyter's tomb, to the pelicans in the Zoological Gardens, and then I escaped from the furious Bois-le- Comte, who would have liked me never to go about except in a glass case labelled "Ecce the Prince de Joinville." Very kind and very witty he was, all the same, one of those finished diplomatists of the old school- -a disciple of M. de Talleyrand. He had been everywhere, seen everything, observed everything, and he kept me under the charm of his conversation all through my hasty trip in Holland. During the last preceding years he had represented France in Portugal and Spain successively, and had been with the two Queens—my future sister-in-law- -Dona Maria in Portugal, and the Regent Christina in Spain, through all the most violent disturbances, struggles, and dangers of the military conspiracies in those countries. He never tired of talking about the courage of these two ladies, the nature of which was very different in each case. The courage of the Queen of Portugal, he said, was resolute, but mournful and gloomy. The example she set was good, but she cast a chill on officers and men alike. Queen Christina—passionate, a woman to her finger tips, careless of danger, but shedding tears of nervous excitement when the bullets smashed her windows and flew hither and thither about the apartments—magnetised her defenders. In the one case you cried "Welcome, Death!" in the other you shouted "Forward!" Very interesting indeed was the description Bois-le-Comte gave me of the La Granja conspiracy. How, having been warned in the middle of the night of the danger threatening Queen Christina and her daughters, he got up in haste to hurry to their assistance, but desired, first of all, to warn the British Minister and carry him along with him. How, when he reached the house of the minister, Mr. Villiers, afterwards Lord Clarendon, he rushed without meeting a soul into his bedroom, where the bed-curtains shook convulsively at the noise of his entrance, and the head alone of the minister appeared, saying, "I'll follow you," while a soft voice tried to detain him, with all the tenderest appeals in the Spanish language. "I took myself off double quick," said Bois-le-Comte to me; "but I had recognised the voice."

From Amsterdam we went to the Hague, and as soon as I got there I asked to see the King. "Let him come at once" was the reply.

King William, young-looking still, with a graceful figure and a kindly engaging face, framed with a fringe of grizzling beard, had a loud voice and a hearty laugh. He was witty in conversation. The Queen, whom I never saw laugh, nor even smile, talked cleverly too, but she picked her words too obviously. Her daughter, the young Princess Sophia, now Grand- Duchess of Saxe-Weimar, was clever too. I was watching her dance at a ball one night, wearing a pretty gown, the chief adornment of which was an eastern scarf, when her father, to whom I was talking, said, "Marmotte (her pet name in the family) looks like a Bayadere to-day." And indeed she had all the grace and charm of one.

My stay at the Hague was one succession of gatherings, dinners, balls, at which the cordiality of my reception never failed for one minute. It touched me much, and I have kept a grateful memory of it, for there was some merit, on the King's part, in its being so. Had we not largely contributed by our support of the Belgian revolution to lessening his kingdom by one half? And there had been yet another wound to his vanity. In his youth King William, then Prince of Orange, full of eager bravery, had gone to serve in Spain under the Duke of Wellington. He had been wounded in the ranks of the British army at Waterloo, and on the strength of these antecedents he had offered himself in 1815 as a candidate for the hand of Princess Charlotte, heir-presumptive to the Crown of England. He had been ousted. And by whom? By Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, whom we had just made King of the Belgians. In spite of these causes for coldness, at all events, the welcome I was given by the King, his family, and by every class of that honest and well-behaved Dutch race, was marked by a constantly increasing kindliness, which filled Bois-le-Comte and his very witty secretary, La Rosiere, with delight. Just at the moment of parting, the King made me a present of an admirable copy in reduced size of Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson, which hung in his study, saying, "You are going to Newfoundland; you shall bring me back a dog in exchange," which commission I faithfully executed.

To finish up my visit to Holland, I paid a visit to the Naval Arsenal at Flushing, and as I passed through Zeeland I saw from afar, and not without emotion, the belfry towers of Bergen-op-Zoom, a town which witnessed the performance of two of the most brilliant exploits in our annals. The first—the taking of the stronghold by assault, by Marshal de Lowendal's army, in 1747. The second—the assault delivered on it on the 8th and 9th of March, 1814, by the whole English army, and triumphantly repulsed by a handful of soldiers and sailors commanded by General Bizannet. The assault under Marshal de Lowendal has been commemorated first of all in a celebrated song, and later by an admirable drawing in body colour by Van Blarenberg, which is to be seen in the Versailles Museum. But the exploit of 1814 has been almost lost sight of amid our disasters and the subsequent invasion. Very few people are aware that the British army made a forcible attack on Bergen-op- Zoom, getting into the town by the port at low tide, and scaling the ramparts, led and backed up by the inhabitants, who had risen in favour of the House of Orange, and that the enemy's columns got as far as the middle of the town, whence, after twelve hours' fighting, they were driven over the ramparts by the resolute bravery of the defending force, leaving more prisoners in its hands than its own fighting men numbered. The details of this splendid page of military history should be read as told by Colonel Legrand of the Engineers, who commanded under General Bizannet. In them, among other dramatic incidents, will be found an episode about a bellringer, which is almost identical with the one Sardou has incorporated in his fine play Patrie.

From the Texel, or, to be more exact, from Neu-Diep to Newfoundland, by the north coast of Scotland, the passage, though we made it without disaster, was terribly trying to both our crews and our ships, which last were much damaged, and lost nearly all their sails. An incessant series of gales kept us under green seas nearly all the time. Upon these followed thick fogs, and finally we fell among numberless icebergs. So it was with a lively sense of relief that I found myself anchored at last within the haven of Le Croc, the headquarters of our squadron during the fishing season. The haven was itself so obstructed with ice that on the very night of my arrival, with the help of my cook and some tins of jam, I was able to serve up Neapolitan ices to my staff, like Tortoni himself.

There was very near being a serious breach of discipline on board the frigate during our passage. A sailor refused to obey, and threatened one of the midshipmen—a serious act of insubordination, which, according to the laws then in force, entailed corporal punishment on its perpetrator. I immediately called a court-martial, which, having heard witnesses and defendant, according to regulations, sentenced the man to a certain number of strokes with the rope's end. The hour for carrying out the sentence came, the crew was mustered, the officers in their places and under arms. I was in my cabin, just buckling on my sword, when my second in command came in like a whirlwind. "They are going to ask for mercy," he cried; "it's your own fault. The men know your hatred of corporal punishment. They are going to presume on it. I beg you'll give me leave to run the first man that opens his mouth through with my sword." Up till that time I had avoided the use of corporal punishment, a matter which had been made all the easier for me by the good feeling and quiet behaviour of the crew I had had under my command. But this time the scandal had been notorious, the punishment must be exemplary, and the law applied without mercy. What would become of the authority of an isolated handful of officers, on the high seas, among hundreds of seamen, if they had no possible recourse to force, to punishment drill, or to long terms of imprisonment? What, again, would become of that purely moral influence, which is indispensable on board a ship which is practically always at sea, if the maintenance of discipline was ever liable to the slightest failure? Filled as I was with even more than the ordinary sense of the imperious claims of duty on the officer in command, I reassured my subordinate. "Make your mind easy," I told him. "I would be brayed in a mortar sooner than tolerate one moment's hesitation in carrying out the sentence. I shall stand at the head of the crew, and have the punishment carried out in front of me. The men will read my countenance and nobody will stir, I'll answer for it!" And so it was. I took my place, all eyes turned on me, and everything passed off according to rule—To say the scene was not a painful one to me would be to tell a lie. But duty has to come first.

As my second in command had said, I had a horror of corporal punishment as laid down by the Convention, a relic of another age, when navy crews were recruited amongst a set of vagabonds picked up in all quarters. I thought it degrading. Often, among my brother officers, I had blamed the unmeasured use I had seen made of it on board ships I did not command. And glad indeed I was when it was done away with. A commanding officer invested, and justly so, with unlimited authority on board his own ship, is sure by intelligence, firmness, and sense of duty, to find other means than the lash of making the saving law of absolute obedience to superiors respected, without going such lengths as the captain of an American warship, who, on his own responsibility, hanged one of his midshipmen, nearly related to the Minister for Naval Affairs, who had been guilty of attempted mutiny, from the yardarm.

I will not enlarge here on what has become the Newfoundland Question, which I have naturally had to study in all its aspects. Suffice it to recall the fact that when the Island of Newfoundland became British territory, the conquerors ceded the exclusive right of fishing on half the coast to France, with the reservation that we were only to remain temporarily, during the fishing season, and have no permanent establishments on the island. When these fishing rights were conceded to us (and they soon became very important, employing as they did over twenty thousand sailors, and turning the Newfoundland fisheries into one of the chief training grounds for our service sailors) the island was well-nigh uninhabited. There are no opportunities for conflict in a desert country. But little by little the island grew populous. On the part where we had the fishing rights, the "French Shore," a very limited, almost insignificant, English population gathered, and, oddly enough, we ourselves brought it there, desirous as we were to leave caretakers to look after and keep in order, from one season to the other, the indispensable establishments for the curing, drying, and salting of the codfish, which we ourselves could not occupy permanently. Everywhere, during my cruise, I found this English population, living by us, and on excellent terms with our Newfoundlanders. To such a pitch was the excellence of these terms occasionally carried, that paying a visit one day to a worthy sea-captain from St. Malo, who had laid up his ship during the fishing season, and settled on shore, in an English house, I saw two chubby children burst in, shouting "Papa, papa!" while a young and pretty Englishwoman, sitting by, never lifted her eyes from her work. "The little geese," said the worthy Breton, "see me so often, they've got into the habit of calling me papa!"

This entente cordiale would no doubt have continued indefinitely, and nobody would have heard any mention of a Newfoundland Question, endangering the international relations between the two countries, if the southern portion of the island, entirely English as it was, and with a temperate climate, had not increased so rapidly in population as to have a constitution, liberal institutions, a Parliament, and the consequent elections. The electioneering agents forthwith found they needed a sensational popular platform, and this platform has ended by becoming something like the "Irredenta" movement in Italy, a claim for national rights over the national soil. "Newfoundland for the Newfoundlanders." There lies the whole of the Newfoundland Question. Locally, nobody bothers their head about it, but in the press, and on the phantom-haunted ground of electoral politics, it has kindled many passions, and may very likely engender ruin and bloodshed some of these days. These facts taken for granted, I return to my personal recollections. Unlike most of my brother officers, I found my stay in Newfoundland (in the summer months, during which we were stationed there, be it understood) very pleasant. The island is a hilly one, covered with pine forests. Where the woods fail, there are lakes and rivers, admirably clear, and swarming with salmon and trout. There was plenty of game, and all this in the midst of the uninhabited region where every one can enjoy the completest liberty, with no limits but those imposed by his own tastes and endurance. If there were no drawback to all these advantages, Newfoundland in the summer-time would be a paradise, and there is no such thing as that upon our globe. The drawback is the flies, little black ones, called the "black fly," the pest of all northern countries, against which one is quite defenceless. They get in everywhere; no preservative stops them; no ointment nor any daubing repels them. During a hunting excursion I made to the Isle of Groix, so christened by some native of L'Orient, which is about eight miles off Le Croc, I saw some of my comrades with their heads swelled up like a hydrocephalous patient's, so that their eyes had disappeared, half mad with pain from the stings of that infernal fly, and one of our sailor servants lay on the ground, refusing to move, and begging us with tears to put a rifle to his head and end his agony.

This Isle of Groix swarmed with creatures that had come over the ice from the mainland in the winter season. Its steep edges, covered with an impenetrable arborescent growth, enclosed a great treeless plateau, a "lande." We used to get on to this lande by walking up the bed of a rivulet, and once on it we had perfect massacres of winged game, especially of that sort of gray grouse called ptarmigan by the English. It was these birds' pairing season. They never flew away, and when we killed one the other would ruffle up its feathers in a fury and fly pecking at our legs. The wooded sides of the island must have been full of reindeer, to judge by the quantities of tracks to be seen on every side. If we had had one or two hounds to send into the thickets we might have made hecatombs of them.

From Le Croc I went round all our neighbouring fishing stations—Saint Julien, the Baie Rouge, &c. Cod were extraordinarily numerous that year. One haul of the seine at the Baie Rouge brought in eighty-four thousand cod-fish in one day. It was the golden age of the fishery. Now the fish have deserted the eastern coast of Newfoundland. Our fishermen have to take their boats and anchor on the big bank, and there they stay for months, tossed about by every tempest. They go out line-fishing in small boats, which are frequently lost in the fog and never heard of again. Often, too, the fishing vessel herself is cut in two, in fog or darkness, by some transatlantic liner steaming seventeen knots an hour, which is out of sight in a few seconds, while the unlucky boat founders with all hands. A hard and a risky life our bank fishermen lead. But they come back men, and well-seasoned men too!

From the eastern coast of the island the Bette-Poule took her way to the western side, passing through the Straits of Belleisle, a narrow channel which parts Newfoundland from Labrador. The amount of difficult navigation we met with going through the straits was really extraordinary. The channel was full of ice-floes, either stranded or driven about by the currents. A thick fog came down on us, with zenithal aurora borealis, the electric action of which threw out every compass, standard and otherwise, on board. No seeing, no steering! After having been in a very critical position at the entrance of Forteau Bay, a point on the Labrador coast celebrated for wrecks, I took the frigate into the haven of Ingornachoix, where we made some considerable stay, necessitated by the condition of my crew's health. For some time it had been suffering from the exceptional fatigues of the cruise. During our stay in Le Croc, in spite of its being a breathing time, and of every kind of care, many men had been ailing, and the sickness ended by taking the form of a somewhat serious epidemic of smallpox. The best thing we could do to stop the mischief and prevent it from increasing and becoming permanent (which would have resulted in closing almost all foreign ports to us) was to isolate the sick. I therefore lost no time in having a hospital constructed on a pretty wooded isle, which lay just at the entrance to the place where we were anchored, and in it I settled all my sick men, doing everything in my power to dry and disinfect the frigate meanwhile. This double measure was successful, and when we left the bay my crew was completely restored to health and vigour.

I learnt several things during this long period in harbour, the first of which was the discovery of the immense quantity of lobsters frequenting the coast. The first day my men went to walk on shore they brought back nine hundred, which they had caught among the rocks, and that without the least difficulty. I do not know whether the Ingornachoix lobster was like Bayard, without reproach, but without fear he most certainly was. It was quite enough, when one caught sight of him in shallow water, to poke a stick at him. He instantly sprang furiously forth, laid hold of it with his claws, and absolutely refused to let go. This abundance of lobsters, turned to commercial account later, when it became known, gave rise to the Lobster Fisheries Question, one of the stalking-horses of the English Irredentists. Furthermore, I discovered that since the codfish were becoming rare on the French Shore of the Straits of Belleisle, our fishermen, to remedy the scarcity, went over and poached on the English coast of Labrador—the principal drawback to which contravention of the agreement was that it gave the English a pretext for doing the same thing. As the English cruisers not unnaturally shut their eyes to irregularities which created precedents that might be harmful to us, our ships of war had either to sanction them by their presence, or, by opposing them, to exercise in a foreign country a right of keeping order which was questionable, to say the least of it; both of them things to be avoided, if possible. And our orders, in fact, were never to be seen at Labrador. This regulation I conformed to; but behold, one fine day, a schooner from our local station at St. Pierre Miquelon casts anchor alongside of me, and the following colloquy ensues between the lieutenant in command and myself:—

"Where are you going ?"

"To Labrador."

"But you know the state of things. There are the gravest objections to taking one of our warships there."

"I know; but I have special and precise orders from the Minister for Naval Affairs."

"What orders?"

"I have been ordered to go to Labrador to buy a dog for one of the secretaries to the minister."

"That's what you have been sent from St. Pierre Miquelon for?"

"Yes."

I had to bow to this. I could not set up my authority as commander-in- chief against that of the minister, so let the schooner go on her compromising mission. Soon after, and not without regret, I set sail to continue our cruise Time had passed swiftly by, between the attention of every kind the health of the crew had necessitated, the drill of every sort we had devoted ourselves to, and the gun practice in the virgin forest, during which the ancient trees had been mown down by our projectiles We had lived a Robinson Crusoe sort of life on the largest scale—it is a sort of life I have always had a weakness for. After building our hospital, we had made limekilns for disinfecting the frigate, we had been wood-cutters, and charcoal burners, and carpenters. We had made ourselves spare masts and spars. We had drained ponds too; explored in all directions, hunting and fishing, and discovered lakes and rivers.

Though we made good bags during these excursions, they consisted of small game only. Once I fired at, and to my deep regret I missed, a silver fox—the animal dressed by nature in the richest and rarest of all her furs. There were abundant tracks of bear and caribou. We caught sight once of a huge gray wolf, striped like a zebra. But none of these larger beasts fell to our guns. We could not have got at them even with hounds, so continuously far stretching and impenetrable the forest was, and the only thing we had to help us was Fox, the ship's dog, an excellent pointer by the way, the pet of everybody on board. He fell into the sea one day when there was a strong breeze, and was picked up, still swimming sturdily along to catch up the frigate, on board of which he had a regular ovation when he got back.

We wound up our Newfoundland cruise with St. George's Bay, the last on the French Shore, and the only point at which any difficulty was raised about the exercise of our rights. We there found, in fact, a large fast- growing and increasingly prosperous Anglo-Canadian village, and in the presence of its inhabitants we went through the ceremony of formally forbidding them to fish, which ceremony was greeted by protests both amicable and bantering. Amicable, because half the population were French Canadians, talking our own language with a strong St. Malo accent, and in spite of everything else, the similarity of origin, language, religion, and habits, established friendly relations between us and them. Bantering, because first of all our fishermen no longer frequented St. George, and secondly, because the prohibition, which was compulsory during the four or five days in the year during which our warships were present, became simply a dead letter during the other three hundred and six days of the year. It was easy, of course, to see that our exclusive right to fish could not be maintained when once a sufficient indigenous population had settled there, but it was no less easy to judge that some local arrangement concerning these exceptional places, conciliating every interest, might easily be made. Would that be possible nowadays, when electioneering palaver has embittered the whole business? After leaving St. George, we spent a long time hunting for our colony of St. Pierre Miquelon in continuous fogs, and only succeeded in finding it by means of a plan of my own invention. The weather happening to be moderate, I had several triangular soundings made while we were under sail, and then endeavoured to make the mathematical triangle thus obtained tally as to depth and nature of bottom with Captain Lavaud's chart of the Newfoundland soundings. So excellent is the chart in question, that the plan was successful, and gave us bearings by which we got a direct line for the shore. St. Pierre Miquelon is a bare, wild, hideous islet, but with a first-class port. Admirable as a victualling station and mart for our fishermen, its military value as far as our trade is concerned is absolutely nil. Whatever may be done for it, it will always be at the mercy of whoever is master of the seas in time of war.

At Halifax, whither I went to meet the officer commanding the British naval station, we were put into quarantine on account of three convalescents, relics of the epidemic we had been suffering from. But it was taken off, thanks to the generous intervention of the Governor- General of Nova Scotia, Lord Falkland, a splendid-looking man, well known in Parisian society. Nobody could have been more obliging nor kinder than this "grand seigneur" and his wife, the daughter of William IV., were to us.

If Nova Scotia as seen from the sea, with its gloomy coast guarded by numberless black reefs, recalls that of Brittany, the same resemblance strikes the traveller who pushes towards the interior of the country, through its deep and smiling bays; and Halifax Bay in particular, when its fresh and verdant surroundings are lighted up by brilliant sunshine, leaves nothing to be desired in the way of charm. I saw it thus when I arrived, in all the excitement of a regatta, with the peculiar feature of a race for birch-bark canoes, paddled with incredible vigour by Mic Mac squaws, or Indian women, in blue blouses and floating black hair. What a splendid colony Nova Scotia is, too!

The advance post of the huge Canadian territory, protected by its almost insular position from the rigours of the northern climate, with all its ports open (not only Halifax, where the fleets of the whole world could find absolute safety, maritime and strategic, at once, but Sydney too, surrounded by immense beds of coal), while the St Lawrence is still choked with ice.

Our short stay in port was wound up by a great dinner given by my gunroom officers to those of the English frigate Winchester. The meal was of the merriest, if I may judge by the toasts, the cheers, and the songs I heard; and the merriment continued on shore, whither the young people betook themselves together. One of the English midshipmen, a good-looking lad with a thick crop of carroty hair, returned on board his own ship with beautiful jet black locks, to the great astonishment of the first lieutenant; while I beheld two of my cadets appear at a ball given by the officers of the garrison and indulge in such a remarkable style of dancing, that I was forced to give them immediate orders to return on board the Belle-Poule. One of these cadets, by the way, was a Turk, called Saly. His story was rather a strange one. He was the son of Saly Pasha, the pasha of Athens, and was a child in his mother's arms when the city was carried by assault by the Greeks and their philhellenic supporters, in I know not which year of the Greek insurrection. All the defenders were put to the sword, and in the excitement of the fight Saly's mother was murdered, but she had strength, as she died, to throw her infant into the arms of a Wurtembergian officer. He, much embarrassed by the gift, passed the child on, having previously christened it Gottlieb, to a French naval lieutenant of the name of Quernel, who commanded a vessel off that coast. When Quernel returned to Toulon, my Aunt Adelaide heard the incident mentioned. She interested herself in the little Turk, and had him brought up amongst us. The boy turned out well, entered the navy, and was a post captain when he died. From Halifax we went to New York, the frantic bustle and stir in which place contrasted strangely, in my eyes, with the calm of the Newfoundland deserts and the placidity of the Blue Noses, as the inhabitants of Nova Scotia are nicknamed. We were at New York to do some indispensable revictualling, consequent on the exceptionally rough voyage we had had. Besides much other damage, we had lost all our sails; they had been carried away one after the other, and it was absolutely necessary to have at least one set in good trim, instead of the patched rags still remaining to us, before undertaking our winter voyage across the ocean.

I took advantage of the time these repairs took up to go and pay my respects to the President at Washington and thence to make a rapid dash into the West, in the footsteps of our ancient pioneers, and up to the farthest limits of civilisation (as they were then, in 1841).

The thing that strikes one most on arriving in the United States, and in New York in particular, as I have already said, is the extraordinary bustle that reigns everywhere, and which really stuns one at first. One feels so bewildered that any idea of a picturesque description disappears. The only thing one is aware of is bustle. Bustle on land, where everybody seems to rush as if they were demented—bustle on the water, where one keeps wondering why the ships of all sizes passing at full speed in every direction do not collide every other minute. In complete contrast to our boulevards, Broadway, when you walk along it, does not seem to contain a single idler. Are there any idle men in America? Yes, there are some millionaires, who pull up when they have made their fortunes. Their fellow-citizens assert that they are always ill at ease, amidst the general activity, and that they go and settle down in their idleness in Paris, among people like themselves, whose frivolity they end by copying. They are looked upon as "demoralised Americans." But they are few in number. As each man has only himself to reckon on, as he has no hoped-for inheritance to wait for and discount in idleness, seeing the man in possession owes nothing to his children, nor to anybody else, and is free to dispose of his property as he chooses, everybody being free to make his will as he likes, so each man feels that if he wants to get on he must work. And is not this the chief cause of the vigour and energy of the great American nation? If Broadway is a tumult of business, that in the port of New York is worth seeing too. This port is at the confluence of two arms of the sea, in front of the public walk called the Battery. Here, towards five o'clock in the evening, when the steamboats start, the huge floating palaces may be seen shooting off in every direction, shrieking hoarsely. It is a maritime pandemonium. In it the American is in his element. Dressed in black, with a stove-pipe hat, the quid in his cheek causing him to look as though he grinned sardonically, with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the engine-room bell, he drives his ship full speed through the throng with an audacity, decision, and coolness which made me shiver at first!

In this manner I left New York and passed along the coast of New Jersey on my way to Washington, but not without receiving a very friendly welcome from the naval officer commanding there, Commodore Perry, a remarkable man, who, half by persuasion and half by force, concluded the first treaty with Japan, thus opening up that interesting country—I will not say to civilisation (for I do not know that Japan has progressed on that account), but to trade, and intercourse with nations of European origin.

In the very first train I got into I found myself opposite a big man wearing a moustache and imperial, with a huge walking stick between his legs, and was told he was the King, or rather Prince, Murat. Next we passed a fine country property belonging to King Joseph Buonaparte, and involuntarily I thought of a certain passage in the works of Voltaire, where Candide meets all the dethroned kings at Venice. There were others even then whose names I might have added to those of Murat and Joseph, and the number was to be increased before long. "Special line of Paris goods," we might almost say, in commercial phrase! Has this sort of export trade answered with us?

I saw Philadelphia once more, as charming as ever. There was a fine performance, that night, in the Chestnut Street Theatre, and I had sent to take places for it. But when I arrived I saw a huge poster over the door—"Prince de Joinville at 8.30," and beat an instant and hasty retreat. As soon as I got to Washington I repaired to the White House to pay my respects to General Tyler. He was a blunt-spoken man with a big nose, who had successively filled the posts of governor of his own State (Virginia) and of President of the United States, in each case in consequence of the death of the actual incumbents, whose deputy he was. He could not have done better in a hereditary monarchy! Our time at Washington was taken up with an interchange of compliments of all sorts. A dinner at the President's, visits to and from the diplomatic corps, a huge reception, at which I shook hands at least three thousand times, at the White House. And bouquets, too, in the "language of flowers!"

We paid a visit, too, to the Naval Arsenal. A very nice little arsenal it was, in a bad situation, but admirably arranged, and only put in that particular place to serve as a sort of school of elementary instruction to the ignorance of Congress, and interest its members in naval matters. When I say Congress, I should rather say the Chamber of Representatives. In the United States the Senate is the body which has the real power, and which actually governs. This assembly, very few in numbers, especially at the time of which I speak, chosen by the Chamber, and of which the members were almost invariably re-elected, had leisure to learn the necessities of administrative government and to become a permanent body, whose action was both lasting and intelligent, like the Council of Ten at Venice or the committee of the Comedie Franjaise. But the Representative Chamber, full as it was of journalists, who had never studied anything beyond the art of attracting subscriptions to their papers, knew nothing whatever. Luckily it only formed a second wheel in the Constitution, but, in spite of that fact, anything likely to add to its enlightenment was useful.

I left Washington highly gratified with my reception, but glad to have got it over, and carried away a most agreeable recollection of our minister, M. de Bacourt, a most delightfully witty man—a family virtue, it would seem, to judge by his niece and grand-niece, Madame de Mirabeau and Madame de Martel (Gyp).

From Washington I went to Buffalo, the train running off the rails on the way, and that, too, on a viaduct, on which the engine, having broken through the roadway, was hung up in the framework, like a fly in a spider's web. I was anxious to go, via the great lakes, to Green Bay on Lake Michigan, and thence starting from Mackinaw, the old Indian Michillimackinac, to follow up the track of our officers and soldiers and missionaries, who pushed on till they discovered the Mississippi.



It was in 1672 that Talon, the Superintendent of "La Nouvelle France," having heard from the Indians of the existence of a great river, sent out an expedition to discover it under Father Marquette, who had great influence over the Indian tribes. Crossing the great lakes, he landed at Green Bay, and pushing westwards, he soon reached the "Father of Waters." It was for Green Bay that I too embarked, at Buffalo, on Lake Erie, on board the staunch steamer Columbus, the last boat to go to that place so late in the season (in mid-winter). Our boat was staunch indeed, some consolation for the slowness of her pace. Of this she soon gave us proof, for she ran with an awful shock, going eight knots an hour in the dark, on to a reef of rocks, stopped short, and heeled over. A big wave caught her and lifted her a second time; there was another bump. But with the third wave she got across the reef. I rushed towards the engine, thinking everything must be smashed and the side of the ship gaping open. But no, not at all!

The captain, who had been taken aback for a moment, merely sent his quid from one cheek to the other, without saying a word. The whole thing was over. And, indeed, that was not the only unforeseen incident during our voyage. We spent one whole night aground in the St. Clair Lake. Nothing I can say will give any idea of the recklessness with which the ship was navigated. To begin with, there were no charts; you went at haphazard, according to information that had come down by tradition, and yet these lakes are really small oceans, with currents, and fogs, and squalls coming off the coasts, just like the sea. The navigation must have been just the same in 1679, when Lassalle, an officer in the Canadian army, launched the first ship, which he called the Griffon, in honour of the griffin in the arms of his commanding officer, the Marquis de Frontenac.

To danger by sea must be added danger by fire for our staunch Columbus. The boilers were heated with wood—aloewood—out of which pencils and cigar-boxes are made. It made a very pleasant smell, but being piled up pell mell in the hold, against the furnaces, it caught fire several times in my presence, and the stokers would just throw a little water on it to put it out. On the deck the very high pressure engine worked exposed and unprotected, amidst sheep and oxen and packages of all kinds, which were frequently shot against it by the roll of the waves, and above the whole there rose two stories of cabins, built of light planking, as thin as paper, quite incapable of standing against the most moderate seas, but which caught the wind, and made the ship exceedingly unsteady. During a squall, luckily for us a short one, which caught us on Lake Michigan, in the middle of the night, the whole fabric began to give way. I was woke by the water coming in and the crackling sound of the damage going on in all directions. So I got up, and found all the Americans on board wearing lifebelts, and greeting me with the remark, "Sir, you are a sailor, but there are more risks on our lakes than on the ocean!" and quite right they were.

It was a long passage, and we put in to several places on our way. First into Detroit, formerly the French Fort Pontchartrain, and now become the capital of Michigan State. Opposite Detroit runs the Canadian shore, to which we are borne by a steam ferry boat, and where the same contrast strikes me as at Niagara. On the American side I find a very pretty town, with all the comforts of civilisation, a scene of hard-working activity. On the Canadian shore I see a village of poor cottages, surrounded with apple orchards, like a village in Normandy, in front of which the red sentry marches up and down, as stiff as an automaton. The inhabitants of the said village, French both in feature and appearance, hurried up in delight when they heard us speaking the language of their forefathers. "It's the only tongue we know. We don't want our children to learn any other!" And yet they have been English for over a century! A strange contrast, indeed, this fidelity to the memory of their national origin, to their not less sincere fidelity to the conquering regime, which assures to them the right of willing their property as they choose, and has freed them from the administrative tyranny which seems, unfortunately, to cling to us under every regime.

From Detroit we went up the St. Clair River to Lake Huron. The great river was a magnificent sight, with its banks covered with mighty forests in all the splendour of their autumnal colouring. Here and there, on the American side, stood some log cabin, an emigrant's first shelter. Then we would come on a sawmill, that first of all necessaries in such a country. On the British side now and again, we saw Indian wigwams, Huron or Chippewa. At the entrance of Lake Huron bad weather came on; it snowed, and we took shelter in a bay, where we moored the ship to the shore close to one of those American forts that fringe the Indian frontier. They are all alike, these forts; a battlemented wall of thick planks, with banquettes for riflemen, and loopholed for heavier guns. Within each are the barracks and the officers' quarters. This particular fort was called Fort Gratiot. In 1688 its name was Fort St. Joseph, and it had a French garrison, commanded by Baron de Houtou. During this stoppage we had an amusing adventure. Our only fellow passengers on the Columbus, some five or six in number, were an American officer on his way to take command at Fort Winnepeg; a Methodist missionary and his wife, who spent the day singing hymns together, and retired to their cabin at night with all the eagerness of the most enthusiastic fondness; a young dressmaker going to join her family at Green Bay; and finally, Miss Mary, the chambermaid, a handsome, fair, freckled girl, liked by everybody on board. Tired of being on shipboard, the whole band of passengers, male and female, and Miss Mary into the bargain, went off to walk and amuse themselves on shore. Suddenly the people in the fort got wind of our presence. The major commanding and his officers hastened up, asking where the prince was, and invited us all into the fort, to rest and refresh ourselves with them. It was impossible to refuse such a kind and cordial invitation. It was equally impossible to break up our party—that would have been unmannerly, and contrary to American ideas of propriety and equality alike. So we entered a drawing-room, in which the wives and daughters of the officers quartered in the fort were assembled. They seemed to falter for a moment, when they beheld our lady companions. They scanned the Methodist and his wife, and took their measure at once But the dressmaker and Miss Mary, hanging on the arms of two of my companions, seemed to puzzle them. Anyhow they hastened towards them, took them by the hand, led them to the place of honour on the sofa, and began the conversation with "Do you speak English ?" I don't recollect now how it all went off, but I know we were soon back on board, Miss Mary and all, under a salute of twenty-one guns.

Mackinaw, a small wooded island, with high shores, and a fort over which the stars and stripes of the Union floated, looked very picturesque as we approached it. There was a ruin on one side of the American guard- house, to which we lost no time in climbing through the woods. It was the old French fort, and our hearts swelled at the thought that the French flag was the first to float over this little Gibraltar, when, some hundred and sixty years previously, our officers took possession of this magnificent country in the name of their king.

Once more, with the eye of fancy, we saw our white-coated soldiers mounting guard on those ramparts, whence their gaze must have wandered over the confluence of the three great lakes and the immense empire they had won for France, while the Indian tribes hurried from all quarters to bend the knee to the Great Chief of the Pale Faces. It was a great and glorious epoch; and what traveller would not feel deeply stirred when he comes upon such bitter memories of the vanished grandeur of his country?

Our good ship Columbus got to Green Bay at last, and, stirring up the mud which obstructs the entrance to Fox River, bore us up that fine stream and deposited us in front of a large store, surrounded by fifty houses, there or thereabouts. This settlement was not in the United States, but on Wisconsin Territory, an embryo State, not populous enough as yet, nor sufficiently organised, to be called a State, nor have a voice in the deliberations of the American Union. The country on the left bank of the Fox River was not even a Territory; it was a No-Man's Land, where any man might settle where and how he pleased. Like all the places I had passed through, Green Bay, the "Baie Verte" of our forefathers (and it still deserves its title) was occupied in the first instance by the French. After Father Marquette's exploring journey, twenty soldiers, two sergeants, and four bandsmen, under the command of Lieutenant du Roussel, were sent thither in 1684 by M. de Beauchamptrelle, commanding the king's troops at Mackinaw. Now, as I have said, it possessed a hotel and about fifty houses, inhabited for the most part by merchants trading with the Redskins. Everybody talked French, and everybody hastened forward when the boat arrived to ask for news from the civilised world.

A few Indians, silent and motionless, wrapped in their blankets, looked on indifferently at the bustle. Squaws shod with moccasins, and the toes of their little feet turned in, passed by without raising their heads, their papooses sitting astride on their backs. The somewhat numerous Indian tribes inhabiting the country were the Menomenis, the Winnepeg Indians, and the Iroquois, which last had emigrated from Canada to escape the English yoke. I much regretted not having time to pay a visit to their wigwams. To the very last they were our most devoted allies in our wars with the English. I had a talk with one of the chiefs sons, who told me he still had Montcalm's sword in his possession, and preserved it as a sacred relic. According to his story, during the battle of Quebec, probably just at the moment when Montcalm was mortally wounded, his sword was hung up in a tree, whence it was taken by one of his faithful Indian followers, and it has always remained with his tribe. After a great deal of difficulty we succeeded in procuring saddle horses for ourselves, and a farmer's waggon for our baggage, and we set forth for the Mississippi. The whole journey was most interesting. There were no roads—the merest track through woods interspersed with prairies— along which we went to the lake and fort of Winnepeg. Beyond that lake we knew there would be nothing but prairie, stretching far and wide, over which we must steer as though we were at sea, or else be guided by the mysterious instinct of some trapper. We met many Redskins in the woods, all busy hunting. Game was very abundant—waterfowl on the streams, flights of prairie hens (a sort of grouse), and herds of buck, which constantly crossed our line of march Here and there was a clearing or first attempt at cultivation, round a squatter's log cabin.