We must, however, satisfy every demand; success itself requires it. The reason must be contented at the same time that the imagination is occupied. The progress of taste, of enlightenment, of society, and of mankind, must serve not to diminish or disturb our enjoyment, but to render them worthy of ourselves and capable of supplying the new wants which we have contracted. Advance without rule and art in the romantic system, and you will produce melodramas calculated to excite a passing emotion in the multitude, but in the multitude alone, and for a few days; just as by dragging along without originality in the classical system you will satisfy only that cold literary class who are acquainted with nothing in nature which is more important than the interests of versification, or more imposing than the three unities. This is not the work of the poet who is called to power and destined for glory: he acts upon a grander scale, and can address the superior intellects as well as the general and simple faculties of all men. It is doubtless necessary that the crowd should throng to behold those dramatic works of which you desire to make a national spectacle; but do not hope to become national, if you do not unite in your festivities all those classes of persons and minds whose well-arranged hierarchy raises a nation to its loftiest dignity. Genius is bound to follow human nature in all its developments; its strength consists in finding within itself the means for constantly satisfying the whole of the public. The same task is now imposed upon government and upon poetry: both should exist for all, and suffice at once for the wants of the masses and for the requirements of the most exalted minds.

Doubtless stopt in its course by these conditions, the full severity of which will only be revealed to the talent that can comply with them, dramatic art, even in England, where under the protection of Shakespeare it would have liberty to attempt anything, scarcely ventures at the present day even to try timidly to follow him. Meanwhile England, France, and the whole of Europe demand of the drama pleasures and emotions that can no longer be supplied by the inanimate representation of a world that has ceased to exist. The classical system had its origin in the life of its time: that time has passed; its image subsists in brilliant colors in its works, but can no more be reproduced. Near the monuments of past ages, the monuments of another age are now beginning to arise. What will be their form? I can not tell; but the ground upon which their foundations may rest is already perceptible.

This ground is not the ground of Corneille and Racine, nor is it that of Shakespeare; it is our own; but Shakespeare's system, as it appears to me, may furnish the plans according to which genius ought now to work. This system alone includes all those social conditions and all those general or diverse feelings, the simultaneous conjunction and activity of which constitute for us at the present day the spectacle of human things. Witnesses during thirty years of the greatest revolutions of society, we shall no longer willingly confine the movement of our mind within the narrow space of some family event, or the agitations of a purely individual passion. The nature and destiny of man have appeared to us under their most striking and their simplest aspect, in all their extent and in all their variableness. We require pictures in which this spectacle is reproduced, in which man is displayed in his completeness and excites our entire sympathy.



ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE

Born in 1790, died in 1869; famous chiefly as a poet, being one of the greatest in modern France, but successful as an orator and prominent in political life during the troubled period of 1848, when he was Minister of Foreign Affairs; author of several historical works, among them the "History of the Girondists."



OF MIRABEAU'S ORIGIN AND PLACE IN HISTORY[51]

He was born a gentleman and of ancient lineage, refugees established in Provence, but of Italian origin. The progenitors were Tuscan. The family was one of those whom Florence had cast from her bosom in the stormy excesses of her liberty, and for which Dante reproaches his country in such bitter strains for her exiles and prosecutions. The blood of Machiavelli and the earthquake genius of the Italian republics were characteristics of all the individuals of this race. The proportions of their souls exceed the height of their destiny: vices, passions, virtues are all in excess. The women are all angelic or perverse, the men sublime or depraved, and their language even is as emphatic and lofty as their aspirations. There is in their most familiar correspondence the color and tone of the heroic tongues of Italy.

[Footnote 51: From Book I of the "History of the Girondists"—the translation of R. T. Ryde in Bonn's Library, as revised for this collection.]

The ancestors of Mirabeau speak of their domestic affairs as Plutarch of the quarrels of Marius and Sulla, of Caesar and Pompey. We perceive the great men descending to trifling matters. Mirabeau inspired this domestic majesty and virility in his very cradle. I dwell on these details, which may seem foreign to this history, but they explain it. The source of genius is often in ancestry, and the blood of descent is sometimes the prophecy of destiny.

Mirabeau's education was as rough and rude as the hand of his father, who was styled the friend of man, but whose restless spirit and selfish vanity rendered him the persecutor of his wife and the tyrant of all his family. The only virtue he was taught was honor, for by that name in those days they dignified that ceremonious demeanor which was too frequently only the show of probity and the elegance of vice. Entering the army at an early age, he acquired nothing of military habits except a love of licentiousness and play. The hand of his father was constantly extended not to aid him in rising, but to depress him still lower under the consequences of his errors. His youth was passed in the prisons of the state, where his passions, becoming envenomed by solitude, and his intellect rendered more acute by contact with the irons of his dungeon, his mind lost that modesty which rarely survives the infamy of precocious punishments.

Released from jail, in order, by his father's command, to attempt to form a marriage beset with difficulties with Mademoiselle de Marignan, a rich heiress of one of the greatest families of Provence, he displayed, like a wrestler, all kinds of stratagems and daring schemes of policy in the small theater of Aix. Not only cunning, seduction, and courage, but every resource of his nature was used to succeed, and he succeeded; but he was hardly married before fresh persecutions beset him, and the stronghold of Pontarlier gaped to enclose him. A love, which his "Lettres a Sophie" has rendered immortal, opened its gates and freed him. He carried off Madame de Monier from her aged husband. The lovers, happy for some months, took refuge in Holland; they were seized there, separated and shut up, the one in a convent and the other in the dungeon of Vincennes.

Love, which, like fire in the veins of the earth, is always detected in some crevice of man's destiny, lighted up in a single and ardent blaze all the passions of Mirabeau. In his vengeance it was outraged love that he appeased; in liberty it was love which he sought and which delivered him; in study it was love which still illustrated his path. Entering his cell an obscure man, he quitted it a writer, orator, statesman, but perverted—ripe for anything, even ready to sell himself, in order to buy fortune and celebrity. The drama of life had been conceived in his head; he wanted only the stage, and that was being prepared for him by time. During the few short years which elapsed between his leaving the keep of Vincennes and the tribune of the National Assembly, he employed himself with polemic labors which would have weighed down another man, but which only kept Mirabeau in health. Such topics as the bank of Saint Charles, the institutions of Holland, the books on Prussia, with Beaumarchais (his style and character), with lengthened pleadings on questions of warfare, the balance of European power, finance, leading to biting invectives and wars of words with the ministers of the hour, made scenes that resembled those in the Roman forum of the days of Clodius and Cicero. We discern the men of antiquity even in his most modern controversies. We may hear the first roarings or popular tumults which were so soon to burst forth, and which his voice was destined to control.

At the first election of Aix, when rejected with contempt by the noblesse, he cast himself into the arms of the people, certain of making the balance incline to the side on which he should cast the weight of his daring and his genius. Marseilles contended with Aix for the great plebeian; his two elections, the discourses he then delivered, the addresses he drew up, the energy he employed commanded the attention of all France. His sonorous phrases became the proverbs of the Revolution. Comparing himself, in his lofty language, to the men of antiquity, he placed himself already in the public estimation in the elevated position he aspired to reach. Men became accustomed to identify him with the names he cited; he made a loud noise in order to prepare minds for great commotions; he announced himself proudly to the nation, in that sublime apostrophe in his address to the Marseillais: "When the last of the Gracchi expired, he flung dust toward heaven, and from this dust sprang Marius!—Marius, who was less great for having exterminated the Cimbri than for having prostrated in Rome the aristocracy of the nobility."

From the moment of his entry into the National Assembly Mirabeau filled it: he became the whole people. His gestures were commands; his movements coups d'etat. He placed himself on a level with the throne, and the nobility itself felt itself subdued by a power emanating from its own body. The clergy, and the people, with their desires to reconcile democracy with the church, lent him their influence, in order to destroy the double aristocracy of the nobility and bishops.

All that had been built by antiquity and cemented by ages fell in a few months. Mirabeau alone preserved his presence of mind in the midst of ruin. His character of tribune then ceased, that of the statesman began, and in this part he was even greater than in the other. There, when all else crept and crawled, he acted with firmness, advancing boldly. The Revolution in his brain was no longer a momentary idea—it became a settled plan. The philosophy of the eighteenth century, moderated by the prudence of policy, flowed easily from his lips. His eloquence, imperative as the law, was now a talent for giving force to reason. His language lighted and inspired everything; and tho almost alone at this moment, he had the courage to remain alone. He braved envy, hatred, murmurs, supported as he was by a strong feeling of his superiority. He dismissed with disdain the passions which had hitherto beset him. He would no longer serve them when his cause no longer needed them. He spoke to men now only in the name of his genius, a title which was enough to cause obedience to him....

The characteristic of his genius, so well defined, so ill understood, was less audacity than justness. Beneath the grandeur of his expression was always to be found unfailing good sense. His very vices could not repress the clearness, the sincerity of his understanding. At the foot of the tribune, he was a man devoid of shame or virtue: in the tribune, he was an honest man. Abandoned to private debauchery, bought over by foreign powers, sold to the court in order to satisfy his lavish expenditures, he preserved, amidst all this infamous traffic of his powers, the incorruptibility of his genius. Of all the qualities of being the great man of an age, Mirabeau was wanting only in honesty. The people were not his devotees, but his instruments. His faith was in posterity. His conscience existed only in his thought. The fanaticism of his ideas was quite human. The chilling materialism of his age had crusht in his heart all expansive force, and craving for imperishable things. His dying words were: "Sprinkle me with perfumes, crown me with flowers, that I may thus enter upon eternal sleep." He was especially of his time, and his course bears no impress of infinity. Neither his character, his acts, nor his thoughts have the brand of immortality. If he had believed, in God, he might have died a martyr.



LOUIS ADOLPHE THIERS

Born in 1797, died in 1877; settled in Paris in 1821; published his "History of the French Revolution" in 1823-27; established with Mignet and others the National in 1830, in which he contributed largely to the overthrow of the Bourbons; supported Louis Philippe; became a member of various cabinets, 1832-36; Premier in 1836 and 1840; published his "Consulate and Empire" in 1845-62; arrested by Louis Napoleon in 1851; led the opposition to the Empire in 1863; protested against the war of 1870; conducted the negotiations with Germany for an armistice; chosen chief of the executive power in 1871; negotiated the peace with Germany; supprest the Commune; elected President in 1871, resigning in 1873.



THE BURNING OF MOSCOW[52]

At last, having reached the summit of a hill, the army suddenly discovered below them, and at no great distance, an immense city shining with a thousand colors, surmounted by a host of gilded domes, resplendent with light; a singular mixture of woods, lakes, cottages, palaces, churches, bell-towers, a town both Gothic and Byzantine, realizing all that the Eastern stories relate of the marvels of Asia. While the monasteries, flanked with towers, formed the girdle of this great city, in the center, raised on an eminence, was a strong citadel, a kind of capitol, whence were seen at the same time the temples of the Deity and the palaces of the emperors, where above embattled walls rose majestic domes, bearing the emblem that represents the whole history of Russia and her ambition, the cross over the reversed crescent. This citadel was the Kremlin, the ancient abode of the Czars.

[Footnote 52: From Book XLIV of the "History of the Consulate and Empire." Napoleon's army entered Moscow on September 15, 1812, or seven days after the battle of Borodino, "the bloodiest battle of the century," the losses on each side having been about 40,000. Napoleon had crossed the river Niemen in June of this year with an invading army of 400,000 men. When he crossed it again in December, after the burning of Moscow, the French numbered only 20,000, The "Consulate and Empire" has been translated by D. F. Campbell, F. N. Redhead and N. Stapleton.]

The imagination, and the idea of glory, being both excited by this magical spectacle, the soldiers raised one shout of "Moscow! Moscow!" Those who had remained at the foot of the hill hastened to reach the top; for a moment all ranks mingled, and everybody wished to contemplate the great capital, toward which we had made such an adventurous march. One could not have enough of this dazzling spectacle, calculated to awaken so many different feelings. Napoleon arrived in his turn, and, struck with what he saw, he—who, like the oldest soldiers in the army, had successively visited Cairo, Memphis, the Jordan, Milan, Vienna, Berlin, and Madrid—could not help experiencing deep emotion.

Arrived at this summit of his glory, from which he was to descend with such a rapid step toward the abyss, he experienced a sort of intoxication, forgot all the reproaches that his good sense, the only conscience of conquerors, had addrest to him for two months, and for a moment believed still that his enterprise was a great and marvelous one—that to have dared to march from Paris to Smolensk, from Smolensk to Moscow, was a great and happy rashness, justified by the event. Certain of his glory, he still believed in his good fortune, and his lieutenants, as amazed as he, remembering no more their frequent discontents during this campaign, gave vent to those victorious demonstrations in which they had not indulged at the termination of the bloody day of Borodino. This moment of satisfaction, lively and short, was one of the most deeply felt in his life. Alas! it was to be the last!

Murat received the injunction to march quickly, to avoid all disorder. General Durosnel was sent forward to hold communication with the authorities, and lead them to the conqueror's feet, who desired to receive their homage and calm their fears. M. Denniee was charged to go and prepare food and lodging for the army, Murat, galloping at the head of the light cavalry, arrived, at length, across the faubourg of Drogomilow, at the bridge of the Moskowa. There he found a Russian rear-guard, who were retreating, and inquired if there was no officer there who knew French. A young Russian, who spoke our language correctly, presented himself immediately before this king, whom hostile nations knew so well, and asked what he wanted. Murat having exprest a wish to know which was the commander of this rear-guard, the young Russian pointed out an officer with white hair, clothed in a bivouac cloak of long fur. Murat, with his accustomed grace, held out his hand to the old officer, who took it eagerly. Thus national hatred was silenced before valor.

Murat asked the commander of the enemy's rear-guard if they knew him. "Yes," replied the latter, "we have seen enough of you under fire to know you." Murat seeming struck with, the long fur mantle, which looked as if it would be very comfortable for a bivouac, the old officer unfastened it from his shoulders to make him a present of it. Murat, receiving it with as much courtesy as it was offered, took a beautiful watch and presented it to the enemy's officer, who received this present in the same way as his had been accepted. After these acts of courtesy, the Russian rear-guard filed off rapidly to give ground to our vanguard. The King of Naples, followed by his staff and a detachment of cavalry, went down into the streets of Moscow, traversed alternately the poorest and the richest quarters, rows of wooden houses crowded together, and a succession of splendid palaces rising from amidst vast gardens: he found everywhere the most profound silence. It seemed as if they were penetrating into a dead city, whose inhabitants had suddenly disappeared.

The first sight of it, surprizing as it was, did not remind us of our entry into Berlin or Vienna, Nevertheless, the first feeling of terror experienced by the inhabitants might explain this solitude. Suddenly some distracted individuals appeared; they were some French people, belonging to the foreign families settled at Moscow, and asked us in the name of heaven to save them from the robbers who had become masters of the town. They were well received, but we tried in vain to remove their fears. We were conducted to the Kremlin,[53] and had hardly arrived in sight of these old walls than we were exposed to a discharge of shot. It came from bandits let loose on Moscow by the ferocious patriotism of the Count of Rostopchin. These wretched beings had invaded the sacred citadel, had seized the guns in the arsenal, and were firing on the French who came to disturb them after their few hours' reign of anarchy. Several were sabered, and the Kremlin was relieved of their presence. But on making inquiry we learned that the whole population had fled, except a small number of strangers, or of Russians acquainted with the ways of the French and not fearing their presence. This news vexed the leaders of our vanguard, who were flattering themselves that they would see a whole population coming before them, whom they would take pleasure in comforting and filling with surprize and gratitude. They made haste to restore some order to the different quarters of the town, and to pursue the thieves, who thought they should much longer enjoy the prey that the Count of Rostopchin had given up to them.

[Footnote 53: The Kremlin is a fortified enclosure within the city and containing the imperial palace, three cathedrals, a monastery, convent and arsenal. It is surrounded by battlemented walls that date from 1492. Within the palace are rooms of great size, one of them being 68 by 200 feet, with a height of more than 60 feet. Many historic events in the times of Ivan the Terrible, and Peter the Great, are associated with the Kremlin. Among its treasures are the Great Bell, coronation robes and the thrones of the old Persian Shah and toe last emperor of Constantinople.]

The next morning, September 15, Napoleon made his entry into Moscow, at the head of his invincible legions, but he crossed a deserted town, and for the first time his soldiers, on entering a capital, found none but themselves to be witnesses of their glory. The impression that they experienced was sad. Napoleon, arrived at the Kremlin, hastened to mount the high tower of the great Ivan, and to contemplate from that height his magnificent conquest, across which the Moskowa was slowly pursuing its winding course. Thousands of blackbirds, ravens and crows, as numerous here as the pigeons at Venice, flying around the tops of the palaces and churches, gave a singular aspect to this great city, which contrasted strangely with the brightness of its brilliant colors. A mournful silence, disturbed only by the tramp of cavalry, had taken the place of life in this city, which till the evening before had been one of the most busy in the world. In spite of the sadness of this solitude, Napoleon, on finding Moscow abandoned like the other Russian towns, thought himself happy nevertheless in not finding it burned up, and did not despair of softening little by little the hatred which the presence of his flags had inspired since Vitebsk.

The army hoped, then, to enjoy Moscow, to find peace there, and, in any case, good winter cantonments if the war was prolonged. However, on the morrow after the day on which the entry had been made, columns of flame arose from a very large building which contained the spirits that the government sold on its own account to the people of the capital. People ran there, without astonishment or terror, for they attributed the cause of this partial fire to the nature of the materials contained in this building, or to some imprudence committed by our soldiers. In fact, the fire was mastered, and we had time to reassure ourselves.

But all at once the fire burst out at almost the same instant with extreme violence in a collection of buildings that was called the Bazaar. This bazaar, situated to the northeast of the Kremlin comprized the richest shops, those in which were sold the beautiful stuffs of India and Persia, the rarities of Europe, the colonial commodities, sugar, coffee, tea, and, lastly, precious wines. In a few minutes the fire had spread through the bazaar, and the soldiers of the guard ran in crowds and made the greatest efforts to arrest its progress. Unhappily, they could not succeed, and soon the immense riches of this establishment fell a prey to the flames. Eager to dispute with the fire the possession of these riches, belonging to no one at this time, and to secure them for themselves, our soldiers, not having been able to save them, tried to drag out some fragments.

They might be seen coming out of the bazaar, carrying furs, silks, wines of great value, without any one dreaming of reproaching them for so doing, for they wronged no one but the fire, the sole master of these treasures. One might regret it on the score of discipline, but could not cast a reproach on their honor on that account. Besides, those who remained of the people set them an example, and took their large share of these spoils of the commerce of Moscow. Yet it was only one large building—an extremely rich one, it is true—that was attacked by the fire, and there was no fear for the town itself. These first disasters, of little consequence so far, were attributed to a very natural and very ordinary accident, which might be more easily explained still, in the bustle of evacuating the town.

During the night of the 15th of September the scene suddenly changed. As if every misfortune was to fall at once on the old Muscovite capital, the equinoctial wind arose all at once with the double violence natural to the season and to level countries where nothing stops the storm. This wind, blowing at first from the east, carried the fire westward, along the streets situated between the roads from Tver and Smolensk, and which are known as the richest and most beautiful in Moscow, those of Tverskaia, Nikitskaia, and Povorskaia. In a few hours the fire, having spread fiercely among the wooden buildings, communicated itself from one to another with frightful rapidity. Shooting forth in long tongues of flame, it was seen invading other quarters situated to the west.

Rockets were noticed in the air, and soon wretches were seized carrying combustibles at the end of long poles. They were taken up; they were questioned with threats of death, and they revealed the frightful secret, the order given by the Count of Rostopchin to set fire to the city of Moscow, as if it had been the smallest village on the road from Smolensk. This news spread consternation through the army in an instant. To doubt was no longer possible, after the arrests made, and the depositions collected from different parts of the town. Napoleon ordered that in each quarter the corps fixt there should form military commissions to try, shoot, and hang on gibbets the incendiaries taken in the act. He ordered likewise that they should employ all the troops there were in the town to extinguish the fire. They ran to the pumps, but there were none to be found. This last circumstance would have left no doubt, if there had remained any, of the frightful design that delivered Moscow to the flames....

Napoleon, followed by some of his lieutenants, went out of that Kremlin which the Russian army had not been able to prevent him from entering, but from which the fire expelled him after four-and-twenty hours of possession, descended to the quay of Moskowa, found his horses ready there, and had much difficulty in crossing the town, which toward the northwest, whither he directed his course, was already in flames. The wind, which constantly increased in violence, sometimes caused columns of fire to bend to the ground, and drove before it torrents of sparks, smoke, and stifling cinders. The horrible appearance of the sky answered to the no less horrible spectacle of the earth. The terrified army went out of Moscow. The divisions of Prince Eugene and Marshal Ney, which had entered the evening before, turned back again on the roads of Zwenigorod and Saint Petersburg; those of Marshal Davoust returned by the road of Smolensk, and, except the guard left around the Kremlin to dispute its possession with the flames, our troops retired in haste, struck with horror, before this fire, which, after darting up toward the sky, seemed to bend down again over them as if it wished to devour them. A small number of the inhabitants who had remained in Moscow, and had hidden at first in their houses without daring to come out, now escaped from them, carrying away what was most dear to them—women their children, men their infirm parents.



HONORE DE BALZAC

Born in France in 1799, died in 1850; educated at Tours and Paris; became a lawyer's clerk; wrote short stories and novels anonymously and became seriously involved in a publishing venture; his first novel of merit, "Le Dernier Chonan ou la Bretagne," published in 1829, "Eugenie Grandet" in 1833, "Pere Goriot" in 1835, "Cesar Birotteau" in 1838; married in 1850 Madame Hanska of a noble Polish family.



I

THE DEATH OF PERE GORIOT[54]

There was something awful and appalling in the sudden apparition of the Countess. She saw the bed of death by the dim light of the single candle, and her tears flowed at the sight of her father's passive features, from which the life has almost ebbed. Bianchon with thoughtful tact left the room.

[Footnote 54: From the concluding chapter of "Old Goriot," as translated by Ellen Marriage.]

"I could not escape soon enough," she said to Rastignac.

The student bowed sadly in reply. Mme. de Restaud took her father's hand and kissed it.

"Forgive me, father! You used to say that my voice would call you back from the grave; ah! come back for one moment to bless your penitent daughter. Do you hear me? Oh! this is fearful! No one on earth will ever bless me henceforth; every one hates me; no one loves me but you in all the world. My own children will hate me. Take me with you, father; I will love you, I will take care of you. He does not hear me—I am mad—"

She fell on her knees, and gazed wildly at the human wreck before her.

"My cup of misery is full," she said, turning her eyes upon Eugene. "M. de Trailles has fled, leaving enormous debts behind him, and I have found out that he was deceiving me. My husband will never forgive me, and I have left my fortune in his hands. I have lost all my illusions. Alas! I have forsaken the one heart that loved me (she pointed to her father as she spoke), and for whom? I have held his kindness cheap, and slighted his affection; many and many a time I have given him pain, ungrateful wretch that I am!"

"He knew it," said Rastignac.

Just then Goriot's eyelids unclosed; it was only a muscular contraction, but the Countess's sudden start of reviving hope was no less dreadful than the dying eyes.

"Is it possible that he can hear me?" cried the Countess. "No," she answered herself, and sat down beside the bed. As Mme. De Restaud seemed to wish to sit by her father, Eugene went down to take a little food. The boarders were already assembled.

"Well," remarked the painter, as he joined them, "it seems that there is to be a death-drama up-stairs."

"Charles, I think you might find something less painful to joke about," said Eugene.

"So we may not laugh here?" returned the painter. "What harm does it do? Bianchon said that the old man was quite insensible."

"Well, then," said the employe from the Museum, "he will die as he has lived."

"My father is dead!" shrieked the Countess.

The terrible cry brought Sylvie, Rastignac, and Bianchon; Mme. de Restaud had fainted away, When she recovered they carried her down-stairs, and put her into the cab that stood waiting at the door. Eugene sent Therese with her, and bade the maid take the Countess to Mme. de Nucingen.

Bianchon came down to them.

"Yes, he is dead," he said.

"Come, sit down to dinner, gentlemen," said Mme. Vauquer, "or the soup will be cold."

The two students sat down together.

"What is the next thing to be done?" Eugene asked of Bianchon.

"I have closed his eyes and composed his limbs," said Bianchon. "When the certificate has been officially registered at the Mayor's office, we will sew him in his winding-sheet and bury him somewhere. What do you think we ought to do?"

"He will not smell at his bread like this any more," said the painter, mimicking the old man's little trick.

"Oh, hang it all!" cried the tutor, "let old Goriot drop, and let us have something else for a change. He is a standing dish, and we have had him with every sauce this hour or more. It is one of the privileges of the good city of Paris that anybody may be born, or live, or die there without attracting any attention whatsoever. Let us profit by the advantages of civilization. There are fifty or sixty deaths every day; if you have a mind to do it, you can sit down at any time and wail over whole hecatombs of dead in Paris. Old Goriot has gone off the hooks, has he? So much the better for him. If you venerate his memory, keep it to yourselves, and let the rest of us feed in peace."

"Oh, to be sure," said the widow, "it is all the better for him that he is dead. It looks as tho he had had trouble enough, poor soul, while he was alive."

And this was all the funeral oration delivered over him who had been for Eugene the type and embodiment of fatherhood.

When the hearse came, Eugene had the coffin carried into the house again, unscrewed the lid, and reverently laid on the old man's breast the token that recalled the days when Delphine and Anastasie were innocent little maidens, before they began "to think for themselves," as he had moaned out in his agony.

Rastignac and Christophe and the two undertaker's men were the only followers of the funeral. The Church of Saint-Etienne du Mont was only a little distance from the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve. When the coffin had been deposited in a low, dark, little chapel, the law student looked around in vain for Goriot's two daughters or their husbands. Christophe was his only fellow mourner: Christophe, who appeared to think it was his duty to attend the funeral of the man who had put him in the way of such handsome tips. As they waited there in the chapel for the two priests, the chorister, and the beadle, Rastignac grasped Christophe's hand. He could not utter a word just then.

"Yes, Monsieur Eugene," said Christophe, "he was a good and worthy man who never said one word louder than another; he never did any one any harm, and gave nobody any trouble."

The two priests, the chorister, and the beadle came, and said and did as much as could be expected for seventy francs in an age when religion can not afford to say prayers for nothing.

The ecclesiastics chanted a psalm, the Libera nos and the De profundis. The whole service lasted about twenty minutes. There was but one mourning coach, which the priest and chorister agreed to share with Eugene and Christophe.

"There is no one else to follow us," remarked the priest, "so we may as well go quickly, and so save time; it is half-past five."

But just as the coffin was put in the hearse, two empty carriages, with the armorial bearings of the Comte de Restaud and the Baron de Nucingen, arrived and followed in the procession to Pere-Lachaise. At six o'clock Goriot's coffin was lowered into the grave, his daughters' servants standing round the while. The ecclesiastic recited the short prayer that the students could afford to pay for, and then both priest and lackeys disappeared at once. The two grave-diggers flung in several spadefuls of earth, and then stopt and asked Rastignac for their fee. Eugene felt in vain in his pocket, and was obliged to borrow five francs of Christophe.



II

BIROTTEAU'S EARLY MARRIED LIFE[55]

"You will have a good husband, my little girl," said M, Pillerault. "He has a warm heart and sentiments of honor. He is as straight as a line, and as good as the child Jesus; he is a king of men, in short."

[Footnote 55: From "The Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau," as translated by Ellen Marriage.]

Constance put away once and for all the dreams of a brilliant future, which, like most shop-girls, she had sometimes indulged. She meant to be a faithful wife and a good mother, and took up this life in accordance with the religious program of the middle classes. After all, her new ideas were much better than the dangerous vanities tempting to a youthful Parisian imagination. Constance's intelligence was a narrow one; she was the typical small tradesman's wife, who always grumbles a little over her work, who refuses a thing at the outset, and is vexed when she is taken at her word; whose restless activity takes all things, from cash-box to kitchen, as its province, and supervises everything, from the weightiest business transaction down to almost invisible darns in the household linen. Such a woman scolds while she loves, and can only conceive ideas of the very simplest; only the small change, as it were; of thought passes current with her; she argues about everything, lives in chronic fear of the unknown, makes constant forecasts, and is always thinking of the future. Her statuesque yet girlish beauty, her engaging looks, her freshness, prevented Cesar from thinking of her shortcomings; and moreover, she made up for them by a woman's sensitive conscientiousness, an excessive thrift, by her fanatical love of work, and genius as a saleswoman.

Constance was just eighteen years old, and the possessor of eleven thousand francs. Cesar, in whom love had developed the most unbounded ambition, bought the perfumery business, and transplanted the Queen of Roses to a handsome shop near the Place Vendome. He was only twenty-one years of age, married to a beautiful and adored wife, and almost the owner of his establishment, for he had paid three-fourths of the amount. He saw (how should he have seen otherwise?) the future in fair colors, which seemed fairer still as he measured his career from its starting-point.

Roguin (Ragon's notary) drew up the marriage-contract, and gave sage counsels to the young perfumer; he it was who interfered when the latter was about to complete the purchase of the business with the wife's money. "Just keep the money by you, my boy; ready money is sometimes a handy thing in a business," he had said....

During the first year Cesar instructed his wife in all the ins and outs of the perfumery business, which she was admirably quick to grasp; she might have been brought into the world for that sole purpose, so well did she adapt herself to her customers. The result of the stock-taking at the end of the year alarmed the ambitious perfumer. After deducting all expenses, he might perhaps hope, in twenty years' time, to make the modest sum of a hundred thousand francs, the price of his felicity. He determined then and there to find some speedier road to fortune, and by way of a beginning, to be a manufacturer as well as a retailer.

Acting against his wife's counsel, he took the lease of a shed on some building land in the Faubourg du Temple, and painted up thereon, in huge letters, CESAR BIROTTEAU'S FACTORY. He enticed a workman from Grasse, and with him began to manufacture several kinds of soap, essences, and eau-de-cologne, on the system of half profits. The partnership only lasted six months, and ended in a loss, which he had to sustain alone; but Birotteau did not lose heart. He meant to obtain a result at any price, if it were only to escape a scolding from his wife; and, indeed, he confest to her afterward that, in those days of despair, his head used to boil like a pot on the fire, and that many a time but for his religious principles he would have thrown himself into the Seine.

One day, deprest by several unsuccessful experiments, he was sauntering home to dinner along the boulevards (the lounger in Paris is a man in despair quite as often as a genuine idler), when a book among a hamperful at six sous apiece caught his attention; his eyes were attracted by the yellow dusty title-page, Abdeker, so it ran, or the Art of Preserving Beauty.

Birotteau took up the work. It claimed to be a translation from the Arabic, but in reality it was a sort of romance written by a physician in the previous century. Cesar happened to stumble upon a passage there which treated of perfumes, and with his back against a tree in the boulevard, he turned the pages over till he reached a foot-note, wherein the learned author discoursed of the nature of the dermis and epidermis. The writer showed conclusively that such and such an unguent or soap often produced an effect exactly opposite to that intended, and the ointment, or the soap, acted as a tonic upon a skin that required a lenitive treatment, or vice versa.

Birotteau saw a fortune in the book, and bought it. Yet, feeling little confidence in his unaided lights, he went to Vauquelin, the celebrated chemist, and in all simplicity asked him how to compose a double cosmetic which should produce the required effect upon the human epidermis in either case. The really learned—men so truly great in this sense that they can never receive in their lifetime all the fame that should reward vast labors like theirs—are almost always helpful and kindly to the poor in intellect. So it was with Vauquelin. He came to the assistance of the perfumer, gave him a formula for a paste to whiten the hands, and allowed him to style himself its inventor. It was this cosmetic that Birotteau called the Superfine Pate des Sultanes. The more thoroughly to accomplish his purpose, he used the recipe for the paste for a wash for the complexion, which he called the Carminative Toilet Lotion....

Cesar Birotteau might be a Royalist, but public opinion at that time was in his favor; and tho he had scarcely a hundred thousand francs beside his business, was looked upon as a very wealthy man. His steady-going ways, his punctuality, his habit of paying ready money for everything, of never discounting bills, while he would take paper to oblige a customer of whom he was sure—all these things, together with his readiness to oblige, had brought him a great reputation. And not only so; he had really made a good deal of money, but the building of his factories had absorbed most of it, and he paid nearly twenty thousand francs a year in rent. The education of their only daughter, whom Constance and Cesar both idolized, had been a heavy expense. Neither the husband nor the wife thought of money where Cesarine's pleasure was concerned, and they had never brought themselves to part with her.

Imagine the delight of the poor peasant parvenu when he heard his charming Cesarine play a sonata by Steibelt or sing a ballad; when he saw her writing French correctly, or making sepia drawings of landscapes, or listened while she read aloud from the Racines, father and son, and explained the beauties of the poetry. What happiness it was for him to live again in this fair, innocent flower, not yet plucked from the parent stem; this angel, over whose growing graces and earliest development they had watched with such passionate tenderness; this only child, incapable of despising her father or of laughing at his want of education, so much was she his little daughter.

When Cesar came to Paris, he had known how to read, write, and cipher, and at that point his education had been arrested. There had been no opportunity in his hard-working life of acquiring new ideas and information beyond the perfumery trade. He had spent his time among folk to whom science and literature were matters of indifference, and whose knowledge was of a limited and special kind; he himself, having no time to spare for loftier studies, became perforce a practical man. He adopted (how should he have done otherwise?) the language, errors, and opinions of the Parisian tradesman who admires Moliere, Voltaire, and Rousseau on hearsay, and buys their works, but never opens them; who will have it that the proper way to pronounce "armoire" is "ormoire"; "or" means gold, and "moire" means silk, and women's dresses used almost always to be made of silk, and in their cupboards they locked up silk and gold—therefore, "ormoire" is right and "armoire" is an innovation. Potier, Talma, Mlle. Mars, and other actors and actresses were millionaires ten times over, and did not live like ordinary mortals: the great tragedian lived on raw meat, and Mlle. Mars would have a fricassee of pearls now and then—an idea she had taken from some celebrated Egyptian actress. As to the Emperor, his waistcoat pockets were lined with leather, so that he could take a handful of snuff at a time; he used to ride at full gallop up the staircase of the orangery at Versailles. Authors and artists ended in the workhouse, the natural close to their eccentric careers; they were, every one of them, atheists into the bargain, so that you had to be very careful not to admit anybody of that sort into your house, Joseph Lebas used to advert with horror to the story of his sister-in-law Augustine, who married the artist Sommervieux. Astronomers lived on spiders. These bright examples of the attitude of the bourgeois mind toward philology, the drama, politics, and science will throw light upon its breadth of view and powers of comprehension....

Cesar's wife, who had learned to know her husband's character during the early years of their marriage, led a life of perpetual terror; she represented sound sense and foresight in the partnership; she was doubt, opposition, and fear, while Cesar represented boldness, ambition, activity, the element of chance and undreamed-of good luck. In spite of appearances, the merchant was the weaker vessel, and it was the wife who really had the patience and courage. So it had come to pass that a timid mediocrity, without education, knowledge, or strength of character, a being who could in nowise have succeeded in the world's most slippery places, was taken for a remarkable man, a man of spirit and resolution, thanks to his instinctive uprightness and sense of justice, to the goodness of a truly Christian soul, and love for the one woman who had been his.



ALFRED DE VIGNY

Born in 1799, died in 1863; entered the army in 1815, becoming a captain in 1823; published a volume of verse in 1822; "Cinq-Mars," his famous historical novel, published in 1826; made translations from Shakespeare and wrote original historical dramas; admitted to the French Academy in 1845.



RICHELIEU'S WAY WITH HIS MASTER[56]

The latter [Cardinal de Richelieu], attired in all the pomp of a cardinal, leaning upon two young pages, and followed by his captain of the guards and more than five hundred gentlemen attached to his house, advanced toward the King slowly and stopping at each step, as if forcibly arrested by his sufferings, but in reality to observe the faces before him. A glance sufficed.

[Footnote 56: From "Cinq-Mars; or the Conspiracy Under Louis XIII." Translated by William C. Hazlitt. The Marquis de Cinq-Mars was a favorite of Louis XIII, grand-master of the wardrobe and the horse, and aspired to a seat in the royal council and to the hand of Maria de Gonzaga, Princess of Mantua. Having been refused by Richelieu a place in the council, he formed a conspiracy against the cardinal and entered into a treasonable correspondence with Spain. The conspiracy being discovered, he was beheaded at Lyons in 1642. Bulwer's popular play "Richelieu," tho founded on this episode, diverges radically in several details.]

His suite remained at the entrance of the royal tent; of all those within it not one was bold enough to salute him, or to look toward him. Even La Vallette feigned to be deeply occupied in a conversation with Montresor; and the King, who desired to give him an unfavorable reception, greeted him lightly and continued a conversation aside in a low voice with the Duc de Beaufort.

The cardinal was therefore forced, after the first salute, to stop and pass to the side of the crowd of courtiers, as tho he wished to mix with them, but in reality to test them more closely; they all recoiled as at the sight of a leper. Fabert alone advanced toward him with the frank and blunt air habitual with him, and making use of the terms belonging to his profession, said:

"Well, my Lord, you make a breach in the midst of them like a cannon-ball; I ask pardon in their name."

"And you stand firm before me as before the enemy," said the cardinal; "you will have no cause to regret it in the end, my dear Fabert."

Mazarin also approached the cardinal, but with caution, and giving to his flexible features an expression of profound sadness, made him five or six very low bows, turning his back to the group gathered round the King, so that in the latter quarter they might be taken for those cold and hasty salutations which are made to a person one desires to be rid of, and, on the part of the Duc, for tokens of respect blended with a discreet and silent sorrow.

The minister, ever calm, smiled in disdain; and assuming that firm look and that air of grandeur which he wore so perfectly in the hour of danger, he again leaned upon his pages, and without waiting for a word or glance from his sovereign, he suddenly resolved upon his line of conduct, and walked directly toward him, traversing the whole length of the tent. No one had lost sight of him, altho affecting not to observe him. Every one now became silent, even those who were talking to the King; all the courtiers bent forward to see and to hear.

Louis XIII turned round in astonishment, and all presence of mind totally failing him, remained motionless, and waited with an icy glance—his sole force, but a vis inertiae very effectual in a prince.

The cardinal, on coming close to the prince, did not bow; and without changing his position, his eyes lowered and his hands placed on the shoulders of the two boys half-bending, he said:

"Sire, I come to implore your Majesty at length to grant me the retirement for which I have long sighed. My health is failing; I feel that my life will soon be ended. Eternity approaches me, and before rendering an account to the eternal King, I would render one to my temporal sovereign. It is eighteen years, Sire, since you placed in my hands a weak and divided kingdom; I return it to you united and powerful. Your enemies are overthrown and humiliated. My work is accomplished. I ask your Majesty's permission to retire to Citeaux, of which I am abbot, and where I may end my days in prayer and meditation."

The King, irritated with some haughty expressions in this address, showed none of the signs of weakness which the cardinal had expected, and which he had always seen in him when he had threatened to resign the management of affairs. On the contrary, feeling that he had the eyes of the whole court upon him, Louis looked upon him with the air of a king, and coldly replied:

"We thank you, then, for your services, M. le Cardinal, and wish you the repose you desire."

Richelieu was deeply angered, but no indication of his rage appeared upon his countenance. "Such was the coldness with which you left Montmorency to die," he said to himself; "but you shall not escape me thus." He then continued aloud, bowing at the same time:

"The only recompense I ask for my services is that your Majesty will deign to accept from me, as a gift, the Palais-Cardinal I have already erected at my own cost in Paris."

The King, astonished, bowed in token of assent. A murmur of surprize for a moment agitated the attentive court.

"I also petition your Majesty to grant me the revocation of an act of rigor, which I solicited (I publicly confess it), and which I perhaps regarded as too beneficial to the repose of the state. Yes, when I was of this world, I was too forgetful of my old sentiments of personal respect and attachment, in my eagerness for the public welfare; now that I already enjoy the enlightenment of solitude, I see that I have been wrong, and I repent."

The attention of the spectators was redoubled, and the uneasiness of the King became visible.

"Yes, there is one person, Sire, whom I have always loved, despite her wrongs toward you, and the banishment which the affairs of the kingdom forced me to procure for her; a person to whom I have owed much, and who should be very dear to you, notwithstanding her armed attempts against you; a person, in a word, whom I implore you to recall from exile—the Queen Marie de Medicis, your mother."

The King sent forth an involuntary exclamation, so far was he from expecting to hear that name. A represt agitation suddenly appeared upon every face. All awaited in silence the King's reply. Louis XIII looked for a long time at his old minister without speaking, and this look decided the fate of France; in that instant he called to mind all the indefatigable services of Richelieu, his unbounded devotion, his wonderful capacity, and was surprized at himself for having wished to part with him. He felt deeply affected at this request, which hunted out, as it were, the exact cause of his anger at the bottom of his heart, rooted it up, and took from his hands the only weapon he had against his old servant; filial love brought the words of pardon to his lips and tears into his eyes. Delighted to grant what he desired most of all things in the world, he extended his hand to the Duc with all the nobleness and kindliness of a Bourbon. The cardinal bowed, and respectfully kissed it; and his heart, which should have burst with remorse, only swelled in the joy of a haughty triumph.

The prince, much moved, abandoning his hand to him, turned gracefully toward his court and said with a tremulous voice:

"We often deceive ourselves, gentlemen, and especially in our knowledge of so great a politician as this; I hope he will never leave us, since his heart is as good as his head."

Cardinal de la Vallette on the instant seized the arm of the King's mantle, and kissed it with all the ardor of a lover, and the young Mazarin did much the same with Richelieu himself, assuming with admirable Italian suppleness an expression radiant with joyful emotion. Two streams of flatterers hastened, one toward the King, the other toward the minister; the former group, not less adroit than the second, altho less direct, addrest to the prince thanks which could be heard by the minister, and burned at the feet of the one incense which was destined for the other. As for Richelieu, bestowing a bow on the right and a smile on the left, he stept forward, and stood on the right hand of the King, as his natural place.



VICTOR HUGO

Born in 1802, died in 1885; his childhood spent partly in Corsica, Italy and Spain, his father an officer in Napoleon's army; educated at home by a priest and at a school in Paris; published in 1816 his first tragedy, "Irtameme," followed by other plays and poems; his most notable work down to 1859 being "La Legende"; his writings extremely numerous, other titles being "L'Art d'etre Grand-Pere" 1877, "Notre Dame de Paris" 1831, "Napoleon le Petit" 1852, "Les Miserables" 1862, "Les Travailleurs de la Mer" 1866, "L'Homme Qui Rit" 1869, "Quatrevingt-treize" 1874, "History of a Crime" 1877; elected to the French Academy in 1841; exiled from France in 1851, living first in Belgium, then in Jersey and Guernsey; returned to France after the fall of the Empire in 1870; elected a life member of the Senate in 1876.



THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO[57]

The battle of Waterloo is an enigma as obscure for those who gained it as for him who lost it. To Napoleon it is a panic; Blucher sees nothing in it but fire; Wellington does not understand it at all. Look at the reports: the bulletins are confused; the commentaries are entangled; the latter stammer, the former stutter. Jomini divides the battle of Waterloo into four moments; Muffling cuts it into three acts; Charras, altho we do not entirely agree with him in all his appreciations, has alone caught with his haughty eye the characteristic lineaments of this catastrophe of human genius contending with divine chance. All the other historians suffer from a certain bedazzlement in which they grope about. It was a flashing day, in truth the overthrow of the military monarchy which, to the great stupor of the kings, has dragged down all kingdoms, the downfall of strength and the rout of war.

[Footnote 57: Chapter XV of "Cosette," in "Les Miserables." Translation of Lascelles Wraxall.]

In this event, which bears the stamp of superhuman necessity, men play but a small part; but if we take Waterloo from Wellington and Blucher, does that deprive England and Germany of anything? No. Neither illustrious England nor august Germany is in question in the problem of Waterloo, for, thank heaven! nations are great without the mournful achievements of the sword. Neither Germany, nor England, nor France is held in a scabbard; at this day when Waterloo is only a clash of sabers, Germany has Goethe above Blucher, and England Byron above Wellington. A mighty dawn of ideas is peculiar to our age; and in this dawn England and Germany have their own magnificent flash. They are majestic because they think; the high level they bring to civilization is intrinsic to them; it comes from themselves, and not from an accident. Any aggrandizement the nineteenth century may have can not boast of Waterloo as its fountainhead; for only barbarous nations grow suddenly after a victory—it is the transient vanity of torrents swollen by a storm. Civilized nations, especially at the present day, are not elevated or debased by the good or evil fortune of a captain, and their specific weight in the human family results from something more than a battle. Their honor, dignity, enlightenment, and genius are not numbers which those gamblers, heroes, and conquerors can stake in the lottery of battles. Very often a battle lost is progress gained, and less of glory, more of liberty. The drummer is silent and reason speaks; it is the game of who loses wins. Let us, then, speak of Waterloo coldly from both sides, and render to chance the things that belong to chance, and to God what is God's. What is Waterloo—a victory? No; a quine in the lottery, won by Europe, and paid by France; it was hardly worth while erecting a lion for it.

Waterloo, by the way, is the strangest encounter recorded in history; Napoleon and Wellington are not enemies, but contraries. Never did God, who delights in antitheses, produce a more striking contrast, or a more extraordinary confrontation. On one side precision, foresight, geometry, prudence, a retreat assured, reserves prepared, an obstinate coolness, an imperturbable method, strategy profiting by the ground, tactics balancing battalions, carnage measured by a plumb-line, war regulated watch in hand, nothing left voluntarily to accident, old classic courage and absolute correctness. On the other side we have intuition, divination, military strangeness, superhuman instinct, a flashing glance; something that gazes like the eagle and strikes like lightning, all the mysteries of a profound mind, association with destiny; the river, the plain, the forest, and the hill summoned, and, to some extent, compelled to obey, the despot going so far as even to tyrannize over the battle-field; faith in a star, blended with strategic science, heightening, but troubling it. Wellington was the Bareme of war, Napoleon was its Michelangelo, and this true genius was conquered by calculation. On both sides somebody was expected; and it was the exact calculator who succeeded. Napoleon waited for Grouchy, who did not come; Wellington waited for Blucher, and he came.

Wellington is the classical war taking its revenge; Bonaparte, in his dawn, had met it in Italy, and superbly defeated it—the old owl fled before the young vulture. The old tactics had been not only overthrown, but scandalized. Who was this Corsican of six-and-twenty years of age? What meant this splendid ignoramus, who, having everything against him, nothing for him, without provisions, ammunition, guns, shoes, almost without an army, with a handful of men against masses, dashed at allied Europe, and absurdly gained impossible victories? Who was this new comet of war who possest the effrontery of a planet? The academic military school excommunicated him, while bolting, and hence arose an implacable rancor of the old Caesarism against the new, of the old saber against the flashing sword, and of the chessboard against genius. On June 18th, 1815, this rancor got the best; and beneath Lodi, Montebello, Montenotte, Mantua, Marengo, and Arcola, it wrote—Waterloo. It was a triumph of mediocrity, sweet to majorities, and destiny consented to this irony. In his decline, Napoleon found a young Suvarov before him—in fact, it is only necessary to blanch Wellington's hair in order to have a Suvarov. Waterloo is a battle of the first class, gained by a captain of the second.

What must be admired in the battle of Waterloo is England, the English firmness, the English resolution, the English blood, and what England had really superb in it, is (without offense) herself; it is not her captain, but her army. Wellington, strangely ungrateful, declares in his dispatch to Lord Bathurst that his army, the one which fought on June 18th, 1815, was a "detestable army." What does the gloomy pile of bones buried in the trenches of Waterloo think of this? England has been too modest to herself in her treatment of Wellington, for making him so great is making herself small. Wellington is merely a hero, like any other man. The Scotch Grays, the Life Guards, Maitland and Mitchell's regiments, Pack and Kempt's infantry, Ponsonby and Somerset's cavalry, the Highlanders playing the bagpipes under the shower of canister, Ryland's battalions, the fresh recruits who could hardly manage a musket, and yet held their ground against the old bands of Essling and Rivoli—all this is grand. Wellington was tenacious; that was his merit, and we do not deny it to him, but the lowest of his privates and his troopers was quite as solid as he, and the iron soldier is as good as the iron duke. For our part, all our glorification is offered to the English soldier, the English army, the English nation; and if there must be a trophy, it is to England that this trophy is owing. The Waterloo column would be more just, if, instead of the figure of a man, it raised to the clouds the statue of a people.

But this great England will be irritated by what we are writing here; for she still has feudal illusions, after her 1688 and the French 1789. This people believes in inheritance and hierarchy, and while no other excels it in power and glory, it esteems itself as a nation and not as a people. As a people, it readily subordinates itself, and takes a lord as its head; the workman lets himself be despised; the soldier puts up with flogging, It will be remembered that, at the battle of Inkerman, a sergeant who, as it appears, saved the British army, could not be mentioned by Lord Raglan, because the military hierarchy does not allow any hero below the rank of officer to be mentioned in dispatches. What we admire before all, in an encounter like Waterloo, is the prodigious skill of chance. The night raid, the wall of Hougomont, the hollow way of Ohain, Grouchy deaf to the cannon, Napoleon's guide deceiving him, Bulow's guide enlightening him—all this cataclysm is marvelously managed.

Altogether, we will assert, there is more of a massacre than of a battle in Waterloo. Waterloo, of all pitched battles, is the one which had the smallest front for such a number of combatants. Napoleon's three-quarters of a league. Wellington's half a league, and seventy-two thousand combatants on either side. From this density came the carnage. The following calculation has been made and proportion established: loss of men, at Austerlitz, French, fourteen per cent.; Russian, thirty per cent.; Austrian, forty-four per cent.: at Wagram, French, thirteen per cent.; Austrian, fourteen per cent.: at Moscow, French, thirty-seven per cent.; Russian, forty-four per cent.: at Bautzen, French, thirteen per cent.; Russian and Prussian, fourteen per cent.: at Waterloo, French, fifty-six per cent.; allies, thirty-one per cent.—total for Waterloo, forty-one per cent., or out of one hundred and forty-four thousand fighting men, sixty thousand killed.

The field of Waterloo has at the present day that calmness which belongs to the earth, and resembles all plains; but at night, a sort of visionary mist rises from it, and if any traveler walk about it, and listen and dream, like Virgil on the mournful plain of Philippi, the hallucination of the catastrophe seizes upon him. The frightful June 18th lives again, the false monumental hill is leveled, the wondrous lion is dissipated, the battle-field resumes its reality, lines of infantry undulate on the plain; furious galloping crosses the horizon; the startled dreamer sees the flash of sabers, the sparkle of bayonets, the red light of shells, the monstrous collision of thunderbolts; he hears, like a death groan from the tomb, the vague clamor of the fantom battle. These shadows are grenadiers; these flashes are cuirassiers; this skeleton is Napoleon; this skeleton is Wellington; all this is nonexistent, and yet still combats, and the ravines are stained purple, and the trees rustle, and there is fury even in the clouds and in the darkness, while all the stern heights, Mont St. Jean, Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, and Plancenoit, seem confusedly crowned by hosts of specters exterminating one another.



II

THE BEGINNINGS AND EXPANSIONS OF PARIS[58]

The Paris of three hundred and fifty years ago, the Paris of the fifteenth century, was already a gigantic city. We modern Parisians in general are much mistaken in regard to the ground which we imagine it has gained. Since the time of Louis XI Paris has not increased above one-third; and certes it has lost much more in beauty than it has acquired in magnitude.

[Footnote 58: From Book III, Chapter II, of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." From an anonymous, non-copyright translation published by A. L. Burt Company.]

The infant Paris was born, as everybody knows, in that ancient island in the shape of a cradle, which is now called the City. The banks of that island were its first enclosure; the Seine was its first ditch. For several centuries Paris was confined to the island, having two bridges, the one on the north, the other on the south, the two tetes-de-ponts, which were at once its gates and its fortresses—the Grand Chatelet on the right bank and the Petit Chatelet on the left. In process of time, under the kings of the first dynasty, finding herself straitened in her island and unable to turn herself about, she crossed the water. A first enclosure of walls and towers then began to encroach upon either bank of the Seine beyond the two Chatelets. Of this ancient enclosure some vestiges were still remaining in the past century; nothing is now left of it but the memory and here and there a tradition. By degrees the flood of houses, always propelled from the heart to the extremities, wore away and overflowed this enclosure.

Philip Augustus surrounded Paris with new ramparts. He imprisoned the city within a circular chain of large, lofty, and massive towers. For more than a century the houses, crowding closer and closer, raised their level in this basin, like water in a reservoir. They began to grow higher; story was piled upon story; they shot up like any comprest liquid, and each tried to lift its head above its neighbors in order to obtain a little fresh air. The streets became deeper and deeper, and narrower and narrower; every vacant place was covered and disappeared. The houses at length overleapt the wall of Philip Augustus, and merrily scattered themselves at random over the plain, like prisoners who had made their escape. There they sat themselves down at their ease and carved themselves gardens out of the fields. So early as 1367 the suburbs of the city had spread so far as to need a fresh enclosure, especially on the right bank; this was built for it by Charles V. But a place like Paris is perpetually increasing. It is such cities alone that become capitals of countries. They are reservoirs into which all the geographical, political, moral, and intellectual channels of a country, all the natural inclined planes of its population discharge themselves; wells of civilization, if we may be allowed the expression, and drains also, where all that constitutes the sap, the life, the soul of the nation, is incessantly collecting and filtering, drop by drop, age by age.

The enclosure of Charles V consequently shared the same fate as that of Philip Augustus. So early as the conclusion of the fifteenth century it was overtaken, passed, and the suburbs kept traveling onward. In the sixteenth it seemed very visibly receding more and more into the ancient city, so rapidly did the new town thicken on the other side of it. Thus, so far back as the fifteenth century, to come down no further, Paris had already worn out the three concentric circles of walls which, from the time of Julian the Apostate, lay in embryo, if I may be allowed the expression, in the Grand and Petit Chatelets. The mighty city had successively burst its four mural belts, like a growing boy bursting the garments made for him a year ago. Under Louis XI there were still to be seen ruined towers of the ancient enclosures, rising at intervals above the sea of houses, like the tops of hills from amid an inundation, like the archipelagos of old Paris submerged beneath the new....

Each of these great divisions of Paris was, as we have observed, a city, but a city too special to be complete, a city which could not do without the two others. Thus they had three totally different aspects. The City, properly so called, abounded in churches; the Ville contained the palaces; and the University, the colleges. Setting aside secondary jurisdictions, we may assume generally that the island was under the bishop, the right bank under the provost of the merchants, the left under the rector of the University, and the whole under the provost of Paris, a royal and not a municipal officer. The City had the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the Ville the Louvre and the Hotel de Ville, and the University the Sorbonne. The Ville contained the Halles, the City the Hotel Dieu, and the University the Pre aux Clercs. For offenses committed by the students on the left bank, in their Pre aux Clercs, they were tried at the Palace of Justice in the island, and punished on the right bank at Montfaucon, unless the rector, finding the University strong and the king weak, chose to interfere; for it was a privilege of the scholars to be hung in their own quarter.

Most of these privileges, be it remarked by the way, and some of them were more valuable than that just mentioned, had been extorted from different sovereigns by riots and insurrections. This is the invariable course—the king never grants any boon but what is wrung from him by the people.

In the fifteenth century that part of the Seine comprehended within the enclosure of Paris contained five islands: the Ile Louviers, then covered with trees and now with timber, the Ile aux Vaches, and the Ile Notre Dame, both uninhabited and belonging to the bishop [in the seventeenth century these two islands were converted into one, which has been built upon and is now called the Isle of St. Louis]; lastly the City, and at its point the islet of the Passeur aux Vaches, since buried under the platform of the Pont Neuf. The City had at that time five bridges: three on the right—the bridge of Notre Dame and the Pont au Change of stone, and the Pont aux Meuniers of wood; two on the left—the Petit Pont of stone, and the Pont St. Michel of wood; all of them covered with houses. The university had six gates, built by Philip Augustus; these were, setting out from the Tournelle, the Gate of St. Victor, the Gate of Bordelle, the Papal Gate, and the gates of St. Jacques, St. Michel, and St. Germain. The Ville had six gates, built by Charles V, that is to say, beginning from the Tower of Billy, the gates of St. Antoine, the Temple, St. Martin, St. Denis, Montmartre, and St. Honore. All these gates were strong, and handsome, too, a circumstance which does not detract from strength. A wide, deep ditch, supplied by the Seine with water, which was swollen by the floods of winter to a running stream, encircled the foot of the wall all round Paris. At night the gates were closed, the river was barred at the two extremities of the city by stout iron chains, and Paris slept in quiet.

A bird's-eye view of these three towns, the City, the University, and the Ville, exhibited to the eye an inextricable knot of streets strangely jumbled together. It was apparent, however, at first sight that these three fragments of a city formed but a single body. The spectator perceived immediately two long parallel streets, without break or interruption, crossing the three cities, nearly in a right line, from one end to the other, from south to north, perpendicularly to the Seine, incessantly pouring the people of the one into the other, connecting, blending them together and converting the three into one. The first of these streets ran from the Gate of St. Jacques to the Gate of St. Martin; it was called in the University the street of St. Jacques, in the City Rue de la Juiverie, and in the Ville, the street of St. Martin; it crossed the river twice by the name of Petit Pont and Pont Notre Dame. The second, named Rue de la Harpe on the left bank, Rue de la Barillerie in the island, Rue St. Denis on the right bank, Pont St. Michel over one arm of the Seine, and Pont au Change over the other, Gate of St. Martin; it was called in the University to the Gate of St. Denis in the Ville. Still, tho they bore so many different names, they formed in reality only two streets, but the two mother-streets, the two great arteries of Paris. All the other veins of the triple city were fed by or discharged themselves into these....

What, then, was the aspect of this whole, viewed from the summit of the towers of Notre Dame in 1482? That is what we shall now attempt to describe. The spectator, on arriving breathless at that elevation, was dazzled by the chaos of roofs, chimneys, streets, bridges, belfries, towers and steeples. All burst at once upon the eye—the carved gable, the sharp roof, the turret perched upon the angles of the walls, the stone pyramids of the eleventh century, the slated obelisk of the fifteenth, the round and naked keep of the castle, the square and embroidered tower of the church, the great and the small, the massive and the light. The eye was long bewildered amid this labyrinth of heights and depths in which there was nothing but had its originality, its reason, its genius, its beauty, nothing, but issued from the hand of art, from the humblest dwelling with its painted and carved wooden front, elliptical doorway, and overhanging stories, to the royal Louvre, which then had a colonnade of towers.



ALEXANDRE DUMAS

Born in 1802, died in 1870; his father a French general, his grandmother a negress; at first a writer of plays; active in the Revolution of 1830; wrote books of travel and short stories, a great number of novels, some of them in collaboration with others; "Les Trois Mousquetaires" published in 1844; "Monte Cristo" in 1844-45; "Le Reine Margot" in 1845; wrote also historical sketches and reminiscences; his son of the same name famous also as a writer of books and a playwright.



THE SHOULDER, THE BELT, AND THE HANDKERCHIEF[59]

Furious with rage, D'Artagnan crossed the anteroom in three strides, and began to descend the stairs four steps at a time, without looking where he was going; when suddenly he was brought up short by knocking violently against the shoulder of a musketeer who was leaving the apartments of M. De Treville. The young man staggered backward from the shock, uttering a cry, or rather a yell.

[Footnote 59: From "The Three Musketeers."]

"Excuse me," said D'Artagnan, trying to pass him, "but I am in a great hurry."

He had hardly placed his foot on the next step, when he was stopt by the grasp of an iron wrist on his sash.

"You are in a great hurry!" cried the musketeer, whose face was the color of a shroud; "and you think that is enough apology for nearly knocking me down? Not so fast, my young man. I suppose you imagine that because you heard M. De Treville speaking to us rather brusquely to-day, that everybody may treat us in the same way? But you are mistaken, and it is as well you should learn that you are not M. De Treville."

"Upon my honor," replied D'Artagnan, recognizing Athos, who was returning to his room after having his wound drest, "upon my honor, it was an accident, and therefore I begged your pardon. I should have thought that was all that was necessary. I repeat that I am in a very great hurry, and I should be much obliged if you would let me go my way."

"Monsieur," said Athos, loosening his hold, "you are sadly lacking in courtesy, and one sees that you must have had a rustic upbringing."

D'Artagnan was by this time half-way down another flight; but on hearing Athos's remark he stopt short.

"My faith, monsieur!" exclaimed he, "however rustic I may be, I shall not come to you to teach me manners."

"I am not so sure of that," replied Athos.

"Oh, if I was only not in such haste," cried D'Artagnan; "if only I was not pursuing somebody—"

"Monsieur, you will find me without running after me. Do you understand?"

"And where, if you please?"

"Near Carmes-Deschaux."

"At what hour?"

"Twelve o'clock."

"Very good. At twelve I will be there."

"And don't be late, for at a quarter-past twelve I will cut off your ears for you."

"All right," called out D'Artagnan, dashing on down-stairs after his man; "you may expect me at ten minutes before the hour."

But he was not to escape so easily. At the street door stood Porthos, talking to a sentry, and between the two men there was barely space for a man to pass. D'Artagnan took it for granted that he could get through, and darted on, swift as an arrow, but he had not reckoned on the gale that was blowing. As he passed, a sudden gust wrapt Porthos's mantle tight round him; and tho the owner of the garment could easily have freed him had he so chosen, for reasons of his own he preferred to draw the folds still closer.

D'Artagnan, hearing the volley of oaths let fall by the musketeers, feared he might have damaged the splendor of the belt, and struggled to unwind himself; but when he at length freed his head, he found that like most things in this world the belt had two sides, and while the front bristled with gold, the back was mere leather; which explains why Porthos always had a cold and could not part from his mantle.

"Confound you!" cried Porthos, struggling in his turn, "have you gone mad, that you tumble over people like this?"

"Excuse me," answered D'Artagnan, "but I am in a great hurry. I am pursuing some one, and—"

"And I suppose that on such occasions you leave your eyes behind you?" asked Porthos.

"No," replied D'Artagnan, rather nettled; "and thanks to my eyes, I often see things that other people don't."

Possibly Porthos might have understood this allusion, but in any case he did not attempt to control his anger, and said sharply:

"Monsieur, we shall have to give you a lesson if you take to tumbling against the musketeers like this!"

"A lesson, monsieur!" replied D'Artagnan; "that is rather a severe expression."

"It is the expression of a man who is always accustomed to look his enemies in the face."

"Oh, if that is all, there is no fear of your turning your back on anybody," and enchanted at his own wit, the young man walked away in fits of laughter.

Porthos foamed with rage, and rushed after D'Artagnan.

"By and by, by and by," cried the latter; "when you have not got your mantle on."

"At one o'clock then, behind the Luxembourg."

"All right; at one o'clock," replied D'Artagnan as he vanished around the corner....

Moreover, he had gotten himself into two fierce duels with two men, each able to kill three D'Artagnans; in a word, with two musketeers—beings he set so high that he placed them above all other men.

It was a sad lookout. To be sure, as the youth was certain to be killed by Athos, he was not much disturbed about Porthos. As hope is the last thing to die in a man's heart, however, he ended by hoping that he might come out alive from both duels, even if dreadfully injured; and on that supposition he scored himself in this way for his conduct:

"What a rattle-headed dunce I am! Thai brave and unfortunate Athos was wounded right on that shoulder I ran against head foremost, like a ram. The only thing that surprizes me is that he didn't strike me dead on the spot; he had provocation enough, for I must have hurt him savagely. As to Porthos—oh! as to Porthos—that's a funny affair!"

And the youth began to laugh aloud in spite of himself; looking round carefully, however, to see if his laughing alone in public without apparent cause aroused any suspicion....

D'Artagnan, walking and soliloquizing, had come within a few steps of the Aiguillon House, and in front of it saw Aramis chatting gaily with three of the King's Guards. Aramis also saw D'Artagnan; but not having forgotten that it was in his presence M. De Treville had got so angry in the morning, and as a witness of the rebuke was not at all pleasant, he pretended not to see him. D'Artagnan, on the other hand, full of his plans of conciliation and politeness, approached the young man with a profound bow accompanied by a most gracious smile. Aramis bowed slightly, but did not smile. Moreover, all four immediately broke off their conversation.

D'Artagnan was not so dull as not to see he was not wanted; but he was not yet used enough to social customs to know how to extricate himself dextrously from his false position, which his generally is who accosts people he is little acquainted with, and mingles in a conversation which does not concern him. He was mentally casting about for the least awkward manner of retreat, when he noticed that Aramis had let his handkerchief fall and (doubtless by mistake) put his foot on it. This seemed a favorable chance to repair his mistake of intrusion: he stooped down, and with the most gracious air he could assume, drew the handkerchief from under the foot in spite of the efforts made to detain it, and holding it out to Aramis, said:

"I believe, sir, this is a handkerchief you would be sorry to lose?"

The handkerchief was in truth richly embroidered, and had a cornet and a coat of arms at one corner. Aramis blushed excessively, and snatched rather than took the handkerchief.

"Ha! ha!" exclaimed one of the guards, "will you go on saying now, most discreet Aramis, that you are not on good terms with Madame de Bois-Tracy, when that gracious lady does you the favor of lending you her handkerchief!"

Aramis darted at D'Artagnan one of those looks which tell a man that he has made a mortal enemy; then assuming his mild air he said:

"You are mistaken, gentlemen: this handkerchief is not mine, and I can not understand why this gentleman has taken it into his head to offer it to me rather than to one of you. And as a proof of what I say, here is mine in my pocket."