"All these circumstances," says the accusation, "throw a frightful light upon Peytel's plans. The letters and will of Madame Peytel are in the hands of her husband. Three months pass away, and this poor woman is brought to her home, in the middle of the night, with two balls in her head, stretched at the bottom of her carriage, by the side of a peasant."

"What other than Sebastian Peytel could have committed this murder?—whom could it profit?—who but himself had an odious chain to break, and an inheritance to receive? Why speak of the servant's projected robbery? The pistols found by the side of Louis's body, the balls bought by him at Macon, and those discovered at Belley among his effects, were only the result of a perfidious combination. The pistol, indeed, which was found on the hill of Darde, on the night of the 1st of November, could only have belonged to Peytel, and must have been thrown by him, near the body of his domestic, with the paper which had before enveloped it. Who had seen this pistol in the hands of Louis? Among all the gendarmes, work-women, domestics, employed by Peytel and his brother-in-law, is there one single witness who had seen this weapon in Louis's possession? It is true that Madame Peytel did, on one occasion, speak to M. de Montrichard of a pistol; which had nothing to do, however, with that found near Louis Rey."

Is this justice, or good reason? Just reverse the argument, and apply it to Rey. "Who but Rey could have committed this murder?—who but Rey had a large sum of money to seize upon?—a pistol is found by his side, balls and powder in his pocket, other balls in his trunks at home. The pistol found near his body could not, indeed, have belonged to Peytel: did any man ever see it in his possession? The very gunsmith who sold it, and who knew Peytel, would he not have known that he had sold him this pistol? At his own house, Peytel has a collection of weapons of all kinds; everybody has seen them—a man who makes such collections is anxious to display them. Did any one ever see this weapon?—Not one. And Madame Peytel did, in her lifetime, remark a pistol in the valet's possession. She was short-sighted, and could not particularize what kind of pistol it was; but she spoke of it to her husband and her brother-in-law." This is not satisfactory, if you please; but, at least, it is as satisfactory as the other set of suppositions. It is the very chain of argument which would have been brought against Louis Rey by this very same compiler of the act of accusation, had Rey survived, instead of Peytel, and had he, as most undoubtedly would have been the case, been tried for the murder.

This argument was shortly put by Peytel's counsel:—"if Peytel had been killed by Rey in the struggle, would you not have found Rey guilty of the murder of his master and mistress?" It is such a dreadful dilemma, that I wonder how judges and lawyers could have dared to persecute Peytel in the manner which they did.

After the act of accusation, which lays down all the suppositions against Peytel as facts, which will not admit the truth of one of the prisoner's allegations in his own defence, comes the trial. The judge is quite as impartial as the preparer of the indictment, as will be seen by the following specimens of his interrogatories:—

Judge. "The act of accusation finds in your statement contradictions, improbabilities, impossibilities. Thus your domestic, who had determined to assassinate you, in order to rob you, and who MUST HAVE CALCULATED UPON THE CONSEQUENCE OF A FAILURE, had neither passport nor money upon him. This is very unlikely; because he could not have gone far with only a single halfpenny, which was all he had."

Prisoner. "My servant was known, and often passed the frontier without a passport."

Judge. "YOUR DOMESTIC HAD TO ASSASSINATE TWO PERSONS, and had no weapon but a single pistol. He had no dagger; and the only thing found on him was a knife."

Prisoner. "In the car there were several turner's implements, which he might have used."

Judge. "But he had not those arms upon him, because you pursued him immediately. He had, according to you, only this old pistol."

Prisoner. "I have nothing to say."

Judge. "Your domestic, instead of flying into woods, which skirt the road, ran straight forward on the road itself: THIS, AGAIN, IS VERY UNLIKELY."

Prisoner. "This is a conjecture I could answer by another conjecture; I can only reason on the facts."

Judge. "How far did you pursue him?"

Prisoner. "I don't know exactly."

Judge. "You said 'two hundred paces.'"

No answer from the prisoner.

Judge. "Your domestic was young, active, robust, and tall. He was ahead of you. You were in a carriage, from which you had to descend: you had to take your pistols from a cushion, and THEN your hammer;—how are we to believe that you could have caught him, if he ran? It is IMPOSSIBLE."

Prisoner. "I can't explain it: I think that Rey had some defect in one leg. I, for my part, run tolerably fast."

Judge. "At what distance from him did you fire your first shot?"

Prisoner. "I can't tell."

Judge. "Perhaps he was not running when you fired."

Prisoner. "I saw him running."

Judge. "In what position was your wife?"

Prisoner. "She was leaning on my left arm, and the man was on the right side of the carriage."

Judge. "The shot must have been fired a bout portant, because it burned the eyebrows and lashes entirely. The assassin must have passed his pistol across your breast."

Prisoner. "The shot was not fired so close; I am convinced of it: professional gentlemen will prove it."

Judge. "That is what you pretend, because you understand perfectly the consequences of admitting the fact. Your wife was hit with two balls—one striking downwards, to the right, by the nose, the other going horizontally through the cheek, to the left."

Prisoner. "The contrary will be shown by the witnesses called for the purpose."

Judge. "IT IS A VERY UNLUCKY COMBINATION FOR YOU that these balls, which went, you say, from the same pistol, should have taken two different directions."

Prisoner. "I can't dispute about the various combinations of fire-arms—professional persons will be heard."

Judge. "According to your statement, your wife said to you, 'My poor husband, take your pistols.'"

Prisoner. "She did."

Judge. "In a manner quite distinct."

Prisoner. "Yes."

Judge. "So distinct that you did not fancy she was hit?"

Prisoner. "Yes; that is the fact."

Judge. "HERE, AGAIN, IS AN IMPOSSIBILITY; and nothing is more precise than the declaration of the medical men. They affirm that your wife could not have spoken—their report is unanimous."

Prisoner. "I can only oppose to it quite contrary opinions from professional men, also: you must hear them."

Judge. "What did your wife do next?"

. . . . . .

Judge. "You deny the statements of the witnesses:" (they related to Peytel's demeanor and behavior, which the judge wishes to show were very unusual;—and what if they were?) "Here, however, are some mute witnesses, whose testimony, you will not perhaps refuse. Near Louis Rey's body was found a horse-cloth, a pistol, and a whip..... Your domestic must have had this cloth upon him when he went to assassinate you: it was wet and heavy. An assassin disencumbers himself of anything that is likely to impede him, especially when he is going to struggle with a man as young as himself."

Prisoner. "My servant had, I believe, this covering on his body; it might be useful to him to keep the priming of his pistol dry."

The president caused the cloth to be opened, and showed that there was no hook, or tie, by which it could be held together; and that Rey must have held it with one hand, and, in the other, his whip, and the pistol with which he intended to commit the crime; which was impossible.

Prisoner. "These are only conjectures."

And what conjectures, my God! upon which to take away the life of a man. Jeffreys, or Fouquier Tinville, could scarcely have dared to make such. Such prejudice, such bitter persecution, such priming of the jury, such monstrous assumptions and unreason—fancy them coming from an impartial judge! The man is worse than the public accuser.

"Rey," says the Judge, "could not have committed the murder, BECAUSE HE HAD NO MONEY IN HIS POCKET, TO FLY, IN CASE OF FAILURE." And what is the precise sum that his lordship thinks necessary for a gentleman to have, before he makes such an attempt? Are the men who murder for money, usually in possession of a certain independence before they begin? How much money was Rey, a servant, who loved wine and women, had been stopping at a score of inns on the road, and had, probably, an annual income of 400 francs,—how much money was Rey likely to have?

"Your servant had to assassinate two persons." This I have mentioned before. Why had he to assassinate two persons,* when one was enough? If he had killed Peytel, could he not have seized and gagged his wife immediately?

* M. Balzac's theory of the case is, that Rey had intrigued with Madame Peytel; having known her previous to her marriage, when she was staying in the house of her brother- in-law, Monsieur de Montrichard, where Rey had been a servant.

"Your domestic ran straight forward, instead of taking to the woods, by the side of the rood: this is very unlikely." How does his worship know? Can any judge, however enlightened, tell the exact road that a man will take, who has just missed a coup of murder, and is pursued by a man who is firing pistols at him? And has a judge a right to instruct a jury in this way, as to what they shall, or shall not, believe?

"You have to run after an active man, who has the start of you: to jump out of a carriage; to take your pistols; and THEN, your hammer. THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE." By heavens! does it not make a man's blood boil, to read such blundering, blood-seeking sophistry? This man, when it suits him, shows that Rey would be slow in his motions; and when it suits him, declares that Rey ought to be quick; declares ex cathedra, what pace Rey should go, and what direction he should take; shows, in a breath, that he must have run faster than Peytel; and then, that he could not run fast, because the cloak clogged him; settles how he is to be dressed when he commits a murder, and what money he is to have in his pocket; gives these impossible suppositions to the jury, and tells them that the previous statements are impossible; and, finally, informs them of the precise manner in which Rey must have stood holding his horse-cloth in one hand, his whip and pistol in the other, when he made the supposed attempt at murder. Now, what is the size of a horse-cloth? Is it as big as a pocket-handkerchief? Is there no possibility that it might hang over one shoulder; that the whip should be held under that very arm? Did you never see a carter so carry it, his hands in his pockets all the while? Is it monstrous, abhorrent to nature, that a man should fire a pistol from under a cloak on a rainy day?—that he should, after firing the shot, be frightened, and run; run straight before him, with the cloak on his shoulders, and the weapon in his hand? Peytel's story is possible, and very possible; it is almost probable. Allow that Rey had the cloth on, and you allow that he must have been clogged in his motions; that Peytel may have come up with him—felled him with a blow of the hammer; the doctors say that he would have so fallen by one blow—he would have fallen on his face, as he was found: the paper might have been thrust into his breast, and tumbled out as he fell. Circumstances far more impossible have occurred ere this; and men have been hanged for them, who were as innocent of the crime laid to their charge as the judge on the bench, who convicted them.

In like manner, Peytel may not have committed the crime charged to him; and Mr. Judge, with his arguments as to possibilities and impossibilities,—Mr. Public Prosecutor, with his romantic narrative and inflammatory harangues to the jury,—may have used all these powers to bring to death an innocent man. From the animus with which the case had been conducted from beginning to end, it was easy to see the result. Here it is, in the words of the provincial paper:—

BOURG, 28 October, 1839.

"The condemned Peytel has just undergone his punishment, which took place four days before the anniversary of his crime. The terrible drama of the bridge of Andert, which cost the life of two persons, has just terminated on the scaffold. Mid-day had just sounded on the clock of the Palais: the same clock tolled midnight when, on the 30th of August, his sentence was pronounced.

"Since the rejection of his appeal in Cassation, on which his principal hopes were founded, Peytel spoke little of his petition to the King. The notion of transportation was that which he seemed to cherish most. However, he made several inquiries from the gaoler of the prison, when he saw him at meal-time, with regard to the place of execution, the usual hour, and other details on the subject. From that period, the words 'Champ de Foire' (the fair-field, where the execution was to be held), were frequently used by him in conversation.

"Yesterday, the idea that the time had arrived seemed to be more strongly than ever impressed upon him; especially after the departure of the cure, who latterly has been with him every day. The documents connected with the trial had arrived in the morning. He was ignorant of this circumstance, but sought to discover from his guardians what they tried to hide from him; and to find out whether his petition was rejected, and when he was to die.

"Yesterday, also, he had written to demand the presence of his counsel, M. Margerand, in order that he might have some conversation with him, and regulate his affairs, before he ——; he did not write down the word, but left in its place a few points of the pen.

"In the evening, whilst he was at supper, he begged earnestly to be allowed a little wax-candle, to finish what he was writing: otherwise, he said, TIME MIGHT FAIL. This was a new, indirect manner of repeating his ordinary question. As light, up to that evening, had been refused him, it was thought best to deny him in this, as in former instances; otherwise his suspicions might have been confirmed. The keeper refused his demand.

"This morning, Monday, at nine o'clock, the Greffier of the Assize Court, in fulfilment of the painful duty which the law imposes upon him, came to the prison, in company with the cure of Bourg, and announced to the convict that his petition was rejected, and that he had only three hours to live. He received this fatal news with a great deal of calmness, and showed himself to be no more affected than he had been on the trial. 'I am ready; but I wish they had given me four-and-twenty hours' notice,'—were all the words he used.

"The Greffier now retired, leaving Peytel alone with the cure, who did not thenceforth quit him. Peytel breakfasted at ten o'clock.

"At eleven, a piquet of mounted gendarmerie and infantry took their station upon the place before the prison, where a great concourse of people had already assembled. An open car was at the door. Before he went out Peytel asked the gaoler for a looking-glass; and having examined his face for a moment, said, 'At least, the inhabitants of Bourg will see that I have not grown thin.'

"As twelve o'clock sounded, the prison gates opened, an aide appeared, followed by Peytel, leaning on the arm of the cure. Peytel's face was pale, he had a long black beard, a blue cap on his head, and his great-coat flung over his shoulders, and buttoned at the neck.

"He looked about at the place and the crowd; he asked if the carriage would go at a trot; and on being told that that would be difficult, he said he would prefer walking, and asked what the road was. He immediately set out, walking at a firm and rapid pace. He was not bound at all.

"An immense crowd of people encumbered the two streets through which he had to pass to the place of execution. He cast his eyes alternately upon them and upon the guillotine, which was before him.

"Arrived at the foot of the scaffold, Peytel embraced the cure, and bade him adieu. He then embraced him again; perhaps, for his mother and sister. He then mounted the steps rapidly, and gave himself into the hands of the executioner, who removed his coat and cap. He asked how he was to place himself, and on a sign being made, he flung himself briskly on the plank, and stretched his neck. In another moment he was no more.

"The crowd, which had been quite silent, retired, profoundly moved by the sight it had witnessed. As at all executions, there was a very great number of women present.

"Under the scaffold there had been, ever since the morning, a coffin. The family had asked for his remains, and had them immediately buried, privately: and thus the unfortunate man's head escaped the modellers in wax, several of whom had arrived to take an impression of it."

Down goes the axe; the poor wretch's head rolls gasping into the basket; the spectators go home, pondering; and Mr. Executioner and his aides have, in half an hour, removed all traces of the august sacrifice, and of the altar on which it had been performed. Say, Mr. Briefless, do you think that any single person, meditating murder, would be deterred therefrom by beholding this—nay, a thousand more executions? It is not for moral improvement, as I take it, nor for opportunity to make appropriate remarks upon the punishment of crime, that people make a holiday of a killing-day, and leave their homes and occupations, to flock and witness the cutting off of a head. Do we crowd to see Mr. Macready in the new tragedy, or Mademoiselle Ellssler in her last new ballet and flesh-colored stockinnet pantaloons, out of a pure love of abstract poetry and beauty; or from a strong notion that we shall be excited, in different ways, by the actor and the dancer? And so, as we go to have a meal of fictitious terror at the tragedy, of something more questionable in the ballet, we go for a glut of blood to the execution. The lust is in every man's nature, more or less. Did you ever witness a wrestling or boxing match? The first clatter of the kick on the shins, or the first drawing of blood, makes the stranger shudder a little; but soon the blood is his chief enjoyment, and he thirsts for it with a fierce delight. It is a fine grim pleasure that we have in seeing a man killed; and I make no doubt that the organs of destructiveness must begin to throb and swell as we witness the delightful savage spectacle.

Three or four years back, when Fieschi and Lacenaire were executed, I made attempts to see the execution of both; but was disappointed in both cases. In the first instance, the day for Fieschi's death was, purposely, kept secret; and he was, if I remember rightly, executed at some remote quarter of the town. But it would have done a philanthropist good, to witness the scene which we saw on the morning when his execution did NOT take place.

It was carnival time, and the rumor had pretty generally been carried abroad that he was to die on that morning. A friend, who accompanied me, came many miles, through the mud and dark, in order to be in at the death. We set out before light, floundering through the muddy Champs Elysees; where, besides, were many other persons floundering, and all bent upon the same errand. We passed by the Concert of Musard, then held in the Rue St. Honore; and round this, in the wet, a number of coaches were collected. The ball was just up, and a crowd of people in hideous masquerade, drunk, tired, dirty, dressed in horrible old frippery, and daubed with filthy rouge, were trooping out of the place: tipsy women and men, shrieking, jabbering, gesticulating, as French will do; parties swaggering, staggering forwards, arm in arm, reeling to and fro across the street, and yelling songs in chorus: hundreds of these were bound for the show, and we thought ourselves lucky in finding a vehicle to the execution place, at the Barriere d'Enfer. As we crossed the river and entered the Enfer Street, crowds of students, black workmen, and more drunken devils from more carnival balls, were filling it; and on the grand place there were thousands of these assembled, looking out for Fiaschi and his cortege. We waited and waited; but alas! no fun for us that morning: no throat-cutting; no august spectacle of satisfied justice; and the eager spectators were obliged to return, disappointed of their expected breakfast of blood. It would have been a fine scene, that execution, could it but have taken place in the midst of the mad mountebanks and tipsy strumpets who had flocked so far to witness it, wishing to wind up the delights of their carnival by a bonnebouche of a murder.

The other attempt was equally unfortunate. We arrived too late on the ground to be present at the execution of Lacenaire and his co-mate in murder, Avril. But as we came to the ground (a gloomy round space, within the barrier—three roads lead to it; and, outside, you see the wine-shops and restaurateurs' of the barrier looking gay and inviting,)—as we came to the ground, we only found, in the midst of it, a little pool of ice, just partially tinged with red. Two or three idle street-boys were dancing and stamping about this pool; and when I asked one of them whether the execution had taken place, he began dancing more madly than ever, and shrieked out with a loud fantastical, theatrical voice, "Venez tous Messieurs et Dames, voyez ici le sang du monstre Lacenaire, et de son compagnon he traitre Avril," or words to that effect; and straightway all the other gamins screamed out the words in chorus, and took hands and danced round the little puddle.

O august Justice, your meal was followed by a pretty appropriate grace! Was any man, who saw the show, deterred, or frightened, or moralized in any way? He had gratified his appetite for blood, and this was all. There is something singularly pleasing, both in the amusement of execution-seeing, and in the results. You are not only delightfully excited at the time, but most pleasingly relaxed afterwards; the mind, which has been wound up painfully until now, becomes quite complacent and easy. There is something agreeable in the misfortunes of others, as the philosopher has told us. Remark what a good breakfast you eat after an execution; how pleasant it is to cut jokes after it, and upon it. This merry, pleasant mood is brought on by the blood tonic.

But, for God's sake, if we are to enjoy this, let us do so in moderation; and let us, at least, be sure of a man's guilt before we murder him. To kill him, even with the full assurance that he is guilty is hazardous enough. Who gave you the right to do so?—you, who cry out against suicides, as impious and contrary to Christian law? What use is there in killing him? You deter no one else from committing the crime by so doing: you give us, to be sure, half an hour's pleasant entertainment; but it is a great question whether we derive much moral profit from the sight. If you want to keep a murderer from farther inroads upon society, are there not plenty of hulks and prisons, God wot; treadmills, galleys, and houses of correction? Above all, as in the case of Sebastian Peytel and his family, there have been two deaths already; was a third death absolutely necessary? and, taking the fallibility of judges and lawyers into his heart, and remembering the thousand instances of unmerited punishment that have been suffered, upon similar and stronger evidence before, can any man declare, positively and upon his oath, that Peytel was guilty, and that this was not THE THIRD MURDER IN THE FAMILY?



FOUR IMITATIONS OF BERANGER



LE ROI D'YVETOT.

Il etait un roi d'Yvetot, Peu connu dans l'histoire; Se levant tard, se couchant tot, Dormant fort bien sans gloire, Et couronne par Jeanneton D'un simple bonnet de coton, Dit-on. Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! Quel bon petit roi c'etait la! La, la.

Il fesait ses quatre repas Dans son palais de chaume, Et sur un ane, pas a pas, Parcourait son royaume. Joyeux, simple et croyant le bien, Pour toute garde il n'avait rien Qu'un chien. Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! &c. La, la.

Il n'avait de gout onereux Qu'une soif un peu vive; Mais, en rendant son peuple heureux, Il faux bien qu'un roi vive. Lui-meme a table, et sans suppot, Sur chaque muid levait un pot D'impot. Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! &c. La, la.

Aux filles de bonnes maisons Comme il avait su plaire, Ses sujets avaient cent raisons De le nommer leur pere: D'ailleurs il ne levait de ban Que pour tirer quatre fois l'an Au blanc. Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! &c. La, la.

Il n'agrandit point ses etats, Fut un voisin commode, Et, modele des potentats, Prit le plaisir pour code. Ce n'est que lorsqu'il expira, Que le peuple qui l'enterra Pleura. Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! &c. La, la.

On conserve encor le portrait De ce digne et bon prince; C'est l'enseigne d'un cabaret Fameux dans la province. Les jours de fete, bien souvent, La foule s'ecrie en buvant Devant: Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! Quel bon petit roi c'etait la! La, la.

THE KING OF YVETOT.

There was a king of Yvetot, Of whom renown hath little said, Who let all thoughts of glory go, And dawdled half his days a-bed; And every night, as night came round, By Jenny, with a nightcap crowned, Slept very sound: Sing ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he! That's the kind of king for me.

And every day it came to pass, That four lusty meals made he; And, step by step, upon an ass, Rode abroad, his realms to see; And wherever he did stir, What think you was his escort, sir? Why, an old cur. Sing ho, ho, ho! &c.

If e'er he went into excess, 'Twas from a somewhat lively thirst; But he who would his subjects bless, Odd's fish!—must wet his whistle first; And so from every cask they got, Our king did to himself allot, At least a pot. Sing ho, ho! &c.

To all the ladies of the land, A courteous king, and kind, was he; The reason why you'll understand, They named him Pater Patriae. Each year he called his fighting men, And marched a league from home, and then Marched back again. Sing ho, ho! &c.

Neither by force nor false pretence, He sought to make his kingdom great, And made (O princes, learn from hence),— "Live and let live," his rule of state. 'Twas only when he came to die, That his people who stood by, Were known to cry. Sing ho, ho! &c.

The portrait of this best of kings Is extant still, upon a sign That on a village tavern swings, Famed in the country for good wine. The people in their Sunday trim, Filling their glasses to the brim, Look up to him, Singing ha, ha, ha! and he, he, he! That's the sort of king for me.



THE KING OF BRENTFORD. ANOTHER VERSION.

There was a king in Brentford,—of whom no legends tell, But who, without his glory,—could eat and sleep right well. His Polly's cotton nightcap,—it was his crown of state, He slept of evenings early,—and rose of mornings late.

All in a fine mud palace,—each day he took four meals, And for a guard of honor,—a dog ran at his heels, Sometimes, to view his kingdoms,—rode forth this monarch good, And then a prancing jackass—he royally bestrode.

There were no costly habits—with which this king was curst, Except (and where's the harm on't?)—a somewhat lively thirst; But people must pay taxes,—and kings must have their sport, So out of every gallon—His Grace he took a quart.

He pleased the ladies round him,—with manners soft and bland; With reason good, they named him,—the father of his land. Each year his mighty armies—marched forth in gallant show; Their enemies were targets—their bullets they were tow.

He vexed no quiet neighbor,—no useless conquest made, But by the laws of pleasure,—his peaceful realm he swayed. And in the years he reigned,—through all this country wide, There was no cause for weeping,—save when the good man died.

The faithful men of Brentford,—do still their king deplore, His portrait yet is swinging,—beside an alehouse door. And topers, tender-hearted,—regard his honest phiz, And envy times departed—that knew a reign like his.



LE GRENIER.

Je viens revoir l'asile ou ma jeunesse De la misere a subi les lecons. J'avais vingt ans, une folle maitresse, De francs amis et l'amour des chansons Bravant le monde et les sots et les sages, Sans avenir, riche de mon printemps, Leste et joyeux je montais six etages. Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt ans!

C'est un grenier, point ne veux qu'on l'ignore. La fut mon lit, bien chetif et bien dur; La fut ma table; et je retrouve encore Trois pieds d'un vers charbonnes sur le mur. Apparaissez, plaisirs de mon bel age, Que d'un coup d'aile a fustiges le temps, Vingt fois pour vous j'ai mis ma montre en gage. Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt ans!

Lisette ici doit surtout apparaitre, Vive, jolie, avec un frais chapeau; Deja sa main a l'etroite fenetre Suspend son schal, en guise de rideau. Sa robe aussi va parer ma couchette; Respecte, Amour, ses plis longs et flottans. J'ai su depuis qui payait sa toilette. Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt ans!

A table un jour, jour de grande richesse, De mes amis les voix brillaient en choeur, Quand jusqu'ici monte un cri d'allegresse: A Marengo Bonaparte est vainqueur. Le canon gronde; un autre chant commence; Nous celebrons tant de faits eclatans. Les rois jamais n'envahiront la France. Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt ans!

Quittons ce toit ou ma raison s'enivre. Oh! qu'ils sont loin ces jours si regrettes! J'echangerais ce qu'il me reste a vivre Contre un des mois qu'ici Dieu m'a comptes, Pour rever gloire, amour, plaisir, folie, Pour depenser sa vie en peu d'instans, D'un long espoir pour la voir embellie, Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt ans!



THE GARRET.

With pensive eyes the little room I view, Where, in my youth, I weathered it so long; With a wild mistress, a stanch friend or two, And a light heart still breaking into song: Making a mock of life, and all its cares, Rich in the glory of my rising sun, Lightly I vaulted up four pair of stairs, In the brave days when I was twenty-one.

Yes; 'tis a garret—let him know't who will— There was my bed—full hard it was and small. My table there—and I decipher still Half a lame couplet charcoaled on the wall. Ye joys, that Time hath swept with him away, Come to mine eyes, ye dreams of love and fun; For you I pawned my watch how many a day, In the brave days when I was twenty-one.

And see my little Jessy, first of all; She comes with pouting lips and sparkling eyes: Behold, how roguishly she pins her shawl Across the narrow casement, curtain-wise; Now by the bed her petticoat glides down, And when did woman look the worse in none? I have heard since who paid for many a gown, In the brave days when I was twenty-one.

One jolly evening, when my friends and I Made happy music with our songs and cheers, A shout of triumph mounted up thus high, And distant cannon opened on our ears: We rise,—we join in the triumphant strain,— Napoleon conquers—Austerlitz is won— Tyrants shall never tread us down again, In the brave days when I was twenty-one.

Let us begone—the place is sad and strange— How far, far off, these happy times appear; All that I have to live I'd gladly change For one such month as I have wasted here— To draw long dreams of beauty, love, and power, From founts of hope that never will outrun, And drink all life's quintessence in an hour, Give me the days when I was twenty-one!



ROGER-BONTEMPS.

Aux gens atrabilaires Pour exemple donne, En un temps de miseres Roger-Bontemps est ne. Vivre obscur a sa guise, Narguer les mecontens: Eh gai! c'est la devise Du gros Roger-Bontemps.

Du chapeau de son pere Coiffe dans le grands jours, De roses ou de lierre Le rajeunir toujours; Mettre un manteau de bure, Vieil ami de vingt ans; Eh gai! c'est la parure Du gros Roger-Bontemps.

Posseder dans sa hutte Une table, un vieux lit, Des cartes, une flute, Un broc que Dieu remplit; Un portrait de maitresse, Un coffre et rien dedans; Eh gai! c'est la richesse Du gros Roger-Bontemps.

Aux enfans de la ville Montrer de petits jeux; Etre fesseur habile De contes graveleux; Ne parler que de danse Et d'almanachs chantans; Eh gai! c'est la science Du gros Roger-Bontemps.

Faute de vins d'elite, Sabler ceux du canton: Preferer Marguerite Aux dames du grand ton: De joie et de tendresse Remplir tous ses instans; Eh gai! c'est la sagesse Du gros Roger-Bontemps.

Dire au ciel: Je me fie, Mon pere, a ta bonte; De ma philosophie Pardonne le gaite Que ma saison derniere Soit encore un printemps; Eh gai! c'est la priere Du gros Roger-Bontemps.

Vous, pauvres pleins d'envie, Vous, riches desireux, Vous, dont le char devie Apres un cours heureux; Vous, qui perdrez peut-etre Des titres eclatans, Eh gai! prenez pour maitre Le gros Roger Bontemps.



JOLLY JACK.

When fierce political debate Throughout the isle was storming, And Rads attacked the throne and state, And Tories the reforming, To calm the furious rage of each, And right the land demented, Heaven sent us Jolly Jack, to teach The way to be contented.

Jack's bed was straw, 'twas warm and soft, His chair, a three-legged stool; His broken jug was emptied oft, Yet, somehow, always full. His mistress' portrait decked the wall, His mirror had a crack; Yet, gay and glad, though this was all His wealth, lived Jolly Jack.

To give advice to avarice, Teach pride its mean condition, And preach good sense to dull pretence, Was honest Jack's high mission. Our simple statesman found his rule Of moral in the flagon, And held his philosophic school Beneath the "George and Dragon."

When village Solons cursed the Lords, And called the malt-tax sinful, Jack heeded not their angry words, But smiled and drank his skinful. And when men wasted health and life, In search of rank and riches, Jack marked, aloof, the paltry strife, And wore his threadbare breeches.

"I enter not the church," he said, "But I'll not seek to rob it;" So worthy Jack Joe Miller read, While others studied Cobbett. His talk it was of feast and fun; His guide the Almanack; From youth to age thus gayly run The life of Jolly Jack.

And when Jack prayed, as oft he would, He humbly thanked his Maker; "I am," said he, "O Father good! Nor Catholic nor Quaker: Give each his creed, let each proclaim His catalogue of curses; I trust in Thee, and not in them, In Thee, and in Thy mercies!

"Forgive me if, midst all Thy works, No hint I see of damning; And think there's faith among the Turks, And hope for e'en the Brahmin. Harmless my mind is, and my mirth, And kindly is my laughter: I cannot see the smiling earth, And think there's hell hereafter."

Jack died; he left no legacy, Save that his story teaches:— Content to peevish poverty; Humility to riches. Ye scornful great, ye envious small, Come follow in his track; We all were happier, if we all Would copy JOLLY JACK.



FRENCH DRAMAS AND MELODRAMAS.

There are three kinds of drama in France, which you may subdivide as much as you please.

There is the old classical drama, wellnigh dead, and full time too: old tragedies, in which half a dozen characters appear, and spout sonorous Alexandrines for half a dozen hours. The fair Rachel has been trying to revive this genre, and to untomb Racine; but be not alarmed, Racine will never come to life again, and cause audiences to weep as of yore. Madame Rachel can only galvanize the corpse, not revivify it. Ancient French tragedy, red-heeled, patched, and be-periwigged, lies in the grave; and it is only the ghost of it that we see, which the fair Jewess has raised. There are classical comedies in verse, too, wherein the knavish valets, rakish heroes, stolid old guardians, and smart, free-spoken serving-women, discourse in Alexandrines, as loud as the Horaces or the Cid. An Englishman will seldom reconcile himself to the roulement of the verses, and the painful recurrence of the rhymes; for my part, I had rather go to Madame Saqui's or see Deburau dancing on a rope: his lines are quite as natural and poetical.

Then there is the comedy of the day, of which Monsieur Scribe is the father. Good heavens! with what a number of gay colonels, smart widows, and silly husbands has that gentleman peopled the play-books. How that unfortunate seventh commandment has been maltreated by him and his disciples. You will see four pieces, at the Gymnase, of a night; and so sure as you see them, four husbands shall be wickedly used. When is this joke to cease? Mon Dieu! Play-writers have handled it for about two thousand years, and the public, like a great baby, must have the tale repeated to it over and over again.

Finally, there is the Drama, that great monster which has sprung into life of late years; and which is said, but I don't believe a word of it, to have Shakspeare for a father. If Monsieur Scribe's plays may be said to be so many ingenious examples how to break one commandment, the drame is a grand and general chaos of them all; nay, several crimes are added, not prohibited in the Decalogue, which was written before dramas were. Of the drama, Victor Hugo and Dumas are the well-known and respectable guardians. Every piece Victor Hugo has written, since "Hernani," has contained a monster—a delightful monster, saved by one virtue. There is Triboulet, a foolish monster; Lucrece Borgia, a maternal monster; Mary Tudor, a religious monster; Monsieur Quasimodo, a humpback monster; and others, that might be named, whose monstrosities we are induced to pardon—nay, admiringly to witness—because they are agreeably mingled with some exquisite display of affection. And, as the great Hugo has one monster to each play, the great Dumas has, ordinarily, half a dozen, to whom murder is nothing; common intrigue, and simple breakage of the before-mentioned commandment, nothing; but who live and move in a vast, delightful complication of crime, that cannot be easily conceived in England, much less described.

When I think over the number of crimes that I have seen Mademoiselle Georges, for instance, commit, I am filled with wonder at her greatness, and the greatness of the poets who have conceived these charming horrors for her. I have seen her make love to, and murder, her sons, in the "Tour de Nesle." I have seen her poison a company of no less than nine gentlemen, at Ferrara, with an affectionate son in the number; I have seen her, as Madame de Brinvilliers, kill off numbers of respectable relations in the first four acts; and, at the last, be actually burned at the stake, to which she comes shuddering, ghastly, barefooted, and in a white sheet. Sweet excitement of tender sympathies! Such tragedies are not so good as a real, downright execution; but, in point of interest, the next thing to it: with what a number of moral emotions do they fill the breast; with what a hatred for vice, and yet a true pity and respect for that grain of virtue that is to be found in us all: our bloody, daughter-loving Brinvilliers; our warmhearted, poisonous Lucretia Borgia; above all, what a smart appetite for a cool supper afterwards, at the Cafe Anglais, when the horrors of the play act as a piquant sauce to the supper!

Or, to speak more seriously, and to come, at last, to the point. After having seen most of the grand dramas which have been produced at Paris for the last half-dozen years, and thinking over all that one has seen,—the fictitious murders, rapes, adulteries, and other crimes, by which one has been interested and excited,—a man may take leave to be heartily ashamed of the manner in which he has spent his time; and of the hideous kind of mental intoxication in which he has permitted himself to indulge.

Nor are simple society outrages the only sort of crime in which the spectator of Paris plays has permitted himself to indulge; he has recreated himself with a deal of blasphemy besides, and has passed many pleasant evenings in beholding religion defiled and ridiculed.

Allusion has been made, in a former paper, to a fashion that lately obtained in France, and which went by the name of Catholic reaction; and as, in this happy country, fashion is everything, we have had not merely Catholic pictures and quasi religious books, but a number of Catholic plays have been produced, very edifying to the frequenters of the theatres or the Boulevards, who have learned more about religion from these performances than they have acquired, no doubt, in the whole of their lives before. In the course of a very few years we have seen—"The Wandering Jew;" "Belshazzar's Feast;" "Nebuchadnezzar:" and the "Massacre of the Innocents;" "Joseph and his Brethren;" "The Passage of the Red Sea;" and "The Deluge."

The great Dumas, like Madame Sand before mentioned, has brought a vast quantity of religion before the foot-lights. There was his famous tragedy of "Caligula," which, be it spoken to the shame of the Paris critics, was coldly received; nay, actually hissed, by them. And why? Because, says Dumas, it contained a great deal too much piety for the rogues. The public, he says, was much more religious, and understood him at once.

"As for the critics," says he, nobly, "let those who cried out against the immorality of Antony and Marguerite de Bourgogne, reproach me for THE CHASTITY OF MESSALINA." (This dear creature is the heroine of the play of "Caligula.") "It matters little to me. These people have but seen the form of my work: they have walked round the tent, but have not seen the arch which it covered; they have examined the vases and candles of the altar, but have not opened the tabernacle!

"The public alone has, instinctively, comprehended that there was, beneath this outward sign, an inward and mysterious grace: it followed the action of the piece in all its serpentine windings; it listened for four hours, with pious attention (avec recueillement et religion), to the sound of this rolling river of thoughts, which may have appeared to it new and bold, perhaps, but chaste and grave; and it retired, with its head on its breast, like a man who had just perceived, in a dream, the solution of a problem which he has long and vainly sought in his waking hours."

You see that not only Saint Sand is an apostle, in her way; but Saint Dumas is another. We have people in England who write for bread, like Dumas and Sand, and are paid so much for their line; but they don't set up for prophets. Mrs. Trollope has never declared that her novels are inspired by heaven; Mr. Buckstone has written a great number of farces, and never talked about the altar and the tabernacle. Even Sir Edward Bulwer (who, on a similar occasion, when the critics found fault with a play of his, answered them by a pretty decent declaration of his own merits,) never ventured to say that he had received a divine mission, and was uttering five-act revelations.

All things considered, the tragedy of "Caligula" is a decent tragedy; as decent as the decent characters of the hero and heroine can allow it to be; it may be almost said, provokingly decent: but this, it must be remembered, is the characteristic of the modern French school (nay, of the English school too); and if the writer take the character of a remarkable scoundrel, it is ten to one but he turns out an amiable fellow, in whom we have all the warmest sympathy. "Caligula" is killed at the end of the performance; Messalina is comparatively well-behaved; and the sacred part of the performance, the tabernacle-characters apart from the mere "vase" and "candlestick" personages, may be said to be depicted in the person of a Christian convert, Stella, who has had the good fortune to be converted by no less a person than Mary Magdalene, when she, Stella, was staying on a visit to her aunt, near Narbonne.

STELLA (Continuant.) Voila Que je vois s'avancer, sans pilote et sans rames, Une barque portant deux hommes et deux femmes, Et, spectacle inoui qui me ravit encor, Tous quatre avaient au front une aureole d'or D'ou partaient des rayons de si vive lumiere Que je fus obligee a baisser la paupiere; Et, lorsque je rouvris les yeux avec effroi, Les voyageurs divins etaient aupres de moi. Un jour de chacun d'eux et dans toute sa gloire Je te raconterai la marveilleuse histoire, Et tu l'adoreras, j'espere; en ce moment, Ma mere, il te suffit de savoir seulement Que tous quatre venaient du fond de la Syrie: Un edit les avait bannis de leur patrie, Et, se faisant bourreaux, des hommes irrites, Sans avirons, sans eau, sans pain et garrotes, Sur une frele barque echouee au rivage, Les avaient a la mer pousses dans un orage. Mais a peine l'esquif eut-il touche les flots Qu'au cantique chante par les saints matelots, L'ouragan replia ses ailes fremissantes, Que la mer aplanit ses vagues mugissantes, Et qu'un soleil plus pur, reparaissant aux cieux, Enveloppa l'esquif d'un cercle radieux!...

JUNIA.—Mais c'etait un prodige.

STELLA.— Un miracle, ma mere! Leurs fers tomberent seuls, l'eau cessa d'etre amere, Et deux fois chaque jour le bateau fut couvert D'une manne pareille a celle du desert: C'est ainsi que, pousses par une main celeste, Je les vis aborder.

JUNIA.— Oh! dis vite le reste!

STELLA.—A l'aube, trois d'entre eux quitterent la maison: Marthe prit le chemin qui mene a Tarascon, Lazare et Maximin celui de Massilie, Et celle qui resta.... C'ETAIT LA PLUS JOLIE, (how truly French!) Nous faisant appeler vers le milieu du jour, Demanda si les monts ou les bois d'alentour Cachaient quelque retraite inconnue et profonde, Qui la put separer a tout jamais du monde..... Aquila se souvint qu'il avait penetre Dans un antre sauvage et de tous ignore, Grotte creusee aux flancs de ces Alpes sublimes, Ou l'aigle fait son aire au-dessus des abimes. Il offrit cet asile, et des le lendemain Tous deux, pour l'y guider, nous etions en chemin. Le soir du second jour nous touchames sa base: La, tombant a genoux dans une sainte extase, Elle pria long-temps, puis vers l'antre inconnu, Denouant se chaussure, elle marcha pied nu. Nos prieres, nos cris resterent sans reponses: Au milieu des cailloux, des epines, des ronces, Nous la vimes monter, un baton a la main, Et ce n'est qu'arrivee au terme du chemin, Qu'enfin elle tomba sans force et sans haleine....

JUNIA.—Comment la nommait-on, ma fille?

STELLA.— Madeleine.

Walking, says Stella, by the sea-shore, "A bark drew near, that had nor sail nor oar; two women and two men the vessel bore: each of that crew, 'twas wondrous to behold, wore round his head a ring of blazing gold; from which such radiance glittered all around, that I was fain to look towards the ground. And when once more I raised my frightened eyne, before me stood the travellers divine; their rank, the glorious lot that each befell, at better season, mother, will I tell. Of this anon: the time will come when thou shalt learn to worship as I worship now. Suffice it, that from Syria's land they came; an edict from their country banished them. Fierce, angry men had seized upon the four, and launched them in that vessel from the shore. They launched these victims on the waters rude; nor rudder gave to steer, nor bread for food. As the doomed vessel cleaves the stormy main, that pious crew uplifts a sacred strain; the angry waves are silent as it sings; the storm, awe-stricken, folds its quivering wings. A purer sun appears the heavens to light, and wraps the little bark in radiance bright.

"JUNIA.—Sure, 'twas a prodigy.

"STELLA.—A miracle. Spontaneous from their hands the fetters fell. The salt sea-wave grew fresh, and, twice a day, manna (like that which on the desert lay) covered the bark and fed them on their way. Thus, hither led, at heaven's divine behest, I saw them land—

"JUNIA.—My daughter, tell the rest.

"STELLA.—Three of the four, our mansion left at dawn. One, Martha, took the road to Tarascon; Lazarus and Maximin to Massily; but one remained (the fairest of the three), who asked us, if i' the woods or mountains near, there chanced to be some cavern lone and drear; where she might hide, for ever, from all men. It chanced, my cousin knew of such a den; deep hidden in a mountain's hoary breast, on which the eagle builds his airy nest. And thither offered he the saint to guide. Next day upon the journey forth we hied; and came, at the second eve, with weary pace, unto the lonely mountain's rugged base. Here the worn traveller, falling on her knee, did pray awhile in sacred ecstasy; and, drawing off her sandals from her feet, marched, naked, towards that desolate retreat. No answer made she to our cries or groans; but walking midst the prickles and rude stones, a staff in hand, we saw her upwards toil; nor ever did she pause, nor rest the while, save at the entry of that savage den. Here, powerless and panting, fell she then.

"JUNIA.—What was her name, my daughter?

"STELLA. MAGDALEN."

Here the translator must pause—having no inclination to enter "the tabernacle," in company with such a spotless high-priest as Monsieur Dumas.

Something "tabernacular" may be found in Dumas's famous piece of "Don Juan de Marana." The poet has laid the scene of his play in a vast number of places: in heaven (where we have the Virgin Mary and little angels, in blue, swinging censers before her!)—on earth, under the earth, and in a place still lower, but not mentionable to ears polite; and the plot, as it appears from a dialogue between a good and a bad angel, with which the play commences, turns upon a contest between these two worthies for the possession of the soul of a member of the family of Marana.

"Don Juan de Marana" not only resembles his namesake, celebrated by Mozart and Moliere, in his peculiar successes among the ladies, but possesses further qualities which render his character eminently fitting for stage representation: he unites the virtues of Lovelace and Lacenaire; he blasphemes upon all occasions; he murders, at the slightest provocation, and without the most trifling remorse; he overcomes ladies of rigid virtue, ladies of easy virtue, and ladies of no virtue at all; and the poet, inspired by the contemplation of such a character, has depicted his hero's adventures and conversation with wonderful feeling and truth.

The first act of the play contains a half-dozen of murders and intrigues; which would have sufficed humbler genius than M. Dumas's, for the completion of, at least, half a dozen tragedies. In the second act our hero flogs his elder brother, and runs away with his sister-in-law; in the third, he fights a duel with a rival, and kills him: whereupon the mistress of his victim takes poison, and dies, in great agonies, on the stage. In the fourth act, Don Juan, having entered a church for the purpose of carrying off a nun, with whom he is in love, is seized by the statue of one of the ladies whom he has previously victimized, and made to behold the ghosts of all those unfortunate persons whose deaths he has caused.

This is a most edifying spectacle. The ghosts rise solemnly, each in a white sheet, preceded by a wax-candle; and, having declared their names and qualities, call, in chorus, for vengeance upon Don Juan, as thus:—

DON SANDOVAL loquitur.

"I am Don Sandoval d'Ojedo. I played against Don Juan my fortune, the tomb of my fathers, and the heart of my mistress;—I lost all: I played against him my life, and I lost it. Vengeance against the murderer! vengeance!"—(The candle goes out.)

THE CANDLE GOES OUT, and an angel descends—a flaming sword in his hand—and asks: "Is there no voice in favor of Don Juan?" when lo! Don Juan's father (like one of those ingenious toys called "Jack-in-the-box,") jumps up from his coffin, and demands grace for his son.

When Martha the nun returns, having prepared all things for her elopement, she finds Don Juan fainting upon the ground.—"I am no longer your husband," says he, upon coming to himself; "I am no longer Don Juan; I am Brother Juan the Trappist. Sister Martha, recollect that you must die!"

This was a most cruel blow upon Sister Martha, who is no less a person than an angel, an angel in disguise—the good spirit of the house of Marana, who has gone to the length of losing her wings and forfeiting her place in heaven, in order to keep company with Don Juan on earth, and, if possible, to convert him. Already, in her angelic character, she had exhorted him to repentance, but in vain; for, while she stood at one elbow, pouring not merely hints, but long sermons, into his ear, at the other elbow stood a bad spirit, grinning and sneering at all her pious counsels, and obtaining by far the greater share of the Don's attention.

In spite, however, of the utter contempt with which Don Juan treats her,—in spite of his dissolute courses, which must shock her virtue,—and his impolite neglect, which must wound her vanity, the poor creature (who, from having been accustomed to better company, might have been presumed to have had better taste), the unfortunate angel feels a certain inclination for the Don, and actually flies up to heaven to ask permission to remain with him on earth.

And when the curtain draws up, to the sound of harps, and discovers white-robed angels walking in the clouds, we find the angel of Marana upon her knees, uttering the following address:—

LE BON ANGE.

Vierge, a qui le calice a la liqueur amere Fut si souvent offert, Mere, que l'on nomma la douloureuse mere, Tant vous avez souffert!

Vous, dont les yeux divins sur la terre des hommes Ont verse plus de pleurs Que vos pieds n'ont depuis, dans le ciel ou nous sommes, Fait eclore de fleurs.

Vase d'election, etoile matinale, Miroir de purete, Vous qui priez pour nous, d'une voix virginale, La supreme bonte;

A mon tour, aujourd'hui, bienheureuse Marie, Je tombe a vos genoux; Daignez donc m'ecouter, car c'est vous que je prie, Vous qui priez pour nous.

Which may be thus interpreted:—

O Virgin blest! by whom the bitter draught So often has been quaffed, That, for thy sorrow, thou art named by us The Mother Dolorous!

Thou, from whose eyes have fallen more tears of woe, Upon the earth below, Than 'neath thy footsteps, in this heaven of ours, Have risen flowers!

O beaming morning star! O chosen vase! O mirror of all grace! Who, with thy virgin voice, dost ever pray Man's sins away;

Bend down thine ear, and list, O blessed saint! Unto my sad complaint; Mother! to thee I kneel, on thee I call, Who hearest all.

She proceeds to request that she may be allowed to return to earth, and follow the fortunes of Don Juan; and, as there is one difficulty, or, to use her own words,—

Mais, comme vous savez qu'aux voutes eternelles, Malgre moi, tend mon vol, Soufflez sur mon etoile et detachez mes ailes, Pour m'enchainer au sol;

her request is granted, her star is BLOWN OUT (O poetic allusion!) and she descends to earth to love, and to go mad, and to die for Don Juan!

The reader will require no further explanation, in order to be satisfied as to the moral of this play: but is it not a very bitter satire upon the country, which calls itself the politest nation in the world, that the incidents, the indecency, the coarse blasphemy, and the vulgar wit of this piece, should find admirers among the public, and procure reputation for the author? Could not the Government, which has re-established, in a manner, the theatrical censorship, and forbids or alters plays which touch on politics, exert the same guardianship over public morals? The honest English reader, who has a faith in his clergyman, and is a regular attendant at Sunday worship, will not be a little surprised at the march of intellect among our neighbors across the Channel, and at the kind of consideration in which they hold their religion. Here is a man who seizes upon saints and angels, merely to put sentiments in their mouths which might suit a nymph of Drury Lane. He shows heaven, in order that he may carry debauch into it; and avails himself of the most sacred and sublime parts of our creed as a vehicle for a scene-painter's skill, or an occasion for a handsome actress to wear a new dress.

M. Dumas's piece of "Kean" is not quite so sublime; it was brought out by the author as a satire upon the French critics, who, to their credit be it spoken, had generally attacked him, and was intended by him, and received by the public, as a faithful portraiture of English manners. As such, it merits special observation and praise. In the first act you find a Countess and an Ambassadress, whose conversation relates purely to the great actor. All the ladies in London are in love with him, especially the two present. As for the Ambassadress, she prefers him to her husband (a matter of course in all French plays), and to a more seducing person still—no less a person than the Prince of Wales! who presently waits on the ladies, and joins in their conversation concerning Kean. "This man," says his Royal Highness, "is the very pink of fashion. Brummell is nobody when compared to him; and I myself only an insignificant private gentleman. He has a reputation among ladies, for which I sigh in vain; and spends an income twice as great as mine." This admirable historic touch at once paints the actor and the Prince; the estimation in which the one was held, and the modest economy for which the other was so notorious.

Then we have Kean, at a place called the Trou de Charbon, the "Coal Hole," where, to the edification of the public, he engages in a fisty combat with a notorious boxer. This scene was received by the audience with loud exclamations of delight, and commented on, by the journals, as a faultless picture of English manners. "The Coal Hole" being on the banks of the Thames, a nobleman—LORD MELBOURN!—has chosen the tavern as a rendezvous for a gang of pirates, who are to have their ship in waiting, in order to carry off a young lady with whom his lordship is enamored. It need not be said that Kean arrives at the nick of time, saves the innocent Meess Anna, and exposes the infamy of the Peer. A violent tirade against noblemen ensues, and Lord Melbourn slinks away, disappointed, to meditate revenge. Kean's triumphs continue through all the acts: the Ambassadress falls madly in love with him; the Prince becomes furious at his ill success, and the Ambassador dreadfully jealous. They pursue Kean to his dressing-room at the theatre; where, unluckily, the Ambassadress herself has taken refuge. Dreadful quarrels ensue; the tragedian grows suddenly mad upon the stage, and so cruelly insults the Prince of Wales that his Royal Highness determines to send HIM TO BOTANY BAY. His sentence, however, is commuted to banishment to New York; whither, of course, Miss Anna accompanies him; rewarding him, previously, with her hand and twenty thousand a year!

This wonderful performance was gravely received and admired by the people of Paris: the piece was considered to be decidedly moral, because the popular candidate was made to triumph throughout, and to triumph in the most virtuous manner; for, according to the French code of morals, success among women is, at once, the proof and the reward of virtue.

The sacred personage introduced in Dumas's play behind a cloud, figures bodily in the piece of the Massacre of the Innocents, represented at Paris last year. She appears under a different name, but the costume is exactly that of Carlo Dolce's Madonna; and an ingenious fable is arranged, the interest of which hangs upon the grand Massacre of the Innocents, perpetrated in the fifth act. One of the chief characters is Jean le Precurseur, who threatens woe to Herod and his race, and is beheaded by orders of that sovereign.

In the Festin de Balthazar, we are similarly introduced to Daniel, and the first scene is laid by the waters of Babylon, where a certain number of captive Jews are seated in melancholy postures; a Babylonian officer enters, exclaiming, "Chantez nous quelques chansons de Jerusalem," and the request is refused in the language of the Psalm. Belshazzar's Feast is given in a grand tableau, after Martin's picture. That painter, in like manner, furnished scenes for the Deluge. Vast numbers of schoolboys and children are brought to see these pieces; the lower classes delight in them. The famous Juif Errant, at the theatre of the Porte St. Martin, was the first of the kind, and its prodigious success, no doubt, occasioned the number of imitations which the other theatres have produced.

The taste of such exhibitions, of course, every English person will question; but we must remember the manners of the people among whom they are popular; and, if I may be allowed to hazard such an opinion, there is in every one of these Boulevard mysteries, a kind of rude moral. The Boulevard writers don't pretend to "tabernacles" and divine gifts, like Madame Sand and Dumas before mentioned. If they take a story from the sacred books, they garble it without mercy, and take sad liberties with the text; but they do not deal in descriptions of the agreeably wicked, or ask pity and admiration for tender-hearted criminals and philanthropic murderers, as their betters do. Vice is vice on the Boulevard; and it is fine to hear the audience, as a tyrant king roars out cruel sentences of death, or a bereaved mother pleads for the life of her child, making their remarks on the circumstances of the scene. "Ah, le gredin!" growls an indignant countryman. "Quel monstre!" says a grisette, in a fury. You see very fat old men crying like babies, and, like babies, sucking enormous sticks of barley-sugar. Actors and audience enter warmly into the illusion of the piece; and so especially are the former affected, that at Franconi's, where the battles of the Empire are represented, there is as regular gradation in the ranks of the mimic army as in the real imperial legions. After a man has served, with credit, for a certain number of years in the line, he is promoted to be an officer—an acting officer. If he conducts himself well, he may rise to be a Colonel or a General of Division; if ill, he is degraded to the ranks again; or, worst degradation of all, drafted into a regiment of Cossacks or Austrians. Cossacks is the lowest depth, however; nay, it is said that the men who perform these Cossack parts receive higher wages than the mimic grenadiers and old guard. They will not consent to be beaten every night, even in play; to be pursued in hundreds, by a handful of French; to fight against their beloved Emperor. Surely there is fine hearty virtue in this, and pleasant child-like simplicity.

So that while the drama of Victor Hugo, Dumas, and the enlightened classes, is profoundly immoral and absurd, the DRAMA of the common people is absurd, if you will, but good and right-hearted. I have made notes of one or two of these pieces, which all have good feeling and kindness in them, and which turn, as the reader will see, upon one or two favorite points of popular morality. A drama that obtained a vast success at the Porte Saint Martin was "La Duchesse de la Vauballiere." The Duchess is the daughter of a poor farmer, who was carried off in the first place, and then married by M. le Duc de la Vauballiere, a terrible roue, the farmer's landlord, and the intimate friend of Philippe d'Orleans, the Regent of France.

Now the Duke, in running away with the lady, intended to dispense altogether with ceremony, and make of Julie anything but his wife; but Georges, her father, and one Morisseau, a notary, discovered him in his dastardly act, and pursued him to the very feet of the Regent, who compelled the pair to marry and make it up.

Julie complies; but though she becomes a Duchess, her heart remains faithful to her old flame, Adrian, the doctor; and she declares that, beyond the ceremony, no sort of intimacy shall take place between her husband and herself.

Then the Duke begins to treat her in the most ungentleman-like manner: he abuses her in every possible way; he introduces improper characters into her house; and, finally, becomes so disgusted with her, that he determines to make away with her altogether.

For this purpose, he sends forth into the highways and seizes a doctor, bidding him, on pain of death, to write a poisonous prescription for Madame la Duchesse. She swallows the potion; and O horror! the doctor turns out to be Dr. Adrian; whose woe may be imagined, upon finding that he has been thus committing murder on his true love!

Let not the reader, however, be alarmed as to the fate of the heroine; no heroine of a tragedy ever yet died in the third act; and, accordingly, the Duchess gets up perfectly well again in the fourth, through the instrumentality of Morisseau, the good lawyer.

And now it is that vice begins to be really punished. The Duke, who, after killing his wife, thinks it necessary to retreat, and take refuge in Spain, is tracked to the borders of that country by the virtuous notary, and there receives such a lesson as he will never forget to his dying day.

Morisseau, in the first instance, produces a deed (signed by his Holiness the Pope), which annuls the marriage of the Duke de la Vauballiere; then another deed, by which it is proved that he was not the eldest son of old La Vauballiere, the former Duke; then another deed, by which he shows that old La Vauballiere (who seems to have been a disreputable old fellow) was a bigamist, and that, in consequence, the present man, styling himself Duke, is illegitimate; and finally, Morisseau brings forward another document, which proves that the REG'LAR Duke is no other than Adrian, the doctor!

Thus it is that love, law, and physic combined, triumph over the horrid machinations of this star-and-gartered libertine.

"Hermann l'Ivrogne" is another piece of the same order; and though not very refined, yet possesses considerable merit. As in the case of the celebrated Captain Smith of Halifax, who "took to drinking ratafia, and thought of poor Miss Bailey,"—a woman and the bottle have been the cause of Hermann's ruin. Deserted by his mistress, who has been seduced from him by a base Italian Count, Hermann, a German artist, gives himself entirely up to liquor and revenge: but when he finds that force, and not infidelity, have been the cause of his mistress's ruin, the reader can fancy the indignant ferocity with which he pursues the infame ravisseur. A scene, which is really full of spirit, and excellently well acted, here ensues! Hermann proposes to the Count, on the eve of their duel, that the survivor should bind himself to espouse the unhappy Marie; but the Count declares himself to be already married, and the student, finding a duel impossible (for his object was to restore, at all events, the honor of Marie), now only thinks of his revenge, and murders the Count. Presently, two parties of men enter Hermann's apartment: one is a company of students, who bring him the news that he has obtained the prize of painting; the other the policemen, who carry him to prison, to suffer the penalty of murder.

I could mention many more plays in which the popular morality is similiarly expressed. The seducer, or rascal of the piece, is always an aristocrat,—a wicked count, or licentious marquis, who is brought to condign punishment just before the fall of the curtain. And too good reason have the French people had to lay such crimes to the charge of the aristocracy, who are expiating now, on the stage, the wrongs which they did a hundred years since. The aristocracy is dead now; but the theatre lives upon traditions: and don't let us be too scornful at such simple legends as are handed down by the people from race to race. Vulgar prejudice against the great it may be; but prejudice against the great is only a rude expression of sympathy with the poor; long, therefore, may fat epiciers blubber over mimic woes, and honest proletaires shake their fists, shouting—"Gredin, scelerat, monstre de marquis!" and such republican cries.

Remark, too, another development of this same popular feeling of dislike against men in power. What a number of plays and legends have we (the writer has submitted to the public, in the preeeding pages, a couple of specimens; one of French, and the other of Polish origin,) in which that great and powerful aristocrat, the Devil, is made to be miserably tricked, humiliated, and disappointed? A play of this class, which, in the midst of all its absurdities and claptraps, had much of good in it, was called "Le Maudit des Mers." Le Maudit is a Dutch captain, who, in the midst of a storm, while his crew were on their knees at prayers, blasphemed and drank punch; but what was his astonishment at beholding an archangel with a sword all covered with flaming resin, who told him that as he, in this hour of danger, was too daring, or too wicked, to utter a prayer, he never should cease roaming the seas until he could find some being who would pray to heaven for him!

Once only, in a hundred years, was the skipper allowed to land for this purpose; and this piece runs through four centuries, in as many acts, describing the agonies and unavailing attempts of the miserable Dutchman. Willing to go any lengths in order to obtain his prayer, he, in the second act, betrays a Virgin of the Sun to a follower of Pizarro: and, in the third, assassinates the heroic William of Nassau; but ever before the dropping of the curtain, the angel and sword make their appearance—"Treachery," says the spirit, "cannot lessen thy punishment;—crime will not obtain thy release—A la mer! a la mer!" and the poor devil returns to the ocean, to be lonely, and tempest-tossed, and sea-sick for a hundred years more.

But his woes are destined to end with the fourth act. Having landed in America, where the peasants on the sea-shore, all dressed in Italian costumes, are celebrating, in a quadrille, the victories of Washington, he is there lucky enough to find a young girl to pray for him. Then the curse is removed, the punishment is over, and a celestial vessel, with angels on the decks and "sweet little cherubs" fluttering about the shrouds and the poop, appear to receive him.

This piece was acted at Franconi's, where, for once, an angel-ship was introduced in place of the usual horsemanship.

One must not forget to mention here, how the English nation is satirized by our neighbors; who have some droll traditions regarding us. In one of the little Christmas pieces produced at the Palais Royal (satires upon the follies of the past twelve months, on which all the small theatres exhaust their wit), the celebrated flight of Messrs. Green and Monck Mason was parodied, and created a good deal of laughter at the expense of John Bull. Two English noblemen, Milor Cricri and Milor Hanneton, appear as descending from a balloon, and one of them communicates to the public the philosophic observations which were made in the course of his aerial tour.

"On leaving Vauxhall," says his lordship, "we drank a bottle of Madeira, as a health to the friends from whom we parted, and crunched a few biscuits to support nature during the hours before lunch. In two hours we arrived at Canterbury, enveloped in clouds: lunch, bottled porter: at Dover, carried several miles in a tide of air, bitter cold, cherry-brandy; crossed over the Channel safely, and thought with pity of the poor people who were sickening in the steamboats below: more bottled porter: over Calais, dinner, roast-beef of Old England; near Dunkirk,—night falling, lunar rainbow, brandy-and-water; night confoundedly thick; supper, nightcap of rum-punch, and so to bed. The sun broke beautifully through the morning mist, as we boiled the kettle and took our breakfast over Cologne. In a few more hours we concluded this memorable voyage, and landed safely at Weilburg, in good time for dinner."

The joke here is smart enough; but our honest neighbors make many better, when they are quite unconscious of the fun. Let us leave plays, for a moment, for poetry, and take an instance of French criticism, concerning England, from the works of a famous French exquisite and man of letters. The hero of the poem addresses his mistress—

Londres, tu le sais trop, en fait de capitale, Est-ce que fit le ciel de plus froid et plus pale, C'est la ville du gaz, des marins, du brouillard; On s'y couche a minuit, et l'on s'y leve tard; Ses raouts tant vantes ne sont qu'une boxade, Sur ses grands quais jamais echelle ou serenade, Mais de volumineux bourgeois pris de porter Qui passent sans lever le front a Westminster; Et n'etait sa foret de mats percant la brume, Sa tour dont a minuit le vieil oeil s'allume, Et tes deux yeux, Zerline, illumines bien plus, Je dirais que, ma foi, des romans que j'ai lus, Il n'en est pas un seul, plus lourd, plus lethargique Que cette nation qu'on nomme Britannique!

The writer of the above lines (which let any man who can translate) is Monsieur Roger de Beauvoir, a gentleman who actually lived many months in England, as an attache to the embassy of M. de Polignac. He places the heroine of his tale in a petit reduit pres le Strand, "with a green and fresh jalousie, and a large blind, let down all day; you fancied you were entering a bath of Asia, as soon as you had passed the perfumed threshold of this charming retreat!" He next places her—

Dans un square ecarte, morne et couverte de givre, Ou se cache un hotel, aux vieux lions de cuivre;

and the hero of the tale, a young French poet, who is in London, is truly unhappy in that village.

Arthur desseche et meurt. Dans la ville de Sterne, Rien qu'en voyant le peuple il a le mal de mer Il n'aime ni le Parc, gai comme une citerne, Ni le tir au pigeon, ni le soda-water.

Liston ne le fait plus sourciller! Il rumine Sur les trottoirs du Strand, droit comme un echiquier, Contre le peuple anglais, les negres, la vermine, Et les mille cokneys du peuple boutiquier,

Contre tous les bas-bleus, contre les patissieres, Les parieurs d'Epsom, le gin, le parlement, La quaterly, le roi, la pluie et les libraires, Dont il ne touche plus, helas! un sou d'argent!

Et chaque gentleman lui dit: L'heureux poete!

"L'heureux poete" indeed! I question if a poet in this wide world is so happy as M. de Beauvoir, or has made such wonderful discoveries. "The bath of Asia, with green jalousies," in which the lady dwells; "the old hotel, with copper lions, in a lonely square;"—were ever such things heard of, or imagined, but by a Frenchman? The sailors, the negroes, the vermin, whom he meets in the street,—how great and happy are all these discoveries! Liston no longer makes the happy poet frown; and "gin," "cokneys," and the "quaterly" have not the least effect upon him! And this gentleman has lived many months amongst us; admires Williams Shakspear, the "grave et vieux prophete," as he calls him, and never, for an instant, doubts that his description contains anything absurd!

I don't know whether the great Dumas has passed any time in England; but his plays show a similar intimate knowledge of our habits. Thus in Kean, the stage-manager is made to come forward and address the pit, with a speech beginning, "My Lords and Gentlemen;" and a company of Englishwomen are introduced (at the memorable "Coal hole"), and they all wear PINAFORES; as if the British female were in the invariable habit of wearing this outer garment, or slobbering her gown without it. There was another celebrated piece, enacted some years since, upon the subject of Queen Caroline, where our late adored sovereign, George, was made to play a most despicable part; and where Signor Bergami fought a duel with Lord Londonderry. In the last act of this play, the House of Lords was represented, and Sir Brougham made an eloquent speech in the Queen's favor. Presently the shouts of the mob were heard without; from shouting they proceeded to pelting; and pasteboard-brickbats and cabbages came flying among the representatives of our hereditary legislature. At this unpleasant juncture, SIR HARDINGE, the Secretary-at-War, rises and calls in the military; the act ends in a general row, and the ignominious fall of Lord Liverpool, laid low by a brickbat from the mob!

The description of these scenes is, of course, quite incapable of conveying any notion of their general effect. You must have the solemnity of the actors, as they Meess and Milor one another, and the perfect gravity and good faith with which the audience listen to them. Our stage Frenchman is the old Marquis, with sword, and pigtail, and spangled court coat. The Englishman of the French theatre has, invariably, a red wig, and almost always leather gaiters, and a long white upper Benjamin: he remains as he was represented in the old caricatures after the peace, when Vernet designed him.

And to conclude this catalogue of blunders: in the famous piece of the "Naufrage de la Meduse," the first act is laid on board an English ship-of-war, all the officers of which appeared in light blue or green coats (the lamp-light prevented our distinguishing the color accurately), and TOP-BOOTS!

Let us not attempt to deaden the force of this tremendous blow by any more remarks. The force of blundering can go no further. Would a Chinese playwright or painter have stranger notions about the barbarians than our neighbors, who are separated from us but by two hours of salt water?



MEDITATIONS AT VERSAILLES.

The palace of Versailles has been turned into a bricabrac shop of late years, and its time-honored walls have been covered with many thousand yards of the worst pictures that eye ever looked on. I don't know how many leagues of battles and sieges the unhappy visitor is now obliged to march through, amidst a crowd of chattering Paris cockneys, who are never tired of looking at the glories of the Grenadier Francais; to the chronicling of whose deeds this old palace of the old kings is now altogether devoted. A whizzing, screaming steam-engine rushes hither from Paris, bringing shoals of badauds in its wake. The old coucous are all gone, and their place knows them no longer. Smooth asphaltum terraces, tawdry lamps, and great hideous Egyptian obelisks, have frightened them away from the pleasant station they used to occupy under the trees of the Champs Elysees; and though the old coucous were just the most uncomfortable vehicles that human ingenuity ever constructed, one can't help looking back to the days of their existence with a tender regret; for there was pleasure then in the little trip of three leagues: and who ever had pleasure in a railway journey? Does any reader of this venture to say that, on such a voyage, he ever dared to be pleasant? Do the most hardened stokers joke with one another? I don't believe it. Look into every single car of the train, and you will see that every single face is solemn. They take their seats gravely, and are silent, for the most part, during the journey; they dare not look out of window, for fear of being blinded by the smoke that comes whizzing by, or of losing their heads in one of the windows of the down train; they ride for miles in utter damp and darkness: through awful pipes of brick, that have been run pitilessly through the bowels of gentle mother earth, the cast-iron Frankenstein of an engine gallops on, puffing and screaming. Does any man pretend to say that he ENJOYS the journey?—he might as well say that he enjoyed having his hair cut; he bears it, but that is all: he will not allow the world to laugh at him, for any exhibition of slavish fear; and pretends, therefore, to be at his ease; but he IS afraid: nay, ought to be, under the circumstances. I am sure Hannibal or Napoleon would, were they locked suddenly into a car; there kept close prisoners for a certain number of hours, and whirled along at this dizzy pace. You can't stop, if you would:—you may die, but you can't stop; the engine may explode upon the road, and up you go along with it; or, may be a bolter and take a fancy to go down a hill, or into a river: all this you must bear, for the privilege of travelling twenty miles an hour.

This little journey, then, from Paris to Versailles, that used to be so merry of old, has lost its pleasures since the disappearance of the coucous; and I would as lief have for companions the statues that lately took a coach from the bridge opposite the Chamber of Deputies, and stepped out in the court of Versailles, as the most part of the people who now travel on the railroad. The stone figures are not a whit more cold and silent than these persons, who used to be, in the old coucous, so talkative and merry. The prattling grisette and her swain from the Ecole de Droit; the huge Alsacian carabineer, grimly smiling under his sandy moustaches and glittering brass helmet; the jolly nurse, in red calico, who had been to Paris to show mamma her darling Lolo, or Auguste;—what merry companions used one to find squeezed into the crazy old vehicles that formerly performed the journey! But the age of horseflesh is gone—that of engineers, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the pleasure of coucoudom is extinguished for ever. Why not mourn over it, as Mr. Burke did over his cheap defence of nations and unbought grace of life; that age of chivalry, which he lamented, apropos of a trip to Versailles, some half a century back?

Without stopping to discuss (as might be done, in rather a neat and successful manner) whether the age of chivalry was cheap or dear, and whether, in the time of the unbought grace of life, there was not more bribery, robbery, villainy, tyranny, and corruption, than exists even in our own happy days,—let us make a few moral and historical remarks upon the town of Versailles; where, between railroad and coucou, we are surely arrived by this time.

The town is, certainly, the most moral of towns. You pass from the railroad station through a long, lonely suburb, with dusty rows of stunted trees on either side, and some few miserable beggars, idle boys, and ragged old women under them. Behind the trees are gaunt, mouldy houses; palaces once, where (in the days of the unbought grace of life) the cheap defence of nations gambled, ogled, swindled, intrigued; whence high-born duchesses used to issue, in old times, to act as chambermaids to lovely Du Barri; and mighty princes rolled away, in gilt caroches, hot for the honor of lighting his Majesty to bed, or of presenting his stockings when he rose, or of holding his napkin when he dined. Tailors, chandlers, tinmen, wretched hucksters, and greengrocers, are now established in the mansions of the old peers; small children are yelling at the doors, with mouths besmeared with bread and treacle; damp rags are hanging out of every one of the windows, steaming in the sun; oyster-shells, cabbage-stalks, broken crockery, old papers, lie basking in the same cheerful light. A solitary water-cart goes jingling down the wide pavement, and spirts a feeble refreshment over the dusty, thirsty stones.

After pacing for some time through such dismal streets, we deboucher on the grande place; and before us lies the palace dedicated to all the glories of France. In the midst of the great lonely plain this famous residence of King Louis looks low and mean.—Honored pile! Time was when tall musketeers and gilded body-guards allowed none to pass the gate. Fifty years ago, ten thousand drunken women from Paris broke through the charm; and now a tattered commissioner will conduct you through it for a penny, and lead you up to the sacred entrance of the palace.

We will not examine all the glories of France, as here they are portrayed in pictures and marble: catalogues are written about these miles of canvas, representing all the revolutionary battles, from Valmy to Waterloo,—all the triumphs of Louis XIV.—all the mistresses of his successor—and all the great men who have flourished since the French empire began. Military heroes are most of these—fierce constables in shining steel, marshals in voluminous wigs, and brave grenadiers in bearskin caps; some dozens of whom gained crowns, principalities, dukedoms; some hundreds, plunder and epaulets; some millions, death in African sands, or in icy Russian plains, under the guidance, and for the good, of that arch-hero, Napoleon. By far the greater part of "all the glories" of France (as of most other countries) is made up of these military men: and a fine satire it is on the cowardice of mankind, that they pay such an extraordinary homage to the virtue called courage; filling their history-books with tales about it, and nothing but it.

Let them disguise the place, however, as they will, and plaster the walls with bad pictures as they please, it will be hard to think of any family but one, as one traverses this vast gloomy edifice. It has not been humbled to the ground, as a certain palace of Babel was of yore; but it is a monument of fallen pride, not less awful, and would afford matter for a whole library of sermons. The cheap defence of nations expended a thousand millions in the erection of this magnificent dwelling-place. Armies were employed, in the intervals of their warlike labors, to level hills, or pile them up; to turn rivers, and to build aqueducts, and transplant woods, and construct smooth terraces, and long canals. A vast garden grew up in a wilderness, and a stupendous palace in the garden, and a stately city round the palace: the city was peopled with parasites, who daily came to do worship before the creator of these wonders—the Great King. "Dieu seul est grand," said courtly Massillon; but next to him, as the prelate thought, was certainly Louis, his vicegerent here upon earth—God's lieutenant-governor of the world,—before whom courtiers used to fall on their knees, and shade their eyes, as if the light of his countenance, like the sun, which shone supreme in heaven, the type of him, was too dazzling to bear.

Did ever the sun shine upon such a king before, in such a palace?—or, rather, did such a king ever shine upon the sun? When Majesty came out of his chamber, in the midst of his superhuman splendors, viz, in his cinnamon-colored coat, embroidered with diamonds; his pyramid of a wig,* his red-heeled shoes, that lifted him four inches from the ground, "that he scarcely seemed to touch;" when he came out, blazing upon the dukes and duchesses that waited his rising,—what could the latter do, but cover their eyes, and wink, and tremble? And did he not himself believe, as he stood there, on his high heels, under his ambrosial periwig, that there was something in him more than man—something above Fate?

* It is fine to think that, in the days of his youth, his Majesty Louis XIV. used to POWDER HIS WIG WITH GOLD-DUST.

This, doubtless, was he fain to believe; and if, on very fine days, from his terrace before his gloomy palace of Saint Germains, he could catch a glimpse, in the distance, of a certain white spire of St. Denis, where his race lay buried, he would say to his courtiers, with a sublime condescension, "Gentlemen, you must remember that I, too, am mortal." Surely the lords in waiting could hardly think him serious, and vowed that his Majesty always loved a joke. However, mortal or not, the sight of that sharp spire wounded his Majesty's eyes; and is said, by the legend, to have caused the building of the palace of Babel-Versailles.

In the year 1681, then, the great king, with bag and baggage,—with guards, cooks, chamberlains, mistresses, Jesuits, gentlemen, lackeys, Fenelons, Molieres, Lauzuns, Bossuets, Villars, Villeroys, Louvois, Colberts,—transported himself to his new palace: the old one being left for James of England and Jaquette his wife, when their time should come. And when the time did come, and James sought his brother's kingdom, it is on record that Louis hastened to receive and console him, and promised to restore, incontinently, those islands from which the canaille had turned him. Between brothers such a gift was a trifle; and the courtiers said to one another reverently:* "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool." There was no blasphemy in the speech: on the contrary, it was gravely said, by a faithful believing man, who thought it no shame to the latter, to compare his Majesty with God Almighty. Indeed, the books of the time will give one a strong idea how general was this Louis-worship. I have just been looking at one, which was written by an honest Jesuit and Protege of Pere la Chaise, who dedicates a book of medals to the august Infants of France, which does, indeed, go almost as far in print. He calls our famous monarch "Louis le Grand:—1, l'invincible; 2, le sage; 3, le conquerant; 4, la merveille de son siecle; 5, la terreur de ses ennemis; 6, l'amour de ses peuples; 7, l'arbitre de la paix et de la guerre; 8, l'admiration de l'univers; 9, et digne d'en etre le maitre; 10, le modele d'un heros acheve; 11, digne de l'immortalite, et de la veneration de tous les siecles!"