tye to a subsequent short but not less happy residence in the fairest cor- ner of the land of cakes, and to an intimacy with some two or three natives of my own land, whose society threw an additional gleam of sunshine on a life hitherto undarkened by a single cloud. During the month of Septem- ber, 1824, I repaired to the Boulevard des Ca~ pucines, to witness the return of Charles X. to Paris from St. Cloud, whither he had retired, immediately after the death of his brother. The day was the very reverse of favourable for any B 4 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. thing of display ; the new uniforms and bright equipments of the soldiery were drenched with the incessant rain ; and heaven's dread artil- lery, in successive peals, out-thundered the pieces de vingt-quatre, fired from the Barriere de l'Etoile, to announce the benign presence of his Christian Majesty in his good city of Paris. The streets through which the procession was to pass were lined by the Garde Roy ale, Swiss, Garde Nationale, and troops of the line ; they, in common with many of the spec- tators, had been awaiting the approach of -the day's bravery for several hours, heedless of the pelting storm. At length, the approach of a brigade of that peculiar class of the mounted gendarmerie, known by the appellation of Les Hirondelles de la Guillotine, from their con- stantly attending at executions, but styled, in all the ordinances of the police, Gendarmerie d'EIite, assured the worthy lieges that Charles of Bourbon was not far behind ; they were fol- lowed by lancers, in green, crimson, and silver ; cuirassiers, nearly resembling our own Oxford VIDOC. 6 Blues, in corslets breasted by a broad sun; chasseurs, hussars, dragoons, the Garde du Corps, and the magnificent artilleurs, with the less brilliant but not less useful Traine, suc- ceeded each other, equipped en grande tenue. The splendid Cent Suisses ; the martial Grena- diers dela Garde ; the diminutive, dirty, and rag- ged troops of the line ; and the awkward National Legions, every man in which would have been a prize for Falstaff, preceded the King, who, mounted on a beautiful grey charger, and sur- rounded by a brilliant staff, looked a venerable representative of benignity, uncovering his grey hairs to the faint shouts of his people, and for- mal salutes of his army. His friend and rela- tion, the Duke de Bourbon, was a few yards in advance of him; his son, the Dauphin, on his right; and, if my memory play me not false, I think the Duke of Orleans was on his left, in a hussar uniform. The royal carriages with the princesses followed, and the whole was closed by a detachment of gendarmerie. At the mo- ment the Duke de Bourbon appeared, a man b2 4 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. of common stature, with small, quick, and crafty looking eyes, shaggy beetling brows, and shabby genteel costume, denoting an agent of police, touched my hat with his cane, and ac- companied the action with the words, ( Mon- sieur, decoiffez vous? ' Cest un peu fort J I thought, in such a shower, but I'll bare my head, and risk a fit of the ague, in compliment to majesty. There was something singular in the words f decoiffez vous> which induced me to turn and look at the speaker, and I instantly addressed a not unusual question to myself, Where have I seen that man ? As the last notes of the hunting chorus in Der Freischutz died away in the distance, I retraced my steps to- wards the Faubourg St. Germain, endeavouring to recollect where I had before met with my unknown ; but I tortured my mind in vain. I summoned spirits from the vasty deep, but they came not when I did call for them. Somewhat tired, and rather vexed, I entered the little Cafe in the garden of the Tuileries, called for a sor- bet a la rum, and the Quotidienne, a journal, VIDOC. O whose strictures excite as much mirth in the circles of the Chaussee d'Antin, as those of the worthy Morning Post do in some of the London coteries. I had got into the middle of an article upon the benefits which France had derived from the mild sway of Louis the Desired, when, by some indefinable association of ideas, I recollected that, about two months previous to that day, I had, at the Cafe de Foy, observed a gentleman seated at the small marble table near the fille du comptoir, in apparently close conversation with a tall, lean, emaciated looking wretch, whose sunken eyes, lank hair, and pale features, intimated a long acquaintance with dissipation, hunger, and filth. The gentleman wore the ribband of the legion of honour, and his seeming respectability formed such a con- trast with the canaille air of his companion, as to attract the attention of every one in the room towards them. I now thought that the member of the legion of honour bore a singular resemblance to the agent of police, and, pleased that I had solved my problem, I returned home, O SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. satisfied that he must either be the famous Vidoc, of whom I had heard so much, or one of the numerous spies who infest all places of public resort in Paris. Vidoc is, in a measure, the Jonathan Wild of France ; he is a liberated galley slave, and em- ployed by the government of that country on the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief; but Jonathan Wild may hide his diminished head, for his glory is eclipsed by the talents of his Gallic rival. Wild's story served as the original for the character of Peachum, hi the Beggar's Opera ; but, I believe, our neighbours have never dared to bring their great man on the stage. Wild adopted the manoeuvre of giv- ing a reward for goods lost or stolen, without asking any questions ; was the receiver-general of stolen goods, and the centre and patron of the thieving profession, but Vidoc has not so much consideration for the worshippers of one of the attributes of Mercury; he wrests the spoil from the thief, and seeks his reward from the rightful owner, and the government by VIDOC. 7 which he is employed ; and his success in this branch of his profession is truly astonishing: his satellites are innumerable, and are to be found in all societies, from the saloons of the dowagers of the Faubourg St. Germain to the less splendid apartments of the good old ladies of the Marais ; from the busy idlers round the throne of the Milles Colonnes, to the more humble crowd at the Cafe des Aveugles ; they are to be found alike at the Grand Opera, and among the audience, or rather spectators, at the little theatre of Madame Saqui ; at the Jardins des Tuileries, and the Jardin Turc ; in short, Vidoc, in himself and in the persons of his crea- tures, is possessed with ubiquity, and soars above Argus, inasmuch that he is not only all eyes but all ears. If it be within the bounds of human possibility to catch a thief, Vidoc will have him ; in an hour he will put on almost as many shapes as there are minutes in that space of time ; he has a spell as powerful as that of the Caliph of Bagdad, and Vidoc's II Bondo- cani will bring the police to his assistance, in 8 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. crowds as numerous as the finny members of the ocean, when they rose in shoals to the sur- face, to hear St. Anthony preach. A year had elapsed since the King's entry into Paris ; the tw r elve months had brought with them their usual accompaniments of joys and sorrows to the greater part of the inhabitants of the metro- polis ; to me, at least, it could bring no addi- tional happiness, (and, what is better, I thought so.) Every comfort of life was within my reach ; I had none, nor did I require any, of its luxuries,— time flew quick,— and, but this is a digression, let it suffice to say that the last five years of a life that has not yet attained its fifth lustre, have been spent in such a manner, up to the very moment of my writing this, as to enable me, like Anastatius, to defy Fate to rob me of their remembrance. It happened, at the period I have mentioned, that an English lady of rank lost a superb and valuable opera-glass, and after much fruitless research, and having good reason to suppose that it had passed through the hands of the VIDOC. 9 Ouvreuse des Loges, she was advised to apply to Vidoc, knowing that if it were within the frontiers, Vidoc would find it. I was honoured with the commission, and I the more gladly un- dertook it, as I now felt assured I should see the prince of spies, and have all my doubts re- moved touching his identity with my knight of the legion of honour, and the agent of police. I accordingly proceeded along the quays, crossed the Pont Neuf, and passed through the Place Dauphine to the Palais de Justice, rightly judg- ing that the latter would be the most likely place to ascertain Vidoc's residence; the answers which my questions received from respectably dressed people, were sufficiently insulting, but at length a gendarme offered to conduct me ; I thanked him, and he led the way to a little nar- row street in the Isle St. Louis, called, I think, Rue Dauphine ; he pointed to a low old- fashioned house, which I thought looked as if it sadly needed the inspection of a surveyor of the board of works. A man in a blue smock frock was at the door, of whom I inquired for Mon- b5 10 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. sieur Vidoc. He gave me to understand that there were a great many waiting to see him, and that he himself acted as huissier. I slipped a five-franc piece into the horny hand of this novel groom of the chamber, and he, instanter, ushered me into a low dark room, in which were two men, announcing me as * un Monsieur qui desire parler a M. Vidoc. 9 One of the occu- pants was seated at a bureau, with a pile of sil- ver and gold coin before him, part of which he was counting out to the man who was standing near him. The eyes of the former no sooner met mine, than I said to myself, s tu es iste vir ; or, as I began to look upon it as something of an adventure, I, like a hero of romance, men- tally ejaculated it. When he had concluded his business with the stranger, he advanced to speak to me ; he was attired in deep black, his linen of the clearest whitQ, and the ensemble emphatically bespoke the gentleman, I ex- pected to hear the idiom of the canaille, but, on the contrary, he spoke the purest French. There was an uncomfortable draught through VIDOC. 1 1 the room, and I could not repress a smile on hearing him say, ' Monsieur ne vous decoiffez pas. 9 I at length communicated my business, described the glass, its cameos, diamonds, its gold, and its value ; adding that three weeks had elapsed since its loss. He appeared to think the latter part of my communication as boding ill for its recovery ; he, however, pro- mised to do what he could to obtain possession of it, if possible, and that if it were in France, and not taken to pieces, he assured me he would have it on that day week. At our next meeting he was dressed in nearly the same mode as when I saw him in the Palais Royal ; at the Cafe de Foy ; he told me the glass had been dismem- bered, and that the stones and gold were pro- bably at that moment in the hands of the Jews of Rotterdam or Frankfort. A very handsome sum had been offered in the event of its being reco'^red, but he refused all remuneration, ob- serving that, had he succeeded, he should have thought himself entitled to the reward, but as his endeavours had been productive of no be- 12 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. nefit to the public, he conscientiously declined any recompense. — We bowed and parted. I have said, that Vidoc is an enfranchised galley slave ; I have also been told that he was once a desperate robber, and that he has both shoulders branded with the letters " T. F." I can say nothing of the truth of such assertions ; they are probably false. I found him polite, and what we understand as gentlemanly in the fullest sense of the word. His occupation, in- disputably, is not one *that any gentleman, or any one possessing the feelings of a gentleman, would select ; but that he has rendered impor- tant services to the French government, cannot be denied, and that he is a man c more sinned against than sinning,' is the firm belief of every one intimate with the police of the neighbouring kingdom. It does not depend upon us to pre- vent being spoken ill of; it is only in our power that it be not done deservedly. SCOTCH WEDDINGS. ' 'Twas a fair night, My young remembrance cannot parallel A fellow to it/ MACBETH, 15 SCOTCH WEDDINGS. +^-*-^>-*-**-+ ' 'Twas a fair night, My young remembrance cannot parallel A fellow to it.' — Macbeth. Nature, in her most playful mood, never formed a more romantic spot than that which bursts upon the view on emerging from Dun- keld. The magnificent sight which this intro- duction to the Highlands presents, would well repay a man for the trouble of walking thither on foot from London to behold it. I can only deplore the inability of such a feeble pen as mine, to describe the wantonness with which the little gray-roofed town nestles amidst Nature's smiles ; the varied outlines of the darkly-wooded Craig-y-barns, rivalling in beauty Ovid's Aerial Alps, and cloud-topped Appenine ; or the Ma- jestic Tay, (Ecce Tiber,) flowing wide and tran- quil, through a succession of beautiful scenery, 16 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. probably not to be equalled, certainly not to be surpassed in the three kingdoms. c Praising what is lost, makes the remembrance dear.' I will terminate this peroration in the words of an author, who has proclaimed the beauties of the Highlands in a way worthy of them, the author of the Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland : ! This/ says he, ' is the gate and portal whence bold Highland Caterans once issued in dirk and plaided hostility, sweeping our flocks and herds, and where (such are the changes of fashion) their Saxon foes now enter in peace, driving their barouches and gigs, and brandishing the pencil and memorandum book/ But my business, at present," is neither with Dunkeld nor its beauties ; I design to fill a page or two with a few words upon Scottish wed- dings ; and the little I have to say upon that subject, will afford no additional information to those who are already possessed of the slightest knowledge of such an agreeable affair. I never was but at one Highland wedding, and was then, as usual, too late, both for the ceremony, SCOTCH WEDDINGS. 17 and the reception of the bride by her new pa- rents, at her future home. So that the world loses the benefit of my remarks upon the cus- tom of breaking bread over the bride's head, and the other incidental accompaniments attend- ant upon wedlock in the north. I may here mention, however, by way of 'parenthesis, that I once witnessed the return of a married couple to their new home, when the fair bride was seated in a cart, with a spinning wheel, deco- rated with ribbands, placed before her, and a washing tub at her side: these were hierogly- phics which needed no Belzoni to transcribe, nor Dr. Young to translate. They who ran might read, with as much facility as if the let- ters stared them in the face ; here were labour, industry, health, wealth, and what not more ; ' I could stretch the line to the crack of doom/ I must frankly confess that the celebration of the wedding at which- 1 was present, offered a different scene, not to what I was led to ex- pect, but to what I in truth did expect. There was no mirth, bcjsterous and noisy, ( like ocean 18 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. waves, when winds are piping loud ;' there was no rude jest that could call up a blush on the cheek of the most or least susceptible; but there was that among the guests that spoke urbanity, good humour, and good wishes to the young couple; they laughed the heart's laugh ; if their repartees wanted humour, they did not think so; and where their dancing fell off in grace, it increased in vigour; for be it known to those who might otherwise burst in ignorance, that a Highland reel is no sinecure; it peremptorily demands unwea- ried strength, and unceasing exertion ; I am not sure, but, inasmuch as I, a Sassenach, am concerned, that an hour's exercise on the Brixton wheel would be preferable, and prove less fatiguing than half an hour's continued trip- ping to the tune of Tullum Goram. The danc- ing commenced with a reel performed by the parents of the bridegroom, and the last men- tioned happy personage and his bride ; how I did wish for Washington Irving! Here was another hieroglyphic not to be* mistaken ; what SCOTCH WEDDINGS. 19 a train of thought, and what a magnificent arti- cle might we not have had from Geoffrey Cray- on's graphic pen, with such a subject to go to work upon ! Could the war-dances of the Ame- rican Indians, or the symbolic measures of anti- quity, express any thing more forcibly than did the exquisitely beautiful sentiment contained under the national dance of my Scottish friends? Was not here one generation taking leave of another, not in the darkness of tears and sor- row, but amidst the sunshine of smiles and gai- ety, and that innocent mirth which the most cynical would not dare to carp at ! I will not attempt to describe the person of the bridegroom's father. I thought, when I first saw him, of what Garrick would have given for the sight of such a face, to have played old Adam by it ; or what a mine of gold the author of the Sketch Book might discover in the study of such a character, in eliciting from him his Reminiscences of London, upwards of half a century back, and in noting down the warmth with which this venerable persecutor of the red deer expatiates on field-sports. I verily believe 20 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. his shot is as sure as that of Shakspeare's famed Douglas the Scot, Prince Henry's gallant ene- my, 'he that rides at high speed, and with his pistol kills a sparrow flying.' I may, however, speak of his hospitality, his good humour, and the excellence of his farintosh — they are all alike warm and enlivening ; his old age, like that of a literary person, is the evening of a fine day, and, in paying this tribute to the worth of my short known, but not less esteemed friend, John Creerar, I will conclude, by noticing, that the remembrance of the few happy hours spent at his son Charley's wedding, will be marked on ' the tablet of my memory,' (there is the bard of Avon for it) albo lapide. One word more : in Scotland, a mutual ac- knowledgment, in the presence of witnesses, constitutes marriage, and Gretna Green has no privilege. In the well known case, where an earldom, and the fate of another wife and child depended upon the decision, an English court, having consulted the first legal authorities in Scotland, declared the marriage lawful, because the lady produced a letter, in which the gentle- SCOTCH WEDDINGS. 21 man addressed her as his ' dear wife ;' and it was proved that they had afterwards been toge- ther long enough to render the consummation of the marriage probable. On this subject, the law of Scotland is certainly more liberal and humane than that of England ; the man who marries the mother of his children, legitimates those born before wedlock, and gives them equal rights to those born after. At penny weddings, the whole expense of the feast and fiddler is defrayed out of the contri- butions of the guests : every one pays for what he has, and, at the end, puts money into a dish, according to his inclination and ability. There is no doubt of the advantage and assistance which this system affords to young people of an inferior condition, but its observance is on the wane, and not held altogether reputable. There are few of the guests at a penny wedding who would decline to respond a hearty amen to the grace of old Pennant's Highland chieftain, 1 Lord ! turn the world upside down, that Chris- tians may make bread of it.' AN EXECUTION IN PARIS. * By eight to-morrow thou must be made immortal.' MEASURE FOR MEASURE, 25 AN EXECUTION IN PARIS. * By eight to-morrow thou must be made immortal/ MEASURE FOR MEASURE. Dampier, in noticing the little feet of the la- dies of the celestial empire, quaintly remarks, 6 They,' (the ladies in question,) c seldom stir abroad, and one would be apt to think that, as some have conjectured, their keeping up their fondness for this fashion were a stratagem of the men's, to keep them from gossiping and gadding about, and confine them at home.' I never stumble upon this passage of the worthy Buccaneer, without wishing that the friends of the Parisian ladies would either advise them to refrain from the custom of honouring execu- tions with their presence, or introduce the fashion of little feet to ' keep them from gossip- ing and gadding about.' I once had ocular c 26 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. demonstration of this penchant of the French ladies for such disgusting exhibitions, on one day, coming from the Cour Royale, which I was in the habit of attending, not only for the sake of listening to, and deriving amusement and instruction from the pleadings of the advo- cates, but also that I might accustom myself to the various provincial dialects, from the shib- boleth of the Faubourg St. Antoine to the pa- tois of the Bretagne and the greek of the Mar- seillois; and I advise every English stranger who is desirous of attaining a thorough know- ledge of the French tongue, to take his lessons, as I did, from the proceedings of the chambers of correctional police ; he will find it infinitely preferable to the usually recommended course of visiting the theatres, (they have no Emerys nor Rayners,) and his stock of knowledge will obtain a greater increase by attending to the responses of a French witness than by listening to the futile attempt at provincial dialect by any artist on the stage ; always excepting Odry, on whom an English public will soon have it in AN EXECUTION IN PARIS. 27 their power to pass sentence, and presuming that the student has somewhat more than a superficial knowledge of the tongue he wishes to master, before he attempts to pursue the windings of a judicial investigation. As I de- scended the broad flight of steps that leads from the Palais de Justice to the spacious court yard below, I became entangled in a dense crowd, from which I found extrication impos- sible till I had reached the fountain in the Place du Chatelet. As soon as I had escaped from the pressure of the throng, I sought a place of security, and was in a short time acquainted with the cause of such a multitude being col- lected : an execution was about to take place, and of all such scenes, this must have been the most dreadful, — it was the execution of a mo- ther and son ; the former was sixty-five years of age, and the latter but twenty ^four ;— they were convicted of the crime of having murdered an infirm woman of eighty. The Place du Cha- telet is midway between the Conciergerie, to which the criminals had been that morning c2 28 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. brought from Bicetre, and the Place du Greve, where they were to suffer. By the time the procession appeared on the bridge, I had be- come surrounded by as great a crowd as that I had fallen into on leaving the Palace de Justice. The prisoners were both seated in one cart, with their backs to the horses, and a priest at the side of each ; the vehicle was preceded and followed by a detachment of the gendarmerie, the ' swallows of the guillotine,' whom I have mentioned in my article on Vidoc. The son sat near the horses ; his appearance was de- jected in the extreme : despair and terror had lent a dreadfully wild expression to his features, and he occasionally put his hand to his brow, as if to dash off the clammy drops that started on his forehead ; and then applied both hands to his throat, as if he were gasping for that breath which he was about to lose for ever. His head sank on the priest's shoulders, and his whole frame seemed unnerved by utter debility. His aged mother, the partner of his crime, ap- peared, on the contrary, the picture of resolu- AN EXECUTION IN PARIS. 29 tion and daring courage. ' Upon her eye-balls murderous tyranny sat in grim majesty, to fright the world.' Her grey hair, which had fallen from under her cap, and hung in matted locks about her face, heightened the Hecate expres- sion of her eyes, which flashed with vindictive glances on the multitude assembled to view her progress. As soon as the cart had passed, the rush of the throng swept me with it ; I was car- ried with the stream towards the spot where the world was finally to close on two wretched beings who had alike violated the laws of God and man, and was thus forced to witness an ex- hibition which I would otherwise have gladly escaped. On arriving at the foot of the scaf- fold, the old woman leaped boldly from the cart, hurriedly ascended the steps, and stood alone and unsupported on the platform ; but the son had not power to rise, terror had chaipjed him to his seat, and he was ultimately lifted from the cart, assisted up the steps, and placed by the side of his mother, near the ex- ecutioner. To the most aged was allotted the 30 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. priority of undergoing the last penalty of the law ; she was bound — placed under the knife, — and was, in a moment, lifeless. As the wea- pon rapidly and obliquely descended ringing in the grooves, I was watching the effect of the sound on the other prisoner, whose back was turned to the sight ; I could only remark a slight tremor, and a convulsive rising of the shoulders ; but when a gendarme slightly touched him, to warn him that his time had come, he fell under the touch as if it had struck life from him ; and he was probably unconscious of the remaining part of the sacrifice ; his coat, which had been loosely thrown round his shoul- ders, was rudely torn from him, his shirt rent down, and he dragged to the knife by that hair which seemed to have been previously curled with the greatest attention to effect. From the time of the arrival of the cart at the foot of the scaffold till the striking off the son's head, ten minutes had not been consumed, and in less than ten more, the whole structure was taken to pieces, and the multitude dispersed. AN EXECUTION IN PARIS. 31 The number of females present on this occa- sion was immense; they at least formed two thirds of the multitude, and evidently took the greatest interest in the whole affair ; they appa- rently considered it as a fete, and enjoyed it accordingly. Their dress, moreover, bespoke them as belonging, if not to the upper classes, at least to the middle rank of society ; certainly the lower orders did not predominate. — Vol- taire's assertion, that the French were a com- pound of the tyger and monkey, was never more forcibly illustrated than in the conduct of these females on such an awful occasion. As the cart passed to the place of execution, they assailed the son with every epithet of vitupera- tion afforded them by a copious vocabulary ; his features, distorted with terror, and his hands, compressed with agony, were subjects of ridi- cule; and their savage remarks ceased only when the unit of his life * had been withdrawn from the sum of human existence/ The un- yielding demeanour of his guilty mother was, on the other hand, received with marked appro- 32 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. bation, and, as she occasionally, with convulsed features, and arms uplifted in the wild parox- ysm of insanity, turned round to revile the craven terror of her offspring, the applause from those of her own sex was redoubled, and re- peated at every frantic gesture of the exulting demoniac. I again assert that this want of feel- ing was not seen in the lower orders exclu- sively ; and that it is not confined to the lower orders alone, is proved by Morris in his Views of Modern France. He asked a lady in Paris, who was under twenty years of age, and the mother of three children, what made her so in- different to them, and unmoved by the adversity under which she was labouring? She replied, without hesitation, that she attributed it to the many scenes of horror which she had witnessed in Paris during the revolution, which had steeled her heart against the finer feelings, and ren- dered her proof against poverty, misery, and distress. She added that, when a child, she was often promised, as a reward for good beha- viour, to go and see the victims of political fury AN EXECUTION IN PARIS. 88 guillotined, and had often witnessed the execu- tion of seventy or eighty in the short space of an hour; the young and old scrambling for places to see well, as if they had been at a play. She also observed, that to see two or three cart loads of dead and perfectly naked bodies go by her window, in the course of a morning, was very usual. Mr. Fox is reported to have said, in the House of Commons, c that among many evils arising from wars and revolutions, one much to be feared was, that the frequency of battles and massacres would by degrees weaken our sym- pathy for each other, and render us indifferent about the shedding of blood.' The preceding anecdote confirms the truth of this observation^ and shews that the British orator possessed a profound knowledge of human nature, and knew how to form a correct judgment of man. Executions in France are not events of fre- quent occurrence ; their code is less sanguinary than ours ; they do not, every session, condemn twenty or thirty unhappy wretches to death, c5 34 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. and leave three-fourths of them to depend, almost with confidence, on a certain commuta- tion of the penalty. They seldom suffer but for assassination, and robbery attended with aggravated violence; and after their condem- nation, have three days to appeal to the Court of Cassation, to set aside the verdict ; this in- deed is a forlorn hope, it is throwing a straw to a drowning man, and few take advantage of the privilege but for the sake of the gloomy satisfac- tion of prolonging life for a few hours. In the days of the notorious Chauffeurs, the guillotine was often in request, and the execution of any of that dreadful tribe was attended by extra thousands, and considered as a fete par excel- lence. The Chauffeurs had acquired a name for dying boldly ; the toilet on the day of their death was a matter of importance, as they prided themselves on their Macheath air, and assump- tion of careless courage ; often walking to the axe with a flower negligently held between their teeth, and retained there long after the head had flown from their shoulders. Their appel- AN EXECUTION IN PAPvIS. 85 lation of Chauffeurs was derived from their cruel practices ; they were professed burglars, (and, by the way, looked forward to the guil- lotine as the certain termination of their labours, as confidently as Mat o' the Mint did to the gal- lows, when he comforted his doomed captain with ' it's what we must all come to,') and were used to seize the inmates of the houses which they forcibly entered, and bake their feet before the fire in order to extort a confession of the place where treasure was supposed to be con- cealed. The crime was very common over the northern and western departments of France, and in the Netherlands. The Bold Turpin was in fact a Chaffeur, but he did not bake the feet of his victims ; he, with a greater share of attention to their personal comfort, quietly seated them on the fire, and gave them a prac- tical illustration of Guatimozin's bed of roses. From such a warm couch of repose I heartily wish all my readers free. MAYNOOTH. * They're sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.' HAMLET. MAYNOOTH. c They're sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.' HAMLET. On the 30th of May of the by-gone year of grace, 1827, I mounted the Liverpool coach, with the intention of visiting Dublin. At all seasons of the year I abominate an inside place ; a four-and-twenty hours' imprisonment, four- and-twenty times worse than the stocks ; not to mention the chance of amazingly-agreeable pas- sengers, — a lady who will have both windows up ; a gentleman who has been on very intimate terms with the brandy-bottle ; or that climax of horrors, a pet child. Then to hear your oppo- site companion, a robust youth, rising six feet two, declare that he must get out to stretch his legs, or suddenly discovering, that your neigh- bour must have been one of those of whom 40 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. Casca so lovingly speaks in Julius Caesar. I am morally certain that the black hole at Cal- cutta was nothing to it. Now if an outside passenger be seated near the most important personage that the vehicle carries, he may book one pleasant companion without fear of disap- pointment ; for it is no difficult matter to dis- cover the weak side, the tender failings, in the character of an English stage-coachman. It is, generally, nothing more than praising his horses, his whip, his coat, or himself, occasional allusions to top-boots, with now and then a word on the noble art of self-defence, and ten to one but he becomes loquacious. There is no rule without an exception : my coachman was deaf to all these topics, and left me to derive what benefit I could from enjoying my own conver- sation. Here was .an anomaly; a whip who would not discourse upon horses! a jehu who was dumb upon every thing concerning New- market or Doncaster! Alas ! thus it is, — 1 Agricolam laudat juris legumque peritus.' He had never read Horace ; but, he, neverthe- MAYNOOTH. 41 less, experienced the feeling which the lawyer did; he was not in love, I am sure; he was not in debt, I believe ; but l he had a soul above his buttons ; ' he was weary of the toil that condemned him to go over the same fifty miles three hundred and sixty-five times during the year ; he was longing for the otium cum digni- tate ; he was sighing for five hundred per an- num, and — Paris ! He had spent ten days in the French capital, he liked the French people, (he ought to know something of them, since he dined every day at Harriet Dunn's, on the Boulevard Madeleine — a chop-house esta- blished for the express and sole accommodation of Messieurs les Anglais,) and he had no doubt but he should like the language, if he were only able to understand it. He grew eloquent on the subject of Burgundy; Q oh he did reverence Burgundy!' quoted Lord Byron, and actually intimated something about its ' sun-set glow.' I won his heart when he found I, too, had been in Paris ; we were bosom friends, almost boon companions, for, during the night, he offered J 42 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. me his pipe, which he had been smoking for at least half an hour, and, having duly wiped the tube on the sleeve of his top covering, asked me if I would like to take a whiff. I declined the courteous invitation with suitable acknowledg- ments ; and, in return for the intended kind- ness, held out a cigar, which he discussed with all the ineffable delight appertaining to a lover of the leaf. 6 Shall I not take my ease in mine inn?' said I, on retiring to my truckle bed with the hope of • steeping my senses in forgetfulness ; ' but the original occupiers of the tenement so forci- bly entered their protest against such a wished- for consummation, that, by heavens ! as poor Curran said on a similar occasion, and without the fear of the worthy licenser before his eyes, had they been unanimous, and all pulled one way, they must have brought me to the ground. A few* short hours, however, and I was on board the Britannia, a fine steamer, which, in a head wind, pitched and rolled like a porpoise, to the evident discomfiture of not a few of her passen- MAYNOOTH. 43 gers, but which ultimately carried us with safety into Kingstown harbour, where lay some dozens of the coasting craft, carrying fruit and timber, i. e. potatoes and birch brooms. A car took me to Stephen's Green, and I hired a porter to carry my portmanteau a short distance, for which service he was, at his own request, to be remunerated with • a brace of threepences/ ' Your honour's from over the water?' ' I am that same.' ' Welcome to Ireland ! Your honour 11 give me a taste of the whiskey, to drink your ho- nour's health, and a safe voyage back? I've not had my morning yet, agrah !' 'Well, I've no objection in life to do that; but get on.' 6 Oh ! to be sure. This is Sunday, your ho- nour.' ' 1 know it.' ' I was thinking I'd be going to mass ;' (very proper, said I ;) f and I'll want getting shaved ; and if your honour were to be giving me a shil- ling, I'll not have a farthing about me for the change.' 44 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. c Well, you're welcome to the shilling, then, only let us make the best of our way out of this rain.' 'Oh! long life and good luck to your ho- nour ! we'll get on fast enough now, at any rate" I say nothing of Dublin ; the subject would be as old as the hills : every one has seen or heard something of the Ballah-lean-Cliath, or the town on the fishing harbour ; its bank, its castle, and its college, its custom-house, its ca- thedral, and its monuments, the Anna Liffey, and the two canals, the Four Courts, and the broad quays. I pass all these, and come at once to Maynooth, one of the Irish lions, which is about eleven miles from Dublin, and a very pretty town withal. The road from the capital has peculiar beauties meeting the traveller at every step ; it lies through the Phoenix Park, the Strawberry Beds, Lucan, (near which is an excellent hotel and spa, greatly esteemed, and much frequented in summer,) and the hand- some town of Leixlip, which cannot fail to ex- cite the admiration of a stranger. This town MAYNOOTH. 45 is on the Liffey, and is famous for the salmon leap near it, and for the very beautiful view which may be had from the bridge. The mag- nificent but neglected seat and demesne of the Duke of Leinster adjoins Maynooth, which lat- ter is chiefly celebrated for its elegant Roman Catholic college. To the said college I and a few friends pro- ceeded, and our repeated applications to what the Jupiter Tonnans of literature would have termed ' the frappant and tintinabulant appen- dages which decorated the ligneous barricado,' were answered by a good-humoured-looking Cerberus, the sleek guardian of the portal. We had, unfortunately, come on some saint's day, when admission to strangers was rigo- rously prohibited, a holiday which was observed by the students with a double portion of pray- ers and preaching, and a corresponding de- crease on their usual quantum of relaxation and exercise. The porter could only repeat his or- ders, he would have admitted us with all the pleasure in life, and, as we were strangers, all 46 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. he could do would be to allow us to speak to Dane Dowly, who was then walking in the gar- den with a friend. — ( Which of them is the dean?' — 'The gentleman in black.' To the dean we despatched one of our party, as a de- putation, who stated our case and our wishes. The answer was courteous and gentlemanly ; we obtained unlimited permission to roam about the grounds, and over the building. The grounds possess no claim whatever to beauty ; rank weeds and undipped hedges flourish in admirable disorder ; and the living ornaments, the students, w T ho ( live and move and have their being' within their hallowed precincts, are in admirable keeping with every thing around them. No curious traveller need go farther than Maynooth for genuine specimens of the true brogueneer ; the dingy, ragged stuff gown often covers a costume whose intrinsic value may be something less than a half-crown ; while the unbraced hose and chaussures, which are actual libels upon shoes, give a cool and easy freedom to the figure of the wearers. The MAYNOOTH. 47 students were perambulating the confined space allotted to them for exercise, perusing their well-thumbed breviaries in silence, and occa- sionally gazing round them with an abstracted, listless, melancholy air. On certain festivals they are prohibited speaking to each other, even at meals, and are thus deprived of the en- joyments of social intercourse — of those intel- lectual treats, every one of which w r e remember as the c feast of reason and the flow of soul.' Bodily exercise is at all times limited to a steady walk : any thing beyond that one solid pace, would heap coals of living fire on the head of the luckless wight who should so far transgress as to indulge in the extravagance of a run. Ex- - cepting some few melancholy-looking sentiment- alists, however, they all bore the rude impress of ruddy health: Lady Morgan might select many a hero from among them, for there she would find the points which are so prominent in all her favourites, — the square shoulders and expanded chest ; the light curls and the laugh- ter-loving eye, ill concealed under the outward 48 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. show of devotion and self-mortification. I may add, that the sight of a mob cap on the head (or the head without the cap) of one of the daughters of the green isle, within the gates of the college, would be such a scandal, as nothing less than the special favour of Old Infallibility himself could wipe away. My limits will allow me to say but little more, and that little shall be dedicated to the kitchen. It is said, that the pious hawkers of Constantinople solemnly perambulate the streets of that capital, exclaim- ing, ' In the name of the prophet — Figs !' It is no less true, that in the spacious kitchen of Maynooth College, is a human being ' begrimed, besooted, and bedevilled,' turning the spits in the name of the L — d. This apology for the genuine tourne-broche is seated on an emi- nence, within a recess between the two broad fire-places, (at which some sixty joints of meat are used to look provokingly inviting,) repeat- ing aves and credos, and paters, with his greasy missal in one hand, while the other performs its allotted duty; there he sits in the dirty mockery MAYNOOTH. 49 of prayer, the paters dropping from his lips, as the juice drops from the fattened joints; the aves lingering on his tongue, as his hungry gaze gloats on the rich fare, and the excess of devotion, and the excess of appetite, raising, the one, water to his eyes — the other, to his mouth ; and as the rich perfumes, rivalling in odour the spices of Araby the blest, wafted themselves in savoury gales to his olfactory nerves, then might the fire be said to glitter -in each eye; For two living coals were the symbols ; His teeth were calcined, and his tongue was so dry. It rattled against them, as though you should try To play the piano in thimbles. THE DUKE D'ANGOULEME'S RETURN FROM SPAIN. u l Let's to the capitol ; And carry with us ears and eyes for the time, But hearts for the event. 5 coriolanus. d2 DO THE DUKE D' ANGOULEME'S RETURN FROM SPAIN. -' Let's to the capitol ; And carry with us ears and eyes for the time, But hearts for the event/ coriolanus. Of the many fetes with which the French peo- ple had been amused, even to satiety, few had so powerfully interested them as the return of the Duke d' Angouleme to Paris, at the head of the French army. The spectacle promised to be a novel one, and novelty, as every one knows, is * the god of their idolatry ;' it was, moreover, military, and as our neighbours form essentially a military nation, the show promised to be popular, with those who felt at all inclined to seek the ' bubble reputation' at the mouth of a four-and-twenty-pounder ; and not less po- pular did it promise to be with the tonsured 54 THF DUKE D* ANGOULEMe's gentry who held ' the withering hand of bigot power' over the fairest land that lies smiling under our northern sun. In short, all classes seemed willing to be pleased, from the peer to the veriest badaud that ever spent three fourths of his existence in sight-hunting; from the duchess to the oldest devote that ever slum- bered under the influence of a lengthy extem- pore, from the would-be Bourdaloues of the parish of St. Roche. It was to be a fete in every sense of the word : business was to be suspended, and pleasure to take its place ; the Stock Exchange was to be as if it had never been, and even Galignani's, the resource of all spleen-devoured Englishmen, was to be par- tially closed. Thus driven alike from the wor- thy society of money-agents, and the reading community of the Rue Vivienne, we had no- thing left but to await the day, and hope for the luxury of a bright sun and dry streets.— Vain hope ! the eventful day was ushered in by as copious a shower as could possibly be desired by the most enthusiastic worshipper of RETURN FROM SPAIN* 55 St. Swithin, or the most violent hater of the Bourbons; it came down straight and heavy, and looked as if it intended to do so for the next six weeks at least. I, however, sallied forth with a young Frenchman, resolved to contend with the fretful element, and to strive, in our ; little world of man, to outscorn The to-and-fro conflicting wind and rain.' We proceeded towards the Place Louis XV ., but, on our arrival there, found nothing but foul weather 9 and a few members of the na- tional guard wet to the skin. It would have been fruitless to have € taxed the elements with unkindness' or to have blamed the thunder that threatened to { strike flat the thick rotundity of the world ;' no ; we, like Lear, were the pat- terns of all patience, and, under the warm co- verts of Spanish cloaks, dared the elements to do their worst. — The troops, to whom it had been allotted to keep the ground, assembled in silence — wet, dirty, and dreary; their very trum- pets, after a while, sounded with long, melan- i 56 THE DUKE D' ANGOULEMe's choly blasts, winding mournfully through the avenues of the Champs Elysees, and affording horrid discord to every legitimate descendant of Sherwood Loeksley, and to every warm ad- mirer of the merry notes that used to dance wildly through the forests of broad England, The troops, as I have said, assembled slowly, and took up their various positions with visible reluctance, and the spectators seemed to ga- ther with equal tardiness ; the rain continued to fall in torrents, and damped the energies of almost every one who had previously deter- mined to brave all inconvenience rather than miss a sight which might never again be offered to the wondering gaze of the good people of Paris; but, fortunately, at midday, (oh! what an auspicious omen to the lovers of the marvel- lous,) at twelve at noon, the sun, which had been hitherto shrouded in a veil of envious clouds, burst forth in all the cloudless splendour of the god of day, precisely at the moment that the Duke d' Angouleme reached the gates of Paris, (the Barriere de 1' Etoile,) and gladdened RETURN FROM SPAIN. 57 the hearts of his uncle's subjects by his own presence and that of the long-desired fountain of light. The congratulations of the King's loyal sub- jects in Paris were paid to the hero by the mayor of one of the arondissemens, and great was the adulation, and manifold the encomiums showered on the army who had followed the prince to Spain, and who had marched so many miles upon her peaceful bosom : e Frighting her pale-fac'd villagers with war, And ostentation of despised arms !' An advanced guard, immediately preceding the royal generalissimo and his staff, approached from the Champs Elysees and entered the gar- den of the Tuileries ; I expected, on the prince's appearance, to hear the populace amaze the welkin with their noisy shouts, but, saving a few old women, and some half-dozen agents of police, ' no joyful tongue gave him his welcome home.' This want of honest warmth seemed to affect the duke but little ; he sat stooping on his charger, and any thing but a hero in his d5 58 THE DUKE d' ANGOULEMe's appearance, laughing and conversing with the generals who surrounded him, and occasionally acknowledging, by a sharp, familiar nod, the lusty endeavours of the mouchards to inspire the people with loyalty, and the obstreperous mirth of the few apprentice boys who threw up their greasy caps, and cried, c God bless the duke!' Though the prince entered Paris at the head of a force amounting, I believe, to nearly 30,000 men, not 5,000 of them were of that army who had been under his command in Spain : the garrisons of Paris, Versailles, and Nantes, were drained to grace his triumph, and throw additional lustre on his ovation ; the can- non and artillery-men both bore an appearance of strength and neatness about them, that totally belied the supposition of their having been engaged in the strife of war, and the colours of the French and Swiss Guards bellied to the wind, without a rent on their surface, or a spot on their clear white to stain the emble- matic purity of the Bourbons, The corps of Pompiers too, instead of coming from Spain, RETURN FROM SPAIN. 59 had evidently marched no greater distance than from their stations in and about Paris; their bright brass helmets gleamed in the sunshine, as dazzling as if they had but just left the hands of the manufacturer; and the dragoons from Versailles curvetted and caracolled in all the pride and glory of green and crimson, epau- lettes, and leopard skin. Amid all this para- phernalia, weakening the eyes and astounding the senses, there was one thing, and but one thing, worth seeing ; it was ^the steady quiet march of the chosen few who had really been engaged in deadly contest with the swarthy Iberian and savage Guerilla ; their advance was manly, slow, and unassuming; their sun-em- browned features, their tattered uniforms, their broken caps, and a general appearance of fatigue, told a long tale of weariness ; their complexions, in ' the shadowed livery of the burnished sun,' spoke of toil, and watching, and strife. Their bursting eyes looked as if they had not often been closed in sleep ; but they now seemed to frighten up and sparkle with 60 THE DUKE D' ANGOULEMe's inward delight as they gazed at the crowds who were enthusiastic in their admiration, and warm in their notes of welcome. I shall never forget the shouts that burst, as if at one impulse, from the people, when they beheld the remains of the colours hanging in shreds from the staff, and proudly dancing their slashed remnants in the wind, as though they too partook in the general exultation. No music accompanied the march of the little band, the applause of their fellow-countrymen was sufficiently exciting, their shouts formed the only harmony attendant on their progress, and they were honest ones, and had been hardly earned by the rough warriors, from whom war and her dread companions had taken the outward shew of smooth civility. I and my friend, in common with many others, cared very little for the remaining part of the procession, as it consisted of nothing more than a continued pouring-in of troops, one regiment succeeding another, in monotonous order, till the whole had defiled. We accordingly made our way towards the Quai des Tuileries, with RETURN FROM SPAIN. 61 the intention of entering the gardens at the little gate, near the corps de garde, and witnessing the public reception of the duke, by the king, his uncle ; but the people had flocked in such multitudes round this entrance, that we found ingress impossible, and as we observed many attempting to scale the walls, I resolved (my companion declining it,) to do the same ; I ac- cordingly divested myself of my cloak, and sur- rendered it to his keeping, and, with the assist- ance of one or two beneath me, managed to get hold of the summit, which I should have speedily cleared, but for a tremendous blow which I received across the knuckles from the stock of a gun, and which, depriving my hand of all power, caused me to drop to the ground. I now, for the first time, remarked, that the sentinels on the river side had been at least quintupled, and that all attempts to enter the gardens, except by the proper gates, must prove unavailing ; I was about to try the latter means once more, when my attention was attracted by a struggle between a soldier on duty and a 62 THE DUKE D* ANGOULEME's young man who had reached, and was then standing on the top of the wall, and from which he was shortly after thrown down ; enraged at his defeat, he took up a stone and threw it at the sentinel, but it fortunately missed him ; he then renewed his attempt to get over the bar- rier, but a blow across the hand, as soon as it touched the summit, again forced him down; he now assailed the soldier with every low epi- thet of abuse, of which the latter affected to take little notice, till he was styled with the re- proachful terms of blanc bee (smooth chin,) and recruit, words conveying mortal offence, when addressed to a young French soldier ; his cheeks did not crimson with the ruddy impress of ho- nest indignation, he turned deadly pale, and trembled violently; his comrades advised him to retire from that side of the terrace, but he continued standing, with his eyes fixed, like a statue's, on the man, who was still directing a torrent of vituperation against him, his musket gradually descended, till it rested on the wall, which was about breast high; the other party RETURN FROM SPAIN. 63 seemed to notice the movement, and retired a few paces, taking the arm of a female, who was afterwards said to be his sister ; the soldier pro- bably thought he was about to withdraw, and I firmly believe was in the act of recovering his arms, when the word ' recruit/ again contemp- tuously uttered, so goaded him on to despera- tion, that he discharged his piece, and with a too fatal effect; — the young man gave one dreadful shriek, sprang at least three feet in the air, and fell flat, dead, on his face : he was shot right through the temple. A loud yell from the crowd, and a simultaneous rush to the walls, alarmed the guard, they knew not which to repel first, and, in the general confusion, I got over. The sentinel, who had fired, fled to his box for protection, and with his unloaded piece, kept the enraged multitude at bay till a corporal and four men arrived to place him under arrest, and he was led away amidst the execrations of a crowd eager to tear him to pieces. In the mean time, the unfortunate cause of all this turmoil was placed against the 64 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. wall, and surrounded by a number of mounted gens-d'armes, who would not allow his wound to be examined, till the arrival of the com- missary of police, and as this did not take place till half an hour had elapsed, any chance that might have existed for saving his life was entirely thrown away. The public are ac- quainted with the sequel : there was a trial, at least it was called so, and the verdict was jus- tifiable homicide, or something to that purpose, with a clause, hinting the praise due to a soldier who knew how to defend his post with vigour. The feelings of the parents were soothed by a pension of, I think, 1000 francs (£40). THE PALAIS ROYAL. : If thou hat'st Curses, stay not; fly while thou'rt blessed and free.' TIMON OF ATHENS. 67 THE PALAIS ROYAL. •Ifthouhat'st Curses, stay not; fly while thou'rt blessed and free/ TIMON OF ATHENS. The Palais Royal of Paris, which contains much that affords amusement, but more that excites disgust, was commenced by Cardinal Richelieu, when in the full-blown plenitude of his power* and when his arrogance ruled over the mildest and most timid monarch that ever sat on the throne of Hugues Capet. It was then styled the Palais Cardinal, and was the resort of all the learned and noble men of Europe, who flocked thither to pay homage to its crafty master, ' the old cat of Narbonne.' There, amidst the revelry of fetes and the ex- citements of pleasure, many a plan was pro- jected that had for its basis the aggrandisement 68 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. of its author, and the degradation of that au- thor's sovereign, and many an act signed that condemned to an ignominious death the per- sonal friends of Louis XIII., who had not suf- ficient power of mind to stand up against the superior intellect of his minister, and assume to himself the right of life and death over his own subjects. Long did the * king s king (another of Richelieu's surnames) enjoy, like Wolsey, the royal graces showered on him daily, and, unlike Wolsey, continued in the almost unin- terrupted enjoyment of them till death. The latter died a prisoner, disgraced and deserted ; the former sank into the arms of the destroyer, with Louis attendant at his side, administering the remedies ordered by the faculty ; and, as the good monarch charitably supposed, sooth- ing the last moments of his servant by repeated assurances of unalterable esteem ; it is said, the ambitious prelate smiled as he witnessed the sway which even in utter helplessness he held over his forgiven and injured master. At one period when Richelieu's star was low in the as- THE PALAIS ROYAL. 69 cendant, and his enemies had succeeded in awakening the sovereign to some sense of his situation, the cardinal found himself compelled to retire from office, and with absolute insolence prayed the king to accept, as a pure gift, the Palais which he had erected at his sole ex- pense; Louis, in his amazement, consented, and, when it was subsequently inhabited by his consort, Anne of Austria, and Louis XIV. then in his minority, it lost its distinguishing appel- lation of Palais Cardinal, and was honoured with that of Palais Royal. It descended to the brother of he Grand Monarque, and at length became the property of Philip, the infa- mous Duke of Orleans, by whom it was consi- derably embellished and enlarged ; it is now occupied by the present highly popular Duke of Orleans. The public are well acquainted with the scenes which rendered this building notorious during the reign of terror, the ex- cesses which M. Egalite sanctioned, and the savage barbarity which characterised the crowds whom his treachery misled. I may as well no- tice here, that in all works purporting to give 70 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. histories or descriptions of the French revolu- tion, we are surfeited with accounts of the san- guinary enormities of the sans-culottes and the crimes of the populace, while we remain unin- formed of the deep depravity and iniquity of the aristocracy that had for ages ' been poisoning the soil with their vices, and at last reaped the har- vest that might have been expected from their toils/ The bloody deeds of a day are blazoned forth for public execration, while the veil of oblivion is thrown over the privileged classes and their unutterable vices, ("shrouded from exposure only by their enormity,") which at length brought down a deluge of blood on the land cursed and polluted by such iniquities. Well may it be supposed that the parc-au-cerf of that right legitimate Louis XV., was suffi- cient alone to raise up a whole nation of regi- cides, and to make every father and husband an assassin, whose soul was not sufficiently base to qualify him for a pander *. There are but * See an able paper, in one of the early numbers of the Westminster Review, on the Memoirs of the Duchess of Orleans. THE PALAIS ROYAL. 71 few events of greater importance among the memorabilia of the Palais Royal than the mur? der of poor Michel Lepeletier, one among the few who voted conscientiously for the death of Louis XVI. : on the evening of the last day of the king's trial, Lepeletier was dining at le cafe Fevrier, when he was accosted by a man of the name of Paris, who asked him if his name were Lepeletier ; on being answered in the affirma- tive, € then/ said Paris, ' you were concerned in the king's trial ; for what did you vote V — ' For death V replied Lepeletier, c I believed him guilty, and recorded my vote against him.' Pa- ris instantly drew forth a concealed dagger, and stabbed him to the heart, exclaiming, ' Villain ! receive thy reward!' Lepeletier was only in the thirty-second year of his age, when he thus fell a victim to his zeal in the cause of liberty. In these days, when every one has seen Paris, it would be a work of supererogation to describe its chief ornament, the Palais Royal, with its jet tVeau in the form of a fleur-de-lis, its one hun- dred and eighty arcades, its jewellers, tailors, 72 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. shoemakers, money-changers, booksellers, mil- liners, grisettes, and cyprians; here may be found all that the eye can seek after, or the heart wish for ; silks from Smyrna, and spices from Amboyna ; cigars from the Havannah, and dates from Lasha; diamonds from Golconda, rubies from Brazil, turquoises from Siberia and Teheran, and the genuine eau de Cologne from the manufactory of Jean Marie Farina, Yez- dikhaust is not more famous for its bread, Sheeraz for its wine, nor Yezd for the bright eyes of Nature's best gift, than is the Palais Royal for all the luxuries that gold can pur- chase; Rocknabad cannot boast a stream so clear as the fontaine, nor Mosellay a bower so sweet as the pavilion ; Istambol affords no bet- ter sherbet, nor does Lebanon offer more agreeable ices. The chief and best known at- traction of this temple of delights is Very's re- staurant, the proprietor of which is the prince of cooks, who would have proved a treasure to Apicius, who is not second even to the great Vatel, and who, compared w T ith Ude, is ( Ossa THE PALAIS ROYAL. 73 to a wart.' The life of the first of the Verys was exhausted in inventing new dishes and stimulants to enjoy them ; he, by the mysteries of his art, gave renewed vigour to the fainting appetite, and added many an exquisite enjoy- ment before unknown to the most refined vo- luptuary; with meagre materials he effected mighty things, he could almost satisfy hunger through the sense of smelling, and make his guests live, like the birds of Paradise, upon the ethereal breath of flowers. It is true he could not set before them the tongues of flamingoes, (the favourite dish of Apicius,) the roasted crane of Nassidienus, or combs torn from the living cock, (one of the most savoury repasts of that great glutton, Heliogabalus,) but he could treat their palate with macaroni au parmesan, cutlets in curl paper, and the most delicious geese that ever died with the liver complaint. Pliny tells us that the Romans were acquainted with fifty different ways of cooking pork; but this boast of Rome sinks into insignificance, when we think of the land that has taught us six hun- E 74 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. dred and eighty-five ways to dress eggs ! What were their heads of ostriches to Very's pate of larks ; their storks, their tongues of nightin- gales, their puppy dogs, and camels' udders, to the combination of delicacies which may be dis- covered in Perigord pies ! pies which, like chro- nometers, are warranted to go well in all climates ; may be sent to the north pole, and return all the better for the voyage ; or may be first cut at Valparaiso, again partaken of at Trinidad, once more tasted at the Azores, and at length con- sumed in London. Let us then hear no more of scurvy, and less of sauer-krout ; let us eat and be thankful, and no longer wonder at the inscription on the tomb of the immortal cook at Montmartre, which tells us that his whole life was consecrated to the useful arts! Were I not afraid of wearying the gentle reader, (hea- ven bless the days of the Grandisons, when no- vels were in fifteen volumes !) I would treat him with a phillippic against tea, tell him how I hate the morning and evening repast of scandal juice avid toast, how I abominate — ' Te veniente die, te decedente.' THE PALAIS ROYAL. 75 But jam satis of Very, though, as Hood says, there is no satis to his jams, and let us look in at 253 ; I am not sure that this number should not be corrected to 213, but the difference is but of trifling import ; at one of these numbers is the principal gambling house of the Palais ; there are two hazard-rooms, one for roulette, the other for rouge etnoir; around the table dedicated to the latter game, was seated a min- gled company of old and young of either sex ; the majority well dressed, and, I must confess, to all appearance, well pleased ; a few had cards before them, on which they pricked the chances, and calculated on their play accordingly. That a punter does not win his first stake, is, of course, an equal bet ; and that he does not win six successive times, is sixty-three to one, ac- cording to the table of odds : yet I saw a pun- ter win, by varying the colour, twelve or thirteen times without interruption, and I well recollect, that by his astonishing success, I was induced to think I might escape fortune's daughter with the same luck that he did ; and it was not until e2 76 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. I had lost five napoleons that I began to disco- ver that I was a tyro in the gamester's arith- metic, and to imagine that I had paid quite sufficient for my first lesson. What envy and malice came over me as I watched the successful player sweeping his winnings into a small can- vass bag, and tempting fortune again and again, without meeting a repulse to his temerity: I sighed, and walked towards the roulette table, at which I remained about half an hour, amused with looking on, and remarking the various changes of countenance, as the numbers proved favourable or adverse; I then asked for my hat, and descended the well-worn staircase, heartily regretting (horresco ref evens) the broad gold pieces I had left behind me. I shortly after entered the Milles Colonnes, capped to the limonadieve, received one of her sweetest smiles in return, took an ice, and again made my way into the garden, threaded its mazes, think- ing unutterable things, and was at last reduced to gaze at Ursa Major, and look on Orion's Belt, (the brightest ornament in a winter's sky,) THE PALAIS ROYAL. 77 for want of thought. I had not been five mi- nutes thus engaged, and was leaning against the palisade, near the cannon which, on every bright day, at noon, is fired by the rays of the sun, when the near report of a pistol created some alarm amongst those who were walking about the spot where I stood : we ran towards the place from whence the noise came, and found a man weltering in his blood ; his hat lay at a small distance from him ; his head, as he fell, had struck against the marble circle of the basin ; and his hand grasped a morocco pocket- book with gold clasps, and a small canvass bag. I assisted those who stood near the body to re- move it towards the Galerie de Bois, and I shall never forget the sensation I experienced when, on looking at the face, I discovered the features of the successful gamester ; successful he had been while I was in the room : the canvass bag emptied of its contents, and his present condi- tion told too plainly how the game had gone after I left. There was nothing in the appear- ance of the suicide that denoted penury or un- 78 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. happiness. His costume was that of a retired officer ; a blue military undress frock, with the ribband and cross of the legion of honour ap- pending to a button hole ; a hat a la Bolivar ; tight black pantaloons ; hessians ; a riding whip mounted in gold, with an amber head ; a pair of kid gloves, on which, with some surprise, I remarked the word ' Dundee ;' and white cravat of batiste, marked A. A. V. He was of that age at which any one might reasonably suppose he was married ; or he might have a mother or sister, or some aged relative depending on him for support. Alas ! where was their hope now? where was the husband and father ? where was the son, the brother, the benefactor, at whose coming the old had wept, and the young smiled? where was the prop of age, the hope of youth, where the delight of both ? — Dead ! and by his own hand ; an assassin, the worst of murderers, for he had done that which left no time for re- pentance ; he had forgotten that the Everlast- ing had fixed ( his canon against self-slaughter,' and he had rushed with all his sins upon his head THE PALAIS ROYAL. 79 into the presence of an offended Deity ! The body was removed, by order of the commissary of police, to La Morgue, and was owned the day after by some relative, I think, a cousin. I remember a story was in circulation at this time concerning a soldier of the king's body guard, (every member of which is noble,) who, besides immense gains, had broken the bank at Frescati's, in the Rue de Richelieu, three times in one week. Such unusual good fortune on the part of the ' man at arms ' had excited great rancour in the breasts of the proprietors of the table, and they determined to do all they could, not only to regain possession of the sums they had lost, but also to ruin him who had won them. It happened that the young life-guards- man was ordered to Lyons, on which orders coming to the ears of the great men of Frescati's, they resolved to send down a certain number of agents to that city, to establish a hazard-table and decoy their intended victim to his ruin. The success of their plans exceeded their hopes ; he played, lost his winnings, borrowed from his 80 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. friends, and lost ; and at length made free with the money which belonged to the regiment, and passed through his hands; this soon went too. He awoke to the full sense of his situation ; to the loss of his honour ; and to his unworthiness of wearing the maiden sword he had never fleshed. Ashamed to appear before his supe- riors, and unable to account, in a satisfactory way, for the deficiencies in the caisse of his bro- ther soldiers, he died the gamester's death, by shooting himself in a field near Lyons, on the very morning he was to have been married to a young lady, who, when the dreadful event was communicated to her, lost her senses, and died with her reason wrecked, at her father's resi- dence, near Bordeaux. This is a dark picture, and happy it is that its shades are relieved by tints of greater bright- ness : the gaming tables are patronised by go- vernment ; their agents are in the pay of the legislature ; the concern is farmed out, is sown and grown, and flourishes under the auspices of those who are ' chiefs in the land,' and who THE PALAIS ROYAL. 81 are themselves voluntary victims to the Levi- athan which they might render harmless, but which now destroys the repose of the innocent, and enables the guilty to defy the justice which should overtake crime. Let us take a picture of the Palais Royal in another point of view ; let us forget even Very's, the gambling-houses, and the lottery-offices ; and look at the many happy faces that traverse its boundary between the rise and set of sun ; the pretty grisettes, — ' Rather eatable things, these grisettes, by the by V tripping with quick step and light heart, with their hair a la Grecque, and a dress that would shame the best attired woman in the three king- doms ; for it cannot be concealed that our fair sisters are far behind their Parisian friends in the art of setting off the person to the best ad- vantage; though, for our own side, we must claim precedence for our superiority in cutting a coat, or for our dexterity in shaping unmen- tionables, so as to express emphatically to the world that we have no license from the pope to e 5 82 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. wear the thick part of the calf downwards . With all its drawbacks, who can help loving the fairy land of cookery and gourmandise, where the hea- vens rain baked meats, and larks fall from the sky ready roasted ? or, who amongst us would object to live in this — -' Land of Cocaigne, This Elysium of all that is fr land and nice, Where for hail they have bon-bons, and claret for rain, And the skaiters in winter show off on cream ice ?' FRENCH PRIESTS. : You Are led so grossly by this meddling priest, Dreading the curse that money may buy out. ? KING JOKNo 85 FRENCH PRIESTS. ! You Are led so grossly by this meddling priest, Dreading the curse that money may buy out. 7 KING JOHN. 1 As sure as God is in Gloucestershire,* was a common proverb at that period when the abbey of Glastonbury flourished, the pride and model of all religious communities, and previous to the fatal hour when * gospel light first beamed from Boleyn's eyes.' In the halcyon days of the monks of Gloucestershire and Somerset- shire, when the scarlet lady of Babylon thun- dered forth her excommunications, and royalty itself quaked at them ; when this ter quaterque blessed land was overstocked with— * Happy convents bosomed deep in vines, Where slumbered abbots, purple as their wines ;' 86 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES, when Baldwin Lepetteur was obliged, every Christmas Day, to perform before our lord the king, at Hemmingston Manor, a saltus, a suf- flatus, and a bumbulus, as John Tradescant, or old Stowe, or Camden, or Pennant, or some one of these British worthies says ; (I like to be particular about my authority for what I assert :) when friars, like Nicholas Breakspeare, of Abbot's Langley, reasonable souls! made the head of the church the boundary of their unambitious wishes, (for I take it for granted, as universally known, that Pope Adrian IV. was a no less important personage than Nick Breakspeare, of the brotherhood of St. Al- ban's ; that he first preached the gospel to the Norwegians, had his stirrup held by the Em- peror Frederic I., (the man preached humility!) and was at last choked, not by the dish which always agreed better with the palate of our first Henry, than it did with his constitution, — not by stewed lampreys ; nor by a grape-stone, as was the rosy-lipped Anacreon, — but by a fly, who most impiously dared to go on a voyage of FRENCH PRIESTS. 87 discovery down his holiness's throat ;) in those days, when the sons of the church macerated themselves by long fastings, yet got pursy in spite of themselves ; when prayer and penance, instead of impressing on them the pale hue of the midnight student, lent them the bloated look of the just-brutalized sensualist; when, by paying the duty at the great custom-house of sin, a man might kill his father, mother, bro- ther, wife, or sister, for the trifle of ten-and- sixpence, (for the cost of the absolution was not greater ;) when a priest might keep his chere amie, and pay but half-a-guinea to ob- tain his dispensation for being irregular; when, to get a license to escape the tyranny of fasting- days, and indulge in flesh, at times prohibited, amounted to the sum of two pounds five shil- lings, being something more than four times the estimated value of a man's life ; when such fees of the pope's chancery were published by authority, and transmitted to posterity, as an indisputable proof of the much-vaunted wisdom of our ancestors ; when even cardinals, in con* 88 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. clave, could not agree, nor be at peace till they had fought it out, but his eminence darkened his other eminence's day-lights, and then both their eminences indulged in the Cornish shrug, and claret flowed, and the fives ' cut and came again/ till one was compelled to cry, ' Hold, enough!' a la Jack Holt, and was i damned/ (as that not-fearing- Suppression- of -Vice -Soci- ety reprobate, Macbeth, says,) a la Shakspeare ; and when inkstands flew, and snuffer-stands followed, endangering the eyes and limbs and lives of the spiritual advisers of the Christian world; when, as I say, such scenes of unani- mity characterized the election of a servus-ser- vorum; when the private prayers of private confessors were the hopes of heirless husbands ; when the said private confessors were rectitude personified, and their penitents models of fide- lity; when the latter would have put to the blush all the Mrs. Potiphars in the world, from her of yore, to the pretty Miss M'Garraghan of our own days ; and when the former were very Josephs, with senses as obdurate as those H FRENCH PRIESTS. 89 of that rock of adamant, the Maguire himself; when such a monster as the Tartuffe was as rare as the Leviathan of the deep, or the sea- serpent, his cousin from the New World ; when sparkling eyes, and lips made only to be kissed, were obstacles to the salvation of those who dared to look or cast a thought upon them ; when the tremendous power of a small number of men was upheld, by calling into requisition the good offices of the Duke of Exeter's daugh- ter and the scavenger's niece, or, to speak in more intelligible terms, the rack and the axe ; when, to have said that the pretensions of Mo- hammed were not more impious than those of the Roman pontiff, would have condemned the unhappy utterer of such an assertion to pro- longed torment in this life, and everlasting tor- ment in the dark hereafter ; when the misery and awful secrecy of the inquisition rewarded those who dared to prefer the splendid domi- nion of the Moorish sovereigns in Grenada to the bigotted, disgusting superstition of the Ferdinands and Charleses, et id genus omne ; 90 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. when we were forbidden to remember that the prophet promised Paradise only to such as were strong in faith, while Pontifex Maximus 1 sold heaven to the highest bidder, and fixed a price on the pains of hell ;' and, finally, with all these whens before us, and remembering that when the cowl and sandals, the rosary and missal, Franciscans and Capuchins, friars white, black, and gray, ' with all their trumpery,' {quasi tromperie,) had overrun the west of Europe, and had nowhere found more comfortable quar- ters than those they had met with in the west of England, can we wonder that the grace of Pro- vidence was over Christian Europe in general, and over sweet Gloucestershire in particular? ' Voici l'heure du rendezvous Mais nos pretres s'endorment tous. Ah ! maudit soit notre cure ! Je vais, sacristie ! Manquer ma parti e, Jeanne est pr&te et le vin tird, Ita missa est monsieur le cure* V lie missa est ; and let us now, not forgetting the anchorite, his filberts, his water, and his FRENCH PRIESTS. 91 bed of rushes — let us now see if the powdered gallant abbes of the ancient regime were a jot better than the solitaires of the olden time— « I leave my readers to judge for themselves: they will probably place but little importance on an individual opinion, but, in my opinion, they were infinitely worse : the ancient hermit assumed a virtue, if he had it not ; there is little doubt but that sloth was under his gown, and, unfortunately, that was not the only vice his gown covered; but his outward appearance conveyed to the eyes of his admirers all that virtue and religion and a contempt for the world could express; the little offerings, willingly brought to his cell, were deposited there in the spirit of charity, and the virtues practised by the peasantry were the effects of the prayers and exhortations of the pastor ; so far all was well ; if the preacher felt not himself the truth he was apparently, with immense zeal, impressing on his auditors — these were not less benefitted than if he had been a saint ; his account stood between himself and his God; his hypocrisy 92 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. effected no injury on his disciples. — I have known the sacrament to be administered in a Protestant church abroad, by one whom I had reason to believe was, in broad terms, a heart- less scoundrel ; but, I believe, that the man's wickedness could not prevent those who were kneeling there repentant, and disposed as we are told and as we feel we should be upon such an occasion, from receiving every benefit that is to be derived from tasting the sacred em- blems ; the Deity and the penitent Christian are the only parties concerned ; if the officiat- ing minister be unworthy of his office, neither the sin nor the fault rests with his flock. We can only lament, that when a man's character renders him unfit for the church, the most im- portant and the most difficult of all professions, he should be allowed to undertake to teach others what he cannot practice himself. The race of French abbes, properly so called, is now extinct ; they are, at least, rarce aves, scarce, something like the breed of Irish wolf- dogs; the present careless, negligent, matter- FRENCH PRIESTS. 93 of-fact gentlemen, are no more like the gallant, mincing, well-bred abbes of former times, than ' I to Hercules.' The abbes of the eighteenth century were mirrors of chivalry, pine apples of perfection ; they were devoted to the sex, and no faultless hero of a circulating library novel could be more ready to break a lance in the cause of his lady love, or to maintain the pre- eminence of her beauty against all comers of gentle degree. They were the vice-husbands of the day ; the critics of the opera ; acquainted with all the intrigues of the sock and buskin, — ' And no Parisian audience could endure a Song, scene, or air, when they cried seccatura.' The qualities of the Italian cicisbeo, and the yierits of the Spanish corteio, were combined in the French abbe ; the mysteries of the toilet were Eleusinian mysteries to all but him ; his presence was like a master-key, all doors flew open before him ; he was the first in the morn- ing at the bed-side of his lady par amour; he assisted at her levee, superintended the arrange- ment of her mouches, quoted Virgil, and com- 94 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. pared her to Aurora leaving the saffron bed of Tithonus ; detailed all the small talk and scan- dal of the seat of dissoluteness ; recited some lines from the newest play ; and, in short, was a walking journal of daily information; like Lauras cavalier, he was faithful as well as amo- rous ; was ' wax to receive, and marble to re- tain,' — 1 And was a lover of the good old school, Who still become more constant as they cool.' I believe I have said before that no rule can exist without an exception ; Bossuet, Flechier, Massillon, Bourdaloue, and the amiable Fenelon of Cambray, were men who would have reflected honour on any age ; but they were not true spe- cimens of the real French Abbes ; many of the latter were about as fitly qualified for the church as they were for the command of a frigate. We laugh because glorious Bess once appointed a na- val captain to a bishopric, and by so doing, per- formed a promise which had been rashly made ; fortunately the new bishop was a man of true piety; but do we recollect the numbers who FRENCH PRIESTS. 95 are now in holy orders and also hold commis- sions in the army ? or do we think of the many who, disgusted with the duties of a soldier, have sneaked, a pas de loup, into the churchy with as little difficulty as if they had been chang- ing from the guards into the line ? I was, about eighteen months ago, in a hatter's shop in Bond Street, when a young man elegantly dressed entered, and ordered his bill to be sent to his hotel ; c you know where to send it to ?' said he, on retiring ; c yes, sir/ answered the shopman, f to Captain C ,' and named the hotel ; "' Captain, nonsense,' rejoined the late infant in arms, * I am not in the army now ; address it to the Reverend Mr. C— — — , and let me have it early in the morning.' Now, for any any thing I know to the contrary, this Rev. Mr. C " ■ " may be as excellent a clergyman and as virtuous a man as Queen Elizabeth's sailor proved to be, but there was something pecu- liarly unpleasant in hearing his profession an- nounced in the way I did, and with apparently as little hesitation as if he had been proclaiming 96 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. his promotion to a majority. I am at this mo- ment acquainted with a person preparing for orders, who is the magnus Apollo of more than one free and easy in the Modern Babylon ; he fancies his forte to consist in comic singing, and prides himself on the execution of all the flash songs and ephemeral parodies of the day. In all other respects he is a frank, worthy fellow ; his ear is never closed to the voice of distress, and he has a ' hand open as day to melting charity.' Instances of unworthy members among our English clergy are,, happily, very rare ; it is impossible that so large a body could exist without men being in it who would disgrace any community ; the dissolute, gallant French abbe is extinct ; and the hunting, six-bottle country parson is fast approaching to the end of his career. An anecdote of the Abbe de Vatte- ville has just occurred to me, which will serve to shew my readers of what metal some men are made. The abbe was brother to the Baron de Vatteville, who was once ambassador to our court, Previous to his assuming the cassock, FRENCH PRIESTS. 97 he was colonel of the regiment of Burgundy, in the service of Philip IV. of Spain, and on vari- ous occasions displayed proofs of daring cou- rage. Promotion, however, came but slowly, and, disappointed in his expectations, he re- signed his commission and retired into a con- vent of Carthusians at Besan£on; but the gloomy monotony of a convent suited ill with his restless spirit, and he determined to escape. He, accordingly, appointed a friend to wait for him with a horse, outside the walls of the con- vent garden ; and he was privately supplied by his relations with money, a riding dress, a case of pistols, and a sword. Thus equipped, he stole by night from his cell into the garden, where he was met by the prior, whom he in- stantly stabbed, got over the wall, and gallopped off at full speed. As soon as he found his horse begin to slacken his pace, through fa- tigue and hunger, he alighted at an obscure inn, ordered dinner, and sat down to his repast with the utmost composure. A traveller, who en- tered the house shortly after, politely requested 98 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. that he might be allowed to share with him. Vatteville rudely refused, alleging that there was little enough for himself, and, impatient of contradiction, killed the gentleman on the spot with one pistol, and presenting the other to the landlady and waiter, swore he would blow out their brains if they once dared to interrupt his repast. Having thus escaped with impunity, he encountered various fortunes ; he, at length, landed in Turkey, renounced the Christian faith, and covered his apostate sconce with the ample turban, received a commission in the army, was raised to the rank of bashaw, and appointed governor of part of the Morea. But, longing to revisit his native country, he entered into a secret correspondence with the Vene- tians, who were then at war with the Turks, obtained absolution, and was presented with a valuable church living in Franche Comte, deli- vered the towns and forts under his command into the hands of the enemy, and was actually nominated by Louis XIV. to tire see of Besan- 9011. The pope, however, though he had granted FRENCH PRIESTS* 99 absolution, refused the bull, and Vatteville was, per force, compelled to remain satisfied with the first deanery and two rich abbeys. In the midst of his magnificence he did not forget his old friends the Carthusians ; he often honoured them with a visit, and, at last, tranquilly expired in his bed, at the advanced age of ninety. Had Vatteville been a poor man, and guilty of such enormities, he would have been broken upon the wheel. I think it was Louis XIV. who gave the archbishopric of Lyons to the Abbe de Villeroi, who, though no credit to the cle- rical profession, was not by any means the equal of Vatteville in arch-villainy : Villeroi had for many years been attempting in vain to be ap- pointed one of the canons of Lyons, and when he was nominated by the king to the arch- bishopric of that city, the canons waited upon him with the usual address of congratulation. The abbe received them with great courtesy, but he could not help remarking that the stone which the builders rejected, had become the head of the corner. One of them immediately f2 100 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. replied : ' This is the Lord's doing, it is mar- vellous in our eyes.' I do not know whether the wit of the answer saved the canon from rebuke. All sensible people, among whom I, of course, include myself, have long since been unanimous in agreeing, that the vow which binds the Ro- mish priests to celibacy, is far from binding them to chastity ; I know several highly gifted young Catholic clergymen who deeply deplore the rigorous act which, as it were, excludes them from the enjoyments of civilized society. They alone can repeat with feeling, the words of Moliere's masterpiece, Pour etre devot,je ne suis pas moins homme. ' You see/ said the Duke of Norfolk to his chaplain, on the passing of the Bloody Act, ' we have hindered priests from having wives.' ' And can your grace,' re- plied the monk, ' prevent wives from having priests?' If we may believe all that is told of the Cordelier Maillard, he surpassed perfection itself; he railed against the vanities of the world with as much warmth as Peter the Hermit FRENCH PRIESTS. 101 preached in favour of the Crusades ; he threat- ened years of purgatory for an extra flounce; and such an enormity as a new head-dress en- tailed Satan's special patronage for the inventor. In his sermon for the second Thursday in Lent, he thus apostrophises the counsellors' wives who wore embroidery : c You say that you are clad according to your conditions ; all the devils in hell fly away with your conditions and you too, my ladies ! You will say to me, perhaps, our husbands do not give us this gorgeous ap- parel, we earn it by the labour of our bodies ; thirty thousands devils fly away with the labour of your bodies, my ladies !' This language is some of the most moderate of the pious author, who went near to equal the famous fathers An- dre and Menot in the turpitude of his expres- sions : all preachers of this class no sooner en- tered the pulpit, than they degenerated into, as Voltaire has styled the Italians, mere harlequins in surplices ; in short, the pulpit was trans- formed into a stage for buffoons, and the jack- pudding preachers sullied it with their obsce- 102 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. nities : their hearers revolted at passages which would have disgraced an infidel to utter ; the churches were deserted, except when a Masillon stood up to delight and instruct, and until good taste finally established its empire in the age of Louis XIV. The decline of the abbes' power- ful dominion did not, however, accompany the fall of the Andres and Menots : gallantry, talent, wit, powder, and frivolity, formed part of their birth-right, till the period of the revolution, and there we lose sight of the men who had for so many years identified themselves with the name of Frenchman ; of the old wits who were still the life of society ; and of the younger cham- pions of the church, who were also sworn cham- pions of the fair, who dreamed of any thing but that which appertained to their profession, and who, in spite of the warnings of their spiritual superiors, revelled in bright visions, ' Like those angelic youths of old, Who burn'd for maids of mortal mould, Bewildered left the glorious skies, And lost their heaven for woman's eyes/ THE PRIEST'S FAVOURITE. f Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night, Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear.' ROMEO AND JULIET. 105 THE PRIEST'S FAVOURITE. ' Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night, Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear.' ROMEO AND JULIET. The age of miracles, like the age of chivalry, is passed, and Prince Hohenlohe is the only modern professor of Thaumaturgy in modern Europe ; not that the intercession of his high- ness is employed for the inhabitants of the smallest and most intelligent quarter of the world alone ; the intervening of the wide Atlan- tic does not tend to destroy the effect of pray- ers put up for our American friends ; a rivulet will cross the scent of a blood-hound, but an ocean cannot impede the working of Hohen- lohe's miracles. The sinners of either hemi- sphere, the wicked, who have played such fan- tastic tricks before high heaven, as ' make the f5 106 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. angels weep/ employ this great man to work special wonders in their favour ; there is not a prodigy in the Talmud, nor a well-authentic- ated miracle in the Koran, but Hohenlohe can surpass ; Friar Bacon was nothing to him, and Nostradamus but a shadow: he would have exhausted the patience of Jupiter himself by his continual prayers in behalf of others ; he alone is never weary of the task of saving souls from the clutches of him of the club-foot, and not to be worn out by the unceasing petitions of those who annoy him pour V amour de Dieu* Were the relics now in the possession of all the Catholic churches in the world to be collected, it is said they would not equal the valuables of that nature contained in his own museum ; he has more wood of the true cross than would suffice to build his Majesty's fleet, and as many locks of our Lady's hair as would furnish a re- giment of dragoons with tails, c streaming like meteors to the wind,' or equip with standards all the pachas in the dominions of that very re- spectable man the Grand Turk, the shadow of the priest's favourite. 107 God upon earth, brother to the sun and moon, disposer of all earthly crowns, and who is obey- ed in the classic land where Homer sang, in the fields where Daoud prayed, and Mousa walked; and in the country where Pharaoh ruled, and mummies rot; the land of Cheops and Cephre- nes, which now calls Mohammed Ali Pasha, viceroy; the Roumelian, the once boulouk ba- shi, and son of his father Ibrahim Aga. He, not Ibrahim Aga, but Prince Hohenlohe, is the undoubted possessor of the most valuable relic the Catholic world can boast; he has enclosed in a phial — what will my readers suppose?-— half-a-dozen bristles from the back of St. An- thony's hog? or a toe-nail of St. Nicholas? No ! however valuable even they may be, what are they compared to the treasure in question ? It is the very phial which was shown by the sacristan of a church on the Continent to an inquisitive traveller, who declared he could see nothing in it: the blind infidel! It contains, I say it contains nothing less than some of the darkness which Moses spread over the land of 108 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. Egypt ! It is as genuine as Warren's blacking or Wright's champagne ; it is the real darkness visible, and the only portion of it ever carefully bottled. And now, what are all relics, and an- tiques, and curiosities, to this invaluable trea- sure ? What is the habit of ' Claudius Ptole- meus, who lived in the year 135?' the poluflos bozo, the little phial that held part of those waves which bore Cleopatra's vessel, when she sailed to meet Antony? or the zona, the moros musphonon, the invisible -rendering girdle? What are all these, the undoubted property of Colonel Feignwell, (every one has seen them in his possession,) what are all these, I once more ask, when compared with the Egyptian dark- ness of the Hohenlohe ? Though it may be said of the age of mira- cles, that it ' once was and is not,' (Ilium fuit et nosfuimus Troes, that's new,) it by no means follows, that the belief in miracles themselves be past. During my residence in Paris, I for- tunately became acquainted with a son of the church, who was the merriest man, ' within the the priest's favourite. 109 limits of becoming mirth, I ever spent an hour's talk withal ;' it was impossible to disturb the serenity of his temper, except by refusing to give credence to modern miracles, and by de- nying transubstantiation ; on all other topics he was a worthy disciple of Momus ; but on that rock alone his bark would split, and his good humour be lost in the wreck. By a curious coincidence, his name was the same as my own, and I became acquainted with him by receiving a letter which was misdirected, and intended for him. We at first usually met in that favour- ite resort of invalids, quidnuncs, old ladies, and bonnes (Tenfans 9 the petit provence of the Tui- leries. He appeared to be well known to all the frequenters of that delightful little spot, on excellent terms with those of his own age, and a universal favourite with the children. He had something to say to every one ; a word of condolence or congratulation with the invalid, according as his looks bespoke retrograding or advancing health ; a five-minutes dish of politics with the bourgeois ; a smile of salutation and a 110 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. most outrageous compliment to the ladies — his sisters, as he called them ; and a pocketful of bon-bons for the children. I generally managed to be the first at the rendezvous, and I was in- variably overwhelmed with questions concern- ing the probability of my aged friend making his appearance in his usual place ; it was de- lightful to witness the enthusiasm with which the curly-headed rogues, and fine romping girls, would hail his appearance, as soon as he was seen descending the slope leading from the ter- race called the Fer a Cheval ; a wild burst of joy, and then a simultaneous rush to meet him, proclaimed in unequivocal terms the heartiness of his welcome, and he was led to his own spe- cial bench, (the privilege of possessing which no one thought of disputing with him,) sur- rounded by a joyous noisy crowd, a few of the favourite members of which (and they were al- ways the youngest,) seized on the spolia opima, his hat and cane, and set off at a swift gallop round the garden enclosures. He was always addressed as man pere, by the young candidates THE PRIEST'S FAVOURITE. Ill for his notice ; and he, in return, applied the epithet mes enfans to them in general, and mon Jilsy or mafille, as he happened to speak to any one in particular: I, for a long time, imagined that no favouritism existed in the little com- munity over which he presided, till I began to remark that a beautiful girl, apparently about fourteen, was always first in the chase to meet him; that he always kissed her, even when the ceremony was omitted with regard to the others ; that he preferred to accept her support, when the exulting urchins had robbed him of his stick ; and when he was seated, she would stay by him, and listen to the c thousand and one 8 anecdotes he had to tell ; her dark, soft, luxu- riant ringlets, mingling with the old man's long snowy locks, as her head reclined on his shoul- der ; and her silky lashes half concealing her expressive eyes, as they were directed towards the ground; and her whole appearance be- speaking rivetted attention in ' as fair a thing as e'er was formed of clay.' He was never weary of answering her questions, nor of afford- 112 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES, ing her explanations to her ingenuous inquiries* which often delayed us till the queen of night was high up in the heavens, and when we were deserted by every one but this, his avowed fa- vourite, and her bonne ; even then, the child was always the first to propose separating ; for I actually believe my venerable namesake would have remained there till the guards came round to clear the gardens, sooner than he would wil- 1 ngly depart from the beautiful child on whom his heart seemed to dote with a father's affec- tion. He never lost his flow of spirits but when the time for repeating the bon soir arrived, and then he would linger and walk slowly with her towards the Place Vendome, and their parting would be with as much reluctance, on both sides, as if they were never to meet again. I, who am blessed with as much curiosity as cer- tain persons mentioned by Butler, who ' Paint and patch their imperfections, Of intellectual complexions ; And daub their tempers o'er with washes, As artificial as their faces,' THE PRIEST'S FAVOURITE. 113 felt very much inclined to ask my friend if this child (whose name, by the by, was Eugenie,) were not related to him, but I reflected that he might consider the question an impertinent one, and I judged that I might easily settle the matter of consanguinity by an attentive examin- ation of her features ; but when an opportunity presented itself to enable me to do so, I could not, with satisfaction, trace the slightest resem- blance between Eugenie and the old priest. The former had soft blue eyes, and she used to raise the transparent lids, and look so smil- ingly at the man of God, when he was, in his own inimitable manner, telling a tale that would make the heart-strings burst with noisy mirth, that I have really often regretted that she was not his daughter. The latter, on the contrary, had dark, but not black eyes, sparkling with intelligence, and swimming in the ecstacy of some joyous thought: his features, notwith- standing the general amiability of their expres- sion, were harsh, and in his \ dark moment/ when attacked on some point of his faith, 114 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. would assume a deep hue, denoting something repulsive, and a scowl of strongly marked fe- rocity. Misery, as the proverb says, makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows; he had been unfortunate in his early days, but I am quite confident that adversity had never brought him in connection with the fiercer passions of our nature ; and I am not a second Lavater, to account for the peculiarity of his looks ; nor another Deville, to explain the particular for- mation of his cranium ; I know nothing more of skulls than having occasionally handled a pair in a waterman's capacity: my knowledge of organs is confined to the barrel organ alone; and my acquaintance with the head is limited to a devoted admiration of bright eyes and rosy lips ; not, particularly, such lips as Dionysius Lambinus delighted in, though he spoke with all the authority of experience ; nor do I re- quire, as an indispensable necessity, that they should be like those of JLucretia, mentioned by iEneas Sylvius, ad morsum aptissima. It is sufficient for me, that the bright eyes, of what- THE PRIEST'S FAVOURITE. 115 ever colour they may be, promise sense and good humour: f Let them effuse the azure ray With which Minerta's glances play;' and let the lips ' keep the word of promise to the hope,' and I see not what more a man can require, though the eyes be odd ones, and the mouth as wide as Dublin Bay itself. I am di- gressing again, revenons a nos moutons. The last time I ever saw Eugenie and my namesake together, the evening passed in nearly the same manner as I have described most of them to have done. The same burst of joy from the light-hearted children, the same fixed smiling attention to his mirth-exciting narratives, the same delay, and the same reluctance to sepa- rate : it was a final separation, — they never met again in this world ; in less than twelve hours after our happy meeting in the gardens, I saw her a corpse. I thought her matchless while living; but, good God! how beautiful that girl looked in death ! 'Tis true all colour had left her cheeks, but beauty still lingered there,— 116 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. ' a gilded halo hovering round decay ;' a smile still played on her mild, angelic features, and retained its soft expression during the whole of 6 that first dark day of nothingness.' In a few- short hours more, this child of nature was con- signed to an early grave in the cemetery of Pere la Chaise, and she now sleeps in a spot where the King of Terrors is robbed of all his gloom; where roses, and orange-flowers, and young plantations, draw our ideas for a moment from the mass of corruption that is festering beneath the smiling bowers and stately marble; where the coward lies, unscared, by the side of the hero, and the soldier, at peace, close to the civilian; where friend and foe repose in cjread silence, T>oth alike shrouded on the cold couch of clammy earth. A small marble urn on a pedestal, and a square black tablet, on which is inscribed the word Eugenie, in gold letters, points out the spot, which is only a few yards from the beautiful gothic tomb of Abe- lard and Heloise. Eugenie's surviving friend supported the bereavement with much greater THE PRIEST'S FAVOURITE. 117 firmness than I could have well expected : he certainly seemed, for the first two or three days, to suffer exceedingly with anguish, but he soon gradually recovered the usual spring and elasticity of his mind, and, with the excep- tion that he would never again frequent his old haunt at the petit provence, he appeared to have ' taken leave of sorrow;' I found the ordi- nary ' quip and crank/ he indulged in hearty mirth, and inspired others with it, and I am not sure but he would soon again have visited the Tuileries, but for the fatal occurrence I am about to relate :— He had invited me to take breakfast with him, for the purpose of introducing me to a gentleman of well-known talent, and high reputation in the French lite- rary world; I was punctual to the time ap- pointed ; I found the gates of the court-yard open, and passed the porter's lodge unnoticed : my summons at the door of his apartment, au second, was answered by the single domestic his limited means allowed him to keep, and I was proceeding towards his little neat study, 118 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. when the servant slightly pressed his hand on my shoulder, and pointed to a sofa, on which was spread a sheet, which, from the form in which it lay, evidently covered a human body. I reeled back with the natural awe of death, and I instinctively guessed at the dreadful truth, — my excellent old friend had that morn- ing dropped dead from his chair. My readers would find no interest in perusing a detail of his funeral ; he was interred at Pere la Chaise, near the child of his affections ; and before the grave closed on him for ever, I threw a wreath of immortels on his coffin, and, with tears in my eyes, took leave of him who will at least be immortal in my memory. I subsequently learned that Eugenie was his grandchild, and that her father fell at Ligny. I can now easily account for every occurrence that before per- plexed me : their affection for each other was unbounded ; and after he was robbed of her, the worm that gnawed at his heart, and ulti- mately destroyed him, was concealed by the smile that beamed with sickly lustre on the THE PRIEST'S FAVOURITE. 119 world. They both sleep almost in on& grave, and only live in men's memories. 'Twere to consider too curiously to carry our inquiries farther ; their insensible dust once willed and moved, to what purpose it may be applied in the conducting of this glorious world it is not ours to say ; we will not exercise our imagina- tion to trace the noble dust of Alexander : — 1 Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams.' CARNIVAL ADVENTURE. ' Thrust not your head into the public street, To gaze on Christian fools with varnished faces ; But stop my house's ears, I mean my casements; Let not the sound of shallow foppery enter My sober house/ Merchant of venice. 123 A CARNIVAL ADVENTURE. c Thrust not your head into the public street, To gaze on Christian fools with varnished faces ; But stop my house's ears, I mean my casements ; Let not the sound t>f shallow foppery enter My sober house/ merchant of Venice. What Io Paeans are sung when the gloom and weary melancholy of a severe winter are dis- pelled, by the Genius of Carnival shaking off sleep, and showing his jolly face to his anxi- ously expecting worshippers ! His altars, raised in the theatres, ball-rooms, and guinguettes, are surrounded by motley crowds pressing for- ward with laudable zeal to enjoy the jubilee, and partake in the gaieties of the comely god. The carnival, though looked forward to with anticipations of delight, is, however, no longer the scene of masquerades and follies, pomp and splendour, which it once was ; we can now with g2 124 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. difficulty trace any remains of the Roman satur- nalia, in which the Franks once delighted, bor- rowing the custom from their conquerors, and covering their chains with roses. The church was the first to put an extinguisher upon their mirth, till it found that if the people were not allowed to amuse themselves according to their own fashion, their thoughts would be directed towards causes which might ultimately produce effects, in direct variance with the well being of her of Babylon; the old lady was conse- quently but too happy to rekindle the flame she had so unceremoniously puffed out, and the torch of the god of Folly once more blazed bright and clear, till the troubles and agitations of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries again dashed it to the ground, whence it was a second time raised and re-illumined by the Italians who accompanied Catherine de Medicis to France, at the period of her marriage to Henri II. The worship of the merry god now, continued uninterrupted for a considerable num- ber of years, but a third prohibition, in 1790, A CARNIVAL ADVENTURE. 125 again threw down his altars, and spread dismay among the observers of his rites ; and it was not till Bonaparte was made first consul that they were finally restored, to the unutterable joy of the Parisians, who celebrated the happy event with every demonstration of excessive delight ; and universal France did then get drunk For joy that Mirth her sovereign was restored/ During a few years nothing could exceed the beauty, variety, and richness of the costumes displayed upon the annual return of the carni- val; no one who went in character thought of expense, the savings of the year were squan- dered in an hour; the Boulevards were crowded with carriages containing a laughable assem- blage of faces ; equestrians and pedestrians vied with each other in seeking for and affording amusement ; wit, puns, and repartees were the order of the day. Jews, sailors, quack doctors, Saracens, and wild Indians, might be seen to- gether, crammed into one vehicle ; followed, perhaps, by a troop of knights from the east contrie, equipped in all the glory of hauberks 126 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. and tasses, casques, gorgets, brassets, cuishes and gauntlets, mounted on magnificent charg- ers, and endeavouring c to witch the world with noble horsemanship.' Among the pedestrians, we might have beheld Don Quixote on amica- ble terms with an harlequin, and his lady-love hanging on the arm of a French tooth-drawer; a Turk in kindly conference with a Paynim ; and Othello, faithless to his Desdemona, whis- pering intelligent nothings and soft nonsense into the willing ears of some pretty oyster-girl. In short, it would be impossible to enumerate the various characters which thronged the public walks, attired in every known costume save the ecclesiastical. The police then, as now, rigor- ously prohibited any guise tending to ridicule or throw contempt on the clergy ; fine and im- prisonment w r ere the penalties for, as it was termed, outraging public decorum; and you had better - t walk about begirt with briars, Instead of coat and small-clothes, than put on A single stitch reflecting upon friars, Although you swore it only was in fun/ A CARNIVAL ADVENTURE, 127 The carnival of the present day is very different from that of a quarter of a century ago ; the splendour and beauty of the costumes have given way to the dirty, tawdry, fantastic rags of the mountebank: the wit, pun, and repartee, have yielded to the lowest vulgarity to which language can be applied ; occasionally two car- riages full of characters will meet, but in place of the merry jests and cutting jeux de mots of the olden time, they assail each other with tor- rents of low abuse, got by heart for the occa- sion, and make use of the broadest and most unequivocal terms in uttering obscenities that would c start the isle from her propriety •' At any other period of the year the public uttering of such language would subject him who was guilty of it to a long imprisonment ; but during the carnival, a license seems given for speaking and listening to every thing abominable and disgusting : the silence to which they are forced during fifty weeks of the year is amply made amends for in the purposes to which they apply their tongues during the remaining fortnight. 128 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. The people, too, seem no longer inclined to amuse themselves as they did formerly; few now assume ' a guise foreign to their nature/ except shopmen, clerks, and Ldisians, and those who are employed by the police to amuse the people at a stipulated price. This latter corps of mercenaries are expected to leap and dance, and make grimaces, and utter their filthy ribaldry, for the paltry remuneration of thirty sous! Conceive a poor half-starved wretch undertaking to make all Paris laugh for one shilling and three pence ! I remember seeing a poor devil, dressed in the dirty white finery of a Pierrot, or Scaramouch, standing warming his hands at the little charcoal fire of a dealer in roasted chesnuts, at the corner of the Rue de Richelieu. The day was very cold and damp, and the poor fellow cast many a wistful look at the provender, while he was enjoying the luxury of warm fingers, and unmindful of the approach of an agent of police, under whose superintendence this department of the public economy was placed ; the latter no sooner saw A CARNIVAL ADVENTURE, 129 in what manner Pierrot was gaining the public wealth, and easing the government treasury of fifteen pence, than he made a smart application of his cane to the back of the luckless buffoon, asked him if he thought it was by idleness he could form any claim on the coffers of the people, and terminated his objurgations, by bawling in his hears, Amuse toi, grand coquinf There was a lurking humour in the eye of the Merry Andrew, that became manifest on being told to amuse himself while writhing under the agony of pain ; he turned round, muttering, Biribi / on senfiche ! and at length darted off, singing, to the great amusement of the crowd :- — ' N'saut' point-z a demi, Paillass' mon ami : Saute pour tout le monde V The remains of the ancient carnival cannot now be found in the annual parade on the Boule- vards ; the masked balls of the opera, and some other theatres, alone present a picture of what it once was ; these balls were first introduced under the regency of the Duke of Orleans ; and g5 130 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. the projector, the Chevalier de Bouillon, re- ceived a pension of 6000 livres (£240) for his ingenuity. It was no less a person than a friar, a Father Sebastian, who invented the means of elevating the floor of the pit to a level with the stage, and lowering it at pleasure ; and it is said that Marie Antoinette herself often honoured (incog.) the balles masques et pares with her presence. I have heard an anecdote of a cele- brated French bishop, who, to the inexpressible amazement of the whole company, entered the ball-room, attired in full sacerdotal costume. It was bad enough in the eyes of every one that such a person should be seen in such a place ; judge then of their astonishment when they saw him advance, with all the empressement of a younger man, to solicit a masked frail one to be his partner in the dance : the reverend father threaded the mazes of the quadrille with infinite eclat, proved himself an adept in the mysteries of FEte, its chaines Anglaises, and tours de mains ; and did himself incalculable honour by his finished performance of a modern youth's A CARNIVAL ADVENTURE. 13! horror, the awful cavalier seuL The dance was finished, his humour enjoyed, and many a joke began to be played off at his expense, when he mounted a chair, and by his serious demeanour and elevated voice, repressed all in- cipient jests: • My good children,' said he, ' I am right glad to see you thus enjoy yourselves, and, by my presence here, you may perceive I think not ill of your amusement ; but, for my own part, I come with another motive than mere pleasure ; I come in behalf of the nu- merous families who are deprived of the neces- saries of life, through the unusual rigour of the season ; you, who are possessed of the luxuries of life, will, I am sure, lend a willing ear to the appeal of your distressed fellow creatures ; your own hearts will tell you what to give ; on my side I feel confident that there is not one in this room who would not contribute twice as much in the cause of charity as he would in common- place amusement ; you gave six francs as the price of admission, you will glory in giving twelve to enable your distressed fellow townsmen to buy 132 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. bread.' The quaint humour of the benevolent clergyman gained the good-will of his hearers ; a liberal subscription was the result of his efforts, and he departed in his carriage, with loud hurrahs, to p'ay off the same happy stra- tagem at some other theatre. Among the customs peculiar to the carnival, is that of acquaintances making and receiving visits, in disguise ; a custom which gives rise to the most ludicrous qui pro quos, and laughable adventures. During the festive season of the year 1824, I w r as invited to make one of a party of Franciscan friars; we were all foreigners, and, at that time, not aware of the ordonnance de police, which prohibited the assumption of religious attire, and we consequently did not surprise a few who thus beheld us in the garb of St. Francis, flying in the face of the mandate of the worshipful master prefect. We made a few visits, and greatly enjoyed the perplexed and fruitless endeavours of our friends to disco- ver our persons. We were proceeding through the Rue de Rivoli, and just turning the corner A CARNIVAL ADVENTURE. 133 of the Rue de Castiglione, when we overheard two English gentlemen speaking of a party given that night in the Faubourg St. Honore, of the house in which, we no sooner got the number, than two of us immediately proceeded thither, and, in less than ten minutes, found ourselves in a comfortable saloon, and in the society of a number of our countrymen, to every one of whom we were perfect strangers. A very merry half hour ensued, and we took our leave with assurances from the whole party that we were recognised in spite of the cowl and mask. The success of our first enterprise ex- cited us to deeds of greater daring. We re- membered we had seen lights and other symp- toms of a fete in a house we had passed in our way, and we forthwith resolved to effect an en- trance, be the consequence what it might ; we boldly advanced to the portal, and the one loud thundering rap was answered by the speedy appearance of a passing pretty female janitor. 6 What is your will, sirs V inquired the fair guard of the outposts. The question embarrassed us 134 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. extremely, as we were totally ignorant of the names of every one within ; it was necessary, however, to say something, and I accordingly answered, ' we are going up stairs, Pauline/ The last name was uttered quite at a venture, and my malignant star willed it to be the right one; Pauline clapped her hands, exclaiming joyfully, ' I wager any thing it is Monsieur Henri !' ' The same,' said I, as we passed her, and hurried up the broad staircase : — ' Oh,jeu- nesse! youth, youth!' apostrophised the pearl of portieres, retiring to her lodge, with all the majesty of a theatrical Semiramis. Unan- nounced, we entered a spacious saloon, superbly illuminated by a softly diffused light of a rich chandelier; we found a numerous company, among whom were a few, perhaps half-a-dozen, of the eternal English, — those biped ferrets, who work their way into every hole and corner of the Continent. Our reception, however, was not such a cordial one as that we expe- rienced in the Faubourg St. Honore ; I thought we were looked upon with suspicion and dis- A CARNIVAL ADVENTURE. 135 trust, and the situation to both began to be ex- ceedingly undesirable : it was then with great surprise I saw the master of the house rise and shake me by the hand, heartily laughing all the while; ' My dear good fellow/ said he, \ the next time you enter disguised among friends, take your ring off; it has betrayed you ; I should not have observed it but for the name engraved on it, (Amitie ;) but I will keep your secret, and you may set the wits of all the others at defiance.' I was now ten times more embar- rassed than before, and my poor friend was not a wit less alarmed than myself; the old gentle- man evidently mistook me for another, and if that awful other should arrive, we were in an uncomfortable degree of doubt touching the consequences. I was half inclined to unmask, confess the imprudence of our unwarranted intrusion, and ask pardon for the whole as a mevefolie tie carnaval: — I had risen to do so, but the company misinterpreted the motion as one announcing our departure, and they unani- mously declared that, since we were known to 136 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. Monsieur ■ — , our absence could not be allowed, and that we must remain and enjoy the amusements of the evening. I, hitherto, had not spoken a single word, not daring to do so, lest some tripping accent should reveal that I was one of the nation of shopkeepers ; I, how- ever, remained steady to my determination of confessing the frolic, and accordingly began :-— ( Gentlemen,' said I. ' Not a word, not a word, we will take no refusal !' was the interruption. — ' But, gentlemen!' ejaculated my brother in sanctity, from the very top of his lungs. — ' Holy fathers,' said a lady, ' listen to the intreaties of this crowd of sinners.' — ( Impossible,' replied I, retreating backwards towards the door, which I saw my friend holding half open,, and we were silently congratulating ourselves on our ap- proaching escape, when the door was violently pushed back, and (mirabile dictu,) there entered the very identical person for whom I had been taken ; — at least, I immediately found he was such, from the old gentleman's violent anger on beholding him; — the first words his rage al- A CARNIVAL ADVENTURE, 137 lowed him to utter, were to order a servant to go for the guard : we saw that further conceal- ment would be useless ; we tore off our masks, ungirded the cord of St. Francis from our loins, divested ourselves of the cowl, and stepped out of the ample gown. We attempted an apology ; of course none was listened to, and I regret to say that our countrymen were more severe in their remarks than the persons who had every right to feel offended and insulted. The guard arrived, and we were marched off in the custody of three soldiers, accompanied by Monsieur — ., and the gentleman whose person I had involuntarily assumed. As we passed through the streets, I observed them in close conversa- tion, and the latter apparently endeavouring to make his elder companion attach no more im- portance to the affair than such a business de- served : I was more sensible of that gentleman's kindness on arriving at the commissaires ; he there represented the matter as originating in a mistake, alleging that we were known to both, and that they consequently did not wish to un- 138 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. dertake any farther proceedings. We were accordingly liberated, but not without a severe reprimand for having donned the ecclesiastical habit,— for which act we were liable to fine and imprisonment. — Our ignorance of the law, as foreigners, alone permitted our second escape ; we took leave of the amiable commissary and our forgiving prosecutors, assuring them we would never again be guilty of crimes of such delinquency, and we retired homeward, with retrospections scarcely of a pleasant nature, concerning the issue of our carnival adventure. THE SOMNAMBULIST. i How ill this taper burns ! — Ha ! who comes here ? I think it is the weakness of mine eyes, That shapes this glorious apparition. It comes upon me!' julius c^esar. 141 THE SOMNAMBULIST. 6 How ill this taper burns ! — Ha ! who comes here 1 I think it is the weakness of mine eyes, That shapes this glorious apparition. It comes upon me V julius c-aESAR. During the early part of the spring of 1824/1 was invited to make one of a quadrille party, at the residence of some English friends, in the vicinity of St. Cloud. In the country of qua- drilles and biensdance, I felt no little hesitation in submitting myself to the ordeal of French eyes and French remarks, by exhibiting to their astonished view the awkward manoeuvres of an adept in the reel and country dance. But I was persuaded ' to screw my courage to the sticking-place,' make light of black eyes, take no note of observation, and at once boldly dare the various difficulties of the most delightful 142 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. dance that ever inspired the heels of a tripping nation. A merry party had assembled to join in the festivities appointed to celebrate the natal day of a fair daughter of that island, whose sons are proverbially brave, and daugh- ters as beautiful as Vulcan's bride. The con- trast between the children of the lily and those of the rose, was sufficiently striking, at first sight, to show that the former had the majority in numbers ; and with respect to costume, alas ! 4 'tis true, 'tis pity, and pity 'tis, 'tis true,' they stood pre-eminent and unrivalled ; — the young English girls encased and disfigured their matchless forms, by wearing things called frocks, as scanty and as graceless as umbrella-covers ; while their foreign sisters set off (as it is called) a villainous shape, and concealed its defects, by the aid of the all-powerful priestesses of the ' Goddess of Fashion, who looks with benignant glance and favouring aspect on the faults and frivolities of her darling children of la belle France.— We have French modes and French milliners, without doubt, in unsparing abun- THE SOMNAMBULIST. 143 dance, but what have they effected? — a partial triumph, I never saw but one English girl who, without foreign aid, knew how to dress well, and who had beauty that needed not even that aid to increase its splendour. The evening of the fete was one of the most lovely that the tutelar guardians of fine weather could have favoured us with ; the balmy breath of the sweet south came sportively wooing the zephyrs, to revel in the golden beams of the youthful god sinking in a blaze of light, and deputing the sovereignty of the night to his fair-haired sister, Luna, the chere amie (though it.be not classical) of the beautiful Endymion; to her who is styled, par excellence, ' integra,' the virgin ; and who, in spite of the appellation, was the mother of fifty daughters, each excel- ling her parent in brightness and grace. ' They who call her chaste, began too soon their nomenclature,' is somewhere remarked by Byron, and an older or a truer remark never fell from the pen of ' Triton or of Minnow,' if my readers will only extend their amiability so 144 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. far as to fancy such worshipful gentry seized with the rage of wielding a goose-quill, or urged on (love, I believe, is the general instigator,) to be guilty of poetry. We have heard of an ele- phant being in love, and why not a triton? An oyster has been know to pine away with green and yellow melancholy, and why may not a minnow plead guilty to the soft impeachment ? But, to return to the buskined goddess, the in- violable virgin, the royal Bess of the starry ex- panse, who has been dignified with a title to which she can advance no claim; let us consi- , der what shadow of right she possesses to even mere common-place respectability; her first fault, like all the faults of so equivocal a per- sonage, is jealousy; for which we have the au- thority of the swan of Avon, who tells us her w T atery beams stayed young Cupid's shafts, aimed at ' the fair vestal enthroned by the west/ and allowed her to pass on ' in maiden meditation, fancy free.' I have no doubt but there are some good souls who fancy such an act was the effect of modesty ; pshaw ! the veri- THE SOMNAMBULIST. 145 est drab can look modest, as the devil can quote scripture, to suit her own purposes : and a top- ping procuress will raise her godly eyes, and turn up her fastidious nose, and talk of the shameless iniquity of the world, and rail at all tickers, and toss off ' blue ruin,' alias ? tape,' at the rate of five half-pints in four half-hours ; and thus the moon, or Cynthia, or, name her by whatever c otherwise' you will, is all hypo- crisy and rottenness and bad faith; the c invio- lable' looks on with all the amiable placidity and quiet intelligence of a ( motherly' counte- nance, at any wickedness you choose to commit within the range of her saintly eyes ; with lewd glances will lure some travelling Endymion in pursuit of her, and, after alternately teasing and tickling him, as fishermen do trout, will rush laughing into the arms of a bully-looking cloud, leaving the luckless youth in despair and dismay on some bleak wild, where, should he fall asleep, his life, from the ravens, is not worth twenty-four hours' purchase ; and should he proceed, he may, to a dead certainty, calcu- li 146 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. late on falling into the insatiable maw of a fetid bog, and be dug up, whole and entire, at the termination of a third millenium, as a splendid specimen of the antidyspeptic effects of peat- moss. i At lovers' perjuries they say Jove laughs,' and in good faith, if the assertion be a true one, the jolly king of the immortals, the father of the gods, and author of men, must be the merriest member in the grand divan which bends in acknowledgment to the voice of the thunderer ; but pallida luna, the pale-faced queen of night, preserves the same unvaried, inflexible cast of features, on all occasions, and at all times, whether Cytherean Venus be lead- ing her merry choirs by moonlight, and the Nymphs and decent Graces, as the poet of Ve- nusium styles them, be tripping on the sward in measured paces, or when maidens, ' in whose eyes there lies more peril than in twenty swords,' tell their false swains to return \ ere the levia- than can swim a league,' and the latter lay per- jury unto their souls, and swear to ' put a girdle THE SOMNAMBULIST. 147 round about the earth in forty minutes ;' if the silver queen smiled, like the Dictasan offspring of Ops and the scythe-armed Saturn, as often as it is satisfactorily proved that c oaths are but straw to the fire of the blood, what a comely visage should we see nightly in the heavens ! but, alas, custom hath so far overcome the pris- tine modesty of the virgin, that she hath forgot- ten the first timid kiss from Endymion, and can now gaze unruffled on the dulciafurta, the sweet thefts of all the followers of the example set by the brother of Bellona, and that mother of frailty, the foam-born daughter of the ocean. I will trouble my readers but with one more wit- ness against the lady in question ; it is the war- bler of his native wood-notes wild, who makes Juliet say, 1 O, swear not by the moon, th' inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable ;' — in answer to the prince of adorers, who pro- poses to swear ' By yonder blessed moon, That tips with silver all the fruit-tree- tops/ H2 148 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES, And now I have done with the lady sovereign of the night, who would fain persuade us of her modesty ; if there exist any who would as fain believe in it, I leave them to all the enjoyments they can derive from their faith ; there are, I fancy, but few who would, with any extraordi- nary degree of alacrity, break a lance in her behalf; she is no longer shielded, as she was wont to be, by the fallacious display of what mortals mistook for chastity ; her name is now synonimous with that of ' go-between/ and that the unblushing beauty is not a jot better than she should be, is a fact as incontrovertible, as that a lady always takes off her left stocking last ; and that, I hope, no one will have the temerity to deny. I find I have wasted a little time, and no in- considerable space, in tiring that imaginary per- sonage, s the gentle reader/ with matters totally extraneous to the subject upon which I pro- posed to enlarge ; and I will now at once inform him, that if he has any business to transact, or any thing else to read, he had better put aside THE SOMNAMBULIST. 149 this article, as I have nothing to relate but a mere incident, which might have occurred to himself as well as to me, and which cannot af- ford any, or but very little, amusement. On the night of the quadrille party I have already mentioned, we had been dancing long and merrily, smiting the ground with alternate feet to the measure of Collinet's far-famed band. The sun had sunk deep below the horizon, and had left behind him ' the bright trace of his fiery car;' this, too, gradually dissolved and disappeared, and we continued tripping through the gloaming of the dubious twilight, till the soft silvery splendour of the moon spread over the surrounding scenery^ and lit up the happy faces of the merry dancers ; we had no thought of discontinuing, even then, but quadrille suc- ceeded quadrille, the laugh and joke bounded with active speed from one to another, and we dreamt of nothing but the present moment and the joy that accompanied it. Jupiter Pluvius, however, looked not on our pleasure with will- ing eyes. His godship seized a cloud, burst it 150 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. in his tenacious grasp, as boys crush butter- flies, and sent the whole contents, charged with all their electric matter, directly over the heads of the devoted dancers, who were at that very moment as noisy and as joyous as the priests of Cybele. The day had been sultry for the sea- son, but fine, and not the least threatening of rain, so that the storm came upon us in all the wild crash of its fury, quite unexpected; it seemed as if the wind, rain, lightning, and thunder, had started from different goals, and met with clashing confusion in their mid-career: the rain descended like one continued outpour- ing of the waters, and would then cease for a minute or two, while the forked lightning shot rapidly from the heavy mass of up-piled clouds, as the forerunner of the hoarse thunder, that roared, peal upon peal, through the heavy over- charged atmosphere. As for the wind, iEolus and all his children must have split their cheeks, — it was what Porson would have called a mathematical wind, extracting the roots of the trees. THE SOMNAMBULIST. 151 The fury of the storm was so great, that no one thought of returning to Paris that night : we hastily retired into the house, without con- fusion, however, and without alarm; thank Heaven ! there was no fainting, no hysterics, no shrieks, no tears, no sobs : s We were all sen- sible girls,' said a soft blue-eyed enchantress, to her half laughing, half angry companions ; c we were defeated, but we left the field of battle without disgrace ; a retreat demands more ge- neralship than a victory.' We all agreed una- nimously to this assertion, we spent a gay half hour, and then proceeded to take such accom- modation as the house afforded. — A room, in which there were two sofas, was allotted to me and a friend : my companion was speedily bu- ried in profound sleep ; but I had found a trea- sure on the table, (Quentin Durward) and re- solved to sit up and enjoy it. I had been oc- cupied, perhaps, an hour and ajialf, in its pe- rusal, and was intently poring over one of the last chapters of the first volume, when I thought I heard a slight noise in the room, and almost 152 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. at the same instant, perceived something white glide slowly between the candle and the fire- place ; I looked up, and with no little surprise, and, for the moment, with some trepidation, perceived a vision, as fair as the light of day, as transcendently beautiful as the eldest of the graces. One of the devotees of Terpsichore had arisen in her sleep, and, unconsciously, had made her way to our apartment: her long, glossy, but uncurled hair, nearly reached the ground, and hung about her, in the manner we see represented in an early engraving of Mu- sidora; her eyes had not the fixed, glassy, death-like expression observable in some sleep- walkers ; they, on the contrary, beamed with all the lustre of waking beauty ; her little white feet slightly pressed the rich carpet as she pass- ed round the room ; she held in her hand a small portrait attached to a dark blue ribband, and her only dress was the favourite dishabille of the Arabian women when they are behind the curtains of the tent. As I saw her advanc- THE SOMNAMBULIST. 153 ing towards the window, and being fearful that she would open it, I stepped forward, putting myself right before her ; she stood still, and for a moment hung down her head, as if in anxious thought. I took her gently in my arms, and, with all possible care, placed her on the sofa, threw a cloak over her, and in a short time, with great pleasure, saw her fall into a com- posed slumber. I endeavoured to open the hand which contained the portrait, but found I could not succeed without the risk of awaking her; I then cut the blue ribband, drew it out of the ring, and ran through, in its place, a hair chain, with small gold clasps. She breathed heavily, and, I at times thought, mournfully— that, I hope, was but fancy, for I had observed her, during the evening, as light-hearted and as smiling as a fairy ; but the brow does not al- ways tell of what corrodes the heart; and I re- flected that the beautiful sleeper might have cares and anxieties which would have broken a stronger frame, but to which her's, as slender and as apparently fragile as a reed, bent, and h5 154 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. escaped destruction. I had not much time to spend in reflection; her sleep again became disturbed, she arose, walked slowly out of the room, but, on reaching the door, turned round and bowed, (while a faint smile played, like a halo, round her lips,) as if in acknowledgment of my attention ; I followed her along the cor- ridor, and gently slipped my cloak from off her ivory-polished shoulders, with heartfelt glad- ness saw her enter her room, and shortly after heard her conversing with the partner of her bed. All this had passed without my worthy and sleepy friend being the least conscious of what was going on ; I was obliged to return to Paris early in the morning, and have never heard a word mentioned of the exchange, nor have ever since been blessed with a sight of the beautiful somnambulist. THE IRISH ARTILLERYMAN. ' My fate cries out, And makes each petty artery in this body As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.' HAMLET. 157 THE IRISH ARTILLERYMAN. +•*+■+*-■*•*■■*■■*■■*-*• 6 My fate cries out, And makes each petty artery in this body As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.' HAMLET. About four miles from the spot where the odious Bastile once reared its dreaded towers to the skies, frowns the magnificent fortress of Vin- cennes, at the skirts of the wood of that name ; the chateau and keep offer the usual testimonials of the power of Time over the strongest efforts of man, — weak in his strength w T hen opposed to such an adversary. The crumbling stone, the spongy moss, the overhanging ivy, and the general grey hue spread over the massy and majestic edifice, combined with its situation, flanked on one side by the little town and dark wood, and presenting the three other sides to a broad open plain, remind us of that by-gone 158 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. age when warders shook their portly sides at the stale jests of some wandering buffoon^ and spear heads gleamed in the sun's rays, as they glided, ghost-like, just peering above the ram- parts ; faint visions of knights and tournaments, of ladies and love bowers, of the cross and the crescent ; of men at arms, and neighing steeds ; of wassail and carousing, and midnight revelry, float before us when we look on those mementos of the days of chivalry : we can fancy the gor- geous panoply of ancient warfare; the loud minstrelsy, the shrill clarions, and the serious jesting of a passage of arms; and the hoarse laugh and broad jokes of the inferior, but not less happy inhabitants of a castle, with its tur- rets and ramparts, moats, dungeons, and watch- towers. The knight and his lady-love no longer grace the boast of Vincennes ; the steel-clad esquires have made way for the busy blue- coated sergeants; and the Milan defences of the stalwart chief yielded to the lace and frip- pery of the gentil officer of hussars ; the schakos of the lancer has superseded the ponderous hel- THE IRISH ARTILLERYMAN. 159 met of the bowman, as the bayonet has super- seded the short sword, and as the bow itself has fallen into disuse since true valour found its grave in the invention of gunpowder ; the grenadier does duty where the pikeman paced his soli- tary guard, and the artilleur works his field- piece where the bowman once drove his bolt. The chateau of Vincennes was erected by that munificent patron of the arts, Francis the First, the hero of Pavia, to whom France is indebted for the palace of Fontainebleau, and who, in the sixteenth century, commenced the Louvre; this chivalrous monarch might have been almost justified in saying of Paris what Augustus did of Rome, ( I found it of brick, and I leave it of marble/ Within this edifice Charles Quint breathed out his soul ; here the noble conqueror of Agincourt, in the summer of his days, and while framing new wars, and enjoying new triumphs, by anticipation, was opposed in his glorious and dazzling career by the grim destroyer; and here, too, the wily Mazarine passed from time into eternity. 160 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. Within the strong boundary of these walls, the two Condes, at different periods, were deprived of man's birth-right — liberty, and Mirabeau sighed away the solitary hours in imprisonment ; and last, but not least, in this dreary catalogue, here the amiable D'Enghien fell murdered un- der the muskets of a picquet of Savary's gen- darmes. I know of few places where I have brimmed the bowl with more pleasure, than I have done again and again at Vincennes ; in the deep re- tirement of whose wood, some half-dozen mad- caps were wont to form another Sans Souci, and, in punche a la Romaine, drink with loud acclaim to ' Bright lips, too bright to wither, Warm hearts, too warm to die/ How often have we banqueted in those sylvan shades, making the forest resound to the unre- strained mirth of our saturnalia, wooed by the blushing cup, and still deeper blushing lip, and heedless of the merry hours that danced by un- perceived, till the watching stars grew pale. THE IRISH ARTILLERYMAN. 161 The remembrance of such happiness gone by, is, alas ! not un tinctured by grief, when I reflect how many of that small band are no longer among the children of life, and that the wild rush of the storm, and the soft glow of the zephyr, sweep alike unheeded over their lifeless brows. It was once } returning from one of these jubi- lees of joy, that I met with the Irish artillery- man, who is the hero of my tale, or rather of his own ; I was walking at a quick pace through the Faubourg St. Antoine towards Paris ; sleep had shaken her leaden pinions over the inha- bitants, and the streets were as noiseless as a city of the plague ; I could hear nothing but the sound of my own footsteps, and the deep sonorous voice of a person some fifty yards in advance ; this voice, however, was employed in singing an air which had probably never before been heard in the Quartier du Faubourg— it was a beautiful revolutionary tune, well known to Irish ears, and the first words I caught were ' We'll gloriously die, singing croppies riae up !' 162 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. The performer was a tall, powerfully-built man, of apparently six or seven-and-twenty, and, in the magnificent costume of a French artilleur, appeared to great advantage : he stood above six feet in height, wore thick curling hair and beard, and there was a reckless cast of wild desperation in his handsome features, height- ened by large sparkling black eyes,' that had, in his own words, a dash of the devil in it. We mutually accosted each other in English : I at first thought he had been revelling rather be- yond the limits of becoming mirth in the sun- shine of the soul, but I was mistaken. We walked together along the Boulevards, and during the course of our promenade, I elicited from him that he was a native of Kilkenny — a place where there is fire without smoke, air without fog, water without mud, women with- out beauty, and the town paved with marble. 6 And you have bidden a lasting farewell to the green island?' said I, * and, forgetful of the ties which bind you to England, have entered the service of her natural enemies V ' As for Eng- THE IRISH ARTILLERYMAN. 163 land/ answered the soldier, c I acknowledge no affection for her; the green isle I had better forget ; France is no enemy to me ; she received me when my own country could not afford me shelter ; she opened her arms to me, when my own headstrong passions drove me from the land I love— from the land which contains all I ever did, all I ever can love. Give me your attention but for a few minutes, and then judge if I can return to it with any reasonable hope of regaining the happiness I have lost. But five years since, I was the happiest mortal that the sun ever rose upon to light to his daily la- bour ; I do not ask you to consider what I am — -a common soldier, looked upon with jealousy by my comrades, on account of my nation : a wild, careless being, who, having suffered all that bad Fortune can inflict, now spits at her, and defies her malice. I was, as I have said, a happy man; happy in my affairs, happy in my friends, and most happy in the love of the pret- tiest pair of eyes that ever smiled yes to a plain question. I was possessed of a small, but flou- 164 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. rishing farm, that repaid me well for all the trouble and anxiety it had occasionally cost me; it wanted but one thing to make it com- plete — a wife. I had long been what is called courting Norah Sullivan, the prettiest girl in the barony ; she had sworn hundreds of times to be none but mine, and I, like a poor fool, believed her/ He here uttered curses, not loud, but deep, upon the whole race of women, from Eve downwards ; and it was here I first discovered he was a classical scholar, by his quoting two or three beautiful Latin lines upon female affection, and which, coming from such a man, (viewing him as a mere private soldier,) jarred strangely with the feelings ; he noticed my astonishment, and smiled. ' Well, sir, matters went on as I could have wished, for some time; we were looked upon by the neighbours almost as married people ; we were complimented and rallied, and we returned thanks and laughed in return. I am unable to enter into any minor details ; I will only leave you to judge of my astonishment, my total stupefaction, on hearing \ \ THE IRISH ARTILLERYMAN. 165 from her own lips, a few evenings previous to our expected union, that she could never be mine. I had been conducting her home from an old aunt's, and, at her father's gate, was about to kiss her, as was usual, before we parted for the night, when she drew back ra- ther proudly. " Norry, ma vourneen," said I, " what means this? you look angry." u l am not angry, then, dear Mich," — she could still say dear, sir, — " I am not angry, but— but if we part here, we part for ever; I have promised to be Carrol's wife, and my father approves of it." I could not answer her; she looked at me for an instant, and retired hastily into her fa- ther's house ; I believe my looks affrighted her, for I know that at that moment they bore an expression, which too plainly indicated the tu- mult of thoughts, and wild contest of passions that raged within me. I had heard some flying- report before that Carrol was playing treachery, but I gave it no credence, as he was my old and sworn friend. Here, however, was con- firmation strong, and I walked slowly from the 166 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. door, swearing dreadful oaths of the deadly re- venge I would wreak upon Carrol wherever I might meet him. There was a slight ascent which lay in my way, at the foot of which, on the other side, was a small fish-pond; I had gained the summit, scarcely conscious of whither I was going, when I beheld my now detested rival coming towards me ; he stood in full relief against the clear tranquil water that reposed behind him. I actually screamed with exulta- tion that I had him in my power ; I drew a large clasp knife, and rushed down on him ; he had not time to step aside, but, fortunately for him, the grass being wet, my foot slipped, I lost the knife, and we both rolled together into the pond. He had always been accounted the stronger man, but I know not if it were from the suddenness of the attack that he lost his self-possession, I seemed endowed with force sufficient to overcome a dozen such opponents ; he, however, struggled dreadfully as we lay in the slime at the edge of the pond, and I with difficulty succeeded in getting on my feet, while THE IRISH ARTILLERYMAN. 167 I retained my hold on him, and with all my force hurled him into deep water. I waded up to my waist, to watch if he should arise ; he did, and was making his way towards the bank, when I again seized him, and we once more grappled with all our remaining strength. His shrieks rang wildly and fearfully through the night air; I grasped him by the throat; he made two or three ineffectual attempts to cry out, and was at length silent. I gradually re- laxed my hold ; his body stood erect, perhaps for a second, swayed with unsteady balance to and fro, and at length fell, face upwards, with a heavy splash, into the pond. My rage, sir, had subsided as his opposition died away; I stood in the water gazing on his features; I dragged him towards the bank ; I grew affright- ed, and, after looking fearfully around me, fled with the speed of an antelope towards my own home. I cannot describe to you what I felt on reaching the home that had always hitherto smiled upon me. I knew it could afford no security for a murderer, and that my only hope 168 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. of safety was in flight. With two or three ne- cessaries, I quitted the place with a heavy heart, unconscious to what quarter I had best direct my steps, ignorant of what means I should pur- sue to avoid the consequences of that to which frenzy had driven me. I need not trouble you with an account of my sufferings, and priva- tions, and narrow escapes. I was one time in the same room with the officers of justice who were in pursuit of me, and from them I learned that Carrol was not dead, but that he had received a deep stab in the right arm, which, however, did not menace his life. The tears gushed from my eyes on hearing this intelli- gence, and I inwardly thanked my Maker that I did not bear the stamp of murderer on my brow. After much trouble and danger, I suc- ceeded in reaching this country, (I had often been here before,) and was gladly welcomed into the corps to which I now belong. I am as happy as circumstances will allow, but my peace of mind, sir, is not regained] I cannot forget that Norah Sullivan is Carrol's wife.' THE IRISH ARTILLERYMAN. lb^ The artilleryman here ended his tale ; it ex- cited my pity for him — there is no being more worthy of pity than an exile. T enjoyed his acquaintance for some time, and found him a classical scholar, a wit, and a man of general information. His attainments placed him in a sphere above his brother-soldiers, and caused a feeling of dislike towards him, of which he was sensitively aware ; he courted no fellowship with them : his happiest moments were when he could escape for an instant from his bondage, and visit me, particularly as I had made him free of a small library — a trifling attention, for which he could not express his thanks in sufficiently grateful terms. The last time I saw him was at a review in the Place de Carousel, on the day his regiment was ordered to Spain; he came from the lines to speak to me, and ex- pressed his desire never to return alive; his wish was too well fulfilled, — he was nearly blown to atoms by the explosion of an ammu- nition waggon, near Logrono. I walked by the side of his horse as far as the Barriere i 170 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. du Trone, where we separated ; his last words were, * Fall where, or by what means I may, I once more thank my God that I shall not fill a murderer's grave.' THE POLISH JEWESS. 4 It is too true an evil : gone she is : And what's to come of my despised time, Is nought but bitterness.' OTHELLO. i2 173 THE POLISH JEWESS. % It is too true an evil : gone she is : And what's to come of my despised time ? Is nought but bitterness.' OTHELLO. The climes where the nights are cloudless, and skies starry; the region where the song of Adria's gondolier sweeps o'er the waters of the ' blue and moonlit deep ; the land of palm-trees and spicy groves ; or the beautiful homes, the smiling retreats of the amiable Otaheitan and savage Zealander, which lie like gems on the bosom of the vast Pacific, never beheld a more magnificent night than that of St. John's Eve, 1826, in the little seaport town of Calais. The solemn stillness of the hour was interrupted only by the monotonous music of the heavy bil- lows, as they lashed lazily against the pier, and went dancing along the sands, their tops crested 174 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. with thin milky foam ; all nature seemed sunk in repose ; the bright moon and pale stars above, and the wide expanse of gently-heaving waters below, were the only objects over which the spirit of watchfulness appeared to preside ; a large armed lugger was gliding softly by, with all her sails set to catch the passing breeze, as I stood at the end of the pier ; she reminded me of the spectre ship that haunts the stormy shores of southern Africa ; I could faintly dis- tinguish two or three of her crew, and I fancied them decked in the high-crowned hats, pon- derous boots, and ample femoralia of the phan- tom crew ; I felt almost disappointed that I did not see the dolphins gambolling in her wake, and the slaves of the ocean-god speeding her on her course ; I thought it must necessarily be the precise night that the father of Proteus and Phorcus would select to guide his well-trained steeds across the limits of his empire; I could have wished to see Anadyomene rise from amidst the waves, and shake the briny moisture from her locks ; or the winged messenger of the THE POLISH JEWESS. 175 gods fall rapidly through the world of stars into the milky arms of the mother of Cupid. But the spectre-ship was haunting other seas than that of the Pas de Calais — the phantom crew were stalking on the treacherous deck of their own vessel, unthought of by those who manned the lugger in the offing; the dolphins might have been sporting and revelling along the clas- sic shores which are swept by the iEgean, — -they certainly were not to be seen in the Straits of Dover ; and, for aught I know, the slaves of the ocean-god were there keeping them company ; the lover of Phoenice and Thesea was probably restraining the clashing fury of the swelling Adriatic, by unveiling his serene aspect to the waters, and rendering them auspicious to the coming of the worshipped goddess of Cytherea ; and, by the same license, we may suppose that Mercury himself was busied in some secret in- trigue for the gracious monarch of the immor- tals. The absence of each was thus accounted for: the dolphins, and sea-gods; the mighty ruler of storms and tempests ; the Amathusia 176 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. Venus, and light-heeled Caducifer, prefer the smiling shores of the Levant to the rocky un- inviting coasts of our native strands. The river in which Shakspeare bathed his locks, and on whose banks Milton sang, is thought of only after the majestic Po, and gold-sanded Pactolus. What is the modern Athens to the Athens of the blue-eyed goddess of wisdom? or who would compare the Babylon of our days to the stupendous city of days of yore? The lug- ger, in the mean time, glided on her way, nobly breasting the rippling waves that broke against her prow, and bounded sportively from her sides ; she looked like a sleeping Leviathan, floating unconsciously over the face of the deep; she stood out northward, her form gradually lessening, till the sails could not be distinguished from her keel ; wore away into a mere unde- finable mass ; and was suddenly swallowed up in the obscurity that reigned afar off, beyond the power of human sight to penetrate. I remained on the jettee long after the lugger had disappeared, watching the few sail that THE POLISH JEWESS* 177 danced merrily by, over the slightly-rippled waves ; my spirits had sunk into that quiescent state from which we are so reluctant to exert ourselves to throw off the lethargy, and enter the monotony of this every -day world ; but the bell of the town-hall began to wag its iron tongue, and ' the never-merry clock' to peal forth the hour appointed for closing the gates ; I awoke from my short-lived dream, and directed my footsteps towards the caravanserai of the hospitable M. Quillacq. What sensations Ovid may have experienced during the period of his banishment to Pontus, I am not on sufficiently good terms with the possessors of his private correspondence, to be enabled to say ; but I will affirm that, had Calais been the dirty sea- port town it is now, and the great Naso exiled thither, the author of the Metamorphoses, in- stead of dragging on his unhappy life for the weary space of nearly nine years, would have burst his bonds before the termination of as many months ; and in place of sinking into a welcome grave at Tomos, would have rendered 178 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. the sea of Calais for ever memorable, by finding a noble sepulchre beneath its stormy depths ; thus urged on to commit, for ennui, what the Lesbian poetess did for love, and restore to the gods the wretched life which, in their wrath, they had conferred upon him. A four days' residence at Calais must be considered, by all reasonable people who have endured the inflic- tion, a sufficient purgative for all the sins of an indifferently long life ; the swamps of Walche- ren reek not with more aguish clouds of vapours than do the ditches and moats which encircle this frontier town ; it has all the disadvantages of Bruges and Dunkerque, without possessing one of their redeeming points : and then the society! (Proh pudor!) Boulogne is respec- table to it. The fraudulent bankrupt, the cri- minal forger, the ruffian duellist, smile on each other with the complacency of old acquaint- ances : the cashiered soldier disdains not to take the arm of some swindling clerk ; and the em- bezzler considers himself honoured by a nod of recognition from the destroyer of a family's THE POLISH JEWESS. 179 peace. So much for the birds of passage. I have not a word to say against the established residents^ but that, unfortunately, these same birds of passage usually make no unconspicuous figure in the soirees and conversaziones of the town coterie. I trust, too, that no one will ever attempt to throw ridicule on the comparatively celestial shape of a Dutch woman, after he has seen an old poissarde beneath the ramparts of Calais. You may observe a few pretty faces among the young retailers of skait and had- docks ; but, slapperloot ! look at their mothers — alike, but,, oh ! how different. The day previous to my leaving Calais for Paris, I observed, among the company assem- bled round the table-d' hote, a fine elderly man, attended by a young girl, whose features plainly bespoke her to be, if not his daughter, at least near akin to him. A deep Jewish expression was strongly marked in the countenance of each, perhaps rather more lightly in the man's than in that of the female ; the latter possessed the true Arabian eyes, — not the soft, melting, 180 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. languid cast of the Spanish Jewess, but the sleepless, never-dying glance of the oriental; they bespoke a mind overflowing with gaiety, a soul all mirth ; you would have taken them for the heralds of wit, the harbingers of merri- ment—but they belied her; you might, as I have already said, have observed an expression of unrestrained gaiety in the eyes, but it was softened by a melancholy cast that spread over her countenance, which rendered her infinitely more attractive, and 1 Stole on your spirit like a May-day breaking !' She was rather above the middle size, and slightly inclined to embonpoint ; but there was grace in every gesture, and modesty in every look. The father, which he really was, had all the features of the Jew T about him, except the nose; he was tall and very upright ; had probably once been handsome, but time had ploughed deep furrows across his brow, and had not only thinned his flowing hair, but changed its colour; THE POLISH JEWESS. 181 it was a shining grey, with here and there an occasional appearance of its original hue, in two or three black stray locks, that lurked, almost unheeded, under the long curling grey. It would be a matter of very little interest to my readers, to hear how our acquaintance was first formed at Calais, and cemented and strength- ened in the capital ; and it would be of as little concern to them to know of what part of Poland they were natives, or what object they pursued by journeying through France. During their sojournment in Paris, I had frequent opportu- nities of observing how completely their happi- ness centred in each other. There was some- thing holy in her admiration and reverence for him; his words were as oracles; never was such implicit faith put in the trumpery of oracles as this poor girl placed in the words of her fa- ther; not a wish but was anticipated; not a look directed towards her, but that the implied desire was gratified before the request was uttered. If her faith and respect and devotion were great towards him, his affection was no 182 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. less unbounded : he was used to watch her slightest movements with the gratification known only to a father ; and after only a few hours' separation from the child of his heart, he would receive and enfold her in his arms with as much eagerness as if years had intervened since the period of their last meeting. Their residence, w r hich was near Passy, stood within one of the most beautiful enclosures that adorns the pre- cincts of Paris — with a garden which must have been arranged from some enchanting model of fairy-land, and through whose mazes we have often wandered, admiring ' the rosy flood of twilight sky.' * Ave Maria ! blessed be the hour, The time, the clime, the spot where I so oft Have felt that moment in its fullest power.' Born in Poland, and educated almost en- tirely in the land of her birth> her knowledge of French was, of course, any thing but perfect, and she used to lisp her words in the prettiest, most infantine way imaginable. I undertook to teach her English; but, whether it were owing THE POLISH JEWESS. 183 to the dulness of the pupil, or the incapacity of the master, Miriam made but very little pro- gress ; she laughed at the uncouth sounds of our- northern guttural, and it was seldom that even a smiling frown could be summoned to re- press the insubordination ; such a flood of good humour floated round her eyes, and washed away the veil of melancholy that was at times spread over her countenance, that to feel anger with such a face was quite out of the question. I found I could do nothing as a master, — we exchanged places, and I became pupil, and student of Italian — of Latin in masquerade. From her accent you would have sworn that she were Tuscan, it flowed so sweetly from her rosy lips. I suppose her method of instruction was superior to mine — at least I know her pupil did credit to her efforts : s she smiled when I was right, and, when wrong, smiled still more.' I soon discovered how agreeable it was to be schooled in a strange tongue by such a teacher, and was as soon enabled to agree, with Byron, how much more agreeable— 184 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. ' When both the teacher and the taught are young.* Time, as it always does where happiness exists, flew apace ; / thought that no time could effect a change in their enviable state of felicity, it seemed so permanent, and the cause so entirely under their own control; — but the devil had been at work ; the tempter had spread his ve- nom, and had introduced despair and sorrow into an abode, which had hitherto been spe- cially devoted to all that was noble and virtu- ous, and where misfortune had never before intruded with his hateful presence. The cause of this sad reverse was intimated to me in a let- ter from the old man, which informed me of his daughter's disappearance from home, an act no less sudden than it was unexpected ; and of his utter ignorance whither she had fled, and of whom she had made the companion of her flight. I hastened to Passy, and found him in a state bordering on distraction; I think I never saw a man so entirely given up to the sway of grief, as he was to the first wild burst which overwhelmed him; he in vain laboured THE POLISH JEWESS. 185 to give utterance to his words, and to make me in some degree acquainted with the full mea- sure of his anguish. After he had become comparatively calm, and enabled to communi- cate his sorrows, I learned, what I have already mentioned, — the sudden and unexpected flight of the child of his bosom, his own sweet Mi- riam. He knew of no attachment she could have formed, no outward change in her demea- nour indicated a fact so much dreaded; he was, at least, sure it could not be with any of his people, or wherefore this concealment? and the thought of her marrying with a Christian, was to him, in his own words, ten thousand times more dreadful than the idea of a Maho- metan's hell : he blessed and cursed her in a breath ; pitied her as the victim of some heart- less villain, and then execrated her for desert- ing her protector in a land of strangers ; called on her name, accompanying it with the most endearing epithets, as if she were there to an- swer the invocation, then heaped maledictions on the head of her and her seducer; and, fore- 186 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. ibly opening and shutting the door, feigned to thrust them from the refuge they might be na- turally expected to seek in his house : ' May the heaviest curse of the God of Israel light on both — on him who has bereaved me of my own Miriam, and on her who has fled to the arms of a Christian, and left her father to pour his sorrows into the bosom of a stranger.' He sunk back exhausted, after pronouncing the malediction, and for some time lay motionless. I then began to devise some means for her re- covery, or at all events to discover her retreat, and promised to bring him the earliest intelli- gence, though where I was to seek it I knew not. He embraced me, wept over me, implored me to be the restorer of his child ; then, re- membering her ingratitude and unparalleled desertion of him, assured me, with dreadful oaths, that again to see her would be a greater curse than to know 7 she were dead ; and that I could not do him a more unwelcome, a more undesired service, than to bring her back to her father's arms. I lent no attention to such THE POLISH JEWESS. 187 incoherence but gave him such advice as I thought the occasion required, and proceeded towards the Hotel Meurice, pondering what means I should pursue to attain the desired object, but I could not, with all my efforts and good-will to boot, shape any scheme bearing the stamp of feasibility, that was likely to be crowned with ultimate success ; my doubts on this point were, however, speedily removed, by the porter's placing in my hand a letter, which I fotmd signed Miriam Letellier. It gave me an account of her flight, and marriage — to a Christian; — there's death to all her hopes of reconciliation in that word, thought I, — -of her reluctance to leave her father, her anxiety to gain information how he supported the bereave- ment, and a joint invitation from herself and husband to visit them immediately, in order to arrange matters to open a negotiation with Mi- riam's parent, that might lead to a pardon and blessing on both. In all this, I saw well that I was expected to be the Mercury; but as the object in view was a noble one, I thought little 188 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. of the trouble, and immediately proceeded in a cabriolet to a distant quarter of Paris, where I was shortly after introduced to the presence of poor Miriam and her husband. ' And this,' said I to myself, on first directing my looks to the latter personage, ' this is, then, the man who has won all that a woman has to give, who has gained the heart of the noblest creature that ever threw herself on the protection of a miscreant to find disappointment and neglect.' The remark was involuntary on beholding him ; he did not possess one solitary trace of beauty in a countenance which was almost as swart as a raven, and rendered cadaverous, apparently through a long course of dissipation : the only anomaly I perceived in his features was, that his eyes should have retained all their bright- ness ; but even they, instead of lending beauty to the face, heightened its hideous expression, and, though they glared not with a sickly hue, yet seemed out of place, like gems on a corpse, or revelry in a sepulchre. I will not weary my readers by entering into a detail of my jouyneys THE POLISH JEWESS. 189 to and fro, in order to effect the reconciliation so much desired, at least by Miriam: the old man was inexorable ; he would occasionally soften, and the tears would rush to his eyes as he spoke of her, but he firmly and resolutely refused to see her. ' She is married/ said he ; 1 let her reap as she has sown : I could have received a deceived penitent, but the only de- ceit has been on her side ; she has despised the counsel of her father; let her suffer for her guilt ; her greatest anguish will be happiness to the hell I feel within me : my curse lie heavy on them both.' I saw that nothing but time could have any effect on his stern severity, and Miriam promised patience and endurance — in short, any thing that was likely to lead to rein- state her in her father's affection. A six months' absence from Paris had not caused me to forget either the Jew or his daughter. I corresponded with neither, but often heard of them, and, among other inform- ation, that the latter had not only made no pro- gress towards a reconciliation, but that at first 190 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. the coolness, then neglect, and at length ill- treatment of the man whom she adored, had driven her to the verge of the grave. Letellier had written to the father concerning property to which, through some misconceived notion previous to their marriage, he fancied his wife possessed an undoubted right. The answer undeceived him, and was couched in the most violent terms, denying that Miriam could offer one legal claim to a centime; that she was an outcast from his love, and that they might both wither under his curse, sooner than he would advance any sum, however trifling, in the way of assisting them. Letellier cared little for the abuse heaped on himself ; he saw and thought only of his blasted hopes ; he had married for gain; he found himself still more deeply sur- rounded by ruin ; his correspondence with the father had disclosed to him a full view of his situation ; he cursed his own rashness, and went home to wreak his vengeance on his fond confiding wife. The latter was unable to bear up long against treatment found where she least expected it ; she had heard — THE POLISH JEWESS. 191 • I The funeral note Of love deep buried In the grave of possession,' and sank unresisting under the consciousness of the dreadful truth. Coolness, neglect, and brutality had effected much during my absence, by despoiling her of her beauty, but the last drop in her already overflowing cup of bitter- ness was still in reserve — desertion : this, too, had come ; and when I called on her, the day after my arrival, I found her alone, wretched, and in tears. I will not linger over the chord of affliction ; let it suffice to say, that the de- serted girl found her father, as soon as I in- formed the latter that Miriam was deprived of her husband's protection. My opportunities of seeing them after this were very numerous, and I regretted that the former scene of happiness could not be traced in the dull course of obedi- ence that characterized the daughter, and the occasionally harsh observations which fell from the father, and struck to her heart. Miriam was not happy, and every day showed it; she 192 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. looked on her parent with awe, not with love, and, strange to say, she remembered her be- trayer with affection, and his treachery with feelings of forgiveness. But to my denoue- ment: — I had been spending a week with them at Passy, and was one evening sitting with the old man in an apartment that looked into the garden, enjoying the cool air of a beautiful sum- mer's evening, and the prospect of every thing around us silvered by the rays of a magnificent moon. Miriam, indisposed, had retired early to rest; we were sitting without lights; the room was very lofty, and in the centre of the ceiling was a large flat skylight, through which the moon poured a rich, glorious flood of light. Our conversation had flagged, and we were in the enjoyment of our own thoughts, when we simultaneously perceived that some body ob- structed the light from above ; we looked up- ward and saw Miriam walking deliberately along the edge of the parapet ; her father started up in wild consternation, fancying that she was in her sleep, called to me to follow him, and darted THE POLISH JEWESS. 198 up the stairs ; I implored him to keep his self- possession, and hastened after him ; but, before I reached the summit, a loud crash, and the noise of something falling heavily on the marble floor beneath, announced some dreadful occur- rence. In half-a-minute I was on the leads, and found that the old man, in his eagerness to rescue his daughter from her supposed perilous situation, had darted forward to save her, for- getful of the skylight, on which he had no sooner placed his foot, than he bore the whole frame-work away, and fell with it : on looking down, I saw him extended motionless on the ground ; I called to him, but received no an- swer ; my attention was next excited by Miriam, who stood, evidently unconscious of what had happened, gazing at the heavens like one fasci- nated by the sight. I carried her down stairs without meeting any opposition on her part, and, having delivered her into the keeping of some other of her father's friends, ran to make myself acquainted with his fate : he probably had not moved from the spot wherp he first 194 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. fell, for, pitching on his head, instantaneous death must have been the consequence. I scarcely remember how I acted in my agitation ; I know I could think of but one being — the wretch who was, virtually, the murderer of a good father, and worse than the murderer of a fond wife. A FRIEND OF MINE. 6 Peace ; sit you down, And let me wring your heart: for so I shall, If it be made of penetrable stuff; If damned custom have not brazed it so, That it be proof and bulwark against sense/ HAMLET. k2 197 A FRIEND OF MINE. ( Peace; sit you down, And let me wring your heart : for so I shall, If it be made of penetrable stuff; If damned custom have not brazed it so, That it be proof and bulwark against sense. HAMLET. What an anomaly of nature is it, that some people, who have happiness within their reach, or who have every prospect of attaining it, should prefer to decline the contest, withdraw from the course, and impede the progress of others who are speeding, hand in hand, to- wards the goal ! how much greater is the ano- maly, when we find such extraordinary per- verseness in those of whonTcommon sense and education should have effected better things ! What an ungrateful subject to write upon such a person! How still more painful when that person is defined by the magic name of woman! 198 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. In intimacy or connection between women, is there a more glorious spectaele, in this all- beautiful world, than the observance of the af- fections dependent upon the holy tie which binds two sisters. Worldly affairs, worldly passions, worldly griefs, often interrupt, and but too often destroy, fraternal love ; brothers may succeed in impressing superficial observers with an idea of their mutual devotion, and, in fact, that devotion may be honest and disinter- ested; but what is it, after all, to the mellow, subdued tone of feeling, remarkable in sisters ? No worldly sorrows, no sublunary considera- tions, can diminish their affection; grief and joy touch both alike; their world is of their own creation, — their sorrows must be of ano- ther's making. I once knew a pair who thus lived in a world of enchantment, the work of no magic but what they found in essentially con- tributing to each other's happiness ; the elder was a creature all mildness and affection for her whom she held in her heart of hearts; her beauty was of the Pensoroso cast, ' her rapt A FRIEND OF MINE. 199 soul sat in her eyes/ and from that heavenly throne seemed to watch with a mother's solici- tude over the welfare of her younger sister ; the latter was the personification of health and gaiety ; she seemed like a young envoy sent by the former ( with rosy gifts upon her cheeks/ and was the very beau ideal of Milton's Allegro, all smiles, and beauty, and good sense ; they were, in all things but goodness, living contrasts ; the elder, a blue-eyed, fair-haired seraph, resem- bling some spirit of Religion wandering upon earth, the other made up of light-heartedness and innocence — easily excited and as easily dejected; she would shed tears, yet change them instantaneously to smiles, and was full of the ' rainbow-joys that end in weeping. 1 Will it be believed that there was one miscreant enough to trifle with the affections of this inex- perienced girl; to gain the rich idolatry of this spotless being; to display the attractions of his mind and person, (the wretch possessed both,) and to terminate by earning the icy damnation of a seducer? There was such a being; he was 200 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. what the world calls a man of talent, a pleasant companion, the life of society, a man of a man! 'twere gross adulation to call him villain. When I first became acquainted with him, he was really an admiring and an admired mem- ber of a large circle of friends ; he was a man whose greatest fault was, as Jean Jacques says, d'etre honteux et timide comme tine vierge; but he unfortunately fell into the habit of consider- ing what men term amiable vices, as crimes of no such great magnitude ; his talents, as a poet, were of no mean order, but he was as fickle in verse as he was in love, and used to quote the good La Fontaine, and smile at his own ability when he thought the quotation well applied. His outward appearance was every way calcu- lated to please ; his conversation sparkled with wit and intelligence, which he possessed the tact of displaying without any apparent effort of wishing to excite admiration ; and, if his subject were satirical, he could mangle his victim with every visible demonstration of cool good humour ; but the result proved that he had that within, A FRIEND OF MINE. 201 which, in most cases, speedily swept away the first favourable impression he so well knew how to inspire ; his passions were not ' among pure thoughts hid ;' of them he had but few, — they were coiled up, a torpid knot of venom, * Like serpents upon flow'rets sleeping;' but only torpid till a fitting season roused the reptile from its slumber, to crawl forth from the retiring shades, and warm its loathsome mass in the bright sun. I sometimes fancy that I can remember the first time his heart inclined to- wards ill, but I have seen him so often since smiling in drawing-rooms with all the quiet, un- restrained amiability of more worthy men, that, for any thing I now know to the contrary, he might, at the period of my introduction to him, have been playing a part, and inwardly meditate ing evil. His victim still lives, if the unceas- ing throbbings of a broken heart can be called living ; the elder sister sank beneath the bur- then; I need not ask who was virtually her murderer ; and the rascal, whose steps polluted 202 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. the fair earth he walked upon, died as he de- served — he breathed out his loathsome exist- ence in a ditch, and his bloated carcass lay, for two days, noisome and unowned, on a dung- heap. A name, or a reference to the period, would bring the whole subject afresh before the public ; his appellation is too well known ever to be forgotten by the world ; it is only charity to allow her's, whose life-long happiness he has sacrificed, to remain buried in the igno- minious obscurity to which hL wretched, sensual villainy has con^ned ■'.. TLj world is unfor- tunately much accustomed to consider the crimes of a seducer wi^li too great a degree of le- niency, and it is the cant of the day to throw all the blame upon her who has confided on a pro- mise made with no intention of being kept ; — upon her who has looked upon the inhuman fiend as the soul of honour, and exulted in wor- shipping him, the only true god of her idolatry ; — he, the demon, stalks abroad, he knows no shame, he acknowledges no law, he respects no bond of civilized society; he looks with the A FRIEND OF MINE. 203 craving glance and ruthless jealousy of a vam- pire at a happy home ; he treads upon all the observances of mankind; at his presence, joy, content, virtue, honour, fly ; and at his depar- ture, he bequeaths misery, shame, disgrace, and death : with a stale jest and lying proverb, he again curses the world with his aspect, seeking out some other domestic circle, that he may overthrow its happiness, — in quest of some other victim to sacrifice at the shrine of his damned brutality. What are the minor faults, the par- donable errors of a woman, to the cold selfish- ness, the low calculations, the infamous thoughts of a man? Think of her — 'the last, the best reserve of God/-— as an attendant on a bed of sickness ; surely, if religion ever soften a man's obdurate feelings, it must be chiefly at that mo- ment when something so like divinity, and bear- ing so near a resemblance to the purity of an- gels, is ministering to a mind diseased, soothing bodily anguish, and teaching us, by her pa- tience, her silent suffering, her anxious affec- tion, and her superior self-possession in the 204 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. crisis of a dangerous malady, how far she is above our grovelling comprehension, how stea- dily she performs the allotted duty for which the Deity created her, and what an endless debt of deep gratitude we owe to them, without whom the world would be as nothing. — It has been said that coquettes are the refuse of their sex, and that they were only ordained to correspond with the coxcombs of ours ; the latter assertion is too evident to be denied ; the former may — - does admit of doubt. Coquettes and coxcombs are worthy of each other ; I would not throw away a thought upon either : — the refuse, the disgrace of the female sex is she who cannot, with self-satisfaction, view the happiness which others are enjoying ; she who would blast the prospects of her friends with mildew and rust ; who tortures and perplexes truth till she frames it and fashions it to her own vile purposes, and uses it for the destruction of those with whom she has broken bread ; to injure those who would fain be friends ; to destroy the superstructure raised by some bright creation of fancy ; and all A FRIEND OF MINE. 205 for the mean gratification of her own base, can- kered envy : such a woman is void of all deli- cacy of feeling, and consequently outrages, un- abashed, the feelings of others ; such a woman sees nothing in the most commonplace actions, but what she would extort from them some mo- tives quite alien to the true ones : she does no- thing but you'll find interestedness lurking under it ; she has no thought but for self, and is one vile compound of falsehood and malice : she alone is the true corresponding pendant for the seducer, as the coquette is for the coxcomb ; she alone, of all her sex, tramples upon the rights of her sisters ; she is awkward too in her sarcasm, — she cannot (she would not, if she could,) make her incisions with a keen-tempered razor, but cuts and haggles away with a ragged blade, heedless that ' the flesh will quiver where the pincers tear ;' regardless that c the blood will follow where the knife is driven :' she de- stroys her victims by gradual torture ; she stains the bright surface of their reputation with her poisonous breath ; she prolongs their torments, 206 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. she goes on steadily in her work of murder— the assassination of a good name ; she ridicules the idea of human suffering, and her gloating eyes are fixed with wild exultation on the wreck and ruin her treachery has effected : — 1 Like Helen, on the night that Troy was sack'd, Spectatress of the mischief she herself had made.' Such a woman does not exist, say you ? I affirm such a woman does exist, and / was once blessed with her acquaintance : — ' Then revile not the dead,' you rejoin: — ' Dead!" she lives, the slave of her own worthless passions — lives, to spit her foul venom on all who cross her path, where she sits like an incubus, brooding over her own hellish thoughts. I owe her an article, — she is one of the most disagreeable of my Reminiscences ; but she is a character : as such, I will trace her outlines; and, should this page ever fall under her inspection, the fair object herself can fill up, and finish the sketch. I first saw her in Paris, of which city she is a constant resident : I found her with education, with good sense to apply it, and good looks to A FRIEND OF MINE. 207 enhance the value of her other attractions : but her education had effected nothing in the cor- rection of her errors ; her good sense was over- whelmed by the fierce current of passions with which we are all occasionally agitated, and in conquering and subduing which consists the height of human virtue. And what were her good looks, of what account was her beauty, when malice, and envy, and jaundiced suspicion were at work, and stood confessed in the ex- pression of her features ? She was a thing of art, all guile and deceit, and flowery words ; but she had not the art of concealing the con- flict which inwardly consumed her: she was an adept, however, in every other branch of de- ception, a female Tartuffe, one who was all sun- shine and fair weather when her purposes so needed it ; assuming qualities which belonged not to her, and betraying those who were de- ceived by the simple innocence of a baby face ; like the song of the syren, enticing the atten- tive and confiding listener; attracting him among hidden snares and covered pits ; and luring him through gardens, and meadows, and or- 208 SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. chards, till he suddenly and unexpectedly stands on the brink of a tottering precipice, which yields to his pressure, and hurls him headlong into de- struction. And such was this torch of discord, this female fury, who could put on the mask of virtue, and ' smile and smile, and murder as she smiled.' Good God! I thought, that such a creature, who has the power of making her- self beloved, should be so perverse, and act so directly opposite to the nature of her sex! that she should be such a slave to the hell she lived in, and allow all that was base, and mean, and paltry, to usurp the station allotted to the qua- lities which confer grace and dignity on the wearers ! Some time had elapsed subsequent to the period of my introduction to her, before the mask fell from her face, and discovered the hi- deous features it had previously concealed; there is nothing left now for me, but to regret that I was not enlightened sooner; and to say, with Almaviva, Madame, vous joules fort bien la comedie : she played her part so naturally, that I entirely misconceived her true character : A FRIEKD Of MINE. 209 I thought her what she represented — a being all benignity, overflowing with the milk of hu- man kindness, and a child of ingenuousness; but c smooth runs the water where the brook is deep, and in her simple show she harboured treason.' A base act of treachery in perverting truth, and framing it into an odious lie, first declared the danger of conversing with a wo- man so malicious: I remember my burst of in- dignation on the fact being communicated to me by a friend ; my anger knew no bounds. I was sorry that I could not act against the evi- dence of my senses, which thus undeniably as- sured me that such a disgrace to her sex did actually exist. Various conflicting passions combatted within me, and I raged on, like ' a full-hot horse,' till self-mettle tired me. I had been told, that to be faithful was a woman's re- ligion, and I regretted to find even one excep- tion to so beautiful a creed ; ' my hopes in her touched the ground, and dashed themselves to pieces.* THE END. ERRATUM. Page 41, lines 3 and 4 from top; for, l above his buttons/ read ' above buttons/ G, Davidson, Printer, Merle's Place, Carey Street, London. JUM 15 i%5. Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: April 2009 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 111 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 1 6066 (724)779-2111