LiSRARY] '■■■:. A ^.,JY OF I :ALIrGRNIA 1 : :i DIEGO J ®}}e JHartnillan pocket Classics fj Lockhart's Life of Scott (Abridged). "^London's Call of the Wild. Longfellow's Fivangeline. Longfellow's Hiawatha Longfellow's The Courtship of Miles Standish. Longfellow's Miles Standish and Minor Poenas. Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn. Lowell's Earlier Essays. Lowell's The Vision of Sir Launfal. Macaulay's Essay on Addison. Macaulay's Essay on V/arren Hastings. Macaulay's Essay on Lord Clive. Macaulay's Essay on Milton. Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome. Macaulay's Life of Samuel Johnson. Macaulay's Speeches on Copyright. (See Lincoln and Trevelyan ) Malory's Le Morte Darthur (Selections). Melville's Moby Dick (Abridged). Memorable Passages from the Bible. Milton's ^omus, Lycidas, etc. ; Arnold's Address on Milton Milton's Paradise Lost, Books I and IL Old English Ballads. Old Testament Selections. Palgrave's Golden Treasury. Parkman's The Oregon Trail. Plutarch's Lives (Caesar, Brutus, and IVIark Antony;. Poe's Poems. Poe's Prose Tales (Selections). Poems, Narrative and Lyrical. Poole's The Harbor. Pope's The Iliad of Homer. Pope's The Odyssey of Homer. Pope's The Rape of the Lock. Reade's The Cloister and the Hearth. ♦Representative Short Stories. Roossvelt's Writings. *Poems of Christina Rossetti. Ruskin's Crown of Wild Olive; The Queen of the Air. Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies. Scott's Guy Mannering. Scott's Ivanhoe. Scott's Kenilworth. Scott'3 Lady of the Lake- Scott's Lav of the Last Minstrel. Scott's Marmion. Scott's Quentin Durward. Scott's Rob Roy. * Can not be sold in Scott's The Talisman. Select Orations. Selected Poems (for required reading in secondary schools.) Selections from American Poatry. ♦Selections for Oral Reading. Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Shakespeare's As You Like It. Shakespeare's Coriolanus. Shakespeare's Hamlet. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Shakespeare's King Henry V. Shakespeare's King Lear. Shakespeare's King Richard II. Shakespeare's King Richard III. Shakespeare's Macbeth. Shakespeare's The Merchant of 'Venice. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare's The Tempest. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Poems trom Shelley and Keats. Sheridan's Plays (The Rivals and The School for Scandal). *Short Stories and Selections. Southern Oratcvs (Selections). The Southern Poets (Selections). Southey's Life of Nelson. Spenser's Faerie Queene, Book I. *Stevenson's Kidnapped. ♦Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae. ♦Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey; Ac Inland Voyage. *Stevenson's Treasure Island. Swift's Gulliver's Travels. ♦Tennyson's Idylls of the King. ♦Tennyson's In Memoriam. ♦Tennyson's The Princess. ♦Tennyso.i's Shorter Poems. Thackeray's English Humorists. Thackeray's Henry Esmond. Thompson's The Hound of Heaven. Thoreau's Walden. *Trevelyan"s Life of Macaulay (Abridged). Virgil's /Eneid Washington's Farewell Address; Web ster's Bunker Hill Orations. Whittier's Snow-bound (and other poems). Wister's The Virginian. John Woo'man's Journal. Wordsworth's Shorter Poems, British Dominions. V f^LLXl"^ Hj2)<^o •Tl THE MACxMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO THOMAS DE QUIXCEY. JOAN OF ARC THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH, AND THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY EDITED WITH INTRODUCTORY AKD TEXTUAL KOTES BY CAROL M. NEWMAN, Ph.D. ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN THE YIBQIKIA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 1926 .dSl rtgalH letierved COPTEIGHT, 1905, By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. it up and electrotyped. Published December, 1905. PREFACE In preparing this book, the editor has endeavored to keep constantly in mind its practical purpose — use in elementary and secondary schools. He has attempted, therefore, to supply such things as the students of these schools may reasonably demand : an accurate text, — that of Masson's edition ; a brief sketch of De Quincey's life, with some comments on his personality and his place in our litera- ture ; a practical discussion of De Quincey's rhetorical merits and faults, to be used in connection with the text-book study of rhetoric ; such information about Joan of Arc and Cata- lina de Erauso as is requisite to a proper understanding of the essays concerning them ; a brief working bibliography ; and numerous textual notes, including De Quincey's owm, on the essays themselves. These textual notes are indeed numerous; the editor, however, has not assumed a refer- ence library at the student's command, but has attempted to furnish him in the present volume with the means of appreciating both intensively and extensively what De Quincey has here written. Free use has been made, in the course of this work, of various authorities. Masson's De Quincey has been the chief source for the biography of the author; the rhetorical discussion has followed somewhat the similar discussion in vi PREFACE Minto's Manual of English Prose Literature; the story oi the Maid of Orleans has been drawn largely from Judge Lowell's excellent Joan of Arc, from which, with the pub- lishers' permission, the map of Northern and Central France has also been taken ; and aid in the preparation of the text- ual notes on Joan of Arc and The English M ail-Coach has been furnished by previous editions of the same essays, notably Hart's and Turk's. To various friends the editor would here express his thanks for many helpful suggestions; to Dr. Charles W. Kent, Professor of English Literature at the University of Virginia, to the Librarian of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, to the Librarian of Congress, and to the editor's wife, special acknowledgments are due for the invaluable aid received from them. C. M. N. CONTENTS PREFACE ▼ INTRODUCTORY NOTES I. Biographical and Critical • • ' • • ix II. Chronological xxv III. Rhetorical xxvii IV. Creative xlii V. Historical A. Joan of Arc xliii B. Catalina de Erauso Ivii VI. Bibliographical Ixx JOAN OF ARC 1 THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH Section I. — The Glory of Motion .... 36 Section II. — The Vision of Sudden Death . . 64 Section III. — Dream-Fugue ; founded on the Pre- ceding Theme of Sudden Death .... 86 Author's Postscript 95 Viii CONTENTS FA6B THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN . ' . . . .98 Author's Postscript ...••.. 184 TEXTUAL NOTES ........ 191 INDEX TO TEXTUAL NOTES ... o c 291 INTRODUCTORY NOTES I. Biographical and Critical Two of the most strikingly eccentric figureg in English literary history are Samuel Johnson and Thomas De Quincey. Yet how unlike as to their eccentricities ! In a few respects, not altogether peculiar, — their l ove of tea , their rnnvprfiin^ tional abilities.^their ingr ained Toryism, their _geneiiisity, th^4r_iig. vo t ion to tho ontnMinhp^'^^TF'h ; — we do, indeed, find similarities between them, but on the whole, we can imagine no greater contrast than that between the burly giant, coarse in his manners, dictatorial in his talk, a lover of disputations, a most clubable, practical man, and the diminy- t ive Opium Eatt^ r. whose shyness and unpr acticality were pro verbial and whose gentl eness of speech a jid^oT demeanor was almost effeminate. From these differences springs another and still greater difference, which we have here to regret. The faithful Boswell has made each word, each act, of Johnson's familiar to us, but careful investigation has re- vealed little more than the main facts of De Quincey's life. For his childhood and youth we have, to be sure, his auto- biography, and we find that in various places elsewhere he has recorded still other facts about himself ; but for information concerning the longest and most important periods of his career we must rely in large measure upon the imperfect recol- lections of his friends and relatives, and upon such letters of his as have been preserved. We should like to study in detail X INTRODUCTORY NOTES all the doings of tliis st range geniu s ; the substance of what is certainly known about him may be recorded briefly enough. Thomas De Quincey was born in Manchester on August 15, 1785. His Norman ancestor^, as he himself once proudly told King George III, had come to England with William the Conqueror, and among their descendants had been men of distinction. In the thirteenth century, indeed, the De Quinceys were E arls of AVinchest er — until unfortunately one of their number was attainted for treason and hanged, whereupon the family greatness came to an end. For sev- eral generations before the time of Thomas they had been plain Quinceys, never rising above mediocrity. His father, another Thomas, was merely a^jvvpll-jj^ilijlJl ie^'^h an t , who had amassed some fortune through a profitable business in Por- tugal, America, and the West Indies, though in addition he was a man of distin ct literary tastes and had even ^Titten a book. In the midst of his prosperity he married a Miss EHzabeth Penson, who bore him eight children, Thomas being the fifth child and second son. Soon after the birth of this son the family moved from Manchester to a country place on the outskirts of the city called "The^arm"; here and at "Greenhay," another sub- urban home, his early childhood was spent. From the first he seems to have been shA^^j;eth;in^ ar^ to dream ing and lo_ brooding over.^ the_my-steries of life . The" almost morbid^eri_ousriess of his character was intensified by his early experip.npft_r)f death and its sorro ws : his sister Jane died in 1787 ; his favorite sister Elizabeth, whose mem- ory became his dearest treasure, followed in 1791 ; and then in 1792 came the father's death. This father young Thomaa never really knew, for consumption had kept him abroad in search of health until at last he returned home to die. The son's loss in being thus deprived of one who migiit have INTRODUCTORY NOTES XI guided and advised his young manhood can hardly be over- estimated. By the father's will the family was well provided for, a yearly income of £1,600 being divided between the mother and six children. The guardianship of the children was placed in the hands of Mrs. De Quincey and four of her hus- band's friends, but it was upon the mother, of course, that the chief responsibility for their early training devolved. From De Quincey himself we learn that s he was a woma n of rare intel lectual powers; from his further remarks and* from other sources we infer that she _was strictj£YerL-tQ--harsh- ness^ partly because of her high conception of a child's duty to its parents and partly because of her austere religious principles. Had there been in her more of the loving, sym- pathetic mother and less of the stern disciplinarian, the character of one of her sons might have been developed along other and more normal lines. Nevertheless, this dreamy youth was not to be allowed to dream and muse altogether at will. Soon after Mr. De Quincey's death there had come to disturb the peace of Greenhay, the eldest son, William De Quincey, who had lived for some time with his father in Lisbon and had later been sent to a grammar school at Louth. This young gentleman, whose "ge nius for mischief amounted _to^ inspiration/' was rough, boisterous, pugilistic, overbearing, but withal exceed- i ngly clev er. He immediately established a reign of terror in the household, making Thomas iiis naxisL abject slave and- holding him in thrall for nearl y four y ears. Thomas must fag for him, must join m his battles, must think and act in accordance with his commands. How intensely the sen- sitive younger brother must have suffered from this over- lordship we can easily imagine; we may be certain, too, that this "introduction to the world of strife" did much to Xii INTRODUCTORY NOTES prevent the dreamy melancholy of De Quincey from passing into morbidity and perhaps disease. Meanwhile the education of the children was not being neglected. In to their father ' s l ib rary they were early turned to browse at will, and wonderfully soon our De Quincey was reading from Johnson and Cowper, from the Bible and the Arabian Nights. When lessons at home and voluntary reading no longer furnished sufficient intellectual pabulum, William and Thomas were put under the tutorship of Mr. Ram 11 el Halj. one of their guardians, who lived at Salford, two miles distant from Greenhay. By him Thomas w^as well grounded in Latin and Greek, and was put through a course of m emory-training more p rofitable than pleasant. In 1796 Mrs. De Quincey moved to Bath, and Thomas was placed in the Rath Grammar Schoo l. Here were spent the most delightful of all his school days; the master was ''a scholar, and a ripe and good one," and De Quincey 's prog- ress under him was rapid. Soon he became so proficient in Latin composition that his exercises were pubhcly paraded before the older boys of the school, whose chagrin and envy led them to swear dire vengeance upon their youthful model. However pleasing his position of eminence may have been to De Quincey himself, it did not please his mother, who had her own peculiar ideas as to what was best for her son ; so, when in 1799 an accident had caused him to leave the school for some weeks, she^refnsed to allow him to return. For a time he studied under a tutor ; then he was sent to a pri- vate school at Winkfi eld in Wjl t^Iuja, of w^hich the chief recommendation was the religious character of the master. After a year spent at th's institution, De Quincey exchanged the education of books for the education of travel. While at Bath he had made the acquaintance of Lord Westport, a boy somewhat older than himself, the only son of an Irish INTRODUCTORY NOTES xiii peer; from him there came in the spring of 1800 an invita- tion to be his companion on a h oliday jaunt to Irela nd. This invitation his mother allowed De Quincey to accept, so in the following summer he joined Lord Westport at Eton. A-fter having been i ntroduced to Geo rf yp TTT an^ his cnurt af Wi ndsor, a nd after havmg paid a brief visit to London, the young gentlemen started on their journey. In due time they reached Ireland and then spent several weeks most deUght- fully at Westport, in Connaught. Before the end of the year, however, De Quincey parted from his friend at Bir- mingham, and went to Laxton in Northamptonshire to visit Lady Carbery, an old friend of his mother's. Here his time was mainly occupied in reading, learning to ride, and teachmg Lady Carbery the rudiments of Greek. Ever since leaving Winkfield, De Quincey had been mak- ing plans for his future school life, and had written several times to his mother and guardians requesting that he be sent back to the Bath Grammar School until old enough to enter Oxford, and objecting most seriously to any further connection with private institutions. His requests were, in a measure, granted ; on leaving Laxton he was sent to the M anchester Grammar Snhonl^ in order that by spending three years there he might secure a scholarship at Brazenose Qo\ - lege^_OxforiJ. The life at Manchester, however, soon became extremely distasteful to him. The master was by no means perfect in his scholarship ; the associations were not of the most pleasant ; the restrictions upon the students' liberties were galling; the impossibility of securing sufficient exercise was ruinous to the health; the opportunities of amusement were few; the duties of the class-room were trivial and mo- notonous, — such were the complaints De Quincey made in va letter written to his mother after he had spent just half the allotted time at Manchester, begging her that he might be sir INTRODUCTORY NOTES allowed to leave the school. His pleas being in vain, ht resolved to take matters in his own hands and run away. So, one fine July morning in the year 1802, he slipped out of the master's house before daylight and started off to learn something of the world, a volume of English poetry in one pocket and a volume of Greek poetry in the other. His first thought was to pay a parting visit to one of his sisters at Chester, where the family was then living ; thither he made his way, — only to be discovered and taken in charge by the older members of the household. His moth er was duly horrified at his conduct, but an-«n€le. Colonel Pen- son, interceded for the runaway and arranged that he should be allowed the liberty of wandering about for a while, and — which was quite as important — should be supplied with a guinea a week on^ w-hich to support himself. — His_wan,derl»g6 first carried De Quincey into North Wales, where he alternately lived in luxury or starved himself — in accordance with the state of his finances. But even such a roving life was too conventional to suit his tastes, and he presently resolved to seek books and still greater soUtude in "th e nation of Lond on." w^here he might contrive to live by borrowing upon his expectations. Accordingly, in Novem- ber, 1802, he ceased all communication with his mother and guardians and made his way to the metropohs. Of the months spent there — months of fruitless dealings with money-lenders, of homeless wandering about the streets, of forced association with the outcast and the destitute — months o f poverty, starvation , intense suffering — he has given us a complete account in his C onfessiaa s. Suffice it to say here that after he had drained the cup of city life to the very dregs, he was fortunately discovered by friends, and in the spring>^-4 803 retu rner] to his , family. In the fall o* the same year he accepted his guardians' offer to send him to Oxford on a small allowance. INTRODUCTORY NOTES XV Concerning De Quincey's Oxford days little definite is known. Years afterwards he was remembered as a quiet and studious young man, of rare conversational powers, fond of solitude, and possessed of an extraordinary stock of infor- mation upon all subjects. He seems to have paid little atten- tion to the prescribed curriculum, but pursued for himself the stud y of Hebrew an d^<^^rTnji.n^ and plunged headlong into the delights ot English literature. About the year 1807 he stood successfully the written examination for the B.A. degree, but for some reason, not clearly known, never came up for the oral part of his examination. Though his nominal connection with the University continued for some years after this, it is probable that De Quincey spent little more time at Oxford. Instead, he started out to become acquainted with some of those men of letters whom he had long admired. At Bridgewater he met Ck)leridge, and soon after acted as escort to Mrs. Coleridge "and her children on their journey to the Lake District, where they were to reside with Southey. Through this trip, De Quincey was enabled to make the ac- quaintance of WordsBiOEth, at whose cottage the party stopped for a few days ; a little later he was introduced to S outhey himself. His admiration for two of these new friends was given material expression soon after, when he made an ano nymous gijt jof_£3QQ to Col eridge and aidfidJWord^sworth gre^tlybj^^seeingiJBeoi Ms pam ph l ets through the p r e ss. After spendingmost of the year 1808 in London, in nominal prepa- ration for entrance at the bar, De Quincey decided that, in order to be near his literary acquaintances, he would take up his own residence in the Lake District. In November, 1809, De Quincey became the occupant of the cottage at Grasmere formerly the home of Wordsworth, and for tw enty years remained, nominally at Ipasf.j a. rpsident. of Westmoreland. Here he found all thingr to his liking. Xvi INTRODUCTORY NOTES Among his neighbors were Wordsworth, Coleridge, an(i Southey, and he soon formed a strong friendship with John ^Vilson, later to become the great "Christopher North ^^ Blackwood. A part of his time De Quincey spent in taking long walks — sometimes with his friends, more often alone — or in visiting his neighbors ; for the most of it, he was busy among his books, studying^ Gerjnaa^iiietaphj^sics and dr inking lauda jiimx. We must pause here to note that while on a visit to London in 1804, De Quincey had chanced to seek relief from npnrfllgifl, h y ti^ ki^^^piii"^; and that from this time forward he had been an intermittent user of the drug. In 1813, however, he became an habitual opium- eater, consuming at times the monstrous quantity of eight thousand drops of laudanum per day. In 1815, to be sure, he reduced this quantity to one thousand drops — a reform made in honor of his ap proaching marriage TISIB') with MargaretSimpson, the daughter of a Westmoreland farmer. Unfortunately, however, this young and beautiful wife was soon called upon to serve as his comforter and sup- port during the very darkest hours of his opium pros- tration. B etween 1817 and 18 18 th e sway o f the drug was complete; De Quincey could neither walk nor eat nor read nor think, and his sleeping hours were full of horror. From the absolute torpor and torment into which he was thus plunged, pecuniar}^ difficulties at last rescued him; he must do something to support himself and his family. By 1819 he had so far rallied his powers as to be able to under- take the editorship of the Westmoreland Gazette, in which appeared almost the first printed fines from his pen. Need- less to say, hejwas_jiQt a succe ssf ul e ditor, s in ee German transcendentafism could hardly please the farmers, who looked to their paper for political editorials of the partisan type; but fortunately De Quincey had at last experienced INTRODUCTORY NOTES XVll what Dr. Holmes has called "lead poisoning" caused by ' mental contact with type metal, " from which he was never thenceforth to recover. In the Lo ndon Ma gazvM for September, 1821, Thomas De Quincey, at the age of thirty-six years, made his real debut before the English reading public with the first instalment of the C onfessions _of an English Opium-Eater. In October a second part followed, and in T822~the Confessions were published in book form. At once De Quincey became famous, and the London Magazine was eager for any production from his pen. To this magazine he contributed until 1824; in 1825 he published a pseudo-translation from the German ■~7 called WaUadmorj one o f the three hooks o l_ffihif^h hp -^g^ ^ t he au thor^ During the years of this first literary period (1821-1826), so brilliant and full of promise, De Quincey resided chiefly in London, though his home continued to be at Grasmere. But London knew httle of him. He had a few acquaintances, men like Lamb, Hazlitt, Hood, T alfour d, Procter, and Knight, with whom he exchanged occasional visits, but for the most part he avoided all intercourse with his fellows and spent his time with his books and his lauda- num at those lodgings in Soho Squar e, CoyentjGaxden, or elsewhere, which he chanced to be occupying. Such exer- cise as he took consisted largely of solitary wanderings through the crowded London streets. During most of this period he seems to have suffered severely for want of money ; writing for the magazines was not the most lucrative of em- ployments, and his own unpracticality fitted him but poorly for making the best use of such funds as he might chance to have in his possession. A story told by Mr. Charles Knight will serve to illustrate both De Quincey's helplessness in business matters and his fondness for leaving his friends in ignorance as to his whereabouts. On one occasion when De xviii INTRODUCTORY NOTES Quiiicey was supposed to be at home in Westmoreland, Mr, Knight found him hiding away in a wretched lodging on the Surrey side of London, the cause of this retirement being his lack of money. He had in his pocket, to be sure, a large draft on a London bank, at twenty-one days' sight, but since the bank had refused to cash it till the expiration of this time, he knew no means of raising money on it and was too shy to let his friends know of his embarrassment. The centre of De Quincey's literary activity was changed in the year 1827 to Edinburgh, where his old friend John Wilson had become celebrated through his connection with Blackwood's Magazine. For some years Wilson had tried to secure contributiohs^lo Blackwood from De Quincey, and at last he succeeded. De Quincey's connection with this well- known quarterly began in 1826 with the publication of his L essing's Laocoon in the issue for November, and continued for twenty-three years. To Edinburgh, therefore, De Quincey moved his literary headquarters. At first, much of his time there was spent w^ith Wilson; Mrs. Gordon, Wilson's daughter, tells us that on one occasion, having dropped io at Gloucester Place to await the passing of a storm, he ended by making the house his home for the better part of a year. C arlyle , too, was among his Edinburgh friends, and one of the readiest to sympathize with him in his troubles. Chief among these troubles was, naturally enough, a continuation of the pecuniary embarrassment that was so characteristic a feature of his London life. Partly, therefore, because he found himself unable to support two establishments, and partly because he was anxious to have his wife and children near him, De Quincey in 1830.mDved-bis-faH»ly-4©-^dHi- burgh^which was to be his only home for ten years to come. These ten years were filled with great literary activity on De Quincey's part. Besides contirxulpg his contributions to INTRODUCTORY NOTES XIX Blackwood, he wrote numerous essays for Tail's Magazine; in all, he produced sojne sixty magazine articles during this period, contributed to the EncyclopcrAia Britannica, and in 1S32 published his only novel, Klosterhei m, or the Ma&que./> Though all this writing added materially to his fame, De Quincey did not therefore become one of the hterary lions of Edinburgh. His love of solitude caused him to be but a very obscure character in the social world of the Scotch capital. Obscurity also surrounded his domestic life there; only a few of the many houses in which he lived are now definitely known. We do know, however, that De_Quincey's homalife^ was__a_vory beautiful -mie — rendered so largely because ofliis uniform gentleness, his_deep love for his chikken, and his painstaking attention to their early education. But the family circle was not long to remain intact. In 1833 Jumus, the youngest son, died, to be followed two years later by William,_ihe eldest. Then, in 1837, came the greatest sorrow of all in the death of Mrs. De Quincey, the noble wife that had borne so bravely with the faults and eccentricities of her husband and had striven so faithfully to protect him from the cares and worries of the working-day world. For a year or two thereafter De Quincey had his library and study in one part of Edinburgh, while the children's home was in another. In 1840, however, the eldest children, Margaret and Horace, took a cottage near Lasswade, seven miles from Edinburgh, and here for some time De Quincey found his chief abode. His chief abode, be it repeated, for during the next nine years (1840-1849) we find him frequently absent from Lass- wade. Often he would be occupying lodgings in Edinburgh, vvhere he would keep one set of rooms until it became filled with books and papers, and then move elsewhere, leaving his literary treasures behind, so that sometimes he was paying rent on as many as four separate sets of lodgings at once. XX INTRODUCTORY NOTES From 1841 to 1843 he was as far from home as GlasgG\^^, where he was the guest of friends. During the general period under consideration, however, Lasswadg saw most of him, for here his three daughters needed his protec- tion, the sons all being absent. Yet De Quincey must have made a somewhat dangerous protector, since, as one of his daughters tells us, "those nights were exceptions on which he did not set something on fire, the commonest incident be- ing for some one to look up from book or work to say casu- ally,' Papa, your hair is on fire ; ' of which a calm, ' Is it, my love ? ' and a hand rubbing out the blaze was the only notice taken." The happiness of this life at Lasswade among the children was seriously marred for De Quincey by the wretch ed conditi^iua Lhis h edth, the gastric neuralgia with whichlie" was afflicted causing him to suffer almost constantly for many years. The necessity of seeking some relief from this pain was largely responsible for his great opium excesses in 1844 and 1848, after the last of which his use of the drug, though continued, was greatly diminished. INIeanwhile he still contributed regularly to Blnrkimnd f^ T-|d_ Tr/.//^ and pub- lished in 1844 his Logic of Politi calJ Econ om y, — a literary activity largely due to his continued need of money. For- tunately, by or before the year 1847, numerous legacies caused a marked improvement in his financial affairs; about this time, too, the "pains and miseries of his constitutional malady" ceased to torment him. Thus De Quincey was en- abled to spend the closing years of his life in comparative comfort, both physical and financial. Those closing years must now be passed over somewhat rapidly. In 1849 his connection with Tail and Blackwood being practically at an end, De Quincey began to contribute to Hogg ^ Weekly his tructor, afterwards known as TheTitan. His connection wit^"Tfugg produced one most important INTRODUCTORY NOTES XXI result, for this enterprising bookseller conceived the idea of bringing out a collective edition of De Quincey's works, such an edition having already begun to appear in America. Perhaps the most continuous labor ever performed by De Quincey was that devoted to collecting, revising, and recasting the material for the fourteen volumes published between 1853 and 1860. That De Quincey did this work was largely due to the untiring efforts of Mr. Hogg himself, who not only saw to it that De Quincey kept the press sup- plied with copy, in spite of the "nervous sufferings," ** lum- bago," "partial delirium," and the hke, of which he was always complaining, but aided him materially in gathering up those manuscript deposits left in various places all over Edinburgh. How difficult was this latter task a single anec- dote will show. Once, when Hogg and De Quincey had gone into a hotel for refuge and refreshment during a storm, the waiter, after eyeing De Quincey curiously for some moments, said, "I think, sir, I have a bundle of papers which you left here some time ago." The bundle was produced and proved to contain valuable manuscripts, of whose where- abouts De Quincey had of course been ignorant. While preparing the material for Hogg's edition, De Quincey lived chiefly at No. 42 Lothian Street, Edinburgh; but, though he had now become a celebrity much talked of in literary circles, he was rarely to be seen at any social gatherings in the capital, and was almost inaccessible to visitors, even when they chanced to be his most intimate friends. Meanwhile, he continued to spend much of his time at Lasswade, especially after two of his daughters had been married and nn jy Emjl y remained at the old home. In 1857 he visited one of these married daughters in Ireland. He was soon back again in Edinburgh, however, working away at the Collective Edition, £fcnd planning great literary labors xxii INTRODUCTORY NOTES to be undertaken when this task should be finished. But hi| plans were never to reach fruition. In the autumn of 1859 De Quincey began to grow feeble and unfit for work, though he sufi"ered from no definite malady. The most distinguished medical skill could do nothing to relieve him ; he continued to sink gradually for several weeks, until on Thursda y. Dece mber 8, the end cani e. In his final delirium he seemed to^oe" living over again the days of his childhood, and his last words, "Sister! sister! sister!" must have been ad- dressed to his long-lost Elizabeth, who doul)tless came to wel- come him into the great beyond. He was buried in the West Churchyard at Edinburgh beside his wife and two children. A simple tablet marks his final resting-place ; another at 42 Lothian Street commemorates his residence there — but no other outward honor has yet been paid by Edinburgh to per- haps the rarest genius she has ever sheltered. Having noted the main facts in De Quincey 's life, we may now ask after the man himself, what sort of being he was. His personal appearance has been carefully described by his friend, Mr. J. R. Findlay : "A short and fragile, but well- proportioned frame; a shapely and compact head; a face beaming with intellectual light, with rare, almost feminine beauty of feature and complexion ; a fascinating courtesy of manner; and a fulness, swiftness, and elegance of silvery speech, — such was the irresistible ' mortal mixture of earth's mould' that men named De Quincey. He possessed in a high degree what the American poet Lowell calls * the grace of per- fect breeding, everywhere persuasive and nowhere emphatic ' ; and his whole aspect and manner exercised an undefinable attraction over every one, gentle or simple, who came within its influence." De Quincey's mental and moral characteristics are still more interesting, though not so easily to be described. If !> INTRODUCTORY NOTES XXlll Quincey was primarily the secluded scholar living in the world of books and noted chiefly for his habit of omnivo- rous reading, he was also a careful observer, whose knowledge of men is singularly accurate. A rnaryellous.memory made the materials thus gathered by reading and experience his own for all time, and an acute intellect enabled him to reason exactly upon all the facts within his knowledge. He was endowed, moreover, with an inventive faculty, an imagina- tive power, rarely to be found save in the greatest of our poels^ which enabled him to reach the most striking conclu- sions, to see visions and dream dreams such as are not vouch- safed to ordinary mortals. His, also, were a profound sym- pathy with the sorrow and the suffering of the world, a true sensejiL,£athos, a fimdjo£ gejmiae humor , and, ^.bove all, a love of the sublime and themysterious, whethei in nature, in life,^orlirtKe~worlcl ot tan'cy7 Surely a rare endowment was this, wherein logical exactness and analytical power were joined with a poetic faculty by means of which he was enabled often- times to soar aloft into the highest realms of the emp^Tean. Morally, De Quincey's character is less admirable. He is neverJnmior^ly-Wtis- constantly unmoral ; rarely is he "jtoo. f ord of _th£_ ^ight to p ursue the_e.xpe4ient. '' Lacking the S(2va indignatio of a CarFyle or a Ruskin, he makes no effort to right abuses, ''to set the crooked straight," to be himself a positive influence for good in the universe. He is, indeed, a l9i£E_iil_ihe_good, but chiefl;^:J9eeause it is the-beatrttftil and the pleasing, and because he is an int^^Hectuql hpHnnisd-,. De Quincey can teach us much, can often carry us with him to the clouds, can inspire us with noble thoughts, but never does he offer us strong meat for our souls. Turning to consider De Quincey's contributions to our lit- erature, we find that with the exception of three books, — Wal- ladmor, Klosterheim, and The Logic of Political Economy, — xxiv INTRODUCTORY NOTES all these contributions took the oneiorm But when we say that De Quincey was the author of one hundred and fifty essays, we have done little toward suggest- ing the vast extent of his literary range. There are few fields of human interest that he has not explored, and f2w periods of human history that he has not investigated, while out of his own imagination he has created dream-worlds w^onderful beyond compare. ' The mention of only a few of his master- pieces must here serve to indicate the multifariousness of his contribution to English literature. Autobiographical are the C onfessio ns of an English Opium-Eater, the Autohio- graj^ hic Sket ches, and the KecgllcrfTnns nj_ thp. T.akp. Popfsi ; among the best of the biographical essays are those on Charles Lamb^ Richard^ejjtley, Shaks:pearej and Pope; The^RewlLof the Tartars, T he Ccesar s, Jo an of A rc, The^&panish Miliiary Null, andr^h e Esse ties are largely historical; Cgsimtry is ethical, Protestantism theological, and A Tory's ^Aixount of Toryism political ; the most noted of his critical writings are StylCy Rhetoric, Language, and O n Wo rdsworth's Poetry; while he is at his greatest in those masterpieceslSf prose^^etry of which the Su spiria de Prof undis and parts of The English MaU^oadi are typical examples. These are but a few~of De Quincey's essays; of the multitude remaining we may note that all are of high average excellence, that all show a wealth of knowledge rarely equalled in the writings of any other English author, and that all are clothed in that striking style of which De Quincey alone is master. What, in conclusion, may be said of De Quincey's place in our literature ? That it is perma nent, noone caiLdgny ; De Quincey's best essays will alwaysTTve because of the enter- tainment and instruction they afford the most cursory reader, because of the pleasing glimpses they give us of his own unique personality, because of their acute criticism of what INTRODUCTORY NOTES XXV men have done and said and written, because of their imagina- tive beauty, their genuine humor and pathos, and the precision, clearness, and melody of their almost perfect style. Inasmuch as De Quin ceyimsL-QQ-grpat l^ss*^^ ^^ fpnoL— ji«^ nnH rarely impresses us by the strong originality of his thought, he can- not, perhaps, be placed among the few supremely great of the world's authors, but, in his own real m he is kin^ ; his mas- terpieces are among those things which the world would not willingly let die, and the name of the English Opium-Eater will long be held in loving reverence by those whose dehght it is to honor literary genius. A-t School and University. IT. Chronological 1785. — Aug. 15, Thomas De Quincey 'bom at Manchester; family moves to "The Farm." 1791. — Elizabeth, his favorite sister, dies. [-1792. — Family moves to "Greenhay"; father dies ; Thomas sent to school at Salford. 1796. — Family moves to Bath ; Thomas entered at Bath Grammar School. 1799. —Attends school at AVinkfield. 1800. — Travels with Lord Westport ; visits Laxton ; enters Manchester Grammar School. 1802. — Runs aM^ay from school ; in North Wales and London. 1803. — Enters Worcester College, Oxfords 1804. - — First uses opium. 1807. — Meets Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey. 1808. — Leaves Oxford; la London, preparing ^ for the bar. xxvi INTRODUCTORY NOTES Among the Lakes. At London and Grasmerc. At Edinburgh and Grasmere. At Edinburgh. At Lasswade and Edinburgh. At Edinburgh and Lasswade. 1809. — Takes up his residence at Grasmere. 1813. — Becomes a confirmed opium-eater. 1816, — Marries Margaret Simpson. 1817. — Prostrated by use of opium. 1819. — Becomes editor of Westmoreland Gazette. ' 1821. — Confessions of an English Opium-Eatef appears in the London Magazine. 1824. — Connection with London Hagazine ends. != 1826. — Begins contributing to Blackwood'' i Magazine. 1827. — On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts. 1830. — Moves family to Edinburgh. 1832. — The Cmars. 1834. — Autobiographic Sketches begin to appear in TaiVs Magazine. 1835. — William, the eldest son, dies. 1837. — The Revolt of the Tartars; wife dies. 1840. — Takes cottage at Lasswade. 1841-1843. —In Glasgow. 1845. — Suspiria de Frofnndis. 1847. — Joan of Arc ; Tlie Spanish Military Nun. 1849. — The English 31ail-Coach ; first contribu- tion to Hogg^s Weekly Instructor. 1852. —Takes lodgings at 42 Lothian St., and begins work on Collective Edition. 1853. — Vol. I of Selections, Crave and Gay^ from Writings of TJiomas de Quincey. 1857. — Visits Ireland. 1859. — Health begins to decline ; Thursday, Dec. 8, dies at 42 Lothian St. ; buried in West Churchyard, Edinburgh. INTRODUCTORY NOTES XXVll III. Rhetorical Among those qualities that we have noted as securing for De Quincey's essays a permanent place in our literature, none is more striking than the rhetorical excellence of their style. Indeed, so skilful a rhetorician was De Quincey that a minute treatise on style might draw its illustrations from his writings alone. This being true, a careful study of the manner in which our author has expressed himself will be both interest- ing and instructive, — especially to the student of rhetoric. It will show us how expert a literary craftsman De Quincey was, and at the same time, since style is the man, will give us further insight into the peculiar character of his genius. In his essay on Style, De Quincey himself tells us that the matter and the manner of a book are often "inextricably interwoven. " This truth is strikingly exemplified in his own writings; consequently, since his matter is multifarious, we find that his style is widely diversified. With regard to their purpose, — and, of necessity, their contents as well, — De Quincey divided his essays into three classes: first, those which propose "primarily to amuse the reader," but which may at the same time arouse in him "an impassioned inter- est''; second, those which "address themselves purely to the understanding as an insulated faculty, or do so prima- rily"; third, those "modes of impassioned prose," which, "ranging under no precedents" in literature, he considers the highest class of his compositions. Accepting this division, but noting that the groups are by no means mutually exclu- sive, we may say that The Spanish Military Nun belongs in the first of these classes, that Joan of Arc falls in the second, and that The English Mail-Coach, in part at least, is one of the productions of the third class. Thus, in the present vol- ume, each of the three groups is represented. A study of De XXVii INTRODUCTORY NOTES Quincey's style, therefore, will be made definite and at \h.k same time sufficiently broad if limited to the essays im- mediately before us. Some general observations concerning this style may first be made, and these supplemented by a series of exercises whereby the student may analyze more minutely for himself De Quincey's rhetorical technique. 1. Fundamental Processes. — Following Professor Ge- nung, we may include under this head "the most impor- tant features of grammatical and rhetorical combination." With regard to De Quincey's grammar, Professor Masson says: "I have found no single recurring fault of s}mtax in his style, unless it be in his sanction of a very questionable use of the English participle. " This fault is easily noticeable ("The steeplechase . . . had been a fine headlong thing, considering the torrent," etc., p. 176, 11. 23 ff.) and is, to be sure, the only "recurring" one, but De Quincey en^s occasion- ally in other matters syntactical. The accuracy of "many a gay creature was sporting that masqueraded as kings in dress" (p. 17, 11. 29-30), for example, may well be questioned, and had is clearly the wrong tense in the sentence, "But it is too probable," etc. (p. 159, 11. 6 ff.). Nevertheless, De Quincey's grammar is usually faultless; in this connection we should note particularly his skill in employing the "his- toric present" tense, his discriminating use of the subjunc- tive mood, his careful distinctions between shall and icill, and his delightful avoidance of the "cleft infinitive." De Quincey's passion for clearness makes him extremely careful to place properly all his words, phrases, and clauses, so that even in his most complex sentences we find little diffi- culty in determining which elements belong together. An occasional error {e.g. "and onhj not good for our age because for us it would be unattainable," p. 11, 11. 15-16; "Accord- ing to the usages of the tunes and country, Kate knew that INTRODUCTORY NOTES XXlX within twelve hours she would be assassinated," p. 126, A. 13-15) thus becomes all the more noticeable. He is equally scrupulous in making clear any reference to preceding or following elements, though occasional ambiguities have called for attention in the notes. Here should be mentioned De Quincey's fondness for the relative pronoun that, which he uses in both coordinative and restrictive senses, generally preferring it to ivho or which except when considerations of euphony forbid its employment. Though his style is not generally elliptical, De Quincey knows well the value of omission and condensation as means to secure rapidity of movement, colloquial ease, and strength of statement. On the other hand, he does not hesitate to repeat important words or expressions if oratorical volume, clearness, or emphasis may be secured thereby. Especially is this repetition frequent in his more elevated passages. Of the various kinds of repetition employed by De Quincey, the most characteristic is repetition in inverse order; e.g» ^' that sang together to God, together that sang to the genera- tions of man, " p. 94, 11. 5-6. Not the least remarkable feature of De Quincey's style is the frequency \x\ih. which he departs from the usual gram- matical order of sentence elements, yet generally manages to keep the dependence clear. Objects precede their verbs ("Us . . . they overtook," p. 94, 11. 7-9), verbs precede their subjects ("Known is it to the great Father of All," p. 183, 11. 19-20), predicate adjectives and adverbial phrases stand first in the sentence ("Frightful was the spasm of joy," p. 147, 1. 21; "To the port she fled," p. 128, 11. 17-18). Such inversions are most frequently used to secure emphasis or to bring some element of the sentence nearer to a corre- sponding element preceding or to follow, but are often due merely to De Quincey's love of euphony and rhythm. These XXX INTRODUCTORY NOTES last-named qualities, we may here observe, are strlkingl;^ present in all that De Quincey wrote. *' At a glance she com- prehended that the sea was her only chance" (p. 128, 11. 16- 17) is one of the few examples of cacophony to be found in the present essays, while such a phrase as "From the silence and deep peace of this saintly summer night " (p. 84, 11. 11-12) will show how closely the rhythm of De Quincey's prose approaches at times the rhythm of poetry. 2. Diction. — De Quincey tells us that the young poet should "spend the third part of his life" in studying his mother tongue and "cultivating its native resources"; "he should be willing to pluck out his right eye or to circumnavi- gate the globe, if by such a sacrifice, if by such an exertion, he could attain to greater purity, precision, compass, or idio- matic energy of diction," We may truthfully say that much more than a third of De Quincey's life was spent in that volurr^inous and varied reading which resulted in gi^dng him command over a vocabulary perhaps the richest at the dis- posal of any English writer since Shakespeare. From this wide vocabulary he was always able to pick the most fitting word for his purpose ; absolute exactness is a marked character- istic of his diction. Even when a word at first seems badly chosen, we generally find that De Quincey has used it in a sense earlier and more exact than that commonly accepted. The use of words with their primitive meanings (e,gr. revolved. p. 145, 1. 32; conceit, p. 169, I. 32) is indeed almost a man- nerism in De Quincey. Equally striking is his use of unex- pected prepositions, as in the phrases ''under some secret conflict" (p. 69, 1. 18) or ''upon sl sound from afar" (p. 87, 1. 24) ; sometimes, indeed, the preposition employed (e.g. "in the whole flowery people, " p. 41, 1. 27) seems hardly to be the best one. Though De Quincey 's use of words is so remarkably ex- INTRODUCTORY NOTES XXXI act, it ia not always readily intelligible to the average reader, since the words themselves are drawn from all conceivable sources. Technical terms abound; law, medicine, mathe- matics, physics, philosophy, logic, heraldry, music, surveying, astrology, astronomy, military science, coaching, the hunting field, the race track — all these are put under contribution even in the three essays before us. Foreign words and phrases are by no means rare. Slang ''from Cockney to Oxonian" is frequently made use of, and colloquialisms of all sorts abound. Such, indeed, was De Quincey's love of ''the pure, racy idiom of colloquial or household English" that he is sometimes betrayed into using it when non-idiomatic dic- tion would be in better taste {e.g. "took after her father," p. 7, 1. 6). On the other hand, De Quincey does not hesitate to employ words of a distinctly bookish flavor. Such are prcedial (p. 15, 1. 4), cognominated (p. 72, 1. 5), vertiginous (p. 165, 1. 8), and many others. Occasionally he coins his own word, but does so in a scholarly way and only for suffi- cient reasons; diphrelatic (p. 72, 1. 7) is of his mintage, and the note on this word will serve to show his general attitude toward word-coinage. As a whole, De Quincey's diction is commonly spoken of as Latinized, and it is true that in his most characteristic passages, words of classic derivation occur in unusual abun- dance. Such words, however, were necessary for the exact expression of his thoughts ; moreover, the classic element of our language is the most " canorous " and " long-tailed words in -osity and -ation " are necessary to a rhythmical and ele- vated style. Nevertheless, De Quincey drew freely upon native Anglo-Saxon sources when occasion demanded, and in the more colloquial parts of The English Mail-Coach and The Spanish Military Nun he will be found to employ a diction Saxon enough to satisfy the most exacting. If, on the whole, XXXii INTRODUCTORY NOTES he uses more words of classic origin than most other EnglisI writers, it is because of his pecuhar needs, and not because he fails to appreciate the sturdy strength of the Saxon. 3. Figures of Speech. — Endowed with a strikingly rich and imaginative intellect and what he himself calls "an electric aptitude for seizing analogies, " De Quincey was natu- rally an incessant user of figurative expressions. These im- press us chiefly by their seeming spontaneity ; rarely or never do they smell of the lamp. In the essays we are studying, examples may be found of every figure known to the rhetori- cian. Of these, metaphors are by far the most numerous, especially when the tone of the discourse is elevated ; in the more colloquial passages similes are frequently used. It is interesting to note that in these figures of comparison animals play an important part, at least a dozen different creatures serving in the metaphors and similes of The Spanish Military Nun. The kindred figures, synecdoche and metonymy, though to be found in these essays, are rare. Personifica- tion, however, is, after the metaphor, De Quincey 's favorite figure; we may note that he not only personifies inanimate objects, but often ascribes life to abstract ideas. Among those figures that appeal most strongly to the reader's feelings and lend most life and emphasis to the style, the apostrophe is De Quincey's favorite and the most char- acteristic of him; an excellent example of its use may be found in the opening paragraph of Joan of Arc. Different in character and purpose are the pseudo-apostrophies ad- dressed to the reader (e.g. pp. 132-133) which are employed for their humorous effect or to make the style more collo- quial. De Quincey knows, too, the various uses of the excla- mation and the rhetorical question. He is at times ironical, but De Quincey's irony is more often good-natured and kindly than bitt^er or mordant. Formal antithetical sentencea INTRODUCTORY N0TE5> ixxiii are rare with him, and when found are generally brief; but antithetical touches, as in "by the traditions of the past no less than by the mementoes of the local present " (p. 14, 11. 3-4) are to be met on every page. While De Quincey ob- serves carefully the order of climax in his paragraphs and essays, he arranges similar words, phrases, and clauses with a view to euphony quite as much as to growth of thought; note, for example, ''to review, to ponder, to compare" (p. 5, 1. 24). Though he uses figures thus freely, De Quincey rarely mixes his metaphors; they are, however, decidedly confused in the sentence, ''Dreadful pecuniary exhaustion . . . feet" (p. 20, 11. 26-32), and are badly crowded, to say the least, in " From the silence . . . voice" (p. 84, 11. 11-20). 4. Sentences. — De Quincey's style is more periodic than that of any other master of modern English prose. The pro- portion of his periodic sentences to those of other types is very large; hardly a page can be found that is not sown with periods. These, however, are rarely of excessive length. We note, too, that he frequently secures periodic effects and at the same time avoids too great strain on the reader's atten- tion by making his sentences periodic only to a certain point, by giving a periodic form to the component clauses of loose sentences, or by becoming periodic at or near the close of his paragraphs. Occasionally, however, entire paragraphs {e.g. "T am not . . . Englishmen," pp. 5-6) are composed largely of periodic sentences, just as others {e.g. "The kit- ten . . . mendacity," pp. 101-102) contain no periods at all. Fond as he is of periodic effects, De Quincey generally takes great care to vary his sentence types. Loose sentences abound. The exact antithetical balance of Macaulay is not often met with, but nearly every sentence of any length shows careful parallelism in the wording of its phrases and XXxiv INTRODUCTORY NOTES clauses. Often several sentences in succession are similarly constructed. Short sentences are employed in large num« bers for variety {e.g. ''Such . . . driving," pp. 39-40), for emphasis (''Bishop . . . silent," pp. 33-35), or for rapidity ("St. Lucar . . . her,'' pp. 117-118). Some- times, however, rapidity is secured by the use of long sentences composed of parts loosely joined, as in the outline of Joan's career on p. 21. Exclamatory and interrogative sentences are frequently employed for variety, and especially in the more elevated passages are relied upon for the expression of extreme emotion; see the paragraph: "Lo . . . founder" (pp. 85-86). The charge sometimes made that De Quincey's sentences are often unduly long, complex, and crowded, will hardly be borne out by our present study. True, we can find sen- tences that are heterogeneous and involved, but they are very rare. De Quincey, indeed, shows a decided preference for short sentences, and any momentary unclearness of structure is apt to be due to an unusual arrangement of parts rather than to any great sentence length. But, as a rule, the structure of all De Quincey's sentences should be clear to the average reader, if only he be reasonably attentive. 5. Paragraphs. — Unity, continuity, and proportion are, we know, the qualities necessary to every good para- graph; the second alone is uniformly to be found in De Quincey. He takes the greatest care that each sentence shall grow out of its predecessor and prepare the way for other sentences to follow; conjunctions, reference words, repetitions, transitional phrases, sentences, and clauses are employed in profusion. The opening paragraph of Joan of Arc will give the student an excellent idea of the care taken by De Quincey to make his style "sequacious." But our author was the most digressive of all English essayists; INTRODUCTORY NOTES XXXV anity and proportion are consequently lacking in a large number of his paragraphs. Sometimes the digressions are slight, as in the paragraph: ''It is not . . . suffer" (pp. 20- 21) ; again they may include practically the whole paragraph, as on pp. 141-144; digressions from digressions, as in the paragraph: "But stay . . . herself" (pp. 3-5), are not un- common. These digressions, however, as Professor Masson observes, "have a wonderful knack of revolving to the point whence they set out, and generally with a fresh freight of meaning to be incorporated at that point." Rhetorically faulty as they are, annoying as we sometimes find them, they are never valueless, and we soon come to delight in them as charming and characteristic De Quinceyisms. 6. Qualities of Style. — As we have already noted, clearness is one of the marked quahties of De Quincey's style. He is always at great pains to make his meaning self-evident, to explain carefuUy the exact bearing of his every statement upon its fellows. Some of the ways in which he does this have already been mentioned. Another favor- ite means of securing clearness is to quote specific cases in illustration of any general statements he may make; this method, as well as his uniform perspicuity, may be studied to advantage in the opening paragraphs of The Vision of Sudden Death, pp. 64-69. But, however clear, De Quincey's style is not preeminently a forceful one, in any such way, at least, as that in which Carlyle's is forceful. Doubtless this lack of strength is due to the peculiarly intellectual type of De Quincey's genius, his inability to forget the manner of his writing, however great may be his interest in its matter. On the other hand, this very inability makes beauty a most striking characteristic of De Quincey's style. He is par excellence the great English master of prose-poetry; the imagery, the melody, and the rhythm of his best passages XXXVi INTRODUCTORY NOTES are not to be paralleled elsewhere in our prose. When D« Quincey pays tribute to some Joan of Arc, or plays for us some mystic Dream-Fugue, his l^Tical powers are at their best, and no reader of the present essays can fail to realize that in his feeling for the sublime, his imaginative faculty, and his match- less command over the rhythmical resources of the language, De Quincey was more rarely endowed than many of our most noted poets. Among the special qualities of style enumerated by rheto- ricians, humor is the one particularly noticeable in all De Quincey's essays. It is, however, a humor peculiarly his own, shading readily into wit, appealing more strongly to the head than to the heart, and rarely, if ever, of the large, whole-souled type that calls for side-splitting bursts of laughter. It is humor that springs not from the subject treated, but rather from the author's brain. It pervades all his work and even crops out at times when good taste would seem to demand its suppression. Indeed, so preva- lent is it in the essays before us and so characteristic of De Quincey that we may take the time to analyze it somewhat carefully. De Quincey's humor most frequently takes the form of a serious treatment of some trivial subject {e.g. p. 45) or the introduction of trivial or ludicrous particulars in the midst of a serious discussion (p. 15). Again it may be due to the sudden intrusion of De Quincey himself into the discourse (p. 107), to some personal appeal of his to the reader (p. 132), or to his famihar method of addressing or referring to some well-know^n character (p. 104). Anacronisms (p. 108), impossibilities (p. 14), incongruities (p. 110), and hyperbolic statements (p. 46) are frequently rehed upon for humorous effects. Sometimes the humor lies in a metaphor or simile (p. 112), or perhaps in an epithet (p. 110). Again, we may be called upon to laugh at an absurd bit of logic (p. 36) or to I]^TRODUCT0RY NOTES XXXvil follow out a line of ridiculous argument (pp. 43-44). Occa- sionally, De Quincey's humor is ironical or sarcastic in tone, as on pp. 98-100. Some of our author's puns are referred to in the notes; their presence in his humorous passages shows how purely intellectual his fun-making is, and how often it is little more than wit. To humor, the twin quality is pathos. De Quincey's pathos, however, unlike his humor, seems to issue directly from the heart; it is genuine and appeals at once to the reader. Like his humor, it is all-pervasive, and pathetic touches abound in the present volume. Joan of Arc con^ stantly inspires De Quincey with pity, and he shows us the sorrowful as well as the sublime in her career. The soldier's mother (pp. 62 ff .) and the young girl (pp. 80 ff.) of The Eng- lish Mail-Coach are pathetic figures as De Quincey presents them to us. But of the characters appearing in these essays it is the Spanish Military Nun of whom De Quincey is most fond, and the pathetic tenderness with which he writes of her doubtless arouses an answering sentiment in the heart of every reader. 7. Practical Exercises. — The list of rhetorical exer- cises here given makes no claim to completeness; it is in- tended to be suggestive merely, and is capable of infinite expansion. (1) Discuss the agreement of subject and verb in the sen- tences: ''That Easter . . . robbers" (p. 33, 11. 9-14) and ''Consequently . . . bands" (p. 110, 11. 22-23). (2) Criticise the participial constructions in 11. 4-5, p. 4 ; 11. 16-17, p. 21 ; 11. 14-15, p. 39 ; 11. 29-30, p. 53 ; 11. 6-7, p. 174. (3) Justify De Quincey's use of shall, will, and would in the paragraph: "Bishop . . . silent" (pp. 33-35). (4) Can you find any examples of the "cleft infinitive*' in the essays of this volume? JtXXViii INTRODUCTORY NOTES (5) Test the use of tenses in the paragraphs : " Oh ! . . ^ frost" (pp. 146-148) and "All . . . forgiveness" (pp. 150- 151). (6) Why should the subjunctive mood be employed in ;. 1, p. 29; 1. 9, p. 32; 1. 20, p. 49? Why the indicative in I. 16, p. 128? What is the difference in force between the indicative and the subjunctive in 11. 10-11, p. 66, and 11. 9-10, p. 82? (7) Comment upon the order of words, phrases, and clauses in the sentences: "Gorgeous . . . her" (p. 3, 11. 10- 16); "But . . . forms" (p. 10, 11. 26-29); "Yet . . . one" (p. 29, 11. 19-26); "Once . . . us" (p. 47, 11. 6-9); "Out . . . Fanny" (p. 55, 11. 13-17); "Ah . . . wind" (p. 85, II. 16-20); "Kate's . . . recollection" (p. 119, 11. 21-24): "As . . . frost" (p. 148, 11. 24-29). (8) Can you determine what principles govern De Quin- cey's use of who^ which, and that? (9) Is the retrospective reference clear in the sentences : "It . . . error" (p. 4, 11. 20-24) and "And . . . death'* (p. 162, 1. 39-p. 163, 1. 3) ? (10) Does De Quincey follow not by or, or by nor ? (11) Study and explain the varying intensity of the nega- tions found in the paragraph: "Here . . . him'' (pp. 61-64). (12) What words are omitted in 11. 8-10, p. 79; 11. 11-13, p. 83; 1. 4, p. 84; 11. 3-5, p. 177? Give reasons for these omissions. (13) Point out all repetitions of words and ideas in the paragraphs: "Thus . . . last" (pp. 90-93) and "That . . . ever!" (p. 183). (14) Find examples of repetition m inverse order on pp. 33-35. (15) Account for the inversions found in 11. 28-30, p. 56; INTRODUCTORY NOTES XXXIX n. 11-15, p. 90; 11. 1-2, p. 148; 11. 21-23, p. 158; U. 8-9, p. 170; 11. 13-14, p. 180. (16) Collate examples showing De Quincey's care for the rhythm of his sentences. (17) Comment on the diction of the sentences: "Unless . . . broken" (p. 22, 11. 14-17); "At . . . dreams" (p. 32, 11. 27-31); "These . . . result" (p. 36, 11. 12-24); "England . . . democracy" (p. 39, 11. 12-15); " Horses 1 . . . leopards?" (p. 58, 11. 26-27); "As . . . goodness" (p. 94, 11. 10-20); "Catalina . . . you" (p. 162, U. 16-20). (18) Make a list of all the unfamiliar words found in the essays of this volume and learn the meaning of each. (19) Collate and comment upon the words coined by De Quincey. (20) Note all the words that De Quincey employs in un- dsual senses, and justify his use of them. (21) Make a Hst of the unexpected prepositions used by De Quincey. (22) Has De Quincey other favorite words besides those mentioned in the notes? (23) How many times is viz. used in the present essays? Why is De Quincey so fond of the word? (24) From what different languages do the foreign words and phrases of these essays come? Is De Quincey's use of these foreign expressions pedantic? (25) Can you find any archaic words or forms in these essays? (26) Show that De Quincey's diction is sometimes poetic. (27) Collect and classify the technical terms used by De Quincey. (28) Pick out and explain the meaning of all colloquial and idiomatic expressions found on pp. 117-121 and pp. 173-176. Xf INTRODUCTORY NOTES (29) Make a list of all the slang terms occurring in Th Spanish Military Nun. (30) What is the proportion of Anglo-Saxon words on pp. 26-27; pp. 93-94; pp. 128-129? Why the diffeience? (31) Is De Quincey's diction more or less Latinized than that of Milton? of Bunyan? of Swift? of Macaulay? of Carlyle? of Ruskin? (32) Find a good example of each of the different figures of speech used by De Quincey. (33) Make a list of the different animals referred to in De Quincey's figures. (34) Point out those figures that involve some technical knowledge on De Quincey's part. (35) Point out those due to his knowledge of history and geography. (36) Recognize and name all the figures occurring on pp. 1-3; pp. 85-87; pp. 146-148. (37) Is De Quincey's frequent use of italics justifiable? (38) What is the purpose of the pleonastic structure of the sentences: "This . . . her" (p. 2, 11. 25-29); "The famines . . . chords" (p. 10, 11. 4-7); "But the forests . . . strength" (p. 12, 11. 6-8); "The shepherd . . . wan- dered" (p. 33, U. 5-9); "We . . . indignities?" (p. 40, 11. 1-5); "And yet . . . life" (p. 141, 11. 2-6); "Potentates . . . vain" (p. 178,11. 26-27). (39) Explain the ellipses in the sentences: "Yet . . . dies" (p. 34, 11. 18-19); "Five . . . event" (p. 56, 11. 28- 30); "What . . . forever!" (p. 58, 11. 27-33); "Thimble . . . her" (p. 118, 11. 19-20). (40) Criticise the structure of the sentences: "This . . . yours" (p. 35, 11. 14-16); "It seems ... piety" (p. 65, 11. 28-29); "As . . . goodness" (p. 94, U. 10-20); "The simple . . . effort" (p. 151, U. 18-25). INTRODUCTORY NOTES xli (41) Test for unity the sentences: "Joanna 5 . . . her- self" (p, 20, 11. 16-22); ''Then . . . children'' (pp. 55-56); "Yet . . . mendacity" (p. 102, 11. 11-22); "But, as . . . nun" (pp. 148-149); "Suppose . . . revolting" (pp. 186- 187). (42) What is the average length of the sentences on pp. 27-28; pp. 55-56; pp. 67-68; pp. 106-107; pp. 139-140; pp. 176-177 ? Why the difference ? (43) What is the purpose of the short sentences on pp. 31-32; pp. 77-78; pp. 128-130; pp. 172-173? (44) Account for the use of the exclamatory and inter- rogative sentences in the paragraphs: "What . . . forever" (pp. 1-3); "Now . . . mother" (pp. 24-26); "Bishop . . . silent" (pp. 33-35); "Passion ... horror?" (p. 85); "Then . . . love!" (pp. 93-94). (45) What is the proportion of periodic sentences on pp. 8-9 ; pp. 59-60 ; p. 76 ; p. 125 ; p. 180 ? Why the difference ? (46) Tabulate the means used by De Quincey for secur- ing suspense. (47) Point out all examples of balanced structure to be found on pp. 2-3; pp. 24-25; pp. 32-35; pp. 90-93; p. 190. (48) Classify rhetorically the sentences of paragraphs: "All . . . broken" (pp. 21-22); "No . . . authority" (pp. 45-46); "Catalina . . . battles" (pp. 155-156). (49) Show all the different means used to secure con- tinuity in paragraphs : "But she . . . EngHsh" (pp. 22-23); "Such being . . . driving" (pp. 39-40); "Here . . . adore" (pp. 141-144). (50) Test the unity of paragraphs: "As to . . . king'' (pp. 16-18); "The mail coach . . . construction" (pp. 37-39); "The modern » . . train" (pp. 49-51) ; "Here . . . anything" (pp. 111-115); "There ... creduUty" (pp. 184-185). Xlii INTRODUCTORY NOTES (51) Find the digressions in paragraphs: "But . . . her» self" (pp. 3-5); "Here . . . him'' (pp. 61-64); "On . . . tenderness" (pp. 98-100). (52) Find several whole paragraphs of digression. (53) Make a Hst of De Quincey's puns. (54) Find additional examples of the different types of humor referred to above (pp. xxxvi-xxxvii) . (55) Is the fun-making of pp. 6-7 and p. 120 in good taste? Why, or why not? (56) Note the most strikingly pathetic passages in these essays. (57) Which passages do you consider the most poetic, and which the most eloquent? (58) Note the various points at which the tone of De Quincey's style changes. (59) What means are used to effect these changes of tone ? (60) Is De Quincey's style ever pedantic, bombastic, or artificial ? Why, or why not ? IV. Creativb The essays contained in this volume should not only furnish the student with material for reading, study, and analysis; they should also be made the basis of original creative work on his own part. To show how easily this may be done, a brief list of possible themes for compositions is here appended. 1. The justice of De Quincey's criticism of Southey's Joan of Arc. 2. The Joan of De Quincey's essay compared with the Joan of Shakespeare's Henry VI, 3. De Quincey's estimate of woman's powers (p. 27) a correct one. INTRODUCTORY NOTES xlui 4. The advantages of the railway train over the mail- 2oach as a means of locomotion. 5. Why the Dream-Fugue is so named. 6. The exact connection between the Dream-Fugue and The Vision of Sudden Death. 7. De Quincey's sarcastic account of Spanish pride and laziness unjustifiable. 8. The probable justice of De Quincey^s comparison between Kate and the Ancient Mariner. 9. Various suppositions as to CataUna's fate. 10. The character of Joan of Arc compared with that of Catalina de Erauso. 11. Historic women that have fought as soldiers. 12. Why De Quincey's notes have been called pedantic. 13. De Quincey's familiarity with Uterature as shown in these essays. 14. The range and accuracy of De Quincey's historical knowledge. 15. The facts these essays tell the reader about De Quin- cey's life. 16. De Quincey's personality as inferred from these essays. 17. De Quincey's feeling toward the French and its causes. 18. The influence of the- Bible on De Quincey's style. 19. Reasons for preferring one of these essays to the others. 20. A personal estimate of De Quincey's rank as an essayist. V. Historical A, Joan of Arc In his essay on Joan of Arc, De Quincey makes no at- tempt "to write the history of La PuceUe" ; indeed, he pre- Xliy INTRODUCTORY NOTES supposes a certain knowledge of her history on the part oi the reader. To supply that knowledge, a brief outUne of her life is here given. At the beginning of the fifteenth century' the national affairs of France were in an extremely critical condition. Though the French territory won by Edward III of England and the Black Prince had been recovered by Charles V (1364- 1380), the incapacity of his successor, Charles VI, had de- stroyed all hopes of immediate national unity and greatness by delivering France as a prey to the rival nobles of the court. Most powerful among these were the Duke of Orleans and the Duke of Burgundy, who soon plunged the country into all the horrors of a civil war. This moment Henry V of England found favorable for pressing his claims to the French throne; entering Normandy in 1415 at the head of an Eng- Ush army, he met with resistance from the Orleanists alone, and by the great victory of Agincourt opened the way to an easy conquest. After pursuing his victorious course for some years, he formed an alliance with the Burgundians, and by the treaty of Troyes (1420) was declared the heir of Charles VI and Regent of France. In 1422, however, both Charles and Henry died. By the terms of the treaty Henry VI, then only nine months old, became joint ruler of the two kingdoms; his uncle, John of Bedford, was appointed his regent in France and at once urged forward the conquest of sueh French pro\'inces as refused to acknowledge the English sovereignty. Meanwhile the Orleanists, or Armagnacs as the 7 were generally called, into whose hands the dauphin Charles, only surviving son of Charles VI, had fallen, offered but a feeble resistance to the Anglo-Burgundian advance. Charles him- self, then twenty years old, was weak, dissolute, and a coward; the leaders of his party were mostly adventurers INTRODUCTORY NOTES xIt who thought only of their private interests and carried on a merely desultory warfare against the English. By 1428 practically all France north and east of the Loire owned Henry as king, while by no means aD the southern provinces remained loyal to Charles. Anxious to complete their con- quest and put an end to the struggle, the English, in October, 1428, invested Orleans, the key to the South. It was just at this critical moment that Joan of Arc entered upon her career of victory and of suffering. At Domremy, in the valley of the Meuse between Cham- pagne and Lorraine, Joan was born in the year 1412, the fourth child of James of Arc and Isabel of Vouthon. Her birthplace seems to have been a part of the Duchy of Bar rather than of Lorraine or Champagne, but whatever its territorial relations, its inhabitants were all loyal supporters of Charles and his cause. Here Joan learned to spin and to sew, to perform the duties of the household, and to watch over her father's flocks. Her childhood was in no wise un- like that of her friends and playmates, save that she was noted throughout the village for her charity and religious zeal. Not until she had reached her thirteenth year was she singled out from among her fellows; one summer's day, when alone in her father's garden, she beheld a great light and in the midst saw the Archangel Michael surrounded by other angels. Similar visions followed at intervals during three years. In these St. Margaret and St. Catherine also ap- peared, by whom she was bidden to save France. At last the commands of the saints became more definite; Joan must go to Vaucouleurs and ask Baudricourt, its commander, to send her to the dauphin ; she must conduct him to Rheims and see him made king; then she must drive the English out of France. In January, 1429, Joan and Durand Laxart» her cousin, Xlvi INTRODUCTORY NOTES made their way to Vaucouleurs. At first Baudricourt gav^ the maid but a cold reception ; she needed to be whipped, he thought. The people of the town beheved in her, however, and finally Baudricourt, giving her a small escort and a letter to the king, sent her on her w^ay to Chinon, where Charles was then holding his court. Arrived here, Joan was first examined by various clerks and priests; not until several days later was she allowed a royal audience in the great hall of the palace. As she entered, the king drew aside, thinking to test her miraculous powers, but she knew him at once and announced to him her divinely appointed mission. For days Charles could not make up his mind to avail himself of Joan's aid ; he had her examined by his priests and monks, then sent her to the university town of Poictiers to undergo further examination as to her orthodoxy. She emerged victorious from these tests, but was obliged to wait some weeks before an army could be raised to relieve Orleans. Meanwhile she wrote a letter to the English, demanding the surrender of all French cities held by them; had made for herself a banner sown with lilies and bearing a picture of God seated upon the clouds ; and sent to the church of St. Catherine of Fier- bois for an old sword which she had never seen but which was found in the place described by her. At length, on April 25, she joined the French army at Blois; and the march toward Orleans was begun. This city, the possession of which was so important to Charles, had been besieged by the English, as we have seen, smce October, 1428. An expedition sent to its relief in Feb- ruary, 1429, had been intercepted and defeated by the Eng- lish, so that the city was now in great straits, though much encouraged by news of the coming of the miraculous maid. On April 29 Joan entered Orleans and was received with great rejoicing; the army, which had lost tune by first approach- INTRODUCTORY NOTES xlvU mg on the wrong side of the Loire, followed her on May 4, the English offering no opposition to their entrance. Once within the city, Joan counselled immediate action, especially since ohe English expected the arrival of reenforcements at any moment. The French generals, on the contrary, fav- ored delay and the exercise of great caution ; but the maid so impressed them by her supreme confidence in herself that at last she was allowed to have her way. By Sunda /, May 8, the English had been driven from their forts, and Talbot with all his troops was retreating rapidly down the Loire. Joan now wished to take advantage of the English dis- couragement and march directly to Rheims ; the royal coun- cil, however, was divided into rival factions and could decide upon no course of action. At last it was determined to attack the English forts along the Loire before proceeding farther, and the Duke of Alengon was given commana of the army. The fortress of Jargeau, twelve miles above Orleans, was taken on June 12; three days later the French marched down the river past Orleans and captured Meung. Talbot then united all the Enghsh forces at Beaugency, hoping to defend this town until the arrival of Fastolf with reenforce- ments from Paris, which he himself went forward to meet. The relief did not come in time, however, for Talbot and Fas- tolf reached Meung just as the city surrendered, June 18. Th3 English then decided to retreat upon Janville, some twenty-five miles to the north. At Patay, twelve miles from Meung, finding themselves unable to go farther without fighting, they halted and gave battle to their pursuers. The French victory here was complete ; the English were utterly routed and few of them escaped being either killed or cap- tured. With the surrender of Janville, the campaign of the Loire was ended, and the country between Paris and Orleans Xlviii INTRODUCTORY NOTES was free from English, though they still held several forts higher up the Loire. To the rapidity of the French move* ments and the enthusiasm of the French soldiers, this result was due, and for both these Joan had been largely responsible. At the conclusion of the campaign the maid hastened to Sully, where Charles was holding his court, and urged that he set out instantly for Rheims. As usual, however, the royal council advised delay, declaring it folly to think of marching through a hostile country full of fortified towns. But Joan's entreaties finally won the day and an advance was decided upon. After further delay in determining the proper route to follow, the march to Rheims was begun on June 30. On July 5 the army camped about Troyes, the capital of Cham- pagne, which refused to surrender to the dauphin. The council was opposed to a siege, some washing to pass by the town, others to return home. Joan promised to capture the place within three days and was allowed to make the at- tempt, but so ^^gorous were her preparations for the siege that, on July 9, Troyes surrendered without having struck a blow. On the day following its entrance into Troyes, the French army advanced upon Chalons. This town tlirew open its gates to receive the dauphin ; two days later, Rheims did likewise; and on Saturday, July 16, Charles and Joan together entered the city of kings. On Sunday, July 17, 1429, Charles VII was duly crowned and consecrated King of France according to ancient custom, all the appointed ceremonies being carefully observed. Throughout the ser- \dce Joan stood close to the king, holding her banner in her hands ; when he had been crowned, she knelt down at his feet, weeping vehemently. The story that she now declared her mission ended and asked permission to return to Domremy seems to be a mere legend lacking historical support. The English had not yet been driven from France, and though her INTRODUCTORY NOTES xlix ' voices " no longer gave definite instructions, they still com- manded Joan to proceed. Charles having been crowned, the part of wisdom was to march at once on Paris and drive out its Anglo-Burgundian garrison before John of Bedford could raise a new army to prevent the French attack. Such a march was begun, however, only after much delay, and even then the advance was slow and tortuous — greatly to Joan's disgust. The royal council, again the cause of all this procrastination, was more anxious to arrange a truce with Philip of Burgundy than to take Paris. Meanwhile Bedford had gathered to- gether fresh troops with which, at Montepilloy, August 14, he was able to check the French advance. Charles there- upon retired to Compiegne, where he was but little nearer Paris than at Rheims. The maid, however, unable to en- dure such vacillation, continued to march forward at the head of a considerable force, and on August 25, with the aid of the Duke of Alencon, captured St. Denis, just outside of Paris. Here she waited for Charles to join her, but instead of the king there came news that on August 28 a truce be- tween the French and the Burgundians had been agreed upon. Fortunately, however, Paris was not included in the truce, and Charles was at liberty to besiege this city. Not until September 8, however, did he unite his forces with Joan's at St. Denis, and before he allowed the maid to attack Paris he had already made definite arrangements to abandon the campaign. The first assault, on September 8, was re- pulsed, so, withor.t making any further attempt to capture the city, Charles ordered his forces to retreat across the Loire. This retreat was much more rapid than the ad- vance had been ; in eight days the French reached Gien, on the Loire, one hundred and fifty miles distant from St. Denis, and here the army was rapidly disbanded. 1 INTRODUCTORY NOTES In spite of the reverses just suffered by the French causey Joan was still anxious to fight. Willing to gratify her desire, the king and his council raised a small force during the month of October and allowed Joan to proceed against St. Pierre le Moustier and La Charite, two towns on the Burgundian frontier, of little importance to either party. St. Pierre fell on November 1 ; La Charite was besieged for a month, but the siege was finally abandoned for lack of means to carry it on. Joan then joined the king at Mehun, where she remained inactive until February, 1430, all the while asking nothing better than permission to fight the English, and receiving instead from the royal court only a patent of no- bility for herself and her family. In March she accompanied the king to Sully, where she was to wait for the ending of the truce with the Burgundians at Easter. Soon, however, she grew weary of the life here, and early in April left the court without the knowledge of the king or his council, probably joining some band of soldiers on their way north- ward. While waiting at Melun for Easter to come, she was warned by her voices that she would be captured before St. John's Day, June 24. When the truce was at last ended, Philip of Burgundy recommenced hostilities by preparing to lay siege to Com- pi^gne, a walled city on the Oise some fifty miles north of Paris. As a first step he besieged Choisy, six miles distant. Hearing of this, Joan hastened to Compiegne. After she and the French captains had made several ineffective at- tempts to relieve the siege of Choisy, that town surrendered (May 20), and the fall of Compiegne seemed inevitable. On May 23 a sally against the Anglo-Burgundian forces was determined upon; this sally Joan prepared to lead. At four o'clock in the afternoon she and her small party issued forth and fierce fighting at once ensued. The French, INTRODUCTORY NOTES H greatly outnumbered, were soon driven back to the city in wild confusion, closely pursued by the Burgundians. Flavy, the commander of Compiegne, fearing that the enemy might effect an entrance, closed the barriers of the boulevard lead- ing to the town before Joan and a few ethers had reached them. Left almost alone, the maid was quickly surrounded by her enemies, dragged from her horse by a Picard archer, and claimed as his prisoner by Lionel of Wandonne. According to the rules of war as then observed, Joan belonged to her captor ; but Wandonne seems to have shared his ownership with John of Luxemburg, commander of the corps in which Lionel was a captain. She was at once sent to Beaulieu, one of Luxemburg's strongholds, for safe-keep- ing. To her captors she was only a piece of property to be sold to the highest bidder ; but to the English she would be an invaluable prize. The latter, therefore, fearing lest Charles might make some attempt to ransom her, immedi- ately hastened to get Joan in their own possession. Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, was chosen as their agent to buy her from the Burgundians. He secured letters from the University of Paris, demanding that she ^ . turned over to him as a witch; on behalf of King Henry he offered £10,000 for her delivery. After some haggling the bargain was made, and as soon as the English had succeeded in raising the purchase money, Joan was turned over to them (November, 1430), Charles VII having made no effort to ransom or rescue her. Meanwhile, Joan herself had been kept for some week» in the castle of Beaulieu, from which she vainly endeav- ored to escape, and had then been taken to Beaurevoir, another and stronger castle belonging to Luxemburg. At both places she seems to have been cruelly treated. Finally, ^orn out by conjQnement and insult, sick at heart over the lii INTRODUCTORY NOTES news that Compiegne was about to be taken by the Burgun dians, and fearful lest she fall into the hands of the English, Joan disobeyed her voices for the first time and threw her- self from the tower at Beaurevoir, hoping either to escape or to end her life. She was badly shaken but not otherwise injured by the fall, so that the Burgundians were able to deliver their property to the English in good condition. For some time Joan's new owners could not decide whether to treat her as a prisoner of war or as a witch. Urged on by the University of Paris, they at last agreed to turn her over to the church for trial ; only by proving her an agent of the devil could they nullify the coronation of Charles. In De- cember, 1430, she was removed to Rouen and there delivered up to Cauchon, now acting as the representative of the church. An ecclesiastical trial of the fifteenth century ordinarily consisted of two parts: first, an inquest or gathering of evidence against the accused, so that an indictment might be drawn up ; second, the trial proper of the accused on the charges contained in the indictment. The first part of Joan's trial began with a preliminary meeting of the court in the royal council chamber at Rouen, on January 9, 1431. At this, as at all the subsequent meetings, Cauchon did not sit alone in judgment; the number of ecclesiastics formin? nis court varied greatly, however, sometimes as many as forty being present, again only five or six. At first the sessions of the court were held in the council chamber of the royal castle, but later Joan was usually examined before a small committee in her cell ; at first, too, there was some shov/ of fairness about the trial, since Cauchon believed that he should have no difficulty in proving Joan's guilt, but he soon found it necessary to resort to the most iniquitous methods in order to accomplish his purpose. During the course of the trial, INTRODUCTORY NO TUS iiii Joan was not allowed to hear mass or enjoy spiritual conso- lation of any kind. She was kept all the while in the com- mon prison of Rouen, heavily ironed and constantly exposed to insults and indignities. Worse still, she was exposed to treachery, for a pretended friend was sent to her cell to secure her confidences, and she was regularly watched over and listened to by concealed spies. At the second meeting of the court, held on January 13, a committee was chosen to digest such evidence as had already been collected against Joan, so that the court might determine what lines the inquest should follow. This task occupied the committee for ten days; other preparations consumed more time ; and it was not until February 21 that Joan was summoned to appear before the court. Into the details of her examination at this and the subsequent ses- sions of the court there is no need to enter ; suffice it to say that by shrewd answers or wise silence she skilfully avoided the traps laid for her by the examiners. The general nature of the questions asked her may readily be surmised if we enumerate a few of the different charges on which her judges wished to find her indictable, and on which their interroga- tions bore : she had communed with evil spirits, practised magic, ascribed supernatural virtue to her sword and banner, followed an unwomanly career in man's clothes, attacked Paris on the Feast of the Annunciation, attempted her own life at Beaurevoir, allowed people to worship her, pretended to wurk miracles, etc. The first part of her trial lasted until March 18, the court having met almost daily and having examined Joan at every meeting; her e\'idence, after being read to her and acknowledged by her, was turned over to Estivet, the prosecuting attorney, that he might prepare an indictment. On March 27 Joan was called before the court to hear the lir INTRODUCTORY NOTES indictment that had been drawn up against her. Thii document contained no less than seventy counts, or charges, to each of which in turn Joan was required to answer. At times she replied with great skill and discrimination ; again she would refer the judges to her previous evidence or de- clare that she left the whole matter to God. As it was im- possible with even a semblance of fairness to find her guilty on all the counts, Cauchon reduced the seventy articles to twelve, of which the most important were those relating to her belief in her saintly visitors, her unwillingness to discard her male garb, and her refusal to submit her life and deeds to the judgment of the church. On May 19 the court, largely influenced by letters received from the University of Paris, was inclined to pronounce Joan guilty of the crimes charged against her in these twelve articles, but gave her a final opportunity to submit to the church before sentence should be passed upon her. This submission the Bishop of Beauvais took good care to prevent, and Joan was condemned to be turned over to the lay tribunal — in other words, to die. Hitherto Cauchon, determined that the court should find Joan guilty, had seen to it that she should not repent of hei resolution not to change her style of dress and not to submit to the church; now that she had been condemned such repentance was no longer undesirable, but was even necessary in order that she appear to the world a self-con- fessed witch and heretic. On May 24, therefore, the maid was taken from her cell to the cemetery of St. Ouen, to hear sentence publicly pronounced upon her. She was placed upon a platform in the midst of the immense crowd ; near by was the executioner with his cart, prepared to take charge of her when the sentence should have been read. After listening to a long sermon, Joan was once more called upon to submit her words and deeds to the judgment of the church; INTRODUCTORY NOTES IT thus only could she escape death. At first she refused, nor would she renounce her masculine apparel as she was urged to do. Reluctantly Cauchon began to read her sentence, while the priests crowded around her, begging her to submit and to agree to change her dress. Suddenly a paper w^as thrust into her hands and she was almost forced to sign it. What it was she really signed can never be known ; Joan herself believed that she was only promising to put on a woman's dress and to submit to the church. At all events, her enemies chose to consider that she had recanted, and Cauchon now pronounced a new sentence whereby she was condemned to imprisonment for life. The English were enraged with the Bishop for allowing Joan thus to escape him, but his schemes were deeper and darker than they imagined ; having made Joan ruin her reputation by recant- ing, he knew he could take her life whenever he chose. The maid, having been led back to prison, was there sub- jected to indignities far worse than she had formerly suffered; she was prostrated, too, by remorse over her abjuration. Ex- actly why, it is impossible to say, but within two days she had resumed her masculine garments — just as Cauchon had intended that she . should. She also claimed to have heard her voices again and persisted in believing that they were those of St. Catherine and St. Margaret. Nothing more was needed; on Tuesday, May 29, the court voted that Joan was a relapsed heretic and should be turned over to the lay tribunal, — which always punished with death by burning such persons as the ecclesiastics delivered to it. At nine o'clock on the morning of May 30, 1431, Joan of Arc was led through the streets of Rouen, clothed in a long black robe, and wearing on her head a mitre bearing the words, "Heretic, relapsed, apostate, idolater." When the Old Market had been reached, she was placed upon a platform fvi INTRODUCTORY NOTES theie and again caused to listen to a long sermon. Shw was then turned over to the executioner, who conducted hei to a scaffold about which faggots of wood had been piled. As she passed through the crowd she begged the priests to say masses for her soul, and as she ascended the scaffold she asked for a cross, which she placed in her bosom. A crucifix also ha\'ing been brought her, she kissed and embraced it while she was being bound to the stake. When the flames had at last been lighted, she urged the monk at her side to descend, and then begged him to hold up the crucifix where she could still see it. Thus she died, the crucifix before her eyes and a prayer upon her lips. After Joan's execution the war dragged on somewhat listlessly until 1435, when the treaty of Arras was agreed upon between the French and the Burgundians; b}^ it the crown was effectually secured for Charles. A series of French victories next forced the English, in 1444, to agree to a truce. In 1449 war again broke out and by 1450 Charles had con- quered all northern France except Calais. The official rec- ords of Joan's trial had thus come into his possession and he was anxious to reverse that judgment whereby he was de- clared to have been crowned through the aid of the devil. It was not, however, until 1455 that the Pope, Calixtus III, gave permission to reopen Joan's case and review the course of her trial. Witnesses were examined at Domremy, Vau- couleurs, Orleans, and Rouen, one hundred and fifty deposi- tions being taken in all. After reviewing this evidence carefully, the judges, on July 7, 1456, pronounced sentence in the great hall of the archbishop's palace at Rouen to the effect that Joan's trial had been unfairly conducted; that all matters connected with the proceedings, the sentence, and the execution, were therefore declared null, invalid, and void; and that Joan and her family should thenceforth be INTRODUCTORY NOTES Ivii held absolutely cleared from all stains or marks of infamy. So, from political motives, the party that had done nothing to save her while living, at last did tardy justice to the mem- ory of the Maid of Orleans. B. Catalina de Erauso Quite early in his story of The Spanish Military Nun, De Quincey takes care to impress upon the reader that "this is no romance, or at least no fiction"; throughout the story he makes frequent reference to Catalina's memoirs and the French reporter of them; and in the postscript of 1854, which replaced a much briefer introductory paragraph in Tail for May, 1847, he gives some account of his sources and discusses their probable authenticity. But De Quincey never saw the memoir? himself, and is purposely inaccurate and secretive in his postscript. Let us see, then, what facts are really known concerning Catalina de Erauso and how De Quincey came to write about her; that such a person once actually existed, there can be no reasonable doubt. The chief source of the world's knowledge concerning Cata- lina is her memoirs. These she began to write in the year 1624, but they were not published until early in the nine- teenth century. M. Ferrer, a native of Guipuzcoa, in Spain, chanced to read, in 1815, among the manuscripts in the possession of D. Felipe Bauza, keeper of the Marine Archives at Madrid, a copy of these memoirs, which had been transcribed from a manuscript in the Royal Academy of History, this in turn having been copied in 1784 from a manuscript volume owned by the Spanish poet, Trigueros. This '-romance of cape and sword," for such he supposed it, made a strong impression on M. Ferrer, especially since the heroine had been born in his own province and since he Iviii INTRODUCTORY NOTES himself had served in Peru. In the political excitement ol the times, however, he soon forgot all about the Military Nun. Several years later, while a refugee in Paris, he came across a brief account of Catalina's life and exploits in the History of the Life and Times of Philip III, by Gil Gon- zales Davila. The idea that the nun might be a genuine historical character caused his old interest to return with redoubled force. He at once procured a copy of the memoirs that he had formerly read, and for many years pursued the most minute historical researches in order to verify, if pos- sible, the statements there made. Contemporary references, parish registers, state documents — among them certificates from Catalina's commanders, her petition to the king, his reply, and the order for her pension — all these proofs, together with an actual portrait of the Nun-Lieutenant, con- vinced M. Ferrer of the substantial accuracy of Catalina's memoirs. To be sure, he could hardly explain, for instance, why the parish register should give the date of Catalina's birth as 1592 when she herself claimed to have been born in 1585; how she could have taken part in the battle of Val- divia (1606) at the very time when the convent records showed her to have been at St. Sebastian ; or why the legend accompanying the portrait of her painted in 1630 should represent her as then being fifty-two years old. Still he had been able to verify the chief facts stated by Catalina, so decided to publish the memoirs, together with such notes and historical documents as seemed worth adding. This volume appeared in 1829, "an unfortunate time,'* says M. Valon (Revue des Deux Mondes, p. 634), " since it was just on the eve of the Revolution of July. The political disturb- ances whirled away the unfortunate book, which disap- peared as mysteriously as the heroine whose history it recounted. It can hardly have been seen by more than 9 INTRODUCTORY NOTES lix few rare amateurs, and it has now become a bibliographical curiosity." But Catalina's literary career had at last begun — though without any such "regular controversy'' as that mentioned by De Quincey. Before pursuing further this "literary career" we should pause long enough to note the chief events in Catalina's "per- sonal career," as she herself has recorded them. She was born at St. Sebastian in 1585, and at the age of four was placed in a convent there. At the convent she remained until March 18, 1600, when she succeeded in escaping. After changing her costume and cutting her hair she wandered to Vittoria, where she entered the service of a professor, a relative of her mother. Three months later she ran away to Valladolid and became a lackey in the service of a state secretary, Don Juan de Idiaquez. To his house her father came one day to report the escape of his daughter from St. Sebastian, and Catalina deemed it prudent to flee. A ccording to the memoirs, Catalina, on leaving Valladolid, made her way to Bilbao, and was there imprisoned for having struck some gamins that were annoying her. She next went to Estella, in Navarre, where she remained for two years as the page of a nobleman. At the end of this time (1603) she was venturesome enough to visit St. Sebastian, fortunately without being recognized. Going thence to San Lucar, she embarked as cabin-boy on one of the vessels in a fleet about to set sail for New Andalusia. On Holy Monday, 1603, the squadron left San Lucar, and in due time reached Araya, where ensued a naval combat with the Dutch, in which Catalina took part. After having touched at Cartagena and Nombre de Dios, she deserted her ship and made her way to Panama. There she entered the service of a merchant named Urquiza; at the end of three months she and her master set sail for Paita, which they iX INTRODUCTORY NOTES finally succeeded in reaching, though their vessel was wrecked en rovte. From Paita, Catalina was sent to Sana, there to take charge of a mercantile establishment belonging to her master. A street fight in which she seriously wounded a friend of one Reyes, who had insulted her, caused Catalina to take sanctuary in a near-by church, whence she was dragged to prison. She was released three months later through the influence of the bishop, and, ha\'ing refused to marry the aunt of Reyes's wife in order to escape from the private ven- geance that now threatened her, was sent by her master to take charge of his establishment at Trujillo. Hither Reyes and his friends followed her. When they ventured to attack her, she again killed a man and was again forced to take sanctuary — this time in a cathedral, from which she was allowed to depart only on condition she left the country with- out delay. At Lima, to which city she fled, a wealthy mer- chant named Solarte gave her employment as his commercial agent, but one day he discovered that she was making love to his wife's sister, so he discharged Catahna from his service. Just at this time troops were being raised for a campaign against the Indians of Chili ; Catalina enHsted and soon found herself at Concepcion, where she met her brother and was transferred to his company. For three years she lived with him on the most intimate terms. Finally, however, they quarrelled about a woman and came to blows ; as a punish- ment for her insubordination, Catalina was sentenced to an exile of three years at the fort of Paicabi. During this period she served in a campaign against the Indians, and because of her bravery at the battle of Valdivia, was promoted to the rank of alferez. She took part in the battle of Puren (1608), and after some years more of distinguished service was allowed to return to Concepcion. Here she quarrelled over the cards with a friend one day, killed him and also the INTRODUCTORY NOTES 1X1 auditor-general, who tried to arrest her, and once more found refuge in a church. After having remained in sanctuary for some months, she was visited by a friend, who wished her to act as his second in a duel to be fought that night. She con- sented, and in the course of the combat killed, without know- ing him, her own brother. The latter with his last breath accidentally made known the name of his murderer, and Catalina was forced again to have recourse to her sanctuary. After having been held a close prisoner here for eight months, she finally succeeded, with the aid of a friend, in making her escape. While fleeing along the coast, she met up with two desert- ers. The three decided to cross the Andes into the province of Tucuman, but Catalina alone succeeded in reaching the other side of the mountains. Here she found shelter at the farmhouse of a Creole woman, who, some days later, pro- posed to Catalina that she remain and assist in the farm management, having first married her daughter. To this proposition Catalina agreed ; two months later the wedding party went to Tucuman, where our friend the alferez man- aged to delay the performance of the ceremony, meanwhile making arrangements to marry the niece of a city ecclesiastic. Matters having thus become complicated, she suddenly de- camped by night, leaving the two girls to exchange consola- tions. After a journey of three months, during which she had an encounter with robbers, she reached Potosi, some sixteen hun- dred miles from Tucuman. Here she entered the service of Don Juan Lopez de Arquijo and was intrusted with the task of convoying twelve thousand llamas and eighty Indians to Charcas. Upon her return to Potosi she again enlisted in the army, was made adjutant-sergeant-major, and served in tins capacity for two years, during which time she took part IXli INTRODUCTORY NOTES in an expedition against the Indians of Los Chuncos and EJ Dorado. Having at length deserted with a number of her companions, she went to La Plata, but had not been there long before she was unjustly accused of having stabbed a woman. When finally acquitted, she made her way to Las Charcas again and found there Don Juan, her former master. She was then put in charge of another drove of llamas, which she convoyed safely to Potosi. When in Las Charcas again, she had a gaming quarrel with the bishop's nephew, killed him, and fled to Piscobamba. Here she quarrelled again, and again killed a man. Upon the testi- mony of false witnesses, she was condemned to be hung for this crime, and was on the scaffold itself when a reprieve came from La Plata, where the witnesses had confessed their perjury. CataUna was then taken to La Plata and set free. Soon after she went to Cochabamba on business for Don Juan and was just about to return to La Plata when, on passing the house of a certain Chavarria, she was hailed by his wife, who prayed to be rescued from her husband, as he was about to kill her. Catalina allowed the lady to share her mule.* together they fled to La Plata, closely pursued b> the irate husband. Having placed the woman in a convent, Catalina then had the pleasure of killing her husband, whom she ii-et in the street. For five months Catalina remained in the shelter of a convent, but at the end of this time had 'ittle difficulty in clearing herself. She was then employed by the president of La Plata on a judicial mission to Piscobamba and Mizque. At La Paz, where we find her next, she killed a man that had called her a liar, and escaped being hanged by a stratagem more ingenious than commendable. Cuzco was her next stop- ping place ; here she was falsely accused of having killed the corr6gidor and was acquitted only after six months. She INTRODUCTORY NOTES Ixiii then hastened to Lima, took part in a naval battle with the Dutch before Callao, was captured by them, and left to die on the coast of Paita. Instead of dying, she made her tvay back to Lima, lived there seven months, then went to Cuzco, where she killed a celebrated bully and was herself seriously wounded. As soon as she was able, she fled to Guamanga. Before she had been there long, however, some alguazils tried to arrest her; she resisted, was slightly wounded, and was taken by the bishop into his own house. Next morning the bishop called her into his presence and questioned her as to her past life. Touched by his sympathy, his sound advice, and his evident goodness, she finally said to him : "Seigneur, what I have told your illustrious highness is not the truth; the truth is — that I am a woman." Other details followed, and the bishop, convinced of her veracity, soon after had her placed in the convent of Santa Clara at Guamanga. Five months later, in 1620, the bishop died and Catalina was removed to the convent of the Holy Trinity at Lima. Here she remained for two years and a half. At the end of this time, information having been received from Spain to the effect that she had not become a professed nun before leaving St. Sebastian, Catalina was set at liberty. Im- mediately she determined to return to Spain; having made her way overland to Cartagena, she embarked on one of the vessels of a fleet about to return to Cadiz. On November 1, 1624, she reached Cadiz, and after spend- ing eight days there, made her way to Seville and thence to Madrid. At the last-named place she was arrested by the ecclesiastical authorities, and owed her release to the inter- vention of the Duke of Olivarez. She next visited Pam- peluna, where she heard of the jubilee at Rome and decided to call upon the pope. On her way, however, she was arrested at Turin as a spy, despoiled of her money and papers, and iX-iv INTRODUCTORY NOTES ordered not to continue her journey. She returned, there- fore, to Spain, and applied to the king for a poTision, which was granled her. Again she started for Rome, but before reaching Barcelona was set upon by thieves and robbed of everything but her papers. The king, fortunately, was at Barcelona, and from him Catalina succeeded in securing a gift of food and money. She then w^ent to Genoa, and while there killed an Italian in a duel. At last she reached Rome, where she was cordially received by the pope, and where during her stay of a month and a half she was constantly feasted and feted by the dignitaries of church and state. From Rome she went to Xaples — and with an anecdote of her life in that city her memoirs suddenly end (July, 1626). Little is definitely known concerning the rest of her life. On July 4, 1630, she was at Seville, and on July 25 set sail for America. In 1645 she was seen at Vera Cruz by a monk named Nicholas de Renteria, who had just come over from Spain ; here, under the name of Antonio de Erauso, she had charge of a drove of mules and negroes and made it her busi- ness to carry baggage from one place to another. When and where she died is altogether unknown. Such is a brief summar}' of those facts about Catalina de Erauso to be gathered from her memoirs and the notes of M. Ferrer. His book, we have seen, disappeared mysteri ously and soon became a bibliographical curiosity. A copy of it, or of a new edition published at Valencia in 1S39, must have fallen, however, into the hands of ^I. Alexis de Valon. who contributed to the Revue des Deux Mondes for February 15, 1847, a forty-nine page article entitled Catalina de Erauso. Forty-five of these pages are devoted to telling the story of the nun's life; the other four give us some account of the original memoirs and of M. Ferrer's editorial labors. Valon claims to "retell the story from her own notes/' but he does INTRODUCTORY NOTES Ixv SO as a romancer, not a historian. He seems first to have picked out for his use such events in Catahna's Hfe as ap- peared to him most characteristic, best fitted to make a well- rounded story, and most certain to interest the reader without wearying him by their sameness; he rejects at least half the incidents recorded by Catalina, and shows no little skill in making his choice. Upon this framework he then proceeds to build up his story in most artistic fashion. He invents particulars, he transfers others from the rejected incidents of the memoirs and embodies them in new settings ; he sup- plies interesting descriptions of persons and things; he moralizes, he attempts to analyze Catalina's feelings, mo- tives, character. The result is a vivid historical romance, written in a style as unlike the crude, terse, vigorous manner of Catalina as his story itself is unhke the original memoirs. The nun's character alone remains practically unchanged; here, as in the autobiography, we realize that, as Valon says, **hers is a savage, self-abandoned nature, having a conscience neither for good nor for evil;" that "she knows no morality other than that of the highways, camps, and ships;" that "she robs with candor, worthy woman, and kills with naivete. " So much for the Catalina de Erauso of February 15, 1847. In Tail's Edinburgh Magazine for May, June, and July of the same year there appeared De Quincey's story of The Naidico- Military Nun of Spain, substantially as we have it, under a different title, in the present volume. What did De Quincey know about Catalina de Erauso? Seemingly nothing more than what he learned from Valon's article. The internal evi- dence is conclusive that he had never seen M. Ferrer's edition of Catalina 's memoirs, that he had not even seen a review of this book which appeared in the Monthly Chronicle soon after fehe publication of the new edition of 1839. The truth seems ]xviii INTRODUCTORY NOTES She was large and strong and I but a slight young girl ; sh* gave me several blows, which I resented deeply. " Valon gives us the following account of the same period {Revue des Deux Mondes, Vol. XVII, pp. 589-590). "In 1592, an honest hidalgo of San Sebastian, named Miguel de Erauso, an old soldier with many children and lit- tle money, was greatly disappointed one fine morning when the news was brought him that during the night heaven had sent him a fourth daughter. Having carefully calculated that he would never have any dowry to give her, he decided to entrust the little Catalina to God. He called the nurse, therefore; wrapped up the child in a corner of his mantle: and carried her to the convent of which his sister-in-law, Dona Ursula, was abbess. He was certainly taking time by the forelock in order to make a good Dominican of her, and the proper inclination should not have been lacking in this child, cradled, so to speak, in the sanctuary. But the proper inclination was lacking, and never before did a cloistral edu- cation produce such a nun. "After having been the most insufferable child, she became the most unsubdued of novices. At fifteen, that age when upon the countenance of a young girl the candor of child- hood begins to mingle with the divine grace of womanhood, she had, so to speak, nothing feminine in her character or in her face. Those modest blushes, that charming embarrass- ment, by which a young girl shows her knowledge of her own beauty and her secret consciousness of her own powers, were never seen in Catalina. She was haughty and violent ; every- body had to give way to her, and so much resolution sparkled in her black eyes that the inmates of the convent hardly knew what to think of this strange novice. One might call her a hawk raised by accident in a nest of turtle-doves. But Dot all the saintly recluses felt alike about Catalina. The INTRODUCTORY NOTES Ixix novices of her own age, accustomed from childhood to her domination, always submitted tremblingly to Catalina, in whom they perceived a superior and almost masculine strength of will ; but not all the nuns were novices. In the convent of San Sebastian el antiguo, there might be found more than one of those old recluses, rough and cross, em- bittered by celibacy, w^hose mummified faces resemble geo- metrical figures covered with parchment, and of whom the type, preserved from age to age, may still be found in all convents and even elsewhere. Dona Incarnacion de Aliri was the most crabbed of these old women, who ordinarily have a horror of youth and beauty ; she detested Catalina and had long since sworn to finish with the insolent novice once for all. One evening when the nuns were going to the refectory, Catalina, scorning all convent rules, passed impudently before Dona Incarnacion, elbowing her as she w?nt ; Dona Incarna- cion pushed her back sharply, and Catalina, having persisted in her attempt to pass, presently received a resounding smack from the dryest hand in the whole peninsula. At once she changed countenance and took on a look so horrible that all the nuns crowded about her in terror, fearing some tragedy. Dona Incarnacion fled; later she declared that the glance of the young girl, glittering like a sword-blade, charged with hate and ferocity like that of a savage beast, had at that moment revealed to her as by a lightning flash, the bloody destiny of Catahna." With these two passages, the four first chapters of De Quincey's story should be compared. Having thus considered the three chief accounts of her life we may end our study of Catalina de Erauso's "literary career," no less interesting in its vicissitudes than the "per- sonal career" with which De Quincey has chiefly concerned himself. The study has not been complete, for we have Ixx INTRODUCTORY NOTES not taken into account the Relacion Verdadera and the Segunda Relacion of Catalina's exploits, published at Madrid in 1624 and 1625, respectively ; a drama — La Monja Alferez, by Juan Perez de Montalvan (1602-1638) — of which she is the heroine; a French version of the memoirs published at Paris in 1830; a reprint of Ferrer's book at Barcelona in 1838; a resume of Catalina's life in the Musf^'e des Fa},iilles (1838-1839) by the Duchess d'Abrantes; a chapter concern- ing Catalina in the Valence et Valladolid (Paris, 1877), of M. Antoine de Latour; or the latest French translation of the memoirs by Jose-Maria de Heredia (Paris, 1894) ; reference has not even been made — and this for a very good reason — to those lengthy reports by "journals in Spain and Germany'^ which De Quincey mentions, and which may or may not have appeared. We have considered only those antecedent ac- counts in which De Quincey's story has made us necessarily interested, and, in excuse for not pursuing further Catalina's literary career, may quote Professor Masson's belief that, "if ever that Spanish eccentric, that masculine nun-adventuress from Biscay, with her black eyes and black hair, the tinge of brown down on her upper lip, and the sword by her side, shall take permanent hold of the imagination of those who read books, it will be because her portrait, after having been sev- eral times attempted by rougher hands, was repainted more sympathetically by this greater artist.'' VI. Bibliographical A, Works The standard edition of De Quincey is : — I. The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, ih 14 volumes, with notes and a preface to each volume by David Masson. London, A. and C. Black, 1897, INTRODUCTORY NOTES lixi Additional matter may be found in: — 2. The Uncollected Writings of Thomas De Quincey. Edited by James Hogg. 2 volumes, London, 1890. 3. The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey. Ed- ited by A. H. Japp. 2 volumes, London, 1891-1893. Noteworthy among numerous American editions of par- ticular essays are : — 4. The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. Edited by Arthur Beatty. New York, 1900. 5. Style, Rhetoric, and Language. Edited by Fred N. Scott. Boston, n.d. 6. The Flight of a Tartar Tribe. Edited by M. H. Turk. Boston, n.d. 7. Selections from De Quincey. Edited by M. H. Turk. Boston, 1902. B, Biography and Criticism 8. Anton, Peter. England's Essayists. Edinburgh, 1883. 9. Bayne, Peter. Essays on Biography and CrUicism. First Series. Boston, 1857. 10. Birrell, Augustine. Essays ahovi Men, Wornen, and Books. New York, 1894. 11. BuDD, Henry, >S^. Mary's Hall Lectures, Philadel- phia, 1898. 12. Chancellor, E. B. Literary Types, being Essays in Criticism. New York, 1895. 13. Clark, J. Scott. A Study of English Prose Writers. New York, 1898. 14. Craik, Henry. English Prose. Volume 5, New York, 1896. 15. Giles, Henry. Illustrations of Genius, Boston, 1854. Ixxii INTRODUCTORY NOTES If). GiLFiLLAN, George. A Gallery of Literary Portraits Edinburgh, 1845. 17„ Gould, George M. Biographic Clinics. Philadelphia^ 1903. 18. Hogg, James. De Quincey and his Friends. London, 1895. 19. Hunt, Theodore W. Representative English Prose. New York, 1895. 20. Ingleby, Clement M. Essays. London, 1888. 21. Japp, Alexander H. De Quincey Memorials. 2 vol- umes, London, 1891. 22. Mason, Edward T. Personal Traits of British Authors. New York, 1885. 23. Masson, David. Essays Biographical and Critical, London, 1856. 24. De Quincey. London, 1902. 25. Martineau, Harriet. Biographical Sketches. Lon- don, 1869. 26. MiNTO, William. Manual of English Prose Litera- ture. Boston, 1901. 27. Page, H. A. (A. H. Japp.) Thomas De Quincey: His Life and Writings. 2 volumes in 1, New York, n.d. 28. Saintsbury, George. Essays in English Literature^ 1780-1860. London, 1896. 29. Stephen, Leslie. Hours in a Library. Volume 1, New York, 1899. 30. WoTTON, Mabel E. {Ed.) Word Portraits of Famout Writers. London, 1887. JOAN OF ARC THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH, AND THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCEY JOAN OF ARC^ What is to be thought of her? What is to be thought of the poor shepherd girl from the hills and forests of Lor- raine, ° that — like the Hebrew shepherd boy° from the hills and forests of Judea — rose suddenly out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration, rooted in deep 5 pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to the more perilous station at the right hand of kings? The Hebrew boy inaugurated his patriotic mission by an act° by a victorious act, such as no man could deny. But so did the girl of Lorraine, if we read her story as it was read lo by those who saw her nearest. Adverse armies bore witness to the boy as no pretender; but so they did to the gentle girl. Judged by the voices of all who saw them jrom a sta- tion of good-will, both were found true and loyal to any prom- ises involved in their first acts. Enemies it was that made 15 the difference between their subsequent fortunes. The boy rose to a splendour and a noonday prosperity, both per- sonal and public, that rang through the records of his people, and became a by-word amongst his posterity for a thousand years, until the sceptre was departing from Judah.° The2C poor, forsaken girl, on the contrary, drank not herself from that cup of rest which she had secured for France. She never sang together with the songs that rose in her native B 1 2 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCE T Domremy° as echoes to the departing steps of invaders. She mingled not in the festal dances at Vaucouleurs° which celebrated in rapture the redemption of France. Xo ! for her voice was then silent ; no ! for her feet were dust. Pure, innocent, noble-hearted girl ! whom, from earliest youth, ever I believed in as full of truth and self-sacrifice, this was amongst the strongest pledges for thy truth, that never once — no, not for a moment of weakness — didst thou revel in the vision of coronets and honour from man. Coro- 10 nets for thee ! Oh no ! Honours, if they come when all is over, are for those that share thy blood. ° Daughter of Domremy, when the gratitude of thy king shall awaken, thou wilt be sleeping the sleep of the dead. Call her. King of France, but she will not hear thee. Cite her by the ap- 15 paritors to come and receive a robe of honour, but she will be found eti contiimace° When the thunders of universal France, as even yet may happen, ° shall proclaim the grandeur of the poor shepherd girl that gave up all for her country, thy ear, young shepherd girl, will have been deaf for five 20 centuries. To suffer and to do, that was thy portion in this life; that was thy destiny; and not for a moment was it hidden from thyself. Life, thou saidst, is short; and the sleep which is in the grave is long; let me use that life, so transitory, for the glory of those heavenly dreams destined 25 to comfort the sleep which is so long! This pure creature — pure from every suspicion of even a visionary self-interest, even as she was pure in senses more ob\ious° — never once did this holy child, as regarded herself, relax from her belief in the darkness that was travelling to meet her. She 30 might not prefigure the very manner of her death ; she saw not in \4sion, perhaps, the aerial altitude of the fiery scaffold, the spectators without end on every road pouring : ito Rouen" as to a coronation, the surging smoke, the volleying flames, JOAN OF ARC 3 the hostile faces all around, the pitying eye that lurked but here and there, until nature and imperishable truth broke loose from artificial restraints° ; — these might not be apparent through the mists of the hurrying future. But the voice that called her to death, that she heard for ever. 5 Great was the throne of France even in those days, and great was he that sat upon it: but well Joanna knew that not the throne, nor he that sat upon it, was for her ; but, on the contrary, that she was for them; not she by them, but they by her, should rise from the dust. Gorgeous were 10 the lilies of France, ° and for centuries had the privilege to spread their beauty over land and sea, until, in another cen- tury, the wrath of God and man combined to wither them° ; but well Joanna knew, early at Domremy she had read that bitter truth, that the lilies of France would decorate no gar- 15 land for her. Flower nor bud, bell nor blossom, would ever bloom for her! But stay. What reason is there for taking up this subject of Joanna precisely in the spring of 1847° ? Might it not have been left till the spring of 1947, or, perhaps, left till called 20 for°? Yes, but it is called for, and clamorously. You are awara, reader, that amongst the many original thinkers whom modern, France has produced one of the reputed leaders is M. Michelet.° All these writers are of a revolution- ary cast: not in a political sense merely, but in all senses: 25 mad, oftentimes, as March hares°; crazy with the laughing gas of recovered liberty"; drunk with the wine-cup of their mighty Revolution, ° snorting, whinnying, throwing-up their heels, like wild horses in the boundless Pampas, and running races of defiance with snipes, or with the winds, or with their 30 own shadows, if they pan find nothing else to challenge. Some time or other I, that have leisure to read, may intro- 4 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCEY duce you, that have not, to two or three dozen of these writers"; of whom I can assure you beforehand that they are often profound, and at intervals are even as impassioned as if they were come of our best Enghsh blood. But now, confining 5 our attention to M. Michelet, we in England — who know him best by his worst book, the book against priests, &c.° — know him disadvantageously. That book is a rhapsody_5f, incoherence. But his "History of France "° is quite another thing. A man, in whatsoever craft he sails, cannot stretch 10 away out of sight when he is linked to the windings of the shore by towing-ropes of History. Facts, and the conse- quences of facts, draw the ^Titer back to the falconer's lure° from the giddiest heights of speculation. Here, there- fore — in his " France" — if not always free from. flightiness, 15 if now and then off like a rocket for an airy wheel in the clouds, M. Michelet, with natural politeness, never forgets that he has left a large audience waiting for him on earth, and gazing upwards in anxiety for his return : return, there- fore, he does. But History, though clear of certain tempta- 20tions in one direction, has separate dangers of its own. It is impossible so to -^mte a history of France, or of England — works becoming every hour more indispensable to the in- evitably-political man of this day — without perilous open- ings for error. If I, for instance, on the part of England, ■25 should happen to turn my labours into that channel, and (on the model of Lord Percy going to Chevy Chase) ° " A vow to God should make My pleasure in the Michelet woods Three summer days to take," 30 probably, from simple delirium, I might hunt M. Mich'^let into delirium tremens^ Two strong angels stand by the JOAN OF ARC 5 side of History, whether French History or English, as heraldic supporters : the angel of research on the left hand, that must read millions of dusty parchments, and of pages blotted with lies; the angel of meditation on the right hand, that must cleanse these lying records with fire, even as of old the draper- 5 ies of asbestos were cleansed,° and must quicken them into regenerated life. Willingly I acknowledge that no man will ever avoid innumerable errors of detail ; with so vast a compass of ground to traverse, this is impossible ; but such errors (though I have a bushel on hand, at M. Michelet's 10 service) are not the game I chase; it is the bitter and un- fair spirit in which M. Michelet writes against England. Even that, after all, is but my secondary object; the real one is Joanna, the Pucelle d'Orleans° for herself. I am not going to write the history of La Pucelle : to do 15 this, or even circumstantially to report the history of her persecution and bitter death, of her struggle with false wit- nesses and with ensnaring judges, it w^ould be necessary to have before us all the documents, and therefore the collection only now forthcoming in Paris. ° But my purpose is narrower. 20 There have been great thinkers, disdaining the careless judgments of contemporaries, Avho have thrown themselves boldly on the judgment of a far posterity, that should have had time to review, to ponder, to compare. There have been great actors on the stage of tragic humanity that might, 25 with the same depth of confidence, have appealed from the levity of compatriot friends — too heartless for the sublime interest of their story, and too impatient for the labour of sifting its perplexities — to the magnanimity and jus- tice of enemies. To this class belongs the Maid of Arc. 30 The ancient Romans were too faithful to the ideal of grandeur in themselves not to relent, after a generation or two, before the grandeur of Hannibal. ° Mithridates, a more doubtful 6 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS -DE QUINCEY person, yet, merely for the magic perseverance of his indomi« table malice, won from the same Romans the only real honour that eve' he received on earth. ° And we English have ever shown the same homage to stubborn enmity. To 5 work unflinchingly for the ruin of England ; to say through life, by word and by deed, Delenda est Anglia Victrix!° — -^" that one purpose of malice, faithfully pursued, has quar- t' tere^ some people upon our national funds of homage as by a perpetual annuity. Better than an inheritance of ser- 10 vice rendered to England herself has sometimes proved the most insane hatred to England. Hyder Ali,° even his son Tippoo,° though so far inferior, and Napoleon, ° have all \^. benefited by this disposition amongst ourselves to exaggerate ' the merit of diabolic enmity. ° Not one of these men was 15 ever capable, in a solitary instance, of praising an enemy (what do you say to that, reader?); and yet, in their be- half, we consent to forget, not their crimes only, but (which is worse) their hideous bigotry and anti-magnanimous ego- tism, — for nationality it was not. Suffren,° and some half- 20 dozen of other French nautical heroes, ° because rightly they did us all the mischief they could (which was really great), are names justly reverenced in England. On the same principle, La Pucelle d'Orleans, the victorious enemy of England, has been destined to receive her deepest com- 25memoration from the magnanimous justice of Englishmen." ^^ • Joanna, as we in England should call her, but, according , /to her own statement, Jeanne (or, as M. Michelet asserts, ^/ Jean°) D'Arc, was born at Domremy, a village on the marches ' • of Lorraine and Champagne, ° and dependent upon the town 80 of Vaucouleurs. I have called her a Lorrainer, not simply 'i.because the word is prettier, but because Champagne too O'^odiously reminds us English of what are for us imaginary wines, — which, undoubtedly, La Pucello tasted as rarely af JOAN OF ARC 7 we English : we English, because the Champagne of London is chiefly grown in Devonshire; La Pucelle^ because the Champagne of Champagne never, by any chance; flowed into the fountain of Domremy, from which onlv she drank. M. Michelet will have her to be a Champenoise,° and for no 5 better reason than that she "took after her father," who happened to be a Champenois. These disputes, however, turn on refinements too nice. Domremy stood upon the frontiers, and, like other frontiers, produced a mixed race, representing the as and the trans °l(i A river (it is true) formed the boundary-line at this point — the river Meuse; and that, in old days, might have divided the populations ; but in these days it did not : there were bridges, there were ferries, and weddings crossed from the right bank to the left. Here lay two great roads, not so 13 much for travellers that were few, as for armies that were too many by half. These two roads, one of which was the great high-road between France and Germany, ° decussated at this very point; which is a learned way of saying that they formed a St. Andrew's Cross, ° or letter X. I hope the 20 compositor will choose a good large X ; in which case the point of intersection, the lociis° of conflux and intersection for these four diverging arms, will finish the reader's geo- graphical education, by showing him to a hair's-breadth where it was that Domremy stood. These roads, so grandly 25 situated, as great trunk arteries between two mighty realms, ° and haunted for ever by wars or rumours of wars,° deeus- satef' (for anything I know to the contrary) absolutely under Joanna's bedroom window: one rolling away to the right, past Monsieur D'Arc's old barn, and the other unac-30 countably preferring to sweep round that odious man's° pig-sty to the left. On whichever side of the border chance had thrown 8 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCEY Joanna, the same love to France would have been nurtured For it is a strange fact, noticed by M. Michelet and others, that the Dukes of Bar° and Lorraine had for generations pursued the policy of eternal warfare with France on their Sown account, yet also of eternal amity and league with France in case anybody else presumed to attack her. Let peace settle upon France, and before long you might rely upon seeing the little vixen Lorraine flying at the throat of France. Let France be assailed by a formidable enemy, 10 and instantly you saw a Duke of Lorraine insisting on having his own throat cut in support of France; which favour accordingly was cheerfully granted to him in three great successive battles: twice by the English, \'iz. at Crecy and Agincourt, once by the Sultan at Xicopolis.° 15 This sympathy with France during great eclipses, in those that during ordinary seasons were always teasing her with brawls and guerilla inroads, strengthened the natural piety to France of those that were confessedly the children of her own house. ° The outposts of France, as 20 one may call the great frontier provinces, were of all localities the most devoted to the Fleurs de Lys.° To witness, at any great crisis, the generous devotion to these lilies of the little fiery cousin that in gentler weather was for ever tilting at the breast of France, could not but fan the zea/ 25 of France's legitimate daughters : whilst to occupy a post of honour on the frontiers against an old hereditary enemy of France° would naturally stimulate this zeal by a sentiment of martial pride, by a sense of danger always threatening, and of hatred always smouldering. That great four-headed 30 road was a perpetual memento to patriotic ardour. To say '• This way Hes the road to Paris, and that other way to Aix-la-Chapelle ; this to Prague, that to Vienna,'' nourished the warfare of the heart by daily ministrations JOAN OF ARC 9 of sense. The eye that watched for the gleams of lance or helmet from the hostile frontier, the ear that listened for the groaning of wheels, made the high-road itself, with its relations to centres so remote, into a manual of patriotic duty. 5 The situation, therefore, locally, of Joanna was full of pro- found suggestions to a heart that listened for the stealthy steps of change and fear that too surely were in motion. But, if the place were grand, the time, the burden of the time, was far more so. The air overhead in its upper ifl chambers" was hurtling with the obscure sound ; was dark with sullen fermenting of storms that had been gathering for a hundred and thirty years. ° The battle of Agincourt in Joanna's childhood" had reopened the wounds of France. Crecy° and Poictiers," those withering overthrows for 15 the chivalry of France, had, before Agincourt occurred, been tranquillised by more than half-a-century ; but this resurrection of their trumpet wails made the whole series of battles and endless skirmishes take their stations as parts in one drama. The graves that had closed sixty 20 years ago seemed to fly open in sympathy with a sorrow that echoed their own. The monarchy of France laboured in extremity, rocked and reeled like a ship fighting with the darkness of monsoons. The madness of the poor king (Charles VI°) falling in at such a crisis, like the case 25 of women labouring in childbirth during the storming of a city, trebled the awfulness of the time. Even the wild story" of the incident which had immediately occasioned the explosion of this madness — the case of a man unknown, gloomy, and perhaps maniacal himself, coming out of aSfl forest at noonday, laying his hand upon the bridle of the king's horse, checking him for a moment to say, " Oh, king, thou art betrayed, " and then vanishing; no man knew 10 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCEY whither, as he had appeared for no man knew what — fell in with the universal prostration of mind that laid France on her knees, as before the slow unweaving of some ancient prophetic doom. The famines, the extraordinary diseases, 5 the insurrections of the peasantry up and down Europe° — these were chords struck from the same mysterious harp; but these were transitory chords. There had been others of deeper and more ominous sound. The termination of the Crusades, ° the destruction of the Templars, ° the Papal 10interdicts,° the tragedies caused or suffered by the house of Anjou, and by the Emperor° — these were full of a more permanent significance. But, since then, the colossal fig- ure of feudalism was seen standing, as it were on tiptoe, at Crecy, for flight from earth°: that was a revolution 15 unparalleled ; yet that was a trifle by comparison with the more fearful revolutions that were mining below the Church. By her own internal schisms, by the abominable spectacle of a double pope° — so that no man, except through poUti- cal bias, could even guess which was Heaven's vicegerent, 20 and which the creature of Hell — the Church was rehearsing, as in still earlier forms she had already rehearsed, those vast rents in her foundations which no man should ever heal.° These were the loftiest peaks of the cloudland in the 25 skies that to the scientific gazer first caught the colours of the new morning in advance. But the whole vast range alike of sweeping glooms overhead dwelt upon all meditative minds, even upon those that could not distinguish the tendencies nor decipher the forms. It was, therefore, 30 not her own age alone as affected by its immediate calami- ties that lay with such weight upon Joanna's mind, but her own age as one section in a vast mysterious drama, unweaving through a century back, and drawing nearer JOAN OF ARC 11 continually to some dreadful crisis. Cataracts and rapids were heard roaring ahead ; and signs were seen far back, ^ by help of old men's memories, which answered secretly to signs now coming forward on the eye, even as locks answer to keys. It was not wonderful that in such a haunted solitude, with such a haunted heart, Joanna should see an- gelic visions, and hear angelic voices. These voices whis- pered to her for ever the duty, self-imposed, of delivering France. Five years she listened to these monitory voices' with internal struggles. At length she could resist no 18 longer. Doubt gave way; and she left her home for ever in order to present herself at the dauphin 's° court. The education of this poor girl was mean according to the present standard : was ineffably grand, according to a purer philosophic standard : and only not good for our 16 age because for us it would be unattainable. She read nothing, for she could not read; but she had heard others read parts of the Roman martyrology.° She wept in sympathy with the sad Misereres° of the Romish Church; she rose to heaven with the glad triumphant Te Deums° of 20 Rome; she drew her comfort and her vital strength from the rites of the same Church. But, next after these spiritual advantages, she owed most to the advantages of her situation. The fountain of Domremy was on the brink of a boundless forest; and it was haunted to that 25 degree by fairies that the parish priest (cvre) was obliged to read mass there once a-year, in order to keep them in any decent bounds. Fairies are important, even in a statisti- cal view: certain weeds mark poverty in the soil; fairies mark its solitude. As surely as the wolf retires before 34 cities does the fairy sequester herself from the haunts of the licensed victualler. ° A village is too much for her nervous delicacy: at most, she can tolerate a distant view 12 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS BE QUiyCEY of a hamlet. We may judge, therefore, by the uneasines* and extra trouble which they gave to the parson, in what strength the fairies mustered at Domremy, and, b}^ a satis- factory consequence, how thinly sown with men and women 5 must have been that region even in its inhabited spots. But the forests of Domremy — those were the glories of the land : for in them abode mysterious powers and ancient secrets that towered into tragic strength. '•' Abbeys there were, and abbey windows," — ''like Moorish temples of 10 the Hindoos, "° — that exercised even princely power both in Lorraine and in the German Diets. ° These had their sweet bells that pierced the forests for many a league at mat- ins or vespers, and each its own dreamy legend. Few enough, and scattered enough, were these abbeys, so as in 15 no degree to disturb the deep solitude of the region ; yet many enough to spread a network or awning of Christian sanctity over what else might have seemed a heathen wilderness. This sort of religious talisman being secured, a man the most afraid of ghosts Gike mj'self, suppose, or 30 the reader) becomes armed into courage to wander for days in their sylvan recesses. The mountains of the ^'o5ges, on the eastern frontier of France, ° have never attracted much notice from Europe, except in 1813-14 for a few brief months, when they fell within Napoleon's line of defence 25 against the Alhes.° But they are interesting for this amongst other features, that they do not, like some loftier ranges, repel woods : the forests and the hills are on sociable terms. Live and let live is their motto. ° For this reason, in part, these tracts in Lorraine were a favourite hunting- 30 ground with the Carlo \'ingian princes. ° About six hundred years before Joanna's childhood, Charlemagne was known to have hunted there." That, of itself, was a grand incident in the traditions of a forest or a ch^se. In these vast forests. JOAN OF ARC 13 also, were to be found (if an>n\'here to be found) those mysterious fawns that tempted soHtary hunters into vision- ary and perilous pursuits. ° Here was seen (if an^-^here seen) that ancient stag° who was already nine hundred years old, but possibly a hundred or two more, when met 5 by Charlemagne; and the thing was put beyond doubt by the inscription upon his golden collar. I believe Charle- magne knighted the stag ; and, if ever he is met again by a king, he ought to be made an earl, or, being upon the marches of France, a marquis. ° Observe, I don't absolutely vouch 10 for all these things : my own opinion varies. On a fine breezy forenoon I am audaciously sceptical; but as twi- light sets in my creduUty grows steadily, till it becomes equal to anything that could be desired. And I have heard candid sportsmen declare that, outside of these very 13 forests, they laughed loudly at all the dim tales connected with their haunted solitudes, but, on reaching a spot noto- riously eighteen miles deep within them, they agreed with Sir Roger de Coverley that a good deal might be said on both sides. ° 20 Such traditions, or any others that (like the stag) connect distant generations with each other, are, for that cause, sublime : and the sense of the shadowy, connected with such appearances that reveal themselves or not according to circumstances, leaves a colouring of sanctity over ancient 23 forests, even in those minds that utterly reject the legend as a fact. But, apart from all distinct stories of that order, in any solitary frontier between two great empires, — as here, for instance, or in the desert between Syria and the Euphrates, 30 — there is an inevitable tendency, in minds of any deep sensibility, to people the solitudes with phantom images of powers that were of old so vast. Joanna, therefore, 14 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCET in her quiet occupation of a shepherdess, would be led con^ tinually to brood over the political condition of her country^ by the traditions of the past no less than by the mementos of the local present. 5 M. Michelet, indeed, says that La Pucelle was not a shep- herdess. I beg his pardon : she was. What he rests upon I guess pretty well: it is the evidence of a woman called Haumette,° the most confidential friend of Joanna. Now, she IS a good witness, and a good girl, and I like her ; for 10 she makes a natural and affectionate report of Joanna's ordinary life. But still, however good she may be as a witness, Joanna is better; and she, when speaking to the dauphin, calls herself in the Latin report Bergereta° Even Haumette confesses that Joanna tended sheep in her girl- 15 hood. And I believe that, if Miss Haumette were taking coffee alone with me this very evening (February 12, 1847) — in which there would be no subject for scandal or for maiden blushes, because I am an intense philosopher, and Miss H. would be hard upon four hundred and fifty years 20 old — she would admit the following comment upon her evi- dence to be right. A Frenchman, about forty years ago — M. Simond, in his '' Travels, "° — mentions accidentally the following hideous scene° as one steadily observed and watched by himself in chivalrous France not very long be- 25 fore the French Revolution : — A peasant was ploughing ; and the team that drew his plough was a donkey and a woman. Both were regularly harnessed: both pulled ahke. This is bad enough; but the Frenchman adds that, in distrib- uting his lashes, the peasant was obviously desirous of being 30 impartial: or, if either of the yoke-fellows had a right to complain, certainly it was not the donkey. Now, in any country where such degradation of females could be tolerated by the state of manners, a woman of dehcacy JOAN OF ARC 15 would shrink from acknowledging, either for herself or her friend, that she had ever been addicted to any mode of labour not strictly domestic; because, if once owning herself a praedial° servant, she would be sensible that this confession extended by probability in the hearer's 5 thoughts to the having incurred indignities of this horrible kind. Haumette clearly thinks it more dignified for Joanna to have been darning the stockings of her horny-hoofed° father. Monsieur D'Arc, than keeping sheep, lest she might then be suspected of having ever done something 10 worse. But, luckily, there was no danger of that: Joanna never was in service; and my opinion is that her father should have mended his own stockings, since prob- ably he was the party to make the holes in them, as many a better man than D'Arc does,° — meaning by 15 that not myself, because, though probably a better man than D'Arc, I protest against doing anj'thing of the kind. If I lived even with Friday in Juan Fernandez, ° either Friday must do all the darning, or else it must go undone. The better men that I meant were the sailors 20 in the British navy, every man of whom mends his own stockings. Who else is to do it? Do you suppose, reader, that the junior lords of the admiralty ° ixve, under articles to darn for the navy ? The reason, meantime, for my systematic hatred of 25 D'Arc is this : — There was a story current in France before the Revolution, ° framed to ridicule the pauper aristocracy, who happened to have long pedigrees and short rent rolls: viz. that a head of such a house, dating from the Crusades, was overheard saying to his son, a Chevalier of St. Louis,°30 ^^ Chevalier, as-tu donne au cochon d manger I "° Now, it is clearly made out by the surviving evidence that D'Arc would much have preferred continuing to say, '^ Ma fille. 16 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCEY as-tu donne au cochon a manger ?'^° to saying, '' PucelU d'Orleans, as-tu sauve les fleurs-de-lys ? "° There is an old English copy of verses° which argues thus : — *' If the man that turnips cries 5 Cry not when his father dies, Then 'tis plain the man had rather Have a turnip than his father." I cannot say that the logic of these verses was ever entirely to my satisfaction. I do not see my way through it as 10 clearly as could be wished. But I see my way most clearly through D'Arc; and the result is — that he would greatly have preferred not merely a turnip to his father, but the saving a pound or so of bacon to saving the Oriflamme of France. ° 15 It is probable (as M. Michelet suggests^) that the title of Virgin or Pucelle had in itself, and apart from the mi- raculous stories about her, a secret power over the rude soldiery and partisan chiefs of that period; for in such a person they saw a representative manifestation of the 20 Virgin Mary, who, in a course of centuries, had grown steadily upon the popular heart. ° As to Joanna's supernatural detection of the dauphin (Charles VII) amongst three hundred lords and knights, I am surprised at the credulity which could ever lend itself 25 to that theatrical juggle. Who admires more than myself the sublime enthusiasm, the rapturous faith in herself, of this pure creature? But I am far from admiring stage artifices which not La Pucelle, but the court, must have arranged; nor can surrender myself to the conjurer's leg- SOerdemain, such as may be seen every day for a shilling. Southey's " Joan of Arc "° was pubHshed in 1796. Twenty years after, talking with Southey,° I was surprised to find ^^ JOAN OF AR:?C again number the hours for the innocent ? Ah no ! he is the JOAN OF ARC 35 prisoner at the bar. Already all is waiting: the mighty audience is gathered, the Court is hurrying to their seats, the witnesses are arrayed, the trumpets are sounding, the judge is taking his place. Oh ! but this is sudden. My lord, have you no counsel? "Counsel I have none: in heaven above, 5 or on earth beneath, ° counsellor there is none now that would take a brief from we°; all are silent." Is it, indeed, come to this ? Alas ! the time is short, the tumult is wondrous, the crowd stretches away into infinity ; but yet I will search in it for somebody to take your brief: I know of somebody l( that will be your counsel. Who is this that cometh from Domremy°? Who is she in bloody coronation robes from Rheims°? Who is she that cometh with blackened flesh from walking the furnaces of Rouen ? This is she, the shep- herd girl, counsellor that had none for herself, whom I choose, 11 bishop, for yours. She it is, I engage, that shall take my lord's brief. She it is, bishop, that would plead for you: yes, bishop, she, — when heaven and earth are silent. THE ENGLISH ^lAIL-COACH® Section I — The Glory of Motion Some twenty or more years before I matriculated at Ox- ford, ° Mr. Palmer,° at that time M.P. for Bath, had accom- pHshed two things, very hard to do on our httle planet, the Earth, however cheap they may be held by eccentric° people 5 in comets : he had invented mail-coaches, and he had married the daughter of a duke.° He was, therefore, just twice as great a man as Galileo, ° who did certainly invent (or, which is the same thing, ° discover) the satellites of Jupiter, those very next things extant to mail-coaches in the two capital 10 pretensions of speed and keeping time, but, on the other hand, who did not marry the daughter of a duke.° These mail-coaches, as organised b}^ Mr. Palmer, are en- titled to a circumstantial notice from myself, having had so large a share in developing the anarchies of my subsequent 15 dreams : an agency which they accomplished, 1st, through velocity at that time unprecedented — for they first revealed the glory of motion ; 2dly, through grand effects for the eye between lamp-light and the darkness upon solitary roads; 3dly, through animal beauty and power so often displayed 20 in the class of horses selected for this mail service; 4thly, through the conscious presence of a central intellect, that, in the midst of vast distances° — of storms, of darkness, of danger — overruled all obstacles into one steady co-operation to a national result. For my own feeling, this post-office 25 service spoke as by some mighty orchestra, where a thousand THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 37 instruments, all disregarding each other, and so far in danger of discord, yet all obedient as slaves to the supreme baton of some great leader, terminate in a perfection of harmony like that of heart, brain, and lungs in a healthy animal organisa- tion. ° But, finally, that particular element in this whole 5 combination which most impressed myself, and through which it is that to this hour Mr. Palmer's mail-coach system tyrannises over my dreams by terror and terrific beauty, lay in the awful 'political mission which at that time it fulfilled. The mail-coach it was that distributed over the face of theiv. land, hke the opening of apocalyptic vials, ° the heart-shaking° news of Trafalgar, ° of Salamanca, ° of Vittoria,° of Waterloo. ° These were the harvests that, in the grandeur of their reaping, redeemed the tears and blood in which they had been sown. Neither was the meanest peasant so much below the grandeur 15 and the sorrow of the times as to confound battles such as these, which were gradually moulding the destinies of Chris- tendom, with the vulgar conflicts of ordinary warfare, so often no more than gladiatorial trials of national prowess. The victories of England in this stupendous contest rose of2C themselves as natural Te Deums° to heaven ; and it was felt by the thoughtful that such victories, at such a crisis of gen- eral prostration, ° were not more beneficial to ourselves than finally to France, our enemy, and to the nations of all western or central Europe, through whose pusillanimity it was that 2;/ the French domination had prospered. ° The mail-coach, as the national organ for publishing these mighty events, thus diffusively influential, became itself a spiritualised and glorified object to an impassioned heart; and naturally, in the Oxford of that day, all hearts were im- 30 passioned, as being all (or nearly all) in early manhood. In most universities there is one single college° ; in Oxford there were five-and-twenty,° all of which were peopled by young 38 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS BE QUINCET men, the elite of their own generation; not boys, but men. none under eighteen. In some of these many colleges the custom permitted the student to keep what are called "short terms"; that is, the four terms of Michaelmas, Lent, Easter, 5 and Act,° were kept by a residence, in the aggregate, of ninety-one days, or thirteen weeks. Under this interrupted residence, it was possible that a student might have a reason for going down to his home four times in the year. This made eight journeys to and fro. But, as these homes lay 10 dispersed through all the shires of the island, and most of us disdained all coaches except his majesty's mail, no city out of London could pretend to so extensive a connexion with Mr. Palmer's establishment as Oxford. Three mails, at the least, I remember as passing every day through Oxford, and bene- 15 fiting by my personal patronage — viz. the Worcester, the Gloucester, and the Holyhead mail.° Naturally, therefore, it became a point of some interest with us, whose journeys revolved° every six weeks on an average, tc look a little into the executive details of the system. With some of these Mr. 20 Palmer had no concern ; they rested upon bye-laws enacted by posting-houses° for their own benefit, and upon other bj^e- laws, equally stern, enacted by the inside passengers for the illustration of their own haughty exclusiveness. These last were of a nature to rouse our scorn; from which the tran- 25 sition was not very long to systematic mutiny. Up to this time, say 1804, or 1805 (the year of Trafalgar), it had been the fixed assumption of the four inside people (as an old tra- dition of all public carriages derived from the reign of Charles 11°) that they, the illustrious quaternion, constituted a por- 30 celain variety of the human race, whose dignity would have been compromised by exchanging one word of civility with the three miserable delf-ware° outsides. Even to have kicked an outsider might have been held to attaint" the foot con THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 39 cerned in that operation, so that, perhaps, it would have re- quired an act of ParHament to restore its purity of blood. What words, then, could express the horror, and the sense of treason, in that case, which had happened, where all three outsides (the trinity of Pariahs°) made a vain attempt to sit 5 down at the same breakfast-table or dinner-table with the consecrated four ? I myself witnessed such an attempt ; and on that occasion a benevolent old gentleman endeavoured to soothe his three holy associates, by suggesting that, if the outsides were indicted for this criminal attempt at the next 1 our mysterious race completes for himself the treason of the aboriginal fall. The incident, so memorable in itself by its features of horror, and so scenical by its grouping for the eye, which furnished the text for this reverie upon Sudden Death, oc-25 curred to myself in the dead of night, as a solitary spectator, when seated on the box of the Manchester and Glasgow mail,° in the second or third summer after Waterloo. ° I find it necessary to relate the circumstances, because they are such as could not have occurred unless under a singular combina- 30 tion of accidents. In those days, the oblique and lateral communications with many rural post-offices were so ar- 70 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS BE QUINCET ranged, either through necessity or through defect of system, as to make it requisite for the main north-western mail {i.e. the dowii mail°) on reaching Manchester to halt for a number of hours; how many, I do not remember; six or 5 seven, I think ; but the result was that, in the ordinary course, the mail recommenced its journey northwards about mid- night. Wearied with the long detention at a gloomy hotel, I walked out about eleven o'clock at night for the sake of fresh air; meaning to fall in with the mail and resume my 10 seat at the post-office. The night, however, being yet dark, as the moon had scarcely risen, and the streets being at that hour empty, so as to offer no opportunities for asking the road, I lost my way, and did not reach the post-office until it was considerably past midnight; but, to my great relief 15 (as it was important for me to be in Westmorland^ by the morning), I saw in the huge saucer eyes of the mail, blazing through the gloom, an evidence that my chance was not yet lost. Past the time it was ; but, by some rare accident, the mail was not even yet ready to start. I ascended to my seat 20 on the box, where my cloak was still lying as it had lain at the Bridge water Arms.° I had left it there in imitation of a nautical discoverer, who leaves a bit of bunting on the shore of his discovery, by way of warning off the ground the whole human race, and notifying to the Christian and the heathen 25 worlds, with his best compliments, that he has hoisted his pocket-handkerchief once and for ever upon that virgin soil : thenceforward claiming the jus domimi° to the top of the atmosphere above it, and also the right of driving shafts to the centre of the earth below it; so that all people found 30 after this warning either aloft in upper chambers of the at- mosphere, or groping in subterraneous shafts, or squatting audaciously on the surface of the soil, will be treated as tres- passers — kicked, ° that is to say, or decapitated, as circum THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH ?1 stances may suggest, by their very faithful servant, the owner of the said pocket-handkerchief. In the present case, it is probable that my cloak might not have been respected, and the jus gentium^ might have been cruelly violated in my per- son — for, in the dark, people commit deeds of darkness, gas 5 being a great ally of morality" ; but it so happened that on this night there was no other outside passenger; and thus the crime, which else was but too probable, missed fire for want of a criminal. Having mounted the box, I took a small quantity of lauda- 10 num, having already travelled two hundred and fifty miles — viz. from a point seventy miles beyond London. ° In the taking of laudanum there was nothing extraordinary. ° But by accident it drew upon me the special attention of my assessor" on the box, the coachman. And in that also there 15 was nothing extraordinary. But by accident, and with great delight, it drew my own attention to the fact that this coach- man was a monster in point of bulk, and that he had but one eye. In fact, he had been foretold by Virgil as " Monstrum horrendum, mforme, ingens, cui himen ademptmri." ° 20 He answered to the conditions in every one of the items : — 1, a monster he was; 2, dreadful; 3, shapeless; 4, huge; 5, who had lost an eye. But why should that delight me? Had he been one of the Calendars in the Arabian Nights, and had paid down his eye as the price of his criminal curi-25 osity,° what right had I to exult in his misfortune? I did not exult; I delighted in no man's punishment, though it were even merited. But these personal distinctions (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) identified in an instant an old friend of mine whom I had known in the south for some years as the most 30 masterly of mail-coachmen. He was the man in all Europe 72 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCE Y that could (if any could) have driven six-in-hand full gallop over Al Sirat° — that dreadful bridge of Mahomet, with no side battlements, and of extra room not enough for a razor's edge — leading right across the bottomless gulf. Under thia 5 eminent man, whom in Greek I cognominated Cyclops*^ Diphrelates (C3^clops the Charioteer), I, and others known to me, studied the diphrelatic° art. Excuse, reader, a word too elegant to be pedantic. As a pupil, though I paid extra fees, it is to be lamented that I did not stand high in his es- 10 teem. It showed his dogged honesty (though, observe, not his discernment) that he could not see nly merits. Let us excuse his absurdity in this particular by remembering his want of an eye. Doubtless that made him blind to my merits. In the art of conversation, however, he admitted that I had 15 the whip-hand of him. On this present occasion great joy was at our meeting. But what was Cyclops doing here? Had the medical men recommended northern air, or how? I collected, from such explanations as he volunteered, that he had an interest at stake in some suit-at-law now pending 20 at Lancaster"; so that probably he had got himself trans- ferred to this station for the purpose of connecting with his professional pursuits an instant readiness for the calls of his lawsuit. Meantime, what are we stopping for? Surely we have 25 now waited long enough. Oh, this procrastinating mail, and this procrastinating post-office ! Can't they take a lesson upon that subject from me? Some people have called me procrastinating. ° Yet you are wdtness, reader, that I was here kept waiting for the post-office. Will the. post-office lay 30 its hand on its heart, in its moments of sobriety, and assert that ever it waited for me? What are they about? The guard tells me that there is a large extra accumulation of foreign mails this night, owing to irregularities caused by THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 7S war, by wind, by weather, in the packet service, which as yet does not benefit at all by steam. For an extra hour, it seems, the post-office has been engaged in threshing out the pure wheaten correspondence of Glasgow, and winnowing it from the chaff of all baser intermediate towns. But at last 5 all is finished. Sound your horn, guard ! Manchester, good- bye!; weVe lost an hour by your criminal conduct at the post-office : which, however, though I do not mean to part with a serviceable ground of complaint, and one which really is such for the horses, to me secretly is an advantage, ° since 10 it compels us to look sharply for this lost hour amongst the next eight or nine, and to recover it (if we can) at the rate of one mile extra per hour. Off we are at last, and at eleven miles an hour; and for the moment I detect no changes in the energy or in the skill of Cyclops. 15 From Manchester to Kendal, ° which virtually (though not in law) is the capital of Westmorland, there were at this time seven stages of eleven miles each. The first five of these, counting from Manchester, terminate in Lancaster; which is therefore fiftj^-five miles north of Manchester, and the 20 same distance exactly from Liverpool. The first three stages terminate in Preston (called, by way of distinction from other towns of that name. Proud Preston) ; at which place it is that the separate roads from Liverpool and from Man- chester to the north become confluent. ° Within these first 25 three stages lay the foundation, the progress, and termina- tion of our night's adventure. During the first stage, I Tound out that Cyclops was mortal : he was liable to the shocking affection of sleep — a thing which previously I had never suspected. If a man indulges in the vicious habit of sleeping, 30 all the skill in aurigation of Apollo himself, with the horses of Aurora to execute his notions," avails him nothing. *'0h, Cyclops !'' I exclaimed, "thou art mortal. My friend, thou 74 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUtNCET snorest." Through the first eleven miles, however, this in* firmity° — which I grieve to say that he shared with the whole Pagan Pantheon° — betrayed itself only by brief snatches. On waking up, he made an apology for himself which, instead 5 of mending matters, laid open a gloomy vista of coming dis^ asters. The summer assizes, ° he reminded me, were now going on at Lancaster: in consequence of which for three nights and three days he had not lain down in a bed. During the day he was waiting for his own summons as a witness on 10 the trial in which he was interested, or else, lest he should be missing at the critical moment, was drinking with the other witnesses under the pastoral surveillance of the attor- neys. During the night, or that part of it which at sea would form the middle watch, ° he was driving. This explanation 15 certainly accounted for his drowsiness, but in a way which made it much more alarming ; since now, after several days' resistance to this infirmity, at length he was steadily giving way. Throughout the second stage he grew more and more drowsy. In the second mile of the third stage he surren- 20dered himself finally and without a struggle to his perilous temptation. All his past resistance had but deepened the weight of this final oppression. Seven atmospheres of sleep° rested upon him ; and, to consummate the case, our worthy guard, after singing "Love amongst the Roses "° for perhaps 25 thirty times, without invitation and without applause, had in revenge moodily resigned himself to slumber — not so deep, doubtless, as the coachman's, but deep enough for mischief. And thus at last, about ten miles from Preston, it came about that I found myself left in charge of his 30 Majesty's London and Glasgow mail, then running at the least twelve miles an hour. What made this negligence less criminal than else it must have been thought was the condition of the roads at night THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 75 during the assizes. At that time, all the law business of populous Liverpool, and also of populous Manchester, with its vast cincture of populous rural districts, was called up by ancient usage to the tribunal of Lilliputian Lancaster.^ To break up this old traditional usage required, 1, a conflicts with powerful established interests, 2, a large system of new arrangements, and 3, a new parliamentary statute. But as yet this change was merely in contemplation.*^ As things were at present, twice in the year° so vast a body of business rolled northwards from the southern quarter of the county H that for a fortnight at least it occupied the severe exertions of two judges in its despatch. The consequence of this was that every horse available for such a service, along the whole line of road, was exhausted in carrying down the multitudes of people who were parties to the different suits. By sunset, 15 therefore, it usually happened that, through utter exhaustion amongst men and horses, the road sank into profound silence. Except the exhaustion in the vast adjacent county of York from a contested election, no such silence succeeding to no such fiery uproar was ever witnessed in England. 2(1 On this occasion the usual silence and solitude prevailed along the road. Not a hoof nor a wheel was to be heard. And, to strengthen this false luxurious confidence in the noiseless roads, it happened also that the night was one of peculiar solemnity and peace. For my own part, though 25 slightly alive to the possibilities of peril, I had so far yielded to the influence of the mighty calm as to sink into a profound reverie. The month was August; in the middle of which lay my own birthday^ — a festival to every thoughtful man suggesting solemn and often sigh-born° thoughts. TheSa county was my own native county — upon which, in its southern section, more than upon any equal area known to man past or present, had descended the original curse of r6 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUIXCEY labour in its heaviest form, not mastering the bodies only o\ men, as of slaves, or criminals in mines, but working through the fiery will. Upon no equal space of earth was, or ever had been, the same energy of human power put forth daily. ° At 5 this particular season also of the assizes, that dreadful hurri- cane of flight and pursuit, as it might have seemed to a stranger, which swept to and from Lancaster all day long, hunting the county up and down, and regularly subsiding back into silence about sunset, could not fail (when united fOwith this permanent distinction of Lancashire as the very metropolis and citadel of labour) to point the thoughts pa- thetically upon that counter-vision of rest, of saintly repose from strife and sorrow, towards which, as to their secret haven, the profounder aspirations of man's heart are in soli- 15tude continuall}^ travelhng. Obliquely upon our left we were nearing the sea° ; which also must, under the present circumstances, be repeating the general state of halcyon repose. The sea, the atmosphere, the light, bore each an orchestral part in this universal lull. Moonlight and the 20 first timid tremblings of the dawn were by this time blend- ing; and the blendings were brought into a still more ex- quisite state of unity by a slight silverj^ mist, motionless and dreamy, that covered the woods and fields, but with a veil of equable transparency. Except the feet of our own horses, 25 — which, running on a sandy margin of the road, made but little disturbance, — there was no sound abroad. In the clouds and on the earth prevailed the same majestic peace; and, in spite of all that the villain of a schoolmaster has done for the ruin of our sublimer thoughts, which are the thoughts 30 of our infancy, we still believe in no such nonsense as a limited atmosphere. ° Whatever we may swear with our false feign- ing lips, in our faithful hearts we still believe, and must for ever believe, in fields of air traversing the total gulf betw(»en THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH TT earth and the central heavens. Still, in the confidence of children that tread without fear every chamber in their father's house, and to whom no door is closed, we, in that Sabbatic° vision which sometimes is revealed for an hour upon nights like this, ascend with easy steps from the sorrow-stricken 5 fields of eavth upwards to the sandals of God. Suddenly, from thoughts like these I was awakened to a sullen sound, as of some motion on the distant road. It stole upon the air for a moment ; I listened in awe ; but then it died away. Once roused, however, I could not but ob-lG serve with alarm the quickened motion of our horses. Ten years' experience had made my eye learned in the valuing of motion; and 1 saw that we were now running thirteen miles an hour. I pretend to no presence of mind. On the contrary, my fear is that I am miserably and shamefully 15 deficient in that quality as regards action. The palsy of doubt and distraction hangs like some guilty weight of dark unfathomed remembrances upon my energies when the signal is flying for action. But, on the other hand, this accursed gift I have, as regards thought, that in the first step towards 20 the possibility of a misfortune I see its total evolution; in the radix of the series I see too certainly and too instantly its entire expansion ; in the first syllable of the dreadful sen- tence I read already the last. It was not that I feared for ourselves. Us our bulk and impetus charmed against peril 25 in any collision. And I had ridden through too many hun- dreds of perils that were frightful to approach, that were matter of laughter to look back upon, the first face of which was horror, the parting face a jest — for any anxiety to rest upon our interests. The mail was not built, I felt assured, 30 nor bespoke, that could betray me who trusted to its protec- tion. But any carriage that we could meet would be frail and light in comparison of ourselves. And I remarked this 78 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCEY ominous accident of our situation, — we were on the wrong side of the road.° But then, it may be said, the other party, if other there was, might also be on the wrong side ; and two 'wrongs might make a right. That was not Ukely. The 5 same motive which had drawn us to the right-hand side of the road — viz. the luxury of the soft beaten sand as con- trasted with the paved centre — would prove attractive to others. The two adverse carriages would therefore, to a cer- tainty, be travelling on the same side ; and from this side, as 10 not being ours in law, the crossing over to the other would, of course, be looked for from 2/s.° Our lamps, still hghted, would give the impression of vigilance on our part. And •very creature that met us would rely upon us for quarter- ing. ° All this, and if the separate links of the anticipation 15 had been a thousand times more, I saw, not discursively, or by effort, or by succession, but by one flash of horrid simul- taneous intuition. Under this steady though rapid anticipation of the evil which might be gathering ahead, ah! what a sullen mystery 20 of fear, what a sigh of woe, was that which stole upon the air, as again the far-off sound of a wheel was heard ! A whisper it was — a whisper from, perhaps, four miles off — secretly announcing a ruin that, being foreseen, was not the less inevitable ; that, being known, was not therefore healed. 25 What could be done — who was it that could do it — to check the storm-flight of these maniacal horses? Could I not seize the reins from the grasp of the slumbering coach- man? You, reader, think that it would have been in your power to do so. And I quarrel not with your estimate of 30 yourself. But, from the way in which the coachman's hand was viced between his upper and lower thigh, this was im- possible. ° Easy was it? See, then, that bronze equestrian statue. The cruel rider has kept the bit in his horse's mouth THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 79 for two centuries. Unbridle him for a minute, if you please, and wash his mouth with water. Easy was it? Unhorsft me, then, that imperial rider; knock me those marble feet from those marble stirrups of Charlemagne. The sounds ahead strengthened, and were now too clearly 3 the sounds of wheels. Who and what could it be ? Was it industry in a taxed cart° ? Was it youthful gaiety in a gig ? Was it sorrow that loitered, or joy that raced? For as yet the snatches of sound were too intermitting, from distance, to decipher the character of the motion. Whoever were the 1(1 travellers, something must be done to warn them. Upon the other party rests the active responsibility, but upon us — and, woe is me ! that us was reduced to my frail opuim- shattered self — rests the responsibility of warning. Yet, how should this be accomphshed? Might I not sound the 15 guard's horn ? Already, on the first thought, I was making my way over the roof to the guard's seat. But this, from the accident w^hich I have mentioned, ° of the foreign mails being piled upon the roof, was a difficult and even dangerous attempt to one cramped by nearh' three hundred miles oi 20 outside travelling. And, fortunately, before I had lost much time in the attempt, cur frantic horses swept round an angle of the road which opened upon us that final stage where the collision must be accomplished and the catastrophe sealed. All was apparently finished. The court was sitting; the 25 case was heard ; the judge had finished; and only the verdict w^as yet in arrear. Before us lay an avenue straight as an arrow, six hundred yards, perhaps, in length ; and the umbrageous trees, which rose in a regular line from either side, meeting high overhead, 3C gave to it the character of a cathedral aisle. These trees lent a deeper solemnity to the early light ; but there was still fight enough to perceive, at the further end of this Gothic 80 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS BE QUIXCEY aisle, ° a frail reedy gig, in which were seated a young man^ and by his side a young lady. Ah, young sir ! what are you about ? If it is requisite that you should whisper your com- munications to this young lady — though really I see nobody, 5 at an hour and on a road so solitary, likely to overhear 3'ou — is it therefore requisite that you should carry your lips for- ward to hers ? The little carriage is creeping on at one mile an hour; and the parties within it, being thus tenderly en- gaged, are naturally bending down their heads. Between 10 them and eternit}^, to all human calculation, there is but a minute and a-half . Oh heavens ! what is it that I shall do ? Speaking or acting, what help can I offer? Strange it is, and to a mere auditor of the tale might seem laughable, that I should need a suggestion from the Iliad° to prompt the sole 15 resource that remained. Yet so it was. Suddenly I re- membered the shout of Achilles, and its effect. But could I pretend to shout like the son of Peleus, aided by Pallas? No : but then I needed not the shout that should alarm all Asia militant; such a shout would suffice as might carry 20 terror into the hearts of two thoughtless young people and one gig-horse- I shouted — and the young man heard me not. A second time I shouted — and now he heard me, for now he raised his head. Here, then, a'A had been done that, by me, could be done; 25 more on my part was not possible. Mine had been the first step ; the second was for the young man ; the third was for God. If, said I, this stranger is a brave man, and if indeed he loves the young girl at his side — or, lo\ing her not, if he feeis the obligation, pressing upon every man worthy to be 30 called a man, of doing his utmost for a woman confided to his protection — he will at least make some effort to save her. If that fails, he will not perish the more, or by a death more cruelf for having made it; and he will die as a brave man THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 81 should, with his face to the danger, and with his arm about the woman that he sought in vain to save. But, it he makes no effort, — shrinking without a struggle from his duty, — he himself will not the less certainly perish for this baseness of poltroonery. He will die no less : and why not ? Wherefore 5 should we grieve that there is one craven less in the world ? Xo ; let him perish, without a pitying thought of ours wasted upon him ; and, in that case, all our grief will be reserved for the fate of the helpless girl who now, upon the least shadow of failure in him, must by the fiercest of translations — must 10 without time for a prayer — must within seventy seconds — stand before the judgment-seat of God. But craven he was not: sudden had been the call upon him, and sudden was his answer to the call. He saw, he heard, he comprehended, the ruin that was coming down: 15 already its gloomy shadow darkened above him ; and already he was measuring his ^strength to deal with it. Ah ! what a vulgar thing does courage seem when we see nations buying it and selling it for a shilling a-day° : ah ! what a sublime thing does courage seem when some fearful summons on the 20 great deeps of life carries a man, as if running before a hurricane, up to the giddy crest of some tumultuous crisis from which lie two courses, and a voice says to him audibly, "One way lies hope; take the other, and mourn for ever!'^ How grand a triumph if, even then, amidst the raving of all 25 around him, and the frenzy of the danger, the man is able to confront his situation — is able to retire for a moment into solitude with God, and to seek his counsel from Him! For seven seconds, it might be, of his seventy, the stranger settled his countenance stedfastly upon us, as if to search and 30 value every element in the conflict before him. For five seconds more of his seventy he sat immovably, like one that mused on some great purpose. For five more, perhaps, he 82 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS BE QUINCET gat with eyes upraised, like one that prayed in sorrow, undei some extremity of doubt, for light that should guide him to the better choice. Then suddenly he rose; stood upright; and, by a powerful strain upon the reins, raising his horse's 6 fore-feet from the ground, he slewed him round on the pivot cf liis hind-legs, so as to plant the little equipage in a position nearly at right angles to ours. Thus far his condition was not improved ; except as a first step had been taken towards the possibility of a second. If no more were done, nothing 10 was done ; for the little carriage still occupied the very centre of our path, though in an altered direction. Yet even now it may not be too late : fifteen of the seventy seconds may Bciii be unexhausted ; and one almighty bound may avail to clear the ground. Hurry, then, hurry! for the flying 15 moments — they hurry. Oh, hurry, hurry, my brave young man ! for the cruel hoofs of our horses — they also hurry 1 Fast are the flying moments, faster- are the hoofs of our horses. But fear not for him, if human energy can sufhce; faithful was he that drove to his terrific duty; faithful was 20 the horse to his command. One blow, one impulse given with voice and hand, by the stranger, one rush from the horse, one bound as if in the act of ripli g to a fence, landed the docile creature^s fore-feet upon the crown or arching centre of the road. The larger half of the little equipage 25 had then cleared our over-towering shadow : that was evident even to my own agitated sight. But it mattered Uttle that one wTeck should float off in safety if upon the \sTeck that perished were embarked the human freightage. The rear part of the carriage — was that certainly be^^ond the 30 line of absolute ruin? What power could answer the ques- tion ? Glance of eye, thought of man, wing of angel, which of these had speed enough to sweep between the question and the answer, and divide the one from the other ? Light ^ THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 83 does not tread upon the steps of light more indivisibly than did our all-conquering arrival upon the escaping efforts of the gig. That must the young man have felt too plainly. His back was now turned to us; not by sight could he any longer communicate with the peril; but, by the dreadfuls rattle of our harness, too truly had his ear been instructed that all was finished as regarded any effort of his. Already in resignation he had rested from his struggle; and perhaps in his heart he w^as whispering, "Father, which art in heaven, do Thou finish above what I on earth have attempted. " iO Faster than ever mill-race we ran past them in our inexorable flight. ° Oh, raving of hurricanes that must have sounded in their young ears at the moment of our transit ! Even in that moment the thunder of collision spoke aloud. Either with the swingle-bar, or with the haunch of our near leader, 15 we had struck the off-wheel of the httle gig; which stood rather obliquely, and not quite so far advanced as to be accurately parallel with the near-wheel. The blow, from the fury of our passage, resounded terrifically. I rose in horror, to gaze upon the ruins we might have caused. From 20 my elevated station I looked down, and looked back upon the scene; which in a moment told its own tale, and wrote ,|all its records on my heart for ever. Here was the map of the passion that now had finished." The horse was planted immovabl}'', with his fore-feet upon 25 the paved crest of the central road. He of the whole party might be supposed untouched by the passion of death. The little cany carriage — partly, perhaps, from the \dolent tor- sion of the wheels in its recent movement, partly from the thundering blow we had given to it — as if it sympathised so with human horror, was all alive with tremblings and shiver- ings. The young man trembled not, nor shivered. He sat '., like a rock. But his was the steadiness of agitation frozen 84 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUIXCET into rest by horror. As yet he dared not to look round; for he knew that, if anything remained to do, by him it could no longer be done. And as yet he knew not for certain if their safety were accomplished. But the lady — 5 But the lady — ! Oh, heavens ! will that spectacle ever depart from my dreams, as she rose and sank upon her seat, sank and rose, threw up her arms wildly to heaven, clutched at some visionary object in the air, fainting, praying, raving, despairing? Figure to yourself, reader, the elements of the 10 case ; suffer me to recall before your mind the circumstances of that unparalleled situation. From the silence and deep peace of this saintly summer night — from the pathetic blending of this sweet moonlight, dawnlight, dreamlight° — from the manly tenderness of this flattering, whispering, 15 murmuring love — suddenly as from the woods and fields — suddenly as from the chambers of the air opening in revela- tion — suddenly as from the ground yawning at her feet, leaped upon her, with the flashing of cataracts, Death the crowned phantom, with all the equipage of his terrors, and 20 the tiger roar of his voice. The moments were numbered; the strife was finished; the vision was closed. In the twinkling of an eye, our flying horses had carried us to the termination of the um- brageous aisle; at the right angles we wheeled into our 25 former direction ; the turn of the road carried the scene out of my eyes in an instant, and swept it into my dreams for ever. THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 85 Section III — Dream-Fugue ° : FOUNDED ON THE PRECEDING THEME OF SUDDEN DEATH " "Whence the sound Of instruments, that made melodious chime, Was heard, of harp and organ ; and who moved Their stops and chords was seen ; his volant touch Instinct through all proportions, low and high, 5 Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue." Par. Lost'^B^. XI."^ T umultuosissimamente° Passion of sudden death ! that once in youth I read and interpreted by the shadows of thy averted signs° ! — rapture 10 of panic taking the shape (which amongst tombs in churches I have seen) of woman bursting her sepulchral bonds — of woman's Ionic form° bending forward from the ruins of her grave with arching foot, with eyes upraised, wdth clasped adoring hands — waiting, watching, trembling, praying for 15 the trumpet's call to rise from dust for ever° ! Ah, vision too fearful of shuddering humanity on the brink of almighty abysses ! — vision that didst start back, that didst reel aw^ay, like a shri\'elling scroll from before the wrath of fire racing on the wings of the wind ! Epilepsy so brief of horror, 20 w^herefore is it that thou canst not die ? Passing so suddenly into darkness, wherefore is it that still thou sheddest thy sad funeral blights upon the gorgeous mosaics of dreams ? Frag- ment of music too passionate, heard once, and heard no more, what aileth thee, that thy deep rolHng chords come 25 up at intervals through all the w^orlds of sleep, and after forty years° have lost no element of horror? I Lo, it is summer — almighty summer ! The everlasting gates of life and summer are thrown open wide; and on the 86 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS BE QUIXCEY ocean, tranquil and verdant as a savannah, the unknown lady from the dreadful vision and I mj'self are floating — she j upon a fairy pinnace, and I upon an English three-decker. ° J Both of us are wooing gales of festal happiness within the I 5 domain of our common country, within that ancient watery park, within the pathless chase of ocean, where England takes her pleasure as a huntress through winter and summer, from the rising to the setting sun. Ah, what a wilderness of floral beauty w^as hidden, or was suddenly revealed, upon the ^10 tropic islands through which the pinnace moved ! And upon ~~^ her deck w^hat a be\^ of human flowers : young women how lovely, young men how noble, that were dancing togetJier, and slowly drifting towards us amidst music and incense, amidst blossoms from forests and gorgeous cor}Tnbi° from 15 vintages, amidst natural carolling, and the echoes of sweet girhsh laughter. Slowly the pinnace nears us, gaily she hails us, and silently she disappears beneath the shadow of our mighty bows. But then, as at some signal from heaver, the music, and the carols, and the sweet echoing of girlish 20 laughter — all are hushed. What evil has smitten the pin- nace, meeting or overtaking her? Did ruin to our friends couch within our own dreadful shadow? Was our shadow^ / the shadow of death ? I looked over the bow^ for an answer. V^ and, behold ! the pinnace was dismantled ; the revel and the 25 revellers were found no more; the glory of the vintage was dust ; and the forests with their beauty were left without a witness upon the seas. "But where,'' and I turned to our crew — "where are the lovely women that danced beneath the awning of flowers and clustering corymbi? Whither 30 have fled the noble young men that danced with them?'' Answer there was none. But suddenly the man at the mast-head, whose countenance darkened with alarm, cried out, "Sail on the weather beam° ! Down she comes upon us: in seventy seconds she will founder." THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 87 II I looked to the weather side, and the summer had de- parted. The sea was rocking, and shaken with gathering wrath. Upon its surface sat mighty mists, which grouped themselves into arches and long cathedral aisles. Down one of these, with the fiery pace of a quarrel° from a cross-bow, 5 ran a frigate right athwart our course. ''Are they mad?'' some voice exclaimed from our deck. ''Do they woo their ruin?" But in a moment, as she was close upon us, some impulse of a heady current" or local vortex gave a wheeling bias to her course, and off she forged without a shock. As 10 she ran past us, high aloft amongst the shrouds stood the lady of the pinnace. The deeps opened ahead in malice to receive her, towering surges of foam ran after her, the billows were fierce to catch her. But far away she was borne into desert spaces of the sea : whilst still by sight I followed her, 15 as she ran before the howling gale, chased by angry sea-birds and by maddening billows ; still I saw her, as at the moment when she ran past us, standing amongst the shrouds, with her white draperies streaming before the wind. There she stood, with hair dishevelled, one hand clutched amongst the 20 tackling — rising, sinking, fluttering, trembling, praying° ; there for leagues I saw her as she stood, raising at intervals one hand to heaven, amidst the fiery crests of the pursuing waves and the raving of the storm; until at last, upon a sound from afar of malicious laughter and mockery, all was 25 hidden for ever in driving showers; and afterwards, but when I know not, nor how, III Sweet funeral bells from some incalculable distance, wailing over the dead that die before the dawn, awakened 88 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS BE QUINCE T me as I slept in a boat moored to some familiar shore. The morning twilight even then was breaking; and, by the dusky revelations which it spread, I saw a girl, adorned with a garland of white roses about her head for some great 5 festival, running along the solitary strand in extremity of haste. Her running was the running of panic; and often she looked back as to some dreadful enemy in the rear. But, when I leaped ashore, and followed on her steps to warn her of a peril in front, alas ! from me she fled as from another 10 peril, and vainly I shouted to her of quicksands that lay ahead. Faster and faster she ran; round a promontory of rocks she wheeled out of sight ; in an instant I also wheeled round it, but only to see the treacherous sands gathering above her head. Already her person was buried; only the 15 fair young head and the diadem of white roses around it were still visible to the pitying heavens; and, last of all, was visible one white marble arm. I saw by the early twilight this fair young head, as it was sinking down to darkness — saw this marble arm, as it rose above her head 20 and her treacherous grave, tossing, faltering, rising, clutching, as at some false deceiving hand stretched out from the clouds — saw this marble arm uttering her dying hope, and then uttering her dying despair. The head, the diadem, the arm — these all had sunk ; at last over these also the cruel quick- 25 sand had closed; and no memorial of the fair young girl remained on earth, except my own solitary tears, and the funeral bells from the desert seas, that, rising again more softly, sang a requiem over the grave of the buried child, and over her blighted dawn. 30 I sat, and wept in secret the tears that men have ever given to the memory of those that died before the dawn, and by the treacherj"- of earth, our mother. But suddenly the tears and ^"uneral bells were hushed bv a shout as of THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 89 many nations, and by a roar as from some great king's artillery, advancing rapidly along the valleys, and heard afar by echoes from the mountains. "Hush!'' I said, as I bent my ear earthwards to hsten — "hush! — this either is the very anarchy of strife, or else'' — and then I listened more 5 profoundly, and whispered as I raised my head — "or else, oh heavens ! it is victory that is final, victory that swallows up all strife, ° " IV Immediately, in trance, I was carried over land and sea to some distant kingdom, and placed upon a triumphal car, 10 amongst companions crowned with laurel. The darkness of gathering midnight, brooding over all the land, hid from us the mighty crowds that were weaving restlessly about ourselves as a centre : we heard them, but saw them not. Tidings had arrived, within an hour, of a grandeur that 15 measured itself against centuries; too full of pathqs they were, too full of joy, to utter themselves by other language than by tears, by restless anthems, and Te Deuvis° reverber- ated from the choirs and orchestras of earth. These tidings we that sat upon the laurelled car had it for our privilege 20 to pubUsh amongst all nations. And already, by signs audible through the darkness, by snortings and tramplings, our angry horses, that knew no fear of fleshly weariness, upbraided us with delay. Wherefore was it that we delayed ? We waited for a secret word, that should bear witness to the 25 hope of nations as now accomplished for ever. At midnight the secret word arrived ; which word was — Waterloo and Recovered Christendom° ! The dreadful word shone by its own light; before us it went; high above our leaders' heads it rode, and spread a golden fight over the paths which we 30 90 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCE Y traversed. Every city, at the presence of the secret word^ threw open its gates. The rivers were conscious as we crossed. ° All the forests, as we ran along their margins, shivered in homage to the secret word. And the darkness 5 comprehended it.° Two hours after midnight we approached a mighty Minster. Its gates, which rose to the clouds, were closed. But, when the dreadful word that rode before us reached them with its golden light, silently they moved back upon their hinges; 10 and at a flying gallop our equipage entered the grand aisle of the cathedral. Headlong was our pace; and at every altar, in the little chapels and oratories to the right hand and left of our course, the lamps, dying or sickening, kindled anew in sym.pathy with the secret word that was flying 15 past. Forty leagues we might have run in the cathedral, and as yet no strength of morning light had reached us, when before us we saw the aerial galleries of organ and choir. Every pinnacle of the fretwork, every station of advantage ° amongst the traceries, was cn-^sted by white-robed choristers 20 that sang deliverance ; that wept no more tears, as once their fathers had wept; but at intervals that sang together to the generations, saying, ** Chant the deliverer's praise in every tongue, "° and receiving answers from afar, 25 " Such as once in heaven and earth were sung." And of their chanting was no end ; of our headlong pace was neither pause nor slackening. Thus as we ran hke torrents — thus as we swept with bridal rapture over the Campo Santo° of the cathedral 30 graves — suddenly we became aware of a vast necropolis THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 91 rising upon the far-off horizon — a city of sepulchres, built within the saintly cathedral for the warrior dead that rested from their feuds on earth. Of purple granite was the necrop- olis; yet, in the first minute, it lay like a purple stain upon the horizon, so mighty was the distance. In the 5 second minute it trembled through many changes, growing into terraces and towers of wondrous altitude, so mighty was the pace. In the third minute already, with our dread- ful gallop, we were entering its suburbs. Vast sarcophagi rose on every side, having towers and turrets that, upon the 10 limits of the central aisle, strode forward with haughty intrusion, that ran back with mighty shadows into answer- ing recesses. Every sarcophagus showed many bas- reliefs — bas-reliefs of battles and of battle-fields ; battles from forgotten ages, battles from yesterday; battle-fields 15 that, long since, nature had healed and reconciled to herself with the sweet oblivion of flowers; battle-fields that were yet angry and crimson with carnage. Where the terraces ran, there did we run ; where the towers curved, there did ice curve. With the flight of swallows our horses swept round 20 every angle. Like rivers in flood wheeling round headlands, like hurricanes that ride into the secrets of forests, faster than ever light unwove the mazes of darkness, our flying equipage carried earthly passions, kindled warrior instincts, amongst the dust that lay around us — dust oftentimes of 23 our noble fathers that had slept in God from Creci° to Trafal- gar. And now had we reached the last sarcophagus, now were we abreast of the last bas-relief, already had we recov- ered the arrow-like flight of the illimitable central aisle, when coming up this aisle to meet us we beheld afar off aSG female child, that rode in a carriage as frail as flowers. The mists which went before her hid the fawns that drew her, but could not hide the shells and tropic flowers with which 92 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUIJSCEY she played — but could not hide the lovely smiles by which she uttered her trust in the mighty cathedral, and in th« cherubim that looked down upon her from the mighty shafts of its pillars. Face to face she was meeting us; face 5 to face she rode, as if danger there were none. '' Oh, baby ! " I exclaimed, ''shalt thou be the ransom for Waterloo? Must we, that carry tidings of great joy° to every people, be messengers of ruin to thee ! '^ In horror I rose at the thought ; but then also, in horror at the thought, rose one that was 10 sculptured on a bas-relief — a Dying Trumpeter. Solemnly from the field of battle he rose to his feet ; and, unslinging his stony trumpet, carried it, in his dying anguish, to his stony hps — sounding once, and yet once again ; proclama- tion that, in thy ears, oh, baby ! spoke from the battlements 15 of death. Immediatel}^ deep shadows fell between us, and aboriginal silence. The choir had ceased to sing. The hoofs of our horses, the dreadful rattle of our harness, the groaning of our wheels, alarmed the graves no more. By horror the bas-relief had been unlocked unto life. By 20 horror we, that were so full of life, we men and our horses, with their fiery fore-legs rising in mid air to their everlasting gallop, were frozen to a bas-relief. Then a third time the trumpet sounded; the seals were taken off all pulses; life, and the frenzy of life, tore into their channels again; again 25 the choir burst forth in sunny grandeur, as from the muffling of storms and darkness; again the thunderings of our horses carried temptation into the graves. One cry burst from our lips, as the clouds, drawing off from the aisle, showed it empty before us. — " Whither has the infant fled ? — 30 is the young child caught up to God?" Lo ! afar off, in a vast recess, rose three mighty windows to the clouds; and on a level with their summits, at height insuperable to man, rose an altar of purest alabaster. On its eastern face was THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 93 trembling a crimson glory. A glory was it from the reddening dawn that now streamed through the windows? Was it from the crimson robes of the martyrs painted on the win- dows ? Was it from the bloody bas-reliefs of earth ? There, suddenly, within that crimson radiance, rose the apparitions of a woman's head, and then of a woman's figure. The child it was — grown up to woman's height. Clinging to the horns of the altar, ° voiceless she stood — sinking, rising, raving, despairing; and behind the volume of incense that, night and day, streamed upwards from the altar, dimly k> was seen the fiery font, and the shadow of that dreadful being who should have baptized her with the baptism of death. But by her side was kneeling her better angel, that hid his face ^\dth vdngs; that wept and pleaded for her; that prayed when she could not; that fought with Heaven by 15 tears for her deliverance ; which also, as he raised his inunortal countenance from his wangs, I saw, by the glory in his eye that from Heaven he had won at last. Then was completed the passion of the mighty fugue. The golden tubes of the organ, which as yet had but muttered 20 at intervals — gleaming amongst clouds and surges of incense — threw up, as from fountains unfathomable, columns of heart-shattering music. Choir and anti-choir were filling fast with unknown voices. Thou also, Dying Trumpeter, with thy love that was victorious, and thy anguish that was 25 finishing, didst enter the tumult ; trumpet and echo — fare- well love, and farewell anguish — rang through the dreadful sanctus° Oh, darkness of the grave ! that from the crimson altar and from the fiery font wert visited and searched by the effulgence in the angel's eye — were these indeed thy 30 94 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCEY children? Pomps of life, that, from the burials of centuries, rose again to the voice of perfect joy, did ye indeed mingle with the festivals of Death? Lo! as I looked back for seventy leagues through the mighty cathedral, I saw the 5 quick and the dead° that sang together to God, together that sang to the generations of man. All the hosts of jubilation, like armies that ride in pursuit, moved vnth one step. Us, that, with laurelled heads, were passing from the cathedral, they overtook, and, as with a garment, they wrapped us round 10 with thunders greater than our own. As brothers we moved together ; to the dawn that advanced, to the stars that fled ; rendering thanlcs to God in the highest^ — that, having hid His face through one generation behind thick clouds of War, once again was ascending, from the Campo Santo of Waterloo 15 was ascending, in the \'isions of Peace ; rendering thanlis for thee, young girl! whom having overshadowed with His ineffable passion of death, suddenly did God relent, suffered thy angel to turn aside His arm, and even in thee, sister unkno^ATi ! shown to me for a moment only to be hidden for 20 ever, found an occasion to glorify His goodness. A thousand times, amongst the phantoms of sleep, have I seen thee entering the gates of the golden dawm, with the secret word riding before thee, \vith the armies of the grave behind thee, — seen thee sinking, rising, raving, despairing ; a thou- 25 sand times in the v\^crlds of sleep have seen thee followed by God's angel through storms, through desert seas, through the darkness of quicksands, through dreams and the dreadful revelations that are in dreams ; onl}^ that at the last, with one sling of His victorious arm, He might snatch thee back from 30 ruin, and might emblazon in thy deUverance the endless resurrections of His love ! AUTHOR'S POSTSCRIPT'^ " The English Mail-Coach. " — This little paper, accord- ing to my original intention, formed part of the "Suspiria de Profundus ''°; from which, for a momentary purpose, I did not scruple to detach it^ and to publish it apart, as sufficiently intelligible even when dislocated from its place in a larger 5 whole. To my surprise, however, one or two critics, not carelessly in conversation, but deliberately in print, professed their inability to a^Dprehend the meaning of the whole, or to follow the links of the connexion between its several parts. I am myself as little able to understand where the difficulty iO lies, or to detect any lurking obscurity^ as these critics found themselves to unravel my logic. Possibly I may not be a,n indifferent and neutral judge in such a case. I will therefore sketch a brief abstract of the httle paper according to my original design, and then leave the reader to judge how fang this design is kept in sight through the actual execution. Thirty-seven years ago,° or rather more, accident made me, in the dead of night, and of a night memorably solemn, the solitary witness of an appalling scene, which threatened in- stant death in a shape the most terrific to two young people 2G whom I had no means of assisting, except in so far as I was able to give them a most hurried warning of their danger; but even that not until they stood within the very shadow of the catastrophe, being divided from the most frightful of deaths by scarcely more, if more at all, than seventy seconds. " Such was the scene, such in its outline, from which t' 95 96 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCE Y whole of this paper radiates as a natural expansion. Thii scene is circumstantially narrated in Section the Second, entitled ''The Vision of Sudden Death." But a movement of horror, and of spontaneous recoil from 6 this dreadful scene, naturally carried the whole of that scene, raised and idealised, into my dreams, and very soon into a rolling succession of dreams. The actual scene, as looked down upon from the box of the mail, was transformed into a dream, as tumultuous and changing as a musical fugue. 10 This troubled dream is circumstantially reported in Section the Third, entitled "Dream-Fugue on the theme of Sudden Death." What I had beheld from my seat upon the mail, — the scenical strife of action and passion, of anguish and fear, as I had there witnessed them moving in ghostly silence, — 15 this duel between life and death narrowing itself to a point of such exquisite evanescence as the collision neared: all these elements of the scene blended, under the law of associa- tion, with the previous and permanent features of distinction investing the mail itself; which features at that time lay^ 20 1st, in velocity unprecedented, 2dly, in the power and beauty of the horses, 3dly, in the official connexion with the govern- ment of a great nation, and, 4thly, in the function, almost a consecrated function, of publishing and diffusing through the land the great political events, and especially the great 25 battles, during a conflict of unparalleled grandeur. These honorary distinctions are all described circumstantially in the First or introductory Section ("The Glory of Motion"). The three first were distinctions maintained at all times ; but the fourth and grandest belonged exclusively to the war with 30 Napoleon ; and this it was which most naturally introduced Waterloo into the dream. Waterloo, I understand, was the particular feature of %c,? "Dream-Fugue" which my censors were least able to account for. Yet surely Waterloo, which, THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH S in common with every other great battle, it had been our special privilege to publish over all the land, most naturally entered the dream under the licence of our privilege. If not — if there be anything amiss — let the Dream be responsible. The Dream is a law to itself; and as well quarrel with at rainbow for showing, or for not showing, a secondary arch. So far as I know, every element in the shifting movements of the Dream derived itself either primarily from the incidents of the actual scene, or from secondary features associated with the mail. For example, the cathedral aisle derived 10 itself from the mimic combination of features which grouped themselves together at the point of approaching collision — viz. an arrow-like section of the road, six hundred yards long, under the solemn lights described, with lofty trees meeting overhead in arches. The guard's horn, again — a humble 15 instrument in itself — was yet glorified as the organ of pub- lication for so many great national events. And the incident of the Dying Trumpeter, who rises from a marble bas-relief, and carries a marble trumpet to his marble lips for the purpose of warning the female infant, was doubtless secretly suggested 2<1 by my own imperfect effort to seize the guard's horn, and to blow a warning blast. But the Dream knows best; and the Dream, I say again, is the responsible party. THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN° 1. — An Extra Nuisance is introduced into Spain. On a night in the year 1592° (but which night is a secret hable to 365 answers), a Spanish "son of somebody" (i.e. hidalgo °), in the fortified town of St. Sebastian, ° received the disagreeable intelligence from a nurse that his wife had just 5 presented him with a daughter. No present that the poor misjudging lad}^ could possibly have made him was so entirely useless towards any purpose of his. He had three daughters already; which happened to be more by 2+1, according to his reckoning, than any reasonable allowance of daughters. 10 A supernumerary son might have been stowed away; but supernumerar}' daughters were the very nuisance of Spain. He did, therefore, what in such cases every proud and lazy Spanish gentleman endeavoured to do. And surely I need not interrupt myself by any parenthesis to inform the base 15 British reader, who makes it his glory to work hard, that the peculiar point of honour for the Spanish gentleman lay in precisely these two equalities of pride and laziness ; for, if he were not proud, or had anything to do, what could you look for but ruin to the old Spanish aristocracy? some of W whom boasted that no member of their house (unless illegiti- mate, and a mere terrce filius°) had done a day's work since the Flood. ° In the ark they admitted that Noah kept them tightly to work ; because, in fact, there was work to do that must be done by somebody. But, once anchored upon THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 99 Ararat, they insisted upon it most indignantly that no an- cestor of the Spanish noblesse° had ever worked, except through his slaves. And with a view to new leases of idle- ness, through new generations of slaves, it was (as many people think) that Spain went so heartily into the enterprises 5 of Cortez and Pizarro.° A sedentary body of Dons," without needing to uncross their thrice-noble legs, would thus levy eternal tributes of gold and silver upon eternal mines, through eternal successions of nations that had been, and were to be, enslaved. Meantime, until these golden visions should be If realised, aristocratic daughters, who constituted the hereditary torment of the true Castilian° Don, were to be disposed of in the good old way, viz. by quartering them for life upon nun- neries : a plan which entailed no sacrifice whatever upon any of the parties concerned, except, indeed, the little insignifi- ;,! cant sacrifice of happiness and natural birthrights to the daughters. But this little inevitable wreck, when placed in the counter scale to the magnificent purchase of eternal idle- ness for an aristocracy so ancient, was surely entitled to little attention amongst philosophers. Daughters must perish by 20 generations, and ought to be proud of perishing, in order that their papas, being hidalgos, might luxuriate in laziness. Accordingly, on this system, our hidalgo of St. Sebastian wrapped the new little daughter, odious to his paternal eyes, in a pocket-handkerchief, and then, wrapping up his own 25 throat with a great deal more care, off he bolted to the neigh- bouring convent of St. Sebastian, — meaning by that term not merely a convent of that city, but also (amongst several convents) the one dedicated to that saint. ° It is well that in this quarrelsome world we quarrel furiously about tastes°;3l since, agreeing too closely about the objects to be liked, we should agree too closely about the objects to be appropriated; which would breed much more fighting than is bred by dis- 100 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCET agreeing. That little human tadpole, which the old toad o\ a father would not suffer to stay ten minutes in his house, proved as welcome at the nunnery of St. Sebastian as she was odious at home. The lady superior of the convent was 5 aunt, by the mother's side, to the new-born stranger. She therefore kissed and blessed the httle lady. The poor nuns, who were never to have any babies of their o\vn, and were languishing for some amusement, perfectly doated on this prospect of a wee pet. The superior thanked the hidalgo for 10 his very splendid present. The nuns thanked him, each and all ; until the old crocodile^ actually began to whimper senti- mentally at what he now perceived to be excess of munifi- cence in himself. Munificence, indeed, he remarked, was his foible^ next after parental tenderness. 2. — Wait a little, Hidalgo ! 15 What a luxury it is, sometimes, to a cynic that there go two words to a bargain. ° In the convent of St. Sebastian all was gratitude; gratitude (as aforesaid) to the hidalgo from all the convent for his present, until at last the hidalgo began to express gratitude to them for their gratitude to him. Then 20 came a rolling fire of thanks to St. Sebastian : from the superior, for sending a future saint ; from the nuns, for send- ing such a love of a plaything; and, finally, from papa, for sending such substantial board and well-bolted lodgings: ''from which," said the mahcious old fellow, "my pussy will 25 never find her way out to a thorny and dangerous world." Won't she? I suspect, son of somebody, that the next time you see "pussy," which may happen to be also the last, will not be in a convent of any kind. At present, whilst this general rendering of thanks was going on, one person only 30 took no part in them. That person was "pussy," whose THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 101 little figure lay quietly stretched out in the arms of a smiHng young nun, with eyes nearly shut, yet peering a little at the candles. Pussy said nothing. It's of no great use to say much when all the world is against you. But, if St. Sebas- tian had enabled her to speak out the whole truth, pussy 5 would have said : " So, Mr. Hidalgo, you have been engaging lodgings for me, lodgings for life. Wait a little. We'll try that question when my claws are grown a little longer." 3. — Symptoms of Mutiny. Disappointment, therefore, was gathering ahead. But for the present there was nothing of the kind. That noble old 10 crocodile, papa, was not in the least disappointed as regarded Ms expectation of having no anxiety to waste, and no money to pay, on account of his youngest daughter. He insisted on his right to forget her ; and in a week had forgotten her, never to think of her again, but once. The lady superior, as 15 regarded her demands, was equally content, and through a course of several years; for, as often as she asked pussy if she would be a saint, pussy replied that she would if saints were allowed plenty of sweetmeats. But least of all were the nuns disappointed. Everything that they had fancied 20 possible in a human plaything fell short of what pussy realised in racketing, racing, and eternal plots against the peace of the elder nuns. No fox ever kept a hen-roost in such alarm as pussy kept the dormitory of the senior sisters ; whilst the younger ladies were run off their legs by the eternal wiles, 25 and had their gravity discomposed, even in chapel, by the eternal antics, of this privileged little kitten. The kitten had long ago received a baptismal name, — which was Kitty, or Kate; and that in Spanish is Catalina. It was a good name, as it recalled her original name of 30 3 02 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QCINCEY "pussy." And, by the way, she had also an ancient and honourable surname — viz. De Erauso; which is to this day° a name rooted in Biscay. ° Her father, the hidalgo, was a military officer in the Spanish service, and had little 5 care whether his kitten should turn out a wolf or a lamb, having made over the fee-simple ° of his own interest in the little Kate to St. Sebastian, "to have and to liold,"° so long as Kate should keep her hold of this present life. Kate had no apparent intention to let slip that hold ; for she was bloom- 10 ing as a rose-bush in June,° tall and strong as a young cedar. Yet, notwithstanding this robust health, which forbade one to think of separation from St. Sebastian by death, and not- withstanding the strength of the convent walls, which forbade one to think of any other separation, the time was drawing 15 near when St. Sebastian's lease in Kate must, in legal phrase, '' determine, "° and any chateaux en Espag?ie° that the saint might have built on the cloistral fidelity of his pet Catalina must suddenh' give way in one hour, like many other vanities in our own days of Spanish growth, such as Spanish consti- 2C)tutions and charters, Spanish financial reforms, Spanish bonds, and other little varieties of Spanish ostentatious mendacity. ° 4. — The Symptoms Thicken. .After reaching her tenth year, Catalina became thoughtful and not very docile. At times she was even headstrong and 25 turbulent, so that the gentle sisterhood of St. Sebastian, who had no other pet or plaything in the world, began to weep in secret, fearing that they might have been rearing by mistake some future tigress; for, as to infancy, that, you know, is playful and innocent even in the cubs of a tigress. But there SO the ladies were going too far. Catalina was impetuous and aspiring, violent sometimes, headstrong and haughty towards THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 103 those who presumed upon her youth, absolutely rebellious against all open harshness, but still generous and most for- giving, disdainful of petty arts, and emphatically a noble girl. She was gentle, if people would let her be so. But woe to those who took liberties with her! A female servant of 5 the convent, in some authority, one day, in passing up the aisle to matins, wilfully gave Kate a push; and, in return, Kate, who never left her debts in arrear, gave the servant for a keepsake such a look as that servant carried with her in fearful remembrance to her grave. It seemed as if Kate had IG tropic blood in her veins that continually called her away to the tropics. It was all the fault of that " blue rejoicing sky,"° of those purple Biscayan mountains, ° of that glad tumultuous ocean, ° which she beheld daily from the nunnery gardens. Or, if only half of it was their fault, the other half lay in those 13 golden tales, ° streaming upwards even into the sanctuaries of convents, like morning mists touched by earliest sunlight, of kingdoms overshadowing a new world which had been founded by her kinsmen with the simple aid of a horse and a lance.- The reader is to remember that this is no romance, 20 or at least no fiction, ° that he is reading; and it is proper to remind the reader of real romances in Ariosto or our own Spenser that such martial ladies as the Marfisa or Bradmnant of the first, and Britomart of the other, were really not the impiobabilities that modern society imagines. ° Many a 25 stout man, as you will soon see, found that Kate, with a sabre in hand, and well mounted, was no romance at all, but far too serious a fact. 5. — Good-night, St. Sebastian ! The day is come — the evening is come° — when our poor Kate, that had for fifteen years been so tenderly rocked in 30 104 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCE Y the arms of St. Sebastian and his daughters, and that hence^ forth shall hardly find a breathing space between eternal storms, must see her peaceful cell, must see the holy chapel, for the last time. It was at vespers, ° it was during the chant- 5 ing of the vesper service, that she finally read the secret signal for her departure, which long she had been looking for. It happened that her aunt, the Lady Principal, had forgotten her breviary. As this was in a private scrutoire,° the prudent lady did not choose to send a servant for it, but gave the key 10 to her niece. The niece, on opening the scrutoire, saw, with that rapidity of eye-glance for the one thing needed in great emergencies which ever attended her through life, that now was the moment, now had the clock struck for an opportunity which, if neglected, might never return. There lay the totaP 15 keys, in one massive trousseau ° of that monastic fortress, impregnable even to armies from without. St. Sebastian ! do you see what your pet is going to do ? And do it she will, as sure as your name is St. Sebastian. Kate went back to her aunt with the bre\4ary and the key, but taking good care 20 to leave that a^vful door,° on whose hinge revolved all her future life, unlocked. Delivering the two articles to the superior, she complained of headache — (ah, Kate ! what did you know of headaches?) — upon which her aunt, kissing her forehead, dismissed her to bed. Xow, then, through r.5 three-fourths of an hour Kate will have free elbow-room for unanchoring her boat, for unshipping her oars, and for pulling ahead right out of St. Sebastian's cove into the main ocean of life. Catalina, the reader is to understand, does not belong to JV) the class of persons in whom pre-eminently I profess an inter- est. ° But everywhere one loves energy and indomitable courage. And always what is best in its kind one admires, even where the kind may happen to be not specially attrac- THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN x05 live. Kate's advantages for her role in this life lay in four things : viz. in a well-built person and a particularly strong ^Tist ; 2d, in a heart that nothing could appal ; 3d, in a saga- cious head, never drawn aside from the hoc age° (from the instant question of the hour) by any weakness of imagina-5 tion ; 4th, in a tolerably thick skin, — not literally, for she was fair and blooming and eminently handsome, having such a skin, in fact, as became a young woman of family in north- ernmost Spain ; but her sensibilities were obtuse as regarded some modes of delicacy, some modes of equity, some modes of 10 the world's opinion, and all modes whatever of personal hard- ship. Lay a stress on that word some — for, as to delicacy, she never lost sight of that kind which peculiarly concerns her sex. Long afterwards she told the Pope himself, ° when confessing without disguise to the paternal old man her sad 15 and infinite wanderings (and I feel convinced of her veracity), that in this respect — viz. all which concerned her sexual honour — even then she was as pure as a child. And, as to equity, it was only that she substituted the rude natural equity of camps for the specious and conventional equity 20 of courts and towns. I must add, though at the cost of inter- rupting the story by two or three more sentences, that Cata- lina had also a fifth advantage, which sounds humbly, but is really of use in a world where even to fold and seal a letter adroitly is not the lowest of accomplishments. She was a 25 handy girl. She could turn her hand to anything ; of which I will give you two memorable instances. Was there ever a girl in this world but herself that cheated and snapped her fingers at that awful Inquisition which brooded over the con- vents of Spain° ? that did this without collusion from outside ; 31 trusting to nobody but to herself, and what beside ? to one needle, two skeins of thread, and a bad pair of scissors ! For that rhe scissors were bad, though Kate does not say so in 106 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS BE QUINCE Y her memoirs, I know by an a priori° argument : \az. because aU scissors were bad in the year 1607.° Now, say all decern logicians, from a universal to a particular valet consequentia,^ the right of inference is good. All scissors were bad, ergo^ bsome scissors were bad. The second instance of her handi- ness win surprise you even more : — She once stood upon a scaffold, under sentence of death (but, understand, on the evidence of false witnesses). Jack Ketch° — or, as the present generation calls him, ^'Mr. Calcraft,"° or " C al- io craft, Esq." — -was absolutely tying the knot under her ear, and the shameful man of ropes fumbled so deplorably, that Kate (who by much nautical experience had learned from another sort of "Jack''° how a knot should be tied in this world) lost all patience with the contemptible arlist, told 15 him she was ashamed of him, took the rope out of his hand, and tied the knot irreproachably herself. The crowd saluted her with a festal roll, long and loud, of vivas; and, this word viva being a word of good augury^ — But stop -, let me not anticipate. 20 From this sketch of Catahna's character the reader is pre- pared to understand the decision of her present proceeding. She had no time to lose : the twilight, it is true, favoured her ; but in any season twilight is as short-lived as a farthing rush- light°; and she must get under hiding before pursuit com- 25 menced. Consequently she lost not one of her forty-five minutes in picking and choosing. Xo shilly-shally° in Kate. She saw with the eyeball of an eagle what was indispensable. Some little money perhaps, in the first place, to pay the first toll-bar° of life : so, out of four shillings in aunty's purse, 30 or what amounted to that English sum in various Spanish coins, she took one. You can't say that was exorbitant. Which of us wouldn't subscribe a shilling for poor Kate, to put into the first trouser-pockets that ever she will wear ? THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 107 i remember even yet, as a personal experience, that, when first arrayed, at four years old, in nankeen trousers, though still so far retaining hermaphrodite relations of dress as to wear a petticoat above my trousers, all my female friends (because they pitied me, as one that had suffered from years 5 of ague°) filled my pockets with half-crowns, of which I can render no account at this day. But v/hat were my poor pre- tensions by the side of Kate's? Kate was a fine blooming girl of fifteen, with no touch of ague; and, before the next sun rises, Kate shall draw on her first trousers, made by her IC own hand ; and, that she may do so, of all the valuables in aunty's repository she takes nothing besida, first (for I detest your ridiculous and most pedantic neologism of firstly°) — first, the shilling, for which I have already given a receipt, — secondly, two skeins of suitable thread, — thirdly, one stout in needle, and (as I told you before, if you would please to re- member things) one bad pair of scissors. Now she was ready ; ready to cast off St. Sebastian's towing-rope; ready to cut and run° for port anywhere ; which port (according to a smart American adage) is to be looked for "at the back of beyond. "° 20 The finishing touch of her preparations was to pick out the proper keys: even there she showed the same discretion. She did no gratuitous mischief. She did not take the wine- cellar key, which would have irritated the good father-con- fessor ; she did not take the key of the closet which held the 25 peppermint-water and other cordials, for that would have distressed the elderly nuns. She took those keys only that belonged to her, if ever keys did ; for they were the keys that locked her out from her natural birthright of liberty. Very different views are taken by different parties of this particu- 30 lar act now meditated by Kate. The Court of Rome treats it as the immediate suggestion of Hell, and open to no for- giveness. Another Court, far loftier, ampler, and of larger 108 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS BE QUIXCEY authority — viz. the Court which holds its dreadful tribune in the human heart and conscience — pronounces this act an inalienable privilege of man, and the mere reassertion of a birthright that can neither be bought nor sold.° 6. — elite's First Brv'ouAC and First March. 5 Right or wrong, however, in Romish casuistry-, Kate was resolved to let herself out; and did; and, for fear any man should creep in while vespers lasted, and steal the kitchen grate, she locked her old friends in. Then she sought a shelter. The air was moderately warm. She hurried into 10 a chestnut wood ; and upon withered leaves, which furnished to Kate her very first bivouac in a long succession of such experiences, she slept till earliest dawn. Spanish diet and youth leave the digestion undisordered, and the slumbers Hght. When the lark rose, up rose Catalina, Xo time to 15 lose ; for she was still in the dress of a nun, and therefore, by a law too flagrantly notorious, liable to the peremptory challenge and arrest of any man — the very meanest or poorest — in all Spain. With her armed finger (ay, by the way, I forgot the thimble; but Kate did not°), she set to 20 work upon her amply-embroidered petticoat. She turned it wrong side out ; and, with the magic that only female hands possess, had she soon sketched^ and finished a dashing pair of Wellington trousers. ° All other changes^ were made according to the materials she possessed, and quite sufficiently 23 to disguise the two main perils — her sex, and her monastic dedication. AMiat was she to do next? Speaking of Wellington trousers anywhere in the north of Spain would remind us, but could hardly remind her, of Vittoria,° where she diml}' had heard of some maternal relative. To Vittoria, 30 therefore, she bent her course ; and, Hke the Duke of Wei- THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 109 lington, but arriving more than two centuries earlier, she gained a great victory at that place. She had made a two days' march, with no provisions but wild berries; she depended, for anything better, as light-heartedly as the duke, upon attacking sword in hand, storming her dear 5 friend's intrenchments, and effecting a lodgment in his breakfast-room, should he happen to possess one. This amiable relative" proved to be an elderly man, who had but one foible, — or perhaps it was a virtue, — which had by con- tinual development overshadowed his whole nature : it was K pedantry. On that hint Catalina spoke : she knew by heart, from the services of the convent, a good number of Latin phrases. Latin ! — Oh, but that was charming ; and in one so young! The grave Don owned the soft impeach- inent°; relented at once, and clasped the hopeful young 15 gentleman in the Wellington trousers to his uncular° and rather angular breast. In this house the yarn of life was of a mingled quality. ° The table was good, but that was exactly what Kate cared least about. On the other hand, the amusement was of the worst kind. It consisted chiefly 20 in conjugating Latin verbs, especially such as were obsti- nately irregular. To show him a withered frost-bitten verb, that wanted its preterite, wanted its gerunds, wanted its supines, — wanted, in fact, everything in this world, fruits or blossoms, that make a verb desirable, — was to earn the Don's 25 gratitude for life. All day long he was, as you may say, marching and counter-marching his favourite brigades of verbs — verbs frequentative, verbs inceptive, verbs desidera- tive — horse, foot, and artillery; changing front, advancing from the rear, throwing out skirmishing parties ; until Kate, 3(! not given to faint, must have thought of such a resource, — as once in her life she had thought so seasonably of a vesper headache. This wa&' really worse than St. Sebastian's. It 110 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCEY reminds one of a French gaiety in Thiebault° ; who describes a rustic party, under equal despair, as employing themselves in conjugating the verb s'e?inuyer° — Je m'ennuie^ tu t'ennuies, il s'ennuit; nous nous ennuyons, &c. ; thence to the imperfect f5 — Je m'ennuyois, tu t'e?inuyois, &c. ; thence to the imperative — Qu'il s'ennuye, &c. ; and so on, through the whole dolorous conjugation. Now, you know, when the time comes that nous nous ennuyons ° the best course is to part. Kate saw that; and she walked off from the Don's (of whose amorous 10 passion for defective verbs one would have wished to know the catastrophe), taking from his mantelpiece rather more silver than she had levied on her aunt. But then, observe, the Don also was a relative ; and really he owed her a small cheque on his banker for turning out on his field-days. A 15 man if he is a kinsman, has no unhmited privilege of boring one ; an uncle has a qualified right to bore his nephews, even when they happen to be nieces ; but he has no right to bore either nephew or niece gratis. 7. — K\TE AT Court, where she prescribes Phlebot- omy, AND IS Promoted. From Vittoria, Kate was guided by a carrier to Valla- ^doUd.° Luckily, as it seemed at first, — but, in fact, it made little difference in the end, — here, at Valladolid, were as- sembled the King° and his Court. Consequently, there was plenty of regiments, and plenty of regimental bands- Attracted by one of these, Catalina was quietly hstening to >5 the music, when some street ruffians, in derision of the gay colours and the particular form of her forest-made costume^ (rascals ! what sort of trousers would they have made with no better scissors?), began to pelt her with stones. Ah, my friends of the genus blackguard, you little know who it is THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 111 that you are selecting for experiments ! Tliis is the one creature of fifteen years old in all Spain, be the other male or female, whom nature, and temper, and provocation have qualified for taking the conceit out of you ! This she very soon did, laying open with sharp stones more heads than 5 either one or two, and letting out rather too little than too much of bad Vailadolid blood. But mark the constant villainy of this world ! Certain Alguazils° — very like some other Alguazils that I know of nearer home — having stood by quietly to see the friendless stranger insulted and assaulted, M now felt it their duty to apprehend the poor nun for her most natural retaliation ; and, had there been such a thing as a treadmill^ in Vailadolid, Kate was booked for a place on it without further inquiry. Luckily, injustice does not ahcays prosper. A gallant young cavalier, who had wit- 15 nessed from his windows the whole affair, had seen the jDrov- ocation, and admired Catalina's behaviour, equally patient at first and bold at last, hastened into the street, pursued the officers, forced them to release their prisoner upon stating the circumstances of the case, and instantly offered to Catalina a 20 situation amongst his retinue. He was a man of birth and fortune ; and the place offered, that of an honorary page, not being at all degrading even to a ''daughter of somebody,"® was cheerfully accepted. 8. — Too Good to Last ' Here Catalina spent a happy quarter of a year. She was 2S now splendidly dressed in dark blue velvet, by a tailor that did not work within the gloom of a chestnut forest. She and the young cavalier, Don Francisco de Cardenas, ° were mutually pleased, and had mutual confidence. All went well, until one evening (but, luckily, not before the sun had 30 112 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCE T been set so long as to make all things indistinct) who should march into the antechamber of the cavalier but that sublime of crocodiles, ° papa, whom we lost sight of fifteen years ago, and shall never see again after this night. He had his '» crocodile tears all ready for use, in working order, like a good industrious fire-engine. \\Tiom will he speak to first in this lordly mansion? It was absolutely to Catalina her- self that he advanced; whom, for many reasons, he could not be supposed to recognise — lapse of years, male attire, 10 twilight, were all against him. Still, she might have the family countenance; and Kate fancied (but it must have been a fancy) that he looked with a suspicious scrutiny into her face, as he inquired for the young Don. To avert her own face, to announce him to Don Francisco, to wish papa 15 on the shores of that ancient river, the Xile, furnished but one moment's work to the active Catahna. She lingered, however, as her place entitled her to do, at the door of the audience-chamber. She guessed already, but in a moment she heard from papa's lips, what was the nature of his errand. 20 His daughter Catherine, he informed the Don, had eloped from the convent of St. Sebastian, a place rich in delight, radiant with festal pleasure, overflowing with luxury. Then he laid open the unparalleled ingratitude of such a step. *0h, the unseen treasure that had been spent upon 25 that girl ! Oh, the untold sums of money, the unknown amounts of cash, that had been sunk in that unhappy speculation ! The nights of sleeplessness suffered during her infancy! The fifteen years of solicitude thrown away in schemes for her improvement ! It would have moved 30 the heart of a stone. The hidalgo wept copiously at his own pathos. And to such a height of grandeur had he carried his Spanish sense of the sublime that he disdained to mention — yes ! positively not even in a parenthesis THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 113 would he condescend to notice — that pocket-handkerchief which he had left at St. Sebastian's fifteen years ago, by- way of envelope for ''pussy/' and which, to the best of pussy's knowledge, was the one sole memorandum of papa ever heard of at St. Sebastian's. Pussy, however, saw no 5 use in revising and correcting the text of papa's remem- brances. She showed her usual prudence, and her usual incomparable decision. It did not appear, as yet, that she would be reclaimed (or was at all suspected for the fugitive) by her father, or by Don Cardenas. For it is an 10 instance of that singular fatality which pursued Catalina through life that, to her own astonishment (as she now collected from her father's conference), nobody had traced her to Valladolid, nor had her father's visit any connexion with any suspicious traveller in that direction. The case 15 was quite different. Strangely enough, her street row had thrown her, by the purest of accidents, into the one sole household in all Spain that had an official connexion with St. Sebastian's. That convent had been founded by the young cavalier's family; and, according to the usage of 20 Spain, the young man (as present representative of his house) was the responsible protector and official visitor of the establishment. It was not to the Don as harbourer of his daughter, but to the Don as hereditary patron of the convent, that the hidalgo was appealing. This being so, 25 Kate might have staid safely some time longer. Yet, again, that w^ould but have multiplied the clues for tracing her; and, finally, she would too probably have been discovered ; after which, with all his youthful generosity, the poor Don could not have protected her. Too terrific was the ven-30 geance that awaited an abettor of any fugitive nun; but, above all, if such a crime were perpetrated by an official mandatory^ of the Church. Yet, again, so far it was the 114 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCE T more hazardous course to abscond that it almost revealed her to the young Don as the missing daughter. Still, if it really had that effect, nothing at present obhged him to pursue her, as might have been the case a few weeks later. 5 Kate argued (I daresay) rightly, as she always did. Her prudence whispered eternally that safety there was none for her until she had laid the Atlantic between herself and St. Sebastian's. Life was to be for her a Bay of Biscay; and it was odds but she had first embarked upon this billowy life 10 from the literal Bay of Biscay.° Chance ordered otherwise. Or, as a Frenchman^ says, with eloquent ingenuity, in con- nexion with this very story, "Chance is but the pseudonym of God for those particular cases which he does not choose to subscribe openly with his own sign-manual. '"•'° She crept 15 upstairs to her bedroom. Simple are the travelling prepara- tions of those that, possessing nothing, have no imperials^ to pack. She had Juvenal's qualification for carolling gaily through a forest full of robbers^; for she had nothing to lose but a change of linen, that rode easilj^ enough under her left 20 arm, leaving the right free for answering the questions of impertinent customers. As she crept downstairs, she heard the crocodile still weeping forth liis sorrows to the pensive ear of twilight, and to the sympathetic Don Francisco. Ah ! what a beautiful idea occurs to me at this point ! Once, 25 on the hustings at Liverpool, I saw a mob orator, whose brawling mouth, o^Den to its widest expansion, suddenly some larking sailor, by the most dexterous of shots, plugged up with a paving-stone. Here, now, at Valladolid was another mouth that equally required plugging. What a pity, then, 30 that some gay brother-page of Kate's had not been there t-o turn aside into the room armed with a roasted potato, and, taking a sportsman's aim, to have lodged it in the crocodile's abominable mouth ! Yet, what an anachronism I There THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 115 ijoere no roasted potatoes in Spain at that date (1608) ; which can be apodeictically° proved, because in Spain there were no potatoes at all, and very few in England. ° But anger drives a roan to say anything. 9. — How TO CHOOSE Lodgings. Catalina had seen her last of friends and enemies ins ValladoUd. Short was her time there ; but she had improved it so far as to make a few of both. There was an eye or two in Valladolid that would have glared with malice upon her, had she been seen by all ej^es in that city as she tripped through the streets in the dusk; and eyes there were that 10 would have softened into tears, had they seen the desolate condition of the child, or in vision had seen the struggles that were before her. But what's the use of wasting tears upon our Kate? Wait till to-morrow morning at sunrise, and see if she is particularly in need of pity. What, now, 15 should a young lady do — I propose it as a subject for a prize essay — that finds herself in Valladolid at nightfall, having no letters of introduction, and not aware of any reason, great or small, for preferring this or that street in general, except so far as she knows of some reason for avoiding one street in 20 particular? The great problem I have stated Kate investi- ■ gated as she went along ; and she solved it with the accuracy which she ever applied to practical exigencies. Her con- clusion was — that the best door to knock at, in such a case, was the door where there was no need to knock at all, 26 as being deliberately left open to all comers. For she argued that within such a door there would be nothing to steal, so that, at least, you could not be mistaken in the dark for a thief. Then, as to stealing from her, they might do that if they could. 31 116 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCE Y Upon these principles, which hostile critics will in vain endeavour to undermine, she laid her hand upon what seemed a rude stable-door. Such it proved ; and the stable was not absolutely empty : for there was a cart inside — a four- 5 wheeled cart. True, there was so; but you couldn't take that away in your pocket; and there were also five loads of straw — but then of those a lady could take no more than her reticule would carry; which perhaps was allowed by the courtesy of Spain. So Kate was right as to the difficulty of 10 being challenged for a thief. Closing the door as gently as she had opened it, she dropped her person, handsomely dressed as she Vv^as, upon the nearest heap of straw. Some ten feet further were lying two muleteers, hon^^st and happy enough, as compared with the lords of the bedchamber^ 5 then in Valladolid; but still gross men, carnaliy deaf from eating garlic and onions and other horrible substances. Accordingly, they never heard her, nor were aware, until dawn, that such a blooming person existed. But she was aware of them, and of their conversation. In the intervals of 20 their sleep, they talked much of an expedition to America, on the point of sailing under Don Ferdinand de Cordova. ° It was to sail from some Andalusian° port. That was the thing for her. At daylight she woke, and jumped up, needing little more toilet than the birds that already were singing in 25 the gardens, or than the two muleteers, who, — good, honest fellows, — saluted the handsome boy kindly, thinking no ill at his making free with their straw, though no leave had been asked. With these philo-garHc° men Kate took her departure. 30 The morning was divine ; and, lea\ing Valladolid with the transports that befitted such a golden dawn, — feeling also already, in the very obscurity of her exit, the pledge of her final escape, — she cared no longer for the crocodile, nor for THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 111 St. Sebastian, nor (in the way of fear) for the protector of St. Sebastian, though of him she thought with some tenderness ; so deep is the remembrance of kindness mixed with justice. Andalusia she reached rather slowly; many weeks the journey cost her°; but, after all, what are weeks? She 5 reached Seville^ many months before she was sixteen" j^ears old, and quite in time for the expedition. 19. — An Ugly Dilemma, where Right and Wrong is REDUCED TO A QUESTION OF RiGHT OR LeFT. Ugly indeed is that dilemma where ship-«Teck and the sea are on one side of you, and famine on the other, or, if a chance of escape is offered, apparently it depends upon 10 taking the right road where there is no guide-post. St. Lucar° being the port of rendezvous for the Peruvian expedition, thither she went. All comers were welcome on board the fleet; much more a fine young fellow like Kate. She was at once engaged as a mate° ; and her ship, in par- 15 ticular, after doubling Cape Horn without loss, made the coast of Peru. Paita was the port of her destination. ° Very near to this port they were, when. a storm threw them upon a coral reef. There was little hope of the ship from the first, for she was unmanageable, and was not expected to hold 20 together for twenty-four 'hours. In this condition, with death before their faces, mark what Kate did ; and please to remember it for her benefit, when she does any other little thing that angers you. The crew lowered the long-boat. Vainly the captain protested against this disloyal desertion 25 of a king's ship, which might yet, perhaps, be run on shore, so as to save the stores. All the crew, to a man, deserted the captain. You may say that literally ; for the single exception was not a man. being our bold-hearted Kate. She was the 118 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCE T only sailor that refused to leave her captain, or the King oi Spain's ship. The rest pulled away for the shore, and with fair hopes of reaching it. But one half-hour told another tale. Just about that time came a broad sheet of lightning, 5 which, through the darkness of evening, revealed the boat in the very act of mounting like a horse upon an inner reef, instantly filling, and throwing out the crew, every man of whom disappeared amongst the breakers. The night which succeeded was gloomy for both the representatives of his 10 Catholic ]\Iajesty.° It cannot be denied by the underwriter* at Lloyd's® that the muleteer's stable at Valladolid was worth twenty such ships, thougn the stable was not insured against fire, and the ship wa^ insured against the sea and the wind by some fellow that thought ver}^ little of his engagements. 15 But what's the use of sitting down to cry? That was never any trick of Catalina's. By daybreak she was at work with an axe in her hand. I knew it, before ever I came to this place in her memoirs. I felt, as sure as if I had read it, that when day broke we should find Kate at work. Thimble 20 or axe, trousers or raft, all one to her. The captain, though true to his duty, faithful to his king, and on his king's account even hopeful, seems from the first to have desponded on his own. He gave no help towards the raft. Signs were speaking, however, pretty loudly that 25 he must do something ; for notice to quit was now served pretty hberally. Kate's raft was ready ; and she encouraged the captain to think that it would give both of them some- thing to hold by in swimming, if not even carrj' double. Al this moment, when all was waiting for a start and the ship no herself was waiting only for a final lurch to say Good-bye to the King of Spain, Kate went and did a thing which some erring people will misconstrue. She knew of a box laden with gold coins, reputed to be the King of Spain's, and meant THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 119 for contingencies on the voyage out. This she smashed open with her axe, and took out a sum in ducats and pistoles° equal to one hundred guineas Enghsh; which, having well secured in a pillow-case, she then lashed firmly to the raft. Now, this, you know, though not "flotsam, " because it would 5 not float, was certainly, by maritime law, "jetsa7n."° It would be the idlest of scruples to fancy that the sea or a shark had a better right to it than a philosopher, or a splendid girl ^^ho showed herself capable of writing a very fair 8vo,° to say nothing of her decapitating in battle, as you will find, more 10 than one of the king's enemies, and recovering the king's banner. No sane moralist would hesitate to do the same thing under the same circumstances, even on board an English vessel, and though the First Lord of the Admiralty, and the Secretary, that pokes his nose into everything 15 nautical, ° should be looking on. The raft was now thrown into the sea. Kate jumped after it, and then entreated the captain to follow her. He attempted it; but, w^anting her youthful agility, he struck his head against a spar, and sank like lead, giving notice below that his ship was coming after 20 him as fast as she could make ready. Kate's luck was better: she mounted the raft, and by the rising tide was gradually washed ashore, but so exhausted as to have lost all recollection. She lay for hours, until the warmth of the sun revived her. On sitting up, she saw a desolate shore stretch- 25 ing both ways — nothing to eat, nothing to drink; but fortunately the raft and the money had been thrown near her, none of the lashings having given way: only what is the use of a gold ducat, though worth nine shillings in silver, or even of a hundred, amongst tangle and sea-gulls? The 30 money she distributed amongst her pockets, and soon found strength to rise and march forward. But which teas forward? and which backward? She knew by the con- 120 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS BE QUINCET versation of the sailors that Paita must be in the neighbour* hood ; and Paita, being a port, could not be in the inside of Peru, but, of course, somewhere on its outside — and the outside of a maritime land must be the shore ; so that, if she 5 kept the shore, and went far enough, she could not fail of hitting her foot against Paita at last, in the very darkest of nights, provided only she could first find out which was up and which was down: else she might walk her shoes off, and find herself, after all, a thousand miles in the wrong. Here,; 10 was an awkward case, and all for want of a guide-post. Still, when one thinks of Kate's prosperous horoscope, — that after so long a voyage, she only, out of the total crew, was thrown on the American shore, with one hundred and five pounds in her purse of clear gain on the voyage, — a convictior 15 arises that she could not guess WTongly. She might hav( tossed up, having coins in her pocket, Jieads or tails ! but thi kind of sortilege was then coming to be thought irreligious ir Christendom, as a Jewish and a heathen mode of questioning the dark future. ° She simply guessed, therefore; and ver} 20 soon a thing happened which, though adding nothing t( strengthen her guess as a true one, did much to sweeten it if it should prove a false one. On turning a point of tb shore, she came upon a barrel of biscuit washed ashore fron the ship. Biscuit is one of the best things I know, even 25 not made by Mrs. Bobo°; but it is the soonest spoiled; an one would like to hear counsel on one puzzling point, — wh it is that a touch of w^ater utterly ruins it, taking its life, an leaving behind a caput mortuum° Upon this caput, in d( fault of anything better, Kate breakfasted. And, breakfaj 30 being over, she rang the bell for the waiter to take away, an to — Stop ! what nonsense ! There could be no bel besides which, there could be no waiter. Well, then, witl out asking the waiter's aid, she that was always prudei THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 121 oacked up some of the Catholic king's biscuit, as she had previously packed up far too little of his gold. But in such 3ases a most delicate question occurs, pressing equally on iietetics and algebra. It is this : if you pack up too much, :hen, by this extra burden of salt provisions, you may retard 5 "or days your arrival at fresh provisions ; on the other hand, f you pack up too little, you may famish, and never arrive it all. Catalina hit the juste milieu°; and about twilight on /he third day she found herself entering Paita, without laving had to swim any very broad river in her walk. 10 11. — From the Malice of the Sea to the Malice of Man and Woman. The first thing, in such a case of distress, which a young ady does, even if she happens to be a young gentleman, is :o beautify her dress. Kate always attended to that. The nan she sent for was not properly a tailor, but one who Bmployed tailors, he himself furnishing the materials. His 15 lame was Urquiza, — a fact of very little importance to us n 1854,° if it had stood only at the head and foot of Kate's ittle account. But, unhappily for Kate's debut on this vast A.merican stage, the case was otherwise. Mr. Urquiza had the misfortune (equally common in the Old World and thef^ Xew) of being a knave, and also a showy, specious knave. Kate, who had prospered under sea allowances of biscuit and hardship, was now expanding in proportions. With very little vanity or consciousness on that head, she now displayed a really magnificent person ; and, when dressed anew in the 23 way that became a young officer in the Spanish service, she '.ooked° the representative picture of a Spanish cahallador° It is strange that such an appearance, and such a rank, should have suggested to Urquiza the presumptuous idea of 122 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS BE QUINCE Y wishing that Kate might become his clerk. He did, how- ever, wish it; for Kate wrote a beautiful hand; and a stranger thing is that Kate accepted his proposal. This might arise from the difficulty of moving in those days to 5 any distance in Peru. The ship which threw Kate ashore had been merely bringing stores to the station of Paita ; and no corps of the royal armies was readily to be reached, whilst something must be done at once for a livelihood. Urquiza had two mercantile estabhshments — one at Trujillo,° to 1 J which he repaired in person, on Kate's agreeing to undertake the management of the other in Paita. Like the sensible girl that we have always found her, she demanded specific instructions for her guidance in duties so new. Certainly she was in a fair way for seeing life. Telling her beads at St. 15 Sebastian's, manoeuvring irregular verbs at Vittoria,- acting as gentleman-usher at \'alladolid, serving his Spanish Majesty round Cape Horn, fighting with storms and sharks off the coast of Peru, and now commencing as book-keeper or com- mis° to a draper at Paita — does she not justify the char- •20acter that I myself gave her, just before dismissing her from St. Sebastian's, of being a ''handy" girl? Mr. Urquiza's instructions were short, easy to be understood, but rather comic; and yet (which is odd) they led to tragic results. There were two debtors of the shop {many, it is to be hoped, 25 but two meriting his affectionate notice) with respect to whom he left the most opposite directions. The one was a very handsome lady"^; and the rule as to her was that she was to have credit unlimited, — strictly unhmited. That seemed plain. The other customer, favoured by Mr. Ur- so quiza's valedictory thoughts, was a young man, cousin to the handsome lady, and bearing the name of Reyes. This youth occupied in Mr. Urquiza's estimate the same hyperbolical rank as the handsome lady, but on the opposite side of the THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 123 equation. The rule as to him was that he was to have no credit, — strictly none. In this case, also, Kate saw no diffi- culty; and, when she came to know Mr. Reyes a little, she found the path of pleasure coinciding with the path of duty. Mr. Urquiza could not be more precise in laying down the 5 rule than Kate was in enforcing it. But in the other case a scruple arose. Unlimited might be a word, not of Spanish law, but of Spanish rhetoric; such as, "Live a thousand years, "° which even annuity offices utter without a pang. Kate therefore wTote to Trujillo, expressing her honest fears, IC and desiring to have more definite instructions. These were positive. If the lady chose to send for the entire shop, her account was to be debited instantly with that. She had, however, as yet, not sent for the shop ; but she began to manifest strong signs of sending for the shopman. Upon 15 the blooming young Biscayan had her roving eye settled ; and she was in the course of making up her mind to take Kate for a sweetheart. Poor Kate saw this with a heavy heart. And, at the same time that she had a prospect of a tender friend more than she wanted, she had become certain 20 of an extra enemy that she wanted quite as little. What she had done to offend Mr. Reyes Kate could not guess, except as to the matter of the credit ; but, then, in that she only followed her instructions. Still, Mr. Reyes was of opinion that there were two ways of executing orders. But 25 the main offence was unintentional on Kate's part. Reyes (though as yet she did not know it) had himself been a can- didate for the situation of clerk, and intended probably to keep the equation precisely as it was with respect to the allowance of credit, — only to change places with the hand- Sd some lady — keeping her on the negative side, himself on the affirmative : an arrangement, you know, that in the final result could have made no sort of pecuniary difference to Urquiza 124 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCE Y Thus stood matters when a party of vagrant comediam strolled into Paita. Kate, being a native Spaniard, ranked as one of the Paita aristocrac}^, and was expected to attend. She did so; and there also was the malignant Reyes. He e came and seated himself purposely so as to shut out Kate from all view of the stage. She, who had nothing of the bully in her nature, and was a gentle creature when her wild Bis- cayan° blood had not been kindled by insult, courteously requested him to move a little; upon which Reyes replied 10 that it was not in his power to oblige the clerk as to that, but that he could oblige him by cutting his throat. The tiger that slept in Catalina wakened at once. She seized him, and would have executed vengeance on the spot, but that a party of young men interposed, for the present, to part them. 15 The next day, when Kate (always ready to forget and forgive) was thinking no more of the row, Reyes passed : by spitting at the window, and other gestures insulting to Kate, again he roused her Spanish blood. Out she rushed, sword in hand ; a duel began in the street; and very soon Kate's sword had 20 passed into the heart of Reyes. Xow^ that the mischief was done, the police were, as usual, all alive for the pleasure of avenging it. Kate found herself suddenly in a strong prison, and with small hopes of leaving it, except for execution. 12. — From the Steps leading up to the Scaffold TO the Steps leading down to Assassination. The relatives of the dead man were potent in Paita, and 25 clamorous for justice ; so that the corregidor° in a case where he saw a very poor chance of being corrupted by bribes, felt it his duty to be sublimely incorruptible. The reader knows, however, that amongst the connexions of the deceased bully was that handsome ladv who differed as much from her cousin THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 125 in her sentiments as to Kate as she did in the extent of her credit with Mr, Urquiza. To her Kate wrote a note; and, using one of the Spanish King's gold coins for bribing the jailer, got it safely delivered. That, perhaps, was unneces- sary; for the lady had been already on the alert, and had 5 summoned Urquiza from Trujillo. By some means not very juminously stated, ° and by paying proper fees in proper quarters, Kate was smuggled out of the prison at nightfall, and smuggled into a pretty house in the suburbs. Had she known exactly the footing she stood on as to the law, she ifl would have been decided. As it was, she w^as uneasy, and jealous° of mischief abroad; and, before supper, she under- stood it all. Urquiza briefly informed his clerk that it would be requisite for him (the clerk) to marry the handsome lady. But why ? Because, said Urquiza, after talking for hours 15 with the corrcgidor, who was infamous for obstinacy, he had found it impossible to make him "hear reason" and release the prisoner until this compromise of marriage was suggested. But how could pubhc justice be pacified for the clerk's un- fortunate homicide of Reyes by a female cousin of the de-20 ceased man engaging to love, honour, and obey° the clerk for hfe ? Kate could not see her way through this logic. "Non- sense, my friend," said Urquiza; "you don't comprehend. As it stands, the affair is a murder, and hanging the penalty. But, if 3^ou marry into the murdered man's house, then it 23 becomes a little family murder — all quiet and comfortable amongst ourselves. What has the corregidor to do with that ? or the public either? Now, let me introduce the bride." Supper entered at that moment, and the bride immediately after. The thoughtfulness of Kate was narrowly observed, 30 and even alluded to, but politely ascribed to the natural anxieties of a prisoner and the very imperfect state of his liberation even yet from prison surveillance. Kate had. 126 TEE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCE T indeed, never been in so trj^ng a situation before. The anx^ ieties of the farewell night at St. Sebastian were nothing to this ; because, even if she had failed then, a failure might not have been always irreparable. It was but to watch and wait. ,5 But now, at this supper table, she was not more aUve to the nature of the peril than she was to the fact that, if before the night closed she did not by some means escape from it, she never would escape with life. The deception as to her sex, though resting on no motive that pointed to these people, 10 or at all concerned them, would be resented as if it had. The lady would regard the case as a mockery; and Urquiza would lose his opportunity of delivering himseK from an im- perious mistress. According to the usages of the times and country, Kate knew that ^dthin twelve hours she would be 15 assassinated. People of infuTiier resolution would have Ungered at the supper table, for the sake of putting off the evil moment of final crisis. Xot so Kate. She had revolved the case on all its sides in a few minutes, and had formed her resolution. 20 This done, she was as ready for the trial at one moment as another; and, when the lady suggested that the hardships of a prison must have made repose desirable, Kate assented, and instantly rose. A sort of procession formed, for the pur- pose of doing honour to the interesting guest, and escorting 25 him in pomp to his bedroom. Kate ^'iewed it much in the; same Hght as that procession to which for some days she had been expecting an invitation from the corregidor. Far ahead' ran the servant -woman, as a sort of outrider; then came Urquiza, Uke a pacha of two tails,° who granted two sorts of 30 credit — ^dz. unlimited and none at all — bearing two wax- hghts, one in each hand, and wanting only c^mibals and kettle-drums to express emphatically the pathos of his Cas- tilian strut ; next came the bride, a little in advance of the THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 127 clerk, but still turning obliquely towards him, and smiling graciously into his face; lastly, bringing up the rear, came the prisoner — our poor ensnared Kate — the nun, the page, the mate, the clerk, the homicide, the convict, and, for this night only, by particular desire, the bridegroom-elect. 5 It was Kate's fixed opinion that, if for a moment she en- tered any bedroom having obviously no outlet, her fate would be that of an ox once driven within the shambles. Outside, the bullock might make some defence with his horns ; but, once in, with no space for turning, he is muffled and 10 gagged. She carried her eye, therefore, like a hawk's, steady, though restless, for vigilant examination of every angle she turned. Before she entered any bedroom, she was resolved to reconnoitre it from the doorway, and, in case of necessity, show fight at once before entering, as the best chance in a 15 crisis where all chances were bad. Everything ends; and at last the procession reached the bedroom-door, the outrider having filed off to the rear. One glance sufficed to satisfy Kate that windows there were none, and therefore no outlet for escape. Treachery appeared even in that; and Kate, 20 though unfortunately without arms, was now fixed for re- sistance. Mr. Urquiza entered first, with a strut more than usually grandiose, and inexpressibly subhme — "Sound the trumpets ! Beat the drums ! "° There were, as we know already, no windows; but a slight interruption to Mr. Ur-25 quiza's pompous tread showed that there were steps down- wards into the room. Those, thought Kate, will suit me even better. She had watched the unlocking of the bedroom- door — she had lost nothing — she had marked that the key was left in the lock. At this moment, the beautiful lady, 30 as one acquainted with the details of the house, turning with the air of a gracious monitress, held out her fair hand to guide Kate in careful descent of the steps. This had the air of 128 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCEY taking out Kate to dance ; and Kate, at that same moment^ answering to it by the gesture of a modern waltzer,° thre\< her arm behind the lady's waist, hurled her headlong down the steps right against Mr. Urquiza, draper and haberdasher, 5 and then, with the speed of lightning, throwing the doof home within its architrave, doubly locked the creditor and unlimited debtor into the rat-trap which they had prepared for herself. The affrighted outrider fled with horror ; she knew that the 10 clerk had already committed one homicide ; a second would cost him still less thought ; and thus it happened that egress was left easy. 13. — From Human IMalice back again to the Malice OF Winds and Waves. But, when abroad, and free once more in the bright starry night, which way should Kate turn ? The whole city would 15 prove but one vast rat-trap for her, as bad as Mr. Urquiza's, if she was not off before morning. At a glance she compre- hended that the sea was her only chance. To the port she fled. All was silent. Watchmen there were none ; and she jumped into a boat. To use the oars was dangerous, for she 20 had no means of muffling them. But she contrived to hoist a sail, pushed off with a boat-hook, and was soon stretching across the water for the mouth of the harbour, before a breeze light but favourable. Having cleared the difficulties of exit, she lay dowm, and unintentionally fell asleep. When she 25 awoke, the sun had been up three or four hours ; all was right otherwise; but, had she not served as a sailor, Kate would have trembled upon finding that, during her long sleep of perhaps seven or eight hours, she had lost sight of land ; by what distance she could only guess; and in what direction THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 129 was to some degree doubtful. All this, however, seemed a great advantage to the bold girl, throwing her thoughts back on the enemies she had left behind. The disadvantage was — having no breakfast, not even damaged biscuit; and some anxiety naturally arose as to ulterior prospects a little beyond 5 the horizon of breakfast. But who's afraid? As sailors whistle for a wind,° Catalina really had but to whistle for anything with energy, and it was sure to come. Like Caesar to the pilot of Dyrrhachium, she might have said, for the comfort of her poor timorous boat (though a boat that in fact 10 was destined soon to perish), "Catalinayn vehis, et Jortunas ejus."° Meantime, being very doubtful as to the best course for sailing, and content if her course did but lie off shore, she " carried on,"° as sailors say, under easy sail, — going, in fact, just whither and just how the Pacific breezes suggested in 15 the gentlest of whispers. All right behind, was Kate's opin- ion ; and, what was better, very soon she might say, all right ahead; for, some hour or two before sunset, when dinner was for once becoming, even to Kate, the most interesting of subjects for meditation, suddenly a large ship began Ihd swell 20 upon the brilliant atmosphere. In those latitudes, and in those years, any ship was pretty sure to be Spanish: sixty years later, the odds were in favour of its being an English buccaneer"; which would have given a new direction to Kate's energy. Kate continued to nake signals with a 25 handkerchief whiter than the crocodile's of Ann. Dom. 1592; else it would hardly have been noticed. Perhaps, after all, it would not, but that the ship's course carried her very nearly across Kate's. The stranger lay to for her. It was dark by the time Kate steered herself under the ship's quarter ; 3a and then was seen an instance of this girl's eternal wakeful- ness. Something was painted on the stern of her boat, she could not see what; but she judged that, whatever this might K 130 THE ESisAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCET be, it would express some connexion with the port that she had just quitted. Now, it was her wish to break the chain of traces connecting her with such a scamp as Urquiza; since, else, through his commercial correspondence, he might dis- 5 perse over Peru a portrait of herself by no means flattering. How should she accomphsh this? It was dark; and she stood, as 3"0U may see an Etonian do° at times, rocking her little boat from side to side, until it had taken in water as much as might be agreeable. Too much it proved for the 10 boat's constitution, and the boat perished of dropsy — Kate declining to tap it.° She got a ducking herself; but what cared she? Up the ship's side she went, as gaily as ever, in those years when she was called pussy, she had raced after the nuns of St. Sebastian; jumped upon deck, and told the 15 first lieutenant, when he questioned her about her adven- tures, quite as much truth as any man, under the rank of admiral, had a right to expect. 14. — Bright Gleams of Sunshine. This ship was full of recruits for the Spanish army, and bound to Concepcion.° Even in that destiny was an iteration 20 or repeating memorial, of the significance that ran through Catalina's most casual adventures. She had enlisted amongst the soldiers; and, on reaching port, the very first person who came off from shore was a dashing young military officer, whom at once, by his name° and rank (though 25 she had never consciously seen him), she identified as her own brother. He was splendidly situated in the service, being the Governor-General's" secretary, besides his rank as a cavalry officer; and, his errand on board being to inspect the recruits, naturally, on reading in the roll one of them THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 131 described as a Biscayan," the ardent young man came up ^^dth high-bred courtesy to Catalina, took the young recruit's hand with kindness, feehng that to be a compatriot at so great a distance was to be a sort of relative, and asked with emotion after old boyish remembrances. There was a 5 scriptural pathos in what followed, as if it were some scene of domestic reunion opening itseK from patriarchal ages.° The young officer was the eldest son of the house, and had left Spain when Catalina was only three years old. But, singularly enough, Catalina it was, the little wild cat that 10 he yet remembered seeing at St. Sebastian's, upon whom his earliest inquiries settled. "Did the recruit know his family, the De Erausos?" Oh yes; everj^body knew them. "Did the recruit know little Catalina?" Catalina smiled ""-s she rephed that she did ; and gave such an animated 15 iescription of the little fierj^ wTetch as made the officer's ejQ flash with gratified tenderness, and with certainty that the recruit was no counterfeit Biscayan. Indeed, you know, if Kate couldn't give a good description of "pussy," who could? The issue of the interview was that the officer insisted on 20 Kate's making a home of his quarters. He did other ser\ices for his unknown sister. He placed her as a trooper in his own regiment, and favoured her in many a way that is open to one having authority. ° But the person, after all, that did most to serve our Kate, was Kate. War was then raging 25 with Indians, both from Chili and Peru. Kate had always done her duty in action ; but at length, in the decisive battle of Puren,° there was an opening for doing something more. Havoc had been made of her own squadron; most of the officers were killed, and the standard was carried off. Kate 30 gathered around her a small partj?" — galloped after tlie Indian column that was carrying away the trophy — charged — saw all her owti party killed — but, in spite of wounds on 132 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCE Y her face and shoulder, succeeded in bearing away the rei covered standard. She rode up to the general and his staff; she dismounted; she rendered up her prize; and fainted away, much less from the blinding blood than from the 5 tears of joy which dimmed her eyes as the general, waving iiis sword in admiration over her head, pronounced our Kate on the spot an Aljerez° or standard-bearer, with a commission from the King of Spain and the Indies. ° Bonny Kate ! noble Kate ! I would there were not two centuries 10 laid between us, so that I might have the pleasure of kiss- ing thy fair hand. 15. — The Sunshine is Overcast. Kate had the good sense to see the danger of revealing her sex, or her relationship, even to her own brother. The grasp of the Church never relaxed, never " prescribed, "° unless 15 freely and by choice. The nun, if discovered, would have been taken out of the horse-barracks or the dragoon-saddle. She had the firmness, therefore, for many years, to resist the sisterly impulses that sometimes suggested such a confidence. For years, ° and those years the most important of her life — 20 the years that developed her character — she lived unde- tected as a brilliant cavalry officer, under her brother's patronage. And the bitterest grief in poor Kate's whole life was the tragical (and, were it not fully attested, one might say the ultra-scenical) event that dissolved their long 25 connexion. Let me spend a w^ord of apolog>' on poor Kate's errors. We all commit many; both you and I, reader. No, stop; t-hat's not civil. You, reader, I know, are a saint; I am not, though very near it. I do err at long intervals; and then I think with indulgence of the many circumstances THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 133 chat plead for this poor girl. The Spanish armies of that day inherited, from the days of Cortez and Pizarro, shining re- membrances of martial prowess, and the very worst of ethics. To think little of bloodshed, to quarrel, to fight, to gamble, to plunder, belonged to the very atmosphere of a camp, to 5 its indolence, to its ancient traditions. In your own defence, you were obliged to do such things. Besides all these grounds of evil, the Spanish army had just then an extra demoralisa' tion from a war with savages — faithless and bloody. Do not think too much, reader, of killing a man — do not, I VA beseech you ! That word "kill" is sprinkled over every page 'T^^ Kate's own autobiography. ° It ought not to be read by the light of these days. Yet, how if a man that she killed were ? Hush! It was sad; but is better hurried over in a few words. Years after this period, ° a young officer, 15 one day dining with Kate, entreated her to become his second in a duel. Such things were everyday affairs. However, Kate had reasons for declining the service, and did so. But the officer, as he was sullenly departing, said that, if he were killed (as he thought he should be), his death would lie at 20 Kate's door. I do not take his view of the case, and am not moved by his rhetoric or his logic. Kate luas, and relented. The duel was fixed for eleven at night, under the walls of a monastery. Unhappily, the night proved unusually dark, so that the two principals had to tie white handkerchief s 25 round their elbows, in order to descry each other. In the confusion they wounded each other mortally. Upon that, according to a usage not peculiar to Spaniards, but extending (as doubtless the reader knows) for a century longer to our own countrymen, ° the tw^o seconds were obliged in honour 30 to do something towards avenging their principals. Kate had her usual fatal luck. Her sword passed sheer through the body of her opponent: this unknown opponent, failin,'!: 134 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCET dead, had just breath left to cry out, "Ah, villain ! you hav« killed me!" in a voice of horrific reproach; and the voice was the voice of her brother ! The monks of the monastery under whose silent shadows 5 this murderous duel had taken place, roused by the clashing of swords and the angry shouts of combatants, issued out with torches, to find one only of the four officers sur\d^'ing. Every convent and altar had the right of asylum ° for a short period. According to the custom, the monks carried Kate, 10 insensible with anguish of mind, to the sanctuary of their chapel. There for some days they detained her; but then, ha^dng furnished her with a horse and some provisions, they turned her adrift. Which way should the unhappy fugitive turn? In blindness of heart, she turned towards 15 the sea. It was the sea that had brought her to Peru; it was the sea that would perhaps carry her away.° It was the sea that had first shown her this land and its golden hopes; it was the sea that ought to hide from her its fearful remembrances. The sea it was that had twice 20 spared her life in extremities ; the sea it was that might now, if it chose, take back the bauble that it had sparsd in vain. 16. — Kate's Ascent of the Andes. Three days our poor heroine followed the coast.** Her horse was then almost unable to move ; and on his account 25 she turned inland to a thicket, for grass and shelter. As she drew near to it, a voice challenged, ''Who goes there?" — Kate answered, ''Spain." — "What people?" — "A friend." It was two soldiers, deserters, and almost starving. Kate shared her provisions with these men ; and, on hearing theif THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 135 plan, which was to go over the Cordilleras, ° she agreed to join the party. Their object was the wild one of seeking the river Dorado ° whose waters rolled along golden sands, and whose pebbles were emeralds. Hers was to throw herself upon a Hne the least hable to pursuit, and the readiest for a 3 new chapter of life, in which oblivion might be found for the past. After a few days of incessant climbing and fatigue, they found themselves in the regions of perpetual snow. Summer came even hither ; but came as vainly to this king- dom of frost as to the grave of her brother. No fire but the 10 fire of human blood in youthful veins could ever be kept burn- ing in these aerial solitudes. Fuel was rarely to be found, and kindling a fire by interfriction of dry sticks was a secret almost exclusively Indian. However, our Kate can do every- thing; and she's the girl, if ever girl did such a thing, that 1 15 back at any odds for crossing the Cordilleras. I would bet you something now, reader, if I thought you would deposit your stakes by return of post (as they play at chess through the post-office), that Kate does the trick; that she gets down to the other side ; that the soldiers do not; and that the horse, 20 if preserved at all, is preserved in a way that will leave him very little to boast of. The party had gathered wild berries and esculent roots at the foot of the mountains, and the horse was of ver}'- great use in carrying them. But this larder was soon emptied. 23 There was nothing then to carry; so that the horse's value, as a beast of burden, fell cent per cent.° In fact, very soon he could not carry himself, and it became easy to calculate when he would reach the bottom on the wrong side the Cor- dilleras. He took three steps back for one upwards. A3 saw her comrades die, that persisted when all were dead, that torelC from the heart of all resistance the banner of her native Spain ? Chance and change have '' written strange defeatures in her face."° Much is changed; but some things are not changed, either in herself or in those about her: there is still kindness that overflows with pity ; there is still helpless- 15 ness that asks for this pity without a voice : she is now re- ceived by a senora not less kind than that maternal aunt who, on the night of her birth, first welcomed her to a loving home ; and she, the heroine of Spain, is herself as helpless now as that little lady who, then at ten minutes of age, was kissed 20 and blessed by all the household of St. Sebastian. ° 20. — A Second Lull in Kate's Stormy Life. Let us suppose Kate placed in a warm bed. Let us sup- pose her in a few hours recovering steady consciousness ; in a few days recovering some power of self-support ; in a fort- night able to seek the gay saloon where the sefiora was sitting 25 alone, and able to render thanks, with that deep sincerity which ever characterised our wild-heaited Kate, for the critical services received from that lady and her establish- ment. This lady, a widow, was what the French call a metisse, the 30 154 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS BE QUiyCEY Spaniards a mestizza — that is, the daughter of a genuini Spaniard and an Indian mother. I will call her simply a Creole ° which will indicate her want of pure Spanish blood sufficiently to explain her deference for those who had it. 5 She was a kind, liberal woman ; rich rather more than needed where there were no opera-boxes to rent; a widow about fifty years old in the wicked world's account, some forty-two in her own; and happy, above all, .in the posses- sion of a#most lovely daughter, whom even the wicked world 10 lid not accuse of more than sixteen 3'ears. This daughter, Juana, was — But stop — let her open the door of the saloon in which the senora and the cornet are conversing, and speak for herself. She did so, after an hour had passed ; which length of time, to her that never had any business 15 whatever in her innocent life, seemed sufficient to settle the business of the Old World and the Xew. Had Pietro Diaz (as Catalina now called herself) been really a Peter, and not a sham Peter, what a vision of loveliness would have rushed upon his sensibilities as the door opened. Do not expect me 20 to describe her; for which, however, there are materials extant, ° sleeping in archives where they have slept for two hundred and twenty-eight years. ° It is enough that she is reported to have united the stately tread of Andalusian women with the innocent voluptuousness of Peruvian eyes. 25 As to her complexion and figure, be it known that Juana 's father was a gentleman from Grenada, ° having in his veins the grandest blood of all this earth — blood of Goths and Vandals, tainted (for which Heaven be thanked !) twice over with blood of Arabs° — once through Moors, once through 3oJews°; whilst from her grandmother Juana drew the deep subtle melancholy, and the beautiful contours of limb, which belonged to the Indian race — a race destined (ah, where- fore ?) silently and slowly to fade away from the earth. No THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 155 awkwardness was or could be in this antelope, when gliding with forest grace into the room ; no town-bred shame ; noth- ing but the unaffected pleasure of one who wishes to speak a fervent welcome, but knows not if she ought; the astonish- ment of a Miranda, bred in utter solitude, when first behold- 5 ing a princely Ferdinand^; and just so much reserve as to remind you that, if Catalina thought fit to dissemble her sex, she did not. And consider, reader, if you look back, and are a great arithmetician, that, whilst the senora had only fifty per cent of Spanish blood, Juana had seventy-five ; so that Id her Indian melancholy, after all, was swallowed up for the present by her Visigothic, by her Vandal, by her Arab, by her Spanish, fire. Catalina, seared as she was by the world, has left it evident in her memoirs that she was touched more than she wished to 15 be by this innocent child. ° Juana formed a brief lull for Catalina in her too stormy existence. And, if for her in this life the sweet reality of a sister had been possible, here was the sister she would have chosen. On the other hand, what might Juana think of the cornet ? To have been thrown upon 20 the kind hospitalities rf her n.'^tive home, to have been res- cued by her mother's se /ants from that fearful death which, lying but a few miles off, had filled her nursery with tra- ditionary tragedies — that was sufficient to create an interest in the stronger. Such things it had been that wooed the 25 heavenly jvesdemona.° But his bold martial demeanour, liis yet youthful style of beauty, his frank manners, his ani- mated conversation, that reported a hundred contests with suffering and peril, wakened for the first time her admiration. Men she had never seen before, except menial servants, or a3(J casual priest. But here was a gentleman, young like herself, I splendid cavalier, that rode in the cavalry of Spain; that jarried the banner of the only potentate whom Peruvians^ 156 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCET knew of — the King of the Spains and the Indies ; that ha6 doubled Cape Horn; that had crossed the Andes; that had suffered shipwreck; that had rocked upon fifty storms, and had wrestled for life through fifty battles. 5 The reader already guesses all that followed. The sisterly love which Catalina did really feel for this j^oung mountaineer was inevitably misconstrued. Embarrassed, but not able, from sincere affection, or almost in bare propriety, to refuse such expressions of feeling as corresponded to the artless and 10 involuntary kindnesses of the ingenuous Juana, one day the cornet was surprised by mamma in the act of encircling her daughter's waist with his martial arm, although waltzing was premature by at least two centuries^ in Peru. She taxed him instantly with dishonourably abusing her confidence. 15 The cornet made but a bad defence. He muttered some- thing about ^'fraternal affection," about "esteem," and a great deal of metaphysical words that are destined to remain untranslated in their original Spanish. The good senora, though she could boast only of forty-two years' experience, 20 or say forty-four, was not altogether to be "had" in that fashion : she was as learned as if she V.ad been fifty, and she brought matters to a speedy crisis. ''You are a Spaniard," she said, "a, gentleman, therefore; remeynber that you are a gentleman. This very night, if your intentions are not 25 serious, quit my house. Go to Tucuman° ; you shall com- mand my horses and servants; but stay no longer to m-\f crease the sorrow that already you will have left behind you. My daughter loves you. That is sorrow enough, if you are trifling with us. But, if not, and you also love her, and can 30 be happy in our solitary mode of life, stay with us — stay for ever. Marry Juana with my free consent. I ask not for wealth. Mine is sufficient for you both." The cornet pro- tested that the honour was one never contemplated by him THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 157 — that it was too great — that — . But, of course, reader, you know that " gammon "° flourishes in Peru, amongst the silver mines, as well as in some more boreal lands that produce httle better than copper and tin. "Tin,"° however, has its uses. The delighted sefiora overruled all objections, great 5 and small ; and she confu'med Juana's notion that the busi- ness of two worlds could be transacted in an hour, by settling her daughter's future happiness in exactly twenty minutes. The poor, weak Catalina, not acting now in any spirit of reck- lessness, grieving sircorely for the gulf that was opening 10 before her, and yet shrinking effeminately from the momen- tary shock that would be inflicted by a firm adherence to her duty, clinging to the anodyne of a short delay, allowed her- self to be installed as the lover of Juana. Considerations of convenience, however, postponed the marriage. It was 15 requisite to make various purchases ; and for this it was requisite to visit Tucuman, where also the marriage ceremony could be perfonned with more circumstantial splendour. To Tucuman, therefore, after some weeks' interval, the whole party repaired. And at Tucuman it was that the tragical 20 events arose which, whilst interrupting such a mockery for eve , left the poor Juana still happily deceived, and never believing for a moment that hers was a rejected or a deluded heart. One reporter of Mr. De Ferrer's narrative^ forgets his usual 25 generosity when he says that the senora's gift of her daughter to the Alf^rez was not quite so disinterested as it seemed to be.° Certainly it was not so disinterested as European ignorance might fancy it ; but it was quite as much so as it ought to have been in balancing the interests of a child. Very 30 true it is, that, being a genuine Spaniard, who was still a rare creature in so vast a world as Peru — being a Spartan amongst Helots° — a Spanish Alferez would, in those days, 158 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCEY and in that region, have been a natural noble. His alliance created honour for his wife and for his descendants. Some- thing, therefore, the cornet would add to the family considera- tion. But, instead of selfishness, it argued just regard for 3 her daughter's interest to build upon this, as some sort of equipoise to the wealth which her daughter would bring. Spaniard, however, as she was, our Alferez, on reaching Tucuman, found no Spaniards to mix with, but, instead, twelve Portuguese. ° 21. — K\TE ONCE MORE IN StORMS. iO Catalina remembered the Spanish proverb, ''Pump out of a Spaniard all his good quahties, and the remainder makes a pretty fair Portuguese "° ; but, as there was nobody else to gamble with, she entered freely into their society. Soon she suspected that there was foul play ; for all modes of doct or- is ing dice had been made familiar to her by the experience of camps. She watched; and, by the time she had lost her final coin, she was satisfied that she had been plundered. In her first anger, she would have been glad to switch the whole dozen across the eyes; but, as twelve to one were too great 20 odds, she determined on limiting her vengeance to the imme- diate culprit. Him she followed into the street; and, coming near enough to distinguish his profile reflected on a wall, she continued to keep him in view from a short distance. The lighthearted young cavalier whistled, as he went, an old 25 Portuguese ballad of romance, and in a quarter-of-an-hour came up to a house, the front-door of which he began to open with a pass-key. This operation was the signal for Catalina that the hour of vengeance had struck ; and, stepping up hastily, she tapped the Portuguese on the shoulder, saying, 30"Senor, you are a robber!'' The Portuguese turned coollj' THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 159 round, and, seeing his gaming antagonist, replied, ''Possibly, sir; but I have no particular fancy for being told so," at the same time drawing his sword. Catalina had not designed to take any advantage ; and the touching him on the shoulder, with the interchange of speeches, and the known character of 5 Kate, sufficiently imply it. But it is too probable, in such cases, that the party w^hose intention had been regularly settled from the first will, and must, have an advantage unconsciously over a man so abruptly thrown on his defence. However this might be, they had not fought a minute before 10 Catalina passed her sword through her opponent's body ; and, without a groan or a sigh, the Portuguese cavalier fell dead at his own door. Kate searched the street with her ears, and (as far as the indistinctness of night allowed) with her eyes. All w^as profoundly silent ; and she w^as satisfied that 15 no human figure was in motion. What should be done with the body? A glance at the door of the house settled that: Fernando had himself opened it at the very moment when he received the summons to turn round. She dragged the corpse in, therefore, to the foot of the staircase, put the key 20 by the dead man's side, and then, issuing softly into the street, drew the door close with as little noise as possible. Catalina again paused to listen and to watch, went home to the hospitable senora's house, retired to bed, fell asleep, and early the next morning was awakened by the corregidor and 25 four alguazils. The lawlessness of all that followed strikingly exposes the frightful state of criminal justice at that time w^herever Spanish law prevailed. No evidence appeared to connect Catalina in any way with the death of Fernando Acosta. 3(1 The Portuguese gamblers, besides that perhaps they thought lightly of such an accident, might have reasons of their own for drawing off public attention from their pursuits in Tucu- 160 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCES man. Xot one of these men came forward openly; else the circumstances at the gaming-table, and the departure of Catalina so closely on the heels of her opponent, would have suggested reasonable grounds for detaining her until some 3 farther light should be obtained. As it was, her imprison- m3nt rested upon no colourable ground whatever, unless the ;'\agistrate had received some anonymous information, — which, however, he never alleged. One comfort there was, meantime, in Spanish injustice: it did not loiter. Full iO gallop it went over the ground : one week often sufficed for informations — for trial — for execution ; and the only bad consequence was that a second or a third week sometimes exposed the disagreeable fact that everything had been "pre- mature"; a solemn sacrifice had been made to offended jus- 15 tice in which all was right except as to the victim ; it was the wrong man ; and that gave extra trouble ; for then all was to do over again — another man to be executed, and, possibly, still to be caught. Justice moved at her usual Spanish rate in the present 20 case. Kate was obliged to rise instantly ; not suffered to speak to anybody in the house, though, in going out, a door opened, and she saw the young Juana looking out with her saddest Indian expression. In one day the trial was finished. Catalina said (which was true) that she hardly knew Acosta, 35 and that people of her rank were used to attack their enemies face to face, not by murderous surprises. The magistrates were impressed by Catalina's answers (yet answers to whai, or to whom, in a case where there was no distinct charge, and no avowed accuser?) Things were beginning to look 30 well when all was suddenly upset by two witnesses, whom the reader (who is a sort of accomplice after the fact,° having been privately let into the truths of the case, and having concealed his knowledge) will know at once to be false wit- THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 161 nesses, but whom the old Spanish buzwigs° doatecl on as models of all that could be looked for in the best. Both were ill-looking fellows, as it was their duty to be. And the first deposed as follows: — That through Ms quarter of Tucuman the fact was notorious of Acosta's wife being the 5 object of a criminal pursuit on the part of the Alferez (Cata- lina) ; that, doubtless, the injured husband had surprised the prisoner, — which, of course, had led to the murder, to the staircase, to the key, to everything, in short, that could be wished. No — stop ! what am I saying ? — to every- IG thing that ought to be abominated. Finally — for he had now settled the main question — that he had a friend who would take up the case where he himself, from shortsighted- ness, was obliged to lay it down. This friend — the Pythias of this shortsighted Damon° — started up in a frenzy of virtue 15 at this summons, and, rushing to the front of the alguazils, said, "That, since his friend had proved sufficiently the fact of the Alferez having been lurking in the house, and having murdered a man, all that rested upon hi7n to show was how that murderer got out of that house ; which he could do sat- 20 isfactorily ; f ' there was a balcony running along the win- dows on the second floor, one of which windows he himself, lurking in a corner of the street, saw the xlKerez throw up, and from the said balcony take a flying leap into the said street." Evidence like tiiis was conclusive ; no defence was 26 listened to, nor indeed had the prisoner any to produce. The Alferez could deny neither the staircase nor the balcony ; the street is there to this day, like the bricks in Jack Cade's chim- ney, ° testifying all that may be required ; and, as to our friend who saw the leap, there he was — nobody could deny him. 30 The prisoner might indeed have suggested that she never heard of Acosta's wife; nor had the existence of such a wife been proved, or even ripened into a suspicion. But the bench 162 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCE T were satisfied; chopping logic in defence was henceforward impertinence ; and sentence was pronounced — that, on the eighth day from the day of arrest, the Alferez should be exe- cuted in the pubhc square. 6 It was not amongst the weaknesses of Catalina — who had so often inflicted death, and, by her own journal, thought so lightly of inflicting it° (unless under cowardly advantages) — to shrink from facing death in her own person. Many inci- dents in her career show the coolness and even gaiety with 10 which, in any case where death was apparently inevitable, she would have gone forward to meet it. But in this case she had a temptation for escaping it, which was certainly in her power. She had only to reveal the secret of her sex, and the ridiculous witnesses, beyond whose testimony there was 15 nothing at all against her, must at once be covered with de- rision. Catalina had some liking for fun ; and a main induce- ment to this course was that it would enable her to say to the judges, "Xow, you see what old fools youVe made of your- selves ; every woman and child in Peru will soon be laughing 20 at 3^ou.'' I must acknowledge my own weakness; this last temptation I could ?iot have withstood ; flesh is weak, and fun is strong. But Catalina did. On consideration, she fancied that, although the particular motive for murdering Acosta would be dismissed with laughter, still this might not clear 25 her of the murder ; which, on some other motive, she might be supposed to have committed. But, allowing that she were cleared altogether, what most of all she feared was that the publication of her sex would throw a reflex light upon many past transactions in her life; would instantly find its 30 way to Spain ; and would probably soon bring her within the tender attentions of the Inquisition. ° She kept firm, there- fore, to the resolution of not saving her life by this discovery. id, so far as her fate lay in her own hands, she would to a THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 163 certainty have perished — wliich to me seems a most fan- tastic caprice ; it was to court a certain death and a present death, in order to evade a remote contingency of death. But even at this point how strange a case ! A woman falsely accused (because accused by Ijdng -witnesses) of an act which 5 she really did commit ! And falsel}^ accused of a true offence upon a motive that was impossible ! As the sun was setting upon the seventh day, when the hours were numbered for the prisoner, there filed into her cell four persons in rehgious habits. They came on the lO charitable mission of preparing the poor convict for death. Catalina, however, watching all things narrowly, remarked something earnest and significant in the eye of the leader, as of one who had some secret communication to make. She contrived, therefore, to clasp this man's hands, as if in the 15 energy of internal struggles, and he contrived to slip into hers the very smallest of billets from poor Juana. It contained, for indeed it could contain, only these three words — "Do not confess. — 3." This one caution, so simple and so brief, proved a talisman. It did not refer to any confession of the 20 crime ; that would have been assuming what Juana was neither entitled nor disposed to assume; but it referred, in the technical sense of the Church, to the act of devotional confession. Catalina found a single moment for a glance at it ; understood the whole ; resolutely refused to confess, as a 25 person unsettled in her religious opinions that needed spiritual instructions; and the four monks withdrew to make their report. The principal judge, upon hearing of the prisoner's impenitence, granted another day. At the end of that, no change having occurred either in the prisoner's mind or insa the circumstances, he issued his warrant for the execution. Accordingly, as the sun went down, the sad procession formed within the prison. Into the great square of Tucuman it 164 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCE Y moved, where the scaffold had been built, and the whole citj had assembled for the spectacle. Catalina steadily ascended the ladder of the scaffold ; even then she resolved not to bene- fit by revealing her sex ; even then it was that she expressed 6 her scorn for the lubberly executioner's mode of tying a knot ; did it herself in a '' ship-shape, "° orthodox manner; received in return the enthusiastic plaudits of the crowd, and so far ran the risk of precipitating her fate; for the timid magis- trates, fearing a rescue from the fiery clamours of the impetu- 10 ous mob, angrily ordered the executioner to finish the scene. ° The clatter of a galloping horse, however, at this instant forced them to pause. The crowd opened a road for the agitated horseman, vrho was the bearer of an order from the President^ of La Plata° to suspend the execution until two 15 prisoners could be examined. The whole was the work of the senora and her daughter. The elder lady, ha\dng gathered informations against the witnesses, had pursued them to La Plata. There, b}' her influence with the governor, they were arrested, recognised as old malefactors, and in their terror 20 had partly confessed their perjiu-y. Catalina was removed to La Plata ; solemnly acciuitted ; and, by the ad^dce of the president, for the present the connexion with the senora's family was indefinitely postponed. 22. — Kate's Penultimate Adventure. Now was the last-but-one adventure at hand that ever Bo Catalina should see in the New World. Some fine sights she may yet see in Europe, but nothing after this (which she has recorded^) in America. Europe, if it had ever heard of her name (as very shortly it shall hear), — Kings, Pope, Cardi- nals, if they were but aware of her existence (which in six 30 months they shall be), — would thirst for an introduction to THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 165 our Catalina. You hardly thought now, reader, that she was such a great person, or anybody's pet but yours and mine. Bless you, sir, she would scorn to look at us. I tell you, that Eminences, Excellencies, Highnesses — nay, even Roy- alties and .Holinesses° — are languishing to see her, or soon 5 wilt bf. But how can th^'s come to pass, if she is to continue in ner present obscurity r Certainly it cannot without some g'-e-n peripetteia,'^ or vertiginous whirl of fortune; which, thei-efore, you shall now behold taking place in one turn of her next adventure. That shall let in a light, that shall throw Id back a Claude Lorraine gleam° over all the past, able to make kings, that would have cared not for her under Peruvian day- light, come to glorify her setting beams. The senora — and, observe, whatever kindness she does to Catalina speaks secretly from two hearts, her own and Juana's 13 — haa, by the advice of Mr. President Mendonia,° given sufficient money for Catalina's travelling expenses. So far well. But Mr. M. chose to add a little codicil to this bequest of the senora 's, never suggested by her or by her daughter. "Pray," said this inquisitive president, who surely might 2a have found business enough within his own neighbourhood — "pray, Sefior Pietro Diaz, did you ever live at Concepcion? And were you ever acquainted there with Signor Miguel de Erauso ? That man, sir, was my friend." What a pity that on this occasion Catalina could not venture to be candid ! 25 What a capital speech it would have made to say, ''Friend were you ? I think you could hardly be that, with seven hun- dred miles° between you. But that man was tny friend also ; and, secondly, my brother. True it is I killed him. But, if you happen to know that this was by pure mistake in the 30 dark, what an old rogue you must be to throw that in my teeth which is the affliction of my life !" Again, however, as so often in the same circumstances, Catalina thought that it 166 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS BE QUINCEY would cause more ruin than it could heal to be candid ; and, indeed if she were really P. Diaz, Esq., how came she to be brother to the late Mr. Erauso? On consideration, also, if she could not tell all, merely to have professed a fraternal 5 connexion which never was avowed by either whilst living together would not have brightened the reputation of Cata- hna. Still, from a kindness for poor Kate, I feel uncharitably towards the president for advising Senor Pietro "to travel for his health/' What had he to do vnth people's health? 10 However, Mr. Peter, as he had pocketed the senora's money, thought it right to pocket also the advice that accompanied its payment. That he might be in a condition to do so, he went off to buy a horse. On that errand, in all lands, for some reason only half explained, you must be in luck if you do not 15 fall in, and eventually fall out, with a knave. But on this particular day Kate icas in luck. For, beside money and advice, she obtained at a low rate a horse both beautiful and serviceable for a journey. To Paz° it was, a city of pros- perous name, that the cornet first moved. But Paz did not 20 fulfil the promise of its name. For it laid the grounds of a feud that drove our Kate out of Amenca. Her first adventure was a bagatelle, and fitter for a jest- book than for a serious history; yet it proved no jest either, since it led to the tragedy that followed. Riding into Paz, 25 our gallant standard-bearer and her bonny black horse drew all eyes, comme de raison,° upon their separate charms. This was inevitable amongst the indolent population of a Spanish town; and Kate was used to it. But, having recently had a little too much of the public attention, she felt nervous on 30 remarking two soldiers eyeing the handsome horse and the handsome rider with an attention that seemed too earnest for mere crsthetics. However, Kate was not the kind of person to let anything dwell on her spirits, especially if it took tha THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 161 shape of impudence ; and, whistling gaily, she was riding for- ward, when — who should cross her path but the Alcalde° of Paz ? Ah ! alcalde, you see a person now that has a mission against you and all that you inherit; though a mission known to herself as little as to you. Good were it for you 6 had you never crossed the path of this Biscay an Alferez The alcalde looked so sternly that Kate asked if his worship had any commands. ''Yes. These men,^' said the alcalde, "these two soldiers, say that this horse is stolen.'' To one who had so narrowly and so lately escaped the balcony wit- id ness and his friend, it was really no laughing matter to hear of new affidavits in preparation. Kate was nervous, but never disconcerted. In a moment she had twitched off a saddle-cloth on which she sat; and, throwing it over the horse's head, so as to cover up all between the ears and 13 the mouth, she replied, " That she had bought and paid for the horse at La Plata. But now, your worship, if this horse has really been stolen from these men, they must know well of which eye it is blind; for it can be only in the right eye or the left." One of the soldiers cried out instantly that it was 20 the left eye ; but the other said, '' A^o, no ; you forget, it's the right." Kate maliciously called attention to this little schism. But the men said, "Ah, that was nothing — they were hurried; but now, on recollecting themselves, they were agreed that it was the left eye." — "Did they stand to 25 that?" — "Oh, yes, positive they were — left eye — left." Upon which our Kate, twitching off the horse-cloth, said gaily to the magistrate, " Now, sir, please to observe that this horse has nothing the matter with either eye." And, in fact, it was so. Upon that, his worship ordered his alguazils tosfl apprehend the two witnesses, who posted off to bread and water, with other reversionary advantages"; whilst Kate rode in quest of the best dinner that Paz could furnish. 168 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCE Y 23. — Preparation for Kate's Final Adventure in Peru This alcalde's acquaintance, however, was not destined to drop here. Something had appeared in the young caballero's bearing which made it painful to have addressed him with harshness, or for a moment to have entertained such a charge 5 against such a person. He despatched his cousin, therefore, Don Antonio Calderon, to offer his apologies, and at the same time to request that the stranger, whose rank and quality he regretted not to have known, would do him the honour to come and dine with him. This explanation, and 10 the fact that Don Antonio had already proclaimed his own position as cousin to the magistrate, and nephew to the Bishop of Cuzco, obliged Catalina to say, after thanking the gentle- men for their obliging attentions, '*I myself hold the rank of Alferez in the service of his Catholic Majesty-. I am a 15 native of Biscay, and I am now repairing to Cuzco° on private business." — "To Cuzco!" exclaimed Antonio; "and you from dear lovely Biscay ! How very fortunate ! My cousin is a Basque like you; and, like you, he starts for Cuzco to- morrow morning; so that, if it is agreeable to you, Senor 20 Alferez, we will travel together." It was settled that they should. To travel — amongst "balcony witnesses," and anglers for "blind horses" — not merely with a just man, but with the very abstract idea and riding allegory of justice, was too delightful to the storm-wearied cornet ; and he cheer- io fully accompanied Don Antonio to the house of the magis- trate, called Don Pedro de Chavarria. Distinguished was his reception ; the alcalde personally renewed his regrets for the ridiculous scene of the two scampish oculists, and pre- sented Kate to his wife — a most splendid Andalusian so beauty, to whom he had been married about a year. This lad}'' there is a reason for describing; and the French THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 169 reporter of Catalina's memoirs dwells upon the theme. ° She united, he says, the sweetness of the German lady with the energy of the Arabian — a combination hard to judge of. ''As to her feet,'' he adds, "I say nothing, for she had scarcely any at all. Je ne parte point de ses pieds; elte n'en avaitS presque pas." "Poor lady!" says a compassionate rustic: ' no feet ! What a shocking thing that so fine a woman should have been so sadly mutilated ! " Oh, my dear rustic, you're quite in the wrong box. The Frenchman means this as the very highest compliment. Beautiful, however, sheia must have been, and a Cinderella, I hope; but still not a Cinderellula,° considering that she had the inimitable walk and step of Andalusian w^omen, which cannot be ac- complished without something of a proportionate basis to stand upon. 15 The reason which there is (as I have said) for describing this lady arises out of her relation to the tragic events which followed. She, by her criminal levit}^, was the cause of all. And I must here warn the moralising blunderer of two errors that he is likely to make: 1st, that he is invited to read 20 some extract from a Hcentious amour, as if for its own in- terest; 2dly, or on account of Donna Catalina's memoirs, with a view to relieve their too martial character. I have the pleasure to assure him of his being so utterly in the dark- ness of error that any possible change he can make in his 25 opinions, right or left, must be for the better : he cannot stir but he will mend, — which is a delightful thought for the moral and blundering mind. As to the first point, what little glimpse he obtains of a licentious amour is, as a court of justice will sometimes show him such a glimpse, simply to 30 make intelligible the subsequent facts which depend upon it. Secondly, as to the conceit that Catalina wished to embellish her memoirs, understand that no such practice then existed 170 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCEY — certainly not in Spanish literature. ° Her memoirs are electrifying by their facts; else, in the manner of telling these facts, they are systematically dry.° But let us resume. Don Antonio Calderon was a hand- 5 some, accomplished cavaher. And in the course of dinner Catalina was led to judge, from the behaviour to each other of this gentleman and the lady, the alcalde's beautiful wife, that they had an improper understanding. This also she inferred from the furtive language of their eyes. Her wonder was 10 that the alcalde should be so bhnd ; though upon that point she saw reason in a day or two to change her opinion. Some people see everything by affecting to see nothing. The whole affair, however, was nothing at all to her; and she would have dismissed it altogether from her thoughts, but for the 15 dreadful events on the journey. This went on but slowly, however steadily. Owing to the miserable roads, eight hours a-day of travelling was found quite enough for man and beast ; the product of which eight hours was from ten to twelve leagues, taking the league at 20 2\ miles.° On the last day but one of the journey, the travel- ling part}'-, which was precisely the original dinner party, reached a httle town ten leagues short of Cuzco. The cor- regidor of this place was a friend of the alcalde ; and through his influence the party obtained better accommodations than 25 those which they had usually commanded in a hovel calling itself a venta° or in a sheltered corner of a barn. The alcalde was to sleep at the corregidor's house ; the two young cava- liers, Calderon and our Kate, had sleeping-rooms at the pubhc locanda° ; but for the lady was reserved a little pleasure- ?0 house in an enclosed garden. This was a mere toy of a house ; but, the season being summer, and the house surrounded \vith tropical flowers, the lady preferred it (in spite of its lonehness) to the damp mansion of the official grandee, who, THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 111 in her humble opinion, was quite as fusty as his mansion, and his mansion not much less so than himself. After dining gaily together at the locanda, and possibly taking a "rise "° out of his worship the corregidor, as a repeat- ing echo of Don Quixote° (then growing popular in Spanish 5 America), the young man Don Antonio, who was no young ofScer, and the young officer Catalina, who was no young man, lounged down together to the little pavilion in the flower-garden, with the purpose of paying their respects to the presiding belle. They were graciously received, and hadl( the honour of meeting there his mustiness the alcalde, and his fustiness the corregidor°; whose conversation ought surely to have been edifying, since it w^as anything but bril- liant. How they got on under the weight of tv.^o such muffs° has been a mystery for two centuries. But they did to a 15 certainty, for the party did not break up till eleven. Tea and turn out you could not call it ; for there was the turn-out in rigour, but not the tea. One thing, however, Catalina by mere accident had an opportunity of observing, and observed with pain. The two official gentlemen, on taking leave, had 20 gone down the steps into the garden. Catalina, having for- got her hat, went back into the little vestibule to look for it. There stood the lady and Don Antonio, exchanging a few final words (they ivere final) and a few final signs. Am^ongst the last Kate observed distinctly this, and distinctly she 25 understood it. First of all, by raising her forefinger, the lady drew Calderon's attention to the act which followed as one of significant pantomime; which done, she snuffed out one of the candles. The young man answered it by a look of intelligence; and then all three passed down the steps 31 together. The lady was disposed to take the cool air, and accompanied them to the garden-gate ; but, in passing down the walk, Catalina noticed a second ill-omened sign that all 172 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCEY was not right. Two glaring eyes she distinguished amongs\ the shrubs for a moment, and a rusthng immediately after. "What's that?" said the lady; and Don Antonio answered, carelessly, "A bird flying out of the bushes." But birds do 5 not amuse themselves by staying up to midnight ; and birds do not wear rapiers. Catalina, as usual, had read everything. Not a -^Tinkle or a rustle was lost upon her. And therefore, when she reached the locanda, knowing to an iota all that was coming, 10 she did not retire to bed, but paced before the house. She had not long to wait: in fifteen minutes the door opened softly, and out stepped Calderon. Kate walked forward, and faced him immediately; teUing him laughingly that it was not good for his health to go abroad on this night. The 15 young man showed some impatience; upon which, very seriously, Kate acquainted him with her suspicions, and with the certainty that the alcalde was not so blind as he had seemed. Calderon thanked her for the information; would be upon his guard ; but, to prevent further expostulation, he 20 wheeled round instantly into the darkness. Catalina was too well convinced, however, of the mischief on foot to leave him thus. She followed rapidly, and passed silently into the garden, almost at the same time with Calderon. Both took their stations behind trees, — Calderon watching nothing but 25 the burning candles, Catalina watching circumstances to direct her movements. The candles burned brightly in the little pavilion. Presently one was extinguished. Upon this, Calderon pressed forward to the steps, hastily ascended them, and passed into the vestibule. Catalina followed on his 30 traces. What succeeded was all one scene of continued, dreadful dumb show; different passions of panic, or deadly struggle, or hellish mahce, absolutely suffocated all articulate utterances. THE SPANISH MILITARY NUIf 173 In the first moments a gurgling sound was heard, as of a wild beast attempting vainly to yell over some creature that it was stranghng. Next came a tumbling out at the door of one black mass, which heaved and parted at intervals into two figures, which closed, which parted again, which at lasts fell down the steps together. Then appeared a figure in white. It was the unhappy Andalusian ; and she, seeing the outline of Catalina's person, ran up to her, unable to utter one syllable. Pitydng the agony of her horror, Catalina took her within her own cloak, and carried her out at the 10 garden gate. Calderon had by this time died; and the maniacal alcalde had risen up to pursue his wife. But Kate, foreseeing what he would do, had stepped silently within the shadow of the garden wall. Looking down the road to the town, and seeing nobody moving, the maniac, for some 13 purpose, w^ent back to the house. This moment Kate used to recover the locanda, with the lady still panting in horror. What was to be done ? To think of concealment in this little place was out of the question. The alcalde was a man of local power, and it was certain that he would kill his wife on 20 the spot. Kate's generosity would not allow her to have any collusion with this murderous purpose. At Cuzco, the princi- pal convent was ruled by a near relative of the Andalusian ; and there she would find shelter. Kate therefore saddled her horse rapidly, placed the lady behind, and rode off in the 25 darkness. 24. — A Steeplechase. About five miles out of the town their road was crossed by a torrent, over w^hich they could not hit the bridge. "For- ward!" cried the lady, "Oh, heavens! forward !''; and, Kate repeating the word to the horse, the docile creature 30 174 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCE Y leaped down into the water. They were all sinking at first; but, having its head free, the horse swam clear of all obstacles through midnight darkness, and scrambled out on the oppo- site bank. The two riders were dripping from the shoulders 5 downward. But, seeing a light twinkling from a cottage window, Kate rode up, obtaining a little refreshment, and the benefit of a fire, from a poor labouring man. From this man she also bought a warm mantle for the lady ; who besides her torrent bath, was dressed in a light evening robe, so that but 10 for the horseman's cloak of Kate she would have perished. But there was no time to lose. They had already lust two hours from the consequences of their cold bath. Cuzco was still eighteen miles distant"; and the alcalde's shrewdness would at once divine this to be his wife's mark. They re- 15 mounted : very soon the silent night echoed the hoofs of a pursuing rider ; and now commenced the most frantic race, in which each party rode as if the whole game of life were staked upon the issue. The pace was killing ; and Kate has delivered it as her opinion, in the memoirs which she wrote, go that the alcalde was the better mounted. ° This may be doubted. And certainly Kate had ridden too many years in the Spanish cavalry to have any fear of his worship's horse- manship ; but it was a prodigious disadvantage that her horse had to carry double, while the horse ridden by her opponent 25 was one of those belonging to the murdered Don Antonio, and known to Kate as a powerful animal. At length they had come within three miles of Cuzco. The road after this descended the whole way to the city, and in some places rapidly, so as to require a cool rider. Suddenly a deep trench iO appeared, traversing the whole extent of a broad heath. It was useless to evade it. To have hesitated was to be lost. Kate saw the necessity of clearing it ; but she doubted much whether her poor exhausted horse, after twenty-one miles of THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 175 work so severe, had strength for the effort. However, the race was nearly finished ; a score of dreadful miles had been accomplished; and Kate's maxim, which never yet had failed, both figuratively for life, and literally for the saddle, was — to ride at everything that showed a front of resistance. 5 She did so now. Having come upon the trench rather too suddenly, she wheeled round for the advantage of coming down upon it with more impetus, rode resolutely at it, cleared it, and gained the opposite bank. The hind feet of her horse were sinking back from the rottenness of the ground ; but Ifl the strong supporting bridle-hand of Kate carried him for- ward ; and in ten minutes more they would be in Cuzco. This being seen by the vengeful alcalde, who had built great hopes on the trench, he unslung his carbine, pulled up, and fired after the bonny black horse and its two bonny riders. But 15 this vicious manoeu\Te w^ould have lost his worship any bet that he might have had depending on this admirable steeple- chase. For the bullets, says Kate in her memoirs, ° whistled round the poor clinging lady en croupe^ — luckily none struck her ; but one wounded the horse. And that settled the odds. 20 Kate now planted herself well in her stirrups to enter Cuzco, almost dangerously a winner ; for the horse was so maddened by the wound, and the road so steep, that he went like blazes ; and it really became difficult for Kate to guide him with any precision through narrow episcopal" paths. Henceforwards 25 the wounded horse required unintermitting attention; and yet, in the mere luxury of strife, it was impossible for Kate to avoid turning a little in her saddle to see the alcalde's per- formance on this tight-rope of the trench. His worship's horsemanship being, perhaps, rather rusty, and he not per- 30 fectly acquainted with his horse, it would have been agree- able for him to compromise the case by riding round, or dismounting. But all that was impossible. The job must be 176 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCE Y done. And I am happy to report, for the reader's satisfaor tion, the sequel — so far as Kate could attend the perform- ance. Gathering himself up for mischief, the alcalde took a mighty sweep, as if ploughing out the line of some vast 5 encampment, or tracing the pomceriimi° for some future Rome; then, like thunder and lightning, with arms flying aloft in the air, down he came upon the trembling trench. But the horse refused the leap ; to take the leap was impos- sible; absolutely to refuse it, the horse felt, was immoral; 10 and therefore, as the only compromise that his unlearned brain could suggest, he threw his worship right over his ears, lodging him safely in a sand-heap, that rose with clouds of dust and screams of birds into the morning air. Kate had now no time to send back her compliments in a musical 15 halloo. The alcalde missed breaking his neck on this occa- sion very narrowly; but his neck was of no use to him in twenty minutes more, as the reader will find. Kate rode right onwards ; and, coming in with a lady behind her, horse bloody, and pace such as no hounds could have lived with, 20 she ought to have made a great sensation in Cuzco. But, unhappily, the people of Cuzco, the spectators that should have been, were fast asleep in bed. The steeplechase into Cuzco had been a fine headlong thing, considering the torrent, the trench, the wounded 25 horse, the lovely Andalusian lady, with her agonising fears, mounted behind Kate, together with the meek dove-like dawn; but the finale crowded together the quickest suc- cession of changes that out of a melodrama ever caii have been witnessed. ° Kate reached the convent in safety; car- SOried into the cloisters, and delivered like a parcel, the fair Andalusian. But to rouse the servants and obtain admission to the convent caused a long delay ; and, on returning to the street through the broad gateway of the convent, whom THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 177 should she face but the alcalde ! How he had escaped the trench who can tell? He had no time to write memoirs; his horse was too illiterate. But he had escaped; temper not at all improved by that adventure, and now raised to a hell of malignity by seeing that he had lost his prey. The 5 morning light showed him how to use his sword, and whom he had before him ; and he attacked Kate with fury. Both were exhausted ; and Kate, besides that she had no personal quarrel with the alcalde, having now accomplished her sole object in saving the lady, would have been glad of a truce. 10 She could with difficulty wield her sword; and the alcalde had so far the advantage that he wounded Kate severely. That roused her ancient Biscayan blood ; and she turned on him now with deadly determination. At that moment in rode two servants of the alcalde, who took part with their 15 master. These odds strengthened Kate's resolution, but weakened her chances. Just then, however, rode in, and ranged himself on Kate's side, the servant of the murdered Don Calderon. In an instant Kate had pushed her sword , through the alcalde ; who died upon the spot. In an instant 20 the servant of Calderon had fled. In an instant the alguazils ; had come up. They and the servants of the alcalde pressed furiously on Kate, who was again fighting for her life with persons not even known to her by sight. Against such odds, she was rapidly losing ground ; when, in an instant, on the 25 opposite side of the street, the great gates of the Episcopal Palace rolled open. Thither it was that Calderon 's servant had fled. The bishop and his attendants hurried across. ^'Senor Caballero," said the bishop, ''in the name of the Virgin, I enjoin you to surrender your sword." — ''My lord,'' 3a ' said Kate, "I dare not do it with so many enemies about I me." — "But I," replied the bishop, "become answerable to I the law for your safe keeping." Upon which, with fihal 178 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCE Y reverence, all parties dropped their swords. Kate being severely wounded, the bishop led her into his palace. In another instant came the catastrophe : Kate's discovery could no longer be delayed ; the blood flowed too rapidly ; and the 5 wound was in her bosom. She requested a private inter- view with the bishop : all was known in a moment; surgeons and attendants were summoned hastily; and Kate had fainted. The good bishop pitied her, and had her attended in his palace ; then removed to a convent ; then to a second 10 convent at Lima° ; and, after many months had passed, his report of the whole extraordinary case in all its details to the supreme government at Madrid drew from the king, Philip IV, ° and from the papal legate, ° an order that the nun should be transferred to Spain. 25. — St. Sebastian is finally Checkmated. 15 Yes, at length the warrior lad}^, the blooming cornet — this nun that is so martial, this dragoon that is so lovely — must visit again the home of her childhood, which now for seventeen years she has not seen.° All Spain, Portugal, Italy, rang with her adventures. Spain, from north to 20 south, was frantic with desire to behold her fiery child, whose girlish romance, whose patriotic heroism, electrified the national imagination. The King of Spain must kiss his faithful daughter, that would not suffer his banner to see dishonour. The Pope° must kiss his wandering daughter, 25 that henceforwards will be a lamb travelhng back into the Christian fold. Potentates so great as these, when they speak words of love, do not speak in vain. All was forgiven, — the sacrilege, the bloodshed, the flight, and the scorn of St. Sebastian's (consequently of St. Peter's) keys°; the par* THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 179 dons were made out, were signed, were sealed; and the chanceries of earth were satisfied. Ah ! w^hat a day of sorrow and of joy was that one day, in the first week of November, 1624,° when the returning Kate drew near to the shore of Andalusia ; when, descending 5 into the ship's barge, she was rowed to the piers of Cadiz ° by bargemen in the royal liveries; when she saw every ship, street, house, convent, church, crowded, as if on some mighty day of judgment, with human faces, with men, with women, with children, all bending the lights of their flashing eyeslC upon herself! Forty myriads° of people had gathered in Cadiz alone. All Andalusia had turned out to receive her. Ah ! what joy for her, if she had not looked back to the Andes, to their dreadful summits, and their more dreadful feet. Ah ! what sorrow, if she had not been forced by music, and endless 15 banners, and the triumphant jubilations of her countrymen, to turn away from the Andes, and to fix her thoughts for the mpment upon that glad tumultuous shore w^hich she ap- proached. Upon this shore stood, ready to receive her, in front of 20 all this mighty crowd, the Prime Minister of Spain, that same Conde 01ivarez° who but one year before had been so haughty and so defying to our haughty and defying Duke of Buckingham. But a year ago the Prince of Wales had been in Spain, seeking a Spanish bride, and he also w^as welcomed 2i5 with triumph and great joy°; but not with the hundredth part of that enthusiasm which now met the returning nun. And Olivarez, that had spoken so roughly to the English duke, to her "was sweet as summer." ° Through endless crowds of welcoming compatriots he conducted her to the 3a king. The king folded her m his arms, and could never be satisfied with listening to her. He sent for her continually to his presence ; b? delighted in her conversation, so new, so 180 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCE Y natural, so spirited; he settled a pension upon her (at the time of unprecedented amount °) ; and by his desire, because the year 1625 was a year of jubilee, ° she departed in a few months from Madrid" to Rome. She went through Barce- 5lona,° — there and everywhere welcomed as the lady whom the king delighted to honour. ° She travelled to Rome, and all doors flew open to receive her. She was presented to his Holiness, with letters from his Most Catholic Majesty. But letters there needed none. The Pope admired her as much 10 as all before had done. He caused her to recite all her adventures ; and what he loved most in her account was the sincere and sorrowing spirit in which she described herself as neither better nor worse than she had been. Neither proud was Kate, nor sycophantishly and falsely humble. Urban 15 Vni it was then that filled the chair of St. Peter. He did not neglect to raise his daughter's thoughts from earthly things : he pointed her eyes to the clouds that were floating in mighty volumes above the dome of St. Peter's Cathedral , he told her what the cathedral had told her amongst the 20 gorgeous clouds of the Andes and the solemn vesper lights — how sweet a thing, how divine a thing, it was for Christ's sake to forgive all injuries, and how he trusted that no more she would think of bloodshed, but that, if again she should suffer wTongs, she would resign all vindictive retalia- 25 lion for them into the hands o? God, the final Avenger. I must also find time to mention, although the press and the compositors are in a fury at my delays, ° that the Pope, in his farewell audience to his dear daughter, whom he was to see no more, gave her a general licence to wear henceforth in ah 30 countries — even in partihus Infidelium° — a cavalry officer's dre«!s, boots, spurs, sabre ; in fact, anything that she and the Horse Guards" might agree upon. Consequently, reader, say not one word, nor suffer any tailor to say one word, or THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 181 the ninth part of a word, against those WeUington trousers made in the chestnut forest; for, understanding that the papal indulgence as to this point runs backwards as well as forwards, it sanctions equally those trousers in the forgotten rear and all possible trousers yet to come. 5 From Rome, Kate returned to Spain. She even went to St. Sebastian's — to the city ; but — whether it was that her heart failed her or not — never to the convent. She roamed up and down ; ever}^where she was welcome — everywhere an honoured guest; but every^vhere restless. ° The poor and ic humble never ceased from their admiration of her; and amongst the rich and aristocratic of Spain, with the king at their head, Kate found especial love from two classes of men. The cardinals and bishops all doated upon her, as their daughter that was returning. The military men all doated \i upon her, as their sister that was retiring. 26. — Farewell to the Daughter of St. Sebastian ! Now, at this moment, it has become necessary for me to ;lose ; but I allow to the reader one question before laying lown my pen. Come now, reader, be c^uick; "look sharp,'"' md ask what you have to ask; for in one minute and a-half 2C '. am going to write in capitals the word finis ; after which, "-ou know, I am not at liberty to add a syllable. It would >e shameful to do so; since that word Finis enters into a ecret covenant ^vith the reader that he shall be molested no Qore with words, small or great. Twenty to one, I guess 23 »rhat your question will be. You desire to ask me, What •ecame of Kate ? What was her end ? Ah, reader! but, if I answer that question, you will say have not answered it. If I tell you that secret, you will iy that the secret is still hidden. Yet, because I have 30 182 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS BE QUINCE Y promised, and because you will be angry if I do not, let me do my best. After ten years° of restlessness in Spain, with thoughts always turning back to the dreadful Andes, Kate heard of an 5 expedition on the point of sailing to Spanish America. All soldiers knew her, so that she had information of everything which stirred in camps. Men of the highest military rank were going out with the expedition; but Kate was a sistei ever^-^-here privileged; she was as much cherished and a^ 10 sacred, in the eyes of every brigade or tertia° as their owr regimental colours ; and every member of the staff, from th( highest to the lowest, rejoiced to hear that she would joiiM their mess on board ship. This ship, with others, sailedt whither finally bound, I really forget. ° But, on reachinaE' 15 America, all the expedition touched at Vera Cruz° Thithet- a great crowd of the military went on shore. The leadin, r officers made a separate party for the same purpose. Thei ; intention was to have a gay, happy dinner, after their Ion ,• confinement to a ship, at the chief hotel; and happy i 20 perfection the dinner could not be unless Kate would conser t. to join it. She, that was ever kind to brother soldier agreed to do so. She descended into the boat along wit them, and in twenty minutes the boat touched the shor All the bevy of gay laughing officers, junior and senior, lil 25 so many schoolboys let loose from school, jumped on shor and walked hastily, as their time was limited, up to tl hotel. Arriving there, all turned round in eagerness, sa ing, "Where is our dear Kate?" Ah, yes, my dear Kate, that solemn moment, where, indeed, were you? She ha 30 beyond all doubt, taken her seat in the boat : that w certain, though nobody, in the general confusion, was certf of having seen her actually step ashore. The sea was search for her • — the forests were ransacked. But the sea did i L- THE SPANISH MILITARY NUN 183 give up its dead,° if there indeed she lay; and the forests nnade no answer to the sorrowing hearts which sought her amongst them. Have I never formed a conjecture of my owu upon the mysterious fate which thus suddenly enveloped her, and hid her in darkness for ever ? Yes, I have. But it is 5 1 conjecture too dim and unsteady to be worth repeating. Her brother soldiers, that should naturally have had more naterials for guessing than myself, were all lost in sorrowing Perplexity, and could never arrive even at a plausible con- ecture.° 10 That happened two hundred and twenty-one years ago° ! Vnd here is the brief upshot of all : — This nun sailed from 5pain to Peru, and she found no rest for the sole of her foot. Phis nun sailed back from Peru to Spain, and she found no est for the agitations of her heart. This nun sailed again 15 rom Spain to America, and she found — the rest which all f us find. But where it was could never be made known ;o the father of Spanish camps, that sat in Madrid, nor to date's spiritual father, that sat in Rome. Known it is to he great Father of All, that once whispered to Kate on the 20 .ndes; but else it has been a secret for more than t"wo siituries; and to man it remains a secret for ever and ever! AUTHOR'S POSTSCRIPT IN 1854° There are some narratives which, though pure fictions from first to last, counterfeit so vividly the air of grave realities that, if deliberately offered for such, they would for a time impose upon everybody. In the opposite scale there are 5 other narratives, which, whilst rigorously true, move amongst characters and scenes so remote from our ordinary experi ence, and through a state of society so favourable to an adventurous cast of incidents, that they would everywher pass for romances, if severed from the documents which attes 10 their fidelity to facts. In the former ^lass stand the admi- rable novels of Defoe, ° and, on a lower range within th same category, the inimitable Vicar of JVakefield° ; upo which last novel, without at all designing it, I once became the author of the following instructive experiment : — I ha 15 given a copy of this little novel to a beautiful girl of seven teen, the daughter of a 'statesman" in Westmorland, no' designing any deception (nor so much as anv concealment with respect to the fictitious character of the incidents an(f of the actors in that famous tale. Mere accident it was thaf' 20 had intercepted those explanations as to the extent of fictir in these points which in this case it would have been - natural to make. Indeed, considering the exquisite verif similitude of the work, meeting with such absolute inexperi * ence in the reader, it was almost a duty to have made there ft': 25 This duty, however, something had caused me to forget ^ and, when next I saw the young mountaineer, I forgot tha -t I had forgotten it. Consequently, at first I was perplexe by the unfaltering gravity with which my fair young frien 184 t AUTHOR^ S POSTSCRIPT IN 1854 185 spoke of Dr. Primrose, of Sophia aPxd her s'stsr, of Squire Thornhill, etc., as real and probably hving personages, who could sue and be sued. It appeared that this artless young rustic, who had never heard of novels and romances as a bare possibility amongst all the shameless devices of London 5 swindlers, had read with religious fidelity every word of this tale, so thoroughly life-like, surrendering her perfect faith ind loving sympathy to the different persons in the tale and the natural distresses in which they are involved, without suspecting for a moment that, by so much as a breathing of ifi 3xaggeration or of embellishment, the pure gospel truth of :he narrative could have been sullied. She listened in a dnd of breathless stupor to my frank explanation that not 3art only, but the whole, of this natural tale was a pure nvention. Scorn and indignation flashed from her eyes. 15 ihe regarded herself as one who had been hoaxed and swin- lled ; begged me to take back the book ; and never again, o the end of her life, could endure to look into the book, r to be reminded of that criminal imposture which Dr. )liver Goldsmith had practised upon her youthful credulity. 20 In that case, a book altogether fabulous, and not meaning p offer itself for anything else, had been read as genuine istory. Here, on the other hand, the adventures of the panish Nun, which, in every detail of time and place have ince been sifted and authenticated, ° stood a good chance at 25 ns period of being classed as the most lawless of romances, b is, indeed, undeniable — and this arises as a natural result •om the bold adventurous character of the heroine, and from ,ji le unsettled state of society at that period in Spanish merica — that a reader the most credulous would at times 30 ^j 9 startled with doubts upon what seems so unvarying a inor of danger and lawless violence. But, on the other md, it is also undeniable that a reader the most obstinately 186 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCE Y sceptical would be equally startled in the very opposite di^ rection, on remarking that the incidents are far from being such as a romance-writer would have been likely to invent ; since, if striking, tragic, and even appalling, they are at 5 times repulsive. ° And it seems evident that, once putting himself to the cost of a wholesale fiction, the writer would have used his privilege more freely for his own advantage, whereas the author of these memoirs clearly wTites under the coercion and restraint of a notorious reality, that would 10 not suffer him to ignore or to modify the leading facts,. Then, as to the objection that fevv' people or none have arj experience presenting such uniformity of perilous adventur( a little closer attention shows that the experience in this cas( is not uniform ; and so far otherwise that a period of severa Xo years in Kate^s South American life is confessedly sup pressed, and on no other ground whatever than that this lon| parenthesis is not adventurous, not essentially differing fron the monotonous character of ordinary Spanish life.° Suppose the case, therefore, that Kate's Memoirs had beei 20 thrown upon the world with no vouchers for their authen ticity beyond such internal presumptions as would hav occurred to thoughtful readers when reviewing the entir succession of incidents, I am of opinion that the person bes qualified by legal experience to judge of evidence would finall 25 have pronounced a favourable award; since it is easy t understand that in a world so vast as the Peru, the Mexicc the Chili, of Spaniards during the first quarter of the sever teenth century, and under the slender modification of India manners as yet effected by the Papal Christianisation 30 these countries, and in the neighbourhood of a river-systei so awful, ° of a mountain-system so unheard-of in Europ there would probably, by blind, unconscious sympathy, gro up a tendency to lawless and gigantesque ideals of adventu AUTHOR'S POUTSCRIPT IN 1854 -L8T ous life, under which, united with the duelling code of Europe^ many things would become trivial and commonplace experi- ences that to us home-bred English {^^ qui musas colimus seve- riores"°) seem monstrous and revolting. Left, therefore, to itself, my belief is that the story of the 5 Military Nun would have prevailed finally against the de- murs of the sceptics. However, in the meantime, all such demurs were suddenly and officially silenced for ever. Soon after the publication of Kate's Memoirs, ° in what you may call an early stage of her literary career, though two centuries la iafter her personal career had closed, a regular controversy 'arose° upon the degree of credit due to these extraordinary jconfessions (such they may be called) of the poor conscience- [lliaunted nun. Whether these in Kate's original MS. were entitled "Autobiographic Sketches," or "Selections Grave 15 ind Gay, from the Military Experiences of a Nun," or Dossibly "The Confessions of a Biscayan Fire-Eater," ° is nore than I know. No matter : confessions they were ; and confessions that, when at length published, were absolutely nobbed and hustled by a gang of misbelieving (i.e. miscreant^) 20 critics. And this fact is most remarkable, that the person vho originally headed the incredulous party — viz. Senor De Ter,° a learned Castilian — was the very same who finally [jiuthenticated, by documentary evidence, the extraordinary ' larrative in those parts which had most of all invited 25 cepticism. The progress of the dispute threw the decision ,t length upon the archives of the Spanish Marine. Those or the southern ports of Spain had been transferred, I •elieve, from Cadiz and St. Lucar to Seville : chiefly, per- .aps, through the confusions incident to the two French 30 ivasions of Spain in our own day (1st, that under Na- oleon, 2dly, that under the Due d'Angouleme°). Amongst liecfe archives, — subsequently amongst those of Cuzco in 188 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCE Y South America, — 3dly amongst the records of some royal com-ts in Madrid, — -ithly by collateral proof from the Papai Chancery, ° — 5thly from Barcelona — have been drawn to- gether ample attestations of all the incidents recorded by 5 Kate. The elopement from St. Sebastian's, the doubling of Cape Horn, the shipwreck on the coast of Peru, the rescue of the royal banner from the Indians of Chili, the fatal duel in the dark, the astonishing passage of the Andes, the tragical scenes at Tucuman and Cuzco, the return to Spain in obe- lodience to a ro3''al and a papal summons, the visit to Rome and the interview with the Pope ; finally, the return to South America, and the mysterious disappearance at Vera Cruz, upon which no light was ever thrown, — all these capital heads of the narrative have been established beyond the 15 reach of scepticism® ; and, in consequence, the story was soon after adopted as historicall}^ established, and was reported at length by journals of the highest credit in Spain and Ger- many, ° and by a Parisian journal so cautious and so dis tinguished for its ability as the Revue des Deux Mondesi 20 1 must not leave the impression upon my readers that this complex body of documentary evidences has been searched and appraised by myself. Frankl}', I acknowledge that, on the sole occasion when any opportunity offered itself for such a labour, I shrank from it as too fatiguing, and also as 25 superfluous® ; since, if the proofs had satisfied the compatriots of Catalina, who came to the investigation with hostile feel ings of partisanship, and not dissembling their incredulity, — armed also (and in Mr. De Ferrer's case conspicuously armed' with the appropriate learning for giving effect to this in- 30 credulity, — it could not become a stranger to suppose himsel qualified for disturbing a judgment that had been so deliber ately delivered. Such a tribunal of native Spaniards beinj satisfied, there was no further opening for demur. Th AUTHOR'S POSTSCRIPT IX 185 Jf 189 ratification of poor Kate's Memoirs is now therefore to be understood as absolute and without reserve.^ This being stated — viz. such an attestation from compe- tent authorities to the truth of Kate's narrative, as may save all readers from my fair Westmorland friend's disaster — it 5 remains to give such an answer as without further research can be given to a question pretty sure of arising in all re- flective readers' thoughts — viz. Does there anywhere survive a portrait of Kate° ? I answer — and it would be both morti- fying and perplexing if I could not — Yes. One such portrait 10 ^here is confessedly; and seven years ago this was to be found at Aix-la-Chapelle, in the collection of Herr Sempeller.° The name of the artist I am not able to report ; neither can I say whether Herr Sempeller's collection still remains intact, and remains at Aix-la-Chapelle. ° 15 But, inevitably, to most readers who review the circum- stances of a case so extraordinary it will occur that beyond a doubt many portraits of the adventurous nun must have been executed. To have affronted the WTath of the Inqui- sition, and to have survived such an audacity, would of itself 20 be enough to found a title for the martial nun to a national interest. It is true that Kate had not taken the veil; she had stopped short of the deadliest crime known to the Inqui- sition ; but still her transgressions were such as to require a special indulgence; and this indulgence was granted by a 25 Pope to the intercession of a King — the greatest then reign- ing. ° It was a favour that could not have been asked by any greater man in this world, nor granted by any less. Had no other distinction settled upon Kate, this would have been enough to fix the gaze of her own nation. But her whole 3Q life constituted Kate's supreme distinction. There can be no doubt, therefore, that from the year 1624 {i.e. the last year of our James 1°) she became the object of an admiration in 190 THE ESSAYS OF THOMAS DE QUINCEY her own country that was almost idolatrous. And thii admiration was not of a kind that rested upon any partisan- schism amongst her countrymen. So long as it was kept alive by her bodily presence amongst them, it was an 5 admiration equally aristocratic and popular, shared alike by the rich and the poor, by the lofty and the humble. Great therefore, would be the demand for her portrait. There is a tradition that Velasquez, ° who had in 1623 executed a portrait of Charles 1° (then Prince of "Wales), was amongst to those who in the three or four following years ministered to this demand. It is beheved also that, in travelling from Genoa and Florence" to Rome, she sat to various artists, in order to meet the interest about herself already rising amongst the cardinals and other dignitaries of the Romish 15 Church. It is probable, therefore, that numerous pictures of Kate are yet lurking both in Spain and Italy, but not known as such. For, as the public consideration granted to her had grown out of merits and qualities purely personal, and were kept alive by no local or family memorials rooted in the land, 30 or surviving herself, it was inevitable that, as soon as she herself died, all identification of her portraits would perish and the portraits would thenceforwards be confounded with the similar memorials, past all numbering, which every year accumulates as the T^Tecks from household remembrances 25 of generations that are passing or passed, that are fading or faded, that are dying or buried. It is well, therefore, amongst so many irrecoverable ruins, that in the portrait at Aix-la- Chapelle we still possess one undoubted representation (and therefore in some degree a means for identifjdng other repre- 30 sentations) of a female so memorabl}' adorned by nature; gifted with capacities so unparalleled both of doing and,. suffering ; who lived a life so stormy, and perished by a fate so unsearchably mysterious. NOTES JOAN OF ARC I. Title, Arc. " Modern France, that should know a great deal bet. ter than myself, insists that the name is not D' Arc — i.e. of Arc — but Dare. Now it happens sometimes that, if a person whose posi- tion guarantees his access to the best information will content him- self with gloomy dogmatism, striking the table with his fist, and saying in a terrific voice ' It is so, and there's an end of it,' one bows deferentially, and submits. But, if, unhappily for himself, won by this docility, he relents too amiably into reasons and argu- ments, probably one raises an insurrection against him that may never be crushed ; for in the fields of logic one can skirmish, per- haps, as well as he. Had he confined himself to dogmatism, he would have intrenched his position in darkness, and have hidden his own vulnerable points. But, coming down to base reasons, he lets in light, and one sees where to plant the blows. Now, the worshipful reason of modern France for disturbing the old received spelling is that Jean Hordal, a descendant of La PucelWs brother, spelled the name Dare in 1612. But what of that '? It is notorious that what small matter of spelling Providence had thought fit to disburse amongst man in the seventeenth century was all monopo- lised by printers: now, M. Hordal was not a printer." — De QUIXCEY. 1 : 3. Lorraine. At the time of Joan's birth, Upper Lorraine was an independent duchy lying between France and Germany. In 1766 it was united with France, but now, as a result of the Franco- Prussian War (1870-1871), it belongs in part to the German Empire. 191 192 NOTES i:3. the Hebrew shepherd boy. David, whose inaugural a^ (line 9) was his victory over Goliath. See 1 Samuel xvii. 1 : 20. the sceptre . • . Judah. "Tlie sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come." — Genesis xlix. 10. 2:1. Domr^my. This small village is situated in northeastern France, in the present Department of the Vosges, about one hun- dred and fifty miles southeast of Paris. It is known as Domremy la Pucelle^ in honor of the maid. Here may be seen the house in which Joan was born, and in the neighborhood is the monument erected to her memory by the prefect of the department. 2: 2. Vaucouleurs. A town ten miles north of Domremy. 2:11. those that share thy blood. "A collateral relative of Joanna's was subsequently ennobled by the title Dii Lys.''' — De QuiNCEY. See, however, Historical Note on Joan of Arc, page 1. 2:16. en contumace. This legal phrase, literally meaning "in contumacy," is applied to an accused person tha;. fai'? to appear in court when summoned. 2:17. as even yet may happen. De Quincey's prophecy has been largely fulfilled within recent years. In 1904 a Paris pro- fessor who, in his lecture room, attacked Joan's cl^aracter, was re- moved by the government under pressure of popular indignation. About the same time the Vatican authorities at Rome announced, to the delight of the French, that Joan had passed the second stage of her canonization ; it now remains only that her power to perform miracles be proved before she is declared a saint. In a very true sense Joan has become the French national heroii^e. 2 : 27. pure in senses more obvious. An interesting comparison may be made between Joan's hre and that of the Military Nun. 2 : 32. Rouen. This important French city is situated on the Seine, some ninety miles northwest of Paris. The city square in which Joan was burned is now called La Place de la Pucelle, and contains her statue. NOTES 193 3 : S. until nature and imperishable truth, etc. See pages 31-32. 3 : 11. the lilies of France. The Jleur-de-lys (lily flower) was the royal emblem of France from the time of King Clovis (465-511) till the Revolution of 1789o 3:13. in another century, etc. Eeference is here made to the great French Revolution or 1789-1793. 3 : 19. in the spring of 1847. This essay first appeared in TaWs Magazine for March and August, 1847. In 1854 it was reprinted by De Quincey in the third volume of the Collective Edition. 3: 21. left till called for. In England this expression is in con- stant use as applied to baggage stored for an indefinite period, let- ters sent to the general delivery, and the like. 3 : 24. M. Michelet. Jules Michelet (1798-1874), a brilliant but biassed French historian. He was professor at the College Rollin, assistant to Guizot at the Sorbonne, tutor to the Princess Clemen- tine, and finally professor in the College de France. Having been suspended from lecturing by the Orleanist government in 1847, he turned his attention thenceforth entirely to literature. His master- piece is the Historii of France here under review. 3 : 26. mad . . . hares. This old saying probably springs from the fact that hares are wildest in March. 3 : 27. recovered liberty. As a result of the Revolution of 1830 Charles X, the last of the eld Bourbon family, was forced to abdi- cate, and Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, was chosen king by the will of the people. 3 : 28. their mighty Revolution. See note on line 13. 4 : 1. may introduce you, etc. This literary plan of De Quincey 's, like many others, was never carried out. 4 : 6. his worst book, etc. Du Pretre, de la Femme et de la Famille (1844) , a translation of which was published at London in 1846. 4:8. " History of France." Michelet's Hisioirt de France was published at Paris (1835-1844) in six volumes. The English trans- • o 194 NOTES Jation by Walter K. Kelley (2 vols.), with which De Quincey wa* familiar, appeared in 1844-1846. The account of Joan is to be found in Volume V of the original French, in Volume II of the translation. It should be noted that Michelet continued to add to his History until, in 1867, the number of volumes reached sixteen. 4:13. the falconer's lure. A device resembling a tiri, some- times bated with food, which is used by a falconer to recall hisj?; hawk. 4 : 26. on the model of Lord Percy, etc. The stanza here paro-t^ died, which may be found in '• The Modern Ballad cf Chevy Chace,"j I Percy's Reliques. Book III, reads as follows in the original : — y> " The stout Erie of Northumberland A vow to God did make, His pleasure in the Scottish woods Three summers days to take." 4 : 31, delirium tremens. As here used, this expression is tended to furnish an antithesis to ''simple delirium," line 30. 5:6. as of old the draperies of asbestos were cleansed. Whenfit the fibres of asbestos, a variety of the hornblende family of min- erals, are woven into cloth, they form a fireproof texture which, tc be purified, needs only to be thrown into the fire. Gloves, napery. towels, handkerchiefs, and even dresses have been- m^ade of thij *t cloth. Legend tells us that Charlemagne possessed an asbestoiHit tablecloth, which he would throw into the fire after dinner, to th( 6 great astonishment of his guests. t^; 5 : 14. Pucelle d'Orleans. ]Maid of Orleans. Joan was so caiiec c: because of her relief of Orleans, the first important act in he: b career. See page 21, lines 3-8. 't.: 5:20. only now forthcoming in Paris. "In 1847 began th« 6: publication (from official records) of Joanna's trial. It was intei ir- rupted, I fear, by the convulsions of 1848 ; and whether even ye - finished I do not know." — De Quincey. NOTES 195 The collection to which De Quincey refers is the Proces d( Coik lemnation et de Behahilitation de Jeanne d'Arc^ ditt La Pucelle, ompiled and edited by Jules Quicherat (5 vols., Paris, 1841-1849). 5 : 33. Hannibal. This famous Carthaginian commander (247- 83 B.C.), when nine years old, swore an oath of eternal enmity to iome, which he kept by ravaging Italy for fifteen years. The ypical Roman estimate of Hannibal may be found in the account f the Second Punic War by Livy, who recognizes HannibaP, reatness, though he fails to do him full justice. 6 : 3. Mithridates, etc. Mithridates, King of Pontus {cir. 120- >3 B.C.), was the most formidable enemy of Rome in Asia Minor ;. or eighteen years he resisted her power with boundless energy and atred, until finally defeated by Pompey. The latter buried his ody in the royal sepulchre at Sinope, the capital of Pontus, thus howing him the honor referred to in the text. 6 : 6. Delenda est Anglia Victrix ! ' ' Victorious England must be estroyed." De Quincey here imitates the words of the elder Cato vino concluded each of his speeches before the Roman Senate with. he declaration, Delenda est Carthago, ^'Carthage must be de- troy ed." 6 : 11. Hyder All. An Indian prince (cm 1702-1782) who waged wo wars against the English. In the first of these he was com- letely successful, but he died suddenly, before the termination of (i|he second. 6 : 12. Tippoo. Having succeeded his father as Sultan of Mysore^ Mppoo Sahib (1749-1799) continued the war against the English. jind did not desist from hostilities even after peace had been de- ei lared. He was finally slain in his own capital, Seringapatam^ fter a gallant resistance. 6:12. Napoleon. De Quincey's hatred of Napoleon, however. I very thoroughgoing, and is constantly coming to the surface in is writings. 6 : 14. this disposition amongst ourselves, etc. For the Ecg- 19|5. NOTES lish opinions of these men with which De Quincey was probably familiar, see Burke's The Xabob ofArcofs Debts (1785) ; Hazlitt'a Life ofXapoleon Bonaparte (1828) ; and Scott's Life of XapoJeon Buonaparte (1827). 6 : 19. Suffren. Pierre Andre de Suffren Saint-Tropez (1726- 1788) was a distinguished French naval officer. In 1780 he captured twelve English merchant vessels, and in 1781 defeated Commodore Johnstone near the Cape Yerde Islands. He was con- certing with Hyder Ali for the destruction of British rule in the East when the conclusion of peace put an end to their scheming. 6:20. other French nautical heroes. Count d'Estaing, Count d'Orvilliers, Count de Guichen, Count de Grasse, the ]\Iarquis de Bouille. and the Duke de Crillon were among the contemporaries of Suffren who fought against and won naval victories from the English. 6 : 25. the magnanimous justice of Englishmen. De Quincey doubtless has in mind Southey's Joan of Arc, to which he later makes reference, rather than Shakespeare's Henry VL 6:28. Jean. "M. Michelet asserts that there was a mystical meaning at that era in calling a child Jean ; it implied a secret commendation of a child, if not a dedication, to St. John the evan- gelist, the beloved disciple, the apostle of love and mysterious visions. But, really, as the name was so exceedingly common, few people will detect a mystery in calling a boy by the name of Jack, though it does seem mysterious to call a girl Jack. It may be less so in France, where a beautiful practice has always pre- vailed of giving a boy his mother's name — preceded and strength- ened by a male name, as Charles Anne, Victor Victoire. In cases where a mother's memory has been unusually dear to a son, this vocal memento of her, locked into the circle of his own name, gives to it the tenderness of a testamentary relique, or a funeral ring. I presume, therefore, that La PuceUe must have borne the baptismal name of Jeanne Jean ; the latter with no reference, NOTES 197 perhaps, to so sublime a person as St. John, but simply to soma relative." — De Quincey. See Michelet's Histoid of France^ Vol. V, page 51. 6 ; 29. Champagne. This province, lying to the west of Lor- raine, became one of the French royal possessions in 1314, and was incorporated with the kingdom of France by John the Good in 1350. Recent investigations seem to prove, however, that Domr^my, in Joan's day, was a part neither of Champagne nor of Lorraine, but belonged to the duchy of Bar. See Lowell, Joan of Arc, pages 15-16 and notes. 7 : 5. Champenoise. A native of Champagne. The masculine form of this word is Champenois, as in line 7. 7 : 10. the cis and the trans. The territories on this side (cis) and on the other side (trans') of the boundary line. 7 : 18. Germany. The German frontier was then some fifty miles distant from Domr^my. 7 ; 20. St. Andrew's Cross. So called because of the legend that St. Andrew suffered martyrdom on a cross of this type. 7 : 22. locus. Point. 7 : 26. two mighty realms. " And reminding one of that inscrip- tion, so justly admired by Paul Richter, which a Russian czarina placed on a guide-post near Moscow; This is the road that leads to Constantinople.'''' — De Qdincey. The realms referred to are, of course, France and Germany. 7 : 27. wars or rumours of wars. "And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars." — Matthew xxiv. 6. 7:31. that odious man's. See pages 15-16 for De Quincey's feeling toward Joan's father, and the reasons thereof. 8 : 3. Bar. The district surrounding the town of Bar-le-Duc, thirty-five miles northwest of Domr^my. This territory was gov- erned by counts until 1354, when it was made a duchy ; thence- forth it usually followed the fortunes of Lorraine. See also the note on Ime 29, page 6. 198 KOTES B : 14. Cr6cy . . . Agincourt . . . Nicopolis. The battle of Crdcy was fought in 1346 between the English forces under Ed- ward III and the Black Prince and the French troops commanded by the Count of Alen^on. It resulted in a great English victory, the French loss being thirty thousand. Among those killed were Rudolf of Lorraine and the Count of Bar. The victory of Agin- court was won in 1415 by Henry V of England, over a French force outnumbering him five to one, which was commanded by D' Albret. Among the ten thousand Frenchmen who lay dead on the field after the battle were Frederick of Lorraine, the Duke of Bar, and the latter's two brothers. At Nicopolis (1396) the allied armies of France, Poland, and Hungary, commanded by the Hungarian King Sigisraund, were defeated by the Turkish Sultan Bajazet I. Among the two thousand French nobles who took part in this combat was a third Duke of Lorraine, whose fate is noted by De Quincey. 8 : 19. the children of her own house. See note on line 29, page 6. 8 : 21. the Fleurs de Lys. See note on line 11, page 3. 8 : 27. an old hereditary ensmy of France. De Quincey refers here to the German Empire. 9:11. chambers. De Quincey 's fondness for this word will readily be noted by the reader. 9 : 13. a hundred and thirty years. Most of the historical events mentioned by De Quincey in this paragraph occurred later than the year 1282, one hundred and thirty years before Joan's birth. 9 : 14. in Joanna's childhood. At the time of this combat she was three years old. 9 : 15. Poictiers. Here, in 1356, Edward the Black Prince, with some fourteen thousand English and Gascons, defeated sixty thousand French under King John, and took the king and his son prisoners. 9 : 25. Charles VI. This unfortunate man was born in 1368 and died in 1422. He assumed control of France in 1388, but aftel NOTES 199 four years of wild debauchery became insane. During the rest of his reign, party strife raged with violence ; see Historical Note on Joan of Arc^ page xliv. 9 : 28. the wild story. This story is told by Michelet in Book VII, Chapter III, of his History. 10 : 5. The famines . . . diseases . . . insurrections, etc. De Quincey probably has in mind such famines as those of 1315 and 1353 in France and England ; such pestilences as those that swept over Europe in 1347-1348 and 13G1-1363 ; and such insurrections as the rise of the Jacquerie in France (1358) and Wat Tyler's rebel- lion in England (1381). ID : 9. The termination of the Crusades. The crusades, which had as their professed object the rescue of the Holy Land from the infidels, came to an end about the year 1271. According to the Encyclopcedia Britannica, "the ulterior results of the crusades were the breaking up of the feudal system, the abolition of serf- dom, the supremacy of a common law over the independent juris- diction of chiefs who claimed the right of private wars." lo : 9. the destruction of the Templars. Of the military orders founded in the twelfth century for the defence of the Latin king- dom of Jerusalem, that of the Knights Templars was the most cele- brated. The wealth, political power, and unscrupulousness of the order led to its suppression by the pope early in the four- teenth century. lo : 10. the Papal interdicts. Because of some grave crime, a whole nation might be put imder interdict by the pope. At such times, Hallam tells us (Middle Ages, Chapter VII, Part 1), "the churches were closed, the bells silent, the dead unburied, no rites but those of baptism and extreme unction performed." England was put under interdict by Alexander III in 1170 and by Inno- cent III in 1209 ; France, by Innocent III in 1200. lo ; 11. the tragedies . . . Emperor. " The emperor is Kon- radin, the last of the Hohenstaufen, beheaded by Charles of Anjou 200 NOTES at Naples, 1268. The subsequent cruelties of Charles in Sicilj caused the popular uprising known as the Sicilian Vespers, 1282, in which many thousands of Frenchmen were assassinated." — Hart. 10 : 14. the colossal figure of feudalism, etc. The feudal sys- tem depended for its existence upon the superiority of the mounted knight to the unmounted yeoman ; at Cr^cy, however, the English archers were victorious over the French knights. Thus Green is justified in saying {History of the English People, Book lY, Chap- ter II) that this battle caused "the ruin, at a single blow, of a S3'stem of warfare, and with it of the political and social fabric which had risen out of that system." lo : 18. a double pope. From 1378 to 1418 two rival popes, Urban VI and Clement VII held their courts, the one at Rome, the other at Avignon in France. 10 :23. the Church was rehearsing, etc. "De Quincey means that all the disturbances in the mediaeval church were only a prepa- ration for the final disruption effected by Luther." — Hart. 11 : 12. dauphin's. " Dauphin " is the title of the eldest son of the French king, the heir to the throne ; Joan chose to consider Charles VII as being merely the dauphin until she had seen him crowned and consecrated at Rheims. II : 18. the Roman martyrology. A history or catalogue of the martyrs of the Roman Catholic church. Many different collections of this sort were current during the Middle Ages. II : 19. Misereres. In Roman Catholic usage. Miserere is the name given to Psalm L of the Vulgate (LI of the Authorized Ver- sion), which in Latin begins with the word miserere, have mercy. It is a penitential psalm, and, as set to music, forms one of the most impressive chants in the Romish service. ii:20. Te Deums. Te Deum laudamns, " "We praise thee, O God," are the first words of an ancient Latin hymn frequently sung on occasions of triumph and thanksgiving, and used in the ordinary Catholic service as an anthem of high praise. NOTES 201 11 : 32. the licensed victualler. The tavern keeper. 12 : 10. "Abbeys . . . Hindoos." De Quincey seems here to be quoting, very inexactly, the lines from Wordsworth's Peter Belly Part II, that run : — ** Temples like those among the Hindoos, And mosques, and spires, and abbey windows, And castles all with ivy green." 12 : 11. the German Diets. The Diet of the German States was a deliberative body of great antiquity. In character, it was feudal rather than representative, and consequently declined in impor- tance after the downfall of feudalism. Spiritual as well as tem- poral princes had seats in the Diet ; hence the influence of abbeys. See Michelet, History of France, Book X, Chapter III, pages 47-48. 12 : 22. The mountains of the Vosges, etc. The Vosges separate Lorraine from Alsace, which is now a part of the German Empire, as it was in Joan's day. 12 : 25. have never attracted much notice, etc. It was in the campaign of 1813-1814 that Napoleon, fighting against great odds, strove to protect France from invasion by the Allies ; his failure resulted in the fall of Paris and his own abdication. In the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, these mountains were again the scene of fierce fighting. 12 : 28. Live and let live, etc. This phrase, or its equivalent, forms a popular motto among the Germans, Dutch, and Italians, tis well as the English. 12 : 30. the Carlovingian princes. Members of the Frankish royal dynasty or family, which was supreme in France from 751 to 987. It takes its name from Charles (Karl) Martel, Duke of the Franks and Mayor of the Palace, whose son, Pepin, deposed the last of the Merovingian rulers and made himself king. 12 : 32. Charlemagne was known to have hunted there. Charle- magne's love of the chase is commented upon by all his Vog- 202 NOTES raphers ; Micheiet (Book X, Chapter III) is probably De Quincey'a authority for this statement as to the place of his hunting. 13 : 3. those mysterious fawns, etc. In the romances of the Middle -Ages, fawns and white hinds frequently play the part re- ferred to by De Quincey. A typical story of the solitary hunter this led astray is Marie de France's Lai de Graelent. 13 : 4. that ancient stag. De Quincey' s source for this story of Charlemagne and the stag is unknown ; not even in the very ex- haustive Histoire Poetiquede Charlemagne, by M. Gaston Paris, is such a legend to be found. 13 : 10. a marquis. The title '• marquis " was originally applied, as its derivation from the Old High German marcha, border, would suggest, to the governor of the marches, or frontiers, of a kingdom. 13 : 20. agreed with Sir Roger de Coverley that a good deal might be said on both sides. This has been charged against De Quincey as a misquotation, inasmuch as at the end of Spectator Ko. 122, the Spectator, on being asked by Sir Roger whether a tavern sign is not more like himself than a Saracen, replies " that much might be said on both sides." This remark, to be sure, was made to Sir Roger, but it had already been made earlier in the day hy Sir Roger, who settled a dispute between Will Wimble and Tom Touchy by using the words that his friend afterward retorts upon him. 14 : 2. the political condition of her country. Se3 Historical Kote on Joan of Arc. pages xliv-xlv. 14-3. a woman called Haumette. This is evidently Hauviette, the wifa of Gerard de Sionne. Her testimony at the rehabilitation of Joan is given by Quicherat in Volume II of the Proces, pages 417- 419. Concerning Joan's daily occupation, she said that, ' Joan used to be occupied just as other girls are ; she would spin and attend to the household duties, and sometimes she had seen her keeping her father's flocks.' 14 : 13. calls herself in the Latin report Bergereta. The NOTES 205 '* Latin report" is the testimony of M. de Gaucourt at Joan's rehabilitation ; he says that slie presented herself before the king, unapauperculahergereta. Bergercta is a late Latin form of the Prench word bergerette, a shepherd-girl. 14 : 22. M. Simond, in his "Travels." Louis Simond C1767- 1831) was a Frencli traveller who lived for some time in England, where he man-ied an English wife and acquired a good English style in writing. He was the author of several volumes of trarels in both French and English ; the work here referred to is his Journal of a Tour and Besidence in Great Britain during the Tears 1810-1811, by a French Traveller, M ed., with Appendix, 1815-1816, on France (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1818). 14 : 23. hideous scene. This story, which De Quincey fre- quently quotes witli horror, will hardly surprise those who, in Germany, have seen a woman and a dog harnessed to the same plough. 15 : 4. praediaL This adjective, now usually spelled predial, means "performing duties connected with a farm; attached to farms or land." 15:8. horny-hoofed. This compound is analogous to the more familiar horny-handed. 15 : 15. as many a better man than D'Arc does. A very ambig- uous clause. 15 : 18. with Friday in Juan Fernandez. Robinson Crusoe's " man Friday " is here referred to. It will be remembered tha': De Foe's novel is supposedly based on the experiences of Alexan- der Selkirk, who for four years lived in solitude on the island of Juan Fernandez. 15 : 23. the junior lords of the admiralty. The English Board of Admiralty is a body of commissioners appointed to administer all the affairs of the British Navy. As now constituted, it consists of five members : two civil or political lords, and three naval or sea lords. Under the lords are three naval secretaries. The first 204 NOTES civil lord and the first naval lord are tlie senior members of thij body. 15 : 27. the Revolution. See note on line 13, page 3. 15 : 30. a Chevalier of St. Louis. The order of St. Louis was founded in 1693 by Louis XIV, for military service, and con- firmed by Louis XV in 1719. Discontinued at the time of the Rev- olution, it was reorganized in 18 li after the restoration of the Bourbons, 15 I 31. " Chevalier, as-tu donne," etc. " Chevalier, have you fed the hog ? " 16 : 1. "Ma fille," etc. "My daughter, have you fed the hog?" 16 : 2. "Pucelle d'Orleans," etc. " Maid of Orleans, have you saved the fleurs-de-lys ? " 16 : 3. an old English copy of verses. De Quincey probably came across this stanza in Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes of SamueUohn- S07h, LL.D., in which the Doctor, to lend point to his criticism of some verses by Lope de Vega, is made to remark (pages 51-52) : "... 'Tis a mere play upon words, and you might as well say that If the man who turnips cries, Cry not when his father dies, 'Tis a proof that he had rather Have a turnip than his father." 16 : 14. the Oriflamme of France. The ancient royal standard, "which was borne on a gilded lance. It was a red flag, deeply split at one end into flame-shaped streamers. 16 : 15. as M. Michelet suggests. See Book X, Chapter I, pages 71-72, of his History of France. 16 : 21. a representative manifestation of the Virgin Mary, etc. So strong was the feeling of devotion to Mary at this period that Micheletp in the passage just referred to, feels himself justified Id NOTES 205 saying, "Tlie God of that age was the Virgin much rather than Christ." The worship of the Virgin is technically known as " Mariolatry." i6 : 31. Southey's " Joan of Arc." This was tLe first noteworthy poem from the pen of Robert Southey (1774-1843), who, in 1813, became Poet Laureate of England. It is a blank-verse epic in ten books, and was written during six weeks of the author's nineteenth year. De Quincey criticises the poem more fully in his essay on Charles Lamb. i6:32. Twenty years after, talking with Southey. In 1816 both De Quincey and Southey were living in the English Lake Country. They were not, however, very congenial friends. 17 : 5. at Chinon. This town is beautifully situated on the Vienne, nearly three hundred miles southwest of Domr^my. Here are still to be seen the ruins of the old castle in which Charles VII resided after Paris had been occupied by the English, and in which he first received Joan. 17:8. coup d'essai. First attempt. 17 : 13. Sovereign Lady Victoria. Victoria was Queen of Eng- land from 1837 to 1901. 17:15. She "pricks" for sheriffs. According to the Century Dictionary, the ceremony of pricking for sheriffs is substantially as follows : The Lord Lieutenant prepares a list of three persons, each qualified to serve as sheriff of the county. This list is then sent to the sovereign, who, without looking at it, strikes a bodkin amongst the names ; the person whose name is pricked is declared elected. It will be noted that one, not tioo, out of three is thus chosen. 17 : 18. Lady of the Islands and the Orient. Aft€i- 1876 Victo- ria's official title was "Queen of Great Britain ana Ireland and Empress of India." De Quincey anticipates. 18: 3. "On the throne," etc. In later editions of the poem these lines read : — 206 NOTE^ " Upon the throne Let some one take his seat and personate My presence, while I mingle in the train." — Book III, lines 208-210. i8: 5. '* the jewelled crown shines on a meniaPs head." Cour-' tier^s is substituted for meniaVs iu the later editions. See Book III, lines 225-226. i8 : 5. "un pen fort." A little too much; coming it rather strong. i8 : 10. had no crown for himself. Like Joan, the French masses believed that Charles must be consecrated at Rheims before he could really become king. See note on line 12, page 11. i8 : 12. Rheims. This very ancient city is situated in the pres- ent Department of Marne, about one hundred miles northeast of Paris. In its celebrated cathedral all the French kings, from Philip II (1179) to Charles X (182-4), with three exceptions, were crowned. i8 : 17. beyond Orleans. That is, beyond relieving Orleans. See note on line 14, page 5. i8 : 20. the sacred ampulla. The Ampulla Remensis, the famous vessel containing the sacred oil with which Clovis, King of the Franks, was anointed in 496, and which was used at the corona- tion of everj' succeeding monarch of France down to Louis XVI. i8 : 21. the English boy. Henry VI was only nine months old when, on the death of his father, Henry V (1422), he was pro- claimed King of England and France. At the time of Joan's appearance at Chinon (1429) he was eight years old. See Histori- cal Note on Joan of Arc, page xliv. i8 : 24. the ovens of Rheims. Rheims was famous for its bis- cuits and gingerbread. i8:80. "appalled the doctors." In later editions we read (Book III, line 447), '' The doctors stood astonish'd." 19 ' 2. the speech. This now occupies lines 410-446 of Book III NOTES 207 Althougli revised, it is still open, at least in part, to De Quincey's objections. 19:4. Tindal's "Christianity as old as the Creation." Mat- thew Tindal, an English jurist and deistical writer (1657-1733), published his Christianity as old as the Creation^ or the Gospel a Bepuhlication of the Religion of Xature in 1730. Here, as in Joan's speech. Nature is set above the Church as a reiigicus teacher. ig : 5. a piracy a parte ante. A premature piracy ; the Latin phrase means literally '-from a part gone before." ig : 7. Cottle, Bristol. Joseph Cottle (1774-1853) was a pub- lisher and bookseller at Bristol. He brought out the first poems of Southey and of Coleridge in 1796. ig : 12. both trials. That of condemnation, in 1431, and that of rehabilitation in 1455-1456. ig : 12. The very best witness. Hauviette, or Hauraette, is here meant. She testified that Joanna "often blushed Qiahehi.t verecundiani) because people told her that she was too devoted in her attendance at church." See note on line 8, page 14. ig : 21. that divine passage in "Paradise Regained." Book I, lines 196-205. 20 : 5. France Delivered. Reminiscent of Jerusalem Delivered, the title of a great epic by the Italian poet Tasso (1493-1569). 20 : 10. passion. Here, as elsewhere, De Quincey uses the word passion in its primitive sense to denote the passive state of suffer- ing or endurance that is the antithesis of action. 2o : 16. the law of epic unity. "It [the epic poem] sbouid have for its subject a single action, whole and complete, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. . . . The beginning and the end must be capable of being brought within a single view." — Aris- totle, Poetics, Books XXIII-XXIV, Butcher's translatiov^ 2o : 20. a narrative episode. "The epic . . . can admit many episodes, which serve to fill in the pauses of the action, or diversify 208 NOTES the interest." -—Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry, page 268. 21 : 10. Patay. A small village about fifteen miles northwest of Orleans. 21 : 10. Troyes. A walled city something more than one hun. dred miles northeast of Patay. 21 : 11. a coup-de-main. A sudden attack. 21 : 13. Rheims. Sixty-five miles north of Troyes. 21 : 17. excepting one man. The one man who supported Joan in her forward movement was Ma^on, the president of the coun- cil. See ]\Iichelet, Book X. Chapter III, page 87. 22 : 4. discord amongst the uncles of Henry VI. One uncle, the Duke of Bedford, was Regent of France, while another uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, and a great-uncle, Cardinal Beaufort, were engaged in a bitter struggle for supremacy in England. Each was jealous of the others and there was constant friction between them. 22 : 13. as M. Michelet is so happy to believe. While Michelet takes care to emphasize the English animosity towards the Maid (Book X, Chapter 4, passim), he really agrees with De Quincey as to the "moving principle" of the persecution. See Book X, Chapter IV, pages 111-112. 22 : 22. Let her enemies declare. The rest of this paragraph is based on facts stated by Michelet. 23 : 1. " Nolebat," etc. " She was unwilling to use her sword or to kill any one." 23 : 27. More than one military plan, etc. For instance, the attack upon Paris, which she did not wish to begin on a holyday. See Historical Note on Joan of Arc, page xlix. 23 : 30. Compiegne. A town some fifty-five miles northwest of Rheims and eighty east of Rouen. 23 : 31. whether through treacherous collusion, etc. Hume {History of England, Chapter XX) says the common opinion was that the French officers, jealous of her renown, willingly NOTES 209 exposed her to this fatal accident. Michelet tliinks that she was bargained for and sold. 24 : 3. the Bishop of Beauvais. Pierre Cauchon. He was edu- cated at the University of Paris and early made its rector (1403). After having filled many other important positions, he was ban- ished in 1413 because of his adherence to the Burgundian party, but returned to Paris when his friends were once more in power, and was then made Conservator of the University and Bishop of Beauvais. After the treaty of Troyes he devoted himself to the English and did all in his power to further the interests of Henry VI. He presided at Joan's trial as bishop of the diocese on the confines of which she had been made prisoner. 24 : 5. hoping, by favour of the English leaders, etc. Cardinal Beaufort had already recommended him to the pope for the arch- bishopric of Rouen. Though the pope seemed unfavorably dis- posed, Cauchon still ho^ed to receive the appointment. 24 : 6. Bishop that art, etc. Suggested by Lady Macbeth's com- mentary on the witches' prediction concerning her husband : — "Glamis thou art, and Cawdor ; and shalt be What thou art promised." — Macbeth, Act I, scene v, lines 16-17. 34 : 8. a triple crown. The pope's tiara, considered symbolical of his temporal authority. It is a high cap of gold cloth, encircled by three coronets and surmounted by a mound and cross of gold. 24 : 15. a cat's-paw. This expression, applied to a person who is employed to perform disgraceful ofi&ces for another, had its origin in the fable of the monkey that used the paw of a cat to draw roasted chestnuts from the hot ashes. 24 : 24. even at this day. In the main, De Quincey's descrip- tion of ':1:3 French method of conducting a trial still holds true. 25 : 10. two-edged questions. A typical question of this charac- 210 NOTES ter was, " Joan, do you believe that you are in a state of grace ? See Michelet, Book X, Chapter IV. 25 : 14. Dominican. A member of the order of mendicant friars established by Domingo de Guzman at Toulouse in 1215. 25 : 14. an objection. De Quincey's memory is here at fault. No doubt he has in mind the following passage from Michelet relative, not to her trial, but to her examination before the doctors at Poictiers : "A Dominican met her with a single objection, but it was one of weight : ' Jehanne, thou sayest it is God's will to deliver the people of France ; if such is His will He has no need of men-at-arms.' The observation did not confound her. ' Ah ! mon Bieu,'' said she, 'the men-at-arms will do battle, and God will give the victory'" (Book X, Chapter III, page 66). 25 : 20. rude Mahometan metaphysics. Mohammedanism is characterized by its extreme fatalism, its belief that God accom- plishes his purposes without availing himself of human means. 25 : 22. Another. This question was asked both at Poictiers and at the trial ; the questioner at Poictiers was Friar Seguin, professor of theology in the University of Poictiers ; at Rouen was Jean Beaup^re, a learned doctor of theology from the University of Paris. 25 : 27. a worse devil. Jean Beaup^re, the oificiai examiner, put this question to Joan on her trial. 25 : 32. God, who clothed the flowers of th3 valleys. " Consider ihe lilies of the field, how they grow ; they toil not, neither do they spin ; and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." — Matthzio vii. 28-29. 26 : 3. Others succeeded by troops. Jean de La Fontaine, vice- president of the tribunal, who succeeded Beaup^re as examiner, asked Joan the question about leaving her parents. In Michelet's account of the trial, however, there is no attempt made to show by whom the different questions are put. 26 : 7. for a less cause than martyrdom, etc. " Therefore shall a NOTES 211 aian leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife.'^ — Genesis ii. 24. 26 : 27. She knew she was to die. Michelet, however, believes ihat she expected to bs saved in some way until <:he very "ast moment. 27 : 15. they are rising even now in Paris. See note on line 20, page 5. 27 : 20. a Mozart, or a Phidias, or a Michael Angelo. Mozart (1756-1791) was one of the world's greatest musical composers ; Phidias {dr. 490-432 e.g.) was the most noted sculptor of ancient Greece ; and Michael Angelo (1475-1564) was almost unrivalled as painter, sculptor, and architect in a period when Christian art had reached its highest excellence. 27 : 24. from the four winds, etc. ^ Come from the four winds, breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live." — Ezekiel xxvii. 9. 27:82. a greater thing than even Milton. John Milton's (1608-1674) greatest work, the epic poem Paradise Lost, was published in 1667. 28 : 2. Tellurians. Inhabitants of the earth (Latin, tellus) De Quincey seem3 to have coined this word. 28 : 5. St. Peter's. This is the largest cathedral in Christendom. 28 : 6. Luxor. Luxor was one of the four quarters of the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes, the ruins of which are among the most magnificent in the world. 28 : 6. Himalayas. This mountain chain is silia loftiest and most stupendous on the globe. 28 : 21. Marie Antoinette. This ill-starred queen (1755-1793), the youngest daughter of the Emperor of Austria, was the wife of Louis XVI of France. During the French Revolution she was imprisoned, given a mock trial, and guillotined, — nine months after her husband had suffered a like fate. 28 : 24. daughter of Caesars. The Emperor of Germany (see 212 NOTES 28. 21), who ruled over the " Holy Roman Empire,^' was supposea to be the lineal successor of the ancient emperors of Rome. 28:26. Charlotte Corday (1768-1798). Horrified at the mon^ strous cruelty of the Jacobin party during the French Revolution, she resolved to rid her country of one of the leaders of this faction. Her choice fell upon Jean Paul Marat, whom she assassinated, July 13, while he wfw in his bath. Four days later she was guillotined. 29 : 8. the Wednesday after Trinity Sunday. May 30. 29 : 17. the English purpose, etc. Michelet thinks that the Eng- lish not only wished to make the execution more solemn and to render it certain that she could be seen by all, but were anxious also to give the executioner no chance to abridge Joan's suffering by killing her before the flames should reach her body (Book X, Chapter IV, pages 169-170). 29 : 24. he draws into light. In reality, Michelet quotes from Grafton as part of a foot-note on Joan's appearance when received at Chinon (Book X, Chapter III. page 64, note 2). 29 : 26. Grafton. Richard Grafton, who flourished during the sixteenth century, was printer to Edward VI. His Chronicle at large, and meere History of the AfTayres of Englande, in two volumes, appeared in 1569. 29 : 27. a stiffnecked John Bull. " John Bull ■' is the name of a character representing the English nation in Arbuthnot's «atire, Lau is a Bottomless Pit. Exemplified in the case of the Lord Strutt, John Bull, Xicholas Frog, and Lewis Baboon (1712) " A John Bull " now means " a typical Englishman." 29 : 30. Holinshead. Raphael Holinshed (d. cir. 1580) is best known by his Chronicles of Englande, Scotlande, and Irelande, which furnished Shakespeare with material for his English his- torical plays. Concerning Joan he says. " Of favour was she counted likesome : of person, stronglie made, and manlie : 0/ courage, great, hardie, and stout withall." NOTES 213 30 : 6. M. Michelet's candour. " Amongst the many ebullitions of M. Michelet's fury against us poor English are four which will be likely to amuse the reader ; and they are the more conspicuous in collision with the justice which he sometimes does us, and the very indignant admiration which, under some aspects, he grants to us. " 1. Our English Literature he admires with some gnashing of teeth. He pronounces it 'fine and sombre,' but, I lament to add, sceptical, Judaic, Satanic — in a word, antichristian.' That Lord Byron should figure as a member of this diabolical corporation will not surprise men. It will surprise them to hear that Milton is one of its Satanic leaders. Many are the generous and eloquent French- men, besides Chateaubriand, who have, in the course of the last thirty years, nobly suspended their own burning nationality, in order to render a more rapturous homage at the feet of Milton ; and some of them have raised Milton almost to a level with angelic natures. Not one of them has thought of looking for him heloio the earth. As to Shakspere, M, Michelet detects in him a most extraordinary mare's nest. It is this : he does ' not recollect to have seen the name of God ' in any part of his works. On reading such words, it is natural to rub one's eyes, and suspect that all one has ever seen in this world may have been a pure ocular delusion. In particular, I begin myself to suspect that the word ' la gloire ' never occurs in any Parisian journal. ' The great English nation,' says M. Michelet, 'has one immense profound vice' — to wit, pride. ' Why, really, that may be true ; but we have a neighbour not absolutely clear of an 'immense profound vice,' as like ours in colour and shape as cherry to cherry. In short, M. Michelet thinks us, by fits and starts, admirable, — only that we are detest- able ; and he would adore some of our authors, were it not that so intensely he could have wished to kick them. "2. M. Michelet thinks to lodge an arrow in our sides by a very odd remark upon Thomas ^ Kempis : which is, that a man of any 214 NOTES conceivable European blood — a Finiander, suppose, or a Zantiote — might have written Tom ; only not an Englishman, Whether an Englishman could have forged Tom must remain a matter of doubt, unless the thing had been tried long ago. That problem was inter- cepted forever by Tom's perverseness in choosing to manufacture himself. Yet, since nobody is better aware than M. Michelet that this very point of Kempis having manufactured Kempis is furiously and hopelessly litigated, three or four nations claiming to have forged his work for him, the shocking old doubt will raise its snaky head once more — whether this forger, who rests in so much dark- ness, might not, after all, be of English blood. Tom, it may be feared, is known to modern English literature chiefly by an irrev- erent mention of his name in a line of Peter Pindar's (Dr. Wolcot) f.fty years back, where he is described as ' Kempis Tom, Who clearly shows the way to Kingdom Come.* Few in these days can have read him, unless in the Methodist ver- sion of John Wesley. Amongst those few, however, happens to be myself ; which arose from the accident of having, when a boy of eleven, received a copy of the De Imitatione Christi as a bequest from a relation who died very young ; from which cause, and from the external prettiness of the book, — being a Glasgow reprint by the celebrated Foulis, and gaily bound, — I was induced to look into it, and finally read it many times over, partly out of some syni- pathy which, even in those days, I had with its simplicity and devo- tional fervour, but much more from the savage delight I found in laughing at Tom's Latinity. That, I freely grant to M. Michelet, is inimitable. Yet, after all, it is not certain whether the original Mas Latin. But, however that may have been, if it is possible that M. Michelet ^ can be accurate in saying that there are no less than ^"If M. Michelet can be accurate : " — However, on consideration, tUfi statement does not depend on Michelet. The bibliographer Barblei NOTES 215 sixty French versions (not editions, observe, but separate versions) existing of the De Imitatione, how prodigious must have been the adaptation of the book to the religious heart of the fifteenth cen- tury ! Excepting the Bible, but excepting that only in Protestant lands, no book known to man has had the same distinction. It is the most marvelous bibliogTaphical fact on record. "3. Our English girls, it seems, are as faulty in one way as we English males in another. None of us men could have written the Opera Omnia of Mr. ^ Kempis ; neither could any of our girls have assumed male attire like La Pucelle. But why ? Because, says Michelet, English girls and German think so much of an inde- corum. Well, that is a good fault, generally speaking. But M. Michelet ought to have remembered a fact in the martyrolo- gies which justifies both parties — the French heroine for doing, and the general choir of English girls for not doing. A female saint, specially renowned in France, had, for a reason as weighty as Joanna's — viz., expressly to shield her modesty amongst men — worn a male military harness. That reason and that example authorised La Pucelle; but our English girls, as a body, have sel- dom any such reason, and certainly no such saintly example, to plead. This excuses them. Yet, still, if it is indispensable to the national character that our young women should now and then has absolutely specified sixty in a separate dissertation, soixante tra- ductions, amongst those even that have not escaped the search. The Italian translations are said to he thirty. As to mere editions, not counting the early MSS. for haif-a-century before printing was intro- duced, those in Latin amount to two thousand, and those in French to one thousand. Meantime, it is very clear to me that this astonishing popularitj^ so entirely unparalleled in literature, couid not have existed I except in Roman Catholic times, nor subsequently have lingered in any , Protestant laud. It was the denial of Scripture fountains to thirsty i lands which made this slender rill of Serioture truth so passionately Welcome. 216 NOTES trespass over the frontier of decorum, it then becomes a patriotifi duty in me to assure ^M. Michelet that we have such ardent females amongst us. and in a long series : some detected in naval hospitals ■when too sick to remember their disguise ; some on fields of battle ; multitudes never detected at all ; some only suspected ; and others discharged without noise by war offices and other absurd people. In our navy, both royal and commercial, and generally from deep remembrances of slighted love, women have sometimes served ia disguise for many years, taking contentedly their daily allowance of burgoo, biscuit, or cannon-balls — anything, in short, digestible or indigestible, that it might please Providence to send. One thing, at least, is to their credit : never any of these poor masks, with their deep silent remembrances, have been detected through mur- muring, or what is nautically understood by 'skulking.' So, for once, M. Michelet has an erratum to enter upon the fly-leaf of his book in presentation copies. '•4. But the last of these ebullitions is the most lively. We English, at Orleans, and after Orleans (which is not quite so extraor- dinary, if all were told), fled before the Maid of Arc. Yes, says M. Michelet, you did: deny it, if you car. Deny it, mon cher f I don't mean to deny it. Running away, in many cases, is a thing so excellent that no philosopher would, at times, condescend to adopt any other step. All of us nations in Europe, without one exception, have shown our philosophy in that way at times. Even people ' qui ne se rendent pas ' have deigned both to run and to shout ^ Sauve qui peut ! ' at odd times of sunset ; though, for my part, I have no pleasure in recalling unpleasant remembrances to brave men ; and yet, really, being so philosophic, they ought not to be tmpleasant. But the amusing featiire in M. Michelet's reproach is the way in which he improves and varies against us the charge of running, as if he were singing a catch. Listen to him. They * showed their hacks,'' did these English. (Hip, hip, hurrah ! tliree times three!) '■Behind good icalls they let themselves be taken.'' NOTES 217 (Hip, hip ! nioe times nine !) They ' ran as fast as their legs could carry them.'' (Hurrah ! twenty-seven times twenty -seven !) They ' ran before a girl ' ; they did. (Hurrah ! eighty-one times eighty- one !) This reminds one of criminal indictments on the old model in English courts, where (for fear the prisoner should escape) the crown lawyer varied the charge perhaps through forty counts. The law laid its guns so as to rake the accused at every possible angle. Whilst the indictment was reading, he seemed a monster of crime in his own eyes ; and yet, after all, the poor fellow had but com- mitted one offence, and not always that. N.B, — Not having the French original at hand, I make my quotations from a friend's copy of Mr. Walter Kelly's translation ; which seems to me faith- ful, spirited, and idiomatically English — liable, in fact, only to the single reproach of occasional provincialisms." — De Qcixcet. 30 : 17. an opinion of his. See page 31, lines 12-14 ; also Miche- let. Book X, Chapter IV. pages 171-172. 31 : 10. seems to admire, etc. Indeed, the general tone of Michelet's account of Joan is one of extreme admiration. 31 : 14, "Whether she said," etc. The words are those of Kelly's translation of Michelet, Volume II, page 581 ; the italics are De Quincey's. 31 : 18. a priori principles. Those involved in the process of reasoning from general statements to particular facts. 31 : 20. ergo. Therefore. 31 : 24. onus. Burden. 31 : 27. weight of metal. Compare the use of the word metal to denote the weight of solid shot a vessel's guns can throw at once. 31 : 32. " ten thousand men wept." For this and the following facts connected with the execution, Michelet, Book X, Chapter IV, pages 173-176, is De Quincey's authority. 32 :24. though one should rise from the dead. "And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. " — Luke xvi. 31. 218 NOTES 32 : 26. thou upon a down bed. History tells us, however, that he died suddenly (1443), while being shaved. Some years later his remains were dug up by the people and thrown into a sewer. 33 : 15, the minutes of dreams, etc. De Quincey says of his own opium dreams : " I sometimes seemed to have lived for seventy or one hundred years in one night ; nay, sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium, passed in that time, or, however, of a duration far beyond the limits of any human experience." — Confessions, Works (Popular Edition), Volume I, page 111. 33 : 16. the bliss of childhood. The fact that De Quincey's dreams often revived "the minutest incidents of childhood " may have suggested this feature 01 Joan's vision. 33 : 27. victoriously she had tasted the stings of death. " Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written. Death is swal- lowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting ? O grave, where is thy victor}^ ? " — 1 Corinthians xv. 54-55. 33 : 30. amidst the drums and trumpets of armies. De Quincey must be taken as meaning armies of martyrs, since, though many English soldiers were present in the market-place, there was no regular military formation at Joan's execution. 34 : 25. Regent of France. John, Duke of Bedford. See note on line 4, page 22. 34 : 26. my Lord of Winchester, etc. Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, the great-uncle of Henry VI. He was one of the most powerful and unscrupulous of the English leaders, and in England was practically king. Before Joan's trial he took up his residence at Rouen, in order to oversee and direct the proceedings. In S Henry VI, Act III, Scene iii, lines 27-29, Shakespeare makes the king say to the dying cardinal : — *' Lord cardinal, if thou think'st on heaven's bliss, Hold up thy hand, make signal of thy hope. He dies and makes no sign. O God, forgive him." NOTES 219 35 : 6. in heaven above, or on earth beneath. Cf. Exodus xx. 4. 35 : 7. take a brief from me. To take a brief is to accept the conduct of a case. 35 : 12, Who is this, etc. An imitation of Isaiah Ixiii. 1, '' Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah ? " 35 : 13. bloody coronation robes from Rheims. The exact mean- ing of this expression is unclear. Joan is supposed to have worn at the coronation her armor, which may well have been bloody. But perhaps De Quincey merely wishes to emphasize the fact that Joan shed her blood to bring about the coronation of Charles. THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 36. Title, The English Mail-Coach. Blackwood's Magazine for October, 1849, contained an article by De Quincey entitled "The English Mail-Coach, or the Glory of Motion." This was followed in December by another article in two sections, the one called "The Vision of Sudden Death," and the other, "Dream- Fugue, founded on the preceding theme of Sudden Death," the two prefaced by a paragraph explaining their connection with the preceding article. For the Collective Edition (1854) of his writings, De Quincey very carefully revised these articles and unified them under their present title and sub-titles. 36 : 2. Some twenty or more years before I matriculated at Oxford. In 1803 De Quincey entered Worcester College, and his name remained on the college books until 1810. The chapter of his Autohio graphic Sketches entitled " Oxford," which the student should certainly read, contains an interesting account of his ma- triculation and residence at the great English university. 36 : 2. Mr. Palmer. "Mr. John Palmer, a native of Bath, and from about 1768 the energetic proprietor of the Theatre Eoyal in that city, had been led, by the wretched state in those days of the 220 NOTES means of intercommimication between Bath and London, and h^ own consequent difficulties in arranging for a punctual succession of good actors at his theatre, to turn his attention to the improve- ment of the whole system of Post-Office conveyance, and of loco- motive machinery generally, in the British Islands. The result was a scheme for superseding, on the great roads at least, the then existing system of sluggish and irregular stage-coaches, the prop- erty of private persons and companies, by a new system of govern- ment coaches, in connexion with the Post-Office, carrying the mails, and also a regulated number of passengers, with clock-work pre- cision, at a rate of comparative speed, which he hoped should ultimately be not less than ten miles an hour. The opposition to the scheme was, of course, enormous ; coach-proprietors, inn- keepers, the Post-Office officials themselves, were all against Mr. Palmer ; he was voted a crazy enthusiast and a public bore. Pitt, however, when the scheme was submitted to him, recognised its feasibility; on the 8th of August 178-4 the first mail-coach on Mr. Palmer's plan started from London at 8 o'clock in the morning and reached Bristol at 11 o'clock at night; and from that day the success of the new system was assured. — Mr. Palmer himself, hav- ing been appointed Surveyor and Comptroller-General of the Post- Office, took rank as an eminent and wealthy public man, M.P. for Bath and what not, and lived till 1818. De Quincey makes it one of his distinctions that he ' had married the daughter of a duke ' ; and in a footnote to that paragraph he gives the lady's name as 'Lady Madeline Gordon.' From an old Debrett, however, I learn that Lady Madelina Gordon, second daughter of Alexander, fourth Duke of Gordon, was Ikst married, on the 3d of April 1789, to Sir Robert Sinclair, Bart., and next, on the 2oth of November 1805, to Charles Palmer, of Lockley Park, Berks, Esq. If Debrett is right, her second husband was not the John Palmer of Mail-Coach celeb- rity, and De Quincey is wrong." — Masso:?. 36 : 4. eccentric. The pun will at once be evident. NOTES 221 36: 6. the daughter of a duke. "Lady Madeline Gordon." — De Quincey. But see note on line 2. 36 : 7. Galileo. The great Florentine astronomer (1564-1642), whose discoveries brought about a new era in experimental science. Because he believed in the astronomical system of Copernicus, he was imprisoned at the age of seventy and hailed before the Inquisi- tion to answer for his heresies. The sentence of indefinite im- prisonment passed upon him was commuted by Pope Urban into permission to reside at Sienna and Florence, where his last years were passed in retirement. The discovery of the satellites of Jupi- ter took place on the night of January 7, 1610. 36 : 8. the same thing. "Thus, in the calendar of the Church Festivals, the discovery of the true cross (by Helen, the mother of Constantine) is recorded (and, one might think, with the express consciousness of sarcasm) as the Invention of the Cross." — De Quincey. 36 : 11. who did not marry, etc. Galileo was never legally married. 36 : 22. vast distances. "One case was familiar to mail-coach travellers where two mails in opposite directions, north and south, starting at the same minute from points six hundred miles apart, met almost constantly at a particular bridge which bisected the total distance." — De Quincey. 37 : 5. as by some mighty orchestra, etc. For De Quincey's views on music in general and orchestral music in particular, see the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater^ Works (Popular Edition), Volume I, pages 15-77. 37 : 11. like the opening of apocalyptic vials. In the Book of Revelation, sometimes called the Apocalypse, Chapter xvi, we read of the pouring out of the " seven golden vials full of the wrath of God." 37 : 11. heart-shaking. De Quincey is very fond of the com- pounds heart-shaking and heart-shattering. 222 NOTES 37 : 12. Trafalgar. Off Cape Trafalgar, on the coast of SpaiHj Admiral Nelson won his last and most celebrated victory (Octo* ber 21, 1805) against the combined French and Spanish fleets. 37 : 12. Salamanca. In the vicinity of this Spanish town, Wel- lington defeated the French under Marmont, July 22, 1812. 37 : 12. Vittoria. The battle of Vittoria, fought between "Wel- lington and the French under Joseph Bonaparte and Jourdan on June 21, 1813, resulted in a decisive English victory, in conse- quence of which the French withdrew from Spain. 37:12. Waterloo. "That world-earthquake, Waterloo," by which the power of the great Napoleon was forever annihilated, was fought on June 18, 1815, between the Allies under Wellington and the French under the Emperor himself. 37 : 21. Te Deums. See note on line 20, page 11. 37:23. at such a crisis of general prostration. From 1804 to 1812, roughly speaking, France under Napoleon was supreme in Europe. 37 : 26. not more beneficial to ourselves, etc. Even in recent years a history of the wars of 1793-1815 has appeared under the title. How England saved Europe. 37:32. In most universities there is one single college. "Else- where," as De Quincey says in his Autobiographic Sketches ( Works, Vol. II, page 516), "the university is a single college and this col- lege is the university. But in Oxford the university expresses, as it were, the army, and the colleges express the several brigades or regiments." In other words, at the American, Scotch, and German universities the instruction is given almost entirely by the university professors, and there are no separate colleges, each with its own private teachers and practically complete in itself. Though changes have been made, the Oxford of the present day is substantially as it was in De Quincey's time. At one of the twenty-one colleges or four halls the student must matriculate, having first passed the college entrance examination. On being NOTES 223 /eceived, the undergraduate is usually assigned to one of the tutors of his college, but he may also attend the classes of other college tutors and lecturers, as well as of the university professors. Be- sides this, he may, if he wishes, read with a private tutor. After keeping the necessary number of terms, he comes up for the vari- ous university examinations for which his college has prepared him. Until 1852 the professorate of the university was almost purely ornamental ; at present, however, the lectures by the uni- versity professors are much more generally attended. 37 : 33. in Oxford there were five-and-twenty. De Quincey (^Autobiographic Sketches, pages 516-517) gives a list of the vari- ous colleges at Oxford in 1832 ; these number, however, only twenty-four. 38 : 5. the four terms of Michaelmas, Lent, Easter, and Act. Michaelmas Term, which takes its name from the feast of the Archangel Michael, observed on September 29, extends from Octo- ber 10 to December 17 ; Lent Term, now called Hilary Term, from January 14, St. Hilary's Day, to the Saturday before Palm Sunday ; Easter Term, from Wednesday in Easter week to Friday before "Whitsunday ; Act, now known as Trinity Term, from Saturday before Whitsunday to Saturday after the first Tuesday in July. The following passage from the Encyclopoedia Britannica (3d ed., 1797) will explain the name formerly given to the last of these terms: "Act, in the universities, signifies a thesis maintained in public by a candidate for a degree, or to show the capacity and proficiency of a student. ... At Oxford, the time when masters or doctors complete their degrees is also called the act; which is held with great solemnity. At Cambridge they call it the commencement.'''' At present, in many colleges at Oxford, undergraduates keep Michaelmas and Hilary terms by six weeks' residence each, and Easter and Trinity by three weeks' each ; but other colleges re- quire a longer period of residence, twenty-four weeks being the average length of the academic year. 224 NOTES 38 : 16. Worcester . . . Gloucester . . . Holyhead mail. A\ these places are situated to the northwest of London ; coaches "bound for them naturally passed through Oxford. 38 : 18. revolved. '■ Revolve was a favourite word with De Quin- cey, in the sense of 'return,' 'come back.' " — Masson. 38 : 21. posting-houses. Houses or hotels at which relays of horses could be obtained. 38 : 29. an old tradition . . . from the reign of Charles II (1660- 1684). "Then no one sat outside; later, outside places were taken by servants, and were quite cheap." — Tdrk. 38 :32. delf-ware. Earthenware made at Delft, in Holland. It is much coarser than porcelain. 38 : 33. attaint. To attaint is to stain, disgrace. By old Eng- lish law any one found guilty of treason or felony was declared to be attainted, which judgment implied that his blood was cor- rupted. This corruption of blood could not be effectually removed except by authority of Parliament 39 : 5. Pariahs. Professor Masson points out that this word, in the sense of "social outcast," was a great favorite with De Quincey. 39 : 19. salle-a-manger. Dining room. 39:32. the maxim that, etc. '•' De non apparentibus^ etc." — De Quincey. This legal axiom reads in full, De non apparentihus et non existentibus eadem est lex : " The same law obtains for things not appearing as for things not existing." 40:6. "raff." "Worthless persons; the sweepings of society; the rabble. The Century Dictionary says that this word is "now applied to students of Oxford by the townspeople." Seemingly the reverse was true in De Quincey' s day. 40 . 7. " snobs." " Snobs, and its antithesis, nobs, arose among the internal factions of shoemakers perhaps ten years later. Pos- sibly enough, the terms may have existed much earlier ; but they were then first made known, picturesquely and effectively, by a NOTES 225 trial at some assizes which happened to fix the public attention." -De Quince y. As an economic term, snoh is the name of a shoemaker in par- ticular, and, in general, of any one who works for lower wages than his fellows or refuses to strike with them. As a piece of uni- versity slang, it means a townsman as opposed to a gownsman. As generally used in literature, it denotes one who vulgarly apes gentility by being servile to superiors and insolent to inferiors. Noh (a member of the aristocracy, a swell) is the "antithesis" of snob in the second and third of these senses, but, so far as present usage is concerned, not in the first, whatever may have been the case in De Quincey's day. See Century Dictionary under snoh^ nob, and knob. 40 : 12. annoyances incident to the pit or gallery. De Quincey himself always sat in the gallery. See Confessions, Works (Popular Edition), Volume I, page 75. 41 : 1. attics. . . garrets. The use of these words in the plural form with singular meaning is rare in English literature, though other examples might easily be quoted. See Arbuthnot's John Bull, Tennyson's The Goose, etc. 41 : 6. jump. Agree, coincide ; a Shakespearian use of the word. 41 : 7. the celestial intellect of China. China is commonly known as the Celestial Empire, a name probably due to the fact that the reigning dynasty is always spoken of as Tien-chao, or Heavenly Dynasty. 41 : 10. George III. King of England from 1760 to 1820. 41 : 11. Pekin. This, one of the largest cities in the world, has been the capital of the Chinese Empire since 1421. 41 : 12. Lord Macartney. George Macartney, Earl of Macart- ney (1737-1806), was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary to Pekin in 1792. He remained in China until 1794. As De Quincey notes, this was England's first diplomatic communication with the Chinese court. Q 226 NOTES 41 : 17. the Emi)eror. Keen Lung was Emperor of China from 1735 to 1795. He was noted both as a warrior and as a man of letters. 41 : 17. The hammer-cloth. The cloth that covers the driver's seat. 41 : 20. was nearest to the moon. The moon is one of the ol> jects to which the Chinese Emperor and his court offer sacrifices in their ceremonial state worship. 41 : 26, the first lord of the treasury. This, as well as other official English titles, is used in the present description to produce a humorous effect. 41 : 28. the whole flowery people. Since one of the Chinese names for the country is Chung Hioa Kicok, "Middle Flowery Kingdom," China is often called " The Flowery Kingdom." 42 : 8. jury-reins. Temporary reins. The word was formed by De Quincey after the analogy of jury-mast, a nautical term mean- ing ''a temporary mast." In the same way sailors call a wooden leg a jury-leg. 42 : 17. Fi Fi. " This paragraph is a caricature of a story told in Staunton's Acco^unt of the Earl of JIacartney'' s Embassy to China in 1792.'''' — Masson. 42 : 20. French Revolution. See note on line 13, page 3. 42 : 21. 9a ira. " It will succeed. " These words are said to have been used by Benjamin Franklin in speaking of the American Revolution ; later they suggested the refrain ('' Ah c^a ira, ra ira, ^a ira''"') of the " Qa ira." one of the famous songs sung by the populace during the French Revolution. 42 : 24. the chief seats in synagogues. We are told of the scribes (3Iark xii. .39) that they loved "the chief seats in the syna- gogues." 43 : 2. all morality, — Aristotle's, Zeno's, Cicero's, etc. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) was the author of the Xicomachean Ethics, and founded the Peripatetic school of philosophy. Zeno (4th and 3d NOTES 227 centuries b.c), the founder of the Stoic school so popular among the Romans, taught a moral system of extreme austerity. Cicero (106-43 B.C.) was the author of several ethical treatises, of which the most noted is the De Officiis ; in philosophy he was an Eclectic. 43 : 8. sur-rebribed. This word, coined by De Quincey after the analogy of the legal terms sur-rebut^ snr-rejoin, means " bribed for the third time and by the party first bribing." 43 : 10. a contested election. In England this phrase is applied to an election involving a contest at the polls, and not to one the result of which is disputed, as the words might suggest to an American. 43 : 22. the British Museum. This celebrated national institu. tion was first opened in 1759; its present buildings, however, have been erected since 1823. 43 : 26. noters and protesters. A protester appears before a notary to fix the liability of the drawer or endorser of a note. Now, the Scotch word for notary is notar; De Quincey, having this in mind, evidently uses the word noters to mean not those who make notes, but notaries. 43 : 28. the house of life. One of the twelve parts into which astrologers divided the visible and invisible heavens when attempt- ing to forecast the course of one's life by the position of the stars at one's birth. 43 : 30. posse. The posse comitatus (literally, "accompanying power") is the body of men that a sheriff may call to his assist- ance. 44 : 9. Von Troll's Iceland. "The allusion Is to a well-known chapter in Von Troil's work, entitled, ' Concerning the Snakes of Iceland.' The entire chapter consists of these six words — ' There are no snakes in Icehtnd.'' " — De Quincey. De Quincey 's reference, however, is incorrect ; it should be to Neil Horrebow's Natural History of IcpJand, of which an English translation appeared in 1758. Chapter LXXII runs : " Concerning 228 NOTES snakes. No snakes of any kind are to be met with throughout th« whole island." Von Troll's Letters on Iceland (1780) contains no such passage. See Notes and Queries, 8th Series, Volume I, page 183. 44 : 10. a parliamentary rat. A member of Parliament who goes over from his own party to the opposition, in order to gain some personal advantage. 44:16. a forbidden seat. "The very sternest code of rules was enforced upon the mails by the Post-ofl&ce. Throughout Eng- land, only three outsides were allowed, of whom one was to sit on the box, and the other two immediately behind the box ; none, under any pretext, to come near the guard ; an indispensable cau- tion ; since else, under the guise of a passenger, a robber might by any one of a thousand advantages — which sometimes are created, but always are favoured, by the animation of frank social inter- course — have disarmed the guard. Beyond the Scottish border, the regulation was so far relaxed as to allow of four outsides, but not relaxed at all as to the mode of placing them. One, as before, was seated on the box, and the other three on the front of the roof, with a determinate and ample separation from the little insu- lated chair of the guard. This relaxation was conceded by way of compensating to Scotland her disadvantages in point of population. England, by the superior density of her population, might always count upon a large fund of profits in the fractional trips of chance passengers riding for short distances of two or three stages. In Scotland this chance counted for much less. And therefore, to make good the deficiency, Scotland was allowed a compensatory profit upon one extra passenger." — De Quincby. 44 '• 19. laesa majestas. Lese-majesty, a crime committed against the sovereign power in a state. 44:31. "Jam proximus," etc. "Now next (the house ofj Ucalegon h\azes. '' — ^Eneid, Book II, lines 311-312. 45 5 7. in the way-bill . . . booked. The way-bill was a list ol NOTES 229 passengers ; the passenger was booked, or entered, on this list, in virtue of having purchased a ticket. 45 : 24. quarterings. See note on line 14, page 78. 45 : 29. within benefit of clergy. Formerly under the English law, all persons in holy orders, and ultimately all persons who could read, might, by pleading " benefit of clergy," be exempted from criminal punishment at the hands of a secular judge. This privilege was wholly abolished in 1827. 46 : 6. Quarter Sessions. A general court held quarterly by the justices of the peace of each county, and having jurisdiction over all but the highest crimes. 46 : 14. as one having authority. " For he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes." — Mattheio vii. 29. 46 : 15. his majesty's. See note on line 10, page 41. 46 : 22. poached. One meaning of the verb poach (: own invention. A fugue is a musical composition in which a theme introduced by one part is repeated and imitated by the others in succession. The name is thus explained by Kastner (Paremiologie Musicale) sub "Fugue": "The bit of music so- called — from the Latin fuga and the Greek - \ University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hllgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. B 000 008 540 7