Chapter XI: Part V (1)

"Have I not in my time heard lions roar?
Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind,
Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?
Have I not heard great ordinance in the field,
And heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?
Have I not in the pitched battle heard
Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"

SHAKESPEARE.

I found the Jew in his den as usual, and communicated my object, like a man of business, in as few words as possible, and in that tone which showed that I had made up my mind. To my surprise, and, I must own, a little to the chagrin of my vanity, he made no opposition to it whatever. I afterwards ascertained that, on the day before, he had received a proposal of marriage for his daughter from a German _millionaire_ of his own line; and that, as there could be no comparison between a penniless son-in-law, if he came of the blood of all the Paleologi, and one of the tribe of Issachar with his panniers loaded with guineas, the sooner I took my flight the better.

"You are perfectly right," said he, "in desiring to see the Continent; and in Paris you will find the Continent all gathered into a glance, as a French cook gives you a dozen sauces in compounding one fricassee. It happens, curiously enough, that I can just now furnish you with some opportunities for seeing it in the most convenient manner. A person with whom I have had occasional business in Downing Street, has applied to me to name an individual in my confidence, as an _attaché_ to our embassy in France, though, be it understood, without an actual appointment."

I started at this dubious diplomacy.

"This," said he, "only shows that you have still to learn the trade. Let me then tell you, that it is by such persons that all the real work of diplomacy is carried on. Can you suppose that the perfumed and polished young gentlemen who, under the name of secretaries and sub secretaries, superior and inferior _attachés_, and so forth, haunt the hotels of the embassy, are the real instruments? It is true, they are necessary to the dinners and balls of the embassy. They are useful to drive out the ambassador's horses to air, escort his wife, and dance with his daughters. But the business is uniformly done by somebody of whom nobody knows any thing, but that he is never seen loitering about the ambassador's drawing-room though he has the _entrée_ of his closet; and that he never makes charades, though he corresponds from day to day with the government at home. Of course you will accept the appointment--and now, let me give you your credentials."

He unlocked a cabinet, which, except for its dust and the coating of cobwebs which time had wrought upon it, might have figured in the saloons of the Medici. The succession of springs which he touched, and of secret drawers which started at the touch, might have supplied a little history of Italian intrigue. At last he found the roll of papers which he sought, and having first thrown a glance round the room, as if a spy sat on every chair, he began to unroll them; with a rapid criticism on each as the few first lines met his eye. Every nerve of his countenance was in full play as he looked over those specimens of the wisdom of the wise; It would have been an invaluable study to a Laveter. He had evidently almost forgotten that I was present; and the alternate ridicule and disdain of his powerful physiognomy were assisted, in my comprehension, by notes from time to time--certainly the antipodes of flattery--"paltry knave"--"pompous fool"--"specious swindler." "Ambassador! ay, if we were to send one to a nation of baboons." "Here," said he, throwing, the bundle on the table, "if I did not despise mankind enough already, I have sufficient evidence to throng the pillory. I deal in gold; well, it is only such that can know the world. Hate, ambition, religion--all have their hypocrisies; but money applies the thumbscrew to them all. Want, sir, want, is the master of mankind. There have been men--ay, and women too--within this dungeon, as you think it, whose names would astonish you. Oh! Father Abraham"--

I finished the quotation.--"What fools these Christians are!" He burst into grim laughter. "Here you have the paper," said he, "and I must therefore send you back to the secretary's office. But there you must not be known. Secrecy is essential even to your life. Stabbing in Paris is growing common, and the knowledge that you had any other purpose than gambling, might be repaid by a poniard."

He now prepared his note, and as he wrote, continued his conversation in fragments. "Three-fourths of mankind are mere blunderers, and the more you know of them the more you will be of my opinion. I am by no means sure that we have not some of them in Whitehall itself. Pitt is a powerful man, and he alone keeps them together; without him they would be potsherds.--Pitt thinks that we can go on without a war: he is mistaken. How is it possible to keep Europe in peace, when the Continent is as rotten as thatch, and France as combustible as gunpowder?--The minister is a man of wonders, but he cannot prevent thirty millions of maniacs from playing their antics until they are cooled by blood-letting; or a hundred millions of Germans, Spaniards, Dutch, and Italians from being pilfered to their last coin!--Old Frederick, the greatest genius that ever sat upon a German throne, saw this fifty years ago. I have him at this moment before my eyes, as he walked with his hands behind his bent back in the little parterre of Sans Souci. I myself heard him utter the words--'If I were King of France, a cannon-shot should not be fired in Europe without my permission.'--France is now governed by fools, and is nothing. But if ever she shall have an able man at her head, she will realize old Frederick's opinion."

As no time was to be lost, I hurried with my note of introduction to Whitehall, was ushered through a succession of dingy offices into a small chamber, where I found, busily employed at an escrutoire, a young man of a heavy and yet not unintelligent countenance. He read my note, asked me whether I had ever been in Paris, from which he had just returned; uttered a sentence or two in the worst possible French, congratulated me on the fluency of my answer, rang his bell, and handed me a small packet, endorsed--_most secret and confidential_. He then made the most awkward of bows; and our interview was at an end. I saw this man afterwards prime minister.

Till now, the novelty and interest of any new purpose had kept me in a state of excitement; but I now found, to my surprise, my spirits suddenly flag, and a dejection wholly unaccountable seize upon me. Perhaps something like this occurs after all strong excitement; but a cloud seemed actually to draw over my mind. My thoughts sometimes even fell into confusion--I deeply repented having involved myself in a rash design, which required qualities so much more experienced than mine; and in which, if I failed, the consequences might be so ruinous, not merely to my own character, but to noble and even royal lives. I now felt the whole truth of Hamlet's description--the ways of the world "flat, stale, and unprofitable;" the face of nature gloomy; the sky a "congregation of pestilent vapours." It was not the hazard of life; exposed, as it might be, in the midst of scenes of which the horrors were daily deepening; it was a general undefined feeling, of having undertaken a task too difficult for my powers, and of having engaged in a service in which I could neither advance with hope nor retreat with honour.

After a week of this painful fluctuation, I received a note, saying that I had but six hours before me, and that I must leave London at midnight.

I strayed involuntarily towards Devonshire House. It was one of its state dinner-days, and the street rang with the incessant setting down of the guests. As I stood gazing on the crowd, to prevent more uneasy thoughts, Lafontaine stood before me. He was in uniform, and looked showily. He was to be one of the party, and his manner had all the animation which scenes of this order naturally excite in those with whom the world goes well. But my countenance evidently startled him, and he attempted to offer such consolation as was to be found in telling me that if La Comtesse was visible, he should not fail to tell her of the noble manner in which I had volunteered; and the happiness which I had thus secured to him and Mariamne. "You may rely on it," said he, "that I shall make her sick of Monsieur le Marquis and his sulky physiognomy. I shall dance with her, shall talk to her, and you shall be the subject, as you so well deserve."

"But her marriage is inevitable," was my sole answer.

"Oh, true; inevitable! But that makes no possible difference. You cannot marry all the women you may admire, nor they you. So, the only imaginable resource is, to obtain their friendship, to be their _pastor fido_, their hero, their Amadis. You then have the _entrée_ of their houses, the honour of their confidence, and the favoured seat in their boxes, till you prefer the favoured seat at their firesides, and all grow old together."

The sound of a neighbouring church clock broke off our dialogue. He took out his diamond watch, compared it with the time, found that to delay a moment longer would be a solecism which might lose him a smile or be punished with a frown; repeated a couplet on the pangs of parting with friends; and with an embrace, in the most glowing style of Paris, bounded across the street, and was lost in the crowd which blocked up her grace's portal.

Thus parted the gay lieutenant and myself; he to float along the stream of fashion in its most sparkling current--I to tread the twilight paths of the green park in helplessness and heaviness of soul.

This interview had not the more reconciled me to life. I was vexed with what I regarded the nonchalance of my friend, and began to wish that I had left him to go through his own affairs as he might. But reflection did justice to his gallant spirit, and I mentally thanked him for having relieved me from the life of an idler. At this moment my name was pronounced by a familiar voice; it was Mordecai's. He had brought me some additional letters to the leaders of the party in Paris. We returned to the hotel, and sat down to our final meal together. When the lights were brought in, I saw that he looked at me with some degree of surprise, and even of alarm. "You are ill," said he; "the life of London is too much for you. There are but three things that constitute health in this world--air, exercise, and employment." I acknowledged to him my misgivings as to my fitness for the mission. But he was a man of the world. He asked me, "Do you desire to resign? If so, I have the power to revoke it at this moment. And you can do this without loss of honour, for it is known to but two persons in England--Lafontaine and myself. I have not concealed its danger from you, and I have ascertained that even the personal danger is greater than I thought. In fact, one of my objects in coming to you at this hour was, to apprise you of the state of things, if not to recommend your giving up the mission altogether."

The alternative was now plainly before me; and, stern as was the nature of the Israelite, I saw evidently that he would be gratified by my abandoning the project. But this was suddenly out of the question. The mission, to escape which in the half hour before I should have gladly given up every shilling I ever hoped to possess, was at once fixed in my mind as a peculiar bounty of fortune. There are periods in the human heart like those which we observe in nature--the atmosphere clears up after the tempest. The struggle which had shaken me so long had now passed away, and things assumed as new and distinct an aspect as a hill or a forest in the distance might on the passing away of a cloud. Mordecai argued against my enthusiasm; but when was enthusiasm ever out-argued? I drove him horse and foot from the field. I did more, enthusiasm is contagious--I made him my convert. The feverish fire of my heart lent itself to my tongue, and I talked so loftily of revolutions and counter-revolutions; of the opportunity of seeing humankind pouring, like metal from the forge, into new shapes of society, of millions acting on a new scale of power, of nations summoned to a new order of existence, that I began to melt even the rigid prepossessions of that mass of granite, or iron, or whatever is most intractable--the Jew. I could perceive his countenance changing from a smile to seriousness; and, as I declaimed, I could see his hollow eye sparkle, and his sallow lip quiver, with impressions not unlike my own.

"Whether you are fit for a politician," said he, "I cannot tell; for the trade is of a mingled web, and has its rough side as well as its smooth one. But, young as you are, and old as I am, there are some notions in which we do not differ so much as in our years. I have long seen that the world was about to undergo some extraordinary change. That it should ever come from the rabble of Paris, I must confess, had not entered into my mind; a rope of sand, or a mountain of feathers, would have been as fully within my comprehension. I might have understood it, if it had come from John Bull. But I have lived in France, and I never expected any thing from the people; more than I should expect to see the waterworks of Versailles turned into a canal, or irrigating the thirsty acres round the palace."

"Yes," I observed; "but their sporting and sparkling answers their purpose. They amuse the holiday multitude for a day."

"And are dry for a week.--If France shall have a revolution, it will be as much a matter of mechanism, of show, and of holiday, as the '_grand jet-d'eau_.'" He was mistaken. We ended with a parting health to Mariamne, and his promise to attend to my interests at the Horse-guards, on which I was still strongly bent. The Jew was clearly no sentimentalist; but the glass of wine, and the few words of civility and recollection with which I had devoted it to his pretty daughter, evidently touched the father's heart. He lingered on the steps of the hotel, and still held my hand. "You shall not," said he, "be the worse for your good wishes, nor for that glass of wine. I shall attend to your business at Whitehall when you are gone; and you might have worse friends than Mordecai even there." He seemed big with some disclosure of his influence, but suddenly checked himself. "At all events," he added, "your services on the present occasion shall not be forgotten. You have a bold, ay, and a broad career before you. One thing I shall tell you. We shall certainly have war. The government here are blind to it. Even the prime minister--and there is not a more sagacious mind on the face of the earth--is inclined to think that it may be averted. But I tell you, as the first secret which you may insert in your despatches, that it will come--will be sudden, desperate, and universal."

"May I not ask from what source you have your information; it will at least strengthen mine?"

"Undoubtedly. You may tell the minister, or the world, that you had it from Mordecai. I lay on you only one condition--that you shall not mention it within a week. I have received it from our brethren on the Continent, as a matter of business. I give it to you here as a flourish for your first essay in diplomacy."

We had now reached the door of the post-chaise. He drew out another letter. "This," said he, "is from my daughter. Before you come among us again, she will probably be the wife of one of our nation, and the richest among us. But she still values you as the preserver of her life, and sends you a letter to one of our most intimate friends in Paris. If he shall not be frightened out of it by the violence of the mob, you will find him and his family hospitable. Now, farewell!" He turned away.

I sprang into the post-chaise, in which was already seated a French courier, with despatches from his minister; whose attendance the Jew had secured, to lighten the first inconveniences to a young traveller. The word was given--we dashed along the Dover road, and I soon gave my last gaze to London, with its fiery haze hanging over it, like the flame of a conflagration.

My mind was still in a whirl as rapid as my wheels. Hope, doubt, and determination passed through my brain in quick succession, yet there was one thought that came, like Shakspeare's "delicate spirit," in all the tumult of soul, of which, like Ariel in the storm, it was the chief cause, to soothe and subdue me. Hastily as I had driven from the door of my hotel, I had time to cast my eye along the front of Devonshire House. All the windows of its principal apartments shone with almost noonday brightness--uniforms glittered, and plumes waved in the momentary view. But in the range above, all was dark; except one window--the window of the boudoir--and there the light was of the dim and melancholy hue that instinctively gives the impression of the sick-chamber. Was Clotilde still there, feebly counting the hours of pain, while all within her hearing was festivity? The answers which I had received to my daily enquiries were cheerless. "She had not quitted the apartment where she had been first conveyed."--"The duchess insisted on her not being removed."--"Madame was inconsolable, but the doctor had hopes." Those, and other commonplaces of information, were all that I could glean from either the complacent chamberlains or the formal physician. And now I was to give up even this meagre knowledge, and plunge into scenes which might separate us for ever. But were we not separated already? If she recovered, must she not be in the power of a task-master? If she sank under her feebleness, what was earth to me?

In those reveries I passed the hours until daybreak, when the sun and the sea rose together on my wearied eyes.

* * * * *

The bustle of Dover aroused me to a sense of the world. All was animation on sea and shore. The emigration was now in full flow, and France was pouring down her terrified thousands on the nearest shore. The harbour was crowded with vessels of every kind, which had just disgorged themselves of their living cargoes; the streets were blocked up with foreign carriages; the foreign population had completely overpowered the native, and the town swarmed with strangers of every rank and dress, with the hurried look of escaped fugitives. As I drove to the harbour, my ear rang with foreign accents, and my eyes were filled with foreign physiognomies. From time to time the band of a regiment, which had furnished a guard to one of the French blood-royal, mingled its drums and trumpets with the swell of sea and shore; and, as I gazed on the moving multitude from my window, the thunder of the guns from the castle, for the arrival of some ambassador, grandly completed the general mass and power of the uproar.

* * * * *

Three hours carried me to the French shore. Free from all the vulgar vexations of the road, I had the full enjoyment of one of the most pleasant of all enjoyments--moving at one's ease through a new and interesting country. The road to Paris is now like the road to Windsor, to all the higher portions of my countrymen; but then it was much less known even to them than in later days, and the circumstances of the time gave it a totally new character. It was the difference between travelling through a country in a state of peace and in a state of war; between going to visit some superb palace for the purpose of viewing its paintings and curiosities, and hurrying to see what part of its magnificence had escaped an earthquake. The landscape had literally the look of war; troops were seen encamped in the neighbourhood of the principal towns; the national guards were exercising in the fields; mimic processions of children were beating drums and displaying banners in the streets, and the popular songs were all for the conquest of every thing beneath the moon.

But I was to have a higher spectacle. And I shall never forget the mixture of wonder and awe which I felt at the first distant sight of the capital.

It was at the close of a long day's journey, while the twilight gave a mysterious hue to a scene in itself singular and stately.--Glistening spire on spire; massive piles, which in the deepening haze might be either prisons or palaces; vast ranges of buildings, gloomy or glittering as the partial ray fell on them; with the solemn beauty of the Invalides on one wing, the light and lovely elegance of the St Genevieve on the other, and the frowning majesty of Notre-Dame in the midst, filled the plain with a vision such as I had imaged only in an Arabian tale. Yet the moral reality was even greater than the visible. I felt that I was within reach of the chief seat of all the leading events of the Continent since the birth of monarchy; every step which I might tread among those piles was historical; within that clouded circumference, like the circle of a necromancer, had been raised all the dazzling and all the disturbing spirits of the world. There was the grand display of statesmanship, pomp, ambition, pleasure, and each the most subtle, splendid, daring, and prodigal ever seen among men. And, was it not now to assume even a more powerful influence on the fates of mankind? Was not the falling of the monarchical forest of so many centuries, about to lay the land open to a new, and perhaps a more powerful produce; where the free blasts of nature were to rear new forms, and demand new arts of cultivation? The monarchy was falling--but was not the space, cleared of its ruins, to be filled with some new structure, statelier still? Or, if the government of the Bourbons were to sink for ever from the eyes of men, were there to be no discoveries made in the gulf itself in which it went down; were there to be no treasures found in the recesses thus thrown open to the eye for the first time; no mines in the dissevered strata--no founts of inexhaustible freshness and flow opened by thus piercing into the bowels of the land?

There are moments on which the destiny of a nation, perhaps of an age, turns. I had reached Paris at one of those moments. As my calèche wound its slow way round the base of Montmartre, I perceived, through the deepening twilight, a long train of flame, spreading from the horizon to the gates of the city. Shouts were heard, with now and then the heavy sounds of cannon. This produced a dead stop in my progress. My postilion stoutly protested against venturing his calèche, his horses, and, what he probably regarded much more than either, himself, into the very heart of what he pronounced a counter-revolution. My courier, freighted with despatches, which might have been high treason to the majesty of the mob, and who saw nothing less than suspension from the first lamp-post in their discovery, protested, with about the same number of _sacres_; and my diplomatic beams seemed in a fair way to be shorn.

But this was the actual thing which I had come to see: Paris in its new existence; the capital of the populace; the headquarters of the grand army of insurgency; the living centre of all those flashes of fantasy, fury, and fire, which were already darting out towards every throne of Europe. I determined to have a voice on the occasion, and I exerted it with such vigour, that I roused the inmates of a blockhouse, a party of the National Guard, who, early as it was, had been as fast asleep as if they had been a _posse_ of city watchmen. They clustered round us, applauded my resolve, to see what was to be seen, as perfectly national, _vraiment Français_; kicked my postilion till he mounted his horse, beat my sulky courier with the flats of their little swords, and would have bastinadoed, or probably hanged him, if I had not interposed; and, finally, hoisting me into the calèche, which they loaded with half a dozen of their number before and behind, commenced our march into Paris. This was evidently not the age of discipline.

It may have been owing to this curious escort that I got in at all; for at the gate I found a strong guard of the regular troops, who drove back a long succession of carriages which had preceded me. But my cortège were so thoroughly in the new fashion, they danced the "_carmagnole_" so boisterously, and sang patriotic rhymes with such strength of lungs, that it was impossible to refuse admission to patriots of such sonorousness. The popular conjectures, too, which fell to my share, vastly increased my importance. In the course of the five minutes spent in wading through the crowd of the rejected, I bore fifty different characters--I was a state prisoner--a deputy from Marseilles, a part of the kingdom then in peculiar favour; an ex-general; a captain of banditti, and an ambassador from England or America; in either case, an especially honoured missionary, for England was then pronounced by all the Parisian authorities to be on the verge of a revolution. Though, I believe, Jonathan had the preference, for the double reason, that the love of Jean Français for John Bull is of a rather precarious order, and that the American Revolution was an egg hatched by the warmth of the Gallic bird itself; a secondary sort of parentage.

As we advanced through the streets, my noisy "compagnons de voyage" dropped off one by one, some to the lowest places of entertainment, and some tired of the jest; and I proceeded to the Place de Vendome, where was my hotel, at my leisure. The streets were now solitary; to a degree that was almost startling. As I wound my way through long lines of houses, tortuous, narrow, and dark as Erebus, I saw the cause of the singular success which had attended all Parisian insurrections. A chain across one of these dismal streets, an overturned cart, a pile of stones, would convert it at once into an impassable defile. Walls and windows, massive, lofty, and nearly touching each other from above afforded a perpetual fortification; lanes innumerable, and extending from one depth of darkness and intricacy into another, a network of attack and ambush, obviously gave an extraordinary advantage to the irregular daring of men accustomed to thread those wretched and dismal dens, crowded with one of the fiercest and most capricious populations in the world. Times have strikingly changed since. The "fifteen fortresses" are but so many strong bars of the great cage, and they are neither too strong nor too many. Paris is now the only city on earth which is defended against itself, garrisoned on its outside, and protected by a perpetual Praetorian band against a national mania of insurrection.

But, on turning into the Boulevards, the scene changed with the rapidity of magic. Before me were raging thousands, the multitude which I had seen advancing to the gates. The houses, as far as the eye could reach, were lighted up with lamps, torches, and every kind of hurried illumination. Banners of all hues were waving from the casements, and borne along by the people; and in the midst of the wild procession were seen at a distance a train of travelling carriages, loaded on the roofs with the basest of the rabble. A mixed crowd of National Guards, covered with dust, and drooping under the fatigue of the road, poissardes drunk, dancing, screaming the most horrid blasphemies, and a still wider circle, which seemed to me recruited from all the jails of Paris, surrounded the carriages, which I at length understood to be those of the royal family. They had attempted to escape to the frontier, had been arrested, and were now returning as prisoners. I caught a glimpse, by the torchlight, of the illustrious sufferers, as they passed the spot where I stood. The Queen was pale, but exhibited that stateliness of countenance for which she was memorable to the last; she sat with the Dauphiness pressed in her arms. The King looked overcome with exhaustion; the Dauphin gazed at the populace with a child's curiosity.

At the moment when the carriages were passing, an incident occurred terribly characteristic of the time. A man of a noble presence, and with an order of St Louis at his breast, who had been giving me a hurried and anxious explanation of the scene, excited by sudden feeling, rushed forward through the escort, and laying one hand on the royal carriage, with the other waved his hat, and shouted, "Vive le Roi!" In another instant I saw him stagger; a pike was darted into his bosom, and he fell dead under the wheel. Before the confusion of this frightful catastrophe had subsided, a casement was opened immediately above my head, and a woman, superbly dressed, rushed out on the balcony waving a white scarf, and crying, "Vive Marie Antoinette!" The muskets of the escort were turned upon her, and a volley was fired at the balcony. She started back at the shock, and a long gush of blood down her white robe showed that she had been wounded. But she again waved the scarf, and again uttered the loyal cry. Successive shots were fired at her by the monsters beneath; but she still stood. At length she received the mortal blow; she tottered and fell; yet, still clinging to the front of the balcony, she waved the scarf, and constantly attempted to pronounce the words of her generous and devoted heart, until she expired. I saw this scene with an emotion beyond my power to describe; all the enthusiasm of popular change was chilled within me; my boyish imaginations of republicanism were extinguished by this plunge into innocent blood; and I never felt more relieved, than when the whole fearful procession at length moved on, and I was left to make my way once more, through dim and silent streets, to my dwelling.

* * * * *

I pass by a considerable portion of the time which followed. The Revolution was like the tiger, it advanced couching; though, when it sprang, its bound was sudden and irresistible. My time was occupied in my official functions, which became constantly more important, and of which I received flattering opinions from Downing Street. I mingled extensively in general society, and it was never more animated, or more characteristic, than at that period in Paris. The leaders of faction and the leaders of fashion, classes so different in every other part of the world, were there often the same. The woman who dazzled the ball-room, was frequently the _confidente_ of the deepest designs of party. The coterie in a _salon_, covered with gilding, and filled with _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of the arts, was often as subtle as a conspiracy in the cells of the Jacobins; and the dance or the masquerade only the preliminary to an outbreak which shattered a ministry into fragments All the remarkable men of France passed before me, and I acknowledge that I was frequently delighted and surprised by their extra ordinary attainments. The age of the _Encyclopédie_ was in its wane, but some of its brilliant names still illustrated the Parisian _salons_. I recognised the style of Buffon and Rousseau in a crowd of their successors; and the most important knowledge was frequently communicated in language the most eloquent and captivating. Even the mixture of society which had been created by the Revolution, gave an original force and freshness to these assemblies, infinitely more attractive than the most elaborate polish of the old _régime_. Brissot, the common printer, but a man of singular strength of thought, there figured by Condorcet, the noble and the man of profound science. St Etienne, the little bustling partizan, yet the man of talent, mingled with the chief advocates of the Parisian courts; or Servan fenced with his subtle knowledge of the world against Vergniaud, the romantic Girondist, but the most Ciceronian of orators. Talleyrand, already known as the most sarcastic of men, and Maury, by far the most powerful debater of France since Mirabeau--figured among the chief ornaments of the _salons_ of De Staël. Roland, and the showy and witty Theresa Cabarrus, and even the flutter of La Fayette, the most tinsel of heroes, and the sullen sententiousness of Robespierre, then known only as a provincial deputy, furnished a background which increased the prominence of the grouping.

But the greatest wonder of France still escaped the general eye. At a ball at the Hotel de Staël, I remember to have been struck with the energetic denunciation of some rabble insult to the Royal family, by an officer whom nobody knew. As a circle were standing in conversation on the topic of the day, the little officer started from his seat, pushed into the group, and expressed his utter contempt for the supineness of the Government on those occasions, so strongly, as to turn all eyes upon him. "Where were the troops, where the guns?" he exclaimed. "If such things are suffered, all is over with royalty; a squadron of horse, and a couple of six pounders, would have swept away the whole swarm of scoundrels like so many flies." Having thus discharged his soul, he started back again, flung himself into a chair, and did not utter another word through the evening. I little dreamed that in that meagre frame, and long, thin physiognomy, I saw Napoleon.

I must hasten to other things. Yet I still cast many a lingering glance over these times. The vividness of the collision was incomparable. The wit, the eccentricity, the anecdote, the eloquence of those assemblages, were of a character wholly their own. They had, too, a substantial nutriment, the want of which had made the conversation of the preceding age vapid, with all its elegance.--Public events of the most powerful order fed the flame. It was the creation of a vast national excitement; the rush of sparks from the great electrical machine, turned by the hands of thirty millions. The flashes were still but matters of sport and surprise. The time was nigh when those flashes were to be fatal, and that gay lustre was to do the work of conflagration.

I had now been a year in Paris, without returning, or wishing to return, to London. A letter now and then informed me of the state of those who still drew my feelings towards England. But I was in the centre of all that awoke, agitated, or alarmed Europe; and, compared with the glow and rapidity of events in France, the rest of Europe appeared asleep, or to open its eyes solely when some new explosion shook it from its slumber.

My position, too, was a matchless school for the learner in diplomacy. France shaped the politics of the Continent; and I was present in the furnace where the casting was performed. France was the stage to which every eye in Europe was turned, whether for comedy or tragedy; and I was behind the scenes. But the change was at hand.

One night I found an individual, of a very marked appearance, waiting for me at my hotel. His countenance was evidently Jewish, and he introduced himself as one of the secret police of the ministry. The man handed me a letter--it was from Mordecai, and directed to be given with the utmost secrecy. It was in his usual succinct and rapid style.

"I write this in the midst of a tumult of business. My friend Mendoza will give you such knowledge and assistance as may be necessary. France is on the point of an explosion. Every thing is prepared. It is impossible that it can be delayed above a week or two, and the only origin of the delay is in the determination to make the overthrow final. Acquaint your English officials with this. The monarchy of the Bourbons has signed its death-warrant. By suffering a legislature to be formed by the votes of the mere multitude, it has put property within the power of all beggars; rank has been left at the mercy of the rabble; and the church has been sacrificed to please a faction. Thus the true pillars of society have been cut away; and the throne is left in the air. Mendoza will tell you more. The train is already laid. A letter from a confidential agent tells us that the day is fixed. At all events, avoid the mine. There is no pleasure in being blown up, even in company with kings."

A postscript briefly told me--that his daughter sent her recollections; that Clotilde was still indisposed; La Fontaine giddier than ever; and, as the proof of his own confidence in his views, that he had just sold out 100,000 three per cent consols.

My first visit next morning was to the British embassy. But the ambassador was absent in the country, and the functionary who had been left in charge was taking lessons on the guitar, and extremely unwilling to be disturbed by matters comparatively so trifling as the fate of dynasties. I explained, but explained in vain. The hour was at hand when his horses were to be at the door for a ride in the Bois de Boulogne. I recommended a ride after the ambassador. It was impossible. He was to be the escort of a duchess; then to go to a dinner at the Russian embassy, and was under engagements to three balls in the course of the evening. Nothing could be clearer than that such duties must supersede the slight concerns of office. I left him under the hands of his valet, curling his ringlets, and preparing him to be the admiration of mankind.

I saw Mendoza secretly again; received from him additional intelligence; and, as I was not inclined to make a second experiment on the "elegant extract" of diplomacy, and escort of duchesses, I went, as soon as the nightfall concealed my visit, to the hotel of the Foreign Minister. This was my first interview with the celebrated Dumourier.

He received me with the courtesy of a man accustomed to high life; and I entered on the purport of my visit at once. He was perfectly astonished at my tidings. He had known that strong resolutions had been adopted by the party opposed to the Cabinet; but was startled by the distinct avowal of its intention to overthrow the monarchy. I was struck with his appearance, his quickness of conception, and that mixture of sportiveness and depth, which I had found characteristic of the higher orders of French society. He was short in stature, but proportioned for activity; his countenance bold, but with smiling lips and a most penetrating grey eye. His name as a soldier was at this period wholly unknown, but I could imagine in him a leader equally subtle and daring;--he soon realized my conjecture.

We sat together until midnight; and over the supper-table, and cheered by all the good things which French taste provides and enjoys more than any other on earth, he gave full flow to his spirit of communication. The Frenchman's sentences are like sabre-cuts--they have succession, but no connexion.

"I shall always converse with you, M. Marston," said he, "with ease; for you are of the noblesse of your own great country, and I am tired of _roturiers_ already.--The government has committed dangerous faults. The king is an excellent man, but his heart is where his head ought to be, and his head where his heart.--His flight was a terrible affair, but it was a blunder on both sides; _he_ ought never to have gone, or the government ought never to have brought him back.--However, I have no cause to complain of its epitaph. The blunder dissolved that government. I have to thank it for bringing me and my colleagues into power. Our business now is to preserve the monarchy, but this becomes more difficult from day to day."

I adverted to the personal character of the royal family.

"Nothing can be better. But chance has placed them in false position.--If the king were but the first prince of the blood, his benevolence without his responsibility would make him the most popular man in France.--If the queen were still but the dauphiness, she would be, as she was then, all but worshipped. As the leader of fashion in France, she would be the leader of taste in Europe.--Elegant, animated, and high-minded, she would have charmed every one, without power. If she could but continue to move along the ground, all would admire the grace of her steps; but, sitting on a throne, she loses the spell of motion."

"Yet, can France ever forget her old allegiance, and adopt the fierce follies of a republic?"

"I think not. And yet we are dealing with agencies of which we know nothing but the tremendous force. We are breathing a new atmosphere, which may at first excite only to kill.--We have let out the waters of a new river-head, which continues pouring from hour to hour, with a fulness sufficient to terrify us already, and threatening to swell over the ancient landmarks of the soil.--It is even now a torrent--what can prevent it from being a lake? what hand of man can prevent that lake from being an ocean? or what power of human council can say to that ocean in its rage--Thus far shalt thou go?"

"But the great institutions of France, will they not form a barrier? Is not their ancient firmness proof against the loose and desultory assaults of a populace like that of Paris?"

"I shall answer by an image which occurred to me on my late tour of inspection to the ports in the west. At Cherbourg, millions of francs have been spent in attempting to make a harbour. When I was there one stormy day, the ocean rose, and the first thing swept away was the great _caisson_ which formed the principal defence against the tide,--its wrecks were carried up the harbour, heaped against the piers, which they swept away; hurled against the fortifications, which they broke down; and finally working ten times more damage than if the affair had been left to the surges alone. The thought struck me at the moment, that this _caisson_ was the emblem of a government assailed by an irresistible force. The firmer the foundations, and the loftier the superstructure, the surer it was to be ultimately carried away, and to carry away with it all that the mere popular outburst would have spared.--The massiveness of the obstacle increased the spread of the ruin. Few Asiatic kingdoms would be overthrown with less effort, and perish with less public injury, than the monarchy of the Bourbons, if it is to fall. Yet, your monarchy is firmer. It is less a vast building than a mighty tree, not fixed on foundations which can never widen, but growing from roots which continually extend. But, if that tree perish, it will not be thrown down, but torn up; it will not leave a space clear to receive a new work of man, but a pit, which no successor can fill for a thousand years."

"But the insurrection; I fear the attack on the palace."

"It will not take place. Your information shall be forwarded to the court; where, however, I doubt whether it will be received with much credence. The Austrian declaration of war has put the flatterers of royalty into such spirits, that if the tocsin were sounding at this instant, they would not believe in the danger. We have been unfortunately forced to send the chief part of the garrison of Paris towards the frontier. But we have three battalions of the Swiss guard within call at Courbevoie, and they can be ready on the first emergency. Rely upon it, all will go well."

With this assurance I was forced to be content; but I relied much more upon Mordecai and his Jewish intelligence. A despatch to London gave a minute of this conversation before I laid my head on my pillow; and I flung myself down, not without a glance at the tall roofs of the Tuileries, and a reflection on how much the man escapes whose forehead has no wrinkle from the diadem.

Within twenty four hours of this interview the ministry was dissolved! Dumourier was gone posthaste to the command of one of the armies on the frontier, merely to save his life from the mob, and I went to bed, in the Place Vendôme, by the light of Lafayette burned in effigy in the centre of the square. So much for popularity.

At dusk, on the memorable ninth of August, as I was sitting in a café of the Palais Royal, listening to the mountain songs of a party of Swiss minstrels in front of the door, Mendoza, passing through the crowd, made me a signal; I immediately followed him to an obscure corner of one of the galleries.

"The insurrection is fixed for to-night," was his startling announcement. "At twelve by the clock of Notre-Dame, all the sections will be under arms. The Jacobin club, the club of the Cordeliers, and the Faubourg St Antoine, are the alarm posts. The Marseillais are posted at the Cordeliers, and are to head the attack. Danton is already among them, and has published this address.

He gave me the placard. It was brief and bold.

"Citizens--The country is betrayed. France is in the hands of her enemies. The Austrians are advancing. Our troops are retreating, and Paris must be defended by her brave sons alone. But we have traitors in the camp. Our legislators are their accomplices: Lafayette, the slave of kings, has been suffered to escape; but the nation must be avenged. The perfidious Louis is about to follow his example and fly, after having devoted the capital to conflagration. Delay a moment, and you will have to fight by the flame of your houses, and to bleed over the ashes of your wives and children. March, and victory is yours. To arms! To arms!! To arms!!!"

"Does Danton lead the insurrection?"

"No--for two reasons: he is an incendiary but no soldier; and they cannot trust him in case of success. A secret meeting of the heads of the party was held two days since, to decide on a leader of the sections. It was difficult, and had nearly been finished by the dagger. Billaud de Varennes, Vanquelin, St Angely, and Danton, were successively proposed. Robespierre objected to them all. At length an old German refugee, a beggar, but a soldier, was fixed on; and Westerman is to take the command. By one o'clock the tocsin is to be rung, and the insurgents are instantly to move from all points on the Tuileries."

"What is the object?"

"The seizure, or death, of the King and Royal Family!"

"And the result of that object?"

"The proclamation of a Republic!"

"Is this known at the palace?"

"Not a syllable. All there are in perfect security; to communicate intelligence there is not in my department."

As I looked at the keen eye and dark physiognomy of my informant, there was an expression of surprise in mine at this extraordinary coolness, which saved me the trouble of asking the question.

"You doubt me," said he, "you feel distrust of information unpaid and voluntary. But I have been ordered by Mordecai, the chief of our tribe in England, to watch over you; and this information is a part of my obedience to the command." He suddenly darted away.