Chapter IV: Part XI (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 ordnance in the field,
And Heavens artillery thunder in the skies?
Have I not in the pitched battle heard
Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"

SHAKSPEARE.

Our procession had more than the usual object of those dreadful displays: it was at once an act of revenge and an act of policy. During the period while the gates of the convent shut out the living world from us, a desperate struggle had been going on between the two ruling factions. In this contest for life and death, the more furious, of course, triumphed; such is the history of rabble revolution in all ages. The Girondist with his eloquence naturally fell before the Jacobin with his libel; the Girondist, affecting a deference for law, was trampled by the Jacobin, who valued nothing but force; the tongue and the pen were extinguished by the dagger; and this day was the consummation. A debate in the Convention, of singular talent and unexampled ferocity, had finished by the impeachment of the principal Girondists. Justice here knew nothing of the "law's delay;" and the fallen orators now headed our melancholy line, bound, bareheaded, half naked, and more than half dead with weariness, shame, and the sense of ruin;--there could scarcely be more in the blow which put an end to all their perturbations on this side of the grave.

We had frequent halts, and I had full leisure to gaze around; for, rapidly as the guillotine performed its terrible task, our procession had been extended by some additional victims from every prison which we passed; and we passed so many that I began to think the city one vast dungeon. What strange curiosity is it that could collect such myriads to look upon us? Every street was crowded with a living mass; every casement was filled; every roof presented a line of eyes straining for a glance below. Instead of the crowd of a populous city, I could have believed that I saw the population of a kingdom poured in and compressed into the narrow streets through which we wound our slow way. From time to time a shout arose, as some conspicuous member of the Convention made his appearance in the vehicle of death: then execrations, scoffs, and insults, of every bitterness, were poured upon the unfortunate being; who seldom attempted to retaliate, or make any other return but a gesture of despair, or a supplication to be suffered to die in peace. Yet all was not cruelty nor insensibility. I saw instances, where friends, bold enough to brave the vengeance of the government, rushed forward to take a last grasp of the hand that must so soon be cold; and my heart was wrung by partings between still dearer objects and the condemned;--wives rushing forward through the multitude; children held up to their father's arms; beautiful and graceful young women, forcing their wild way through the line of troops, to take a last look, and exchange a last word, with those whom they would have rejoicingly followed to the tomb.

Our progress lasted half the day, and the sun was already near its setting, when the waggon in which I sat turned into the Place de Greve. But I must, I dare, describe no more. I shall not say what I saw in that general receptacle of the day of horror--the range of low biers which lay surrounding the scaffold, now the last resting-place of men who had but a few hours before flourished in the full possession of every faculty of our being; and, still more, with all those faculties in the full ardour of public life--with brilliant ambition to stimulate, with prospects of boundless power to reward, and with that most exhilarating and tempting spell of human existence, popular acclamation, resounding in their ears. I had known some of them, I had seen then all; and now I saw those highly gifted, vigorously practised, and fiery-souled men, shaken down in an instant like a shock of corn; swept to death as if they were but so many weeds; extinguished in a moment, and in another moment flung aside, a heap of clay, to make room for other dead. And this was Republicanism--this the reign of knowledge, the triumph of freedom, the glory of political regeneration! Even in that most trying moment, when I saw the waggon, in which I remained the last survivor but one, give up my unfortunate companion to the executioner, my parting words to him, as I shook his cold hand, were--"Better the forest and the savage than republicanism! Doubly cursed be murder, when it takes the name of freedom!"

I then resolved to see and hear no more; gave a brief and still a fond recollection to England; and, committing my spirit to a still higher care, I bowed my forehead on my hands, like one laying down his head for the final blow!

But while I was still thus absorbed I heard a sudden shout, the trampling of cavalry, and the sound of trumpets. I again raised my eyes. A strong body of French troopers, covered with the dust of the high-road, and evidently exhausted by a long journey, were passing along the _quai_ which bordered the scene of execution. In the midst of these squadrons were seen Austrian standards surmounted by the tricolor, and evidently carried as trophies. The rumour now ran quickly through the spectators, that Flanders had been entered, that the enemy had been routed, and that a column of Austrian prisoners was passing through the streets, of which those squadrons formed the escort.

What could now detain the multitude? The public curiosity would probably have defied grape-shot; with one burst they poured from the square. When the populace went, why should the National Guard stay behind?--were they not as much entitled to satisfy their curiosity? Three-fourths of the guard instantly piled their muskets, leaving them in care of their less zealous or more lazy fellow warriors, and ran after the multitude. The executioners were like other men; equally touched by their "country's glory," and fond of a spectacle. They dropped by twos and threes quietly from the sides of the scaffold, and made their way to the _quai_. In the mean time I was left disregarded; but I was still fettered, or I should have jumped from the waggon, and taken my chance for escape. All had evidently come to a full stop, and even that horrible machine, above my head, had ceased to clank and crush; for what is a spectacle in France without an audience? The chief headsman, with two or three of his assistants, true to their post, alone remained--waiting for the return of the people; yet even they cast many a lingering glance towards the pageant, whose plumes, flags, and kettledrums, passing across the entrance of the square, made their patriotism more difficult from minute to minute. At length the trumpets died away, and, to my renewed despondency, I saw the crowd again thicken towards me and the few remaining vehicles, which that day, now sinking into twilight, was to empty of their victims.

But I was again respited. While I awaited the summons to mount the fatal steps, a party of dragoons rode into the square, seized every waggon without a moment's delay, and ordered the whole to be driven out for the reception of a column of wounded, both French and Austrians; who, having been brought to the city gates, now waited the means of transport to the great military hospital at Vincennes.

In this country of expedients, the first suggestion is always the best. The colonel of dragoons in charge of the column, had applied to the government for the means of carriage; they referred him to the municipality, who referred him to the staff of the National Guard; who referred him to the subprefect; who referred him to his subordinate functionaries; who knew nothing on the subject; until the colonel, indignant at the impertinences of office, accidentally heard that the requisite conveyances were to be seen in front of the Hotel de Ville. Regarding it as the natural right of the soldier to be first served in all cases, he sent off a squadron at full speed to make his seizure. Nothing could be more complete. The affair was settled at once. The remonstrances of the civil officers against our being thus withdrawn from their grasp, were answered by bursts of laughter at their impudence, and blows with the flat of the sabre for their presumption; for, next to the open reprobation of the army for the civic cruelties, was their scorn of the civic functionaries. The National Guard made some feeble display of resistance, but soon showed that they had no wish to try their bayonets against those expert handlers of the sword; and the event was, that the whole train of fifty or sixty waggons, of which about a tenth remained full, were hurried away at full gallop down to the Boulevard, leaving the scaffold a sinecure. At the barrier a new arrangement took place; the wounded were piled into the carriages along with us, and the whole were marched under escort to the grand depot of the garrison of Paris.

I had seen Vincennes before, and under trying circumstances; its frowning physiognomy had not been altered, nor, as a prison, was it more congenial to my feelings than before. Yet, on hearing the hollow tread of our horses' feet over its drawbridge, and seeing myself actually within its massive walls, I experienced a feeling of satisfaction which I had never expected to enjoy within bolts and bars. In this world contrast is every thing. I had been so fevered with alternate peril and escape, so sick of doubt, and so perplexed with the thousand miseries of flight; that, to find myself secure from casualty for the next twenty-four hours, and relieved from the trouble of thinking for myself, or thinking of any thing, was a relief which amounted almost to a pleasure. I never laid myself down to sleep with greater thankfulness, than when, stretched on the wooden guard-bed of the barrack-room, where the whole crowd of prisoners were packed together, I listened to the beat of the night-drum and the changing of the guard. They told me that, for once at least, I might sleep without a police-officer, to bid me, like Master Barnardine, "arise and be hanged."

Time in a garrison is the most lingering of all conceivable things, except time in a prison. I had it, loaded with the double weight. There was no resource to be found in the fractured and bandaged portion of human nature round me. The Austrians were brave boors, who spoke nothing but Styrian or Carinthian, or some border dialect, which nothing but barbarism had ever heard of, and which nothing but Austrian organs could have ever pronounced. The French recruits were from provinces which had their own "beloved patois," and which, to the Parisian, held nearly the same rank of civilized respect as the Kingdom of Ashantee. Besides, it was to be remembered, that all round me was a scene of suffering--the dismal epilogue of a field of battle; or rather the dropping of the curtain on the royal stage, when the glitter and the noise were gone by, and the actors reduced from their pomps and vanities, and sent home to the shivering necessities of poor human existence.

Life to me was now as stagnant as the ditch round the fortress; all feeling was as languid as the heavy air of our casemates. The mind lost all curiosity relative to the external world; and, beyond the casual knowledge which dropped, with all official mystery, from the lips of our worthy governor, and which told us that the war still continued, and that the armies of the Republic were "invincible beyond all power of human resistance;" we could not have been much more separated from sympathy, even with the capital itself, if we had been transported to one of the belts of Jupiter.

But a new alarm now seized me. The extreme indifference with which I had begun to regard all things, at length struck the eye of one of the military surgeons, who had been sent from Paris in consequence of the influx of prisoners. He seemed to take some interest in my consumptive visage and lack-lustre eye; asked me whether "some of my family had not died early in life," and offered to dictate my pursuits and regimen. The French are by nature a kindly people, with this one proviso, that, though every Frenchman on earth is more or less a _persifleur_, you must never practise the art upon himself. M. Rossignol Perigord Pantoufle would have been an incomparable subject for the exercise, for he was eccentricity from top to toe. But the state of my spirits prevented my taking any share in the burlesque which too frequently befell this worthy person; and he attached himself to me as a sort of refuge from the sly, but stinging, persecution of his fellow-officers. When the hen-wife plucks the goose's bosom it makes her nestle more closely to her goslings. It was the calamity of my friend Pantoufle to be born with what the novelists call a "too feeling heart;" he was always in love with some one or another, and always jilted. But misfortune was thrown away upon him; he was still a complete sensitive plant, shivering and shrinking at every new touch: a dish of _blancmange_ could not have shaken with a slighter impulse, nor a shape of jelly more easily dissolved. He was now past fifty; and, never much indebted to nature in his youth, time, the foe to beauty, had been more than a foe to the doctor. I never recollect to have seen a figure or physiognomy less fitted to disturb the female soul. But he made me the confidant of his woes; and if I did not, like Desdemona, "to him seriously incline," at least I never laughed, amusing as were his agonies, and diverting as was his despair. I had either the presence of mind, or the feebleness of pulse, to look and listen;--the art has succeeded in higher places than prisons.

Yet all was not sentimentality with him. He was an honest and high-spirited man in the main. He questioned me--and no question could then be a bolder one at the time--in what manner he could best serve me. My answer was immediate--"Find out the commercial house of Elnathan, and tell the head of the family that I am here." The service was done, and I received for answer, on my friend's return from his ride to the Rue Vivienne--"That the firm kept no account with any person of my name; and that they had no desire to have any further application on the subject." The doctor, too, had been received with such gathering of black brows, and such murmurs between indignation and astonishment; that if Rabbi Elnathan had not been deemed altogether beneath the vengeance of "an officer in the service of the Republic," the consequence would have been a proposal to choose his own time to be run through the body in the Champs Elysees.

It was late when my ambassador had returned, and I had begun to feel some alarm for his peril by other than the shafts of Cupid in the rashness of exposing him to the jealous eye of his government, or perhaps to the denunciation of the Jewish firm, who, to screen themselves, might hasten with the intelligence to the first police-office. And I had an uneasy walk of a couple of hours, gazing from the ramparts, for every movement in the direction of the capital. The night was calm, and the glow of the lamps in the streets strikingly marked their outline; when on a sudden the sky was filled with flame of every colour, shot up in all directions, the cannon round the barriers began to roar, and Montmartre was in a perpetual blaze. It was plain that some extraordinary event had occurred; but whether this were the fall of the triumvirate or of their enemies, a new revolution or a new monarch, was beyond our knowledge; we were all hermetically sealed up in Vincennes; and if Paris had been buried in its own catacombs at the moment, the news would have been doled out to us only in the segments which suited the dignity of the governor.

But Pantoufle for once was popular in the fortress. If he had brought nothing to raise my spirits, his tidings threw the garrison into ecstasy. The Republic "had gained a great victory," whose value was enhanced by the previous disasters of the campaign. The favourite of the French armies, too, had gained that victory. This was another feature of the rejoicing. Dumourier was one of the people; "no noble, no aristocrat, no son of landed wealth, no lord of forests and feeder on privileges." He had been a simple captain of engineers; he was now conqueror of those Austrian provinces on which France had cast an eager eye for centuries. That prize, which all the monarchs of France, with all their titled marshals, had never been able to seize, "the Republic, with a republican army and a republican general, had won in the first month of her first invasion."

The garrison, of course, had its fireworks, its salute from the ramparts, and its _feu de joie_. But, in the midst of the festivity, I observed Pantoufle's countenance loaded with some mighty secret. He broke it to me with the air of a man revealing a conspiracy. Taking me on one side, while the ramparts were blazing with blue-lights, and every man, woman, and child of the garrison were chattering, huzzaing, and waltzing round us; he communicated to me the solemn fact, that his heart had been pierced again. This execution had been done while he was waiting in Elnathan's counting-house: a young Rachel or Rebecca had accidentally glanced across his sight, with such inimitable eyes, that his fate was decided for life. The world was valueless without her; and my particular advice was requested as to the way in which he was to make his approaches. I advised a sonnet. He smiled, and acknowledged that he had anticipated my advice, and had spent an hour of that twilight, dear to love and the muses, during which he had kept me in all the discomforts of suspense, devoting all the energies of his soul to the composition of a song to the beauties of the irresistible Israelite. Boileau has told the world, that a poet once insisted on his listening to an ode of his composition, while they were kneeling together at high mass. Our situation might not be quite as solemn, but the doctor was quite as pressing; and seated on the corner of a bastion, while the guns were roaring above our heads, I listened to an effusion in the most established style of sexagenarian poetry.

"Rachel est sans desirs,
C'est un bouton de rose,
Que la nature arrose,
Et dispose a s'ouvrir.

Dans son cour sans detour,
Il n'est pas jour encore;
Il attend pour eclore
Un rayon de l'amour!"

I listened without a laugh, and won the eternal gratitude of the writer. Nothing could be clearer than that, whatever the effusion might owe to the inspiration of Cupid, Apollo had no share in its charm. On my part, it would probably have been an act of the truest friendship, to have bid him burn his tablets, forswear poetry for ever, and regard himself as forbidden the temptations of the maids of Parnassus. But I should have broken his heart. I took the simpler but more effectual cure--I bade him find out this idol, and marry her. Before I forget him and his sorrows, let me mention, that he took my advice, and that, on my return to the Continent some years after, I found the poet transferred into the benedict, with a pretty wife at his side, and a circle of lively children at his knee--an active, thriving, and rational member of the community. I always quote the doctor, for the superiority of the soothing system. The vinegar of criticism would have festered the wounds of his vanity; the art of (must I call it) flattery healed them. It left a scar, I acknowledge; for the doctor still wrote verses, and still had a lurking propensity for climbing the slippery slope of poetic renown. But the realities of life are fortunate correctives to this passion, and, like Piron, luckily

"Il ne fut rien
Pas meme academician."

But on this night our "intercourse of souls" was interrupted by one of those painful evidences of the renewal of hostilities which shows war in its truest aspect. A long column of vehicles, which we had seen moving for some time across the plain, and whose movement, by the torches of the escort, looked from the ramparts like the trailing of an immense phosphoric serpent, approached the gates. The announcement was soon made that it was a large detachment of prisoners and wounded, who had arrived from the desperate but decisive battle in Flanders. All the medical officers of the garrison were immediately in requisition; and the sights which I saw, even when standing at the gate, as the carts and cars rolled over the drawbridge, were sufficient to startle feelings more used to such terrible demonstrations of the folly or the frenzy of the world. But this was no time to indulge indolent sensibilities. Of course, I have no desire to enter into the startling details of that spectacle. But mastering myself so far, as to volunteer my attendance for the time in the hospital, the thought often occurred to me, that there could be no better lesson for the love of conquest than a walk through a military hospital after the first battle.

This anxious service lasted during the greater part of the night; for the wounded amounted to little less than a thousand, both French and foreign. But as I was returning to my mattress, I recollected the countenance of a prisoner standing at the door of one of the chambers set apart for officers of the higher rank. The man put his hand to his shako, and addressed me in German;--he was one of the squadron of Hulans whom I had commanded in the Prussian retreat, and who had rejoined his regiment after the skirmish with the French dragoons. He expressed great delight in finding that I was a survivor. But "on whom was he now in attendance?" "On Major-General Count Varnhorst." He told me that the general had volunteered to join the Austrian army in the Netherlands, and taking the Hulan with him, had been wounded in covering the retreat, been found on the field, and was now in the hands of the surgeons in that chamber!

I pass briefly over this scene. I found my brave friend apparently at the point of death; he had been wounded by the sabre, trampled under horses' hoofs, and crushed in every imaginable way, in the course of the desperate defence which he made against an overwhelming force of the enemy's cavalry. The officers of the escort were loud in reports of his almost frantic gallantry; but he was now so exhausted by the length of the march as to be almost insensible: he knew no one; and his case, after a day or two, was pronounced beyond all cure. It was then that I obtained permission to watch over him, and at least provide that he should not be disturbed in his closing hours. Care is often more than science, and care succeeded in this instance, against all the ominous looks of the medical staff. I so much delighted Pantoufle, by having thus overthrown the authority of a pragmatical _confrere_, who had been peculiarly stern in his prognostics; that he made the proposal to me of joining him in the chances of his profession. "I shall fix myself in Paris," said he; "fame will be the inevitable consequence, and fortune will follow; here you shall be my successor." I fought off the prospect as well as I could, and pleaded my want of professional knowledge. His countenance, at the words, would have been an incomparable study of mingled burlesque and scorn. He instanced a whole crowd of leading men, whom he unceremoniously designated as having made fortunes, not by knowledge, but simply by its absence. "Their ignorance," said he, "gives them effrontery, and effrontery is the grand secret of fame. You are an Englishman and a philosopher,"--the latter expression uttered with a curl of the lip and an elevation of the brow, which evidently translated the word, a fool. "You take things circuitously, while success lies in the straight line; thus you fail, we triumph."

I admitted the rapidity of his countrymen.

"In France," said he, or rather exclaimed, "two things conduct to renown; and but two--to stop at nothing, and never to admit ignorance in any thing; in medicine, to cure or kill without delay; in surgery, to operate at all risks. If the patient dies, there are fifty reasons for it; if the surgeon hesitates, the public will allow of but one. Politics are not within my line, and the subject is just now a delicate one; but you see that the secret of renown is, to run on the edge of the scaffold. In soldiership the principle is the same--always to fight, whenever you can find any body to fight with; you will deserve to be famous, or deserve to be guillotined.'

"Perhaps both," I remarked.

"Nothing more probable. But still something is done; inaction does nothing. Look at Dumourier; he has had no more necessity for fighting this battle, than for jumping from the parapet of Notre-Dame. But he has fought, he has conquered; and, instead of throwing himself from the parapet of Notre-Dame, which he probably would have done in the next fortnight's _ennui_ in Paris, all Paris is placarded with his bulletins."

"But he _might_ have been beaten; he might have been ruined, or brought to trial for rashness; or to an Austrian prison, like La Fayette."

"Of course he might. But the question is of the fact--let prophets deal with the future. He _has_ beaten the Austrians; he _has_ conquered Flanders; he _has_ made himself the first man of France by the act, for which, if he had been an Austrian general, he would have been brought to a court-martial, his victory pronounced contrary to rule, his bravery a breach of etiquette, and the rest of his days, if he was not shot on the ramparts of Vienna, spent in a dungeon in Prague. Take my advice; dash at every thing; risk is the grand talent--adventure, the philosopher's stone. So, listen to me; you shall be admitted to the Hotel Dieu as an _eleve_; become my assistant, and make your fortune."

I stared at this sudden explosion of the doctor's rhetoric; but I should have remembered, that he was under the double inspiration of new-born love and reluctant rhyme.

Varnhorst at length attempted to walk as far as the ramparts, and I was enjoying the pride of being able to exhibit my patient to the garrison; when, just as we were issuing from the long and chill corridors into the fresh air and sunshine, I observed the commandant coming towards me with a peculiar air of gravity, attended by several of his officers. Bowing to Varnhorst with military etiquette, he took him aside and communicated to him a few words, which made his pale countenance look paler still. "My friend is brave," was the Prussian's reply, turning a glance to where I stood. "I have seen him in the field. I am satisfied that, wherever he is, he will do his duty."

The commandant now walked up to me, and with an air of embarrassment put a sealed letter into my hands. It was from the minister of foreign affairs, and was marked _secret and immediate_. I opened it, and I shall not say with what feelings I saw--an order for my attendance at the office of the minister, signed ROBESPIERRE.

If the grim majesty of death had put his signature in person to this order, it would not have borne a more mortal aspect. It was a pang! yet the pang did not continue long. Inevitable things are not the hardest to be borne. At all events, there was no time for pondering on the subject. The carriage which had brought the order and the government _huissier_, was at the gate. Varnhorst gave me one grasp of his honest hand as I left him; the commandant wished me "good fortune." I hurried into the carriage, and we flew on the road to Paris.

On reaching the barrier, we turned off to the quarter of the Luxembourg, and stopped at the gate of a moderate-sized house, where my conductor and I entered. I was shown into a small and simple room; where I found a man advanced in years, and of a striking aspect. He said not a word; I had no inclination to speak. The one or two hesitating syllables which I addressed to him were answered only by a bow and a look, as if he did not understand the language; and I awaited the approach of the terror of France, the horror of Europe, during half an hour, which seemed to me interminable. The door at last opened, a valet came in, and the name of "Robespierre" thrilled through every fibre; but, instead of the frowning giant to which my fancy had involuntarily attached the name, I saw a slight figure, highly dressed, and even with the air of a fop on the stage. Holding a perfumed handkerchief in one hand, which he waved towards his face like one indulging in the fragrance, and a diamond snuff-box in the other, he advanced with a sliding step; and after a sallow smile to me, and a solemn bow to the old man, congratulated himself on the "honour of the acquaintance, which he had been indebted to his friend Elnathan for making, in my person." I was all astonishment: I had come in expectation of receiving my death-warrant--I had a reception like an ambassador. I now perplexed myself with the idea, that I had been mistaken for some stranger in the foreign diplomacy; but I was instantly set right by his pronouncing my name, and making some allusions to "the influence of my family in the British Parliament."

Yet, I was still in the tiger's den, and I expected to feel the talons. I was happily disappointed; the claw was sheathed in velvet. A slight refection was brought in by an embroidered domestic, and it was evidently the wish of this tremendous demagogue to appear the man of refinement, at least in my instance.

"My friend Elnathan," said he, "has informed me that you wish to return to England?"

This was pronounced in the meekest tone of interrogatory; and, with eyes scarcely raised to either of us, he awaited my confirmation of his idea.

It was given unhesitatingly; and my glance at the countenance of the old man was answered by another, which told me that I saw the correspondent of my friend Mordecai.

"The circumstances are simply these," said the dictator in the same delicate tone; "the government has occasion to arrange some matters of importance with the British cabinet. The successes of the Republic have raised jealousies, which it is for the advantage of human nature that we should reconcile if possible. France and England are the only free countries: their hostility can only be injurious to freedom."

He paused, and his cold grey eye, after traversing the floor, was slowly raised to me.

I admitted my perfect agreement in the opinion, that "wherever national conflict could be avoided, it was the business of all rational men to maintain peace." I saw a grim smile pass over his sallow features, probably at having found another dupe. Elnathan sat in profound silence, without a muscle moved.

Robespierre, rising, took from a portfolio a letter, and put it into the Jew's hand. He now had got over that strange embarrassment with which his habitual nervousness had marked his first address, and spoke largely, and with a considerable expression of authority.

"The English government," said he, "have expressed some unnecessary uneasiness at the progress of opinion in Europe. The late victory, which has decided the fate of the Austrian Netherlands, will probably increase that uneasiness. Communications through the usual channels are slow, imperfect, and open to espionage on all sides. I have, therefore, applied to my friend Elnathan to point out some individual in whom he has perfect confidence, and through whom the communication can be made. He has named you."

Elnathan, with his huge hands clasped on his breast, and his bushy brows drawn deep over his eyes, bent forward with almost oriental affirmation.

"When will you be ready to set out for Calais?"

"This moment," was my willing answer.

"No, we are not quite prepared." He walked for a while about the room, pondering on the subject; then, turning to Elnathan, he directed the Jew to get ready some papers connected with the financial dealings which his English brethren were then beginning to carry on extensively throughout Europe. Those were to be arranged by next day, and for those I must wait.

"You shall be under the care of Elnathan," said the master of my fate. "He will obtain your passports from the Foreign Office, and you will leave Paris to-morrow evening at furthest. We must avoid all suspicion, Elnathan," said he, turning to the Jew. "Paris is a hot-bed of spies. Apropos, where do you propose to spend the evening?"

My mind glanced at Vincennes, and his eye, cold as it was, caught my startled conception.

"No, your return to-night to the fortress would only set all the tongues of Paris in motion to-morrow. You must be seen in public to-night, at the opera, the theatre, or where you will. You must figure as an Englishman travelling at his pleasure and his leisure--_a Milor_."

"Madame Roland gives a soiree to-night," humbly interposed the Jew.

"Ha!--that is the best of all. You must go there. You will be seen by all the world. Elnathan will introduce you to the 'philosophic lady' of the circle." He then resumed his pacing round the room. I could observe the vulpine expression of his visage, the twitching of his hands, the keen sidelong look of a man living in perpetual alarm. We prepared to take our leave; but he now suddenly resumed the _petit-maitre_, flourished his perfumed handkerchief again, gave a passing smile at the mirror, and offered me the honours of his snuff-box with the affectation of the stage. But, as we reached the door of the apartment, he made a long, single stride, which brought him up close to me. "Remember, sir," said he, in a stern voice, wholly unlike the past--"You have it in charge from me to inform the government of your country of the actual feeling of France. It is true that there are madmen among us--Brissotins, Girondists, and other enthusiasts--who talk of war. I tell you that they _are_ madmen, and that _I_ will have no war.--There may be conspirators, who think to shake the existing _regime_ of the republic, and look to war as the means of raising themselves on its ruins.--_I_ tell you, and you may tell your cabinet, that they will not accomplish their objects here; and that, if they accomplish them, it will be the fault and the folly alone of England. Impress those truths on the minds of your countrymen: the Republic desires no war; her principle is peace, her purpose is peace, her prosperity is peace. There will be, there shall be, there _can_ be, no war." He folded his arms, and stood like a pillar till we withdrew.

I happened to ascertain shortly afterwards, that on this very day Robespierre had presided at a council which has sent off orders to Dumourier to open the Scheldt, the notorious and direct preliminary to war with England. Such is the sincerity of diplomacy!

I remained during the rest of the day with Elnathan. His hotel was splendid, and all that surrounded him gave the impression of great opulence; but it was obvious that he lived like a man in a gunpowder magazine. He had several sons and daughters, whom, in the terrors of the time, he had contrived to send among his connexions in Germany; and he now lived alone, his wife having been dead for some years. All his wealth could not console him for the anxiety of his position; and doubtless he would have perished long before, in the general massacre of the opulent, except for the circumstance of being the chief channel of moneyed communication between the government and Germany. In the course of our lonely but most _recherche_ dinner, he explained to me slightly the means of my recent preservation. The police-officer had acquainted him with my being the bearer of a letter from Mordecai. The intelligence reached him just in time to save me, by a daring claim of my person as an agent of the English ministry. He had then lost sight of me, and began to think that I had perished; when the application of my friend the doctor told him where I was to be found. The message of the head of the Republic, requiring a confidential bearer of documents, struck him as affording an opportunity of my liberation; and though the palpable absurdity of my worthy friend Pantoufle prevented any communication with _him_, no time was lost in proposing my name to authority.

"And now," said my entertainer, after drinking my safe arrival in a bumper of imperial tokay, "En avance, for Madame Roland."

We drove to a splendid mansion in the Rue de la Revolution. The street in front was crowded with equipages, and it was with some difficulty that we could make our way through the long and stately suite of rooms. The house had belonged to the Austrian ambassador; and on the declaration of war it had been taken possession of by the Republic without ceremony.

I observed to Elnathan, that "to judge from the pomp of the furniture, republicanism was not republican every where."

"Nowhere but in the streets, or the prisons," was his reply in a whisper. "Since the Austrian left it, the whole hotel has been furnished anew at the most profuse expense, which I had the honour of supplying. Roland is a great personage, an honest nobody, a mill-horse at the wheel of office. He is probably drudging over his desk at this moment; but Madame is of another mould. "La voila!" He turned suddenly, and made a profound bow to a very showy female, who had advanced from a group for the purpose of receiving the Jew and the stranger. I had now, for the first time, the honour of seeing this remarkable personage. Her figure was certainly striking, and her physiognomy conveyed a great deal of her character for intelligence and decision. She had evidently dressed herself on the model of the _classique_; and though not handsome enough for a Venus, nor light enough for a nymph, she might have made a tolerable Minerva. She had probably some thoughts of the kind; for before we had time to make our bows, she threw herself into an attitude of the Galerie des Antiques, and, with her eyes fixed profoundly on the ground, awaited our incense. But when this part was played, the idol condescended to become human, and she spoke with that torrent of language which her clever countrywomen have at unrivaled command. She was "delighted, charmed, enchanted, to make my acquaintance. She had owed many marks of friendship to M. Elnathan; but this surpassed them all--she admired the English--they were always the friends of liberty--France was now beginning a race in the arena of freedom. The rivalry was brilliant, the prize was inestimable." I could only bow. Again, "she was enraptured to see an Englishman; the countryman of Milton and Wilkes, of Charles Fox and William Tell--she had been lately studying English history, and had wept floods of tears over the execution of William III.--_Enfin_, she hoped that Shakspeare, 'ce beau, ce superbe Shakspeare,' was in good health, and meant to give the world many, many more charming tragedies."

She had now discharged her first volley, and she wheeled back upon a group of members of the Convention, grim and sullen-looking sages, with wild hair hanging over their shoulders, and the genuine Carmagnole physiognomy. With those men she was evidently plunged in vehement discussion, and her whole volume of politics was flung at their heads with as little mercy as her literary stores had been poured upon me.

But the crowd pressed towards another object of curiosity, and I followed it, under the guidance of my Asmodeus, to a music room, splendidly fitted up, and filled with the most select orchestra of the capital. But it was an amateur that was there to attract all eyes and ears. "Madame de Fontenai," whispered the Jew, as he glanced towards a woman of a remarkably expressive countenance and statue-like form, half sitting, half reposing, on a sofa--surrounded by a group soliciting her for a "few notes, a suspiration, a _soupcon_"--of, as Elnathan observed, "one of the most delicious voices which had ever crossed the Pyrenees," and the Jew had all the habitual connoisseurship of his nation. At last the siren consented, and a harp was brought and placed before her, with the same homage which might have attended an offering to the Queen of Cyprus, in her own island, three thousand years ago; and rather letting her hand drop among the strings, than striking them, and rather breathing out her feelings, than performing any music of mortal composition, she sang one of the fantastic, but deep, reveries of passion of "the sweet south."

SARABANDA.

"Tus ojos y los mios
Se miran y hablan.
Pero los Corazones
No se declaran.
Mas te prevengo
Que si tu no te explicas,
Yo no te entiendo.

"Las dudas de un amante
No han de saberse,
Que al decirlas se sabe.
Que desmerecen.
No--en el silencio
No son pensamientos
D'el mas aprecio."[14]

The song closed in a burst of plaudits, as general and marked as if they had been given to a _prima donna_ in a theater, and she received them as if she was in a theatre.

"You should be presented to Madame de Fontenai," was my guide's suggestion. "She is our reigning _celebrite_ at present, as Madame Roland is our _publicite_. You see we are nice in our distinctions.--I shall probably to-night show you another, a very handsome creature indeed, without half the talents of either, but with more admirers than both; who has obtained the title of our _felicite_."

"I shall be delighted to be made known to her, but give me the _carte du pays_. Who or what is she?"

"The daughter of Cabarus, the Spanish ambassador here some years ago. She is now a widow, rich, giving the most _recherche_ suppers, followed by all the world, and, as she declares, _persecuted_ by M. Tallien; who, as perseverance is nine-tenths of success in every thing, will probably succeed in making her Madame Tallien."

I had now the honor of being presented, and was received with very flattering attention. This I probably owed to the Jew, who seemed to have the key to every one's smiles, as he had to most of their escrutoires. She was certainly a person of most distinguished appearance. Not handsome, so far as beauty depends on feature; for she had the olive tinge of her country, Spain, and she had the _not_ Spanish "petit nez retrousse." She required distance for fascination. But her figure was fine, and never was any costume more studied to exhibit it in all its graces. Accustomed as I had become to foreign life, I must acknowledge that I was a little surprised at the unhesitatingly _classical_ development of her form;--arms naked to the shoulder, or clasped only with golden serpents; a robe _a la Diane_, and succinct as ever huntress wore; silver sandals, a jeweled cestus, and a tunic of white satin deeply embroidered with gold, depending simply to the knee! But when she placed me on the sofa beside her, and entered into conversation, every thing was forgotten but her incomparable elegance of manner. She had singular brilliancy of eye; it almost spoke, it perpetually flashed, and it filled up the pauses when she ceased to speak, with a meaning absolutely mental. Her language was animated and intelligent; sometimes in a tone of gentle and touching confidence, which made the hearer almost think that he was looking at her soul through her vivid countenance. Before a few minutes had elapsed, I could fully comprehend her title to the renown of the most captivating conversationist of Paris.

As I at length relinquished this enviable and envied position, to give way to the crowd who brought their tribute to the _fateuil_, or rather the shrine, of this dazzling woman--"You have still," said my companion, "to see another of our sovereigns; for, as we have a triumvirate in the Tuileries, the world of taste is ruled by three rivals; and they are curiously characteristic of the classes from which they have sprung. The lady of the mansion, you must have perceived to be republican in every sense of the word--clever undoubtedly, but as undoubtedly bourgeoise; intelligent in no slight degree, but too much in earnest for elegance; perpetually taking the lead on those desperate subjects, in which women can only be, and ought to be, smatterers; and all this to the infinite amusement of her hearers, and the unbounded terror of her meek and very helpless husband."

I remarked, "that she had, at least, the important merit of giving very splendid entertainments."

"Yes, and of also possessing as honest a heart as she possesses a rash brain. She is kind, generous, and even rational, where she has not a revolution to make or to ruin. But, suffer her to touch on politics, and you might as well bring a lunatic into the full moon."

"But that singular being, to whom we have just been listening, and whose song I shall hear to-night in my dreams--can she be a politician, a republican? I have never seen a countenance more likely to be contemptuous of the _canaille_!"

"You are perfectly in the right. She has a sphere of her own, which has no more to do with our world than if she lived in the evening-star. She exists simply to enjoy homage, and to reward it, as you have seen, by a song or a smile; yet she has been on the verge of the scaffold. Some of our most powerful political characters are contending for her influence, her fortune, or her hand; and whether the contest will end in raising M. Tallien to the head of the Republic, or extinguishing him within the week, is a question which chance alone can decide.--She may yet be a queen."

"She seems fitter to be a Circe, or a Calypso. Or if a queen, she would be a Cleopatra."

"No," said Elnathan, with the only laugh which I had seen on his solemn visage during the night. "She has known too much of courts to endure royalty. She reigns as the widow of M. de Fontenai. If Tallien falls, she will have the power of choosing from all his successors. When old age comes at last, and conquests are hopeless, she will turn _devote_, fly to her native Spain, abjure the face of man, spend her money on wax-dolls and cockle-shells; and after being worshipped by the multitude as a saint, and panegyrized by the monks as a miracle, will die with her face turned to Paris after all, as good Mussulmen send their last breath in the direction of Mecca."

We now plunged into the centre of a circle of men in military costume, full of the war, and criticising Dumourier's campaign with the utmost severity. As I listened; with some surprise at the multiplicity of errors which the most successful general of France had contrived to squeeze into a single month of operations, I observed a man, of a pale thin visage, like one suffering from ill health or excessive mental toil, but of a singularly intellectual expression; standing at a slight distance from the group of tacticians with a quiet smile.

"Let me have the honour of presenting M. Marston to the minister at war," was my introduction to the celebrated Carnot; with whom Elnathan seemed to be on peculiar terms of intimacy. The minister entered at once, and good-humouredly, into conversation.

"You must not think our favourite general," said he, "altogether the military novice which those gentlemen of the National Guard have decided him to be. I feel an additional interest in the question, because I had a little official battle to fight to place him at the head of the army of Flanders. But I saw that he had military talent, and that, with a republic, cancels all sins."

I made some passing remark on the idleness of disputing the ability of an officer who answered cavils by conquest, observing, that the only rational altar raised by the Romans, a people of warriors, was to "Good Fortune."

"Ah yes, you think, in the Choiseul style, that the first question to be asked in choosing a general was, 'is he lucky?' I must own, notwithstanding, that our city warriors have been of the opinion"--and a slight movement curled his lip--"that General Dumourier has fought his battle against principle. But they do not perceive, that _there_ lies the very merit for which the Republic must uphold him. His troops were in an exhausted country; they had but provisions for two days. He must fight at once or retreat. Another general might have retreated; and made his apology by the state of his haversacks. Dumourier took the other alternative: he fought; and the general who fights is the only general who gains victories."

One of the tacticians at whom he had indulged in a sneer, Santerre, the commandant of the city horse, a huge and heavy hero with enormous jackboots and a clattering sabre, now strode up to us, and pronounced that the campaign had been hitherto "against all rule."

"You mistake, my good friend," said the now half-angry minister--"you mistake acting above rule for acting against rule. Our war is new, our force is new, our position is new; and we must meet the struggle by new means every where. Follow the routine, and all is lost. Invent, act, hazard, strike, and we shall triumph as Dumourier has done--France is surrounded with enemies. To conquer, we must astonish. If we wait to be attacked, we must feel the weakness of defence--the spirit of the French soldier is attack. Within the frontier he is a bird in a cage; beyond it he is a bird in the air. Why has France always triumphed in the beginning of a war? because she has always invaded. The French soldier must march, he must fight, he must feel that he hazards every thing, before he rises to that pitch of daring, that ardour, that _elan_, by which he gains every thing. Let him, like the Greek, burn his ships behind him, and from that moment he is invincible."

I listened with speechless interest to this development of the principles on which the great war of Europe was to be sustained. The speaker uttered his oracular sentences with a glow, which left his hearers almost as breathless as himself. I could imagine that I saw before me the living genius of French victory.

While we were standing, silenced by this burst; an incident occurred, as if to give demonstration to his theory; an aide-de-camp entered the room, bringing despatches from the army of Flanders. He had but just arrived in Paris, and not finding the war-minister at his bureau, had followed him here. Of course, the strongest conceivable curiosity existed; but not a syllable was to be learned from the official mystery of the aide-de-camp. He made his advance to the minister, deposited the despatch in his hands, and then drew up his stately figure, impervious to all questioning. Carnot retired to an alcove to read the missive, and in the mean time the general anxiety was an absolute fever. The dance ceased, the tables of loto and faro were deserted, the whole business of life was broken up, and five hundred of the handsomest, the most brilliant, and the best dressed of the earth, were standing on tiptoe in an agony of suspense. It would have justified a counter-revolution.