Chapter VI: Part 6

"The worst of all this," said he, with his grave smile, "is that the officer in command of your camp on that night will get a red riband and a regiment; and that you will get only the advantage of recollecting, that in war, and perhaps in every situation of life, nothing is to be despaired of, and nothing is to be left untried. A candle in a lantern, properly used, probably saved both our lives, the lives of some thousands of your brave troops, the fate of the campaign, and, with it, half the thrones of Europe, trembling on the chance of a first campaign. I shall yet have some of my mystical countrymen writing an epic on my Flemish lantern."

During this little narrative, we had been riding over the bleak downs which render the environs of Valenciennes such a barren contrast to the general luxuriance of northern France; and were examining the approaches to the city, when Guiscard called to his attendant for his telescope. We were now in the great coal-field of France; but the miners had fled, and left the plain doubly desolate. "Can those," said he, "be the miners returning to their homes? for if not, I am afraid that we shall have speedy evidence of the hazards of inactivity." But the twilight was now deepening, and neither of us could discern any thing beyond an immense mass of men, in grey cloaks, hurrying towards the city. I proposed that we should ride forward, and ascertain the facts. He checked my rein. "No! Amadis de Gaul, or Rolando, or by whatever name more heroic your chivalry prefers being called, we must volunteer no further. My valet shall return to the camp and bring us any intelligence which is to be found there, while we proceed on our survey of the ground for our batteries."

We had gone but a few hundred yards, and I was busily employed in sketching the profile of the citadel, when we heard the advance of a large party of British cavalry, with several of the staff, and the Duke of York, then a remarkably handsome young man, at their head. I had seen the Duke frequently on our parades in England; but even the brief campaign had bronzed his cheek, and given him the air which it requires a foreign campaign to give. He communicated the sufficiently interesting intelligence, that since the victory over Dampier, the enemy had collected a strong force from their garrisons, and after throwing ten thousand men into Valenciennes, had formed an intrenched camp, which was hourly receiving reinforcements. "But we must put a stop to that," said the Duke, with a smile; "and, to save them trouble and ourselves time, we shall attack them to-morrow." He then addressed himself to Guiscard, with the attention due to his name and rank, and conversed for a few minutes on the point of attack for the next day--examined my sketch--said some flattering words on its correctness, and galloped off.

"Well," said Guiscard, as he followed with his glance the flying troop, "war is a showy spectacle, and I can scarcely wonder that it should be the game of princes; but a little more common sense in our camps would have saved us to-morrow's battle. The delays of diplomacy are like the delays of law--the estate perishes before the process is at an end. But now to our work." We rode to the various points from which a view of the newly arrived multitude could be obtained. Their fires began to blaze; and we were thus enabled to ascertain at once their position, and, in some degree, their numbers. There could not be less than thirty thousand men, the arrival of the last few hours. "For this _contretemps_," said Guiscard, as he examined their bivouac with his telescope, "we have to thank only ourselves. Valenciennes ought to have been stormed within the first five minutes after we could have cut down those poplars for scaling ladders," and he pointed to the tapering tops of the large plantations lining the banks of the Scheldt; "but we have been quarreling over our portfolios, while the French have been gathering every rambling soldier within a hundred miles; and now we shall have a desperate struggle to take possession of those lines, and probably a long siege as finale to the operation. There, take my glass, and judge for yourselves." I looked, and if the novelty and singularity could have made me forget the serious business of the scene, I might have been amply amused. The whole French force were employed in preparing for the bivouac, and fortifying the ground, which they had evidently taken up with the intent of covering the city. All was in motion. At the distance from which we surveyed it, the whole position seemed one huge ant-hill. Torches, thickets burning, and the fires of the bivouac, threw an uncertain and gloomy glare over portions of the view, which, leaving the rest in utter darkness, gave an ominous and ghostly look to the entire. I remarked this impression to Guiscard, and observed that it was strange to see a "scene of the most stirring life so sepulchral."

"Why not?" was his reply. "The business is probably much the same."

"Yet sepulchral," I observed, "is not exactly the word which I would have used. There is too much motion, too much hurried and eager restlessness, too much of the wild and fierce activity of beings who have not a moment to lose, and who are busied in preparations for destruction."

"Have you ever been in the Sistine Chapel?" asked my companion.

"No; Italy has been hitherto beyond my flight; but the longing to see it haunts me."

"Well, then, when your good fortune leads you to Rome, let your first look be given to the noblest work of the pencil, and of Michael Angelo: glance at the bottom of his immortal picture, and you will see precisely the same wild activity, and the same strange and startling animation. The difference only is, that the actors here are men--there, fiends; here the scene is the field of future battle--there, the region of final torment. I am not sure that the difference is great, after all."

At daybreak, the British line was under arms. I feel all words fail, under the effort to convey the truth of that most magnificent display; not that a simple detail may not be adequate to describe the movements of a gallant army; but what can give the impression of the time, the form and pressure of collisions on which depended the broadest and deepest interests of the earth. Our war was then, what no war was since the old invasions under the Edwards and Henrys--national; it was as romantic as the crusades. England was fighting for none of the objects which, during the last three hundred years, had sent armies into the field--not for territory, not for glory, not for European supremacy, not even for self-defence. She was fighting for a Cause; but that was the cause of society, of human freedom, of European advance, of every faculty, feeling, and possession by which man is sustained in his rank above the beasts that perish. The very language of the great dramatist came to my recollection, at the moment when I heard the first signal-gun for our being put in motion.

"Now all the youth of England are on fire,
And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies.
Now thrive the armourers; and honour's thought
Reigns solely in the breast of every man.
They sell the pasture now to buy the horse,
Following the mirror of all Christian kings
With winged heels, as English Mercuries."

Our troops, too, had all the ardour which is added even to the boldest by the assurance of victory. They had never come into contact with the enemy but to defeat them, and the conviction of their invincibility was so powerful, that it required the utmost efforts of their officers to prevent their rushing into profitless peril. The past and the present were triumphant; while, to many a mind of the higher cast, the future was, perhaps, more glittering than either. In the same imperishable eloquence of poetry--

"For now sits expectation in the air,
And hides a sword, from hilt unto the point,
With crowns imperial, crowns and coronets,
Promised to Harry and his followers."

The ambition of the English soldier may be of a more modified order than that of the foreigner; but the dream of poetry was soon realized in the crush of the Republicans, who had trampled alike the crown and the coronet in the blood of their owners. Twenty-seven thousand men were appointed for the attack of the French lines; and on the first tap of the drum, a general shout of exultation was given from all the columns. The cavalry galloped through the intervals to the front, and parks of the light guns were sent forward to take up positions on the few eminences which commanded the plain; but the day had scarcely broke, when one of those dense fogs, the customary evil of the country, fell suddenly upon the whole horizon, and rendered action almost impossible. Nothing could exceed the vexation of the army at this impediment; and if our soldiers had ever heard of Homer, there would have been many a repetition of his warrior's prayer, that "live or die, it might be in the light of day."

But in the interval, important changes were made in the formation of the columns. The French lines had been found of unexpected strength, and the Guards were pushed forward to head a grand division placed under command of General Ferrari. The British were, of course, under the immediate orders of an officer of their own, and a more gallant one never led troops under fire. I now, for the first time, saw the general who was afterwards destined to sweep the French out of Egypt, and inflict the first real blow on the military supremacy of France under Napoleon. General Abercromby was then in the full vigour of life; a strongly formed, manly figure, a quiet but keen eye, and a countenance of remarkable steadiness and thought, all gave the indications of a mind firm in all the contingencies of war. Exactly at noon, the fog drew up as suddenly as it had descended, and we had a full view of the enemy's army. No foreign force ever exhibits so showy and soldierly an appearance as the British. The blue of the French and Prussians looks black, and the white of the Austrian looks faded and feeble, compared with the scarlet. As I cast my glance along our lines, they looked like trails of flame. The French were drawn up in columns in front of their camp, which, by the most extraordinary exertion, they had covered during the night with numerous batteries, and fortified with a circle of powerful redoubts; the guns of the fortress defended their flank and rear, and their position was evidently of the most formidable kind. But all view was lost, from the moment when the head of our brigade advanced. Every gun that could be brought to bear upon us opened at once, and all was enveloped in smoke. For a full hour we could see nothing but the effect of the grape-shot on our own ranks as we poured on, and hear nothing but the roar of the batteries. But at length shouts began to arise in distant parts of the field, and we felt that the division which had been appointed to assault the rear of the camp was making progress. Walmoden, commanding a brigade under Ferrari, now galloped up, to ascertain whether our men were ready to assault the intrenchments. "The British troops are _always_ ready," was Abercromby's expressive, and somewhat indignant, answer. In the instant of our rushing forward, an aide-de-camp rode up, to acquaint the general that the column under the Duke of York had already stormed three redoubts. "Gentlemen," said Abercromby, turning to the colonels round him, "we must try to save our friends further trouble--forward!" Within a quarter of an hour we were within the enemy's lines, every battery was stormed or turned, and the French were in confusion. Some hurried towards the fortress, which now began to fire; a large body fled into the open country, and fell into the hands of his royal highness; and some, seizing the boats on the river, dropped down with the stream. All was victory: yet this was to be my day of ill luck. In pursuing the enemy towards the fortress, a battalion, which had attempted to cover the retreat, broke at the moment when my company were on the point of charging them. This was too tempting a chance to be resisted; we rushed on, taking prisoners at every step, until we actually came within sight of the gate by which the fugitives were making their escape into the town. But we were in a trap, and soon felt that we were discovered, by a heavy discharge of musketry from the rampart. We had now only to return on our steps, and I had just given the word, when the firing was renewed on a bastion, round which we were hurrying in the twilight. I felt a sudden shock, like that of electricity, which struck me down; I made a struggle to rise on my feet, but my strength wholly failed me, and I lost all recollection.

On my restoration to my senses, in a few hours after, I found that I had been carried into the town, and placed in the military hospital. My first impulse was, to examine whether any of my brave fellows had shared my misfortune; but all round me were French, wounded in the engagement of the day. My next source of congratulation was, that I had no limb broken. The shot had struck me in the temple, and glanced off without entering; but I had lost much blood, had been trampled, and felt a degree of exhaustion, which gave me the nearest conception to actual death.

Of the transactions of the field I knew nothing beyond my own share of the day; but I had seen the enemy in full flight, and that was sufficient. Within a day or two, the roaring of cannon, the increased bustle of the attendants, and the tidings that a black flag had been erected on the hospital, told me that the siege had begun. I shall pass over its horrors. Yet, what is all war but a succession of horrors? The sights which I saw, the sounds which I heard from hour to hour, were enough to sicken me of human nature. In the gloom and pain of my sleepless nights, I literally began to think it possible that a fiendish nature might supplant the human condition, and that the work before my eyes was merely an anticipation of those terrors, which to name startles the imagination and wrings the heart. Surrounded with agonies, the involuntary remark always came to my mind with renewed freshness, in the common occurrences of the hospital day. But, besides the sufferings of the wounded, a new species of suffering, scarcely less painful, and still more humiliating, began to be prominent. The provisions of the people, insufficiently laid in at the approach of the besiegers, rapidly failed, and the hospital itself was soon surrounded by supplicants for food. The distress, at last, became so excessive, that it amounted to agony. Emaciated figures of both sexes stole or forced their way into the building, to beg our rations, or snatch them from our feeble hands; and I often divided my scanty meal with individuals who had once been in opulent trade, or been ranked among the _semi-noblesse_ of the surrounding country. Sometimes I missed faces to which I had been accustomed among those unfortunate beings, and I heard a still more unhappy tale--shall I call it more unhappy? They had perished by the cannon-shot, which now poured into the city day and night, or had been buried in the ruins of some of the buildings, which were now constantly falling under the heaviest bombardment in the annals of war. Of those scenes I say no more. If the siege of a great fortress is the most trying of all hazards to the soldier without, what must it be to the wretches within? Valenciennes was once the centre of the lace manufactories of France. The war had destroyed them at once. The proprietors had fled, the thousands of young and old employed in those delicate and beautiful productions, had fled too, or remained only to perish of famine. A city of twenty thousand of the most ingenious artists was turning day by day into a vast cemetery. As I tossed on my mattress hour after hour, and heard the roar of the successive batteries, shuddered at the fall of the shells, and was tortured by the cries of the crowd flying from the explosions all night long--I gave the deepest curses of my spirit to the passion for glory. It is true, that nations must defend themselves; the soldier is a protector to the industry, the wealth, and the happiness of the country. I am no disciple of the theory, which, disclaiming the first instinct of nature, self-preservation, invites injury by weakness, and creates war by impunity; but the human race ought to outlaw the man who dares to dream of conquest, and builds his name in the blood of man.

On my capture, one of my first wishes had been to acquaint my regiment with the circumstances of my misfortune, and to relieve my friends of their anxiety for the fate of a brother officer. But this object, which, in the older days of continental campaigning, would have been acceded to with a bow and a compliment by Monsiegneur le Comte, or Son Altesse Royale, the governor, was sturdily refused by the colonel in charge of the hospital--a firm Republican, and the son of a cobbler, who, swearing by the Goddess of Reason, threatened to hang over the gate the first man who dared to bring him another such proposal. I next sent my application to the commandant, a brave old soldier, who had served in the royal armies, and had the feelings of better times; but it was probably intercepted, for no answer came. This added deeply to my chagrin. My absence must give rise to conjecture; my fall had been unseen even by my men; and while I believed that my character was above the scandal of either pusillanimity or desertion, it still remained at the mercy of all.

But chance came to my relief. It happened that I had unconsciously won the particular regard of one of the Béguines who attended the hospital; and my _tristesse_, which she termed 'effrayante,' one evening attracted her peculiar notice. Let not my vanity be called in question; for my fair admirer was at least fifty years old, and was about the figure and form of one of her country churns, although her name was Juliet! Pretty as the name was, the Béguine had not an atom of the poetic about her. Romance troubled her not. Yet with a face like the full moon, and a pile of petticoats which would have made a dowdy of the "Belvedere Diana," she was a capital creature. Juliet, fat as she was, had the natural frolic of a squirrel; she was everywhere, and knew every thing, and did every thing for every body; her tongue and her feet were constantly busy; and I scarcely knew which was the better emblem of the perpetual motion. My paleness was peculiarly distressing to her; "it hurt her feelings;" it also hurt her honour; for she had been famous for her nursing, and as she told me, with her plump hands upon her still plumper hips, and her head thrown back with an air of conscious merit, "she had saved more than the doctors had killed." I had some reluctance to tell her the cause of my _tristesse_; for I knew her zeal, and I dreaded her plunging into some hazard with the authorities. But who has ever been able to keep a secret, where it was the will of the sex to extort it? Juliet obtained mine before she left the ward for the night; and desired me to give her a letter, which she pledged herself to transmit to my regiment. But this I determined to refuse, and I kept my determination. I had no desire to see my "fat friend" suspended from the pillars of the portico; or to hear of her, at least, being given over to the mercies of the provost-marshal. We parted, half in anger on her side, and with stern resolution on mine.

During the day Juliet was not forthcoming, and her absence produced, what the French call, a "lively sensation"--which, in nine instances out of ten, means an intolerable sense of ennui--in the whole establishment. I shared the general uneasiness, and at length began to cast glances towards the gate, where, though I was not exactly prepared to see the corpulent virtues of my friend in suspension, I had some tremblings for the state, "_sain et sauf_;" of my Béguine. At last her face appeared at the opening of the great door, flushed with heat and good-nature, and, as it came moving through the crowd which gathered round her with all kinds of enquiries, giving no bad resemblance to the moon seen through a fog; whether distinct or dim, full and florid to the last. Her good-humoured visage revived me, as if I had met a friend of as many years standing as she numbered on her cradle. But all my enquiries for the news of earth outside the hospital, were answered only by an "order" to keep myself tranquil--prevent the discomposure of my pulse, and duly drink my ptisan. All this, however, was for the general ear. The feebleness which kept me confined to my bed during the day, had made my nights wakeful. On this night, whether on the anxiety of the day, or the heavier roar of the siege, for the bombardment was now at its height, I exhibited signs of returning fever, and the Béguine remained in attendance. But when the crowd had gone to such rest as they could find, amid the thunder of batteries and the bursting of shells, Juliet approached my pillow with a broad smile, which distended her good-natured mouth from ear to ear, and thrust under my pillow a small packet--the whole operation being followed by a finger pressed to her lips, and a significant glance to every corner of the huge melancholy hall, to see that all was secure. She then left me to my meditations!

The mysterious packet contained three letters; and, eager as I was for their perusal, I almost shuddered at their touch; for they must have been obtained with infinite personal peril, and if found upon the Béguine they might have brought her under the severest vengeance of the garrison. They were from Guiscard, Mariamne, and Mordecai. Thus to three individuals, all comparatively strangers, was my world reduced. But they were no common strangers; and I felt, while holding their letters in my hand, and almost pressing them to my heart, how much more strongly friendship may bind us than the ties of cold and negligent relationship. I opened the soldier's letter first. It was like every thing that Guiscard ever did; manly, yet kind. "Your disappearance in that unfortunate rencontre has created much sorrow and surprise; but the sorrow was all for your loss to _the_ 'corps of corps,' and the surprise was, that no tidings could be heard of you, whether fallen or surviving. The flag and trumpet sent in next morning to recover the remains of such as had suffered in that mad rush to the gates of the town, came back without being permitted to pass beyond the outworks, bringing a brutal message from the officer on duty, 'that the next flag should be fired on,' and that the 'brave soldiers of the Republic allowed of no compromise with the slaves of tyranny!' The bravado might be laughed at, but it left me in the dark relative to your fate; and if you are to be flattered by the feelings of men who cannot get at you but by cannon-shot, you may congratulate yourself on having had as many fine things said of you as would make an epitaph for a duke--and, I believe, with a sincerity at least equal to the best of them. I write all this laughingly now, but suspense makes heaviness of heart, and you cost me some uneasy hours, of course. I send you none of _our_ news; as you will hear all in good time, and communications on public matters might bring your messenger or yourself into difficulties. You are alive, and in good hands; that is the grand point. Your character is now in _my_ hands, and I shall take care of it; I shall see you a general officer yet, if you have not the greater luck to retire and live an honest farmer, sitting under your own fig-tree and your own vine, with an unromantic spouse, and some half-dozen of red-cheeked children. Farewell, we shall _soon_ see each other."

The last line evidently meant more than met the eye, and I was now just in the mind to indulge in the fantasies of my fair correspondent. They were like herself--a curious mixture of mirth and melancholy.

"Why I wished to write to you, or why I write at all--which, however, I do decorously at the side of my father--are questions which I have not taken the trouble of asking until this moment. But I am in Switzerland, where no one has time for any thing but worshipping mountain-tops, and falling down at the feet of cataracts. Whether it would add to Mr Marston's satisfaction I cannot presume to say, but I feel better, much better, than when I first came into this land of fresh breezes and beauty of all kinds--the population, of every rank, always excepted. If I were, like you, a philosopher, I should probably say that nature gets tired of her work, and after having struck off some part of it with all the spirit of an Italian painter, disdains the trouble of finishing; or, like a French 'fashionable,' coquettes with her own charms, and is determined to make the world adore her, in spite of her slippers and her shawl. Thus, nature, which gave the peacock a diadem on its head, and a throne in its tail, has given it a pair of frightful legs. And on the same charming principle, she has given Switzerland the finest of all possible landscapes, and filled them with the most startling of all possible physiognomies.

"But no more of theory. It has always made my head ache, and headachs are, I know, contagious; so I spare you. Yet, have you a moment, among your thousand and one avocations, to remember my father--or me? I beg that I may not impede the march of armies, or shock the balance of Europe, while I solicit you to give me a single line--no more; a mere 'annonce' of any thing that can tell me of your 'introuvable' friend Lafontaine. This is _not_ for myself. The intelligence is required for a sister of his whom I have lately met in this country--a showy "citizeness" of Zurich, _embonpoint_ and matronly, married to one of the portly burghers of the city, and exemplary in all the arts of sheep-shearing, wool-spinning, and cheese-making; a mother, surrounded _à la Française_ with a host of Orlandos, Hyacintes, Aristomenes, and Apollos--pretty children, with the Frenchman developing in all its gaudiness; the Switzer remaining behind, until it shall come forth in cloudy brows, and a face stamped with money-making. Madame Spiegler is still not beyond a waltz, and in the very whirl of one last night, she turned to me and _implored_ that I should 'move heaven and earth,' as she termed it--with her blue eyes thrown up to the chandelier, and her remarkably pretty and well-_chaussé'd_ feet still beating time to the dance--to bring her disconsolate bosom tidings of her '_frère, si bien aimé, si malheureux_.' I promised, and she flew off instantly into the very _core_ of a dance, consisting of at least a hundred couples.

"I have just returned from a drive along the shore of the Leman. The recollection of Madame Spiegler, rolling and rushing through the waltz like a dolphin through the waves; or like any thing caught in an enormous whirlpool, sweeping round perpetually until it was swept out of sight, had fevered me. The air here is certainly delicious. It has a sense of life--a vivid, yet soft, freshness, that makes the mere act of breathing it delightful. But I have mercy on you--not one word of Clarens, not one word of Meillerie. Take it for granted that Ferney is burnt down, as it well might be without any harm to the picturesque; and that Jean Jacques never wrote, played the knave, or existed. If I were a Swiss Caliph Omar, I should make a general seizure, to be followed by a general conflagration, of every volume that has ever touched on the wit and wickedness of the one, or the intolerable sensibility of the other. I should next extend the flame to all tours, meditations, and musings on hills, valleys, and lakes; prohibit all sunset 'sublimities' as an offence against the state; and lay all raptures at the 'distant view of Mont Blanc,' or the 'ascent of the Rhighi,' if not under penalty of prison, at least under a bond never to be seen in the territory again. But I must make my _adieux_. _Apropos_, if you _should_ accidentally hear any thing of your _pelerin-à-pied_ friend Lafontaine--for I conjecture that he has gone to discover the fountains of the Nile, or is at this moment a candidate for the office of court-chamberlain at Timbuctoo--let me hear it. Madame Spiegler is really uneasy on the subject, though it has not diminished either her weight or her velocity, nor will prevent her waltzing till the end of the world, or of herself. _One_ sentence--nay, one syllable--will be enough.

"This light _is_ delicious, and it is only common gratitude to nature to acknowledge, that she has done something in the scene before my casement at this sweet and quiet hour, which places her immeasurably above the _decorateurs_ of a French _salon_. The sun has gone, and the moon has not yet come. There is scarcely a star; and yet a light lingers, and floats, and descends over everything--hill, forest, and water--like the light that one sometimes sees in dreams. All dream-like--the work of a spell laid over a horizon of a hundred miles. I should scarcely be surprised to see visionary forms rising from these woods and waters, and ascending in bright procession into the clouds. I hear, at this moment, some touches of music, which I could almost believe to come from invisible instruments as they pass along with the breeze. Still, may I beg of you, Mr Marston, not to suppose that I mean to extend this letter to the size of a government despatch, nor that the mark which I find I have left on my paper, is a tear? _I_ have no sorrow to make its excuse. But here, one weeps for pleasure, and I can forgive even Rousseau his--'Je m'attendrissais, je soupirais, et je pleurais comme un enfant. Combien de fois, m'arrêtant pour pleurer plus à mon aise, assis sur une grosse pierre, je me suis amusé à voir tomber mes larmes dans l'eau.' Rousseau was lunatic, but he was _not_ lunatic when he wrote this, or _I_ am growing so too. For fear of that possible romance, I say, farewell.

"P.S.--Remember Madame Spiegler. _Toujours à vous_--MARIAMNE."

My third letter was Mordecai to the life--a bold, hurried, yet clear view of the political bearings of the time. It more than ever struck me, in the course of his daring paragraphs, what a capital leader he would have made for a Jewish revolution; if one could imagine the man of a thousand years of slavery grasping the sword and unfurling the banner. Yet bold minds _may_ start up among a fallen people; and when the great change, which will assuredly come, is approaching, it is not improbable that it will be begun by some new and daring spirit throwing off the robes of humiliation, and teaching Israel to strike for freedom by some gallant example--a new Moses smiting the Egyptian, and marching from the house of bondage, the fallen host of the oppressor left weltering in the surge of blood behind.

After some personal details, and expressions of joy at the recovering health of his idolized but wayward daughter, he plunged into politics. "I have just returned," said he, "from a visit to some of our German kindred. You may rely upon it, that a great game is on foot. _Your_ invasion is a jest. Your troops will fight, I allow, but your cabinets will betray. I have seen enough to satisfy me, that, if you do not take Paris within the next three months, you will not take it within ten times the number of years. Of course, I make no attempt at prediction. I leave infallibility to the grave fools of conclaves and councils; but the French mob will beat them all. What army can stand before a pestilence? When I was last in Sicily, I went to the summit of Etna during the time of an eruption. On my way, I slept at one of the convents on the slope of the mountain. I was roused from my sleep by a midnight clamour in the court of the convent--the monks were fluttering in all corners, like frightened chickens. I came down from my chamber, and was told the cause of the alarm in the sudden turn of a stream of the eruption towards the convent. I laughed at the idea of hazard from such a source, when the building was one mass of stone, and, of course, as I conceived, incombustible. '_Santissima Madre!_' exclaimed the frightened superior, who stood wringing his hands and calling on all the saints in his breviary; 'you do not know of what stone it is built. All is lava; and at the first touch of the red-hot rocks now rolling down upon us, every stone in the walls will melt like wax in the furnace.' The old monk was right. We lost no time in making our escape to a neighbouring pinnacle, and from it saw the stream of molten stone roll round the walls, inflame them, scorch, swell, and finally melt them down. Before daylight, the site of the convent was a gulf of flame. This comes of sympathy in stones--what will it be in men? Wait a twelvemonth; and you will see the flash and flame of French republicanism melting down every barrier of the Continent. The mob has the mob on its side for ever. The offer of liberty to men who have spent a thousand years under despotism, is irresistible. Light may blind, but who loves utter darkness? The soldier may melt down like the rest; he is a man, and may be a madman like the rest; he, too, is one of the multitude.

"Their language may be folly or wisdom, it may be stolen from the ramblings of romance writers, or be the simple utterance of irrepressible instincts within; but it is the language which I hear every where around me. Men eat and drink to it, work and play to it, awake and sleep to it. It is in the rocks and the streams, in the cradle, and almost on the deathbed. It rings in the very atmosphere; and what must be the consequence? If the French ever cross the Rhine, they will sweep every thing before them, as easily as a cloud sweeps across the sky, and with as little power in man to prevent them. A cluster of church steeples or palace spires could do no more to stop the rush of a hurricane.

"You will call me a panegyrist of Republicanism, or of France. I have no love for either. But I may admire the spring of the tiger, or even give him credit for the strength of his tusks, and the grasp of his talons, without desiring to see him take the place of my spaniel on the hearth-rug, or choosing him as the companion of my travels. _I_ dread the power of the multitude, _I_ despair of its discipline, and _I_ shrink from the fury of its passions. A republic in France can be nothing but a funeral pile, in which the whole fabric is made, not for use, but for destruction; which man cannot inhabit, but which the first torch will set in a blaze from the base to the summit; and upon which, after all, corpses alone crown the whole hasty and tottering erection. But this I _shall_ say, that Germany is at this moment on the verge of insurrection; and that the first French flag which waves on the right bank of the Rhine will be the signal of explosion. I say more; that if the effect is to be permanent, pure, or beneficial, it will _not_ be the result of the tricolor. The French conquests have always been brilliant, but it was the brilliancy of a soap-bubble. A puff of the weakest lips that ever breathed from a throne, has always been enough to make the nation conquerors; but the hues of glory no sooner began to colour the thin fabric, than it burst before the eye, and the nation had only to try another bubble. It is my impression, that the favouritism of Revolution at this moment will even receive its death-blow from France itself. All is well while nothing is seen of it but the blaze ascending, hour by hour, from the fragments of her throne, or nothing heard but the theatrical songs of the pageants which perform the new idolatry of 'reason.' But when the Frenchman shall come among nations with the bayonet in his right hand and with the proclamation in his left--when he turns his charger loose into the corn-field, and robs the peasant whom he harangues on the rights of the people--this republican baptism will give no new power to the conversion. The German phlegm will kick, the French _vivacité_ will scourge, and then alone will the true war begin. Yet all this may be but the prelude. When the war of weapons has been buried in its own ashes, another war may begin, the war of minds--the struggle of mighty nations, the battle of an ambition of which our purblind age has not even a glimpse--a terrible strife, yet worthy of the immortal principle of man, and to be rewarded only by a victory which shall throw all the exploits of soldiership into the shade."

While I was meditating on the hidden meanings of this letter, in which my Jewish friend seemed to have imbibed something of the dreamy spirit of Germany itself, I was startled by a tremendous uproar outside the hospital--the drums beat to arms, the garrison hastily mustered, the population poured into the streets, and a strong and startling light in all the casements, showed that some great conflagration had just begun. The intelligence was soon spread that the Hotel de Ville, the noblest building in the city, a fine specimen of Italian architecture of the seventeenth century, and containing some incomparable pictures by the Italian masters, and a _chef-d'oeuvre_ of Rubens, had been set on fire by a bomb, and was now in a blaze from battlement to ground. The next intelligence was still more painful. The principal convent of the city, which was close in its rear, had taken fire, and the unfortunate nuns were seen at the windows in the most imminent danger of perishing. Feeble as I was, I immediately rose. The Béguine rushed in at the moment, wringing her hands and uttering the wildest cries of terror at the probable destruction of those unhappy women. I volunteered my services, which were accepted, and I hurried out to assist in saving them if possible. The spectacle was overwhelming.

The Hotel de Ville was a large and nearly insulated building, with a kind of garden-walk round three of its sides, which was now filled with the populace. The garrison exhibited all the activity of the national character in their efforts to extinguish the flames. Scaling-ladders were applied to the windows, men mounted them thick as bees; fire-buckets were passed from hand to hand, for the fire-engines had been long since destroyed by the cannonade; and there seemed to be some hope of saving the structure, when a succession of agonizing screams fixed every eye on the convent, where the fire had found its way to the stores of wood and oil, and shot up like the explosion of gunpowder. The efforts of the troops were now turned to save the convent; but the intense fury of the flame defeated every attempt. The scaling-ladders no sooner touched the casements than they took fire; the very walls were so hot that none could approach them; and every new gust swept down a sheet of flame, which put the multitude to flight in all directions. Artillery was now brought out to breach the walls; but while there remained a hundred and fifty human beings within, it was impossible to make use of the guns. All efforts at length ceased; and the horror was deepened, if such could be, by seeing now and then a distracted figure rush to a casement, toss up her arms to heaven, and then rush back again with a howl of despair.

I proposed to the French officers that they should dig under the foundations, and thus open a way of escape through the vaults. The attempt was made, but it had the ill success of all the rest. The walls were too massive for our strength, and the pickaxe and spade were thrown aside in despair. From the silence which now seemed to reign within, and the volumes of smoke which poured from the casements, it began to be the general impression that the fate of the nuns was already decided; and the officers were about to limber up their guns and retire, when I begged their chief to make one trial more, and fire at a huge iron door which closed a lofty archway leading to the Hotel de Ville. He complied; a six-pound ball was sent against the door, and it flew off its hinges. To the boundless exultation and astonishment of all, we saw the effect of this fortunate shot, in the emergence of the whole body of the nuns from the smoking and shattered building. They had been driven, step by step, from the interior to the long stone-built passage which in old times had formed a communication with the town, and which had probably not been used for a century. The troops and populace now rushed into the Hotel de Ville to meet and convey them to places of safety. I followed with the same object, yet with some unaccountable feeling that I had a personal interest in the rescue. The halls and apartments were on the huge and heavy scale of ancient times, and I was more than once bewildered in ranges of corridors filled with the grim reliques of civic magnificence, fierce portraits of forgotten men of city fame, portentous burghers, and mailed captains of train bands. The unhappy women were at length gathered from the different galleries to which they had scattered in their fright, and were mustered at the head of the principal entrance, or _grand escalier_, at whose foot the escort was drawn up for their protection.

But the terrors of that fearful night were not yet at an end. The light of the conflagration had caught the eye of the besiegers, and a whole flight of shells were sent in its direction. Some burst in the street, putting the populace to flight on every side; and, while the women were on the point of rushing down the stair, a crash was heard above, and an enormous shell burst through the roof, carrying down shattered rafters, stones, and a cloud of dust. The batteries had found our range, and a succession of shells burst above our heads, or tore their way downwards. All was now confusion and shrieking. At length one fell on the centre of the _escalier_, rolled down a few steps, and, bursting, tore up the whole stair, leaving only a deep gulf between us and the portal. The women fled back through the apartment. I now regarded all as lost; and expecting the roof to come down every moment on my head, and hearing nothing round me but the bursting and hissing of those horrible instruments of havoc, I hurried through the chambers, in the hope of finding some casement from which I might reach the ground. They were all lofty and difficult of access, but I at length climbed up to one, from which, though twenty or thirty feet from the path below, I determined to take the plunge. I was about to leap, when, to my infinite surprise, I heard my name pronounced. I stopped. I heard the words--"_Adieu, pour toujours!_" All was dark within the room, but I returned to discover the speaker. It was a female on her knees near the casement, and evidently preparing to die in prayer. I took her hand, and led her passively towards the window; she wore the dress of a nun, and her veil was on her face. As she seemed fainting, I gently removed it to give her air. A sheet of flame suddenly threw a broad light across the garden, and in that face I saw--Clotilde! She gave a feeble cry, and fell into my arms.

Our escape was accomplished soon after, by one of the scaling-ladders which was brought at my call; and before I slept, I had seen the being in whom my very existence was concentrated, safely lodged with the principal family of the town. Slept, did I say? I never rested for an instant. Thoughts, reveries, a thousand wild speculations, rose, fell, chased each other through my brain, and all left me feverish, half-frantic, and delighted.

At the earliest moment which could be permitted by the formalities of France, even in a besieged town, I flew to Clotilde. She received me with the candour of her noble nature. Her countenance brightened with sudden joy as she approached me. In the _salle de reception_ she sat surrounded by the ladies of the family, still full of enquiries on the perils of the night, congratulations on her marvellous escape, and no slight approval of the effect of the convent costume on the contour of her fine form and expressive features. My entrance produced a diversion in her favour; and I was showered with showy speeches from the seniors of the circle; the younger portion suddenly relapsing into that frigid propriety which the Mademoiselle retains until she becomes the Madame, and then flings off for ever like her girlish wardrobe. But their eyes took their full share, and if glances at the "Englishman" could have been transfered into words, I should have enjoyed a very animated conversation on the part of the _Jeunes Innocenes_. But I shrank from the panegyric of my "heroism," as it was pronounced in all the tones of courtesy; and longed for the voice of Clotilde alone. The circle at last withdrew, and I was left to the most exquisite enjoyment of which the mind of man is capable--the full, fond, and faithful outpouring of the heart of the woman he loves. Strange to say, I had never exchanged a syllable with Clotilde before; and yet we now as deeply understood each other--were as much in each other's confidence, and had as little of the repulsive ceremonial of a first interview, as if we had conversed for years.

"You saved my life," said she; "and you are entitled to my truest gratitude to my last hour. I had made up my mind to die. I was exhausted in the attempt to escape from that horrible convent. When at last I reached the Hotel de Ville, and found that all the sisterhood had been driven back from the great stair by the flames, I gave up all hope: and may I acknowledge, unblamed, to you--but from _you_ what right have I now to conceal any secret of my feelings?--I was not unwilling to lay down a life which seemed to grow darker from day to day."

"You were wearied of your convent life?" said I, fixing my eyes on hers with eager enquiry. "But you must not tell me that you are a nun. The new laws of France forbid that sacrifice. My sweet Clotilde, while I live, I shall never recognise your vows."

"You need not," she answered, with a smile that glowed.

'Celestial rosy red, love's proper hue.'

"I have never taken them. The superior of the convent was my near relative, and I fled to her protection from the pursuit of one whom I never could have respected, and whom later thoughts have made me all but abhor."

"Montrecour! I shall pursue him through the world."

"No," said Clotilde; "he is as unworthy of your resentment as of my recollection. He is a traitor to his king and a disgrace to his nobility. He is now a general in the Republican service, Citizen Montrecour. But we must talk of him no more."

She blushed deeply, and after some hesitation, said, "I am perfectly aware that the marriages customary among our noblesse were too often contracted in the mere spirit of exclusiveness; and I own that the proposal of my alliance with the Marquis de Montrecour was a family arrangement, perfectly in the spirit of other days. But my residence in England changed my opinions on the custom of my country, and I determined never to marry." She stopped short, and with a faint smile, said, "But let us talk of something else." Her cheek was crimson, and her eyes were fixed on the ground.

"No, Clotilde, talk of nothing else. Talk of your feelings, your sentiments, of yourself, and all that concerns yourself. No subject on earth can ever be so delightful to your friend. But, talk of what you will, and I shall listen with a pleasure which no human being has ever given me before, or ever shall give me again."

She raised her magnificent eyes, and fixed them full upon me with an involuntary look of surprise, then grew suddenly pale, and closed them as if she were fainting. "I must listen," said she, "to this language no longer. I know you to be above deception. I know you to be above playing with the vanity of one unused to praise, and to such praise. But I have a spirit as high as your own. Let us be friends. It will give an additional honour to my name; shall I say"--and she faltered--"an additional interest to my existence. Now we must part for a while."

"Never!" was my exclamation. "The world does not contain two Clotildes. And you shall never leave me. You have just told me that I preserved your life. Why shall I not be its protector still? Why not be suffered to devote mine to making yours happy?" But the bitter thought struck me as I uttered the words--how far I was from the power of giving this incomparable creature the station in society which was hers by right! How feeble was my hope even of competence! How painfully I should look upon her beauty, her fine understanding, and her generous heart, humbled to the narrow circumstances of one whose life depended upon the chances of the most precarious of all professions, and whose success in that profession depended wholly on the caprice of fortune. But one glance more drove all doubts away, and I took her hand.

She looked at me with speechless embarrassment, sighed deeply, and a tear stole down her cheek. At length, withdrawing her hand, she said, in almost a whisper, and with an evident effort, "This must not be. I feel infinite honour in your good opinion--deeply grateful for your kindness. But this must not be. No. I should rather wear this habit for my life, than make so ungenerous a return to the noble spirit that can thus offer its friendship to a stranger."

"No, Clotilde, no. Again, in my turn, I say, this must not be; you are _no_ stranger. I know you at this hour as well as if I had known you from the first hour of my being. I gave my heart to you from the moment when I first saw you among your countrywomen in England. It required no time to make me feel that you were my fate. It was an instinct, a spell, a voice of nature, a voice of heaven within me!"