Chapter VII: Letter VII: Objects to Be Gained Through the Artificial Induction of (3)

Sieyes was well known to be what the French call an _idealogue_. He was a theorist on governments, which he invented in any convenient number. For the Consulate he had his theory ready. The First Consul was to be like an epicurean divinity, enjoying himself and taking care for no one. But this tranquillity of position, and nonentity of power, by no means suited the taste of Napoleon. "'Your Grand Elector," said he (the title which seems to have been intended for his head of his new constitution,) "would be nothing but an idle king. The time for do-nothing kings is gone by--six millions of francs and the Tuilleries, to play the stage-king in, put his signature to other peoples work, and do nothing of himself, is a dream. Your Grand Elector would be nothing but a pig to fatten, or a master, the more absolute because he would have no responsibility.' It was on quitting me after this conversation," said Napoleon, "that Sieyes said to Roger Ducos, 'My dear Colleague, we have not a President, we have a master. You and I have no more to do, but to make our fortunes before making our _paquets_.'" This was at least plain speaking, and it discloses the secret of ninety-nine out of every hundred of the Republicans.

An amusing anecdote of the memorable Abbe is then told. He was Almoner to one of the Princesses of France. One day, while he was reading mass, the Princess, from some accidental circumstance, retired, and her ladies followed her. Sieyes, who was busy reading his missal, did not at first perceive her departure; but when he saw himself abandoned by all the great people, and had no auditory left but the domestics, he closed the book, and left the altar, crying, "I do not say mass for the rabble!" This certainly was not very democratic, and yet Sieyes was soon afterwards the most rampant of all possible democrats.

The history of his patriotism, however, alike accounted for his former contempt and his subsequent fraternisation. Previously to the Revolution he was poor, neglected, and angry; but, as he was known to be a man of ability, his name was mentioned to De Brienne, who, though an archbishop, was Prime Minister. He was desired to attend at his next levee; he attended, and was overlooked. He complained to his friend, who repeated the complaint to the archbishop, who desired him to appear at his levee; but was so much occupied with higher people, that the clever but luckless Abbe was again overlooked. He made a third experiment, on the promise that he should obtain audience; but he found the Archbishop enveloped in a circle of _epaulets_, _grands cordons_, and mitres. To penetrate this circle was impossible, and the Abbe, now furious at what he regarded as a mockery, rushed to his chamber, seized a pen, and wrote his powerful and memorable pamphlet entitled, "What is the third Estate?" a fierce, but most forcible appeal to the vanity of the lower orders, pronouncing them _the_ nation. This was a torch thrown into a powder magazine--all was explosion; the church, the noblesse, and the monarchy were suddenly extinguished, and France saw this man of long views and powerful passions, suddenly raised from hunger and obscurity, to the highest rank and the richest sinecurism of the republic.

Antomarchi was not fortunate in his attendance on Napoleon. Of course he felt, like every other foreigner, the ennui of the island, and he grew impatient to return to Europe. At last he applied for permission, which Napoleon gave him in the shape of a discharge, with the following sting at the end. "During the fifteen months which we have spent in this country, you have given his Majesty no confidence in your moral character. You can be of no use to him in his illness, and your residing here for several months longer would have no object, and be of no use." However, a reconciliation was effected, and the doctor was suffered to remain. But all the household now began to be intolerably tired. Three of the household, including the Abbe, requested their conge.

There is in the spirit of the foreigner a kind of gross levity, an affectation of frivolity with respect to women, and a continual habit of vulgar vanity, which seems to run through all ranks and ages of the continental world. What can be more offensively trifling, than the conduct which Napoleon narrates of himself, when Emperor, at Warsaw.

A Madame Waleska seems to have been the general belle of the city. On the night when Napoleon first saw this woman, at a ball, General Bertrand and Louis de Perigord appeared as her public admirers. "They both," said he, "kept hovering emulously round her." But Napoleon, Emperor, husband, and mature as he was, chose to play the gallant on this evening also. Finding the two Frenchmen in the way of his attentions, he played the Emperor with effect on the spot. He gave an order to Berthier, then head of his staff, instantly to send off M. Perigord "to obtain news of the 6th corps," which was on the Passarge. Thus one inconvenience was got rid of, but Bertrand was still present, and during supper his attentions were so marked that, as he leaned over Madame's chair, his aiguilettes danced on her shoulders. "Upon this," said Napoleon, "my impatience was roused to such a pitch that I touched him on the arm and drew him to the recess of a window, where I gave him orders 'to set out for the head-quarters of Prince Jerome,' and without losing an hour to bring me a report of the siege of Breslau." Such it is to come in the way of Emperors. "The poor fellow was scarcely gone," adds Napoleon, "when I repented of my angry impulse; and I should certainly have recalled him, had I not remembered at the same minute that his presence with Jerome would be useful to me." And this was the conduct of a man then in the highest position of life, whose example must have been a model to the multitude, and in whom even frivolity would be a crime.

Napoleon had long lived in a state of nervous fear, which must have made even his high position comfortless to him. He had been for years in dread of poison. "I have escaped poisoning," said he, "ten times, if I have once." In St Helena he never eat or drank any thing which had not been tasted first by one of the household! Montholon, during the night, constantly tasted the drink prepared for him. On this subject, Napoleon told the following anecdote.

"He was one day leaving the dinner-table with the Empress Josephine, and two or three other persons, when, as he was about to put his hand in his pocket for his snuff-box, he perceived it lying on the mantel-piece, in the saloon which he was entering. He was about to open it and take a pinch, when his good star caused him to seat himself. He then felt that his snuff-box was in one of his pockets. This excited inquiry, and on sending the two boxes to be chemically tested, the snuff on the mantel-piece was discovered to be poisoned." After this, it is somewhat absurd in M. Montholon to give his hero credit for _sang froid_, and say of him, that no one could take fewer precautions against such dangers than the Emperor. His whole life seems to have been precautionary; still, he sententiously talked the nonsense of fatalism.

"Our last hour is written above," was his frequent remark. He had some absurdities on the subject of medicine, which would have very effectually assisted the fulfilment of this prediction. He had all idea that he should cure himself of his immediate disease, and perhaps of every other, by swallowing orange-flower water, and soup _a la reine_.

The governor, during this period, constantly offered the services of an English physician; and Dr Arnott was at last summoned, who pronounced the disease to be very serious, and to be connected with great inflammation in the region of the stomach. It was now, for the first time, ascertained that his disease was ulceration of the stomach. There is an occasional tribute to the humane conduct of the governor at this time. On April eleventh, there is this memorandum:--

"Sir Hudson Lowe has left us in perfect tranquillity, since Dr
Arnott has been admitted, though he comes every day to the
apartments of the orderly officer, for the purpose of conferring
with the physician."

Napoleon, now conscious of the dangerous nature of his disease, made his will. He had conceived that he was worth in various property about two hundred millions of francs, which he left by will, but of which we believe the greater part was impounded by the French government, as being public property.

He now held a long conversation on the prospects of his son, whom he regarded as not altogether beyond the hope of ascending the throne of France. He predicted the fall of the reigning family. "The Bourbons," said he, "will not maintain their position after my death." With an exactness equally odd, but equally true, he predicted the rise of another branch of the dynasty: "My son will arrive, after a time of troubles; he has but one party to fear, that of the Duke of Orleans. That party has been germinating for a long time. France is the country where the chiefs of parties have the least interest. To rest for support on them, is to build their hopes on sand."

There is a brilliant shrewdness now and then, in his contempt of the showy exhibitors in public life. "The great orators," said he, "who rule the assemblies by the brilliancy of their eloquence, are in general men of the most mediocre talents. They should not be opposed in their own way, for they have always more noisy words at command than you. In my council there were men possessed of much more eloquence than I was, but I always defeated them by this simple argument,--Two and two make four.

"My son will be obliged to allow the liberty of the press. This is a
necessity in the present day. My son ought to be a man of new ideas,
and of the cause which have made triumphant every where.

"Let my son often read and reflect on history: that is the only true
philosophy. Let him read and meditate on the wars of the great
Captains. That is the only means of rightly learning the science of
war."

In April, the signs of debility grew still more marked. On the 26th, at four in the morning, after a calm night, he had what Montholon regards as a dream, but what Napoleon evidently regarded as a vision. He said with extraordinary emotion, "I have just seen my good Josephine, but she would not embrace me; she disappeared at the moment when I was about to take her in my arms; she was seated _there_; it seemed to me that I had seen her yesterday evening; she is not changed--still the same, full of devotion to me; she told me that we were about to see each other again, never more to part. She assured me of that. Did you see her?"

Montholon attributed this scene to feverish excitement, gave him his potion, and he fell asleep; but on awaking he again spoke of the Empress Josephine.

It is difficult in speaking of dreams and actual visions, to know the distinction. That the mind may be so perfectly acted upon during the waking hours as to retain the impressions during sleep, is the experience of every day. And yet we know so little of the means by which truths may be communicated to the human spirit while the senses are closed, that it would be unphilosophical to pronounce even upon those fugitive thoughts as unreal. That Napoleon must have often reflected on his selfish and cruel desertion of Josephine, it is perfectly natural to conceive. That he may have bitterly regretted it, is equally natural, for, from that day, his good fortune deserted him. And he might also have discovered that he had committed a great crime, with no other fruit than that of making a useless alliance, encumbering himself with an ungenial companion, and leaving an orphan child dependant on strangers, and continually tantalised by the recollections of a fallen throne. Those feelings, in the solitude of his chamber, and the general dejection of his captivity, must have so often clouded his declining hours, that no miracle was required to embody them in such a vision as that described. And yet, so many visitations of this kind have undoubtedly occurred, that it would be rash to pronounce that this sight of the woman who had so long been the partner of his brilliant days might not have been given, to impress its moral on the few melancholy hours which now lay between him and the grave.

It is painful, after a scene which implies some softness of heart, to find him unrepentant of one of the most repulsive, because the most gratuitous crime of his career. In the course of the day, Bertrand, in translating an English journal, inadvertently began to read an article containing a violent attack on the conduct of Caulaincourt and Savary in the seizure of the Duc d'Enghien. Napoleon, interrupting him, suddenly cried, "This is shameful." He then sent for his will, and interlined the following words:--"I caused the Duc d'Enghien to be arrested and tried, because that step was essential to the interest, honour, and safety of the French people, when the Count d'Artois was maintaining, by his own confession, sixteen assassins in Paris. Under similar circumstances I should act in the same way." Having written these few lines he gave back the will. From this period he was engaged in writing codicils and appointing executors. He gave to Marchand a diamond necklace, valued at 200,000 francs. He wound up those transactions by an extraordinary letter,--no less than the form of an announcement of his own death. It was in these words:--

"Monsieur le Gouverneur, the Emperor Napoleon breathed his last on
the ---- after a long and painful illness. I have the honour to
communicate this intelligence to you.

"The Emperor had ordered me to communicate, if such be your desire,
his last wishes. I beg you to inform me, what are the arrangements,
prescribed by your government for the transportation of his remains
to France, as well as those relating to the persons of his suite. I
have the honour to be, &c., COUNT MONTHOLON."

An act of this order implied a good deal of self-possession. But, even to the last day he continued to occupy his mind with subjects sufficiently trying at any period. On one of those nights he made Montholon bring a table to his bed-side, and dictated for two hours; the subjects being, the decoration of Versailles, and the organisation of the National Guard. On the 30th of April he was given over by the physicians. On the 3rd of May his fever continued, and his mind was evidently beginning to be confused. On the 5th of May he passed a very bad night and became delirious. "Twice," said Montholon, "I thought I distinguished the unconnected words, _France--Armee--Tete d'Armee--France_."

His final hour now visibly approached. From six in the morning, until half-past five in the evening of that day, he remained motionless, lying on his back, with his right hand out of the bed, and his eyes fixed, seemingly absorbed in deep meditation, and without any appearance of suffering; his lips were slightly contracted; his whole face expressed pleasant and gentle impressions.

But he seems to have been awake to external objects to the last. For whenever Antommarchi attempted to moisten his lips, he repulsed him with his hand, and fixed his eyes on Montholon, as the only person whom he would permit to attend him. At sunset he died.

The immediate cause of his death was subsequently ascertained by the surgeons to have been an extensive ulceration of the stomach.

On the 9th of May the body was buried with military honours. On the 30th, Montholon, with the household, quitted St Helena.

Thus obscurely, painfully, and almost ignominiously, closed the career of the most brilliant, ambitious, and powerful monarch of his time. No man had ever attained a higher rank, and sunk from it to a lower. No man had ever been so favoured by fortune. No man had ever possessed so large an influence over the mind of Europe, and been finally an object of hostility so universal. He was the only man in history, against whom a Continent in arms pronounced sentence of overthrow: the only soldier whose personal fall was the declared object of a general war:--and the only monarch whose capture ensured the fall of his dynasty, extinguished an empire, and finished the loftiest dream of human ambition in a dungeon.

Napoleon, since his fall, has been denied genius. But if genius implies the power of accomplishing great ends by means beyond the invention of others, he was a genius. Every act of his career was a superb innovation. As a soldier, he changed the whole art of war. Instead of making campaigns of tactics, he made campaigns of triumphs. He wasted no time in besieging towns; he rushed on the capital. He made no wars of detachments, but threw a colossal force across the frontier, held its mass together, and fought pitched battles day after day, until he trampled down all resistance by the mere weight of a phalanx of 250,000 men. Thus, in 1800, at Marengo, he reconquered Italy in twelve hours. In 1805, he broke down Austria in a three months' war. In 1806, he crushed the Prussian army in four-and-twenty hours, and walked over the monarchy. In 1807, he drove the Russians out of Germany, fought the two desperate battles of Eylau and Friedland, and conquered that treaty of Tilsit, by which he gave the Emperor Alexander a shadow of empire in Asia, in exchange for the substance of universal empire in Europe.

But his time was come. His wars had been wholly selfish. To aggrandise his own name, he had covered Europe with blood. To place _himself_ at the head of earthly power, he had broken faith with Turkey, with Russia, with Germany, and with Spain. The blood, the spoil, and the misery of millions were upon his head. His personal crimes concentrated the vengeance of mankind upon his diadem. For the last three years of his political and military existence, he seems to have lain under an actual spell. Nothing but the judicial clouding of his intellect can account for the precipitate infirmities of his judgment. His march to Russia, as we have already observed, was a gigantic absurdity in the eyes of all Europe--his delay at Moscow was a gigantic absurdity in the eyes of every subaltern in his army. But his campaigns in France were only a continuation of those absurdities. With fifty thousand men he was to conquer three hundred thousand, backed by an actual million ready to rush into the province of France. How was resistance possible? Treaty was his only hope: yet he attempted to resist, and refused to treat. He was beaten up to the walls of Paris. The Allies then offered him France: he still fought, and only affected to negociate. At length the long infatuation was consummated in his march _from_ Paris; the Allies marched _to_ Paris; and Napoleon was instantly deposed, outlawed, and undone.

Even his second great experiment for power was but the infatuation repeated. Every act was an error: his return from Elba ought to have been delayed for at least a year. His campaign of 1815 ought to have made head against the Prussians and Germans in the south, while he left the English and Prussians to waste their strength against his fortresses. Even in Belgium, he ought to have poured the whole mass of his army on the English at once, instead of violating his own first principle of war, and dividing it into three armies, Ney's at Quatre-Bras, Grouchy's at Wavre, and his own at Ligny.

Still, when routed at Waterloo, he had a powerful force in the field, the remnant of his army, with Grouchy's corps. With those he ought to have moved on slowly towards Paris, garrisoning the fortresses, breaking up the roads, throwing every obstacle in the way of the Allies, and finally, at the head of his 60,000 veterans, with the national guard of the capital and the surrounding districts, (amounting to not less than 100,000 men,) at once making a front against the Allies, and negociating.

Above all things, he ought _never_ to have separated himself from the army; as he thus stripped his party of all power at the moment, and virtually delivered himself a prisoner to the Bourbonists in the capital. Whatever might be the difficulty of deciding on his conduct at the time, it is now perfectly easy to see, that all these were blunders of the first magnitude, and that every step was direct to his ruin.

He was no sooner in Paris, than he was made a prisoner; escaped being shot, only through the mercy of the Allies; and, for the general quiet of France and Europe, was consigned, for the remainder of his few and melancholy years, to the prison of St Helena.

The name of Napoleon has a great place in history. He was a great moving power of the day of change, a great statesman, a brilliant soldier, and a splendid ruler of the mightiest dominion that had existed under one sceptre, since the days of Charlemagne. He was a man of vast projects, vast means, and vast opportunities. But he had no greatness of mind; he had but one purpose, personal aggrandizement; and for that purpose, he adopted every vice of the heart of man.

Without being bloodthirsty by nature, he was cruel by habit; without being naturally avaricious, he was a universal spoiler; and without savagely hating mankind, he spurned the feelings, the sufferings, and the life of man. He was hollow, fierce, and remorseless, where his own objects were concerned, and whether he cheated his party in the state, or rode over a field covered with his dying troops, he regarded the treachery as legitimate, and the slaughter as meritorious, if they raised him a step nearer to the aim of his ambition.

With the most splendid chances for establishing a name of perpetual honour, this selfishness defeated them all. On his accession to the throne, he might have secured Peace, as the principle of all European government. He might have developed all the natural powers of his empire, covered its rivers with commerce, filled its cities with opulence, restored the neglected fertility of its plains, and rendered its capital the centre of the most brilliant civilisation which the world had ever seen. But War was for the _fame_ of Napoleon, and he chose the havoc of war.

In 1812 he might have restored the kingdom of Poland, and stamped perpetual renown on his diadem, by an act of imperial justice. But he preferred sacrificing it to the alliance of Austria--for the purpose of devastating Russia. He might have exercised his boundless influence over Spain, to bring the faculties of that noble country to the light, and add the contributions of twelve millions of a half-forgotten race of mankind, to the general happiness of the world. But he preferred being called its conqueror, shedding its blood in torrents. To France herself he might have given a rational liberty, have animated her literature, taught common sense to her vanity, thrown the field open to her genius, and guided her natural ardour, flexibility, and spirit of enterprise, to achievements for the good of man, to which all the trophies of the sword are pale. But he cast away all those illustrious opportunities, and thought only of the shout of the rabble.

Napoleon's career was _providential_; there is no name in history, whose whole course bears so palpable a proof of his having been created for a _historic_ purpose. Europe, in the partition of Poland, had committed a great crime,--France, in the murder of her king, had committed a great crime. The three criminal thrones, and the regicidal republic, were alike to be punished. Napoleon was the appointed instrument for both purposes. He first crushed the democracy, and then he broke the strength of the three powers in the field--he thrice conquered the Austrian capital--he turned Prussia into a province,--and his march to Russia desolated her most populous provinces, and laid her Asiatic capital in ashes.

But France, which continually paid for all those fearful triumphs in her blood, was still to suffer a final and retributive punishment. Her armies were hunted from the Vistula to the Rhine, and from the Rhine to the Seine. She saw her capital twice captured--her government twice swept away--her conquests lost--her plunder recovered by its original possessors, and her territory garrisoned by an army of strangers--her army disbanded--her empire cut down to the limits of the old monarchy--her old masters restored, and her idol torn from his altar. Thus were thrown away the fruits of the Revolution, of the regicide, of the democracy, and of a quarter of a century of wretchedness, fury, and blood.

On Napoleon himself fell the heaviest blow of all. All the shames, sorrows, and sufferings of France were concentered on his head. He saw his military power ruined--his last army slaughtered--his last adherents exiled--his family fugitive,--his whole dynasty uncrowned, and himself given up as a prisoner to England, to be sent to an English dungeon, to be kept in English hands; to finish his solitary and bitter existence in desertion and disease, and be laid in an English grave,--leaving to mankind perhaps the most striking moral of blasted ambition ever given to the world.

* * * * *

In 1840 England, at the solicitation of France, suffered the remains of Napoleon to be brought to Europe. They were received in Paris with military pomp, and on the 15th of December were entombed in the chapel of the Invalides.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] _History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St Helena._ By General Count MONTHOLON Vols. iii. and iv. London: H. Colburn.

JUANCHO THE BULL-FIGHTER.

M. Theophile Gautier, best known as a clever contributor to the critical _feuilleton_ of a leading Paris newspaper, also enjoys a respectable reputation as tale-teller and tourist. His books--although for the most part slight in texture, and conveying the idea that the author might have done better had he taken more pains--have certain merits of their own. His style, sometimes defaced by affectation and pedantry, has a lively smartness not unfrequently rising into wit. And in description he is decidedly happy. Possessing an artist's eye, he paints with his pen; his colouring is vivid, his outline characteristic. These qualities are especially exemplified in a spirited and picturesque, but very _French_ narrative, of an extensive ramble in Spain, published about four years ago. He has now again drawn upon his Peninsular experience to produce a tale illustrative of Spanish life and manners, chiefly in the lower classes of society. His hero is a bull-fighter, his heroine a _grisette_. Of bull-fights, especially within the last few years, one has heard enough and to spare, since every literary traveller in Spain thinks it incumbent on him to describe them. But this is the first instance we remember where the incidents of the bull-ring, and the exploits and peculiarities of its gladiators, are taken as groundwork for a romantic tale. The attempt has been crowned with very considerable success.

The construction of M. Gautier's little romance is simple and inartificial, the incidents are spirited, the style is fresh and pleasant. Its character is quite Spanish, and one cannot doubt the author's personal acquaintance with the scenes and types he sketches--although here and there he has smoothed down with a little French polish the rugged angles of Spanish nationality, and in other places he may be accused of melodramatising rather over much. Through the varnish which it is the novelist's privilege to lay on with a more or less sparing brush, we obtain many interesting and correct glimpses of classes of people whose habits and customs are unknown to foreigners, and are likely to continue so, in great measure, until the appearance of Spanish writers able and willing to depict them. The three principal personages of the tale--the only important ones--are, a young gentleman of Madrid, a bull-fighter named Juancho, and an orphan girl of humble birth and great beauty. The story hinges upon the rivalry of the gentleman and the _torero_ for the good graces of the grisette. There is a secondary plot, associated and partly interwoven with the principal one, but which serves little purpose, save that of prolonging a short tale into a volume. It will scarcely be necessary to refer to it in sketching the trials of the gentle Militona, and the feats and misfortunes of the intrepid and unhappy Juancho.

It was on a June afternoon of the year 184--that Don Andres de Salcedo--a cavalier of good family, competent fortune, handsome exterior, amiable character, and four-and-twenty years of age--emerged from a house in the Calle San Bernardo at Madrid, where he had passed a wearisome hour in practising a duet of Bellini's with Dona Feliciana Vasquez de los Rios. This young lady, still in her teens, moderately pretty and tolerably rich, Andres had from childhood been affianced with, and was accustomed to consider as his future wife, although his sentiments towards her were, in fact, of a very tepid description. Betrothed as children by their parents, there was little real love between them: they met without pleasure and parted without pain; their engagement was an affair of habit, not of the heart.

It was a _dia de toros_, as Monday is called in Madrid--that being the day when bull-fights usually take place--and Andres, passionately addicted to the Spanish sport, left the mansion of his mistress without any lover-like reluctance, and hurried to the bull-ring. Through the spacious street of Alcala, then crowded to suffocation with vehicles of every description, horsemen, and pedestrians, all hurrying to the point of grand attraction, the young man pressed onward with that alert and active step peculiar to Spaniards--unquestionably the best walkers in the world--joyfully fingering his ticket of _Sombra por la tarde_.[11] It entitled him to a place close to the barrier; for Andres, despising the elegance of the boxes, preferred leaning against the ropes intended to prevent the bulls from leaping amongst the spectators. Thence each detail of the combat is distinctly seen, each blow appreciated at its just value; and in consideration of these advantages, Andres willingly resigned his elbows to the contact of motley-jacketed muleteers, and his curls to the perfume of the manolo's cigar.

Although a bridegroom-elect ought not, strictly speaking, to perceive the existence of other women than his intended, such scrupulous fidelity is very rare except in romances: and Don Andres, albeit descended neither from Don Juan Tenorio nor Don Juan de Marana, was led to the circus by other attractions besides the brave swordsmanship of Luca Blanco and of Montes' nephew. At the bull-fight on the previous Monday he had seen a young girl of rare and singular beauty, whose features had imprinted themselves on his memory with a minuteness and indelibility quite extraordinary, considering the short time he had been able to observe them. So casual a meeting should have left no more trace than the picture to which one accords a passing glance. No word or sign had been exchanged between Andres and the manola, (she apparently belonged to that class,) who had been separated by several benches. Andres had no reason to believe that the young girl had remarked his admiration, or even perceived him. Her eyes, fixed upon the arena, had not for an instant wandered from the incidents of the bull-fight, in which she appeared to take an exclusive interest. It would have been natural to forget her on the threshold of the circus; but, instead of that, her image had haunted Andres all the week, recurring perpetually to his memory with increased distinctness and perseverance. And it was a vague hope, unacknowledged even to himself, of beholding the lovely manola, that now doubled his usual impatience to reach the scene of the bull-fight.

At the very moment Andres passed under one of the three arcades of the gate of Alcala, a _calesin_, or light calash, dashed through the crowd, amidst a concert of curses and hisses, the usual sounds with which the Spanish populace assail whatever deranges them in their pleasures, and infringes upon the sovereignty of the pedestrian. This vehicle was of outrageous magnificence. The body, borne by two enormous scarlet wheels, was covered with groups of Cupids, and with Anacreontic attributes, such as lyres, tambourines, Pandaean pipes, cooing doves, and hearts pierced with arrows, executed at some remote period by a pencil more remarkable for audacity than correctness of design. The mule harnessed to this gaudy car, had the upper half of his body closely clipped, bore a lofty panoply of coloured worsted upon his head, and was covered with bells from nose to tail. A ferocious-looking charioteer, stripped to his shirt-sleeves, a sheepskin jacket dangling from his shoulder, sat sideways upon the shaft, and belaboured with his whip-handle the lean flanks of his beast, which sprang forward with redoubled fury at each repetition of the stimulant.

There was nothing remarkable in the appearance of such a vehicle on a Monday afternoon at the Alcala gate; and if we have honoured it with especial notice, it is because, upon beholding it, the countenance of Don Andres was illumined by an expression, of the most agreeable surprise. The cabriolet contained two persons: one of these was a little old woman, in an antiquated black dress, whose gown, too short by an inch, disclosed the hem of one of those yellow woolen petticoats commonly worn by Castilian peasants. This venerable creature belonged to the class of women known in Spain as _Tia_ Pelona, _Tia_ Blasia, according to their name, and which answer to the French Mother Michel, Mother Godichon, in the society Paul de Kock delights to sketch. Her large, black, cadaverous physiognomy was relieved by dark sunken eyes, and by a pair of mustaches shading the corners of her lips. Although she had long passed the age of coquetry, she arranged her elbows under her serge mantilla with an air of no small pretension, and flirted with a certain dexterity a large green paper fan. It could hardly be the sight of this amiable creature that brought a smile of satisfaction across the features of Don Andres.

The second occupant of the cabriolet was a young girl, sixteen or eighteen years old--sixteen rather than eighteen. A black silk mantilla, drooping from the top of a tall tortoiseshell comb, round which a magnificent plait of hair was twisted, formed a frame to her lovely countenance, whose paleness bordered on the olive. Her foot, worthy of a Chinese beauty, was extended on the front of the calash, showing a delicate satin shoe and a tight silk stocking with coloured clocks. One of her hands, slender and well formed, although a little sun-burnt, played with the corners of her mantilla, and on the other, which held a white handkerchief, sparkled several silver rings--the richest treasures of the manola's jewel-case. Buttons of jet glittered on her sleeve, completing this strictly Spanish costume. Andres recognised the charming creature whose image had haunted him during the whole of the past week. Accelerating his pace, he entered the bull-ring at the same time with the two women. Chance had so distributed the numbers of the stalls that Andres found himself seated next to the young manola.

Whilst the benches of the amphitheatre became rapidly covered with spectators, the bull-fighters assembled in a large white-washed apartment, serving as a green-room for the actors in the sanguinary drama. Amongst these was a man of five or eight-and-twenty, whose tawny complexion, jet-black eyes, and crisp curling hair, told of an Andalusian origin. A more robust body and better shaped limbs could hardly be seen. They exhibited strength and agility combined in the happiest proportions. Equally well qualified to run and to wrestle, Nature, had she had the express intention of making a bull-fighter, could not have succeeded better than when she moulded this slender Hercules. Through the opening of his cloak glittered the spangles and embroidery of his pink and silver vest, and the jewel of the ring that confined the ends of his cravat; this jewel was of considerable value, proving, as did the whole of the costume, that its owner belonged to the aristocracy of his profession. His _mono_ of new ribbons, attached to the lock of hair reserved expressly for that purpose, spread in gay profusion over his nape; his montero, of the most glossy black, was loaded with silk ornaments of the same colour; his pumps, extraordinarily small and thin, would have done honour to a shoemaker, and might have served a goddess of the ballet.

Nevertheless, Juancho--such was the name of the torero--had not the frank, open air of a handsome young fellow with gay garments on his back, about to be applauded by a host of pretty women. Did apprehension of the approaching contest disturb his serenity? Had he seen in his dreams an infernal bull bearing a matador empaled upon his horns of red-hot steel? Nothing of the sort. This gloomy air was his wont since a twelvemonth. Without being on bad terms with his comrades, there no longer existed between him and them that jovial and careless familiarity usual amongst persons who share the chances of a perilous profession. He did not repulse advances, but he made none; and although an Andalusian, he was often taciturn. If he at times threw off his melancholy, it was to run into the opposite extreme, and abandon himself to a gaiety as violent as it was factitious. Then he would drink like a fish, dance like a madman, and quarrel about every thing and about nothing. The fit over, he relapsed into his previous moody reserve.

The hour fixed for the commencement of the sport approached. Juancho rose from his bench, threw off his cloak, took his sword, and mingled with the motley group of _toreros_ and _chulos_, _banderillos_ and _espadas_. The cloud had left his brow; his eyes sparkled, his nostril was dilated. A singular expression of daring animated his fine features. His foot pressed the ground energetically, and the nerves of his instep quivered beneath the knitted silk like the tense-strings on a guitar-handle. Juancho was really a splendid fellow, and his costume wonderfully set off his physical perfections. A broad red sash encircled his graceful waist; the silver embroideries covering his vest formed, at the collar and pockets, and on the sleeves, patches where the groundwork of the garment disappeared under the complications of the arabesques. It was no longer pink embroidered with silver, but silver embroidered with pink. So loaded were the shoulders with twist, filigree, knots and ornaments of all kinds, that the arms seemed to issue from two crushed crowns. The satin hose, braided and spangled on the seams, were admirably adjusted to limbs combining power and elegance. The whole dress was the masterpiece of Zapata of Granada,--of that Zapata, unrivalled for _majo_ costumes, who weeps when he takes one home, and offers his customer more money to resign it to him than he had asked for making it. The learned in such matters did not consider the suit dear at ten thousand reals. Worn by Juancho, it was worth twenty thousand.

The last flourish of trumpets sounded; the arena was cleared of dogs and boys, and the troop of bull-fighters entered. A murmur of admiration greeted Juancho when he made his obeisance before the queen's box; he bent the knee with so good a grace, with an air at once, so humble and so proud, and rose again so gracefully and easily, that the severest critics and oldest frequenters of the circus declared none had ever done it better.

Meanwhile Andres, delighted to have found the manola, paid little attention to the preliminaries of the fight, and the first bull had already ripped up a horse before he bestowed a single look upon the arena. He gazed at the young girl by his side, with an intentness that would doubtless have embarrassed her had she perceived it. He thought her more charming than ever; and certainly a more perfect type of Spanish beauty had never sat upon the blue granite benches of the Madrid circus. With admiration amounting to ecstasy, Andres contemplated the delicate profile, the thin, well-formed nose, with nostrils pink-tinted, like the interior of a tropical shell; the full temples, where, beneath the slightest possible tint of amber, meandered an imperceptible network of blue veins; the mouth, fresh as a flower, ripe and ruddy as a fruit, slightly opened by a half smile, and illuminated by a gleam of mother-of-pearl; and above all, the eyes, whose glances, passing between a thick double fringe of black lashes, possessed an irresistible fascination. It was the Greek form with the Arab character: the style of beauty would have had something startling in a London or Paris drawing-room, but was perfectly in its place at a bull-fight and under the ardent sky of Spain.

The old woman, less attentive than the young one to the progress of the sport, watched the proceedings of Andres with the look of a dog who scents a thief. As he persisted in his contemplation of his pretty neighbour, the old lady's anger gradually increased; she fidgeted on her seat, rattled her fan, pushed her companion with her elbow, and asked her all sorts of questions to oblige her to turn her head. But the young girl either did not or would not understand; she gave short answers, and resumed her attentive and serious attitude.

"The devil take the old witch!" muttered Andres. "Tis a thousand pities they have abolished the Inquisition! With such a face as that, she would have been treated, without form of trial, to a ride on an ass, dressed in a _san-benito_ and a sulphur shirt. She belongs to the seminary of Barahona, and washes young girls for the sorcerers' sabbath."

Juancho, whose turn to kill had not yet come, stood carelessly in the centre of the circus, paying no more attention to the bulls than if they had been so many sheep. He scarcely deigned to take two or three steps aside when the furious beasts showed a disposition to attack him. His large bright black eye glanced round boxes, galleries, and benches, where thousands of fans, of every hue, fluttered and palpitated like butterflies' wings. He evidently sought some one. At last a gleam of joy flashed across his brown features, and he made the slightest possible movement of his head, the sort of salutation that actors sometimes address to their acquaintances before the curtain. It was directed to the bench on which sat the old woman and the young girl.

"Militona," said the duenna in a low voice, "Juancho sees us. Be cautious! that young man ogles you, and Juancho is jealous."

"What is that to me?" replied Militona in the same tone.

"You know he does not jest with those who displease him."

"I have not looked at the gentleman, and besides, am I not my own mistress?"

In saying she had not looked at Andres, Militona was guilty of a slight equivocation. She had not _looked_ at him, perhaps, for women can see without looking, but she could have given a most minute description of his person. And out of respect to truth, we must here mention that she took Don Andres de Salcedo for what he really was, a very smart and good-looking cavalier.

Andres, as a pretext for commencing a conversation, called one of those dealers in oranges, preserved fruits, lozenges, and other sweetmeats, who circulate in the corridor of the bull-ring, and offer their wares to the spectators at the end of long sticks.

"Senorita, will you accept some comfits?" said Andres, with an engaging smile to his beautiful neighbour, offering her the open box.

The young girl turned quickly round, and looked at him with an air of uneasy surprise.

"They are lemon and mint," said he, as if to decide her.

Militona, suddenly making up her mind, plunged her little fingers into the box, and took a pinch of the lozenges.

"Luckily Juancho has his back turned," muttered a _majo_ who stood just by, "or there would be blood on his knife to-night."

"Will this lady take some?" continued Andres in a tone of exquisite politeness, holding out the box to the horrible old woman, who was so disconcerted by this piece of audacity that in her confusion she took every one of the sugar-plums. Nevertheless, whilst emptying the box into the palm of her hand, black as that of a mummy, she cast a furtive and frightened glance at the circus, and heaved an enormous sigh.

At that moment the orchestra sounded the death: it was Juancho's turn to kill. He approached the municipal box, made the usual salutation and demand, and threw his montero into the air in right cavalier style. The audience, usually so tumultuous, became profoundly silent. The bull Juancho had to kill was of formidable breed; seven horses, stretched lifeless upon the sand, their bowels protruding from hideous wounds, told of his fury and vigour. The two picadores had left the arena, sorely bruised and crippled by numerous falls, and the supernumerary waited in the corridor, foot in stirrup and lance in fist, ready to replace them. The chulos prudently kept themselves in the vicinity of the palisade, one foot on the wooden ledge which aids them to leap it in case of danger; and the victorious bull ranged the circus--stained here and there by large puddles of blood, which the attendants dared not approach to scatter with sawdust--striking the doors with his horns, and tossing the dead horses into the air. Juancho approached the monstrous beast with that firm and deliberate step before which lions themselves retreat. The bull, astonished at sight of a fresh adversary, paused, uttered a deep roar, shook the slaver from his muzzle, scratched the earth with his hoof, lowered his head two or three times, and made a few paces backwards. Juancho was magnificent to behold: his countenance expressed dauntless resolution; his fixed and steadfast eyes, whose pupils, surrounded by white, resembled stars of jet, darted invisible rays which pierced the bull like steel darts; unconsciously, he subjected the brute to that magnetism by which Van Amburgh sends his trembling tigers crouching to the extremity of their den. Each forward step made by the man was responded to by a backward one of the ferocious beast. At this triumph of moral over brute force, the audience, seized with enthusiasm, burst into frantic applause, shouting and stamping, yelling out _vivas_, and ringing the species of bells which amateurs take with them to the bull-fights. Walls and ceilings cracked beneath this storm of admiration, the paint crumbled off and flew about in whirlwinds of white dust. The torero, thus applauded, raised his head, with flashing eyes and joyful heart, to the place where Militona sat, as if to lay at her feet the admiration of a whole city. The moment was badly chosen. Militona had dropped her fan, and Don Andres, who had snatched it up with all the precipitation of a person desirous to strengthen with an additional thread the slender chain of a new acquaintance, returned it to her with a happy smile and gallant gesture. The young girl could not do less than acknowledge the polite attention by a gracious smile and inclination of her head. Smile and bow were detected by Juancho; his lips grew pale, his complexion green, the orbits of his eyes became blood-shot, his hand contracted on his sword-hilt, and the point of the weapon, which he held low, was thrust, by a convulsive movement, thrice into the sand. The bull, no longer under the spell of the fascinating glance, approached his adversary, who neglected to put himself on guard. The interval between man and beast was terribly small.

"Master Juancho is not easily frightened," observed some of the more callous spectators.

"Juancho, have a care!" cried others, more humane; "Juancho _de mi vida_, Juancho of my heart, Juancho of my soul, the bull is upon you!"

As to Militona, whether it was that the habit of bull-fights had blunted her sensibility, or that she had entire confidence in the consummate skill of Juancho, or because she took little interest in the man over whom she exercised such influence, her face continued as calm as if nothing unusual was occurring; only a slight flush appeared in the centre of her cheek, and the lace of her mantilla rose and fell upon her bosom with increased rapidity.

The cries of the spectators roused Juancho from his stupor: he drew hastily back, and waved the scarlet folds of the _muleta_ before the eyes of the bull. The instinct of self-preservation, the pride of the gladiator, struggled in his breast with the desire to watch Militona; a moment's neglect, a glance on one side, might cost him his life. It was an infernal predicament for a jealous man. To behold, beside the woman he loved, a gay, handsome, and attentive rival, while he, in the middle of a circus, the eyes of twelve thousand spectators riveted upon him, had, within a few inches of his breast, the sharp horns of a ferocious beast which, under pain of dishonour, he could only kill in a certain manner and by a wound in a certain place.

The torero, once more master of the _jurisdiction_, as it is said in tauromachian slang, settled himself firmly on his heels, and manoeuvred with the muleta to make the bull lower his head.

"What could he say to her," thought Jauncho, "that young fellow on whom she smiled so sweetly?" Swayed by the reflection, he again forgot his formidable antagonist, and involuntarily raised his eyes. The bull, profiting by the momentary inattention, rushed upon the man; the latter, taken unawares, leaped backwards, and, by a mechanical movement, made a thrust with his sword. Several inches of the blade entered, but in the wrong place. The weapon met the bone; a furious movement of the bull made it rebound from the wound amidst a spout of blood, and fall to the ground some paces off. Juancho was disarmed, and the bull more dangerous than ever, for the misdirected thrust had served but to exasperate him. The chulos ran to the rescue, waving their pink and blue cloaks. Militona grew pale; the old woman uttered lamentable ejaculations, and sighed like a stranded whale. The public, beholding Juancho's inconceivable awkwardness, commenced one of those tremendous uproars in which the Spanish people excel: a perfect hurricane of insulting epithets, of vociferations and maledictions. "Away with the dog!" was shouted on all sides; "Down with the thief, the assassin! To the galleys with him! To Ceuta! The clumsy butcher, to spoil such a noble beast!" And so on, through the entire vocabulary of abuse which the Spanish tongue so abundantly supplies. Juancho stood erect under the storm of insult, biting his lips, and tearing with his right hand the lace frills of his shirt. His sleeve, ripped open by the bull's horn, disclosed his arm a long violet scar. For an he tottered, and seemed about to fall, suffocated by the violence of his emotions; but he promptly recovered himself, ran to his sword, picked it up, straightened the bent blade with his foot, and placed himself with his back towards the place where Militona sat. At a sign he made, the chulos led the bull towards him by tantalising it with their cloaks; and this time he dealt the animal a downward thrust, in strict conformity with the laws of the sport--such a one as the great Montes of Chiclana himself would not have disowned. The sword was planted between the shoulders, and its cross-hilt, rising between the horns of the bull, reminded of those Gothic engravings where St Hubert is seen kneeling before a stag which bears a crucifix in its antlers.

The bull fell heavily on its knees before Juancho, as if doing homage to his superiority, and after a short convulsion rolled over, its four feet in the air.

"Juancho has taken a brilliant revenge! What a splendid thrust! He is superior to Arjona and the Chiclanero; do you not think so, Senorita?" cried Andres enthusiastically to his neighbour.

"For God's sake, sir, not another word!" replied Militona very quickly, without turning her head and scarcely moving her lips. The words were spoken in a tone at once so imperative and so imploring, that Andres immediately saw it was not the artifice of a young girl begging to be let alone, and hoping to be disobeyed. Neither could modesty dictate the injunction. Nothing he had said called for such rigour, and manolas, the grisettes of Madrid, are not usually--be it said without calumny--of such extreme susceptibility. Real terror, apprehension of a danger unknown to Andres, was indicated by the hasty sentence.