Chapter LIII: A Loss And A Gain (3)

In a few minutes the young man, who looked bewildered and could not speak, was safely stowed away among Nathalie’s other parcels; and the crest of the hill being gained, we began rolling rapidly down a steep descent. The little old maid, though in a perfect ecstasy of delight—the incident evidently appeared to her quite an adventure—behaved with remarkable prudence. While I was puzzling my head to guess by what disease this poor young man had been attacked, she was getting ready the remedies that appeared to her the most appropriate, in the shape of some excellent cakes and a bottle of good wine, which she fished out of her huge basket. Her protégé, made tame by hunger, allowed himself to be treated like a child. First, she gave him a very small sip of Burgundy, then a diminutive fragment of cake; and then another sip and another piece of cake—insisting on his eating very slowly. Being perfectly useless, I looked quietly on, and smiled to see the submissiveness with which this fine, handsome fellow allowed himself to be fed by the fussy old maid, and how he kept his eyes fixed upon her with an expression of wondering admiration.

Before we arrived at Avignon we knew the history of the young man. He was an artist, who had spent several years studying in Paris, without friends, without resources, except a miserable pittance which his mother, a poor peasant woman, living in a village not far from Aix, had managed to send him. At first he had been upheld by hope; and although he knew that his mother not only denied herself necessaries, but borrowed money to support him, he was consoled by the idea that the time would come when, by the efforts of his genius, he would be able to repay every thing, with the accumulated interest which affection alone would calculate. But his expenses necessarily increased, and no receipts came to meet them. He was compelled to apply to his mother for further assistance. The answer was one word—“impossible.” Then he endeavored calmly to examine his position, came to the conclusion that for several years more he must be a burden to his mother if he obstinately pursued his career, and that she must be utterly ruined to insure his success. So he gave up his art, sold every thing he had to pay part of his debts, and set out on foot to return to his village and become a peasant, as his father had been before him. The little money he had taken with him was gone by the time he reached Lyon. He had passed through that city without stopping, and for more than two days, almost for two nights, had incessantly pursued his journey, without rest and without food, until he had reached the spot where, exhausted with fatigue and hunger, he had fallen, perhaps to perish had we not been there to assist him.

Nathalie listened with eager attention to this narrative, told with a frankness which our sympathy excited. Now and then she gave a convulsive start, or checked a hysterical sob, and at last fairly burst into tears. I was interested as well as she, but retained more calmness to observe how moral beauty almost vainly struggled to appear through the insignificant features of this admirable woman. Her little eyes, reddened with weeping; her pinched-up nose, blooming at the point; her thin lips, probably accustomed to sarcasm; her cheeks, with a leaden citron hue; her hair that forked up in unmanageable curls—all combined to obscure the exquisite expression of respect and sympathy, perhaps already of love, sparkling from her kindled soul, that could just be made out by an attentive eye. At length, however, she became for a moment perfectly beautiful, as, when the young painter had finished his story, with an expression that showed how bitterly he regretted his abandoned art, she took both his hands in hers, and exclaimed, “No, _mon enfant_, you shall not be thus disappointed. Your genius”—she already took for granted he had genius—“shall have an opportunity for development. Your mother can not do what is necessary—she has played her part. I will be a—second mother to you, in return for the little affection you can bestow on me without ingratitude to her to whom you owe your life.”

“My life has to be paid for twice,” said he, kissing her hand. Nathalie could not help looking round proudly to me. It was so flattering to receive the gallant attentions of so handsome a young man, that I think she tried to forget how she had bought them.

In the exuberance of her hospitality, the little old maid invited both Claude Richer and myself to spend some time in the large farm-house of her brother-in-law. I declined, with a promise to be a frequent visitor; but Claude, who was rather commanded than asked, could do nothing but accept. I left them at the diligence office, and saw them walk away, the little Nathalie affecting to support her feeble companion. For the honor of human nature let me add, that the conductor said nothing about the fare. “It would have been indelicate,” he said to me, “to remind Mlle. Nathalie of her promise in the young man’s presence. I know her well; and she will pay me at a future time. At any rate, I must show that there is a heart under this waistcoat.” So saying, the conductor thumped his breast with simple admiration of his own humanity, and went away, after recommending me to the Café de Paris—indeed an excellent house.

I shall say nothing of a variety of little incidents that occurred to me at Avignon, nor about my studies on the history of the popes who resided there. I must reserve myself entirely for the development of Nathalie’s romance, which I could not follow step by step, but the chief features of which I was enabled to catch during a series of visits I paid to the farm-house. Nathalie herself was very communicative to me at first, and scarcely deigned to conceal her sentiments. By degrees, however, as the catastrophe approached, she became more and more reserved; and I had to learn from others, or to guess the part she played.

The farm-house was situated on the other side of the river, in a small plain, fertile and well wooded. Old Cossu, the owner, was a fine jolly fellow, but evidently a little sharp in money-matters. I was surprised at first that he received the visit of Claude favorably; but when it came out that a good part of his capital belonged to Nathalie, every circumstance of deference to her was explained. Mère Cossu was not a very remarkable personage; unless it be remarkable that she entertained the most profound veneration for her husband, quoted his commonest sayings as witticisms, and was ready to laugh herself into convulsions if he sneezed louder than usual. Marie was a charming little person; perhaps a little too demure in her manners, considering her wicked black eyes. She was soon very friendly with Claude and me, but seemed to prefer passing her time in whispered conversations with Nathalie. I was let into the secret that their conversation turned principally on the means of getting rid of the husband-elect—a great lubberly fellow, who lived some leagues off, and whose red face shone over the garden-gate, in company with a huge nosegay, regularly every Sunday morning. In spite of the complying temper of old Cossu in other respects when Nathalie gave her advice, he seemed obstinately bent on choosing his own son-in-law. Parents are oftener correct than romancers will allow in their negative opinions on this delicate subject, but I can not say as much for them when they undertake to be affirmative.

I soon observed that Nathalie was not so entirely devoted to the accomplishment of the object for which she had undertaken the journey as she had promised; and, above all, that she spoke no more of the disinterested sacrifice of herself as a substitute for Marie. I maliciously alluded to this subject in one of our private confabulations, and Nathalie, instead of being offended, frankly answered that she could not make big Paul Boneau happy and assist Claude in his studies at the same time. “I have now,” she said, “an occupation for the rest of my life—namely, to develop this genius, of which France will one day be proud; and I shall devote myself to it unremittingly.”

“Come, Nathalie,” replied I, taking her arm in mine as we crossed the poplar-meadow, “have you no hope of a reward?”

“I understand,” quoth she, frankly; “and I will not play at cross-purposes with you. If this young man really loves his art, and his art alone, as he pretends, could he do better than reward me—as you call it—for my assistance? The word has a cruel signification, but you did not mean it unkindly.”

I looked at her wan, sallow countenance, that had begun for some days to wear an expression of painful anxiety. At that moment I saw over a hedge—but she could not—Claude and Marie walking in a neighboring field, and pausing now and then to bend their heads very close together in admiration of some very common flower. “Poor old maid,” thought I, “you will have no reward save the consciousness of your own pure intentions.”

The minute development of this drama without dramatic scenes would, perhaps, be more instructive than any elaborate analysis of human passions in general; but it would require a volume, and I can only here give a mere summary. Nathalie, in whom alone I felt particularly interested, soon found that she had deceived herself as to the nature of her sentiments for Claude—that instead of regarding him with almost maternal solicitude, she loved him with an intensity that is the peculiar characteristic of passions awakened late in life, when the common consolation is inadmissible—“after all, I may find better.” This was her last, her only chance of a happiness which she had declared to me she had never dreamed of, but which in reality she had only declined because it did not present itself to her under all the conditions required by her refined and sensitive mind. Claude, who was an excellent fellow, but incapable of comprehending her or sacrificing himself, never swerved from grateful deference to her; but I could observe, that as the state of her feelings became more apparent, he took greater care to mark the character of his sentiments for her, and to insist with some affectation on the depth of his filial affection. Nathalie’s eyes were often red with tears—a fact which Claude did not choose, perhaps, to notice, for fear of an explanation. Marie, on the contrary, became more blooming every day, while her eloquent eyes were still more assiduously bent upon the ground. It was evident to me that she and Claude understood one another perfectly well.

At length the same thing became evident to Nathalie. How the revelation was made to her I do not know; but sudden it must have been, for I met her one day in the poplar-field, walking hurriedly along with an extraordinary expression of despair in her countenance. I know not why, but the thought at once occurred to me that the Rhône ran rapid and deep not far off, and I threw myself across her path. She started like a guilty thing, but did not resist when I took her hand and led her back slowly toward the farm-house. We had nearly reached it in silence, when she suddenly stopped, and bursting into tears, turned away into a by-lane where was a little bench under an elm. Here she sat down and sobbed for a long time, while I stood by. At length she raised her head and asked me, “Do morality and religion require self-sacrifice even to the end—even to making half a life a desert, even to heart-breaking, even unto death?”

“It scarcely belongs to a selfish mortal to counsel such virtue,” I replied; “but it is because it is exercised here and there, now and then, once in a hundred years, that man can claim some affinity with the divine nature.”

A smile of ineffable sweetness played about the poor old girl’s lips. She wiped her eyes, and began talking of the changing aspect of the season, and how the trees day by day more rapidly shed their leaves, and how the Rhône had swelled within its ample bed, and of various topics apparently unconnected with her frame of mind, but all indicating that she felt the winter was coming—a long and dreary winter for her. At this moment Fanfreluche, who had missed her, came down the lane barking with fierce joy; and she took the poor little beast in her arms, and exhaled the last bitter feeling that tormented her in these words: “Thou at least lovest me—because I have fed thee!” In her humility she seemed now to believe that her only claim to love was her charity; and that even this claim was not recognized except by a dog!

I was not admitted to the secret of the family conclave that took place, but learned simply that Nathalie pleaded with feverish energy the love that had grown up between Marie and Claude as an insuperable bar to the proposed marriage between Paul Boneau and her niece. Matters were arranged by means of large sacrifices on the part of the heroic maid. Paul’s face ceased to beam over the garden-gate on a Sunday morning; and by degrees the news got abroad that Marie was betrothed to the young artist. One day a decent old woman in _sabots_ came to the farm-house; it was Claude’s mother, who had walked from Aix to see him. It was arranged that Claude should pursue his studies a year longer, and then marry. Whether any explanation took place I do not know; but I observed that the young man sometimes looked with the same expression of wondering admiration I had observed in the diligence on the little Nathalie—-more citron-hued than ever. At length she unhooked the cage of Coco, the parrot, took Fanfreluche under one arm and her blue umbrella under the other, and went away in company with the whole family, myself included, every one carrying a parcel or a basket to the diligence office. What a party that was! Every one was in tears except Nathalie. She bore up manfully if I may use the word; laughed, and actually joked; but just as I handed Coco in, her factitious courage yielded, and she burst into an agony of grief. With officious zeal I kept at the window until the diligence gave a lurch and started; and then turning round I looked at Claude and Marie, who were already mingling their eyes in selfish forgetfulness of their benefactress, and said, solemnly: “There goes the best woman ever created for this unworthy earth.” The artist, who, for an ordinary man, did not lack sentiment, took my hand and said: “Sir, I will quarrel with any man who says less of that angel than you have done.”

The marriage was brought about in less time than had been agreed upon. Nathalie of course did not come; but she sent some presents and a pleasant letter of congratulation, in which she called herself “an inveterate old maid.” About a year afterward I passed through Lyon and saw her. She was still very yellow and more than ever attentive to Fanfreluche and Coco. I even thought she devoted herself too much to the service of these two troublesome pets, to say nothing of a huge cat which she had added to her menagerie, as a kind of hieroglyphic of her condition. “How fare the married couple?” cried she, tossing up her cork-screw curls. “Still cooing and billing?”

“Mademoiselle,” said I, “they are getting on pretty well. Claude, finding the historic pencil not lucrative, has taken to portrait-painting; and being no longer an enthusiastic artist, talks even of adopting the more expeditious method of the Daguerreotype. In the mean time, half the tradesmen of Avignon, to say nothing of Aix, have bespoken caricatures of themselves by his hand. Marie makes a tolerable wife, but has a terrible will of her own, and is feared as well as loved.”

Nathalie tried to laugh; but the memory of her old illusions coming over her, she leaned down toward the cat she was nursing, and sparkling tears fell upon its glossy fur.

THE POISON-EATERS.

A very interesting trial for murder took place lately in Austria. The prisoner, Anna Alexander, was acquitted by the jury, who, in the various questions put to the witnesses, in order to discover whether the murdered man, Lieutenant Matthew Wursel, was a poison-eater or not, educed some very curious evidence relating to this class of persons.

As it is not generally known that eating poison is actually practiced in more countries than one, the following account of the custom, given by a physician, Dr. T. von Tschudi, will not be without interest.

In some districts of Lower Austria and in Styria, especially in those mountainous parts bordering on Hungary, there prevails the strange habit of eating arsenic. The peasantry in particular are given to it. They obtain it under the name of _hedri_ from the traveling hucksters and gatherers of herbs, who, on their side, get it from the glass-blowers, or purchase it from the cow-doctors, quacks, or mountebanks.

The poison-eaters have a twofold aim in their dangerous enjoyment: one of which is to obtain a fresh, healthy appearance, and acquire a certain degree of _embonpoint_. On this account, therefore, gay village lads and lasses employ the dangerous agent, that they may become more attractive to each other; and it is really astonishing with what favorable results their endeavors are attended, for it is just the youthful poison-eaters that are, generally speaking, distinguished by a blooming complexion, and an appearance of exuberant health. Out of many examples I select the following:

A farm-servant who worked in the cow-house belonging to —— was thin and pale, but nevertheless well and healthy. This girl had a lover whom she wished to enchain still more firmly; and in order to obtain a more pleasing exterior she had recourse to the well-known means, and swallowed every week several doses of arsenic. The desired result was obtained; and in a few months she was much fuller in the figure, rosy-cheeked, and, in short, quite according to her lover’s taste. In order to increase the effect, she was so rash as to increase the dose of arsenic, and fell a victim to her vanity: she was poisoned, and died an agonizing death.

The number of deaths in consequence of the immoderate enjoyment of arsenic is not inconsiderable, especially among the young. Every priest who has the cure of souls in those districts where the abuse prevails could tell such tragedies; and the inquiries I have myself made on the subject have opened out very singular details. Whether it arise from fear of the law, which forbids the unauthorized possession of arsenic, or whether it be that an inner voice proclaims to him his sin, the arsenic-eater always conceals as much as possible the employment of these dangerous means. Generally speaking, it is only the confessional or the death-bed that raises the vail from the terrible secret.

The second object the poison-eaters have in view is to make them, as they express it, “better winded!”—that is, to make their respiration easier when ascending the mountains. Whenever they have far to go and to mount a considerable height, they take a minute morsel of arsenic and allow it gradually to dissolve. The effect is surprising; and they ascend with ease heights which otherwise they could climb only with distress to the chest.

The dose of arsenic with which the poison-eaters begin, consists, according to the confession of some of them, of a piece the size of a lentil, which in weight would be rather less than half a grain. To this quantity, which they take fasting several mornings in the week, they confine themselves for a considerable time; and then gradually, and very carefully, they increase the dose according to the effect produced. The peasant R——, living in the parish of A——g, a strong, hale man of upward of sixty, takes at present at every dose a piece of about the weight of four grains. For more than forty years he has practiced this habit, which he inherited from his father, and which he in his turn will bequeath to his children.

It is well to observe, that neither in these nor in other poison-eaters is there the least trace of an arsenic cachexy discernible; that the symptoms of a chronic arsenical poisoning never show themselves in individuals who adapt the dose to their constitution, even although that dose should be considerable. It is not less worthy of remark, however, that when, either from inability to obtain the acid, or from any other cause, the perilous indulgence is stopped, symptoms of illness are sure to appear, which have the closest resemblance to those produced by poisoning from arsenic. These symptoms consist principally in a feeling of general discomfort, attended by a perfect indifference to all surrounding persons and things, great personal anxiety, and various distressing sensations arising from the digestive organs, want of appetite, a constant feeling of the stomach being overloaded at early morning, an unusual degree of salivation, a burning from the pylorus to the throat, a cramp-like movement in the pharynx, pains in the stomach, and especially difficulty of breathing. For all these symptoms there is but one remedy—a return to the enjoyment of arsenic.

According to inquiries made on the subject, it would seem that the habit of eating poison among the inhabitants of Lower Austria has not grown into a passion, as is the case with the opium-eaters in the East, the chewers of the betel nut in India and Polynesia, and of the coco-leaves among the natives of Peru. When once commenced, however, it becomes a necessity.

In some districts sublimate of quicksilver is used in the same way. One case in particular is mentioned by Dr. von Tschudi, a case authenticated by the English embassador at Constantinople, of a great opium-eater at Brussa, who daily consumed the enormous quantity of forty grains of corrosive sublimate with his opium. In the mountainous parts of Peru the doctor met very frequently with eaters of corrosive sublimate; and in Bolivia the practice is still more frequent, where this poison is openly sold in the market to the Indians.

In Vienna the use of arsenic is of every-day occurrence among horse-dealers, and especially with the coachmen of the nobility. They either shake it in a pulverized state among the corn, or they tie a bit the size of a pea in a piece of linen, which they fasten to the curb when the horse is harnessed, and the saliva of the animal soon dissolves it. The sleek, round, shining appearance of the carriage-horses, and especially the much-admired foaming at the mouth, is the result of this arsenic-feeding.(4) It is a common practice with the farm-servants in the mountainous parts to strew a pinch of arsenic on the last feed of hay before going up a steep road. This is done for years without the least unfavorable result; but should the horse fall into the hands of another owner who withholds the arsenic, he loses flesh immediately, is no longer lively, and even with the best feeding there is no possibility of restoring him to his former sleek appearance.

The above particulars, communicated by a contributor residing in Germany, are curious only inasmuch as they refer to poisons of a peculiarly quick and deadly nature. Our ordinary “indulgences” in this country are the same in kind, though not in degree, for we are all poison-eaters. To say nothing of our opium and alcohol consumers, our teetotallers are delighted with the briskness and sparkle of spring-water, although these qualities indicate the presence of carbonic acid or fixed air. In like manner, few persons will object to a drop or two of the frightful corrosive, sulphuric acid (vitriol), in a glass of water, to which it communicates an agreeably acid taste; and most of us have, at some period or other of our lives, imbibed prussic acid, arsenic, and other deadly poisons under the orders of the physician, or the first of these in the more pleasing form of confectionary. Arsenic is said by Dr. Pearson to be as harmless as a glass of wine in the quantity of one-sixteenth part of a grain; and in the cure of agues it is so certain in its effects, that the French Directory once issued an edict ordering the surgeons of the Italian army, under pain of military punishment, to banish that complaint, at two or three days’ notice, from among the vast numbers of soldiers who were languishing under it in the marshes of Lombardy. It would seem that no poison taken in small and diluted doses is immediately hurtful, and the same thing may be said of other agents. The tap of a fan, for instance, is a _blow_, and so is the stroke of a club; but the one gives an agreeable sensation, and the other fells the recipient to the ground. In like manner the analogy holds good between the distribution of a blow over a comparatively large portion of the surface of the body and the dilution or distribution of the particles of a poison. A smart thrust upon the breast, for instance, with a foil does no injury; but if the button is removed, and the same momentum thus thrown to a point, the instrument enters the structures, and perhaps causes death.

But the misfortune is, that poisons swallowed for the sake of the agreeable sensations they occasion owe this effect to their action upon the nervous system; and the action must be kept up by a constantly increasing dose till the constitution is irremediably injured. In the case of arsenic, as we have seen, so long as the excitement is undiminished all is apparently well; but the point is at length reached when to proceed or to turn back is alike death. The moment the dose is diminished or entirely withdrawn, symptoms of poison appear, and the victim perishes because he has shrunk from killing himself. It is just so when the stimulant is alcohol. The morning experience of the drinker prophesies, on every succeeding occasion, of the fate that awaits him. It may be pleasant to get intoxicated, but to get sober is horror. The time comes, however, when the pleasure is at an end, and the horror alone remains. When the habitual stimulus reaches its highest, and the undermined constitution can stand no more, then comes the reaction. If the excitement could go on _ad infinitum_, the prognosis would be different; but the poison-symptoms appear as soon as the dose can no longer be increased without producing instant death, and the drunkard dies of the want of drink! Many persons, it can not be denied, reach a tolerable age under this stimulus; but they do so only by taking warning in time—perhaps from some frightful illness—and carefully proportioning the dose to the sinking constitution. “I can not drink now as formerly,” is a common remark—sometimes elevated into the boast, “I _do_ not drink now as formerly.” But the relaxation of the habit is compulsory; and by a thousand other tokens, as well as the inability to indulge in intoxication, the _ci-devant_ drinker is reminded of a madness which even in youth produced more misery than enjoyment, and now adds a host of discomforts to the ordinary fragility of age. As for arsenic-eating, we trust it will never be added to the madnesses of our own country. Think of a man deliberately condemning himself to devour this horrible poison, on an increasing scale, during his whole life, with the certainty that if at any time, through accident, necessity, or other cause, he holds his hand, he must die the most agonizing of all deaths! In so much horror do we hold the idea, that we would have refrained from mentioning the subject at all if we had not observed a paragraph making the round of the papers, and describing the agreeable phases of the practice without mentioning its shocking results.

A CHILD’S HISTORY OF KING JOHN’S REIGN. BY CHARLES DICKENS.

At two-and-thirty years of age, John became King of England. His pretty little nephew Arthur had the best claim to the throne; but John seized the treasure, and made fine promises to the nobility, and got himself crowned at Westminster within a few weeks after his brother Richard’s death. I doubt whether the crown could possibly have been put upon the head of a meaner coward, or a more detestable villain, if the country had been searched from end to end to find him out.

The French King, Philip, refused to acknowledge the right of John to his new dignity, and declared in favor of Arthur. You must not suppose that he had any generosity of feeling for the fatherless boy; it merely suited his ambitious schemes to oppose the King of England. So, John and the French King went to war about Arthur.

He was a handsome boy, at that time only twelve years, old. He was not born when his father, Geoffrey, had his brains trampled out at the tournament; and, beside the misfortune of never having known a father’s guidance and protection, he had the additional misfortune to have a foolish mother (Constance by name), lately married to her third husband. She took Arthur, upon John’s accession, to the French King, who pretended to be very much his friend, and made him a knight, and promised him his daughter in marriage; but, who cared so little about him in reality, that finding it his interest to make peace with King John for a time, he did so without the least consideration for the poor little Prince, and heartlessly sacrificed all his interests.

Young Arthur, for two years afterward, lived quietly; and in the course of that time his mother died. But, the French King then finding it his interest to quarrel with King John again, again made Arthur his pretense, and invited the orphan boy to court. “You know your rights, Prince,” said the French King, “and you would like to be a king. Is it not so?” “Truly,” said Prince Arthur, “I should greatly like to be a King!” “Then,” said Philip, “you shall have two hundred gentlemen who are knights of mine, and with them you shall go to win back the provinces belonging to you, of which your uncle, the usurping King of England, has taken possession. I myself, meanwhile, will head a force against him in Normandy.” Poor Arthur was so flattered and so grateful, that he signed a treaty with the crafty French King, agreeing to consider him his superior Lord, and that the French King should keep for himself whatever he could take from King John.

Now, King John was so bad in all ways, and King Philip was so perfidious, that Arthur, between the two, might as well have been a lamb between a fox and a wolf. But, being so young, he was ardent and flushed with hope; and, when the people of Brittany (which was his inheritance) sent him five hundred more knights and five thousand foot soldiers, he believed his fortune was made. The people of Brittany had been fond of him from his birth, and had requested that he might be called Arthur, in remembrance of that dimly-famous English Arthur, of whom I told you early in this book, whom they believed to have been the brave friend and companion of an old king of their own. They had tales among them about a prophet called Merlin (of the same old time), who had foretold that their own king should be restored to them after hundreds of years; and they believed that the prophecy would be fulfilled in Arthur; that the time would come when he would rule them with a crown of Brittany upon his head; and when neither King of France nor King of England would have any power over them. When Arthur found himself riding in a glittering suit of armor on a richly caparisoned horse, at the head of his train of knights and soldiers, he began to believe this too, and to consider old Merlin a very superior prophet.

He did not know—how could he, being so innocent and inexperienced?—that his little army was a mere nothing against the power of the King of England. The French King knew it; but the poor boy’s fate was little to him, so that the King of England was worried and distressed. Therefore, King Philip went his way into Normandy, and Prince Arthur went his way toward Mirebeau, a French town near Poictiers, both very well pleased.

Prince Arthur went to attack the town of Mirebeau, because his grandmother Eleanor, who has so often made her appearance in this history (and who had always been his mother’s enemy), was living there, and because his knights said, “Prince, if you can take her prisoner, you will be able to bring the king your uncle to terms!” But she was not to be easily taken. She was old enough by this time—eighty—but she was as full of stratagem as she was full of years and wickedness. Receiving intelligence of young Arthur’s approach, she shut herself up in a high tower, and encouraged her soldiers to defend it like men. Prince Arthur with his little army besieged the high tower. King John, hearing how matters stood, came up to the rescue with _his_ army. So here was a strange family-party! The boy-Prince besieging his grandmother, and his uncle besieging him!

This position of affairs did not last long. One summer night King John, by treachery, got his men into the town, surprised Prince Arthur’s force, took two hundred of his knights, and seized the Prince himself in his bed. The knights were put in heavy irons, and driven away in open carts drawn by bullocks, to various dungeons, where they were most inhumanly treated, and where some of them were starved to death. Prince Arthur was sent to the castle of Falaise.

One day, while he was in prison at that castle, mournfully thinking it strange that one so young should be in so much trouble, and looking out of the small window in the deep dark wall, at the summer sky and the birds, the door was softly opened, and he saw his uncle the King standing in the shadow of the archway, looking very grim.

“Arthur,” said the King, with his wicked eyes more on the stone floor than on his nephew, “will you not trust to the gentleness, the friendship, and the truthfulness, of your loving uncle?”

“I will tell my loving uncle that,” replied the boy, “when he does me right. Let him restore to me my kingdom of England, and then come to me and ask the question.”

The King looked at him and went out. “Keep that boy close prisoner,” said he to the warden of the castle.

Then the King took secret counsel with the worst of his nobles how the Prince was to be got rid of. Some said, “Put out his eyes, and keep him in prison, as Robert of Normandy was kept.” Others said, “Have him stabbed.” Others, “Have him hanged.” Others, “Have him poisoned.”

King John, feeling that, in any case, whatever was done afterward, it would be a satisfaction to his mind to have those handsome eyes burnt out that had looked at him so proudly while his own royal eyes were blinking at the stone floor, sent certain ruffians to Falaise to blind the boy with red-hot irons. But Arthur so pathetically entreated them, and shed such piteous tears, and so appealed to Hubert de Bourg, the warden of the castle, who had a love for him, and was an honorable, tender man, that Hubert could not bear it. To his eternal honor he prevented the torture from being performed, and, at his own risk, sent the savages away.

The chafed and disappointed King bethought himself of the stabbing suggestion next, and with his shuffling manner and his cruel face, proposed it to one William de Bray. “I am a gentleman, and not an executioner,” said William de Bray, and left the presence with disdain.

But it was not difficult for a king to hire a murderer in those days. King John found one for his money, and sent him down to the castle of Falaise. “On what errand dost thou come?” said Hubert to this fellow. “To dispatch young Arthur,” he returned. “Go back to him who sent thee,” answered Hubert, “and say that I will do it!”

King John very well knowing that Hubert would never do it, but that he courageously sent this reply to save the Prince, or gain time, dispatched messengers to convey the young prisoner to the castle of Rouen.

Arthur was soon forced from the good Hubert—of whom he had never stood in greater need than then—carried away by night, and lodged in his new prison: where, through the grated window, he could hear the deep waters of the river Seine, rippling against the stone wall below.

One dark night, as he lay sleeping, dreaming perhaps of rescue by those unfortunate gentlemen who were obscurely suffering and dying in his cause, he was roused, and bidden by his jailer to come down the staircase to the foot of the tower. He hurriedly dressed himself and obeyed. When they came to the bottom of the winding stairs, and the night air from the river blew upon their faces, the jailer trod upon his torch and put it out. Then, Arthur, in the darkness, was hurriedly drawn into a solitary boat. And in that boat he found his uncle and one other man.

He knelt to them, and prayed them not to murder him. Deaf to his entreaties, they stabbed him and sunk his body in the river with heavy stones. When the spring morning broke, the tower-door was closed, the boat was gone, the river sparkled on its way, and never more was any trace of the poor boy beheld by mortal eyes.

The news of this atrocious murder being spread in England, awakened a hatred of the King (already odious for his many vices, and for his having stolen away and married a noble lady while his own wife was living) that never slept again through his whole reign. In Brittany, the indignation was intense. Arthur’s own sister Eleanor was in the power of John and shut up in a convent at Bristol, but his half-sister Alice was in Brittany. The people chose her, and the murdered prince’s father-in-law, the last husband of Constance, to represent them; and carried their fiery complaints to King Philip. King Philip summoned King John (as the holder of territory in France) to come before him and defend himself. King John refusing to appear, King Philip declared him false, perjured, and guilty; and again made war. In a little time, by conquering the greater part of his French territory, King Philip deprived him of one-third of his dominions. And, through all the fighting that took place, King John was always found, either to be eating and drinking, like a gluttonous fool, when the danger was at a distance, or to be running away, like a beaten cur, when it was near.

You might suppose that when he was losing his dominions at this rate, and when his own nobles cared so little for him or his cause that they plainly refused to follow his banner out of England, he had enemies enough. But he made another enemy of the Pope, which he did in this way.

The Archbishop of Canterbury dying, and the junior monks of that place wishing to get the start of the senior monks in the appointment of his successor, met together at midnight, secretly elected a certain Reginald, and sent him off to Rome to get the Pope’s approval. The senior monks and the King soon finding this out, and being very angry about it, the junior monks gave way, and all the monks together elected the Bishop of Norwich, who was the King’s favorite. The Pope, hearing the whole story, declared that neither election would do for him, and that _he_ elected Stephen Langton. The monks submitting to the Pope, the King turned them all out bodily, and banished them as traitors.—The Pope sent three bishops to the King, to threaten him with an Interdict. The King told the bishops that if any Interdict were laid upon his kingdom, he would tear out the eyes and cut off the noses of all the monks he could lay hold of, and send them over to Rome in that undecorated state as a present for their master. The bishops, nevertheless, soon published the Interdict, and fled.

After it had lasted a year, the Pope proceeded to his next step; which was excommunication. King John was declared excommunicated, with all the usual ceremonies. The King was so incensed at this, and was made so desperate by the disaffection of his barons and the hatred of his people, that it is said that he even privately sent embassadors to the Turks in Spain, offering to renounce his religion and hold his kingdom of them if they would help him. It is related that the embassadors were admitted to the presence of the Turkish Emir, through long lines of Moorish guards, and that they found the Emir with his eyes seriously fixed on the pages of a large book from which he never once looked up. That they gave him a letter from the King containing his proposals, and were gravely dismissed. That presently the Emir sent for one of them, and conjured him, by his faith in his religion, to say what kind of man the King of England truly was? That the embassador, thus pressed, replied that the King of England was a false tyrant, against whom his own subjects would soon rise. And that this was quite enough for the Emir.

Money being, in his position, the next best thing to men, King John spared no means of getting it. He set on foot another oppressing and torturing of the unhappy Jews (which was quite in his way), and invented a now punishment for one wealthy Jew of Bristol. Until such time as that Jew should produce a certain large sum of money, the King sentenced him to be imprisoned, and, every day, to have one tooth violently wrenched out of his head—beginning with the double teeth. For seven days the oppressed man bore the daily pain and lost the daily tooth; but, on the eighth, he paid the money. With the treasure raised in such ways, the King made an expedition into Ireland, where some English nobles had revolted. It was one of the very few places from which he did not run away; because no resistance was shown. He made another expedition into Wales—whence he _did_ run away in the end: but not before he had got from the Welsh people, as hostages, twenty-seven young men of the best families; every one of whom he caused to be slain in the following year.

To Interdict and Excommunication, the Pope now added his last sentence—Deposition. He proclaimed John no longer King, absolved all his subjects from their allegiance, and sent Stephen Langton and others to the King of France to tell him that, if he would invade England, he should be forgiven all his sins—at least, should be forgiven them by the Pope, if that would do.

As there was nothing that King Philip desired more than to invade England, he collected a great army at Rouen, and a fleet of seventeen hundred ships to bring them over. But the English people, however bitterly they hated the King, were not a people to suffer invasion quietly.—They flocked to Dover, where the English standard was, in such great numbers to enroll themselves as defenders of their native land, that there were not provisions for them, and the King could only select and retain sixty thousand. But, at this crisis, the Pope, who had his own reasons for objecting to either King John or King Philip being too powerful, interfered. He intrusted a legate, whose name was Pandolf, with the easy task of frightening King John. He sent him to the English camp, from France, to terrify him with exaggerations of King Philip’s power, and his own weakness in the discontent of the English barons and people. Pandolf discharged his commission so well, that King John, in a wretched panic, consented to acknowledge Stephen Langton; to resign his kingdom “to God, Saint Peter, and Saint Paul”—which meant the Pope; and to hold it, ever afterward, by the Pope’s leave, on payment of an annual sum of money. To this shameful contract he publicly bound himself in the church of the Knights Templars at Dover: where he laid at the legate’s feet a part of the tribute, which the legate haughtily trampled upon. But they _do_ say, that this was merely a genteel flourish, and that he was afterward seen to pick it up and pocket it.

There was an unfortunate prophet, of the name of Peter, who had greatly increased King John’s terrors by predicting that he would be unknighted (which the King supposed to signify that he would die) before the Feast of Ascension should be past. That was the day after this humiliation. When the next morning came, and the King, who had been trembling all night, found himself alive and safe, he ordered the prophet—and his son too—to be dragged through the streets at the tails of horses, and then hanged, for having frightened him.

As King John had now submitted, the Pope, to King Philip’s great astonishment, took him under his protection, and informed King Philip that he found he could not give him leave to invade England. The angry Philip resolved to do it without his leave; but, he gained nothing and lost much; for, the English, commanded by the Earl of Salisbury, went over, in five hundred ships, to the French coast, before the French fleet had sailed away from it, and utterly defeated the whole.

The Pope then took off his three sentences, one after another, and empowered Stephen Langton publicly to receive King John into the favor of the church again, and to ask him to dinner. The King, who hated Langton with all his might and main—and with reason too, for he was a great and a good man, with whom such a King could have no sympathy—pretended to cry and to be very grateful. There was a little difficulty about settling how much the King should pay, as a recompense to the clergy for the losses he had caused them; but, the end of it was, that the superior clergy got a good deal, and the inferior clergy got little or nothing—which has also happened since King John’s time, I believe.

When all these matters were arranged, the King in his triumph became more fierce, and false, and insolent to all around him than he had ever been. An alliance of sovereigns against King Philip, gave him an opportunity of landing an army in France; with which he even took a town! But, on the French King’s gaining a great victory, he ran away, of course, and made a truce for five years.

And now the time approached when he was to be still further humbled, and made to feel, if he could feel any thing, what a wretched creature he was. Of all men in the world, Stephen Langton seemed raised up by Heaven to oppose and subdue him. When he ruthlessly burnt and destroyed the property of his own subjects, because their lords, the Barons, would not serve him abroad, Stephen Langton fearlessly reproved and threatened him. When he swore to restore the laws of King Edward, or the laws of King Henry the First, Stephen Langton knew his falsehood, and pursued him through all his evasions. When the Barons met at the abbey of Saint Edmund’s-Bury, to consider their wrongs and the King’s oppressions, Stephen Langton roused them by his fervid words to demand a solemn charter of rights and liberties from their perjured master, and to swear, one by one, on the high altar, that they would have it, or would wage war against him to the death. When the King hid himself in London from the Barons, and was at last obliged to receive them, they told him roundly they would not believe him unless Stephen Langton became a surety that he would keep his word. When he took the Cross, to invest himself with some interest, and belong to something that was received with favor, Stephen Langton was still immovable. When he appealed to the Pope, and the Pope wrote to Stephen Langton in behalf of his new favorite, Stephen Langton was deaf, even to the Pope himself, and saw before him nothing but the welfare of England and the crimes of the English King.

At Easter time, the Barons assembled at Stamford in Lincolnshire, in proud array, and, marching near to Oxford where the King was, delivered into the hands of Stephen Langton and two others, a list of grievances. “And these,” they said, “he must redress, or we will do it for ourselves?” When Stephen Langton told the King as much, and read the list to him, he went half mad with rage. But that did him no more good than his afterward trying to pacify the Barons with lies. They called themselves and their followers, “The army of God and the Holy Church.” Marching through the country, with the people thronging to them every where (except at Northampton, where they failed in an attack upon the castle), they at last triumphantly set up their banner in London itself, whither the whole land, tired of the tyrant, seemed to flock to join them. Seven knights alone, of all the knights in England, remained with the King; who, reduced to this strait, at last sent the Earl of Pembroke to the Barons to say that he approved of every thing, and would meet them to sign their charter when they would. “Then,” said the Barons, “let the day be the 15th of June, and the place, Runny-Mead.”

On Monday, the fifteenth of June, one thousand two hundred and fourteen, the King came from Windsor Castle, and the Barons came from the town of Staines, and they met on Runny-Mead, which is still a pleasant meadow by the Thames, where rushes grow in the clear waters of the winding river, and its banks are green with grass and trees. On the side of the Barons, came the General of their army, ROBERT FITZ-WALTER, and a great concourse of the nobility of England. With the King, came, in all, some four-and-twenty persons of any note, most of whom despised him and were merely his advisers in form. On that great day, and in that great company, the King signed MAGNA CHARTA—the great charter of England—by which he pledged himself to maintain the church in its rights; to relieve the Barons of oppressive obligations as vassals of the Crown—of which the Barons, in their turn, pledged themselves to relieve _their_ vassals, the people; to respect the liberties of London and all other cities and boroughs; to protect foreign merchants who came to England; to imprison no man without a fair trial; and to sell, delay, or deny justice to none. As the Barons knew his falsehood well, they further required, as their securities, that he should send out of his kingdom all his foreign troops; that for two months they should hold possession of the city of London, and Stephen Langton of the Tower; and that five-and-twenty of their body, chosen by themselves, should be a lawful committee to watch the keeping of the charter, and to make war upon him if he broke it.

All this he was obliged to yield. He signed the charter with a smile, and, if he could have looked agreeable, would have done so, as he departed from the splendid assembly. When he got home to Windsor Castle, he was quite a madman in his helpless fury. And he broke the charter immediately afterward.