Chapter XII (3)

The corpse was embalmed, and conveyed to Greenwich, where it lay in state for some days. On the 4th of September, 1657, the Thames bore a solemn funeral procession, which moved slowly, amid salvos of artillery, to Westminster, where a new vault had been prepared in the noble abbey. The tears of a nation made it hallowed ground. A prince, of whom the epigram declares that, if he never said a foolish thing, he never did a wise one--saw fit to disturb the hero's grave, drag out the embalmed body, and cast it into a pit in the abbey-yard. One of Charles Stuart's most witless performances! For Blake is not to be confounded--though the Merry Monarch thought otherwise--with the Iretons and Bradshaws who were similarly exhumed. The admiral was a moderate in the closest, a patriot in the widest sense.

In the chivalric disposition of the man, there was true affinity to the best qualities of the Cavalier, mingled sometimes with a certain grim humor, all his own. Many are the illustrations we might adduce of this high-minded and generous temperament. For instance: meeting a French frigate of forty guns in the Straits, and signaling for the captain to come on board his flag-ship, the latter, considering the visit one of friendship and ceremony, there being no _declared_ war between the two nations--though the French conduct at Toulon had determined England on measures of retaliation--readily complied with Blake's summons; but was astounded on entering the admiral's cabin, at being told he was a prisoner, and requested to give up his sword. No! was the surprised but resolute Frenchman's reply. Blake felt that an advantage had been gained by a misconception, and scorning to make a brave officer its victim, he told his guest he might go back to his ship, if he wished, and fight it out as long as he was able. The captain, we are told, thanked him for his handsome offer, and retired. After two hours' hard fighting, he struck his flag; like a true French knight, he made a low bow, kissed his sword affectionately, and delivered it to his conqueror. Again: when Blake captured the Dutch herring-fleet off Bochness, consisting of 600 boats, instead of destroying or appropriating them, he merely took a tithe of the whole freight, in merciful consideration toward the poor families whose entire capital and means of life it constituted. This "characteristic act of clemency" was censured by many as Quixotic, and worse. But "Blake took no trouble to justify his noble instincts against such critics. His was indeed a happy fate: the only fault ever advanced by friend or foe against his public life, was an excess of generosity toward his vanquished enemies!" His sense of the comic is amusingly evidenced by the story of his _ruse_ during a dearth in the same siege. Tradition reports, that only one animal, a hog, was left alive in the town, and that more than half starved. In the afternoon, Blake, feeling that in their depression a laugh would do the defenders as much good as a dinner, had the hog carried to all the posts and whipped, so that its screams, heard in many places, might make the enemy suppose that fresh supplies had somehow been obtained.

The moral aspects of his character appear in this memoir in an admirable light. If he did not stand so high as some others in public notoriety, it was mainly because, to stand higher than he did, he must plant his feet on a _bad_ eminence. His patriotism was as pure as Cromwell's was selfish. Mr. Dixon, his biographer, alludes to the strong points of contrast, as well as of resemblance between the two men. Both, he says, were sincerely religious, undauntedly brave, fertile in expedients, irresistible in action. Born in the same year, they began and almost closed their lives at the same time. Both were country gentlemen of moderate fortune; both were of middle age when the revolution came. Without previous knowledge or professional training, both attained to the highest honors of their respective services. But there the parallel ends. Anxious only for the glory and interest of his country, Blake took little or no care of his personal aggrandizement. His contempt for money, his impatience with the mere vanities of power, were supreme. Bribery he abhorred in all its shapes. He was frank and open to a fault; his heart was ever in his hand, and his mind ever on his lips. His honesty, modesty, generosity, sincerity, and magnanimity were unimpeached. Cromwell's inferior moral qualities made him distrust the great seaman; yet, now and then, as in the case of the street tumult at Malaga, he was fain to express his admiration of Robert Blake. The latter was wholly unversed in the science of nepotism, and "happy family" compacts; for, although desirous of aiding his relatives, he was jealous of the least offense on their part, and never overlooked it. Several instances of this disposition are on record. When his brother Samuel, in rash zeal for the Commonwealth, ventured to exceed his duty, and was killed in a fray which ensued, Blake was terribly shocked, but only said: "Sam had no business there." Afterward, however, he shut himself up in his room, and bewailed his loss in the words of Scripture: "Died Abner as a fool dieth!" His brother Benjamin, again, to whom he was strongly attached, falling under suspicion of neglect of duty, was instantly broken, and sent on shore. "This rigid measure of justice against his own flesh and blood, silenced every complaint, and the service gained immeasurably in spirit, discipline, and confidence." Yet more touching was the great admiral's inexorable treatment of his favorite brother Humphrey, who, in a moment of extreme agitation, had failed in his duty. The captains went to Blake in a body, and argued that Humphrey's fault was a neglect rather than a breach of orders, and suggested his being sent away to England till it was forgotten. But Blake was outwardly unmoved, though inwardly his bowels did yearn over his brother, and sternly said: "If none of you will accuse him, I must be his accuser." Humphrey was dismissed from the service. It is affecting to know how painfully Blake missed his familiar presence during his sick and lonely passage homeward, when the hand of death was upon that noble heart. To Humphrey he bequeathed the greater part of the property which he left behind him. In the rare intervals of private life which he enjoyed on shore, Blake also compels our sincere regard. When released for awhile from political and professional duties, he loved to run down to Bridgewater for a few days or weeks, and, as his biographer says, with his chosen books, and one or two devout and abstemious friends, to indulge in all the luxuries of seclusion. "He was by nature self-absorbed and taciturn. His morning was usually occupied with a long walk, during which he appeared to his simple neighbors to be lost in profound thought, as if working out in his own mind the details of one of his great battles, or busy with some abstruse point of Puritan theology. If accompanied by one of his brothers, or by some other intimate friend, he was still for the most part silent. Always good-humored, and enjoying sarcasm when of a grave, high class, he yet never talked from the loquacious instinct, or encouraged others so to employ their time and talents in his presence. Even his lively and rattling brother Humphrey, his almost constant companion when on shore, caught, from long habit, the great man's contemplative and self-communing gait and manner; and when his friends rallied him on the subject in after-years, he used to say, that he had caught the trick of silence while walking by the admiral's side in his long morning musings on Knoll Hill. A plain dinner satisfied his wants. Religious conversation, reading, and the details of business, generally filled up the evening until supper-time; after family prayers--always pronounced by the general himself--he would invariably call for his cup of sack and a dry crust of bread, and while he drank two or three horns of Canary, would smile and chat in his own dry manner with his friends and domestics, asking minute questions about their neighbors and acquaintance; or when scholars or clergymen shared his simple repast, affecting a droll anxiety--rich and pleasant in the conqueror of Tromp--to prove, by the aptness and abundance of his quotations, that, in becoming an admiral, he had not forfeited his claim to be considered a good classic."

The care and interest with which he looked to the well-being of his humblest followers, made him eminently popular in the fleet. He was always ready to hear complaints, and to rectify grievances. When wounded at the battle of Portland, and exhorted to go on shore for repose and proper medical treatment, he refused to seek for himself the relief which he had put in the way of his meanest comrade. Even at the early period of his cruise against the Cavalier corsairs of Kinsale, such was Blake's popularity, that numbers of men were continually joining him from the enemy's fleet, although he offered them less pay, and none of that license which they had enjoyed under Prince Rupert's flag. They gloried in following a leader _sans peur et sans reproche_--one with whose renown the whole country speedily rang--the renown of a man who had revived the traditional glories of the English navy, and proved that its meteor flag could "yet terrific burn."

THE BRITISH MUSEUM AND ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS.

BY FREDRIKA BREMER.

London possesses two scenes of popular enjoyment on a great scale, in its British Museum and its Zoological Gardens. In the former, the glance is sent over the life of antiquity; in the latter, over that of the present time in the kingdom of nature; and in both may the Englishman enjoy a view of England's power and greatness, because it is the spirit of England which has compelled Egypt and Greece to remove hither their gods, their heroic statues: it is England whose courageous sons at this present moment force their way into the interior of Africa, that mysterious native land of miracles and of the Leviathan; it is an Englishman who held in his hand snow from the clefts of the remote Mountains of the Moon; it is England which has aroused that ancient Nineveh from her thousands of years of sleep in the desert; England, which has caused to arise from their graves, and to stand forth beneath the sky of England, those witnesses of the life and art of antiquity which are known under the name of the Nineveh Marbles, those magnificent but enigmatical figures which are called the Nineveh Bulls, in the immense wings of which one can not but admire the fine artistic skill of the workmanship, and from the beautiful human countenances of which glances Oriental despotism--with eyes such as those with which King Ahasuerus might have gazed on the beautiful Esther, when she sank fainting before the power of that glance. They have an extraordinary expression--these countenances of Nineveh, so magnificent, so strong, and at the same time, so joyous--a something about them so valiant and so joyously commanding! It was an expression which surprised me, and which I could not rightly comprehend. It would be necessary for me to see them yet again before I could fully satisfy myself whether this inexpressible, proudly joyous glance is one of wisdom or of stupidity! I could almost fancy it might be the latter, when I contemplate the expression of gentle majesty in the head of the Grecian Jupiter. Nevertheless, whether it be wisdom or stupidity--these representations of ancient Nineveh have a real grandeur and originality about them. Were they then representatives of life there? Was life there thus proud and joyous, thus unconscious of trouble, care, or death, thus valiant, and without all arrogance? Had it such eyes? Ah! and yet it has lain buried in the sand of the desert, lain forgotten there many thousand years. And now, when they once more look up with those large, magnificent eyes, they discover another world around them, another Nineveh which can not understand what they would say. Thus proudly might Nineveh have looked when the prophet uttered above her his "woe!" Such a glance does not accord with the life of earth.

In comparison with these latest discovered but most ancient works of art, the Egyptian statues fall infinitely short, bearing evidence of a degraded, sensual humanity, and the same as regarded art. But neither of these, nor of the Elgin marbles, nor of many other treasures of art in the British Museum which testify at the same time to the greatness of foregone ages, and to the power of the English world-conquering intelligence, shall I say any thing, because time failed me rightly to observe them, and the Nineveh marbles almost bewitched me by their contemplation.

It is to me difficult to imagine a greater pleasure than that of wandering through these halls, or than by a visit to the Zoological Garden which lies on one side of the Regent's Park. I would willingly reside near this park for a time, that I might again and again wander about in this world of animals from all zones, and listen to all that they have to relate, ice-bears and lions, turtles and eagles, the ourang-outang and the rhinoceros! The English Zoological Garden, although less fortunate in its locality than the _Jardin des Plantes_ in Paris, is much richer as regards animals. That which at this time attracted hither most visitors was the new guest of the garden, a so-called river-horse or hippopotamus, lately brought hither from Upper Egypt, where it was taken when young. It was yet not full-grown, and had here its own keeper--an Arab--its own house, its own court, its own reservoir, to bathe and swim in! Thus it lived in a really princely hippopotamus fashion. I saw his highness ascend out of his bath in a particularly good-humor, and he looked to me like an enormous--pig, with an enormously broad snout. He was very fat, smooth, and gray, and awkward in his movements, like the elephant. Long-necked giraffes walked about, feeding from wooden racks in the court adjoining that of the hippopotamus, and glancing at us across it. One can scarcely imagine a greater contrast than in these animals.

The eagles sate upon crags placed in a row beneath a lofty transparent arch of iron work, an arrangement which seemed to me excellent, and which I hope seemed so to them, in case they could forget that they were captives. Here they might breathe, here spread out their huge wings, see the free expanse of heaven, and the sun, and build habitations for themselves upon the rock. On the contrary, the lions, leopards, and such-like noble beasts of the desert, seemed to me particularly unhappy in their iron-grated stone vaults; and their perpetual, uneasy walking backward and forward in their cages--I could not see that without a feeling of distress. How beautiful they must be in the desert, or amid tropical woods, or in the wild caverns of the mountains, those grand, terrific beasts--how fearfully beautiful! One day I saw these animals during their feeding time. Two men went round with wooden vessels filled with pieces of raw meat; these were taken up with a large iron-pronged fork, and put, or rather flung, through the iron grating into the dens. It was terrible to see the savage joy, the fury, with which the food was received and swallowed down by the beasts. Three pieces of meat were thrown into one great vault which was at that time empty, a door was then drawn up at the back of the vault, and three huge yellow lions with shaggy manes rushed roaring in, and at one spring each possessed himself of his piece of flesh. One of the lions held his piece between his teeth for certainly a quarter of an hour, merely growling and gloating over it in savage joy, while his flashing eyes glared upon the spectators, and his tail was swung from side to side with an expression of defiance. It was a splendid, but a fearful sight. One of my friends was accustomed sometimes to visit these animals in company with his little girl, a beautiful child, with a complexion like milk and cherries. The sight of her invariably produced great excitement in the lions. They seemed evidently to show their love to her in a ravenous manner.

The serpents were motionless in their glass house, and lay, half-asleep, curled around the trunks of trees. In the evening by lamp-light they become lively, and then, twisting about and flashing forth their snaky splendors, they present a fine spectacle. The snake-room, with its walls of glass, behind which the snakes live, reminded me of the old northern myth of Nastrond, the roof of which was woven of snakes' backs, the final home of the ungodly--an unpleasant, but vigorous picture. The most disagreeable and the ugliest of all the snakes, was that little snake which the beautiful Queen Cleopatra, herself false as a serpent, placed at her breast; a little gray, flat-headed snake which liked to bury itself in the sand.

The monkey-family lead a sad life; stretch out their hands for nuts or for bread, with mournful human gestures; contentious, beaten, oppressed, thrust aside, frightening one another, the stronger the weaker--mournfully human also.

Sad, also, was the sight of an ourang-outang, spite of all its queer grimaces, solitary in its house, for it evidently suffered ennui, was restless, and would go out. It embraced its keeper and kissed him with real human tenderness. The countenance, so human, yet without any human intelligence, made a painful impression upon me; so did the friendly tame creature here, longing for its fellows, and seeing around it only human beings. Thou poor animal! Fain would I have seen thee in the primeval woods of Africa, caressing thy wife in the clear moonlight of the tropical night, sporting with her among the branches of the trees, and sleeping upon them, rocked by the warm night wind. There thy ugliness would have had a sort of picturesque beauty. After the strange beast-man had climbed hither and thither along the iron railing, seizing the bars with his hands, and feet which resembled hands, and also with his teeth, he took a white woolen blanket, wrapped it around him in a very complicated manner, and ended by laying himself down as a human being might do, in his chilly, desolate room.

After this, all the more charming was the spectacle presented by the water-fowl from every zone--Ducks, Swans, and Co., all quite at home here, swimming in the clear waters, among little green islands on which they had their little huts. It was most charmingly pretty and complete. And the mother-duck with her little, lively golden-yellow flock, swimming neck and heels after her, or seeking shelter under her wings, is at all times one of the most lovely scenes of natural life--resembling humanity in a beautiful manner.

Even among the wild beasts I saw a beautiful human trait of maternal affection. A female leopard had in her cage two young cubs, lively and playful as puppies. When the man threw the flesh into her cage, she drew herself back and let the young ones first seize upon the piece.

Crows from all parts of the world here live together in one neighborhood, and that the chattering and laughter was loud here did not surprise me, neither that the European crows so well maintained their place among their fellows. That which, however, astonished and delighted me was, the sweet flute-like melodious tones of the Australian crow. In the presence of this crow from Paradise--for originally it must have come therefrom--it seemed to me that all the other crows ought to have kept silence with their senseless chattering. But they were nothing but crows, and they liked better to hear themselves.

Parrots from all lands lived and quarreled together in a large room, and they there made such a loud screaming, that in order to stand it out one must have been one of their own relations. Better be among the silent, dejected, stealthy, hissing, shining snakes, than in company with parrots! The former might kill the body, but the latter the soul.

Twilight came on, and drove me out of the Zoological Garden each time I was there, and before I had seen all its treasures. Would that I might return there yet a third time and remain still longer!

A TERRIBLY STRANGE BED.

The most difficult likeness I ever had to take, not even excepting my first attempt in the art of Portrait-painting, was a likeness of a gentleman named Faulkner. As far as drawing and coloring went, I had no particular fault to find with my picture; it was the _expression_ of the sitter which I had failed in rendering--a failure quite as much his fault as mine. Mr. Faulkner, like many other persons by whom I have been employed, took it into his head that he must assume an expression, because he was sitting for his likeness; and, in consequence, contrived to look as unlike himself as possible, while I was painting him. I had tried to divert his attention from his own face, by talking with him on all sorts of topics. We had both traveled a great deal, and felt interested alike in many subjects connected with our wanderings over the same countries. Occasionally, while we were discussing our traveling experiences, the unlucky set-look left his countenance, and I began to work to some purpose; but it was always disastrously sure to return again, before I had made any great progress--or, in other words, just at the very time when I was most anxious that it should not re-appear. The obstacle thus thrown in the way of the satisfactory completion of my portrait, was the more to be deplored, because Mr. Faulkner's natural expression was a very remarkable one. I am not an author, so I can not describe it. I ultimately succeeded in painting it, however; and this was the way in which I achieved my success:

On the morning when my sitter was coming to me for the fourth time, I was looking at his portrait in no very agreeable mood--looking at it, in fact, with the disheartening conviction that the picture would be a perfect failure, unless the expression in the face represented were thoroughly altered and improved from nature. The only method of accomplishing this successfully, was to make Mr. Faulkner, somehow, insensibly forget that he was sitting for his picture. What topic could I lead him to talk on, which would entirely engross his attention while I was at work on his likeness?--I was still puzzling my brains to no purpose on this subject, when Mr. Faulkner entered my studio; and, shortly afterward, an accidental circumstance gained for me the very object which my own ingenuity had proved unequal to compass.

While I was "setting" my pallet, my sitter amused himself by turning over some portfolios. He happened to select one for special notice, which contained several sketches that I had made in the streets of Paris. He turned over the first five views rapidly enough; but when he came to the sixth, I saw his face flush directly; and observed that he took the drawing out of the portfolio, carried it to the window, and remained silently absorbed in the contemplation of it for full five minutes. After that, he turned round to me; and asked, very anxiously, if I had any objection to part with that sketch.

It was the least interesting drawing of the series--merely a view in one of the streets running by the backs of the houses in the Palais Royal. Some four or five of these houses were comprised in the view, which was of no particular use to me in any way; and which was too valueless, as a work of Art, for me to think of _selling_ it to my kind patron. I begged his acceptance of it, at once. He thanked me quite warmly; and then, seeing that I looked a little surprised at the odd selection he had made from my sketches, laughingly asked me if I could guess why he had been so anxious to become possessed of the view which I had given him?

"Probably"--I answered--"there is some remarkable historical association connected with that street at the back of the Palais Royal, of which I am ignorant."

"No"--said Mr. Faulkner--"at least, none that _I_ know of. The only association connected with the place in _my_ mind, is a purely personal association. Look at this house in your drawing--the house with the water-pipe running down it from top to bottom. I once passed a night there--a night I shall never forget to the day of my death. I have had some awkward traveling adventures in my time; but _that_ adventure--! Well, well! suppose we begin the sitting. I make but a bad return for your kindness in giving me the sketch, by thus wasting your time in mere talk."

He had not long occupied the sitter's chair (looking pale and thoughtful), when he returned--involuntarily, as it seemed--to the subject of the house in the back street. Without, I hope, showing any undue curiosity, I contrived to let him see that I felt a deep interest in every thing he now said. After two or three preliminary hesitations, he at last, to my great joy, fairly started on the narrative of his adventure. In the interest of his subject he soon completely forgot that he was sitting for his portrait--the very expression that I wanted, came over his face--my picture proceeded toward completion, in the right direction, and to the best purpose. At every fresh touch, I felt more and more certain that I was now getting the better of my grand difficulty; and I enjoyed the additional gratification of having my work lightened by the recital of a true story, which possessed, in my estimation, all the excitement of the most exciting romance.

This, as nearly as I can recollect, is, word for word, how Mr. Faulkner told me the story:--

Shortly before the period when gambling-houses were suppressed by the French Government, I happened to be staying at Paris with an English friend. We were both young men then, and lived, I am afraid, a very dissipated life, in the very dissipated city of our sojourn. One night, we were idling about the neighborhood of the Palais Royal, doubtful to what amusement we should next betake ourselves. My friend proposed a visit to Frascati's; but his suggestion was not to my taste. I knew Frascati's, as the French saying is, by heart; had lost and won plenty of five-franc pieces there, "merely for the fun of the thing," until it was "fun" no longer; and was thoroughly tired, in fact, of all the ghastly respectabilities of such a social anomaly as a respectable gambling-house. "For Heaven's sake"--said I to my friend--"let us go somewhere where we can see a little genuine, blackguard, poverty-stricken gaming, with no false gingerbread glitter thrown over it at all. Let us get away from fashionable Frascati's, to a house where they don't mind letting in a man with a ragged coat, or a man with no coat, ragged or otherwise."--"Very well," said my friend, "we needn't go out of the Palais Royal to find the sort of company you want. Here's the place, just before us; as blackguard a place, by all report, as you could possibly wish to see." In another minute we arrived at the door, and entered the house, the back of which you have drawn in your sketch.

When we got up-stairs, and had left our hats and sticks with the doorkeeper, we were admitted into the chief gambling-room. We did not find many people assembled there. But, few as the men were who looked up at us on our entrance, they were all types--miserable types--of their respective classes. We had come to see blackguards; but these men were something worse. There is a comic side, more or less appreciable, in all blackguardism--here, there was nothing but tragedy; mute, weird tragedy. The quiet in the room was horrible. The thin, haggard, long-haired young man, whose sunken eyes fiercely watched the turning up of the cards, never spoke; the flabby, fat-faced, pimply player, who pricked his piece of pasteboard perseveringly, to register how often black won, and how often red--never spoke; the dirty, wrinkled old man, with the vulture eyes, and the darned great coat, who had lost his last _sous_, and still looked on desperately, after he could play no longer--never spoke. Even the voice of the croupier sounded as if it were strangely dulled and thickened in the atmosphere of the room. I had entered the place to laugh; I felt that if I stood quietly looking on much longer, I should be more likely to weep. So, to excite myself out of the depression of spirits which was fast stealing over me, I unfortunately went to the table, and began to play. Still more unfortunately, as the event will show, I won--won prodigiously; won incredibly; won at such a rate, that the regular players at the table crowded round me; and staring at my stakes with hungry, superstitious eyes, whispered to one another that the English stranger was going to break the bank.

The game was _Rouge et Noir_. I had played at it in every city in Europe, without, however, the care or the wish to study the Theory of Chances--that philosopher's stone of all gamblers! And a gambler, in the strict sense of the word, I had never been. I was heart-whole from the corroding passion for play. My gaming was a mere idle amusement. I never resorted to it by necessity, because I never knew what it was to want money. I never practiced it so incessantly as to lose more than I could afford, or to gain more than I could coolly pocket, without being thrown off my balance by my good luck. In short, I had hitherto frequented gambling-tables--just as I frequented ball-rooms and opera-houses--because they amused me, and because I had nothing better to do with my leisure hours.

But, on this occasion, it was very different--now, for the first time in my life, I felt what the passion for play really was. My success first bewildered, and then, in the most literal meaning of the word, intoxicated me. Incredible as it may appear, it is nevertheless true, that I only lost, when I attempted to estimate chances, and played according to previous calculation. If I left every thing to luck, and staked without any care or consideration, I was sure to win--to win in the face of every recognized probability in favor of the bank. At first, some of the men present ventured their money safely enough on my color; but I speedily increased my stakes to sums which they dared not risk. One after another they left off playing, and breathlessly looked on at my game. Still, time after time, I staked higher and higher; and still won. The excitement in the room rose to fever pitch. The silence was interrupted, by a deep, muttered chorus of oaths and exclamations in different languages, every time the gold was shoveled across to my side of the table--even the imperturbable croupier dashed his rake on the floor in a (French) fury of astonishment at my success. But one man present preserved his self-possession; and that man was my friend. He came to my side, and whispering in English, begged me to leave the place, satisfied with what I had already gained. I must do him the justice to say, that he repeated his warnings and entreaties several times; and only left me and went away, after I had rejected his advice (I was to all intents and purposes gambling-drunk) in terms which rendered it impossible for him to address me again that night.

Shortly after he had gone, a hoarse voice behind me cried: "Permit me, my dear sir!--permit me to restore to their proper place two Napoleons which you have dropped. Wonderful luck, sir!--I pledge you my word of honor as an old soldier, in the course of my long experience in this sort of thing, I never saw such luck as yours!--never! Go on, sir--_Sacré mille bombes!_ Go on boldly, and break the bank!"

I turned round and saw, nodding and smiling at me with inveterate civility, a tall man, dressed in a frogged and braided surtout. If I had been in my senses, I should have considered him, personally, as being rather a suspicious specimen of an old soldier. He had goggling, bloodshot eyes, mangy mustaches, and a broken nose. His voice betrayed a barrack-room intonation of the worst order, and he had the dirtiest pair of hands I ever saw--even in France. These little personal peculiarities exercised, however, no repelling influence on me. In the mad excitement, the reckless triumph of that moment, I was ready to "fraternize" with any body who encouraged me in my game. I accepted the old soldier's offered pinch of snuff; clapped him on the back, and swore he was the honestest fellow in the world; the most glorious relic of the Grand Army that I had ever met with. "Go on!" cried my military friend, snapping his fingers in ecstasy--"Go on, and win! Break the bank--_Mille tonnerres!_ my gallant English comrade, break the bank!"

And I _did_ go on--went on at such a rate, that in another quarter of an hour the croupier called out: "Gentlemen! the bank has discontinued for to-night." All the notes, and all the gold in that "bank," now lay in a heap under my hands; the whole floating capital of the gambling-house was waiting to pour into my pockets!

"Tie up the money in your pocket-handkerchief, my worthy sir," said the old soldier, as I wildly plunged my hands into my heap of gold. "Tie it up, as we used to tie up a bit of dinner in the Grand Army; your winnings are too heavy for any breeches pockets that ever were sewed. There! that's it!--shovel them in, notes and all! _Credié!_ what luck!--Stop! another Napoleon on the floor! _Ah! sacré petit polisson de Napoleon!_ have I found thee at last? Now, then, sir--two tight double knots each way with your honorable permission, and the money's safe. Feel it! feel it, fortunate sir! hard and round as a cannon ball--_Ah, bah!_ if they had only fired such cannon balls at us at Austerlitz--_nom d'une pipe!_ if they only had! And now, as an ancient grenadier, as an ex-brave of the French army, what remains for me to do? I ask what? Simply this: to entreat my valued English friend to drink a bottle of champagne with me, and toast the goddess Fortune in foaming goblets before we part!"

Excellent ex-brave! Convivial ancient grenadier! Champagne by all means! An English cheer for an old soldier! Hurrah! hurrah! Another English cheer for the goddess Fortune! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!

"Bravo! the Englishman; the amiable, gracious Englishman, in whose veins circulates the vivacious blood of France! Another glass? _Ah, bah!_--the bottle is empty! Never mind! _Vive le vin!_ I, the old soldier, order another bottle, and half a pound of _bon-bons_ with it!"

No, no, ex-brave; never--ancient grenadier! _Your_ bottle last time; _my_ bottle this. Behold it! Toast away! The French Army!--the great Napoleon!--the present company! the croupier! the honest croupier's wife and daughters--if he has any! the Ladies generally! Every body in the world!

By the time the second bottle of champagne was emptied, I felt as if I had been drinking liquid fire--my brain seemed all a flame. No excess in wine had ever had this effect on me before in my life. Was it the result of a stimulant acting upon my system when I was in a highly-excited state? Was my stomach in a particularly disordered condition? Or was the champagne particularly strong?

"Ex-brave of the French Army!" cried I, in a mad state of exhilaration. "_I_ am on fire! how are _you_? You have set me on fire! Do you hear; my hero of Austerlitz? Let us have a third bottle of champagne to put the flame out!" The old soldier wagged his head, rolled his goggle-eyes, until I expected to see them slip out of their sockets; placed his dirty forefinger by the side of his broken nose; solemnly ejaculated "Coffee!" and immediately ran off into an inner room.

The word pronounced by the eccentric veteran, seemed to have a magical effect on the rest of the company present. With one accord they all rose to depart. Probably they had expected to profit by my intoxication; but finding that my new friend was benevolently bent on preventing me from getting dead drunk, had now abandoned all hope of thriving pleasantly on my winnings. Whatever their motive might be, at any rate they went away in a body. When the old soldier returned, and sat down again opposite to me at the table, we had the room to ourselves. I could see the croupier, in a sort of vestibule which opened out of it, eating his supper in solitude. The silence was now deeper than ever.

A sudden change, too, had come over the "ex-brave." He assumed a portentously solemn look; and when he spoke to me again, his speech was ornamented by no oaths, enforced by no finger-snapping, enlivened by no apostrophes, or exclamations.

"Listen, my dear sir," said he, in mysteriously confidential tones--"listen to an old soldier's advice. I have been to the mistress of the house (a very charming woman, with a genius for cookery!) to impress on her the necessity of making us some particularly strong and good coffee. You must drink this coffee in order to get rid of your little amiable exaltation of spirits, before you think of going home--you _must_, my good and gracious friend! With all that money to take home to-night, it is a sacred duty to yourself to have your wits about you. You are known to be a winner to an enormous extent, by several gentlemen present to-night, who, in a certain point of view, are very worthy and excellent fellows; but they are mortal men, my dear sir, and they have their amiable weaknesses! Need I say more? Ah, no, no! you understand me! Now, this is what you must do--send for a cabriolet when you feel quite well again--draw up all the windows when you get into it--and tell the driver to take you home only through the large and well-lighted thoroughfares. Do this; and you and your money will be safe. Do this; and to-morrow you will thank an old soldier for giving you a word of honest advice."

Just as the ex-brave ended his oration in very lachrymose tones, the coffee came in, ready poured out in two cups. My attentive friend handed me one of the cups, with a bow. I was parched with thirst, and drank it off at a draught. Almost instantly afterward, I was seized with a fit of giddiness, and felt more completely intoxicated than ever. The room whirled round and round furiously; the old soldier seemed to be regularly bobbing up and down before me, like the piston of a steam-engine. I was half-deafened by a violent singing in my ears; a feeling of utter bewilderment, helplessness, idiotcy, overcame me. I rose from my chair, holding on by the table to keep my balance; and stammered out, that I felt dreadfully unwell--so unwell, that I did not know how I was to get home.

"My dear friend," answered the old soldier; and even his voice seemed to be bobbing up and down, as he spoke--"My dear friend, it would be madness to go home, in _your_ state. You would be sure to lose your money; you might be robbed and murdered with the greatest ease. _I_ am going to sleep here: do _you_ sleep here, too--they make up capital beds in this house--take one; sleep off the effects of the wine, and go home safely with your winnings, to-morrow--to-morrow, in broad daylight."

I had no power of thinking, no feeling of any kind, but the feeling that I must lie down somewhere, immediately, and fall off into a cool, refreshing, comfortable sleep. So I agreed eagerly to the proposal about the bed, and took the offered arms of the old soldier and the croupier--the latter having been summoned to show the way. They led me along some passages and up a short flight of stairs into the bedroom which I was to occupy. The ex-brave shook me warmly by the hand; proposed that we should breakfast together the next morning; and then, followed by the croupier, left me for the night.

I ran to the wash-hand stand; drank some of the water in my jug; poured the rest out, and plunged my face into it--then sat down in a chair, and tried to compose myself. I soon felt better. The change for my lungs, from the fetid atmosphere of the gambling-room to the cool air of the apartment I now occupied; the almost equally refreshing change for my eyes, from the glaring gas-lights of the "Salon" to the dim, quiet flicker of one bedroom candle; aided wonderfully the restorative effects of cold water. The giddiness left me, and I began to feel a little like a reasonable being again. My first thought was of the risk of sleeping all night in a gambling-house; my second, of the still greater risk of trying to get out after the house was closed, and of going home alone at night, through the streets of Paris, with a large sum of money about me. I had slept in worse places than this, in the course of my travels; so I determined to lock, bolt, and barricade my door.

Accordingly, I secured myself against all intrusion; looked under the bed, and into the cupboard; tried the fastening of the window; and then, satisfied that I had taken every proper precaution, pulled off my upper clothing, put my light, which was a dim one, on the hearth among a feathery litter of wood ashes; and got into bed, with the handkerchief full of money under my pillow.

I soon felt, not only that I could not go to sleep, but that I could not even close my eyes. I was wide awake, and in a high fever. Every nerve in my body trembled--every one of my senses seemed to be preternaturally sharpened. I tossed, and rolled, and tried every kind of position, and perseveringly sought out the cold corners of the bed, and all to no purpose. Now, I thrust my arms over the clothes; now, I poked them under the clothes; now, I violently shot my legs straight out, down to the bottom of the bed; now, I convulsively coiled them up as near my chin as they would go; now, I shook out my crumpled pillow, changed it to the cool side, patted it flat, and lay down quietly on my back; now, I fiercely doubled it in two, set it up on end, thrust it against the board of the bed, and tried a sitting posture. Every effort was in vain; I groaned with vexation, as I felt that I was in for a sleepless night.

What could I do? I had no book to read. And yet, unless I found out some method of diverting my mind, I felt certain that I was in the condition to imagine all sorts of horrors; to rack my brains with forebodings of every possible and impossible danger; in short, to pass the night in suffering all conceivable varieties of nervous terror. I raised myself on my elbow, and looked about the room--which was brightened by a lovely moonlight pouring straight through the window--to see if it contained any pictures or ornaments, that I could at all clearly distinguish. While my eyes wandered from wall to wall, a remembrance of Le Maistre's delightful little book, "Voyage autour de ma Chambre," occurred to me. I resolved to imitate the French author, and find occupation and amusement enough to relieve the tedium of my wakefulness by making a mental inventory of every article of furniture I could see, and by following up to their sources the multitude of associations which even a chair, a table, or a wash-hand stand, may be made to call forth.

In the nervous, unsettled state of my mind at that moment, I found it much easier to make my proposed inventory, than to make my proposed reflections, and soon gave up all hope of thinking in Le Maistre's fanciful track--or, indeed, thinking at all. I looked about the room at the different articles of furniture, and did nothing more. There was, first, the bed I was lying in--a four-post bed, of all things in the world to meet with in Paris!--yes, a thorough clumsy British four-poster, with the regular top lined with chintz--the regular fringed valance all round--the regular stifling, unwholesome curtains, which I remembered having mechanically drawn back against the posts, without particularly noticing the bed when I first got into the room. Then, there was the marble-topped wash-hand stand, from which the water I had spilt, in my hurry to pour it out, was still dripping, slowly and more slowly, on to the brick floor. Then, two small chairs, with my coat, waistcoat, and trowsers flung on them. Then, a large elbow chair covered with dirty-white dimity: with my cravat and shirt-collar thrown over the back. Then, a chest of drawers, with two of the brass handles off, and a tawdry, broken china inkstand placed on it by way of ornament for the top. Then, the dressing-table, adorned by a very small looking-glass, and a very large pincushion. Then, the window--an unusually large window. Then, a dark old picture, which the feeble candle dimly showed me. It was the picture of a fellow in a high Spanish hat, crowned with a plume of towering feathers. A swarthy sinister ruffian, looking upward; shading his eyes with his hand, and looking intently upward--it might be at some tall gallows at which he was going to be hanged. At any rate he had the appearance of thoroughly deserving it.

This picture put a kind of constraint upon me to look upward, too--at the top of the bed. It was a gloomy and not an interesting object, and I looked back at the picture. I counted the feathers in the man's hat; they stood out in relief; three, white; two, green. I observed the crown of his hat, which was of a conical shape, according to the fashion supposed to have been favored by Guido Fawkes. I wondered what he was looking up at. It couldn't be at the stars; such a desperado was neither astrologer nor astronomer. It must be at the high gallows, and he was going to be hanged presently. Would the executioner come into possession of his conical crowned hat, and plume of feathers? I counted the feathers again; three, white; two, green.

While I still lingered over this very improving and intellectual employment, my thoughts insensibly began to wander. The moonlight shining into the room reminded me of a certain moonlight night in England--the night after a pic-nic party in a Welsh valley. Every incident of the drive homeward through lovely scenery, which the moonlight made lovelier than ever, came back to my remembrance, though I had never given the pic-nic a thought for years; though, if I had _tried_ to recollect it, I could certainly have recalled little or nothing of that scene long past. Of all the wonderful faculties that help to tell us we are immortal, which speaks the sublime truth more eloquently than memory? Here was I, in a strange house of the most suspicious character, in a situation of uncertainty, and even of peril, which might seem to make the cool exercise of my recollection almost out of the question; nevertheless remembering, quite involuntarily, places, people, conversations, minute circumstances of every kind, which I had thought forgotten forever, which I could not possibly have recalled at will, even under the most favorable auspices. And what cause had produced in a moment the whole of this strange, complicated, mysterious effect? Nothing but some rays of moonlight shining in at my bedroom window.

I was still thinking of the pic-nic; of our merriment on the drive home; of the sentimental young lady, who _would_ quote Childe Harold because it was moonlight. I was absorbed by these past scenes and past amusements, when, in an instant, the thread on which my memories hung, snapped asunder; my attention immediately came back to present things more vividly than ever, and I found myself, I neither knew why or wherefore, looking hard at the picture again.

Looking for what? Good God, the man had pulled his hat down on his brows!--No! The hat itself was gone! Where was the conical crown? Where the feathers; three, white; two green? Not there! In place of the hat and feathers, what dusky object was it that now hid his forehead--his eyes--his shading hand? Was the bed moving?

I turned on my back, and looked up. Was I mad? drunk? dreaming? giddy again? or, was the top of the bed really moving down--sinking slowly, regularly, silently, horribly, right down throughout the whole of its length and breadth--right down upon me, as I lay underneath?

My blood seemed to stand still; a deadly paralyzing coldness stole all over me, as I turned my head round on the pillow, and determined to test whether the bed-top was really moving or not, by keeping my eye on the man in the picture. The next look in that direction was enough. The dull, black, frowsy outline of the valance above me was within an inch of being parallel with his waist. I still looked breathlessly. And steadily, and slowly--very slowly--I saw the figure, and the line of frame below the figure, vanish, as the valance moved down before it.

I am, constitutionally, any thing but timid. I have been, on more than one occasion, in peril of my life, and have not lost my self-possession for an instant; but, when the conviction first settled on my mind that the bed-top was really moving, was steadily and continuously sinking down upon me, I looked up for one awful minute, or more, shuddering, helpless, panic-stricken, beneath the hideous machinery for murder, which was advancing closer and closer to suffocate me where I lay.

Then the instinct of self-preservation came, and nerved me to save my life, while there was yet time. I got out of bed very quietly, and quickly dressed myself again in my upper clothing. The candle, fully spent, went out. I sat down in the arm-chair that stood near, and watched the bed-top slowly descending. I was literally spell-bound by it. If I had heard footsteps behind me, I could not have turned round; if a means of escape had been miraculously provided for me, I could not have moved to take advantage of it. The whole life in me, was, at that moment, concentrated in my eyes.

It descended--the whole canopy, with the fringe round it, came down--down--close down; so close that there was not room now to squeeze my finger between the bed-top and the bed. I felt at the sides, and discovered that what had appeared to me, from beneath, to be the ordinary light canopy of a four-post bed was in reality a thick, broad mattress, the substance of which was concealed by the valance and its fringe. I looked up, and saw the four posts rising hideously bare. In the middle of the bed-top was a huge wooden screw that had evidently worked it down through a hole in the ceiling, just as ordinary presses are worked down on the substance selected for compression. The frightful apparatus moved without making the faintest noise. There had been no creaking as it came down; there was now not the faintest sound from the room above. Amid a dead and awful silence I beheld before me--in the nineteenth century, and in the civilized capital of France--such a machine for secret murder by suffocation, as might have existed in the worst days of the Inquisition, in the lonely Inns among the Hartz Mountains, in the mysterious tribunals of Westphalia! Still, as I looked on it, I could not move; I could hardly breathe; but I began to recover the power of thinking; and, in a moment, I discovered the murderous conspiracy framed against me, in all its horror.

My cup of coffee had been drugged, and drugged too strongly. I had been saved from being smothered, by having taken an over-dose of some narcotic. How I had chafed and fretted at the fever fit which had preserved my life by keeping me awake! How recklessly I had confided myself to the two wretches who had led me into this room, determined, for the sake of my winnings, to kill me in my sleep, by the surest and most horrible contrivance for secretly accomplishing my destruction! How many men, winners like me, had slept, as I had proposed to sleep, in that bed; and never been seen or heard of more! I shuddered as I thought of it.